The Hunting Party

by Lucy Foley

  It was about a year ago that Julien said, very casually, one evening, ‘I’ve got a friend. He’d love you to design a website for him. He’s left the City and he’s trying to set up a business. What do you reckon?’

  Did I know, even then, that there was something off about it? It’s only with hindsight that I can see the way he asked it was a little too casual. That he was drumming his fingers against the kitchen counter: a direct contrast to his tone. That he would hardly look at me as he spoke. There was also the fact that he had never up to that point seemed to think much of my skills in website design, or my little business idea: to set it up as a company, seek out commissions. He had called it my ‘project’, as though I were making a quilt.

  It would only be my second commission to date – the first had been for a friend’s baby shower. But I decided to overlook my misgivings. I assumed that the reason for his shiftiness was that this was clearly a bit of a pity project, whatever else he claimed. He earned enough money for the two of us put together, more than we needed, but I think he knew that my pride had been hurt by my own lack of success. So, to tell the honest truth, I didn’t look too closely into it. Not then. And it would be a useful showcase, I thought. It would be helpful simply to have another happy client under my belt: to share on my website, via my social media. You have to have a bit of a body of work to entice others. A bit chicken and egg, but there it is.

  ‘Should I send him a quote?’ I asked Julien. ‘Because I hope he knows I’m not going to work gratis.’ I didn’t want this guy to think that just because I was his mate’s wife I would do him a freebie. I might give mates’ rates, certainly, but I was a professional. My time was valuable. It had been a long time since I had felt really useful to anyone professionally, if ever, and I was going to savour the feeling. That was my biggest worry at the time. That I might be humiliated by working for free.

  ‘Don’t worry about the money,’ Julien said. ‘He’s already reassured me that he’ll pay you handsomely.’ He grinned. ‘Some in cash, some in a bank transfer – so you don’t have to declare it all to HMRC if you don’t want to.’ Well, that wasn’t exactly a concern. The company hadn’t made any money yet – it was unlikely it would be in profit by the end of the tax year. Surely Julien knew that?

  Even then I didn’t feel any particular suspicion. Should I have done? He was my husband, for God’s sake.

  It was only when a payment of £50,000 arrived in my bank account, and when Julien returned home from ‘watching rugby at the pub’, with the same amount in fifties, that I became suspicious. ‘Julien,’ I asked him, ‘what the fuck is going on?’ He grinned awkwardly, spread his hands wide. ‘This is just what he wants to pay you,’ he said. ‘He was so pleased with the work. He has absolutely pots of money, so this is just like loose change to him.’

  I might even have believed him, if I hadn’t seen his eyes.

  ‘Julien,’ I said, sharply, so he knew there was no bullshitting me, ‘this money is in my account. So whatever else, I am now involved in whatever the fuck is happening here. And I am your wife. So I think you need to tell me everything, right now.’

  ‘It will be good for us, in the end,’ he said, blusteringly. ‘I … I suppose you could say I saw an opportunity.’

  ‘What sort of opportunity? Outside work?’

  ‘Well,’ he gripped the back of the chair in front of him, hard. ‘I suppose you could say it is connected to work. Loosely …’ He seemed to gather himself. ‘Look, it was just – sitting there, right in front of me. There was some information that I was aware of, and it would have been completely stupid not to use it.’

  It was then, finally, that it struck me. ‘Oh my God, Julien. Oh my God. Do you mean insider trading? Is that what you’re saying to me? Is that where this money comes from?’

  I knew the truth less from anything he said then than from the way his face drained immediately of all colour. ‘I wouldn’t call it anything as formal as that,’ he said. ‘No, it’s nothing like that. I’ve just given a couple of people a bit of a nudge. Friends. Nothing really big. This sort of thing happens all the time.’

  I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. ‘I think what you mean, Julien, is that people get arrested all the time.’

  Only the other week I had been reading about Ray Yorke, a partner at one of the big investment banks who was serving time for trading secrets with his golf buddy. As they made their way around the course he’d casually dropped in titbits of information – supposedly not realising that his mate was trading on the information, and making millions in the process. He claimed he didn’t realise even when he started accepting the gifts his friend pressed on him: a Rolex watch, jewellery for his wife, parcels of cash. When he was caught, his life had ended. He’d lost his job, he’d gone to prison, his wife had divorced him, he’d never work in finance again. CNN had shown an interview of him outside the courthouse practically weeping: offering himself up as a cautionary tale. And of course, in the process, he’d had to give it all back – and then some.

  I’d had zero sympathy for the guy. Who, I had thought, could be that fucking stupid? It had seemed so obvious to me. Of course you get found out for something like that, in the end.

  As it turned out, my husband could be exactly that fucking stupid. ‘What on earth is wrong with you, Julien?’ I said. ‘You’re like a gambler, always in for one more hand.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Manda, I don’t know what to—’ And then suddenly his face had changed, hardened. He stopped the expansive innocent guy routine, he called off the cringing, hand-wringing mea culpa. ‘Well, I suppose it’s easy for you to say, Miranda,’ he said. ‘But you seem to forget quite how much you enjoy this life. The holidays – Tulum, the Maldives, St Anton – they don’t come for free, you know. Half the time you seem to be sitting around reading some kind of brochure for holidays that cost more than some people earn in a year. Or the boxes that turn up from Net-a-Porter every season, or the five hundred pounds you pay every month to your fucking nutritionist. Yes, I earn a lot. But we have practically no savings. And now you’re talking talking talking about having children – do you know how much private school costs these days? Because of course the children of Miranda Adams couldn’t go anywhere so lowly as a free school, like I did. And university, now they’ve hiked the fees? And with only one of us working …’ He looked me straight in the eye. ‘My job isn’t as secure as you think it is, Miranda. The financial crisis wasn’t all that long ago. And then we’d have been screwed.’

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘You can’t put this on me, Julien. This is your fuck-up.’

  Perhaps I should have seen it coming. Because this is how he has always been. He didn’t grow up in a well-off household, like me, with a solid family unit. His mum was a single parent. It cost her everything to put him through university. Though you would never know it, from the way he acted there. He has a profound shame of the fact that he used to be – not even poor – from a lower income family. He has a fear of looking bad – which is what poor is, in his mind. It’s like he has always felt the deficit. Perhaps if it weren’t this, it would be something else. It would be an affair, for instance, or a gambling addiction. Maybe I should even be grateful that it isn’t something more, something worse: though it’s difficult to imagine what that would be, right now.

  DOUG

  It is dark, late. This is his favourite time. He has the whole place to himself – finally. Or at least he thought he did, until he came across that idiot guest, the one who had pestered him about the Wi-Fi, the one with the handsome, punchable face. Julien. When the torch beam passed over him he was walking along the track that led from the Lodge to the cottage where he and his wife were staying. But it was about an hour after all that awful noise from the Lodge had stopped – and after the lights had gone off.

  The man had started in surprise when he caught him with the torch. He had looked like an animal, like one of the herd, fixed in the Land Rover’s beam. His face had worked, as
though he were wrestling with himself as to whether he should explain what he was doing out so late. But in the end he had settled for a grimace and a nod, and continued on his way without turning back. He looked as guilty as a man could look. He had the hunched shoulders, the stiff, mincing walk, of someone who had been up to no good. Doug would bet that the man had not expected to see anyone else on his way. And in whatever he was doing, he had been caught out.

  That, at least, had made up for the interruption to his peace. Thinking about it now, he smiles.

  He has taken the dogs out with him. Griffin and Volley: Griffin a beautiful flat coated retriever with a mouth as soft as velvet, and Volley an Australian Shepherd, beautiful too, but also strange-looking, with one milky blue eye and a marbled coat like ink dropped into water. They actually seem to like him, seem not to sense the darkness in him in the same way that people do.

  Both of the dogs are skittish, excited, this evening. It’s the promise of the snow in the air, he’s sure – the scent sharpening, metallic, strange. There has been nothing in the forecast, but in a place like this you learn to trust what you can see and smell over any supposed science.

  He’ll have to go and warn the bloody guests about it tomorrow. There could be a lot of it coming. If they need any groceries for the next few days they’ll have to let him know by this evening. If it’s a bona fide dump, the track will be impossible to navigate, even in the Land Rover – even with the snow tyres on. No one will be able to get back in here. Or out.

  He picks up a stick from the path and throws it. It disappears outside the beam of his head-torch beyond his vision. Both dogs hurtle after it, their sight keener than his. They are almost a match for speed, though Griffin is getting old, and slackens her pace first. Volley bounds ahead, true to his name, and takes the prize, tail wagging furiously, an unmistakable air of triumph in the proud way he holds his head.

  At times like this Doug breathes easier.

  Now, Volley has dropped the stick, and begun to whine. ‘What is it boy? Hey, what is it?’

  Griffin has caught the scent too. They begin to follow it, muzzles down. A rabbit, perhaps, or a fox. Maybe even a deer, though they don’t tend to come around the side of the loch as regularly. Then Doug hears something a little way off: the noise of a large animal passing through the undergrowth beside the path. ‘Who’s there?’ he calls.

  No answer, but the unmistakable noise of snapping and tearing continues, at a greater pace. Something – or someone – is running from them.

  The dogs tear ahead, after the sound. He calls them back. They turn and trot back to him; reluctant, but obedient. If it’s another of the guests, the dogs could terrify them.

  Doug flashes the beam of his torch on the earth around him and illuminates a man’s footprint a few feet ahead. Just one; apparently this is the only part of the path soft enough to take an impression. A large foot. He places his own inside it: roughly the same size. Might be one of the guests of course, though he would be very surprised if they’d got this far from the Lodge in their evening explorations. He’d heard them down by the lake before supper, but he doubts they would have ventured much further in the dark. And this boot has a good tread on it. The London guests all turned up wearing city people’s idea of rugged outdoor wear – Dubarry boots and Timberlands.

  The Icelanders then, perhaps, with their proper boots. But the question remains: why would any of the guests have run away, when he called?

  He often comes out at this time to check for anything untoward. Some of his night-time forays, however, are not so intentional.

  Once he woke up and discovered himself lying in the damp heather a little way from the other end of the loch, near the deserted Scout camp. It was the middle of the night, but luckily there was enough of a moon for him to see where he was. He had no memory of how he had got there, but his legs ached as though he had been running. His hands stung. Later, in the light of the cottage, he would discover that they were lacerated by cuts and grazes, in a couple of places very deeply.

  He could not remember anything that had happened before this point. Once, as a boy, he had a general anaesthetic. It had been a black curtain coming down upon his consciousness, a light switched off, the time lost like the blink of an eye. These were like that. Great mouthfuls of time swallowed, leaving voids in their place. He could have been anywhere. He could have done anything.

  It had happened to him in the city, too. That was worse: then he had ended up on the other side of town, had come around wandering in unknown streets, or lying in a children’s playground, or stumbling his way down a railway siding.

  There is a word for it, a word that sounds like a piece of music: fugue. A beautiful word for something so terrifying. They were brought on by the trauma, the psychiatrist said. They were a symptom, not a condition in and of themselves. The first thing he had to do was start talking about what had happened to him. He understood that, didn’t he? Because this problem, while so far it hasn’t caused any great harm other than a few confusing nights – well, it could be dangerous. For himself. For others around him. After all, there was already the incident in question: the very reason he was having the sessions.

  ‘Yes,’ he had said, looking the psychiatrist right in the eye. ‘But that didn’t happen in a fugue state. I knew exactly what I was doing then.’

  The psychiatrist had coughed, looked uncomfortable. ‘Still: I think we have established that both the incident and these episodes, directly or less so, stem from the same trauma.’

  There had been an enforced number of sessions, though the psychiatrist wrote in her report that she believed they needed more. He double-checked: this was only advisory, not mandated. He was free to ignore her advice. He couldn’t quite believe that he had got off so easily, and he suspected that she couldn’t, either. It had stuck with him though, the idea that he could hurt someone: not intentionally, as the other thing had been, but without even knowing what he was doing. So instead of getting to the bottom of the issue – because he didn’t think he could ever talk about that day, even if it were to save his life – he has come somewhere where there are very few people that he could hurt.

  He waits for a while longer at the edge of the trees, his ears prickling for any further movement. But there’s nothing, and the dogs seem to have lost interest too. He turns and tramps back along the path in the direction he has come.

  When he returns to the cottage he lies back on his bed, fully clothed. Allows himself, finally, to hope for the possibility of sleep.

  The room is spartan. Here there are no pictures upon the walls, no knick-knacks on the shelves, which hold only a couple of slim volumes: a book of short stories, a collection of poems. He never reads these days, but they are clues, tethers to the person he used to be. There is nothing here to tell you about the man who inhabits the room, unless the nothing is in itself a clue to something. It has the anonymity of a prison cell. This, if one knew him, which no one does well, is no coincidence.

  He turns onto his side, and closes his eyes. It is a mimicry of sleep. If he is lucky he will get perhaps an hour – maybe even two – of rest. He has learned to exist on this, to drink enough coffee to combat the dizziness, to take enough painkillers to mask, as much as possible, the migraines. There was a time when he used to sleep the deep, untroubled sleep of an animal. He cannot imagine it now. That life belonged to a different man. Now every time he closes his eyes he sees their faces. With pleading eyes they ask him: Why us? What did we do to deserve it? Their hands grope for him, catch at his hair, his clothes. He can feel them on him – he has to fight them off. Even when he opens his eyes he can feel the ghost traces of their fingertips upon his skin: cobweb memories.

  NOW

  2nd January 2019

  HEATHER

  After I call the police, I dial the boss’s number, in London. I don’t get through to him first, of course: it’s a silken-voiced PA. ‘How can I help?’

  I tell her everything. There’s a stunned silen
ce on the line, then: ‘I’ll put you through to him,’ she says, in a much more ordinary voice, as though she has quickly decided that the husky purr isn’t appropriate here.

  He comes on the line quickly. ‘Hello Heather,’ he says, as familiarly as if we talk every day on the phone like this. From the one time I met him, I remember him being quite handsome (though difficult to say whether that was just the effect of good grooming, and all that charm), with the smile of a politician.

  ‘It’s bad,’ I say. ‘We found a body.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Oh, God.’ But he doesn’t sound particularly shocked. Instead, I am certain I can hear him thinking – just like the politician he resembles – of how to manage this, of how to protect the estate.

  ‘And I’m afraid it doesn’t look like an accident.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘You’ve called the police, of course?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘just before I called you.’

  ‘I’d come up,’ he says, ‘but I’m not sure that would help matters.’

  ‘It’s likely you wouldn’t be able to get here anyway.’ I explain the situation with the weather, the fact that we’re essentially snowbound here.

  ‘It was Doug who found the body, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’ He asks it with a new sharpness in his tone. Maybe he’s wondering if there’s any way he could be sued for this.

  ‘In the waterfall near the old watermill.’

  ‘OK. And did you see anything? Did Doug?’

  ‘No – nothing in particular.’

  ‘Does Iain know, too?’

  ‘Er … no, not yet. He would have left on New Year’s Eve, once he’d finished his work for the day.’

  ‘Well, he’ll still need to know, of course. Important that you put him in the loop too.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Of course. I’ll try him now.’

  ‘Do. And keep me posted with any updates please.’