Free Doctor Illuminatus by Martin Booth Page B

dreadlocks.
    “You live near ’ere?” he inquired in a friendly voice. “Yes,” Tim confirmed. “In the manor.”
    “The place they jus’ done up?”
    “Yes.”
    “Nice place!”
    “Where do you live?” Tim asked, feeling he was volunteering too much information about himself.
    The young man jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “In the quarry,” he said. “We got a camp there.” “We?” Tim questioned.
    “Me ’n’ some mates. Look,” he went on, “you don’t want to sell your fish, do yer? I’ll pay you a coupla quid for it.”
    “Why don’t you catch your own?” Tim said.
    “We ain’t quite got the knack,” the young man admitted. “We been puttin’ out night lines with worms ’n’ slugs on ’em but all we got so far’s an eel.”
    Tim considered the proposition. His mother still had some trout in the freezer from a fishing trip at Easter — and a “coupla quid” would certainly supplement his pocket money.
    “All right,” Tim agreed. “I’ll sell it to you for £2.” He looked at the stretch of deep water between them and the fast current. Wading was out of the question: this was a prime spot for a vicious undertow. And the river was too wide for him to risk throwing the trout over. “How do I get it to you?”
    “Walk down the old bridge,” the young man said. “It ain’t deep where the bridge’s fell in.”
    Collecting up his fishing gear, Tim headed along the bank. As he neared the bridge piers, he saw that the water between them was shallow where large slabs of masonry had formed a natural weir.
    “Can yer bring it over?” the young man asked, waving one of his sandaled feet in the air. “I ain’t got me boots on.” He looked indifferently at the stone bridge abutments. “Been thinkin’ of putting a plank across but, well, you know . . .” His voice trailed off.
    Leaving his rod and landing net on the bank, Tim picked the trout up, sliding his fingers into its gills, and waded across the river. The current in the center was quick and strong where it ran over the rubble of the bridge but, as the water was shallow, it posed him no problem.
    “Here you are.” Tim held the fish out. “It’s quite heavy.”
    The young man took it, smiled and said, “I’ve got the money up in the camp. C’mon up and I’ll pay yer.”
    For a moment, Tim hesitated. How many times, he thought, had he been warned against going off with strangers? His parents, his teachers, the crime prevention officer visiting his school had all pressed home the maxim —
Don’t say hello: just go
. Yet this young man seemed innocuous enough: it wasn’t as if he was weird or anything, driving an unmarked van and holding out a bag of sweets or offering him a lift home. He was, Tim considered, just a hippy who lived in the woods and, if the worst came to the worst, he could always leg it. Rawne Barton was less than a half a mile away, even if it was on the other side of the river.
    Keeping his wits about him, Tim followed the young man along a well-beaten path that wound through the woods in the direction of the quarry face. As they went, he noted landmarks along the way — a rock with a streak of quartz in it, a fallen log, a stand of hazel with the nuts just beginning to swell. If he did have to make a run for it, this would be the way to go.
    After a hundred meters or so, the path rounded a bend and opened out into a clearing at the foot of the quarry cliff. There, between massive boulders, were several tents, a distinctly unroadworthy single-decker bus and an equally derelict red van that had, judging by the vague outline of a crown on the side, once been a Royal Mail delivery vehicle. Sitting around a campfire were three other men, two young women dressed in long blouses and skirts to their ankles, and a stark-naked toddler of about two. A nondescript mongrel, which was dozing on its side by the fire, got up on their approach, barked twice in a desultory fashion, wagged its tail