He let me inside, and Aggie was naked on the bed and really out of it, drunk or stoned or something, and James was holding her down by the throat, he was holding me by the throat, and when Aggie saw me she tried to sit up, she shouted to get me out of here, to let her go, she shouted at them to stop, begged for them to stop until James swung his fist and punched her so hard in the face that she was knocked out.
When I opened my eyes I was lying on the edge of the bed. A bed that was moving.
My clothes were still on, and no one was touching me.
But. I turned my head.
My sister’s face was level with mine. Her eyes were closed.
“Aggie,” I said, and she opened them.
I took her hand and squeezed as tightly as I could and I was appalled at the hatred Gus must have inside him, the humiliation, the rage. How had I not seen this in him? Except I had, hadn’t I? I’d seen it, and still I’d trusted it would never get this bad because this bad was unfathomable. I thought of all the moments that had led to this and knew there were a thousand that could have shifted just a little and I might have saved us from it. All those moments when I knew what he was, when I recognized the monster and still did nothing, even tonight, when I sat on that couch and I thought to myself that this was a bad situation and I didn’t fight to leave, I didn’t want to make a fucking fuss, and everything inside me was on fire and I would never stop burning. I wanted to kill him and James both, brutally, only I couldn’t stand and fight because they had us both pinned to the bed, and I could feel the trauma they were inflicting on her body, taking turns one after another, and seemingly with an effort to cause harm, an effort to destroy and humiliate. I couldn’t stand and fight because I was made wrong, because I was weak. I couldn’t protect her the way she’d done for me our whole lives. She saved me from this but I couldn’t save her. And as I held her eyes, as I held all of her with all of me, I wasn’t enough against this tide, I couldn’t keep hold, she was leaving me, she was gone.
* * *
I sit under the shower and try to disappear. But there is a little one and she is wriggling inside me and sending me back into the worst thing my skin has known, back into that night, over and over, to that bed as it moved and my unforgivable stillness. These are the memories that live in my body.
When they were gone, James and the rest of the men, Gus sat on the floor with his head in his hands. He didn’t try to help his bleeding wife. I struggled upright, dazed but unharmed, and used my sister’s phone to call an ambulance, and then I did what I could for her but in the end that simply meant stroking her hair the way she loves, over and over, even though I didn’t think she could feel it.
Her body barely survived. And when she woke, she’d gone elsewhere, and she’d taken all the strongest pieces of her, even her voice.
27
We’ve been searching for Number Ten for two weeks when Evan finally walks through the front door of base camp and says, “We spotted her.”
“Hallelujah!” Zoe says.
I’ve been taking to the sky with Fergus to get eyes on Ten. Winter has well and truly set in, unseasonably early, just as everyone knew it would. It is late November, but the world is white. Without her tracking collar Ten’s been invisible to our tech, and days of searching by plane reaped no reward either. By now she’s learned the sound of the plane and knows to stay hidden. So I sent Evan and Niels to track by ground, wanting to be out there myself but knowing my belly has gotten so big I’d be useless. At thirty-six weeks pregnant, little one has made up for lost time and is growing at an alarming pace. She is due in one month, on Christmas Day.
In any case, pregnant or not, it’s hard going out there in such thick snow. Easier to track in it, certainly—the wolves are slower, their prints clearer. But they are wild creatures and we are something tamer. We’ve forgotten how to move through the wilderness as though we belong to it. This is Number Ten’s domain and we trespassers in it. My hope of finding her has been dwindling with each passing day, but when I speak to Bonnie I always tell her we are close, we are getting it done, we just need her to stall the hunters a little longer so we can take care of this ourselves. Even though it makes me sick to my stomach, I have assured her that when we capture Number Ten we will put her down: it will be this, and only this, that will save the rest of the wolves from Red and his friends. The single rogue wolf must be dealt with to protect the species.
“Where?” I ask now.
“At the base of Cairn Gorm mountain.”
“Why didn’t you bring her in?”
“I tried. Missed her. She got away and we couldn’t find her again.”
“Are you kidding me? Why didn’t you follow her tracks?”
“It’s a blizzard up there!” he replies. “There were no tracks!”
My temper eases as I see how tired and cold Evan is. He and Niels have been out there for days. “Sorry,” I say. “You did well to find her at all. Go home and take a shower. Get some sleep.”
As Evan stomps out I tell Zoe to download Evan’s locations so I can take a look at where he spotted Ten. He’s right about it being a long way away. Deep in that wild heart of the Highlands, where I first suspected the wolves would feel called. It’d take days just to ride out that far in adverse weather. I don’t think I can ask Evan to go out again tomorrow, he’s reached his limit, and Niels is shit at tracking even when it’s not in the middle of a blizzard. Plus all our horses are exhausted and Ten could be long gone from that spot by the time anyone gets back up there.
“This is a goddamn nightmare,” Zoe says, watching the hope leach out of me.
“It’s okay. It’ll be okay. I’m going to make some calls, see if I can get some old colleagues out here to help us. We just need more manpower. Ten can’t cross through the mountain range in this weather so my guess is she’ll circle south, back toward her pack. We can cut her off closer to home, where the conditions aren’t as bad and we have more bodies to help.”
I grab my phone and see that I have two missed calls from Duncan, which is weird, but I don’t have time to worry about him right now. I’ve been dealing with Bonnie on the wolf front so anything he has to talk to me about can wait. I get on the phone and organize some of my Denali colleagues to fly out here as quickly as they can. Most have work of their own they can’t leave, but a few are eager to help, saying they’ve been watching the progress of the project on the news for months.
I leave past the stables. We’ve moved Gall here for the winter, not having stables at home to keep her warm. I feed her a couple of apples, then do the same for the other exhausted horses who’ve been traipsing around the country for weeks. I brush each of them down and make sure their hooves are all right, before returning to Gall and stroking her neck. “I wish I could take you home,” I tell her softly. “Aggie’s been missing you.” She presses her nose into my cheek and I close my eyes, breathing in the warm scent of her.
I drive home over icy roads.
Aggie doesn’t respond to my entrance. I assume she’s in bed, where she’s been all day, but instead of trying to convince her to come out for some food I leave her in there; I can’t face her silence tonight. So much for thinking she might have turned a corner. Colm’s attack has sent her spiraling back down the hole, and to be honest I don’t feel entirely free of that same hole.
I’m in the process of taking off my winter layers when there’s a knock just behind me. Bonnie is gray-faced. “Come in,” I tell her, pulling her into the warmth. “Are you okay? What’s happened?”
“I need to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
Her nervous energy is alarming.
“Sit down. Can I get you anything?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
“Is this about Colm?”
“No. We’re keeping a close eye on him, you don’t have to worry.”
I sit in the armchair opposite hers. My sister doesn’t come out from her room. The thought darts quick like a tiny bird:
that’s because she’s not really there. She’s dead.
No, she isn’t. Duncan saw her. He did.
“I had a visit from Red McRae,” Bonnie says.
“Okay.”
“He said you came to see him, and said something that stayed with him.”
I try to think back to that conversation.
“Apparently you thought Duncan was involved in Stuart’s death.”
“What?”
“That night before he went missing. You spent it at Duncan’s.”
“Yeah…”
“You told me you were there the whole night. But I realized I never asked you if Duncan was there the whole night.”
My heart beats hard in the tips of my fingers and toes.
“Was Duncan with you from the time you left the pub to daylight hours of the following morning?”
I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say.
And then, somehow, I do. He told me he didn’t kill Stuart. And as utterly idiotic as it may make me, even after everything Aggie and I have been through, every lesson to the contrary, I think I finally believe him. “Yes,” I reply.
“Oh.” She sighs, and I can see this conversation is costing her a lot. “Then what made you think Duncan had anything to do with it?”
I breathe out. This is what I wanted—to figure out the truth of what happened to Stuart so I could tell someone and shift the blame from the wolves. This was the whole point of what I did, burying him like that. And now that someone is sitting here willing to listen to me, all I can think about is how to lie convincingly. Just as I can’t let the wolves go down for this, neither can I let someone innocent take the blame.
I shake my head. “I was pissed off with him. I’ve been pissed off for a while now. He didn’t tell me he was sleeping with Lainey and I felt like I’d been used or whatever. I was running my mouth with Red. But as much as I’d love to take him down a peg, Duncan was with me in bed all night. That’s all I know. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
She doesn’t say anything for a good long moment. Watching me. It is an unnervingly frank gaze and I think this must be how she gets people to confess to things, to get out from under that gaze. I hold firm.
Bonnie gets to her feet. “Okay, thanks, Inti. I just wanted to follow up about it.”
“Sure, thank you.”
Once Bonnie is gone I can’t think what to do. She didn’t believe me, of that I am sure. Her cop nose has caught a scent and she’s going to follow it, whether she has my information or not.
I pull on my coat and hat and scarf. “Aggie, I’ll be back soon,” I call as I head out. Maybe this is why he was phoning me today; I feel bad now for not returning the call when I had service. I have to at least let him know I’ve made him a suspect again. Warn him that Bonnie might be coming after him.
Rather than walking through the cold on aching feet, I drive the short way to Duncan’s cottage. The lights are on and his car is here. But when I knock there’s no answer. I knock a few more times and then find the door unlocked. Inside I call his name, expecting Fingal to come bounding.
Only he doesn’t, there’s no one here.
Which is strange.
The woodstove is crackling as though it has recently been stoked, and that’s not something Duncan would do right before he was about to go out, he wouldn’t leave the flue open like that, it could burn the house down. His wallet and keys are sitting on the coffee table. His car outside. I stand in his living room and try to work out where he is, how it could be that he’s not standing next to me. Did he take the dog for a walk? Leaving everything as it was?
I walk outside and stand in the dark. “Duncan?” I shout.
Silence.
And then a whimper.
Something in me goes cold.
I draw my phone from my pocket and switch on its torch. Then I walk, slowly, into the dark. The snow before me is white, untouched, and then I see it disturbed by footprints, and then again by streaks of red.
The color of cherries and the heads of cock goldfinches. And of arterial blood.
I see Fingal first. His stomach open. His lungs moving rapidly because by some miracle he is still alive. His eyes are open and gazing up at me as I move past him, aching, wanting to stop but compelled by the other body, the larger human body that lies a few feet away.
Duncan, too.
His throat is open. All of his blood seems to have come free, onto the snow. All of mine.
I clutch at my throat to hold it closed, and I can’t look, but I have to. I will look, and I will just have to feel whatever I feel because that will not be the last time I look at him.
I sink, shaking, to my knees. Reach for his face. And look. He opens his eyes and it shocks me so much that I cry out.
No sound comes from Duncan’s mouth but I have spent a lifetime understanding silent languages. In his eyes are words of fear and pleading and love.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You’re okay,” and what an absurd thing to tell someone who is spilling like this but it doesn’t matter, I am moving without thought to press his throat closed, to press snow into the wound and pack it tight. It hurts and I can hardly breathe but I will not let my condition be the master of me, not here.
My dog, his eyes say.
“Fingal’s all right,” I tell him. “He’s alive.”
Duncan’s grip on me is so strong. He is shaking me.
“I understand,” I tell him. “I won’t leave him here.” Because he must have tried to save Duncan.
My hands are slippery with his blood, he is all over me, and the smell, it’s dizzying. I remember to phone an ambulance but there’s no reception, I can’t get a signal yet again, the remoteness of this place, the isolation of it will be the death of us all.
“I’m getting you to a hospital, Duncan.”
My dog, his eyes say.
“I won’t leave him. Can you stand?” Of course he can’t fucking stand, his throat’s open. “I’ll have to drag you, okay?” I put my slippery hands under his armpits and grab hold as best I can, then I start dragging his weight back along the snow. It’s very difficult, far more so than I thought it would be. It would be difficult even were I not eight months pregnant but right now my muscles shriek in refusal. This is too much, too impossible. And not. It’s just getting a person to safety. I can do that. Fingal is here, we are passing him, and I say, “Don’t look, Duncan, don’t look,” but he does, of course he does, and something in him breaks as he sees his dog lying there, gasping for breath. I say, “He’s still alive,” but it’s cold comfort because we both know nothing survives having its guts torn open by a wolf. Duncan cries the silent pain of grief but I keep dragging, I have to keep dragging. He is so heavy, my hands so slippery, I drop him constantly but I pick him back up each time and drag him on, I will drag him forever if I have to because in each staggering step I know a thing with all my soul, that I have been wrong, that he didn’t kill Stuart and also that it doesn’t matter either way because there is a greater knowing within me, and that is the depth and breadth of how I love him.
I look down at his face and see that his eyes are closed, he’s out. A sob leaves me but when I search his wrist for a pulse I find the faint memory of one. He’s still breathing somehow, his heart still beating. We reach the car. I open the back door. Climb in, turn around, awkward as a whale on land, and reach down for him. My back, as I pull him up and onto the seat, god it hurts. I’ve bitten my tongue and can taste iron. There are spots in front of my eyes, and his throat as mine, but there is a sort of numbness setting in now, that sensation fatigue that switches me off, and finally he’s in the car, I’ve managed it.
I’m about to hop in the front when—
My dog, said his eyes.
I turn back for Fingal. I won’t leave him. Not when he fought to save Duncan’s life, when he has died in the trying and isn’t that the way of animals, to break your heart with their courage, with their love. I scoop him up and hold him to
my chest. He’s lighter than I thought he’d be. A slight creature under all his hair. His eyes are still open and I look at him as I hurry back to the car. “Good boy,” I say, over and over, “darling boy,” as he slips away.
I place him gently on the front seat. His eyes are closed now. The panted breaths ceased.
I speed along the black road for town. I drive way too fast but not as fast as the car will go, knowing the roads are winding and perilous at night, knowing I won’t save Duncan’s life if I crash this car.
At the hospital entrance I yell for help, and it comes, carrying Duncan onto a stretcher and wheeling him away to where I can’t see him anymore. I sink onto a plastic chair in the waiting room until a nurse arrives and leads me through the doors, and I think she’s taking me to Duncan but she sits me on the end of a bed and checks my pulse and also listens to the heartbeat of the baby. A doctor comes soon and does an ultrasound, and when I explain that I haven’t been to a doctor before, not during my pregnancy, he is shocked and starts to say all kinds of things about how irresponsible I’ve been and how many things could have gone wrong, but a part of me switches off and I can no longer hear him. I stare at the ceiling and think about the wolf.
It just wasn’t making sense—who killed Stuart. If Lainey didn’t do it, if I didn’t and Duncan didn’t, then who did? Who could have?
The answer has been here all along, the entire town saw the answer but I refused to. I was too stubborn, too willfully blind, keener to accuse the man I love than to accuse the animals I brought here. Even knowing, as I did, that there was one wolf among them who did not fear humans, one wolf more aggressive than the rest, one wolf unwilling to be caged. And now Duncan has paid for my denial.
* * *
I’m told he’s gone into surgery. That he will be in there a long time, and that it will be a miracle if he lives out the night.
* * *
First I go to the base camp to look through the old data. We lost Number Ten for a good while after she fled the pen. She ran north. Toward us. We knew that much, so then why didn’t it occur to me to check? Because I didn’t want to see it.
Once There Were Wolves Page 24
