The Hunting Party

by Lucy Foley

  We are about to plunge into the thicket of trees that ring the loch on this side. A fringe of dark pines. Some of them aren’t native; they’re Norwegian imposters, planted after the war. They’re much denser than the local Scots pine, and when you’re among them all sound from the outside world seems to be muffled. Not that there are many sounds here, beyond the occasional cawing of the birds.

  On my good days, I persuade myself that I love these trees: their glossy needles, the cones that I collect to keep in bowls around the house, the warm, green Christmas scent of the resin when you walk among them. On my bad days I decide they look funereal, like sinister black-cloaked sentinels.

  We are out of sight of the Lodge now. Completely alone. I am suddenly reminded that though I’ve worked alongside this man for a year I know almost nothing about him. This is definitely the most time I have ever spent in his company – and quite possibly the most we have ever spoken to one another.

  I’m not sure he speaks to anyone. Early on, I kept expecting him to ask me if he could use the Internet: to send an email, perhaps, or check up on friends and family on Facebook. But he never did. Even I check in with friends and family every so often. ‘Your mam worries about you,’ my dad said, at the beginning. ‘Stuck in a place like that all on your own, after everything you’ve been through. It’s not right.’ So I try and go back every few months or so to put her mind at rest, though the experience of re-entering the outside world is not one I particularly relish.

  But Doug never seems to leave the estate unless he has to: taking guests into town to visit the shops, for example. I made the mistake of mentioning him to my mum, the lonely existence he leads. Of course, in true parental style, she was worried for me.

  ‘He could be anyone,’ she told me. ‘What’s his background? Where does he come from?’

  I told her the one thing I did know, that he’d been in the Marines. This did not reassure her in the slightest. ‘You need to goggle him, Heather,’ she told me.

  ‘Google, Ma.’

  ‘Whatever it is. Just promise me you’ll do it. You need to know who this man is … I can’t sleep for worrying about you, Heather. Running off and leaving us all behind just when you need your family about you most. Not letting us help you like we want to. No word for days, weeks. I need to know that you’re safe at least. Who you’re working with. It’s not fair, Heaths.’ And then she seemed to check herself. ‘Of course – I know it must sound awful, me saying that. What happened to you … that was the most unfair thing that could happen—’

  ‘All right, Ma,’ I said, not wanting to hear any more. ‘I’ll do it, I’ll google him.’ But I didn’t, not then. Truthfully, the thought of it felt like a betrayal.

  Of course, when my mum asked me what I had found – I could tell it was one of those things that she wouldn’t give up on, a terrier with a bone – I reassured her. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I looked. There’s nothing there. You can stop worrying about me now.’

  There was a pause. ‘I never stop worrying about you, pet.’ I put the phone down.

  The truth is, she’s right. I don’t know anything about Doug. Just what the boss hinted at during my interview, that his background made him well suited to the job – particularly seeing off any poachers. When he was asked to take his pick of the cottages he chose the one furthest from anything – at the bottom of the flank of the Munro, with no sheltering trees, with no view of the loch. It’s unquestionably the worst of all of them, which would suggest he chose it purely for its position. I understand the need to be alone. But the need for even further isolation within this remote wilderness makes me wonder exactly what it is he is trying to distance himself from.

  ‘Where are we going, Doug?’

  ‘Just a little way now,’ he says, and I feel a leap of trepidation, a powerful urge to turn and start in the other direction again, back towards the Lodge. Instead I follow Doug as we tramp further into the trees, the only sound the squeak of our boots in the snow.

  Up ahead of us I see the first of the waterfalls, the small wooden bridge that spans it, the pumphouse building a little way further up. Normally it would take us only ten minutes to get here. But in these conditions it has taken the best part of half an hour.

  I see the big impressions of Doug’s boots in the snow on the bridge, where he apparently stood the first time, looking down. There are no other footprints, I notice. But then there wouldn’t be. This snow has been falling for hours. Any other tracks – including those of the dead guest – will have long ago been obscured.

  ‘There,’ he says, pointing.

  I step warily onto the bridge. At first I can’t see anything. It’s a long way down to the bottom, and I’m very aware of Doug standing just behind me. It would only take a little push, I find myself thinking, to send me over. I grip the chain rail hard, though it suddenly seems very flimsy in my grasp.

  There is a moment of incomprehension as I stare into the void. All I can make out is a lot of snow and ice gathered in the ravine.

  ‘Doug,’ I say, ‘I can’t see anything. There’s nothing there.’

  He frowns, and points again. I follow his finger.

  Suddenly, peering down among the rocks, the great pillows of fallen snow, it appears below me like the slow emergence of a magic eye image.

  ‘Oh God.’ It’s more an exhalation of air, like a punch to the gut, than a word. I have seen dead bodies before in my time, in my old line of work. A greater number than the average person, definitely. But the horror of the experience never leaves you. It is always a shock – a profound, existential shock – to be confronted with the inanimate object that was once a person. A person so recently thinking, feeling, seeing, reduced to so much cold flesh. I feel the long-ago familiar swoop of nausea. At medical school they told us it would go away, after our first few. ‘You get used to it.’ But I’m not sure I ever really did. And I am unprepared, despite knowing what I have come to see. I have been ambushed, here in this place, by death. I thought that I could outrun it.

  It almost looks like part of the landscape now: I think that is partly what helped it to blend in. But now I can see it, I can’t believe I missed it before. The corpse has a kind of dark power, drawing the eye. The lower half of it is covered modestly by fallen snow, though the shield of the bridge has protected the top half of the body. The skin is a greyish blue, leached of all blood and human colour. That hair too, spilling behind the head, might just be more dead weed, such as those that poke obstinately through the snow in places.

  There seems to be a great deal of skin, in fact. This is not the corpse of a person who came out dressed for the elements. The cold would have killed in an hour – less – if nothing else had. Or someone else had.

  I see now, looking harder, the halo of blood about the head: rust-coloured, covering the rocks beneath like a peculiar species of lichen. There is a lot of it. A fall onto rock. That could have been the thing that did the killing, in itself.

  But I can see that it is more complicated than that. There is an unmistakable necklace of darkness about the neck. The skin there, even from this distance away, looks particularly blue and bruised-looking. I know very little about forensics – barely more than someone with no background in medicine. My old vocation was in saving life, not examining the evidence left after its loss. But you would not need to be an expert in the field to see that something has compressed the skin there, injured it.

  The face … no, I don’t want to think about the face.

  I turn back to Doug. His gaze is a blank; as though there is no one behind his eyes. I take a step back, involuntarily. Then I get a grip of myself.

  ‘I see it,’ I say. ‘I see what you mean. Yes.’

  We must wait for the police to arrive, to make their judgements, of course. But I know now why Doug wanted me to come and take a look. This does not look like an accident.

  Three days earlier

  30th December 2018

  EMMA

  We’re back in
the living room of the Lodge, all a bit tipsy. Tired from the day, too – but no one wants to go to bed, because it’s a novelty to be together like this. Samira and Giles have joined us now – Priya’s finally fallen asleep apparently, though Samira keeps holding the baby monitor up to her ear as though worried it has stopped working. There’s a lot of laughter and hilarity, the booze loosening us.

  ‘So what did we miss?’ Giles asks.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Nick says. ‘Though clearly I should have brought a kilt. De rigueur here, it seems.’

  ‘I think it’s a good look,’ Miranda says, with a glance in the direction of the gamekeeper, who’s kneeling in the grate to make our fire. ‘Oh,’ she says, mysteriously, ‘and we met the other guests …’

  ‘What are they like?’ Samira asks.

  Bo does a heavily accented impression of the man, Ingvar.

  ‘Ze blood lust,’ he says, gesticulating, ‘don’t you feel it stirring in you in a place like zis, ze urge to keeeeeell?’

  Miranda snorts with laughter, ‘Yes, yes – that’s it exactly!’

  He’s a good mimic – he would be, being an actor. But he’s also slurring a bit, drunker than everyone else. He had some problems with drugs in the past, apparently, but alcohol doesn’t seem to be off limits. At the dinner he was knocking back the glasses of wine like water.

  ‘God,’ Samira says, ‘he sounds like a bit of a freak. But presumably … you know, a harmless one?’

  ‘He liked you, Katie!’ Miranda says.

  ‘Did he, Katie?’ Giles asks, grinning.

  Katie colours. She’s curled up on one of the sofas next to Nick, feet tucked under her, as though she’s attempting to take up as little room as possible. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says.

  ‘Oh yes he did,’ Mark says, ‘I think he wanted to drag you off into the woods and have his way with you.’

  Again, I’m aware of the gamekeeper’s presence. But he’s hardly going to tell the other guests what he’s overheard, is he? I watch as he makes a teepee of the wood and kindling: there’s something satisfying about his efficiency. Giles and Mark were peeved that Miranda thought it necessary to go and get him, but their first few attempts fizzled out within minutes. He doesn’t look particularly impressed about being asked, either – I suppose it is pretty late. I wonder if anyone other than Miranda would have been able to summon him at this time of night.

  Miranda, speaking of, is now at the cocktail cabinet making us ‘boulevardiers’, her speciality: a negroni, with the gin swapped out for bourbon. She had them served them at her wedding.

  ‘Want one?’ she asks the gamekeeper.

  ‘No,’ he says, looking at the floor. ‘I’ve got to be getting back.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  He stands up, wipes the soot from his hands on his jacket, and makes for the door. ‘Goodnight!’ Miranda calls, as it closes.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Mark says, ‘he’s hardly a barrel of laughs, is he?’

  ‘Not everyone has your wit and charm, Marky-Mark,’ Miranda says, as she brings the cocktails over to us, then huffs down onto the sofa, kicking off her pumps in one fluid motion. Her toenails are painted a perfect dark blood red. I love that colour, really chic. I’ll have to remember to ask her what shade it is.

  ‘I want a smoke,’ she announces. ‘I always want a smoke with one of these.’ She takes out her packet. They’re Vogue lights. I know, because I smoke the same ones – I haven’t smoked anything else since I took up the habit, at nineteen.

  ‘I don’t think you can smoke in here,’ Nick says.

  ‘Of course I can. Fuck that. We’ve paid enough for the privilege, haven’t we? Besides,’ she points at the giant fire in the grate, which is sending up clouds of peat-scented smoke, ‘that thing stinks enough to mask the smell.’

  But someone could look in and see you, I think. Heather, or the gamekeeper, Doug. When you look at the windows now you can mainly just see the reflection of us, the room, the fire. And then just beyond, the very faint outline of the night-time landscape: the darker black of the trees and the gleam of the loch. But we’re pretty blind to anything else out there.

  It said it on the form, I remember. Quite clearly: no smoking indoors, please. If someone sees her, we’ll be charged the damage deposit. But I won’t say anything, not now at least. The last thing I want to be is a killjoy. I just want everyone to have a good time.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Miranda says, ‘where’s my lighter? I thought I’d left it right there on the coffee table. It’s a special one: it was my grandfather’s. It has our crest on it.’

  Miranda always finds little ways to remind people of the grand stock she comes from. But I don’t think she does it in a mean way, really. It’s just how she is.

  Mark fumbles in a pocket, finds his lighter. Miranda leans forward into the flame, so far that we can all see the raspberry lace of her bra.

  ‘Perhaps your stalker took it?’ Nick says teasingly, leaning back and taking a sip of his whisky – he refused a cocktail.

  ‘Oh God,’ Miranda says, widening her eyes. ‘I swear … every time I lose something, I half find myself blaming it on him first. It’s rather convenient.’

  ‘What stalker?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh,’ Miranda says, ‘I always forget how new you are, Emma.’

  No she doesn’t. She’s always reminding me how new I am to the group. But I suppose I don’t mind.

  ‘Manda had this stalker,’ Samira says. ‘It started in Oxford, but it carried on in London for several years, didn’t it, Manda?’

  ‘You know,’ Miranda says, airily, ‘sometimes I could almost believe that there never really was one. That it was someone playing a joke on me, instead.’

  ‘Funny sort of joke,’ Julien says. ‘And I don’t remember you being that blasé about it at the time. It was fucking creepy – you must remember how much it frightened you?’

  Miranda frowns. I suspect she doesn’t like the implication that it had worried her. Playing the victim is not her style. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘he used to take stuff from me. Weird things, little things – but often with some sentimental value. To be honest, it took me a while to work it out. I’m so disorganised that I’m always losing things and never finding them again.’

  ‘He’d return them, too,’ Katie says, over the top of the magazine she’s reading. She’s been so quiet for the last hour or so – while everyone else has been making so much noise – that I’d almost forgotten she was there. ‘Later on, he’d return them.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Miranda says. For a moment I think I see a shadow of something in her expression – some fear or disquiet – but if the memory unnerves her, she conceals it quickly. ‘At Oxford he used to leave the things he’d taken in my locker at college, with a little typed note. And then when we were in London, I’d get stuff posted to me – also with a note. Little things: an earring, a jumper, a shoe. It was like he was just keeping them for a while.’

  ‘It was horrible,’ Samira says. ‘Especially when we lived in that gloomy little house in second year next to the railway tracks – do you remember? I always thought you must have been so scared. I was scared, just thinking that he was lurking around.’

  ‘I think I actually found it quite funny, more than anything,’ Miranda says.

  ‘I’m not sure you did at the time,’ Katie says. ‘I remember, in college, you coming to my room in the middle of the night with your duvet over your shoulder, saying you felt like someone had been in your room, watching you. You used to come and sleep on my floor.’

  Miranda frowns. I suppose that’s the problem with old friends; they have long memories. It’s as if Katie’s not playing by the rules – her comment has cut through the fun.

  ‘You know,’ Julien says. ‘I always thought it was someone you knew. It had to have been someone who was always there, near you – close enough to take those things.’

  I see Katie dart a look at Mark, and then quickly glance away again. I’m sure I know what s
he’s thinking. I bet her pet theory is that he was the stalker. He has always had a crush on Miranda. Yes, I know about it. No, it doesn’t bother me. It’s harmless, I know it is. Mark is, at heart, a fairly simple soul. He has a temper, yes, but he lacks the calculating nature needed for such behaviour.

  I see the pity in the way Katie looks at me sometimes. It irks me. I do not need her pity. I wish I could tell her that, without sounding like I am protesting too much.

  MIRANDA

  People have always been entertained by tales of my stalker. I know how to dress them up to give that little ghost-story shiver down the spine. And it’s such a bizarre thing, isn’t it? A real-life stalker. Everyone seems to think it only happens to celebrities: actresses, singers, breakfast TV hosts. Sometimes I’ll catch the person I’m telling looking at me: squinting, head on one side, as though they’re assessing me. Do I really deserve to be stalked? Am I really that interesting?

  I often bring up my stalker as a piece of dinner party conversation. At times it feels like he’s an exotic and fascinating pet, or a particularly gifted child. It starts conversations. It can stop them too: the idea of someone watching you, knowing everything about you. And then I’ll segue neatly into my whole routine – about how, when you think about it, in the times we live in we are all stalkers. All of us knowing so much about one another’s lives. Even people we haven’t seen in years. Old childhood friends, old school mates. I’ll talk about how we all submit to being stalked. How we think that we’re in control, sharing what we think we choose to share, but really putting a lot more out there than we’re aware of.

  ‘So really,’ I’ll say, at this point in my performance, ‘my stalker was just a bit ahead of the game! A trend-setter, of sorts. He was just analogue. Although having probably been a student at Oxford too’ – little pause to let that settle, let it glimmer and impress for a moment – ‘for all I know he’s probably behind some social media app anyway. Sharing his expertise with the world!’