He took acloser look at the food on the table. Some of the brand names werefamiliar to him, yet the packaging told him that he was looking at food madesomewhere in the Thirties, Forties or Fifties. The torchlight fell onto awhite packet with blue writing, which confirmed for him the exact decade: Cadbury’sRation Chocolate. The building had stood unused since the war. Butwhy?
The torch beambegan to fade, which he thought was rather typical. He shone the fadinglight over to the adjacent room and hesitantly moved into the doorway. Itwas a small room and, just before the torch battery died, he caught sight of aneat and tidy bed, all ready-made as if waiting for the owner to return. He spotted something else in the corner of the room just as the lightfailed. Something that set his heart racing.
Feeling acutelyvulnerable in the pitch-black room, he set down the backpack and fumbled aboutfor the box of matches. Finally, he struck a match and the room took onan eerie, shadowy glow. He held the light over the object in the cornerof the room. It was a tiny cot with blankets that, unlike the bed, wereall dishevelled and unkempt, dangling precariously over the wooden bars. He bent down and picked up a knitted, beige-brown teddy bear. He drew itclose to his face, knowing to whom it once belonged. Morton stoodclutching the bear, contemplating the sight before him, weighing theimplications of discovering an isolated shooting box, unused since the war,which contained a baby’s cot. Had this been James Coldrick’s place ofbirth? The place where his mother had written the goodbye letterto him? He tried to recall the contents of the letter. Whatwas it she had said? Something about being placed in an abominablesituation and what she feared would happen to him. A wave of nauseasuddenly passed over him and he needed air that wasn’t almost seventy years oldinside his lungs. He moved back into the main room of the shooting boxwhen something caught his attention. He squatted down to the door, whichhe believed he had just burst from its hinges, and took a closer look. The hinges had been forced open, but not by him and not just now. One was twisted, contorted and in the process of disintegration. Theother hinge was missing entirely. The door had been held shut by threelarge metal straps, which were themselves time-rusted and decayed.
Morton wasbeginning to form an idea of what had occurred here in 1944.
A tumultuousdouble crack of nearby gunfire made Morton jump with fright.
They’d foundhim.
He blew out thematch and ran for the door. The last thing he wanted was to be corneredin a deserted shooting box when nobody outside knew where he was. Hepeered cautiously into the woodland. The only movement was a mass exodusof birds taking to the skies in raucous screams.
Morton sprintedto the nearest thicket and tucked himself into a purple rhododendron bush wherehe observed a group of people with dogs striding into the clearingapproximately one hundred yards away. He quickly raised the binoculars toget a better look. Five people and two golden retrievers. Huntingdogs. Brilliant. At least they weren’t Dobermans, he thought. The binoculars weren’t powerful enough to help identify the group headingtowards him, but it looked like four men and one woman. He adjusted theplastic focus ring as they neared him, their faces gradually gainingclarity. Morton couldn’t yet see the detail of their faces, but theirgait and mannerisms told him that they weren’t searching for an intruder on theestate, but rather were out on a shooting expedition.
The group camewithin fifty yards and incomprehensible fragments of their conversation driftedacross to him. He tweaked the binoculars again and the group came intofocus. The woman, attractive with a neat brown bob and blonde highlights,whom he guessed to be in her mid-forties, seemed wholly out of place dressed ina black pinstripe business suit, while the four men were dressed asstereotypical aristocrats with tweed jackets, flat caps, plus-fours andhalf-cocked shotguns. He didn’t recognise the woman or two of the men,one of whom was struggling under the weight of a mountain of luminous orangeclay pigeons. The other two he categorically recognised: they wereundeniably his old friend Daniel Dunk and the Secretary of Defence, PhilipWindsor-Sackville. The woman leaned over and pecked PhilipWindsor-Sackville on the cheek.
Morton heaved asigh of relief as the group changed direction so that they were no longerheading straight for him. He was relieved that the door to the shootingbox was facing him; from their angle, as far as they could tell, nothing hadchanged since 1944. They stood still for a moment, laughing andjoking. Morton had an opportunity to get a decent photograph of them butthe camera was in the backpack, which was inside the bedroom of the shootingbox. He lowered the binoculars and gauged that if he crawled quickly overto the shooting box, he could just get back with the camera in time to take a photobefore they disappeared back into the woods.
Morton dived tothe ground and shimmied awkwardly through the long grass until he reached thesafety of the shooting box. Once inside, he pulled himself up and grabbedthe digital camera from the backpack and slithered back out into theundergrowth to get a photo.
The shootingparty were still stood in the same position, buying Morton a few more secondsto switch the camera on and check that the flash was off. Rathersurprisingly for his father, the digital camera was decent quality with animpressive telephoto zoom and Morton quickly had the Secretary of Defence andthe woman, presumably his wife, giggling like hormonal teenagers in hisviewfinder. He snapped them repeatedly.
The group beganto move, back in the direction that they had entered the woods.
Morton took onelast photo when suddenly his mobile loudly declared to the whole world that hehad just received a text message.
He ducked downand froze, hoping that by some small miracle they hadn’t heard it. Parting the tall grass, his pulse quickened as he watched the group stand stillin unison, all turning quizzically. One of them, Daniel Dunk, turned andbegan to turn towards the shooting box.
He needed toget out.
Fast.
Quickly andgracelessly, Morton squirmed on his stomach
