Logan blasted his horn and leaned out of the window. “Get them shifted!”
Constable Tanaka leaned out of the driver’s side window of the 4x4 and called back. “Not sure I can, sir. There’s loads of them.”
“I can see there’s fu—” Logan began, then he decided that actions spoke louder than words. Throwing himself out of the car, he charged the sheep, clapping his hands to scare them away.
It worked. To an extent. The sheep moved away, though not as quickly as he would’ve liked, and not in any of the directions he’d have chosen.
The problem was the fences of the fields on either side. They were too high for the animals to jump over, and they formed a narrow passageway which allowed them only two directions of travel—towards the cars, or away from them. Given the sheer mass of the flock, and its relatively lumbering pace, it could take hours to clear the buggers. Hours that they or Jameelah Oboko may not have.
“What do we do, boss?” asked Tyler, stumbling up behind him. He was a deathly shade of white, but looked relieved to be back on solid ground.
Logan looked down and around at the impassable mass of sheep. He looked over to where Constables Tanaka and Miller were vaguely trying to shepherd them out of the way, well aware that they were fighting a losing battle.
And then, he looked ahead, along the road, to where the top of a white marquee tent was just visible over the crest of a hill.
“Taggart, no!”
Sinead made a grab for the dog, but he was too fast. He launched himself towards the sheep, barking and yipping his hairy wee head off. Tyler tried to catch him, but the dog dodged the grasping hands and vanished between the legs of the closest sheep.
The world erupted into a chaos of bleated cries and stamping hooves. The sheep, which had been forming one big knot on the road, now started shooting off in all directions like sparks from a Catherine Wheel. This did not make it easier to drive past them. Quite the opposite, in fact. Penned in by the fences, they rebounded back and forth across the road, making what was already an impassable obstacle markedly more so.
“Sinead, you two, catch that wee bastard,” Logan instructed. “Tyler, you’re with me.”
“What are we going to do, boss?” the DC asked again.
“Run, Tyler,” Logan said. “We’re going to run.”
Logan shrugged off his coat and tossed it onto the bonnet of the BMW. With a grunt, he vaulted the fence on the left. Then, without bothering to check if Tyler was following, he set his sights on the top of the tent, and he ran.
Constable Dave Davidson was facing down a bowl of something that looked like semi-digested twigs, with a level of enthusiasm usually reserved for people who’ve just been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
André Douville sat cross-legged on the floor beside him, egging him on, and assuring him that the plate full of misery was, “Really good stuff,” as well as being meat, gluten, and dairy-free.
“And there’s definitely no bacon rolls, or chips, or anything?” Dave asked, prodding something that he was convinced was a stick insect with the prong of a fork. To his relief, it didn’t get up and walk away. Although, if it had, it would’ve been one less thing in the bowl to worry about.
“It’s nutritious,” André continued. He gestured around at his small army of acolytes, who were half-heartedly getting stuck into their portions. “And look, the others enjoy it.”
Dave felt that this was a generous description of how the others appeared to feel about their lunch. If any of them were genuinely enjoying the food （another generous description, he thought）， then they hadn’t bothered to let their faces know.
It had been quite a day so far, and it wasn’t even half done. Between the sunburn and the nettle cream, his arse was red raw and felt like it was hanging in tatters. That was the main issue he had with the day so far, although the food was rapidly gaining ground.
He was just going to suggest he drive to the shop to pick up some frozen pizzas, when the flap of the dining tent flew open, and a wheezing, red-faced DCI Logan stumbled in.
“Oh, thank fuck for that!” both men ejected at precisely the same moment, but before either of them could say any more, André Douville rose from where he’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor, and held up a spoon like it was some magical trinket.
“Halt! You have entered a sacred eating space,” he proclaimed, and half a dozen of his weirdo punters all raised their own cutlery in what was presumably a show of support. “This is a protected area, and I will not—”