by Rebecca King
“Look closer.”
Peregrine studied the area a little closer.
“A little closer.”
Peregrine studied the ground at their feet.
“You aren’t going to see anything on this ground. Like you have said, it is likely that nobody has ventured in here for years.”
“It’s a damned fool that ventures in here now,” Peregrine snorted.
“Yes, but not for the reasons you suspect. The idiot thinks it is to his advantage that he can hide in places that people don’t venture into. Unfortunately, he will leave markers that point to where he has been, but only to people who know where to look. Don’t be in such a rush. Watch.” Joshua stepped toward the trees and pointed out a new wound on the one closest tree trunks where a small twig had been torn off.
“Look around at the others. Not one of them has damage like this. All of them are moss covered or intact. This is damaged. Look at the ground. We know from the trail that he came into the woods past this exact spot.”
Peregrine lifted his brows and turned to study the other trees. About three feet away there was another tree where the branches had been broken. Fresh leaves now sat on the otherwise decaying forest floor. He looked askance at Joshua and stepped toward it.
“Now look at the twigs on the floor over there. They could only have been broken by a heavy weight. The rest of the twigs in that area are untouched. Any forest animal, a fox, a hedgehog, or a badger, wouldn’t be heavy enough to break them.”
The men followed the trail; a meandering path through the less dense undergrowth which eventually led out to a small clearing on the other side of the woods. Joshua then pointed out a patch of grass that looked to have been cut recently.
“Only animals will cut the grass down so uniformly short. I think it is safe to assume that a horse has been standing here munching while waiting for his owner to return. Look at these hoof prints.”
Peregrine cursed. “Can you follow them?”
“Thankfully, it didn’t rain last night so yes, we are going to,” Joshua smiled. “Just don’t go charging ahead. There are probably all sorts of hoof prints in this field which don’t belong to the horse we need to follow, but it shouldn’t matter too much. We need to make sure we follow the ones we need, not the ones that are easiest to see.”
“What are you?” Peregrine growled.
“Better than you at following trails. It is what I did in the army, don’t forget. You must be trained by people who know what they are doing. It is difficult, but is a skill you never really lose.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay and become part of our team? What the hell are you doing in London with tracking skills like yours? The local team need you.”
“I am able to track through countryside. I never said I wanted to live here,” Joshua muttered.
“Do you like it in London?”
While the men had worked together on many occasions in the past, they had not had much time to truly get to know each other. Still, Peregrine understood the bosses all thought very highly of Joshua who had proven himself to be a skilled marksman, an excellent tracker, and someone who everyone trusted with their lives.
“It brings its challenges,” was all Joshua said. “I don’t like it and I don’t dislike it to be honest with you. Since I have joined the Star Elite, I have been far too busy chasing up and down this damned country to think about life in general much. There isn’t really anywhere a man is able to call home with jobs like ours.”
“I had heard that you were the son of a Viscount something or other,” Peregrine murmured as he squinted off into the distance and tried to remember where he had heard that.
Joshua shifted uncomfortably for a moment.
Their eyes met.
“I am a Viscount,” Joshua admitted eventually. “Just one who refuses to adhere to my family’s stringent dictates. When they decided who I should marry, I decided enough was enough and joined the army. It was the best thing I could do. It ended a life of privilege but gave me far more.”
“You don’t regret it?”
“While rank and title might mean something to some, and sounds wonderful to people who don’t have anything, it comes with certain obligations and expectations that can suck the life out a person. It is difficult to gain one’s own identity because you are always living up to tradition; standards set by other people. You are raised to face a life of obligation where you have all this money; so much money that you can do what you want whenever you want, and most people don’t ever question you over it. However, the choices in your life are rarely your own. You are told which house you must spend your life running and living in by your forefathers and family heritage. You are told what to spend your money on by how good a job your forefathers have done keeping up with the maintenance of said vast estates they chose not you. Moreover, in order to keep the family name going you are even told what children to have. Boys are good, girls are to be frowned upon and largely kept in the nursery out of sight, once you are told which family yours should be connected to, of course. Not even my damned wife would have been my own choice. Marriages are for the betterment of the family name, the best connections, and nothing to do with personal interest. It’s no more than a sodding business contract with the heir a prize stud.” Joshua looked quite frankly at Peregrine and lifted his brows. “Could you live like that?”
“I think I would rather go off to war and die on the battlefields. That is no life,” Peregrine snorted.
“Then you will understand why when I returned from the army I refused to answer my father’s summons to return home so he could tell me who I was going to marry. I joined the Star Elite instead. Since then I have worked in London and have lived my life the way I see fit. It is not the kind of life that suits most, but it works for me. I like it.”
“Nobody blames you,” Peregrine murmured softly sensing Joshua’s disgust. “In fact, the men don’t know about your title. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. I think one thing that is unique about the Star Elite is that the men all have their own histories, problems, and joined for their own personal reasons, but mostly for a different way of life. None of us are the kind of men who are prepared to follow the stringent dictates of society, much less our families. I know some of the others have titles as well, but they don’t use them and wouldn’t ever dutifully follow their family’s orders and marry just to continue the family name.”
“Marriage isn’t for me. I cannot think of anything worse than being shackled.”
“There is nothing to say that you have to be. I am not married, and I have to say that I have no interest in ever being married. I like my life, and don’t see why I should change it for anybody. I haven’t for my own family. I certainly won’t for some addle-brained chit who needs looking after.”
The men grinned at each other.
Peregrine nodded to the ground at their feet. “Do you think you can follow them?”
“Let’s give it a go, shall we?”
With that, they began to follow the fresh hoof prints in the soil.
For miles and miles, Peregrine and Joshua walked with their heads down, slowly but steadily moving from one field into another. They didn’t stop until a small village came into view.
“Where is that?” Peregrine asked with a squint. “Is that Bamtree?”
“Yes,” Joshua murmured, not taking his eyes off the direction of the hoof prints. “Let’s go.”
Miles later they arrived on the outskirts of a small cluster of houses. The hoof prints they had followed ended at a five-bar gaze alongside which ran the only road that led into Bamtree. Even before the men stepped onto the road, they saw the muddy trail the horse had left behind having walked for several miles through mud.
“How many break-ins have there been?” Joshua asked as the men followed the trail down the road toward the lower half of village.
“Four before last night. All four houses were burgled, we think because they were remote. But the people
who occupy them don’t have much wealth. What they did have of any value was stolen, though. It is mostly money that has been taken. But other things have been stolen too, like Mrs Asquith’s vase. That was very old, and while it wouldn’t raise a fortune, it could be sold at a pawn shop and make the thief a coin or two.”
“It doesn’t strike me that the burglar is someone who wants to make money from his ill-gotten gains.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you aren’t going to get something financially from committing crime, why do it? What do you hope to achieve? The victims haven’t been offered the protective services of a local thug or something, have they?”
“No, I don’t believe so. It would be difficult to protect the occupants out here because they all live so rurally. Besides, the thugs who are likely to do that kind of thing all live in the towns where the shops are more affluent, and the shop keepers can pay them more. They wouldn’t venture all the way out here to steal vases,” Peregrine reasoned.
“Which is why the burglar has to be someone who knows the area well. Now they may be paupers, in which case we have somewhere to start to look for the culprit. We should ask around if any of the poorest villagers have suddenly started to find their circumstances improve a lot. However, the thief may be burgling houses for the thrill of it. They may be foolish enough to think they can challenge us. In which case, we are going to have to look for someone who is arrogant and scornful of the Star Elite.”
“Why start to kill, though?” Peregrine mused.
“It doesn’t make sense that a burglar would take to murdering his victims. However, maybe Julian did disturb the burglar, and had to be murdered. Maybe the burglar was interrupted by Mr Smitherson who also struggled with him. Having killed once, the burglar wouldn’t hesitate to kill a second person,” Joshua said.
“Why would the knives be in rooms where the struggles took place, though?” Peregrine sighed.
“Because the killer may have kept one with him in case he was accosted,” Joshua argued.
“Whatever is going on, we have to catch this blackguard sooner rather than later. People are becoming scornful of the Star Elite. They know we work in the area yet are unable to catch whoever is doing it.”
Joshua nodded. “Which is why the thug keeps doing it. Whatever made him start to kill people, he knows he is making us look foolish and incapable of stopping what is happening. Of course, there is nothing to say that the killer is the same person who is burgling houses.”
Peregrine froze. “What?”
“The killer and the burglar might be two separate people.” Joshua shrugged. “Nothing can be discounted right now. Let’s face it, the people we usually deal with are hardened criminals; serial killers, kidnappers, gangs of pickpockets, fraudsters, and people who blackmail the innocent to pay them for protective services they really shouldn’t need. None of them are children, or foolish. They are arrogant and will look for any opportunity to commit their crimes. It isn’t impossible that the killer is making the most of the burglaries to claim his victims knowing that the burglar is going to take the blame when he is caught.”
“But who could it be?”
“That’s for us to find out,” Joshua sighed. “We will. It just takes time.”
“Are you seeing more than one trail?”
“There are plenty of footprints, plenty of hoof prints, but no proof that there is an accomplice to this burglar, no,” Joshua countered.
“This doesn’t feel like the work of someone who is out for something they can get hold of for nothing,” Peregrine whispered. “It feels like the work of someone who is burgling houses for the thrill of being able to make fools of us.”
“I know.”
“Can we not persuade you to stay in Leicestershire?” Peregrine asked a short while later.
Joshua grinned. “I have only just arrived, and you want to make my secondment a permanent arrangement.”
Peregrine waved a hand to the road behind them and the open fields beyond. “We have managed to achieve more in one day that the entire team have managed in a month. It isn’t that we cannot do our job it is just that we cannot patrol seventy miles of open countryside and keep watch over several hundred houses at night. Now I know why the boss demanded you come and help. With your tracking skills we could have the blackguard under arrest by the end of the week.”
“Let’s hope you are right. But, I think we need to create this ruse and try to lure our burglar out before he kills again. He knows this area well because the trail we have followed doesn’t meander. It is direct, sure, and in a straight(ish) line. Whoever made this trail knows exactly where he is going.”
They both turned to face the cluster of houses before them once more. From where they stood the small village of Bamtree looked just like any other quintessentially English country village. Thatched houses of all shapes and sizes sat amongst an array of various other buildings, the requisite shops, a tavern, and a church. Peregrine and Joshua knew that in the centre of the village was a village green in the middle of which was a duck pond. It was all very quiet, very peaceful, and very isolated.
“Now who in the hell would want to live here?” Joshua hissed before shaking his head in disgust.
“People do,” Peregrine grinned, although could fully understand the man’s sentiments. He lived in town, and even that wasn’t busy enough sometimes. “It is different to London’s hustle and bustle, isn’t it?”
Joshua shook his head. “It is difficult to believe that two such vastly different places could belong in the same country. London’s streets, all filled with grime and dirt-covered people, seem a million miles away from this, this-”
“Tranquillity?” Peregrine grinned at him.
“If you want to call it that. It is just difficult to go from one to the other and not be a little shocked by the change in lifestyles,” Joshua sighed.
“Well, for now, all we need to focus on is who does live in a place like this, and what in the heck they get up to at night because from the look of these tracks one thing is certain; the thief or killer, maybe both, lives in Bamtree.”
Joshua turned around and began to retrace his steps.
“Where are you going?”
“I cannot be seen, remember?” Joshua called back without slowing his stride. “I have another job to do.”
CHAPTER THREE
Joshua muttered a curse and dropped the shirts he carried into the top drawer of the dresser in his new, albeit temporary home. He listened to the almost constant knocking on the front door with only half an ear but made no attempt to answer it. He suspected that his unexpected guest was one of the villagers who had decided to come and try to find out everything they could about him so they could pass the gossip on to others. But Joshua wasn’t prepared to indulge them just yet, not least because he wasn’t feeling particularly sociable.
Having spent the last couple of days following the trail of the killer and burglar, the Star Elite had concluded that they were looking for one person. A thief who had taken to killing his victims. However, they had been unable to find any link between those victims, or reasons as to why the burglar had started to murder.
“I am really starting to resent having been called to Leicestershire. It was good for a while, but now I am fed up of fields, bloody trees, and too many curious villagers. At least in London you can go where you like and nobody pays you any attention. Here, every time you step outside you are watched by people who are better at surveillance than the Star Elite,” Joshua hissed.
He couldn’t help but miss his old way of life. This new rather quiet, countrified life was most definitely not for him. It was too quiet, too isolated, with nothing much happening, even with the latest investigation. He was used to noise, hustle and bustle, people everywhere and smog, plenty of thick, cloying smog. He wasn’t used to crisp mornings, empty streets and absolute silence.
“It’s so damned quiet I can hear myself breathing,” he grumbled.
“Muttering to yourself again, eh?” Hamish grinned from the doorway.
“The last thing I need is bloody gossipy locals to go with it,” Joshua grunted before slamming the dresser drawer closed with a resounding bang.
“You are going to have to answer your door sometime,” Hamish warned around his unrelenting smile. “They aren’t going to go away and you cannot hide in here forever.”
“I don’t want to take tea with the sodding locals. I am here to put on a show of wealth. The boss never said I had to be sociable,” Joshua growled.
“There is a pretty lady on the doorstep,” Hamish teased. “She is local, and highly sought after. She lives next door as a matter of fact. Her name is Miss Annalisa Carrington, and she is here with her aunt, Yvette. From what I hear, she is a prize catch. Annalisa that is, not her aunt.”
“Well, the local lotharios can have her. I am not interested. Just as soon as this investigation is over, I am heading straight back to London. You won’t catch me living here that’s for certain, pretty ladies or not,” Joshua growled.
“So, why be afraid of answering your own front door then?” Hamish lifted his brows when Joshua threw him a dour look. “They are two women. You can’t be afraid of them, surely to goodness? What kind of investigator for the Star Elite are you to fear two innocent women?”
“I am not scared, all right? I just don’t want to have to answer their bloody questions,” Joshua grunted. “Women are nosy, gossipy, and probing.”
“Well, look at it this way, they are also messengers. If you tell those two anything, it is going to be around the village by nightfall. That is what we want, don’t forget. Talking to the neighbours is going to save you the job of parading around the village flashing your gold watch and cufflinks like a dandy and being forced to socialise with people you really don’t want to stop and pass the time of day with. I mean, you don’t want to be social, do you?” Hamish ducked out of the room and laughed when he heard the resounding bang of a boot slamming into the door.
“Damned nosy women,” Joshua grunted, but knew Hamish was right.