The Family

by P. R. Black

  ‘Hey. There you are,’ he said. ‘Nice to see a pretty face, for once!’

  She smiled. ‘Touché. Your mask has slipped, Rupert.’

  ‘Oh!’ His hand flew to his mouth. Then he grinned. ‘I forgot. I’m meant to be in disguise. Ah, never mind. You’ll need to be some kind of tech Jedi to crack this encryption.’

  ‘What if I’m recording you?’

  ‘You’re not recording me.’ He waggled a finger. ‘I’d know if you were.’

  ‘I’ve got a train to catch; let’s hear it.’

  ‘I found Fabrice – it turns out there was a computer record of him kept at one school… the head of computing there was very keen on electronic records. He was still there when Windows appeared; he transferred every single file. I had to reinstall old versions of Word, but I got there in the end. Apparently a girl there made contact with the mysterious Fabrice through the inter-schools’ magazine. Does the name Clara Morgan mean anything to you?’

  She paused. Her chin quivered before she spoke. This was absurd, that she could be so close to tears, at the mere mention of the name. She swallowed hard then said, ‘Yes. She’s one of the murder victims in France, isn’t she? Twenty years ago?’

  ‘Yes. The ritual thing you wanted me to check out with the police. Direct hit, right?

  Becky scratched at her neck and nodded.

  ‘Anyway, this Clara got in contact with Fabrice. There’s a postal address connected to the PO box for the student exchange service. I had a quick look at census data and local councils; there’s no Fabrice listed there, at the time, or now.’

  Becky leaned forward. ‘What was that address?’

  He gave it to her; she wrote it down, longhand, in the hotel’s headed notepaper.

  ‘The other thing was, the house hasn’t changed hands in, like, forever… It’s a family home, former farmhouse kind of thing. Same family passes it on, generation to generation.’

  ‘Who lives there now?’

  ‘You want a name?’

  ‘Yes. Come on, man!’

  He told her. She leaned back and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  ‘What’s the matter? You know the dude?’

  ‘Not exactly. I expected this. Or I suspected it, anyway. He’s the man I’m going to speak to next.’

  ‘You okay? You don’t look okay.’ Rupert bit his lip. ‘This guy giving you trouble?’

  ‘No. Nothing like it. I was just hoping it would be someone else.’

  *

  It was a chocolate-box village that might have been somewhere slow-paced in England. A place where lorries wouldn’t fit on the roads. There were one or two thatched roofs and white walls on the older periphery of the town where, so the guidebook said, some Roman settlements remained. But most of the houses were toasty red brick, set among cobbled lanes. An old slate-grey church stuck right in the centre had survived the war, although the saints and angels lining its ancient corners and stretching out their arms in blessing or welcome had lost their heads. This would have been thanks to hammer and chisel rather than the guillotine, but probably happened round about the time Madame carried out her bloody work.

  The day was clouded over but not cold, with a hint of summer in the air. Snowdrops curtseyed demurely beneath the shade of trees; greedy starlings hopped along the top of the higher walls. A few tourists roamed here and there, grinning impalements on the end of selfie sticks near the entrance of a walled garden. Water tinkled somewhere, but Becky couldn’t be sure which garden hid the feature.

  She waited on a bench on some flat parkland, near a play area where a boy terrorised his younger brother, pushing him ever higher on the swings. Their mother sat with her head bent low into a paperback book, oblivious to the screams.

  Sometimes, in the quieter moments, the sadness returned to haunt Becky. It was here that she felt the echoes of things which could not be, and had never been – scenes of families out in the park – even when siblings bickered, or parents grew tetchy. It was a subtle blow, but a telling one.

  Becky fixed the pink carnation in her lapel and waited.

  She kept her eye on the dog-walkers who appeared on a playing field throughout the afternoon. If she were in his shoes, she would take her time to stake the place out, and dog-walking was a decent cover story if you wanted to do that. One woman walked past with two Cairn terriers; a younger woman struggled to contain an immense Irish setter; later, a tall man was seemingly borne aloft on a billowing cloud of small yappy dogs – clearly a walking service of some kind – with admirable cool.

  She wondered how she should play it when she finally met him. Friendliness? Cool reserve? Cold professionalism? She felt none of these things. Becky tried to focus on her breathing, to calm her heart, and to dab the moisture that prickled her palms.

  She spotted the man she had come to see from a long way off. By the colouring and its wiry frame, she made out the details of his dog first – a farmer’s mutt, an English sheepdog. She took care to keep her chin tilted upwards and her shoulders back as he approached, and kept her breathing slow, deep and steady; in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  She wondered if sheepdogs were vicious. Should he turn tail on her, she fully intended to keep step with him.

  Becky shuddered as the face grew more distinct. It was him. The pink carnation pinned to his coat confirmed it.

  As he grew closer, Becky realised that he had barely changed; his close-shaved face suited a few more lines, and his fine head of longish wind-whipped hair was mostly dark, though spiked with the white cat’s whisker spines. The mullet had long gone, naturally, but he still had the look of a rock star, and a French one, at that. Becky didn’t feel nearly as nauseous as she’d imagined she would. Perhaps that would come later, when they spoke.

  He squinted, rather than frowned, as he approached. The dog strained at the leash once or twice, but came to heel with a single command. Perhaps it was a descendant of the dog she remembered in the woods.

  His thin, black eyebrows arched as he approached. He was slightly shorter than she remembered. If he’d played rugby he’d have been a fly half; certainly his ears hadn’t negotiated too many scrums, but he was still in good shape. He had a longish nose but thin cheeks and high, well-defined cheekbones. He might have made a good Musketeer.

  He checked himself; possibly he recognised her at some level, but didn’t put it together immediately. ‘Hello,’ he said, diffidently. ‘Are you Monique?’

  ‘I am,’ Becky said, standing. She held out her hand, and he switched the dog lead to his left hand in order to shake it.

  ‘I’m Roger,’ he said. Becky always had loved the French pronunciation, the trailing consonants soft and tactile. ‘I know this sounds like a corny thing to say, but… have we met before?’

  ‘We have. It was a long time ago, though. A good distance away from this place. Near your house.’

  She studied his reaction closely. The slight tug at one corner of the mouth. The startled look. Then the wide oases of realisation spreading in his eyes. ‘You sound as if you are from England.’

  ‘I am. And I know your name isn’t Roger. It isn’t Fabrice, either. Is it, Leif?’

  He opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He turned sharply and stalked away. The dog yelped, astonished, as he dragged it alongside.

  Becky caught up with him in two or three long strides. The dog tried to sniff her, but its owner yanked the lead savagely, and growled a command either too low or too guttural to be understood on a human level.

  ‘It’s all right, Leif. You’re not in any kind of trouble.’

  ‘I do not want to talk to you. Why are you here?’

  ‘I have to speak to you about what happened.’

  ‘I have nothing more to say about that, to anyone. Do you understand? I had to speak to the police again two weeks ago. Again. I cannot remember one single detail I haven’t already described, over and over again. I cannot help you.’

  Leif would not look at her,
drawing his chin down towards his chest, as if he was bent into heavy rain.

  Becky swallowed an angry response and softened her tone. ‘I’m sorry I had to contact you the way I did, it wasn’t a nice thing to do. But if I’d gone to your house you might have just shut the door on me. I have to speak to you. It’s important. Leif, if you have any understanding of the situation, please stop, and at least talk to me for two minutes. Please.’ Her French wasn’t used to being harried in such a way; usually Becky had the luxury of time taken to construct the phrases. Perhaps something in the desperate delivery made him stop.

  His eyes were bloodshot. She resisted an urge to put a hand on his arm.

  ‘I will give you two minutes. Becky.’

  15

  Then

  Leif took up the stick and examined it for weight and heft. He pulled out stray twigs and stripped off sharp edges along the bark. Finally, he stared along its tenderised length, then made as if to throw it.

  By his side, Petra waited, sat on her haunches, patient and composed.

  He frowned at her, then grinned. His hair and eyebrows were wild, but his face was too open and handsome to be intimidating. The boy resembled a matinee idol trying to play the tough guy.

  ‘You know me too well, old girl. No suspense? No drama?’

  Petra licked her chops and panted. It was as close to a shrug as an animal could get, Leif supposed.

  ‘Go on then – show me what you can do!’

  He hurled the stick as far as it would go. It sailed overhead before crashing into the line of trees, where the path began. Birds shot out of the uppermost branches, startled into shrieking motion. Petra shot off after it, barking loudly.

  Leif checked his watch. He was far too early, but it paid to be cautious. He believed in preparation.

  It was a fine day today – still chilly at first light, but otherwise there were signs that summer was nearby. Leif had the luxury of a few days off from college, and chose, as ever, to spend it in the valley with his dog. La Grange aux la Croix was alive, and with its prime yet to come. In the morning, in the little bedroom opposite the oak tree, he woke each day with the skylarks’ clamouring. Petra – not as enthused over early starts as she once was – grunted as he threw back the bedclothes, but would still pad over the scrubbed floorboards to join him by the window, in anticipation of a walk. Leif would gaze at the early morning skies, elbows resting on the windowsill, the same way he had as a boy. A lonely child grown into a shy young man, Leif loved the emptiness and stillness of the house at these times. Then, as now, his father, who had long given up on him, was out working on the farmland he had retained. Most of the livestock had long been sold off, but the old man could not quite let the lifestyle go, even though his wife’s insurance policies had long afforded him the luxury of retirement.

  The solitude and the mystery of the woodland in the valley was something Leif could never forgo, whatever the time of year. Even if the rain slicked the trees and the wind clutched their branches, Leif felt safe beneath the swaying canopies. The shadows thrown during the brightest parts of the day were places of refuge for him, and the ditches, dells, rotten brown pine needle carpets and thin creeping fingers of the young birches brought a feral thrill to his heart.

  Perhaps I am a predator at heart.

  Although there were gîtes and even a hotel nearby, there were never any people to be seen on this path, unless he should meet his father. Today, Leif followed the familiar pathway, a whitened groove winding its way through the trees.

  Petra returned, expertly manipulating the fetched stick so that its weight was perfectly counterbalanced at each side of her jaws. Leif scratched behind her ears, and one of her back legs twitched with delight. It was a gesture that never failed to please the dog. He had missed her while he was at college – missed everything. Although his father was an old hand with animals, particularly dogs, he was of necessity unsentimental about them. His son was different.

  Leif knew his dog would not live forever. As a boy he had been through the unique, exquisite agony of losing a pet, when Petra’s sister Katrina had to be put down after being hit by a Land Rover. His fear was not simply that Petra would die, but that she would die while he was away from home, and that when he returned, there might not even be a grave to visit.

  ‘You’re a clever one, still,’ he told the dog. When he reached for the stick, she let go of it immediately, with no dissent. ‘You should be out herding sheep somewhere hilly, my dear. You’re quite wasted out here with me.’

  As if revelling in the praise, Petra panted, tongue drooping. Leif took up a strong stance, then braced his shoulders to throw the stick like a javelin. Petra tensed, ready to run. And then something caused both of them to snap their heads up.

  Petra stood up, back tense, and barked. Her ears wavered.

  ‘You heard it too, I bet,’ Leif whispered. ‘That means I’m not imagining it. Easy, girl.’

  He kept hold of the stick, and they moved forward. Leif was given to daydreaming and wandered thoughts, but he was never quite superstitious. Although the dog-eared paperbacks his mother had battened upon contained many horror stories, and he had thrilled to these by torchlight after dark, the woods had never been a place of dark fancies and creeping terrors. They were not haunted, for him. Had god given him the same abilities as the fox or the wolf, he might even have walked through the woods at night, enjoying the play of the moonlight in silvery puddles on the forest floor. He loved the mystery, the jagged outline against the skies, the ancient forces that had led to the forest springing up and flourishing, the unknowable geometry and algebra which governed the course of its life far from the hands of men. But he never allowed that wonderment to turn towards any idea of spirituality. As for more earthly fears hiding among the branches, these rarely entered his mind. Leif knew he was alone out here.

  Today was the day this notion would change. This was the day the woods became haunted.

  ‘It sounded like a scream, didn’t it, girl? It wasn’t a loon or a nasty old crow, was it?’

  The dog’s pinned-back ears told Leif all he needed to know.

  On the way, something snagged his attention. Leif and Petra passed this way most days, when he was home from his studies, and this anomaly in the familiar interplay of bark and foliage seemed as blatant as a scratch across the paintwork of a new car. It was something carved into a tree, something which had caught his eye as surely as if it had been a face.

  It was a face. Or a suggestion of one. It was gouged deep into the bark of an elderly sycamore, its edges oozing sap. There were slashes for eyes, a mouth, and a long, thin face. Something about the image seemed slightly familiar, but it repelled him. Someone had done this with a long, thin blade.

  He glanced at the stick in his hands. Perhaps a blade like that would be able to chop right through this branch.

  Another face popped up on another nearby tree, and another. The same expression, the same baleful features.

  The girl had said there might be a sign – but surely not these grotesque things. The images had been carved into the face of the trees fringing the path, about half a dozen or so, and seemingly at random. They were all fresh – done in the past twenty-four hours.

  So someone had been here. Without Leif knowing. Probably at night.

  Then the scream came again – definitely a scream, there could be no doubt. Petra’s back arched like a cat’s, and she growled.

  He stayed her with a firm hand at her neck. ‘No. Not yet. Easy, Petra. Let’s go and take a look. Be quiet, girl. Take it easy.’

  There was no need for a leash out here; never had been. Petra obeyed, loping along close to Leif’s legs.

  The path gave way to a clearing, and here you could hear, but not see, the brook pattering through a defile in the land. Something in Leif shrank back from this exposure, even though the sun was high and bright, a beautiful May morning. Had he ever been frightened before, in these woods? He had been startled, but never scared. Not the
kind of fear that clutched at your guts, and then your throat. The fear he was experiencing now.

  A fresh scream echoed out through the trees. It was a crazed sound, like jammed machinery on the verge of an insanely dangerous disintegration, something born of panic, not pain.

  ‘It’s a girl, I think,’ he said softly.

  Terribly, terribly slowly, a connection was made, and a light blinked on. In his pocket, still sweetly tinctured with jasmine and rosewater, was the letter, the instructions. Leif was hours early, but there was still a chance, an awful chance—

  Petra barked, four times, her body tense against him. He did not command her to be quiet, this time.

  Someone was coming through the trees, opposite the clearing. It was particularly thick with ramrod fir trees at the verge, a band of dark green running to black on the inside. One of the shadows detached itself from this barrier, and fought its way through a wicked tangle of bark. The figure grew more distinct. Then it fully emerged, tearing across the bright green grass in a flaring oasis of sunlight.

  Only a girl, indeed – but she was wearing… she was wearing nothing, he saw. The dark red splashes covering her body were surely blood. Her face was a mask of it, her hair clotted thick with dried brown clods. Through this hideous mask, a pair of eyes bulged in stark, raw panic. Her hands were outstretched, her legs sodden to the knees with mud and detritus, and she screamed, terrifyingly loud, bearing straight towards him.

  ‘Wait! Wait!’ he cried, hand outstretched, uselessly.

  Petra shrank back, growling.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed, in English. ‘Help! He’s coming!’

  16

  Now

  Edwin Galbraith pulled into his garage, engaged the handbrake, killed the engine, then watched the world close over his head as the garage door retracted. He sat for a while and listened to the car tick, until the muggy heat became unbearable.