Ambivalent as he had begun to feel about the company, Martin was delighted to be singled out for a mention – particularly without any hint that he wasn’t as experienced as everyone else. He glowed with a sense of belonging.
‘As usual,’ Lewis Glaven went on, ‘to give everyone a fair chance, we’ll draw for our first pegs and then move up two at the start of each drive. And as usual, if you’ll bear with me, I’ll just go over the Chalcot ground rules before we start.’
Tait had read enough about driven shoots to know the code of good practice already, but he realised that the others weren’t to know that he knew. Lewis Glaven was tactfully making sure of it for everybody’s benefit, and Tait prepared to listen intently. But at that moment an extravagantly fitted Daihatsu Fourtrak drove into the yard, and a squat man rolled down from the driving seat.
He was half a head shorter than Martin, and dressed up in a shooting suit of best-quality tweed with every possible sartorial extra. He took off his deerstalker, revealing an almost hairless head, and came among them with a swagger and a wide ingratiating smile.
‘Good morning all!’
The man advanced on Lewis Glaven and tilted back his head – with some difficulty in the absence of any recognisable neck – in order to address him.
‘Ah, Mr Glaven, good morning to you! Won’t keep you a moment – my junior assistant is just delivering Mrs Harbord’s order for the weekend.’
The junior assistant, an undersized lad almost swamped by a butcher’s white trilby hat and long white overall, brought a covered tray out of the vehicle and carried it to the back door of the house.
‘Fillet steak for your dinner tonight, I believe,’ went on the man, ‘and crown of lamb for your Sunday roast. My manager does all the cutting now, of course – first class butcher, trained him myself. Best quality meat, needless to say – finest in the county!’
Lewis Glaven, waiting to resume his briefing, murmured courteous Thank yous and Yes indeeds. The junior assistant took the tray into the house. The seated dogs yawned impatiently. The members of the shooting party, discreetly amused, studied the sky.
‘Ideal morning for shooting!’ the butcher continued. ‘Shooting man myself, of course – crack shot when I was younger, finest in the county. Still first class! Belong to a syndicate over at Horkey. Should have been there this morning – shoot called off at the last minute. All ready for it, as you see – gun and cartridge bag in the Fourtrak. Disappointed, of course …’
He stood waiting, a wistful look on his toadlike face, absurdly hopeful of being given an invitation to join them. The junior assistant had returned and was standing by the vehicle, presumably waiting to know whether or not he would have to walk back to the village.
Lewis Glaven merely nodded his understanding, and offered the butcher nothing more than a sympathetic ‘Bad luck.’
Undeterred, the man persisted: ‘Pay my way, of course! Just as I do at Horkey. Money no object – name your price.’
The other members of the shooting party had turned away and were talking loudly among themselves, all except Joanna Dodd who seemed indifferent to the incident and almost savagely impatient to be off. Lewis Glaven phrased his reply courteously, but his tone and his look put the interloper firmly in his place.
‘No one pays to shoot at Chalcot, Mr Brunt. This is a private party, d’you see? Now if you’ll excuse me …’ He moved away and joined his friends.
For a moment the butcher stood crestfallen. The voices of the shooting party rose, and peaked in laughter; they were not of course laughing at him, because they had forgotten him already, but it was evident that he thought they were and felt doubly humiliated.
Then he reinflated himself. Beef-red, grotesquely proud, he swaggered back to the Fourtrak; and only Tait, it seemed, noticed the malevolence of his expression as he drove away.
As soon as the briefing had finished, and pegs had been drawn for, the party and their dogs were distributed among the off-road vehicles for the cross-country drive up to Belmont.
Martin found himself sitting in the back of a Landrover opposite the Treadgold brothers, competing for space with their knees, the gun bags, a retriever and two spaniels. The dogs were intrigued by his dogless smell, and did their best to rectify it with licks and snuffles. Absently fondling a spaniel’s ears, he thought of Will Glaven’s girlfriend and wondered how best to rescue her, without asking himself exactly who or what he intended to rescue her for.
The brothers, meanwhile, still regarded him as a puzzle. They looked at him with frank curiosity, as though he was the first man they’d met socially who hadn’t been born with a sporting gun in his hand. Tait decided not to bother to learn which of them was which. It was easier to think of them as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
‘First time you’ve tried shootin’game, eh?’
There was no point in denying it. Anyway, they could see that his gun bag and his cartridge bag were both brand new.
‘I’ve always shot clays,’ he said. ‘Excellent sport, and it fits in with my CID work.’
The Treadgolds refused to be impressed by his job. They conceded, though, that clay pigeon shooting was probably better than nothing. ‘Keeps your eye in, off-season,’ said Tweedledum. He paused, then said to his brother, ‘Wonder if Calamity Jane practises with clays, on the quiet?’
‘Hasn’t done the trick, though, has it?’ They gave each other a meaningful smirk.
Tait guessed they were talking about Joanna Dodd. ‘Why Calamity?’ he asked, insatiably curious. ‘I heard she’s a good shot.’
‘With a gun, yes. Can’t get her man, though …’
Tweedledee turned to his brother. ‘What about that stunnin’new girl of his? No wonder Joanna’s in a foul mood this morning.’
‘No wonder at all. If Will’s serious about the girl, he’s going to be in real trouble with Calamity Jane. How does that quotation go? “Hell has no fury like …”?’
Tait would have capped it correctly, but the Treadgolds were simply setting up one of their prep-school jokes.
‘… like a woman’s corns?’ suggested Tweedledee.
‘That’s it! Remarkable chap, Shakespeare – or was it Oscar Wilde? Knows what it is that makes people tick, anyway.’
They grinned at each other, and then sobered. ‘All the same,’ said Tweedledum, ‘if I were in young Will’s boots, I’m damned if I’d go out in the same shootin’party as Joanna. Wouldn’t want to meet with a nasty accident.’
Chapter Eight
The beaters were travelling up to Belmont in style, sitting on straw bales in a covered trailer towed by one of the farm tractors. Another tractor followed, towing the empty game cart. The cart was fitted with wooden racks on which the dead pheasants would be strung up at the end of each drive.
There were nine regular beaters, an assortment of local men who looked forward to a day outdoors in good company, with cash in hand at the end of it. They had come prepared to push through thick undergrowth and were wearing their oldest, toughest clothes. They were armed with heavy sticks, makeshift flags, and thermos flasks containing who-knew-what, and with them were two eager dogs and a despondent Darren Jermyn.
Being left alone to brood about Laura would have made Darren wretched enough. As a novice, though, he had to serve as the butt of the other beaters’dry humour.
‘Seems there’ll be a new Gun out today,’ said leathery old Arthur, the owner of the dogs. ‘A townie from Saintsbury. Hope you’ve put a tin plate down the front of them there waterproof trousers, boy? He’s bound to shoot low, and a few stray pellets could ruin your love life …’
Darren reddened. He shifted uncomfortably on the straw, endured the laughter, and submerged himself again in angry, anguished thoughts.
He had biked straight up to Chalcot House that morning, arriving at first light just as Laura was coming out to the shrubbery to feed her special pheasants. She’d looked beautifully sleepy, as though she hadn’t properly woken up, and he’d longed to hold her
in his arms and nuzzle her warm cheek.
But Laura was still hostile. Brushing her fall of hair away from her eyes, she’d said crossly, ‘What do you want?’
He tried a subtle approach. ‘It’s more what I don’t want. I’ve gone off gamekeeping. I don’t want anything to do with killing the pheasants. So I’ll pack in the job – if you’ll promise to stay away from the shoot.’
She’d looked at him as though she despised him. ‘I’m not promising you anything! If you’ve finally realised that it’s wrong to be a keeper, good. Just say so to Mr Glaven and walk out.’
‘That’s not the point –’
She gave him a scornful smile; there was nothing sleepy about her now. ‘Too scared to tell him?’
‘’Course I’m not scared! I was going to tell him anyway. But I don’t want you to get involved with the shoot. You could be hurt.’
‘The pheasants are going to be killed if I don’t help them. Stop interfering, Darren. I’ve made my plans.’
His insides tightened with anxiety. ‘This morning?’
‘No – I’ve got to stay and help my mother with today’s lunch, worse luck. That’s the only way I’ll get my week’s money out of her. But then I’m going to Belmont to stop the rest of the shoot, whether you like it or not.’
Sick with longing, Darren had tried another approach. ‘All right – if you must do it, I’ll join you. How about that?’
He had moved towards her. Her nearness made him shake, and snatched at his breath. Unable to keep his hands off her, he reached out and touched her hair. ‘We’ll find some way of stopping the shoot together …’
He slid his hands under her hair and cupped them round her neck. All he wanted was to show her his love, to draw her towards him and feel the softness of her body, to be an item again as they were last summer. But Laura resisted.
‘Together?’ she’d said scornfully, and the sweet remembered warmth of her breath made him tighten his hold. ‘We’re not together – we’re finished, can’t you understand? Get off me, Darren Jermyn!’
She struggled, pushing his arms and trying to break his grip. He pulled her to him, so desperate to prove his love that he hardly knew what he was doing. ‘I love you, Laura,’ he heard himself croak, ‘I love you –’
A sudden sharp pain crippled him as she kicked him on the shin. Taken by surprise he had yelped, hopped, sworn and let her go. And now he sat in the beaters’trailer, so deep in misery that he couldn’t raise the energy to feel sorry for the pheasants he was about to betray.
At least he knew now that Laura wouldn’t be trying to stop this morning’s shoot. She was safe for a few hours. But this afternoon …
Whatever she tried to do this afternoon, he would be there to stop her. And next time he held her, she wouldn’t get away from him so easily.
The keeper’s Landrover had overtaken the tractor and trailer. By the time the beaters arrived at the far side of the estate, half a mile beyond Belmont wood, Len Alger was waiting for them.
He was irritable, impatient to start, but the men thought him such an old misery that they refused to be rushed. They knew that experienced beaters are hard to come by, and that he needed them more than they needed him. One of their pleasures was to see him spluttering with rage, and they contrived to wind him up by taking their time over unloading themselves and their equipment from the trailer.
Darren had jumped down first, glad to get away from the lot of them. The vehicles were parked at the end of the track under a tall old hedge, coloured with autumn leaves and hawthorn berries, that formed the western boundary of the Glavens’land. Looking back, across the intervening arable fields and hedges and copses, he could see Belmont wood standing thick and dark against the eastern sky. The sight of it, and the thought of what could happen there during the afternoon drives, made him feel sick with anxiety.
Before they reached the wood, though, there were going to be three drives across the nearer land where he had been feeding the wandering pheasants. He could see some of them now, pecking about in wheat stubble, the cocks occasionally raising their handsome, stupid heads to peer at the group of beaters.
Yesterday he had thought of them as victims, but today he hadn’t any sympathy to spare. At least they didn’t know what was coming to them. Mr Glaven had said that half of them would survive, and Darren was beyond worrying over the fate of the others. All he could think of was Laura.
‘Come on, come on, you lazy young devil! Stop day-dreaming and get to the far side of that kale – move yourself. And when I blow my whistle to start the drive, for God’s sake keep in line!’
Len Alger, his gun under his arm and his two brown retriever crosses keeping prudently to heel, was now so wound up that his long bony face was visibly twitching. The other beaters, grinning, plodded over the stubble and spaced themselves out in a long line, facing east across a swath of kale towards a narrow plantation known as Long Spinney.
Darren had the farthest to go, naturally. He picked up his ash stick and made for his place. He chose to run, not because he cared what Len Alger shouted at him but just to show the rotten old bastard how young and fit he was.
The kale in front of them was a game crop, planted for the benefit of the pheasants. The birds he’d seen pecking in the stubble had already taken fright and run to it for cover. It was nearly waist high and so top-heavy with coarse green leaves that Darren had no idea how many birds were likely to be in it, but Mr Glaven had told him that it should produce enough for a good first drive.
Darren could see the shooting party taking up their positions at the lower end of the stubble field, in a dip between the strip of kale and Long Spinney. The Guv’nor had explained that the crop had been deliberately planted along the crest of a slight rise. The plan was that when the pheasants were driven out of the kale and flew for the shelter of the trees they would see the guns just below them, put on speed and climb high, so presenting a challenging target.
Darren glanced along the line. The other men stood with their sticks, or flags made of strips cut from plastic sacks and nailed to poles, waiting for the signal to start beating through the kale. The dogs, Arthur’s and the keeper’s, professionals from nose to tail, stood quivering with eagerness to begin. Their job was to work with the beaters, scouring silently along the line to stop any of the birds from running back, and pointing them out if they tried to lie low.
‘Some o’them crafty pheasants’ll crouch down and freeze,’ Arthur had told Darren. ‘When y’see a dog pointing, go you and poke the bird out. Keep’em all moving forward.’
Len Alger had positioned himself in the centre of the line but about twenty yards back. According to Arthur, this was so that he could bawl at any beaters who didn’t keep in line, and also take a shot at any wily pheasant that flew back behind the beaters instead of forward over the guns.
As well as his shotgun the keeper had a walkie-talkie. The Guv’nor would use it to let him know when to start each drive. There seemed to be some delay at the other end, but Darren was hardly aware of what was or wasn’t happening around him. He stood with his head down, using his stick as a prop; aching as he thought of Laura, wondering what she was doing and what she planned.
‘You, boy!’ The keeper’s sudden bellow made him start. ‘Wake up there, for God’s sake! You’ll never be any good at this job, you’re useless …’
Kurr-kuk kurr-kuk.
Somewhere down by Long Spinney a cock pheasant crowed; and then another and another. Numbed by his own wretchedness, Darren waited for the keeper’s whistle to blow, and the slaughter to start.
Martin Tait was standing beside his peg, a slotted stick which held a numbered card. As he waited in the crisp pheasant-echoing air to take aim at his first live target, he was tense with anticipation. He hardly noticed his host’s approach, until Lewis Glaven spoke to him.
‘Ah, you’ve found your peg. Excellent. Mind if I stand here for this first drive? Just to see how well the birds are flying …’
&n
bsp; Tait could hardly object, but he wasn’t too pleased. He was confident that he would impress his host over the course of the day, but he would have liked to get his eye in before being watched.
He understood Lewis Glaven’s motive, of course. Safety had been the main theme of the briefing, and no doubt Lewis wanted to assure himself that his new guest was a safe shot. But he need have no fear about that.
Tait had come to Chalcot having already learned the safety rules that apply to driven shoots. As a senior police officer – and therefore well aware of the lethal potential of shotguns – he knew better than his host how important such rules are. He was miffed to think that Lewis Glaven hadn’t taken his safety-consciousness on trust; but at least he now had an opportunity to demonstrate that he was not only a safe shot but an excellent one as well.
The other members of the shooting party – his fellow Guns – were positioning themselves on their pegs, which had been pushed into the stubble more or less in a straight line and about thirty yards apart. They stood with their backs to Long Spinney, well out from the trees. Ahead of them, on the crest of gently rising ground a hundred yards away, was the swath of kale.
Behind the Guns, on the edge of the spinney, were the pickers-up. Doffy Wilson-Brown, planted squarely on a shooting stick, was in charge of a small team of local helpers – superannuated beaters, by the look of them. With them was a posse of gun dogs, patient and observant, waiting until the end of the drive when they would be sent out to retrieve the fallen birds.
Lewis Glaven, his own dogs at heel and a radio in his hand, was looking up and down the line to check that all the Guns were in place. As he did so he offered Tait a quiet word of advice.
‘Technique’s much the same with pheasants as with clays. Difference is that clays slow down as they come over, birds accelerate. Takes a bit of getting used to. No shame in missing. Always go for the challenge of a high bird, never for an easy target. I’d rather you missed than made an unsporting kill. All right?’
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