Chapter Thirteen: Tuesday
“The case of the Cannich Puma is still a source of debate and speculation. In October 1980 farmer Ted Noble angered at finding his sheep killed, baited a home-made trap and managed to capture a female puma, later to be christened Felicity by the Highland Wildlife Park.”
“And then Rupa said...”
“Rupa, eh? Very friendly now aren’t we?”
Art grinned sheepishly. “No point hanging around,” he bragged, knowing that John would know that he was not serious.
“So, what do you reckon? Are you going to see her again?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Bloody hell,” John sounded impressed, “You really do act fast.”
Art shrugged his shoulders. “When you've got it...” He left the expression unfinished.
John took a sip from the froth on the top of his beer, stooping low over his glass, barely lifting the vessel off the table-top. He had a look of eager expectation in his eyes, barely able to contain his excitement at the prospect of more salacious facts to come. Art was reminded of the expression on the face of Rupinder’s dog, Sandy, when he had bent down to offer him a piece of one of Luke’s breadsticks: lip-licking, greedy anticipation. “So? So? Don’t keep me in suspense. Did you...?” John nodded his head knowingly.
“What? No,” adding more emphatically, when he saw the look of disappointed disbelief in John's face, “No, it’s not like that.”
“What other way is there?” asked John, incredulous.
“She is going to look after Luke for me,” Art explained. “While I go out after the puma again.”
“You’re joking?”
“No. I’m still married to Amanda, remember.”
“You know what I think about that,” said John.
Both men took deep draughts from their respective glasses, neither wanting to pursue the current direction of their conversation. The subject of Amanda was not conducive to a light-hearted chat: her memory was drowned somewhere in the second mouthful.
“So how’s it going with the big cat hunt?” asked John.
“A big fat zero so far,” confessed Art. He went on to explain about his internet rival, the mysterious HPL200890.
“And you don't know who it is?”
“No idea. I did a Google search for the sequence, but it drew a blank. I don’t know what it means.”
“It sounds like a date, the last part.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought too,” agreed Art, “20th August 1990. Does it mean anything to you?”
“Not off the top of my head,” John was forced to concede. “The day Thatcher resigned?” he added, frivolously.
“Could be,” said Art, absentmindedly, not taking the suggestion as serious.
“Or a birthday?”
“That would only make him eleven years old.”
“Not much of a rival there,”
“I don’t know. What match is that?” Art asked, changing the subject and screwing up his eyes to peer at the distant T.V. set, which sent out a near continuous barrage of sport’s coverage from its lofty vantage point in the far corner of the pub, regardless of whether anyone was watching or not, although judging from the number of heads turned in its general direction it was a popular attraction.
John swivelled around on his stool to look at the image on the set. “Charlton,” he said. “It’s a re-run.” He waved his hand in front of Art’s eyes, trying to draw his attention back from the T.V.. “So, you're still sure it’s a puma, are you?”
Art sounded weary, “I really don’t know what to think. If it wasn’t for this other chap, I might have been tempted to give the whole thing up, but this new information about the tracks has got me intrigued.”
“Yes, but why specifically a puma?” John pursued, “I mean, there must be any number of possible big cats.”
Art looked suspiciously across the table at his companion, saying jokingly, “You’re very interested in all of this all of a sudden. Are you sure that you’re not the elusive HPL200890?” He continued, answering John’s question, “I guess a puma is just the most likely suspect. They are adaptable predators, have been known to prey on livestock in their native States, they are elusive; all the things that match with the scant evidence I have so far.”
“Very scant,” John reminded Art.
“Very scant evidence,” Art echoed, “Plus there is a history of pumas having been kept as pets here in the U.K. before they were outlawed under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976, of course. That’s when all this mystery big cat business really started here in Britain.”
“Oh? How so?”
“Before 1976 pretty much anything was considered fair game...” John winced and Art excused the unintentional pun, continuing, “to be kept as a domestic pet in this country. People had dangerous snakes in their houses, rare and endangered species, and big cats were not uncommon too.”
“Would need a big house,” said John, flippantly.
“Plenty enough of them around,” said Art, seriously, “And people with the money but not necessarily the know-how to go with it. Anyway after the Act came into force it meant that private individuals could no longer keep certain wild animals without either the proper license...”
“Which cost money.”
“Quite. Or the suitable environment, you know, proper cages, regular health checks, etcetera. Which was not what most of these people were about.”
“So you’re saying all these animals were just let loose?”
“Yes, exactly. People would prefer to set their erstwhile pets free rather than pay for a license or conform to the new legislation.”
John shook his head in disbelief and took another swig from his glass. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “And you reckon some of these old pets...” He made a gesture with his hands, indicating that he put the term in inverted commas, “are still on the loose.”
“More likely the off-spring of the original pets.”
“A breeding population?”
“That is what any self respecting A.B.C. hunter would love to prove.”
“You mean to find one puma is no good?” asked John, disappointed to discover one of his investments had taken a sudden downturn.
“Four legs good, eight legs better,” said Art, mangling an Orwellian phrase. “Of course, my A.B.C. could always turn out to be a wolverine.”
“What?”
“I’m joking.” Art laughed, “It’s another classic English cryptid story that is never likely to be proved one way or the other.”
“A wolverine!” John sounded sceptical, “I’ve never even heard of it.”
“Not an X-Men fan then?” Art continued more seriously, “It’s one of the largest mustelids.”
John whizzed his hand over the top of his head, “Whoosh.”
Art smiled and went on to explain, “Same family as the weasel, marten and otter, only the wolverine is much bigger, much fiercer, and much less likely to be over here. Most reported sightings turn out to be muddy badgers.”
“Bloody...”
“Quite. No, what I’m chasing is either the Cassiobury Cougar or zilch. Thin air. Just a particularly aggressive dog-fight, or a sick human, or a total hoax. There are a million and one possible explanations other than the one I would like to discover.”
“But you’ll carry on searching?”
“It keeps me off the streets,” said Art, not particularly optimistically. He took another mouthful of beer, glancing up again at the T.V. screen and returning to an earlier conversation, “By the way, Thatcher resigned on 22nd November 1990. If there is one date I will always remember by heart...”
•••
David William “Sweet” Sherry. It had been a strange case. Detective Sergeant James Leigh lay the brown A4 manila folder on his desk, opened it and folded back the flap wide, putting a definite crease in the spine with the side of his hand so that the ca
rdboard would not spring back shut again, and prepared himself to begin re-reading at page one.
The initial case notes, more than forty years old now, had been hand-written and James found himself struggling to interpret some of the sloping and erratic script of the detective in charge at the time, one D. C. Mortimer Vaughan. The gist of the notes were clear though. David Sherry - ‘little Dave’ as Vaughan occasionally, and inappropriately, referred to him - would have only been ten years old at the time. It had all begun on a February day in 1961 and David, his father Harry and his brother Ronald had embarked on a simple day trip to the zoo. The day had ended with old man Harold ending up mauled to death in the lion’s pit and young David under arrest for his manslaughter. There were conflicting reports at the time as to whether Harold’s death had been an accident or whether he had been wilfully pushed by his son - David himself had always pleaded his own innocence - but it was his brother Ronald who gave the crucial statement that convicted him, claiming that he had seen David deliberately trip his father, resulting in his fall into the lion’s enclosure and subsequent mauling. The zoo itself, obviously conscious of the repercussions to themselves should an accidental death verdict be brought in on the case, heavily backed the brother’s statement, and the unfortunate David was found guilty of killing his father and ordered to be detained for an indefinite period at a young offender’s centre. It was not prison, but to a vulnerable ten-year old it must have felt the same.
It was while in detention that David Sherry developed - perhaps understandably given the circumstances behind his conviction - what was described in the case notes as, a pathological interest in wild cats. He would smuggle feral cats into his room and managed to keep a large population of the creatures returning to a particular corner of the remand centre’s grounds by leaving out food; he requested books about the maintenance of domestic cats and about the lives of big cats from the centre library; and he voiced an ambition to train to be a zoo keeper when he left the centre. All worthy enough occupations for an imaginative teenager, it would appear: indeed until the age of seventeen, David had proved himself to be a near model inmate and would, in all likelihood, have been recommended for release at the time of, or soon after, his approaching eighteenth birthday. If only he had not killed again.
The man in question was one Andrew Rowbottom, only really still a youth, himself just sixteen at the time. Rowbottom had only recently been installed in the centre, but unlike David, arrived with a history of minor criminal convictions behind him, dating back several years, most for petty theft, but more recently involving violence too. Rowbottom was identified by the centre’s psychologist, in his initial evaluation, as someone possessing a sadistic and bullying personality, and this cruel streak was evident when the young man was discovered to have wrung the necks of at least three of David Sherry’s befriended felines. Sherry’s revenge was not instant - in his subsequent trial this was a factor to go against him; a passionate, spontaneous retribution might have been excused; a slow, calculated campaign leading to Rowbottom’s eventual death could only be classed as murder.
Sherry, once again, pleaded not guilty. The victim had been discovered, behind the industrial waste bins, outside the rear exit to the centre’s kitchen area, five deep stab wounds raking his back, causing wounds that superficially looked as though they had been caused by the paw of a giant cat. There had been no witnesses to Rowbottom’s death, but other than David there were no other suspects; no other known motives, and David Sherry was to find himself once again convicted of the unlawful killing of a fellow human being, this time, though, the crime was murder, and the punishment was life in prison.
And there the essential notes ended. Various psychologist’s reports had been appended to the case files over the period of the intervening thirty years, none of them recounting anything of any significant interest as to David’s well-being, sanity or otherwise. David himself had quietly maintained his innocence of all crimes during his years of incarceration, but had otherwise kept his nose clean and had appeared to accept his confinement with stoic indifference. He had not been allowed the same freedom to indulge his enthusiasm for cats during his period in prison as he had enjoyed in the young offender’s centre, but his wardens reported that he was generally a happy, if solitary, prisoner. There had been no apparent reason to think that he was about to make a break for liberty. He had nowhere to go.