Animal Instinct

by Animal Instinct (retail) (epub)

  ‘You are now part of an official murder inquiry. I know a good solicitor, Sandra Gillespie. I’ll call her first thing.’ He took a sip of Luke’s beer. ‘You’ll plead guilty to possession with intent to supply. It’s a first offence so you might get lucky – maybe a suspended sentence or a community order.’ He paused for effect. ‘But whatever the court does will be a day at the beach compared to what Mum and I will do if you ever go near drugs again. Is there any part of that you don’t understand?’

  Luke shook his head. His face was set hard, a picture of youthful defiance, but he said nothing. Joe’s back was aching. He needed to calm down.

  ‘I’m going to get a drink,’ he said. ‘When I get back, I want to know all about Bella.’

  He went into the pub and bought two sausages and a pint of Guinness. When he got back to the table, Luke was staring into his empty glass. Joe placed the sausages in front of his son. Luke pushed the plate away, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

  ‘Didn’t Mum tell you?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I’m vegetarian.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Last week. I saw a thing on YouTube about pig farming and veal and foie gras. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Would you rather get fish and chips?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘Nothing with a face.’

  Joe shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’

  He took a bite of sausage. Luke watched him for a moment then cleared his throat.

  ‘I played Danny Zuko.’

  Joe frowned. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The John Travolta part. In Grease. That was me.’

  Joe swallowed the morsel of sausage. ‘I know. I was there.’

  ‘Until the interval. You had to leave.’

  ‘Luke, I got a call—’

  ‘About a case. I know. It was important.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was always important.’

  Joe took a sip of his pint. ‘Would it help if I said I was sorry?’

  Luke shrugged. ‘You’ve been sorry my whole life.’

  ‘And I still am.’

  Luke gave a small smile. ‘“What’s done is done, cannot be undone”.’

  Joe raised an eyebrow. ‘Shakespeare?’

  Luke nodded. ‘Lady Macbeth.’

  ‘School wasn’t all wasted, then.’

  ‘Nope.’

  Luke fell silent. Joe waited a moment, staring out to sea before bringing the conversation back to the matter uppermost in his mind.

  ‘Do you have any idea what happened to Bella after she left the pub on Monday?’

  Luke shook his head. His expression was surly. Joe persevered.

  ‘Did she say anything about being worried, or scared? Did you see anyone following her? Did anyone else talk to her in the pub? Marky? Dylan? The “Connection”? Anyone? Is there anything that might be relevant to how a friend of yours ended up hanging from a meat hook?’

  Joe saw a thought flit across his son’s face.

  ‘There was a bloke she thought was creepy,’ he said. ‘He was always watching her, trying to be friendly.’

  ‘Did she tell you his name?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘She said he was an electrician.’

  Raoul Jonas.

  Joe recalled the emaciated man who had wired the Panda-cam. The ‘Desperate Dan’ chin. The badge on his T-shirt.

  The more I see of people the more I like my dog.

  ‘She also said she’d had a row with her dad,’ said Luke.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘He was always nagging her, driving her nuts, triggering panic attacks.’

  Joe thought for a moment. ‘Did she mention anyone else? Felix Goodchild? Liam O’Mara? Tom Lycett? Her sister Saffron?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that everything, Luke? You dropped her in the pub car park and that’s the last you saw of her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Joe sipped his Guinness. Despite the tension in his shoulders, he could feel himself starting to unclench for the first time today.

  ‘You realize there’s another angle to this?’ he said.

  ‘You mean, Mum?’

  Joe nodded. ‘She had to stand down from the case. Her first murder inquiry as SIO.’

  A smile played on Luke’s lips. ‘So she’ll have time for a holiday. It’s like I did her a favour.’

  Joe’s felt his heart harden. He remembered the chewing gum and the roll-up. Both were in the yoghurt pot in the MGB’s glove compartment. He finished his drink and stood up.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Luke remained seated. Held out his empty glass. ‘A last pint for the condemned man?’

  Joe frowned. ‘Sometimes I feel like I don’t understand you at all.’

  He turned and headed for his car. Luke called after him.

  ‘I was only trying to impress a girl, Dad. Sound familiar?’ Joe kept walking. His son’s voice grew louder, more insistent. ‘Carol Dixon? Elephant enclosure, nineteen eighty-one Ring any bells?’

  Joe stopped and turned. The boy looked small.

  Young.

  Scared.

  He walked back to the table and hoisted Luke’s rucksack over his shoulder. He kept his tone even.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you home.’

  13

  1981

  ‘The elephant graveyard is a myth,’ declared Joe. ‘Total bollocks.’

  Dave Munday rolled his eyes. ‘Joe’s going to run away and join the circus,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘If he doesn’t bore us all to death first.’

  ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials echoed around the zoo’s picnic area, blaring from the snack bar’s radio. Joe had done his best to position himself next to Carol Dixon when he and his Holy Trinity classmates collapsed on the grass with their packed lunches, but Dave had outmanoeuvred him. Trying another tactic, he turned to the paddock, watching the African elephants lumbering behind the matriarch. Six females with two calves bringing up the rear. The bulls were off at a distance.

  ‘People think elephants know when they’re going to die so they go to a special last resting place but that’s not true,’ said Joe. ‘What happens is, they have six sets of teeth during their lifetime and…’

  ‘Six sets of teeth?’ said Dave, snaking an arm around Carol’s shoulder. ‘Sounds like Ken Dodd.’

  Joe stifled a sigh. ‘It’s number four on the questionnaire. Do you want the answer or not?’

  Carol shrugged free of Dave’s arm.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  The top two buttons of her blouse were undone, revealing a gold crucifix nestling against her pale throat. Joe glimpsed what he took to be a bruise but realized was a love bite. Jealousy shot through him like an electric shock.

  ‘Six sets of teeth,’ he said, wrenching his thoughts from the memory of Carol and Dave huddled in the back of the minibus. ‘Each bigger than the last. The final ones are ginormous, the size of a brick, eight inches long…’

  ‘Want to know what else is eight inches long?’ said Dave.

  ‘In your dreams,’ said Wendy Mills. ‘Come on, Joe, spit it out.’

  ‘They get to an age where their last set of teeth fall out so they can’t eat the stuff they usually do.’

  Dave feigned a yawn but Joe saw Carol jotting notes on her clipboard. The sight kindled a spark of hope.

  ‘That’s when they go off to find a marshy area where the plants are easier to eat. And that’s where tons of elephants die, but it’s not ’cause they know they’re going to a graveyard, it’s just where they end up.’

  Dave shovelled crisps into his mouth.

  ‘How do they fuck?’

  Carol gave him a dig with her elbow.

  ‘For starters,’ said Joe, ‘it’s always the cow that decides if she’s up for it or not.’

  ‘Story of my life,’ grinned Dave.

  He finished his crisps, scrunched the bag into a ball and lobbed it over the bars of the enclosure. Joe prete
nded not to notice.

  ‘There’s fierce rivalry between males,’ he said, catching Dave’s eye. ‘Especially for the matriarch. She won’t have it off with any old ele, he’s got to be the leader of the pack.’

  Dave nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

  The two boys held each other’s gaze. Munday was first to crack. As he looked away, Joe continued for the benefit of Carol, and others who were taking notes.

  He noticed a lone boy, the same age, sitting cross-legged on the grass a few yards away. A floppy blond fringe, the sort Joe associated with boys from posh schools. He was fiddling with a black and gold signet ring, eyes focused on the elephants, but Joe knew he was eavesdropping.

  ‘If a bull takes a shine to a female in heat,’ Joe said, ‘he’s got to watch he doesn’t get beaten up by the older males, so he oozes what they call the “innocence secretion”.’

  ‘Disgusting,’ said Dave, his words muffled by a mouth full of Scotch egg. ‘Some of us are trying to eat.’

  Carol’s pen hovered over her clipboard. ‘What does the innocence secretion do?’

  ‘It sends a message that he’s no threat because he’s young,’ said Joe.

  ‘But how do they actually do it?’ said Wendy Mills, opening a bottle of Tizer.

  ‘The bull approaches from behind, lays his trunk on the female’s back, mounts her and… does the deed.’

  Dave fixed Joe with a look. ‘Anyone tries that with my bird, he’s dead.’

  The boy with the signet ring cast a scornful look in Dave’s direction then got to his feet and headed away, passing the sign for the gorilla house.

  ‘Look,’ said Carol, pointing at one of the baby elephants. ‘He’s dancing.’

  ‘He’s a “she”,’ said Joe. ‘She’s not dancing, she’s limping. They’ve got soft, sensitive pads on their feet. She probably stood on something sharp.’

  ‘Poor baby,’ said Carol.

  Joe looked around for a keeper but the picnic area was deserted apart from his classmates. Their teacher, Mrs Johnson, had gone in search of a toilet and the boy with the floppy hair had disappeared. Fifty yards away, people were queuing outside the snack bar, their backs to the enclosure.

  On the radio, The Specials gave way to an oldie, ‘Devil Gate Drive’. An image of Suzi Quatro in black leather wafted into Joe’s mind’s eye. He wondered what Carol Dixon would look like in black leather. Then he took the apple from his lunchbox, got to his feet and walked towards the enclosure.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Carol.

  ‘To sort out her foot,’ said Joe. He started to clamber over the perimeter fence.

  ‘Wait for a keeper.’

  ‘Won’t take a sec.’

  Dave yawned. ‘I wonder who he’s trying to impress.’

  Joe dropped to the other side of the railings and crossed the patch of grass towards the barrier that encircled the paddock. The baby ele was just yards behind the fence, raising her injured foot every few steps as she followed the elephant Joe assumed to be her mother.

  The other females had gathered in a circle. If Joe moved quickly he could act before they noticed him. He turned quickly, to be sure that Carol was watching, then knelt and held out the apple. The baby elephant saw it and changed direction, heading his way. As she reached the fence, she raised her foot again, as if inviting him to tend her injury.

  Joe saw the problem: a shard of glass wedged between her nails. Some moron – some idiot like Dave Munday – had lobbed a bottle into the enclosure. The ele lowered her foot then raised her trunk, nuzzling her pink tongue at the metal bars, trying to reach the apple. Joe held it out of reach then, as she raised her foot for a third time, he tugged at the piece of glass. It came away easily. The ele was given her reward. The apple vanished in seconds.

  Joe turned to his classmates, grinning in triumph, raising the shard to show Carol. He wondered if King Arthur had felt this proud presenting Excalibur to Guinevere.

  Carol was no longer looking.

  Instead, she was lying on the grass, flat on her back, her face obscured by the back of Dave Munday’s head as he clamped his salt-and-vinegar lips to hers.

  Joe’s stomach lurched but he knew he was still on show. The rest of the group was watching – Wendy was clapping – so he took a mock bow, even as he felt the jealousy surge. Straightening up, he saw Wendy’s expression change: admiration turning to alarm.

  ‘Look out!’

  He turned, suddenly aware of an enormous shadow looming over him. In that instant, he felt the coarse, leathery trunk of the five-ton bull elephant snaking around his chest, hoisting him high into the air, then hurling him onto the ground inside the enclosure.

  The shock was nothing compared to the fear. Sprawled on his back, pain shooting from his hip, he was aware of the cries of his classmates but amid the confusion he knew he had seconds before the elephant came at him again. Dragging himself to his feet, he was knocked sideways by a swipe of the elephant’s trunk.

  As he hit the ground, an image came to him. A wildlife documentary. An elephant crushing a bison’s head with a single stamp of its foot.

  He heard shouting.

  Saw a figure clambering over the fence.

  The floppy-haired boy.

  Flat on his back, Joe watched the youth grab a branch from the pile of discarded browse and run at the elephant, brandishing the bough, shouting at the top of his voice.

  It worked.

  The bull elephant turned to the boy, raising its trunk, trumpeting loudly, spreading its ears in a display of aggression.

  The boy yelled to Joe.

  ‘MOVE!’

  He backed away from the elephant, luring it away from Joe, swirling the branch in the air. Joe scrambled to his feet. The pain in his leg was excruciating. Half limping, half crawling, he squeezed through the horizontal bars of the inner fence.

  ‘Keep going!’ yelled the boy. He backed away from the elephant. Thrashing the ground with the branch. ‘Keep going!’

  Joe reached the perimeter fence. Arms grabbed him, pulling him to safety. He collapsed onto the patch of grass where moments earlier the worst thing in the world had been the sight of a girl being kissed.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Carol’s voice.

  Joe could only nod. He turned to the enclosure, watching his rescuer make it to the railings and clamber to safety. The boy hurled the branch aside. He headed straight for Joe and yelled in his face.

  ‘Idiot!’

  Joe tried to speak – an apology, a thank you – but the words wouldn’t come. He heard Dave Munday’s voice.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Adam Pennefeather. My family owns this place. You’re lucky your moron friend isn’t dead.’

  The last thing Joe saw before blacking out was the boy’s signet ring; the last sound he heard was his voice, fuelled by adrenalin and fury.

  ‘Stupid fucking idiot!’

  14

  Squinting against the morning sun, Joe fell in step with the crowd and followed the Panda-cam signs. Free admission was a factor but judging by the queues at the turnstiles, people hadn’t been deterred by the stiff wind blowing in from the east.

  Nor by the murder of a young woman.

  If anything, Bella’s death added a macabre frisson to a ‘family day out’. Joe had overheard visitors talking in subdued tones, comparing notes on what they’d gleaned from the newspapers and TV. One or two seemed disappointed that the crime scene tape had disappeared, along with the police cars and SOCOs, but whether the ghouls liked it or not, life at Pennefeather’s was returning to normal.

  On the surface, at least.

  With Saffron and Isobel unable to bring themselves to attend, Liam, Adam and Felix were the only members of the family who would witness the two-minute silence in her memory. The event struck Joe as mawkish but he kept his opinion to himself. When it came to family matters – especially bereavement – outsiders were wise to go with the flow.

  The day before, Joe’s o
wn fragile family had presented a united front, as he and Katie had accompanied their son to Canterbury police station. Luke had spent two hours being questioned by Bryan Messenger, Katie’s successor as SIO.

  The beer-bellied DI, less than a year from his pension, was not normally one to work on a Sunday. But he was plainly cock-a-hoop at being handed a high-profile inquiry. Pleased to be getting one over on a rival and keen to make his mark.

  According to Katie, Luke had slammed back into the house at lunchtime, mumbling that the interrogation had been ‘intense’ but declining to elaborate. He’d spent the rest of the day in his room, curtains drawn, emerging only to eat eight slices of Marmite on toast.

  She’d decided against giving him a roasting. Too upset. Too angry. Joe knew she would subject their son to what he and Luke had dubbed ‘Mum’s silent treatment’.

  Despite everything, he was relieved that Luke had told the truth. Drugs were a headache but the situation could have been worse.

  Much worse.

  Reaching the seating area around the Panda-cam stage, Joe caught sight of the giant image that filled the screen. Gazing down on the crowd was the smiling face of Bella Pennefeather. The picture changed, morphing into another photo of the dead girl, younger – perhaps fifteen – blowing out candles on a cake. As the slideshow continued, Joe saw an image he recognized: Bella’s freckled face – tanned, happy, her mischievous blue eyes full of life. With a start, he realized it was the photo that Adam had given him five days earlier, when there had been hope of finding Bella alive.

  He checked his watch. Still a few minutes before eleven but already the crowd was standing-room only. A sizeable number – three hundred, maybe more – had squeezed into the clearing where the strong wind buffeted the horse chestnut trees. The atmosphere was muted, respectful. No one wore black but Joe noted that the volunteers and keepers were sporting yellow ribbons; a mark of respect.

  A TV cameraman was setting up at a discreet distance, towards the rear of the crowd. Joe caught sight of other journalists, including Chrissie McBride. Sporting sunglasses, jeans and a leather jacket, the Kent Today reporter gave a smile and a small wave. He nodded in reply.