Caracal Page 5

  ‘Three!’ There was almost a note of jubilation in the constable's voice. He was remembering all those fruitless chases after poachers which the other had instigated, the cold winter nights when he had been forced to leave fireside or bed. Now Calvin Jones was getting his own back. The third line will draw from Rhos-y-meirch, following Offa's Dyke, skirting the town and meeting the others at Panpunton. They'll be the party using Davies' otter hounds. Since otter hunting was suspended those dogs haven't had any work. They'll be as keen as mustard.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Hughes blew out an angry cloud of smoke. ‘Three lines of guns, hounds, every mongrel in Powys and Salop, not to mention the poachers. I reckon I'd best leave you gentlemen to it.’ He rose to his feet, glaring defiantly at the others.

  ‘You can't,’ Calvin Jones elatedly drove home the jibe. ‘The Chief Constable has laid it all on with your boss for you to lead the Panpunton team. The syndicate has no objection to the woods being driven. In fact, Mr Hidderley-Walker reckons it's a good thing, make the birds wilder, good fliers for the early part of the season.’

  Fuck Mr Hidderley-Walker, the gamekeeper thought, and sat down again, visibly trembling with suppressed rage. He'd change his tune when there weren't any birds to shoot at in October. ‘Keeper, where the devil have all the birds got to?’ Fuck him!

  ‘That's settled then,’ Rutter became the referee, pushing the fighters back into their respective corners. ‘Now, Mr Grayling, perhaps you would care to inform us which party you intend to accompany in the morning?’

  Fencing again, the professor's rapier drawing blood, remembering a destructive review of his book, The Life of the Grey Squirrel, which had appeared in the pages of Grayling's journal under the initials ‘TG’. The Sporting Gazette saw no redeeming features in the intruder from the States. The term ‘tree rat’ was becoming overplayed even for them.

  ‘If it's all right with you, gentlemen, I'll tag along with Mr Hughes.’

  Melvyn Hughes nodded. He was sure to get a mention in the next leader article: perhaps ‘Gamekeeper heads chase after wild beast’. ‘The Black Beast of Radnor’, Grayling had termed it a few weeks ago.

  ‘There'll be scores of reporters hanging around,’ Rutter drew blood again. Interfering bastards, without exception. ‘Doubtless there will be many conflicting accounts, not a single one truly accurate.’

  Grayling flushed. ‘I shall report the facts,’ he spoke tersely. ‘Nothing else.’

  ‘Well, that seems to be it,’ Colin Rutter folded the map, an eminent man suddenly tired of inferior company. A fleeting thought crossed his mind, that of a strained young man, drug-punched, struggling over a typewriter, a distinct talent threatening to evaporate. Lansdale didn't deserve sympathy. Like the caracal, he was a victim of circumstances. The only thing the two men shared was an ability to write and get published. The content was of no importance. It was an association that few would understand, certainly not these three.

  ‘Nine o'clock tomorrow at Panpunton,’ PC Jones looked at the others.

  ‘I always rise at six,’ Rutter banged his pipe out loudly in the heavy glass ashtray. The tension seamed to escalate, inflating the petty hatreds that had developed during the last hour. Lansdale would be coming along tomorrow, too, which was strange and quite out of character. Rutter guessed, though: a kind of secret ‘Caracal Saboteurs Association’, a quiet hope that the hunted creature would slip its pursuers, wanting it to escape. Rebellion against an alien society.

  ‘See you at nine then.’

  Rutter stayed at his desk while the others filed out into the night, making no attempt to follow them to the door. Rarely did he regret a decision made, but right now he wanted to opt out God, how had he come to be mixed up in the organisation of a blood hunt? The answer lay in his one weakness, his ego. This was an episode of animal life about which he would never put pen to paper. Tomorrow he would be just a hunter, nothing more, and he was ashamed of himself.

  Wendy was both worried and frightened. Worried because Wes had been gone since breakfast, and she knew that he had lied to her. He hadn't gone to Shrewsbury to do more research on his book, she was sure - she always knew when he lied.

  She was frightened because she was alone in the house with Lester Hoyle. Bilal was somewhere around, maybe out in the garden. He seemed unable to keep away from the old hen house these days, standing by the broken sundial staring at the rusted corrugated sheets as though unable to accept that they were the final barrier between himself and the animal which he had nursed all the way from his homeland. The caracal had grown up and gone, but Bilal had become a boy again, brooding, sometimes weeping when he thought nobody was watching.

  Wendy thought about going into the garden in search of him, and wished that she had gone into Knighton with the others. She had stayed behind because she couldn't face the thought of endless mooching, staring into shop windows at goods she was never likely to have the money to buy.

  She decided to wash the dishes. That should have been Trix's job, but the plump girl had already left. She was back with Jon again, and the two of them had spent the last two or three days in serious muttered conversation away from the others. That either meant that they were planning to leave the commune or that Trix was pregnant. Maybe both. A funny girl, Trix, Wendy thought. She'd been the rounds with nearly all the men, except Wes and possibly Lester. Nothing to look at but she seemed to conjure up sexual attraction despite her sluttishness.

  Suddenly Wendy stiffened and almost dropped a cup in the sink. She hadn't heard Lester come into the kitchen, and now he was standing directly behind her, his hands encircling her waist in an ‘I'm-only-playing-but-I-mean-it’ fashion, sliding upwards. She shuddered as his fingers touched her breasts through her blouse and remained there.

  ‘No boyfriend today?’ his voice was soft. Sexy if you liked your men that way, but it made her flesh creep.

  ‘I expect … he'll be back soon,’ a desperate lie and not very clever. Wes had made a point of telling everybody at breakfast that he was hitching to Shrewsbury, which was why she knew he'd lied.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Lester Hoyle's fingers found the nipples for which they had been searching and began to rub gently, almost imperceptibly. ‘He's gone to Shrewsbury. At least, that's what he said.’

  ‘If he said so, then that's where he's gone,’ her tone was cool, her body tensing.

  ‘I don't think so. He told us he'd gone into Knighton the other day, but that wasn't where he went.’

  ‘I … I wouldn't know about that,’ she was aware that her cheeks were flaming. Her stomach seemed to drop down into her bowels and when she spoke again her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper. ‘How do you know, anyway?’

  ‘Because I followed him. When I think anybody in this commune is lying I check on them … for the good of all of us. He went to see that professor fellow who owns the cottage up on the hill. The other writer … Rutter.’

  ‘I … well, there's nothing wrong in that,’ Wendy's voice quavered.

  ‘Then why lie about it?’

  ‘There must be a reason,’ her reply sounded weak, unconvincing.

  ‘Of course there must be. I think young Wes is up to something, playing some deep game that he doesn't want either of us to know about. And he's back on drugs. Harder than before.’

  To say ‘I know’ seemed a betrayal. She took a deep breath and remained silent, her body screaming out at her to yell at Hoyle to ‘take your hands off me’. Instead she just stood there, dazed, letting him fondle her nipples.

  ‘You're the sexiest girl I've ever met’

  It sounded corny. More than that, frightening. She experienced the feeling which a fly has on finding itself trapped in a spider's web. Sheer helplessness. She wished again that she had gone out with the others but it was too late now. Lester Hoyle was kissing the nape of her neck, lusting, a hardness jabbing into her buttocks.

  ‘Don't … please!’ she struggled to turn round, but he had her pressed hard against the sink
.

  ‘Why not?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘We're the only ones around. Nobody else will know. Not that it matters, anyway. Wes is no good to you, Wendy. He'll ruin you as surely as he's ruining himself.’

  Suddenly her anger returned. Somehow she slipped from his grasp, and turned to face him.

  ‘Don't you try that crap with me!’ she flared. Her blouse was undone and she knew that he was looking at her breasts but she didn't care. Let him see what he would never have. ‘You'll never come near Wes Lansdale, either as a man or as a writer.’

  ‘Wes has gone to pieces,’ he sneered, ‘His work is proof of that.’

  ‘Because you keep interfering, destroying his confidence because you're jealous of him!’

  Her words hit him like a clenched fist and he stepped back a pace, lips compressed into a thin bloodless line. ‘You bitch!’ he hissed. ‘Can't you see I'm trying to help him?’

  ‘I can see through you, Lester,’ her anger was smouldering now, burning up the initial fear. ‘You're one of life's failures, in every respect. Coming here to Pentre was a last chance for you. You couldn't make it in conventional society so you had to find somewhere where you could be somebody, con everyone into thinking how clever you are. But it won't work with me, it never has.’

  He backed away towards the door, his expression a mixture of rage and amazement. For once she had reduced him to silence, and this gave her a distinct sense of achievement

  ‘You thought I'd fall for it, too,’ she pressed home her advantage viciously. ‘You couldn't make it, Lester, so you're determined that Wes isn't going to either.’

  He rushed out with a curse, and she stood listening to his footsteps going up the stairs. Somewhere above a door slammed. Silence.

  Wendy stood trembling, frightened not so much for herself as for Wes Lansdale. Lester Hoyle was a dangerous enemy.

  Chapter 4

  Editorial in the Sporting Gazette dated 4 October 19—:

  As reported in last week's issue the organised shoot in an attempt to rid the countryside around Knighton of an escaped caracal took place on Saturday, 29 September. Three parties of guns and beaters, assisted by teams of dogs, drew an area of some twenty square miles. The operation was under the direct supervision of Melvyn Hughes, gamekeeper on the Panpunton Estate.

  The day was warm and sunny and your correspondent, who accompanied Professor Colin Rutter - eminent zoologist and author of several books on various aspects of wildlife - felt that the scene was reminiscent of a late season grouse shoot. The dogs worked tirelessly but were often distracted by the scent of rabbits and hares. Much of the terrain being inaccessible to the guns, greater reliance had to be placed on dogs to flush out any lurking beast. Several foxes were seen, and one was accidentally shot by an over-enthusiastic member of a fox club.

  By lunchtime there had been no signs of the caracal, but towards mid-afternoon a dead sheep was discovered, the skin having been removed and the ribs chewed into the vertebrae. An examination was carried out by Professor Rutter, who is convinced that this was a kill made by the caracal only a few hours previously. As we pressed on the dogs became more excited and it was clear that the ‘Black Beast’ could not be far away.

  The climax to the day came shortly after four o'clock on the outskirts of Kinsley Wood, on the edge of some open pasture. The caracal had apparently been feeding on a hare which it had killed, and had been so preoccupied that it failed to hear the approaching dogs until they were almost upon it. Indeed, it seemed such an unlikely place that the nearest gun was caught unawares and afterwards confessed that at first he did not realise that the animal was in fact the caracal.

  Several members of the party had a good view of the creature as it sped for freedom, and there is now no doubt concerning its identity. Approximately the size of a fox, and obviously not quite fully grown, it is dark brown in colour with lighter underparts, ears long and upright, tail about ten inches long. As it bounded off at tremendous speed, a shot rang out and it veered to the right. A volley of gunfire followed, but by this time the animal was sixty or seventy yards away. One of the line of guns claimed a hit, but the caracal did not falter and within half a minute of being put up, disappeared into the dense thickets of Kinsley Wood.

  The original plan for the three parties to meet at a prearranged rendezvous about five o'clock had to be changed, but it was after six by the time everybody had converged near the quarry's refuge. A cordon was thrown around Kinsley Wood, guns spaced at sixty-yard intervals facing outwards so that any shot taken would be at the departing caracal and the chances of an accident minimised. All those with dogs were summoned to drive out the wood systematically, additional beaters being enlisted to help through the thick undergrowth. The operation was lengthy owing to the nature of the terrain.

  It was already dusk when the party finally broke from cover into the small cul-de-sac formed by the north-east side of Kinsley Wood and Panpunton Hill. There was a distinct atmosphere of anticlimax as the weary hunters gathered together for a post-mortem on the day's events. Few had expected to see a caracal, and most doubted its existence in this part of the country. The unbelievers had been converted, but at the last moment the caracal had eluded its pursuers. Thorough as the search had been in Kinsley Wood, the area is so vast and dense that an animal the size of a buffalo could remain undetected. Moreover, it had been assumed that the caracal would bolt when it heard the dogs rather than be flushed out.

  However, it has now been established without any doubt that the animal is a caracal, and the danger of its presence in the countryside cannot be overemphasised. The Chief Constable has called a meeting with officials of the Forestry Commission to determine the next move.

  A short while ago the Gazette made clear its views on the use of fox snares. These are now reiterated, and we urge those readers living in Powys not to set snares in the hope of catching this wild beast. Steps will be taken to ensure the safety of poultry and livestock, and any further sightings should be reported at once to your local police station. Meanwhile, we shall be reporting week by week on the progress made by those responsible for capturing the caracal. ‘TG’

  Extract from the Courier dated 1 October 19—:

  The Black Beast of Radnor.

  Parties of blood-lusting ‘sportsmen’ congregated in the Welsh hills on Saturday in an attempt to track down an escaped feline creature known as a caracal. Towards the end of the day the animal was seen, fired upon, and a trail of blood led the hunters to a nearby forest. All efforts to find the wounded creature failed and as darkness fell the hunt was called off. Labour MP Mr Herbert Lessing referred to the episode as degrading. Mr Lessing, who is on the committee of the League Against Cruel Sports and a campaigner for the abolition of blood sports, said that the caracal has probably died a lingering death as a result of the shotgun blasts and was confident that it had been no real threat to livestock anyway.

  Foxes were indiscriminately shot at throughout the drive.

  ‘Well, he got away,’ there was genuine relief in Wes Lansdale's voice as he accepted the cigarette which Colin Rutter offered him from the small teak box on the desk. ‘That's something at any rate. The fellow who claims he hit him is either a fool or a liar. I saw the shot kick up at least a yard behind the caracal's tail.’

  ‘For one who has lived in urban surroundings all his life,’ Rutter watched the other carefully as he spoke, ‘you seem to show an unusual amount of interest in this animal.’

  ‘It isn't every day you get a ferocious wild beast in the locality,’ Lansdale hoped his sense of guilt didn't show. ‘I don't agree with blood sports, anyhow.’

  ‘I'm totally unbiased,’ the zoologist took his time over filling his pipe. ‘I've never been interested in killing, and guns terrify me. But I can understand other people's points of view. For instance, the anti-field sports people thought they were doing the deer a good turn when they rented the sporting rights over large acreages of land in Devon and forbade shooting there. Instead, the wh
ole scheme backfired, for without culling the herds increased out of all proportion and devastated the crops on neighbouring farms. They paid the penalty for interbreeding, and drew most of the poachers in the county, chaps who use shotguns and crossbows from vehicles at night, not caring if they merely wound a beast that will suffer agonies for days before it finally dies. That's what I'm against, kindness that is far more cruel than killing in the proper way. However, in the case of the caracal, sympathetic as I am, it is not a native wild animal of this country and until it's either caught or killed a lot of farm animals and game are going to die.’

  They sat in silence for some minutes, each occupied with his own thoughts, the diversity of opinions seeming to cement rather than delay their relationship.

  ‘By the way,’ Rutter searched amongst a pile of papers on his desk and withdrew a sheaf of typewritten sheets. ‘I thought these chapters of your book were excellent. Not a masterpiece, but good enough for any publisher.’

  ‘Oh!’ Lansdale's surprise was evident ‘You're kidding! It's rubbish.’

  ‘Good God, no! There are some minor criticisms, but basically the work's sound. Three chapters. Where's the rest?’

  ‘I never got around to writing it.’

  ‘It's crying out to be finished. Why did you stop?’

  ‘I … I was told it was a load of rubbish, a thin plot with weak characterisation.’

  ‘Who by? That girl of yours?’

  ‘No. She liked it, wanted me to go on with it. There's this fellow who runs the commune, a guy named Hoyle. He's got a degree in English. Used to be a university lecturer.’

  ‘And how many books has he had published?’

  ‘None that I know of, except a thesis of some kind. I've never actually seen it but apparently he had a number of copies printed.’