Chapter Fourteen: Tuesday Night
“The Beast of Exmoor is perhaps the best known of all British mystery big cats and was the beginning of widescale media interest in the phenomena. The presence of a mystery predator was first suspected in the region in the spring and summer of 1983 when over 100 sheep and lambs were slaughtered in a particularly savage fashion”
Rob was not going to be discouraged by Damien’s teasing. He didn’t even know why he still hung around with him anyway: Damien was a snob and a narrow-minded idiot. They had been flung together in the same classes during sixth form, but that was not necessarily a good enough reason to still maintain an association now, over two years on. School was like that though, it thrust unlikely companions together. Perhaps life was just the same? Rob had once succumbed to the urge to look up his old classmates on the Friends Reunited website: despite only having left school a couple of years beforehand, he could not but admit to a passing curiosity to see how some of his peers were faring, particularly within the anonymity of the internet, where he could genuinely be like the ‘fly on the wall’ at the school reunion. The list of instantly recognizable names made for depressing reading, a roll-call of some of the most annoying people from his past and all apparently professing to be far more successful in the big, bad world than he was himself. Tossers Best Forgotten would have been a more apt name for the site. Rob did not register his own details and vowed never to look at it again. Not until he hit the big time, at any rate. He was annoyed that Damien had found out about Janet and also that he had mocked their meeting place, but he knew that he was actually more annoyed with himself: he had never been good at keeping a secret and, anyway, what good a rebellion if no one even knew about it? This was how he now tried to justify his revealing details of his supposedly clandestine relationship; the truth was that he hadn’t been able to hold his drink and he had boasted about his romantic conquest. It was what lads did. He just didn’t like the repercussions.
Rob glanced at his watch as he passed beneath one of the dim lamps that shone its weak light on the pathway that ran beside the children’s play area in the park. He was going to be early this evening. That was okay. It would give him time to smoke and have a think. Of course, Janet may not even turn up. She hadn’t been there on the last couple of occasions they had arranged to meet. Perhaps she had grown bored of him? Rob remembered her eager little hands and exploring mouth and lips on the last occasion they had met, and smiled to himself: no, he didn’t think so. She was more desperate for his company than he was for hers. Or if not his company exactly, certainly his... what? Prowess? She always played the innocent but Rob knew better: the girl was pure mischief. Anticipation of the forthcoming liaison made Rob unconsciously hurry his step. What did Damien Finn know? The little idiot had no idea what he was talking about. Perhaps he would introduce Janet to him after all, he could do with his eyes opened to the real world. Except, of course, they never would be: Damien was on a fast-track to success; he would never have to acknowledge that there was a world out there that didn’t revolve around the drinking of fine wines and being seen wearing the best designer labels; doing business over a round of golf or a set of tennis, and only dining out at one of the top London restaurants. Yes, he may have taken a year out between school and university, but he had spent it at his uncle’s office in the City earning more money than most graduates could only dream of upon leaving college, and now that he had his place reading P.P.E. at Oxford secure to start in the autumn, he would have no need to look downwards to the gutter, or indeed backwards at the past. Far from Rob being the one that might cast adrift Damien, Rob wondered how long it would be before his friend - like Peter - denied him. Another five years and Rob could only too well imagine Damien’s own entry on the Friends Reunited bulletin board: ‘after qualifying with a first class degree from Oxford, I joined a City brokers, where I am now working as a commodities trader. I spend my time between my apartment in Docklands and my villa on Tenerife. I married Samantha last year and we are expecting our first child in the summer.’ A life mapped out from birth to death: school, qualifications, Oxbridge, City, early-retirement, even earlier first heart attack, always that thought that you would give-it-all-up-and-enjoy-all-this-money-you-have-made, second fatal heart attack before you even meet your grand-children. Rob shook his head - no it was not for him. He knew this with conviction, he had no choice, he had tried for Oxbridge and been turned down: this world had already politely - albeit firmly - shown him the exit door. There was no way back. Even if he had wanted to be a conformist, the buggers quite clearly did not want him. Rob wondered what it was about him that hadn’t fitted. Perhaps exactly this behaviour: stalking around in the park in the twilight for a quick shag with a common barge girl. His quiet, independent spirit must have been written in every expression on his face; they had read him like a book and decided that he was not Debrett’s Etiquette. Rob had reached the canal bridge by now and his thoughts turned to Janet again: some things were more precious than money and success. He wouldn’t swap what he had.
He could see the meeting tree from the rise in the middle of the bridge, it stood out clear, tall and dark against the deep blue sky beyond, the peculiarly spherical ball of mistletoe distinctive in the very topmost branches, looking like a great bees’ nest resting on the highest boughs. It was a corny place to meet, Rob was forced to admit, but they never dallied there long before searching out a more discreet venue in the dark trees. The reassuring feel of the hard bridge beneath his feet was quickly replaced by the slippery earth and loose plant debris of the wood, as Rob veered off left from the main path and took a short cut perpendicular to the towpath, directly up the sloping bank of earth that led to the foot of the tall tree. As he approached closer, he was surprised to see that Janet was already waiting for him, standing alone at the base of the tree, half hidden in the darkness of the surrounding undergrowth. She was never early. She must be desperate for him. Rob smiled again to himself. It would be a good evening.
It was only as he drew nearer that he suddenly had doubts. Was it Janet after all? She had made no move towards him. Normally she would have been dancing eagerly forward by now. She could not have failed to hear him coming. Surely someone else couldn’t have been using their tree. Not at the same time, not for their own romantic tryst, it was just too great a coincidence. Rob hesitated to call out Janet’s name for fear that her father might hear. They had deliberately arranged for their meeting place to be some distance away from the moored longboats but, in the quiet of the night and across the still water, Rob was always aware of how far his voice might carry. Caution was his byword. Precaution was Janet’s.
Rob was nearly within touching distance of the person standing at the foot of the tree and was just preparing to whisper “Janet is that you?” when the figure moved forward a pace, stepped out of the obscurity of the bushes, and revealed itself to be not Janet but instead a grim-faced looking man, brandishing a large stick. Rob did not have any time to speculate about the apparently violent motive as to why this stranger should be standing here at this unusual hour, before a slight noise immediately behind him caused him to turn his head and, before he could see his second adversary, strong arms gripped him in a bear-hug embrace around his waist and he was bodily lifted off the ground and thrown unceremoniously in a heap, landing painfully on a protruding root at the base of the rendezvous tree. He felt at least two sharp kicks to the side of his torso as he lay on the ground, and a numbing punch full in the face, that felt as though it must have pushed his nose almost inside out, like the reversal of a jelly mould, and from which he recognized, and tasted, the hot and salty sensation of his own running blood, before he heard the swishing rush of the first attacker’s large stick, as it was raised, double-handed, above his opponent’s head and swung down on an unstoppable collision course with the front of his unprotected skull.
•••
/>
“She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not.” Art was not even aware of the words he was muttering beneath his breath, nor of the happy tune that he was humming: an inharmonious combination that would have been guaranteed to irritate any connoisseur of music - or anyone at all, come to that - should there have been anyone around to hear, which thankfully there was not. He was alone - Luke soundly asleep and snoring upstairs - in the front room of his terraced house, absentmindedly pulling threads out from an increasingly balding patch on the arm of one of his easy chairs, trying to block out the steady thump, thump of the music emanating from his neighbour’s stereo. The noise was only quiet, and if he had had his own T.V. on, or if there had been any other noises about, Art was sure that he would not have noticed it at all, but in the silence of his own house that evening, the sound reverberated through the walls with a persistence that was hard to ignore, like a throbbing tooth. Still, Art could hardly complain: when Luke used to wake up and cry in the middle of the night they had never said a word. Perhaps the music had made them deaf?
“She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not.” The rhythm of Art’s words had unconsciously sped up, falling into sympathetic step with the techno beat from next door. He found that his foot was tapping too and that the destruction to the fabric of the armchair was progressing at a pace that could not be ignored unless he was happy to rest his limbs on hard, bare, wooden supports. “She loves me, she loves me not.”
He was thinking about Rupa but also about Amanda. There seemed little doubt that Rupa liked him. Why she should, he was not sure, but there it was, life is not always simple to explain. On Monday, when they had taken their leave of each other, she had kissed him lightly on the cheek. He had been surprised. It wasn’t something that he had expected an Asian woman to do. After he had reproached himself for being racist and tried to imagine if he would have had the same reaction if Rupa had not been Indian, he discovered that he was still surprised. A kiss on the cheek: he wouldn’t have expected that from anyone. Not even Amanda, in recent months. The surprise was that anyone would fancy him, not just specifically that it was Rupa that did. And what did he think of her? Art knew what his heart thought. She was gorgeous, she was funny, she was smart and she was feisty. His heart - not to mention all regions below - was screaming out “Go on, my son.” So why was he listening to his head?
Art stood up, still twirling a long piece of thread that he had extracted from the arm of the chair around his finger. He took two paces across the room, turned around, walked back and sat down again. What would Amanda be doing now? Art glanced at the wall clock above the fireplace. It was one of those novelty clocks that sounded a different bird call on each hour. Initially, Art had been thrilled to wake at six o’clock to the dawn chorus of the Ficedula Narcissina, but after the second, and the third, and the fourth occasion the novelty had begun to wear a bit thin, and after a week the battery was removed and the Parus Major, the Tarsiger Cyanurus, and particularly the insufferable squawkings of the Turdus Chrysolaus, were silenced forever. It would be three o’clock in the afternoon in New York. She would still be at the office. In her office. With her nameplate on the door. Amanda Madison, Managing Editor. Or would she have reverted back to her maiden name? She had always resisted being a Madison; had never got around to changing the details in her passport. Amanda Raine. She used to say that she had been a Raine for so long that she could have caused a flood. Art had never found it a particularly funny joke. Rupa had made him laugh when she had recounted the story of how she had muddled up her bags in the changing room in French Connection and had walked out with someone else’s shopping, or was it that, or had someone else walked out with hers? Art couldn’t remember. Their whole conversation that day had had a dreamlike insubstantiality about it; he could remember that he had laughed a lot, but the details... they seemed to float to the corners of his memory such that they were always just out of sight.
Thud, thud, thud, thud. The beat through the wall was constant, never-ceasing. Did he want to see her again? Of course. He had been counting down the hours until Wednesday morning; rehearsing every move as he opened the gate to her house, walked up the front drive, knocked on the door, waited while she turned the key from the inside and unlocked the bolts, stood back as she opened the door, smiled and said “Come in”; he had stepped back into her life a thousand times since that kiss on Monday. Thud, thud, thud, thud. The beat of his heart was constant, never-ceasing.
Thud, thud, thud, thud. The rhythm changed, the music quickened, the volume increased. The beat was incessant, insistent, pervasive. He was a married man. He loved his wife. Amanda. Amanda: he found that he could barely conjure up her features in his imagination, like trying to rearrange the pieces of a mental jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box to act as a guide. Thud, thud, thud, thud. Art felt as though he could have struck his head repeatedly against the wall: his indecision was driving him insane. Rupa. He was only leaving Luke with her for a few hours tomorrow morning, it was not as though he was jumping into bed with her, or anything. It was all perfectly innocent. Except, of course, Art knew that it was not. In his mind, he had already crossed a different threshold. Thud, thud, thud, thud. A vein throbbed in his temple. In his mind the blood was beating its own angry tune. He shouldn’t lead her on; not let her expect something that he was not able to fulfil. He was a married man. He would tell her tomorrow; he would not leave Luke with her. They would cross paths occasionally in the park, perhaps say hello, pass the time of day, but that would be where it would end.
Dring, dring. Dring, dring. It was a new sound. The music from next door had stopped as suddenly as it had started, and instead had been replaced by the sound of ringing. Art looked up surprised. Dring, dring. Dring, dring. It was the telephone. It was Trevor. Art did not recognize the voice at first.
“Who?”
“Trev. Trevor. What’s up, Art? You sound half asleep. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Trevor.” Art finally recalled the voice of the journalist. “Trevor. No, that’s fine. I was... thinking.”
“I should stop that,” his friend quipped, “Bad for the brain.”
“What? Yes,” Art was still not mentally firing on all cylinders.
“I suppose you are wondering why I’ve rung?” said Trevor, ignoring Art’s sluggish responses.
“Yes,” agreed Art. Now he came to think about it, it was strange to hear from Trevor. He could not recall his friend ever having rung him before, Art hadn’t even been aware that he knew his phone number. Generally when they had met it was when Art had actually gone along to the newspaper’s offices to visit him in person. “What's up?”
“As you know the local paper comes out tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve written a follow up piece to last week’s story, you know, about the big cat, and I thought that you might like to have a sneak preview before it hits the streets.”
Art was more alert and interested now, although he tried not to convey his enthusiasm to Trevor. Something was not quite right, Trevor was not normally known for doing anyone a favour without wanting something back in return. “Oh, yes,” Art said, cautiously.
“There have been a few more... I don't know how best to describe them... occurrences.”
Art could not contain his curiosity, “What?” He was filled with a mixture of impatience to hear what Trevor had to say and annoyance that the journalist had clearly not kept him updated, even though he knew of Art’s particular interest in the subject. “Any actual sightings? Why didn’t you tell me before? What have you got, Trevor?”
“Calm down, calm down,” said Trevor, “There is nothing definite. In fact,” he lowered his voice, sounding slightly sheepish, “this is partly why I called you. I think the whole thing may be a big hoax and that I am being used as the fall guy.”
“Oh?”?
? Art was still intrigued, “Tell me the whole story.”
It was a strange tale that Trevor went on to recount. It had begun last Thursday night, when Trevor had received a second anonymous phone call.
“It sounded like the same voice as before,” Trevor said, “Definitely a man’s voice, although it sounded as though he was muffling it somewhat. A bit melodramatic, but not uncommon.”
“And what did he say?” Art asked.
“Well, it was all a bit Teddy Bears’ Picnic-ish. You know, if I go down to the woods today I'm in for a big surprise.”
“Was he any more specific?”
“Oh yes, much. What he actually told me was that there was a fresh carcass... hang on, let me get my notebook and I'll tell you his exact words.”
Art was left holding on to a dumb receiver for several moments before Trevor’s voice returned, “Here we are. Another killing, is what he said.”
“Where?” Art’s voice couldn’t disguise his excitement. “I mean, what? And where?”
“Well that was a bit odd. On the golf course.”
“Not a golfer?” Art could afford to sound flippant. If an actual person had been attacked the event would have made national news and he could not have failed to have noticed it, even so there was still a hint of hope in his voice, after all, golfer, human, the two words were not necessarily mutually compatible.
“No. Now that would have been a story,” Trevor sounded excited just imagining the scoop. “No, the caller didn’t actually stipulate what it was that was dead. He just suggested that I went to the fifth fairway and looked around close to the trees on the left hand side, and that I should get there early before any golfers played their first round, or before any other animals had removed the remains. He also said that there was a distinctive footprint in the sand of one of the bunkers on the same hole, which I might find interesting too. And that was it. He rang off.”
The information about the footprint reminded Art that he wanted to ask Trevor about any tracks discovered around the first body, that of the Alsatian, and whether he had known about anything else that he had not included in his original article. That could wait though, Art wanted to hear more about the new developments. “So, what did you do?”
“Got up early and duly trotted along to the golf course to see what there was to see.”
“And?”
“Well, looking back now, I suppose I was a bit suspicious even then. It was still barely light when I got to the course, although by the time I found the correct spot the sun was just about up. I’m not a member there, are you?”
“Of course not,” said Art.
“So I don’t really know my way around, is what I’m saying,” continued Trevor, “Anyhow it took a while to find the fifth fairway. I seemed like I had been walking for miles, up and down and back and forth. But I was lucky, though, there was still no one else around, and from the description the caller had given, once I was there, I was able to find both the bunker he mentioned and the body quite swiftly.”
“And?” Art was desperate for Trevor to give him some concrete facts, something that he could analyze, any clue that might point to the validity or not of his big cat. “What was it?”
“I don’t know.” Trevor heard Art’s loud disappointed sigh down the phone, but carried on more positively, “All that remained were several skinned chunks of flesh. It was actually rather an unsettling sight, these naked, unrecognizable globules of pink meat, strewn around an area about the size of a large snooker table. I know it sounds a strange analogy, but that was the impression it gave me at the time, you know, the short cut grass of the fairway like the green baize, and these nuggets of meat spread around like the billiard balls, waiting to be dispatched.”
“And how large were the chunks?”
“Not big, fist-sized perhaps.”
“And no fur?”
“Nothing. Totally stripped clean. I was a bit freaked, I can tell you.”
Art was puzzled. The description Trevor had recounted did not conform to the feeding habits of any big cat that he was familiar with, although without having seen the actual evidence it was possible that Trevor’s account was inaccurate.
“So what did you do?”
“Picked up the chunks and took them with me.”
“What!” Art sounded incredulous. “You mean no one else except for you got to see any of this.”
“Didn’t want any competition, did I,” said Trevor, trying to justify his actions, “Don't worry. I took some photographs of the area before I disturbed anything.”
Art sighed again, “Well that’s something, I suppose. Mind if I look at them.”
“Be my guest. I’ll post a set to you.”
“And what about the footprint?”
“Yes, I photographed that too.”
“It was really there, where the guy said it would be?” Art was excited again, “Can you describe it?”
“Yes. It was much as you'd expect from a large cat. I’ve done a bit of research myself since I wrote the first article. In fact, it was the print rather than the carrion that initially convinced me that there was still something on the loose out there in the woods.”
“Bit convenient it treading in the sand, just where a footprint was likely to show,” said Art sceptically. “It’s classic hoax stuff.”
“I didn’t know that, did I,” said Trevor, “I was just excited at making a discovery. Anyway, hear me out, I'm still not sure if it is a hoax or not. I’d like your reaction.”
“So, the footprint?” Art prompted again.
Trevor became surprisingly scientific in his description, “Four distinct impressions of toes in a circular arc around a three lobe pad.”
“Sounds about right.”
“It was big too. Even allowing for the soft sand and the time that had lapsed before I saw it, it looked big to me.”
“And you destroyed this too?” Art questioned.
“Of course.” Trevor went on to explain his reasoning, “The groundsman, or whatever equivalent it is that they have on golf courses, would only have raked away the evidence without so much as a second glance.”
Art was ruing the fact that the period of time that Trevor was describing was the very morning that he had been in the woods on his own private cat hunt, only he had discovered nothing when by all account there was a trail to follow as wide as the Avenida 9 de Julio. “Send me that photo too?”
“Sure thing.”
“So what are you not telling me?” said Art, “You’ve still got your big cat, more importantly you’ve still got your big story. What has now made you get all windy?”
“It’s happened again.”
“What!” Art sounded amazed.
“Exactly the same circumstances. Anonymous phone call. Tipping me off to be in the park first thing.”
“When was this?”
“Just this evening, immediately before I rang you.”
“You mean the evidence is still there.”
“That’s right, if the caller is to be believed.”
“Where?”
“Just off the canal, close to the watercress beds. Do you know the weak bridge?”
“Yes, I know where you mean.”
“There is a water-logged track which runs from there around past the cress beds and down a slight incline before it merges with the river again. He said it wouldn’t take much looking for.”
“I’ll find it.”
“You mean you’ll go?”
“Just try to stop me,” said Art.
“But it must be a set up,” said Trevor.
“Most likely,” agreed Art, “but it is in your interest if I manage to prove that it is not, right?”
“I guess so,” said Trevor miserably, already thinking ahead to the apology he was more than likely going to have to print in the following week’s paper.
“By the way, Trevor,” Art bega
n, “While we are on the subject, why didn’t you tell me about the tracks around the Alsatian you discovered?”
“What tracks?”
“Footprints. Around the body.”
Trevor sounded confused, “How do you mean? I don’t recall any. I never saw the body, remember. All those coppers around that day, I never got any closer to it than you did. All I had to go on was my tip-off’s information.”
Art was thoughtful. “Thanks Trevor,” he said, “I’ll call you if I discover anything.” He put down the receiver. If what Trevor had said was true, the journalist’s evening caller and Art’s mysterious HPL200890 might share more in common than just their anonymity.
Tomorrow morning: it could not come quickly enough. Art just hoped that Rupa wouldn’t mind if he ignored her request and gave her an early morning wake up call.