Once they left the tarmac public road, the lane up to Ladderback Farm was in bad repair, heavily rutted and bumpy and Yarrow’s Riley made heavy weather of the drive as it bounced and swayed on its springs and tyres, jerking and throwing Yarrow and Harding about as the track wound up the hillside.
‘I can’t believe this, we’re miles and miles from anywhere out in the middle of the back of beyond,’ Marcus Harding said, ‘I mean, how can anybody seriously think that Teddy boys, who do nothing but hang around outside coffee bars or dance halls are going to come out all this way just to play a prank. Makes no sense, no sense at all.’
He gazed out across the bitter windswept hillside, the snaking dry-stone walls, black gritstone outcrops and a flock of sheep sheltering under a solitary wind-wra
