‘Can I help you?’
Cooper turned to see an old balding man. She gave her information and got her key. He wanted to photocopy her passport, but it wasn’t necessary, not if you were from the UK, and she had to argue with him about it, get the proof up on her phone.
‘Have you just been copying people’s passports this whole time?’
‘No,’ he mumbled, and seemed eager to go away.
Hm.
He left, and Cooper went to find her room. The elevator was one of those old pull-shut ones. There were warnings everywhere not to put too many people inside. Not that this was a problem. When she arrived at her floor, there were no signs of anyone else, but that was the twilight of any place like this, busy or not, an emptiness of strangers. The kind of solitude that bothered her more than being watched. She needed people, even if she didn’t need to talk to them.
She didn’t bother unpacking her clothes, having brought just enough for the four days for which she had been booked. She dumped her toiletries near the sink in the shower room. In her backpack she had a few bottles of water, a can of lemonade, some gum. She took off her purple coat, her green top, her blue jeans, her black watch with the red trim. She stepped through and tested the pressure. She left the door to the bedroom open a little as she washed.
She was done in five minutes. She found a hairdryer under the bed. She didn’t like how long her hair had grown, and hated it falling in front of her face. She only wore it loose if she felt some special occasion demanded it.
She’d had no real special occasions, at least recently.
She pulled on a red sweater and the same jeans she’d already been wearing.
She went to the window and parted the curtains. The world outside was all as it had been before.
The sea throbbed in the silence past the thin windows. If people grew noisy out there at night, she wouldn’t sleep through it. She remained there for a few moments, crossing her arms. She could see her own reflection in the night, like anyone looking out in the dark. It made everything more than it was. It seemed to infect her. Dark hair, dark eyes, almost sunken in the distortion.
She turned the main light off. She could see better. It was calmer now.
Out in the distant waters, there was a blinking. Flashing. A boat signalling, maybe. She didn’t know much about that kind of thing.
Mass horse mutilations, though – that was another matter entirely.
When he’d called her, the inspector had wanted to know if she’d seen anything like this before. If there was much precedent, if they were looking at the work of a madman or something else.
Revenge could be a motive, but from Cooper’s understanding, the horses had belonged to disparate owners without much of a sense of relationship or community.
Sometimes these kinds of killings were used as a smokescreen for other motives, staging crimes in such a way that the authorities would focus on their gruesome nature at the expense of more mundane possibilities.
‘Like what?’ the inspector had asked, his voice crackling in the bad signal.
Like insurance fraud.
It was an easier kind of madness, at least superficially. Throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties, a hundred horses had been killed across the USA, taking an eventual human murder, and so the involvement of the FBI, to bring the insurance scam to an end.
The inspector had said they’d look into Ilmarsh’s horse owners. He’d said the team was looking forward to working with her.
Alone now, watching the emptiness of this night and this sea, Cooper’s sickness began to ease once more.
She needed a drink. She needed to find something to eat. She took her key and left, locking the room behind her.
CHAPTER THREE
There had been only a few reports the day before. A car’s windows had been smashed near the market. A fight had broken out in a pub after closing time. There had been calls about shouts and crashes from a home with three young children and angry parents. When asked, they had said everything was fine.
The old hotels had been silent.
Homeless people were tidied away from the park and barred re-entry.
Trucks had arrived. Wooden pallets, laden with food and drink.
The town told this story to those who asked.
On the nearest Saturday to 5 November itself, the people of Ilmarsh would set off fireworks in King’s Park further down the shore, the whole beachfront buzzing with people, with sparklers, with glow-sticks. Every cafe and every shop and every pub would come alive once more. This year, 7 November.
It was Bonfire Night.
At 3.05 a.m., the owner of Well Farm had set out west in a van containing thirty sheep. The farmer would arrive at the livestock market shortly before six. He would not return until early evening, most likely exhausted from the day’s driving and lifting and wrangling. He would be seen unloading sheep by those passers-by who knew him, those on their way to the show. One would mention that a sheep was loose on the road a little further down, but this was nothing strange, not for them.
In town, the people had walked to the park.
Some had paid five pounds to enter and received a short programme for their trouble. Others had stood outside, content with an unsanctioned view.
There had been hot-dog stands, candy floss, light-up games, even a cart dragging along representatives of the county’s radio station. Some years they had music, big classical theme tunes from films and television, all echoing out over the big speakers as fireworks took off through the sky.
Later, they would set fire to a giant effigy of a man who had once tried to blow up parliament.
Everyone had then started to go home. Some went to pubs.
And that was that.
Few could remember anything else but that which had felt normal. Vans had moved throughout the evening, dismantling the celebration, bringing supplies and people home. One more would not have been remarked upon. There was such noise, such light. The owners of the horses had been far enough away that their animals’ abduction could have gone unnoticed, absorbed into waves of cheers, of fire.
Many of the horses had been dosed with sedatives. As the police would soon discover, their owners had requested this themselves. They might panic, otherwise, they might quiver at each burst of light through the sky, each roar of distant thunder.
They were made sleepy, docile.
They would not have felt afraid, not at first.
Just as Alec finished up at the farm, the sky electric dark, thick grey rain seeping through his only coat, a call came from the station. An old man was waiting to speak with him – he claimed to have seen the whole thing, to have been there the night of the deaths. A vagrant, sleeping on the edge of the farm, seeking refuge within a stone ruin. No fixed abode. No electoral registration. No friends. No connection to anyone beyond his walking into a police station and sharing a story about animals and torchlight.
‘Do you think he was actually there?’
‘I don’t know,’ the inspector said. ‘Ask him yourself.’ The call ended.
So Alec went, driving to the centre of town, his trousers squelching in his seat. The police station had long since been merged with the town’s library, much of the county’s budget spent on electronic helpdesks in place of a normal reception or waiting area. The library – itself almost empty and ransacked since the merger – had a lift round the back in the loading bay, but they only used that when they had to. The security system was a pain. The entrance to the station was around the side of the building, up a zigzag of metal stairs.
A dozen cameras watched Alec as he rose up, holding firmly on to the rusted rails, the old metal slick with rain.
Alec held his pass to the electric pad. The light went green and the door buzzed open.
From his glass office, the inspector waved, then pointed over to the end of the room. Alec grumbled and went straight to the interview room. Not even a fucking hello, let alone a debrief.
The hermit
was inside as promised. He had a can of cola on the table in front of him. It was unopened. The whole interview, it remained unopened. Both of them sat there, wet with rain.
‘Do you want a towel?’
‘What?’ The hermit raised an eyebrow.
‘I’m going to get towels.’
Alec left and could only find stacks of blue paper towels in the bathrooms. Blue like a bedroom wall of painted clouds. A nice blue. He brought a wad back.
Both men patted their hair with it, their clothes.
The hermit told him his story.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Witness
They’d carve out vast fields of conifers, tall and thick and green and beautiful, even at night. They’d be glad of it. They’d leave them long enough to establish ecosystems, to become a part of the land in the eyes of all those who passed along the road, who lived and made their homes here. Then they’d cull it all, selling the wood for paper. The beauty was in death, in brevity. They’d move on.
These charnel fields ran amongst the farms and the forests, the river and the ponds. There was water, there were trees, and there were places the conifers had once stood, side by side in the endless flatness, this place without curvature or motion.
The hermit knew the whistle of the air, the cries of birds you’d hear in land like this. He knew each sound, though he didn’t know the names of the actual species. He’d planned to use the library computer, whenever he went to town again. See if there was an answer there. He’d remember them all. He wanted to, truly he did. He’d do his best. He had his card, worn and faded though it was.
A few hours before the horses were killed, he’d walked among the trees, the sun low, mostly hidden behind a carpet of clouds. There were leaves everywhere, crumpled, desiccated. Each step crumpled more. It was satisfying. It calmed him. He looked up and around as he went. They were mostly skeletons around this place, though there were animals, still, squirrels and hedgehogs, badgers even. He’d heard stories of wild boar closer to town.
He’d found a life where living was the only purpose. He’d left everyone he had ever loved, ever cared about. He had found peace.
At the lake, half an hour past the treeline, near the rusted burned-out wreck of a car, he washed.
He dried himself with a rag from his bag, metal pans and cups clanking as he pulled it out. He’d make some coffee when he got back. He looked at the sky, wondering what day it was.
He got dressed and doubled back to the woods. He needed to gather kindling. Half-dry moss, peeled from the tree trunks. Sticks and wood both short and not so short. A few inches, thin for the beginning. Longer and thicker for the flame proper, to lay on it afterwards. It was the water that kept it going, the impurities and imperfections. He gathered what he needed and left. The day was growing darker.
By nightfall, he had fire. He fashioned the moss and the twigs – the small ones, the thin ones – all into a ball, cupping his hands round them and forging a shallow well with his fingers. He lit his match and sparked the fire in the centre of the ball, blowing into the orb, giving his own air to help the flame spread. He started it outside the little stone house he’d called home these past few nights, stacking the longer sticks in cross-hatch around the kindling. It kept him warm and gave him light for his book. He heated his beans in a can above it. He heated coffee. He’d killed a bird the day before, had stripped it of its feathers and meat. It had a tag attached to its leg.
Fireworks burst in the darkness, far away.
A small whistle, a stuttered ‘pop’ of stars in the long black. The rockets had been going off for weeks, though tonight was worse. He wasn’t sure when the fifth was, when the bonfire and fireworks would be. Imagine an effigy of yourself being burned alive for hundreds of years. He did not want to imagine or see.
He closed the book covers and let his fire die. He went into the stone house and lit his candle. His blankets and bedding were still stretched out from the night before. They were enough to keep him warm. This place was a small ruin; it had holes in the ceiling and flooded when it rained. It was not large. He had worked out the best place to sleep. It was close to the woods and the lake. He had been left alone here. He’d stay, if he could.
He’d seen the farmer a few times, the one who lived adjacent. WELL FARM. Most people didn’t know why it was called that. A good name for a farm. Hopeful, they thought. But it was nothing to do with goodness. There was a water-well in the woods, on land that had once been a part of this place.
So people thought ‘Well Farm’ was a nice name.
He hadn’t spoken to the farmer, he’d just seen him and tried not to be seen, in case the man laid claim to this land, or knew who might. He’d watched him in his fields, spraying nettles. He’d watched him walking a dog. Something about the farmer seemed lonely.
Like a prisoner.
The hermit went to sleep.
He was awoken before light.
It was still dark. The candle wax had set, though. He relit it. Something was outside.
He heard the running of an engine, a car or a small truck, over almost as soon as it had begun. But the hermit saw nothing when he looked out through the window. The noise had come from the farm, or closer to it. There was nothing, until there was something. It made him breathe.
A torch. Two torches.
They danced in the dark, further down the fields. They moved back and forth, until they rested against the ground, illuminating vast horizontals.
The hermit pulled his coat around him and left the stone house. He wanted to see.
There were hands in that earth, patting down soil around lifeless shapes.
The strangers moved back and forth.
One of them was crying.
The hermit left the next morning, gathering his things before first light. Before the policeman arrived at the farm. Before the eyes in the earth. Before all of it began.
‘I came back,’ he told Alec, shaking. ‘I came back. I – I didn’t want to be alone, not after that. I wanted to get new books. I wanted to – I wanted to be with people. And I heard what had happened . . . I heard what they did.’
Alec stared at him from across the table, piles of blue paper towels all around them.
‘Did I help?’ the hermit asked, staring back.
Alec asked the man if he could identify the people who had done this. If he had seen their faces, if he knew their gender, or any identifiable characteristic at all.
‘They – they were crying. One of them was crying,’ the man said.
Of all else, he was not sure.
He was sorry. He—
‘You’ve been helpful,’ Alec said, trying to smile. ‘Of course you’ve been helpful.’
This made the hermit beam and nod his head, his tired eyes glistening.
He had nowhere to go that night.
Alec helped him down the metal stairs.
He never saw the man again.
CHAPTER FIVE
The CD player sang a song about the end of the world. It could be heard through the glass, it was that loud, the curtains drawn at the front of the house, the fire burning – a real fire, wood and all – casting the living room in a golden glow.
Inside, visible through the hallway’s end, a child could be seen playing with paper clips in the kitchen corner, stringing them together and tying them round wooden chairs, hanging his toys and action figures from various hoops.
Alec tried his best with the child, which was all anyone could do. He didn’t know how to talk to him.
His wife stood near the stove and stirred minced beef into tomato, tomato into minced beef.
The smells hit him as he came in through the front door. The track changed.
He shouted, ‘I’m back,’ but it felt a little pointless. His wife was still busy with dinner, his son was busy with . . . well, whatever the whole paper clip thing was about. Alec tussled Simon’s hair as he walked past and the boy grumbled.
‘How was your day?’ Elizabeth ask
ed, not turning around.
He put his hands round his wife’s waist, and she shifted away.
‘Not while I’m cooking.’
‘My day was great,’ Alec lied, putting his hands round her waist again.
She turned from the saucepan, thrusting the wooden spoon into her husband’s hands. ‘Stir,’ she said.
So he stirred.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ Alec lied.
‘It’s fine,’ his wife also lied, moving along to take the boiling spaghetti off the heat.
‘It’s just this case . . . You wouldn’t believe what we’re dealing with.’
He waited. The music kept playing. The kid kept playing.
He continued. ‘I said, you wouldn’t believe what we’re dealing with.’
‘I heard you.’
‘You’re clearly angry about something,’ Alec said. ‘What is it?’
‘You’re clearly angry about something,’ she repeated, her tone all silly, mocking, ridiculous.
‘Oh, great.’
‘Oh, great.’ She reclaimed the spoon and took over stirring, tasting, preparing. He caught the beginning of a smile in the corner of her mouth, and he smiled too.
‘You’re just copying me.’
‘You’re just copying me.’
‘I think Alec Nichols is very sorry for whatever bad thing he did.’
‘I think Alec Nichols is bla bla bla blah.’
The little boy laughed at this. Alec smiled too, in spite of himself.
‘Hey,’ he said, touching his wife’s arm, gentler than before. She turned, clearly tired. ‘I think Alec Nichols doesn’t know how lucky he is.’
She didn’t repeat this, only frowned.
‘Hey,’ he said again, his eyes staring into her eyes, both of their expressions fading into light smiles.
‘Let’s . . . let’s just get dinner on the table, OK?’ she said, after a pause. ‘We can talk later, when he’s in bed.’
Sixteen Horses Page 3
