Christmas Stalkings (6 page)

“Back down the drive, there’s an opening on the left. Barn’s straight ahead. What are you gawping at?”

Sixsmith said, “When you said, ‘it’s you . . .’“

“‘Small, shabbily dressed black man,’ that’s what my husband said. You are this detective thing, aren’t you?”

“Well yes. And you’re Mrs. Nettleton?”

“Who the hell else would I be?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry. Your husband didn’t give me quite so detailed a description. Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Nettleton. I look forward to helping sort out your little problem.”

That was pretty smooth, he thought. Show her she was talking to class.

“What problem?” she said.

“These what-you-call-’
em
? These lampers.”

“Oh, those bastards. No problem,” she said dismissively. “Couple of blasts with a shotgun would see them on their way.”

“But if they’re poaching game on your estate . . .”

“Estate?
Jesus Christ, he’s not been shooting that estate shit again? Listen, twenty acres of boggy fell-side and a bit of woodland doesn’t add up to an estate. As for game, there’s a bit of rough shooting, but these deer aren’t game, there’s no official hunting of them. Scrubby little roe they are, come down and eat the flowers if you’re not careful.”

“So you wouldn’t object to a proper hunt?”

“On horseback? Or course not Fat chance of that round here, where they even chase foxes on foot”

“But you do object to lamping?” said Sixsmith, eager for clarity.

“Of course I do. That’s not sport. Lot of nasty little
erks
come crawling out of their slums to make a bit of money. The Arabs have got it right. Chop off a few hands, that’d bring the crime wave down. What the hell Ambrose thinks you can do about it, I can’t imagine. Well, it’s his money. Just keep out from under my feet, okay?”

She began to close the door. Sixsmith said, “I take it Mr. Nettleton’s not at home.”

“You don’t think I’d be freezing my tits off out here if he were, do you?” she snapped, slamming the door.

He found the Barn without difficulty. After his ungracious reception, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find he was expected to sleep on a bale of straw surrounded by oxen. Instead it turned out to have been very effectively converted into a two-
bedroomed
cottage with all mod cons. Someone had even switched on the electric radiators and stocked the pantry and the fridge.

He opened a tin of tuna fish and put it in a saucer for Whitey, who returned from a tour of his new domain purring.

“You like it, huh? That’s fine, but I don’t want you molesting the local wildlife, do you hear me now?”

He himself dined on scrambled eggs. About an hour after he’d arrived, he saw a headlight moving along the driveway and heard the growl of a supercharged engine. Probably Nettleton returning, he thought. But if it was, the man didn’t think it necessary to call on him.

He went to bed about half past ten, with Whitey snuggled beside him on top of the duvet. He fell asleep instantly, but woke again sometime after midnight with a sense of how utterly dark it was with no comforting rectangle of dim light at the window from the refracted glow of a nocturnal city.

Whitey had managed to get his head under the duvet.

“Good thinking, man,” said Sixsmith, pulling it over his head and going back to sleep.

He was woken once more by the same car engine. This time the window was visible as a pale square and he lay there till the pallor began to glow. Then he got up, pulled back the curtains and found himself looking at blue skies above trees made gold by the rising sun. Among the trees something moved. He pushed the window open, and to his delight away up the wood bounded a pair of deer.

Nettleton called to see him late in the morning.

“Settled in?” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t be here, but business kept me in Manchester overnight.”

“I’m very comfortable. What do you want me to do?”

“Start detecting, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes. Any suggestion where? My Indian tracking’s a bit rusty.”

“How about the pub? I’ll give you directions.”

According to Nettleton’s directions, the
Hunnisage
Arms was only a mile up the road. Sixsmith clocked fifteen finding it A battered pickup with carburetor trouble preceded him onto the car park. Three men got out, rustic types in cloth caps, gum boots, and shirt sleeves, despite the sub-zero temperature. Sixsmith let them go into the pub while he examined the car park. It was large with no sign of any lighting. Perfect for your bonnet artist

The bar was empty apart from the three men, who didn’t even glance his way as he entered. The landlord, a small bearded man, compensated for this lack of interest with a warm welcome; probably, Sixsmith thought cynically, in the hope that this was a scouting expedition for a large and hungry family out in the car.

If so, to his credit his bonhomie survived the disappointment of being told Sixsmith was alone. “Till my kid brother and his family join me for Christmas,” he added, this being the story he’d concocted to account for his unseasonal solitariness. “I volunteered to come up early, get the place aired out,
suss
out the nice pubs. Don’t reckon I need go no further.”

“We try to please.”

“You’re succeeding. Where’s the name come from, by the way?”

“Hunnisages are the local gentry,” explained the landlord. “They own half the land round here. Your landlady is a
Hunnisage
.”

“Mrs. Nettleton?” said Sixsmith, surprised.

“That’s right. She’s some sort of second cousin to young Sir Andrew. He came into the title when his uncle died last spring. The Manor and the main body of land were all entailed, of course, but
Skellbreak
Hall had come into the family late and never been included in the entail, so he left that to Mary Nettle-ton. He’d always had a soft spot for her mother, it seems.”

“So it’s hers, not Nettleton’s?” said Sixsmith.

“That’s right, though he’d like folk to think different Not that I’ve anything against the man,” he added with a publican’s caution.

They parted on first-name terms. . “Cheers, Joe, see you again soon, I hope?”

“Tonight, Dave. I’m not a man who likes to cook for himself.”

In the car park the three men, who’d left just ahead of him, were standing peering under the bonnet of the pickup.

“Looks knackered to me, Charley,” opined one of them.

Charley, the oldest and clearly the owner, cursed savagely.

“I suppose I’d better ring that
git
at the garage,” he said.

Sixsmith strolled over and said, “Having trouble?”

“You’ve noticed,” growled Charley.

“Mind if I look?”

He peered in with the expert eye of one well-versed in keeping ancient engines going well beyond their expiry date. Then he went to the boot of his own car, came back with the cardboard box in which he carried tools and a huge assortment of spares, and set about the carburetor.

“Try her,” he said.

Charley tried her. The engine started first time and his look of ill-tempered skepticism was replaced by one of amazed delight.

“By Christ, it sounds better than it’s done in years!” he cried. “Thanks, mate. I owe you a drink. Can’t stop now, we’re late already. But if you’re staying at
Skell
-break Barn, you’ll be in again, eh? See you!”

The pickup roared off.

So much for rustics paying no attention, thought Sixsmith. The sods had probably
earwigged
every word he’d said!

But it was all bread upon the waters.

When he entered the Arms that night (a journey he’d reduced from fifteen miles to three), he hadn’t got a yard beyond the door when Charley rose from a crowded table by a roaring fire and cried, “Over here, Joe! Sit down. Your money’s no good tonight”

Joe.
He probably knows my National Insurance number too, thought Sixsmith. There’s a lot I’ve got to learn about this detection business!

He sat down and was introduced as a visiting mechanical genius to the seven or eight men around the fire. He soon realized they were already in full possession of every scrap of disinformation he’d given Dave, the landlord, and they seemed genuinely friendly, with none of that suspicious reserve he’d been conditioned to expect from country folk. Only one of them, a small wiry man with a swarthy complexion, came over as less than wholehearted in his welcome. When he was identified as Eddie Stamp, for once Sixsmith found himself fully in sympathy with Nettleton.

Charley, after his fourth pint, became expansive.

“You ought to settle up here, Joe,” he said. “Lad with your
talents’d
never be short of work.”

There was a chorus of approval, but Eddie Stamp said, “A bit far north, I’d say. You lot aren’t built for the cold, are you?”

Before Sixsmith could pick his response, Charley said, “Your
mam’s
family managed all right and they came from Egypt originally, didn’t they? Whose shout is it? Eddie, it must be you.”

As the man rose reluctantly and went to the bar, Charley said, “Half Gyppo. Pay him no heed, he’s harmless enough.”

Sometime later there was one of those twenty-to-the-hour silences which often fall on noisy groups, and from the car park came the roar of a powerful sports-car engine.

“That sounds like Randy Andy. Better lock up your old lady, Dave,” Stamp called out.

There was a general laugh which Dave didn’t join in.

“Randy Andy? Who’s he?” said Sixsmith.

“Sir Andrew
Hunnisage
of
Hunnisage
Manor,” said Charley. “Half the buggers in here work on his estate or on farms rented from it. They might have a laugh behind his back but just watch them touch their caps when he comes in.”

Sixsmith watched. In fact, there wasn’t all that much touching of caps but nearly everyone returned the hearty “good evening!” with which the willowy young man in jeans and a tartan lumberjack shirt announced his entry to the bar. He had a bored-looking young woman with him who sat on a barstool, showing a great deal of rather chubby leg, while her escort chatted to various individuals with apparently effortless ease.

“He seems to get on well with people,” said Six-smith.

“Bred to it,” said Charley. “No use trying to put it on like some buggers.”

“I wouldn’t mind breeding her to it,” said someone with a lascivious glance toward the bar.

And in the laughter Sixsmith heard Eddie say, “I know someone who’ll have her nose put out of joint.”

In the days that followed, Sixsmith found to his surprise that he was rather enjoying his stay in these foreign parts. Charley had “adopted” him and missed no chance of showing him (in every sense) round the district.

As to his investigation, he made only negative progress. It was easy after a while to get Charley himself to bring up the subject of “lamping” deer. The countryman expressed his own obviously genuine revulsion for the practice. And while there might have been some partiality in his assurances that no one local would do such a thing, this seemed to be supported by
Sixsmith’s
own assessment of his nightly drinking companions, with the possible exception of Eddie Stamp. And even here, Sixsmith wondered uneasily whether his distrust might not be a crypto-racist response to the man’s “half-Gyppo” origins.

After a while he began to feel as guilty about wasting Nettleton’s money as he had about Miss Negus’s, but during their brief daily encounters, he got no sense of pressure from the man, so it was easy to drift along with the slow current of country life. He even began to enjoy his gentle strolls around the “estate” in an over-large pair of gum boots he’d found in the Barn. To his relief he found no grisly evidence of lamping, but he saw plenty of live deer and got a great deal of pleasure out of watching these timid, graceful animals.

Then one day he bumped into Mary Nettleton and her reception more than compensated for the lack of pressure from her husband.

“You still here?” she snapped. “You earn your money easy, don’t you?”

“You’ll need to discuss that with your husband, ma’am,” he replied.