Broken Homes

like it if he comes tooling up in a tractor and he can’t get in,’ I said.
    ‘He’ll get over it,’ she said. ‘Farmers are always pissed off about something.’
    I looked at the farmyard. I was still wearing my DM 1461 shoes which were not my best, but not what I wanted to get agricultural waste products on, either. But sometimes successful policing involves making a sacrifice.
    We climbed out of the Asbo into the hot sunlight. The air had that dried shit smell that I’ve been reliably informed indicates either muck spreading or a music festival. But not at this farm, I decided. Even I could see that there didn’t seem to be enough actual livestock aftermath in the yard.
    ‘He could be a cereal farmer,’ said Lesley when I pointed this out.
    The dilapidated grey concrete barn was open to the elements at both ends. An ancient Land Rover was parked half inside, its bonnet propped open to reveal a rusted engine. Behind it there were strange concrete troughs and the spiky torture-chamber shapes of agricultural equipment. Beyond that, a rectangle of pale blue sky. The brick barn was older, sturdier and better maintained, its main front door firmly closed and padlocked.
    The bungalow was blind, with grimy net curtains. Set down by its tornado at an off angle to the yard, it was also backwards, with what was obviously the back door facing us – although Lesley said this was standard for farms. ‘Nobody uses the front door except to hang out washing,’ she said.
    I tapped on the back door and then the kitchen window.
    ‘Hello,’ I called. ‘It’s the police, is anyone home?’
    Somewhere in the distance I thought I might have heard a dog barking.
    There were two rutted tracks in the grey dust leading left and right out of the yard. We took the right one because it looked like it curled around the side of the bungalow. It did, and Lesley had been right about the washing. A rough square lawn was fenced in by knee-high metal railings and sported a rotary clothesline and a scattering of sun-faded plastic toys. A rusty green metal swing stood in another corner and would no doubt have squeaked mournfully in the wind had the seat not been missing. Probably removed by someone who got fed up with it squeaking mournfully. What was unmistakably the front door of the house was painted a mottled blue and was wedged shut when I gave it an experimental shove.
    ‘Could they be out in the fields?’ I asked.
    ‘There’d still be a car in the yard,’ said Lesley. ‘Although the farmer might be working and the wife in town.’
    ‘If there is a wife,’ I said.
    ‘No sign of the Transit van,’ she said. ‘Want to break in?’
    She didn’t sound enthusiastic. Farmers meant shotguns, legal and illegal, and a loose interpretation of the common law when it came to self-defence.
    There were what might have been fresh tyre marks leading away further up the track. I stared in that direction and thought I could see what looked like a roofline poking up from behind a rise in the ground.
    ‘Let’s check up here first,’ I said.
    We headed up the track until we topped the rise and found ourselves looking down at a pair of wooden storage sheds new enough for the pine planking to still be bright yellow and smell of Ronseal. They were windowless and had gabled roofs surfaced with black felt.
    ‘Did you hear that?’ asked Lesley.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Dogs,’ she said. ‘Barking.’
    I listened, but all I could hear was the wind and something making a belching squawk that I assumed was a bird.
    ‘Nope,’ I said.
    We followed the track down the rise until we reached the first shed. Now, the closest I’ve ever got to DIY is arresting shoplifters in B&Q but even I know green wood when I’m right up close and can see where it is warping out of shape. Some of the planks in the walls here had peeled offthe frame. I looked closer and found that there were no nails. The planks had been held in place with wooden plugs. When I checked the door, I saw that the hinges were wooden and that there were no locks, only a crude wooden latch.
    Lesley reached out to open the door.
    ‘Wait,’ I told her, and she hesitated. ‘Dogs,’ I said.
    ‘Dogs?’ asked Lesley.
    I did a three-sixty and found what I was looking for behind me on the opposite side of the tracks – a bare slender tree with thin branches within arm’s reach. I crossed over and tried to break the smallest I could get – a branch the thickness and length of a pool cue. It