‘Hunt servants?’ said Reynolds.
‘Employees of the hunt.’
‘And do you have any enemies among the ranks of hunt employees?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Took.
Rice mouthed, ‘Shit.’
Reynolds very nearly hung up. Then he remembered the man in the yard below the helicopter. Waving like a cannibal at the iron bird in the sky. Reynolds got a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
‘Mr Took, we flew over the hunt kennels a few weeks back.’
‘Yes,’ said Took. ‘They’re empty now.’
‘But we saw a man there,’ said Reynolds carefully.
‘That’ll be Bob Coffin. Our old huntsman. He still lives in the cottage. For a bit. The place’ll be sold off this winter.’
The feeling in Reynolds’s gut splashed through his body like spilled milk. A sick, excited feeling that he’d never felt before. Never believed he would feel.
He tried to deny it. Tried to suppress it. But it defied him.
It was a hunch.
He was having a fucking hunch!
He tried to keep his voice from shaking. ‘There’s an incinerator there, right?’
‘Yes. We’ve got an incinerator up there,’ said John Took.
‘What’s it for?’
‘For burning what’s left of the fallen stock after it’s been slaughtered for the dogs. Hoofs and hides and the like.’
‘But why would the incinerator be in use if the kennels are empty?’
There was a silence on the line that seemed to last for the whole of Reynolds’s life up to that moment.
‘It shouldn’t be,’ said John Took.
The incinerator roared softly to life and the children pricked up their ears like Dobermanns.
Even Jonas felt the dull flames in his stomach as he scrape-scrape-scraped the link on the cement immediately in front of his face.
The knives started to sharpen, and saliva trickled into his mouth. It disgusted him, but he couldn’t help it. It was a relief, in fact. He’d drunk the last of his water yesterday, and his tongue already felt too big, as if it were trying to crowd down his sticky throat.
The children pressed diamonds into their own meagre flesh as they squeezed themselves against the fence, their eyes fixed unwaveringly on the big shed. They waited for the rumble of the trolley piled with meat.
But it never came.
In the big shed Bob Coffin took the coupling chains from the hooks on the wall.
They would give him something to hold them still by.
62
RICE DROVE AS fast as the roads allowed.
At least.
Reynolds kept his right foot pressed hard on the brake he didn’t have and – now and then – slapped a steadying hand on the dashboard.
‘Sorry,’ Rice said, after one particularly close shave with a caravan.
‘Not at all,’ said Reynolds. He assumed Rice had done the Advanced Driver course, but thought that now would be a poor time to double-check.
He leaned forward and tilted his head to the left to peer into the wing mirror. They’d lost the other three cars in the convoy somewhere. They should really wait for them, but Reynolds wasn’t about to slow Rice down. His hunch had segued into a feeling of such imminent disaster – such impending doom – that getting to the hunt kennels as fast as humanly possible was the only thing that mattered. He’d already summoned ambulances from Weston and Minehead, and the police helicopter from Filton. He didn’t care who got there first, as long as they got there fast.
He sat up straight again, and fake-braked through an S-bend.
‘I was getting worried it was Jonas,’ said Rice.
‘Me too.’ He nodded.
‘I’m glad it’s not.’
‘Me too,’ he admitted, and braced himself for a collision with a bank of trees that loomed across the road.
‘Your hair looks good,’ said Rice.
Reynolds was surprised. ‘Thanks.’ He touched his fringe self-consciously.
Rice swung around a hairpin, then stamped on the accelerator and picked up frightening speed on a rare straight.
We’re going to make it, thought Reynolds, with hope unfurling in his heart.
They passed a group of deer so fast they didn’t even have time to scatter, only to flinch and then stand and quiver post-fright. In his wing mirror, Reynolds saw the buck pointing after them, its dark nose raised and its antlers laid along its back in fury.
He wished he hadn’t looked.
The first fat drops of rain fell on to the concrete, releasing the hot smell of dust. More rang slowly off the corrugated plastic roofs.
Bob Coffin padlocked one end of a coupling chain to Steven’s collar and handed him the other end. He unlocked the gate next door, and pointed at Jonas.
‘Put it on him, bay,’ he said.
Steven walked slowly into Jonas’s cage. It was strange to be so close to him after all the time they’d spent in separate spaces. It made everything seem brighter, more real. Jonas lay twisted on one side, like a dead fox in a ditch. His stretched skin was split in a dozen swollen yellow-purple places, the way a loaf cracks open as it rises. As Steven approached, Jonas stopped scraping the chain on the cement and watched him through one eye, the shallow rise of his ribs now the only thing that showed he was alive.
‘Can you sit up?’
Slowly, Jonas put a flat hand on the cement, and Steven helped him to sit against the mesh.
Steven knelt and attached the other end of the coupling chain to his collar. Now they were harnessed to each other.
‘Here.’
Steven looked round. The huntsman was leaning towards him with the key. He nodded at the padlock that held Jonas to the fence. Steven noticed that as soon as he took the key, the huntsman stepped quickly away, afraid of getting too close to Jonas.
Steven unlocked Jonas from the fence and helped him to his unsteady feet.
‘Where are we going?’ said Jonas.
‘Exercise. Put your arm on my shoulder,’ said Steven, and Jonas did, and together they left the stinking kennel. As they passed the huntsman, he held out his hand for the key and then slipped it into his pocket.
The others were already on the walkway, waiting for them: Pete and Jess linked together, and Kylie with Maisie.
Jonas was all bones. Steven guessed they all were, but to feel another man’s bones against his own was strangely sad.
The rain got louder on the roofs, and the children turned their faces to it and opened their mouths.
‘Hup!’ said the huntsman.
They were facing the meadow, as usual, but the huntsman spread his arms and encouraged them to turn the other way – towards the big shed.
‘Hup! Hup!’
Pete and the girls started to shuffle slowly round, but Steven stood his ground.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Hup!’ said the huntsman.
Steven didn’t move. This didn’t feel right. Routine had kept them alive for so long and this was not routine. First Jonas had been let out, and now they were being herded towards the big shed instead of the meadow. Steven started to feel bad. He didn’t exactly feel sick, but he thought he might quite soon.
‘Why aren’t we going to the meadow?’
‘Hup!’
‘Where are we going?’ said Steven stubbornly.
The huntsman paused and then gestured vaguely at the sky. ‘Helicopter.’
They all looked up, but saw nothing, heard nothing. Even so, Maisie began to sob loudly, which set Kylie off like a twin.
The younger children continued to move, searching the sky. Even Jonas moved his weight as if he expected Steven to start walking.