No Holds Barred by Lyndon Stacey Page B

one long swallow and stood up.
    â€˜Didn’t mean nuthin’. Juss ramblin’. Folks’ll tell you I’m daft in the head, an’ maybe they’re right. Reckon you don’t wanna take no notice of what I say.’ He stood up and headed for the door, the little lurcher once again hidden under his coat.
    Daniel followed him. ‘You’re no more mad than I am. What are you scared of ? Who are you scared of ? Is it Taylor Boyd?’
    Woodsmoke turned sharply.
    â€˜Iss not just him! You don’t know what you’re messing with. There’s dozens of ’em – hundreds. People you don’t expect. They come from all over. There’s nuthin’ you can do ’cept keep your head down and pretend you don’t see nor hear nuthin.’
    He made to move away again, but Daniel caught hold of his coat sleeve.
    â€˜What are you talking about? What people?’
    Woodsmoke paused and, without turning, said reluctantly, ‘Reckon there’s plenty others, but Boyd’s lot calls theirselves the Butcher Boys. But I never told you that and no one can prove I did.’
    As the little woodsman disappeared into the darkness, Daniel locked the front door of the cottage and returned to the kitchen. A glance at the clock told him it was a quarter to four. Hard to believe that so much had happened in such a short time.
    He rinsed the mugs, turned the lights off and made his way back upstairs with Taz at his heels, feeling a dozen bruised muscles pull with every step. Tomorrow wasn’t going to be much fun. It was Saturday and only a half-day, but, as luck would have it, he was one of the drivers rostered on. He searched his memory; Reg was the other one, so at least he should be spared coming face to face with Boyd for a day or two.
    Lying on top of the single cotton sheet, Daniel closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but the combination of aching body and busy mind made the goal a remote one.
    The Butcher Boys. A gang of some sort, by the sound of it. The way the poacher had spoken of them made them sound almost like Freemasons. Were they known to the police? If the cottage had had a telephone line and internet access, he’d have been out of bed and Googling the name right away, but, as it was, it would have to wait. Perhaps a call to Tom Bowden would turn up some information. Tom was the son of Daniel’s boss in Devon, and a Detective Inspector who had helped him massively in the past.
    Turning over, he punched the pillow with his good hand and wriggled so he wasn’t lying on a bruise. Sleep remained stubbornly elusive. He was beginning to have some ideas about Taylor Boyd and the possible nature of the gang, and they were none of them pleasant.
    The morning dawned clear with the sun climbing steeply into an azure sky. Getting up, showering and dressing was an ordeal for Daniel, whose stomach and shoulder muscles were rebelling against the treatment they’d received.
    The face that looked back at him from the bathroom mirror had also seen better days. His jaw was slightly swollen and bore a bruise that was only partially visible under the night’s growth of stubble, so he decided to remain unshaven. There was another bruise in his hairline, collected when he’d butted Boyd in the face. That didn’t show at all, and its presence was a source of satisfaction, solely because he knew that Boyd must have come off far worse. The only immediately obvious signs of the night’s unrest were the graze on his cheekbone and his painfully swollen wrist, now inexpertly bandaged.
    Emerging from the cottage after a breakfast of coffee, toast and paracetamol, he found the front garden similarly the worse for wear, a substantial length of its picket fencing flattened and the borders trampled. Across the lane, the top twenty or thirty feet of one of the fir trees in the wood was blackened and split in two where the lightning had struck.
    At the side of the