Shaston

What Are You Doing Here? is a tale based in an ordinary Dorset village in the year 1949. Ordinary of course in that year meant being faced with many shortages plus war time rationing. On top of which hardships some extraordinary events occurred. The murder of two young people brings consternation, it also brings the police. They commence a house to house enquiry, during which a local girl is kidnapped and tied up in the woods. Local dairyman, poacher and all round countryman Bert Foot, finds one of the bodies. rescues the girl and is obliged to listen as she relates what happened to her. He vows vengeance on whoever treated this girl so badly. He is grilled by police and eventually cleared of any involvement in the murder, though they reserve judgement on his other activities. He is persuaded to assist in tracking the culprit. The culprit is a highly trained military man. An exceptional man according to his superiors, who could live in your garden for a month and you'd not know. A man trained to kill. He had absconded from his unit which was engaged in bringing scientists and engineers from Germany to England. Other countries too had noticed how advanced Germany was in terms of technical expertise, and they also sent teams in search of desirable people. These teams were therefore obliged to work in conditions of extreme competition. Stress probably caused the man to decide he had had enough, and unknown to his superiors return to his native Dorset village, where he promptly ran amok. Mr. Foot and others take a painful vengeance before any degree of normality can return.