Bird Brain Read online

  ‘Er, excuse me! Hey, I say!’ he tried, but again made no more noise than a squeak. When the trolley moved Banger was knocked off his feet into a bunch of squeaking furry objects, which he was astonished to see were chicks. He looked down at his feet, three pronged yellow claws – and glanced at his chest, it was covered in golden fur. ‘What the blazes!’ he exclaimed. it came out: ‘tweet’.

  Banger shouted at the man again. ‘One moment, sir!’

  A voice beside him said, ‘You should put your complaint in writing.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Banger.

  ‘Yes,’ said the little brown-faced hen who stood beside him.

  ‘Who do we complain to?’ asked Banger.

  ‘In the first instance the trade body, and then, if you get no satisfaction, directly to “You and Yours”,’ she said.

  ‘“You and Yours”! “You and Yours”!’ cheeped the birds around them, when they recognised the words, jumping up and down with excitement.

  ‘And if that’s no good you can try “Face the Facts”!’

  ‘“Face the Facts”! “Face the Facts”!’ they all squeaked.

  It didn’t take long for Banger to work out they were pheasants, but he didn’t consider himself one; he was still irrefutably Banger, of Llanrisant Hall, somehow wrongly, accidentally or maliciously trapped in a bird’s body. He was definitely not, nor ever could be, a pheasant. The pheasant, in Banger’s estimation, was the most idiotic, simple-minded, daft species in the world. Pheasants made ducks seem smart.

  By the second week, a scattering of bronze feathers appeared in the soft, mousey down that encased Banger and he began to work a few things out about his situation. He knew he was not part of the scene depicted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. The man in the white lab coat who listened to Radio 4 and lobbed dead birds into Daryl’s Recycling bin was not St Peter. He was a low-paid agricultural worker. The shed across the covered way that smelled of pig shit was not heaven, and the pen he was sharing with six hundred other chicks was not purgatory. Through the slats in the wall he glimpsed an oak tree in leaf, a lopsided rusting baler beside it, and beyond that a pile of old worn tyres wreathed in twists of muddy black plastic. This all indicated that he was on a British farm, in the summertime – and, with what he had seen inside the shed, he could conclude what kind of farm it was.

  Banger disdained the company of his fellow chicks. They amused themselves with games; like seeing how long they could stand on one claw without putting the other one down, or turning round and round until they got dizzy. More intellectual pursuits included arguing for periods of up to six hours about which was up and which was down. Banger remained on the sideline, in a determined grump.

  The incubation shed was comfortable and life was easy: food was plentiful, and warmth and safety assured. At night, hot red lights beamed benevolently from above to keep them warm. In the evenings, after a feed, the pheasants stood around bewildered, jumping at any noise, scared of the growing darkness. Due to the massive doses of hormonal growth promoter and antibiotics in his food, Banger was developing into a handsome young cock pheasant; his colours deepening and sharpening by the day. This was important because the pheasants valued appearance highly, and a large portion of time was spent, particularly by the males, preening, grooming and posing.

  Banger began to make escape plans, always solo. Other birds would only slow him down with their inane questions, giggling and silliness. They wouldn’t have a clue when the shooting started. They literally wouldn’t know what hit them.

  Three times a day a man in overalls came to sweep out the droppings and fill the food and water troughs. Banger thought that if he could make contact with this worker, somehow explain his situation, he might get the attention of the human world, and be saved. Banger’s pheasant head filled with thoughts, and an engaging scenario emerged: he managed to make contact with a sensitive, intelligent human, who quickly saw how very special a bird Banger was. The two of them would find a way to communicate via a computer keyboard, Banger typing the letters with his beak and claw. Here they were laughing about the misspelling of intelligence, and here he is eating grain from a dish at the same table as his handler. He would feature on the news, local at first: ‘The Pheasant That Can Understand Humans’, and they’d film Banger doing what he was told by the amazed daytime TV presenter, something simple to start with – ‘Lift your head, lift your left leg’ – but then more complicated commands that would baffle people and bring him great fame. Things like ‘Flap your left wing and tap out the morse code for SOS with your right foot …’ Banger snapped out of his dream. There was a lot of work to be done. Before the agricultural labourer came round for his morning sweep, Banger told the crowd of pheasants to stand back while he carefully spelt out the words I AM HUMAN HELP in lines of pheasant poo.

  The man in the white overalls, holding a sack marked ‘Pheasant Pellets with Antibiotics’, put his boot over the barrier and stopped. He was faced with a crowd of motionless birds, and in front of them the clearly legible words marked out in white and grey pheasant droppings. Banger gazed unflinchingly at the worker, urging him to slow down and look at the floor. The man wore a dust mask over his face and held a brush, which he brought down beside the letter I, and stopped.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ exclaimed Banger. ‘That’s it! That’s it! Read it! I did it! It is me!’

  The broom swept the message cleanly away. Later that day, Banger eavesdropped on the workers to see if one mentioned it to the other.

  ‘Ruddy hell,’ he said to Jenni, the brown hen who had earlier advised him to get in touch with the trade body. All of the birds with the exception of Banger had adopted names they had heard on the radio. Jenni named herself after Jenni Murray, the presenter of ‘Woman’s Hour’.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Jenni.

  ‘They’re bloody Polish,’ moaned Banger. ‘They don’t even understand English.’ He found a corner, sat down on his own and thought miserably about the woods, fields and hedges of Llanrisant. He remembered the wind, the rain, the clouds that scudded across the sky, the wide spaces of his heather and bilberry moor, the safe and secret spots in the forest, and longed to be back among his damp and dripping trees.

  One hot summer morning a truck backed up to the doors of the rearing shed, filling the place with the rattle of an ageing diesel engine. Exhaust fumes caught the sunlight coming through holes in the building and made a lattice of yellow lasers in the dusty air. Humans in trainers grabbed a bird in each fist and stuffed them into crates. Banger wasn’t expecting the journey to be long, as he knew that there were game farms all over Britain, and shoots tended to order poults locally. With ten of them in a crate they were slammed onto the truck, with more crates piled on top. Manoeuvring himself to a spot with a view, Banger gazed across a golden wheatfield to the great green domes of a distant oak wood.

  After the breezeblock walls and artificial light of the sheds, the long views, fresh air and open sky filled Banger’s heart with hope. There was a trouble ahead, he knew, but there was at last a chance of freedom.

  He looked for familiar landmarks that would indicate where in Britain he was. The lorry slowed, negotiated a roundabout, and Banger managed to catch sight of a sign: CHESTER 4.

  That would put him about thirty miles from home, in North Wales. The truck now turned off the main road and through a gate along a well-maintained farm track. Banger surveyed the landscape, resplendent with double-fenced hedges, newly planted woodlands, properly hinged gates and marked footpaths. This was a rich estate. It would mean plenty of food, good protection and safe penning, but it would also mean efficient dogs, many shoot days and few places to hide. A large Georgian house swung briefly into view, with eight windows across its front and a pair of white pillars flanking its front door.

  A chill ran through Banger’s heart, for he knew the house. He had been there once for the only thing that he ever left home for: to shoot pheasants. It belonged to a man called Barry Brown. Banger had not enjo
yed his day’s sport. Barry Brown had the kind of set-up Banger abhorred. His woods were crammed with semi-tame pheasants that flew so low and slowly over the Guns that Banger had refused to kill them. When any fool could hit a bird they ceased to be worth shooting. Banger had felt not part of some noble, ancient ritual as he did on a good day out, but part of some industrial process. He had seethed with fury at a catalogue of unforgivable behaviour. Barry Brown had not searched for every wounded bird. One man shot with two loaders and three guns. Tweeds were too clean, and one of Barry Brown’s friends, when he picked up a bird that wasn’t quite dead, didn’t know how to kill it with his bare hands. Barry Brown’s woods, like the sandy hair that ran over his shiny head, were thinning, and although he had a selection of hats and even a bandanna which he wore at lunch to hide the latter, he seemed unaware of the former – an egregious sin to Banger. Unfenced woods, where deer, sheep or cows could graze, soon lost their thickety underwood, and in a hundred years – which to Banger was no time at all in the life of woods – died, leaving only a blank field.

  Barry was a friend of William, Banger’s half-brother. The two of them worked together in the City. Barry Brown had spent his money on the Marfield Estate, for what better way to manifest your power than to swagger around on five million quid’s worth of your own land, bearing arms? Prince of all he surveyed, Barry Brown could kill whatever he wanted to.

  Banger thought about Barry Brown. He might be obnoxious, but he was worth a lot of money. Banger, by contrast, was worth two pounds sixty-seven, for that is exactly what Barry Brown had just paid for him.

  5

  The Metropolitan Breed

  IN A BACK room of the old red-brick Victorian police station in Llangollen, Buck was sharing a biscuit dipped in cocoa with Constable Powell. The results of the forensic tests on Banger’s shotgun, delayed by more important inquiries taking place, had finally come through, and the policeman was discussing them with his best friend. Stress tests run on a similar gun at the lab and photographs from police archives of other accidental shotgun explosions indicated that the detonation in Banger’s gun was unexpectedly violent.

  ‘The report used the word “unexpectedly”,’ Constable Powell pointed out to Buck.

  ‘I know,’ replied Buck, now lapping at the policeman’s cup. ‘You’ve said that four times.’

  ‘Unexpectedly …’ repeated Constable Powell. ‘Which to us means suspiciously.’

  ‘Nor was the level of alcohol in the deceased’s blood consistent with such a major error of judgement,’ said Buck.

  ‘Combined with the fact that the level of alcohol in the deceased’s blood was not high enough to cause such a major error of judgement, we have a set of circumstances that requires further investigation, I’d say. What do you think, Watson?’

  The door opened and the D.I. put his head round it. Detective Inspector Dave Booth was short and thickset, with brutally cut hair and eyes that loved a bit of violence, as long as it wasn’t on camera. ‘Powell, get off your fat arse and go over to the Riverside Park. There’s some lads there drinking cider.’

  The D.I. had recently been posted to the picture-postcard, crime-free town of Llangollen, and was resentful of it. He longed for the crime-ridden alleys and underpasses of a sink estate. He loathed the happy citizenry of the quaint Welsh town, with their tedious respect for fairness, moderation and the rule of law. He wanted, ideally, gangs – in open warfare with each other. He hated that the glossily painted brickwork in the interview room at the police station bore no bloodstains, that the two panda cars had won no dents in action, and that police sirens never wailed through the town’s healthy mountain air. Dealing with vandalised dustbins, easily settled neighbourly disputes about leylandii, and the lost property of tourists was not D.I. Dave’s idea of policework. He hadn’t even beaten up a suspect yet.

  ‘Did you by any chance, sir, see the report I left on your desk?’ Constable Powell asked.

  Buck, who as usual was listening carefully, winced to hear Powell call a man twenty years his junior ‘sir’.

  ‘Oh – that stuff about the toff up at what’s it called?’

  ‘Llanrisant Hall.’

  ‘Open and shut case. Death by misadventure. He was so sozzled he put two cartridges in one barrel. Typical chinless wonder. Congenital idiot.’

  ‘Well, it looks to me like there may have been foul play,’ continued Powell, ‘although we have not yet established a motive.’

  ‘He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?’ sneered the D.I.

  ‘I wouldn’t say friend,’ said Powell. ‘Mr Peyton-Crumbe always treated us well, didn’t he, Buck? It’s just that any normal twenty-bore cartridge caught in the sleeve wouldn’t have had the effect this one did. That’s what the tests seemed to indicate.’

  ‘What are you proposing I do?’ asked the D.I.

  ‘Well, what I thought was that we,’ he gazed fondly, almost fatally fondly, at Buck, ‘should go and visit all the Guns individually. Question them, and poke around their gun rooms to see if we can find any trace either of home-cartridge manufacture or of this particular brand of ordnance, “High Pheasant”.’

  ‘You sound like Hercule bloody Poirot,’ laughed the D.I. ‘Do you really think I’m going to let you go gallivanting all over the countryside hobnobbing with your rich and titled friends? It was an accident. Further investigation is a waste of precious police resources. Now get down to the park and make some arrests. And knock ’em about a bit, it’s the only language they understand, these kids. Well, that and Welsh,’ he laughed.

  Constable Powell, who loved the language, looked upset.

  ‘They’re probably just high-spirited young lads. Better to have a chat with them than bring them in,’ Powell said.

  ‘Get out,’ said D.I. Dave.

  The Detective Inspector went into his office and sat on the corner of his desk, thinking it made him look more dynamic than using the old squeaky chair. He looked through his paperwork. He was faced with the task of assessing his officers and looked to see which one of them had met or failed to meet their targets. As usual Constable Powell was at the bottom of the league.

  Constable Eryl Powell:

  Target number of arrests: 15. Number of arrests: 1 (wrongfully). Target number of traffic offences: 20. Number of tickets issued: 0.

  D.I. Dave drew air in through his teeth. He recalled seeing Powell chatting at length to the owner of the souvenir shop while leaning against the shopkeeper’s Volvo estate parked on a double yellow, and doing nothing about it. He moved some paper about until he came to a request from HQ in Wrexham for a volunteer to attend a course at the Police College in Cardiff called ‘Environmental Policing’. It was described as ‘A three-month residential course to skill officers in the areas of Toxic Waste Disposal regulations, which includes hands-on analysis of toxic waste, including landfill, cess-pit sewage, building aggregate, industrial effluent and other pollutants, to bring Police Officers up to date with the latest environmental laws’.

  DI Dave scrawled ‘Volunteer: Constable Eryl Powell’, and dropped it into his out-tray.

  6

  ‘Very Good,’ said Mr Hudson

  IT TURNED OUT that the rapprochement between Banger and his daughter Victoria, which had been going on in the year she had been living back on the estate, had not been total. When Banger’s will was read, it emerged that he had left his entire estate to William, his half-brother, and not a penny to Victoria or Tom, her sixteen-year-old son, and Banger’s only grandchild. For William, the new owner of the Llanrisant Estate, there was a decision to make about what to do with Victoria and Tom.

  ‘I don’t want to leave them homeless,’ said William to Mr Hudson, the estate lawyer, a tall, avuncular man with a soft, gentle face and kindly manner that grated on William, who expected his lawyers to be hard-nosed bastards. They were sitting in a room piled high with bundles of old paper at Hudson’s Oswestry office, which was a converted cottage in one of the narrow back streets. William had
a steel and glass suite of offices on the twenty-eighth floor of a gleaming tower in the City of London, and prided himself on a paperless work environment. He had also enjoyably banned the secretaries’ knick-knacks from their desks. How he loathed all their gonks and sentimental birthday cards and pathetic joke toys.

  ‘At the moment, as you know, she is in Ty Brith, which does suit them very well I believe,’ the softly spoken lawyer said. ‘I could draw up a transfer of ownership in her favour if you wish.’

  ‘I’m not going to give her Ty Brith,’ snarled William.

  ‘If you prefer, I can draw up a lifetime lease.’

  ‘Yes, a lifetime lease, but not for Ty Brith. It has four bedrooms, far more than they need. Two would do them fine. What’s that cottage up that muddy track called?’

  ‘You mean Dinbren Cottage?’ said Mr Hudson. ‘But—’

  ‘Dinbren Cottage, yes …’

  ‘But it’s virtually condemned, and barely fit for human habitation. It hasn’t been occupied for years. The roof leaks and I know it suffers from terrible damp. Don’t you think—’

  ‘It just needs someone in it,’ William interrupted. ‘Get some fresh air in the place, and I’m sure even Victoria is capable of getting a roof patched. The thing is, it’s not too big. She’s probably rattling around in Ty Brith. Dinbren Cottage is much better suited to the needs of an unmarried mother,’ he managed to make the phrase sound as disagreeable as possible, ‘and a young boy.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Mr Hudson, making a note in longhand on his yellow pad.

  ‘A lifetime lease. Or would it be better to give her ten years and renew if everything is going okay? I certainly cannot give it outright to her. We don’t want to break up the estate, Banger wouldn’t have wanted that.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Mr Hudson.