'Haven't you heard, mister,' he said, bristling at the 'sonny' comment. 'Thomas Powell has offered a reward of a thousand euros for whoever can capture the cat, dead or alive. Says the Garda aren't doing anything so he has to instead. Care to comment, Inspector?' the boy said, smiling at his guile.
'Yeah, you're standing in my driveway. Piss off.'
I went back into the house and put on a jumper and waterproof coat and my rubber boots. Then I padlocked Frank in the shed, just as a precaution.
I found Anderson about a quarter of a mile up the road, standing at the gate of his field, which ran all the way down to our home and up another mile or so to his own house. The moon was high and the sky clear, and in the lilac light the veins which had burst on Anderson's cheeks and nose through years of drinking stood out. As he talked, his toothless gums seemed purple and angry.
'I warned you I'd deal with things,' he said, as I approached. 'You're a bit late now.'
'A wild cat's a little different from my dog. Are you sure whatever's worrying your sheep is an animal? How is Malachy, by the way?
'Are you here for a reason?' he sneered, choosing to ignore the implication in my question.
'Just thought I'd keep an eye on things. Don't want someone shooting you by accident, now, do we, Mark?'
I chose a slight rise in the field to lie against and joined two other men there. One I recognized as a clay- pigeon shooter from Raphoe, though I did not know his name. The ground beneath us had frozen to iron and the cold seeped up through my body so that I had to shift continually to keep warm. And there, in the frost, we lay and waited, straining against the dark to see shapes shifting around the sheep, whose wool seemed all the more brilliant in the moonlight. The holly hedge around the field was thick and lush now with big blood-red berries. Small animals skittered through it. Directly above us was a weeping birch whose branches were so heavy they trailed along the ground.
At around 10.30 p.m. someone shouted, and at one corner of the field the loud clear cracks of shotguns rang out a second after the bright gunfire flashes. A number of the men lying about clambered to their feet and ran to the spot where something had been seen, while two men argued about who had shot first.
'Looks like someone's made a grand,' the Raphoe man said, getting to his feet. I followed suit, only to have my legs buckle under me with stiffness from lying in one place so long in the middle of winter. I hobbled behind the men to the spot where a group had gathered, but even before I got there it became apparent, from the disgusted shakes of collective heads, that the quarry was not the wild cat they had hoped. Instead, in the middle of the circle of men, lay the body of a fox, its side shredded by the shotgun blasts, oozing blood as black as tar onto the sugar- frosted grass. Its tongue lolled in and out of its mouth, its breathing was laboured and harsh. With each breath, a fresh spurt of blood pumped out of its side. My companion from Raphoe loaded a shot in his gun, placed it above the fox's head and fired so close that blood and tissue spattered on his shoes and the barrel of the gun. The air carried the smell of cordite and burnt fur.
'Do we go home then?' someone asked disappointedly.
'Weren't no fox attacked my sheep,' Anderson said, spitting on the carcass. 'Leave this here – might attract whatever that thing is.'
He half-heartedly kicked the body, which flopped over on the grass, then wiped his boot on the back of his trouser leg. 'Back to your positions,' he said, then fixed his cap on his head and trod back to where he had been hiding.
I returned to the mound again and lay in a different position this time and lit a cigarette.
'Best not do that,' the other man, whose name was Tony something, said. 'Them cats could smell smoke miles away. That'll scare them off.'
'If this cat can smell the smoke of one cigarette, but can't smell the stink of thirty Donegal men lying in a field of sheep shit, it deserves to get blown away,' I said, then inhaled deeply for effect, though the air was so cold it burned my lungs. The Raphoe man laughed and took out a tobacco tin to roll a cigarette, so I gave him one from my packet.
'Aren't you hunting?' he asked, noting the fact that I was the only unarmed man in the field.
'Nope. Just making sure nobody shoots anybody else,' I said, adding, 'or my dog.'
'What?'
'Anderson thought it was my dog that was attacking his sheep. I suppose I should be grateful that this cat has appeared.'
'I suppose so, officer,' he said, joining with my laugh.
I smiled. 'I know your face. I can't place you, though.'
'You gave me a speeding ticket a few years back. You were in uniform then'
'Shit,' I said. 'Sorry.'
'Don't be. I was doing a hundred and two along the Letterkenny Road. I was lucky I wasn't killed. I got off light, all things considered.'
I recalled the event now and remembered the face, although the man had had a moustache then. He seemed to assume that I remembered his name, so I didn't want to ask. 'A red Celica was it?'
'Close enough. A red Capri.'
'Have you still got it?' I asked. 'It was a lovely car, even as a blur.'
'No. Wife had a kid; I got rid of the car. Driving a family car now.'
'This is lovely,' the man called Tony said, 'and I hate to interrupt, but could you two shut up?'
We sat in silence for another hour or so, smoking periodically. The evening was so still the smoke hung in a silver cloud above our heads. At around 12.30 a.m. I stood up to stretch the stiffness out of my legs, and it was while doing so that I saw a black shape snaking its way down from the top of the field just above us. It crept slowly towards a group of sheep that seemed to be sleeping, its belly pressed so close to the ground its coat must have been dusted with frost. I couldn't tell what it was as it slinked down along the furrows tractors had made in the field.
'Stand up,' I hissed to the two beside me, and they did so, rubbing their legs while they straightened up. The Raphoe man spotted the shape then and loaded a shell, as did Tony.
They both shouldered their shotguns together, steadying the barrels. The Raphoe man shifted his stance a little, widening his legs so he was standing in a solid position. I noticed the mist of his breath stop as he took aim, and I found myself instinctively holding my own breath as I watched the shape slow and stop, as if it too were suddenly aware of the events which were about to unfold. Afterwards, I would recall that he shifted his aim just slightly in the final milliseconds before he shot, though I cannot be sure.
Slowly then, he pulled the trigger, a fluid movement, and his gun jerked as the blast echoed across the field and left my ears ringing. Tony fired a second later, another sharp crack, like a stick being snapped. Then the three of us set off at a run, stumbling through the furrows and sliding across the sheep dung, scattering the slumbering sheep who watched us with wide, terrified eyes. As we ran, we saw the black shape dash back the way it had come, its running erratic. We reached the spot where it had been when shot, and saw the black blood of its wound spattered on the white grass. We followed its path, the grass greener where the frost had been disturbed by the creature, and saw more blood on the ground. Then the path disappeared into a thicket hedge and we could follow it no further.
'Hard luck,' I said to the man from Raphoe, who smiled slightly.
'Time to go home I think, partner,' he said, shouldering his shotgun and picking his way carefully back down the field, while others ran to see what had happened.
I walked back down the road to the house about half an hour later and went around the back of the house to check that the shed was locked. I rattled the padlock on the bolt and was turning to go into the house when I heard a soft whimpering from inside the shed. I unlocked the door and went in.
Frank lay in the corner, curled up, blood congealing on the floor of the shed beneath him. He raised his head an inch and looked at me, but his usually bloodshot eyes were pale and dull. He licked ineffectually at the area on his flank where the shot had skinned him, and I noticed that his right ear, which before had hung almost to the ground, was tattered and torn, the surface bloody and dark. His snow-white chest was pink and red with blood, though I could not tell if he was bleeding there or if this had come from the wound to his ear.
He yelped weakly when I lifted him and carried him out to the car. I set him on the back seat with a picnic blanket under him, working quickly lest some of the farmers wandering down the field, disappointed with the night's
