“Of course I remember,” he said. “And no, I’m not going to tell our friends or post about this. But I think I ought to be able to at least expect my own wife to back me, even if nobody else does. I’m going. Goodbye.”
Owen left, slamming the door shut behind him. Kylie sighed. She hoped to God that her man was going to be all right, and that he wasn’t coming down with anything. Incipient madness, for instance.
Owen tramped crossly up the garden path, turned left along Poshton Avenue, and headed down the hill into the middle of Birkby. The leafy and genteel area he lived in with large detached and semi-detached houses soon gave way to streets of small terraced houses packed together, and the occasional cobbled street.
He walked amongst them until he came to Bert Fosset’s house, a small terraced property with an unusually large back garden. He didn’t know what he expected to find there; but he saw little more than a ring of police crime-scene tape cordoning it off from the other properties. He trekked the streets some more and found the area of paving outside 51, Bleardale Avenue that was said to have been smeared with Barbados Jones’s blood. He saw no trace of it.
Finally, he walked to the allotment on Cemetery Road where Adrian Broadbent and his young apprentice Paul Formby had met their terrible end. He soon identified Broadbent’s shed, which was bigger and better than the ramshackle constructions built by the other allotment-owners, and was surrounded by yellow and black police tape.
He ventured as close as he could to the shed and peered at it. He wondered if he might find cat footprints in the soft earth nearby. Then he thought: even if I do, what will that prove? Only that a cat has been prowling around the place. I won’t know if it was a were-cat.
He turned to leave, and found himself face to face with a grey-haired middle-aged man who was wearing, somewhat inappropriately given the autumnal sky, a white cheesecloth shirt and cream linen pants. He had a brown leather satchel slung over one shoulder and a notebook in his hands. He was making copious notes in the notebook. He looked up from his work.
“Good day to you, sir,” he said, with a distinctly French accent. “Jaques Lay-zyoom at your service.”
“Oh, hello,” Owen replied, unsure of what to make of the fact that he’d just bumped into a note-taking Frenchman in the middle of an allotment in Birkby, Huddersfield.
“I’m Owen Blackhead. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
He hesitated for a moment, and then extended his hand, as he thought it was the polite thing to do.
“I cannot shake hands monsieur,” said the Frenchman. “I am busy taking notes, as you can zee.”
“Oh, yes, of course. What are your notes about?”
“Zee murders of course. I am a detective, and I am here to solve these terrible crimes.”
“You’ve come all the way from France to do that?”
“That I have sir, and with God’s help, and with the science of logic, solve them I will.”
“Amazing. How did you get to hear about the goings-on in Huddersfield when you live in France? Are you related to one of the victims?”
“I am a detective and I have my ways, sir.”
“Which murders are you investigating exactly? I assume its Broadbent and Formby you’re interested in.”
“Not just those. There are Fossett and Jones as well, and others, are there not?”
“How do you know they were murdered? The victims might have just, I don’t know, had a series of accidents.”
“As I said, I am a detective and I have my ways, sir.”
“I hope you don’t mind me asking you something. I’m curious about what’s been going on myself. There are suggestions that some kind of animal killed them all. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Anything is possible, Monsieur Blackhead, when you are investigating a death. My first rule as a detective is this: rule nothing out, and rule everything in. That is zee way you find out zee truth.”
“Do you think it was an animal that did all this?”
“For now, I think only that there have been a number of deaths, and I must find out what happened. It could have been an animal, yes; and it could have been a person who behaved like an animal. Now if you will excuse me, I must press on with my investigation.”
He opened his satchel, carefully placed the pen and notepad inside it, and made his way across the soft earth of the allotment back towards Cemetery Road. Owen was left pondering on the detective’s words. It reassured him to think that a man who was obviously a professional in the field of criminal investigation and forensic science did not exclude the possibility that an animal was behind the disappearances (and probable deaths) of Fossett, Jones, Broadbent and Formby et al. He’d actually said: “it could have been an animal, or a man who behaved like an animal.”
Could it be that Lay-zyoom thought, as Owen did, that a were-cat was involved?
It was food for thought, and it gave Owen a renewed confidence in his theory.
He turned his eyes towards Stonker Edge.
Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place, he thought. Perhaps I need to go up there and search for the were-cat on the top of Stonker Edge, if I dare.
He set off in the direction of South Stonker Lane, the improbably steep and winding road that led to the top of Stonker Edge. He got there in under half an hour and began the ascent. He was a seasoned walker but even so the road was so steep that he was breathing heavily before long.
He reached the top, turned onto Stonker Lane, and walked past the golf course. The road ahead disappeared into the distance with moorland to either side of it.
There was a wall at the side of the road and on the other side of the wall there were the fields belonging to Stonker Edge Farm. He found a gap in the wall which gave access to a path running across the fields in the direction of the farmhouse. He was about to set off walking along the path when a thick mist came rolling in off the moors. Within seconds, the farm buildings disappeared from view and he couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead.
Owen began to shiver, and not just with the low temperature caused by the mist.
Images of Bigfucka losing his foot came into his mind.
What if the bloody were-cat is here now? He thought. It could be watching me, stalking me. And I won’t be able to see it until it’s on me.
He turned around and hurried home.
I’m going to come back, he told himself. I’m sure it’s up here. I’m going to come back and make sure I find it and film it.
CHAPTER 15
Jonathan Badde, of Lowe, Petty and Badde Solicitors, examined the report he’d just received from Title Research and smiled. The report told him that the late Ted Forsyth, of 41 Acacia Avenue, who had died without leaving a valid will, had been survived by a distant relative.
This relative, who in all probability had never heard of Forsyth, was now going to inherit everything that Forsyth had owned in the way of money, assets and property. It amounted to a tidy sum. There was Forsyth’s house at 41 Acacia Avenue, worth quite a lot in view of its proximity to London, and a healthy balance in a bank account.
What it all added up to was a decent payday for Lowe, Petty and Badde Solicitors, if Badde played his cards right.
He got on the telephone and called Wally Pratt, the distant relative of Forsyth who was about to come into an unexpected stroke of good fortune.
“Mr Pratt,” he said.
“Yes?”
“You don’t know me; my name is Jonathan Badde, and I’m with Lowe, Petty and Badde Solicitors.”