The Beast Of Exmoor

Chapter 1

ONE

LOWER QUINTON, WARWICKSHIRE, 2023

Jake Conley picked up and inspected the plain brown wrapping paper he had earlier discarded under the coffee table. The address was in neat handwriting, firm and masculine and suggested a confident, educated person. On what had been the rear of the package was the sender’s details: Josh Lamp, 72b Choristers’ Gardens, Tiverton, Devon EX16 6DN. The only remarkable thing about that was its unbelievability. A quick check of the postcode showed it to be King’s Crescent, Tiverton, and a further check proved that no such street as Choristers’ Gardens existed in the town, either. At that stage, realising that someone had gone to lengths to keep their identity secret, he did not bother to seek out the fictitious Joshua Lamp. Scrunching up the paper and tossing it back under the table, he turned his attention to the contents of the package.

Without exception, they were newspapers and magazines from the counties of Devon, Somerset and Cornwall. In common, they had articles about ABCs — Alien Big Cats — also defined as phantom cats, large felids, such as jaguars, cougars and leopards, which allegedly appear in regions outside their indigenous range. Sightings, tracks and predation had been reported in each of the three counties. Indeed, two county-wide magazines each ran headlines of striking similarity: one read THE BEAST OF BODMIN MOOR, the other, THE BEAST OF EXMOOR. Both articles carried references to ordinary, sober people who had sighted a large, stealthy feline, far bigger than a domestic cat and with a prominent long tail. The journalist described each beast as a black panther, leading Jake to scrupulously ascertain that by this, they meant a melanistic variant of either a leopard or a jaguar, animals with an excess of black pigments hiding their natural spots.

A more pressing question for Jake was why should a secretive person wish him to read about phantom cats? In these circumstances, there could only be one answer—Sir Clive Cochrane, also known as Double-A, his unofficial employer at MI5… or was it, MI6? Jake had not satisfactorily established which. There had been no calls from AA for more than six months, which suited Jake because invariably, Sir Clive troubled him only with intractable cases that always involved supernatural elements, sometimes of a fearsome nature. On more than one occasion, he had encountered ghosts or demons when he had also been within a hair’s breadth of, as Shakespeare so finely worded it, shuffling off this mortal coil.

Having thought about Sir Clive for little more than two minutes, in a display of synchronicity, just another inexplicable phenomenon that haunted Jake, his mobile vibrated and juddered on the coffee table. As it rang, the familiar sensation of a dull ache at the centre of his forehead nagged at him. This happened as a confirmation that something supernatural was afoot: it disturbed him deeply. Gazing at it in alarm, because this was the mobile reserved only for Sir Clive, he picked it up and, with a slight tremor in his voice, said, “Jake Conley speaking.”

“How are you, dear boy and the delightful Alice?”

“Of course, you won’t know. My wife is expecting our first child. He’s due in two months, in June.”

There was a long silence in which AA pondered the significance to the department, because Alice Conley, the former Alice Harrop, was one of their agents, too. He recovered his poise and said, “Jolly good show, what? Congratulations are in order. I shall expect you to appoint me as the child’s godfather.”

Jake treated him to a similar enduring silence as he thought, Godfather? Hmm, I’ve often thought of you as one, you old dog. But not in the sense you mean! Eventually, he said, “I’ll talk it over with Alice, Sir. But off the cuff, I can’t think of a more appropriate choice.”

“That’s settled then. Now, on to the reason for my call.”

Jake’s heart thumped wildly in his chest, so he sank into his favourite armchair. He always felt he could deal with anything life threw at him once he was settled in its comfortable and comforting cushions.

“Yes?”

“Dear boy, have you heard of a personage called Kuveni?”

“Can’t say… unless he’s an Indian cricket player?”

“She, actually, but well spotted, old chap. It is an Indian name — or perhaps Sri Lankan — I want you to mug up on her so that you’ll be up to speed in my office tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock sharp.”

With deliberate mocking repetition, Jake asked, “Very good, Sir. By the way, have you heard of a personage named Joshua Lamp?”

“Ha-ha!” the mandarin chortled. “I do like you, dear boy! Touché! That would be our chappie, Derek Mortimer, down in Devon. He tends to be admirably cautious. I gather he sent you the package, then.”

“He did. But there’s nothing about India in it. It’s all about big cats.”

“Ah, yes, quite so. But a sharp fellow like yourself will soon make the connection. Nose to the grindstone and all that! See you tomorrow. Once again, congratulations!”

“Tha—” click. Sir Clive had done it again, cutting off the phone call abruptly by slamming his office phone down, just one of the many authoritarian mannerisms that made him disagreeable to Jake. Now he would have to set his life aside and get on with whatever the big boss demanded.

He had been right to assume the strange package was somehow connected to AA. There must be a link between the ABCs and this Kuveni character. He reached for his laptop and plunged straight into the labyrinth of Indian mythology. There were at least six different versions of the life of Kuveni, so he took a green exercise book with a shiny cover and scribbled down the facts common to all the stories. Places and characters varied, but the essential framework was there.

When he had finished, he wrote up a thorough account, which he could learn by heart for the next day, on a new page that read as follows:

A prophet foretold that the beautiful southern Indian princess named Suppadevi would have children by the king of beasts, a lion (big cat connection). Wishing to escape from her palatial life of boredom, Suppadevi joined a passing caravan to satisfy her wanderlust. She was abducted from the caravan by the lion god, Sinha and, remembering the prophecy, complied with his lustful wishes and bore him two children, the male named Sihabahu and a daughter. Sinha was the terror of law-abiding travellers and homesteads, so the king (again not important) issued a proclamation offering a reward for anyone who could slay the evil lion. Many died in the attempt, but, enticed by the reward, Sihabahu committed parricide and gained the money.

On learning of his parentage, the king exiled the killer to the island of gems (Sri Lanka) where he adopted his father’s wicked, pillaging ways, slaughtering the merchants and their wives who dared to venture to the island in search of gems. However, Sihabahu spared the merchants’ children and, thus, created a community. As the children grew, he chose the most beautiful girl among them to be his bride and together they had a son, Vijaya.

The years passed and the youthful Vijaya, restless like his forebears, wandered far and wide until he came across a yakkhini (female demon—trust Sir Clive!). The demon, who was quietly spinning cotton, on seeing the handsome, formidable Vijaya before being spotted herself, transformed into an irresistibly beautiful sixteen-year-old maiden. Vijaya lost his heart to her immediately, so they made love, the demon subsequently bearing a child named Kuveni (So K. had lion and demon’s blood in her veins). Her true nature emerged in moments of great passion when she transformed into a large black cat. (Oh-oh! the connection.) Soon, owing to this characteristic, Kuveni was expelled from the isle because people feared supernatural beings like her. She decided to seek the place of her ancestors—Madras (present-day Chennai). The besotted Vijaya went with her and they had more children, each female of whom was endowed with great beauty. This characteristic continued invariably through the generations.

Kuveni and Vijaya lived in the 7th century in the reign of the enlightened scholar king, Mahendravarman—so what had all this got to do with present-day south-west England, he wondered? Presumably, he would find that out the next day in Sir Clive’s office in London.

“Alice!” he bellowed. “Fancy going down to our fair capital city tomorrow?”

“Only if we can go to a shop I know for expectant mums on Oxford Street. There are loads of things I’ve seen on the Internet, but I prefer to see and touch the goods before I buy.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged. I’ll park at Warwick station and we can go by train. I’ll find one with a buffet car.”

“And hopefully, clean loos. I keep having to pay a visit to the toilet—you men have it so much easier, you know!”

“Do you have to keep reminding me, darling? I have to see a man about a cat!”

“Would that be Sir Clive, and does he know about the baby? Was he frightfully angry?”

“Not at all, he wants to be its godfather.”

Alice smiled grimly. “It would guarantee Jake Minor many advantages in life—oh, what a clever husband I’ve got!”

Jake cleared his throat. He was about to confess, Well, it wasn’t my idea, in truth, but changed his mind for tactical reasons and limited himself to saying, “Er, yes, it’s a good idea, isn’t it?

He spent the rest of the evening reading every article from the package and hopelessly seeking a connection between seventh-century India and the English south-west. In desperation, he tried typing Derek Mortimer into a search engine. The first hit he got was from the Devon Police searching for a missing man by that name. This made him consider the torturous anonymity of MI agents and the lengths the department would go to, to preserve an employee’s cover. Quite possibly a Joshua Lamp was wandering the streets of Tiverton, but he certainly didn’t live in the fictional street of the package. Out of sheer boredom, he typed Joshua Lamp, Tiverton into the search engine and it directed him to a modern floor lamp, given the name Joshua by the manufacturers.

Angrily, frustrated, he slammed his laptop closed and poured himself a Lagavulin single malt whisky, one of his little foibles. Sir Clive would make the ABC connection with Sri Lanka tomorrow, of that he had no doubt.