The Moon Is Out Tonight

by Paul Whybrow

  Chapter 2—Needs Must

   

  He should have brought another bag. The pockets on his poacher's coat were already full, and there were two more pheasants incapacitated over there. He'd spotted several going to roost in the trees by the old lodge-house, which he'd have a go at later when it was fully dark—he'd picked up a clever trick from an old book on poaching left to him by his grandfather. And a visit to a car-boot sale paid-off when he acquired some night-vision goggles.

  There was somebody home in the lodge, a snooty bitch who'd just closed her curtains—all fur-coat and no knickers, no doubt. He didn't think that she was anything to do with the manor-house, as the park-keeper's lodge was sold off to a developer a few years back, converted to modern tastes and flogged on again, possibly to her. He'd once delivered milk to that property, but never met the lady who left payment-cheques out for him once a fortnight. She cancelled her order after a few months, worried about the milk going-off and giving away that she wasn't home. He couldn't hold that against her—no doubt there were some nice things in there. And who wanted milk delivered anymore, when it was so much cheaper at the supermarket? Once again, he'd jumped into a dying trade—great going, Hugh—if only he could live his life backwards he'd make a fortune.

  The moon was bright tonight, and he'd heard something on the radio about it being the equinox soon. People called such well-lit conditions a 'Harvest Moon', but it was more of a hindrance than a help as it made him stand out too. With his night-vision goggles, which intensified all of the available light, he didn't need any help from the man-in-the-moon. As it was, he'd have to ensure he kept something dark behind him—the trees and scrub, and the brick wall around the lodge-house would conceal his silhouette.

  A shame really, as he wanted to try some mist-netting for partridges on the cultivated field that ran alongside the manor-grounds. They were supposed to be more difficult to catch than pheasants, who must be the stupidest birds on the planet.

  Hugh remembered these game-birds visiting his grandparent's country-estate when he was a boy. They were ungainly flyers who exploded from cover as people approached, rattling away in a flurry of stiff wings before gliding to earth again. They were better at walking, strutting really, and appeared to forget that they possessed wings, spending hours trying to fit their rotund bodies through gaps in the chestnut-paling fence that were plainly too narrow for them—with one beat of their wings they could have been over.

  He wondered if they'd always been this clueless. Were the pheasants that the Romans introduced to Great Britain once intelligent prey? Perhaps hundreds of years of over-protection by gamekeepers and inbreeding made their ancestors low in bird IQ.—as they repeatedly demonstrated to him. Just as well really, they made the ideal bird for him—despite a fine education, Hugh felt as thick as day-old porridge sometimes.

  Best put the brace of hen-birds out of their misery. Not that they were suffering—well only a little. Rather, they were as confused as ever, trying repeatedly to remove the obstruction which was puzzling them. Pheasants were irresistibly drawn to sweetcorn kernels and sultanas, and would follow a line of these forever. If these tasty morsels were threaded onto some mono-filament fishing-line, then the bird would swallow it too—and with the occasional hook on the line, it stayed in place in their gizzard.

  They couldn't remove the line sticking out of the beak with their claws, but that didn't stop them attempting to, as they sat there bemused by their condition. The hooks were useful for dragging any birds out that took to cover, but Hugh didn't like doing this and swiftly broke their necks. The other way to catch pheasants with sweetcorn was to make little funnel-shaped hats of aluminium cooking-foil and wedge them in long grass or leaf-litter, with a kernel placed in the bottom. The pheasant was attracted by the glint of the foil, stabbing its beak into the cone to get to the sweetcorn, rising up with it wedged on its head covering the eyes. This appeared to fool it into thinking night had arrived early and they became immobile, waiting for daylight. It would have been possible for them to push the mask off their faces, as they could certainly reach, but it never occurred to them.

  Hugh crouched down and scanned the park for human shapes. It was almost fully dark now, but this late crepuscular stage was making innocent natural vegetation take on shifting forms that looked like running men. While down, he wrung the pheasants' necks and tucked them into a Hessian shoulder-bag, which he wore beneath his coat. He'd been squeamish about the idea of doing this before he began, as he'd never killed anything before, apart from the occasional rabbit that ran into the path of his car. He practised on an old sock filled with broken-biscuits, which was nothing like the real thing, of course, but at least gave him an idea of the wrenching action involved.

  There were more pheasants around than recently—he'd become worried that he'd taken too many, or that they were becoming wise to his ways. Hugh only worked at night, and noticed recently the birds took to the roosts in the trees earlier, which must be a response to the reduced amount of vegetation from the leaves falling in autumn. To counter this he brought along a hook, which he'd fashioned from a wire coat-hanger—there was more than one way of hooking a pheasant.

  Things weren't always this way for Hugh Roper-Mason. His grandfather would be spinning in his grave if he could see what he was up to—he used to shoot at poachers on his estate, and was proud of the collection of old trip-guns, man-traps and gin-traps he kept hanging up in the garage next to an Alvis shooting-brake, which was in genteel retirement.

  Hugh was the oldest child in his family, the first to go to university and much was expected of him. He studied Art and English, with vague ideas of being a writer, painter, playwright, or perhaps an actor. He failed to apply himself to writing, and the pieces that he did send off generated enough rejection letters to wallpaper his bedroom He tried his hand at acting but repertory was exhausting and poorly-paid, though he made some regular money as an extra in a popular television soap-opera. Hugh was briefly the face of a car-insurance company specialising in a 'bespoke service', but which went bankrupt, owing claimants and Hugh money. His image was tainted by association, and work dried-up.

  Needing to pay-off his student-loan debts, which were celebrating their tenth birthday, Hugh did a post-graduate teaching qualification, even though he wasn't that interested in the learning-process and didn't much like children. His lack of enthusiasm transmitted itself to potential employers, so although he secured a contract as a supply teacher, covering for staff who were off sick or on maternity-leave, he couldn't find a school which would take him on as a permanent teacher. Hugh courted and won the hand of a practical home-economics and gym teacher, who introduced him to the joys of running. With a lot of spare-time on his hands while Jan was at work he overdid the training, resulting in a pair of worn-out knee-joints.

  While waiting for replacement artificial knees, Hugh became addicted to pain-killers, a fact which became apparent through his erratic behaviour. He lost his job, wife and home in short-order. Rehabilitation Clinic straightened him out, and he met a lot of people like him—lost souls who were looking for a new path through the woods. Hugh read Frost's poem about the diverging paths, and figured that he'd missed the junction completely—he'd been crashing through the undergrowth, chasing his own tail for years.

  How did people decide what to do with their lives and stick to it? Hugh didn't have a clue—there were too many things that he liked doing, so he jumped from one to another, never getting far with any of them. With the little money that he brought out of the sale of the marital home, Hugh bought a milk-round on a franchise basis. He figured that working for himself, via a nationally-know company who would take care of the promotional work for him, would be safe and provide a stable income.

  He forgot to take into account how physical the work was, and how much accounting was necessary to keep the books straight. His newly rebuilt knees were soon creaking, while his head was in a spin from the sums—he'd never been good with money. Time
s were tough and customers began to cancel their orders—they could buy two litres of milk for £1 in the supermarket, owned cars to get there and free buses took those that didn't, so why pay him to deliver expensive milk?

  Some weeks he barely broke-even after paying the franchise fee—he was literally running to stand still, as he reckoned that he trotted 30 miles a week, but wasn't any better-off financially. He was fitter than he'd ever been, but at 40 couldn't take things for granted any more and he didn't want to ruin his knees again. Hugh sold the franchise to an eager school-leaver, with more enthusiasm than life-experience.

  Hugh retreated to his housing-association flat, another failed venture behind him. His rent was largely paid, as his income on a basic £52 a week Working Tax Credit was so low that he qualified for housing and council-tax benefit. By the time that he paid out £15 for mobile broadband allowance for his ageing laptop and put a fiver in the electricity-meter, there was thirty-odd quid left for food and everything else. It was just as well that he'd kicked his addiction to pills and that he didn't drink booze, smoke or gamble for he wouldn't have been able to afford them. He had no social-life at all, and relied on library-books to fill the hours—he was reading a novel a day.

  Hugh applied for 500 jobs in two years, but was invited to only four interviews. Two of those were for positions that were already promised to existing employees—he knew men who worked there, who reliably informed him of this later. The employment laws requiring firms to advertise jobs that were already filled were so ludicrous that Hugh wished he hadn't heard of the so-called vacancy in the first place. True, it gave something for the human-resources officer to do, but imbued unemployed interviewees with false hope. He was never interviewed by anyone older than him, and wryly reflected that it wasn't policeman looking younger which aged you, but personnel officers who looked like they'd just started shaving.

  When passing a butchers one day, Hugh's eye was caught by a row of pheasants hanging from hooks on a chrome rail in the window. All of the food scares, including the horse-meat scandal, were making organic meat and wild-food popular, so there was a resurgence of interest for game-birds, venison and rabbits. He couldn't believe how much was being asked for a brace of birds, so popped into the shop to ask the hearty butcher where he sourced his wild-meat, receiving an encouragingly vague answer with a shoulder-shrug and wink.

  Examining the menus in restaurant-windows, and a quick chat with the cook at the gastropub showed that more people were eating pheasants than he would have guessed—he couldn't remember the last time that he'd enjoyed a well-hung bird—he lived off cheap sausages and burgers these days. He'd noticed that salmon and trout were popular too, but didn't know anything about fishing. He was ignorant about guns too, and anyway they made a noise and what he was thinking of doing required stealth. He'd always been interested in wildlife, especially birds, and was familiar with the area from his running, knowing lots of short-cuts and hiding-places which would baffle a typical patrol-car-bound policeman, so he could see that there was money to be made at minimum risk.

  Hugh went online and did some research into hunting methods and the ways of the old poachers. He was shocked to learn that those caught hunting his Lordship’s game were executed in Tudor times, and imprisoned or transported in Victorian days. He wondered what the modern punishment would be. It couldn't be as bad as being trapped in a housing-association flat, with a nymphomaniac next door, her bed banging against the wall while she moaned loudly. His other neighbour was a garrulous 80 year-old who he took to sneaking past, in case he was delayed for an hour hearing her latest woes.

  His grandfather's old book, Ian Niall's 'A Poachers Handbook' became required reading. To his delight, he found a well-used poachers greatcoat in a charity-shop, which with a fresh application of wax-proofing would provide him with great protection sneaking through rough vegetation—it seemed like an encouraging omen. Hugh took to frequenting the areas where he'd noticed pheasants feeding, so that anyone watching would be used to seeing him around. As an excuse, he carried a copy of Richard Mabey's 'Food for Free' with him, along with some carrier bags, and enjoyed gathering wild garlic, dandelion leaves, mushrooms, nuts and blackberries—he was eating better than for ages.

  Hugh was a patient man, one of his main character strengths, though even that occasionally backfired on him when he put up with untenable work-situations and stagnant relationships for too long. Nonetheless, patience was an essential part of a hunter's repertoire, as were keen observation, cunning and being able to keep still for long periods of time. To further his nature-loving green credentials, he took to keeping a nature-diary, whose cryptic entries also recorded when and where he'd spotted game-birds. A cheap dog-lead, another charity-shop buy, was further cover for being where he shouldn't be—a distressed owner searching for his puppy might well trespass.

  He knew that what he was doing was illegal, and that he was now part of the 'black economy', but it was easy-money and he was under pressure from debt-collectors who were sending him dire warning-letters and pounding on his door. A little extra cash would be useful too, not for treats so much, but more for what most people considered necessities. His laptop was giving signs that it was on its last legs, freezing-up and displaying the blue-screen-of-death. Hugh couldn't afford to do a lot of web-surfing, but took to window-shopping for property, cars and women. His dating-agency profile was a mix of truth and wish-fulfilment, and gathered quite a few 'hits' from local lonely-hearts. He rather liked the man he saw described there, and was reverting to artistic endeavours, writing his own 'Country-Diary of a Penniless Scrounger' and attempting watercolours of wildlife using a children's painting-set.

  It was five years since he'd been with a woman sexually, and his last social date was four years distant. He'd been out with a couple of divorcees and a widow for walks, visits to the cinema and a local carnival, but there was no mutual desire and they seemed to be as devoid of belief in the power of love as Hugh. He couldn't afford to date anyway. His van went for scrap three years ago, and he walked everywhere—he was starting to feel like a medieval peasant, with his shabby clothing, foraging from hedgerows and viewing life with such a limited horizon. He wasn't sure how he'd ended up on the scrap-heap in so many ways, but it felt like his natural habitat, so he may as well adapt to it.

  Jan was the person who knew him best in the last two decades, and their relationship of four years felt more like a mismatch of temperaments. She was steady, placid, well-organised and content with her lot, while he felt out of place and ill-at-ease with everything he was doing—he over-complicated things and missed the blooming obvious. Jan bought him a coffee-mug, with an appropriate epithet on it for him:

  'What the fool does in the end, the wise man did in the beginning.'

  He knew what she was trying to tell him, for he was always chasing after a train that long since left the station. He looked at the words some evenings when he was having his cheap coffee, and wondered how his ex-wife was doing. She'd remarried to a good and steady man, and had the baby she always wanted. He wished her well, he'd been lucky to know her for a time and he bore her no resentment. There was regret, of course, but life was all about conquering regret, so he was moving-on himself. Quite where to, Hugh didn't know, but it was on his own—or in the company of a load of brain-dead pheasants at the moment.

  The words on the mug provided him with a pithy dating-agency profile name 'Nobody's Fool'—which for those who didn't know him might seem like arrogance, but Hugh recognised that he was his own fool, and was adapting to hiding behind the underclass status society foisted on him of being a nobody. He was probably being foolish again, with this sneaking-around in the night, poaching someone else’s pheasants, but at least it felt like fighting back.

  He wasn't sure who lived in the old manor-house anymore. It belonged to one of the oldest families in the county, who were illustrious in history but who'd dwindled to a couple of old crusties, whose one son, the heir, was currently in prison for
false-accounting and theft at his merchant-bank. The upkeep of such an old house cost a fortune, so the elderly scions sold-off the lodge-house and a couple of retainers' cottages in the grounds. There were rumours in town that they were planning to give the house and park over to the National Trust, but Hugh also heard that Arab money was interested in buying the estate for its proximity to deep-water moorings for their super-yachts.

  Whatever the case, they still employed a game-keeper. He might be old, but he knew the lay of the land and was crafty, persistent and an expert at camouflage. When Hugh first checked the woods he'd almost walked right into the game-keeper, and it was sheer chance he spotted the man's profile leaning against a tree fifty yards away. What gave him away was a tobacco-pipe clenched between his teeth, which stood out from all of the natural vegetation shapes around him. It wasn't lit, so the man must be using it as a form of comfort, for his eyes were closed and he may even have been asleep. Hugh backed away quietly, heading back to the lane.

  He made a note of the time and the location in his nature-diary, as a warning to be wary there in the future. That wasn't necessarily going to be useful though, for he'd never seen the game-keeper in the same place twice. And another problem was that old people didn't need a lot of sleep, so Hugh couldn't rely on him being abed at 3:00am. The old man sometimes wore a frightening-looking ghillie's stalking outfit, all tattered camouflaged strips of burlap, fake vegetation and with a face-mask which broke-up his human shape—it would be possible to walk right up to him and not know that he was there.

  Hugh looked into buying some good quality thermal imaging equipment to locate where the gamekeeper was, but the sensors were too expensive for him, and anyway there was no valid reason for carrying such a thing, should he be apprehended. He felt a bit nervous about toting a lock-knife, which he knew were now illegal due to draconian legislation as a panic-response to knife-crime. But he needed something sharp which wouldn't fold-back on his fingers while working in the dark. He sometimes sliced the protruding lines from the pheasants' beaks, leaving the rest of the lure in place. And tonight he used the saw-teeth on the top of the blade to slowly cut-down a long straight hazel sapling. This was ideal for a shaft to hold his coat-hanger wire-hook, which he forced into the end of the wood. He'd hide the pole somewhere under leaf-litter for future use, and take the hook back home with him.

  The idea was an old practice, which Victorian poachers used to pull pheasants from trees. The birds took to the branches to roost as protection against predators, foxes mainly. It was difficult to see them in summer concealed behind dense foliage, but with the leaves falling they showed up well against the night-sky. Hugh's cheap night-vision goggles gave him a clearer view of them, but the trick was to choose a route through the surrounding branches to insert the grab-pole. It was another strange form of fishing on the land, and he needed a clear pull on the hook, which he gently passed over the pheasant's neck, before yanking down, breaking its spine and sending it falling towards him.

  This worked quite well though it was time-consuming, for he needed to move quietly and not all of the roosting branches were accessible. Pheasants often bunched together for warmth and stability, as well as greater protection, and Hugh was surprised by how little the remaining birds were disturbed by the sudden disappearance of their sleeping-partner—sometimes they shuffled together to fill the gap.

  Hugh heard a dog barking, but couldn't be sure from which direction or how close it was from the cover of the trees. It could belong to one of the families who now lived in the old servants' cottages, or perhaps somebody was out for a late walk in the lane. The only time that he'd seen the gamekeeper with a dog was when he hunted with shooting-parties, where Spaniels and Golden-Retrievers bounded around. It would be a bad development if he'd obtained a tracker-dog. Hugh froze and listened intently for several minutes.

  Nothing. At least nothing to concern him. Just the distant whining of a small motorcycle exhaust, a Tawny Owl hooting enquiringly from deeper in the wood and a gentle sussuration came as a light breeze breathed through the remaining leaves. The moon looked to be close to the Earth tonight and glowed a strange golden colour like cheese-rind. The craters made an ashy dappling across its face—an ancient widow in mourning who looked down on his actions in cold speculation.

  The floor of the wood shone in a green light through the lens of his infra-red goggles, bright and with little contrast. Switching them off gave the opposite effect, with his vision taking a moment to adjust, all the bushes and saplings merged into large black blocks, clotted by silvered patches of fallen leaves. It was like he was playing with the contrast and brightness controls of his ancient cathode-ray-tube television.

  Hugh looked up at the pheasants above him, their plump forms tapering black ovals. There was no disguising their shape, though he'd been startled into immobility one night when he came upon a peculiar form that resembled a sinister cowelled night-watchman. There was a dilapidated wooden foot-bridge, moss-covered and partly-collapsed over the stream which ran alongside the lane. On it was a sleeping Grey Heron, its head tucked under a raised wing, which made a hood arched over the sinuous neck. Hugh saw the sword of a beak, scabbard-less at the heron's flank.

  It was cold tonight, and he could just see his breath—he often wondered if that was an indication of the temperature or the amount of water-vapour around. That would be another useless fact to find out—his mind was a repository of them, perhaps he should join a pub-quiz team. He heard the passage of pine-cones falling through the branches, released from their cups by the chill. This was a disconcerting sound, like someone throwing stones into the trees, and were one to hit you it would produce quite a headache.

  As if in sympathy with that notion, one of the sleeping pheasants released a spirtle of droppings, which splattered onto the leaves around Hugh—he sensibly moved around the trunk. Something didn't feel quite right, and he didn't want to continue his hunt until he was more at ease. Perhaps it was just the atmospherics. This was a turning-point in the year, after all, a time of fruitfulness that also presaged the gloom of winter. His nutty nympho neighbour, a self-proclaimed spiritual healer, pushed an invitation through his letter-box summoning him to a celebration of the autumn equinox on the common. Hugh wouldn't be attending—he'd seen 'The Wicker Man'!

  He had six pheasants, which would bring him £24 from the butcher, so why didn't he stop? He couldn't easily carry any more as it was. The birds roosting overhead would still be here tomorrow night. Hugh's birds were popular with his customers as they didn't contain any shotgun pellets, and he'd been asked if he could provide partridges and rabbits too. He'd definitely try some mist-netting soon, and maybe snare some rabbits—who would miss them? And he could do that legally, and with the approval of the local farmers if he asked permission.

  Hugh couldn't see how the owner of the manor had a right to say all of the pheasants were his anyway. OK, the gamekeeper docked the flight-feathers of the birds he'd raised and put rings on their legs, but there were still wild pheasants which flapped and walked in from the surrounding farmland and from over the road where there were public woods. There were so many of them around that the lane which ran between the trees was known as 'Suicide Alley' by locals, for the number of dead game-birds dotted across the tarmac. 'Why did the pheasant cross the road? To get run over,' was one of the first jokes children learned around here.

  Hugh sometimes stopped to examine these victims as he cycled back, collecting those which were recent and not too badly damaged for his own consumption. The bicycle was a recent acquisition, bought at a car-boot sale, and useful for a speedier get-away. He had the theory that he was less likely to be stopped by the police if he was on a bike, provided it was legal and showing lights by night. He'd only been questioned once by a passing patrolman, who'd wondered what he was doing rooting around the hedgerow, and he'd gone into twittish bird-spotter impersonation, boring the police-officer into escaping. The old Raleigh was hidden in some brambles in the public-
wood.

  He'd been poaching for ten weeks now, which he felt a bit guilty about as it cut into the fledgling season. But then again, the gamekeeper appeared to collect any youngsters and incubate abandoned eggs, so where was the harm? And shooting-season was coming up, when they would release five million birds into the wild, so it wasn't as if they were going to miss the few he was taking.

  Since he'd been doing this he'd saved £300 and made a large dent in paying-off his historic student-loan, which brought a sense of achievement and calm to his life which had been absent for years. Planning for some kind of future, via the creativity which was going into his diary scrawling and paint daubing made Hugh feel good too. Perhaps he could turn the diary into a television comedy—there were dafter ideas on the box. And his paintings might sell to holidaymakers next summer at the free art-fair on the quayside, by that posh gift-shop. He was allowed to be happy, wasn't he? Even if he didn't trust the feeling.

  What the hell was that? There was a crashing through the undergrowth nearby. It wasn't big enough to be a man, and was low down. Hugh risked a brief flash of his torch-beam towards the sound. It was a half-grown fox, running as if there were a pack of hounds in pursuit. It's brush trailed out, tongue dangling and eyes startled—it saw him and darted between some trees.

  What could have scared it like that? Was the gamekeeper nearby? He shouldn't have lit the torch. Moving slowly, Hugh clicked his night-vision goggles on. He'd been right to be cautious and to listen to his sixth sense—there was someone around. The hairs on the back of his neck were bristling and a cold flush of fear raked his forehead. What if he were surrounded? Something wasn't right. He was being watched.

  Hugh scanned the bushes around him, squinting at the tree-trunks trying to spot a head looking round. If he moved he'd make a noise. He tried to be quiet on his feet, but the dry leaves and fallen twigs crackled and cracked at this time of year, so he stayed immobile. Let them move first so he could get some idea of how many there were. Where was the nearest escape-route? He thought that there was a narrow track behind him, but that dead-ended in a granite rock-face which supported a disused water-feed pipe to the grand house from the stream. The only other way out was to risk running into the open and try to make it over a fence. Were they armed though, and would they fire at him?

  Hugh crouched down, trying to see legs and feet. The tension was excruciating—he felt like erupting into flight like a pheasant. A pair of eyes glinted at him. It was a predator of some kind, as they were on the front of the face. It was a lynx! It must be, he'd never seen a cat that big, and it was fluffy with ear-tufts like a lynx, or perhaps a bobcat. He'd heard all of the stories about big wild cats, descendants of those released in response to the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976.

  Pumas, lynxes and ocelots were all freed by owners who kept them as pets, and who couldn't face seeing them destroyed or put in zoos. Subsequent sightings of big cats in the countryside, such as the legend of 'The Beast of Bodmin Moor' was one of many which helped contribute to the tourist-trade. But that meant nothing if you were alone in a wood at 2:00am and being stared at by one!

  Hugh was starting to regret his dislike of guns—even an air-gun would be welcome right now. As would the arrival of the gamekeeper. He'd rather end up in magistrate's court than in some giant feline's stomach. This must be what scared the fox into fleeing. How dangerous were lynxes anyway? He thought that bobcats were not quite as heavily-built as lynxes. This one looked to be about the size of a medium-sized dog, but its teeth and claws would be a lot sharper—not good, it could do a lot of damage.

  Pumas could easily kill people, but he wasn't sure about smaller wild cats. The damn thing was just sitting looking at him, twitching its tail now and again. Hugh reached for his lock-knife, thumbing it open with the knurled knob on the thick blunt edge of the blade—at least he was armed now. Thinking to intimidate the lynx, Hugh extended the grab-pole, which it watched coming with interest, lashing its tail excitedly. Just as he was about to poke the hook into its chest it jumped onto it, batting the pole furiously like a cat playing—it was a cat! The biggest cat he'd ever seen in his life. Was this thing feral, grown huge on a diet of pheasants and rabbits? It was twice the size and weight of any cat he'd known.

  He liked cats, but he wasn't going to risk stroking this one. What now? It was looking behind it, over its shoulder, and he could hear more sounds of something approaching. A Cocker Spaniel trotted into view, and rather foolishly went up to the cat, which raked the dog's face with razor-claws, it pinned its ears back and ran back the way it came. The cat fled too, towards the lane. Hugh heard the sound of a gruff male voice ordering him to come out from where he was hiding as he couldn't get away.

  He'd see about that, and abandoning his grab-pole Hugh ran in the same direction as the cat, closing and trousering his lock-knife as he did so—the furry feline must know a better way out of this situation than he did! The giant cat was racing across the grass, its long bushy tail fluffed up and trailing in the air, as if waving at him. It was taking long leaps and moving faster than Hugh could run in his baggy heavy full-length wax-proof coat, loaded down with six pheasants—he wasn't leaving those behind.

  Hugh glanced back over his shoulder, but couldn't see any figures emerging from the trees—the gamekeeper must be wondering what his spaniel just encountered when it came back with a bleeding face. The cat was disappearing over a six foot high wall around the garden of the lodge-house, which it did without slowing down, seeming to run up the vertical face only touching a couple of times.

  Hugh couldn't see any lights on in the house, though the ground-floor was hidden by the wall—surely nobody would be up this late? That had to be a better way out of the park than trying to scale the spiked railings. Keeping his momentum going, Hugh leapt for the top of the wall. He made it, but bashed his titanium knee-cap on the edge of the bricks, bringing tears to his eyes. There were no lights on in the house, so he swivelled around and holding onto the top of the wall with his elbows dropped himself to the ground. A dead pheasant squeezed out of one of the poachers pockets, falling onto the flower-bed. It could stay there, he needed to get moving. Pulling his coat close to him, Hugh walked quietly down the side of the lodge-house, past the lady's Range-Rover and into the cover of the night.