Sixteen Horses
Page 1
SIXTEEN HORSES
GREG BUCHANAN
Contents
1.
2.
PART ONE: ILMARSH
Day One
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
Day Two
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
One Month Ago
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Day Three
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Two Years Ago
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Day Three
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
PART TWO: THE HOLE IN THE WORLD
Day Four
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Two Weeks Later
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
THE HORSES
Day Twenty-Four
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
Day Twenty-Five
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Day Twenty-Six
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
PART THREE: A BIRTH OF SMILES
Day Twenty-Seven
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Day Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Day Thirty
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Day Thirty-One
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Twenty Years Ago
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Day Thirty-One
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Day Thirty-Five
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Day Thirty-Nine
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
CHAPTER EIGHTY
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
Day Forty
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
PART FOUR: SIXTEEN HORSES
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
CHAPTER NINETY
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND ONE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWO
EPILOGUE
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For Charlotte
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’
Robert Frost (1922)
1.
Tufts of cloud burned black before the sunrise, the horizon littered with the flotsam of old and rusted silhouettes. They were alone.
‘Chemtrails,’ the farmer had said to Alec, early on their walk. Other than this, he had been silent.
And now their torches revealed the edge of a bank, right before the crest of a shallow stream that cut through the farmer’s reclaimed marshland. Along its muddy edge and all around, the reeds sang with flies and crickets and buntings.
‘Where are they?’ Alec asked, shivering. It was 6.55 a.m. He’d left his jacket in his patrol car.
‘There weren’t any sheep over here,’ the farmer said, ignoring the question. He leapt over the bank, his boots slipping slightly on the incline. ‘They normally love coming over here.’
Alec stared at the mud, and the farmer grinned, his cheeks ruddy beneath his dirty white beard. With that thick wax coat and that gut and that voice, he could have been a lunatic Santa Claus. ‘You won’t fall,’ he said. ‘Not afraid of a little dirt, are you, Sergeant Nichols?’
‘No.’ Yes. ‘I just hope you aren’t wasting my time. And these flies . . .’ Alec swatted one away from his rolled-up sleeve, a great bulbous thing that had nestled on the hairs of his forearm. He was food for this whole place.
‘Try covering up next time,’ the farmer said.
Alec grimaced. He stepped back, tensing before rushing over the ditch. He came down with a thud, right into the thick and gelatinous mud. He splattered his black trouser legs and the farmer’s jeans.
The other man tutted, smiling. ‘What have we come to, eh?’
Alec brushed at the muck around his ankles, but this only spread it further. His palms grew filthy.
The farmer walked on.
He gestured past a large, half-empty water tank around two hundred feet away, its translucent plastic grown stained with time, the smear of a smile where fluid had lapped within. ‘We found them near there.’ His face fell.
Alec checked his watch. 7.06 a.m.
The sun would soon rise.
They kept on, the silence drowned out by the buzzing of the flies and the distant hellos of scraggly sheep out there in the semi-darkness.
‘Jean’s moving out,’ the farmer said. ‘Did you know?’
‘Who?’
‘Jean . . . The lady who lives down the lane,’ the farmer said, frowning. ‘She’s moving out, selling up her farm.’
‘Oh yes, Jean . . .’ His voice drifted. ‘I saw the sign.’ Alec had driven past it on the way here, a farm twice the size of this one, its animals and land and people in far better condition. He had not known the name. He knew few out here. One more reminder that he did not belong, he supposed.
‘They’re selling up to live with family, so she says.’
‘I think I saw them in town a few times,’ Alec said. They were almost at the water tank, at the smile. ‘Were they the ones who made those wagon wheels? They’d mix sausage meat into a kind of – well, kind of cinnamon swirl,
I suppose. It’s delicious. Did you ever try one?’
He swatted another fly away from his face.
‘No,’ the farmer said. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Really? My wife tried doing that a few years back, and—’
‘No,’ the farmer said, and the conversation died.
The world was still dark, even if only for a little while. The sun was almost free. The day had almost begun.
Fifty feet away, the field gave way to freshly tilled brown soil, forming mounds everywhere on the uneven earth. Chalky rocks littered the plot in every direction. Each step in this place was as muddy and wet as the last.
Further still, a thin metal fence marked the edge of the land, clots of wool decorating the wire like fairy lights where the sheep had once tried to break through.
But there were no animals in sight now. There was nothing but detritus.
‘I don’t see what—’
‘There,’ the farmer interrupted. ‘In the ground.’
Alec looked down. For a moment, he saw nothing but dirt.
‘I don’t—’
Alec stopped talking, a breeze moving past them both. Something shook along the soil.
He removed his torch and stepped forward, pointing its light at the source. Just three feet away, almost the same colour as the mud itself, there lay a great mound of black hair, coiled in thick and silken spirals.
He moved closer and knelt down. He wiped his hands on his trouser legs, reached into his pockets, and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. He tried to pull them on in one smooth motion, but his fingers – clammy, damp from the walk – clung to the latex before he could get them fully in. He had to inch each one into place before he could touch those cold dark circles. He stared at them all the while.
He lifted some of the hair up, surprised by the weight of it, its coarseness. He held it higher and ran his fingers along the strands, gripping at intervals. Towards the base of the spiral, where the rest of the hair still lay upon the ground, he felt flesh and bone.
Alec put it back carefully. The sun continued to rise. There was something else.
It was black, almost like plastic in its sheen, a thin half-moon of dulled white at its rim. It looked past him.
There was an eye, a large sad eye in the earth.
Alec stepped back.
‘My daughter found them,’ the farmer said. ‘Shouldn’t even have been out . . .’
Alec shone his torch across the area. There were others – some close together, some alone. He walked until he was sure he had found the whole set. He paced back and forth, a hundred feet all around.
He counted sixteen submerged heads, all apart, all with only the barest strand of skin on display, all with a single eye left exposed to the sun. One of the heads had been dug up a little more than the others, revealing the neck, at least. It was unclear how much of the corpse remained beneath the surface.
There were footprints everywhere: his, the farmer’s, the daughter’s, no doubt. He hadn’t been told any of this . . . He hadn’t known . . .
‘Who could do this?’ the farmer croaked, blinking. ‘Who could make themselves—’
Alec looked up suddenly, acid rising in his throat. The sky was growing brighter, its red spreading like fire, the clouds shifting blue. Still the flies and crickets screamed across the reeds, though nothing crawled along those dead eyes. Nothing seemed to touch them.
There was a stone house half a mile away along the horizon.
‘Who lives over there?’ Alec asked.
‘No one.’
Alec stared at it a moment longer. It was a lonely-looking place.
‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’ he asked. ‘It’s—’
Grotesque.
Beautiful.
‘No. Have you?’
Alec shook his head, stepping back, staring once more at the hair. It was all tails, he could see that now.
‘That’s murder,’ the farmer said, his voice soft. ‘Just look at them. Look.’
It was in fact criminal damage, a mere property crime.
If you decide something isn’t human, you can do almost anything.
Alec looked at the house again, dark and cold in the distance.
‘Do you know anyone who might have a grudge against you? Anyone who might try and cause you harm?’
The farmer tried to smile. ‘Apart from my wife? No, no . . . I get along with folk. Always have.’ He paused. ‘What do I do?’
‘We need to get a vet in.’ Alec stood up. ‘We need to get post-mortems performed, if we can. I wouldn’t touch them until we know more—’
‘Can’t afford any of that,’ the farmer said.
‘You wouldn’t have to—’
‘And besides,’ the farmer interrupted. ‘Someone buried them, didn’t they? Horses don’t just get that way themselves.’
‘What about the mud? If this used to be wetland, maybe they . . . I don’t know, maybe they—’
‘No,’ the farmer said, firmly, without elaboration.
Alec paused, looking back down at the eyes. But for the lack of motion, they might have been alive.
He got his phone out to take some photographs of the scene. They would have to do until help came. ‘Try and keep your other animals away,’ Alec said. ‘If you can keep your other animals inside or—’
‘What about the owner?’ asked the farmer.
‘Of what?’
‘Them – these—’ The farmer gesticulated, wincing.
‘What?’ Alec glanced down at the heads and up again at this man. ‘Were you stabling them?’ He paused. ‘We’d need to contact the—’
‘NO,’ the farmer spat. ‘No – no – no—’
‘Hey, it’s OK,’ Alec said, stepping closer as the farmer turned away. ‘I’m sure it’s covered by your insurance.’
‘You don’t understand. I don’t keep horses – I’ve never kept horses. That’s what I tried to tell the girl on the phone—’
A fly landed on the rim of an eye.
‘I’ve never seen these horses before in my life.’
2.
A dead man sits in a room. His hands are tied behind his back; it’s why he hasn’t fallen. The air is full of dust and gas. There is something moving inside his stomach. His right eye is no longer there.
His hunger outlives him. His teeming gut, his microbiome aflame with bacteria and symbiotic juices, they carry on. All that life within him continues consuming and breathing until it can breathe no more. He digests himself.
It smells like rancid pork mixed with sugar. It smells like a nightmare of food. It smells like the worst thing in the world.
A dead man sits in a room, but he isn’t alone.
Two detectives watch as a sample is taken from the body. It isn’t from the victim, it isn’t even human.
Three white cat hairs, found in blood.
Cooper clutches her mask to her face, the stench unbelievable, but still she carries on. She won’t run to the window and vomit. She won’t give any of these smug pricks a reason to doubt her.
It is the first time Cooper has ever seen a dead body, but you wouldn’t think it.
She focuses on the cat hairs, and only the cat hairs.
She ignores everything else. It is no time to get emotional.
These cat hairs are going to solve the case. They’re going to ID a man no one could ID. They’re going to—
‘Why are we here?’ her therapist asked.
There was no clock in the small, fluorescent-lit white room. Cooper had a black smart watch on her left wrist, though. It needed charging once a day. It was bulky. It had a red trim. It was hard to use and it was far more trouble than it was worth.
The watch was not something Cooper could easily check the time on without being accused of fidgeting. The therapist used anything against her. She was relentless.
‘Why are we here, Cooper? I want to go back to why we’re here.’
Cooper narrowed her eyes.
&nb
sp; ‘You want me to express what I’m feeling?’ Cooper straightened up a little. ‘I’m expressing what I’m feeling.’
‘I want to go back to something you mentioned before. That “it was no time to get emotional”.’
‘I was at the scene of a murder,’ Cooper said, anger entering her voice. ‘It was the first time I’d ever been called out to one. What was I supposed to do? Cry?’
The therapist just stared back at her. She was not like Cooper’s previous therapist: that woman had been warm, filling out big green jumpers with smiles and echoes of whatever Cooper was feeling. There was sympathy, empathy, everything. This woman . . .
Her eyes were cold.
‘I was twenty-five. I took the hairs from the crime scene, I looked over the rest, and I made it five feet from the building before I poured my guts out into the grass.’ Cooper angled forward a bit. ‘I did a good job.’
‘Do you think you were prepared for it?’
‘Of course I was prepared. They wouldn’t have let me be there if I wasn’t prepared.’
‘You’re not a police officer. You’re not CSI. You’re—’
‘I was prepared,’ Cooper interrupted. ‘I’m quite a professional, actually.’
‘You’re a vet.’
Cooper looked away. There was silence for a time, so she raised her wrist and stared at her watch.
2.18 p.m.
2.19 p.m.
‘Those cat hairs we found on the victim’s leg – they were from a friend of the man’s brother-in-law. We found a small quantity in the sister’s house, we traced his associates, we found the friend. The evidence helped us to convict him of the murder.’ Cooper paused.
The therapist said nothing, and Cooper’s muscles tensed.
‘I still don’t think you understand exactly what I—’
‘Why did you focus on the smell? I’m curious about that.’
‘You ever smelt a dead body?’
The therapist shook her head.
‘Not much room to think about anything else.’ Cooper picked up her water bottle from her feet and drank a bit. ‘Part of us lives on after our death, all right, but it’s nothing like a soul or anything. It’s just our gut.’
‘You said we eat ourselves.’
‘We do. The bacteria inside us, they start breaking everything down.’
‘So it’s not us then, exactly.’
‘We’re sixty per cent water. There’s room in us for a lot of things.’
Cooper straightened herself and looked at her watch again. 2.23 p.m. The therapist was studying her notes.