The Kill Call

31

Saturday

A series of gritstone buildings stood at the end of a long drive, guarded by a locked gate. Fry could see nothing grand about any of the buildings, nothing to justify their secluded position. This was hardly Chatsworth House, or any other stately home.

‘Take a closer look,’ said Cooper, passing her the binoculars.

‘What is this place?’

‘The hunt kennels.’

‘The Eden Valley Hunt?’

‘Right,’ said Cooper. ‘This is where the hounds are kennelled.’

Many of the structures were single storey, their slate roofs darkened by rain. A couple of vans with muddy wheel arches stood in the yard. Fry could hear the distant sound of barking dogs.

‘The huntsman and kennel man live on the premises,’ said Cooper. ‘The building to the right is the flesh house.’

‘The what?’

‘Well, you know about the flesh run?’

‘Jesus, do I want to?’

‘Like a lot of hunts, the Eden Valley provides a service for farmers,’ said Cooper. ‘It collects fallen stock – dead and sick animals, or ones that just don’t happen to have any value. They pick the dead ones up from the farm, or put live animals down humanely, if necessary. It’s a real boon for farmers. Fallen stock would cost them the earth to dispose of, otherwise. The regulations make incineration expensive, and you can’t bury animals on your own property, the way a lot of farmers used to.’

‘But what do the hunt want with dead livestock?’ asked Fry. She turned her head to listen to the sound of high-pitched barking drifting from the kennels – a wild, haunting sound that must have struck terror into the heart of many a fox. ‘Oh God, I think I know already.’

‘You do?’

‘There are about forty damn big dogs in there.’

‘Hounds. Eden Valley Hunt have sixteen and a half couple – thirty-three hounds.’

‘And big dogs take a lot of feeding, don’t they?’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Cooper.

Fry felt sick to her stomach. She couldn’t bear to look at the innocuous grey stone buildings any more, couldn’t stand to hear the barking any longer. The images in her mind were too vivid, and too bloody.

‘Can we get away from here, please?’

She knew what Cooper was doing – he was trying to make her see the hunt differently, to convey a picture of some kind of essential cog in rural life, regrettable but necessary. So far, it wasn’t working.

But Cooper hadn’t finished yet.

‘The kennel man does the flesh run, collects the fallen stock from farms all across the hunt’s area. He uses a captive bolt pistol to kill any animals that need putting down. Then he skins them, guts them, and feeds the carcasses to the hounds. A pack like the Eden Valley’s can get through a lot of raw meat in a day.’

‘This place is no better than the abattoir,’ said Fry.

‘Well, they’re serving a similar purpose.’

‘If you say so.’

Fry lowered the binoculars. The hunt was gathering again for the second time this week. Something called a lawn meet, she was told. It sounded ridiculous, and created images in her mind of people playing croquet on horseback.

‘Let’s get this straight,’ said Cooper. ‘The Eden Valley Hunt aren’t doing anything illegal. Neither are the owners of the abattoir where horses are slaughtered. So anyone who tries to interfere with their legal activities by obstruction or intimidation is committing a crime, and is liable to be arrested. Right, Diane?’

Fry could feel her jaw tighten. Strange, but she’d thought this would be a safe subject, a way of keeping Cooper off more personal topics. So why was it that he seemed able to make any subject unsettling?

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We could never condone vigilantism, by animal rights activists or anyone else.’

‘I’m glad about that.’

‘But it’s still disgusting.’

Cooper looked at her, but she couldn’t meet his eye.

‘Everything ends the same way, Diane,’ he said. ‘Animals don’t live for ever. Farm livestock are there for a purpose.’

Everything ends the same way. She supposed that was right – for humans, as well as animals. It was just a question of how much pain you had to go through first.

Cooper suddenly seemed to lose interest in the direction of the conversation. He pointed beyond the kennels.

‘See down there, on the road?’ he said. ‘About a hundred yards short of the gate to the kennel drive.’

‘Yes. There’s an old Bedford van parked up on the verge.’

‘That’s the sabs’ van. They’re on kennel watch. They’re waiting for the hounds to leave, so they can follow them to this morning’s meet. Sometimes, if the hunt expects to be sabbed, they try to change the location at the last minute from the one listed on the meet card.’

‘If the van is there, that means the animal rights activists are due back in the area today.’

‘Right,’ said Cooper. ‘Well, it’s the last hunt of the season. They’ll want to go out on a high note.’

‘Speaking of which,’ said Fry, ‘I’d really like to follow up the hunt saboteurs’ claim to have heard the kill call before the hunt on Tuesday morning.’

‘You think the kill call was real, Diane?’

‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘I believe in the kill call.’

They went back to the car, and Cooper drove up the road two miles from the kennels to where the hunt was gathering at the home of a member.

Cooper surveyed a scene that he had once thought would be a vanishing tradition, no more than a memory in the British countryside. Everyone was in correct hunting dress this morning, of course – gentlemen in three-button red coats with brass buttons, white breeches, and top boots. The traditional bowlers and top hats had disappeared now, though, in favour of protective hunting caps to meet safety standards.

‘See, no one in tweed jackets, except for the small child there,’ he said. ‘It’s not acceptable dress. And there are the hunt staff – the huntsman and kennel man. The joint masters, and then the mounted hunt followers. Plus all the foot and car supporters. It’s quite a crowd, isn’t it?’

They had found a spot in a small stretch of woodland overlooking the meet. A dense cover of brambles and dead bracken, trees still bare but for the thick, strangling snakes of ivy wrapped round their trunks.

‘Are you actually a member of the hunt, Ben?’ asked Fry.

‘Of course not. But my brother Matt is.’

‘Really? I’ve seen your brother. What’s he like on a horse?’

‘He doesn’t ride.’

‘So how come farmers are members of the hunt? I thought they were all supposed to be poor. I heard the subscription is more than a thousand pounds a year.’

‘Farmers get a reduced rate. Masters have to keep them on side, or they’d have nowhere left to hunt.’

As Peter Massey had said at Rough Side Farm, farmers committed no offence as long as they didn’t knowingly allow illegal hunting on their land. As they watched, a terrier man was letting his dog scent along the hedgerow. But that meant nothing, either.

‘This is the end of the hunting season?’ asked Fry.

‘Mid-March, yes. There’s Flagg Races on Easter Tuesday, and that’s it.’

‘What races?’

‘Flagg. You’ve never heard of it?’

‘Is there a reason I should have?’

‘Well, it’s on our patch.’

‘Ben, there are all kinds of little out-of-the-way hobbit burrows on this patch that I’ve never heard of. Half of them haven’t seen a human being for years. Some of them are so small you can’t see them for the nearest telegraph pole. Why would I have heard of this one in particular?’

‘Because it’s where the races are held.’

‘For God’s sake -’

Cooper looked at her. ‘Are you all right, Diane?’

‘I wish people would stop asking me if I’m all right.’

Cooper shrugged. He’d thought Flagg’s point-to-point races were pretty famous, in their own way.

‘The protestors are gathering in the lane,’ said Fry. ‘Discussing tactics, you think?’

‘More than likely. They’re usually well organized.’

Once, when Cooper had been on hunt policing duty as a uniformed officer, one group of saboteurs had turned up with something called a ‘gizmo’, a sort of modified loud-hailer which played tapes of hounds in cry to distract the pack away from the quarry. He’d watched them drive along a dirt track in their van, playing their gizmo, with the hounds running towards them from a field away and loping along behind their wheels. And then there were the ubiquitous sprays – cans of Anti-mate, or a home-made brew concocted from citronella or garlic – anything that would mask the scent of a fox.

These days, of course, the hunt only followed a fox-based scent mixed with vegetable oil, laid by followers.

‘Tarmac and concrete won’t hold scent for long,’ said Cooper. ‘Wet ground provides good scenting conditions, but not in heavy rain – the scent gets washed away.’

‘Just like our DNA and trace evidence.’

‘Yes.’

Of course, it wasn’t always a scent that attracted the hounds. The hunt wasn’t riding through local villages to exercise the pack any more, not since someone’s pet cat had been killed by them early one morning. You’d think the sight and sound of a few dozen hunting dogs would be enough of a warning to a cat, let alone the scent. Cooper could smell these hounds himself.

‘Now, if we get among the horses, Diane, remember that a red ribbon on the tail of a horse means it’s liable to kick, so avoid passing behind it.’

‘Don’t worry. I have no intention of getting behind a horse ever again.’

‘Oh, I heard.’

Fry changed the subject rapidly.

‘Hunts are always policed, whether there are protestors or not. And we do make arrests sometimes, don’t we?’

‘The hunts expect it.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You’ll find every hunt supporter carries a Countryside Alliance membership card. If they get arrested, they’ll use their right to a telephone call to phone the CA legal team. So they get expert legal advice from the word “go”.’

‘There’s the huntsman now,’ said Fry.

‘You recognize him?’

‘Yes, I’ve spoken to him. John Widdowson.’

‘Widdowson?’ said Cooper. ‘That reminds me, Diane – there was something I meant to mention to you.’

‘What?’

‘There was a Naomi Widdowson on Walsh’s list of complainants in the Trading Standards investigation. But she was also one of the IPs on the Horse Watch list. I know you told me those calls weren’t so important any more, but I didn’t like to leave the job half finished, so I tried again. It turned out she was the owner of the Dutch Warmblood mare. Miss Widdowson. She sounded a bit annoyed when I told her who I was.’

‘When did you speak to her?’ asked Fry.

‘Yesterday morning, while you were out with Gavin.’

‘I see. Well, she was annoyed because we’d just visited her and got her back up.’

‘Oh, of course.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Fry, ‘This Dutch -’

‘Warmblood.’

‘What was its name?’

Cooper hesitated. He was always nervous when faced with that tense, expectant expression from Fry. Every time, he felt as though he might be going to let her down.

‘Its name?’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask.’

Fry groaned. ‘Who’s on duty this morning? Luke Irvine or Becky Hurst? Whoever it is, give them a call and get them to check. Right now, Ben.’

‘I’ll have to get out of these woods,’ said Cooper. ‘There’s no signal here. I’ll walk back down to the car.’

Almost as soon as Cooper had left her alone, Fry became aware of several figures in balaclavas appearing silently through the trees. They were carrying pickaxe handles and baseball bats. She stood facing them, hand on her extendable baton, ready to fight if necessary, but knowing there were too many of them.

Motion attracts, she kept telling herself. If you stay completely still, they don’t see you, even if you’re right out in the open. It’s movement that the eyes notice. The instincts of an animal. Motion attracts.

For two minutes, nothing seemed to happen. Fry tried to take in as many details as she could. Four men, she counted. Camouflage jackets, black balaclavas, only their eyes showing, like bank robbers anxious to avoid security cameras. But there were no cameras out here, no witnesses to identify them later. Only her.

Though it was broad daylight, and the woods couldn’t be more different from the back streets of Birmingham, her mind overlaid the scene with memories of a dark night. She felt as though she could sense other bodies, further back in the woods, watching, laughing, waiting eagerly for what would happen next. Voices murmuring and coughing in the darkness.

Something had stirred up the images that she always tried to keep buried. Today, once again, those dark forms seemed to loom around her, smudges of silhouettes that crept ever nearer, reaching out towards her. They merged with the trees, like creatures that had risen from the undergrowth.

She remembered the movements that crept and rustled closer, the reek of booze and violence. She was waiting for the taunting laughter, for that familiar voice to break into her mind, coarse and slurring in its Birmingham accent. ‘She’s a copper.’

Some form of communication seemed to take place between the men around her. One of them stared at her keenly, as if he knew her, or would know her again if he saw her.

And then they slipped away through the trees as quickly as they’d come. Fry breathed a sigh of relief, and realized that her hand was starting to cramp where it had been gripping the handle of her ASP.

She thought of calling in the incident. The group had been armed with baseball bats and pickaxe handles, after all. But her reluctance stemmed from her fear of being a bad witness, a dread of expending her colleagues’ time and effort for no worthwhile result.

She also knew she’d recognized the first man, just as he’d recognized her. She felt sure he was the same hunt steward who had stared at her on Tuesday as she’d waited for the hunt to go by.

But there was a difference. On Tuesday, she hadn’t been able to recall where she knew him from. Her powers of recognition had failed her.

This time, she knew who exactly he was.

‘Diane?’ The voice was Cooper’s, instantly reassuring.

‘I’m here.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Did you see them?’ she said. ‘The hunt stewards?’

‘No,’ said Cooper.

She stared at him, not sure whether she could believe him. Whose side was he on, after all? The realization that she had no one she could trust made her suddenly, irrationally angry.

‘Why did I come to this place? Why do I put up with these people?’ She gestured at the people down on the road, at the hunt kennels, at the whole world in general. ‘Horse-eating, fox-hunting, baseball-bat-wielding Neanderthals.’

Cooper gazed after her in amazement as she strode off. ‘That’s a bit unfair.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Diane,’ called Cooper, ‘don’t you want to know? Becky Hurst has come up with some information for us.’

Fry stopped. ‘And?’

‘We have to get moving, if we want to make a quick arrest.’