Mystery City

by Alistair Lavers

  ‘Size of a lion eh? Safe ta say yoo won’t be using Kitekat ta bait the bastard then…’

  Jackson respectfully ignored the farmer’s joke and ploughed on. ‘Do panthers or cougars compare in size to lions, Mr Burr?’

  ‘Well… Alsatians look pretty much like a wolf frum a long ways off, ‘specially at dusk. I seen some Alsatians round yerr that’d make you shit yourself. When you says “wolf-like” how’s that diff’rent from a wolf – have you made any casts?’

  ‘Casts?’

  ‘Plaster casts. From its tracks. That’s one way o’settlin’ it.’

  ‘I really wouldn’t know what to look for Mr Burr. We don’t, well – as yet we haven’t had any forensic examinations from the crime scenes. The scenes of the killings aren’t really crime scenes as such, just remains. The ground around them wasn’t protected of course, so they were all covered in wellington boot prints and tyre tracks by the time I arrived much later. When I say a wolf of considerable size, it’s been described by witnesses as being half-bear, half-wolf.’

  ‘Half-bear, half-wolf you say… You got yurr work cut out then? Oi’m a sort of unofficial authority on big cats down yer– so striped elephants an’ bear-wolves‘ez not sumthen oi’ve come ‘cross,’ said Mr Burr guardedly, unsure whether he was being played as a fool.

  ‘Granted,’ replied Jackson, refusing to rise to the smoothly delivered jibe from the farmer, whom he was still desperate to keep on side. I just hoped you could tell me something about big cats feeding habits.’

  ‘Well, oi spose oi could spare a foo minutes. Oim guessin’ this is free advice oim gevven out – izzit?’

  ‘I’ve not been authorised to employ any experts yet sir. I’m just hoping people are willing to give of themselves to help.’

  ‘If oi wuz ta ‘give of moiself’ as you puts it, we’d all be on benefetts Mr Alger.’

  ‘Ahhh, perhaps we could come to an arrangement. I could propose you as an independent expert, and if you were invited to work for us on that basis we would certainly cover your fee and expenses. For a reasonable sum. I could put it to my sergeant, if that’s acceptable to you of course.’

  ‘Problem is see, we’re lambing, so oi can’t leave the farm.’

  ‘Oh. Do you mean you could only work over the phone?’

  ‘Look– I’ll tell eee as much as I knows this ways. Send us a cast o’ the prints if you should foind another, an’ I’ll look it over. If you needs anyone to find the bastard, I knows a gudd tracker who’d be willing to travel. I don’t much like being more than a couple of hours away from ‘ome anyways. Away from the family an’ the farm. If eee can work round that, then we can get along. Oive written a book on the cats, you’d probably have to order it where you’re at. You’ll need about ten copies…’

  ‘TEN?’

  ‘Ten’s good. I’ll be able to give of moiself much better furr ten. Fifteen or twenty an’ you’ll find me very ‘elpful indeed…’

  ‘How much are they?’

  ‘Fifteen pounds. The Big Cats of Devon. Tarka Publishing. Your bookshop can order ‘em.’

  ‘Does this tracker friend of yours have any hunting experience?’

  ‘Been hunting since he was a bay– Dubby. Ex-army snoiper too, clever fella.’

  ‘Bay? Sorry, I don’t…’

  ‘Youngster.’

  ‘Does he have a firearms licence?’

  ‘Well, you’d ‘ope ‘umdid, ‘im ‘avin so many guns an’ all. You should see the thing he killed this lynx with, lovely looken rifle. Bullets as big as a Castella. Got to be tooled up for this game. You won’t get rid o’ buggers like they big cats with a pasty an’ a caution.’

  ‘What’s his name Mr Burr?’

  ‘Dudley Kingcome, Dubby. Lives just outsoide Torrington. He’s a sparky. I can give eee his phone number.’

  ‘A sparky?’

  ‘Aye, ‘lectrician…’

  ‘Oh!.. I see! Yes–that might be useful – thank you very much…’

  Since he was tall enough to hold a rifle, Dudley Kingcome had shot all manner of things for money. A quiet, self-contained farm boy, from the heart of rural Devon, he had spent all his productive waking hours outdoors. For farmers, he shot injured livestock. For the army, he shot farmers, but only those who were members of the IRA. Since passing through the Army Sniper School, he had sent twenty-eight wellington-shod terrorists and bomb makers into the green fields and lanes of the afterlife – all in the sitting position. The majority in vans or lorries and five in tractors. Dudley was good at his craft, because he was patient, and because he had come from the same stock as his victims. He knew how to use dung to mask his scent from the farm dogs which belonged to his targets and he knew the chores and routines of farm life. He had even used the faeces of one of his victim’s own dogs. He was, in his own particular way, a bolt action death dealer – in shit. Dudley’s last kill for the army had left a mark on the borderlands of Northern Ireland equal to any scar on the battlegrounds of northern France – for the cost of a single round. Lance Corporal Kingcome and his spotter had tracked two enormous fertiliser bombs and a terrorist hit squad from their hide in a nettle-filled orchard on a hill in County Armagh, and realised they were about to pass each other on opposite sides of the B1277 near Dorsey. After seeking permission to engage, he sent an incendiary bullet through the thin metal skin of the passing car’s fuel tank which set off an explosion that threw the remains of the car and the lorries into the adjoining fields and created a crater big enough to close the circuit road beside Black Pig’s Dyke for eight months. The pressure wave of the blast was so strong that it peeled back the hedges and turf on the surrounding pasture for a distance of eighty-five feet.

  It was one of the most remarkable goodbyes in the history of his trade, yet for all his commendations, his medals and his willingness to keep going back to one of the most dangerous theatres of war, when the time came for Dudley to say goodbye to his life in the army, both he and his superiors breathed a sigh of relief, although his skills were celebrated with pride, the vessel in which they resided had never reflected his Regiment’s idea of a regular soldier. Dudley was never deliberately untidy. Rather, he had an untidy physicality– and a posture that could not be altered either by nature, force, or training; or by the showers of obscenities thrown his way by the non-commissioned officers (his immediate superiors) whose clumsy insults and biting sarcasm were so ineffective in correcting his perceived shortcomings. In uniform, he had been as much of a scruff as the army had ever tolerated – a man who could ruin a parade standing still, with his ambling bow-legged slouch and lopsided gait that had made his turning-out parade so entertaining. It was only his skill with a rifle which kept him from civvy street before he reached his ninth year.

  Once his discharge had been processed, Dudley returned to Devon and moved back to his parents’ dairy farm near Honiton, taking on some of the duties his father was beginning to struggle with, as his father and his father’s father had also done. He had not yet provided the family with an heir; an irritation that was always at the back of his mind. But he couldn’t yet comprehend the importance of attending the various dances organised by the local farming community’s social club, despite his mother’s hints and his father’s verbal prods, though Dudley, who was wiser than he seemed, decided to bide his time and pick up a divorcee when the time came, someone whose fertility was already proven, and who was less fussy about a man’s physical shortcomings, if they came with a profitable farm.

  ‘Phone Dudley! Some Grockle frum Yorkshire. Says eeez with the police.’

  ‘Police Ma?’

  ‘That’s what eee sez. What you bin doin’..?’

  ‘What’ve oi bin doin’?’ Looken’ after eee. That’s what oi bin doin’.’

  ‘You not shot n’body bay?’

  ‘Pack it in Ma…’

 
; ‘Better speak to ‘um then, afore eee rings off. Might be money ennett.’

  Dudley tramped into the boot room of his parents’ farmhouse and picked up the receiver on the shelf.

  ‘‘LO?’

  ‘Dudley Kingcome?’

  ‘Ooos thess?’

  ‘My name’s Alger, Mr Kingcome. Jackson Alger. I’m with North Yorkshire Police, sir.’

  ‘With ‘em eh?’

  ‘I’m the community officer for Staithes, Runswick Bay and Kettleness. A friend of yours, a Mr Burr, gave me your phone number. I believe you’ve hunted and tracked some non-native species of big cats?

  ‘Moight do…’

  ‘I really could do with your help Mr Kingcome, I think that we could have a big cat problem in my district. I have a proposition for you, if you’d like to hear it? If you’d consider it we’d all be very grateful.’

  ‘Proposition..? Just so’s we understands each other Mister Alger, this is a payin’ job izzit?’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Contract

  ‘Hello Jack.’

  ‘Conn.’

  ‘I went to the Church in Whitby.’

  ‘You ‘ad enough time ta see it all then? I can tell by the look on ya face – d’you ‘ave time to read the other stuff?’

  ‘Aye, I did.’

  ‘Well, now you know,what I know – what are you gonna do about it?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think there’s anything to be done, d’ you Jack?’

  ‘At least thee can protect thi’ sen’. Till it stops. Jackson’s trying to get a hunter on the case. Some bloke from Devon.’

  ‘Someone ta shoot it?’

  ‘I know what you’re gonna say next, but this fella’s an ex-army sniper.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘If you were ta put this fella up Conn. On yer land, then we can mek sure he uses the reet kind o’ bullet.’

  ‘You mean a silv…’

  ‘Explosive bullet. Tek off the head, tek out the heart. Turn the heart inta ash in yer stove. That’s the way it’s done.’

  It took another week of telephone calls, an exchange of letters and a brown envelope of used notes before Dudley was finally welcomed into the small community of Kettleness and installed in readiness. Dudley decided to use Conn Thatcher’s static caravan as his base. It was far enough away from the main farmhouse and outbuildings to put him on the front line in his game of cat and mouse; yet was still connected to all the farm’s services and offered the kind of comforts he had never enjoyed before ‘in country’ on the Irish borderlands. To a hunter like Dudley, its proximity to the stream and its view of the riverbank and flood plain gave him a major advantage; it also meant he could fart as much as he liked and stay warm and comfortable while he was watching the field boundary with his spotter scope, by the biggest window.

  Dudley knew that large predatory mammals always hunted close to water sources – within their own ranges – and always preferred to drink, on the inside curve, of the same well-covered riverbanks; away from the pounding noise of white water or waterfalls, but close to woods or undergrowth that offered cover for stalking or concealment. The big cats he had stalked in the wilds of Devon always struck within ten or twenty feet of woodland or thick undergrowth, where their scent could not be spread easily by the wind. And never attacked or approached across open country. In many respects, they were using the same skills as Dudley, but killing for food rather than a commission, or a tepid plate of eggs, chips and beans.

  Just as he had done in the Army, Dudley kept the same maintenance and cleaning regimen for his own gun, a bolt-action Remington 700, the rifle beloved of military snipers and deer hunters the world over for its accuracy and robustness.

  Sitting down at the table, in Conn Thatcher’s static caravan, Dudley unpacked his weapon and opened his fishing tackle box, selecting two felt cleaning plugs which he placed on a clean newspaper, before dousing them in Tri-Flon lubricating oil, pushing one through the barrel with a wooden dowel and repeating the procedure with the second plug. Dudley also checked, cleaned and lubricated the breech and bolt mechanisms until he was satisfied with the operation of the bolt and the ejector. Next, he fitted an arrester block behind the rear telescopic scope mount, which was designed to stop‘scope creep’ then cleaned and loaded the magazine, inspected his ammunition and chambered a round. Once the rifle was ready, he applied the safety catch and home-made guard which kept branches and twigs away from his trigger. Dudley preferred a very short amount of travel, with a 2lb pull. Finally, he attached the sling, bound the barrel and stock in scraps of camouflage cloth, covered his scope with a black 40-denier stocking, to stop moonlight reflecting off the lens of the telescopic sight, then waited for sundown.

  Fifteen miles away, in the great study of Charlwood House, Lord William Henry Warner Woollens pulled the brake on the library ladder rail, and ascended the steps to the fourth collection, second tier bookcases, which housed the family’s literature and records collection, covering the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

  Lord Warner Woollens put on his reading spectacles and scanned the six shelves of the fourth-placed bookcase, selecting a torso-sized volume titled England, Scotland and Spain, in War and Peace, 1500-1700 for the lift basket, then he placed a 5lb ingot on the hook of the counterweight rope, pulled out the anchor peg on the book lift and let the basket glide down to the floor.

  Once at his desk, he unlocked the clasp on the cover and began to read. After two hours and half a bottle of Auslese, he put the book aside, and from his desk drawer pulled on a pair of disposable gloves, of the type used by scholars to study priceless manuscripts and fragile documents. Then the study door swung back and his wife floated into the room in a great knot of fabric and brocade.

  ‘Gloves, William? I sincerely hope you’re not about to play doctors and nurses again. It’s rather late to be inserting your hands in the animals– is it not?’

  ‘I am wearing gloves for the purpose of examining an artefact, from the estate. Be so kind as to close the door on your way out Antonia.’

  ‘I’ve no interest in artefacts William. I was just curious to discover where you were.’

  ‘I’m here…Goodnight.’

  Once he was alone again, Lord Woollens tipped the gold doublon from a small tupperware box onto a sheet of vellum, placed a sheet of rubbing paper over the coin and dragged a stick of fine charcoal backwards and forwards over the paper covering the coin, to obtain an image. Satisfied with his work, he replaced the coin in the tupperware container and locked it in his desk.

  ‘The Treasure of the Mar del Norte…’ he whispered, ‘it can’t be. It had better not b-be.’ Then he put the rubbing in the top drawer of his desk and turned off the lamp.

  ‘Buggeryomlettes…’

  In the empty void below the DJ’s island inside Mystery City, the evil root of the hidden gold began to disseminate its malignant oeuvre, splitting the insulation on the electrical wiring beneath the turntables, while it pumped out a sluggish, dewy fog through the seams of the toolbox in which it was trapped. A half bottle of Napoleon brandy toppled over and began to pool onto the chipboard base of the vented bargeboard, then the first sparks began to fall.

  Barnett woke up suddenly in his bed, and propped himself up on his elbows. Ears pricked. Only the snores of his PVA-smeared chum James Stone disturbed the silence. But Barnett sensed danger and swung his legs out of bed. Pulling on his Celtic football dressing gown. He grasped the machete he always kept under his pillow and stood up, sniffing the air.

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