‘Right,’ said Cooper. ‘This is where the hounds are kennelled.’
Many of the structures were single storey, their slate roofs darkened by rain. A couple of vans with muddy wheel arches stood in the yard. Fry could hear the distant sound of barking dogs.
‘The huntsman and kennel man live on the premises,’ said Cooper. ‘The building to the right is the flesh house.’
‘The what?’
‘Well, you know about the flesh run?’
‘Jesus, do I want to?’
‘Like a lot of hunts, the Eden Valley provides a service for farmers,’ said Cooper. ‘It collects fallen stock — dead and sick animals, or ones that just don’t happen to have any value. They pick the dead ones up from the farm, or put live animals down humanely, if necessary. It’s a real boon for farmers. Fallen stock would cost them the earth to dispose of, otherwise. The regulations make incineration expensive, and you can’t bury animals on your own property, the way a lot of farmers used to.’
‘But what do the hunt want with dead livestock?’ asked Fry. She turned her head to listen to the sound of high-pitched barking drifting from the kennels — a wild, haunting sound that must have struck terror into the heart of many a fox. ‘Oh God, I think I know already.’
‘You do?’
‘There are about forty damn big dogs in there.’
‘Hounds. Eden Valley Hunt have sixteen and a half couple — thirty-three hounds.’
‘And big dogs take a lot of feeding, don’t they?’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Cooper.
Fry felt sick to her stomach. She couldn’t bear to look at the innocuous grey stone buildings any more, couldn’t stand to hear the barking any longer. The images in her mind were too vivid, and too bloody.
‘Can we get away from here, please?’
She knew what Cooper was doing — he was trying to make her see the hunt differently, to convey a picture of some kind of essential cog in rural life, regrettable but necessary. So far, it wasn’t working.
But Cooper hadn’t finished yet.
‘The kennel man does the flesh run, collects the fallen stock from farms all across the hunt’s area. He uses a captive bolt pistol to kill any animals that need putting down. Then he skins them, guts them, and feeds the carcasses to the hounds. A pack like the Eden Valley’s can get through a lot of raw meat in a day.’
‘This place is no better than the abattoir,’ said Fry.
‘Well, they’re serving a similar purpose.’
‘If you say so.’
Fry lowered the binoculars. The hunt was gathering again for the second time this week. Something called a lawn meet, she was told. It sounded ridiculous, and created images in her mind of people playing croquet on horseback.
‘Let’s get this straight,’ said Cooper. ‘The Eden Valley Hunt aren’t doing anything illegal. Neither are the owners of the abattoir where horses are slaughtered. So anyone who tries to interfere with their legal activities by obstruction or intimidation is committing a crime, and is liable to be arrested. Right, Diane?’
Fry could feel her jaw tighten. Strange, but she’d thought this would be a safe subject, a way of keeping Cooper off more personal topics. So why was it that he seemed able to make any subject unsettling?
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We could never condone vigilantism, by animal rights activists or anyone else.’
‘I’m glad about that.’
‘But it’s still disgusting.’
Cooper looked at her, but she couldn’t meet his eye.
‘Everything ends the same way, Diane,’ he said. ‘Animals don’t live for ever. Farm livestock are there for a purpose.’
Everything ends the same way. She supposed that was right — for humans, as well as animals. It was just a question of how much pain you had to go through first.
Cooper suddenly seemed to lose interest in the direction of the conversation. He pointed beyond the kennels.
‘See down there, on the road?’ he said. ‘About a hundred yards short of the gate to the kennel drive.’
‘Yes. There’s an old Bedford van parked up on the verge.’
‘That’s the sabs’ van. They’re on kennel watch. They’re waiting for the hounds to leave, so they can follow them to this morning’s meet. Sometimes, if the hunt expects to be sabbed, they try to change the location at the last minute from the one listed on the meet card.’
‘If the van is there, that means the animal rights activists are due back in the area today.’
‘Right,’ said Cooper. ‘Well, it’s the last hunt of the season. They’ll want to go out on a high note.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Fry, ‘I’d really like to follow up the hunt saboteurs’ claim to have heard the kill call before the hunt on Tuesday morning.’
‘You think the kill call was real, Diane?’
‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘I believe in the kill call.’
They went back to the car, and Cooper drove up the road two miles from the kennels to where the hunt was gathering at the home of a member.
Cooper surveyed a scene that he had once thought would be a vanishing tradition, no more than a memory in the British countryside. Everyone was in correct hunting dress this morning, of course — gentlemen in three-button red coats with brass buttons, white breeches, and top boots. The traditional bowlers and top hats had disappeared now, though, in favour of protective hunting caps to meet safety standards.
‘See, no one in tweed jackets, except for the small child there,’ he said. ‘It’s not acceptable dress. And there are the hunt staff — the huntsman and kennel man. The joint masters, and then the mounted hunt followers. Plus all the foot and car supporters. It’s quite a crowd, isn’t it?’
They had found a spot in a small stretch of woodland overlooking the meet. A dense cover of brambles and dead bracken, trees still bare but for the thick, strangling snakes of ivy wrapped round their trunks.
‘Are you actually a member of the hunt, Ben?’ asked Fry.
‘Of course not. But my brother Matt is.’
‘Really? I’ve seen your brother. What’s he like on a horse?’
‘He doesn’t ride.’
‘So how come farmers are members of the hunt? I thought they were all supposed to be poor. I heard the subscription is more than a thousand pounds a year.’
‘Farmers get a reduced rate. Masters have to keep them on side, or they’d have nowhere left to hunt.’
As Peter Massey had said at Rough Side Farm, farmers committed no offence as long as they didn’t knowingly allow illegal hunting on their land. As they watched, a terrier man was letting his dog scent along the hedgerow. But that meant nothing, either.
‘This is the end of the hunting season?’ asked Fry.
‘Mid-March, yes. There’s Flagg Races on Easter Tuesday, and that’s it.’
‘What races?’
‘Flagg. You’ve never heard of it?’
‘Is there a reason I should have?’
‘Well, it’s on our patch.’
‘Ben, there are all kinds of little out-of-the-way hobbit burrows on this patch that I’ve never heard of. Half of them haven’t seen a human being for years. Some of them are so small you can’t see them for the nearest telegraph pole. Why would I have heard of this one in particular?’
‘Because it’s where the races are held.’
‘For God’s sake — ’
Cooper looked at her. ‘Are you all right, Diane?’
‘I wish people would stop asking me if I’m all right.’
Cooper shrugged. He’d thought Flagg’s point-to-point races were pretty famous, in their own way.
‘The protestors are gathering in the lane,’ said Fry. ‘Discussing tactics, you think?’
