Steven nodded and passed the message down the line. Then he did something he hadn’t done for weeks – he started to test the boundaries of his prison, kicking at the wall, pushing a stalk of grass into the padlock, tugging at the ends of the wire fence as if he might unravel the chain link like an old jumper.
The .22 pistol was a waste of time.
What worked well when pressed between the eyes was completely useless when trying to hit a galloping pony at fifty paces. Bob Coffin thought he’d winged a couple but not even badly enough to be able to hunt them down and kill them. The deer didn’t even let him get within firing distance.
Bob Coffin threw the pistol on to the passenger seat of his old diesel and slammed the door hard.
Time was there was a never-ending parade of old, broken-down livestock coming into the yard, and the Park Rangers would let him know when a pony or deer was dead on the moor. Then the flesh room was always packed with fresh meat.
Not now the hounds were gone.
He’d stolen the last cow. Just walked into Jack Biggins’s field by night and taken the first one he’d come to. It was so easy it didn’t even feel like theft.
But when he’d tried it again over at Deepwater, the herd had gone off like a bovine car alarm – mooing and lowing and milling about him until he’d feared they would knock him down and trample him. But he’d needed the meat, and clung on to the cow until a skin-and-bone collie with one white eye had scattered the beasts and then bitten his ankle as he scrambled back over the five-bar gate.
He had a sheep, but it would last no time.
After that, he didn’t know what he would do.
Jonas saw Steven wince as a sharp point of wire pricked his finger. The boy didn’t give up, though – he shook his hand, then bent to his task again, even though it was hopeless.
Jonas thought of the grim truth – that Bob Coffin was their captor and tormentor, but he was also their lifeline. If he fell down and broke his leg, they were all dead; if he had a car accident and was taken to hospital, they were all dead; if he simply lost interest or got scared, or took a long weekend by the seaside, they were
Now the huntsman was somewhere else and they were here.
Helpless as infants.
As he watched Steven, Jonas cursed himself. A strip of leather and a small padlock, and he’d simply resigned himself to his fate, along with the children he was sworn to protect. He should have remembered the gun and realized the danger they were in. He should have been planning an escape for weeks, not waited until there was a crisis like this one. He’d been afraid, and frozen by that fear, and it had stopped him thinking.
He’d better start again right now.
Jonas ran his fingers along the chain that tethered him to the fence. He examined every link minutely, tried their strength with his hands and his teeth. He picked a link in the middle of the tether, and scraped it repeatedly across the cement, making a graze in the grey of the floor, and a shiny new corner on the metal.
That might work. Although an escape plan that relied on the erosion of metal was an escape plan that should have been formulated long before they were each left with half a bucket of water and no food.
The link became shiny but it didn’t get thin. It seemed hopeless, but Jonas beat down the feeling that he was wasting his time. Right now this was the most important thing in the world. The
The thought made him strangely optimistic, and he went at the task with new vigour.
Steven said ‘Shitshitshit’ and flapped his hand again.
‘You OK?’ said Jonas.
‘Cut it,’ said Steven, holding it up to the fence for Jonas to see.
Jonas reached out and wiped away the blood with his own thumb. Immediately it squeezed out again in a pretty red sphere.
‘It’s just a flesh wound,’ said Jonas with a smile.
‘Yeah,’ said Steven. He smiled back, but it didn’t last long. ‘Jonas?’ he said tentatively, ‘do you think he’s going to come back for us?’
‘Of course,’ said Jonas. ‘He loves us, doesn’t he?’
The sun was high in the sky before Pete said, ‘I hear him!’ and he was right.
Bob Coffin came down the walkway without meat, but with purpose, carrying a coil of thin cord. He wore his mask but no gloves. He strode past them all and unlocked Charlie’s kennel, then shook an end out of the coil like a cowboy about to rope a calf. Charlie stood up and moved away, like that same calf.
Jonas knelt against the fence. ‘What are you doing?’
Coffin ignored him and lunged at Charlie, who dodged him, then burst into tears.
Bob Coffin tried again, arms outstretched, and Charlie cowered, then darted away, bawling his lungs out.
‘Hold still, bay!’
Charlie rattled the gate in blind panic and twisted out of Bob Coffin’s grip once more. ‘No meat! No meat!’
‘Stay! Or I’ll get the gloves.’
Charlie ran to Jonas at the fence, clutching at the wire. ‘I don’t want to go!’ he cried. ‘Jonas!’
The terrified boy fell to his knees as Bob Coffin tried to drag him away.
