by S J Bolton
We left the restaurant to find snow had covered the ground outside and Nick suggested we take a longer route home to enjoy what he described as the city with a coat of whitewash. Despite jeans that were more hole than fabric, I agreed, because I still hadn’t worked this man out. Besides, there is something about snow, isn’t there? About the way it softens harsh sound and brightens the darkness, hiding everything that’s ugly and making the world look clean. As we walked through the town, students had left their buildings, even the pubs and cafés, to come outside and play. All around us were the sounds of fun: footsteps crunching at speed, high-pitched squealing and good-natured taunting.
For a few minutes we followed the river, watching flakes fall and melt on its slow-moving surface, then we turned across a stretch of field that Nick told me was Jesus Green. There was an epic snowball fight going on.
‘That lot are Jesus, the others are Queens’,’ said Nick, as he gallantly put himself between me and the fight. ‘Keep your head down and walk fast, they might not spot us.’
‘How can you tell?’ I asked.
‘Jesus attracts an inordinate number of red-haired women,’ he told me, ‘whereas Queens’ men are known for wearing their jeans very low down on their hips.’
I looked over at the skirmish. A girl with a Peruvian hat was rugby-tackled to the ground by a man wearing nothing warmer than a sleeveless vest. She didn’t seem to mind too much. No red-haired women or low-slung jeans that I could see. I gave Nick my best quizzical look.
‘Scarves,’ he said. ‘Jesus are red and black, Queens’ are green and white.’
A stray snowball came our way and caught him on the side of the head.
‘Serves you right,’ I told him.
‘Ouch,’ he said. ‘That is very cold down the back of my neck.’
We walked on, leaving the squeals behind us, and approached the town again. As we left the Green, I thought for a moment, and then took his arm. In front of us was a long, low house of honey-coloured stone, the ledges of its tiny paned windows frosted with snow. Over our heads a snowball soared through the air and exploded against the stonework. We turned a corner and beautiful buildings, gleaming white and gold in the lamplight, rose up around us. It was like stepping into a fairy tale.
‘I never tire of it,’ Nick said, as we made our way along the pavement and snow covered our footsteps almost immediately. ‘My parents both worked at the university. Their worst arguments when I was growing up were over which college I’d attend. My idea of teenage rebellion was threatening to apply to Oxford.’
My idea of teenage rebellion had been torching cars in the Cardiff docks. It didn’t seem like the moment to mention it. ‘So where did you end up?’ I asked.
‘Trinity,’ he said. ‘Dad’s old college. He’d died by that stage and my mother thought it would be a kind of memorial to him if I went there.’
His father had died. How exactly? Natural causes or … we were in amongst the buildings now. Towers and turrets stretched up above us.
‘It’s at moments like these,’ said Nick, who was looking up towards the rooftops, ‘that I always hope I’ll see a night climber.’
There was a tiny scar on the underside of his chin. This close, he smelled good. Something warm and rich. ‘Sounds like a low-budget horror film,’ I said.
‘I think that’s night crawlers,’ he replied. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of the night climbers.’
Careful now. This might be something every real student in Cambridge was expected to know.
‘Rings a bell,’ I said. ‘I think I just assumed they were a myth.’
‘Oh no, they’re very real,’ he said. ‘Any amount of photographic evidence. Most years in December you’ll see a Father Christmas hat on one of the pinnacles at King’s. All of them on a good year.’
‘So who are they exactly?’
He smiled down at me. ‘No one knows, that’s the whole point. There’s no club or society you can join because it’s all strictly against the rules. Get caught climbing and you’ll be sent down. No argument.’
‘And what do they climb?’
Nick raised his hand and gestured at the sky around us. ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Rooftops, chimneys, drainpipes, spires, turrets. It started in the old days when colleges were locked at ten o’clock. Men who stayed out late had to climb their way back in. Some of them got a taste for it.’
I looked at a nearby church spire. It looked pretty high off the ground to me.
‘Do they ever fall?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely. A few years ago a chap got impaled on some railings. Story is he was so drunk they operated without anaesthetic.’
We’d reached the main gate of St John’s. Cambridge is a small city. Nick greeted the porter on duty by name as we stepped through the small inner door into First Court. A group of third-year students were building a snowman.
‘So, did you ever night-climb?’
‘Ah, that’s the thing,’ he said. ‘We never climb and tell.’
A cat watched us from a first-floor window ledge as we approached the main entrance to the Cripps Building and I could feel the beginnings of a nervous tickle. Nick would expect to be invited up.
We’d reached the door. He turned to face me, taking hold of the lapels of my coat to pull me closer, and I actually found myself considering it. He was the best-looking man I’d met in a long time and it wasn’t uncommon for undercover officers to have sexual relationships with people they were investigating. It was all part of infiltration and establishing trust.
On the other hand, wasn’t it turquoise eyes, not russet-brown ones, that I wanted looking down at me the next time I had sex?
‘So tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Three o’clock. My house. Come out hawking with me?’
I could not have Joesbury. Not ever. He was the one man in the world I would never be able to keep at arm’s length.
‘OK,’ I agreed, tilting my head back so the angle between his mouth and mine was perfect. All he had to do was lower his head. He smiled at me.
‘See you then,’ he said. Then he let go of my jacket, turned, and walked away.
SINCE THE ACCIDENT that had crippled her, Evi had dreamed many times that she could run. Occasionally, that she could fly. Only once had she dreamed that she could ski, and she’d woken trembling and sweating in the early hours. She had never dreamed that she could dance.
Until now.
Rock music. Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’. A pounding, insistent rhythm, turned up loud to be heard above the wind. Her hair flying round her head, her neck cold in the November air, the heat of a man’s body pressed against her. Harry. The priest who’d played in a rock band, who’d held her upright and moved them both around the bare rock of the Lancashire Tor. The night they’d fallen in love.
Harry back again. Harry in her arms. She could feel his breath against her forehead, knew the wonderful anticipation of a first kiss. They danced closer and closer to the edge of the Tor. He tucked her right hand against his chest, freeing his to gently tilt her chin up towards him. She saw brown eyes smiling down at her. This was it.
‘Evi fall,’ he said. And threw her off the Tor.
Evi was out of bed and the pain running the length of her body was all she could think of. She made herself take deep breaths. Just a dream. She hadn’t fallen. Maybe out of bed, maybe that accounted for the sudden stabbing pain, but she was fine. She found the light. Sniffy looked up at her, blinking, from her place on the rug. Then she gave a lazy wag of her tail. Nothing to worry about. She’d take some more painkillers, maybe get a hot drink and go back to bed. Everything was fine.
Except Springsteen was still singing.
Somewhere in the house, music was playing. And not just any music. It was the tune that meant more to her than any other. The track she could never listen to, the one that had her switching off the car radio on the occasions it was played, because she simply couldn’t hear it without crying.
Biting h
er lip, Evi made her way round the bed and towards the door. Then she turned back and called to the dog. Sniffy got up reluctantly, not remotely concerned about either the phantom music or the intruder who must have broken in to put the CD in the music system.
Evi’s CD player was in the sitting room. The hallway was in darkness. She released her hold on Sniffy’s collar and the dog stayed by her side. The door to the sitting room was closed. Evi turned the handle and reached in to find the light switch.
The music stopped. The room was empty.
‘Go see,’ she whispered. Sniffy looked at her. The only possible hiding place in the room was behind the curtains covering the large front windows. The dog would know, surely, if there was anyone there. There were no lights on the music system. It made a faint twanging noise when it was switched off: she would have heard it.
Now that she thought about it, she didn’t even have the Springsteen CD.
Clutching tight to Sniffy’s collar, Evi limped across the room and pulled back the curtains. No one there. Sniffy cocked her head, as if to say, Now can we go back to bed?
‘I was dreaming, wasn’t I?’ said Evi. ‘There was no music, was there?’
Sniffy’s tail waved left and then right. One ear drooped, the other stayed pert.
Evi set off back again. She was halfway across the bedroom when she stopped. She knew, beyond any doubt, that someone was watching her. She turned on the spot. Curtains drawn, doors closed, she was completely alone. She’d reached the bed when she heard the voice directly behind.
‘Evi fall,’ it said.
Sunday 20 January (two days earlier)
NEXT MORNING I felt massively better. After several hours of completely dreamless sleep, whatever germs I’d been fighting off appeared to have thrown in the towel. There was certainly no sign of any surreptitiously administered illegal drugs. Evi had been right to be cautious; luckily she’d been wrong.
I’d also had an idea. Bryony might have struck the match that nearly killed her, but clear evidence that she’d bought the petrol herself would indicate intent like nothing else. Lighting a match under the influence of drugs was one thing. Getting yourself to a petrol station, filling a can and paying for it was another entirely. I doubled-checked the CID report into the investigation following Bryony’s suicide attempt. As I remembered, the receipt for a can of petrol had been found in Bryony’s desk. I found the name of the petrol station and the date and time of the can’s purchase. Then I got dressed and went out.
The snow had put a lot of motorists off leaving their houses and the garage on Station Road was quiet. A thin trickle of people coming in to buy milk and papers was exactly what I needed. Enough custom to be distracting, but not so much the counter staff would feel stressed. A young Asian man behind the counter watched me walk the length of the shop. I gave him an appraising look, figuring he was just about good-looking enough to be taken in by it. Then I grinned. He grinned back.
‘Hi,’ I said, when I was close enough to lean on the counter and pout. ‘I’m Laura. I’ve come to look at your CCTV footage.’
His smile faded just perceptibly. ‘Sorry?’ he said.
I dug into my pocket and pulled out my university ID. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Here are my credentials. So you know I’m not a villain or anything. I’m doing a research project into how petrol stations are taking over from corner shops. I arranged with Mr Watson to pop in for ten minutes this morning. Just to do a random viewing of your recorded CCTV footage.’
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ he said, bristling.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘You know, I’m not surprised. I’ve had ten places to visit this week and in over half the message didn’t get through. Trouble is, I have to submit the results tomorrow. Still, not your fault. Bye.’
I was almost at the door and thinking it hadn’t worked when he called me back.
‘Do you just need to look at some stored footage?’ he asked me.
I nodded. ‘I’ve got some random dates and times that our software programme generated. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.’
Forty minutes later I left. I’d watched the footage twice to be sure. Bryony had not been in the petrol station anywhere close to the time the petrol can had been bought. The only possible candidate for the purchase had been a tall bloke, who’d kept his face hidden beneath a hooded sweatshirt the whole time he’d been in the shop. He’d also kept whatever he was buying very close to his chest – literally – but when he turned to leave the camera got a pretty good shot at the thing he was clutching. Looked a lot like a petrol can to me.
By three o’clock I was back at Nick’s house, standing outside the falcons’ shed, having some sort of harness fitted round my shoulders.
‘You’re sure you’re OK to do this?’ he asked me for the third time. ‘I can take the second lot out later while you’re catching up on the EastEnders omnibus.’
‘I don’t believe your house even has electricity,’ I said.
Nick lowered a square wooden frame over my shoulders and fastened it to the harness. On it, I’d been informed, I would carry three falcons. Nick would do the same. He disappeared into the shed and brought out a bird with a medieval-style leather hood covering its head. It settled on the wooden frame in front of me, its talons tied with thin leather strips. It ruffled its feathers in response to the cold but otherwise seemed completely at ease.
Ten minutes later, accompanied by the two pointers, Nick and I were striding down the snow-covered farm track further into the Cambridgeshire countryside.
‘Why are they hooded?’ I asked, as we climbed a stile into a ploughed field. Nick leaped over it as though he didn’t have a live cargo slung around his waist. I went slowly, terrified of falling into a snowdrift and hurting one of the tiny creatures.
‘Stops them getting distracted,’ he said. ‘If they weren’t blind, the minute we see any game they’d all want to be off. It’d be chaos.’
‘So they take it in turns?’ I asked. ‘What happens, do we let them off and see what they can find? How long do they get before we give up and let another one have a go? And what stops them flying away and not coming back?’
‘Lot of questions at once,’ he replied. ‘It’s not uncommon for birds to be lost. You just have to give them enough of an incentive to come back. This lot have been trained since they were infants to associate me with food. That’s why they come back, usually. As far as the hunting is concerned, they don’t find the game, they just catch it.’
‘So who finds it?’ I asked.
We passed through a gate and Nick closed it behind me.
‘We’re on Jim Notley’s land now and he’s happy for me to hunt here, so we can start,’ he said. ‘OK, this is how it works. The dogs find the game. Watch them now.’
At a signal from Nick, Merry and Pippin ran on ahead and started sniffing around. Pippin disappeared from sight into a drift, occasionally sending up fountains of snow. Merry stayed where we could see him, poking his nose into rabbit holes, beneath brambles, under logs.
‘We’ll fly Arwen first,’ Nick said, reaching out and taking the hood off the bird to his right. Getting its vision back, the falcon flapped its wings and gave a little hop. The other birds seemed to sense something going on. A little collective shiver passed from one to the other. Both dogs had disappeared from view.
‘What are they looking for?’ I asked. ‘Rabbits?’
‘Peregrines won’t take prey from the ground,’ said Nick. ‘Some birds will, owls for instance, and buzzards, but peregrines have too much speed. If they hit the ground at over a hundred miles an hour they wouldn’t survive. They have to take their prey on the wing. Steady, sweetheart.’
Arwen wanted to be off. She was straining against the tether, pecking at Nick. Keeping a tight hold of the straps, he lifted her off and put her on his forearm. We walked on, Nick holding his arm at right angles like a medieval huntsman, and I felt a ridiculous sense of anticipation. If someone had told me two weeks ago
I’d be out falconing!
Then everything happened at once. One of the dogs started barking and a mass of flapping grey feathers shot into the air. Then Arwen was soaring into the sky like a bullet, wings that had seemed so light and delicate on the perch pumping her upwards with incredible force.
‘She’s seen it,’ said Nick. ‘Keep your eye on her.’
I tried, but it was over so quickly. The partridge – I learned later that’s what it was – didn’t stand a chance. The peregrine saw it, accelerated, and a couple of seconds later the mid-air collision took place twenty feet above us. I thought I heard the captured bird screaming, or it could have been Arwen howling in triumph, then the two began to plummet. For a moment I thought something had gone wrong, then Arwen’s wings stretched out to slow her down. They landed and Nick picked up his pace to reach them.
The dogs beat us to it but stood waiting politely. Nick lowered his framework of birds to the ground, lifted Arwen off the dead partridge, and tethered her back on the frame. Then he pulled out a knife, cut the partridge’s head off and offered it to Arwen, who sat, alert and eager, on his gloved hand.
‘Are you squeamish?’ he asked, as she tore the head apart in seconds and tiny speckles of red began to stain the snow. Smelling blood, the other birds grumbled and pulled against their tethers.
‘I have my moments,’ I said.
We flew the birds one by one. When Nick’s had all had their turn and his game bag was filling up, he let me try. The trick was in keeping the bird calm until the moment for it to fly, then releasing it quickly and smoothly. Clearly there was a knack to it because my birds weren’t nearly as successful as Nick’s. By the time the last bird had flown, ribbons of pink and gold were strung across the sky and my legs, working extra hard because of the snow, were starting to ache. A sudden cry overhead made me look up to see three swans flying above us.
‘I think we’re done,’ Nick said. ‘If we follow the fence at this point, we can pick up a short cut.’
I was happy with that, so we made our way round the outskirts of a small copse. As we turned away from the sunset, the vista opened up for us again. About a mile away was a collection of large, low buildings.