“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Not good to spend all your time with animals, and I say that from experience. I go to a thing on Thursday evenings, in the wool shop. You come along.”
“The wool shop? What kind of thing?”
“A knitting circle.”
I look up at him. “You’re in a knitting circle?”
“Too right I am. It’s relaxing. You come along, all right? We don’t bite.”
“Neither do the animals. Mostly.”
He eyes me as I pour the water into the cups. “Why are you here, wolf girl?”
“I’m a woman,” I tell him.
Douglas’s face creases into a smile. “Beg your pardon. Wolf woman.”
I hand him his mug and lean against the kitchen counter. “I don’t really know, Douglas. I don’t actually know.”
“You’re doing a good thing.”
My mouth opens in surprise. “You think so?”
Douglas nods.
“Aren’t you worried about your sheep? Everyone else is.”
“The time for sheep is over,” he says simply, and sips his tea.
* * *
When Red returns he takes me into a small, messy office and sits me down before his desk as though I am in trouble with the principal. “What do you want?”
I sit back in my chair. “I got a warmer welcome from your dad.”
“He’s got dementia.”
I laugh as I rub my tired eyes. “Right. Look, it’s nothing to do with the wolves or your sheep or anything.”
“What then. I’ve got animals to drench.”
“That night outside the pub, before Stuart went missing.”
His eyebrows arch and he sits back, mirroring me. Relaxed now that he senses he has the upper hand.
“I went inside. Left Duncan out there with you. And when he came in he was all beat up.”
“What’s your question?”
“What happened?”
Red stares at me. Now that I’ve seen his dad’s, his mustache isn’t quite so impressive. “Why are you interested?” Red asks me.
“I’m trying to piece together a timeline.”
He grins. “Interning for the police department, are we?”
I don’t reply.
“You’ve been causing a lot of trouble for me, Miss Flynn.”
“How’s that?”
“Do you know how much it costs to build fences?”
“No, I do not.”
“Do you know what it costs a person to stay up all night guarding their flock?”
“The cost of the job, I’d imagine. And I’m sorry we’ve made that cost higher, I truly am, but what are you getting at, Red?”
“Why exactly would I help you with anything?”
“Because you’re a good man who cares about what happened to his friend.” I have to hope this is true. There’s always the possibility that Red’s desire to get rid of the wolves makes him a suspect in this, but I don’t know if I can stomach the thought of a man murdering his friend in order to frame the creatures he wants to hunt.
“What will you do for me?” Red asks.
My eyes narrow. “What do you want?”
“Drop the charges for the wolf I killed.”
The charges that were never getting laid because Duncan is a coward? I almost smile. Clearly Duncan never informed Red he’d decided to let the kill go. I spend a few seconds pretending to weigh it up, then nod. “Fine.”
“Stu was wound tight by what you said to him. He wanted a bit of a scuffle and he picked the wrong man for it. There was bad blood already between him and MacTavish. They were friends once, which is probably why things had gone so sour. It didn’t take much to set either of them off. Mac got him in hand and then he beat Stu, he beat that man black and blue and it was old demons in him that did that.”
I am breathless. “Had they fought before like that?”
“Not since they were kids, I guess.”
“Then why that night?”
“I told you—you stirred Stu up, Inti. Threw a light on something he’d been trying hard to keep buried. That’s if we’re to believe what you accused him of, anyway. He wanted to fight someone and Duncan was there, and Duncan had some built-up grudges of his own.”
I process this. “So then what happened?” I ask. Expecting, maybe, the hospital.
But Red says, “Took him off to the lockup for the night.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Do you know for sure he took him to the station?”
“Where else would he have taken him?”
“And that’s the last time you saw Stuart?”
Red nods.
I stand to go. “Thanks, then.”
“Miss Flynn. I don’t have much love left for the chief, not after witnessing his temper. But MacTavish is not a man you want to go up against. And frankly? You trying to throw attention anywhere but your own backyard is pathetic, and it’s dangerous. We all know what happened to Stuart. You won’t win this fight.”
“You think this is a fight?” I smile as I head for the door. “When I start fighting, Red, you’ll know.”
* * *
I park in front of the police station, properly queasy now. I lower the window and let the air cool the sweat on my hot face. One would imagine that if Duncan had marched a bloodied Stuart here that night then he would have been held in a cell until morning, presumably with some record of it, and let free in daylight. Which would mean he couldn’t have been in the forest getting killed in the middle of the night. Which seems to imply Duncan took Stuart somewhere else. And then came back to the pub to see me. And then disappeared again, sometime around 2:30 A.M. My timeline isn’t getting much clearer.
The motive, though.
I understand full well why Duncan would kill Stuart Burns. The thing I can’t reconcile is why he would do it and then just leave the man’s body to be discovered.
The only motive for doing that that makes sense to me is to make it look like a wolf kill.
Perhaps Duncan never meant to kill Stuart, but the man died of wounds from their fight, and the chief saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Save himself from a homicide charge and create a legal reason to get rid of the wolves, easing the tension among his people and setting it all back to normal.
He must be wondering who hid the body.
Or not. It’s starting to seem obvious.
* * *
I drive out to the Burns farm. I have avoided coming here since my run-in with Lainey and her brothers, it very clear how little she wants to see me. But I’m worried about her. I want to see if she’s okay. If, and only if, she’s open to talking about that night, then maybe she can shed some light on what happened outside the pub, and whether or not Duncan took her husband to the police station. But my first priority is bringing her the loaf of bread and pot of soup Aggie has made, and a bottle of wine.
I juggle my bounty in order to knock on the door. Her light is on and I see a flash of her face in a window before the curtains are pulled shut. She doesn’t answer.
Perhaps she blames me for the conflict that night, the fight that led to his disappearance. Perhaps she blames me for getting involved at all. Frankly, I too am beginning to think I should have stayed right the hell away. I place the food and drink on her doorstep and leave her in peace.
* * *
“Inti Flynn. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to invite you out to the hide this afternoon.”
Duncan doesn’t answer for a long moment. I listen to his breathing down the line. “Why’s that then?”
“It’s rare to get a hide set up with such good visibility of a pack’s den site. We can watch them quite easily.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“Because few people in this world get to watch wolves in the wild. It’s a very special thing. I’m trying to change your mind about them, Duncan.”
I can
hear him deliberating. “What time then?”
* * *
The hide is made of timber and is only large enough for two to three people to sit inside. It’s low to the ground, has a grass roof to blend in more easily with its surrounds, and a narrow viewing window from which to see 360 degrees of undulating brown hills that make up part of the southeastern slopes of the Cairngorms mountain range.
It is truly remote out here. The landscape is enormous in a way I can’t make sense of. I feel a million miles from humanity, and so tiny.
I haven’t been to base camp in days because from here, with binoculars, I can watch the Glenshee Pack denning for the birth of their new litter. The mother, Number Eight, has disappeared into the crevice she and her mate dug out, and she hasn’t come out for a solid six days. Which I think essentially means she’s had her pups in there, and will soon emerge. The other four wolves, including Number Ten, the sister returned from her long journey, have remained close. I spend the morning watching two of them play, one with a long white swan feather, which brings her no end of joy, waving it between her teeth and batting at it with her paws, while the other—the male alpha—dances with the shadows of clouds for hours on end. Old male Number Fourteen, our oldest wolf, watches them serenely, while vigilant Number Ten stalks the riverbank, up and down, mesmerized by something in the water. The more I watch them, the more I understand that I will never know what happens inside a wolf’s mind, I won’t even come close. I smile at the foolish teenager in me who thought she could discover their secrets.
The door bangs open and I about jump out of my skin. “Jesus, Duncan.”
He is hunched over to fit into the little hide, looking completely unsure what he’s doing here.
I hope he sees the invitation as a peace offering instead of what it really is: a tactic.
He shuffles awkwardly in so he can close the door. Sits as far from me as he can. As I pass him the second set of binoculars and point him in the right direction, I watch the tiny expressions on his face, the movement of his eyes, the twitch of his lips. I watch how his hands move, how he inhabits a space. Trying to learn him, learn his tics and tells the way the wolves learn their prey. I will have the truth of that night, one way or another. If it takes drawing a little closer then that’s what I’ll do.
“This is the Glenshee Pack,” I say. “They’re waiting for the breeding female to have her pups.”
He watches them quietly, moving his sightline from wolf to wolf. “Only four?”
“And the mother in the den.”
“Which is the alpha?”
“The breeding male is Number Seven, on the far left.”
“What’s he doing?”
I lift my binoculars to see Seven chomping on a stick and wrestling it between his paws. I shrug. “Playing.”
Duncan frowns. “They don’t look so scary.” He glances sideways at me. “But then neither do you.”
I don’t know what to say to that. With the two of us wedged into the small space it feels hot and airless. “Who ever told you I was scary?”
“I didn’t need to be told.”
I am meant to be getting close to him and here I am getting annoyed. “Rich, coming from you.” I brush the hair off my sweaty face. “I knew you couldn’t be as nice as you seemed. No one ever is.”
“What happened to you?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say, pissed off and returning fire. “What happened to your leg?”
I don’t expect him to answer, but he says, “My father took to it with a cricket bat. Shattered my femur. Mam didn’t want to anger him further by taking me to a hospital so she bandaged me up as best she could, and it healed very badly.”
My chest deflates. Every ember of anger dies instantly and there are tears in my throat and I want to reach for him, must hold myself very still.
“How old were you?” I ask as evenly as I’m able.
He shrugs. “Dunno. Thirteen?”
It starts to rain, as the clouds have been warning me all day. “This weather’s relentless,” I mumble, distressed and unsure how to be, what to say. I was wrong again about him.
“‘Summer on the high plateau,’” Duncan recites, “‘can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge.’”
“What kind of cop knows poetry, huh?” I say, swatting a midge away from my face—even with the door closed the little bastards find a way in. I think I am relieved to be taken elsewhere, away from the cricket bat and broken bones, and hate myself for this cowardice.
“Many kinds, I’d guess.”
I shake my head. “None of the ones I know.”
“Let me guess—your dad a cop?”
“My mum. And not the kind who knows poetry.”
“Oh yeah? What kind is she then?”
“The kind who suspects something and follows it through instead of sitting outside in a car all night waiting for bad shit to happen inside.”
There is silence at that.
And I realize it might be this, most of all, that I can’t forgive: his inaction.
“She tell you much about her work?” Duncan asks.
I shrug.
“’Cause any half-decent detective knows you don’t go after the man unless you can keep him locked up, unless you’ve got him iron tight, or else he goes straight home and hurts his wife a thousand times worse than he would have. Sometimes he kills her.”
I look at Duncan. “Is that what happened to your parents?”
He turns back to the wolves. Nods.
“And you tried to protect her.”
“No,” Duncan says. “I didn’t. Not that day. On that day I watched him beat her to death and I just sat there, still as a corpse.”
Within me, a painful recognition.
Duncan says, “I killed my father but it wasn’t in self-defense, or defense of another, like they said. There was no one to defend. I guess you ought to know that.”
“Then what was it?”
His jaw twitches. “Revenge. Hatred. She was dead already when I took that same cricket bat and shattered his skull.”
I swallow, my cheeks on fire. The words tumble from me without my permission. “My sister was brutalized by her husband.”
Duncan’s head whips around to me. “What?”
“My twin.”
He lets the air from his lungs. “I’m sorry,” he says, a hitch in his voice. “I’m so fucking sorry. Forgive me.”
A strangled laugh leaves me. “Why? You didn’t do it.” I lift a trembling hand to my eyes, fingers pressing my eyelids closed. I am starting to feel nauseous again. “It turned me into something I hadn’t been,” I admit. “Something I’d never imagined I could be. I wanted to kill him. I wanted it so badly. I was feral. Duncan, I—you have no idea how gentle I used to be. I believed there was magic in the space between our bodies, and now I’m just this … hard, angry thing.”
“You’re gentle still,” he says. “You pretend not to be but I see it in everything you do.”
I am crying after all.
My hand goes to my tummy, where the small bump is forming. I must force it away from there or be undone.
In another life, maybe.
Duncan’s palm rests on my back, large and warm, and this is what I should have been able to do for him.
“Where’s your sister now?”
I wipe my eyes. “At home.”
“In Blue Cottage?” He frowns, confused. “I didn’t know you had anyone living there with you.”
“She doesn’t leave. Except in her mind.” I shift, struggling with the words. “I didn’t know … that that could happen. To a person. That they could just be snuffed out. That we have the power to undo each other.”
“Are you getting her help?”
“I tried. I took her to a facility where she could get proper care, you know, therapy and medication and all of that. But she hated it so much. She just wants quiet. And to be alone. It’s why I brought her out here. I thought it might be quiet enoug
h to heal her.”
There is a long silence and then he asks, “Were you there? When it happened?”
My eyes search for the wolves through the curtain of rain, but they’ve disappeared. “No,” I reply.
* * *
A while later, rain still heavy.
“Come on,” I say. “I promised you wolf watching and this lot won’t give us much more.”
“So…?”
“So we’ll find another pack, if you’re up for it.”
We head out into the sideways-lashing rain, lifting our raincoat hoods. It’s a fair hike down the side of the mountain, and I can see in the distance where he’s parked his truck. “My car’s further along,” I tell him as we approach. “Follow me.”
I lead him back toward home then cut north to Abernethy Forest. By the time we park at the edge it’s stopped raining, and Fingal leaps from the truck’s cabin to lick my hands excitedly. Hello, you. “Will he be able to stay quiet or should we leave him?” I ask.
“He knows to be silent out here. Will his scent disturb them?”
“No more than ours.”
The three of us set off, soon enveloped by trees. Moss carpets the ground in lime. There are ferns as high as my shoulders. I touch rough trunks and smooth boughs, run my fingers through soft foliage, over prickly needles. My feet sink a little in the sodden ground. Through the canopy is a gray sky, its light turning the edges of everything crisper, illuminating colors from within. It’s cold, still, even in summer. Without the sun to warm us it feels colder. The rain has left its scent behind, a scent like no other, and glittering droplets on the end of every leaf. We move as quickly as Duncan can, while Fingal bounds joyously ahead, chasing rabbits.
“Does he catch any?” I ask.
“Naw,” says Duncan. “Wouldn’t know what to do if he did.”
We emerge through the birch trees to the edge of a silver loch, the dog waiting patiently for us at its edge. We stop to take in the lovely sight, and as we stare quietly at the water a large brown and white bird of prey swoops down and catches something wriggling and scaly in its talons. It flounders within the splashing water and must work hard to lift the heavy trout back up into the air, its magnificent striped wings so powerful even with the extra load.
Once There Were Wolves Page 18
