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“Do they not try to defend their kills?” Steph asked, still mesmerised by what she was seeing.

“Not anymore; not against him anyway,” Davey replied, also still looking.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that when they lost one of their pack trying to, they stopped.”

FIFTEEN

As fascinating as the cave bear was, Steph knew that she could not spend all day admiring its size and presence. She had a job to do. Two jobs, in theory. The one Kelvin had hired her for and her own (she was still shaping that one). Either way for both jobs, she felt it best to make use of Davey’s knowledge of the place. She might not like the man, but she would definitely need to converse with him.

She wanted to see the beavers and discover how their handiwork had shaped the environment. They had dammed the river creating a small pond which acted as a bit of a drinking hub for some of the animals. Davey seemed pleased to point out that the original pair had successfully bred. Then he mentioned some trivia about the fur trade in the past. Steph was not sure why he felt the need to bring the fur trade up but listened anyway.

She continued to make notes and ask questions. Davey was knowledgeable about what he had seen in terms of the behaviour of the animals and of what had gone on inside the fences. However, his answers suggested that he lacked any prior academic grounding. His knowledge came from his own observations alone.

“The light is starting to fade,” Davey pointed out.

“Fine,” Steph sighed. “I shall have to come out tomorrow anyway. More than that is needed really, but I will do a couple of days and then regroup.”

“For what?”

“What?”

“Regroup for what?” Davey said, widening his eyes and spreading his hands.

“To figure out what I need to do next to find out what is effective and what isn’t, and what that might even entailconsidering the mishmash of animals and the territory, for that matter.”

“And work out how secure the fences are?”

Steph paused for a moment.

“I saw you looking constantly into the distance whenever you assumed we were nearing the perimeter,” Davey continued.

Steph paused a moment longer, opened her mouth slightly and then chose to ignore the bait. In her head, she questioned whether an animal could have escaped the fences unaided. They seemed secure.

“Like I said, you can knock yourself out on that front,” Davey said, bending down to tie his laces whilst keeping a wary eye scanning the area around them. “Maybe you can ask Michael to take you around the perimeter tomorrow.”

“I don’t need that,” Steph replied.

“Sure.”

“I don’t! What use would it be to me?”

“I know that the fences were all intact after what happened to that boy. Maybe that’s of use to you.”

Steph chose to ignore him. She wouldn’t be goaded. Even so, if the animal that killed the boy – and Steph was pretty certain that it was an animal – had not come from the compound, where had it come from?

The pair walked for a little longer. Steph made mental notes of the track they were taking and the surrounding vegetation. The light was really starting to disappear now. If it was not to provide a slow acclimatisation to the light levels, Steph would have been tempted to pull out her torch.

Steph was about to ask who chipped the animals, when she noticed a light up ahead.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?” replied Davey.

“That! That light up ahead?”

“Oh, that. That’s one of the cabins.”