3 Inspector Hobbes and the Gold Diggers by Wilkie Martin

annoyed with myself and feared he’d perceive me as a hopelessly unobservant clod.
    The land remained bleak and lonely until we crested another ridge and started heading into a valley, where the air was fresh and clean, scented with gorse and some sweet herb. At the far end was a small pool, fringed by broken reeds, its dark waters backed up by a rugged cliff. I was feeling strangely euphoric, as if I’d cast off all the cares of the world, even though I’d never felt so far from the comforts and security of civilization, and even the tiredness of my leg muscles seemed pleasurable. I speculated that perhaps I was, at heart, a mountain man. Still, I was grateful when Hobbes said we’d arrived, for even Dregs had run out of bounds by then.
    ‘Did you see that?’ he asked as I stopped.
    ‘Yes,’ I lied.
    ‘Then why did you step in it?’
    My right foot was in the rotting, maggoty carcass of a crow or something. Its stench was such that even Dregs fled before it. I used a rock to prise it loose and finished the clean up on a tuft of heather.
    ‘We’ll camp down there,’ said Hobbes, pointing towards a spring, bubbling from the side of the valley and forming a small stream that trickled and twisted down to the pool, where a grey heron, hunched on the far side, ignored us.
    ‘This,’ he said, still appearing as fresh as he’d been at the start, ‘is Stradlingate. Let’s get the tent up.’
    Dropping my rucksack, I sprawled on a flat, sun-warmed rock and let him get on with it, for he knew what he was doing, and I would only have been in his way and got tangled up in all the lines. I did, however, pick up the bag of pegs, ready to hand to him, while Dregs, who believed Hobbes was being attacked by a vast canvas monster, growled encouragement and attacked any flapping edges. Yet, even with Dregs’s contribution, it was not long before the tent was secure in the shelter of a gorse bush and Hobbes was punching in the final peg.
    Although I couldn’t stand up straight in it, there was plenty of room for all three of us. I just hoped the musty, dusty smell would go away. Dregs, accepting the transformation from monster to shelter with equanimity, lay down and went to sleep as soon as his blanket had been unrolled. I wasn’t surprised that, instead of modern lightweight, micro-fibre sleeping bags, Hobbes had brought woollen rugs, which we piled on a pair of rubber-backed canvass groundsheets.
    ‘That’s yours,’ he said, pointing to the left, ‘and this is mine.’
    ‘Will it be warm enough?’ I asked. ‘It must get pretty nippy at night.’
    ‘We’ll be fine … probably,’ said Hobbes. ‘I doubt the weather will turn bad for a day or two.
    ‘I fancy a bit of a run up the Beacon. D’you want to come?’
    ‘I think I’ve had quite enough exercise today,’ I said, yawning. ‘Where is the Beacon?’
    Taking me outside, he pointed to a distant peak that rose high above the ridges. It was conical, covered with browning bracken on the steep sides, with bare rock as it reached the domed top, reminding me of Friar Tuck’s tonsure. The sun, still bright and hot, was over the summit.
    ‘It looks a long way off,’ I said, glad I’d chickened out.
    ‘Not really,’ said Hobbes. ‘I’ll be back by dusk.’
    ‘When’s that?’
    ‘When it starts to get dark.’
    He left, his great loping strides taking him along the valley and then, via a cleft, towards the peak. I watched until he was out of sight and joined Dregs, who was snoring gently and twitching on his blanket. With a yawn, I lay down on top of my rugs, it being too warm inside to cover up, and rested my eyes for a few moments.
    I awoke to Dregs’s low growling, though that wasn’t what had woken me. He was outside, bristling and ill at ease, and I understood, for something felt wrong, though I couldn’t put my finger on quite what. I got up, surprised how gloomy the day had grown, and shivered, wishing Hobbes was back. Then I felt it, a weird