The Kill Call

conversation. He pointed beyond the kennels.
    ‘See down there, on the road?’ he said. ‘About a hundred yards short of the gate to the kennel drive.’
    ‘Yes. There’s an old Bedford van parked up on the verge.’
    ‘That’s the sabs’ van. They’re on kennel watch. They’re waiting for the hounds to leave, so they can follow them to this morning’s meet. Sometimes, if the hunt expects to be sabbed, they try to change the location at the last minute from the one listed on the meet card.’
    ‘If the van is there, that means the animal rights activists are due back in the area today.’
    ‘Right,’ said Cooper. ‘Well, it’s the last hunt of the season. They’ll want to go out on a high note.’
    ‘Speaking of which,’ said Fry, ‘I’d really like to follow up the hunt saboteurs’ claim to have heard the kill call before the hunt on Tuesday morning.’
    ‘You think the kill call was real, Diane?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘I believe in the kill call.’
       
    They went back to the car, and Cooper drove up the road two miles from the kennels to where the hunt was gathering at the home of a member.
    Cooper surveyed a scene that he had once thought would be a vanishing tradition, no more than a memory in the British countryside. Everyone was in correct hunting dress this morning, of course – gentlemen in three-button red coats with brass buttons, white breeches, and top boots. The traditional bowlers and top hats had disappeared now, though, in favour of protective hunting caps to meet safety standards.
    ‘See, no one in tweed jackets, except for the small child there,’ he said. ‘It’s not acceptable dress. And there are the hunt staff – the huntsman and kennel man. The joint masters, and then the mounted hunt followers. Plus all the foot and car supporters. It’s quite a crowd, isn’t it?’
    They had found a spot in a small stretch of woodland overlooking the meet. A dense cover of brambles and dead bracken, trees still bare but for the thick, strangling snakes of ivy wrapped round their trunks.
    ‘Are you actually a member of the hunt, Ben?’ asked Fry.
    ‘Of course not. But my brother Matt is.’
    ‘Really? I’ve seen your brother. What’s he like on a horse?’
    ‘He doesn’t ride.’

    ‘So how come farmers are members of the hunt? I thought they were all supposed to be poor. I heard the subscription is more than a thousand pounds a year.’
    ‘Farmers get a reduced rate. Masters have to keep them on side, or they’d have nowhere left to hunt.’
    As Peter Massey had said at Rough Side Farm, farmers committed no offence as long as they didn’t knowingly allow illegal hunting on their land. As they watched, a terrier man was letting his dog scent along the hedgerow. But that meant nothing, either.
    ‘This is the end of the hunting season?’ asked Fry.
    ‘Mid-March, yes. There’s Flagg Races on Easter Tuesday, and that’s it.’
    ‘What races?’
    ‘Flagg. You’ve never heard of it?’
    ‘Is there a reason I should have?’
    ‘Well, it’s on our patch.’
    ‘Ben, there are all kinds of little out-of-the-way hobbit burrows on this patch that I’ve never heard of. Half of them haven’t seen a human being for years. Some of them are so small you can’t see them for the nearest telegraph pole. Why would I have heard of this one in particular?’
    ‘Because it’s where the races are held.’
    ‘For God’s sake –’
    Cooper looked at her. ‘Are you all right, Diane?’
    ‘I wish people would stop asking me if I’m all right.’
    Cooper shrugged. He’d thought Flagg’s point-to-point races were pretty famous, in their own way.
    ‘The protestors are gathering in the lane,’ said Fry. ‘Discussing tactics, you think?’
    ‘More than likely. They’re usually well organized.’
    Once, when Cooper had been on hunt policing duty as a uniformed officer, one group of saboteurs had turned up with something called a ‘gizmo’, a sort of modified loud-hailer which played tapes of hounds in cry to distract the pack away from the quarry. He’d watched them drive along a dirt track in their van, playing their gizmo, with the hounds running towards them from a field away and loping along behind their wheels. And then there were the ubiquitous sprays – cans of Anti-mate, or a home-made brew concocted from citronella or garlic – anything that would mask the scent of a fox.
    These days, of course, the hunt only followed a fox-based scent mixed with