Tales From the Graveyard Page 7

  Odell paused, and drawing his pipe from his pocket he lit it. Drawing steadily on it, he remained lost in thought for some minutes. Finally he spoke.

  ‘I’m going to take this dog out on to the moors and let him lead me to wherever he’s going, Tommy,’ he said. ‘In the meantime I want you to take the car, and contact the police. I’ve an idea that we’re up against something far more sinister than just a ghostly wolf!’

  Odell set off across the moors, the Alsatian pulling at the chain by which the detective held it. On and on they went, the dog straining all the time as if in a frenzy to reach its destination. Then, for the third time that night, Odell heard the cry of a wolf. The Alsatian, on hearing it, gave a sudden pull, wrenched itself free of its captor and seconds later it was swallowed up in the night. Odell continued in the direction from which the cry had come. That was obviously where the dog was heading. Once more he grasped the revolver which rested in his pocket.

  As he came over the brow of the hill, the detective saw a rambling old farmhouse nestling in the hollow below him. Lights were on, and there appeared to be a general air of activity about the place. He realised that the utmost caution was needed if he was going any closer to investigate.

  Odell pressed himself close to the wall of the old stone barn. From where he was he could see into the kitchen of the house. Three or four rough looking men were gathered round the table, and appeared to be in deep conversation. Somewhere he could hear the barking of dogs, quite a few of them by the noise they were making. He crept closer in an attempt to hear what the men were saying. Too late his ears caught the sound of a soft footfall behind him and as he wheeled round, something descended on his head. Everything seemed to explode around him, and then he sank into oblivion.

  ***

  Raymond Odell judged that he could not have been unconscious for very long. He discovered that he was bound hand and foot and was lying on the stone floor of the farmhouse kitchen. The men were still engaged in conversation. One of them turned around, noticing that their captive had regained consciousness.

  ‘So, you’ve come to, have you, Mr Odell?’ The detective recognised the speaker as none other than the ex-convict Marty Wiseman. ‘Well, we’ve really got something in store for you, but as we’ve got an hour to kill before we can move from here, I may as well tell you what it’s all about. Dead men tell no tales, so there’s no harm in you knowing now.’

  Raymond Odell listened intently, pushing everything else from his mind as the mystery unravelled. Wiseman went on talking. ‘Drug smuggling, that’s what we’re up to, Mr. Raymond Odell. A launch slips into the bay below the moors, a couple of hundred yards out, and a signal is given.’ He held up what appeared to be a hunting horn. ‘This is the wolf howl. They’ve got one of these on the boat as well. When they give a blast our dogs swim out to the boat. Waterproof containers with heroin in them are strapped to their backs, and we give another wolf call to bring them back again. Anybody watching would never see the dogs slipping past them in the dark. And as for nosey-parkers,’ he gave a laugh, ‘we’ve got a special dog that doesn’t go in the water. He’s painted with luminous paint. Scares all the locals, and is trained to disappear through a gap up in the rocks on the hilltop. I believe even you lost sight of him there.’

  He paused, but there was no response from the detective, so he carried on.

  ‘That swine Roker has been the trouble. He meant to blackmail us, and tonight he managed to capture one of the dogs and took it back to the ‘Old Mariner’. I was on his trail, but then you butted in, and I had to fool you, pretending I was dead, while we drew you off with that wolf call. Anyway, I silenced Roker. It’s a pity you had to carry on interfering though. Tonight’s our last night. The drugs the dogs brought in are already on their way to London, and we’re going to the continent in the launch, which is still out there. And so are you Mr. Odell, but only part of the way!’

  Raymond Odell did not reply. The implication was only too clear. They intended to drop him overboard somewhere en route.

  Half an hour later the party made its way across the moors towards the sea. Odell’s legs had been freed to allow him to walk, but his hands were still bound tightly behind his back. They pushed him in front of them, forcing him to stumble along the rough terrain. There was one thought uppermost in Raymond Odell’s mind. They had not mentioned Tommy Bourne. Perhaps in all the night’s happenings they had overlooked the fact that his young assistant had even been with him.

  At last the party reached the end of the moors. There was a narrow path down and Odell feared lest he might slip as he descended the path, which was more suitable for mountain goats.

  Minutes later they were all standing on the beach.

  ‘Can’t see the boat,’ Marty Wiseman muttered. ‘He should have moved in close by now.’

  No sooner had he spoken than dark shapes materialised from behind the nearby rocks. There seemed to be men everywhere. Marty Wiseman, cursing fluently, tried to draw his automatic, but strong hands seized him, and rendered him helpless.

  ‘This is the police,’ a voice barked out. ‘You’re all under arrest.’ A wave of relief flooded through Raymond Odell, and then he heard Tommy Bourne’s voice at his side.

  ‘Well done, Tommy,’ he grunted, rubbing his sore wrists together, trying to restore the circulation. ‘However did you manage to get here, though?’

  ‘After I left you,’ Tommy explained, ‘I’d gone about a mile down the road when a car caught me up. He was going like the clappers, couldn’t wait, overtook me on a bend, and piled his machine into the ditch. I’m afraid he put a dent in your car as well guvnor.’ The young detective was relieved to hear his chief laugh, and went on, ‘I pulled up to help him, but he was sparked out. I noticed that there were some canisters… guess what?’

  ‘Heroin,’ Raymond Odell replied. ‘I know all about that, but go on.’

  ‘I thought it would take too long rousing the local constabulary, so I used my mobile and got straight through to Richmond at the Yard. Fortunately, he was still there on special duty, and he soon got on the blower, and got these country coppers moving. The bloke who’d been knocked out in the car crash came round just as the police arrived. As soon as he realised the game was up he blew the gaff. I went with the police, and we arrested those smugglers in the launch as soon as they beached. All that remained was to wait for the rest of the gang to show up, and hope that you were still O.K. We figured that either you were still keeping watch or else they’d got you.’

  ‘That’s about it, sir,’ the local police inspector approached the two detectives. ‘I think we can safely say we’ve got the lot.’

  ‘Good,’ Raymond Odell replied, ‘I think my assistant and I can do with some shut-eye now. We’ve had quite a night of it. By the way, Inspector,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘I’d like one of the wolf-calls these chaps were using, for my collection. I don’t think the wolf will be howling on the moors anymore from now on.’

  Hounds from Hades

  (from Graveyard Rendezvous Summer 2009)

  Creatures from hell exacted revenge upon those who violated Nature’s domain.

  The long, mournful howl shattered the stillness of the cold winter's night, rose to a crescendo, and then died away echoing for some time across the surrounding hills until finally the silence rolled back. The brown owl which had been hooting for some time beforehand was now strangely silent. Field fares shifted uneasily in their roost amidst the thick conifer plantations, and a vixen which had been screaming her mating cry on a far off crag slunk back to her earth beneath the rocks.

  ‘Someone is going to die tonight,’ Gwynne Evans, the old hill-farmer, muttered as he came in from the barn and closed the door behind him. His gnarled fingers shot the bolt home. It was a long time since he had locked up at night.

  ‘The Black Dogs,’ his grey-haired wife, bent almost double with rheumatics, stared into the blazing fire. ‘Nigh on twenty years since we last heard 'em, the night that climber
fell at Devil's Peak.’

  ‘Aye,’ Gwynne stared out of the window, pressing his face against the pane and attempting to shut out the reflection of the room. Sheep fields, silvery white with a thick hoar frost, stretched up until they met the black outline of the forest on the horizon. Forestry Commission plantations, closely planted trees which obscured the sunlight day after day, forbidding, refusing to yield the secrets of their gloomy depths. Did they hide the legendary spectral dogs, the hounds of hell, harbingers of doom? The legend stretched back to the Middle Ages. Anyone who saw the dogs died, and when their howling was heard death for somebody in the hills was certain. But for whom?

  ‘Maybe it's just a stray dog,’ the woman's voice trembled, destroying any conviction which her tone might have had. ‘They do say that after old Maurice Jones passed away his dog took off and hasn't been seen since. It could be living up there in the forestry, gone half-wild.’

  ‘No,’ the farmer closed the curtains and turned back into the room. ‘That weren't Gip. It was the Black Dogs. I guess we might as well go to bed. We'll know by morning, right enough, what it was all about... except them as the cry was for!’

  Frank Hall, the head forester, stirred restlessly in his sleep. A long way off, a telephone was ringing. It was some minutes before its harsh jangling penetrated his slumbers sufficiently to make him aware that it was his phone down in the hall below. Cursing beneath his breath, still half-asleep, he swung his legs to the floor and groped for his dressing-gown on the chair beside the bed.

  Panic hastened his wakening and the grimness of reality returned to him as he stumbled down the narrow stairs. It could be the hospital. It had to be at this hour. His wife. A terminal illness. The surgeons had done what they could. They had given her six months to live. Maybe the shock of the operation had cut her time.

  His hand trembled as he lifted the receiver, and his vocal cords refused to function. It was a man's voice on the other end of the line, and it was several seconds before his dazed brain recognized it as that of Len Wright, his beat-forester.

  ‘Poachers,’ Len was breathless, ‘up beyond the Devil's Peak. Using a Land Rover. After the deer.’

  ‘Ok, Len,’ he stammered, ‘don't panic. We'll get 'em. Stand by. Give me a few minutes and I'll pick you up. And give the police a call, will you? If it's these same chaps who were raiding us last winter we could have our hands full.’

  Frank Hall dressed hurriedly. Even at fifty years of age he moved quickly. He was as fit as he had been ten years ago. Deer poachers were all part of his routine. In fact, and he would not have admitted it to anybody else, they helped to break the monotony of life in these remote border hills. He needed something like this to help him get other things off his mind.

  Wearing his heavy sheepskin jacket and corduroy trousers he went outside and climbed into the Land Rover. The engine spluttered into life and then the wheels were bumping their way over uneven ground which separated the Head Forester's house from the lane. There was no need for the headlights. The moon had reached its zenith and hills and fields were portrayed in direct contrast of soft light and shadow. It was an ideal night for catching up with a gang of deer-poachers.

  Len Wright was standing waiting in the road outside his cottage, his breath showing clearly in the freezing atmosphere.

  ‘I got through to the police,’ Len said as he clambered into the passenger seat. ‘They'll get somebody out here as soon as they can.’

  Frank Hall nodded and made a mental calculation. Fifteen miles, and allowing for communication and organization, the law was unlikely to show up for at least another half-hour. He turned off the hard road and took the steep unsurfaced forestry track which led towards Devil's Peak, the topmost crag in this range of hills. Even now he could see its outline in the moonlight, an escarpment scintillating above the forest, silhouetted against a black cloudless sky. There was no sign of the headlights which his assistant had reported seeing. Probably the poachers were on the small plateau behind the Peak, cruising slowly around, rifles at the ready in search of unsuspecting deer.

  Ten minutes later, the ground levelled out and the Forester brought the vehicle to a standstill.

  ‘Let's listen for a few minutes,’ he found himself whispering. ‘Maybe we'll get some idea of just where they are.’

  The silence was almost overpowering.

  Both men sensed its uncanniness, the absence of the nocturnal noises as though the whole of these hills had suddenly become a lifeless wilderness. Neither mentioned it to the other. Both found themselves wishing that they could seize upon some excuse for returning to the safety of their home.

  Suddenly a barrage of shots rang out from up above them somewhere behind Devil's Peak. Rifles being fired as fast as fingers could squeeze the triggers. An engine was roaring as though being revved mercilessly in a low gear. And then the listening men heard the howling, a frenzied deep throated baying that drowned everything else like a thousand stag-hounds in full cry.

  ‘My God!’ Len Wright muttered. ‘What is it?’

  But Frank Hall did not reply. His face deathly white, he was staring up towards the Peak, throat dry, vocal cords refusing to function again. He knew the legend. Until now he had scoffed at the tale, but this time there was no logical explanation. And not for a thousand pounds would he have driven any further up that track.

  The two watching men saw the Land Rover come into view, its twin headlights piercing the darker shadow of Devil's Peak, elevating as the vehicle scaled a sharp incline, then dipping and levelling as it found flat ground again. It was surely out control. Vivid flashes denoted more rifle fire but the reports were lost in the baying which drowned everything else.

  The watching foresters had an unrestricted view of the careering Land Rover, it's crazy course back and forth on the plateau of shale and heather, never slowing, seemingly trying to turn but always reverting to its original direction which led directly to the precipice below the Peak.

  More firing. Yet there was no sign of any other form of life. Sheer madness, a gang of hardened poachers driving towards certain death whilst raking the area at their rear with a constant hail of bullets. The Land Rover checked momentarily as though the driver had braked sharply and then jerked forward, picking up speed rapidly, this time heading straight for the edge of the cliff.

  ‘They're going over!’ Len Wright screamed.

  Frank Hall's nails bit deeply into the palms of his hands as he saw the vehicle shoot out into space and seem to hover like some earth-orbiting craft, then plunge downwards to the forested ravine below. The canine baying reached its peak and then died away. Silence, the atmosphere heavy with an aura of evil, the cold more intense than ever. A reddish glow spread up into the night sky and the two forestry men could hear the crackling of flames. The fire from the smashed and blazing Land Rover was spreading through the thickets as though trying to erase the memories of this very night; pillars of smoke rising up into the sky in the beginnings of a forest fire that no living man could check, an inferno that seemed to have come from Hades itself.

  The following day was well advanced before Frank Hall drove up on the plateau that adjoined Devil's Peak. Below him the blaze raged relentlessly, driving back the team of fire-fighters under the control of Len Wright.

  The Head Forester left his Land Rover and walked across the open space of level ground. Flakes of burning debris floated down around him like black snowflakes but he ignored them, his keen grey eyes scanning the ground in front of him.

  After some searching he managed to find the tyre tracks which he sought, imprinted on the barren surface, twisting crazily this way and that. Then his expression hardened and his lips tightened into a thin bloodless line. Deer spoor he was familiar with, the churning hoof marks of a passing herd, but these huge paw-prints had not been made by any passing herd of fallow or sika. They were barely discernible on the rocky ground, a scuffing of the soil here and there, more distinct around the odd boggy patch. But there was no mistaking the fo
otprint of a dog, a hound of immense proportions, creatures that had been invisible to the watching mortals yet seen in terrifying clarity by those whom the pack pursued.

  Frank Hall nodded to himself and began to retrace his steps. It was no concern of his. The hounds had come from hell and now they had returned there in accordance with the legend. Those who had violated the laws of nature had paid the ultimate penalty. When Black Dogs were heard, someone died. The Head Forester had witnessed a brand of justice meted out by the spectral hounds, to those poachers who had violated the law of these hills. It was the law of this hill country dating back to time immemorial, and it would always be so.

  I Couldn’t Care Less

  (from Graveyard Rendezvous 40)

  Malcolm Palmer could not remember how long he had been in the condemned cell. Sometimes he thought it was only since yesterday, other times it seemed years. They had returned capital punishment to Britain, he didn’t know when and he wasn’t really interested. All he knew was that one of the mornings they would come for him, lead him down to the execution chamber and that would be that. Finis!

  He had not appealed against his sentence. Or rather, if his lawyer had done so then he had not informed Malcolm. In fact, Malcolm did not mind dying at all because there was nothing left to live for now that Paula was gone. They had found him guilty of her murder and that hurt a lot. But, on reflection, he had had plenty of time to think about it, his wife would know that he had not killed

  her. Soon they would be together. He couldn’t wait to join her; he just wished that he knew when it would be.

  He went over it all again in his tortured mind, the shock and the tragedy, the grief that had blinded him to all else. He had been shaving in the bathroom that fateful morning when he had heard Paula going downstairs. If she had walked slowly, carefully, like he was always telling her to do, then she would still be alive today and he would not be cooped up in this pokey little cell waiting to die. But Paula was fifteen years younger than himself and she did everything at teenage speed.