Where the missing gather, p.21
Where the Missing Gather, page 21
She holds her sleeve over her mouth so she can breathe, backs out of the alley and drags the sheets with her, the biggest ones, and the bits she’s got clutched in her hand. Why would anyone cut up their sheets to dispose of them? Why would anyone cut holes in them, like eyeholes? She drops the sheet she’d been pulling and holds the smaller piece between both hands. They’re not like eyeholes, they are eyeholes. It might have been a sheet once, but it’s been cut and shaped into some kind of mask. Stitched, by hand. There are holes for the eyes but nothing for the nose, the mouth – it would cover the whole head and face, the breath of whoever wore it left to cling to their skin.
There was something else she’d thrown off to the side. A dressing gown. Was it? Her neck prickles.
She glances over her shoulder – that feeling of someone watching, something moving but there’s no one here, no one at all – then runs back to the alleyway and pulls it out. It is a dressing gown, and it’s exactly like the one Walt Mackie wears. It could be anyone’s, of course, except that when she turns it inside out, his name and address have been written on a piece of fabric and stitched into the lining. She folds up the mask and stuffs it into her pocket, grabs everything else and throws it back into the pile where she found it, then heads along Main Street out of the village, north, following the single-track road that leads to the Burrowhead care home.
CONFESSION AT QUARTER TO THREE
Georgie stares at him longer than she should. She was planning to bring him in herself; she wasn’t anticipating he’d turn up like this, looking like he hasn’t slept in three days, saying he needs to report a crime. Last time Ricky Barr was in the station he had a look of disgust on his face and a threat in his voice that made young Andy recoil into himself and put Georgie’s teeth on edge. What was that, three months back? Looks like he’s aged about ten years. He needs a shower too, he’s brought the smell of the farm with him. She regains her composure, swallows down her dislike and invites him to have a seat in the interview room. Offers him the cursory cup of water assuming he’ll say no.
‘Please, aye.’
His voice is grating, sore. She nods, goes through to the kitchen to get him his water – they’re out of the paper cups they’re supposed to use and they’re expensive, those things, so he gets one of the plastic camping mugs that were donated when the outdoor shop in Crackenbridge closed down. Given the way he downs the water, she doesn’t suppose he cares much what kind of cup it’s delivered in.
‘Are you alright, Ricky?’ she says.
He clears his throat and for a second she thinks he’s actually going to spit on the floor, but he doesn’t. Trish comes through, sits beside her and starts up the tape.
‘Want me to fill that up for you again, Ricky?’
‘It was my horse.’
It takes her a moment.
‘Can you…’
‘My black mare was stolen last weekend. I was trying to track her down myself—’
‘You lied to PC Hunter?’
‘Like I say, I was handling it myself. But my son tells me a horse was found slaughtered in the woods. PC Hunter didn’t mention that bit.’ He hasn’t broken eye contact since he started speaking, but something about him has changed – it’s not a threat, in his eyes. ‘So I’m here now to tell you it was my horse.’
Georgie swallows.
‘Do you have any idea why anyone would want to steal your horse?’
‘I could take a guess.’
‘Would you, please?’
He looks at Trish, then back at Georgie. A flicker of emotion crosses his face but it’s gone faster than Georgie can read it.
‘Whenever something goes wrong round here, folk like to blame me. That makes me a target.’ He sits back and presses his fist into his throat. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll no be requesting police protection.’
‘Trish,’ Georgie says. ‘Have you got a photo, for confirmation?’
Trish pulls a photo of the dead horse out of her folder, pushes it across the table. Ricky looks at it. ‘That’s her. She’s got a whorl on her stomach, ’bout an inch across.’
Georgie nods. It’s as he describes – the mare they found had the same marking. That poor creature, with her eyes staring wide as though she’d had to watch what was happening to her as it happened. The sheen on her coat, where it was unharmed; the dark black matted mess around the chest where the blood had gushed from her throat.
‘Do you have any suspects yet?’ he says, clearing his voice like he wants to get down to business. He’s not here for sympathy, that’s for sure.
‘We don’t know why anyone would do this.’
A single rough bark of a cough.
‘It’s personal.’
‘What makes you say that?’
He waits before replying. Fleetingly, Georgie could almost feel sorry for him. It’s as though, whatever he’s about to say, it’s going to cost him something he’d never want to pay. He’s forcing himself to go there.
‘They did the same thing to my dog.’
‘You don’t have a dog,’ Trish says, her obvious suspicion making Georgie cringe.
‘I did once,’ Ricky says, quietly.
‘And when was this?’
‘I’d have been eight years old. I was the one who found her—’
Trish opens her mouth to interrupt but Georgie stops her with a look.
‘Please, take your time, Ricky,’ she says in her slow twang, despite Trish’s obvious impatience.
Ricky swallows, rubs his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Someone killed my dog in the same way they killed my horse.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
‘They cut her throat, when I was a kid. And they left her there, in that same clearing in the woods.’
‘So,’ Trish says, leaning forwards. ‘Was this before or after your sister ran away?’
‘Been looking my family up, have you?’ he fires back.
‘We were just wondering where she is now. Any idea?’
He doesn’t reply – he doesn’t even move – for what feels like minutes.
‘I’ve not seen her since the day she left,’ he says.
Georgie stares at him, at the exhaustion deep in his eyes, the red splatters of veins across his cheeks, the haunted way his teeth grind at the back of his jaw and the way his neck never seems to relax, like’s he’s constantly ready to fight – and at last she realises why he looked so terrified when she started digging in his field.
‘You thought it was her,’ she says quietly. ‘You thought it was your sister, buried on the farm.’
‘But it wasn’t, was it,’ he says, suddenly sitting that bit taller.
‘We don’t believe so.’
His shoulders fall; he seems able to breathe again. For a second she wonders if she can see some softness in his eyes – she dismisses that thought fast though.
‘Look, I don’t know who it was killed my dog,’ he says. ‘I was a kid. It made a fucking impression though and I’ve no kept a dog since. So doing that to my mare… whoever stole her, slaughtered her out in the woods, they knew exactly what they were doing. Same place. Same cut across the throat.’
He swallows and Georgie can hear the pain of it.
‘As for whoever it is buried in my field… They say killers of animals can turn into killers of people, don’t they? And I can tell you who was in charge back then, in charge of who got the jobs, of who sold what, of who got to marry who, who got to live in peace, all of it – and it were the same people who had it in for my family all along.’
He stops and looks at Trish; looks at her hard and refuses to break his gaze. Georgie can feel her shoulders clench at the sight of it.
‘I’ve got four names for you,’ he says, still refusing to look away. ‘Art Robertson. Jack Helmsteading. Nora Prowle. And Walt. Fucking. Mackie.’
EYES, WATCHING
Shona peers into each door she passes – they all have a glass panel in the top so the staff can keep an eye on the residents – and the old people inside ignore her or, worse, look up with hope that she might be here for them, until she gets to the end of the corridor, climbs the stairs, and repeats the process. She doesn’t have to go too far. Walt Mackie’s is the second door on the left. She pushes it.
His eyes follow her into the room as though he’d known she was coming – or that someone was – as though he’s been waiting for her all afternoon and she’s turned up late.
‘Sit down, lass,’ he says.
She perches on the bed, opposite where he’s sitting in his chair, a dressing gown just like the one she found wrapped round his body despite the suffocating heat.
‘You cold?’ he says.
She shakes her head.
‘I was wondering if you’d lost a dressing gown.’
He looks down at the one he’s wearing, back up again. His face is open and lost, his eyes straying across hers in confusion.
‘I found one in the village, Walt. I found a dressing gown.’ She pauses. ‘It had your name and address sewn in.’
‘Ah,’ he nods. ‘My name is in all my clothes. My Trish likes to do that, in case I go walkabout.’ He looks over her shoulder, as though he expects to see her arrive any minute. ‘She’ll no leave me here alone.’
Shona pulls the mask from her pocket. It looks comical, here, in this heat and this light, with this harmless old man.
‘And this?’ she says. ‘Is this yours too?’
He reaches out and caresses the filthy white fabric.
‘This is special,’ he says. ‘This is the first one I ever made.’
‘Why did you throw it away then?’
His fingers find the eyeholes and he seems to massage the frayed edges; he’s got that faraway look of someone remembering. They say that the past can seem more real than the present for people with dementia, don’t they?
‘I couldn’t at first,’ he says. ‘But then they killed Bobby.’
Shona feels her breath catch in her throat.
‘Bobby Helmsteading?’
‘They killed him because of what he did.’
‘Who killed him?’
‘He sneaked into the woods and he watched us, and then he copied us, twisting everything up wrong. Something had to be done.’
‘What did he see?’
‘It was the right thing to do; he was a vicious boy.’
‘Can you hear me?’
‘But he saw us performing the ritual and that’s where he got the idea, to attack poor Dawn.’
He’s not looking at her, hasn’t looked at her while he spoke, not once. His eyes are raised above her head, flicking back and forth like someone’s pacing behind her.
‘I would never have condoned that though,’ he says, suddenly taking her hand. ‘Never, not a wee girl like that.’
Shona wants to pull her hand away but his grip is tight and his eyes are still avoiding hers – she turns: nothing. The crumpled duvet. The bare walls.
‘I’m the last one left now,’ he says. ‘The only one left. But the Others are coming.’
His eyes clear and focus and suddenly he looks at her like he knows her.
‘Who comes to visit you, Walt?’
‘Natalie, sometimes. She says I can call her Natalie.’
‘You mean Natalie Prowle?’
‘She likes to talk about the old days.’
He’s still clutching onto her hand.
‘And I like that too,’ he says. ‘Things were better in the old days.’
She pulls her hand away at last, and he looks down surprised.
‘Old people always say that.’
‘You think I’m an old person?’ He smiles. ‘So I am, I suppose. And I should know then, shouldn’t I? Things were better before.’
‘When before?’ Shona says. ‘When we had the strikes?’
‘I remember the strikes… We had bad times, true enough, and I’m no saying…but before that, lass.’
‘Before that?’ She looks at him, straight into his eyes. ‘You mean during the world wars? You miss all that killing? The rations, the fear?’
He looks uncomfortable, trying to avoid her gaze, his shoulders hunching in as though her words are hurting him, but she can’t stop.
‘Or do you mean before that, Walt? Before medicine, before human rights, when there was plague and starvation, when witches were burned at the stake?’
Walt is staring down at his chest now, at the crumbs from his lunch that have collected there, that slowly, painfully rise and fall with each breath he manages. His hands are shaking, she hadn’t noticed that, shaking like he can’t make them stop and he keeps pulling the sleeves of his dressing gown over his wrists and she’s seen that before, that motion, that pulls her back into her own memories where she doesn’t want to go.
‘Your friend,’ he says, suddenly. ‘The one who always wore those long skirts, the ones she embroidered herself. She was so pretty, that one. What was her name again?’
‘Rachel,’ Shona says.
‘Rachel,’ Walt smiles. ‘She’s okay now. I thought you’d like to know that.’ He pats her hand. ‘Some good news, after you came all the way out here to see me.’ He leans in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper and his breath clammy on her cheek. ‘I summoned the Others to help her, just like we used to.’
She pulls away from him, her hand wiping his breath’s moisture from her skin.
‘I saved her.’
‘No one saved her, Walt. She killed herself. She’s dead.’
Suddenly she needs to see some sunlight, something other than his hopeful eyes and his creased old face and his shaking hands and his cut wrists and so she looks up to the window and that’s when she sees it.
A row of see-through plastic cups, positioned all along the white painted windowsill, each with a layer of red beneath the clear water that she feels sure must be his blood and right there in the middle of the window – she has no idea how she could have missed it – is another corn doll. He must have made it himself, here in the care home. It’s not even made of straw. It’s made of neatly ripped pieces of old photographs and three colours of thread have been plaited together and looped around her neck, tied to the curtain rail high above the window, so that the corn doll is hanging, lifeless, against the glass.
SOMEONE WHO MIGHT REMEMBER
Mrs Helmsteading stares at Simon from the other side of the glass. She looks well. Younger than she seemed before, inexplicably hopeful given that she’s facing a life sentence having pleaded guilty to murdering her own son.
‘Good to see you again, Georgie,’ she says, her eyes not leaving Simon’s face.
Simon thinks about asking how she is, if she’s heard from Dawn, but decides against it.
‘I hear you’ve volunteered to work in the prison library,’ Georgie says.
‘Oh aye. I’ve never been around so many books before. I like it, in the library. I like all them books better than I like most people these days.’
‘They’re treating you alright then?’
‘Why are you here, DI Strachan?’ At last her eyes are on Georgie, and Simon feels able to breathe again. He can see Dawn in her; hear Dawn’s words in her voice.
‘Have you heard from Dawn since you’ve been in here?’ Georgie says.
It’s like she could be reading his mind, sometimes.
Mrs Helmsteading’s lips rise into a smile and the warmth spreads up her face, all the way to her eyes.
‘Dawn’s gone,’ she says. ‘And she’s never coming back.’
‘She’s got nothing to fear now. She’s not suspected of any crime any more. We’re not even looking for her—’
‘She’s never coming back here. She’s a smart girl, my Dawny. And she’s safe.’
‘Do you think she’d be in danger here?’
‘You’re not trying to save people again are you, DI Strachan?’
Georgie shakes her head. ‘Actually I want to talk to you about something else.’
‘Is that so?’
‘I was wanting to talk to you about your husband Jack, and Ricky Barr.’
Mrs Helmsteading’s eyes flit momentarily about the room, and for a second Simon sees the same haunted woman he followed to the cave, to Dawn’s hiding place.
‘Interesting,’ he says, ‘the way Ricky took your Bobby under his wing.’
‘Is that what you’ve heard?’
They both wait a beat.
‘That boy told me nothing, and I didn’t get a kind word from him since the day he got home and set himself up in my spare room.’
‘Does it haunt you?’ Georgie says.
‘You mean what I did?’ she says. ‘Or what he did?’
She leans back then, away from the glass.
‘I just mean…are you doing okay in here? Do you need—’
‘Ask your question, DI Strachan. I’ve books to be getting back to.’
‘Okay,’ Georgie says. ‘Fair enough.’ She takes a breath. ‘First up, we were hoping you could tell us about a particular group of villagers we’ve been hearing about, when they were young.’
‘What group’s that then?’
‘Your husband, Jack. Art Robertson. Walt Mackie. And Nora Prowle.’
Mrs Helmsteading smiles at that, like she’s glad to have permission to fall back into her memories for a moment.
‘You want to talk about Jack, Art and Walt, when they were young men. Yes, I remember. My Jack was the youngest of the three but he was the first to die. It seems unfair, that.’ Her eyes rise to Simon’s for a second. ‘But aye, he was the youngest. A few years older than him was Art Robertson. And then Walt Mackie, he was older again, by a good ten years. He was in his fifties by the time he took in poor little Trish. But age aside, there was nothing separating them, for a few years there. They kept bees – did you know that?’
Beside him, Georgie nods.
‘They’re ancient, the bees. They haven’t evolved in ten million years.’
‘And Nora,’ Simon says. ‘Did she keep bees as well?’
