by Tim Weaver
She got up – so angry she could barely breathe – and headed out, ignoring amused looks from the men closest to Hayesfield’s office. Two tables down from her, Greg Landa had wheeled himself away from his desk and was singing ‘Jolene’ again, smiling as he did, except he’d changed the words of the chorus to I’m begging you, please don’t fuck this case. Some of the others laughed.
She glared at Landa, at everyone else, a whole floor’s worth of eyes burning a hole in her.
And then she grabbed her jacket and walked out.
Part Four
* * *
THE ENVELOPE
32
I was still awake at 2 a.m.
Since the case at Christmas, I’d consistently failed to sleep well. The echoes of that, of how personal it had been, of how close I’d come to completely losing my grip, all still reverberated, feeding and massaging my fears. Some nights, like this night, the fear was so completely overwhelming, all I could see as I stared up into the darkness was defeat – all the questions I had no answers to, all the things I’d failed to figure out.
All the ways in which I’d never solve Black Gale.
I flipped back the covers and sat up.
Through the window, I could see cows in the field opposite, gathered along the fence, creamy streaks against the dark. Somewhere else, an owl hooted, the night so still that the sound carried undisturbed, as clearly and distinctly as if the bird were inside the room with me. I finished the water next to my bed and went to fill it again.
And then paused.
Was there something else out there?
I stayed where I was, the carafe at an angle in front of me. My gaze switched from the roof of my car – just about visible from where I was sitting up – to the fence hemming in the paddock. It was so dark on the farm that I couldn’t see much further, or much more, than that: in the far distance was a dim glow from the main road, maybe three quarters of a mile away; beyond that, there were tiny pinpricks of amber from the nearest village; then, finally, there was an outside lamp on the main house, two hundred feet up the track from me. It was sallow, a weak half-circle of orange light extending about four feet from the property, framing the porch and part of the lawn.
Putting down the carafe, I got up.
At the window, using the curtains as cover, I looked down at my car, checked the glass and doors were still intact, and then watched as a few of the cows – who’d strayed out from the barn – continued to graze at the spot across from me. They looked undisturbed, unworried.
So was it just them I’d seen moving?
I grabbed a pair of tracksuit trousers, slipped on a T-shirt and headed down to the living room. There was the faintest of carry from the lamp on the main house, a low-level grey that allowed me to make out the corners of the furniture around me, and then a hint of the papers and photographs I’d mounted on the wall.
I went to the front door and looked out at my car, and then both ways along the track. There was no one out there. I rubbed at an eye, tired suddenly, trying to think of the last time I’d been in a place like this, one that was so soundless and dark. I’d spent pretty much my entire adult life in London, and after so many years there I hardly noticed the noise and light any more; there was no escape from it – even in the dead of night – and it had become so written into me now that, in a place bereft of both those things, I felt unsettled.
I made my way back upstairs, my bones aching from exhaustion, and perched on the edge of the bed. I took off my T-shirt and finished a third glass of water. Fully awake now, my mind started moving, rewinding through the things I’d read before bed: the death of Adrian Vale; the interview DS Smoulter had conducted with him after Beatrix disappeared; and Vale’s connection to Jacob Pierce, the man who ran Seiger and Sten.
And then, in the field opposite, I really did see something.
One of the cows to my right, close to the barn and barely visible in its shadow, had turned away from the fence and had suddenly broken into a run. Seconds later, another did the same.
Something was spooking them.
Or someone.
33
Grabbing my shirt and a coat, I hurried downstairs.
At the side of the cottage was a series of footprints.
They were freshly fossilized in the mud and moved past the front of my car, on to the track and across to the fence: a clump of daffodils was now lying flat to the grass, where they’d been trampled upon.
I looked left, up the track to the main house. The security lamp was on but there were no internal lights. The farmer, his wife and their kids were still asleep.
The footprints didn’t belong to them.
I clicked the door shut behind me and stepped on to the track. Stones gently crunched under the soles of my boots. I saw they were unlaced and dropped to one knee to do them up – and, as I did, I heard the low of the cattle in the barn.
The cows were responding to something.
I followed the direction of the footprints. They went to the fence and then transferred to the slats themselves: wet mud stained the posts where someone had climbed over into the field.
I’d brought a penlight with me, could feel it shifting around in my coat pocket as I clambered over the fence and into the field, but I didn’t switch it on for now. The darkness was so thick ahead of me, it was impossible to see much more than a few feet, and the further from the main house – and its security lamp – that I got, the less I was able to make out. Before long, I could hardly see anything at all, even where my feet were landing. But if I couldn’t see anything, neither could whoever was out here.
They would have a torch, the same as me.
I just wanted them to use theirs first.
Pausing for a moment, I listened to my surroundings, the thump of my heart in my ears. I’d come in what felt like a straight line, using the main house as a mooring, but it was hard to be certain, even as I looked back. Somewhere off to my right was the barn, and as I stared at the dark, I thought maybe I could make it out now, its huge corrugated iron walls and the maw of its main doors. I thought I could see a vague hint of white as well – one of the cows.
And then I realized it wasn’t an animal at all.
It was a person.
By the time it had registered with me, they were gone, vanishing inside what I was certain now was the barn. Immediately, I heard cows start to react – confirming that someone was in there – their noises softened by the fluted walls of the structure.
I picked up the pace, almost turning my ankle in the bumps and crags of the grass, but soon the barn began to emerge, painted a deep, charcoal grey against the night. At the doorway I saw cows moving around inside, their chalky coats making them easier to spot, even if the shadows still hid the majority of their bulk. The farmer had told me they were truly free-range, able to wander and graze wherever they wanted, except in the depths of winter, and as one came out towards me, forming out of nothing, the others passed behind it like phantoms. The smell was strong here, a mix of hay, manure and water, and for the first time I could hear a breeze: it was faint, barely strong enough to register against my skin, but as it passed through the panels of the barn it made a feeble whine, like a cry for help.
Suddenly, a light flicked on.
Automatically, I stepped back, behind the edge of the main doors, and looked across the barn. It was torchlight, a pipe-shaped beam coming from the opposite side. In between were gates and runs for the cattle, as well as the cows themselves, so it was hard to see much else, let alone who was holding the torch. And then, whoever it was had gone again, a thin shape passing out through a door in the far corner of the building.
I backed up and hurried around the barn, walking parallel to it, my hand out at my side, my fingers brushing the corrugated skin of the structure in order to keep me in a straight line. When I got to the corner, I leaned around: at this end, the barn opened out into more pasture, hemmed in by wooden gates. On the far side, maybe four hundred feet from
me, I could see an ivory column of torchlight.
Whoever it was, was heading away from me.
I moved quickly across the field, stumbling slightly, and then again as I got to the fence. Just down from me, six feet away, a cow emerged from the darkness as I scaled the barrier, and once I landed on the other side it made a long, low sound like an air-raid siren.
Ahead of me, I saw the torch swing back in my direction.
Whoever was out here was trying to find me – or, at least, the reason why the cow had made a noise – but it was much harder now because, I realized, we were in a different part of the farm: not a field any more, but a series of smaller, open-sided barns, linked together by concrete paths. Inside the barns were the skeletons of old machinery: tractors without wheels, ploughs, a field sprayer, rust-eaten vehicles and equipment whose shapes I couldn’t identify, all of them sitting dormant in a sea of blackness, like the torso of some sleeping giant. As the torch came back in my direction again, trying to seek me out, I moved behind cover and watched the beam continually vanish and reappear as it passed countless openings and doorways.
They couldn’t find me.
There were too many hiding places.
I stayed behind one of the barns, moving along its flank, using the torch like a point on a map. The owner of the torch was moving slowly now, back in the direction they’d come, either drawn towards the noise the cows had been making, or aware that they’d hit a dead end. Beyond the barns, from what I could see, circling them like castle walls, were huge laurel hedges, and I realized that, though we were at the edge of the farm, there was no way out from here.
It was a dead end.
Whoever was here would have to come back.
I stayed where I was. The torch swung left to right, the owner little more than a swipe of black paint, the beam of light leaking a fraction of the way up their arms, across their coat and down to their legs. They were all in black, their coat tight-fitting, the silver zips at the pockets glinting. Shadows moved either side of them; doorways lit up and darkened.
It was definitely a man.
He stopped.
As soon as he did, I instantly sensed something was wrong, the movement so sudden and unexpected that it had to have been deliberate. And then – out of the very corner of my eye – I saw another blink of light. I turned, looking along the barn, into the dark. From here, there was no way I should have been able to see the cottage I was staying in, not only because it was too far away, but because I’d left all the lights off.
Except all the lights were on now.
Someone was inside the house.
This whole thing was a trap.
34
I had a second to register that the man was wearing something on his head – was it a beanie? – and then he killed the light.
Darkness.
Absolute darkness.
He’d wanted me to follow him.
Which meant he’d led me out here on purpose.
I stood there, sealed in by the night, my bones throbbing with every heartbeat. I didn’t try to walk, to run, to hide, wary of making a noise; instead, I took a fractional shift to my right and looked in the direction of the cottage again. Its windows were minuscule squares of yellow, perforations in an infinite wall of black. I couldn’t see anything inside. From here, I couldn’t even see a hint of the nearest town any more, or the glow from the main road.
It felt like I was adrift on an ocean.
And then I heard a sound.
It seemed so out of place among these fields and barns, alongside the dying hulks of old machinery, that I didn’t identify it for a moment. But then there was a follow-up sound, a smaller, almost identical noise – electronic, like equipment was being turned on – and I remembered seeing a beanie on the man’s head.
Except it hadn’t been a beanie, I realized that now.
It had been a set of night-vision goggles.
I stayed where I was – the panic like a fire – trying to come up with something: a plan, a move, a way out. He would be able to see me, but I wouldn’t be able to see him. I had no idea if this was all purely a distraction – a ploy to keep me out here while someone went through my things at the cottage – or if he was planning something much worse.
I listened, trying to push the sound of my heartbeat into the background, and thought I could hear movement – perhaps the scattering of stones underfoot – on the opposite side of the barn. Moving parallel to the wall, I retreated to the next doorway along. In the darkness, I thought I could make out a tractor, or maybe a plough, a tiny dusting of light falling against one of the wheel arches, and then the clouds thinned, the moon making its escape, and suddenly everything had a deep, lead-grey outline.
I started to move, making use of the fact that I could see, following the concrete path I’d come in on. At the corner of the building, I stopped again and peered around its edge.
No one was there.
There was ten feet of space between me and the next barn, so I bridged it quickly, passing the old corpse of a harrow and then a pile of tools, lying on the ground, discarded. I stopped again, reached down to grab a shovel, and then the light altered.
The clouds thickened; the moon vanished.
Black.
I listened for any approach, any sign he was close to me or using the sudden switch in light to his advantage. When nothing came back but more silence, I slowly inched the shovel out from the pile.
But I never got the chance to use it.
There was the scuff of a sole against the uneven concrete path and then a fist crunched into the side of my head, releasing my grip on the shovel instantly. I stumbled sideways, my cheek on fire, my ears ringing, and then I was struck again, an attack from the darkness I couldn’t see and couldn’t defend. I staggered off the path, clattering against a rake. It clanged as it fell and hit the concrete, and then I lost my footing and landed hard on the grass. When I looked up, hands in front of me for protection – bracing myself for more – no one was even there: it was just a swathe of black, no shape to it at all.
Fast footsteps.
I dragged myself up on to all fours, turning on my hands and knees, following the sound of him. He was heading back in the direction of the cottage. I heard his feet pounding against concrete, and then the dull thump of the grass.
Clambering to my feet, I switched on the penlight and used it to guide myself out of the maze of barns. I could smell sweat on myself, dirt, manure, could feel blood running from my hairline, but I kept going, ignoring it all, focused entirely on the cottage: all the lights were still on inside and, as I got closer, I could see the front door was open.
Were they still in there?
I hit the final fence, climbed over it and then switched off the penlight.
Approaching slowly, I moved on to the porch and stopped in the doorway, leaning in so that I could see most of the living room. None of the furniture had been moved. To anyone else, it probably looked like nothing had changed at all.
Except it had.
My laptop was gone: I’d left it charging, but all that remained now was the cable, plugged into the wall and snaking across the floorboards. My phone was missing. My notebook was still on the table, open to a page halfway in, but I knew straight away that it wasn’t untouched: inside, along the gutter of the book, pages had been torn out, and when I picked it up and started going through it, I could see that the only pages that remained were the ones on which I’d made notes in shorthand, or in a form that only I understood.
I looked across the room.
It got worse.
Everything on the wall had been torn down. Photographs, cuttings, paperwork, theories – it was all either scattered on the floor, ripped into pieces that I could never put back together, or gone entirely.
‘Stop looking into Black Gale.’
I turned, almost dropping the notebook, startled by the voice, the pages of the investigation like confetti under my feet.
A man was s
tanding in the doorway of the kitchen.
He was holding a shotgun.
Monster
1985
Los Angeles | Thursday 1 August
They met in a coffee shop on Broadway. Downtown was busy, the sun baking the city’s streets again, Jo watching from one of the booths at the back as a fight broke out on the sidewalk opposite, two bums pushing each other as their shopping carts blocked a lane of traffic.
Larry O’Hara turned up shortly after.
Jo had already gone ahead and got herself a coffee and was picking at some eggs. She’d missed breakfast with Ira to get here for 10 a.m. O’Hara slid in at the booth without even saying a hello.
‘Morning, Jo,’ she said to him.
He rolled his eyes.
‘I’ll skip the pleasantries if that’s all right.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she responded, and watched as he started going through a bag he’d brought with him. O’Hara was in his late thirties but looked like he’d done a ton more miles, the bags under his eyes like permanent scars, his hair already gone in its entirety. He slid on a pair of reading glasses and brought out a personal stereo.
