The Country Escape (41 page)

‘I’m no longer interested in the bonus option,’ Dougie told Dollar, with tight-lipped restraint.

‘What is wrong?’ Her voice purred with reassuring cool.

‘I’ve changed my mind.’ He let himself into the mill house, the
puppy wriggling in ahead.

‘That is very inconvenient. Removing Kat Mason and her sanctuary is now a number-one priority. We would like Lake Farm made vacant and repatriated to the estate as a matter of urgency.’

Dougie snorted at the use of ‘repatriated’, as though Lake Farm was a refugee in a war zone. ‘That’s not my problem any more.’

She gave an exasperated huff, tapping
on her tablet in the background. ‘We will need to deal with this before Seth and his guests arrive next weekend. Igor will hunt and shoot both days.’

‘Who’s Igor?’

‘You should be aware of this. Dair has been given the security briefing to distribute. Igor is a
very
important guest. Read up on him.’

Dougie looked at the pile of unopened post on the table, one of which was a
hand-delivered A4 envelope addressed to The Hon. D. W. J. Everett, MFH. Only Dair was that formal and evasive.

‘I’ll look through it again tonight.’ He threw his keys down on the table and headed to the fridge for a Coke. ‘There aren’t a lot of sporting options right now, but I can set something up with a scent trail.’

‘That is not what we want, Dougie.’

He felt his scalp
tighten. ‘What precisely do you want?’

‘We have promised Igor English medieval hunting. This is entirely within your brief. We have assured him of your full co-operation. He expects to be entertained.’

‘You want me to dress up in doublet and hose?’ He played it dumb, but he knew that he couldn’t play it any dumber than he inadvertently, stupidly and blindly already had.

‘He
is an experienced bowman. He will bring his own equipment. Your job is to provide the horses and to track the game.’

‘You know I can’t do that. It’s completely illegal.’

There was a long pause. ‘Dougie, have you read your contract?’

‘I obviously have a lot of reading to do tonight.’

‘You have half an hour.’ She rang off.

Dougie knew he couldn’t hope to find his
contract in half an hour. Instead, he called his father’s mobile. ‘What do you know about Arjan “Seth” Singh?’

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘Should I be worried if I am?’

‘Not unduly. He’s very well liked.’ Vaughan Everett didn’t hesitate, the name as familiar to him as Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. ‘I was working for the Treasury when Seth’s first company was floated on the stock
exchange for a cool eight figures. That must have been fifteen years ago or more. He was a computer genius from Bradford who made a mint through developing online gaming sites. He was known as Britain’s richest teenager by the tabloids, but he hated the publicity and quickly disappeared behind a privacy wall. I think he’s based in India now. His enterprise is absolutely huge, one of the global
IT heavyweights.’

‘Would global include Russian arms deals?’

Vaughan promised to do some detective work and call back within the hour.

Dougie went to throw open a window, cursing himself repeatedly under his breath, his forehead pressed against the frame. Quiver leaned supportively against his legs as Dougie scrunched his eyes closed and breathed in the air outside so long,
low and mournfully it seemed to pull every muscle in his chest.

He thought of Kat Mason and the irony that they’d both been trying to dupe the other, he flirting for a million-pound bonus and she playing detective for the sanctuary. He knew he should be darkly amused by such bittersweet double deceit – an ability to laugh at himself was his strongest armour these days – but jealous anger
twisted inside him: his own allegiance had shifted while she had clearly stayed loyal to Badger Man and the village.

Now he knew what Seth expected him to lay on for his VIP visitors, Dougie could hardly blame Kat for spying on him, judging him, hating him. How he could be so naïve and walk straight into this situation appalled him. He’d ignored its obvious traps, too blown away by the
escape Eardisford had offered and the easy money to question the details.

He needed a drink, but all he had was Coke and coffee, and he was jittery enough as it was, heart lurching when his phone rang.

It was Dollar, her stonewall voice as inexpressive as ever. ‘I have discussed the forthcoming visit with Seth and your services will not be needed. Shooting will be the focus.’

‘Sensible choice,’ he muttered. Let Dair worry about what the Russian could track in the off season.

‘We will need the horses to be available at all times. Igor is a very keen horseman. And you must keep the girl away. Drug her if you need to.’

‘I’m the huntsman, not a henchman,’ he reminded her. He was feeling jumpy as he thought back to his conversations with Kat, which had
revealed how little he knew about Seth’s real identity, let alone his connection with oligarchs and arms deals. And then the idiot Badger Man had started spouting on about rich tycoons slaughtering wildlife. Suddenly the James Bond fantasy he’d harboured at the start felt less silly and far too close for comfort. ‘Who exactly is Igor?’

‘That is none of your concern. As well as mounting
our guest on a very well-behaved animal, you will be required to work as part of the team ensuring we have discretion and security. His visit requires total privacy. Sunday afternoon is the estate versus the village cricket match. The pitch is on the far side of the church, and so it is an excellent distraction. Everybody will be out of the way. The day before will be harder because so many villagers
walk their dogs through the estate. We have surveyed the public rights of way and Dair Armitage has it all in hand.’

‘Is he organizing a rough shoot?’

‘On the contrary, we need it to go smoothly.’ Her voice softened. ‘I would like to see you alone.’

‘I’ll be playing cricket and distracting girls, remember?’

‘We will see each other.’ With this, she rang off, leaving
Dougie feeling oddly as if he’d been threatened.

Unable to sit still for more than a minute at a time – certainly not long enough to read Dair’s impossibly long and boring security briefing – Dougie took Quiver for a walk past Lake Farm to visit Harvey. There were several cars parked in the farmyard. The voices coming from the kitchen sounded positively party-like.

He found Harvey
lying on his side in his field and sat down beside him, using his rump as a back rest so that he was facing the lake, looking across to Eardisford’s illuminated windows as he called Dair, who had also been equipped with a satellite phone but was hopeless at using it. Dougie had been calling and texting all evening to find out how Kat was and had heard nothing, but this time he was in luck as the
phone was picked up. The delay, however, was terrible.

‘Hello?… Can you hear me, Dair?… How’s Kat?’

‘Dougie? It’s Kat… Dair left his phone in the cubicle.’

‘Kat!… Where are you?’

‘Concussion and a nosebleed… They’re letting me out in a minute.’

‘Are they keeping you in overnight?… I am so bloody sorry.’

‘Hospital.’

‘How do you feel?’

There
was a long pause and he thought at first they’d been cut off. Then she said, ‘It hurts, Dougie. It really, really hurts.’

Despite the confused cross-purposes of the phone delay, he knew she wasn’t talking about her head. A moment later, Dair’s brusque Scottish tones were on the line and he told Dougie that Kat was fine and he would be informed of any change.

‘It goes without saying
that today represents a very serious security breach,’ he said darkly. ‘I want you to reread the brief about next weekend’s hunting party very carefully, Dougie, and it is probably advisable to have no association with Miss Mason in the immediate future. I warn you, there are some pretty incendiary rumours going around, but thankfully nothing has spread yet. You
must
keep your nose clean. This
is much, much bigger than you.’

When Vaughan rang his son back, he said, ‘Seth’s company is currently pitching to be a part of a Russian bid to produce flight simulators for the Indian Army. The Russians would rather keep it all at home, but they know that if the licence to develop the simulator software is granted in India, it will make it a more tempting contract for the army.
And it would make a huge difference to Seth’s net wealth.’

‘How much is it worth to him?’

‘Seven or eight billion at a guess.’

Dougie whistled. ‘Which makes buying an English country estate in which to entertain the main players a fairly wise investment.’

‘Most definitely. They love their hunting, these Russkies.’

‘Even if it’s outside the law?’

‘That’s
part of the thrill. They want to ride over Queen and country like ancient conquerors. They can legally bow-hunt boar in Hungary or go pig-sticking in Spain, even shoot big game in Africa for enough dollars, but hunting deer in the parks of jolly old England on horseback like Henry the Eighth is a real culture kick for a post-Communist self-made man.’

Dougie knew he could trust his father
for the heads-up. He only wished it didn’t make him want to hang his own head in shame, particularly when he asked his father if he knew of any Russian arms dealers called Igor who were fond of slaughtering British wildlife.

‘Could be Igor Talitov – known popularly as “I-gotta-lot-of”. Met him on Hay Meredith’s grouse moor last year. Total dipso and a terrible shot, but rather jolly for
an oligarch. Lock up your daughters, mind you. Man’s a total lady-killer.’

‘I hope you don’t mean that literally,’ Dougie said weakly.

Dougie lay awake that night, feeling like an unwitting pawn in a game of chess or, more accurately, an animated character in a computer game.

Much as he loathed to admit it, Badger Man was right about one thing. The estate had been
bought by an expert in virtual gaming action, and it was the platform on which Seth was designing a very real and ludicrously expensive diversion to entertain his guests. The English Hunting Game, a jolly jape through the woodlands with a spear and a trusty guide providing the walk-through and weaponry. Dougie had battled his way through plenty of virtual worlds drunkenly with friends, but it had
never been a big addiction. This time, he couldn’t drop the console and turn away while the characters met grisly ends. He already cared too deeply about those involved, most especially the redhead who was only ever destined to star in Level One of the game, the training level where nobody had big weapons and where techniques and strategies were honed and enemies identified.

Dougie had
failed Level One. He wanted to retake it, but it was too late, and he was locked out of Level Two.

He spent most of the night searching the house, but finally located his contract in the sports bag he must have carried as hand luggage from LA. It seemed a lifetime ago. His jagged signature spoke of DTs, fast exits and flirtation, the happy-go-lucky scrawl of a chancer who never read the
small print. The contents of the contract were heavily embedded in legalese he didn’t understand. He read it so many times his eyes started to cross, fathoming out just a few basic facts, mostly that he owed back a hell of a lot of money, much of which he’d already used to pay off the worst of his debts in the States. The legal wording was too hard-core to understand more.

He picked up
his phone, aware that it was the early hours now, scrolling through the numbers, lingering on Lake Farm, then flicking on to his old friend Milligan, who ran a club in Soho and would be barely warming up for the night: ‘Might need somewhere to hide out, Mil.’

‘Not a problem.’ Mil, who was extremely well connected and largely moral-free, had helped his friend out of several troublesome situations,
usually when Dougie’s love life blew up in his face. ‘When do you arrive?’

He looked up at the oil painting of the miller’s daughter, now with no nose. It was another reminder of his naïvety. He had shot an arrow into it to show off to Dollar, unaware that he had already shot himself squarely in the foot by signing an unread contract, just as he’d always taken film parts without reading
the scripts. The old Dougie might have stayed on for the hell of it, chancing his luck and playing at being a medieval huntsman. Equally, the old Dougie would have thought nothing of taking the opposite path and telling Seth to stick his job, packing up and leaving that night. Dougie figured he could pay back the money eventually, and his inbuilt bravura told him that the dotcom billionaire was hardly
going to sue his arse in public, given that what he’d hired him to do was illegal. But that wasn’t what was making him hesitate about leaving Eardisford. It was Kat. He needed to keep his head down and carry on working until he figured out what to do. He couldn’t walk away knowing she thought so badly of him or abandon her before she’d attempted the Bolt, a feat he still worried was close to
impossible. And he couldn’t leave Harvey, his hounds and the hunt horses without knowing they were in safe hands. He also wanted to bowl out Badger Man.

‘It might be a day or two,’ he told Mil vaguely. ‘Got a game of cricket to play.’

‘You always had your priorities right, Everett.’

The first concrete memory Kat had after falling off was bouncing around on the back seat of Dair Armitage’s Range Rover with her head resting on a cartridge bag and the guns rattling on the rack above her. Later, at the County Hospital,
there had been nurses and a nice female doctor who said she had a horse too and talked about dressage. Dair had appeared occasionally, asking how much longer it would take because he’d had a call to deal with some poachers.

Then Mags had arrived to take her home to Lake Farm, pink hair on end, driving far too fast as usual, although Kat recalled that no pheasants had been mown down on the
way. She asked about Dougie several times and got no reply, although that might have been another memory blank. There had been a lot of loud music.

Officially declared mildly concussed, Kat went straight to bed while Mags raided the last of the Waitrose goodies in the fridge. Later, Cyn appeared for a night shift – an over-enthusiastic Florence Nightingale in winceyette pyjamas who woke
Kat constantly with wet flannels and pulse-checks. It was only when tall, dour Pru took over in the morning that Kat learned the truth about her reputation.

‘I hear you’ve been spying on Dougie Everett for the antis
and
the Brom and Lem.’ Pru delivered a breakfast of doorstep toast and brick red tea on a tray at a quarter to six, turning on the radio for
Farming Today
. ‘Frightfully impressive
subterfuge, my dear. To think we all just assumed you and Dougie Everett were shagging like stoats. You’re Eardisford’s own Mata Hari!’

The sanctuary committee and volunteers all rallied to provide cover for Kat, insisting that she must rest for at least forty-eight hours after a head injury, but Kat wasn’t good at resting, especially with such a heavy heart. She seemed to have
a constant stream of visitors and ‘carers’, plonking down a cup of tea, asking if she was suffering blurred vision or dizziness and then asking if it was true that Dougie Everett had been hired to marry her.

‘We’re treating it as strictly confidential information for committee and activists only, Kat love,’ Mags reported kindly. She and Russ seemed to have elected themselves primary carers,
playing a lot of loud music and arguing. ‘Russ thinks the more cards we keep up our sleeves the better. For now, he says direct action is the way forward. And we all think you need protecting.’

‘I can look after myself,’ Kat insisted, wishing she could see Dougie. She still couldn’t remember anything of her fall or its immediate aftermath, although Russ had it all on camera and said it
was damning stuff. He had also told Dougie she never wanted to see him again, which infuriated her.

‘You have no right to interfere with my life!’

‘Irritability is a classic post-concussion side-effect,’ Russ said calmly.

‘I’m not irritable. I’m fucking annoyed at being treated like a psychiatric patient. I want to make some phone calls. In private.’

Waiting until Mags
and Russ were out in the yard with the animals, Kat phoned Dawn.

‘Promise me you’re definitely coming next weekend? I need you to help me evict Russ.’

‘I thought he’d moved out months ago.’

‘He’s found a reason to move back in.’ She dropped her voice: ‘I’ll explain when I see you, but I’m practically being held
prisoner
here.’

‘I’ll bring the wire-cutters baked in a
cake,’ Dawn reassured her cheerfully.

Taking a deep breath, Kat phoned Dougie. He answered from one of the kennel pens, hounds baying all around him. She waited while he moved somewhere he could hear better, his voice husky and breathless: ‘How are you?’

‘Much better.’

‘Thank God.’

‘Can I see you?’

He hesitated. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’

‘Please, Dougie.’

There was an even longer pause. ‘No, Kat. Trust me, it’s for the best.’

‘Trusting you is something I’m finding hard to do right now,’ she breathed, but he had already rung off. She still held the phone tightly to her ear, as though some part of him was still inside it and she could keep it close. ‘Loving is another matter.’