Big Cats and Kitten Heels

by Claire Peate

  “So, Joe, tell me – how many sightings have you had reported then?”

  Joe snapped out of his daze and leant forward to me. “We’ve had nine in this immediate area in the past two weeks. Mostly they have taken place around early evening, which is when the animal will hunt. Josh gave us all a briefing on the puma when he arrived here, so we’re all up to speed on what we’re looking for. Did you know that the puma gets to within a few metres of its prey and then they pounce? A single jump can span twelve metres! Isn’t that incredible? Twelve metres!”

  “Great!” I nodded, seeing a picture all too clearly in my mind. Torn in two.

  “And then they leap on the back of their prey and break its neck with a single bite. I mean, I saw pictures of pumas and thought they looked quite domesticated. Not now though. Bloody fierce things. Zoos are the best thing for them, in my opinion. Put it in a cage and throw away the key.”

  “Oh quite,” I said, when there was nothing “Oh quite” about it. Miserable bastard, wanting to get rid of a cat. Even in my red-wine-fuzzy head, though, I knew that it would be the wrong thing to argue animal rights in a room full of police marksmen and one big game hunter.

  “So, Joe, aren’t you scared being out there looking for the puma? If what you say is true, then it can jump you before you even see it.”

  If there was such a thing as a seated-swagger then Joe did it. “Ha! I’m not scared. We work in pairs and I work with Josh.” He swelled out his chest in pride. “I’m not really concerned. Besides, it’s more likely that the puma would be scared of us, so why would it attack us?”

  “Why would it attack a horse?”

  “A horse is food, isn’t it? A horse stands around and doesn’t do much, so it doesn’t present much of a threat to the cat. But humans are constantly moving around and making a noise so it isn’t too sure about us. Plus we have the guns which make a hell of a noise.”

  “Yes, I thought I heard one go off this afternoon,” I said, suddenly remembering a noise when Old Ned and I were taking the air.

  “That was me.” He pointed to his chest proudly. “There was an animal right in front of me and I aimed and shot it. Killed it first shot. Only it was a squirrel. But you can’t be too careful…”

  I concealed a smile by taking another sip of my drink.

  Joe looked at his drink for a moment, running his fingers along the rim of the glass and looking as if he was debating in his head whether or not to tell me something.

  “What is it?” I asked quietly. I was intrigued by his silence – was there something about the puma he wasn’t supposed to say?

  He leant towards me and looking around him whispered, “Josh thinks someone’s manipulating it.”

  I stared at him blankly for a moment. Someone was controlling the puma? “Really?”

  “Think about it.” The policeman put down his drink to concentrate on what he was saying, glancing over at Josh to make sure he wasn’t listening in. But Josh was far from caring what was being talked about over the other side of the room. Louisa had him cornered and was tossing her hair and laughing and smiling and giving it everything she’d got. Far from encouraging him, from what I could see Josh had the look of a hunted animal, caged in and not a little bit frightened. Ha! The hunter becomes the hunted.

  “You have to ask yourself, where did the animal come from,” Joe was saying, “and it’s more than likely that it was released into the wild when the change to animal licences was brought in. Do you know that it wasn’t even illegal to let a puma loose in the countryside?”

  “No way,” I said, horrified, my attention well and truly grabbed by Joe now.

  “Seriously, Josh told me that – now what was it – the Countryside and Wildlife Act, something like that, a few years ago there was this act passed that made it illegal to release animals that weren’t native to this country into the wild. Scary stuff, huh? Makes you wonder what went on before that!”

  “You could legitimately release a lion or something into the wild before the new law?”

  “Apparently so, but I’m not dead sure of the details. Anyway, Josh was saying that things are much more tightly controlled now than they used to be. The chances are this thing has been around for a few years and not released recently. We checked with zoos and circuses and so on – no one has reported a missing puma. So in all probability what we’re dealing with here in the Beacons is either an ex-circus animal or even the offspring of an animal that was released a few years ago.”

  “But surely if it’s been out and about in the wild for few years then you would have had sightings reported all the time,” I argued. “You would have known about it before now?”

  “We did know about it.”

  I gaped at him. That wasn’t good. “You mean to say that you’ve had people in this area report sightings of a puma before now?”

  “Of course. All the time. It’s just now it’s making the headlines because all of a sudden it’s attacking livestock. Horses, sheep, a dog…”

  “A dog?”

  “There’s an old farmer over the way called Tomos –”

  “I know him!”

  “Oh. Well, it was Tomos’ dog that was attacked.” Joe was silent for a minute. “The strange thing was that the cat didn’t injure the old hound too badly. Apparently Old Shep is nearly blind and can hardly walk, so how it defended itself against the puma I don’t know. But Josh said the markings were unmistakable. It was definitely the puma that attacked Old Shep.”

  My heart was racing and there was a thought in the back of my mind that I just couldn’t grasp but I knew it was important. Something he was saying was very important. There was some clue that my Merlot befuddled head just couldn’t process.

  “Anyway, it’s all turned nasty these past two weeks now that personal property is at stake,” Joe was saying. “Suddenly everyone’s more interested in capturing the thing when they’ve got something to lose. When there were just reported sightings of a big cat, or when there were dead wild animals like birds and rabbits, we used to go about having a token look for the animal and to be honest with you it was a bit of fun for me and the lads. And we never saw anything to make us think there was actually a big cat living round here. Looking back though,” he laughed, “we probably made so much noise and commotion that the cat would have known we were coming while we were still putting our uniforms on at home in the morning. That’s what’s so great about having Josh – he’s a professional and he tells us just how we should go about capturing the thing. Now we’ve got a full-scale investigation into it. Budget allocated, plans drawn up and people like Josh here are brought over to help out. We’ve got no option but to throw all we’ve got at it. The national media are on our case and it’s our necks on the line if we don’t do something about it.”

  An apt choice of words.

  I wondered whether or not to tell him that the media were right here in this room, currently dipping their hands in the roast beef flavour crisps. But then that wouldn’t be very fair on Henna if she “interviewed” him and he was already prepared for it. Let him find out in his own time.

  “So why is the cat attacking livestock now?” I asked, still not getting why things should be different now.

  Joe dropped his voice again into just above a whisper. I leant closer to him in a bid to hear over the noise of the party, in particular Louisa screaming with laughter at something one of the policemen had said. “That’s why Josh thinks that someone is manipulating it. Not letting it go about its usual routine satisfying itself with killing rabbits and birds. Maybe they’re starving it somehow and …”

  “Excuse me!” Henna tripped over, wobbly and drunk. She looked straight at Joe and said, “Your mate over there said you went to Sheffield Uni ten years ago. You didn’t study Geography, did you?”

  “Yes.” Joe looked nonplussed for a minute

  “I thought so! It’s Joe Williams, isn’t it? It’s Henna! Henna Smithson!”

  Joe shot up from the sofa with an, �
��Oh my God, Henna!” and the two of them exploded into conversation leaving me open-mouthed on the sofa.

  Josh believed someone was manipulating the puma. Tomos! It had to be Tomos the old farmer.

  I sat for a few moments staring into the fire and trying desperately to clear my head and put everything I knew into place. There were loads of things that pointed to the old man being associated with a big cat! For a start there was the bloodstained jacket I saw the other day, and the torn hand and arm. Maybe the cat had turned on him? If Joe had said the cat was likely to be a circus animal then it wouldn’t be afraid of humans per se, but it would defend itself and if Tomos was forcing it to do something it didn’t want to do, like preventing it from going out on its regular hunts in the countryside…

  And then there was Old Shep, Tomos’ dog. I realised now what had been bugging me about what Joe had said. The dog was ancient and almost blind. It was absolutely unable to defend itself but when the cat had attacked it, the old dog hadn’t been killed. Because Tomos had been there to protect his dog from the animal. That had to be the case!

  Now it all fitted in to place.

  Because the most important fact was that it was Elijah’s animals that had been attacked – the animals of a man that Tomos had a particular reason to despise and wish ill.

  Tomos had the puma!

  By now my heart was pumping in my chest.

  I had to see Gwyn. This was too much of a coincidence. I had to tell him. I’d worked the mystery out. Now Gwyn would know that, if he did trail Tomos another day on one of his walks, it would be likely to lead him to wherever the farmer was keeping the big cat!

  “Hello there, you’re staring quite intently in the fire.” One of the police marksmen stood in front of me, holding out a plate of hummus and dips. “Mind if I join you? I’m Peter.”

  “Oh. Right. Back in a minute.”

  I made my way over to the door, checking to see if any one else had noticed that I was leaving the party. Laura was occupied talking to two scary-looking marksmen about her job: “They’re just animals. That’s what they are. All children under five are no more advanced than a dog; they eat, they sleep, they crap. You treat them like you’d treat an animal and they give you respect.”

  Henna was busy interviewing another overwhelmed-looking policeman, “So how do you know where it lives? What would you do if it attacked one of your policemen? How do you know if there’s just one of them?”

  And Louisa was pinning Josh to the wall and using her breasts as a lion tamer uses a chair to keep an animal where they want it.

  So far so good; no one had seen me get up and leave.

  I slid out of the room and bounded upstairs to my bedroom.

  24

  Even though I’d drunk the best part of a bottle of wine I still knew that it was a brainless idea to go out in the night to see Gwyn.

  Of course I knew it was.

  Every ounce of my sensible self was appalled at my half-formed plan. But my sensible self was put in check by my new bottle-of-wine self. Stuff sitting around on a squashy sofa. Stuff talking to over-confident policemen about how exciting their jobs were. Why not grab this one opportunity to embrace a bit of a risk? Why should I bring my Dull Life Crisis here to the Hen House? This weekend was all about being a different me, living here in this amazing place, secretly flirting with handsome farmers and uncovering all the local secrets. This weekend was my manicured two-fingers up at Marcia.

  I was due back in the city tomorrow, back in work on Tuesday and then I would be back to a life of making calls, going to meetings, writing reports and buying the same old sandwiches from the same sandwich man who visited our offices every lunchtime. All my days were spent being sensible and normal – why not take a risk and go and see Gwyn tonight? The party wasn’t such fun that I wanted to stay. Louisa had grabbed the most interesting bloke, the other policemen had more than enough on their plates with the other girls and really, I was more of a spare part here. The music wasn’t great and all the decent wine had been drunk. Only the £2.99 bottles of Chateau de Tesco were left and I certainly had more common sense than to start drinking those.

  The rational course of action – that my rational self would have taken – would have been to go back downstairs and speak to Josh about the possible connection between old Tomos and the big cat. It would have been a matter of moments to prise Louisa away from her quarry and have a word with him. Or even approach one of the policemen first, for that matter. Then they could be the ones to go and do the prising, which would be far more sensible from a personal safety point of view.

  But then what? I would tell them about my suspicions and they might nod and say, “Yes, let’s think about that,” and have another drink, thereby leaving me back where I started, a spare part at a party, but this time without the reason to go and see Gwyn. Or alternatively they might say, “Of course! The missing link!” and dash off in their riot van into the night and I’d be left with a room full of very angry girls looking at me. And cheap wine.

  But this way, going out right now to find Gwyn, ensured that I didn’t disrupt the party. It also meant that I didn’t unnecessarily blacken a man’s reputation because, after all, what did I know about Tomos? I still only knew what I’d been told about him from other people. And there might be all sorts of explanations as to why he had been so badly cut, why there was blood on his coat and why his dog, against all the odds, had survived a cat attack. Mind you, I couldn’t think of one. Still, the idea of an old Welsh farmer manipulating a ferocious puma could be wide of the mark and I’d look pretty stupid blurting it all out only to be proved wrong.

  In addition to all this, I reasoned, by talking to Gwyn I would be passing the responsibility on to him and he could follow it up when I’d gone. It also meant that the party could continue with the full complement of policemen and hunters and there would be more supermarket wine to go round.

  And it meant I’d get a breath of fresh air to clear my head.

  Oh, and it meant that I got to spend just a bit more time with Gwyn.

  That small point.

  Provided that he was home by now.

  Should I try to call again? No, probably not. No doubt someone would see me coated-up in the hallway and ask where I was going, and then I’d have to explain and then the policemen would be getting back into the riot van and driving off… There was that image of a hallway full of angry girls looking at me again. I should definitely just sneak out quietly. Quickly.

  I crept down the stairs and pulled out my coat from the alcove underneath the staircase. Then I stole into the kitchen for a weapon of some sort. After all, there was a puma on the loose and although the walk up to Gwyn’s was a matter of ten minutes, there was still a chance I could meet it. And having drunk so much wine I could hardly drive up to his farm, not with half a dozen policemen in the vicinity.

  Spatulas and the potato masher didn’t really look like proper weapons, and I couldn’t really imagine fending off a foaming-mouthed puma with a Philippe Starck orange squeezer, however much a design classic it might be. Checking behind me to make sure no one was standing in the doorway watching what I was doing, I pulled open the knife drawer, ogled at the array of weapons for a moment and then closed it again, horrified. There was no way I would be going up to Gwyn’s brandishing a knife. I’d probably stab myself by accident and if I did get attacked by the puma, there was no way I would be able to knife the poor animal. I needed a weapon of defence, not slaughter.

  A fork might do the trick! I picked one up and contemplated it for a second. I could jab at the animal. I jabbed the air experimentally. But then it would have to get pretty close to be jabbed and I could easily drop the fork and then where would I be?

  And so it was that, a few minutes later, I walked out of the front door, closing it quietly behind me with a very large wooden rolling-pin in one hand and an impressive looking torch in the other.

  I sobered up the minute I stepped outside. The noise and heat and
beery-smell of the party disappeared and it was just me out in the cool night air. I flicked on the PowerBeam Mega Three. Instantly there was a blinding ray of light up the gravel driveway. Christ, it was bright. It was also eerily silent except for a soft rustling of leaves in the woodland beside the track. With my back pressed hard against the knobbly ancient front door, I swept the beam across the driveway, watching for pumas in the thin band of light, clutching the rolling-pin tightly. The woods on either side of the steep road looked black and ominous – only the very tops of the trees visible in the moonlight, shifting and rustling in the breeze. The lane, lit up by the thin white light of the moon, snaked its way up towards the village. If I was going to do this I should do it now.

  I took a deep breath, which sounded juddery as my heart was pounding away in my chest.

  I set off. Dull Life Crisis be damned.

  I walked past the cars and out of the safety of the fenced driveway and into the lane. Flicking the beam of light left and right, I scrunched my way up the stony track in my ridiculously inappropriate kitten-heeled shoes desperately trying to think through the plan in my head.

  The beam flickered. I stopped and shook the torch. It seemed fine again.

  I started walking.

  It cut out.

  “Fuck!” I shook it again. Nothing.

  I bit my lip. What should I do? Turn round and go back? I looked behind me. The orange lights of the Hen House were just visible down the road. But I was only a few minutes from Gwyn’s farm.

  What if Gwyn wasn’t at home by now? Then I’d have to go on to the pub looking for him. He was bound to be at the pub and if he wasn’t, well, I suppose I’d go back to the Hen House and I’d have put myself through sheer terror for no reason. But at least I would have tried – if I hadn’t tried then no doubt I would be still sitting there on the sofa, bursting with the revelation about old Tomos with no one to tell. A sudden gust of wind howled down the valley and rushed into the woods around me, creating a din of rattling branches and swishing leaves. I crouched down and put the dead torch on the side of the road. It was too heavy to be carrying for no reason. I could collect it on my way back. I gripped the rolling-pin tighter and started to walk towards Gwyn’s farm. The track went quite steeply uphill now and I was panting as I walked, trying to avoid the potholes without much success as the moonlight was hazy. My shoes kept slipping off and I had to backtrack every so often to put them on again. I was a quarter of the way there. I looked behind me and saw the warm orange lights of the house disappear as I turned the corner. My last glimpse of safety…