by Andy Maslen
She hoisted the Marlin up and settled it against the fleshy pad of muscle beside her shoulder. Then she repeated the sequence of movements she’d been using at each stage of her assessment. With the tip of her tongue between her teeth she looked down the Marlin’s barrel, aligning the brass bead of the foresight with the raised rear sight. This is it, Stel. Moment of truth. Ken thinks this is all about hunting. But we know different.
49
Hunting Trip
In a small, calm, silent space all of her own, Stella let the outside world drift away until she was nothing more than the rifle, aware only of the trajectory the bullet would take on its two-hundred-yard journey to the side of the blue oil drum.
She squeezed the trigger, leaning slightly forward into the stock to minimise the impact of the recoil. With a bang, the round sped away towards the target. She held the rifle up for a moment or two before lowering it.
Confident she’d hit the drum, she turned to Ken, who was staring downrange.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think, let’s go and see. But I also think, you’d make a fine hunter.”
Stella realised her heart was racing as they walked back to the oil drum. As they drew closer, she could see what she wanted to see: a hole with the characteristic irregular splash of grey where the impact of the bullet had blown the paint off the metal. She smiled to herself, but Ken caught the fleeting expression of joy.
“Yeah, you hit it. Plum centre. What did you shoot in England?”
Scotland, but let’s not split hairs.
“You mean the rifle or the target?”
He shrugged.
“Both, I guess.”
“The rifle was a Blaser. An R93 Luxus, if memory serves. And the target was,” she hesitated, “big game.”
“Didn’t realise you had any in England. What was it? Buffalo? Some kind of deer?”
A fat thug in corduroys.
“Yes, a big deer. Red.”
“Huh. OK, then. Listen, you want to help me with my truck? I could use a second pair of hands.”
“Sure. I don’t have anywhere to be. Just, you know, I’m more of a bike girl. But you tell me what to hand you or what to hit with a hammer, and I’m there.”
With a smile he turned, and together they walked, in companionable silence, back through the woods, which had refilled with birdsong now the shooting was over.
Stella spent the rest of the day helping Ken work on the truck. He’d offered to take her to meet the shaman, but when they got to his house, the man was out. The windows were shuttered, giving the house a closed-for-the-season look. He gave her a lift back to Lac La Croix at 7.00 p.m., with a promise to collect her outside Franklyn’s at six the following morning. To get an early start, as he said.
She was awake and dressed in what she now thought of as her hunting gear by 5.30 a.m., breakfasting on a sandwich and a flask of coffee she’d asked Maureen to prepare the previous evening.
The temperature outside was rising, but as she stood waiting for Ken, she was glad of the warmth the sweatshirt provided. The sun had just appeared over the horizon, throwing pink spears across the sky. She inhaled deeply. Mostly what she could smell was clean, crisp air, overlaid with the faint tang of pine needles.
The truck’s familiar raucous engine note, smoothed off a little by the previous day’s exertions, announced Ken’s imminent arrival. Stella felt herself smiling at the prospect of a day outside, far from other people – especially the kind of other people who were out to kill her. Or, she supposed, the kind of other people she was out to kill herself. Having proved herself against the oil drum, she was looking forward to trying her hand at trickier targets. She remembered a girl she’d known at university in Bath. Sophie Abbott’s well-to-do parents owned a successful farm, but she had turned her back on matters rural, from agriculture to hunting. From there it had been a short step to turning vegetarian.
“You shouldn’t eat meat unless you’re prepared to kill it yourself,” had been one of her stock lines. And it worked against the city-bred kids who thought lamb chops came from Sainsbury’s and not from baby sheep. Stella, always an argumentative girl, had risen to the bait – and the challenge.
“I’d be happy to kill my own food,” she’d declared over coffee after a psychology lecture. “Why not? Our ancestors did.”
A posh boy at the next table, Marcus something, who she always thought had a thing for her, had leaned over.
“Couldn’t help overhearing, ladies,” he said in that infuriatingly languorous upper-class accent so many of the students at Bath affected. “I’m going home on Friday after lectures. You could come along, Stella. My father likes to shoot for the pot most weekends.”
She’d agreed there and then, more to provoke her friend than from any desire to relive the 1920s. And the weekend had been fun, more or less. Marcus’s parents – the Belmonts, that was it! Marcus Belmont – were welcoming and, it seemed to Stella, genuinely friendly. Mrs Belmont had been a brilliant raconteuse and had kept their weekend guest enthralled with tales of her work as an analyst at MI6 during the Cold War. Mr Belmont loved his guns, his vintage Brough Superior motorbike, which he’d allowed Stella to ride down their half-mile-long drive and back, and his wine cellar.
On the Saturday, after a hearty breakfast of devilled kidneys, fried eggs and a pile of toast, Marcus and Stella had accompanied Mr Belmont in his knackered old Land Rover out to a wooded corner of his estate where they proceeded to stalk and kill half a dozen rabbits and a couple of pheasants.
Stella returned to Bath with Marcus on the Sunday afternoon, happily anticipating her next encounter with the saintly Sophie.
Ken rolled up beside her, interrupting her reverie with a blip of the throttle. He wound the window down.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
Stella nodded, bent to pick up her daysack and walked round the front of the truck to climb in. She pulled open the door and was immediately met with a long, wet tongue.
“Hey, who are you?” she asked the over-eager mutt now slobbering all over her.
“His name’s Chakabesh,” Ken said, pronouncing it chuh-kah-baish. Then, to the dog, “Give the lady some room, Chaka.” He dragged the dog back by its collar so Stella could get herself seated.
Ken pushed the stick shift into first and pulled away with a roar from the truck’s high-mileage engine and a gust of stinking exhaust fumes. Chakabesh had obviously decided the biiwide was a friend and proceeded to lick her hand, her leg, basically any part of her he could reach. Which was fine by Stella. Uncomplicated, loyal and probably very clever: all qualities she could appreciate, in humans as well as dogs.
“Have you had him since he was a puppy?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. His mother belongs to my mother.”
“What does his name mean? Is it Ojibway?”
“Yes. Chakabesh is from the folk stories of the Cree and Northern Ojibway peoples. Sometimes we call him the Man in the Moon. He could be foolish sometimes, rash, you know? His older sister was sensible, but Chakabesh ignored her advice. But he had courage and a faithful heart, and people always forgave him in the end.”
“He sounds a little like The Trickster,” Stella said.
“What?”
“Did you ever hear of Carl Jung?”
“Is he a folk hero of your people?”
“No, he was a—”
“Of course I’ve heard of Carl Jung! Do you think I’m some dumbass Indian who only knows the old stories? I took a minor in psychology at college before I came back to Lac La Croix.”
Once more, Stella felt the blood heating her cheeks.
“Fuck! I put my foot in it again, Ken. I’m really sorry. It’s just—”
Ken’s loud laughter made Chakabesh pause in his fervent licking of Stella’s left wrist and look up at his master. Clearly satisfied that nothing was amiss, he resumed his ministrations.
“No, I’m sorry,” Ken said. “I’m just messing with you. Why
would a backwoods Indian stuck out here in Western Ontario know about a Swiss psychiatrist?”
Stella sighed with relief. This slow-talking man was playing her like her professor at university had played the eager nineteen-year-old psychology undergraduate.
“Fine. So, having pulled my foot out of my mouth, I did psychology, too. I was going to say that Chakabesh sounds a lot like The Trickster archetype.”
“Hmm. Maybe. Could be The Rebel, too. Or The Hero. Anyway, forget all that Jungian bullshit. Chaka’s a great hunting dog.”
Stella laughed as the dog tried to work his rough tongue up the inside of the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“And if all else fails, he could always get a job as a physical therapist.”
Two hours later, with Chakabesh happily asleep, his silky head on Stella’s lap, Ken made a turn signal and pulled off the highway onto a dirt road. The dog woke up and looked straight ahead, as if to say, Hey! I recognise this. His tail began thumping rhythmically on the seat and his wide mouth dropped open in what Stella could only conceive of as a happy smile. He began whining softly, way back in his throat.
“Is he OK?” Stella asked.
“Oh, he’s fine. He’s just excited cause he knows we’re almost there.
Chaka was right because after another ten minutes, Ken pulled the truck over and killed the engine. The two humans climbed out and eased off their muscles. Chaka, meanwhile, bounded away along a narrow track through the trees before running back, full tilt, then springing off in a new direction.
Ken handed Stella the Marlin she’d used the previous day and took his Remington off the gun rack at the back of the cab.
“Down there,” he said, pointing at the first track Chaka had run off to investigate.
The track wound on for a couple of hundred yards through light, mixed woodland. Lots of birch, some oak, some pines and a lot of low-growing shrubs bearing thousands of pink and yellow flowers. The wood smelled of leaf mould, pine needles and sap – clean, green smells that made Stella smile. The rapid-fire knocking of a woodpecker directly above them made her stop and look up, but she couldn’t see the bird. She felt Ken’s hand on her arm.
“Wait,” he murmured. “There.” He extended his arm very slowly and pointed to a spot just in front of them and about thirty feet up.
“I see it,” she said, barely able to keep her voice quiet with the glee she felt at being able to see the black, red and white woodpecker hammering away at the trunk of a sycamore tree.
They emerged onto a path that led around the perimeter of a clearing some twenty-five feet below their own level. The floor of the circular, sandy space was bare of bushes and scrub, and covered in a thin layer of moss and grass, punctuated here and there by bare stone scrapes. On the far side, where the ground sloped steeply upwards, Stella could see dozens of darker brown patches that, as she focused, resolved themselves into holes. A rabbit warren. She tried to see, not merely to look, as she felt sure Ken was doing at her right elbow. The ground between the holes was covered in rabbits. There must have been several hundred. Their colour was such a close match to the ground cover that until they moved, and their white scuts flashed, it was virtually impossible to see them.
“Dinner,” Ken said quietly. She noticed that he never whispered, preferring to murmur. Just like we used to, she thought. Harder to make out without the hissing sibilants. And then she thought, We? That feels like a different life. Spending hours in converted transit vans on surveillance duty. Tailing drug dealers, or watching gangsters from a corner table in a rough pub. How had she come from that, to this?
You know the answer to that one, Stel, a soft voice whispered from somewhere in the deepest part of her brain. Because those fuckers murdered your husband and left your baby to burn to death in her daddy’s car.
Stella shook her head, willing the voice, and its malevolent owner, to retreat. Ken was speaking again.
“You want to shoot one first?”
Stella nodded. She moved a couple of yards to her left where a slender birch leant at the perfect angle to make a shooting support. Turning away from the warren and shielding the rifle’s action with her torso, she worked the lever down and up to chamber a round. The sound of the well-maintained action was minimal.
She faced forward again and rested the rifle against the birch tree, settling her cheek against the stock and preparing herself to shoot. The distance from her position to the warren was only half that of the previous day’s marksmanship test. Even without the telescopic sight of Ken’s Remington, she felt confident as she sighted along the barrel. She was shooting downwards, but over a relatively short distance she didn’t think she’d need to compensate for the bullet’s dropping much during flight.
She fired, and all but one of the rabbits scattered, darting towards their holes.
“Nice shot,” Ken said. “Next time we shoot together, OK?”
Stella nodded.
Gradually at first, then with increasing confidence, the remaining rabbits re-emerged from the warren. Before long the ground was thick with them, despite the presence of the dead creature among them.
The two rifles sang out in unison, and two more rabbits died on the spot.
When they’d shot half a dozen, Ken held his hand up.
“That’s enough for today. You shoot well for a city-dweller.”
“Thank you. Shall we go and collect the bunnies?
Ken strung the rabbits together on a length of nylon cord, running it between the bones of the back leg and the Achilles tendon.
“I have coffee and sandwiches in the truck. You hungry?”
“Starving.”
They walked back to the truck in silence. Ken wasn’t a man to talk when he had nothing to say, and Stella liked him all the more for it. Her shoulder ached pleasantly. If it hadn’t been for the question she’d framed in her head, she could almost fancy herself content. But Collier was out there, somewhere to the south. Enjoying life. Enjoying playing at being an FBI agent. And while he breathed, she couldn’t. Not properly.
Back at the truck, Ken poured two tin cups of coffee and broke out ham sandwiches. Stella took a bite and washed it down with a swig of coffee. Then cleared her throat, preparing to ask her question.
50
Airweight
Ken looked up from his sandwich.
“What is it?”
Stella took a deep breath and let it out in a huffing sigh.
“Can you help me get a handgun?”
Instead of answering, he took another bite of the sandwich, followed by a swig of coffee. He didn’t take his eyes off her until he’d swallowed.
“Why do you need a handgun?”
“Self-defence. I’m planning to move on soon, and it’s pretty isolated country out here. I need something to help me feel safe.”
“It’s against the law for you to buy a handgun in Canada, and that goes for me buying one for you. You know that, right?”
“Uh-huh. But, you know, I thought maybe you could sell me one you already own. I can pay. A lot.”
Ken pursed his lips. Looked up at the sky, squinting against the sun. Then returned his gaze to hers.
“I need my guns.”
“So could you get one for me? I noticed a gun shop in town.”
“For self-defence?”
“Yes. Like I said, I—”
“You’re lying.”
“No. I just need—”
“Tell me the truth. Last chance. Tell me why a nice, pretty girl from England comes all the way out to Lac La Croix, pals up with a full-blood Ojibway, gets him to take her hunting, then asks him to buy her a gun. Lie to me again, and I’ll take you back into town and we’re done. Apart from what you owe me for the hunting trip.”
Stella sighed. She’d already made the decision.
“I’ve come out here to find, and kill, the man who organised the murder of my family. He’s in Chicago.”
She added the names of the main PPM players and sketched in the
group’s activities in England. Having delivered herself of a cut-down version of the story, she watched Ken assimilate the information. His eyes never left hers. After a full minute of silence, he rubbed the sparse stubble on his cheeks.
“Show me your hands again.”
Stella held out her hands, palms upwards.
He took her right hand and turned it over. Turned it back again. Told her to make a fist.
“You’ve got small hands,” he finally said.
“I’ve shot a Glock 17,” she blurted, afraid he was going to reject her request on the grounds of her anatomy.
“Yeah, I bet you have.”
“Please, Ken. Don’t say no.”
“You want something small. Something you can keep in a pocket. You can’t walk around Chicago carrying something that bulges out through your clothes.”
Stella felt the black clouds of doubt dissipate in a second.
“So you’re going to help me? Even though we’ve only just met?”
“Yes. Wanna know why?”
“Tell me.”
Ken put the cup down on the truck’s hood then turned back to face Stella.
“One, I trust you, and I believe you. Someone murdered my family, I’d do what you’re doing. Two, you’re respectful, and you helped me with my truck yesterday.” He paused.
“And three?”
“And three, you’re going to pay me $6,000.”
Stella had been expecting something in the high four figures. She was ready with a counter offer.
“Let’s make it ten thousand. US. Including the hunting trip. This old heap of yours needs more than just the patch-up work we did on it yesterday. Maybe you can get yourself a new truck out of this. Plus, then you can throw in a boat trip across the lake to the US side.”
“Ten? Why so much more than I just asked for?”
“You’re taking a big risk with me. And I have enough to get by on once I reach the States. The money’s under a loose floorboard back in my room at Maureen’s.”
