The Scent of Blood Read Online Free Page A

and tunnels, she had each of them safely contained in separate cages. Even though my conscious mind told me there were iron bars and bolts between us and them, I still experienced a clutch of panic. They were so big. So powerful. I thought of Sandy Milford and felt faint.
    “They must be very dangerous,” I said weakly.
    “All animals are dangerous if you don’t respect them,” Kylie replied shortly. She thrust a shovel towards me. “Hold that.”
    Graham looked as pale as I felt, but Kylie was unsympathetic. She shoved a broom into his hand, dropped a sack of meat into a wheelbarrow and, grabbing its handles, told us to follow her. Before long we found ourselves in the tiger enclosure with the Great British Public on the other side of the glass, gawping and making sarcastic remarks like “Funny-looking tigers!”
    “That one’s got no fur.”
    “Oi! I paid to see animals, not a pair of kids. I want my money back.”
    Kylie ignored their witticisms and led us over to where a wooden pole was sticking out of the ground, as thick and as tall as a tree trunk. Opening the sack of meat, she spiked a large piece with a lethal-looking hook and proceeded to hoist it to the top of the pole on a rope and pulley.
    “What are you doing?” Graham was intrigued.
    “It’s called environmental enrichment,” explained Kylie. “Keeps them busy. They have to climb if they want to eat. It makes them work for their food in the same way as they would in the wild.”
    “Ingenious,” Graham commented approvingly.
    When Kylie finished with the meat, she pulled a bottle of aftershave from her pocket. Strangely, mystifyingly, she began to pour it into various holes drilled in the pole. “They like different smells,” she told us curtly. “I vary what I pour in from day to day. It stops them getting bored.”
    When she’d emptied the last drops from the bottle, she turned to me and Graham looking faintly amused. “Now it’s your turn,” she said. “Time to do the mucking out.”
    Tiger poo is very big and very smelly. By the time Graham and I had shovelled the last of it gingerly into the wheelbarrow, our eyes were watering and we were both feeling slightly queasy, despite the fact it was nearly lunchtime.
    When we’d finished the job to Kylie’s satisfaction, she led us back out and performed the reverse manoeuvre with the safety gates. The three tigers sort of flowed with brutal grace back into their outside enclosure.
    “That’s your lot, then,” she said briskly. She made no attempt to disguise the fact that she was glad to be getting rid of us at last. “I’ve done my bit. You’re in the Frozone this afternoon, aren’t you?”
    Graham didn’t need to check our schedule. It was already imprinted on his super-retentive brain. “Yes.”
    “OK, then. Bye.” Kylie turned to go. We were dismissed.
    It was now or never. “It must be a difficult job looking after tigers,” I blurted out. “People must get hurt every now and then, however careful they are.”
    “Well, yes.” Kylie gave me a hard stare. “Tigers sometimes kill their keepers. But the most dangerous animal in captivity is the elephant.”
    “Really?” Surprise threw me off my line of questioning. “I thought elephants were quite docile. People ride on them all the time in India, don’t they? I’ve seen it on TV.”
    “True. But they kill more keepers than all the other animals put together. The director of Grampian Zoo was crushed to death last year. Sometimes I think…” She broke off, but her eyes had narrowed and her expression had become intense and ruthless. I could almost see the thought rising like a bubble from her head.
    Kylie Milford was fervently wishing that Anthony Monkton had suffered a similar fate.

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    I felt a bit shaky after we’d mucked out the tiger enclosure. I couldn’t decide which I’d found more frightening: the animals or Kylie. She was like a volcano, simmering with heated anger. What would it take