A cluster of villagers clogs the path ahead, voices overlapping in low, irritable murmurs. I shoulder through with a few muttered apologies and a polite excuse-me or two, until I reach the front.
And there she is.
Eileen, gripping a pitchfork—an honest-to-God, rust-flecked, three-pronged relic that looks like it’s spent the last decade propped behind a compost bin. She holds it with both hands, knuckles white, the points pressed squarely into the chest of a man pinned to the flint wall.
He’s tall and alarmingly thin, all angles and poorly chosen tailoring. Possibly in his late fifties. Limbs awkward. Eyes bulging. He looks like he’s been cut out and pasted there. The navy suit is rumpled, his expression more so. It takes a moment, but then I clock him: the weasel from the pub. No flat cap this time—just a sweep of slicked-back hair losing ground at the temples, and a moustache so thin and mean it looks drawn on with a biro.
“Get out, you cold-handed bastard!” Eileen’s voice is iron. “Set foot in my library again and I’ll drive this thing straight through your middle like a pig on a spit.”
A middle-aged woman nearby—clipboard, blazer, blonde hair, face like a panicked vole in a chignon—shrieks, “Someone call the police!” She clutches her lanyard like a crucifix.
The crowd is mostly pensioners and dog-walkers, gathered at a prudent distance. No one moves to intervene. They observe like it’s Sunday panto.
I dart forwards, hands raised. “Eileen! You’ll do yourself a mischief—”
“Back off, Noah,” she hisses. “This rat’s sniffin’ round again. Pretending it’s a survey. Survey my arse.”
The pitchfork jerks as she says it, and I feel it catch—sharp—through the side seam of my jacket.
“Bloody—!” I leap back, heart thumping. The wool tears with a dreadful sound far more personal than it should be. Inches from skin. Too close.
Eileen blinks. Her fury wavers. And so do her hands.
The suited weasel gurgles something about ‘legal action’.
She growls, “Touch your foot on my library step again and I’ll pin you like a moth, Frank Cullen. And don’t think I won’t.”
With a last, warning jab that’s more theatrical than lethal, she lowers the fork. The watching villagers don’t clap—but I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I haul Cullen off the wall, more from instinct than sympathy. He’s trembling, though trying to smother it behind a curl of corporate bravado.
His briefcase bursts open in the mud—papers splayed, the dreaded Landmark Syndicate logo stamped bold across the pages. About as subtle as a fox in a chicken coop. He snatches it up with a grimace.
* * *
We walk slowly to a grey Lexus parked just up the street.
“Thank you,” Cullen mutters, adjusting his crushed lapel with a sniff. “Very unprofessional. Extremely volatile.”
“That’s Eileen,” I say, brushing my torn jacket. “What did you think would happen, waltzing into the village the morning after a protest? With a briefcase?”
He opens his mouth, likely to bluster something forgettable, but the clipboard woman—flustered, cheeks blotchy—jumps in first.
“We’ll, um, of course we’ll pay for your jacket. Here’s my card. Please—just call me Betty.”
“Oh, cheers.” I take the card without looking and offer my hand out of habit. “Noah Yalland.”
Cullen’s head snaps round. His expression sharpens like a hound catching scent.
“Maggie Trew’s grandson?”
“You knew her?” I ask, more guarded than curious.
“Not personally,” he says, a little too quickly. “But you’re just the man I was hoping to run into.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“The cottage,” he says, with a glint that feels rehearsed. “It has potential. Would you consider selling?”