Finders Keepers (28 page)

Now the chain goes round the head like that, to hold him in place, see? And the hook for the winch goes in the collar like
so
. When I started there weren’t no electric up here and it were my job to turn the winch by hand. All right for a calf, but you try winding the hide off a bloody carthorse! It’s different now. Press the button and away we go. The hide comes off lovely with a
crackle
and quiet little
ssssssssss
and leaves neat pink muscles and tendons in the shape of a calf.

Taking off the head dulls the knife but I won’t sharpen it until the next job – whether that’s five minutes from now or five days. Old Murton taught me well.
Old!
Listen to me calling him old when he was likely younger than I am now. Just seemed old to me ’cos I was just a bay, see? Fourteen when I started here, and it took me a right good sweat to line out my first sheep. Up to my elbows in blood and shit and I still couldn’t get the head off!

Not like now. One, two, three and it’s gone. That’s the only place that bleeds. Just drops out of the throat on to the concrete. Dark red and shiny but not much of it. Put the head beside the legs, with the fat pink tongue poking out all comical.

Hang the calf at the back of the flesh room and spray it blue so it can’t go for people to eat. There’s a dozen carcasses in here but we’ll get through all those before they go bad. Easy. Cold, see? Even in midsummer it’s always cold in the flesh room ’cos of the thick walls and turf roof.

Mostly it’s horses this year. Been a bad winter and feeding an old horse is no way to spend money. There’s a couple of late calves too small to make it by the time the snow come, a few ponies off the moor and Jack Biggins’s best old milker, Bubbles. Brought her in himself, he did, and said she’d always liked to watch the hunt go by. Daft old bugger! But he didn’t want her going off to Brown’s, see, where they treat ’em so bad. Likely old Bubbles thought her was coming in to be milked! Down the concrete slope, a pat between the eyes, a kind word. No bother.

I go back into the big shed and collect the leftovers of the calf –
the hocks, the hoofs, the hide, the head
– and put ’em in the incinerator. Time was we’d sell the hides to the tanneries at Porlock or Swimbridge, but now everything that’s leather comes from China or India ten times as cheap. We’re nothing now, England. All we got left now is our traditions, and there’s those what would like to see them gone too, and us all living like Russians.

I hose down the shed, then sharpen up another knife and take down old Bubbles. The hounds know the sound of the second knife sharpening and start to sing, so I join ’em:
The hocks, the hoofs, the hide, the head, the hocks, the hoofs, the hide, the head …

I put chunks of the old milker in a wheelbarrow and take her out to the yards and throw her over the gates. The hounds stop singing and start eating. The older ones eat first: the pups learn that fast. Only Milo tries it on, and I have to wade in there with the whip and pull his teeth out of General’s shoulder. Him’ll be a fine dog, Milo, but he needs a lot of arse-kicking. The whole litter’s turned out a bit bolshy, as it happens. That’s Rufus for you. Finest sire in four counties, but him do get some growlers and some nippers. Rick and Rosie like a sly nip when they’re walked. That’s why they go out coupled with Drifter and Sandy – them two’ll put any pup in its place quick enough. Nothing like being bit hard by a bigger hound you’re chained to, to teach you some manners. By next winter them’ll be as good as anything the Blacklands ever had.

There’s a car coming up the lane. Not expecting visitors.

John Took got out of his Range Rover and lit a cigarette against the biting wind. He wasn’t looking forward to this.

He’d inherited Bob Coffin. The bow-legged huntsman had come in a package deal with the sixty-odd hounds that had become his when he’d taken on the role of Blacklands Master three years before. If John Took could have chosen, he’d have picked a huntsman with a bit more stature. Someone who looked well in a white coat and bowler hat at the county hound show. Possibly not quite so much like Neanderthal Ice-cream Man.

The kennelman, Nigel, would have fitted the bill, but what could he do? Nigel was only twenty-eight and Coffin had been the Blacklands huntsman for almost forty years. Even Took had known enough not to rock a forty-year-old boat. Not here on the moor, anyway.

At least he kept the place clean. Never a bit of straw out of place, never a speck of blood in the big shed, never a turd in the cement runs. And he never complained about the cottage that came with the job, even though the hunt hadn’t spent money on it in thirty years. Took assumed Coffin did any repairs himself, and never asked about the cost.

He turned out good hounds, too, Took had to give him that. Hounds well bred for the idiosyncrasies of Exmoor, big and strong enough to fight their way through gorse, wire and flooded rivers, but light enough behind to keep going all day over hilly terrain.

It was a shame. Really it was. They were all going to suffer.

He heard a gate latch and Coffin emerged from the yards and touched his cap. It was feudal, but Took rather liked it.

‘Bob,’ he said.

‘Mr Took.’

Took had a final drag and stamped on his cigarette.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Bob.’

Bob Coffin’s expression didn’t change. Like a sheep’s.

‘We’ve worked out the merger with the Midmoor.’

Coffin nodded, waiting for more.

‘We’ll have joint Masters, and their whipper-in has agreed to go part-time with Alistair Farrell. But I’m afraid we’ll lose the name.’

This was a bitter blow. Took could tell by the way Coffin almost blinked. There’d been a Blacklands Hunt on Exmoor for a hundred and forty-odd years. Never fashionable, but
there
.

‘The good news,’ Took continued more cheerfully, ‘is that Malcolm Bidgood has room for one more in kennels—’

‘Huntsman?’

‘Assistant huntsman.’

No such thing
. Coffin didn’t say it, but they both knew it. Forty years and he was being demoted to kennelman. Like some work-experience boy up for the summer holidays from Bicton College.

‘We’ll be based at their kennels,’ Took hurried on, relieved that the worst was over. ‘But I don’t want you to have to hurry out of here, Bob. This is your home, and I made sure it was part of the deal that it won’t be sold until next season, so you’ve got plenty of time to sort things out. I was very clear about that.’

Bob Coffin didn’t thank him, but nodded briefly and glanced at the cottage.

‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.’

Coffin nodded once more. ‘What of the pack?’ he asked.

‘Ah yes. The pack. Mr Stourbridge says we’ll take three couple. He trusts you to pick the best of them, but they did say nothing over three years old, please.’

‘What of Rufus?’

‘Nothing over three. I did ask. And I’ve been calling round all week but nobody needs the others. Bloody shame.’

‘Nobody needs ’em,’ said Bob Coffin. It wasn’t a question, but Took answered it anyway.

‘That’s right.’

‘What’ll I do with ’em then?’

Took looked surprised. Surely that was self-evident? But Bob Coffin just looked confused. He wasn’t going to make him
say
it, was he?

Apparently he was. The passive-aggressive little caveman.

‘Well, I’m afraid we’ll have to dispose of them, Bob. Terrible shame, but there you go.’

‘Shoot ’em, you mean?’

Took was surprised that Coffin was surprised. God, anyone would think he’d never shot an animal in his life. Like there wasn’t a constant stream of ribby horses and broken-legged cows to dispatch in the big shed. Not to mention the old hounds – every season there were five or six who could no longer keep up and had to go to the happy hunting ground, courtesy of a .22 handgun. The old bugger wasn’t going to get all weepy on him now, was he?

‘Yes,’ said Took. ‘We’re all going to suffer a bit, I’m afraid. I can ask Nigel to come up to help you, if you like.’

Coffin looked away across the meadow to where the pied backs of the sixty hounds could be seen through the chain-link, tails high and curved and waving like happy flags as they milled around the giant slabs of raw cow.

‘Shoot ’em,’ he said softly.

‘That’s right,’ said Took briskly. ‘Nothing you haven’t done a thousand times before though, is it?’

‘Not to fit dogs.’

‘Look, they exist to do a job and now they’re out of work. We have to be realistic about this, you know.’

‘The whole pack,’ said Coffin quietly.

Took started to lose patience. ‘They’re
hounds
, Bob, not
pets
, for fuck’s sake! They’re not bloody children! You don’t
love
them.’

Coffin said nothing – he continued to look away towards the yards through the first stinging flakes of sleet.

Took collected himself and cleared his throat. ‘Look, I did my best. Been calling round all week. Packs like to breed their own now, you know that.’

Coffin said nothing. Took decided to stop grovelling and treat him like the hunt servant he was. ‘So you don’t want me to send Nigel up?’

‘No,’ Coffin said.

‘Right,’ said Took, and strode back to the Range Rover, leaving his flattened cigarette butt to show where he’d been.

*

When Mr Took left, I chose the three couple for the Midmoor.

Connor, Dancer, Patch, Boatman, Rusty and Rumble.

The rest I shot.

Better to do it before I could think about it too much, see? Didn’t take more than an hour. I took ’em to the big shed in
their
couples, so I’d have the chain to hold ’em still by, but they were all good dogs.

Rufus was a bit hard. Only natural, him being the best and all, and a favourite. But – strange to say – the worst was a little bitch called Frankie. Nice little maid with a funny way of wrinkling up her snout to smile at you. Got that from her mother, Bella, who got it from
her
mother, Fern. Frankie was almost the last to go. The pack was already piled up in a corner of the shed when her and Bumper followed me in. Both put their heads down and licked at the blood on the floor so I shot Bumper quick, then put the muzzle against Frankie’s head next, as it was held low by the chain between them.

Before I could pull the trigger, Frankie twisted to look up at me, and smiled.

PART THREE
SUMMER

JONAS WOKE ON
a cold cement floor with the smell of dogs and disinfectant strong in his nose, and icy hands on his chest. It was dark, even though he wasn’t blindfolded, and he was dimly aware of a man bending over him, tugging his clothes off. Jonas flailed weakly, hoping to connect, but found he couldn’t feel his own arms – didn’t know where they were or what they were doing.

The hands were firm but not hurtful. They quickly stripped him, and Jonas became sick and panicky at the thought that he couldn’t stop what was happening to him, however bad it got … He felt his adult self dissolving around him like sugar in water. The terror in his chest was the terror of a small boy. The strength of a man drained from him and he knew once more the weakness of the very young and vulnerable.

Then the dark figure bent forward and looped something around Jonas’s throat. Something to hold him. Something to hold him
down
…

He tried to cry out, tried to jerk away, tried to fight back, but he was a fish flopping about on dry land.

‘Ssshh now,’ said the man. ‘Ssssshh. There’s a good bay.’

Jonas was a child again, and he was helpless.

And then – right under his chin – he felt the click that locked the collar around his neck.

*

New roadblocks were set up. More officers were drafted in from other force areas and even from the neighbouring Devon & Cornwall Police, whose patch bled into Exmoor to the northwest. As they arrived, Reynolds sent them straight to the woods to join the hunt … for what and for whom he was not completely sure.

Davey Lamb was returned to the bosom of his family. His brother was not. Rice hoped she never again had to watch two human beings disintegrate in front of her eyes the way that Lettie Lamb and her mother did when they realized Steven was still missing.

Jonas Holly’s home was searched. First to check on Em’s claim that he had indeed disappeared along with Steven Lamb – a fact supported by the open back door and the abandoned wheelbarrow half-f of weeds and hedge-trimmings. Then a more careful search was made as a matter of procedure, because allegations had been made and should therefore be investigated. Emily Carver seemed like a sensible girl, but her secondhand accusations smacked more of grudge than fact. Rice reminded Reynolds that she had personally demanded proof from Steven Lamb of any wrongdoing by Jonas and he’d been unable to provide it.

‘I know,’ said Reynolds. ‘But it does seem unlikely that someone has managed to snatch a teenaged boy
and
a good-sized police officer at the same time. I’m duty bound to take it somewhat seriously.’