No Place Like Home Jane Renshaw (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📖

I could send you a photo of anything I forage, just until I get into the way of it, to confirm I haven’t made a potentially dangerous error?’

Willie turned and looked at him. ‘Aye, if you must, email me a photo.’ He rummaged in his pocket for a pen and a scrap of paper on which to write his email address.

‘Thanks very much.’

Bram imagined spooning unctuous chanterelle risotto onto Phoebe’s plate, and telling her about gnome-like Willie who’d helped him find the chanterelle mushrooms in their own wood. It was important she realised that the wood wasn’t a bad place – that good things could be found here.

After an hour’s foraging, Willie announced that he was off, and when he’d gone, Bram started to relax into the whole thing. He was confident of being able to reliably identify the distinctive yellowy-orange trumpets, so he continued on into the wood, breathing in the earthy early-morning smells.

Foraging for food from their own wood!

Although of course he was more than happy for any of the locals, not just Willie, to do the same. Maybe he should put up notices to that effect next to the other ones, to soften the impact of what probably came across as rather aggressive territoriality.

Because he was intent on looking for the splashes of yellow on the forest floor, he didn’t notice them until they were almost literally in his face: three crows, tied from the branches of a small birch tree by the legs, beaks swaying gently in the slight breeze.

Bram stopped, and slowly looked about him.

There were three more in another tree, this one further from the path. And another in a tree beyond that. The more he looked… It was like getting your eye in with the chanterelle. There was another. And two more, hanging from the gnarled branch of one of the old pine trees.

Jesus Christ!

He stood completely still, straining to listen, but all he could hear was the wind in the trees and a bird piping. Another answering. And then, suddenly, there were tiny birds all over the trees above his head, peeping and chirping and floating from one branch to the next. Tiny birds with long tails, moving in turn, it seemed, one past the other.

There was something obscene about it, this flock of living birds so busy about their business while on the branches under them hung the crows, silent and still.

As suddenly as they had appeared, the little birds were gone.

Maybe he’d scared them.

Or maybe something else had.

The problem with being in this part of the wood, the birchwood, was that you could only see a very limited distance in any direction. Bram started walking back down the path. And then he was running, the basket jiggling in his hand, the chanterelles jiggling out of it, and then he had dropped the basket and was sprinting along the path, feet hardly seeming to touch down he was flying along so fast, and –

‘Vuuuuuw!’ The wordless sound shot from his throat as he flew round a kink in the path and right into a man who grabbed him, whose strong hands tightened on Bram’s upper arms, who –

Who said, ‘Oofta, Bram!’

Andrew Taylor, dressed head to toe in country gent wear, waxed jacket to the fore. He steadied Bram and released his arms.

‘Crows,’ Bram blurted, like a kid who’d run to an adult for help. ‘There are crows, strung up in the branches. Dead crows.’

Andrew gave Bram’s arm a dad pat. ‘Ah.’

‘Back there. I’d better get something to cut them down with before the kids see them. There must be – I don’t know. At least a dozen.’ And it struck him, suddenly. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

‘We can use this.’ Andrew took a shiny penknife from a pocket of his jacket. Yup, Andrew would carry a penknife.

They started back along the path, and Bram retrieved his basket of chanterelles and the ones he’d dropped in his headlong flight, feeling a little sheepish that Andrew was obviously working out what had happened, that Bram had completely panicked.

How could he be so calm about this?

My God – could Andrew be responsible for the dead crows? But why would he want to shoot crows? Wild food for his restaurant? But surely not even Heston Blumenthal would serve up crow as a fine dining experience? And even if Andrew did have that in mind, he wouldn’t just leave them hanging from the trees.

‘There,’ Bram said, needlessly, when they came to the place.

And there they were, the poor bloody crows, hanging like sick Hallowe’en decorations. As Andrew reached up to the first one, he said, ‘They keep appearing in our wood too, which is why I carry the penknife. What I do is cut them down and put them in a pile, take the nylon string home, obviously, to be disposed of, and come back with a spade to bury them. I’ll do that, if you like.’ He dropped the first bird, thwack, to the ground, and turned to face Bram. ‘I’m sorry. I – We haven’t been entirely honest with you. Your father-in-law was right, we should have warned you that we’ve had… some trouble with local youths.’

Youths now, not kids, Bram noted. ‘What kind of trouble?’ he got out.

‘Hanging around making a racket, bonfires, littering, graffiti – obscene graffiti. Cara was once followed through the woods by a couple of lads, which really shook her up, as you can imagine… But mainly it’s dead animals. Crows, rabbits, hares, even a goose, a couple of cats… Strung up in the trees.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Yobs. Yobs with airguns, or possibly shotguns, and nothing better to do.’

‘But you told us you hadn’t had issues with guns! For God’s sake, Andrew! This is serious! Do the police know all this?’

‘Not all of it, no. We decided it was best not to – antagonise the yobs further.’

‘What do you mean, further?’

A sudden snap behind him had Bram jumping round, scanning the trees, the undergrowth, but he couldn’t see anything. Anyone.

‘We put