Glass Arrows by Heather Peck

Author:Heather Peck [Peck, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

16

The riverbank and Stalham Poultry

Greg was back in the lifeboat and on his way to a rendezvous with the search dog team when his phone found an ephemeral signal and rang.

‘Hi, Jim,’ he said. ‘Any progress?’

There was a long pause while he listened, struggling to hear over the engine noise and the flickering signal.

‘That’s great, well done, Jim,’ he said. ‘What led you to it?’

‘The inappropriately reinforced gate in the first instance,’ replied Jim. ‘It took me a few moments to work out what alerted me, but everything else was old, dilapidated and dull. Bright metal was incongruous. At the time, I just knew something didn’t fit, but thinking back, that was the trigger.’

‘And what’s the latest on the drain?’

‘Our local contact, Ian Rhodes, has turned up some old maps. The drain runs in a straight line from the manhole in the old lairage yard to the riverbank. I’ve had officers check it out. The outfall measures three feet in diameter and there’s no grid or grating that we can see. I’ve got the SOCOs checking around there and along the riverbank, but they don’t think they’ll find anything after multiple tides. One man has been down to the bottom of the shaft at the yard end and shone a torch down the drain. He couldn’t see anything except a shallow trickle of water. We’re waiting now on borrowing some kit from the water board. They have a sort of probe they use to check drains and pipes. We can send that down pretty much all the way to the outfall. No one is keen to send a man down as we don’t know how structurally sound the old pipe is.’

‘That all sounds great. Thank you, Jim,’ said Greg again. ‘I’m on my way to see where we think the poacher Jackson went in the river. After that, I’ll head back to Wymondham. I think a general catch-up this afternoon would be good.’

‘How are they getting on with checking out possible employers?’

‘I’m not up to date on that. Last thing I heard they were checking on poultry units and processing plants near Thetford. I’ll make sure we have a report back from Sarah this afternoon.’

*

The lifeboat rounded the bend to see Jenny Warren and her dog partner sitting on the bank. Both rose as the lifeboat approached – Jenny to catch the line, Meg to bark. Jenny waved frantically to prevent the lifeboat steering straight over the blue item she could see below the water.

‘There,’ she shouted. ‘That’s what I think we should retrieve. Over there.’

The boat turned sharply and then reapproached the bank from a different angle. Greg stepped out, reflecting as he did so, that he was getting rather better at this, just before he stepped heavily into a cowpat. Jenny tried, with limited success, to hide her smirk as he dragged his feet, trying to clean up his shoe on the rough grass. Even the spaniel had a superior expression.

‘The items Meg found are over here,’ she said, pointing to the old tree trunk.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.