by Mike Pannett
Algy arrived in his 1934 Frazer Nash, a great beast of a car that roared up the drive raising a cloud of dust.
‘Where’s old Dobbin?’ I asked, as he reached outside the driver’s door and yanked on the handbrake.
He clambered out of the seat and removed his goggles. He was frowning. ‘Dobbin?’ he repeated. Then his face broke into a grin. ‘Ah, you refer to the recalcitrant Horatio. The gallant Lord Nelson.’
‘Aye, grand day like this I thought you’d fancy a ride out.’
‘Between you and me, Michael old chap, I’m starting to wonder whether I haven’t bought a pig in a poke, as my late father would say. I’m no longer convinced that horsemanship is destined to be a feature of Algernon’s CV. If the Birdsall Hunt is to engage my services it may have to be as a mere hanger-on, a camp follower, a supporting player. I can see myself mingling with the gallant hunters with a tray of sherry glasses held aloft and cheering them as they gallop off over hill and dale.’
‘You’re still struggling then?’ I said.
‘No longer, alas. I’m afraid the struggle has been suspended. I am on the point of unconditional surrender.’
‘No, no, no,’ I said. ‘You can’t give in now. You can do it. You just need a spot of tuition. And here’s the very woman who’ll put you right,’ I added, as Ann came out to admire the car.
‘That would indeed be a help. Any chance you could help a duffer like me get the hang of this riding lark, Sergeant Barker?’
‘How long have you had him now?’ she asked.
‘Well, let’s see, I must’ve had him a week or two before we went on our maiden voyage . . . That is, when we came around on New Year’s Eve.’
‘And have you made any progress at all? Been out practising?’
‘Ah well, that’s the point. I did find that first ride somewhat trying, so I sort of – well, I decided that the best policy was quieta non movere.’
‘Quieta what?’ I said. ‘Algy, mate, are we talking the same language here?’
‘No no, do excuse me. It’s Latin. Roughly translated, it means let sleeping dogs lie.’
‘Ah,’ Ann said, ‘so what you’re saying is, you haven’t been on his back since we sent you home that night?’
Algy looked as sheepish as it’s possible for a man to look when he’s wearing a deerstalker hat and a paisley cravat and has his hands encased in long leather gauntlets. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t.’
Ann gave a little sigh. It was probably too faint for Algy to hear, but I knew what it meant. It meant she’d be round as soon as possible to sort the daft bugger out.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘d’you want to step inside and talk about house prices?’
A lot of people underestimate Algy. Because he talks in that colourful way of his, and has an eccentric lifestyle, they assume he’s one or two bricks short of a full load. They’re wrong. Yes, he inherited money, but he’s invested it cleverly and built on his good fortune. He’s a very shrewd businessman and he can drive a hard bargain. So he wasn’t about to let Keeper’s Cottage go at a knockdown price. He named a sum and stuck to it. And once Ann and I had had time to reflect on the sum he was asking, we realised we would struggle to pay it as things stood.
‘Well,’ I said, as Algy roared off down the lane, ‘that’s that. It’s well out of our range.’
‘Oh no it isn’t,’ Ann said.
‘Well, how can we manage that on our salaries?’
‘I’m not suggesting we can.’ Ann stood there looking at me. Her face was set, her lips pursed, and her brow furrowed. If I had to guess I would’ve said she was looking . . . determined. ‘We just have to . . . what’s the phrase? Adjust our parameters.’
‘Come again, love?’
She rubbed her thumb and first two fingers together. ‘We need to make more money – which means that PC Pannett needs to crack on and pass his exams. If you were on a sergeant’s pay we could probably match his asking price.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘You usually are. OK, I’ll give it a go – but I’ll be relying on you to help me.’
‘Help you?’ she said. ‘I’ll be standing behind you ready to kick your rear end.’
Chapter 3
Snout and About
‘Cubs, you say?’ As one part of my brain concentrated on noting down what the man on the phone was telling me, the other part was frantically trying to dredge up what I knew about young badgers. Adults I’d had some dealings with, but the young? I’d never had much to do with them.
‘Two of them. I see . . . And what sort of state are they in, sir?’
He said they seemed fine, but that they were obviously orphaned.
‘So are you in a position to stay with them till I can get over?’
‘No problem,’ he said, ‘I’m here all morning, making charcoal. Got a stack of timber to put in my kiln. They’re not going anywhere.’
I looked at my watch. ‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘Look, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Let’s say eight thirty.’
I put the phone down and went to my locker to look for the notebooks I still had from my wildlife course. What the hell do you do with baby badgers? Had we covered that? For an awful moment I was reminded of Walt’s tale about his dad, serving them up as a Sunday roast, wrapped in pastry. He’d be locked up today, of course – but that was back when times were hard, in the 1930s and if they could trap it, or shoot it, they’d eat it. I put the thought from my mind. Right now I was already more concerned about my personal safety. There was no way I wanted to handle a pair of adolescent badgers. Cubs are born in February, and they don’t come out from underground until May time, and by then they’re a fair size. If you find one in the open early in the year it’s a fair bet someone has dug into the sett and killed the adults, and it was more than likely that that’s what had happened in this case. What was troubling me was that these youngsters would be four months old now. No way would they come quietly. But even as I shuffled through the chaotic muddle of circulars, notebooks and copies of legislation in my trays, something was starting to nag at the fringes of my memory.
I went back to the front desk where Chris Cocks was stirring his tea and reading a case file I’d submitted the previous day. ‘Sarge?’
‘What is it, Mike?’
‘Am I imagining it, or is there a lass they call the badger woman?’
‘Lady,’ he said. ‘We call her the badger lady.’
‘Thought so. I was sure I’d heard about her. Doesn’t she take in waifs and strays and so on? Injured animals, like?’
‘She’ll take in anything. Pets, wild animals, birds . . . even been known to take in a thirsty copper and give him a drink of tea. Lives across the river in Norton. And it’s your lucky day. I have her details right here.’ He opened a drawer in a desktop cabinet and riffled through a stack of index cards. ‘But her speciality, as you’d say, is badgers. No idea why. Ah, here you go.’ He pulled out a card and inspected it.
‘Thank God for that,’ I said. ‘Y’know, it’s all very well being a wildlife officer, but . . .’
‘But people expect you to know all about wildlife, right?’ Chris didn’t look up, just ripped a page out of the pad on the desk and scribbled the phone number down for me. ‘You’d think they’d have more sense, wouldn’t you?’
‘What, to assume I know – yeah, thanks Sarge.’
‘Pleasure. And let’s just hope the lady’s at home.’ He looked at me then and asked, ‘Got your tetanus shots up to date?’
‘I’m not that daft, Sarge.’
I suppose it’s the same with any kind of so-called expert, or specialist. You can’t be expected to know everything; but you do need to know how to find things out, who to call on. That’s the key to it. And in my line you rely on your contacts. Normally I’d have gone to one of my gamekeepers. They’d know what to do. But Nick had just taken off on an African safari, and my other reliable source of information was out on the moors all week on some sort of National Park survey. As
I dialled the number Chris had given me I made a mental note to call on Rich, another of my gamekeeper contacts, next time I was through Hovingham.
The phone rang several times. I was just starting to wonder who the hell I was going to call next when the lady I was after picked it up. I explained what had happened. ‘Where are they?’ she asked.
‘Howsham woods. There’s a guy burning charcoal up there—’
‘Oh, Phil somebody?’
‘That’s right. He found them this morning.’
‘What’s he done with them? Are they still running loose?’
‘No, he’s got them under a tub of some sort. Turned it over on them. He assures me they won’t get away.’
‘Where shall we meet?’
‘Oh, you’re happy to come out then?’
‘No offence intended, but I wouldn’t want them to fall into the hands of an amateur, however well-meaning.’
I took the main road out of town and headed west, dropped down to Kirkham, then climbed up the other side of the Derwent valley, swinging past the Stone Trough to hit the woods at the point where the road turns towards Westow. The badger lady was already there, rummaging about in the back of her estate car amidst a tangle of boxes, wellington boots, blankets, cages, pet carriers and leashes.
‘Mike Pannett,’ I said.
‘Jean,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Jean Thorpe.’ She pulled out a stout plastic crate with a hinged lid, and looked towards the woods. ‘Can we get any closer? ’Cos there’s two or three miles of track in there.’ She handed me the crate. ‘You don’t want to be trailing along with this thing, do you now?’
‘Not on a morning like this,’ I said. It had started out bright enough, but now the sun had been obscured by a towering, white-topped cloud. There was hardly a breath of wind.
‘I think I know where to find him,’ I said. I’d got to know the basic layout of these woods the previous year when I made a series of visits to Gerald, the naked cyclist. I remembered seeing one of Phil’s metal kilns smouldering away, but I’d never met the man himself. ‘Let’s shove this in my old Puddle Hopper here and we’ll go down together.’
We followed the rough road along the side of the cornfield, then into the woods proper, climbing a steep, rutted track.
‘There he is. Or at least, there’s his workings, d’you see?’
I was looking at a metal sectional kiln about six feet across and four feet high, beside which was a neat stack of logs, graded by thickness, and all about two feet long. A few yards away, standing by an earth bank, was our man, wearing khaki trousers and a black T-shirt. ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘I see they’ve sent the A team. Which one of you’s going to take them on?’
There was no need for an answer. Jean was already approaching the sett.
‘Someone’s been busy here,’ she said. ‘Look at it.’
You can tell a badger’s hole by the great piles of soil they throw out. But there were several mounds of freshly dug earth around this one, and broken roots, upturned stones, trampled greenery. I knew what it meant: men with dogs, bent on tormenting an adult badger, had been attacking it with spades. All in the name of sport, and without a thought for the young, who could starve to death for all they cared.
‘Animals,’ I said.
‘I’d rather you didn’t call them that,’ Jean said. ‘They’re not worthy of the name.’ Then she turned to Phil. ‘So, where are these young ’uns?’
‘Just over here.’ A few yards away Phil’d got some kind of galvanised metal tub, turned over and weighed down with a large piece of wood.
Jean walked towards it and crouched down. She was wearing a pair of leather gauntlets that reached almost to her elbows. ‘Let’s have a look,’ she said, wiping the sweat off her face before kneeling down and carefully lifting one edge of it a few inches clear of the leaf-mould and faded bluebells. A dark snout appeared, snuffling. She carefully lowered the tub. ‘Right, Mike, can you hand us the crate?’
I set it down beside her and then stood well back. I’ve seen how badgers can behave and needed to give her some room to operate in. I was wondering what I would do if one came bolting out.
‘Cute, aren’t they?’ Both of the cubs were snarling and flailing out with their sharp claws as Jean picked them up, one after the other, dropped them smartly into her crate and closed the grilled lid. Now that they were safely locked in I edged forward to have a closer look at them. They were indeed exquisite, with their luxuriant fur dark at the tips, paler underneath, their heads marked with the familiar black and white stripes, their eyes as bright as little jewels.
‘Aye, they’re cute enough, so long as you don’t get into a fight with them,’ Phil said.
‘Oh yes, they know how to look after themselves.’ Jean picked up the crate, which rocked in her hands as the two occupants hurled themselves at the lid, trying to find a way out. ‘Until they come across a gang of men with dogs bred for the express purpose of killing. Well, thanks for calling us – and for watching over them.’
‘What’ll you do with them?’ Phil asked.
‘Feed them, water them, and when I think they’re ready to fend for themselves I’ll set them free, as near to this place as I can.’
Before we left I grabbed some police tape out of my vehicle and marked off the area around the disturbed sett. One thing they’d hammered into us on the wildlife course was that it was always worth getting the scene of crime officer in to examine a site like this. It might be a bit of a long shot, but there was always the chance that there might be some sort of forensic evidence: a fibre, some DNA material, perhaps just a footprint. The fact is, a crime had been committed – and, like any other, it deserved to be investigated. The SOCO would take and file photographs too. You never know what sort of incidents will come up in the future. And if you have a record, you can maybe establish links.
I followed Jean back to her house. I wanted to see what kind of set-up she had for looking after wild creatures. I was surprised, then, to find that she lived in an ordinary detached house on an estate on the edges of Norton. Even her garden wasn’t that big, but it was a little wildlife haven. Just inside the gate was a large aviary, with creepers running up the sides and a large tree overshadowing it. As we walked around the side of the house a frog hopped across the path in front of us. There were kennels, nesting-boxes, a couple of small ponds, and in her garage a pair of stalls, carpeted with straw. She let the badger cubs into one, and put out some water and a bowl of dog food for them. ‘So who’s next door?’ I asked, looking at the neighbouring stall. She laughed, and opened it up for me.
‘Blooming mallards,’ she said. ‘They’ve got to be the world’s worst parents. They lose their own young, collect a few off other birds, and then wander off into the rushes and leave ’em to their own devices.’ She looked at the huddle of fluffy brown-and-yellow chicks, most of them fast asleep. They were a tangle of downy feathers, beaks and oversized feet, crammed into one corner as if they’d been washed up there by a tidal wave. ‘And then the public, God bless them, bring them to me. I’d fifteen of them, last time I counted, and I think they came in four different lots.’ She closed the door, pausing to lift the lid of a large chest freezer. Inside was a plastic tray full of frozen chicks, not unlike the ones we’d just seen sleeping peacefully. ‘Day-olds,’ she said. ‘I get them from a poultry breeder. They’ve either died or aren’t viable. I feed them to any ferrets I get in, or foxes. Or owls, or badgers. The list, as they say, is endless. Anybody around here finds anything, it’s “Take it to Jean”.’
‘I thought you’d be in a farmhouse, with a couple of acres,’ I said, as she showed me into her kitchen and filled the kettle. ‘Somewhere out in the country.’
She emptied a large china pot and spooned some fresh tea into it. ‘Grab a seat,’ she said, moving aside a bowl of water with her foot. Three floppy little black-and-white puppies followed it, tumbling over each other and starting to chew on my trouser leg. Jean bent down, scooped them up
and dropped them in a basket across the other side of the room. ‘You’ll find I’m not sentimental about animals. What do they say about nature, that it’s red in tooth and claw?’ She filled the pot with boiling water. ‘Well, it’s not far off the mark, is it? So why do people go all mushy?’
She poured the tea and shoved a tin of biscuits towards me, then said, ‘But to answer your question, about me living here – go on, help yourself – I would be out in the country, no question about it, if I’d had any idea I’d end up doing all this.’ She picked up a computer printout and passed it across to me. ‘Even have a website now. And you know, it all happened by accident.’ She looked at her watch. ‘How you doing for time? Because I don’t want to keep you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘There’s nowt spoiling.’ I know my colleagues think I spend too long supping tea and chatting, but to my mind this was another recruit to my army of contacts, people who would help me out, pass on information, advise me, educate me. You can’t learn if you don’t make time to listen, and you can’t listen if you’re always dashing. I’ve said it before: you can’t police 600 square miles effectively without getting the community behind you.
‘It all started after my dad died. We went through his things, the way you do, deciding if there was any memento we wanted for ourselves. I picked out his binoculars, ’cos he liked to sit in the window and watch the birds. It was barely a month or so after we’d buried him. I was in this kitchen baking a pie. I’d just put it in the oven and for some reason I picked them up and looked out of the window, over towards Howe Hill.’ She got up, and pointed. ‘You can still see it, look, across the field. And I spotted three badgers, under a sycamore tree, young ones, looked as though they were playing. And out of curiosity I got a book out of the library and started learning about them.’ She laughed. ‘Next thing someone’s rescued one from a trap and I’m hand-rearing it, then I’m giving talks to the W.I., and before you know it it’s turned into a full-time job. I even get the odd little donation now – you know, people who read about me in the paper and slip a tenner through the door in an envelope.’