When the fourth hour came, the sky had started to grow red. It was dust, the news had said. Blown in from the Sahara desert, changing the light across the northern world. It looked so strange. The red light would remain with them for the better part of a week.
Something moved.
A dog stood across the clearing, right at the edge of the treeline. It was scared, malnourished, mangy, its grey-brown hair all in patches.
‘Here, boy,’ the driver said.
The dog seemed to respond, but only tentatively.
The driver took a treat from the bag and held it out, even with the dog all that distance away, even though it was frightened, even with its teeth so sharp.
After a few minutes the dog limped to one of the two crates and stared at the driver some more. The driver sat unchanged, staring back, still holding the treat. The dog turned and ate out of the crate.
The driver spoke again. ‘Who’s a good boy?’
The dog kept eating. It did not look back when it left.
The next day, later in the afternoon as the red sky grew dark, the car returned. Within half an hour, the same set-up of actions had been completed, and the dog emerged once more.
This time the dog wandered to those crates closer to the driver. These boxes held objects of different kinds. In some of them, treats. In one, a ball that squeaked as the dog took it in its mouth and let go, as if it couldn’t quite remember what toys were for. Its tail began to wag, even so.
The driver talked all the while – gentle, rhythmic.
The dog grew calmer.
The dog limped round sniffing all the crates. It took a last pause, waiting beyond the reach of the stranger, before bravely approaching and sniffing the treat in the still-outstretched hand.
The dog took the treat in a lick that made the driver smile. The driver let out a ‘heh’. The dog’s tail wagged more and more. The driver stroked its head and patted it. ‘Who’s a good boy, you’re a good boy.’ The dog shivered in its happiness.
The third day, the dog was already there when the driver returned. The day was warmer. This time, the dog approached the treat first. There was no food remaining in the crates, of course. The ball had long since vanished in the distant ditches of the forest.
Eventually, the dog fell asleep at the driver’s feet. The driver watched the creature for a while before lifting it like a sleeping baby and placing it in one of the crates.
The driver took an electric screwdriver and some screws. The driver inserted them into the corners, sealing it all around with the dog inside, a single air hole poked through in the side, large enough for the animal to breathe but not for it to see through.
Still the dog slept.
The driver picked the crate up and brought it to the far edge of the clearing, weighing its top down with a large rock.
The driver waited in that place until the dog awoke. Waited until the noise began.
The driver went back to the car.
Back to Ilmarsh, past the sunken homes.
One day the driver would stare Alec in the face.
One day the driver would think back to those weeks of wooden boxes, far from town.
One day the driver would smile, and then cry, and then smile again.
All things died.
One day, the driver would try to die, too.
But not yet.
Day Three
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The phone rang. Alec heard it before he opened his eyes. He didn’t like phone calls, not least when he had to handle them at 6 a.m. Even less so when he’d barely slept.
He was in his car. He’d left the house early, had driven to the bay, had parked right out by the diner, waiting for it to open.
He’d just closed his eyes for a while, and no dreams had come.
‘You’re awake,’ George’s voice crackled down the line.
‘I’m awake.’
‘The pills not work?’
‘They work just fine,’ Alec said, watching the lights start to flicker on along the dark shore. ‘I just didn’t take them.’
‘I don’t—’ George broke into a fit of coughing.
‘You OK?’
George ignored the question. ‘Harry called. Wants us to go out to the riding school.’
‘I thought you’d taken a statement already?’
‘Something new,’ George croaked. ‘The stable owners made their insurance claim.’
‘So?’
‘They tried making it a couple of hours before we’d even spoken to them. We hadn’t even told them where the horses had been found, but still, they knew . . . they mentioned Well Farm in their call. It’s all in the transcript.’
‘We were quite visible in those fields,’ Alec said. ‘News travels fast.’
‘Even so. They knew a lot about the case. The wife didn’t seem too upset, either.’
‘I’ll meet you there?’
‘I’m sick. Not going in.’
‘You’re sick?’ Alec raised an eyebrow. No one could see.
‘Fuck you. I’m sick.’
‘. . . OK, fine. You’re sick.’ The row of amusement arcades juddered to life as they spoke, lights beginning to blink, music beginning to reach out towards the sea.
‘You still coming to my barbecue?’
‘I thought you were sick.’
‘That’s why I need rest.’ George yawned. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’
‘You’ve got flu and you’re going to handle food for a barbecue you’re doing in November?’
‘I don’t have to explain myself to you.’
Alec sighed, stretching in his car seat. His whole body ached from poor sleep. ‘Want me to bring anything?’
‘A personality.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
An hour passed. Their little empty world lurched to life.
Alec sipped his chocolate milkshake and waited for his coffee. He stared out at the islands and watched the sun rise over the sea.
Beyond breakfast, there was not much reason for Alec to come here. The call-outs were few. The odd couple having sex in the dark. Addicts leaving needles in the sand. Nothing that need concern the police, stretched thin as they were.
He wondered if a place could remember.
A boat moved across the water.
He’d ordered for Cooper already. She’d messaged to say she’d be late. How, when her hotel was ten minutes’ walk away, he did not know. Overslept, maybe.
‘How d’you want your eggs?’ the waitress called over.
‘Fried.’ He paused, tapping his fingers against the table. He tilted his head. ‘No, wait . . . scrambled.’
The waitress relayed the instruction to the cook, who seemed never to be allowed to leave his small vent at the back. She then got back to setting up, getting out menus from behind the counter. An ornamental dog, a great red, white and blue cash register, and a toy sports car sat as landmarks upon the long blue surface, punctuated by cutlery holders and ketchup bottles. The diner was American themed, in the loosest way possible.
‘You working on the horses?’ the waitress asked, three tables away.
Alec nodded. He was the only customer in the room. She didn’t normally ask about work. ‘Why?’
‘People are talking about it.’ She put a ketchup bottle on his table and kept moving.
‘How?’
‘With their mouths.’
Alec rolled his eyes. ‘Anything specific?’
‘I heard . . .’
‘What?’
‘One of the heads was, you know . . . human.’
He scowled. ‘No.’
He’d woken up earlier and earlier lately, taking any morning calls he could. He’d been finding it hard to get to sleep, and to stay asleep.
Waiting for Simon to wake up, to watch the boy eat his cereal, to see him out the front door, it wasn’t needed any more, and coming to realize that, it was a sign of the end. Soon he’d move out, he’d be off to university and more. Soon Alec could just be
himself again, he’d have his own space again. Life would be life once more. Maybe that was terrible to think. He didn’t know.
Maybe other parents felt that way, too.
Maybe everyone felt that way about everyone they loved, on some level.
Maybe he was utterly, profoundly alone.
And when he ate these breakfasts by himself, he’d read a newspaper, sometimes. He’d eat each bit of the meal together, stuffing egg fragments onto clumps of sausage, then spearing a tiny bit of bacon beneath, topping it off with flakes of black pudding.
This is what he was doing as the bell rang on the door, as Cooper hurried in. She almost crashed into the waitress.
‘Sorry!’ Cooper said, her eyes glancing fleetingly at both of them as she sat down. Her breakfast followed.
‘How’d you sleep?’
Cooper took her purple coat off and unwound her grey scarf. ‘Rough. Think I twisted my neck – slept on it funny, I don’t know.’ She picked up the mug of coffee from the table and before Alec could say anything, she drank it, pulling a face as she did so. ‘Ugh. Not very warm.’
‘It was mine,’ Alec said, quietly. ‘I was waiting for it to get colder . . .’
‘Oh.’ She grimaced. ‘Er . . .’
‘It’s OK.’ He turned to the waitress and asked for more.
They talked through Cooper’s findings. Decapitation had been performed with a combination of a knife and wire – most likely a fetotomy wire. The theory that two or more people were involved was supported by the different proficiencies with which the heads had been severed.
‘Why both?’
‘The knife wouldn’t get through the bone. But it could cut their throats. It could immobilize them, it could give you enough grip into the skin and soft tissue for the wire to work. And what we’re talking about, it’s a veterinary tool.’
Alec paused. ‘So whoever did this might have had a farming background, or worked with animals, maybe.’
Cooper hesitated. ‘Possibly. I—’
‘Likely they’d know the horses were sedated,’ he carried on, cutting her off. ‘They would know how to handle them, and where all the horses were.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Someone local then, involved in local life. How hard would it have been to use these tools?’
‘It would have taken whoever did it around ten minutes per head, if they were strong enough, and if they managed to keep the horses still, which would have been a feat enough in itself . . .’ Cooper finished her beans. She ate each part of her breakfast in methodical sequence, not mixing anything at all. ‘Maybe more than ten minutes, then. I don’t know.’
The waitress came and collected their plates, obviously taking her time and trying to listen. They sat in silence until she left.
‘So we’re not looking at an axe-wielding, frothing-from-the-mouth psychopath. Someone more deliberate than that.’ Alec finished his coffee. ‘How were the vets, when you spoke to them?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘The director, Frank, he was a little . . . well, he was abrasive, but a lot of partners are. The only other vet I spoke to there was Kate – she was a bit timid, worked with a few of the animals. Neither came across strangely.’
‘Hm.’ Alec watched as the waitress left through the kitchen door. ‘We should speak to them again later, maybe. See if any of their supplies have been taken, which farms or properties they’ve brought these phot – photeto – what was it?’
‘Fetotomy wires.’
‘Could anyone else have had access to these tools? Anyone likely to have used them on a frequent basis?’
‘Like who?’
‘Like stable owners.’
Cooper shook her head. ‘Even if they bred animals, you wouldn’t risk doing a fetotomy in a mare by yourself. You’d call the vet.’
He nodded. ‘Anything else?’
‘One thing . . .’ She opened her bag and pulled out a folder. Inside there were print-outs of message boards, missing animal posters, and more.
‘What’s this supposed to be?’
‘Cats and dogs,’ she said. ‘I—’
‘I can see that. How’s it relevant?’
‘I wanted to see if there were any heightened abuse cases in the last few months, any evidence of other animal attacks,’ she said. She took a final gulp of her coffee. ‘I didn’t find much – they don’t always come to the notice of vets, let alone cross police desks. They’re voiceless.’ She wiped sleep away from one of her eyes. ‘So I decided to look for reports of missing animals – both in the local database and online. And it was mostly normal: cats who never came home, dogs who ran off in parks, et cetera et cetera. But if you look at the frequency compared to other months . . .’ She pushed some of the papers in front of Alec. ‘You’ll see they’ve been rising. And fewer of the missing have been found, whether at shelters or otherwise.’
‘So let’s say there’s a connection. What would it be? The killer is graduating to larger prey?’
She did not know.
Alec kept on pushing for explanations she could not give. She didn’t know who would do a thing like this, but at the same time, everyone knew, didn’t they?
Everyone spoke to hollow people every day.
People who made you want to say goodbye.
People you wanted to run from or hurt.
CHAPTER TWENTY
There were twenty, maybe thirty deer out in the fields.
They looked like they might flee at any moment, all caught on the edge of some final stampede.
They watched the car until it left. Alec looked back at them in his mirror.
He drove on. He tried to make sense of his temporary partner.
Cooper’s eyes were sharp, almost glaring, no matter her mood. She had a slight unintended intensity to every smile, every frown. He had only rarely known people like this. Sometimes he found it hard to talk to her, just like he found it with everyone else. Sometimes she felt like an old friend, like he’d always known her.
She had agreed to come with Alec to this interview, to assess the way the stable owners had run their business, to help him understand whatever truths, lies and evasions they might offer.
They talked about the case for a while, about the area, about the community. Cooper asked about the island fire – she told him the vets had mentioned it.
Alec just nodded. He told her he hadn’t been on the case, that he didn’t know much about it.
He told her it wasn’t all as dramatic as she’d heard, though. It had been an accident.
He moved off the topic quickly.
He wanted to know how she’d entered this line of work, and so they talked about their jobs for a while instead, about why they did what they did. She had not been a vet for very long before she had turned towards crime scenes and forensics. He did not get to hear much about why or how this change had occurred, or whether she missed her old career.
She shifted the subject towards Alec, wanting to know how he had started on his own path.
There was no tragic backstory. Nothing he tried to avenge, no wrong the world had done to him, no grand excuse for all he had done in turn. It was just one of those jobs that children think they’ll do – fireman, doctor, policeman. Everyone thinks they will save people. That’s why they like stories. In Alec’s case, he just kept going with his. He was good at it. He vanished into the role.
He asked Cooper if she’d ever considered becoming a doctor instead. She just laughed without explanation or elaboration.
‘Did you ever think about joining the police?’
She shook her head, putting her phone back in her pocket. She had a faintly amused look.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I’d have imagined you’d be valuable.’
‘I like travelling to new places. Choosing what I do.’ She opened her window slightly. ‘Working by myself.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You can do a lot of that in the police.’
‘You can choose where you go? What you want to do?’
‘You
can transfer, yes.’
‘And you wanted to transfer here? That was your choice?’
‘Fresh start.’ He tried a big broad grin he didn’t really believe in. ‘I always wanted to live by the sea.’
‘Why?’ She twisted round to adjust her headrest.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
They were around eight minutes from the stables. It was a little after one in the afternoon. The air was almost humid. It felt like more than twenty Celsius, more than they said it would be.
‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’ he asked, suddenly.
‘What?’ She turned to him.
He looked ahead. ‘Just . . . just small talk.’ He paused, sheepish. ‘I’m not very good at it.’
Cooper looked back at the road. ‘I scratched up a car once.’
‘Why?’
‘I was thirteen, on a paper round. I saw a man kick his dog. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I took my house key – I’d just been given it, my dad had picked me up from school before he moved away, but now, you know, I was walking myself back, so my mum gave me one. I took the key and I dragged it along the dog-kicker’s paintwork.’
‘How did it feel?’
‘Great.’
‘Did you get in trouble?’
‘Not really.’ Cooper frowned. ‘But . . .’
‘But what?’
‘It turned out I got the wrong car.’
They both laughed at that, and caught each other in a smile.
‘Is that really the worst thing you’ve done?’
‘No,’ she said.
The sign was a faded green, a wooden rectangle arched at the top in a light curve. It looked to Cooper like it had, at some point, been repainted badly and quickly. She could still see the drip smears, frozen throughout the numbers of a year.
ELTON RIDING SCHOOL AND LIVERY.
EST. 2001.
The stable curved back round from the path’s end, shielded by tall conifers and hedgerows, all bound by ivy running up and down and in and out, crested by the roofs of the buildings and the sheds. The road was the only entry point large enough for a van, and even then, not by much. The horses could have been led elsewhere first, perhaps. There was a public footpath cutting through the land, marked by a post.
Sixteen Horses Page 8
