False Witness (25 page)

“Yes,” I said. “How
can
they think it’s just the idle rich hunting defenseless animals with a pack of bloodthirsty hounds? What an outrage.”

At the right moment, the barking grew louder. “You peasant,” she said.

Since I had been in Stonebury, I had thought of nothing else but Justine. When I awoke in the morning, she was the first thing
I saw, all day I was with her and at night I could feel her warmth. It was as though nothing else in Stonebury existed except—and
this was the interesting thing—except for those unpredictable hours of sleep.

I still had the dreams and they must have kept Justine awake most of the night, for each day she was increasingly tired, although
she never blamed me. To me, it had almost become a sickness. For it was something I longed for. I desired to be there, near
to the stones, and I wished to see. Yet I was repulsed by the images that flashed across my imagination.

Perhaps Kingsley was correct: nothing was forbidden, everything was there, just waiting. Our minds, he had said, were like
sensitive receivers. And here I was in Stonebury. In some ways I had tuned into the end of the dial. And beside me was Justine.

The clatter of our horses’ hooves bounced down the country lane. We were not far from the arranged meeting place.

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” said Justine. “I mean, it’s our land.”

“Yes,” I said. “But it’s not your fox. I think that might be the point.”

“You don’t have to do this, Tom.”

“I want to… I think.” What I really wanted was to be near Justine and I knew I would have to try to understand her world.

Justine had the full kit: cream-colored breeches, scarlet coat, long leather boots. It was oddly provocative, like a taste
of the other side. She had lent me her father’s old tweed jacket, a Ratcatcher she had called it. Her horse was speckled white
and had a shaggy mane; sitting on her mount, floating above the frozen winter ground, Justine was completely at home, at ease,
in a way she never could have been in London.

“You know,” she said, “it’s not so bad down here.”

“Who said it was?”

“You’re London, Tom. Always will be. Town. There are some things you’ll never understand about the country. You think it’s
all cattle rustling and incest down here.” She looked at me and she had a gleam in her eye. “Well, mainly it is. Couple more
fences and we’re there.”

The howling of the dogs became more desperate, and a frightening edge appeared in their barking. But my horse did not flinch.
And nor, of course, did Justine.

When we arrived at the Meet, the field of hunters was everything I expected and worse. Overweight landowners and retired colonels
cavorted on uncomplaining horses. They greedily drank their stirrup-cups while below them, standing around their horses like
Nubian slaves, were the hunt followers, impoverished local lads, heads bowed, hanging around for orders.

Justine’s voice rose above the babble of appalling accents. “Good morning, Master,” she said.

Then a familiar voice. “Ah, Fawley. Glad to see you’re game for some real sport.”

I recognized the revolting mustache.

“Didn’t I tell you?” said Justine. “Aubrey is Master of the Hunt.”

Davenport’s horse was monumentally large, the type you would imagine hauling a brewer’s dray. It waddled toward me as Davenport
pointed to the sea of dogs. “Look at my beauties.”

“If you’re in at the kill, Aubrey can blood you,” Justine told me.

“Do you
actually
have to kill it?” I asked. “I mean, can’t you just chase it a bit and then bugger off home for some South African sherry?”

“We’ve got to keep the hounds in blood,” said Davenport. “Charley won’t mind. Good sport is Charley.”

“Charley?”

“The fox,” explained Justine. I said, “What if it escapes?”

“Gone to ground?” Davenport kicked his nag a couple of times but it refused to move. “Well, he is a wise old bird is Charley.
But there’s no chance of that.”

“How do you know?”

“Stoppers sorted the earths first light.”

“Can’t you speak English, Davenport?”

Justine again intervened. “The men blocked the fox-holes with thorns. The fox hasn’t got a prayer.”

“Call this sport?” I said, hanging off the saddle. “Well, it’s not. It’s murder.”

“Grow up, Tom.” Justine was clearly annoyed.

“At least give it an even chance to escape. It’s so unfair.”

“So’s life, Fawley.” Davenport wrestled his beast around. “Better dash. See you at the death.”

Suddenly the hounds were off across the meadows and there was undiluted excitement. Someone had picked up a scent.

We moved past a copse of barren trees which Justine told me they called Nethersmere Woods. There were wilting branches and
roots that reached out of the ground like dead men’s hands. Then I heard a cacophony of noise: the beating of drums, the blowing
of whistles, and many sirens.

I was behind Justine and could see nothing when she cried out.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Anti’s.”

“What?”

“Hunt sabs.”

The noise was like a Schoenberg symphony played at the wrong speed, not that I could usually tell the difference. Then there
was a chorus of virulent abuse.

“Bastards… murderers… rich scum.”

There were forty or fifty saboteurs, wearing the same green wax jackets the huntsmen would sport in town. Their eyes were
full of hatred. One of them, a lanky boy with two pony-tails and a CND badge, tried to pull me off.

“Use your whip,” shouted Justine.

“Are you
mad
?” I replied. I managed to free my leg from his grasp, but lost a stirrup.

Ahead of me was a girl. She had a stereo, like a ghetto-blaster, churning out a tape of the hounds in full cry.

“What do I do?” I called to Justine who was now riding beside me.

“Just keep going.”

Our horses got closer and closer to the girl, but she did not move. I pulled the reins to the left, tugged them to the right,
but the wretched horse headed straight for the girl.

“Get out of the way,” 1 shouted.

“Killers,” she replied.

Our horses were virtually on top of her.

“For God’s sake,” I shouted.

She turned up her stereo. “Murderers.”

“Get out—”

The sound of the baying hounds filled every crevice of my head. The horse bolted to the right and into the woods, where clawlike
branches tore through my jacket and pulled at my hair. Further and further the horse charged, leaving the field way behind.

I had lost Justine and what was more, I thought I recognized the girl.

T
HERE WERE NO LEAVES ON THE BRANCHES, BUT THE
light had nevertheless disappeared, losing its way somewhere up amongst the treetops. Behind me, wafting on the still air,
was the sound of the field: the dogs, the horses, no longer menacing, but constantly fading as I went deeper into the wood.

The glancing shadows of the trees caused me to think back over the previous weeks, much in the way that a hypnotist’s watch
conjures up the memory. There I was in Stonebury, where it all had happened, where Molly Summers had been killed. I remembered
my conversation with Kingsley in the prison and how he talked quitely about molestation. Why did he go so far with Molly Summers?
Was physical gratification, for once, not enough? Did he need something more? Something better? Did he need some blood?

Soon I came to a clearing in the wood where the tree line curved down toward a brook. As I emerged from the shade the air
grew warmer. The frost began to melt and sparkled in the rough pasture. This was a place of calm.

The horse, however, was on edge.

Near to the fence that ran from the trees to the water was a stirring, a noise and a movement, almost too delicate to discern
with the eye, but there nonetheless. The horse refused to advance, and scuffed a front leg in the long grass. Just then my
attention was drawn to the edge of the woods a furlong away.

“That you, Fawley?” shouted Davenport.

I did not answer.

“You’re going the wrong way, man,” he said. “We lost the damn thing. Doubled back on its tracks.”

My horse started to inch its way toward the place.

“Hurry up, Fawley. We haven’t got all day.”

“With you in a second,” I said.

“You’re going the wrong way, man.”

Then I saw it. Sitting between the fence and the stream, where the long grass actually smelt green, looking directly at me,
tongue panting, was the fox. I wondered whether the disappearing witness was a little like that animal. Perhaps she had not
really gone to ground? Perhaps she was waiting somewhere, waiting to be found?

Davenport drew closer. He was only a hundred yards away. “Ground too cold to hold a scent. We’ll never find it,” he said.

The animal looked at me with vacant yellow eyes. What was I to do? Davenport was very near.

I said, “I think I’ve seen it, Aubrey.”

He let out some kind of obnoxious hurrah.

“Where is it, man?”

“There,” I said, pointing behind him back into Nethersmere Woods. “Deep in there. You better hurry.”

Davenport heaved his horse about and the dogs rushed off toward the trees with their tails pointing in the air. Barking filled
the air with saliva and hunger, and the fox began to move—almost casually—through the fence. The wiring was razor-sharp, and
its hide was ripped. But it did not make a sound. I turned my horse away from the fox and joined Davenport by some bushes.

“Come on, Aubrey,” I said. “I’ll show you where Charley’s hiding.”

“Wise old bird is Charley,” he replied.

Davenport said something else, but I did not hear. I kept wondering whether Molly Summers had screamed, and if she did, why
no one had heard. Some nights I imagined the sound, and how it would feel to scream like that, and I would always wake up,
never sure whether the screams were the girl’s or mine.

As we trotted back toward the start, Davenport bored me with his hunting stories much as he used to bore unsuspecting young
women in the Old Bailey Mess with his overblown tales of forensic triumph. It was, however, pleasant enough to pass through
the gentle Devon hills for twenty minutes.

By the end of the hunt, the numbers were much depleted. Boys tried to shove reluctant horses into boxes. Everyone was set
on a prompt departure before the saboteurs regrouped.

Justine rushed toward me. “Are you all right, Tom?”

“Doddle,” I said. “Not so sure about Trigger.” I pointed to the horse who seemed to be flagging. “She looked after me.”

“It’s a he, didn’t you notice the—”

“Oh, yes. He’s hung like a donkey.”

“Anyway,” said Justine, “he’s not called Trigger.”

“What’s his name, then?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What’s his name, Justine?”

“Nigel,” she said. “But officially, he’s—”

“Well, that’s just brilliant.”

“Tom, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing. I mean, I’ve been attacked by hippies, I galloped over a girl and for the last twenty minutes I’ve been trotting
behind Davenport’s bottom on a horse called Nigel. Apart from that, Justine, everything’s hunky dory.”

Justine did not answer.

“Still,” I added, “shame about Charley.”

We both walked into the middle of a group of riders who were again drinking.

“That depends on your point of view,” said Justine.

“Well, there’s always another day.”

“Do shut up,” she said and kissed me roughly in front of the amused crowd, holding my face between her hands.

“Better luck next time,” I said.

“There won’t be a next time.” Her fingers came slowly away from my face and I could feel the warm stickiness of quickly drying
blood. “There isn’t a next time,” she repeated. “Not for Charley.”

I had saved the wrong fox.

T
HE COTTAGE WAS EVERYTHING YOU WOULD EXPECT:
coarse stone walls, thick rugs, brass ornaments and a raging open fire. In fact, the only thing I did not anticipate was
that I would still be there, and would be happy, and would be with Justine.