The jagged white-painted scrawl underneath that said PRIVATE PROPERTY – PISS OFF was much more recent and a lot more telling.
Ben stepped out of the car to open the gate, drove through the entrance and started making his way down the long bumpy track. Le Crock would have been better suited to the potholes and ruts; the low-slung Mazda grounded out with a nasty grinding scrape two or three times as he approached the dimly lit buildings.
Rolling up into the frosty yard, Ben glanced around him and could immediately picture the kind of open-toed-sandalled, pot-smoking middle-class hippies who would keep a farm like this as an occasional holiday place and let their son and his mates run riot in it whenever they wanted. If there was a line somewhere between decadent Bohemian chic and out-and-out neglect, Black Rock Farm had crossed it a long time ago. Sophie Norrington hadn’t been far wide of the mark when she’d called it ‘grim and lugubrious’. Simeon’s description ‘derelict’ hadn’t been wildly off, either.
Ben parked the Mazda outside the crumbling low wall that ringed the old stone farmhouse. ‘You stay here,’ he told the dog. As he climbed out of the car he heard the thump-thump-thump of music in the distance, a riffy rock guitar over bass and drums. He turned to see that it was coming from the looming dark shape of a barn across the far side of the yard. Shards of light glowed out here and there from the gaps in the walls. Ben followed the sound, his footsteps crunching on the deep frost. Through the mist he could see a few cheap cars, the kinds of cars students drove, parked in the shadows. If it had been California there’d have been a couple of bad-boy Harleys, too. But this wasn’t California.
As Ben walked up to the barn he could hear that the music was being played live – so much was obvious from the fact that the musicians either weren’t very good, or were just too drunk or stoned to hit the right notes or keep a steady beat. He found the door and pushed it open. Warmth, light, noise and the smell of booze and smoke hit him as he stepped inside.
The floor of the barn was compacted earth. The walls were rusty corrugated iron sheets held together in places with baling twine. The halogen lamps that hung from wires draped over the beams were probably a massive fire risk, but not so much as the ancient-looking wood-burner that someone had dragged in and set up on bricks in a corner.
A lot of the heat inside the barn wasn’t coming from the blazing logs, but from the thirty or so bodies dancing to the music, young men and women, none of them far out of their teens. Most of them appeared pretty inebriated, almost as far gone as the musicians up on the makeshift stage that was littered with wires, bottles, and amplifiers cranked up to maximum volume. The lead guitarist was using an empty beer bottle as a glass slide to screech out some truly hideous dissonant notes over the lumbering rhythm that his mates onstage were hammering out from the bass and drums. A military firing range would have done a more harmonious job of damaging the eardrums.
Ben shook his head at the spectacle, and hoped to God he’d never managed to look this ridiculous at their age.
Few people seemed to notice his presence. Sitting in a row on a collapsed sofa to one side of the barn were a young girl who was either asleep or maybe in a coma, a spotty gingery youth on whose shoulder her head was resting, and another young guy who seemed about to throw up. Ben reckoned that the spotty gingery one was the best option to speak to. ‘I’m looking for Jude Arundel,’ he shouted over the noise, bending low to be heard.
The kid’s face was blank for a few seconds, then he motioned in the direction of a side door. ‘They’re in the house,’ he slurred. ‘Want some of this?’ he added, holding up a crumpled joint.
Ben ignored the offer. Glad to escape the noise, he left the barn and cut across towards the farmhouse. Little chimes suspended above the front door tinkled in the cold breeze. He was about to knock, then instead tried the door and found it was open.
Ben stepped inside the hallway and smelled the sickly smell of damp mixed with incense; patchouli or sandalwood. A yin-yang symbol the size of a cartwheel was painted on one wall, opposite a peeling Led Zeppelin poster. From the slightly better-tended state of the place, Ben figured that Robbie’s parents probably got around to visiting their holiday home every year or two.
From up the staircase came the sound of a toilet flushing, and moments later a spiky-haired young guy of about Jude Arundel’s age appeared. He stopped midway down the stairs, and gaped at Ben with wide eyes.
‘Who’re you?’
‘Are you Robbie?’ Ben said.
‘I’m Mark,’ the young guy said, adding, ‘I’m in the band.’
‘Where’s Jude Arundel?’
‘Who’s asking?’ Mark said, puffing out his chest.
Ben just stared at him. After a couple of seconds Mark lowered his eyes, bravado melting away quickly, and pointed towards a room down the hall from the front door. ‘In there. Playing cards with Robbie.’
The reek of booze was strong as Ben slipped into the dimly candle-lit room, apparently unnoticed by the half-dozen young guys who were sitting in varying stages of drunkenness around a worn table. At some point in its progress, the card game they were playing had mutated into a drinking competition whose purpose seemed to be a challenge to whoever could stomach the unholy mixture of Guinness, cheap red wine and vodka one of them was pouring into a grubby pint glass. The contest had already claimed its first victim, who was slumped semi-conscious across the table.
Ben instantly knew which of them was Robbie from the name emblazoned across the front of his red sweatshirt. He was maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, overweight and trying five years too early to grow a beard.
Sitting next to Robbie at the table, leaning his athletic frame back in his chair and laughing at something his friend had just said, was the young man whose picture Ben had seen at the vicarage. Jude looked just as he had in the photo, except that his unruly mop of hair was bleached blonder by the New Zealand sunshine and the wetsuit had been exchanged for a fleece jacket. Still laughing, he went to pick up the pint glass containing the lethal concoction his friend had just poured.
Ben didn’t want to have to break news like this to someone half blotto. Stepping brusquely into the candlelight, he reached out and stopped Jude’s hand before it could get to the glass.
‘Oy!’ Jude said, looking up at Ben in surprise and anger. His eyes were only a little glazed over from the drink, which made him by far the soberest person at the table. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demanded.
Robbie swayed up out of his seat. ‘What’re you doing in my place, man?’
‘Sit down, Robbie,’ Ben said.
Robbie sat down.
‘Jude, my name’s Ben Hope. I’ve been leaving messages for you all day. Didn’t you get them?’
‘I don’t know you. How did you find me?’ Jude blustered. Even the drunkest of his friends were beginning to take notice of what was going on.
‘Never mind how I found you. We need to talk.’ Ben glanced around at the others and shot a warning look at Robbie. ‘In private. Can we step outside?’
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Ben.’
‘These are my friends, Ben. Whatever you’ve got to say to me, you can say it to all of us.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said.
‘Really.’
‘Listen to me. I’m a friend of your family and this is much more important than you realise.’
‘Oh, I get it,’ Jude interrupted him. ‘You’ve come to take me home? Did he send you?’
Robbie let out a belch, then leered wolfishly at Jude. ‘The reverend wants his baby boy home for Christmas.’
‘Fuck you, Robbie,’ Jude said. ‘Who was too chicken to get in the water with the great whites?’ He made another grab for the drink, amid a chorus