Caracal Read online

  His greatest concern was roaming dogs, which seemed to be worse this year than at any previous time. No use calling the police - one had to make lengthy statements and absolutely nothing happened. There was only one answer - shoot any dog you saw on the sheepfields (provided you could get within range) regardless of whether you recognised it or not. Dead dogs don't run sheep! Les always carried some SSG shot in the pocket of his tattered working jacket and generally used at least one a week. One thing which could be said in favour of that gamekeeper fellow, he told his friends on auction days at the Norton Arms, was that he didn't mess about where unruly dogs were concerned. And as for Mrs Tomkinson's Jack Russell, he winked slyly, it was anybody's guess what had happened to that!

  Les carried his old hammer gun with him on his trips up to the fields beyond Panpunton Hill. There was rust on the Damascus barrels and a split in the stock had been reinforced with a strip of wire. It was his ‘knockabout’ weapon, an old favourite that dated back to his youth, and secretly he preferred it to the Gallyon sidelock ejector with which he shot grouse on the Mynd in August and September. However, one could not use a dilapidated weapon in the company of gentry.

  His train of thought led back to Melvyn Hughes. Next month there was sure to be an invitation to shoot pheasants on Panpunton, and they would meet again. The underlying dislike was mutual - one was a farmer, the other a gamekeeper. Landowner and servant. Class distinction would never be totally wiped out, no matter how hard those hippies down at Pentre tried to convince everybody that there was now a classless society.

  The sun had already dipped behind the western range of hills when he climbed over the rustic stile in the hedge dividing the Long Acre from the scrub hillside. The haze on the horizon indicated an early morning mist followed by sunshine. An Indian summer, which was fine until the last of the harvest was carried, but rain was desperately needed - the springs were low and without heavy snow this winter it could be disastrous. He remembered the drought of 1976 only too well.

  Les Powell paused, studying the sheep on the upper slopes. On a still evening like this they would usually be scattered, grazing peacefully, but instead they were huddled together in a bunch, bleating.

  ‘Now what the devil's up with them?’ he muttered. ‘A dog on the loose, I'll be bound.’

  A movement to the left caught his eye, and he jerked round. That half of the hillside was in shadow and it was difficult to make out details, but he thought he saw an animal, dark in colour, bushy tail streaming as it bounded away between clumps of hawthorn.

  His first conclusion was that it must be a fox. But the movements were too springy, back legs propelling the body so that at times it was airborne. So it had to be a dog, but even then something was wrong, the very speed at which it moved, the style.

  ‘What in the name of …!’

  Even as he watched, the creature disappeared into a silver birch thicket. An area of gorse and bracken adjoining this would screen it from sight until it was over the brow of the hill.

  Disconcerted and annoyed, the farmer started up the slope. Whatever it was, there wasn't much chance of getting a shot at it, but he had to check those sheep.

  It took him fifteen minutes to reach the spot where the small flock of Cluns were bunched in a hollow. He ran an experienced eye over them. As he expected, they were scared - it only took a strange dog within a radius of five hundred yards to frighten sheep - but apart from that they seemed all right

  He paused a few moments to regain his breath, telling himself that he needed to count the flock. Any excuse rather than admit that his age was beginning to tell. Otherwise it might have been another three or four weeks before he discovered that there was one ewe short.

  Even then he had not expected to find her in the gathering dusk, and thought she might just have strayed. Less than fifty yards away, at the base of a small hummock, he saw what seemed like a heap of bones. There were sheep skeletons to be found on most hillsides in these parts, only this one still had strips of chewed and mangled flesh hanging from it. It was his missing ewe all right - and she was freshly killed!

  ‘My God!’ he approached, stood gazing in horror and disbelief, noting how the ribs had been crushed right into the vertebrae. The jawbone was pulped but the rest of the skull appeared unscathed. There was no sign of the skin, just a few tufts of fluffy wool scattered across the parched brown grass.

  Les Powell knew that this was not the work of humans, nor fox nor dog. He cocked both hammers of his gun and stared back up the slope. The creature which had departed hurriedly at his approach was to blame, he felt certain. He had no idea what it was, but there was one man who might know, and he began to walk quickly in the direction of Colin Rutter's cottage.

  ‘Most interesting, most interesting,’ Colin Rutter stared across the large mahogany desk which took up the greater part of his study, the light from the table lamp reflecting the eagerness in his eyes. ‘You say the skin was removed completely and the ribs crushed into the vertebrae?’

  ‘That's right,’ Les Powell stood there like an erring schoolboy, fidgeting with his hands. The zoologist always made him feel uneasy, inferior. ‘The skull was virtually untouched, though.’

  ‘It all adds up,’ Rutter muttered, staring at the wall behind Powell. ‘I half guessed when I saw how Hughes' pheasants had been killed, and realised the strength of the brute. It was certainly the work of the cat family, but not of any native British species. I thought of a lynx, probably an escapee from some wildlife park. But the flaying of the skin, coupled with the damage done to vertebrae and ribs, is conclusive proof. It cannot be anything else!’

  ‘What … what is it, then?’ Powell's voice was low.

  ‘Without a shadow of doubt it's a caracal!’

  ‘A what!’ the other grunted, aware of his ignorance, and wishing he had waited for the explanation which would surely follow.

  ‘A caracal,’ Colin Rutter's manner changed to that of a sixth-form schoolteacher standing in for a colleague who was absent from the lower third, ‘is a member of the cat family, Felis caracal Temminckii. The name is derived from the Turkish “kara”, black, and “kulach”, ears. The animal you saw fleetingly was a caracal, normally found in Persia, Africa and India. Although it is sometimes tamed for the purpose of hunting, in the wild it is a savage and dangerous beast. It seems that the creature at large in these hills is not of the tame variety.’

  ‘But how the hell did it get here?’

  ‘Obviously it has escaped from somewhere. I know of no zoo or private menagerie in the immediate vicinity, so we must conclude that it has either been kept secretly and illegally or else has deliberately been turned loose by some unscrupulous owner who fears prosecution for harbouring dangerous wild animals without a licence.’

  ‘Something's got to be done about it,’ the farmer was already fearing for the safety of those sheep still up on the higher ground.

  ‘Quite. When I spoke to Hughes earlier I was against its destruction, no matter what animal it was, for I detest killing. However, I must now change my opinion. This creature is dangerous, and livestock, even human beings, are at risk every moment it remains at large.’

  ‘You can say that again! Right now I'm worried as to whether my sheep will be safe until morning.’

  ‘I don't think you need worry at this very moment,’ Rutter stuffed coarse stranded tobacco into his blackened pipe and struck a match. The caracal is a killer, but not an indiscriminate slaughterer which kills purely for the sake of killing. It has slain a sheep and fed, and will not need to do so again for another twenty-four hours. In the meantime we must attempt to locate its lair, not an easy task in this part of the country. I shall phone our, slow-moving, slow-thinking police constable and attempt to convince him that we have a dangerous predator at large. I should be grateful, Mr Powell, if you would alert your farming friends.’

  Les Powell kept his shotgun cocked throughout the half-mile walk back to his farm. Every shadow seemed to move, and once the
screech of a vixen in the Panpunton woodlands sent a wave of prickles up his spine and into his scalp. By the time he reached the safety of his own farmhouse his shirt was clinging damply to his body. He had never heard of a caracal before, and didn't really know what the creature looked like, but he could not get the picture of that mutilated sheep out of his mind, the way the ribcage had been crushed by powerful jaws. He was a very frightened man.

  Report from the Sporting Gazette, dated 18 September 19—:

  Farmers and gamekeepers on the fringe of Radnor Forest are concerned over sheep and game losses during the last few weeks. It seems from the method of killing that a sizeable feline beast is at large, possibly an escapee from a wildlife park although police enquiries have not so far found this to be so. All private menageries within a radius of fifty miles have been contacted without result. Professor Colin Rutter, author of Naturalised British Animals, is of the opinion that the creature in question is a caracal, similar in appearance to a lynx except that it has a long bushy tail. It is best described as a small mountain lion, slightly larger than a fully grown fox, and is capable of jumping ten-foot fences. It is mainly found in Africa, India and Persia, where it is domesticated from birth and used to hunt small game. In the wild, however, the caracal is an extremely savage and bloodthirsty killer, a peculiar characteristic of the species being that it flays the skin from its victims.

  Police are urging hill farmers in the area to give their stock extra protection. Our own special correspondent, Tim Grayling, who is well known to readers through his weekly column ‘Around the Game Preserves’, is already in the area conducting his own investigations, which he will be reporting in a forthcoming issue.

  The ‘Big Shoot’ was arranged for Saturday, 29 September, and for the past week reports and notices had been appearing in the local newspapers. The fact that no more sheep had been killed was of little consequence. The caracal was still around, skulking in the wooded hillsides by day, hunting the fields by night. It had to be - the public demanded it and the media obliged:

  CARACAL SIGHTED AT CWMGILLA

  ‘Well, that's a load of balls,’ Wes Lansdale threw the newspaper on to the uncleared breakfast table, rattling crockery and catapulting a spoon across the floor. ‘They were trying to make out in the Courier yesterday that it had been seen over at Gladestry. Every cat in the district has suddenly turned into a caracal.’

  ‘Your argument doesn't hold water,’ Lester Hoyle sneered. ‘It can cover twenty or thirty miles in a night, maybe more. Anyway, why are you suddenly presenting a defence for the accused?’

  ‘Because it's nothing but a witch hunt,’ Lansdale retorted angrily. ‘If the truth were known, half the dead sheep have been killed by either rustlers or dogs.’

  ‘Not according to Rutter. He's the expert. And don't forget, there is a caracal at large. Half the theories are now in favour of pumas or lions. Only we really know. And we've got to put an end to it before the whole thing rebounds and lands us in real trouble. We should've killed the bloody thing when that wog first turned up with it. Sure, they'll have their hunt, and the whole countryside will be bristling with guns and dogs from Knighton to Radnor Forest, but they'll draw a blank because the damned animal will be peacefully snoozing the day away in this very garden! I tell you we ought to kill it now, bury the thing and swear blind we've never set eyes on it. In a week everybody will have gone back to drooling over mass murderers and the sports pages. I tell you it's the only way. Hell, I am in charge of this commune!’

  ‘And how are you going to kill the caracal?’ Wendy lit a cigarette and regarded him steadily, ‘We don't even have a shotgun between the lot of us.’

  ‘An axe will do. Smash its head open. Just one blow.’

  ‘OK, white hunter, see how you get on,’ she was mocking him openly now. ‘Try to get it out of that coop so you can swing your axe at it. Even Bilal daren't put his hand inside, and I don't give much for your chances once it realises what you're up to.’

  ‘There are other ways,’ Hoyle felt his authority slipping down another rung. ‘We could poison it.’

  Wendy looked at him with contempt. ‘What do you suggest? Grind up some deadly nightshade or hemlock and hope the animal will merely think its meat is highly spiced? The only stuff that would work is strychnine and we don't stand much chance of getting any of that.’

  ‘Hughes uses it. Remember that fox we found dead last summer?’

  ‘Yes, contorted with agony even after rigor mortis had set in. Forget it, Lester. We're supposed to be against that sort of thing.’

  ‘It's Bilal's job, anyway,’ he kicked at the leg of a chair angrily. ‘He brought it here and it's up to him to get rid of it’

  ‘Which he'd like to do,’ Wendy snapped. ‘He's as worried as we are.’

  ‘There's only one way,’ Wes Lansdale pursed his lips and for a moment his dull eyes seemed to clear as he made a determined effort to grope his way out of the lethargy which had once more begun to claim him.

  ‘What's that?’ Hoyle seized upon a chance to ridicule the other. ‘Talk to it nicely and tell it to kill rabbits instead of sheep?’

  ‘These bloodthirsty shooters are trigger-happy for a caracal,’ Wes replied. ‘So we'll give them one. We'll wait until nightfall, after the creature's gone out to hunt, then we'll barricade that rickety old hen house so securely that it can't get back. That way there's a fair chance that it'll take to the hills. Maybe it'll get shot, maybe it won't. Whatever happens, nobody will connect it with Pentre and we'll be in the clear. There're enough sheets of corrugated metal from that old lean-to that blew down last winter to seal up the pen.’

  Lester Hoyle nodded slowly. It was something he should have thought of earlier. He tried to think of a reason why they shouldn't barricade the caracal out of its daytime refuge, and failed.

  ‘Bilal can do it,’ he said. ‘It's his pigeon. And maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to shut him out, too. Once we've got rid of the caracal that Paki's next for the chop!’

  Colin Rutter chewed hard on the stem of his pipe and contemplated the three men seated in his study: Jones, the policeman, out of his depth and realising it; Hughes, the gamekeeper, seething with anger; Grayling of the Sporting Gazette, as eager as a cocker spaniel at the start of a day's shooting - looking a bit like one, too, Rutter reflected, with his drooping features and large ears. But self-important; vindictive, too. He would probably delight in rejecting a submission from a well-known columnist in favour of one of his own pieces. A man to watch carefully.

  ‘Well, we've got to go through with the shoot,’ Jones shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘The Chief Constable has authorised it. It's out of my hands.’

  ‘But that's not the way to find a … a caracal,’ Hughes hesitated over the name, foreign to his own world of clearly defined game and vermin species. ‘The countryside will be teeming with blokes who have no idea how to handle a gun, anyway, and dogs will be yapping their heads off not knowing what they're supposed to be looking for. The creature will hear them miles off and just lie low.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Rutter acknowledged, ‘but it's the first step, combing the area.’

  ‘And then what?’ the gamekeeper's eyes narrowed, shifted suspiciously from the zoologist to the policeman.

  ‘We shall have to be more subtle,’ Rutter spoke slowly, aware of the opposition to any infiltration of the Panpunton estate. ‘The commandos go in where the massive invasion forces have failed. We know that the caracal is more likely to be active at night. One or two experienced men with spotlights and rifles may have better success that way. But the demand is for an all-out mass attack …’ His gaze shifted to Tim Grayling.

  ‘Let's go over the plans for tomorrow again,’ the journalist spoke quickly, afraid that he might be expected to produce some novel idea. ‘You reckon you can muster sixty or seventy guns, constable?’

  ‘Easily,’ Calvin Jones nodded. ‘A lot of the local boys are only too eager for a chance to give their guns an airin
g.’

  ‘Poachers,’ Hughes grunted. ‘Some real hard cases amongst them. Some have already been had up for poaching on the estate. You don't think they're coming along on the off chance of a shot at a mythical wild animal, do you? No, sir! They've never had a better opportunity to give the estate the once-over, see where the bulk of the birds are. Come next month, next week in fact, the buggers will be back, after dark. And there'll be folks out tomorrow carrying guns without shotgun certificates.’

  ‘That's something we'll have to overlook for once,’ the officer mumbled. Christ, he couldn't go round booking half the volunteer force - the Chief Constable would have him back in Birmingham before the week was out. The caracal was a priority, those were the chief's very words. ‘Kill it and kill all the publicity.’ The cat was making a fool of them all.

  ‘Huh!’ Melvyn Hughes blew his nose loudly, a habit when trying to keep his temper in check. ‘And another thing, all the birds in the woods will be scattered and scared to hell. They might not even return to the feeding points. I can see half of them arriving at Clun and stopping there. Can't we skirt Panpunton Wood? I've had no losses there for over a fortnight now. If you ask me, the caracal's moved on.’

  ‘We can't skirt anywhere,’ Jones tapped the Ordnance Survey map which was spread out across the desk. ‘Chief's orders. We start at Lower Stanage - the thing's killed some pheasant poults on the estate there, too. Work our way down to the Lee, cross the river and up into Panpunton. Meantime, the Anchor Fox Club will have worked their way down from Knucklas to Cwmgilla, swinging north-east up across Garth Hill to meet us.’

  ‘Somebody'll get shot for sure,’ the gamekeeper lit a cigarette with shaking hands. ‘Two lines of guns converging on each other, I've never heard the likes of it.’