An Unsafe Pair of Hands

by Chris Dolley

  He slowed a few yards short of the electric fence and peered through the underbrush between him and the two men. They were a hundred yards away, walking past a herd of sleeping cows. Should he ring Helena and warn her? Or would that make it worse? What if they were only planning to break in – to plant another bottle of wine? Timing the break in for after Helena had gone to bed, but then Shand’s phone call brings her downstairs and they have to kill her?

  He darted forward for a better look. He could call out. That would stop them. The moment they climbed Helena’s back wall he’d shout and keep on shouting, at the top of his lungs if need be. There was not going to be a third murder!

  Lee and Marius climbed the metal gate into the next field. Shand counted the seconds – five, six – waiting for Lee’s head to drop below the top of the intervening hedge. Then he ran, keeping low, aiming for the hedge to the left of the gate. A cow started as he ran by. It leapt ungainly to its feet, bellowing in fright. Shand threw himself to the ground. Other cows got up. Two bellowed.

  Shand neither moved nor looked up. He pressed himself flat on the grass. And prayed that the two men wouldn’t come back to look.

  And that the cows would settle down.

  Silence, broken only by the bark of a dog in a nearby house. He waited. A few seconds, then a few seconds more … then he was running, head down and couldn’t care less about the cows. He had to save Helena!

  He slid into the base of the hedge and looked for a gap to peer through. The two men were approaching the next gate. From there it would be forty yards to Helena’s wall. He had to get closer. He started to rise. A hand grabbed his shoulder.

  “Shouldn’t we wait?” whispered Marcus.

  “No,” said Shand, shrugging off the hand and reaching for the top bar of the gate.

  He climbed the gate as silently as he could, then set off across the field, crouching low, willing his feet to silence, ready to throw himself to the ground the moment anyone looked round.

  No one did. Lee and his friend climbed the far gate. They were approaching Helena’s wall. Shand watched, and waited – ready to shout, ready to sprint, ready to raise the entire village if he had to.

  They kept going. Past the place the intruder had climbed the wall the night before. Past the gate at the far end of the wall. Were they circling around to the front door?

  They weren’t. They walked straight on, heading uphill. Uphill towards the stone circle.

  Marcus came alongside. “Where are they going?”

  Shand was more concerned with what they were going to do when they got there. And what was in that hold-all?

  He climbed the gate and crept along the grass track, passing the Benson’s back wall. At the entrance to the large field he stopped. This was going to be difficult. The field was huge with no cover. To be safe, they’d have to wait until Lee cleared the brow of the hill some five hundred yards distant.

  Shand couldn’t wait that long. Someone might have been lured to the stone circle. He let a gap of two hundred yards develop, then set off along the field boundary towards the woodland edge.

  The cold night air bit through Shand’s clothes. He hadn’t thought to bring a coat. He pulled his jacket tighter to his chest and pressed on. At the stone circle, Lee and his companion stopped. Shand slowed, peering on tip toe to see over the brow of the hill. He could only see their heads. He looked up at the moon, hoping to see a cloud nearby. Something to give him cover so he could take a closer look. But the clouds were on the other side of the sky and showing no inclination to move closer.

  The two men entered the circle. There was a snatch of conversation, too muffled for Shand to decipher. He strained to hear more. Both men laughed. Then began to run. Lee towards the chalk track through the woods, Marius towards the road. Had they realised they were being followed?

  Shand raced up the hill. There was something in the stone circle. The hold-all. They’d left it behind. He signalled Marcus to follow Lee while he stopped to look. It was a canvas hold-all with a single zip fastening lengthways down the middle. He snapped on his gloves and pulled the zip back.

  And immediately recoiled. The stench of rotting flesh hit him the moment he opened the bag. He stood up, walked away, and took several deep breaths. Then returned, knelt down and, bracing himself, slowly pulled the two sides of the bag apart.

  It was empty.

  Whatever – or whoever – had been inside they’d taken with them.

  ~

  Shand rang the station. He wanted the hold-all secured and taken back to Sturton.

  “Cancel the back-up request,” he said. “And get them to pick up the hold-all. It’s at the stone circle.”

  And then he was running, legs pumping towards the chalk track and Marcus, who had to be somewhere up ahead. He could hear the clatter and crunch of running feet in the distance. He set off in pursuit, running fast and blind, black walls of trees towered either side of him, a grey gloom in between.

  After a quarter of a mile, Shand fell back. Age and lack of fitness slowing him to a rubber-legged walk, ragged breaths burning his lungs with cold night air. He stopped, hunched over, and clutched both knees with his hands. He wasn’t cut out for this.

  Minutes passed with barely a sound – no running feet, no raised voices, or sounds of distant struggle – just Shand’s breathing and the plaintive calls of a pair of hunting owls.

  He started to walk, trusting that Marcus hadn’t turned off the track. More minutes passed and then, turning a bend, he saw a dark shape against the light grey of the chalk track up ahead. Someone was walking his way.

  He waited, bracing himself in case it was Lee. Then he heard Marcus’s voice.

  “I lost him,” he said, breathlessly. “He must have turned off somewhere.”

  ~

  They retraced their steps, stopping at anything that looked like a path into the woods.

  “Did you hear him turn off?” asked Shand.

  “I didn’t hear anything. I just ran.”

  “But you saw him?”

  “No. I just assumed he ran down the track and set off after him. I thought I’d see him when I got to a straight bit.”

  And Shand had run after Marcus. Leaving Lee to hide in the trees until they passed, or maybe he’d turned off before Marcus had even reached the chalk track.

  A dog howled in the distance. Shand knew how he felt.

  “Sorry, sir. I should have stopped and listened.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Shand, seeing no point in apportioning blame. When it came to making mistakes, a certain DCI had already filled the Division’s quota for the week single-handed.

  Another dog howled. Then another. Several dogs all barking at once. It was coming from behind, along the chalk track over towards Sixpenny Barton. Was that where Lee had run to? Had he woken all the dogs in the neighbourhood?

  Shand turned to look. It sounded so close. A trick of the night, perhaps. And how many dogs was that? It sounded like at least half a dozen – barking, howling and baying.

  They saw the glow first. Like a dull, yellow ball on the horizon between the trees.

  “What’s that?” asked Marcus.

  Shand had no idea. It appeared to be on the track or floating slightly above it. And it was changing shape, like a small cloud composed of dozens of dancing, fuzzy lights.

  The baying grew louder. And closer. And there was another noise – a scraping, clattering sound.

  A rush of cold air blew against the back of Shand’s neck. Small branches rustled overhead. And then ... silence. Complete and utter silence. No dogs, no owls, no rustling leaves. Nothing. And how black everything had suddenly become. The moon had gone. The dancing lights had gone. All definition had gone. It was like the two walls of trees had closed over them, squeezing every last bit of light out of the world. He’d never experienced a darkness like it. In a town there was always light somewhere – the fuzzy glow of street lights on the horizon, a light from a window, a shop, a car. But this �
�� this was taking black to a new level – a silent, timeless black as though a portal to the past had been opened and he was alone in a wood in some Dark Age past.

  And then the baying started up again – louder and closer – making Shand jump in surprise. The dancing, spectral lights returned too.

  “It’s the Wild Hunt!” said Marcus, already turning. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Another time Shand might have stayed and debated the point. But it was pitch black, they were alone in the woods, a pack of wild spectral dogs were heading their way, and Marcus had started to run.

  Shand followed – fast – his mind trying to rationalise the situation while his imagination fought him all the way. Why were the dogs glowing? And what was that scraping, clattering sound? Was he really being pursued by a spectral hunt?

  The track turned revealing a small patch of light up ahead. It had to be the mouth of the chalk track. Marcus ran faster, moving farther away. Shand flinched in sudden pain. Stitch. He ignored it, kept going. And then felt stupid. What was he doing? Running away from a bunch of glowing lights. He was a detective. He should be running towards the lights to see what they were.

  Or, at least, looking for a place in the woods where he could hide and watch unobserved.

  He slowed to a walk, hands on hips and taking deep breaths. The sounds from behind were more muffled now. And where was Marcus? There was neither sight nor sound of him.

  “Over here!” hissed Marcus from the trees on the left. “We can hide down here.”

  Marcus had found a narrow path winding off into the woods. They followed it for thirty yards before Shand stopped and turned. He positioned himself behind a tree and waited. Was this going to be another of Lee Molland’s stunts? A Wild Hunt put on for Shand’s benefit? Or were those stories of Satanic cults in the village more than wild conjecture?

  The sounds came closer. Dogs and the clatter of horse’s hooves – many horses, trotting along the track. A glow flickered through the trees away to Shand’s right. A glow that fragmented and stretched back along the chalk track as though a caravan of glow-worms was approaching.

  The procession slowed, then stopped at the entrance to Shand’s path. The lights at the front danced back and forth. Shand strained to make out the shapes. Some looked like spectral hounds – dog-like shapes that glowed dirty yellow – others were just blurs – formless clouds of fuzzy light.

  Then they started baying – frantically – one shape bounded onto the path towards Shand and the others followed.

  Shand fell back instinctively. Four short strides away from the path and then he dived for the ground, pressing himself flat against the soil and what felt like bramble. He braced himself, not daring to look or breathe. Sounds all around. Dogs, horses, shouts, the crack of a whip. He could feel soil hit the back of his legs. He waited for the first dog to find him, the jab of the nuzzling nose, the frenzied claws.

  It never came. The baying passed by and moved off. It wasn’t Shand’s scent they had. He rolled slightly to his left and looked up. Spectral horses and riders, parts of them glowing like the dogs, were thundering past. At least a dozen of them, probably more. What the hell was going on?

  He stayed on the floor several seconds after the last rider had passed. Then got up, disentangling his clothes from the barbed strands of bramble.

  “Marcus,” he hissed.

  A groan came from deeper in the wood.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I will be, sir,” said Marcus, clutching something white to his cheek. “I ran into a tree.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Just about.”

  “Then follow me. I think I know where they’re going.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The moon had re-emerged by the time they reached the yard at Sixpenny Barton. A yard full of 4x4’s and horseboxes.

  “Take down the registration numbers,” said Shand. “Run every one of them through DVLA. We’re going to talk to the lot of them.”

  Shand checked the outbuildings, looking for fluorescent paint or dye. What was the Brigadess playing at? Was she running a coven, or in league with Lee Molland?

  One thing was certain – he wasn’t going to leave until he found out. Even if he had to arrest every single rider and drag them back to Sturton.

  Hours passed. Then the procession of dancing lights appeared on the horizon where the chalk track left the wood at the top of the ridge.

  “You take Lee, I’ll deal with the rest,” Shand whispered to Marcus. “Stay out of sight until they’re all in the yard.”

  They waited, crouching in the shadows in the lee of the outbuildings. The procession getting closer, the clatter of hooves, a snatch of broken conversation on the wind.

  The first rider pulled into the yard, then another, then the dogs, swarming over the yard, their noses pressed to the ground, their tails erect. Shand waited for the last rider to arrive, then stepped into the moonlight.

  “Mrs. Montacute,” he said, trying to keep his anger under control.

  Her horse shied at Shand’s sudden appearance and danced backwards.

  “Easy, boy,” said the Brigadess. “Easy now.” She pulled the horse around and walked it back towards Shand. “Chief inspector, this is a surprise.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” snapped Shand.

  “Isn’t it obvious? We’ve been drag-hunting.”

  “At night?”

  “It’s the only time the bloody sabs aren’t about,” said Sandy Montacute, pulling his mount alongside.

  “Hunt saboteurs don’t target drag-hunts, Mr. Montacute. Even a townie like me knows that.”

  “If only the yobs from Sturton shared your powers of discrimination, chief inspector,” said the Brigadess. “Unfortunately the lure of a good punch-up is their only motivation. None of them care about animals. They just like to cause trouble.”

  It almost sounded plausible. But how could it be? A clandestine meeting in the middle of the night, the proximity of Lee Molland…

  But on the other hand … Where was the guilt? He looked around the yard. People were dismounting, unlatching the rear gates of trailers, loading their horses. No sense of urgency, no one trying to make a run for it. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was three o’clock in the morning, it couldn’t have looked more natural.

  “So why paint the animals?” he said, turning back to the Brigadess.

  “It’s a matter of visibility. Moonlight’s fine in the open, but you need something to follow in the woods.”

  “And it helps keep the pack together,” said Sandy. “Without the paint the whipper-in would never notice the strays.”

  Shand had to turn away. He felt like he was in the middle of a well-rehearsed practical joke. They had answers for everything, they sat on their horses, and smiled down at him while the yard teemed with glowing animals. It just wasn’t right.

  And then something hit him.

  “What scent were the dogs following tonight?”

  “Part of a fox carcass, I believe,” said Sandy. “Killed humanely, of course. We’d like to use aniseed but…” He shrugged apologetically. “The hounds are bred to hunt foxes. Eventually we’ll train them onto aniseed, but it takes time.”

  Shand looked from Sandy to his wife. Were they really telling the truth? It sounded so plausible – in a raw, countrified kind of way. The foul-smelling hold-all. Lee running off. The spectral-looking hunt.

  “So Lee Molland was your hare?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Sandy, “Bright lad. It was all his idea – both the hunting at night and the fluorescent dye.”

  Shand didn’t doubt it, the whole episode had Lee Molland’s imprint; drag-hunting by moonlight, the facsimile of the Wild Hunt. It would appeal to his sense of theatre.

  “Where’s Lee now?” he asked. “Is he coming here?”

  “He shouldn’t be far behind,” said the Brigadess, her horse straining forward and nodding its head up and down. “Easy, boy,�
�� she said. “You’re have to excuse us, chief inspector, we have a pair of bored and hungry horses here who were promised food.”

  They both dismounted and started to lead their horses away.

  Shand followed alongside. “Did Lee run the course alone?”

  “No, he shares the running with a friend,” said Sandy. “One drags the sack while the other walks to the next rendezvous. Very clever really. They plan the route meticulously and if we’re getting close, they lift the sack off the ground for a short spell and make the hounds work to find the scent again.”

  “Do you know the name of Lee’s friend?” asked Shand.

  “No,” said the Brigadess, abruptly. “We liase through Lee. We don’t know anything about his friends.”

  Shand knew she was lying. And why.

  “You don’t hunt asylum seekers then?” said Shand, watching the Brigadess for a reaction.

  There was a flicker of surprise. Barely discernible. And then a smile. “Don’t give my husband ideas, chief inspector.”

  “They’d probably enjoy it,” joked Sandy. “A good chase through the woods. It’d remind ’em of home.”

  ~

  Shand watched them stable their horses, and then glanced towards Marcus who was still standing in the shadows watching for Lee. The rest of the yard was emptying – horses and dogs disappearing into their respective trailers and boxes. It looked innocent enough. And yet … the involvement with Lee Molland, the secretive way it was organised, the asylum seeker who just happened to go missing the night of the murder.

  Shand froze. The night of the murder had been cloudless too. A full moon. Had they…

  He ran to the stable door. “Were you hunting Friday night?” he asked the Brigadess.

  She didn’t answer at first. She continued stuffing hay into a rope net.

  “We might as well tell him,” said her husband from the adjoining stall. “He already knows about the hunt.”

  Shand waited, his anger bubbling up. Had they all been on the chalk track that night? Had they put their own secrecy above the search for the killer? He couldn’t believe it!