The Eltons’ house stood across the fields. It was the closest thing to a hill Cooper had seen in this place, a light slope followed by a ridge, a set of steps leading down the miniature hillside. The house felt alien to her, somehow, standing against the sky when nothing else could.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘We woke up, we had breakfast. It was a . . . it was a normal morning.’ The stable owner tried to smile, but her eyes couldn’t follow. ‘We went out to feed them.’
Atop the red-brick fireplace, there was a single image – of a long-forgotten nephew, maybe – and a clock next to it, a silver clock with two bells that never rang. It ticked in the silence. Dust seemed to catch in the light beams from the window. The room was full of horses.
Little figurines, pictures, photos, place mats. Alec wondered who it was all for. Whether you wouldn’t grow sick of it, given enough time, given enough proximity. He thought perhaps this room was more for guests, for parents of students, rather than for those who lived here. It felt like it was supposed to give an impression. A takeaway box from an Indian restaurant, just lying in the hallway – that had been the only clue of a messy, human life.
They sat with a coffee table between them, the stable owner in her gown and fresh slippers on one sofa, Cooper and Alec bunched together on the other, three cups of tea steaming in the middle. It was barely big enough for the both of them.
‘They were empty,’ the stable owner said, her voice soft, almost broken. ‘The stable bays, I mean.’
‘And then?’ Alec asked, pen in hand. It was a fountain pen, a birthday present from his son.
‘And then we made our statement,’ she answered, picking up her tea. Her hand shook slightly as she did so, the saucer clinking against the white china cup.
‘What do you remember from Bonfire Night?’
‘We were in town.’ She sipped her tea. ‘We always go. Did you go?’
‘I was working, yes. At the right entrance for a while, then on patrol.’
‘Much trouble?’ she asked.
‘No, no.’ He smiled. ‘People were surprisingly well-behaved, all things considered. Some kids were acting out near the seafront, but – nothing major.’
‘We don’t have many nights like this.’ She nodded. ‘We get to see all our friends. People used to go to the pub more, used to do the farmer’s market on Sundays. It’s all stopping.’
‘They don’t do the farmer’s market any more?’ Alec frowned, and she nodded. ‘I liked going to that.’
‘They haven’t done it for a year.’ She smiled. ‘You can’t have liked it that much.’
‘So . . .’ He looked at the window, just briefly. He thought he’d seen movement, but there was nothing. He turned back. ‘So you were at the fireworks show. Are there people who will verify you being there?’
She nodded.
‘What happened earlier in the day? Anything out of the ordinary?’
‘No. Just, just lessons.’
‘For who?’
‘Kids,’ she said. ‘We don’t get many adults wanting them.’
‘You have a lovely home,’ Cooper said, and Louise smiled at that, surprised at the compliment, grateful for the escape it provided. More tea was poured for everyone. ‘How did you get into this line of work?’
‘The old owner moved,’ Louise said. ‘We couldn’t bear to see it shut down. It hadn’t been used like this for years—’
‘Used like how?’ Alec took his cup.
‘Like a riding school.’ There was a noise in the hall, a little slam as someone came in. The husband, probably. She continued. ‘We . . . we wanted to give the kids around here the same opportunities we had.’
‘You rode when you were younger?’ Cooper asked, and Louise nodded happily.
‘Charlie did. I was, well, I was scared.’
‘Of horses?’ Alec raised an eyebrow.
Louise hesitated. ‘No, the animals themselves, they’re lovely. It’s the riding I don’t like – they’re too tall for me, too strong. Moving on something that was alive, it . . .’ She shrugged, smiling. ‘I like helping the children, but it’s – it’s not for me. Though Charlie . . . you should have seen him, seventeen, trotting along to me in the field. We were friends before that. We grew up together and we liked each other and nothing more, but when he came to me out here, I saw that I loved him. And this place, it was . . . it . . .’ She seemed to struggle to find the right words. ‘It was important to us.’
‘How were the horses, before all this?’ Alec asked.
‘They were lovely.’ Louise came alive. ‘They—’
‘I mean their health. Were they healthy?’
She deflated a little. ‘We did our best.’
‘Customers ever complain?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said. She sighed. ‘But it’s . . . it’s something you have to get used to. I was, you know, I was a teacher before I retired, at the school. Right up until last year. You . . .’ She tried to smile. ‘I bet people aren’t happy with you, sometimes. People work for the public, they find a reason to be unhappy with us.’
‘You cared about them,’ Cooper said. ‘It’s why you dosed them.’
‘Dosed?’
‘You arranged for the horses to be sedated, didn’t you?’
Louise nodded, after a brief delay. ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
‘What does that mean, exactly, Mrs Elton?’ Alec asked. ‘It knocked them out, or . . .?’
‘It made them docile,’ she answered. ‘They get scared, with fireworks, and . . . it’s – it’s safe. It calms them.’
‘And you did this yourself?’
‘The vet did it,’ she said. ‘I – I’m not good with needles.’
‘Which one?’ he asked.
‘Kate. I . . . I don’t know her surname, though . . .’
Alec felt her eyes on him as he wrote in his notebook. ‘You said you didn’t know they were gone until morning.’
‘Yes . . .’
‘So you didn’t check on them the night you came back?’
‘We don’t normally,’ she said.
‘They’re kept right by the entrance. It wouldn’t have been difficult?’
‘We’ve never had problems before.’ She hesitated. Her nails, long, chipped, dirty light blue, dug into the soft white fabric on her arms. ‘Why are you—’
Cooper put her cup down. ‘He’s asking because he’s wondering why someone who cared enough about her animals’ fear to pay for intravenous drugs wouldn’t take a minute to see if they were OK.’
‘You tried to make your insurance claim before you’d even spoken to the police,’ Alec said, calmly. ‘Why?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Louise Elton said she had not tried to make an insurance claim, no matter what the company had reported, no matter how the transcript sounded. She’d just been enquiring about their position. It had been a precautionary measure – she’d wanted to know if they’d be OK. Other owners had already messaged her. What did it matter, raising the alarm? Their animals were gone. But they still needed a roof over their heads.
‘The thing about my – my family,’ she tried to say, ‘we always try to do our best. We always try.’
‘Which family?’ Cooper asked, and Alec turned.
The stable owner did not understand. Neither did he.
‘The one you married into or the one you were born into?’ Cooper went on.
‘The one I made.’
Louise explained and explained, a bird moving along the rotten windowsill outside, the sky bluer than her nails. Neither colour felt real. Neither colour felt right.
She kept trying to explain.
The last few years had been difficult, for both of them.
Most lies are mundane. Most people don’t even know they’re doing it, and if they’re caught, they rationalize their deceit. Cooper understood this. She did not like it.
She was up for some minor rule-breaking as much as the next person – she’d been quite the illeg
al downloader at university, and there’d been some weed sometimes, too, and an almost-expulsion, and a little attempted suicide, but who didn’t try to kill themselves when they were twenty, you know? There was a difference between living in pain and living in lies.
And this man – this temporary partner – this Alec, he was a man who lived in lies.
Not in his work. Not in his job, or what people might think were the important things. Not like a criminal.
It was something in his voice, the movement of his eyes, the hidden fire of each impulse, cut off.
He was not a man who lived authentically. He was not honest with himself about who he was, about how he really wanted to be.
She felt sorry for Alec, the more she watched him. The more he spoke, needy, endlessly deviating from protocol. Wanting to be liked, and disliking in return.
‘I need to go,’ Cooper said. ‘I—’
‘What?’ Alec seemed surprised.
‘Where’s your bathroom?’ She turned to their host.
Mrs Elton told her it was through the kitchen.
‘Can’t it wait?’ Alec asked.
She shook her head. It was a real tragedy.
She shut the door behind her as she left the hall. She heard their muted talking, Alec’s deeper grumbles, Louise’s half-shrill croaks.
Unwashed plates were scattered throughout the kitchen. Cooper took her time as she moved towards the next door. The calendar didn’t have much on it, a circled visit Danny crossed out, the date of a film further down. They hadn’t even changed it from October, yet. There was nothing in November.
There were letters near the kettle, sorted into two piles. Cooper picked some of them up.
FINAL NOTICE.
Overdue balance.
The fee will be applied to your account on 28 December.
Your application has been refused.
Overdue payments may affect your credit rating for a period of six years.
County court judgements may affect credit availability.
Card declined.
FINAL NOTICE.
Balance: -£15,468
Credit cards: -£89,421
FINAL NOTICE.
Please contact us to discuss a voluntary credit arrangement. The direct debit has been cancelled.
Beneath the letters, there was something glossy, almost plastic in its edge. Cooper looked over her shoulder. No one was there. The house was still and quiet, but for the noise of Louise’s breakdown in the lounge.
Cooper pulled the letters away from what lay beneath.
There on the counter sat a photo of a brown Labrador, a polaroid. The light was dark in the image, the camera struggling to catch it.
The dog’s eyes were not open.
Its paws had been separated from its body, a small three-inch-long section laid out next to each leg.
Cooper returned to the lounge.
Alec turned to her as she sat down, and then he quickly looked away again.
He had done that a few times.
Louise Elton was going through the names.
There were no strangers who had taken an interest in horses, no weirdos lurking in the woods.
Louise’s concerns were those of hate.
She told them about everyone.
It might have been one of them.
Every client who might hold a grudge. Everything people had said to her. Everyone who had not paid, who had complained about their animals, about their kids, about cancellation fees, about anything and everything. Everyone who had not been kind to her.
‘I never had any children,’ Louise said, shaking her head. ‘I loved those horses. I did. I loved them. I loved . . . I love Charlie. But this . . . all of this . . .’
She was silent for a moment.
‘It might have been someone who knew us,’ she said, quietly.
Cooper opened her bag and removed one of the missing animal posters she’d shown Alec at the diner.
Louise froze when she saw it.
Cooper made sure it was on her lap for a few moments before she put it in her notebook and shut it away.
Louise opened the table drawer and pulled out a small plastic bottle, trying to empty pills into her hand, but there were none. Her eyes clenched shut. ‘I’m sorry. I—’
She got up and left the room.
MISSING DOG.
CHOCOLATE LAB.
RAN AWAY IN DENTON PARK AUGUST 2ND.
VERY FRIENDLY. ANSWERS TO LIZZIE.
PLEASE HELP US FIND HER.
£50 REWARD.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Cooper had told Alec what she’d found in the kitchen. A minute later and he’d seen it for himself. Then, shouting from the base of the stairs, ‘Mrs Elton? Are you OK?’, no answer had come.
A few minutes later, looking around the lounge, finding nothing, they went up regardless.
The light, it spilled through the dark hallway of the landing.
They found a door, slightly ajar.
This door was an oak-wood door. This place had been a nursery, once, though not for decades. A tree was carved into the wood, its surface painted a mottled, flaking blue. The paint had not been right for a door like this. In the dark places of the hall, damp ran riot across the walls.
The door was slightly open.
Their feet made the floorboards creak; of course they did.
A fly buzzed past them.
And they could see Louise Elton right on the other side, crying at her desk, shaking.
Before her on the table, there were dozens of photographs, black and blue and green, all catching the red sun.
‘Mrs Elton, are you—’
She wheeled round, mouth agape. She tried covering the photos, snatching them up in her shaking hands, suddenly aware of where she was, of who she was with.
Alec pushed the door fully open. She turned back to the desk.
‘They keep sending them,’ she croaked. She dropped the pictures down as if her soul had left her body. She kept holding on to an envelope, her blue nails curled around it.
The images were of animals, of wooden boxes, of a shore, of an island far away.
‘We keep finding them, we—’
‘Mrs—’
‘They know,’ she just whispered, shaking her head.
‘Pick up the phone.’
‘Just talk to me.’
‘Listen.’
‘Please.’
‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The water buckets were almost full to the brim from the storm two nights earlier. Hay floated in the muck. Nearby, outside one of the stable doors, bales of haylage had been bound in plastic. One was half torn open, most likely unused for weeks.
Cooper felt strange being out here alone. A car was coming, at least. The silence was easing.
The stables were capable of holding at least twenty animals. The only boarding place for miles apparently, but there had been only six occupants. Whoever had taken these horses had taken all they could. The old quarters were full of grime, some faeces, too. Most likely they had only been mucked out a couple of weeks before. There had been no grand erasure of evidence, no attempt to hide how they had lived, at least so much as Cooper could see.
‘Hi!’
She turned. Kate, the mousey vet from the surgery, had arrived, her rusty green car parked just beyond Alec’s own.
Alec had remained back in the house with two other officers, searching the building while Cooper looked over the grounds. They hadn’t been able to get much more out of Mrs Elton; she had refused to say anything else until her husband came home. The man appeared to have fled the premises sometime during their interview. His tractor lay abandoned in the fields, red and vast against the hill. His car was gone from the driveway. Attempts to reach him by phone had failed.
‘I’m glad you called,’ Kate said. ‘I wanted to help yesterday but—’
‘Just need some background,’ Cooper said, turning to l
ean over one of the stable doors. ‘You were the one who sedated these horses?’
‘Yep.’ Kate nodded, awkward, sharp. ‘These and a few others. Mostly those closest to town, those who might have problems with the fireworks.’
‘What’s your opinion of the Eltons?’
‘As in . . .?’
‘Were they good owners? Good people?’
‘They were OK,’ Kate said. ‘Left some problems untreated, but . . . what business doesn’t?’
‘What kind of problems?’
Cooper knew her manner was somehow upsetting the other vet, but knowing this didn’t change her actions. She’d once thought her speech compulsive, unhinged from social conventions. She’d thought that other people – like her family, like her schoolfriends – simply didn’t understand her. But the older she got, the more Cooper felt that the opposite might be true. That there was some secret for knowing how to act that she’d never learnt. Sometimes she had no idea how to imitate, and the vague instinct to do so just seemed to push her further and further away into her own head.
So she’d asked Kate what kind of problems the Eltons might have left untreated.
‘Possibly some signs of lameness. A few of their horses were shifting their weight, the older ones, mostly. The Eltons started avoiding contact as soon as I pushed the issue. They probably couldn’t afford any treatment or surgery.’
‘But they could afford sedatives?’
Kate shrugged.
Cooper disappeared into one of the stable bays.
‘You have any suspects yet?’ Kate’s voice grew slightly high. Cooper didn’t answer, and so she went on. ‘Hopefully you’ll have time to enjoy the town once you’re done, anyway. Let me know if you want any recommendations or anything.’
The tentative pleas for warmth made Cooper feel bad. She tried to focus on the task.
‘Help me lift this.’
They moved a wooden crate from the corner of one of the unused bays.
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