The Old Enemy, Henry Porter [important of reading books txt] 📗

The Bird coughed quietly and said, ‘Good morning Dr Gaspar.’

‘My God, General! Where the hell did you spring from? Have you come to buy the gun?’ He rose and folded the glasses. ‘They didn’t tell me you were here.’

The Bird moved towards him, gun drawn, and said, ‘I have come to talk about my friend Bobby Harland, the man you had shot two weeks ago.’

Gaspar spluttered that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Had the General lost his mind? What the heck did he think he was doing, walking into his home with a gun? He made for a pistol in his desk, but the Bird moved quickly to bring the gun down on his bare arm. A small gash appeared. Gaspar looked astonished. He reached for the phone. The Bird stopped that, too. He now saw that Gaspar had been watching the stream from Congress being aired by Fox News. Anastasia was sitting alone at a table. Someone was asking her a question. The Bird nodded and smiled. This was the first he knew of what was happening in Congress.

‘You know her?’ said Gaspar incredulously.

‘Yes, she’s a remarkable young woman. Now pick up the gun case over there and walk to the door. If you do anything but walk and breathe, I will shoot you in the back of the head.’

‘Are you taking the gun?’

‘To fill a room like this with dead creatures?’ He looked from the elephant to the leopard then back to the rhinoceros head. He shook his head. If Gaspar had glanced at the Bird’s eyes instead of the street gun, he would have seen a look of great sadness, as well as disgust.

The Bird pushed him out of the house to the Pinzgauer, where Gaspar made as though he had forgotten the keys. ‘They’re where you left them, clipped above the sun visor.’

They drove to the spot they had stopped before, where Gaspar had excitedly climbed down. Waiting there was Macy Harp, sitting on a tree stump with his loafers resting on a boulder. He was peering at an anthill. The Bird, who never noticed much about a person’s mood, saw how content he seemed. Now he looked up and squinted at them in the sunlight. ‘So this is the fella who killed my friend Bobby,’ he called out. He got up and ambled over, picking his way through the grass, which had already grown tall in the spring warmth. He reached them and looked at Gaspar. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, addressing the Bird, ‘when you meet a real bad’un, how profoundly unimpressive they always are.’

Gaspar shrank from him. He saw in the cheery, rubicund features something that really frightened him. ‘I haven’t got long to live, Mr Gaspar,’ started Macy conversationally. ‘A matter of weeks, they tell me. I have no pain – nothing like Robert Harland endured in his final days – so I count myself as fortunate.’ He looked around him. ‘But, when you’re dying, you see the wonder of things with such clarity. Bobby was painting when your man executed him, completing a work of sublime beauty. I can’t paint, but I have been watching those ants over there for nearly an hour and, to be honest, I haven’t spent a happier hour in the last forty years. Ants are quite simply marvellous, aren’t they?’

Gaspar glanced at the Bird, as an improbable haven of sanity. The Bird handed the pistol to Macy and set about fixing the barrel of the Nitro Express rifle to the stock and fitting the forend under the barrels.

‘What do you want?’ asked Gaspar. ‘Money? I can give you more money than you could dream of.’

Macy smiled. ‘It must be evident that I have no use for money.’

‘Normally, I’d take you up on that,’ said the Bird. ‘I could use a substantial donation for my place. I have a zoo and conservation projects that absolutely burn money.’ He looked down both barrels. ‘But, well, it seems I can do more for conservation and the wildlife right here with you.’

‘You have no ammunition,’ said Gaspar. ‘Let’s talk this over. Come on, fellas. You don’t want to do this.’

‘Oh, but I do have ammunition.’ The Bird put his hand in his pocket and held out his hand. Two large shells rolled across his open palm. He inserted them in the barrels and snapped the rifle shut.

‘You going to shoot me with that?’

The Bird shook his head. ‘You start walking over there. Follow the deer track. If you want to run, please feel free to do so. Sporting chance, and all that.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ said Gaspar.

‘I am,’ said the Bird. And for the first time the smile vanished from his face. ‘Go!’

Gaspar took a few steps, looking back at the rifle, then a few more. People and animals had flattened the path. It was tempting. He could make a dash for it. He ran thirty paces, picking up speed, then ducked down, took a firearm from his ankle holster – Bird had known it was there – turned and fired wildly in their direction. Macy ducked, but the Bird didn’t move. Gaspar ran a few more paces, and only then did the Bird raise the rifle. He didn’t aim at the figure fleeing chaotically through the dappled light, but rather at a spot a little ahead of him, and loosed off two shots in quick succession. The sound was deafening. Realising that he hadn’t been hit, Gaspar shot over his shoulder twice more and kept running – straight into the plume of cyanide gas that had been ejected from the baited M-44 trap that had so recently felled a six-hundred-pound bear. Exactly three paces beyond the trap he staggered, performed a grotesque pirouette, clutched his throat and fell forward.

‘That’s for Bobby,’ murmured Macy.

‘And for the baboon,’ added the Bird. He lowered the gun. ‘And the leopard, the warthogs, the rhino, the buffalo, the elephant, the bears, the deer and the croc.’ Indistinct sounds came from