Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

Nobody moved; nobody ran to Davey and helped him. That alone made the scene even more disturbing. Instead the boy swung himself around in a doddering arc and came to them. Rice finally closed the few paces between them. ‘Are you OK, Davey?’ she said.

‘What?’ he said, screwing up his face in confusion. ‘What?’

Drugs. Reynolds had seen enough of them to know. These rural communities were rife with them. An edge of anger made him want to slap the boy for wasting their time. Except, as he got closer he could see that Davey Lamb was also streaked with what looked like coal or grease.

‘Where’s Steven?’ said Emily Carver urgently.

‘Back there,’ said Davey, waving a vague arm behind him. ‘They tried to kill me, but I got away.’

‘Who tried to kill you, Davey?’ Rice had bent down a little now to get on to the same level as the boy. She spoke in her soothe-the-victim voice.

Davey stared at her, then turned and stared at the woods behind him, frowning deeply. ‘I dunno,’ he said. Vomit followed the last word out of his mouth and fell down his shirt in a lumpy coconut stream.

‘Gross!’ said Shane.

Reynolds looked soberly at Rice.

Davey sat down heavily on the forest floor, cross-legged, and with long strings of snotty fluid hanging from his nose. He started to cry.

‘Davey, where’s Steven ?’ the girl insisted, but Davey Lamb could only shake his head and sob.

Funny, I never do this without singing that old song. In my head, mostly, but sometimes out loud, as my knife slips easy through the skin. No accident, that. Old Murton taught me well about knives. Meat likes a fresh blade, old Murton used to say – no point in sharpening a knife and then not using it. I sharpen my knives right before I use them, see? Right before I take the legs off at the hock, like so . They come off so clean and I pick them up. This is a calf, so it’s easy to hold all four feet in one hand. Place them off to one side. Now a little slit here and here , a long slit there and all round the throat.

Now the chain goes round the head like that, to hold him in place, see? And the hook for the winch goes in the collar like so . When I started there weren’t no electric up here and it were my job to turn the winch by hand. All right for a calf, but you try winding the hide off a bloody carthorse! It’s different now. Press the button and away we go. The hide comes off lovely with a crackle and quiet little ssssssssss and leaves neat pink muscles and tendons in the shape of a calf.

Taking off the head dulls the knife but I won’t sharpen it until the next job – whether that’s five minutes from now or five days. Old Murton taught me well. Old! Listen to me calling him old when he was likely younger than I am now. Just seemed old to me ’cos I was just a bay, see? Fourteen when I started here, and it took me a right good sweat to line out my first sheep. Up to my elbows in blood and shit and I still couldn’t get the head off!

Not like now. One, two, three and it’s gone. That’s the only place that bleeds. Just drops out of the throat on to the concrete. Dark red and shiny but not much of it. Put the head beside the legs, with the fat pink tongue poking out all comical.

Hang the calf at the back of the flesh room and spray it blue so it can’t go for people to eat. There’s a dozen carcasses in here but we’ll get through all those before they go bad. Easy. Cold, see? Even in midsummer it’s always cold in the flesh room ’cos of the thick walls and turf roof.

Mostly it’s horses this year. Been a bad winter and feeding an old horse is no way to spend money. There’s a couple of late calves too small to make it by the time the snow come, a few ponies off the moor and Jack Biggins’s best old milker, Bubbles. Brought her in himself, he did, and said she’d always liked to watch the hunt go by. Daft old bugger! But he didn’t want her going off to Brown’s, see, where they treat ’em so bad. Likely old Bubbles thought her was coming in to be milked! Down the concrete slope, a pat between the eyes, a kind word. No bother.

I go back into the big shed and collect the leftovers of the calf – the hocks, the hoofs, the hide, the head – and put ’em in the incinerator. Time was we’d sell the hides to the tanneries at Porlock or Swimbridge, but now everything that’s leather comes from China or India ten times as cheap. We’re nothing now, England. All we got left now is our traditions, and there’s those what would like to see them gone too, and us all living like Russians.

I hose down the shed, then sharpen up another knife and take down old Bubbles. The hounds know the sound of the second knife sharpening and start to sing, so I join ’em: The hocks, the hoofs, the hide, the head, the hocks, the hoofs, the hide, the head…

I put chunks of the old milker in a wheelbarrow and take her out to the yards and throw her over the gates. The hounds stop singing and start eating. The older ones eat first: the pups learn that fast. Only Milo tries it on, and I have to wade in there with the whip and pull his teeth out of General’s shoulder. Him’ll be a fine dog, Milo, but he needs a lot of arse-kicking. The whole litter’s turned out a bit bolshy, as it happens. That’s Rufus for you. Finest sire in four counties, but him do get some growlers and some nippers. Rick and Rosie like a sly nip when they’re walked. That’s why they go out coupled with Drifter and Sandy – them two’ll put any pup in its place quick enough. Nothing like being bit hard by a bigger hound you’re chained to, to teach you some manners. By next winter them’ll be as good as anything the Blacklands ever had.

There’s a car coming up the lane. Not expecting visitors.

John Took got out of his Range Rover and lit a cigarette against the biting wind. He wasn’t looking forward to this.

He’d inherited Bob Coffin. The bow-legged huntsman had come in a package deal with the sixty-odd hounds that had become his when he’d taken on the role of Blacklands Master three years before. If John Took could have chosen, he’d have picked a huntsman with a bit more stature. Someone who looked well in a white coat and bowler hat at the county hound show. Possibly not quite so much like Neanderthal Ice-cream Man.

The kennelman, Nigel, would have fitted the bill, but what could he do? Nigel was only twenty-eight and Coffin had been the Blacklands huntsman for almost forty years. Even Took had known enough not to rock a forty-year-old boat. Not here on the moor, anyway.

At least he kept the place clean. Never a bit of straw out of place, never a speck of blood in the big shed, never a turd in the cement runs. And he never complained about the cottage that came with the job, even though the hunt hadn’t spent money on it in thirty years. Took assumed Coffin did any repairs himself, and never asked about the cost.

He turned out good hounds, too, Took had to give him that. Hounds well bred for the idiosyncrasies of Exmoor, big and strong enough to fight their way through gorse, wire and flooded rivers, but light enough behind to keep going all day over hilly terrain.

It was a shame. Really it was. They were all going to suffer.

He heard a gate latch and Coffin emerged from the yards and touched his cap. It was feudal, but Took rather liked it.

‘Bob,’ he said.

‘Mr Took.’

Took had a final drag and stamped on his cigarette.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Bob.’

Bob Coffin’s expression didn’t change. Like a sheep’s.