Wrecker the Weasel and the Watermill Plot

By Jason Cooke

An old enemy returns to pursue a vicious vendetta against Wrecker the Weasel and the Rotten Shed Gang in ‘Wrecker the Weasel and the Watermill Plot’, the second adventure of the British countryside’s most notorious egg thieves! Expect rollicking adventure, humour, and touching comradeship as the hapless smugglers do their best to outsmart the plans of the psychotic fox, Mandrake. Against the background of a summer heatwave, Mandrake and his foxes set out to ruin Wrecker’s egg-smuggling operations, destroying birds’ nests, stealing eggs, and holding water sources to ransom. Before long Mandrake allies with sinister underworld figures in London in a bid to crush Wrecker’s supporters in the city. Facing the loss of his business, his gang, his friends, and ultimately his life, Wrecker must hope for a miracle of deliverance. Strangely, the ghost of an opportunity becomes apparent at the old watermill, and in the millpond which sits directly above Mandrake’s countryside headquarters. A well-engineered flood couldn’t possibly be the answer to Wrecker’s problems… could it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Jun 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781787970571

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9781787970571.jpg

Wrecker the Weasel and the Watermill Plot

Jason Cooke

Wrecker the Weasel and the Watermill Plot

Published by The Conrad Press Ltd in the United Kingdom 2023

Tel: [phone] www.theconradpress.com 
[e-mail]

ISBN 978-1-787970-57-1

Copyright © Jason Cooke, 2023

The moral right of Jason Cooke to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk

The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

For my parents, wife and daughters, all of whom are wonderful - and for Pippa the collie, who loves chasing foxes!

Dramatis Personae

The Garden Animals

Brett: an inquisitive and resourceful young blackbird

Tarquin: a wise toad of many seasons

The ‘Hedgerow Watch’

Baxx: a redoubtable barn owl

Vector: an elusive pipistrelle bat

Mottle: a buzzard

Slipstream and Twist: a pair of otters, experts in underwater engineering

The Rotten Shed Gang

Wrecker: a tough weasel, experienced smuggler of birds’ eggs

Maguire: a piratical magpie, thief and smuggler, now somewhat mellowed by fatherhood

Jacqui: a preening jay - head of public relations for The Rotten Shed Gang

Thewk: elderly weasel, accountant for The Rotten Shed Gang

Jerrit, Rinspike, Lucca, Mystic: weasel ‘runners’, smugglers in The Rotten Shed Gang

The Foxes of Celandine Orchards

Mandrake: a ruthless villain, ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ in the countryside

Black Taile: a formidable vixen

The London Underworld

Big Sam: a tough ferret, former professional pit fighter turned gangster and racketeer

Rik Sharpclaw: peregrine falcon, feathered assassin and terror of the city pigeons

Whitepads: Leader of the urban fox militia

Danny the Mink: rising North London mobster

And Finally...

Pippa: a young border collie

Deadlock: a powerful badger

Tik-Tak: an enigmatic and mischievous crow

For reference:

1 Kilometre = 0.62 of a Mile

1 Metre = 3.28 Feet = 1.09 Yards

Map

1

The heatwave

It was a long, lazy afternoon in early summer in a rural churchyard in the southeast of England, and Wrecker the weasel was sunning himself on the church lawn.

He lay on a gentle rising slope, not far from the point where the dry-stone churchyard wall cast some welcome shade, and not far too from the point where the neatly mown grass gave way to long, untidy, unkempt weeds, beyond the attentions of the parish gardener who was ‘paid a pittance’ (his words, not mine) to try to keep the church grounds in some sort of order.

The afternoon was very hot, and that delicious loamy smell redolent of early summer was in the air. A few insects buzzed lazily in the vicinity and there was a pleasant, haphazard chatter of birdsong. Aside from these familiar sounds of summer the churchyard was quiet, as it was located in a sleepy country village, and being a weekday most of the human population of the village was out at work. It was for exactly this reason that Wrecker had allowed himself the luxury of sunbathing on the lawn, as weasels like to remain unseen and he would never have run the risk of being spotted in the open.

Wrecker lay on his back with one leg crossed over the other and his paws behind his head. He was chewing a stalk of grass. In fact it would have been easy to imagine that the weasel did not have a care in the world, so relaxed and comfortable did he appear to be. This, however, would have been a false impression, for Wrecker was doing a lot of thinking on that particular afternoon.

He was a tough, ruthless and self-interested individual, and as the leader of local criminal organisation The Rotten Shed Gang – thieves of and traders in stolen birds eggs on a significant scale - his thoughts that afternoon focused on a number of threats which were emerging that summer to put his gang’s business, and the very livelihoods of his gang’s members, in severe jeopardy.

The weasel idly watched a pair of bees circling and buzzing some way above his head, and briefly reflected on the simple and uncomplicated lives bees must lead.

‘You are born, you are part of a swarm or colony, you fly around a bit, do some pollination and honey-making, then peg out,’ he mused, superficially and not entirely accurately. ‘What’s not to like?’

‘Whereas I, on the other hand, am directly responsible for keeping an important business afloat and indirectly responsible for the lives and welfare of my team and their families, and I suffer all the stress and worry associated with that responsibility,’ he grumbled to himself. Life was nothing if not unfair, he reflected.

He sighed and forced himself to concentrate once more on the challenges that lay ahead, counting each one off mentally in his head as he did so - Wrecker was very proud of his mathematical abilities.

‘Problem one - this infernal heatwave,’ the weasel grumbled to himself.

Early summer temperatures that particular year had been continuously and unseasonably hot, to the extent that local water sources had begun to dry up and the supply of water to the local bird and animal populations had become a real issue. And this with several months of summer still to go!

‘The stream at Wye Copse – dried up,’ mused Wrecker. ‘The small pond at Lamplighter’s Corner – a muddy, sticky, fly-blown mess. The stream with the waterlilies, wild celery and waterweeds that passes under Willow’s Bridge – gone! Hmm, Hmm…’ The weasel’s whiskers twitched as he mentally worked his way through known sources of moisture used by The Rotten Shed Gang.

‘Those useful puddles at Barn Corner – all gone. Same with the pools at The Secret Oaks, if Rinspike is to be believed. Hmm, Hmm...’

Rinspike was another weasel, a key lieutenant in Wrecker’s criminal organisation. The Secret Oaks were a group of oak trees in a narrow and sheltered valley on the smuggling route leading from the village to the great city of London, wherein lay the dubious customers – ferret, stoat and other such undesirables – who traded with Wrecker for the birds’ eggs stolen by his organisation. The oak trees in question had impressive roots that collected fresh water in mossy channels. The spot was normally much favoured by the gang as a stopping point on the route into London.

Wrecker scratched his head with a grubby paw. This was hard work! Nevertheless he methodically completed his review of the local geography.

‘Hmm, Hmm. There is no problem with the river south of here and the pools up at the top of Dark Wood. Water levels may drop if this heat continues but they won’t dry out. Same for the mill pond over on the other side of the apple orchards. We’d be able to get water there, I’ll bet.’

The trouble was, as Wrecker knew only too well, these large reservoirs of water lay some distance from the churchyard, and so were not readily on hand for thirsty gang members within the immediate vicinity. Given that the churchyard was The Rotten Shed Gang’s base of operations, this was most unhelpful. Over the last couple of weeks Wrecker had given considerable thought as to how to solve this particular problem.

There was a pond in the garden of the cottage next door to the churchyard, which would have been ideal as a water source. Unfortunately the human owners of the cottage had recently covered the pond in a tightly meshed netting to prevent infants falling into the pond water and drowning.

Wrecker knew that a baby was now resident next door – ‘heard the pesky thing crying and yowling at all hours of day and night, so I should know,’ he grumbled to himself – so the netting was understandable, but it meant that neither the gang members nor the creatures resident in the garden could easily get access to the pond and the water in it.

Wrecker had come up with a plan to siphon off water from a tap-off point in the pond brickwork using a discarded piece of hose, only to find the tap-off point blocked on the pond side with leaves and debris. This was doubly vexing, as he had also thought to ransom some of the water acquired in this way to the garden’s inhabitants, with whom Wrecker and his gang had a longstanding love-hate relationship.

‘It was a sound plan,’ thought Wrecker, with satisfaction. ‘I’d have allocated water rations to the Garden Do-Gooders on a reasonable basis - for an inflated price, of course!’ The weasel chortled involuntarily at his own evil genius.

Nevertheless, good plan or not, it had not proved to be viable, and so Wrecker was forced to admit to himself that the supply of water in the immediate locality was and would continue to be a problem until a solution emerged. Meanwhile, he had sent some of the ‘boys’ – his weasel underlings - on a reconnaissance around the village to try to find water from sources or collection points as yet unknown.

‘Problem two,’ Wrecker muttered to himself, continuing his assessment of his current business risks - ‘the egg situation.’ As Wrecker acknowledged to himself, this was really an umbrella term which covered a whole series of concerns affecting The Rotten Shed Gang’s key interests, namely the theft, smuggling and sale of nesting birds’ eggs.

A noisy flapping of wings and a harsh ‘ack-ack-ack-ack’ from the overgrown area of the churchyard behind him interrupted his thoughts. He twisted irritably on to his white-furred tummy and squinted up at the source of the noise. It was coming from an old and dilapidated shed in the shadows of the church wall, surrounded by weeds and wild flowers, decaying logs festooned with fungus, as well as broken gardening pots, a rusting lawnmower, forgotten and unloved gardening implements and even some unused and mossy granite gravestones, stacked one on top of another.

This was the infamous ‘Rotten Shed’ from which Wrecker’s gang of smugglers, thieves and adventurers took their name. Long since abandoned and unused by parish gardeners for years, it had proved to be a secluded and well situated headquarters.

Right now a large if grubby and unkempt magpie perching on a metal bracket attached to the side of the shed peered down at Wrecker and opened his beak once more. The magpie screeched again.

‘Maguire!’ protested Wrecker. ‘Enough with that infernal racket! Come down here and give me some news!’

Problem two would have to wait!

The magpie glided down to the lawn and alighted next to the weasel. Maguire the magpie was Wrecker’s ‘Number Two’ in the gang, although the weasel would never have made the mistake of telling him - it would have gone to the magpie’s head. Tough and menacing – if not the brightest member of his species - Maguire was normally a beautiful-looking bird, but at the moment he looked very shabby with feathers dirty and ruffled and his long tail feathers in particular sticking out at very strange angles.

The magpie noticed his boss looking him over distastefully. ‘Can’t help it!’ he muttered. ‘Nest is a mess! Youngsters are all over me for food and play! If I knew becoming a father was going to be this hard, I’d never have let Whitestreaks bully me into it!’

Maguire shifted his weight and flapped his wings again, looking a little sheepish. Wrecker grunted. ‘No matter. To business! What is the news from Half Mile Farm?’

‘I flew over there yesterday on a scouting mission, as you asked. That new young farmer has really got a grip on things, no question. All the barns and outbuildings are looking clean and repairs have been carried out in some places. All that rusting machinery has been cleared away and those pools of stagnant water have gone. They’ll have dried up in this heat, I suppose. The fields have been new sown with crops, I think. I saw a couple of collie dogs in the main yard.’

‘Yes, yes!’ snapped Wrecker. ‘And the hen house? What about the hen house?’

The magpie shook his head vigorously. ‘We won’t be getting in there again any time soon, Boss. Shiny new locks on the door and a padlock as well. Half the timber planks have been replaced. We won’t be able to pick locks like that and we’ve got no-one who could chew through wood that tough.’

Wrecker scowled. Half Mile Farm hen house was huge and housed a large number of chickens, who in turn laid a large number of eggs. Wrecker’s gang had raided the old hen house comprehensively at the end of the previous year to fulfil urgent egg supply contracts. It had proved to be the saving of his business on that occasion. It would have been very useful to have been able to rely on such a lifeline again.

‘What about getting the moles to help?’ queried Wrecker. ‘They could tunnel in from underneath?’

The magpie shook his head once more. ‘Solid timber flooring. I caught a glimpse of it when the farmer went in to the hen house. The moles couldn’t get through that.’

Wrecker scowled again. Solid timber! He didn’t know anyone who could chew through that, with the possible exception of Deadlock the badger, and he hadn’t been seen in ages. He spent a few moments pondering why the farmer would go to such lengths to strengthen hen house security to such an extraordinary degree, before belatedly realising that it was due to the activities of criminals like himself, who had cleaned the place out many times within recent memory.

Perhaps he should take the increase in security at the hen house as a sort of back-pawed compliment, he reflected. Still, that didn’t change the fact that Maguire’s news was very unhelpful.

As if sensing his boss’ thoughts, Maguire continued his report.

‘The farmer beefed up his security because we had ‘form’ for nicking all his eggs. He didn’t realise it was us, of course - he thought it was the local rats. That’s why he’s got a reinforced timber floor in there. But see here, Boss, there’s more...’

‘Yes?’ queried the weasel, intrigued.

‘I listened in to those two collies yapping to each other in the yard. It was they who was talkin’ about the new security on the hen house, about the farmer worrying about the rats nicking the eggs. But it turns out that there is another problem, and that is, loads of foxes have been seen on the farm in recent weeks. Mostly at night and in the early evening, in the shadows, after the geese and ducks on the river on the farm’s southern border, but the farmer’s worried about them going for his chickens as well. That’s another reason why security on the hen house is so tight.’

Wrecker thought for a few moments on what the magpie had told him. ‘Foxes, foxes,’ he murmured. ‘Hmm. Either they are becoming more visible because the hot conditions are forcing them to hunt wider and more openly for food and water, or there is something else going on. Why so many, Mags, eh?’

The magpie hunched his wings in a type of shrug.

‘And why at the farm in particular? Could it be that when we took down Monsta the rat’s empire at the farm last year, it left it wide open for other scoundrels to come in and entrench themselves and help themselves to the farm’s assets?’

Two of Wrecker’s many faults were a breath-taking hypocrisy and a swaggering self-confidence that bordered on arrogance. This reference to the dismantling of rodent gangster Monsta the rat’s criminal empire at the farm the previous summer was a case in point.

Wrecker’s statement gave no mention of the critical part played by the inhabitants of the garden next door to the churchyard in Monsta’s demise, nor did he see the irony in referring to other unsavoury ‘post-Monsta’ profiteers as ‘scoundrels’ when he himself had been one of the greatest offenders and opportunists. The full story of the overthrow of Monsta and his rats is told in ‘Wrecker the Weasel and the Rare Egg Robbery’, an account based on some early chapters of Wrecker’s published memoirs.

Wrecker did not say so, but the news Maguire had brought about the expanding fox population in the