by Guy Sheppard
‘Spit it out, man.’
‘He found him locked in one of his insulated meat vans.’
‘I doubt that very much.’
‘Mr Slater had scratched off all his fingernails before he suffocated, sir. There was blood down both doors.’
Sara butted in.
‘His lordship said he knows who did it…’
James cut her short.
‘She means that we’ve just had a fright of our own, sir.’
‘And Lord Hart has given chase,’ said Sara, breathlessly. ‘He thinks he can catch him, as we speak.’
Of my own thoughts, it was hard to make sense.
‘You see his face, at all?’
‘I’m thankful, in a way, I didn’t.’
James rattled more keys. He tried in a vain attempt to come up with a plan of action.
But the interfering Sara had not finished yet. Fear and loathing lit her face.
‘What are the odds one of them will get hurt?’
‘Fetch a lamp,’ I said immediately.
‘What good will that do, sir?’ asked James.
‘Doesn’t mean one of us shouldn’t try to stop him.’
‘Take my advice. Don’t go without your gun.’
‘Honestly? How come?’
‘Because what I saw was a beast of a man,’ added Sara, recklessly. ‘You ought to be careful, Mr Walker. Some things are best left to others.’
‘Okay, it’s just that I’m in charge now.’
That’s when she gave me a fatalistic look I couldn’t quite fathom. Her wide emerald irises filled with dismay at my woeful predicament as though I deserved as much pity as his lordship. If the wretched girl could not understand that I had to go on the hunt of a lifetime, it was because she had no idea what it meant to get the chance to lay to rest a bogy man, bugbear or bogle.
‘Do either of you, like, know exactly where George is headed?’ I asked.
James brought me my boots from the kitchen.
‘It could be Chatcombe, Mercombe or Hilcot Wood, sir.’
‘Where would you run to if you really wanted to hide?’
But I’d guessed that already.
*
My biggest regret was that I had entirely the wrong sort of weapon. Whereas a hunting rifle could have brought down a man at considerable range, my 12-gauge, double-barrelled shotgun was a blunt instrument more suited to blasting rooks or rabbits. To be effective I was going to have to go in close, I was going to have to see the whites of his eyes, not just be within eyeshot.
I counted spare cartridges into my trouser pocket. Then, briefly, I stopped by the door to the inner courtyard in order to don my cap and coat. At that moment, the reluctant Sara came marching up to me dressed in a dreadfully fluorescent, yellow anorak and Wellingtons. In her hand was the oldest oil lamp I had ever seen in my life.
‘James says I have to go with you.’
I shot her a smile.
‘The dumbest animal will see you for miles.’
She flicked a curl of red hair.
‘It’s not an animal we’re after.’
‘Whatever he is, we have to hunt him down.’
‘Even if he is a freak of nature you shouldn’t talk of hurting him quite so casually.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, Sara, but your sympathy won’t save him from my gun.’
‘Some things are not what we imagine, Mr Walker.’
‘Do I look like a man who doesn’t know how to hunt his own monster?’
*
It was agreed that Lord Hart could not have gone very far with his limp and cane.
‘Why chase after someone all by yourself on the spur of the moment?’ I asked, studying footprints left in the hoar frost. ‘What is the fool thinking?’
‘I didn’t say he went willingly,’ replied Sara.
‘You mean he was taken?’
‘I mean he wasn’t himself, he was incredibly elated. Never seen a man so animated.’
I smiled again. When something happened that coincided with someone’s most fervent wishes he had to think of it as a God-given opportunity. When something was that opportune, he did not stop to consider whether it occurred by accident or design, he simply rejoiced at the favourable timing. He didn’t always show the caution he should.
Crossing the bridge by the lake, we followed the grassy carriage drive diagonally across the field. We passed the overgrown entrance with its two loury griffins, then crossed the main road to climb the hill to Upper Coberley.
The wretched Sara stumped along behind me with her arms folded. I had to chivvy and chide her every step of the way as she kicked stones idly along the pot-holed road.
‘Do try to keep up,’ I said.
‘It’s these stupid boots, they’re rubbing my ankle.’
‘Just tell me where to go and I’ll go on without you. What else did George say, to your knowledge?’
‘He said something about we each have our own cross to bear which has to be answered.’
‘Doesn’t mean I can’t give him a helping hand.’
‘What if you find yourself answerable, too?’
‘I’m still going.’
‘Are you mad? What if you meet your death?’
I felt too enlivened to listen.
‘Honestly. Do I look out of my mind?’
‘I don’t know. All I see is you.’
37
If not openable, Hilcot’s newly padlocked gate was at least surmountable, I discovered. A shiny red and white police sign, displaying the web-like cross-hairs of a gun, proclaimed ‘POACHERS! WE HAVE YOU IN OUR SIGHTS.’ A second bull’s eye had been nailed to a tree beside the road, which struck me as somewhat melodramatic. The threat was deadlier than the warning. Even as Sara and I set foot in the maze of trees it was odd how eerily bound on all sides we felt, so completely did two ominous features at once unite against us. They were the stillness and the silence.
I had not the nerve to step off the path, which was why I chose not to reveal any of my ridiculous apprehension, only follow. For Sara’s sake, it would do no good to panic in all that crepuscular gloom which was otherwise so utterly black as to have no other distinguishable tint or hue. Frankly, we might have been the first people on the planet. Or the last. I favoured the last.
Seconds later, she gave me a whistle and I came running.
‘What is it?’ I asked, gasping.
‘We have to take that track over there.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘My father and I came here poaching.’
*
Not only did every bush or bramble against which I brushed sprout spiky pelts of tinkling ice, the very air I inhaled felt full of cold barbs. Soon I was struggling to breathe in a place bleached by age, not frost, it seemed. My rough, husky voice was suddenly that of a very old man in some afterworld.
When at last Sara lowered her smelly spirit-lamp close to a frozen puddle, we saw by its yellow glow how someone had recently sliced through the brittle grass. I drew attention to one deep, cloven print in particular and then pointed ahead towards our quarry.
‘It’ll be the devil to pay tonight.’
Sara marched off in a most cursory manner.
‘I know a stag’s print when I see it, Mr Walker.’
She meant well, but hunting a demoniac required a more refined set of tracking abilities. One had to have great skill in detecting things ordinarily hidden from the human eye, one had to hone an almost supernatural sense of touch, smell and hearing to pick up the slightest signs of a trail. You had to see what the moon did.
I glanced anxiously over my shoulder. Already we had left the gate marked PRIVATE far behind us. A decent flashlight would have been nice. Honestly, it was too late now to change my mind.
*
Sara assumed pole position at the head of our expedition. Anyone else might have thought she could do without me.
We stumbled downhill past some enormous cedars which, like Solomon’s Temple, to
wered all the way up to the night sky. Each mighty red pillar joined the earth to the heavens.
We spoke not a word to each other until, half way down the slope, Sara sat on her haunches. Next, she ran her hand quickly across some soggy brown pinecones. In a display of ungainly dexterity, she moved sideways and backwards like a crab, while exploratory fingertips considered different surfaces.
‘See these holes, Mr Walker? Note how they’re all dot one and go.’
‘H’m, yeah, well, I see that now.’
Even the cleverest, most devious soul had to leave a few obvious clues behind them.
‘Notice how each jab of his stick sinks deep into the ground. Lord Hart is really tired. From hereon he’ll be going slower and slower, that’s for sure.’
So apt was she to make such bold assertions that fewer and fewer did I trust to satisfy my feverish impatience. It was like going prospecting for gold. At the slightest clue she uttered a short ‘h’m’, then more than before, blundered on. Eventually she slunk along much more sure-footed, much like she had with her poacher-dad, no doubt. Her skills had to be of more use to me than her morals.
Next minute, the sky sizzled. We were in a clearing around which storm-tossed trees had been felled by unnatural forces, the exact circumstances or battles of which had been lost in time. White with ice, piles of fractured branches lay all about us in shipwrecks of broken bones. Here, though, was the real reason why Hilcot Wood had been largely left alone for half a century. I looked up to see crackling, high voltage cables divide the trees from east to west. It was pylons.
To cross under such high metal towers in such a hidden place was a surprise, but not even the showers of hot snow that rained from the buzzing lines could quite account for the air of disconcerting hostility they showed. Each pylon hissed at us venomously.
I could just about tolerate my tremors of cold but not of trepidation. Sure enough, we passed old guelder roses which had over the centuries grown into impressive snowball trees. We were in an ancient domain where every now and then a twig shed a sliver of ice down our necks or spat us cold kisses. Then it was that I was overtaken by a withering impression of decay and disaster – a sensation which was more fact than fanciful. Carpets of stinking dog’s mercury released their morbific, fetid smell as I waded poisonous green leaves crushed flat by man or beast.
At the edge of the clearing, we arrived at a precipitous slope down which I hesitated to slither.
But Sara was not interested in my premonitory diversions, she was holding her lamp to a handkerchief on which I was treading.
‘His lordship passed this way a moment ago.’
I snatched the blue-edged cloth from her fingers. I could barely distinguish it from any other awful rag, but then, unlike mine, she did his washing.
*
The deeper into the wood we penetrated the more I found myself beginning to people the trees with grotesque and capricious fancies. These I could not wholly rule out as unreal. Mind and trees merged in one dreadful tangle of veins and branches, they writhed and wriggled round me in living projections of my innermost fears. My shotgun weighed more heavily in my hands as I prepared to shoot devilish things.
A moment later we heard an awful scream.
‘Quick, Sara. Go and see who it is.’
‘What about you, Mr Walker? What will you do?’
‘I’ll climb the ladder of this deer hide while you scout ahead to confirm our line of attack.’
‘But…’
‘No buts, that’s Lord Hart shouting.’
‘Since when do you give all the orders?’
‘H’m, well, yeah, I don’t know. We can’t both get lost in the night, can we?’
I listened again to the high-pitched scolding and it did sound to me like man and fiend fighting.
*
Not that Sara was gone long.
Thankfully.
She lifted her hot lamp half way up my ladder.
‘It was only two foxes courting, Mr Walker. You’ve not seen them go nose to nose to scream in each other’s faces before?’
Clearly this wilderness could be more misleading and deceptive than I imagined. Meanwhile the shapes that I tried to see dissolved into nothing. I resolved to descend at once and rescind our attack when suddenly a grotesque shadow bridged the narrow gap in the trees at the top of the bank. It shot off sideways.
With my gun held high in my hands, I peered all about me with deadly intent at whatever or whomever it was I was supposed to be aiming.
‘Pay no attention,’ I said. ‘It’s that stupid dog fox and vixen again.’
But Sara stared ahead in absolute silence. With a finger pressed to the tip of my gun she slowly lowered its barrels.
Next moment, she motioned me to follow, but not make a sound.
Of my own astonishment it was impossible to speak.
Ahead of us, two shadowy figures stood ready to wrestle. Snow peppered their hats like loose diamonds. At once I recognised Lord Hart, but Sara poked her finger in urgent mime at the other, she had me note the bloody bandage round his upper arm where he had been wounded? I shuddered. If so, Patrick McGuinness had indeed nearly done for him on beaters’ day, as I’d thought.
Framed by the weak glow of the moon stood a creaturely man with strong hands and a long nose. A thick, white fell of untidy hair curled in rat’s tails down each side of his massive head where it trailed past his stout neck.
Valorously, I ducked lower. Next, I gestured frantically to Sara to dim the wick in her lamp just as the voice of Lord Hart drifted from over the lip of the slope. We had circled round and were close to the line of pylons again.
‘It’s been so long. Are you really dead or alive?’
There came a gruff, bear-like snarl.
‘Isn’t it enough that I’m here?’
‘How long will you stay? How long were you gone?’
‘Does it much matter?’
‘Because I know what you’re capable of,’ said Lord Hart. ‘I know how murderous a man can become when he’s allowed to stray or run wild.’
‘You more than most.’
‘What greater hell is there than grief?’
‘Then why didn’t you save her?’
‘How do you stop someone drinking herself to death?’
‘You did nothing to help her. You didn’t even try.’
*
Peering from the tree-line, I peeped again at the misshapen figure that was so quick to accuse. With the moon’s bitter look reflected in a dull lake behind him, the barrel-chested scarecrow stood seven feet high while his face remained a mass of conflicting shade. His wretched clothes hung off his shaggy body where his bulky torso bulged inside his rat-coloured cape. With his long leather gauntlets and green floppy hat trimmed with a brown and cream buzzard’s feather, he was the kind of outlaw everyone instinctively wanted gone.
I did not have to wait long for more vociferous exchanges.
‘You forget how much I loved her,’ said Lord Hart. ‘I wanted to marry her, for God’s sake.’
‘And you forget that she couldn’t live with what you did in her name.’
‘But I lost my brother, too.’
‘Doesn’t mean he was any better than you.’
*
Sara leaned closer to me on a carpet of dead beech leaves.
‘This isn’t any good,’ she whispered, ‘his lordship doesn’t have a gun.’
‘You see that?’ I said. ‘The other has a knife.’
‘So it will be a fight to the finish.’
‘You’ve changed your tune.’
‘You want to settle it, Mr Walker? You want to play the hero?’
‘Let’s hear what else they have to say first.’
‘Do you even know how to shoot?’
‘Shut up and listen.’
*
With raised voice, Lord Hart was becoming angrier and angrier.
‘Are you quite sure it isn’t more money you’re after?’
&nbs
p; ‘We’ve been over that already.’
‘Cash suited you well enough before.’
The gorilla of a man gave a grunt and shifted one foot in the mud. He rolled a massive shoulder, then bowed low with his hat in his hand like a Cavalier. It was pure buffoonery.
‘Your blood money was never enough for me, you know that, George.’
‘How else have you managed?’
‘Since the army wouldn’t have me I’ve carved wooden bears.’
‘So what else has changed?’
‘You have.’
‘We agreed you’d never come back.’
There was another growl. A fiercer one.
‘A few weeks ago you set a trap for me, tried to spear me like a wild animal.’
‘Isn’t that what you deserve?’
‘It’s no way to treat any man.’
‘Not a man, a bogy.’
‘I’m finished with you all anyhow. You’re the last.’
‘Is that why you killed Peter?’
There followed a bitter laugh. It chilled me to the bone. I could choose to run away but could not stomach the choosing.
That appeared to go for the beast, too.
‘You think you are superhuman and judgement is yours to give as you see fit, don’t you George, but you’re no different from me? At heart, we’re both killers.’
‘I never set out to hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it,’ replied Lord Hart defiantly.
‘Consider one death very much like another, do you?’
‘What do you know?’
‘I’ve let Esti’s fate go unpunished far too long.’
Lord Hart brandished his cane higher.
‘If you hadn’t been on the run in the woods after you fed Gerald Turner to the pigs you never would have seen us leave ‘The Firs’. You would never have had the means to blackmail me.’
‘Gerald Turner was no different from the rest of you. You all did your damnedest to ruin my sister with your lust and ambition.’
‘Whatever I did, I did it to spare Esti, too. That at least should put us on the same side?’
‘You have to answer for your sins like all the others.’
‘You don’t know what it was like back then. Joseph Jones was a vicious bully. Many a day saw my brother and me hide in fear of our lives. When our mother died Philip changed irrevocably. Even before that you can’t imagine what it meant to live in the shadow of his growing delusions. To this day, I still don’t know for definite if he skinned that tramp alive or what he did to Father O’Connell. I had no choice but to protect him from himself.’
