Suspicious Minds

by David Mark

  She keeps typing. She allows herself a smile when she finds something unexpected: a furious, spit-flecked epistle left on a forum written for and by animal rights activists, principally aimed at changing the laws on the use of snares. The message was posted in May, 2017, by a user named DanBrompton, under a thread entitled ‘Still At It – Fat Cats Couldn’t Give a Damn’:

  Shaking as I write this. Those who know my name will probably be rolling their eyes that I’m still surprised by people’s actions but I have never lost my faith in human nature, even after 30 years of campaigning to ban snares and hunting with dogs. You may also know I’ve paid the price for my efforts in dismantling snares. 16 convictions at the last count, and jail twice for refusing to pay the fines. Why should I? I don’t agree I’m in the wrong. You might also remember that I’ve taken a few bad beatings when I’ve got on the wrong side of gamekeepers, farmers and the various thugs whose job it is to make sure people like me don’t interfere with rich people’s delight in killing animals of all shapes and sizes. This weekend I came as close as I’ve ever come to paying the ultimate price for what I believe. I know there will be repercussions if I name names but this is too important to keep quiet – even if the toadies in the Press have refused to listen. I am pointing my finger at the owners of the Swinburn Estate: Campion and Candace. He’s nothing but a thug done good and she’d step over a dozen burning babies to go and save her favourite saddle. I spend my spare time looking for traps – yes, often on private land, why not?! – and on Sunday I had the misfortune to find a house cat caught in a snare. The cord had gone through to bone and there was a maggot infestation that had clearly begun long before the creature died of its injuries. I did what the experts say we should and immediately phoned the RSPCA and the local police. Police couldn’t care less – all bought and paid for! – and the wildlife protection officer and me have history so nobody turned up. Nobody except the assistant gamekeeper Brendon Whistler and his hired thugs. We’ve got no shortage of history either! He’s been using the same group of nasty sods to scare off the saboteurs and the activists for years. Been inside for it but Campion still keeps him on. I’ve been wise to what they’re capable of ever since the attack at my property – another disgusting cover-up. I swear if there hadn’t been some ramblers nearby I wouldn’t still be here! Keep up the good fight. DanB.

  Betsy’s tea has again gone cold. She reaches into the biscuit barrel for sustenance and her fingers brush the envelope of money; the thrill of illicit contact sending a shiver down to her toes.

  She types ‘Brendon Whistler’ into Google. Scans the first article she finds. Whistler had helped knock the stuffing out of a couple of hunt saboteurs who’d disrupted a chase by laying a false trail through woodland. One victim, unnamed, required surgery to have their ear reattached. The other suffered multiple fractures to their ribs and severe bruising to their legs and knees. There was evidence of an attempted lynching, though the sentencing magistrate said that the accusation was ‘barely credible’. He sentenced Whistler, then thirty-two, and co-defendant Rufus Hewson, twenty-four, to eight- and four-month prison terms respectively, saying they were previously of good character and had been ‘sorely provoked’.

  Betsy skips on. Finds what she’s looking for.

  Speaking outside the court, animal rights campaigner and Allen Valleys smallholder Maeve Ducken, said: ‘If the regular person in the street saw what happened that day, they would be appalled. These men are paid specifically to deter hunt saboteurs and animal rights campaigners and they seem to think they can do so with impunity. People might wonder why we’re still fighting all these years after hunting was banned, but that’s because the ban doesn’t work and is barely enforced. More than that, there are far worse practices being carried out right under our noses – the violence towards animals is truly shocking and there are some unscrupulous landowners who seem to think that nothing matters except making money from the rich folk who come here to blast over-fed, half-tame grouse. It’s disgusting.’

  Betsy sits back, her knees jiggling up and down. She’s learned something, she’s sure, but she doesn’t understand whether it matters. Jude has told her the bare bones of this already, hasn’t he? Her head is starting to hurt.

  Jude.

  Guilt floods her as she thinks of him. They’ve barely argued since that horrible night. He’s tiptoeing around her, holding her so gently it’s as if he’s trying to pick up a cobweb without it coming apart. She feels horribly disloyal, sitting here unstitching his stories and looking for loose threads.

  No, she tells herself, bristling. No, you’ve got every right. You may be paranoid but you might also be really astute. You were right about Jay, weren’t you? You always knew he didn’t really love you enough to put in the effort. Didn’t even fight to keep you, did he? And now the same voice is saying Jude is lying about something. That night – the night Jay died – you were dead to the world. He could have slipped away, couldn’t he? You don’t know. The way he was with Anya – that was sort of awkward, wasn’t it? Like he couldn’t be near her if she was going to talk about him. Could that be guilt? And what about Mick – the one Candy told you about? And Jude, with his dead wife. The one who nagged and belittled him and who left him everything when she died …

  She pushes the laptop away. Puts her hands to her face and groans into her palms. She glances towards the clock. It will be another hour at least before Anya arrives. She can get plenty done. She could collect the eggs, make a cake before she arrives. Could use her time wisely.

  She pulls the laptop back towards herself. She has a sudden sensation that she has missed something important. She re-reads the articles. Then she sees it – the shared surname.

  Rufus Hewson.

  Mick Hewson.

  Missing Mick.

  She types both into Google. There’s little on Michael save a couple of articles in a local paper in Newcastle: a local man raising cash for Army veterans with sponsored athletics challenges at a community gym. He’s pictured with a woman described as his partner. Donna Embleton, thirty-two. She’s the woman from the river; photographed before she shaved in the Mohawk and before she slimmed down from the hulking bodybuilder physique she sports in the picture.

  There’s plenty on Rufus, and all of it ties up entirely with the vile specimen who’d fought with Jude at the pharmacy.

  She feels sick as she reads. He made headlines shortly after being released for his part in the assault on the saboteurs. The article, printed in the national Daily Mail, details the ‘sickening and ultra-violent assault’ carried out by habitual offender Rufus Hewson on a man and a woman in a row over a parking space. The man was left with ‘life-altering’ injuries having been struck around the head with an item believed to be a steering-wheel lock. The woman suffered facial injuries and lost a hunk of hair from her scalp. An earlier charge of attempted rape was dropped for lack of evidence. Judge Arthurs, sentencing him to six years, said he was ‘an extremely dangerous’ individual.

  Betsy looks up as she hears the car crunching up the path. She smears the heels of her hands across her face and practices a quick smile. It feels wrong. Everything feels wrong. She starts to rise from the table when some inescapable impulse stops her. She pulls up Facebook and logs on, quickly, ignoring the seemingly endless messages and notifications that begin pinging into her profile. She types Rufus’s name into the search facility. She finds him at once. He’s puffier in his face than he was in the photograph that accompanies the article. Sallow skin. There’s a tattoo on his neck: something that might be the wing of a bird of prey. He’s pressing his cheek against the jowl of an elderly lady; her smile falling well short of her eyes. Not much of his information has been set to ‘public’, but he’s tagged in pictures taken in February by one Anthony Bede. Betsy clicks the link. Sees Rufus, beady-eyed and sweaty, holding a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, his beefy arm slung over the shoulder of his brother, Mick.

  ‘Boys are back in town’, screams the caption. It
has eighteen likes. Two responses. One from an Alan Graves:

  Glad to see the madman’s out. Can’t keep a good man down, eh? Tell him to drop me a line, eh?

  In response, a comment from Mick:

  No worries Gravesy. He purely beasted his welcome home party! Still a legend and he hasn’t lost his taste for the ale or the ladies. I reckon he’ll be useful to you. Mr Punch won’t know what’s hit him!

  Betsy closes the laptop. Pushes her hair from her face and hurries outside. She doesn’t like keeping people waiting, though this aversion has never succeeded in making her change her ways.

  Anya’s waiting by the gate, struggling with the loop of damp rope coiled around the fencepost. She jabs a thumb over her shoulder as she sees Betsy approach, signalling with her hands, her face, her whole manner, that she’s not alone.

  On the road, hands on his hips, looking a lot like Mussolini in his jodhpurs, is Campion Lorton-Cave. He’s red-faced. Sweaty. There are briars snagged on his coat and a splash of dirt on his face. Over his arm, as casual as if he were holding a discarded coat on a too-warm day, a double-barrelled shotgun, open where the chamber meets the barrel.

  Anya opens the gate. Hurries towards Betsy, her bag banging on her back.

  ‘Miss Zahavi,’ says Campion, and there is a slur to his words that suggests the red face may have been helped by a bottle. ‘Miss Zahavi, I think we may have to have an overdue conversation.’

  Betsy stands perfectly still, her heart thumping in a way that makes her think, incongruously, of a boot slamming down, piston fast, on the pedal of a bass drum.

  ‘I’m not sure we have anything to say to each other,’ she begins, her voice faltering. She is about to tell him to get off her property; that Jude will be home any moment, and then she hears it. The still, cold air carries with it the song of warring sirens: police, ambulance; the valley filling with the sound of frightened livestock and angry drivers.

  Betsy shivers. Catches the scent of damp grass and the disturbed silt of the riverbed. Something feels wrong.

  ‘I told your wife and Jude’s told your lackeys – we’re going nowhere. You’d best be going. I won’t tell Jude you were here.’

  He shakes his head. Stumbles forward and rights himself. ‘Miss Zahavi. Or is it Betsy today? Liz tomorrow, is it?’

  She shakes her head. ‘You can have your money back. I don’t care. But we don’t need to ever have a conversation …’

  He swings the gun lazily up, as though following the path of a butterfly. He shrugs, almost sadly.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, almost apologetically. He clicks the shotgun closed. Unloops the rope around the gatepost and trudges, muzzily, into the courtyard. ‘Yes we do.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Up close, there’s nothing particularly impressive about Campion Lorton-Cave. He looks old: in poor health. There are little bristly patches in his jawline that he has missed while shaving. His eyes are yellow and shiny, the way Betsy’s go when she is holding back tears. His hair, scruffy and sticking up, has a greasiness to it and where it fails to cover his scalp she can see patches of psoriasis, blooming like mildew on stone. It’s the gun that changes things. The gun that glares at her: two perfect round eyes, glaring holes in her chest. The gun that makes her listen.

  ‘We can sit here, if you like,’ mutters Betsy, pointing at one of the crates in the courtyard. ‘No need to go inside.’

  ‘Cold out,’ he replies, and his voice carries a whine. ‘Doc’s orders. Stay warm. Tea would be nice.’

  Betsy can’t stop herself giving a little snort of laughter. She wonders if this is normal in the countryside.

  ‘Fine, tea, whatever,’ mutters Betsy, leading him in through the back door. Anya is waiting inside, her face white.

  ‘Mum had a meeting,’ she explains, hurriedly. ‘Said she had to go. She says to say sorry.’

  Betsy hugs her. Kisses her head. ‘You go and put your stuff in the spare room, yeah? I’m going to talk with the man. This is Campion. He owns most of this area.’ She glares at the man in the doorway, the gun still over his arm. ‘He’s a very important person.’

  Campion looks as though he’s struggling to stay upright. He leans in the doorway, eyes sliding shut. ‘Best stay with us, love,’ he mumbles, to Anya. ‘Don’t want you ringing anybody, do we?’

  ‘Leave her be – you didn’t even know she’d be here,’ snaps Betsy. ‘Talk to me, if it’s so bloody important.’

  ‘Do as you’re told.’

  Anya stays still. Betsy, pissed off as much as afraid, starts banging about with mugs, filling the big black kettle and placing it on the stove. She pulls a log from the stack and chucks it into the Rayburn, the heat briefly warming her face.

  ‘Just so you know, Jude’s coming home for his lunch,’ says Betsy, trying to sound smug. ‘He’s not hugely keen on cold-callers.’

  ‘He won’t be coming home,’ mumbles Campion, shaking his head. ‘Maybe not ever.’

  Betsy stops, perfectly still: a rabbit hearing the tread of a fox. She finds herself smiling, fretfully, the sound of her own heart thumping in her skull. ‘Not ever, you say? Don’t talk soft. You done him in, have you? Decided that a bit of land and some access rights are worth killing for? I doubt you’d even be able to do it. I can see you enjoying turning a grouse into feathers and mince but Jude? No, hiring thugs is more your game, isn’t it? And they haven’t had any impact on him.’

  Campion waves a hand, vaguely. He seems to be having trouble seeing properly. Keeps opening his mouth as if to relieve pressure in his ears. ‘Not me,’ he mutters. ‘Gone too far already, hasn’t it? You can’t control a man like that. Can’t get him to see sense.’

  ‘Jude?’ laughs Betsy. ‘Control Jude?’

  ‘No, that monster. Mick’s brother. Brendon brought him in – said he and Jude had scores to settle. And Brendon knows what he’s talking about. I just wanted things settled. But he won’t listen. Won’t leave things be.’

  ‘He nearly blinded Jude,’ spits Betsy, and feels Anya’s eyes upon her. ‘In front of everybody. Called him out and started a fight.’

  Campion shakes his head, looking pained. He grimaces, suddenly. ‘Water,’ he mumbles. ‘I can’t breathe …’

  Betsy finds herself moving towards him even before she makes up her mind whether to help him. She helps him to a chair, and tells Anya to bring him a glass of tap water. He sips it, gratefully, nodding thanks. Holds it like a toddler with a cup.

  ‘You seem ill,’ she says, putting her hand on his forehead. He’s clammy. She snatches the hand away as a memory floods her vision: Campion holding a riding crop to Maeve’s throat, his arse flashing up and down on the riverbank. She turns away from him, stamping back to the stove.

  ‘You’ve heard a lot about me,’ says Campion, more strength in his voice. ‘These past months you’ve heard what an evil bastard I am. The power I have over people. The way I manipulate my position and ruin lives, yes? Campion Lorton-Cave, the evilest man in the valley.’ He shakes his head, dejected. ‘I don’t defend myself against it because I’m big enough to know that people need somebody else to blame. And whining so-and-so’s have been blaming the rich for their problems ever since we were living in caves and some poor hard-done-by bastard felt he deserved a bigger share of somebody else’s shit-pile. I get that. That’s the way it is. And I wasn’t always well off, you understand that, yes? I worked hard. Worked until I bled. Had to marry damn well. Had to grease up plenty of country gents and gentry cunts to become what I am.’

  ‘Jude,’ says Betsy, not caring. ‘What did you mean about Jude?’

  ‘He’s told you lies about me,’ croaks Campion. ‘Not his fault – he believes what he’s saying to be true.’

  ‘That you’re an evil bastard who forced his wife to sleep with you in order to get planning permission for her house?’ Betsy shoots a look at Anya. ‘Cover your ears, sweetheart.’

  Campion scowls. ‘Yeah, thought that might come up.’

  ‘Why do y
ou care what I think anyways?’ asks Betsy.

  ‘I don’t,’ shrugs Campion. ‘You and I got off to a bad start, didn’t we, but I put things right. Candy was right about that. Doesn’t matter how shit your driving was, I’d had a few and I shouldn’t have left you. The money was an apology. Can’t be all bad, can I?’

  ‘You’ve had men trying to force him out of his home!’ shouts Betsy, banging the kettle down on the sizzling hotplate. ‘Animals killed. A deer strung up in the bloody trees – earmuffs please, Anya – and you’re sitting here with a bloody shotgun telling me he’s never coming home!’

  ‘Police have found Mick,’ says Campion, softly. ‘Couple of cave-divers found him down one of the disused shafts, three miles back up the valley. I have friends in the police. They’re coming for Jude.’

  Betsy shakes her head. It feels like there are cold stones in her stomach. ‘He wouldn’t. He didn’t …’

  ‘Rufus thinks he did. Thinks his mortal enemy has done his brother in. And the police aren’t going to be arresting Jude until they’ve got more evidence, which means he’s out there, now, with a psychopath after him. After all he holds dear.’

  Betsy shakes her head again. ‘No. Jude’s not a killer. I’ve had doubts, sure, but––’

  ‘There are those who say he killed my Maeve,’ whispers Campion.

  ‘Your Maeve? How the hell was she your Maeve?’

  ‘We had something special,’ he says. ‘We couldn’t be together, not properly, but she mattered to me and I mattered to her.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw the footage!’ snaps Betsy, before she can stop herself. ‘You with a riding crop to her throat and tears streaming down her face.’