Dead of Winter

Chapter 13

Carmichael laid Rusty on the kitchen table.

‘Look after him while I fetch the medical kit.’

He came back with an armful of neatly folded towels, old but clean, and a medical chest.

‘What can I do?’ Ebony asked.

Carmichael took out his knife and cut into the material so he could tear them into pressure bandages. ‘Lie him on the towels. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Carmichael disappeared. Ebony lifted up Rusty’s limp body, wet with blood, his flesh exposed, ripped over his flank and back. The fox had tried to tear him apart. Carmichael returned with a bowl of warm salted water and for the next two hours they worked together to sew Rusty up.

Carmichael pushed his hair back from his tired eyes. ‘He will survive or not.’ He picked Rusty up and lay him in his basket. He was just about alive. ‘There’s nothing more we can do: I don’t have any antibiotics to give him. I need to go out. Leave him here and go to bed. Upstairs, first door on the right. Bathroom’s the second one. It’s primitive but it’s clean.’ Carmichael was rubbing soot into his face. He smelt like he’d rolled in a dead animal and then slept on a dung heap. Ebony heard him linger in the tack room. Then he was gone.

In the lounge the fire was dying down. Ebony put another few logs on it and covered Rusty with a clean towel. He didn’t stir.

She went across to the dresser and picked up the photo of Louise and Sophie and wondered how many times Carmichael had held this photo in the lonely evenings he spent there on his own. Apart from the shelves with their few books, his writing desk was the only other personal addition to the room: neat, plain and functional, like the rest of the house. Sitting on the top of it was an old silver tankard used as a penholder and, the most incongruous thing in the room, his laptop, the newest and the best piece of kit. She went to open it and then stopped herself. Whatever she found on there it would have been left there on purpose, just for her to find. Then he would lose his trust for her. Already she understood that much about him. She looked around: the desk had one long thin drawer under its top. Ebony gave it a little rattle to see if it would open. But it was locked. After a last check on Rusty Ebony opened the door to the upstairs. At the top of the landing there was the guest room on her right and then the bathroom. The bathroom was warm because it was above the Aga in the kitchen. Ebony brushed her teeth and opened cupboards. What little there was, was laid out in military order: toothbrush, paste, floss, antiseptic cream. Every surface was wiped and spotless on the old shelves that looked like they had been put up by someone a hundred years before. Carmichael had never put his stamp on the house: he was just a visitor. When Ebony emerged from the bathroom she opened the door opposite it, across the landing. The room smelt of saddle soap and liniment and a whiff of sheep. The bed was made with military creases. In the corner there was a cloth wardrobe that looked like it had been a temporary measure but never replaced. Now it was on its last legs. He hadn’t spent money on any of it, thought Ebony. If Carmichael had inherited all his wife’s large fortune then he hadn’t spent it on himself. Inside the wardrobe was a shelf stacked with small piles of perfectly folded T-shirts and sweaters. On the top of the wardrobe was a rifle bag.

She closed the door quietly and went back to the guest bedroom at the top of the stairs. Inside the room it looked like Carmichael had gathered anything feminine from all over the house and put it in there. There were old flowered curtains and peeling rose wallpaper. There was an old fifties dressing table, white, with a cracked, mottled mirror and a matching freestanding wardrobe that must have been someone’s idea of chic at one time. She turned the small brass handle on the wardrobe door and cringed as it squeaked on its hinges. She paused, no sound from anywhere in the house. She was pretty sure Carmichael would hear her if he was back inside. Inside the wardrobe were a few padded hangers hanging empty from the brass rail and on the floor were boxes covered by a tartan blanket. Ebony peeled the blanket aside and carefully prized open one of the two boxes. Inside it was packed neatly with mementos, knick-knacks. She lifted out a photo album that was resting on the top and turned the pages of Carmichael’s former life. It started with Christmas and Sophie standing by a snowman. It was spring by the end of the album. Sophie was running towards the camera; Louise was running after her laughing. The next one, Louise must have taken. It was a strange sight to look at Carmichael laughing in the photo. In the spring photos Louise and Sophie were wearing the same clothes as in the photo downstairs. Must have been his last recorded happy day with them. It must have been some of the last photos they ever took as a family. After she’d made up the bed from a neatly folded pile of bedding left on top of it, she phoned Carter.

‘Don’t seem to be any motels round here, Sarge.’

‘Yeah. . knew you’d be alright, Ebb. What is he like then? What do you think of him?’

‘You’d like him: he’s straight out of a Call of Duty game.’

‘Is he going to be useful to us?’

She paused; her eyes settled on the photo of Louise and Sophie.

‘Useful probably isn’t the right way to put it. He’s living in limbo. His whole past is locked away in boxes. He lives very frugally, as if he’s about to move on any minute. He’s a man in no-man’s land.’

‘So he couldn’t add anything to his original statement?’

‘He didn’t exactly refuse. He started to tell me what happened when he went into Rose cottage and found them but then his dog got savaged and he’s gone out to try and kill the thing that did it.’

‘Shit. . told you, Ebb, it’s dog-eat-dog out there in the country. Do you think he knows stuff we don’t?’

‘I don’t know. He lives like a hermit. He doesn’t have anything in his sitting room except some books on faraway places and sheep-farming. His laptop is his only expensive piece of kit. But it’s the best: the newest on the market. He has no telly, no entertainment except that. All he has is his photo of his wife and child and the internet.’

‘We need to know everything he does. I need you to get him on our side, Ebb. You can bet your life when you leave him tomorrow he is going to be working on this twenty-four seven. I need you to gain his trust. Whatever he finds out we want to know.’

‘I’m not sure I was the best person to come up here. Why did you think he would trust me? ’

‘Because he doesn’t trust easily and neither do you; and both of you have good reason.’

When Ebony came off the phone to Carter her mobile rang. She looked at the number on the screen and closed her eyes, took a breath.

‘Hello, Mum.’

‘You didn’t come. I waited for two hours, just sat there, waiting. .’

‘I told you I wouldn’t be able to come for a couple of weeks, Mum. I’m sorry. We have a lot going on at work. Did you get the parcel? Did you have a good birthday?’

‘No. . they wouldn’t give it to me. They accused me of stuff again. I didn’t do it.’ Her voice rose an octave or two as she went into child mode. ‘How can I have a good birthday? My life isn’t worth living. I’d rather be dead. No one loves me. No one cares.’

Ebony squeezed her eyes shut and her fingers dug into the side of her face without her realizing.

‘Don’t worry, Mum. I’ll find out what happened to it. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll sort it and I’ll come and see you as soon as I get another visiting order. I love you, Mum.’ The phone went dead.