He walked on towards the Crag, flushing the grouse which came lower down the hill in spring, looking all the time for signs of predators. There had been a lot of carrion crows this year and it was a bad time for foxes, just after lambing. Pest control was Craven’s responsibility and if his gibbets were anything to go by he was conscientious enough, but Vic wanted to see for himself. They could do with some Samson traps to have a go at the stoats and weasels. He came to a shooting butt and stopped to get his breath. That would be the next job, he thought, repairing the butts. There seemed no end to it. As he set off again he saw Ursula Ottway’s Land Rover drive up the track to Back Rigg, but thought nothing of it.

When he got down from the hill he was tempted to call in to the cottage and have a quiet cup of tea with Marie before the girl came home. Once the ambulance arrived there would be no peace for either of them until Monday morning. But he had sent Craven to build a new pheasant release pen in the wood at the east of the estate and he wanted to see if the job was finished. He took the van along the road past the cottage then set off across the fields by foot, thinking that they could do with a crop providing more cover here if they were going to release pheasants from the wood. Something like turnip would be best. If Jeremy Grenville had more authority on the estate he would arrange it, but he let the tenant farmers walk all over him.

The relationship between Vic and the tenant farmers had never been good. They came occasionally to work as beaters for the shoots but otherwise had little contact. Vic found it impossible to see the problems of the estate from their point of view. What did the drop in sheep prices have to do with him? He only thought the farmers should be more cooperative. His shoots made a profit for the Cadver and kept their rents down. They had no right to whinge. He walked on, brooding about this lack of gratitude, until he came to the small wood where he hoped this year to move the pheasants.

He bought in the pheasants as day-old chicks, when they were tiny, thumb-nail size, and kept them confined at first in very small pens, hardening them off as they got older, moving them into bigger rearing pens. You needed an affinity with pheasants to achieve his success rate. Each evening he would phone the met office in Carlisle and decide whether they could be let out at night. The release pen was the last step before they were returned to the wild.