by Liz Evans
A quick glance downwards confirmed the T-shirt was long enough to cover my confusion - if not much else.
‘Hi, Zeb. Excuse the flashing.’
He flicked a half-hearted wave in my direction. "S OK. I hadn’t noticed.’
I decided he wasn’t being diplomatic. This was a real facer. Not only was I rapidly sliding over the hill, but my pulling factor was fading fast.
(Not that I wanted to pull Zeb. He was a pleasant enough looking bloke, with the eyes - and occasionally the friskiness - of a Labrador puppy, but not my type at all. However, a girl has her pride.)
I guess the pique showed on my face, since Annie felt obliged to explain Zeb was a bit tired as he’d just come off duty at the local CID office. ‘He’s undercover. He’s had to put in a bit of hard graft for once.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Annie,’ he objected. ‘Undercover means you don’t tell the whole bloody world, in case you’ve forgotten.’
‘It’s only Grace, she’s not going to blab to the bad guys, is she?’
‘Well, you never know,’ he muttered.
‘Zeb!’ Annie snapped in her best don’t-mess-with-me big sister voice.
I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I knew his remark hadn’t been intended as an oblique knock at my ignominious departure from the police while I was under suspicion of taking bribes from local low-life. He was just displaying his normal talent for sucking his own toes.
The import of what he’d implied finally got through the thatch of untidy light brown hair. ‘Oh? Yeah! Sorry, I didn’t... I mean, we’re still not certain who’s involved, so you might say something to someone . .. quite innocently, you know ...’
It was like watching a fluffy bunny squirm on a meat hook. I put him out of his misery by telling him his grovel was accepted. Anyway, Annie was right - he did look rough.
With an enormous yawn, he swung his ankles over one arm of the sofa whilst he wriggled his shoulders into the cushion at the other end. The movement let his coat swing back. I caught a glimpse of an identity badge clipped to the belt of his jeans. I was interested to see that Zeb was now calling himself Craig Stillwell. (A change that probably came as something of a relief when your parents have lumbered you with ‘Zebedee’ and the world regularly greets you with ‘BOING!’) I just managed to read the last fraction of the company name (‘ainers’) before he saw me noseying, and thrust it into a pocket.
‘Don’t get comfortable there,’ his loving sister ordered. ‘I’ve work to do. Go home to your own bed.’
‘Yeah. In a tick.’ With another jaw-cracker, Zeb stretched and arched his back.
My request to borrow the computer was turned down on the grounds it was already surfing the net on Annie’s behalf. It looked like I was going to have to throw the contract to Jan (and pray that God had mercy on its syntax).
The only spare clothes I had at the office were my best three- piece suit, which consisted of a dark grey pin-stripe jacket with interchangeable short skirt and trousers. I pulled the skirt on and retrieved the photo wallet. If my thighs and butt couldn’t make the twenty-mile trip out to Wakens Keep, at least I might be able to manage the three miles to St Biddy’s and start on my search for Barbra’s second lucky legatee (please God Hiawatha was an orphan!).
I slung Barbra’s contract in Jan’s typing tray on the way out, and after a quick trip home to exchange the skirt for jeans, I bumped Grannie Vetch’s Sunbeam up the iron steps from my basement flat and sat down with great care. I found if I stayed sitting fairly still and pedalled with my legs bent outwards at the knees, I could get along quite well.
About a mile outside St Biddy’s, Carter had said when I asked about the Indian parrot’s possible roosting place. When people say you can’t miss it, you usually can - by miles. However, in Carter’s case, he’d been right. The insistent thrumming of a drum beat could have come straight out of a John Ford Western (generally the scene before the wagon train’s attacked by hordes of whooping Apaches).
The estate looked like it had once belonged to someone who thought they were important. The driveway curved away from the chained iron gates with their large ‘Keep Out’ notice. There didn’t seem to be any bell or other means of attracting the owners’ attention. Luckily the ten-foot brick walls on either side were crumbling sufficiently to provide a decent set of footholds. Tucking the photos in my waistband, I laid the bike down in the overgrown grass along the verge and heaved myself up and over the parapet.
I had to jump for it but the soft carpet of leaf loam on the other side provided a good enough shock-absorber. The trees and shrubbery must have been planted by the house-owners. Out here we were too near the flat marshlands of the coast for such a profusion to be natural. At present they were in full midsummer leaf, which meant that most of the sunlight was obscured and it was oddly cold and gloomy. It was almost as if I’d entered another dimension.
The timpani section, which had been working itself into a frenzy in the distance, fell silent with an abruptness that made my heart jump into my throat. I recalled Carter’s joke about being afraid when the drums stopped. It was a joke, right?
There were sounds in here I hadn’t noticed before. Rustlings and murmurings - as if something, or things, were stalking me.
A dried branch cracked loudly behind me. I swung back. And was confronted by a seven-foot nightmare of horns, yellow eyes and brown fur, its huge mouth a gleaming cavern of ivory teeth and red flesh.
8
I did what any reasonable woman confronted by a demon from Hades would do: prayed that devils kept their family jewels in the same place as mere mortals and brought my knee up - hard.
The roar that erupted from the slavering jaws indicated he was going to find biking as uncomfortable as I did for a few days.
I headed in what I hoped was the direction of the house. Why I felt that way was any safer, I can’t think now. After all, Mrs Moloch and her little devils could have been heating the oil in anticipation of someone dropping in for lunch, for all I knew. But unless you’re a bat, daylight somehow seems to offer more hope than darkness and I could see the bushes thinning out and the promise of open ground ahead.
I was aware that the whispers and rustles around me were getting nearer. I’d got close enough to make out the vein patterns on the last leaves before open country when the first arrow whistled past my head and drove into the earth ahead of me.
A blow against my left shoulder blade knocked me off my stride. I staggered, trying to regain my rhythm, flailed out into the light, and landed nose first in the grass. Rolling on to my back with my arms across my midriff, I lifted and bent my legs ready to deliver the soles of both trainers into the most tender area of whatever reached me first.
What did reach me was a skinny kid of about ten, liberally daubed with paint over his face and bare chest, and wearing a couple of feathers in a head band.
A dozen more little savages slid silently out of the growth and huddled to stare down at me. They were carrying small bows and wearing the sort of expressions that I’d last seen on a pack of lager louts at chucking-out time. It was like being trapped in a production of Lord of the Flies.
‘Who’s she?’
‘How’d I know? You shot her, git-head.’
‘Didn’t.’
‘Did.’
‘I know who she is. She’s a grass. My dad says so.’
This last comment came from the smallest member of the hunting party. One look was enough to place him. He belonged to the tribe of my least favourite copper. Terry Rosco’s seed had gone forth and multiplied four times (that his wife knew of). This was the oldest Rosco sproglet.
‘Your dad wants to watch his mouth, Junior. There are laws against slander - and shooting people.’
I wrenched the spent arrow from the earth. The one that had hit me in the back had bounced off and fallen a few feet away. Examining them both, I discovered the bouncer had had its tip bound tightly in foam rubber, hence its failure to make itself at h
ome in my back - and probably my lung, judging by the point on the second shaft.
‘You can’t touch me. I’m under the age of criminal ’sponsibility, I am.’ The arrogant thrust of his bottom lip was pure Terry.
‘You know, Junior, if I didn’t already feel sorry for your mum, one of the joys of my life would be waiting for you to grow into your rebellious genes and make your dad’s life pure hell.’
One of the others sniggered. ‘Joooonior.’
‘That ain’t my name. She’s soft. Brain rot. And there ain’t nothing wrong with my jeans neither. They fit OK,’ he finished in a rush, grabbing the arrow from my hand just as my devil limped slowly from the undergrowth. His John Wayne impression was much better than mine.
In the light it was plain that the fur was a zippered body suit and the yellow-eyed, red-toothed, horned head was a full elk mask. Worn over his own head, it must have added another couple of feet to his natural height. At present, it was being clutched under his arm, which allowed the owner’s real eyes (blue - not yellow) to glare at me over the collar rim of the costume. ‘Are you completely out of your mind?’ he snarled.
Coming from someone prancing around the woods in a pantomime costume, I thought this was a bit like the pot accusing the kettle.
‘How the devil did you get in here?’ he demanded.
‘I climbed over the wall. The gates are locked.’
‘And did it occur to you that that might be because we were trying to keep people out? Did that large notice annotated “Keep Out” not give you the tiniest clue that this was private property?’ He was panting heavily, partly from pain and anger, but also from the heat inside his costume, I suspected. I decided the time had come to proffer the peace pipe and start again.
‘Look, I’m really sorry about kneeing you. It’s just that you scared the hell out of me. I was looking for someone who can give me some information. I’d really appreciate the help. Why don’t we get inside out of this sun?’
I half expected to be told to leave the hunting grounds before he whistled up Crazy Horse or something. Instead he grunted and told the war party to head back to the house.
‘What about our elk hunt?’ one protested. ‘We ain’t shot nothing yet.’
‘You nearly shot me,’ I reminded him.
‘It’s not that dangerous,’ the elk said. ‘The arrows are covered.’
‘Not all of them.’
The vague ripple of guilt as the boys jockeyed for the positions furthest away wasn’t lost on either of us. The elk held out a hand. ‘All right, let’s have them.’
No one moved. The elk grabbed a couple of shafts at random. Their metal tips gleamed wickedly in the sunlight.
‘You stupid little ... Do you realise you could have maimed me - or each other?’ he added a trifle belatedly.
‘Lighten up, Grandad,’ the biggest kid said. ‘It’s supposed to be a frigging hunt. Can’t have a proper hunt without drawing blood.’
A few of the others laughed, braver now they knew any comeback was going to be homing in on their spokesperson.
‘If you don’t get out of here this minute, the only blood spilt, you little moron, will be yours.’
The big kid had to keep face. ‘You can’t hit me. I’ll have the law on you. It’s assault. I’ll have you slung in prison.’
The war party backed away hastily, spreading out around us like ripples in a pond. They still murmured support, but kept out of whacking range.
‘Frankly, you unpleasant lump of excrement,’ the elk hissed in short, clipped tones, ‘I couldn’t care less. I doubt if prison would be any worse than a day in the company of you stupid, manner-less louts. Now go away and do your worst. Go on ... GO!’
‘We’re not supposed to leave. Not till we get met,’ one of the smaller braves said.
‘Then wait by the gates. But GO AWAY!’
A raised fist sent them flying towards the house. Once they were safely out of range, several turned round to semaphore anatomically impossible suggestions. Rosco Junior contributed by yelling that he’d tell his dad. He got the arrows the elk was still holding bowled overarm at him. They fell well short and brought a few more jeers from the war party.
Breathing hard, the elk turned his attention to me. ‘Well, come on.’ He stalked away awkwardly, handicapped by the costume and my recent assault.
I put the house at late Victorian. Lumps of other styles had been grafted on erratically: rusting metal fire escapes, window frames that didn’t match, plastic gutterings. A newly painted board outside announced it was ‘The Purbrick Centre for Native American Studies’. Inside there was more paint, and the aromas of linseed oil and wood stain. And an echoing hollowness that said there wasn’t enough furniture or soft furnishings in the rooms yet to absorb normal everyday sounds.
‘In here.’ The elk led the way into a room on the right of the front hall. Large uncurtained windows at the far end let in a flood of sunlight that poured over the bare floorboards and a dust- sheeted jumble of furniture that had been pushed to the far side of the room. A woman was perched on a step-ladder by the left- hand wall, transferring paint from a palette to a tiny figure galloping across the plains of buff-coloured emulsion. When she turned to see who’d come in, she proved to be younger than the streaks of grey in her auburn hair had suggested.
‘Esther, this is Miss ... Smith, was it?’
‘Grace. Hi.’
Esther abandoned the palette on the top step and climbed down, casually pushing the boyish cut from her face and adding more paint smears to the fringe. Extending her hand, she said: ‘Esther Purbrick. Pleased to meet you.’
‘My wife,’ the elk said. I am Selwyn Purbrick.’ There was a note of pride in his voice. ‘Professor Selwyn Purbrick. You might have seen a precis of my piece on the Windigo legends of the Subarctic in National Geographic last month.’
‘Of course she didn’t. Most people don’t read those things until they’re at least four years out of date. And then only if they’re stuck in the doctor’s waiting room for hours.’ Esther grinned. She had one of those big-mouthed, rubbery sort of faces that looked their best during a smile. ‘Well, that’s the introductions done. Selwyn, hadn’t you better change? You look like you’ve sweated off ten pounds. How did the hunt go?’
‘It was hellish. I dismissed them.’
‘What do you mean, “dismissed”?’
‘I mean I told the bunch of morons to go home. And don’t look at me like that. I am a professor of anthropology, not a children’s entertainer. This whole concept was a ridiculous idea. We should be a serious study centre - instead of which we’re in some kind of sub-standard Butlin’s. Well, I, for one, have had enough.’ He waddled in the direction of a side door, calling back over his shoulder, ‘Miss Smith wants some information on the centre. Can you sort her out?’
Before I could correct the mistake, Esther whipped up a corner of dust-sheet and removed a sheaf of stapled paper from the desk underneath. ‘This is our new programme. It’s only provisional at present until we get ourselves settled in.’
Further unpeeling of the dust-sheet had unearthed a cardboard pallet of mineral water bottles. Clawing back the thick plastic coating, Esther jiggled two free and raised an interrogatory eyebrow. At my grateful nod, she flicked one over.
I hadn’t realised how dry all that sun, exercise and fear had left me until I took several large gulps of the slightly warmish liquid. Esther sipped hers more decorously. Glancing down the prospectus, I discovered the centre offered courses in all Indian arts, from quill-weaving and basket-making to canoe-building and totem-pole-carving. They appeared to exclude buffalo-hunting - which was the subject of Esther’s wall mural.
‘It’s good,’ I said, toasting it with the mineral water.
‘Thanks.’ Head on one side, Esther scanned the panorama of small mounted warriors firing arrows into a distinctly cheesed-off buffalo. ‘It’s not original, of course. It’s a copy of Howling Wolf s work. Do you know him?’
‘Not unless he’s the DJ on the pirate rave station.’
‘Possibly he is. But this Howling Wolf was a nineteenth- century North Cheyenne artist.’ She took another sip of water and asked me what had happened with the hunting group.
‘They were playing with live arrows. I nearly got skewered. My own fault, really. I was trespassing.’
‘And Selwyn? Just how abusive was he?’
I discovered I felt no loyalty to Selwyn. ‘He threatened to thump one.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘That’s hardly the point, is it?’
‘The point to what?’ enquired her husband, re-joining us. He’d swapped the elk costume for a pair of jeans and a cerise shirt topped off with a natty yellow bow-tie. His trimmed hair and beard were a lightish grey, and by my estimate he was at least fifteen years or so older than his wife. Nonetheless he moved easily, and from what I could see his body had the well-toned definition of a much younger man.
‘For mercy’s sake, how much longer do we have to put up with that racket?’ he exploded as the Apache drum- section outside suddenly burst into life. This time they’d been joined by a chorus of what sounded like constipated wolves.
‘Only half an hour to go. We advertised a week’s course for children on Native American activities: making music, body-painting, constructing a teepee, tracking skills, that sort of thing,’ Esther explained for my benefit. ‘It’s proved amazingly popular. I think we’ll have to make it a regular event during the school holidays.’
‘Over my dead body,’ Selwyn snapped. ‘I won’t be taking part in this farce in the future. Is that quite clear?’
All three of us wandered down to the window to stare out at about thirty little savages beating the hell out of assorted drums, hollow logs and filled gourds under the supervision of several teenage helpers wearing matching grey sweatshirts with the yellow legend, How? (Ask Me!).
‘How long have you been here? I didn’t even know this place existed until yesterday.’