The Scent of Blood (8 page)

Exactly where he’d been shot himself.

Goosebumps prickled down my arms when I read that part. “Is there more?” I asked. “Can you find anything else?”

Graham scrolled through all kinds of files but he couldn’t find any more information about the accident. He did find something else, though. A purchase order that showed Mr Monkton was paying for a memorial stone for Sandy Milford. A large marble plaque was to be erected near the gates. His full name, Alexander Duncan Milford, was going to be on it, along with the date he died and the words
Much missed
.

I read it twice. I could feel an idea dangling almost within reach. “Alexander,” I said aloud, trying to grasp it. “Not Sandy.”

“No. Well, you’d only put someone’s full name on a memorial stone, wouldn’t you?”

“So why did the graffiti say S.M.?”

“I suppose the writer must have been someone who knew him well enough to use his nickname,” said Graham reasonably.

It made sense, but I had the feeling there was more to it than that. I got off my stool and started to pace the length of the room. “All the people who have died were linked to that accident in some way. There was even that maintenance guy who killed himself. But maybe he didn’t! Maybe he was murdered too…”

“He could have been. If his negligence caused the tigress to break through and kill Sandy, our murderer could well have decided to target him. But why kill the vet? It most certainly wasn’t his fault.”

“I don’t know. We’re missing something.” I said nothing for a while, trying to work it out. I sat down again and cupped my head in my hands. “We thought it was to do with avenging Sandy,” I said at last, “but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the keepers’ alibis fitted together perfectly because they were all true. Maybe Charlie really
was
sick. I think we’ve been looking at it from the wrong end.”

“The wrong end?” echoed Graham. “Which end should we have been looking at it from?”

“Sandy wasn’t the only one to die that day, was he?” I said suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“The tigress! Do we know anything about her?”

Graham shrugged. “If we’re right in assuming that she was the mother of the present three tigers, we know that she was Sumatran. That’s the smallest of the existing sub-species of tiger. Highly endangered, of course.”

“Sumatran,” I echoed. A thought tickled at the back of my brain. “Did she have a name?”

We looked back at the report, and there it was. I’d been so interested in the people, I’d skipped over that piece of information. And it was the key to the whole thing. My heart was thumping with excitement as I read aloud,
“Sumatran Maharani.”
I looked at Graham. “S.M.”

His mouth dropped open.

“How could we have been so
stupid
?” I exclaimed. “
She
was the one being avenged, not Sandy Milford! It’s been about her all along.”

“So who did it?” asked Graham.

“I don’t know. But I reckon those protesters must have something to do with it. An innocent tiger being shot by its jailers? That’s what they’d say, isn’t it? It certainly gives them plenty to be angry about.”

“So … if it’s to do with the tigress,” said Graham, “we need to know more about her.” He turned back to the computer. “She must be here somewhere. They’re part of a captive breeding scheme, according to the sign on the cage. There must be records about her.”

It didn’t take long for Graham to find out that Sumatran Maharani had been sent to Farleigh Manor from Grampian Zoo.

“Grampian?” Something stirred deep in my memory. “Didn’t Kylie say that someone there was killed by an elephant?”

“Yes,” said Graham, frowning. He scrolled down and then murmured, “Here we are. He was called Dougal McTaggart, the director of Grampian Zoo. Which just so happens to be where Sumatran Maharani was born.”

“Another accident? Or do you reckon he might have been murdered too? It’s got to be connected with what’s been happening here, hasn’t it?”

“The chances of it being purely coincidental are very slim,” said Graham as he accessed the Grampian Zoo website. He couldn’t find anything, so he typed “Grampian Zoo Sumatran tigers” into the search engine and came up with an entry that had been posted five years ago. It was about a tiger cub that was being hand-reared by a keeper called Chris Ball.

“Chris?” I gasped. “Those protesters called the ferret-faced guy Christopher! Could it be him?”

“Possibly.” Graham looked at me. “From what Kylie said, we know that hand-rearing requires an awful lot of dedication. Regular feeds several times a night. You wouldn’t get a proper night’s sleep for months on end.”

“You’d have to really love animals to do that, wouldn’t you?” I said. “Can you find a picture of this Chris person?”

For several nail-biting minutes Graham drew a blank. But eventually he found an old photograph in the archives of a Scottish paper. The hair was dark, not orange, but the smiling face of the keeper holding the tiny cub was unmistakeable. Chris Ball wasn’t the ferret-featured man from the gates.

It was Zara.

“Christine
, not Christopher,” I said, staring at the computer. “Wow.”

In front of us Zara’s face grinned happily from the screen.

Then, behind us, the real-life version came back through the door – and she was neither grinning nor happy. She hadn’t left the building at all. She’d listened to our entire conversation. Her depressed, ditzy manner had completely vanished. Her features were hard. Determined. And she was carrying a gun.

“How very reckless of you,” she said grimly, pointing the rifle in our direction. “You seem to have worked it all out.”

“Revenge,” I told her flatly. “Starting with Dougal McTaggart.” I stared at her for a moment and then said angrily, “It’s an awful lot of people to kill for one tiger.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, glaring at me with hate-filled eyes. “No one does. She’s dead because those stupid people let her down. I loved Maharani. She was mine. Mine!” Zara jabbed the butt of her rifle at the computer screen. It smashed to the floor and died with an eerie electronic whine. “I looked after her from the day she was born. She was so weak, so fragile. The vet said she wouldn’t survive. He wanted to put her down. I wouldn’t let him. Night after night I sat up with her, willing her to live. And she did. For me. She was so special. So precious! But Dougal just treated her like any other animal. When she was old enough he sent her off for breeding. I begged him not to, but he insisted. He persuaded Mr Monkton to take her. I pleaded for a transfer so I could go with her. I knew she’d be miserable without me. But he wouldn’t listen. And then they shot her.”

“So you killed Dougal McTaggart?”

“Yes. It was easy enough to arrange an accident. That elephant used to be in a circus, so she was very good at following orders. I only had to say the word. Alisha stepped back, and that was it.”

“And then what?” I demanded. “You tried to get a job here?”

“Yes. It took a while: there weren’t any vacancies for keepers. So when I saw a post advertised in the education centre, I changed my name, faked a CV and got the job. Then I plotted my revenge.”

“Archie Henshaw? Was he your second victim?” asked Graham.

“Archie? Ah yes, him. Did he jump or was he pushed?” Her lips curled into a malicious smile. “Pushed.”

“But why?”

“He didn’t do his job properly. If his workmanship had been better, Maharani would never have broken through.”

“Is that how you killed Mark Sawyer, too?” I demanded. “Pushed him into the enclosure?”

“It wasn’t difficult. I told him there was an emergency with the crocodile. A blow to the head first thing this morning and he toppled straight over the wall. Easy. Served him right. If he hadn’t wanted to look at Maharani’s cubs in the first place, she would still be alive.”

“And you shot Charlie,” I said.

“Naturally.” Zara smiled again. “With the same gun he used on Maharani. I’d say that was poetic justice, wouldn’t you? They keep it in Mr Monkton’s office. In a locked cabinet, of course, but I took the key from him before I killed him.”

“But that’s not right.” Graham shook his head indignantly. “You might have committed all those other murders, but you
couldn’t
have killed Mr Monkton. We saw you! You were in that teddy-bear suit being chased around all evening.”

Zara looked from Graham to me and back again, her eyebrows raised like a teacher waiting for the correct answer. And suddenly I saw exactly how she’d done it.

Cursing myself for my slowness I said, “It wasn’t you, was it? Someone else was in that suit.”

She didn’t say anything.

Suddenly the ferrety features of the protester at the gates came into my mind. “That man. Christopher. Were you working with him?”

Zara nodded slowly. “Well done. I bumped into him in the supermarket one night. We got talking. When I told him what I was planning, it wasn’t difficult to persuade him to help. I hid him in the boot of my car when I came back for the party that night. Christopher wore the teddy-bear suit while I despatched Mr Monkton.”

“But all those stab wounds… I thought lots of different people must have done it.”

Zara gave a short, sharp laugh. “Did you? How fanciful. It wouldn’t have been like that if the wretched man had stood still. He would keep moving! It made things a little messy.”

“Poor Mr Monkton,” I whispered sadly. “He felt so guilty! He hated giving the order to shoot. He had nightmares about it.”

“And you think I don’t?” Zara spat.

“Charlie had to do it,” I protested. “Maharani was going to kill the vet.”

“So what? Why do you assume that people are more important than animals? Maharani was protecting her cubs. Doing what a mother should do. Why did she have to die for it?” Zara’s eyes gleamed with savage fury. “It’s too late to save her, but I’m going to save her cubs.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m taking them away. Now. While everyone’s attention is on the crocodile enclosure. The police are so busy on the other side of the zoo, no one will notice what I’m up to here.”

Graham looked intrigued. “Are you going to put them back in the wild? Only I’d have thought that with deforestation their chances of survival might be slim.”

“The wild?” Zara echoed incredulously. “Of course not! They wouldn’t stand a chance! I’m taking them to where they’ll be safe. There are plenty of people who don’t think animals should be held in zoos for the public to gawp at. I’ve decided to make use of them. Some have a lot of money, including Christopher. He’s got room for them on his country estate.” Zara checked her watch. “He’ll be bringing the lorry in right now.”

“He won’t get past the gatekeeper!” Graham protested. “Ron Baker won’t let him in.”

“Yes, he will. Christopher will be in disguise. And I’ve told Ron I’m expecting a delivery of new seating for the education centre. He won’t bat an eyelid.” Zara clicked the safety catch off the gun and took a step forward so the end was now pressing into my chest. “You can come with me.”

“What are you planning to do with us?” I tried but failed to keep the tremble out of my voice.

“What better way to lure my tigers into the lorry than with a bit of live bait? It brings the concept of environmental enrichment to a whole new level.”

“You wouldn’t really feed a pair of children to the tigers, would you?” Graham’s words came out as high and squeaky as mine.

“After those Brownies?” Zara laughed nastily. “Believe me, I’ve had enough of kids to last me a lifetime.”

Mum and Becca were still stuck in the mud. The zoo was empty. We walked to the Rainforest without seeing a single other human being. No one even came within shouting distance. They were all watching the police combing through the crocodile enclosure so they could find out how Mark Sawyer had met his grisly end.

When we reached the tigers, Christopher, dressed in a nondescript boiler suit with a realistic fake beard, was already there. I thought the sight of two kids being forced along at gunpoint would make him uneasy; I hoped we might be able to appeal to his better nature. But clearly he didn’t have one. When Zara muttered “bait” to him, he merely nodded and stood aside to let us pass.

Christopher had already backed his lorry through the wooden gates and parked it in the service area. Zara ordered Graham and me to climb up into a barred travelling cage in the back and then flipped a series of levers and catches that connected it to one of the tunnels. Then she opened the first gate through to the tigers’ enclosure.

There was nothing we could do. She had a gun: we’d be dead if we tried anything. The only escape route was through the tunnel, into the tiger cage. For a moment I considered it, but only for a moment. Because then Zara was banging on the side of a bucket filled with slabs of steak and the three tigers were stalking slowly, elegantly into the holding pen. The gate clanged shut behind them. Zara slid open the door to the tunnel and threw a piece of meat into it to encourage them forward. They were in. The door closed. They could only go forward. We could feel the weight of them as they approached, and the iron mesh of the tunnel creaked and groaned. The lorry swayed with each step. They were coming. Towards us. Graham was fumbling with his phone, trying to call for help, but his hands were stiff and awkward. He was terrified. He dropped it. It fell through the wire, through a gap in the floorboards and shattered on the concrete below. My legs gave way. I sank down. Put my hands over my eyes. Like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, I didn’t want to see what happened next. I just hoped it would be over quickly. There was nothing between us and the tigers. Nowhere to hide. No hope of survival. I opened my fingers and peered through the crack. For a split second I stared into a pair of wild amber eyes. Hot, carnivorous breath was on my face. A sandpaper tongue rasped against my head. I was dead meat. Literally.

But then the tiger turned and sniffed the air. Zara was outside the lorry, still holding the bucket of steak. The tigers weren’t used to live food; they preferred ready meals. The one who’d licked me sniffed the air again. Looked at the bucket. Batted at the side of the mesh, trying to get to it. And the workmanship on the cage was as bad as Archie Henshaw’s. Shoddy. Badly maintained. The rusty catches gave way.