Buch lesen: «Country Rivals»

Chapter 1

Jamie Trilling had worked on enough film sets to know the sound of a shotgun being closed. It was a heavy clunk. Distinctive. The type of sound that vibrated in the still night air.

His fingers froze mid text.

Before he even had time to look up from his mobile phone there was the metallic echo of a safety catch being released and he knew he had to move. He couldn’t. His tongue stuck to the parched roof of his mouth, and his throat – along with the rest of his crouched body – tightened with fear.

The shotgun barked out an unmistakable message, peppering his hands, his face, his hair with a shower of dark, peaty earth, and sending a rush of adrenalin that shocked him out of his stupor.

Jamie dived straight into the nearest rhododendron bush, catching a brief flash of a ghostly figure shimmering in the moonlight before his body hit the ground and the breath was knocked out of him.

For a moment all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, then the crisp snap of twigs told him that whoever, or whatever, had shot at him was about to get a second chance.

He was too young to die, and if he did have to go he’d not planned on it being under a bush in the middle of nowhere. His mother would never forgive him.

Jamie swallowed hard. If this was the movies he’d be rolling his way out of trouble and have his assailant in an arm-lock and disarmed before the next bullet had been loaded. But it was real life and his arm bloody hurt from landing on an exposed root. Lying paralysed in the greenery was so pathetic though. And for what? If he hadn’t relied on bloody Pandora he’d have arrived in daylight and knocked at the door, not been skulking in the undergrowth, in the middle of night, with only a camera for company.

There was another crack of brittle wood, alarmingly close this time, and a rustle of leaves and Jamie shut his eyes.

‘Damned ramblers. I’ll give you the right to roam, you buggers.’ The unmistakably posh, and female, voice was unexpected. ‘Think you own the blasted countryside.’ There was the sound of a path being hacked out between him and her. He opened one eye, and through the shrubbery could just make out a green wellington boot. Not a ghost, then. ‘Come out and show yourself, man, before I pepper your backside with shot.’

It was a turn of events he really hadn’t expected, and it was all beginning to feel a bit surreal. A bad dream. Except it would take a better imagination than his to conjure up the painful throb in his elbow.

Jamie groaned. Two minutes earlier he’d been crouched in the undergrowth gazing at the image on his camera display like some self-satisfied goon who’d won the lottery. Now he was about to die. Or worse.

* * *

If he was honest, it had been a pretty weird kind of day, the strangest part being that his boss’s wife, Pandora, was actually being helpful.

‘Ignore Seb, dear. He’s just anxious,’ she’d remarked, swanning into the room just as Seb Drakelow had stormed out, after ripping a strip off him with the type of sarcasm you had to be born with. ‘I can help you get back in his good books, if you like?’ She’d said it disarmingly enough, but it still made him feel uneasy. Pandora was never nice to anybody. Feeling he hadn’t really got much choice, he’d nodded. ‘I do rather like you. It would be a shame if you were sacked so soon after starting, like the last boy.’ She smiled, as sympathetically as her Botox-frozen features would allow. ‘He’s rather impulsive. It’s his artistic side, I’m afraid. Now, what was it he asked you to do?’

Without Pandora’s help Jamie would have been in trouble. Location scouting was fine when you had time on your side and knew what you were looking for. But he’d been dropped in at the deep end, with a ridiculously tight deadline, after the site his predecessor had arranged had fallen through at the last minute.

‘Don’t worry, I know exactly what type of place we need.’ She held a hand out for his tablet. ‘We did have a shortlist of places before, let me just look … Something like this maybe? Or this one? Oh yes, I can just imagine filming here, can’t you? Although it’s probably way outside our budget. Now this one,’ she tapped on an image that linked to a newspaper report, ‘Oh dear, they’ve had a fire and it looked ideal.’

Jamie looked over her shoulder. ‘But that’s what it looks like after the fire, isn’t it? The outside still looks fine.’

‘So it does, aren’t you the clever one? And I suppose it might be a reasonable price if … Well, I’ll leave it with you. I must admit though, it does look rather nice. You have a closer look and let me know.’ She’d dropped the tablet on his lap, one finger to her lips. ‘This can be our little secret, I won’t tell Seb I helped. I presume you do want a permanent job with us?’

He did. He stared at the images, hardly noticing as Pandora left, shutting the door quietly behind her. She was right. From the few details he knew about the film it seemed to fit the bill. In fact, the more he looked at the Tipping House Estate, the more he was convinced it was exactly what Seb Drakelow was looking for. He scanned the newspaper report, a fire, closed for business, broke landowners …

‘You are a fucking genius, man.’ An unexpected surge of triumph had flooded through him. ‘A bloody genius, even if I say so myself.’

Two hours later Pandora had willingly (in her husband’s absence) authorised expenses for his train ticket and practically pushed him out of the office. ‘And if you fuck this up you’re on your own. Seb really doesn’t like failures,’ had been her parting words as she’d signed the form without even looking at him.

The train journey had been a nightmare, and by the time he’d arrived at the nearest station to Tippermere it had been dark. The taxi rank had been deserted and when the station master had taken pity on him and offered the loan of a bike and directions to the estate, which was ‘impossible to miss’, it had seemed ideal. It would be a doddle – how hard could it be to find a whacking big country estate in a village?

It turned out to be harder than anticipated. There were no signs, no street lights and the names of the country lanes mysteriously changed at what appeared to be random points. He’d needed a map and he couldn’t get a signal on his mobile, and his hands felt like they were about to drop off from the combination of freezing cold and juddering handlebars.

When he’d finally spotted the entrance gates to the Tipping House Estate he’d dropped the bike, punched the air and done a jig. Then he’d realised that he couldn’t get in, which was slightly sobering. But with the promise of a well-paid job hovering just out of reach on the horizon he’d decided he had to be resourceful.

He’d clambered over a stone wall, torn his jeans on a barbed-wire fence, had brambles wrapped round his crotch (thank God for thick denim) and stood in more than one pile of smelly fox poo. He stank and was frayed at the edges, but he’d been proved right.

As he’d absentmindedly brushed a hand down one long denim-clad leg, his blue-grey eyes never leaving the image, he had to admit it. Tipping House was awesome. The perfect country pile. Full, no doubt, of stuck-up toffs and their horse-faced wives, but what the hell? It was the building he was interested in, not its inhabitants.

From his vantage point in the woods there was no sign of the fire damage that had caught his attention online, and even with the heavy cloak of night time, pierced only by the silver-white slivers of winter moonlight, the grand old building seemed to glow with a grandeur that spoke of majesty and pride. It shouted out, well murmured in a very upper class way, ‘country estate’. It was all about what ho’s, stiff upper lips, hunting parties and Hooray Henrys. Even the lawn was bigger than a bloody football pitch. Which was exactly what film-maker Seb Drakelow, and his demanding bitch of a wife, were after.

Jamie wasn’t really into stately homes and all the pretentious crap that went with them. What he was into was ideas. And this idea was going to pay off big time. The Tipping House Estate was going to win him some points and a permanent job. Pandora had more or less said as much – although whether he trusted her word or not was debatable. But he did trust Seb, and Seb was going to be impressed.

The world might have been his oyster since leaving university, but it was a pretty cramped shell when all you were getting was the word ‘intern’ to slap on your CV along with an endless supply of cheap coffee and the kind of pay that didn’t cover a week’s worth of train fares. He desperately needed to get a place of his own. Urgently. Living with a librarian was seriously cramping his style, even if he was very fond of her. His mother. How the hell was he ever going to get a girl to take him seriously if he had to admit he’d moved back home?

It wasn’t that there was any shortage of girls in his line of work, and with his loose-limbed frame, generous smile and earnest gaze Jamie had always had his admirers. But they tended to mother him rather than show any desire to strip off their clothes and drag him into bed.

There was a subtle change in the quality of the light as the clouds drifted, and Jamie focused back on the job. The clouds were clearing from over the moon – which was his sole source of light. The photographs he’d already got weren’t bad, but this was his chance to get the winner. The perfect moonlit mansion. He lifted his camera to get one more shot. And that was when it all started to go wrong.

‘Shit.’ It was a ghost.

His mouth dried, his throat constricting, his gaze locked on the viewfinder. The figure was lit by the moon, as white as death, smack bang in the middle of his line of sight.

Except this was a solid mass, not the watery, wispy apparition he’d imagined a ghost would be. Some part of his brain told him that he should still be able to make out the mansion, through a shadowy form. That a ghost should be elusive.

Jamie knew he should run or take a photograph. But he couldn’t do either. He couldn’t even glance up to take it in with his own eyes. Second-hand, through the camera, was enough. He was mesmerised. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck. As he stared, transfixed, the auto focus in the viewfinder of the camera flickered, trying to fix onto and sharpen the apparition.

Which was the precise moment when his mobile phone had beeped its way into his conscience and he’d picked it up with trembling hands to find an irate ‘Well?’ text message from an impatient Pandora. The sight of her profile picture had rather brought him back to reality. Then he’d heard the clunk of the shotgun.

* * *

Jamie stared at the wellington boot, which didn’t appear to have moved.

‘Show yourself, man, or I’ll send the dogs in after you.’

‘No fucking chance, you loony.’ He stayed where he was, one hand clutching his precious camera to his chest. A ghost would have been easier to handle than this trigger-happy harridan.

Another shot rang out, alarmingly close, splinters of bark bouncing off the canopy of leaves that covered him, and Jamie froze. His ears picked up the clunk of the gun being reloaded, or at least that’s what his imagination told him it was. In his world nobody carried shotguns or fired at strangers.

He supposed he should wriggle his way, commando style, to freedom. Not easy with a camera like a brick in one hand. And she’d probably pepper his arse with shot, or send the hounds in to drag him back. Christ, he was going to need new jeans after this. His inner action hero had obviously abandoned him.

‘After him, boy, flush him out.’

‘Well, Mum, I’m not quite sure this was what you had in mind when you said a degree would broaden my mind,’ he muttered under his breath as the sound of snapping twigs heralded the oncoming dog. The Hound of the Baskervilles meets Miss Havisham, was his second thought as the snuffles and panting got closer. Although Havisham Hounds sounded more like a pub than a horror film. He had to breathe, calm down. Think rationally.

There was a rustle immediately to his left, the smell of sweet doggy breath, and Jamie opened his eyes – which he hadn’t realise he’d shut. Whiskers tickled his cheek, above them a black, wet, shiny nose. Jamie all but giggled in relief as he realised that it was a Labrador grinning down at him. It plonked itself down on its haunches by his shoulder, tongue lolling, tail swishing through the leaves.

Jamie, who’d never heard of anybody being eaten alive by a Labrador, even though they’d eat more or less anything, offered a hand. The dog sniffed, then licked him with a noisy slurp.

‘Bertie stop that, you bloody traitor.’ Bertie stopped and glanced up guiltily over his shoulder, and so did Jamie. Straight into the barrel of a very old shotgun, gripped by even older, liver-spotted hands. ‘And don’t even think about running off. Darned safety catch, sticking again.’

Jamie wasn’t even sure he could get up without help, let alone run. ‘Do you know what you’re doing with that thing?’ He nodded at the barrel, which was a damned sight steadier than his wavering voice.

‘I’m perfectly competent.’

Which he took as a yes. Despite the firearm pointed at his heart he could feel the blood returning to his extremities with a rush. His fingertips started to throb. ‘It might be nice if you pointed it somewhere else.’ She didn’t. ‘I thought you were a ghost.’

‘A ghost?’

It was laughable now, but had seemed a real possibility only minutes ago. If it was minutes. He’d lost track of time, along with the feeling in one arm.

She was, he decided on closer inspection, quite an old lady. But one with a steady hand and a much firmer voice than most grannies he’d come across. More Clint Eastwood than Lady in a Van.

‘Are you drunk, young man? Or under the influence of one of those new-fangled drugs you children play with?’ Which was quite a good question, considering the weird direction his mind was taking him in. ‘You’re all the same you youngsters, need to get out in the fresh air and do some manual labour. You look pasty.’

‘You’d look bloody pasty if you’d been shot at by a ghost.’

There was a glimmer of a smile across what he could now see were unmistakably aristocratic features. High cheekbones, beady eyes, a long slightly hooked nose and grey hair fixed firmly back. ‘In my day …’

He rolled his eyes and let his head fall back onto the pillow of leaves. It was surreal, being stuck in the middle of nowhere, well, a Cheshire estate – but it might as well be nowhere, in the shadow of an amazing building, hearing the same words his grandfather threw at him on a regular basis.

‘In my day nobody dived for cover. Stand up like a man, you lily-livered buffoon.’

Which wasn’t quite what he was expecting.

‘My estate manager will be sending a bill for any damage.’

Jamie stared up incredulously at the foliage that surrounded him. ‘How do you damage a bush?’

‘Fences, you fool. I know you didn’t walk in through the front gate as a normal,’ she stressed the word, ‘visitor would do. You don’t look like you’d be capable of damaging much, though. Far too stringy.’ Her eyes narrowed and she peered more closely at him. ‘Are you sure you’re not on drugs?’

‘No I’m bloody not. I could ask you the same. You’re the one in wellies and a nightie, walking the dog in the middle of the night.’ It was probably better not to mention the gun. ‘Nice dog, by the way.’ She harrumphed as he edged himself cautiously up onto his elbows, the dog’s tail beating a tattoo against the mulch of leaves. ‘Not much good at the hunting and killing, though, is it?’

‘He’s a Labrador, a gundog, trained for picking up game not tracking quarry.’ The unspoken ‘stupid boy’ hung in the air. ‘You are trespassing, young man, so you’re fair game.’

‘I know.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘Would you mind if I got out of this bush?’

‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you.’

‘If you do, you won’t find out why I’m here?’

‘I said shoot you, not kill you.’

‘Ahh. You wouldn’t hit a man when he’s down, would you?’

‘I am more than happy to give you a five-second start, young man.’

Jamie was just trying to decide if she was kidding or not, as her face was scarily emotionless, when she seemed to come to a sudden decision and straightened up. ‘You don’t look like a lunatic. Come up to the house and make me a drink.’ She lowered the barrel of the gun. ‘And you can explain yourself. Now where’s Bertie wandered off to? Damned sure that dog is going senile. Bertie, Bertie, come here you old fool.’ Breaking open the gun, she hooked it over her arm. ‘Well, come on young man, it’s too cold to stand about gawping.’ And without looking back, she stomped off out of the trees.

Jamie, plucking twigs from his hair and holding firmly onto his camera, ran after her. He caught up just as she reached the edge of the expanse of lawn.

‘Jamie, James Trilling.’

‘I’m sure you are.’ She didn’t even glance his way. ‘Bertie, old boy, don’t you even think of rolling in that excrement or you’ll be sleeping in the stables.’

‘Isn’t it rather late for you to be out walking him?’

‘Couldn’t sleep. Overrated if you ask me, all this lying about. Does your mother know where you are?’

Jamie laughed. ‘Why, are you going to kill me and bury my body?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She chuckled, and he joined in. ‘That is the gamekeeper’s job.’

‘Oh. You’re kidding?’ She didn’t reply. ‘So you live here?’ They were crunching over the gravel that fronted the imposing house, and Jamie slowed his pace and glanced up. ‘It’s incredible.’

‘It is.’ Her tone softened, ‘and I do. I was born in that wing,’ she nodded, ‘and now I live,’ she paused to push open the large door, then gestured across the hallway, ‘in that one.’

Jamie stared. Visiting stately homes as a kid had been part of growing up, but now, standing here in the lived-in version he wondered if he’d cracked his head while climbing over the wall. It couldn’t be real. Close up, it was like something out of one of the BBC bonnet-busters that his mum loved to watch. She hated it when he called them that, or told her that the day a woman came out of the lake with a shirt clinging to her chest was the day he’d start watching them.

He supposed he should be used to places like this, just view it as another location, like the rest of the crew would do. But the only locations he’d been sent out to see since starting this job were sink estates that scared the shit out of him (Seb liked ‘authentic’ and was far more comfortable surrounded by concrete than fields), and deserted stretches of railway track where no doubt somebody would get brutally murdered on film. They gave him the willies, if he was honest, but this was different.

Jamie glanced at his ghostly companion as he followed her in. She couldn’t be real. But with a black Labrador at her feet, the shotgun cracked open over her arm and the Hunter wellingtons on her feet, he had to admit that even in her nightie her resemblance to the portrait at the end of the hall was remarkable. ‘You’re, you’re Lady …’

‘Elizabeth Stanthorpe,’ she finished for him, the hint of a smile twitching at her thin lips. ‘Who the blazes did you think I was? You may call me Lady Elizabeth. Now, are we having that drink or not? You’re not one of those feeble types that doesn’t drink are you? No appetite for anything these days, you youngsters, other than fiddling with those egg box things.’

‘X-box.’

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Gimmicky what-nots. All that staring at screens and fiddling with knobs. I bet you don’t even have time to fiddle with girls. It’s not natural.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Do those lap-dancing clubs still exist? They were very trendy at one time. I blame that Stringfellow chap for a lot of the shenanigans. And there were gentlemen’s clubs. That kind of thing was guaranteed to raise the blood pressure. Nowadays there are no wars to fight, no hunting allowed, no sex … mark my words the human race will die out if the do-gooders have their way. It’s all about being gay now, isn’t it?’ She pulled a wellington off, then pointed at his feet. ‘Shoes off. Not that I have a problem with gay men. It’s always gone on, that type of thing. Knew some splendid chaps who did it. But they did their duty and married the gals as well. Heir and a spare and all that.’

‘People do still have sex.’ Jamie wasn’t quite sure where the conversation was heading.

‘Jolly good. Bertie do leave those alone, there’s a good chap.’ The Labrador looked at her with big chocolate eyes, a boot held gently in his jaws, which he very carefully laid back down at his mistress’s feet. ‘He misses Holmes, don’t you old man?’ She patted the dog’s head and his tail swung a metronome beat as he looked up expectantly.

‘Holmes?’ Jamie looked around, half expecting a butler to appear.

‘Lab. Like peas in a pod the two of them were. Died of old age, dropped like a stone the other week as he ran out after a pheasant, daft old bugger.’