Three Mile Drove Concluding Chapter

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Darren stepped out of the bungalow, walking across the yard to where his barn stood clean and empty. Free now of the farming relics Sam Regan had stored, cluttering the interior for years. For the past three months it had housed nothing other than his Cherokee Jeep, and it wouldn’t be doing that any longer.
He shut the barn door and padlocked it, not really knowing why. After all that had happened he reckoned people would want to stay well away from this place.
He walked a few paces towards the gates and stopped, looking westward from the perimeter of the yard, across the fens to where the village of Bramble Dyke stood, its church spire just visible in the distance.
A remote fenland village, a nowhere sort of place or so it seemed. Suddenly given a nation-wide notoriety by what had occurred, on account of this hellhole of a place –
Three Mile Drove.
The accounts of the kidnappings by the wretched Tomblin family who’d secretly headed a community of inbred retards, carried out in the twisted hope that their imperfections would one day be erased, and the subsequent killings of the crazed Joseph, had assured maximum publicity.
The police naturally hadn’t come out unscathed, blaming lack of funding as the result of insufficient police presence in the rural community. Only Tim McPherson had received any credit, and that alone for his dogged persistence.
He and Claire had been hailed as heroes, though he regarded himself as the most unlikely hero ever. She’d sold her story to the press only on the condition that the proceeds be deposited in a trust fund for her daughter Julia.
They had hounded him of course, but he hadn’t uttered a printable word. He’d been too sick of the whole business and couldn’t wait to be leaving the drove. A three mile stretch of barren road where he was the only surviving resident.
Not any more.
He felt no pity at the fate of Jacob and Shaun Tomblin, the wretched deformed Joseph, not even for the rest of the horribly disjointed tribe who had perished in the fire. It was just one sad, sorry reprehensible picture. Though there was some concern for Endleberry, whose suicidal actions against the Tomblins had saved them, it was tempered with the knowledge that he’d fired the barn first, that he must have intended them all to perish.
He’d died a beleaguered and tortured man.
Tomblin’s wife Sandra had disappeared maybe before, perhaps after the fire. A police search had found the house stripped both of her belongings and those of the kids.
The battered blue bus Tomblin had been working on had disappeared, its less than roadworthy qualities presumably concealed by the night. By now Darren could picture them safely camped amongst some band of new age travellers far removed from civilisation’s all-seeing eye.
Somewhere in the back of his mind Darren became aware that the rapping of the hammer on the bungalow roof had ceased. He turned, inclining his head as Ted Jackson backed down the last few rungs of the ladder.
‘Well that’s it Mr.Goldwater.’ Jackson ambled across and then half turned with an appreciative glance, ‘The whole job done. If you’ll just give it a final look over and then sign on the dotted line.’
‘No, I don’t think I’ll bother.’ Darren took the bill from Jackson’s outstretched hand and placed it on the bonnet of his Jeep, signing it without inspection, just a brief scribble.
‘Thanks I…’ Jackson had made to go then turned back to face him, ‘I know it’s not been the best of times for you in these parts…’
‘No, it hasn’t,’ Darren said, more sharply than he’d intended.
‘It should fetch a tidy sum…’
Darren laughed at that, but it left a bitter taste in his mouth, ‘Do you really think so Ted, after all this? I don’t know why I bothered having it done.’
‘I’d already started for one thing,’ Jackson said. He turned and gazed along the drove, ‘and for another, the properties might lie empty now but someone will snap them up, mark my words, you’ll see. The Big City dwellers will move in, they’ll live off Three Mile Drove’s notoriety, something to boast about at lunchtime in the Capital.
Darren watched Jackson drive out, considered his words. Yeah perhaps they would, there were a lot of people about like that. Respectable on the outside but sick underneath. They might after all suit the place.
But not him.
And it wasn’t his problem any longer; he had an appointment with a garage in Ely to trade in his Cherokee Jeep.
He checked his watch and closing the gates for the last time sped along the drove, not even a glance back, not even a sideways glance at Tomblin’s house, Tomblin whose own family had fled the day after the fire. There wasn’t a glance in the direction of where Claire’s old house once stood, and not at Jacob Tomblin’s bungalow, standing like the gatehouse to hell at the top of the drove.

Fifteen minutes later he’d reached Ely, exchanged his Jeep for a smart little Fiesta saloon. Well he wasn’t the largest of men, he wouldn’t feel cramped and it would be cheap on petrol.
There would be precious little income while he wrote his memoirs.
He’d thought about that, now in hindsight what had happened here wasn’t a journalist’s tale, it was his own.
But of course he’d have support, even if Claire was going to be busy in her new post in Cornwall.
She’d applied for the post two months back and got it. Community nurse in a place called Mousehole, close to Penzance he’d been told. She’d received confirmation a couple of weeks ago. There was a house with it too, ideal for starting anew, ideal also for Julia who had learning difficulties as the result of her ordeal.
He couldn’t believe it when she’d asked him to go with her and Julia. What would he do?
“Think,” she’d said with a smile.
And so he had. He’d write his memoirs while she was working, he’d always fancied trying his hand as a writer, if the truth were known he’d considered trying it years ago. He’d secretly kicked himself for not giving it a go, after all the years he’d wasted on a second rate rock group. Yes, now was the time to put ideas into practice. He’d find time to attend to Julia too, and perhaps find a seasonal job to help out, spring wasn’t so far away after all.
It wasn’t a bad thought really. After all that had happened.
A half hour later he was back in Bramble Dyke, approaching the crescent that had provided Claire’s home for the past few years.
She was waiting for him on the porch, all long dark hair and smiling eyes.
He gave her a hug and went inside.

THE END