So the motley bunch of people tagging along in a little group at the back must be the saboteurs. Some of them looked like students, glittering with piercings and tattoos, and one even had a red mohican, which was exactly how she would have pictured them, if asked. But a few of the protestors were middle-aged women, positively respectable looking, wearing walking boots with thick socks rolled over their ankles, and carrying little rucksacks. They reminded her of the Greenham Common women who had impressed her when she was a small child, because they always seemed to be on the TV news.
A couple of the sabs were carrying video cameras, others had mobile phones they were using to take photographs. Maybe they were also keeping in touch with another group somewhere, with a person in charge of co-ordination. Or perhaps they really were just a disorganized rabble letting off a bit of steam.
On the other hand, she could see now that video cameras and mobile phones weren’t the only equipment the protestors were carrying.
She saw Inspector Redfearn, and wound her window down.
‘Inspector, do you know some of those animal rights people are carrying whips?’
‘Yes, it’s usual. Its one of their tactics for confusing the hounds.’
‘Shouldn’t you seize them? Wouldn’t you consider them offensive weapons?’
‘Ah, but look at the huntsman, and half of the riders. They all have whips or riding crops. We can’t seize them from one side and not from the other.’
‘So it’s all in the cause of impartiality?’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’
Fry shook her head. If the two sides had both been armed with baseball bats, knives, or AK-47s, there’d have been no question how the police would react. But nice, middle-class people couldn’t have their whips taken off them, could they?
The inspector’s radio burst into life, and he listened for a moment.
‘Uh-oh. It seems to be kicking off on the other side of that copse.’
‘So there is another group of sabs.’
‘Sounds like it. This lot are probably just the diversion.’
Fry got out of her car and waited to see what would happen. It was so difficult to tell what was going on. A confusion of shouting, horns blowing, car engines revving, hooves clattering on the tarmac. She smelled a chemical spray on the air, almost as if tear gas had been fired. Four police officers ran down the track from where she’d last seen the hounds. A radio crackled, someone uttered a short, sharp scream.
She walked a few yards further up the track, feeling completely out of her depth.
‘Do you need help?’ she called.
‘It’s usually all over and done with in a few minutes,’ said the inspector. ‘It’ll just be a question of who’s left with the most bruises.’
Four men in camouflage jackets trotted past her. They were all big men, bulky under their jackets, and one of them was carrying a pickaxe handle. He gave Fry a hard stare as he went by, and she felt sure she’d seen him before, possibly in court, or occupying a cell in the custody suite. If she’d seen those four sitting in a car within fifty yards of a bank, she would have been tempted to call in the response team to arrest them on suspicion of planning an armed robbery. Today, though, they all wore baseball caps that said HUNT STEWARD. The unmistakable scent of violence hung on the air.
‘I see the hunt have their own heavies, Inspector,’ said Fry.
‘The stewards, yes. They were stood down for quite a while, but they seem to have been re-formed for the occasion.’
‘Looking for a chance to teach the protestors a lesson, I suppose.’
‘We do try to keep an eye on them. But with an event like this, things can be spread over a wide area. The hounds are in one place, the riders another, and the car followers all over the shop. That’s why we tend to watch the sabs. The trouble happens where they are, one way or another.’
An officer came up and spoke to the inspector.
‘OK, thanks.’ He turned back to Fry. ‘It seems some hunt supporters blocked the sabs’ van in with their vehicles and let the tyres down. That’s pretty tame stuff, really.’
‘What about all the shouting and screaming?’
‘Oh, one of the joint masters got a bit aggravated and chased the sabs down the road.’
‘When he was on horseback?’
‘That’s “she”. Two of the Eden Valley joint masters are women. Yes, she was mounted at the time. A horse can be a bit terrifying when it’s coming towards you at a canter. That’s one reason we use them ourselves, of course.’
A moment later, two young women ran through the trees and on to the road towards the police. One of them had blood streaming down her face and into her hair from a cut above her eye, and the other was holding a hand to her mouth, wincing in pain.
‘That doesn’t look like tame stuff to me.’
‘I’ll get an ambulance here.’
‘Good luck getting it through, Inspector.’
But the two women were soon telling their story in the back of a police car while they waited for the ambulance.
‘It’s often the female sabs who get hurt,’ said the inspector, when he returned.
‘Funny, that.’
‘To be honest, I think they’re probably the most provocative. Though I suppose I shouldn’t say it.’
Fry made her way back to her Peugeot, carefully stepping over heaps of steaming horse muck on the road, and the muddy ruts left by the wheels of the transporters. She was just in time to see a stray foxhound, its tongue lolling, cocking a leg to urinate on her car.
‘Oh, wonderful,’ said Fry, to no one in particular. ‘Another slice of country life.’
Sean Crabbe was surprised to have made it home safely. He was still trembling and sweating by the time he arrived at the house, and he had to pretend that he’d been running. Then he had to make up some excuse to explain why he wasn’t at college, which he’d forgotten all about.
If only he could afford to get a place of his own, this would never be a problem. He was twenty years old, for Christ’s sake. He ought to be independent, earning his own living, free to come and go when he pleased, without making explanations.
But instead he had to mutter something vague about not feeling well, before disappearing to his room. His mother looked at him suspiciously, but she would probably decide that he must have ’flu coming on or something. What he needed most was to have a shower, and to check whether he had any traces of blood on him.
Sean couldn’t believe he’d done something so stupid. Maybe he could blame Coldplay; ‘A Rush of Blood to the Head’. Damn right. That was exactly what had happened.
In that moment of anger at the intrusion into his territory, the invasion of his sanctuary among the derelict buildings, he’d acted without thinking things through. Just because no one else ever came up to the huts, because he was so confident that he wouldn’t be seen, he’d done something he would never have considered in the ordinary world. He wasn’t a criminal, in fact he hated the junkies and yobs and thieves he saw every night in the streets of Edendale. He never wanted to be part of their world. So why had he done it?
Sean stripped off his clothes, holding his parka and jeans up to the light from his bedroom window. No sign of blood. But what about his trainers? Soil and dust trapped in the pattern of his soles, a few small pieces of stone. If the police got hold of them, they would probably be able to piece together exactly where he’d