Hunted. Paul Finch

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СКАЧАТЬ was the countryside. Odd noises were commonplace.

      A fierce clatter split the silence, like something fragile impacting on stone.

      Heck spun, gazing deeper into the encircling undergrowth – and spying something he found a little reassuring. The upper section of another manmade structure stood beyond the rhododendrons; by the looks of it, a greenhouse. Was it possible the gardener was here after all?

      He pushed further into the underbrush, catching his arms and hands on thorns, but coming out alongside the greenhouse, which he now saw was extensive, maybe forty yards in length, but in a poor state of repair; its windows were cracked and grubby, the basic ironwork from which it was constructed rotted and furred with moss. However, it was still in use. When he entered, he gazed down a central concrete aisle, to either side of which thick jungles of luxuriant plants grew from trays of black soil mounted on waist-high metal shelving. Down at the far end, transverse to the central aisle, stood another rack of steel shelving, this one taller than those on either side, rising to about head height and crammed with garden breakables; plant pots and the like, even a few figurines like gnomes and elves.

      There was no one down there that Heck could see. He strolled forward – only to forcibly stop himself after several yards. Okay, he’d heard something. But did it really matter? Someone was working nearby. That was all it was. In any case, time was short; he’d come here to assess the accident scene, not flog his way through the surrounding woods, freezing like a scared rabbit at the slightest irregularity. Whether he liked it or not, it was time to return to the crash site. But as he swung round to head back, a flicker of movement caught his eye.

      He glanced sharply to the far end of the aisle.

      And saw it again.

      It was one of the figurines on the upper shelf; definitely a gnome or elf, one of those trashy little objects which, in truth, he’d never have expected to find on a stylish estate like this – and it had just moved.

      Of its own accord.

      Heck stared in astonishment, trying to laugh it off as a bizarre optical illusion. But now it moved again – just slightly, the merest quiver. Again of its own accord.

      Slowly, disbelievingly, he walked down towards it. ‘You’re losing it, pal,’ he said to himself. ‘You’ve got to be …’

      The figurine quivered again, more violently, bringing Heck to a dead halt.

      A few moments passed as man and manikin stared at each other, Heck’s neck hairs prickling. This time the thing remained stationary, even when he advanced again and came up close to it. It was exactly what he’d thought it was: a garden gnome, complete with beard, pointed nose, pointed ears, and pointed hat. It was about a foot and a half in height, and its once-garish colours had mostly weathered away. And yet it was hideous – so much so that he grimaced as he lifted it down from the shelf.

      Where each of its eyes had once been, a black X had been etched, first gouged with a blade, and then filled in with black pen. Its mouth was a thin red line, with red trickles added to either side to create a vampire effect. Either the original paint job had run, or someone else had been handy with a different-coloured pen. For all his revulsion, Heck turned it several times in his hands, but could find nothing out of the ordinary. It was no more than a lump of sculpted, slightly mouldy plaster. He placed it back on the shelf and stepped back. Bewildered.

      And then the disfigured gnome leaped at him.

      Literally launched itself from its perch, and descended to the concrete floor. Its head broke off with the impact, rolling towards Heck’s feet, where it came to a rest, gazing up at him with those unblinking, crossed-out eyes.

      Heck was at first too stunned to react. He gazed back down at it, then at the rack – just as another object, a plant pot, also made a suicidal leap, exploding into a thousand fragments. A second pot followed from the other end of the shelf, and then another. Heck backed away involuntarily, hair prickling again, the sweat chilling on his neck and chest. A fifth object hurtled down; another gnome – this one landed upright and didn’t shatter, but stood rocking back and forth as if the moment it regained its balance it would come toddling towards him. A sixth object went, and a seventh – more plant pots, all exploding on impact. Heck’s hair was now standing on end, but then he spotted the culprit – the sleek brown form and whipping tail of a rat as it scuttled back and forth in the recess at the rear.

      Heck sagged with absurd relief; he had to lean forward to get his breath.

      When he looked again, the rat had fully emerged. It bounded to the floor and bolted away beneath the shelving on the left.

      ‘You get a move on, lad,’ Heck said under his breath, thanking God that none of the local officers he was shortly to be ‘advising’ had been around to witness that little pantomime. ‘There’s no wasting time in your game …’

      He walked back along the aisle to the greenhouse entrance, heading through the rhododendrons, bypassing the compost heap and the two wooden sheds, and lurching down the path between the thickets. Even on reaching the front of the house, it was several seconds before he felt his heart rate begin to slow. He took a couple of deep breaths in order to regain full composure. He hadn’t discovered the source of the metallic clattering, of course, but again – did that really matter? It wasn’t like he didn’t have any real work to do.

      He walked on down the drive and returned to the road, where he dug a fresh pair of latex gloves from the pockets of his doublet and snapped them into place. A fingertip search was just the thing to concentrate his mind.

      Inch by painful inch, sometimes on his knees, he worked his way along the verge on the side where the undergrowth had been torched, initially focusing on the glistening debris that had been swept into the gutter by passing vehicles but then scanning further afield as well. There was nothing instantly noticeable, which wasn’t entirely surprising as he didn’t really know what he was searching for, and was still a little distracted – he couldn’t help but keep throwing glances over his shoulder at the silent, locked-up house. He still felt as if he hadn’t been quite alone over there, but about ten minutes into his search something else caught his attention, something a lot more tangible: a tiny white object gleaming amid the charcoaled roughage.

      He poked at it with a pair of tweezers, attempting to tease it into view.

      It was a tooth – and by the looks of it human, a molar in fact. What was more it had recently been removed from its owner’s jaw, because though several of its roots had been snapped, a couple had been wrenched out in full, and tiny threads of reddish-brown tissue were still attached. He fed it into a small sterile evidence sack, which he then sealed. When he held it up to the sunlight, the tooth’s underside was crusted reddish-brown. More blood – which was explainable, because this was an adult-sized molar, and adult molars didn’t come out easily.

      Heck pocketed it, marked the spot of its discovery with an evidence flag, and continued his search, but nothing else of consequence emerged in the next hour, at the end of which he took some pegs and fluorescent tape from the boot of his car and cordoned off several areas. It irked him that this crime scene – and he already had a strong feeling that this was what the accident site was – had not been preserved for more detailed forensic examination. Of course that could still be arranged, though it might already be too late.

      Reigate Hall was an unusually attractive building for a police station, built from eroded Georgian brick with a lopsided roof of crabby, moss-covered slates. It looked more like a moot hall or village almshouse than a focal point of modern day law enforcement, and faced onto a pleasant open green, at one СКАЧАТЬ