The Scent Of Blood Part 6

"The tigress! Do we know anything about her?"

Graham shrugged. "If we're right in a.s.suming that she was the mother of the present three tigers, we know that she was Sumatran. That's the smallest of the existing sub-species of tiger. Highly endangered, of course."

"Sumatran," I echoed. A thought tickled at the back of my brain. "Did she have a name?"

We looked back at the report, and there it was. I'd been so interested in the people, I'd skipped over that piece of information. And it was the key to the whole thing. My heart was thumping with excitement as I read aloud, "Sumatran Maharani." I looked at Graham. "S.M."

His mouth dropped open.

"How could we have been so stupid?" I exclaimed. "She was the one being avenged, not Sandy Milford! It's been about her all along."

"So who did it?" asked Graham.

"I don't know. But I reckon those protesters must have something to do with it. An innocent tiger being shot by its jailers? That's what they'd say, isn't it? It certainly gives them plenty to be angry about."

"So ... if it's to do with the tigress," said Graham, "we need to know more about her." He turned back to the computer. "She must be here somewhere. They're part of a captive breeding scheme, according to the sign on the cage. There must be records about her."

It didn't take long for Graham to find out that Sumatran Maharani had been sent to Farleigh Manor from Grampian Zoo.

"Grampian?" Something stirred deep in my memory. "Didn't Kylie say that someone there was killed by an elephant?"

"Yes," said Graham, frowning. He scrolled down and then murmured, "Here we are. He was called Dougal McTaggart, the director of Grampian Zoo. Which just so happens to be where Sumatran Maharani was born."

"Another accident? Or do you reckon he might have been murdered too? It's got to be connected with what's been happening here, hasn't it?"

"The chances of it being purely coincidental are very slim," said Graham as he accessed the Grampian Zoo website. He couldn't find anything, so he typed "Grampian Zoo Sumatran tigers" into the search engine and came up with an entry that had been posted five years ago. It was about a tiger cub that was being hand-reared by a keeper called Chris Ball.

"Chris?" I gasped. "Those protesters called the ferret-faced guy Christopher! Could it be him?"

"Possibly." Graham looked at me. "From what Kylie said, we know that hand-rearing requires an awful lot of dedication. Regular feeds several times a night. You wouldn't get a proper night's sleep for months on end."

"You'd have to really love animals to do that, wouldn't you?" I said. "Can you find a picture of this Chris person?"

For several nail-biting minutes Graham drew a blank. But eventually he found an old photograph in the archives of a Scottish paper. The hair was dark, not orange, but the smiling face of the keeper holding the tiny cub was unmistakeable. Chris Ball wasn't the ferret-featured man from the gates.

It was Zara.

vengeance brings freedom!.

"Christine, not Christopher," I said, staring at the computer. "Wow."

In front of us Zara's face grinned happily from the screen.

Then, behind us, the real-life version came back through the door a and she was neither grinning nor happy. She hadn't left the building at all. She'd listened to our entire conversation. Her depressed, ditzy manner had completely vanished. Her features were hard. Determined. And she was carrying a gun.

"How very reckless of you," she said grimly, pointing the rifle in our direction. "You seem to have worked it all out."

"Revenge," I told her flatly. "Starting with Dougal McTaggart." I stared at her for a moment and then said angrily, "It's an awful lot of people to kill for one tiger."

"You don't understand," she said, glaring at me with hate-filled eyes. "No one does. She's dead because those stupid people let her down. I loved Maharani. She was mine. Mine!" Zara jabbed the b.u.t.t of her rifle at the computer screen. It smashed to the floor and died with an eerie electronic whine. "I looked after her from the day she was born. She was so weak, so fragile. The vet said she wouldn't survive. He wanted to put her down. I wouldn't let him. Night after night I sat up with her, willing her to live. And she did. For me. She was so special. So precious! But Dougal just treated her like any other animal. When she was old enough he sent her off for breeding. I begged him not to, but he insisted. He persuaded Mr Monkton to take her. I pleaded for a transfer so I could go with her. I knew she'd be miserable without me. But he wouldn't listen. And then they shot her."

"So you killed Dougal McTaggart?"

"Yes. It was easy enough to arrange an accident. That elephant used to be in a circus, so she was very good at following orders. I only had to say the word. Alisha stepped back, and that was it."

"And then what?" I demanded. "You tried to get a job here?"

"Yes. It took a while: there weren't any vacancies for keepers. So when I saw a post advertised in the education centre, I changed my name, faked a CV and got the job. Then I plotted my revenge."

"Archie Henshaw? Was he your second victim?" asked Graham.

"Archie? Ah yes, him. Did he jump or was he pushed?" Her lips curled into a malicious smile. "Pushed."

"But why?"

"He didn't do his job properly. If his workmans.h.i.+p had been better, Maharani would never have broken through."

"Is that how you killed Mark Sawyer, too?" I demanded. "Pushed him into the enclosure?"

"It wasn't difficult. I told him there was an emergency with the crocodile. A blow to the head first thing this morning and he toppled straight over the wall. Easy. Served him right. If he hadn't wanted to look at Maharani's cubs in the first place, she would still be alive."

"And you shot Charlie," I said.

"Naturally." Zara smiled again. "With the same gun he used on Maharani. I'd say that was poetic justice, wouldn't you? They keep it in Mr Monkton's office. In a locked cabinet, of course, but I took the key from him before I killed him."

"But that's not right." Graham shook his head indignantly. "You might have committed all those other murders, but you couldn't have killed Mr Monkton. We saw you! You were in that teddy-bear suit being chased around all evening."

Zara looked from Graham to me and back again, her eyebrows raised like a teacher waiting for the correct answer. And suddenly I saw exactly how she'd done it.

Cursing myself for my slowness I said, "It wasn't you, was it? Someone else was in that suit."

She didn't say anything.

Suddenly the ferrety features of the protester at the gates came into my mind. "That man. Christopher. Were you working with him?"

Zara nodded slowly. "Well done. I b.u.mped into him in the supermarket one night. We got talking. When I told him what I was planning, it wasn't difficult to persuade him to help. I hid him in the boot of my car when I came back for the party that night. Christopher wore the teddy-bear suit while I despatched Mr Monkton."

"But all those stab wounds... I thought lots of different people must have done it."

Zara gave a short, sharp laugh. "Did you? How fanciful. It wouldn't have been like that if the wretched man had stood still. He would keep moving! It made things a little messy."

"Poor Mr Monkton," I whispered sadly. "He felt so guilty! He hated giving the order to shoot. He had nightmares about it."

"And you think I don't?" Zara spat.

"Charlie had to do it," I protested. "Maharani was going to kill the vet."

"So what? Why do you a.s.sume that people are more important than animals? Maharani was protecting her cubs. Doing what a mother should do. Why did she have to die for it?" Zara's eyes gleamed with savage fury. "It's too late to save her, but I'm going to save her cubs."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm taking them away. Now. While everyone's attention is on the crocodile enclosure. The police are so busy on the other side of the zoo, no one will notice what I'm up to here."

Graham looked intrigued. "Are you going to put them back in the wild? Only I'd have thought that with deforestation their chances of survival might be slim."

"The wild?" Zara echoed incredulously. "Of course not! They wouldn't stand a chance! I'm taking them to where they'll be safe. There are plenty of people who don't think animals should be held in zoos for the public to gawp at. I've decided to make use of them. Some have a lot of money, including Christopher. He's got room for them on his country estate." Zara checked her watch. "He'll be bringing the lorry in right now."

"He won't get past the gatekeeper!" Graham protested. "Ron Baker won't let him in."

"Yes, he will. Christopher will be in disguise. And I've told Ron I'm expecting a delivery of new seating for the education centre. He won't bat an eyelid." Zara clicked the safety catch off the gun and took a step forward so the end was now pressing into my chest. "You can come with me."

"What are you planning to do with us?" I tried but failed to keep the tremble out of my voice.

"What better way to lure my tigers into the lorry than with a bit of live bait? It brings the concept of environmental enrichment to a whole new level."

"You wouldn't really feed a pair of children to the tigers, would you?" Graham's words came out as high and squeaky as mine.

"After those Brownies?" Zara laughed nastily. "Believe me, I've had enough of kids to last me a lifetime."

Mum and Becca were still stuck in the mud. The zoo was empty. We walked to the Rainforest without seeing a single other human being. No one even came within shouting distance. They were all watching the police combing through the crocodile enclosure so they could find out how Mark Sawyer had met his grisly end.

When we reached the tigers, Christopher, dressed in a nondescript boiler suit with a realistic fake beard, was already there. I thought the sight of two kids being forced along at gunpoint would make him uneasy; I hoped we might be able to appeal to his better nature. But clearly he didn't have one. When Zara muttered "bait" to him, he merely nodded and stood aside to let us pa.s.s.

Christopher had already backed his lorry through the wooden gates and parked it in the service area. Zara ordered Graham and me to climb up into a barred travelling cage in the back and then flipped a series of levers and catches that connected it to one of the tunnels. Then she opened the first gate through to the tigers' enclosure.

There was nothing we could do. She had a gun: we'd be dead if we tried anything. The only escape route was through the tunnel, into the tiger cage. For a moment I considered it, but only for a moment. Because then Zara was banging on the side of a bucket filled with slabs of steak and the three tigers were stalking slowly, elegantly into the holding pen. The gate clanged shut behind them. Zara slid open the door to the tunnel and threw a piece of meat into it to encourage them forward. They were in. The door closed. They could only go forward. We could feel the weight of them as they approached, and the iron mesh of the tunnel creaked and groaned. The lorry swayed with each step. They were coming. Towards us. Graham was fumbling with his phone, trying to call for help, but his hands were stiff and awkward. He was terrified. He dropped it. It fell through the wire, through a gap in the floorboards and shattered on the concrete below. My legs gave way. I sank down. Put my hands over my eyes. Like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, I didn't want to see what happened next. I just hoped it would be over quickly. There was nothing between us and the tigers. Nowhere to hide. No hope of survival. I opened my fingers and peered through the crack. For a split second I stared into a pair of wild amber eyes. Hot, carnivorous breath was on my face. A sandpaper tongue rasped against my head. I was dead meat. Literally.

But then the tiger turned and sniffed the air. Zara was outside the lorry, still holding the bucket of steak. The tigers weren't used to live food; they preferred ready meals. The one who'd licked me sniffed the air again. Looked at the bucket. Batted at the side of the mesh, trying to get to it. And the workmans.h.i.+p on the cage was as bad as Archie Henshaw's. Shoddy. Badly maintained. The rusty catches gave way.

Three tigers spilled out of the lorry. The bucket was knocked from Zara's hand as they each seized a chunk of meat.

It might have been all right. There was a moment when things could have been OK. If Zara had thrown more food into another pen, she could have re-caught them and got away unharmed. But then Christopher screamed. High and loud. Like Mr Monkton. And the tigers hated it.

A snarl.

A growl of warning.

Thud! One blow from a paw and Christopher would never scream again.

And the tigers were still upset. Quarrelsome. Fighting over what was left of the raw meat. They turned their attention to Zara. She had the gun, she could have saved herself, but Zara wouldn't shoot. Not a tiger.

She dropped the rifle, which clattered on the concrete as she opened her arms wide. She looked as if she was inviting a kitten to jump onto her lap. And one of them did jump a but its claws were unsheathed, its jaw agape. For a split second I saw the glint of those teeth flas.h.i.+ng in the sun, then I shut my eyes. Graham and I hung on to each other in the back of that lorry, trying to make ourselves invisible. And then it was over.

Kylie had heard Christopher's scream and come running. Zara might have stolen the rifle from Mr Monkton's office, but the vet had left his bag in Kylie's kitchen and there was a tranquillizer gun in it. She didn't even radio for help: she climbed straight up on the roof and darted the tigers.

Waiting for them to fall asleep was the scariest bit, as far as Graham and I were concerned. It was only a few minutes but it seemed to take for ever. In the meantime we had to remain still and silent, desperately hoping that the tigers wouldn't come for us. We were extremely pleased when they finally toppled over, but also extremely pleased that they hadn't been killed. By that time we'd seen more than enough death.

There's not much to add, really. It turned out we'd been right about April. She had married Mr Monkton, and a despite a legal challenge from one of his nephews a she did inherit the whole place. But she ran it well, and although she kept the yurts and the hotel as a tribute to her late husband, she put all her energy into sprucing up the zoo. They built this huge new aquarium with sharks and coral reefs and walk-through tanks, which won a really big conservation award. By the time it opened, Kylie and Pete had got together and Sandy's wife had gone back to work at the zoo because their youngest kid had started school. I knew perfectly well that the keepers would be supporting each other. Zara hadn't lied about that a they really were a close, tight-knit group. I was glad to hear they were all getting on OK. But when our teacher organized a school trip to Farleigh Manor, Graham and I decided not to go along. We'd experienced enough of the Animal Kingdom to last us both a lifetime.

The Scent of blood.

Tanya Landman is the author of many books for children, including Waking Merlin and Merlin's Apprentice, The World's Bellyb.u.t.ton and The Kraken Snores, and three stories featuring the characters Flotsam and Jetsam. Of The Scent of Blood, the fifth t.i.tle in her popular Poppy Fields series, Tanya says, "I used to work in a zoo full of hungry a potentially man-eating a carnivores. When I started writing, it seemed a perfect place to set a murder mystery."

Tanya is also the author of two novels for teenagers: Apache, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize, and The Goldsmith's Daughter, which was nominated for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. Since 1992, Tanya has also been part of Storybox Theatre. She lives with her family in Devon.

You can find out more about Tanya Landman and her books by visiting her website at

www.tanyalandman.com.

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