Against the Grain

1
This is a death trap, his brain told him. You have a few seconds left. Maybe a minute.
     A minute to curse his stupidity for being conned. Like an idiot he’d taken up the challenge with no thought about the danger. A couple of drinks had made him bolder, but he certainly wasn’t drunk, not even in party mood. He had been focused. This was a game he’d needed to win.
     In the moonlight, he’d climbed the twenty-metre ladder and lifted the inspection hatch in the conical roof. It had been left unbolted. A promising sign, he had decided. He’d looked in and at once spotted what he had come for. The pink prize was lying in the centre only a short way off. He felt a rush of excitement.
     He should have sussed he had been set up. Should have worn a safety line. And shouldn’t have gone in alone, after dark. But he didn’t hesitate. Gripping the hatch door and the side for support, he lowered himself inside. The silo was filled almost to the top with wheat grain, so he didn’t need to jump. His feet met the surface before it needed to take his weight. A crust had formed on top and felt reasonably firm.
     He wasn’t troubled that the hatch didn’t stay open. It was within reach so he could easily push the door up to get out again. And he had his phone to see with. He switched on the flashlight for a better view of the smooth-sided galvanised steel cylinder. Ten metres across. He would only need five.
     His shoes broke the crust and sank in a short way. That didn’t register as a warning. He could still get to the centre. The effort of freeing his foot gave extra force to his next step and caused him to sink in some more. The crust was thinner out here, away from the wall. Stored grain is unstable, he told himself. What else do you expect?
     Almost at once he was knee deep. Movement was like wading through a swamp. Still the lure of the reward drew him on. I won’t be beaten, he told himself. I’ve gone to too much trouble already. Pushing on, thighs straining, upper body twisting, elbows at shoulder level working like machinery, he inched towards the target. He leaned in, stretched and felt his fingertips touch the lace trim. At a second try he grabbed it.
     Success.
     And so simple.
     He drew the garter on to his arm to leave both hands free.
     Now he needed to get back to the hatch and climb out. He made the effort to turn and felt a troubling loss of control. All this disturbance had produced a shallow crater in the surface that was clearly getting deeper. He was at the lowest point with the grain streaming down. It was taking a huge effort to move his legs. Already he was up to his thighs and sinking. For the first time in this misadventure, he knew he was in danger of being buried alive.
     In alarm, if not panic, he shouted for help. His voice echoed off the steel sides and roof, only confirming that he was in an enclosed space where nobody would hear.
     Seed was bouncing down the slope, stinging his face. Some of it got in his mouth. Shouting will only make this worse, he thought. I must keep my airways clear.
     His legs and feet were being crushed. His descent might have slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. He was held fast, up to his armpits. With each movement of his shoulders a million suffocating seeds ran down the sides of the crater.
     Idiot. You have a phone in your right hand. Use it.
     No service came up on the status bar.
     He was in a dead zone.


2
Peter Diamond stared at the email on his home computer screen. “Smelly lanes and horse flies. I’m not cut out for country life.”
     “I never said you were,” his partner, Paloma Kean, said over his shoulder. “Doesn’t mean you can’t go out of town. You’ve been before.”
     “Only on police duty. This is something else. She’s asking us to stay.”
     “Not forever. It’s a visit.”
     “A whole damn week out of my annual leave.”
     “She was your deputy. You’re always telling me what a gem Julie was. Aren’t you interested to see her again after all this time?”
     He hesitated. He’d never told Paloma why the staunchly loyal Julie Hargreaves had quit and applied for a transfer. The harsh truth of the matter was that the day came when even Julie had wearied of his overbearing conduct. She’d smoothed the way for him through case after case until she’d finally buckled under the strain. Her announcement that she was leaving Bath CID had been one of the great shocks of his life. He couldn’t blame her any more than he could change his own personality. For Julie it had been a gut-wrenching decision, unknown to him until later. She had discussed it all with Stephanie, his late wife, and Steph had supported her. “Let her go, Pete,” she had told him after Julie had dropped her bombshell. “A trouble-free life isn’t necessarily what you want or need.” Another way of saying she’s too good for you. Anything Steph had said was gospel. He bore no resentment towards Julie.
     “But a day visit will be more than enough,” he told Paloma. “I don’t do overnight. It’s only Somerset, for pity’s sake. We can be there and back in a couple of hours.”
     “Maybe she has a reason for wanting you to stay.”
     “Like what? Putting up shelves? She’d regret that.”
     “Something professional.”
     “Julie is retired now. She had the sense to put it all behind her.”
     Paloma vibrated her lips. “Says you.”
     He managed a self-conscious grin.
     Retirement beckoned for him, too, but he wasn’t looking forward to it. His job defined him. Without it, he would lose self-respect and, more importantly, the satisfaction of seeking and discovering nuggets of truth in a chaotic world. “I had a run-in with Georgina yesterday.”
     His boss, Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore, had endured his prickly personality for almost twenty years and thought it should have earned her the King’s Police Medal for service of conspicuous merit.
     “She asked me my age.”
     “Doesn’t she know it already?”
     “You bet she does. Years, months and days. She started talking about the NPA as if I should know about it. She knows my blind spot for abbreviations.”
     “NPA?”
     “Normal Pension Age.”
     “Ouch.”
     “My reaction exactly. I was forced to remind her about the RPO.”
     “What’s that, the Royal Philharmonic?”
     “The Retention of Police Officers scheme. For those of us—I quote—‘due to retire, who wish to continue to supply their valuable skills and experience.’ Bit of a shock for her. She almost burst her tunic buttons.”
     Paloma smiled. “But I don’t think you should stay in the job just to spite Georgina.”
     “I do it for myself. You know that.”
     The truth was that he and Georgina had worked on their mutual dislike over the years and attained a level of understanding, if not tolerance. The fighting never stopped, but the chance of a knockout had long since gone by. They knew too much about each other. She had his misdemeanours on file going right back to violence episodes when he had been in the Met. But the only time she had tried to get him sacked at a disciplinary hearing at headquarters, it had been cancelled at the last minute because he had broken his leg performing an act of heroism in the line of duty.
     Diamond didn’t have a dossier on Georgina but he knew her weak points. She had once been desperate to find a house-sitter, mainly to cosset her pampered Persian cat, Sultan, when she went abroad. Through no fault of his own, he’d ended up doing the job himself, whisking Sultan away from Georgina’s luxurious house in Bennett Street to the more humble Diamond homestead in Weston to share with his own tough tabby called Raffles. Georgina never knew Diamond could have had the run of her house, everything from her Mills & Boon collection to her underwear drawer. And he was privy to more of her innermost secrets, the afternoons out for golf, hair appointments and choir practice.
     “We’ve never experienced village life,” Paloma said as if the thought had just occurred to her. “Julie’s invitation could be an opportunity.”
     Danger signals sounded for Diamond. “Opportunity for what?”
     “Finding out if the country suits us.”
     He didn’t like that at all. “It wouldn’t. We’re townies, through and through. Nothing ever happens there. You can soon get tired of frolicking lambs and helping the farmer pick his apples.”
     “What’s that Sherlock Holmes quote about the smiling and beautiful countryside having a more dreadful record of sin than the vilest alleys in London?”
     “Detective fiction,” he said with a curl of the lip. “I deal in true crime.”
     “You may have to go looking for true crime if you want to exercise your brain after, em . . .”
     “Retirement?”
     Paloma hadn’t wanted to use the R word again. She knew how it troubled him. “But you’d help Julie if she had a problem. It’s not in your nature to spurn a cry for help from an old colleague.”
     He checked the screen again. “Cry for help? I don’t see one here.”
     “Did you notice the name of the village?”
     Baskerville. “Is that real?”
     “Doesn’t it have some appeal to you, of all people?” Paloma said.
     “Is that why you just quoted Sherlock Holmes?”
     “It may have popped into my head.”
     “It’s only a name,” he said. “The countryside is dotted with stupid names. One more reason for avoiding it.”
     “That’s rich for a man who lives in a town called Bath.”
     She knew better than to press old Grumbleguts when he was in this mood. She would let him brood on the matter. A few hours might make a difference.
     As for Diamond, he had a more urgent matter to deal with, a visit to the vet with Raffles, his elderly cat, for the annual booster injection. The needle never seemed to bother Raffles. What troubled him was the waiting room and the smells and sounds of other people’s pets, especially dogs. He would be safe in his carrier but that didn’t stop him from mewing loudly enough for Diamond to get looks from all the other owners.
     Mercifully, when they got there, the waiting room was empty except for a man with a large bird cage under a black polyester cover. Whatever was inside was silent.
     Diamond didn’t have to ask.
     “He’s a beautiful cockatoo,” the man said. “He’s been off colour for a week and I want the vet to take a look. I’d show him to you, but it could be psittacosis. Heard of that?”
     “The parrot disease,” Diamond said in a tone meant to shut the man up. He didn’t want conversation right now. But he made the mistake of softening his response by adding, “Let’s hope it’s not that.”
     “It can easily be transferred to humans,” the man said as blithely as if he were doing a TV commercial. “Little airborne particles. Breathe any of those in and you could go down with pneumonia.”
     “Nasty,” Diamond said, thankful that the cockatoo and its owner were on the other side of the room.
     The man was nervous and needed to fill the silence. “The symptoms are like Covid. Bit of a cough, temperature, headache. You could take one of those lateral flow tests and come up negative and think you’re safe, but you aren’t. If you’re taken seriously ill and don’t tell them you’ve been near a parrot, they won’t know how to treat you. It could be curtains. I’m doing the right thing, bringing him here.”
     “No question,” Diamond said without meaning it at all. “You can’t be too careful.”
     “I’m going to warn the vet to wear a protective mask.”
     “Excellent idea,” Diamond said, thinking he, too, should be wearing protection.
     “Not just a face covering, a proper surgical mask that filters out those particles.”
     A young woman in a green uniform appeared at the door of the inner sanctum. “Mr. Screech?”
     The man twitched. “That’s my cockatoo, not me.”
     “The vet will see you now, both of you.”
     After they’d gone in, Diamond picked up a magazine. Not to read, but to flap the air and disperse any particles that had come his way.
     Raffles treated him to one of those disdainful looks cats give their owners.
     “How old is he now?” the vet asked Diamond when their turn came.
     “I wouldn’t like to answer that in his presence. Last time we were here I told you he likes to check on the birds from the windowsill but can’t jump up anymore, and you suggested a chair would help. Now he needs a footstool to get on the chair.”
     “Good thinking,” she said. “And how is his appetite?”
     “Smaller, for sure.”
     She put Raffles on the scales. “You may need to raise his feeding dish to shoulder level.”
     “His shoulders or mine?”
     She smiled. “An upturned shoebox would be about right.”
     “Good idea. I’ll find one.” A shoebox wasn’t going to cost anything. Elderly pets can get expensive.
     “We are recommending new medication for the arthritis that will help him,” the vet added as she lifted Raffles on to her table. “Let’s look at his teeth.”
     Some dental work under anaesthetic was going to be necessary. They’d need another appointment for that. The bill was mounting. The new medication for the arthritis wouldn’t come cheap. And the annual jab wasn’t free.
     On the drive home, Diamond had a rather good idea. He would use Raffles as the excuse to get him out of that week in the country. A phone call to Julie to explain that the cat needed special care now and couldn’t be boarded anywhere.