Equoid

for me, and whatever Mr. Howard here is eating—”

I scan the menu hastily. “I’ll have the cheeseburger, please,” I say.

“We’ll be in the garden,” the beard announces, its points quivering in anticipation. And then he’s off again, launching himself like a cannonball through a side door (half-glazed with tiny panes of warped glass thick enough to screen a public toilet), into a grassy back yard studded with outdoor tables, their wooden surfaces weathered silver-grey from long exposure. “Jolly good!” he declares, parking his backside on a bench seat with a good view of both the parking lot and the back door (and anyone else who ventures out this way). “Brenda will have our drinks along in a minute, and then we shall have a bite of lunch. So tell me, Mr. Howard. What did your boss tell you?”

“That you work for DEFRA and you know about us and you’re cleared to request backup from my department.” I shrug. “When I said she doesn’t believe in prejudicing her staff I meant it. All I know is that I’m supposed to meet you and we’re going to go and investigate a livery stable called, um, G. Edgebaston Ltd. What’s your job, normally? I mean, to have clearance—”

“I work for DEFRA in—” He pauses as a middle-aged lady bustles up to us with a tray supporting two nearly full beer glasses and some slops. “Thank you, Brenda!”

“Your food will be along in ten minutes, Mr. Scullery,” she says with an oddly proprietorial tone; “don’t you be overdoing it now!” Then she retreats, leaving us alone once more.

“Ah, where was I? Ah yes. I work for the Animal Health Agency.” The beard twitches over its beer for a moment, dowsing for drowned wasps. “I’m a veterinary surgeon. I specialize in horses, but I do other stuff. It’s a hobby, if you like, but it’s official enough that I’m on the books as AHA’s in-house cryptozoologist. What about you, Mr. Howard? What exactly do you do for the Laundry?”

I am too busy trying not to choke on my beer to answer for a moment. “I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about that,” I finally manage. (My oath of office doesn’t zap me for this admission.)

“Yes, but really, I say. What do you know about cryptozoology?”

“Well.” I think for a moment. “I used to subscribe to Fortean Times, but then I developed an allergy to things with too many tentacles…”

“Bah.” Greg couldn’t telegraph his disdain more clearly if he manifested a tiny thundercloud over his head, complete with lightning bolts. “Rank amateurs, conspiracy theorists and journalists.” He takes a mouthful of the Greene King, filtering it on its way down his throat. “No, Mr. Howard, I don’t deal with nonsense like Bigfoot or little grey aliens with rectal thermometers or chupacabra: I deal with real organisms, which simply happen to be rare.”

“Unicorns?” I guess wildly.

Greg peers at me over the rim of his pint glass, one eye open wide. “Don’t say that,” he hisses. “Do you have any idea what we’d have to do if there was a unicorn outbreak in England? It’d make the last foot and mouth epidemic look like a storm in a tea-cup…”

“But I thought—” I pause. “Hang on, you’re telling me that unicorns are real?”

He pauses for a few seconds, then wets his whistle before he speaks. “I’ve never seen one” he says quietly, “for which I am profoundly grateful because, being male, if I did see one it’d probably be the last thing I ever set eyes on. But I do assure you, young feller me lad, that unicorns are very real indeed, just like great white sharks and Ebola Zaire—and they’re just as much of a joking matter. Napalm, Mr. Howard, napalm and scorched earth: that’s the only language they understand. Sterilize it with fire and nerve gas, then station armed guards.” Another mouthful of beer vanishes, clearly destined to fuel the growth of further facial foliage and calm Mr. Scullery’s shaky nerves.

I shake my head. The EQUESTRIAN RED SIRLOIN dossier was suggestive, but it’s always hard to tell where HPL’s starry wisdom ends and his barking fantasy starts. “Okay, so you want backup when you go to run a spot check on Edgebaston’s stable. Why me? Why not a full team of door-breakers, and a flame thrower for good luck?”

“They’ve got connections, Mr. Howard. Bob, isn’t it? The Edgebastons have run Edgebaston Farm out at Howling ever since Harry Edgebaston married Dick and Elfine’s daughter Sandra Hawk- Monitor, and renamed the old farm after his own line—and wasn’t that a scandal, most of a century ago!—but in this generation they’re pillars of the local community, not to mention the Conservative Club. Suppliers of horses to Sussex Constabulary, first cousins of our MP, Barry Starkadder. You do not want to mess with the squirearchy, even in this day and age of Euro-regulation and what-not. They’ll call down fire and brimstone! And not just from the Church in Beershorn, I’m telling you. Questions will be asked in Parliament if I go banging on their front door without good reason, you mark my words!”

“But—” I stop and rewind, rephrasing: “something must have raised your suspicions, Mr. Scullery. Isn’t that right? What makes you think there’s an outbreak down at Edgebaston Farm?”

“I have a pricking in my thumbs and an itching in my nostril.” The beard twitches grimly. “Oh yes indeed. But you asked the right question! It’s the butcher bills, Mr. Howard, that got my attention this past month. See, old George has been buying in bulk from old Murther’s butcher, lots of honeycomb and giblets and offal. Pigs’ knuckles. That sort of thing. Wanda’s happy enough to tell me what the Edgebastons are buying—without me leaning too hard, anyway—and it turns out they’re taking about forty kilos a day.”

“So they’re buying lots of meat? Is that all?” I think for a moment. “Are they selling pies to Poland or something?”

“It’s not food-grade for people, Mr. Howard. Or livestock for that matter, not since our little problem with BSE twenty years ago.” Greg raises his glass and empties it down his throat. “And it’s a blessed lot of meat. Enough to feed a tiger, or a pack of hounds, ’cept Georgie doesn’t ride with the Howling Hounds any more. Had a falling-out with Debbie Checkbottom six years ago and that was the end of that—it’s the talk of the village, that and Gareth Grissom wearing a dress and saying he wants a sex change, then taking off to Brighton.” He says it with relish, and I try not to roll my eyes or pass comment on his parochial lack of savoir faire. This is rural England, after all; please set your watch back thirty years…

“Okay, so: meat. And a livery stable. Is that all you’ve got?” I push.

“No,” Greg says tightly, and reaches into his pocket, pulls something out, and puts it on the table in front of me. It’s the shell of a cone snail, fluted and spiraled, about ten centimeters long and two centimeters in diameter at its open end, gorgeously marbled in cream and brown. It’s clearly dead. Which is a very good thing, because if it were a live cone snail and Greg had picked it up like that it would have stung him, and those bastards are nearly as lethal as a king cobra.

“Very nice,” I say faintly. “Where did you find it?”

“On the verge of the road, under the fence at the side of the back field under Mockuncle Hill.” The beard clenches, wrapping itself around a nasty grin. “It was alive at the time. Eating what was left of a lamb. Took a lot of killin’.”

“But it’s a—” I stop. I swallow, then realize I’ve got a pint of beer, and my dry throat really needs some lubrication. “It could be a coincidence,” I say, trying to convince myself and failing.

“Do you really think that?” Greg knots his fingers through his beard and tugs, combing it crudely.

“Fuck, no.” I somehow manage to make half a pint of beer disappear between sentences. “You’re going to have to check it out. No question. In case there are females.”

“No, Mr. Howard.” He’s abruptly as serious as a heart-attack. “We are going to have to check it out. Because if there’s a live female, much less a mated pair, two of us stand a better chance of living long enough to sound the alarm than one…”

(cont’d.)

Having for so long been tongue-tied in her presence, I was finally shocked out of my diffidence when I saw the object of Hetty’s interest. “I say, what is that?” I ejaculated.

My rosy-cheeked Dawn turned her face towards me & smiled like a goddess out of legend: “It is a daddy-snail!” she exclaimed. She reached towards a funerary urn wherein languished a bouquet of wilted lilies & plucked a browning stem from the funereal decoration—she was in truth poetry in motion. “Watch this,” she commanded. My eyes turned to follow her gesture as she gracefully prodded the lichen-crusted rock before the snail’s face. The shell of the snail was a fluted cone, perhaps eight inches long & two inches in diameter at the open end. Its color was that of antique ivory, piebald with attractive glossy brown spots. I could see nothing