Caracal Page 10

  At that moment he pushed the door open, using a foot to force the rusted hinges back. Small and lean, his features were a mass of acne, glazed eyes denoting a heavy intake of drugs, long straggling hair that was thinning at the crown. Another few years and he would probably be bald.

  He ignored her and went straight to the stove, dropping an armful of wood on to the floor beside it. The cast iron structure with its chimney pipe going vertically up to the roof was as sound as on the day it had been installed. Trix was surprised that the tinkers who converged on Knighton periodically hadn't taken it to sell for scrap, but this wasn't really surprising because the place was so remote that one would only come upon it by chance as she and Jon had done.

  ‘Jon?’ She raised herself up on an elbow.

  ‘Huh?’ He didn't look round but continued to stuff dry grass and sticks into the stove.

  ‘Jon, why did we leave Pentre?’

  ‘Dunno, really,’ he carried on building the fire. ‘Just thought it was best. There's going to be trouble there before long.’

  ‘Over the caracal?’

  ‘That and other things. Hoyle and Lansdale are sparring up for a big set-to. Hoyle's set his sights on shagging that girl Wendy but she hates his guts. Then they're always falling out over Lansdale's writing. There'll be big trouble, you mark my words. Hoyle's got it in for that wog, too - you can see how he loathes the poor bleeder.’

  ‘But what's going to happen to us, Jon? We can't stay here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, by tomorrow we'll be out of food. It's cold, too. We won't be able to survive much longer, winter's not far away. And another thing, in case you'd forgotten … I'm pregnant?’

  ‘Sure. I know. What's that got to do with it?’

  ‘Oh, Christ, don't you know anything about anything? I shall have to be careful, I can't rough it. I shall need rest!’

  ‘You can rest here.’

  She caught her breath, tried to check her anger. ‘Jon, I have to go back to Pentre; there's no two ways about it.’

  ‘All right,’ he turned to face her, squatting on his haunches, looking at her blankly. ‘I'm not stopping you. You can go now if you want to.’

  ‘Not without you,’ she clenched her fists. ‘You've a duty to look after me, now, Jon. You can't just walk off the moment you get a girl into trouble.’

  ‘Hold on!’ His eyes flickered and his brow furrowed as though he was making a tremendous mental effort to get to grips with the situation. ‘How do you know the baby's mine? You‘ve fucked with most of the guys in the commune.’

  ‘Not recently. Lately I haven't had it with anybody except you, Jon. Anyway, it happened that night when we didn't take any precautions. I knew it the moment you started to come, that you were shooting a baby into me.’

  ‘I see,’ his eyes clouded over once more. Either he understood or else it had all slipped away from him again. ‘In that case, we'll have to stay together. We'll be all right here. I'll look after you.’

  She turned away, biting her lip and trying to choke back a flood of emotion. She wanted to scream, to yell at him, ‘You just want me here to fuck, you don't want me, you only want my cunt.’ What the hell was the use?

  After a while he went back outside, and only then did she surrender to a fit of sobbing. It lasted about a quarter of an hour, after which she became remarkably calm. She'd have to do something, Jon wouldn't help her, so it was all up to her. If he wasn't prepared to care for her now, then he certainly wouldn't trouble in later life, so what was the point in sticking with him? There were thousands of unmarried mothers around. The State looked after them, all part of the “System”.

  She rose to her feet unsteadily. At first she thought she was going to faint but the sensation passed. She felt sick, but was rapidly getting used to that these days.

  Cautiously, almost like a fugitive, she pushed open the rickety door and stepped outside into the open clearing. There was no sign of Jon, which was all for the best. She didn't want to see him again … ever!

  There was only one ride leading from the clearing, the one they had entered by, so it was logical to go that way. Once beneath the trees it was much darker, only fingers of sunlight filtering through here and there. She hurried on, glancing behind her every few yards, almost expecting to see Jon coming after her. But he did not appear.

  Silence, except for some wood pigeons cooing, gently digesting their afternoon's feed, and a jay chattering harshly from the middle of a dense thicket - its rasping noise got on her nerves.

  She did not know the time, but it had to be late afternoon according to the position of the sun. She tried to work out how long it would take her to get back to the commune. It was impossible to tell, three or four hours perhaps. Of course it wasn't a direct route, lots of twisting paths, junctions, forks … she stopped and stared. Immediately ahead the path she was following divided into two: one track leading off at right angles, the other bending round almost as though the two might join up again further on, but both disappearing into a thick forest of rhododendron bushes. She couldn't recall seeing the bushes on their way here, but they must have passed through them because there was no other way.

  She trod warily, her mouth dry, her heart pounding. The path was narrow, seemed to be getting even narrower, shutting out the light … or was it already starting to get dark? Christ, no, not yet!

  The track widened and she walked on for some time. Hope. Some distance further on it tapered again. Despairs

  Panic threatened to take over when she came to another fork. Right or left? She took the left one, starting to run, but after fifty yards or so it came to a dead end, a towering wall of rhododendrons barring her way. She let out a cry and turning, caught her foot in a protruding tree root and fell heavily. Crying now, she staggered back to her feet, limping, hopping, desperate to get out of this darkening wood.

  It was a relief to reach the junction again. She blundered down the right hand path, oblivious of an obstructing holly bush with sharp leaves which scratched her face and arms, sobbing now and gulping in her breath noisily. It seemed to be getting darker by the second. Somewhere close at hand an owl was hooting, but everywhere else there was a deathly hush.

  A twig cracked with a sound like the report of a .22 rifle. Trix pulled up, looking wildly about her, trying to peer into the dense plantation on either side of the track, but it was impossible to see anything.

  Another sound, soft and slithering such as a snake might make. She shuddered and crossed herself, an instinctive reaction, something which she had not done for a very long time. Mother of God!

  She stood there listening with a desperation that emphasised every tiny sound: the thumping of her own heart and laboured breathing; the breeze soughing softly through the tops of the firs; dead twigs scraping as branches brushed … a stealthy movement only yards away. She tried to hold her breath. Must be a rabbit or some other harmless creature … too big; a fox or a badger, then, they didn't harm humans.

  Suddenly she saw the animal eyes staring out at her in the darkness, two orbs glowing like car sidelights flickering with a faulty battery. Then the creature moved forward and she could pick out the feline shape, the upright pointed ears, the arched back, blocking her escape, menacing.

  She watched it, knowing that it was going to attack but helpless to defend herself, paralytic fear robbing her of logical thought. She did not even recognise it as the caracal which had lived for so long at Pentre - it was an alien beast of prey, cat-like, and it was going to kill her.

  She made no resistance as the caracal's leap knocked her to the ground and she fell, its fetid breath searing her face. Only when its claws ripped through her clothing and half-severed a big fleshy breast did she start to scream. She writhed and flayed her arms, beating at the sinewy silky body with her fists, tasting the blood which sprayed on to her mouth and knowing that it was her own. Her blows became more feeble as the crimson fluid continued to jet from her slashed wrists, her screams reduced
to soft moans, scarlet bubbles forming on her lips and bursting.

  Now she accepted death, almost grateful for the release from life. Only one regret: her baby. Probably the embryo was already destroyed, shredded or crushed within her womb. Jon wouldn't care, he'd be glad. She didn't love him, only the baby. The creature's eyes glittered. Claws still tore at her flesh but she was past feeling any more pain. Oh, God, please let me die! This couldn't really be happening; perhaps it was all the drugs she had taken, or maybe the lack of them. Now sleep was closing in on her, comforting cooling waves of darkness - soon she'd be all right. Trix tensed, then relaxed, went limp.

  The caracal ate ravenously at first and then lay down alongside its kill, picking at its food from time to time, gorged yet unwilling to leave. It had been watching the humans in the hut for two days now, and had not forgotten the other one, the man, but there was no hurry. Its hunger appeased, it could afford to wait and began to toy with a piece of severed bone.

  Chapter 8

  ‘It's crazy,’ Melvyn Hughes thumped a fist into the palm of his hand and looked defiantly from Baldwin to Hidderley-Walker. ‘Going out at night with spotlights makes a kids' party game out of looking for needles in haystacks. We won't be able to get anywhere near nine tenths of the ground which we covered on the two previous shoots. We can't use dogs, either. And the damage we'll do to game is nobody's business. Coveys of partridge will fly blindly and rip themselves to shreds on barbed wire fences. Pheasants will desert their native woodlands and …’

  ‘I'm afraid game and our own sporting interests have to take second place,’ Hidderley-Walker replied coldly. ‘People have been killed. More will die if we don't get the caracal soon.’

  ‘All right, but don't blame me if there's nothing left to shoot at on the Panpunton Estate,’ the gamekeeper seemed to shrivel under the hostile glares of the others in the small forestry office. Please your bloody selves then!

  ‘Anyway, I think you were one of the first to suggest that the caracal might be shot more easily after dark,’ Hidderley-Walker fired another salvo, sensing that he was expected to act as spokesman on this particular issue concerning the tenancy of his syndicate.

  ‘Right, but I didn't mean half the population scouring the hills with lamps and guns,’ Hughes replied. ‘One or two guns, the same way as culling deer. Experienced men.’

  ‘There isn't time,’ Baldwin said. ‘We don't have weeks ahead of us in which to experiment. As Mr Hidderley-Walker has said, lives are at stake and others have been needlessly lost. Tonight we must make an all-out effort to destroy this killer cat.’

  The late afternoon sun cast a pattern of golden squares on the far wall, the tranquillity and beauty of autumn gracing the surrounding hills with a carpet of purple and gold. It was hard to believe that somewhere out there a maneater lurked. The third hunt was only hours away.

  ‘That's settled then,’ Baldwin spoke in clipped tones, rejecting further objections, eager for action and desperate to appease the media. ‘Three parties: Hughes in charge of the Panpunton one; Sirtmons bringing in the one from Garth Hill; Professor Rutter and Constable Jones working from the northern side of Lurkenhope. Land-Rovers will be used where possible to cover the ground more quickly, but only a small part of the area can be worked on foot. Each party will have a .226 rifle fitted with telescopic sights and light enhancement device, one main lamp, and a backup shotgun force. We move off at eight o'clock from our respective starting points. Gentlemen, I wish you luck. This time we cannot afford to fail.’

  ‘I finished off Pawns of Time today,’ Wes Lansdale spoke with a note of pride, his sudden announcement jerking Wendy into wakefulness as she half dozed in the bed by his side.

  ‘You what!’

  ‘I've finished Pawns of Time. Not only completed it this afternoon, but packed it up ready to send off. Colin says he'll drop it in at the post office for me tomorrow. He had a quick look at it, says it's good.’

  Wendy felt a sudden surge of elation. Things were really looking up.

  ‘I'm so glad,’ she murmured. ‘I knew you could get it finished, but this is much sooner than I dared hope. Lester's really depressed at the moment, been in his room all day and hasn't even come down to eat. Talking of food, I wonder what's happened to our esteemed cook and her boyfriend.’

  ‘They could have gone anywhere. People have just walked out before, and we've never set eyes on them again.’

  ‘But this time I've got an odd feeling that something's happened to them.’

  ‘Well, if it has there's nothing we can do about it, they've only themselves to blame. Anyway, the police are looking into it.’

  ‘There's another hunt tonight, isn't there? I heard it mentioned earlier on the radio, and thought maybe you'd be going with Rutter.’

  ‘I think I've done my share. Anyway, he had to go to a meeting at the Forestry Commission this afternoon and he's probably gone straight off from there. Christ, I hope they get the bloody thing this time! You should just see the sightseers that are drifting into Knighton - caravans, hikers, the lot. The hotels are booked to bursting point and I shouldn't think there's a weekend cottage vacant for miles around. That's the trouble, there are too many people mooching, about, trespassing all over the hills and woods. If the caracal is on the lookout for another quick kill there are plenty of prospective victims!’

  Fred Reece and his wife Mary had moved out from the Black Country to the outskirts of Knighton in 1972. From Tipton to Lower Cwmgilla was a complete contrast of scenery, but Fred had convinced Mary years ago that it was necessary to ‘get away from it all’. That was long before it became the ‘in thing’ to do.

  ‘It's no good leaving it until you've reached retirement age,’ he told her on more than one occasion. ‘At sixty-five you can't do what you can at fifty-five.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Plump, with a pink complexion and grey hair, Mary Reece regarded her husband quizzically. ‘But what exactly are you going to do in Wales? There are no foundries there and that's where you've always worked.’

  ‘Which is just why we're going.’ His glasses always slid to the end of his nose so that he peered over them when he was annoyed. ‘I've worked in a bleeding foundry since I left school at fifteen. Forty wasted years, but at least we've got a few bob saved up. We'll buy a smallholding, just a big paddock will do, and keep goats.’

  ‘Goats!’ Mary Reece sat bolt upright in astonishment ‘Why, for heaven's sake? They stink.’

  ‘Rubbish! Only the billy stinks, and if we have one he'll be kept for stud purposes only and in a shed well away from the nannies. Don't you fret, dear, I do know something about goats. When I was a lad my uncle Arthur at Brierley Hill used to keep them and …’

  ‘And he used to put them on the wall with the pig to watch the band go by!’

  ‘Now you are talking rot. Just leave it all to me, as you usually do. I'll see to the goats, and you won't even have to go near them. Wales is the place for us. My uncle Jack came from South Wales, and he was ninety-two when he died. Have I ever told you about him?’

  She sighed and grunted. The odds were that they would go to Wales whatever she said. Once Fred really made his mind up over anything, that was it.

  It took them five years to build up their herd of fifteen goats, mostly Toggenburgs and British Saanens. They had started with one small goatling, Florrie, bought for £30. A sweet little creature, snowy white from head to foot, intelligent and mischievous, she had soon changed Mary's opinion about goats. From October to March she had done most of the feeding, walking the length of their five-acre field in all weathers to attend to the animal, and when Florrie kidded, Mary had spent most of the night in the goat house with only a storm lantern to see by. Unfortunately, the kid had been a billy, which Fred sold the next May in exchange for another nanny.

  In 1975 Fred bought a two-year-old billy which they called Bertie, a fine specimen not yet fully grown. Twice the size of Florrie, Bertie soon learned to use his long wicked horns to maximum effect - a d
ownward movement of the head followed by a quick upward sweep that could impale the object of his wrath with terrible force. Soon it was all too obvious that even tethered in the paddock Bertie was dangerous.

  ‘I'm not going out there while he's there,’ Mary Reece stated emphatically one morning, returning to the kitchen where Fred had just sat down to breakfast. ‘If the rope had broken I wouldn't be here now. And it wasn't just his breakfast he was in a hurry for, you mark my words, Fred. That animal's wicked - the sooner we get rid of him, the better.’

  ‘No!’ Fred Reece was unruffled. ‘He's too good an investment at a fiver a stud, and two nannies are booked to be served next month. If he gets obstreperous the thing to do is to grab him hard by the beard and hold on tight - he can't do a thing then.’

  ‘Huh!’ Mary snorted and began washing feeding buckets in the long stone sink. ‘If Bertie needs grabbing by the beard, I'll leave that to you. And I'm going to leave all the feeding to you from now on. I mean what I say, Fred, I'm not going out in the paddock while he's there!’

  ‘All right, all right,’ he frowned as he attacked his fried bread and overdone bacon; the prospect of feeding the herd in addition to three hours' milking, morning and evening, was not appealing. ‘What if I build Bertie a shed, one he can stay in permanently? Tethered as well. That way he can't get at anybody.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ she placed two empty buckets by the kitchen doorway. ‘But until then, the herd's all yours!’

  Fred Reece began to build Bertie's shelter later that day. It didn't need to be very elaborate, he told himself: a few eight-foot fencing stakes and some spare corrugated iron sheets would do - no need for a door because Bertie would be permanently tethered. In fact, the whole job could be completed before it was time for evening milking.