No Place Like Home

decided to have some innocent fun at our expense. There was… evil intent. He was wearing a mask, for God’s sake.’
Scott came back up the steps. ‘How sure are you about that? He was some distance away, you’ve said, and moving away from you at speed.’
‘He turned – he looked back at one point, and I saw it. One of those Hallowe’en masks, a werewolf, I think…’ He swallowed. ‘This is all pretty disturbing stuff, Scott.’
‘The chances are it’s just the same kids who’ve been messing with the Taylors.’
Bram nodded. His face was still tingling; his senses super-alert for any movement on the track, in the grass, over by the trees. It was as if his brain knew he wasn’t in danger any more, but the signals hadn’t yet reached his body. He rubbed the skin under his eyes, his cheeks.
A radio in one of the cars crackled, and Bram saw there was someone in there, a female cop talking into the radio. Now she was getting out of the car and coming to the bottom of the verandah steps. ‘Delivery driver at the track end,’ she reported. ‘Okay if one of the officers there signs for it, Mr Hendriksen? I can go down and get it?’
Bram froze. Was this someone trying to get past the police by pretending to be a delivery driver?
Then he remembered the cameras. They were due to be delivered today.
He nodded. ‘Thanks. Thanks very much.’
When the light began to go, they pulled the curtains over all the windows, including the long expanse of glass in the Room with a View. There was something oppressive, he was beginning to think, about the emptiness of the landscape out there, the wild, uninhabited acres all around them.
‘It’s a room without a view now,’ Max said, flopping down on a sofa.
Bram picked up the instruction booklet for the cameras and read the same paragraph for the third time, but he still couldn’t make head nor tail of it. The arrival of the cameras had lifted his mood instantly. Finally, he felt they were doing something. When the little bastards were caught on camera, the police could take action.
Unless they were wearing masks.
He pushed the thought away.
Phoebe was curled up with Kirsty in the big armchair, already in her pyjamas. They were watching Babe: Pig in the City on the TV, Phoebe’s eyelids heavy as she rested her head on Kirsty’s chest.
Bram should probably ask Max to work out how to set up the cameras, but after the day they’d had, he felt the kids didn’t need to see their dad at a loss when it came to the security measures they were installing. He was already feeling pretty chastened by the fact that, on learning that there could be a homicidal maniac out there, the first thing Max had done was summon David.
There was bound to be a YouTube video explaining it all. Bram fetched his laptop, but instead of looking at YouTube, he couldn’t help himself opening his blog. He’d added a post about the day’s events, and the photo, in the vain hope that someone might recognise a blurry arm and leg.
Lots of comments from worried friends and family.
And another from ManOnAMission:
What actually happened was that you saw someone on the right of way through your wood and called the cops on them! That wood has been used by locals for centuries and now you’re trying to exclude us? That’s illegal.
God almighty! Bram knew it was probably a mistake to engage, but he couldn’t let that go. He quickly typed:
We have no problem with people using the wood. What we have a problem with is being shot at, because that’s what actually happened. My neighbour and I were shot at by a masked man. Excuse me for finding that unacceptable.
An hour later, there were eighteen replies to that, most of them from trolls – ManOnAMission and Red, but also some others.
You’ve had too many magic mushrooms, pal!
Oooh, a dangerous ‘masked man’ with a BB gun!!! :-)
What were you and your neighbour doing together in the woods in the first place?!! Oo-er!!
But it was Red’s comment that made his blood run cold:
You’re bringing this on yourself, Bram. Why don’t you piss off back to London?

8
The next morning, Bram, Kirsty and Max positioned the cameras in the wood, hiding them carefully in the trees. They were motion-activated, but only by large moving objects that gave off an infrared signal. Large creatures, basically. Anything from a fox up to a human. In daylight the pictures would be in the normal spectrum, but at night the cameras would switch to infrared imaging.
They removed all the notices, Kirsty agreeing with Bram that they could be seen as antagonistic, given the history the Taylors had with local youths. Then they gathered chanterelles for the risotto Bram was planning on making that night.
‘It was just a BB gun,’ Kirsty kept saying. ‘If they’d really meant you harm, they wouldn’t have used a BB gun.’
‘No, of course they wouldn’t.’
In the afternoon, David and Linda came over, and Max eagerly took David to check out the cameras. The two of them came back in high spirits, Max bounding onto the terrace where Kirsty and Bram were sitting. ‘Grandad didn’t spot a single one!’
He was obviously basking in the unaccustomed warmth of David’s approval. David came onto the terrace behind him and turned to glare back at the wood with his feet apart, hands on hips, in the belligerent mode that always made Bram think of Henry VIII. Then he turned and smiled at Bram, and came over to literally pat him on the back. ‘Good man. Good man. Now we’ll get the bastards.’
‘Yeah!’ Max enthused.
Bram nodded, finding himself in complete sympathy, for once, with David.
But Kirsty looked from Max to her father and said, ‘No one’s getting anyone, Dad.’
‘I’m sure David only means “get” as in “bring to book”.’
Kirsty shot Bram a disappointed look.
‘Those bloody Taylors, eh, Bram?’ David muttered when Kirsty had gone back