The Viv Fraser Mysteries Box Set 1 by V Clifford

Author:V Clifford [Clifford, V]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inverardoch Press
Published: 2017-04-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The journey to Aberdeen in the dark with a starry sky and a nip in the air was almost as beautiful as in daylight. It took her forty minutes to get out of Edinburgh and before she saw the Forth rail bridge and lights twinkling all along the Fife coast. She’d forgotten her iPod and had to settle for the Bridge Over Troubled Water CD. No hardship there. She pressed repeat and sang like no one was listening. ‘Jubilation! She loves me again, I fall on the floor and I’m laughing . . . ’ It would take a hard heart not to be lifted by that and Viv was already flying. By the time she reached the outskirts of Aberdeen she was hoarse.

The atmosphere felt entirely different as soon as she turned up the track towards the Grants’s farmhouse. Almost blinded by a security light, she reversed out of its range before getting out of the car. The light stayed on for its thirty-second setting, and Viv, careful to avoid it, skirted along the edge of the hedge, then against the side of the house before she reached the walls of the barn. She asked herself what the hell she was doing – she should have gone straight to the other houses in the hamlet. There wasn’t anyone here to answer her questions.

The door to the chicken shed was closed and had been secured with a padlock. Why? There was nothing in it apart from remnants of straw. Had she missed something? The barn beyond was open and a Zetor tractor was parked with its trailer sticking out into the yard. Viv stepped cautiously towards it, the condensation from her shallow breath leading the way. The engine was still warm and was making noises of contraction as it cooled.

Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. In the far corner, sitting on top of wooden pallets, there were two huge unopened sacks containing fertiliser pellets. The concrete floor was marked by mud from tyre tracks left by other, smaller bits of machinery. She took out her torch and followed tracks near the right-hand wall. She spotted a straggle of straw sticking out of what turned out to be a hatch in the floor. There wasn’t much evidence of straw anywhere in the barn, which struck her as odd. She crouched to take a closer look and a split second later she sensed a weightless step, then heard a light thud.

There was a bright light in the tiny space. It mightn’t have been bright by anyone else’s standards, but with a searing pain beneath her occipital bone, Viv’s eyes were in no state to be tested. Bit by bit the room came into focus and she gradually and very gently moved her head to the right and left. She was alone, in the chicken shed, except for the forty-watt bulb dangling from the ceiling. She pushed herself up the wall of the wooden enclosure. Her gloved hands were covered in straw from the floor.

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