Inspector Hobbes and the Curse - a fast-paced comedy crime fantasy (unhuman)

by Martin, Wilkie

  Inspector Hobbes

  and the Curse

  unhuman II

  Wilkie Martin

  The Witcherley Book Company

  United Kingdom

  ISBN 9780957635135 (ebook)

  1

  When I drew Hobbes’s attention to the unpleasant, if somewhat underwhelming, article on the front page of the Sorenchester and District Bugle, neither of us could have foreseen the deadly and bizarre events it heralded. The next few weeks were to prove among the most painful, frightening and horrific of my life, taking me to dark places I would have given almost anything to have avoided.

  I was, at the time, having to live at Hobbes’s, sleeping in his spare room, jobless, broke and pretty low. Mrs Goodfellow, his housekeeper, had left us to fend for ourselves while she attended a dental conference in Norwich: she wasn’t actually a dentist, merely obsessed by teeth, having amassed a collection of several thousand. To start with, things had been fine, for she’d prepared meals to heat up, but we’d devoured the last one the previous night and I’d volunteered as stand-in cook, having made a passing study of the old girl’s culinary technique during the months I’d been staying there. Admittedly, my experience had been mostly confined to hanging around, getting in her way and eating whatever she prepared, yet I’d been quietly confident I’d absorbed enough and could cope so it had seemed only fair that I, as a non-paying guest, should help out. Hobbes, to his credit, had let me get on with it, on a trial basis. Breakfast had been a doddle, there being little I could do wrong with Sugar Puffs and marmalade on toast; my first big test was lunch.

  Since we’d been surprised by a burst of intense summer, I had opted, as a first attempt, for simplicity. I threw together a salad and cold meats, using up a few leftovers and adding some green stuff from the garden. Unfortunately, it hadn’t looked sufficient for me, never mind for Hobbes’s vast appetite, and so I’d decided to make a nice gazpacho, using a recipe I’d spotted in Sorenchester Life. This, I thought, combined with our remaining bread, would fill the void.

  Taking advantage of the fine weather, I served the meal beneath the fractured shade of the knobbly, old apple tree in the middle of the luxuriant, flower-scented back garden. After Hobbes, according to his custom, had said grace, his voice competing against the buzzing of countless bees, I handed him the salad, which was, in my opinion, not bad. Certainly, he ate his without fuss, seeming not to mind the big green caterpillar on the lettuce, and he even complimented me on its freshness. He did, however, point out that the potatoes in a potato salad are better when cooked.

  Then, proudly, I ladled out the gazpacho, its blood-red hue and tingling aroma of herbs and spice a promise of excellence, yet, from my first spoonful, it was obvious something had gone terribly wrong, resulting in a weirdly unpleasant meaty flavour that, combined with a nasty grittiness, caught the throat and turned the stomach. Hobbes only got as far as sniffing his before, aiming a puzzled frown in my direction, he headed towards the kitchen.

  Sitting on the garden bench, watching the ants avoiding a spot of soup I’d spilled, I tried to figure out where I’d gone wrong, following a recipe the magazine claimed to be foolproof. So far as I could remember, I’d followed the instructions precisely, using only fresh vegetables, and, being short of tomatoes, a big squirt of tomato purée. Although my soup had come out considerably redder than the photograph, I’d put it down to the printers saving on red ink.

  When Hobbes returned, carrying an immense slab of cheese and pickle sandwich, he tossed the tomato purée tube in front of me with an amused snort, except it wasn’t tomato purée at all but the dog’s meat-flavoured toothpaste. Hobbes, grinning at my shudder of revulsion, my look of despair, took a big bite from his sandwich and sat chewing.

  On finishing, he suggested it would be better if we ate out, or bought in takeaways until the old girl got home. I didn’t argue, merely taking myself to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, a task at which I’d become reasonably adept.

  I’d just picked up the Sorenchester and District Bugle when Hobbes, sauntering in from the garden, helped himself to a steaming mugful of tea from the pot I’d made. Chucking in a handful of sugar, he stirred it with his great, hairy forefinger, relaxed into the battered, old chair next to mine, stretched out his thick legs, took a quick slurp, and placed his mug on the kitchen table.

  ‘Let’s hope,’ he said, grimacing, ‘that the lass returns before you finish both of us off.’

  I shrugged, trying not to feel more inadequate than usual, for I was really doing my best in the absence of Mrs Goodfellow and, pointing at the front page, changed the subject. ‘Umm … According to this, there was blood everywhere.’

  ‘Whose blood?’

  ‘The sheep’s I suppose. What d’you reckon did it?’

  Frowning, he scratched the side of his bull neck. ‘The very beginning is a very good place to start. About what are you talking?’

  ‘This.’ I pushed the paper towards him.

  Taking it, he scanned the article, his bristling eyebrows plunging into a scowl. ‘You want me to tell you what killed it, even though you’ve got all the information I have?’

  I nodded. ‘Well, you are a detective.’

  He smiled. ‘Alright, I’ll do what I can, though there’s precious little to go on. First point: yesterday morning, a farmer found a dead sheep in a field just off the main road to Pigton. Second point: its throat had been torn out. Third point: it had been partially eaten. Those are the facts; the rest is filler.’

  It was, I thought, a good summary, though the reporter had managed to inflate the story to cover half the front page, while hinting at dark mysteries. Still, ‘Sheep Killed’ was not among the snappiest headlines Rex Witcherley, the editor, or Editorsaurus as I called him, had come up with and the blurry photograph of a sheep in a field, entitled ‘A Sheep in a Field’ that occupied most of the rest of the page, was not the most creative idea he’d had. To be fair to the Editorsaurus, it wasn’t always easy to find hot news in a small Cotswold town like Sorenchester. Furthermore, he’d been going through a tough time since his wife got herself locked up in a secure unit for attempting to murder Hobbes, me and others the previous November, and wasn’t yet back on form.

  Hobbes, taking another swig from his mug, continued. ‘I suspect a dog might be to blame, possibly a stray, because when pet dogs run wild they are less likely to eat what they kill. Anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it, unless there are further incidents.’

  Dregs, Hobbes’s delinquent dog, padded in through the open back door, his long pink tongue snaking out to lick a blood-red globule dripping from his shaggy black muzzle. He slumped onto the cool red-brick floor with a sigh, wagging his tail as if he’d just done something clever.

  ‘Look!’ I cried, my finger trembling as I pointed, ‘It was him, but he’s always well fed.’

  Hobbes’s laugh rumbled round the kitchen. ‘You’d be hard pressed to make the charge stick, since he was with me at the station at the alleged time of the incident. Furthermore, if you observe more closely, you’ll notice that it’s not blood but your … interesting tomato soup round his chops. You shouldn’t jump to wild conclusions.’

  I flinched and said nothing, wallowing in a familiar sense of failure. It was worse that, this time, I had really tried.

  At length, draining his mug, he got to his feet. ‘I’d better be off,’ he said, ‘Superintendent Cooper asked me to have a word with Skeleton Bob Nibblet. Do you fancy a trip out?’

  ‘Umm … Yeah. Why not? What’s he been
up to this time?’

  ‘Same as usual – poaching.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you can’t blame him; he looks like he needs the meat.’

  Bob’s hollow eyes, sparse frame and skull-like head were familiar to Bugle readers, his frequent appearances before the magistrate providing the crime desk with a constant trickle of small news. His offences, always petty, usually detected early in their inception, meant he would never be regarded as a criminal genius, yet he had a reputation as an excellent poacher and, according to pub rumours, supplied many respectable people with illicit game.

  Hobbes led Dregs and me from number 13 Blackdog Street towards his rusting blue Ford Fiesta. As we got in, I wondered why I was always relegated to the cramped back seat whenever the dog travelled with us. In a way I was glad of this inferior position, for Hobbes’s maniacal driving, showing no signs of abating, meant I enjoyed a slight sense of security when cowering in the rear, reasoning that the chances of him reversing into a tree at breakneck speed were considerably less than those of smacking into one at full speed ahead. Dregs, on the other hand, showed every confidence in Hobbes’s abilities and, to give him his due, the facts backed up his nonchalance, for no one I’d asked could recall Hobbes ever being involved in a road accident. Apparently, the time to worry was when he went off road; more than one vehicle had allegedly disintegrated about him while he was hot on some miscreant’s trail.

  The engine growled into life. Dregs growled back in challenge, barking madly until we yelled at him to shut up. The ritual complete, we hurtled along Blackdog Street, screeched round the corner, flew along Pound Street and Spittoon Way, ignored the red traffic light onto the main road and sped in the general direction of Pigton.

  Despite the open windows directing a hurricane of miscellaneous insects into my face, sweat was soon trickling down inside my loose white shirt and pooling around the belt of my khaki chinos, which, like all my clothes, had once belonged to Mrs Goodfellow’s husband, last heard of attempting to set up a naturist colony on Tahiti. Dregs’s long tongue was lolling like a pink snake as he stuck his black head out the window, enjoying the jet stream. Hobbes, though apparently unaffected, still wearing his usual heavy, bristly tweed jacket and baggy flannels, making me sweat even more whenever I glanced at him, had, as a concession to the heatwave, ventured out without his battered gabardine mac.

  At least with him driving, it only took a few desperate minutes before we were turning off the main road into a tree-shadowed lane. After a couple of hundred yards and a sharp turn, we bounced onto a track, stopping in a fog of dust. Back home on the kitchen wall, Mrs Goodfellow had put up a calendar showing glossy images of romantic cottages, all black and white walls, thatched roofs and roses round their doors, but Bob’s cottage would never have got anywhere near the long list, though, what it lacked in roses it more than made up for in brambles. It was, in fact, a crumbling, red-brick hovel amidst a small yard overflowing with rusting bits of car, and mysterious remnants of machines that might once have had an agricultural purpose. In the corner, a rotting shed slouched against a crumbling brick wall and next to it stood a cage, shiny and clean and looking well out of place.

  As we got out the car, Skeleton Bob, filthy string vest drooping from bony shoulders, was perched on an upturned beer keg in the porch. A faint, musky odour tainted the breeze.

  Hobbes nodded. ‘Good afternoon, Bob.’

  Bob grunted.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked a woman’s breathless voice from inside.

  ‘It looks like the circus has come to see us,’ said Bob grinning, displaying a spectacular set of discoloured and broken teeth. ‘Leastways, we’ve got the strongman, the lion and the clown.’

  A spherical, red-faced woman immersed in a billowing purple tent rolled from the cottage, coming to rest beside Bob, her hands on where her hips might have been.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Nibblet,’ said Hobbes, touching his forehead.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. What’s he done this time?’

  ‘I’ve done nothing,’ said Bob.

  She frowned. ‘You can shut up!’

  Bob shrugged.

  ‘It’s been brought to my attention that someone’s been poaching in these parts,’ said Hobbes, shambling towards the Nibblets.

  Mrs Nibblet sniffed. ‘Oh, is that all? Can’t a poor man take the odd rabbit to feed his starving family?’

  ‘If,’ said Hobbes, ‘only the odd rabbit had been taken, I very much doubt I’d be here. Unfortunately, there’s been a sudden and dramatic reduction in the pheasant population. Colonel Squire has been objecting. In fact, he’s been objecting very loudly to Superintendent Cooper, demanding action. He says there’s a lot of money in pheasants.’

  ‘In which case,’ said Bob, ‘the odd one or two going missing won’t hurt him.’

  ‘Keep quiet, you,’ said Mrs Nibblet, glaring at her husband, turning back towards Hobbes. ‘Look, Bob only takes the odd bird or two that he comes across. Loads more get killed on the roads.’

  ‘However many he takes, poaching is still against the law. Yet, in this case, Mrs Nibblet, dozens of young birds have vanished without trace, while a similar number have been found without heads. Do you know anything about it?’

  Bob and wife spoke together, ‘Dozens?’

  ‘Yes, dozens.’

  Bob shook his skull head. ‘Honestly, Mr Hobbes, it’s got nothing to do with me.’

  Hobbes frowned. ‘Fair enough, but perhaps you know something about it?’

  Bob glanced at his wife as if seeking permission.

  ‘We know nothing,’ she said before he could open his mouth.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Bob after a moment’s hesitation.

  Dregs yelped and I turned in time to see him leap away from the cage, blood oozing from the black tip of his nose and dripping onto the grass.

  ‘You ought to keep that dog away from my ferrets, or he’ll get hurt,’ said Bob, shuffling off his beer keg, approaching Dregs.

  ‘Careful,’ I warned, ‘he’s fierce.’

  Bob ignored me, taking Dregs’s head in his hands and examining the injury. ‘That’s no more than a love-bite,’ he said, reaching into the pocket of his threadbare jeans, pulling out a battered tobacco tin and handing it to me. ‘Open it, please.’

  I screwed off the lid. The waxy brown goo inside stank of garlic and stuff. I wrinkled my nose. ‘What’s in this muck?’

  ‘Garlic and stuff, but it’s not muck.’ Scooping up a globule with a bony, nicotine-stained finger, he massaged it into the wound.

  To my astonishment, Dregs, after a faint whimper, allowed the indignity. I knew I’d never let the gunk get any closer to my nose than arm’s length.

  ‘Won’t he just lick it off?’

  ‘Would you lick it off?’ asked Bob, his grin exuding his habitual good nature.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hobbes. ‘He’ll not do that again. I doubt he’s ever seen a ferret before.’

  Dregs’s tail thumped a staccato beat as Bob stroked him; I wondered how he would have reacted six months ago when Hobbes had first brought him home, a savage, vicious, malevolent creature. It had only been a few days after I’d moved in and, without exaggerating, I’d been in fear for my health and safety, if not for my life. In fairness, Dregs had only nearly killed me twice and neither time had it been on purpose. Since then we’d become friends.

  ‘We’d better be on our way,’ said Hobbes. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Nibblet.’ Again he touched his forehead in an old-fashioned salute.

  She nodded, waddling back into the cottage as Hobbes turned, strolling towards his car, gripping Bob’s arm. Dregs and I walked beside them.

  ‘Right, then, Bob,’ said Hobbes, ‘you want to tell me something.’

  ‘Do I?’ asked Bob, biting his lip, looking shifty, which was normal for him.

  ‘You do. I saw the look you gave Mrs Nibblet.’

  ‘I try not to look at her.’

  ‘You can tell me in confidence,’ said Hobbes.
He chuckled, his arm encircling Bob’s skinny shoulders, like a python round a fawn.

  Bob squeaked and found himself in agreement. ‘OK, OK, I’ll tell you … just give me a moment to catch my breath.’

  Hobbes releasing him, Bob talked. ‘Look, don’t think I’m going funny or nothing and I don’t really know if it’s important or not, but I did see something the other night … something strange.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Hobbes, slowing to snail-pace.

  ‘I was out for a quiet walk in the woods a couple of nights ago.’

  Hobbes raised his eyebrows.

  ‘And you’ll never guess what I saw.’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘A big cat.’

  ‘A big cat?’

  ‘Yes, a big cat.’

  ‘How big?’

  ‘Andy, shut up a minute,’ said Hobbes. ‘How big was it?’

  ‘Much bigger than this dog of yours but it was black like him.’ Bob glanced around as if hidden ears might be listening. ‘I reckon it was one of them panthers.’

  ‘So,’ said Hobbes as he reached his car, ‘you reckon a big cat’s been taking the pheasants?’

  Bob nodded and then shook his head. ‘Yes … no … er … could be.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Hobbes.

  ‘Look,’ Bob whispered, ‘I didn’t see it do anything; it was just slinking through Loop Woods, that’s all. It might just be a coincidence.’ He stopped and frowned. ‘You don’t believe me do you?’

  Hobbes looked thoughtful. ‘Let’s say I don’t not believe you. Thank you for your help and if you see anything else you know where to get hold of me. By the way, I’d lay off the night-time excursions on Colonel Squire’s land for the time being if I were you. I’d hate to hear you’d been eaten by a stray cat. Goodbye.’

  With a nod, he squeezed into the driver’s seat and, as soon as Dregs and I had taken our places, started the engine, waving as we lurched and bumped back down the track. Bob was standing still, rubbing his shoulders, wearing an anxious frown on his bony face.

  ‘What d’you make of that?’ I asked.