Caracal

by Guy N Smith

  As he died the caracal slept.

  Chapter 9

  Wes Lansdale stared almost in disbelief at the shotgun which was propped up in the corner of Colin Rutter's study, its blue-black barrels leaving a small oil mark on the white wall, the stock a rich polished walnut. It did not look like a wall piece despite its grace and balance. It was first and foremost a weapon, one that functioned as efficiently now as when it had left the gunsmith's over half a century ago. Moreover, it bore the stamp of recent handling.

  The professor followed the other's gaze, a faint, almost apologetic smile on his lips. ‘My gun,’ he said. ‘It belonged to my father, specially made for him. Why so surprised?’

  ‘I'm sorry.’ Lansdale's expression was as embarrassed as if he had been caught reading Rutter's private correspondence. ‘It's …. it's just that I didn't expect you to own a gun.’

  ‘No, I don't suppose you did. You might be surprised to learn that in my youth I seldom went out into the countryside without a gun under my arm. In those days I used a small folding .410 with a skeleton stock, one that my father took from a poacher he caught. That little gun encouraged me to study the habits of the creatures I hunted, to learn from those I shot. I never killed indiscriminately, only for food or to control the numbers of those creatures harmful to the edible species. That is conservation, maintaining the balance of nature is just as important as protecting an endangered species. As I became prominent in the natural history field I found myself hypocritically pretending to abhor killing. I kept that gun hidden away, broke the law by not taking out a licence. I even tried to convince myself. But the other night I found I didn't want any of the others to kill the caracal. I wanted to shoot it, hold it aloft, maybe even have a taxidermist prepare its mask as a trophy for my wall. A photograph in the papers perhaps.’ He smiled whimsically.

  Wes Lansdale nodded. ‘I can share your feelings up to a point. The first time I went on the hunt I was praying that the caracal would get away. At that stage it was just a soft, lovable creature which had killed a few sheep and pheasants, but so what? Then suddenly it was a vicious killer which had to be killed in turn. I'd kill it outright this minute if I could get hold of it.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Rutter paused to light his pipe, slightly embarrassed at having expressed himself so freely. ‘By the way, how's the battle against the drugs going?’

  ‘I'm fighting them. Hard. I had to have one shot early this morning but that's all. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to do without altogether. I feel absolutely shattered, but that's only to be expected. Right now the only thing I want is to see the caracal accounted for. Two daylight hunts and a nocturnal one have failed. What now?’

  Rutter blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke and sat down again. ‘All the authorities involved have exhausted their ideas. The police are concerned in case it attacks human beings again, and they've even organised patrols in Knighton to ensure that no child goes about alone. The Forestry Commission have closed off all their woods to the public, but there's no way you can keep people out if they're determined to get in. Troops are forming a cordon round the woods, although idiots are already hiding out there. The RAF have supplied helicopters for aerial patrols but that's no good in country like this. Most of the farmers have brought their sheep down a month earlier than they would normally do, but the caracal will go and help himself when he feels like it no matter where they are. So, we're back to square one, no further forward than when the first sheep was killed.’

  ‘You don't mean to tell me that you've run out of ideas, Colin?’

  ‘Almost,’ the professor smiled, and hesitated momentarily before going on. ‘The usual methods have failed miserably. The more the caracal is hunted, the wilier he becomes. Right now he's probably wondering which farm to raid tonight, maybe hoping he'll find somebody out after dark. You see - and this is something the authorities are trying to play down - the human deaths haven't just been chance encounters. In its wild state the creature will usually avoid contact with people. But this one has gone kill-crazy. It's tasted human flesh and now nothing else will satisfy it.’

  ‘My God! You really think …’

  ‘There's no “think” about it, I know. Fortunately the media haven't tumbled to it yet, although they soon will. The Chief Constable and Baldwin have both pooh-poohed the idea. I can't publicise it too widely, though, or else there'll be mass hysteria in Knighton. I know this saying is getting very hackneyed, but we've got to get the caracal!’

  ‘What about this idea of yours?’

  ‘Nothing very original. One or two men who know what they're doing have been camping out on Panpunton Hill, just hanging about but on the alert the whole time, one sleeping, one on guard. I think it's a big mistake to go after the caracal rather than wait for him to come to them.’

  ‘So you're going camping?’ Wes asked slowly.

  ‘Maybe. But I can't go alone. I can't keep awake twenty-four hours for days on end. On the other hand, I don't want the company of someone like Baldwin or that pompous fellow from the Sporting Gazette. Hughes is the obvious choice, but he's too steeped in gamekeeping ways and wouldn't have the patience; he'd want to be off setting traps and snares the whole time or poking about in thick undergrowth. What about it, Wes? It's entirely your decision, I couldn't ask any man to undertake something like this against his will. It'll be no ordinary hunting trip. The caracal will be the hunter, we'll be the prey! Every second we'll have to be watching because just when we least expect it he'll be likely to creep up on us.’

  Wes helped himself to a cigarette off the desk. ‘It would do me a power of good to be away from Pentre for a while, and I'd say yes right away, but …’

  ‘Your girl?’

  ‘Yes. Normally I wouldn't worry about leaving her at the commune but now this feud with Lester Hoyle has come to the boil, I just can't do it. He's embittered against both Wendy and me, and he'd take advantage of any situation which arose to get even with us. I think he's mentally unstable. He might do anything …’

  ‘She could come here while we're away. Provided she didn't go out on her own at night she'd be all right.’

  ‘I'll ask her,’ Wes said, ‘but my participation in this rests with her. So long as she's safe I'll go along with you, Colin.’

  ‘I don't like it,’ Wendy's features were strained with worry. ‘I don't like it one little bit.’

  ‘Look, there's nothing to worry about,’ Wes smiled reassuringly, keeping his voice low; the partition wall was thin and he did not want other members of the commune to overhear his plans.

  ‘Its score of human victims is mounting up. I just know it's got Jon and Trix, and I don't want you to be the next. God, I'd kill myself if anything happened to you, Wes! You don't have to go!’

  ‘I owe it to Colin Rutter.’

  ‘That's nonsense. He wouldn't expect you to risk your life just because he's given you the use of a room in his cottage.’

  ‘It isn't that, Wendy. He needs me. You'll be all right in his place while we're away.’

  ‘If you're set on going then I'm going with you, make no mistake about that.’

  ‘Don't be ridiculous. You can't … Colin wouldn't let you.’

  ‘We shall see. If I don't go, then neither do you.’

  ‘You,’ Lansdale sighed, ‘are making things very awkward.’

  She smiled. ‘I intend to make them much more awkward if you two don't take me along.’

  ‘I'll ask Colin in the morning,’ Wes replied. He knew only too well what the zoologist would say, the arguments. And in the end Wendy would go along with them.

  Grayling had been absent from the Norton Arms Hotel where he was staying for most of the day, and hoped his presence had not been missed. He drove slowly back to the Welsh borderlands in a long queue of traffic; caravans, cars, towing trailers loaded high with camping gear. Idiots, all of them! Bloody fools who could not keep away from anything gruesome. Just when the caracal was slipping from the front pages of nearly every daily newspape
r, it had returned that morning, more sensational than ever. The bodies of the two people missing from the commune had been discovered late the previous afternoon by a party of unauthorised caracal hunters. A girl who had been with them was being treated for shock.

  The youth, Jon, had been found in a disused woodman's cabin, ripped to shreds and partially eaten. His girlfriend had been over a mile away in a dense conifer plantation. At least, they thought it was her - a heap of crushed bones. Other animals had been feeding on the remains since the caracal, probably foxes and rats mostly.

  Grayling smiled faintly to himself. He would have no difficulty in getting past the patrols. Most of the soldiers knew him (he had made sure of that) and in any case he had his press card. He cursed the traffic again, wondering if there was a turning off anywhere which might spare him the frustration of travelling with the main stream. He wished now that he had thought to buy a map. It was too late in the day to experiment by trial and error; there was nothing else but to stick it out.

  A bottleneck at Craven Arms, which a harassed policeman on traffic duty was doing his best to cope with. In all probability it would have been better to have let the cars sort themselves out instead of wasting taxpayers' money!

  It took Grayling forty minutes to cross the main road and as he drove past the constable he sensed a sinking feeling in his flabby stomach. For a second their eyes met. Contempt in the officer's, fear in the journalist's. Contempt because the man from the Sporting Gazette was just another sightseer; fear because ... because of what rested beneath the rug on the back seat.

  He was sweating heavily as his Granada crawled under the railway bridge at Craven Arms. For a few seconds he had understood the apprehension of an armed criminal who finds himself caught up in a roadblock. But even if he had been stopped and searched, possession of the weapon in the back of his car was not illegal. You didn't need to possess any firearms licence to own it, in fact a child could walk into a shop and buy one. One of the deadliest and most silent weapons on the market, and in most cases overlooked by the criminal - the crossbow!

  He was a hypocrite, too. Strewth, if the readers of the Sporting Gazette ever got to know about this his whole reputation, the façade carefully constructed over the past few years, would be completely destroyed. Extracts from one of his recent articles grated harshly in his brain as though his conscience had set off a tape recording: ‘the crossbow is a curse on the modern countryside … silent, lethal at a hundred yards … used by deer poachers and sheep rustlers regardless of the suffering a misplaced bolt can cause … overlooked by the law in spite of their eagerness to impose restrictive firearms legislation …’

  However, he consoled himself, the end - in this case - justified the means. Once the caracal was dead nobody was going to criticise the method by which it had been killed. Even gin traps rediscovered after twenty-five years in barns and attics would be condoned if the killer cat was caught in one. And the man who accounted for it would be a national hero.

  Already he was mentally composing the leader article for a future issue: ‘BLACK BEAST OF RADNOR SHOT BY MR TIM GRAYLING [more dramatic in the dailies, with the same head-and-shoulders photograph sold to a score of journals]. After intensive hunts organised by the Forestry Commission, the Combined Forces, and every local landowner, the man-eating caracal was shot on … [the date didn't matter and there was no need even to mention a crossbow] by Mr Grayling who conducted a lone war against the cat in its own territory …’

  A screech of brakes, and he almost went into the back of the car ahead. Sod it, these bloody fools kept stopping and starting, progressing at less than walking pace because half of them had no idea how to tow caravans. Christ, there were people inside the caravan in front, sitting down to a meal at the table while on the move. Now that was flouting the law; how the hell had the copper on traffic duty failed to spot them? Probably because he was pissed off with all these silly buggers getting excited over an outsize cat.

  His forthcoming article having undergone its first mental draft, Grayling began to plan his assault on the caracal in more detail. Getting past the cordon of troops lining the forest area presented few problems. It wasn't worth trying to sneak by - you looked such a bloody fool if you got caught. The open casual approach was best, as the soldiers rarely questioned bona fide hunters. He didn't want them to see the crossbow though, it would be best to strip it down so that it could be in his large leather camera case and reassemble it on site.

  OK. Now, when to start? Early morning rather than late evening. Not that he was scared of prowling about cat territory in the dark, but logically daylight would be preferable. You can't shoot anything, even with a crossbow, if you can't see it! A caracal is by nature nocturnal, but recent developments had proved that it can adapt to daylight forays. So you stand as much chance of shooting it by day as by night. Too late to start tonight anyway. First thing in the morning after a good night's sleep.

  It was 9.30 p.m. when Tim Grayling reached the Norton Arms.

  ‘Any messages?’ his tone was nervous as he fired the question at the receptionist.

  ‘No, sir,’ she smiled wearily. ‘Nobody has asked for you,’

  Thank Christ for that! It had taken him a full day to fetch the crossbow from the Midlands. But it was not wasted time, more in the nature of a halt in order to be fully prepared for the final assault.

  ‘Well, I just hope we've got everything we need,’ Colin Rutter said as the three of them left his small cottage.

  ‘Food, water, ammunition,’ Wendy checked. ‘We've even got a tent!’

  Lansdale glanced at her, made as though to speak but changed his mind. He did not know the professor well enough to indulge in frivolities about the need for sex.

  ‘I still think we ought to have left the young lady behind,’ Rutter crinkled his forehead into a frown. ‘I should have insisted …’

  ‘I insisted,’ Wes laughed, ‘but we still ended up bringing her.’

  ‘I suppose three pairs of eyes and ears are better than two,’ the zoologist strode ahead. ‘We'll just have to be extra careful. We really ought to have brought along another gun.’

  ‘Not really,’ Wes glanced appreciatively at the magnificent workmanship of the weapon that Rutter carried under his arm. ‘I've changed my views about blood sports … well, to some degree, anyway. But I really don't fancy using a gun myself, although I'm prepared to have a go during my night watches if necessary.’

  ‘Ever fired a gun before?’

  ‘Only on the rifle range at the fairground.’

  ‘Well, shotguns are different. If the target is moving, get your barrels on to it, swing until you're ahead of it, and keep on swinging after you've fired otherwise you'll shoot behind it.’

  ‘Where are we going to camp out?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘Doesn't matter a great deal,’ Rutter glanced up at the sky and estimated that there were two or three hours of daylight left. ‘One place is as good as another. The caracal might be anywhere. I reckon, though, that we ought to get a fair way up Panpunton and pick an open patch of ground so that we have a clear view.’

  They were ten yards from the edge of the big fir wood when a soldier, rifle slung on his shoulder, stepped out of the trees.

  ‘Nobody goes … oh, it's you, sir.’

  ‘We're going up on to the hill,’ Colin Rutter said. ‘We may be there for several days.’

  ‘Going to join the other gentleman, sir?’

  ‘Which other gentleman, Private?' Rutter's eyes narrowed.

  ‘The one who writes in the shooting paper. There's always a copy lying around in the mess room, not that I'm the sporting type myself. Too much like being on duty. Now what's his name? Grisling … no, Grayling. That's the one, sir. Went up just after nine this morning, lugging a blooming great camera with him.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ Rutter muttered. ‘So he's hit on the same idea. Well, let's just hope we keep well clear of each other.’

  Tim Grayling chose his own place of a
mbush towards midday, a high outcrop of rock which jutted above a plantation of three-year-old spruce trees. From his vantage point he was able to survey three rides and a firebreak which had become overgrown with bracken. Just the place to find the caracal, he decided. He was high enough for his scent not to reach it and near enough to bring off a fatal shot. Most important of all, he felt safe up here, like an ancient Briton taking up a defensive position from which to hurl down rocks on an invading foe.

  He ate some of the sandwiches which he had brought with him and drank a can of light ale. The next job was to reassemble the crossbow, which should have been easy. A screwdriver would have helped, but all he had was a penknife. Christ, the screws were tight! A drop of oil would have done the trick.

  He worked feverishly, clumsily, dropping screws and nuts, scrabbling on the ground for them. Somehow, an hour or so later, he had managed it. A long sigh of relief, followed by another can of beer. God, he needed that!

  Grayling glanced at his watch. 2.30 p.m. Suddenly time seemed to slow, and there was nothing to do but wait. And wait. Until darkness … Doubts began to cloud his mind again. He had brought neither tent nor sleeping bag though it wasn't likely to rain; the weather forecast had predicted clear skies, a ground frost, and the possibility of fog patches before dawn - certainly not camping weather.

  He decided to stay where he was until an hour or so before sunset, then hide the crossbow here and return to his hotel. Tomorrow morning he would come back here. Early. Soon after dawn. One snag … on the long trek to and from his vantage point he would be unarmed … That wouldn't do: take the crossbow, hide it somewhere on the edge of the wood.