3 Inspector Hobbes and the Gold Diggers (10 page)

‘What are we going to do tonight?’ I asked, hoping there’d be a cosy pub within easy walking distance, but fearing the appearance of being in the middle of nowhere was no illusion.

‘We’re going to wash up,’ said Hobbes, ‘and then I’m going to turn in. You can do what you like.’

‘I hoped we might grab a beer or something.’

‘The nearest pub is in Blackcastle. It’s about eight miles due east of here. You can’t miss it.’

‘OK … Which way is east?’

‘Over there.’ He pointed. ‘Roughly opposite to where the sun went down. Of course, to get there you’ll have to cross Dead Man’s Bluff.’

‘I might give it a miss tonight.’

‘Suit yourself.’

As soon as we’d washed up in cold water and stacked the plates to drip dry, he retired into the tent.

Wrapping my jacket around me, I lay on the flat rock, gazing at the stars. I’d never seen such abundance. Hobbes had once tried to teach me about them, displaying a vast theoretical and practical knowledge, but astronomy was way over my head. I could, at least, recognise the moon, half of which was rising, making the mountains shine with a pale, silvery light. Once or twice I noticed the flickering silhouettes of bats and, faraway, an owl screeched, emphasising the quietness and the isolation and filling me with a sense of melancholy and loneliness that was almost exhilarating. Sprawled, relaxed, contemplating the cosmos, I thought deep thoughts and pondered much on the meaning of life, until Dregs started licking himself. The mood shattered, I relieved myself in a gorse bush and decided to turn in. Anyway, I was starting to feel cold.

Hobbes, fast asleep, didn’t stir as I snuggled into my pile of rugs. I was sure the ground was too hard and rocky and the rugs nowhere near thick enough to allow me to sleep, especially as Dregs had decided to lie on my feet.

When I awoke it was morning, and Hobbes and Dregs were already up. It took me a while to join them, because my back was rigid and my neck stiff and besides, it was warm where I was. Yet I had to move sometime, so, with a sigh, I crawled out into bright daylight and got to my feet, grunting good morning, stretching and yawning. Hobbes, having made a fire from old bits of gorse, was filleting several large trout.

‘Where did you get those from?’ I asked.

‘Over there.’ He pointed down the valley to the pool.

‘Great. How did you catch them?’

‘With difficulty, because they didn’t want to be caught. I think they were nervous of the heron.’

When he started frying them, along with a handful of green leaves he’d found, the air was filled with delicious scents; they tasted even better. Fresh fish cooked and eaten in fresh air really piqued the appetite.

‘I could get used to this,’ I said, stuffing the last bit into my mouth.

‘Yes. This is good living. There’s plenty to eat around here and I doubt I’ll have much trouble at this time of year. It’s not so good in the depths of winter, though.’

‘We won’t be here that long, will we?’

‘No. At least, I hope not, but it is October and the weather up here can change within minutes. Still, it should stay warm and sunny for the next few days. After that, I’m not so sure.’ He sniffed the air and glanced at the sky. ‘We’ll see.’

‘Do you think bad weather’s on the way?’

‘Maybe, but let’s enjoy the good stuff while we can.’

Having never gone camping in really bad weather before, I wasn’t much looking forward to the prospect, but Hobbes didn’t concern himself with future problems that might not even arise. It struck me as a good way of living, one that I wished I could follow. Unfortunately, I had a tendency to worry, despite having learned that the worrying about a dreaded event was often far worse than the event itself. This wasn’t always the case, for I had another tendency to drop myself into messes far deeper than I’d anticipated.

After we’d eaten and I’d scrubbed the dishes, I asked a foolish question.

‘What do we do about washing ourselves?’

The pool was cool and clear and, once the shock of being thrown into it had passed, refreshing.

The next two days were glorious. We’d turn in as the light faded and wake early. I made it to the top of Beacon Peak, where I sat stunned by the vastness of the landscape as the morning mist dispersed. The hills looked pristine, as if human kind had never intruded, and it felt like we’d awoken into the first dawn of a clean, new world. When we got back down, Hobbes, naked and as hairy as a bear, his beard grown shaggy already, would plunge headfirst into the lake, often emerging with an eel or a trout between his jaws. Later, he would gut them, clean them and fry them for breakfast. The rest of the day, we would walk over the ridges and, despite Dregs’s attentions, Hobbes would hunt for rabbits and hares, or scratch around for herbs and roots. He discovered a hunched, arthritic old apple tree, a remnant, so he said, of an ancient farmhouse, and roasted some of the ripe fruit on a sheet of corrugated iron that he unearthed in a cave. We ate like lords and never had to eat a stoat or open our emergency rations, though we had to drink our tea without milk.

By my reckoning, it was on the third day when our morning walk took us to Blacker Knob, a tall peak, where near the top, a pile of rocks might long ago have been a cottage. That was where our camping trip took a dark turn.

7

Hobbes was chasing a hare and, since he appeared to be enjoying his workout, I found myself somewhere sheltered to sit and watch. Dregs, for once not bounding after him, started barking, and something in the tone suggested urgency. I stood up, the wind blustering and raising goose pimples, and went to see what was bothering him. Bristling, excited and ill at ease, he was sniffing round a pile of small rocks and pawing at something.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

A smooth, round, white object, a bit like a child’s ball, rolled towards me. Bending, I picked it up and was nearly sick. I had a human skull in my hand and, although my first instinct was to drop it, I couldn’t let go. I stared into the empty eye sockets.

‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ I said, a long-forgotten incident popping unbidden into my head. ‘I knew him, Dregs.’

It was a conditioned response and I was as unable to restrain myself as Pavlov’s dogs could have stopped drooling at the sound of a bell. It all went back to when my class was studying the graveyard scene in Hamlet and I still remembered the malicious expression of Psycho Simms, our English teacher, who, book in hand, called me and ‘Bill’ Bailey to the front.

‘Caplet,’ said Psycho, ‘although you are, perhaps, the most unlikely prince, you will recite Hamlet’s part. Bailey, you play Horatio. Take it from where Hamlet picks up the skull.’

‘Yes sir,’ I said, my mind instantly going as blank as the freshly-wiped whiteboard. ‘Alas … umm … alas … alas … alas … umm.’

‘Poor,’ said Psycho.

‘I’m sorry, sir. Oh, I see: that’s what comes next.’ I turned towards Bailey ‘Alas, poor … umm …’ I stared at his round, pimply face, struggling to recall the stupid name, growing ever more desperate, my mind empty of everything but embarrassment. As Psycho and the class waited and waited, someone sniggered and the blood burned my cheeks as my dramatic pause seemed to stretch towards infinity.

Bailey, taking pity, was mouthing the name.

I nodded, confidence flooding back, and, raising my hand dramatically, staring at an imaginary skull, I came out with the immortal words: ‘Alas, poor Yogi!’

I never finished the speech. My role ended with a stunning rap on the head from the complete works of Shakespeare, mocking laughter from my classmates and having to write out the scene one hundred times.

Hobbes appeared with a brace of hares dangling limply from his belt.

‘Hello, ’ello, ’ello,’ he said. ‘I take my eye off you for one minute and find you engaged in all sorts of skulduggery.’

I grimaced.

‘I always knew you’d get ahead one day.’

‘How can you joke about it?’ I asked, trembling and hoping I’d only picked up a prehistoric relic, not a recently dead skull.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but humour soothes the sting of horror. Give it to me, please.’

I handed it over, nearly losing my breakfast when he sniffed it. He frowned, turning it over and round, running his hand over it, holding it up and examining it from all angles.

‘It’s only a few years old at the most and, judging by the size and the brow ridge, I’d say it belonged to an adult male human. It has received a severe blow to the top which caused a penetrating fracture. Of course, that might have occurred post mortem. I’m not an expert.’

Carefully, he put it down and began sifting through the rock pile, pushing aside a number of slabs to reveal a skeleton, still partially covered in ragged, faded scraps of clothing and with a pair of boots on the feet. I grabbed for Dregs’s collar, but he made no attempt to go for the bones.

‘Again,’ said Hobbes, frowning and thoughtful, ‘the hips suggest an adult male and, to judge from the long bones, quite a tall one.’ He pointed to an arm. ‘The upper bone plate and radius have fused, suggesting he was out of his teens, while the collarbone development indicates he was probably older than his late twenties.’

Squatting, he peered at the torso, where it was exposed beneath what might have once been a red-checked shirt. ‘There is a little degeneration of the spine and that, together with the wear and tear on his teeth, leads me to speculate that our man was in his mid-forties.’

His calm assessments felt like soothing balm on my raw nerves and my brain started functioning again.

‘How long has he been here?’ I asked. ‘And how did he get here?’

‘It’s not easy to be accurate,’ he said, ‘and as I said, I’m no expert, but I’ll take a stab at it. The rocks and slates have protected the body from larger scavengers, so the skeleton is mostly intact and, although small animals have disturbed them to some extent, the bones are in reasonably good condition. The clothing and the boots are modern and appear to be of a type suitable for hill walking. I’d guess the cloth has made many a mouse nest cosier.

‘I’d say he’s probably been dead for two, maybe three years, and that someone killed him and carried him here to conceal the body.’

‘It was murder then?’ I said, my sick feelings returning.

‘It seems likely. Clearly he didn’t bury himself and the skull fracture suggests a violent attack. Assuming that’s what killed him, the wound would have bled considerably, but there’s no sign it bled round here, although that might be down to time and rain. I would also have expected a hill walker to have some sort of backpack and, at least, basic survival gear.’

‘So,’ I said, ‘the poor guy was probably killed elsewhere and the murderer hid the body here. He didn’t do a very good job.’

‘No,’ said Hobbes, ‘but he wouldn’t expect anyone to be up here.’

I shivered and it wasn’t because of the cold wind.

‘I suppose,’ he said, scratching his chin, ‘we should tell the authorities.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘The trouble is that I came here to escape publicity and, although I expect things have quietened down by now, I would rather not draw attention to myself again. You’ll have to go into Blackcastle and tell the police. You could say you were out walking your dog and came across the skeleton on Blacker Knob, which is essentially the truth.’

‘OK,’ I said, reluctantly, ‘but how do I … umm … get to Blackcastle?’

‘I’ll guide you to the outskirts. It’s not far.’

‘You said it was eight miles away!’

‘Exactly.’

‘Fine. How will I find my way back? I don’t know where here is.’

‘That’s a good point,’ he said. ‘I’ll lay a trail.’

We set off straight away, despite my hints that it was nearly lunchtime. He led Dregs and me to the outskirts of the little grey town, and handed me some money for a bite to eat and to buy a newspaper, asking me to check if interest in him had yet waned. Then he left us.

Dregs and I followed a potholed track into Blackcastle, walking past a row of seedy terraced houses that might have been transformed into something reasonably attractive had anyone been bothered. A slab pivoted, its front end going down, its back end rising and catching my foot, making me stumble and put my hand on a sturdy-looking garden gate. Giving a sad sigh, it crumbled into dust, falling onto a garden path that was ankle deep in dandelions and grass. As I hurried on, pretending it had been nothing to do with me, a terrier in the next garden along woofed once before relapsing into apathy and going back to chewing what appeared to be a flat cap. Dregs, knowing he was on a mission, ignored him and we turned onto a narrow street, hemmed in by squat, concrete buildings that I imagined estate agents might have referred to as bijou maisonettes. Their grey walls were stained and cracked, the paintwork bubbled and peeled and the doors and window frames were rotten.

Although some areas of Pigton, the nearest big town to Sorenchester, were rather rundown, I’d never before been anywhere as spirit draining as that godforsaken place. Even Dregs’s normal bounding enthusiasm was dampened and he walked obediently to heel. As we reached the last house of the terrace, an old woman in a shabby brown cardigan appeared to be scavenging from a dustbin and, despite my friendly smile, she flinched and scurried inside, slamming the front door behind her. I blamed Dregs for alarming her, though I found his presence comforting.