Carrion Comfort

by Aline Templeton

  CARRION COMFORT

  ALINE TEMPLETON

  In fond memory of Fiona Robertson, who had an indomitable spirit

  Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee,

  Not untwist – slack they may be – these last strands of man

  In me or, most weary cry, I can no more.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  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

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BY ALINE TEMPLETON

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  In high summer on the bleak northern coast of Scotland where the land at last gives way to the hungry seas, it is never completely dark. The bogs and standing pools of the Flow Country shimmer in the pale but relentless sun and life is in a state of frenzy before the brief light season gives way again to the long winter darkness. There is a background hum of insects and on the heather moors bees labour in a dizzy ecstasy of scent and colour.

  For days now the sun had shone in one of the rare spells of windless weather and as Gabrielle lay in bed the humid air seemed to lie like a thin blanket layer on her skin.

  The merciless light, and her own troubled thoughts, made sleep impossible. She longed with an almost physical hunger for the blessing of soft, velvety darkness but even with the curtains drawn there was at best a lavender-grey dusk around midnight for an hour or two. At last she gave up, sliding off the mattress with a glance at her sleeping partner, and with infinite caution left the room. If David woke and saw her she knew he’d want to get up and make her a cup of tea, keep her company. He knew the small hours of the morning were a bad time for her.

  In the kitchen she ran the tap cold then filled a glass with water, pressing it to her flushed cheek as she went through the silent house to stand at the great picture window in the sparsely furnished living room, looking out but barely seeing the bleak moor and the random patterning of pools and lochans, ink-black in the low light.

  A movement caught her eye: a small owl, quartering the ground on its broad, rounded wings, noiseless as a moth, listening and watching for movement. Gabrielle shuddered, feeling in herself the shivering of a terrified vole, afraid to stay, afraid to run. As she watched, the bird swooped in an unhurried, elegant glide. She shut her eyes so that she wouldn’t see the tiny limp body hanging from its talons as it rose from the kill.

  When she opened them again, the bird had gone. But death was all about you in this place, brutal and alien as a lunar landscape. The killers were the kings here: the birds of prey, the foxes, the skuas, the ravens that did not always wait for life to be extinct before they went for the eyes. Even the marshland bred carnivorous sundews and butterworts and the bogs around even the tiniest dubh lochs were traps where animals could be drawn in to their death. Animals, and even—

  But she knew she mustn’t think about that now. That was a long time ago. And she’d promised David she wouldn’t obsess over things that couldn’t unhappen. She’d promised – but then words were easy.

  Only words, though. Everything else had become hard and painful since her father died. Paddy had been her anchor; now she was adrift. Day by day, little by little, she was getting worse. It had been such small things at first, like believing she’d put her keys in her handbag when she hadn’t. Everyone did that, didn’t they? But then she had to make a list before she did anything – and still something would go wrong. She had even struggled to be sure what she’d dreamt and what was real – and the awful humiliation of confusing a dream with reality still made the sweat spring out on the back of her neck even as she thought about it.

  Friends had made allowances for her, telling her about their own idiotic forgetfulness on occasion and she was grateful for their kindness, if not reassured. You didn’t lose your mind all at once; it was small things that accumulated quite gently and slowly, like snowflakes falling, falling, until the day when the avalanche came crashing down and swept away the pretence that nothing was wrong.

  After that, they blamed losing the baby for her distracted state. It was only natural, David told her soothingly, kind and loving even though it had been her fault and his baby too. But it was more than that. She had to face up to reality and recognise that she needed a complete break.

  So, she’d come back to the very basic house that Paddy had refused to give up even when he hardly used it any more, as if she might find here something left of the love that had enfolded her like a security blanket. David had arranged everything, even to restructuring his job with an Aberdeen oil firm as a computer troubleshooter so he could work a lot from home while she took time off to recover.

  She should have found peace up here where there were no demands on her and no stress, where it was so quiet. Deathly quiet. But she hadn’t. Somehow, she’d managed to forget how toxic the atmosphere was in the village, where even after all these years no one had forgotten or forgiven anything.

  Gabrielle took a deep breath, and another, and another, fighting down the sense of panic that never seemed very far away. She must go back to bed, take one of the pills that would give her a couple of hours’ sleep before the dawn woke her again to another long day.

  It was getting lighter already. As she turned from the window she heard the eerie, haunting whistle of the owl returning but she didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER ONE

  He had been waiting in the yard, watching the farmhouse. The light in her bedroom had gone out, but he knew she wouldn’t be asleep.

  It had been later than usual before the lights in the downstairs room went off and there was still a light in her parents’ bedroom. Kirstie wouldn’t move until she was sure they were asleep, and it was another of these warm, light nights; even people as old as they were might feel the restlessness that seemed to possess everyone at this time of year.

  Calum wedged his skinny, adolescent body into the angle of the barn where he would be invisible from the house. He seemed to stand here for longer and longer every night and it was driving him mad. He gave something between a sigh and a groan; enforced patience and rampant lust were a bad combination. It was like voluntarily entering a torture chamber every single night.

  At last the bedroom light went off. This was almost the worst bit, waiting when he was sure they must be asleep, but she apparently wasn’t yet convinced. Then at last he saw the back door open and her slim form slip out and run across the grass towards him.

  He grabbed at her, but she fended him off. ‘Not here! They might get up to open the window or something,’ she hissed, darting ahead of him out of the garden and looking back teasingly over her shoulder as she ran along the stony track that led up the hill at the back of the village to a building right on the edge of the moor.

  The old croft house, abandoned many years before, had always been an illicit playhouse for the local childr
en; being forbidden to go there because of the dangers of broken glass and crumbling stonework had only made it more attractive. But there weren’t so many kids here now and most of them spent their lives inside staring at a tablet anyway.

  Now it was Calum and Kirstie’s own secret place, out of the sight of prying eyes. At this time of year, you never knew when people might be about, and Kirstie was nervous. She had mega-strict parents and while it might not be true that her father would kill her if he found out what was going on, that was certainly what she always said.

  Most of the roof was off, but there was still a sheet of corroded corrugated iron in place over one end of the main room, where you could get a little bit of shelter if the rain came on. The door had been roughly boarded up with a couple of planks nailed across it, but you only had to pull on it and it would swing back on its rusted hinges.

  He caught up with Kirstie just as she reached it and caught her in a rough embrace. The door was standing wide open tonight; they must have forgotten to shut it properly. Giggling, she responded as he walked her backwards through the doorway, still kissing her. Then he stopped abruptly and let her go.

  There was a man asleep on the floor under the open sky, a man with dirty, smelly clothes, his face begrimed with dirt. And he was lying on their rug, the rug Calum had stolen from his mother’s linen cupboard.

  He swore. Kirstie looked over his shoulder, gave a little squeal of fright and pushed him back outside. ‘It’s a dosser! How’d he get there?’

  ‘How the hell do I know? I’m going to find out—’

  Furious with rage and frustration he turned back but she hung on his arm. ‘No, no! We don’t want to start anything. If he goes, “Who are you, then?” and begins maybe yelling and shouting, they might hear it down the house and my dad would come out. Just shut the door and let him be.’

  Even as he shut it obediently, he knew with a terrible sense of inevitability what she was going to say next. She was saying it now.

  ‘I’m away home, Cal. Even if he left, I’m just, like, revolted with that smell. It’s gross. And he’s likely got bugs.’

  ‘We could go up on the moor,’ he urged with some desperation. ‘We’re not needing shelter on a night like this.’

  Kirstie looked at him blankly. ‘On the moor? With not even a rug? Yeah, that’ll be right! I’d get eaten alive, Cal. The midges are bad enough out here, anyway. Dad would go, “How come you’ve got all these midge bites when you’ve been in your bedroom all night, Kirstie?”’

  He could recognise when he was beaten. ‘Oh, all right, if you’re going to be fussy,’ he said sulkily. ‘I don’t suppose I can make you.’ Before the words were out of his mouth he realised his mistake. ‘Sorry, sorry, that came out wrong—’

  But a mulish look had come over Kirstie’s face. ‘No, you can’t, Calum Cameron. No means no, remember, and that’s what I’m going to say right now. No. Got it?’ She walked off back down the track without looking back, scrubbing her fingers through her dark curly hair as if the midges had got to her already.

  He could feel them biting himself, clustering round him in an infuriating, inescapable cloud. Tormented, he flailed at them, then swearing in a fury of frustration he kicked the door of the croft house again and again, but there was no sound from inside. The dosser hadn’t wakened – drunk, probably. And God knew how long he’d be planning to squat there.

  Even if he managed to patch things up with Kirstie he still couldn’t see her agreeing to go back in there, even if the man had gone tomorrow. She’d made her views clear about open-air sex too.

  The bastard had only ruined his summer, that was all.

  ‘What shift are you on today, Kirstie?’ Fergus Mowat asked pointedly on Friday morning.

  His daughter, looking bleary-eyed, was sitting at the table in the farmhouse kitchen, hunched over a mug of coffee. She eyed him resentfully. ‘Well, like, early, obvs. Wouldn’t be up at this time otherwise, would I?’

  Fergus, who had risen as usual at six to get out round the farm and was back for his mid-morning break, looked pointedly at the clock. ‘It’s five to ten now,’ he said. ‘You can’t walk down to the cafe and be there by ten o’clock. You’re going to be late.’

  Kirstie said, ‘So?’ and gave him the dumb insolent look that would make the Archangel Gabriel himself long to slap that pert little face.

  He could feel himself going red. ‘Look, lassie. Your mother went to a lot of trouble to get you this job. It’s not just yourself that you’re letting down, it’s your mum.’

  His wife, Rhona, working at a battered desk in one corner of the room with a chequebook, an account book, a pile of bills and a frown, looked up. ‘Don’t worry, Fergie. If Morven’s not happy she’ll soon let her know. Kirstie, ask yourself, “Do I feel lucky?” I wouldn’t choose to get the rough end of her tongue, myself.’ She went back to her task with a sigh.

  Kirstie gave her a darkling look but after a face-saving ten seconds slid off her chair. ‘I was just going, anyway,’ she said to no one in particular, grabbed her canvas satchel from the floor, slung it over her shoulder and left, not quite slamming the back door.

  Fergus blew a ‘Phou!’ of frustration. ‘How long till she leaves home?’

  Rhona gave him a sideways look. ‘You just make her worse,’ she said calmly.

  ‘Well, she started it,’ he said, then had the grace to laugh. ‘Oh, I know, I know. I don’t suppose it does any good.’ He carried his mug, along with Kirstie’s, over to the sink and put it into the dishwasher. ‘And why couldn’t she have done that?’

  Bent over her bills, with her lips moving, Rhona didn’t reply but then he didn’t expect her to. They both knew the answer – she was fifteen and a half, and she had made it into an art form.

  ‘I’m away off up the hill. One of the hoggets up there was limping yesterday so I better take a wee look at her, see she’s all right today. Back at half twelve.’ Rhona grunted something that might have been a farewell as he left but he wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t a swear word addressed at the accounts.

  It was another improbably beautiful day. What was it – almost a fortnight now without a drop of rain? Just every so often you got a spell like that, which was all very well but if it went on any longer he’d have to start shipping water out to the troughs.

  He set off as he always did up the track that led past the abandoned croft house, gradually being weather-beaten to a ruin. He’d known the old couple who’d lived there; they’d had a few sheep on the little field near the house and there’d been a productive vegetable garden too, long overgrown. Fergus had bought the land from the family who’d inherited for grazing but the house itself was worthless. He often thought about them as he passed, struck by the melancholy thought that with the way farming was these days, one day his own much larger house and farm would lie abandoned to nature. Kirstie wasn’t going to want his sort of life, that was for sure.

  There were ravens circling around it, he noticed suddenly. Like any sheep farmer, he hated the birds, the ruthless killers who hung about at lambing time and homed in on the sheep, helpless in labour, and the weaker lambs. It added insult to injury when the bird protection lot claimed they only took carrion; he’d lost ten lambs this year in attacks that seemed positively sadistic, yet you left yourself open to prosecution if you defended your vulnerable sheep with a shotgun. Not that he didn’t do it – sheep should have animal rights too.

  Another raven arrived, and then he saw one dropping down inside. Had a sheep got in there, somehow? The walls of the house had been crumbling away for years so it wouldn’t be surprising if an enterprising ewe, pursuing the sheep’s favourite hobby of self-destruction, had wandered in and then been too dumb to find her way out again.

  Surely, he’d have heard her complaining about the situation, though. They didn’t normally suffer in silence, so it was probably some other carrion – a rabbit, a hare, maybe? He walked round the house, looking for a break in the wall but couldn’t s
ee one; the door was still barred. He shrugged, ready to walk on.

  But something stopped him. There were too many ravens for small carrion; as he looked up, another arrived, and he could hear coarse cawing arguments going on from the other side of the wall. With growing concern, Fergus went to the door – the nails in the planks fixing it shut might be rusted enough to break if he pulled at it. To his surprise the door swung back easily under his hand and he stepped inside.

  It was like a scene from a horror movie. There was a man lying on the floor and five of the great glossy-black birds were perched on his shoulder and around his head, so absorbed in their struggle as they tore at his exposed flesh that they didn’t react to the door opening.

  Hoarse with the horror of it he yelled and rushed at them, clapping his hands. They were huge, threatening, this close; they startled at the noise, turning to eye him, their scimitar beaks bloodstained, but with insolent slowness did not immediately relinquish their prey. He caught one of them a blow with the back of his hand and at last they flew off. As a wing brushed his face he felt pure panic in a Hitchcock moment; were they rising only to attack him from the air?

  But they were flying off, though only to join the others circling watchfully. The moment Fergus left, they would be back. What was he to do?

  Reluctantly, he looked at the body. He was sadly accustomed to the savagery of their attacks on his sheep and his lambs – the pecked-out eyes, the tongue torn from the socket, the intestines pulled out from the creature while it still lived – but he had to fight nausea as he looked at the mutilation of one of his own kind.

  It was in their usual pattern, going first for the soft flesh of eyes and mouth. The clothes – jeans and a long-sleeved checked shirt – had protected him so far, though before long a questing beak would break through these too; just an unusual type of fleece.

  Dear God, he hoped the man had been dead before they started. Surely, he must have been! Even ravens would have been wary of attacking a living man – and when Fergus thought about it, surely there would have been more blood. No, this was some down-and-out who’d been shacked up here and just died; probably a druggie.