He chugged towards us, stopped and jumped out. Dregs bounded up to him, an old friend, greeting him exuberantly, jumping into the front seat, chewing his ball.
‘Hiya,’ said Billy, in his high-pitched, piping voice. ‘How ya doing? You don’t look so good.’
‘Thanks,’ said Hobbes with a grimace.
‘Have you been messing with camels again?’
Hobbes nodded.
‘I’ve told you before they’re no good for you,’ said Billy, with a stern frown.
‘I made a mistake.’
‘You’re telling me? Oh well, I’d best get you home. You’ll have to pick up your car tomorrow.’
Billy helped Hobbes stand, trying to support him as he struggled to the hearse, the pair making an entirely ludicrous tableau. I helped get Hobbes into the back, where he lay flat, groaning, and joined Dregs and Billy in the front, there being plenty of room for three to sit abreast. Following a brief scuffle, I had to take the middle seat, so Dregs could stick his head out. An elderly gentleman raised his sunhat respectfully as we pulled away at a speed in keeping with the vehicle’s original use.
‘Has he taken one of the green bottles?’ asked Billy.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What on earth is in that stuff?’
‘Mysterious herbs from the East, so I was told. Mrs Goodfellow makes it and it’s powerful stuff, though the side effects can be alarming.’
‘I’ve seen them,’ I said, nodding.
‘Did he howl?’
‘Yes. It didn’t half give me a turn.’
‘Not as much as it gave me,’ said Hobbes and coughed horribly.
‘At least he’s compost mental again,’ said Billy.
‘That’s compos mentis,’ said Hobbes.
‘Which proves my point.’ Billy chuckled.
Hobbes didn’t speak for the rest of the journey, except for a snuffly complaint about a headache. I wondered about the green stuff he’d taken, alarmed that its side effects were presumably better than not drinking it. On reaching Blackdog Street, he rolled from the hearse with a brief word of thanks and went straight upstairs to bed. I checked on him from time to time but he was fast asleep, still bubbling like a cauldron on the boil.
I was, therefore, by default, back in charge of catering and, despite the lure of the pubs, I decided it wouldn’t be fair to desert Hobbes. Besides, I had no money. Dregs’s dinner was not a problem; opening a tin of dog food, I spooned it into his bowl and watched him wolf it down in half a dozen noisy bites, before taking himself upstairs to lie at Hobbes’s door. Next came the important thing: my supper. A rummage through Mrs Goodfellow’s cupboards revealed surprising quantities of tins, mostly ancient ones. I was amazed she kept so many for I’d hardly ever known her use one – except for tins of pears, which Hobbes liked with his Sunday tea. None of them appealed.
Then I had a brainwave. A jacket potato with cheese would taste great and be highly nutritious. Selecting a brick-sized spud from Mrs Goodfellow’s store, scrubbing it clean, I sliced it down the middle. Next, taking a nice chunk of the wonderful, crumbly Sorenchester cheese from the pantry, grating it with a potato peeler, I heaped a generous amount onto the potato halves and shoved them under the grill. After lighting it, reckoning they’d take about half an hour to cook, I sauntered into the sitting room and turned on the telly. As I sat down, the regional news came on, making no mention of dead sheep or big cats.
However, one item caught my attention, a report on the First Annual Great Sorenchester Music Festival. I watched with increasing interest, despite the inane and annoying presence of Jeremy, a reporter who clearly imagined himself the epitome of cool. He might have been twenty or more years earlier, though I doubted it and his three-minute slot showed him to be a patronising, smug, ignorant twit. He interviewed the festival’s organisers, a pair of local farmers, clearly not gentleman farmers but genuine, horny-handed sons of the soil, though I couldn’t imagine how they’d managed to get so encrusted in mud when it hadn’t rained for weeks.
Why the report piqued my interest so much mystified me for, although I had attended the occasional music gig over the years, I’d not really enjoyed them and the last time I’d gone out to see a band had been quite painful when a careless, or vindictive, person had dropped a full drink from the balcony and, though I’d been fortunate a safety-conscious management had replaced glasses with plastics, it had left a deep impression on the bridge of my nose and a bloody mess down my shirt.
The acrid stink of smoke in my nose, my eyes were already running with tears as I leapt up, running to the kitchen, where heavy, yellowish, greasy smoke was billowing from the grill. I was coughing like a sixty-a-day man, my potato and cheese belching fumes like a pair of miniature volcanoes, erupting into orange flame as I tugged the pan from under the heat. I tipped the whole lot into the sink, spinning the taps to full throttle, watching as, with a sad hiss, the fires dying, the potato halves collapsed in on themselves, leaving a blackened, soggy mess. Throwing open the back door and window, I flapped a tea towel to disperse the smog, dreading what Hobbes would say when he woke up, for it wasn’t the first time I’d nearly set fire to his kitchen and, since the reason I was staying there was because I’d accidentally burned my old flat down, I feared he might regard me as a liability.
Though I was fortunate there were two closed doors between him and the kitchen, I was sure he’d notice the smell, unless I cleaned up as well as possible. Finding a bucket and cleaning stuff, I scrubbed every surface I could reach until I was dripping with sweat, and then spritzed air freshener all around; it turned out to be fly spray but it did mask the pong quite effectively.
Afterwards, my culinary confidence dented beyond repair, I resorted to cold baked beans à la tin, eating in the garden, resolving to pay much more attention next time Mrs G was cooking. Then, before turning in, and much to Dregs’s disgust, I splashed bleach around, hoping the pungent fumes would mask any underlying odours and that Hobbes would think I’d merely decided to clean up.
As I lay in bed that night, thinking of the music festival, I hoped I’d find a way to get there, despite what had happened at the last one I’d sort of been to as a schoolboy. It had started when my mate Baz, spotting a poster for a free festival, grew really excited at the bands listed and, though they’d meant little to me, I’d allowed myself to be dragged along in the slipstream of his enthusiasm. I’d agreed to go with him, providing I could get father’s permission, something I’d thought unlikely with the festival taking place during term time, albeit over a weekend. To my surprise, he’d said yes.
Just after tea on the Friday evening, Baz’s mum had given us a lift to the farm hosting the event, dropping us off with our rucksacks and a tent we’d borrowed from Baz’s sister. We’d been surprised – and not a little proud – to be the first arrivals. Tramping across a squelchy field that had quite obviously been home for many cows, we found what we considered a suitable spot and set to pitching the tent. The sky was already darkening when we started the argument about which one of us should have brought a torch and, by the time we’d called a truce, we could really have done with one, if only to read the instructions. Instead, opening the tent bag, tipping everything out, we used the grope, stumble and curse method, taking an hour at least to contrive something tent-like.
Then, while I held it together, Baz, picking up the rubber mallet, attempted to knock in the pegs. Taking a massive overhead swing, he struck the first peg a mighty blow, bending it in half, as the mallet, rebounding, gave him a fat lip. Our strained friendship could have done without my heartless laughter. Still, in the end, we succeeded in pegging it down. We then spent another half-hour discussing whether we needed the flysheet; Baz, insisting that we wouldn’t since it was too cold for flies, won the argument on the grounds that it was his sister’s tent. We were well past the tetchy stage when, at last, we chucked our gear inside and set out for a recce.
Still no one else had arrived and we slipped and squelched through mud that w
ould have been ideal for a First World War movie, searching with increasing desperation by the flickering light of a match for a signpost, or anything to direct us to the facilities. I’d begun to get a very bad feeling by the time we were forced to pee in a hedge.
The downpour started as we groped our way back to the tent, where we discovered what a flysheet was for, how badly we’d put up the tent and how thin were our sleeping bags. That night had been the longest, the most uncomfortable and the most miserable of my life, up to that point.
Having finally got to sleep in the dawn’s grey light, we were woken by a grinning farmhand who, roaring up in a tractor, told us, through tears of laughter, that we were a month too early. By the time Baz and I managed to get a lift home, a tedious process in the days before mobile phones, we were no longer on speaking terms.
I sighed. I’ve never been very good at keeping friends, or making them for that matter. In fact, by then, my best friend was either Hobbes, or Dregs, something I didn’t like to dwell on. Nevertheless, hope was prevailing over experience and, having recently seen a film clip on telly about Woodstock, the idea of sitting in a sunny field with a few beers amidst friendly, peace-loving fans appealed and, maybe, my lovely woman would turn up.
Waking next morning, after a sweaty night of broken sleep and hot dreams, I washed, dressed and strolled down to the kitchen. Hobbes was already up. His eyes had lost their strawberry look, though they still retained a delicate pink tinge. He was growling to himself, eating Sugar Puffs straight from a large bowl with ‘DOG’ written on the side. Sometimes I wondered how much of his weird stuff was done for effect.
‘Morning,’ he said, still snuffling.
I felt some guilt at my relief when he didn’t mention the stink of smoke or fly spray or bleach. ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, thank you and thanks for helping out yesterday. I really should take more care with camels.’
‘You should.’ I nodded. ‘Umm … what was in the vial? It seemed to have a terrible effect.’
‘Mysterious herbs from the East: Norfolk, I think. The lass makes it, and it does me a power of good, though it tastes vile.’
‘It didn’t appear to do much good.’
‘You haven’t seen what I’m like without it. You should see what happens to my …’ He paused.
‘To your what?’
‘You’re sure you want to know?’
‘Yes … umm … probably.’
He shook his head. ‘I think it best that you don’t.’
After breakfast, he led Dregs and me to the car. I’d climbed into the back and put on my seat belt before it struck me that it shouldn’t have been there.
‘How did this get back?’ I asked
‘I expect the car fairy brought it,’ he said, with a strange grin.
I think he was joking but I wasn’t entirely sure. One day, I probably would meet a car fairy and many things would become clear. The thought had occurred more than once that I was stuck in a dream, for there was no way someone like Hobbes could exist and, yet, there he sat, as solid as a pile of bricks.
We left town, heading roughly in the direction of Skeleton Bob’s place, but Hobbes said he was planning to ask around some of the farms and cottages in that area and see if they’d noticed anything out of the ordinary.
‘Are you still worried about the panther?’ I asked.
‘I’m not worried. I want to know if there is any truth in Bob’s story – and I still need to find out what happened to those missing pheasants.’
The odd thing was that, though he was driving, I could talk with him, look about and enjoy the ride since he was driving safely, within the speed limit, keeping an eye on the road. In a way, I almost found it more disconcerting than his usual maniac style.
We stopped at several farms and homes in the area; no one claimed to have seen any big cats or, indeed, anything unusual at all, most regarding the suggestion with amused scepticism. I, for one, didn’t feel in the least surprised.
Then, a couple of miles beyond Bob’s place, we visited a small farm bordering the woods where he’d claimed his sighting. It was Loop’s Farm, according to a blue enamelled sign by the entrance. Rattling over a cattle grid, we bumped along a dusty drive towards the lichen-encrusted walls of an old stone farmhouse, where two men were leaning against a gate into a field, dotted with Sorenchester Old Spot pigs. We pulled up next to them.
The younger man nodded. ‘G’day.’ A length of orange twine substituted for a belt round his mud-spattered moleskin trousers, his bare chest was nearly as hairy as Hobbes’s and he was wearing a tatty, broad-brimmed straw hat.
‘Good day,’ said Hobbes as he got out.
The older man smiled. He was dressed like the first one, except for a red-checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He gave the impression of being even muddier, as if he’d been rolling in muck with the pigs. ‘What can we do you for?’ he asked.
Hobbes was introducing himself as I slithered from the car. Dregs, who had fallen asleep with his bottom half on the front passenger seat, his top half in the footwell, awoke with a resounding woof and bounded into the yard, upending me as he sprang towards the farmers. I sprawled in the dust, fearing he was going to attack, but his tail span like a propeller as he danced around them, as if meeting old friends.
‘Nice doggie,’ said the older man, patting him. He held out a big, grey-haired hand towards Hobbes. ‘Bernie Bullimore and this is my son-in-law, Les – Les Bashem. Now, how can we help you?’
Hobbes shook hands. ‘I have a few routine questions.’ He hauled me to my feet. ‘There have been reports of pheasant poaching in these parts and I wondered if you’d had any problems?’
‘No, not really,’ said Les, ‘but, then, we’re not a shooting estate and there’s not much for ’em to take. Bob Nibblet takes the odd rabbit now and again but we don’t object to that.’
‘Does he have permission to be on your land?’
‘Not as such but we know he does it and he knows we know and we know he knows we know, if you know what I mean. It’s an informal arrangement. Old Skelly Bob don’t do much harm.’
Hobbes nodded and I brushed the dust and dung from my trousers. Dregs was rolling on his back at Les’s feet, like an excited puppy.
‘Funny you should mention Mr Nibblet,’ said Hobbes, ‘because he reported seeing what might have been a big cat in Loop Woods. I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything out of the ordinary?’
‘No,’ said Bernie, shaking his head so emphatically that his hat spun away like a Frisbee. I thought he glanced at his son-in-law.
‘Mind you,’ said Les, ‘we was wondering what’d killed that sheep, ’cos we ain’t seen no stray dogs around here, not this year anyhow. And it was found on Henry Bishop’s land and that’s right close to Loop Woods. Of course, Henry’s not the sort to let dogs get at his beasts. He’s always ready with his shotgun – a bit too ready if you ask me.’
‘That’s right.’ Bernie nodded. ‘He damn near blew my head off once, when I was picking nuts in the woods by his hedge.’
‘Why?’ asked Hobbes.
‘Because I like nuts.’
Hobbes chuckled. ‘No, why did he shoot at you?’
‘He said he mistook me for a stray dog.’
‘But dogs don’t pick nuts.’
‘That’s what I told him.’
‘How did he respond?’
‘He said, “Get off my land” and popped in another couple of shells. Of course, I wasn’t actually on his land, but Henry’s not one to let facts get in the way of a good catchphrase. He enjoys having something to moan about.’
Hobbes looked stern. ‘Did you report the incident to the police?’
‘No. The way I saw it, there was no harm done, but I make sure the kids keep well away from him.’
‘That’s right,’ said Les. ‘The nippers can go where they like on the farm, except near that old bugger’s place. It’s best for everyone. He’s not the
easiest of neighbours.’ He grinned. ‘Mind you, he might say the same about us when we hold our festival.’
Only then did the recognition circuits in my brain connect. ‘I know you!’ I said, ‘I saw you talking to that twerp on the telly last night before I set f …’ I glanced at Hobbes. ‘That is … umm … before I … umm… set the table for my tea.’
Bernie took a bow. ‘That’s right. Me and Les are celebrities now. You can have our autographs for a fiver.’
I smiled. ‘I’ll remember that when I’ve got one. I would like to see the festival though. Unfortunately, I’m skint.’
‘Quiet, Andy,’ said Hobbes. ‘We’re here on police business, if you remember?’
‘Sorry.’ I shut up.
The festival’s appeal was growing, though money would be a problem. Since losing my job at the Bugle, I’d been unemployed, except for a disastrous two weeks as stand-in waiter at the Black Dog Café. They gave me a uniform but the trousers, being very much on the tight side, I’d had to wear them with caution and much stomach sucking. Though the memory was as painful as the trouser squeeze, by the end of the second week, I’d believed I was getting the hang of things. Then, one busy lunchtime, came a moment of explosive release, a feeling of freedom, which lasted until a lady started making a fuss about flies in her soup. Since the teeth of my zip were grinning up from her bowl and my predicament was obvious, there’d been no point in denying ownership. I hadn’t regarded it as my fault but the manager, taking a different view, had sent me on my way.
I could perhaps have got another job since then, but Hobbes seemed to need my help and, despite everything, I enjoyed being out with him and Dregs. It was far more exciting than working as a not-very-good journalist or as a waiter and, thanks entirely to Hobbes’s and Mrs Goodfellow’s generosity, I lived better and healthier than ever before. I just wished I had some money.
Inspector Hobbes and the Curse - a fast-paced comedy crime fantasy (unhuman) Page 4
