‘Heroin,’ Raymond Odell replied. ‘I know all about that, but go on.’
‘I thought it would take too long rousing the local constabulary, so I used my mobile and got straight through to Richmond at the Yard. Fortunately, he was still there on special duty, and he soon got on the blower, and got these country coppers moving. The bloke who’d been knocked out in the car crash came round just as the police arrived. As soon as he realised the game was up he blew the gaff. I went with the police, and we arrested those smugglers in the launch as soon as they beached. All that remained was to wait for the rest of the gang to show up, and hope that you were still O.K. We figured that either you were still keeping watch or else they’d got you.’
‘That’s about it, sir,’ the local police inspector approached the two detectives. ‘I think we can safely say we’ve got the lot.’
‘Good,’ Raymond Odell replied, ‘I think my assistant and I can do with some shut-eye now. We’ve had quite a night of it. By the way, Inspector,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘I’d like one of the wolf-calls these chaps were using, for my collection. I don’t think the wolf will be howling on the moors anymore from now on.’
Hounds from Hades
(from Graveyard Rendezvous Summer 2009)
Creatures from hell exacted revenge upon those who violated Nature’s domain.
The long, mournful howl shattered the stillness of the cold winter's night, rose to a crescendo, and then died away echoing for some time across the surrounding hills until finally the silence rolled back. The brown owl which had been hooting for some time beforehand was now strangely silent. Field fares shifted uneasily in their roost amidst the thick conifer plantations, and a vixen which had been screaming her mating cry on a far off crag slunk back to her earth beneath the rocks.
‘Someone is going to die tonight,’ Gwynne Evans, the old hill-farmer, muttered as he came in from the barn and closed the door behind him. His gnarled fingers shot the bolt home. It was a long time since he had locked up at night.
‘The Black Dogs,’ his grey-haired wife, bent almost double with rheumatics, stared into the blazing fire. ‘Nigh on twenty years since we last heard 'em, the night that climber fell at Devil's Peak.’
‘Aye,’ Gwynne stared out of the window, pressing his face against the pane and attempting to shut out the reflection of the room. Sheep fields, silvery white with a thick hoar frost, stretched up until they met the black outline of the forest on the horizon. Forestry Commission plantations, closely planted trees which obscured the sunlight day after day, forbidding, refusing to yield the secrets of their gloomy depths. Did they hide the legendary spectral dogs, the hounds of hell, harbingers of doom? The legend stretched back to the Middle Ages. Anyone who saw the dogs died, and when their howling was heard death for somebody in the hills was certain. But for whom?
‘Maybe it's just a stray dog,’ the woman's voice trembled, destroying any conviction which her tone might have had. ‘They do say that after old Maurice Jones passed away his dog took off and hasn't been seen since. It could be living up there in the forestry, gone half-wild.’
‘No,’ the farmer closed the curtains and turned back into the room. ‘That weren't Gip. It was the Black Dogs. I guess we might as well go to bed. We'll know by morning, right enough, what it was all about... except them as the cry was for!’
Frank Hall, the head forester, stirred restlessly in his sleep. A long way off, a telephone was ringing. It was some minutes before its harsh jangling penetrated his slumbers sufficiently to make him aware that it was his phone down in the hall below. Cursing beneath his breath, still half-asleep, he swung his legs to the floor and groped for his dressing-gown on the chair beside the bed.
Panic hastened his wakening and the grimness of reality returned to him as he stumbled down the narrow stairs. It could be the hospital. It had to be at this hour. His wife. A terminal illness. The surgeons had done what they could. They had given her six months to live. Maybe the shock of the operation had cut her time.
His hand trembled as he lifted the receiver, and his vocal cords refused to function. It was a man's voice on the other end of the line, and it was several seconds before his dazed brain recognized it as that of Len Wright, his beat-forester.
‘Poachers,’ Len was breathless, ‘up beyond the Devil's Peak. Using a Land Rover. After the deer.’
‘Ok, Len,’ he stammered, ‘don't panic. We'll get 'em. Stand by. Give me a few minutes and I'll pick you up. And give the police a call, will you? If it's these same chaps who were raiding us last winter we could have our hands full.’
Frank Hall dressed hurriedly. Even at fifty years of age he moved quickly. He was as fit as he had been ten years ago. Deer poachers were all part of his routine. In fact, and he would not have admitted it to anybody else, they helped to break the monotony of life in these remote border hills. He needed something like this to help him get other things off his mind.
Wearing his heavy sheepskin jacket and corduroy trousers he went outside and climbed into the Land Rover. The engine spluttered into life and then the wheels were bumping their way over uneven ground
