Elmet

I travel with Bill for days more. I am his company and he is mine. I am his succour. He is my warmth.

I search for her wherever we go. I search for her by the bus stations and by the railway tracks. I look at the adverts in shop windows. People with want for rooms, people with want for jobs. I do not have the courage to lose my faith. I bite at my fingernails as I stare out through the filthy panes of the lorry windows and scour the vertical and horizontal lines of concrete cityscapes for her familiar form.

Bill helps for a time, but finding my sister is not his main concern.

One night we take the lorry off the main roads, down some back lanes to spend the night in the quiet, away from the drill of rubber on tar. We jerk then sway back from side to side as the weighty wheels dip into deep potholes and fumble on the rocks propped against the verge. There is no light. Pitch dark. Few stars. No moon. An amber glow of electricity far off. And then our own headlights. And then a roe deer illuminated by our beacon. Caught. Stopping short. Stood right there before us and startled too, as we are. She is held as if preserved. As if dead, stuffed, posed. Glass eyes sewn into place. And what with her staring at us from behind glass, behind the windscreen, it is as if she has been placed in a museum with a natural habitat designed and built and painted for her.

Bill jams his palm against the centre of the steering wheel and the horn sounds like a hunting bugle and the deer is gone and I hate him for it, the brute.

My Daddy would have done differently.

But then we stop in a lay-by. And I learn that a body can mutate in the course of a night. And that a night can bend with the curve of a body. He is not so strong as he thinks. He is not so much of a man. His voice is deep and his chest is broad and there is more hair on his chin and jaw than on the top of his head. But I have known others. I have come from sterner stock.

I reach out to stroke him as he pulls at my jeans but he bats away my hand. I do not mind. He is nervous to the touch.

His weight is such that I am pinned. I notice the tattoos on his upper arms. They have faded and bled blues and greys against his blotchy skin. I make out the head of a serpent. There is an eagle caught in flight. Its talons and hooked beak are fierce. The body of a woman is stretched out along his forearm. Her breasts are bare.

He does not look me in the eye. We do not kiss. There is no conversation.

There is pleasure in the contact, if nothing else. In this brittle caress.

And in the morning I sit differently in my skin.

Chapter Nineteen

When you are terrified of everything nothing particularly afears. It was Cathy who first noticed the alteration. I had gone back to bed at Daddy’s behest and had fallen asleep quickly. Cathy, who had slept through the night and through the arrival and departure of the man who had come to warn Daddy, was now up and thundering around our little cottage like a songbird that had flown through the window and was madly trying to retrace its path. The noise woke me but I did not get up and go to her. I remained tucked beneath my covers with my eyes closed, terrified. When she burst into my room she nearly lifted the door from its hinges. Its handle thudded against the wall and segments of roughly applied plaster crumbled to chalky dust.

‘Wake up, Daniel, wake up,’ she pleaded. I had never heard her plead.

I hesitated, wanting nothing less than to leave my safe, warm, bed. But she was my sister. And I knew instinctively, deeply, certainly, that something was very wrong.

I opened my eyes. ‘I am awake,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘Daddy’s gone.’

‘He must be in trees,’ I replied immediately.

‘I’ve been into the copse. He indt there. He indt in the house and he indt in the trees.’

‘Did you go right to the heart of the copse? To the mother tree?’

‘I’ve searched everywhere.’

I was silent, but this time through comprehension.

Cathy must have seen some understanding in my expression. ‘Where is he? Where has he gone?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. He said he would stay, no matter what. And if he was going to leave, why did he leave without us?’

‘Where has he gone?’

‘I don’t know. I said, I don’t know.’

‘What do you know?’

‘I saw him early this morning. Just at dawn. A man came to the door and the dogs woke and then they woke me. They handt come back either. They must be out on the hill somewhere. Did they not wake you?’

‘I slept right through the night. I was dreaming throughout. Dreaming dreams I don’t remember.’

‘I woke and I heard Daddy speaking with the man at the front door and snuck out of bed to listen. I dindt recognise the other man’s voice. He wandt one of our lot and not someone from village. He came to warn Daddy. To warn him and to urge him to leave, get out of here, and—’ I stopped. ‘And to take us with him.’

‘Why? We’ve won.’

‘Because — and this is what the man said — because after the fight, in the middle of night, they found a body in woods behind the racecourse. A dead body. It was one of Price’s sons.’

Cathy made no reaction, gave no sense that she had even heard or understood. She simply looked at me with those bright blue eyes, shining from that pale, lucid skin.

‘The man told Daddy that Mr Price blamed him. Price and the others all think that Daddy killed son. I don’t know which one it was. They had decided it must have been Daddy, from I don’t know what, extent of strangulation, strength of hands that enclosed his neck and power of person behind them. They decided because of that and because, of course, Price hates him. His hatred of Daddy goes deeper than this recent trouble, I think, Cathy. It goes deeper than all this business about the fight and deeper than land on which we live. Stranger at door said Price had made up his mind it were Daddy killed his son, and now he’s set on vengeance. There are no games any more. He’s sending his men up, today, this morning perhaps, to get Daddy. To drag him back to them and do I don’t know what. They woundt go to police, obviously.’

‘Where is Daddy?’

‘I told you I don’t know. Stranger came up here to warn Daddy, like I said. He urged him to go but once he had left I came out. Daddy maybe knew I had been there, listening, the whole time. Daddy said he woundt go. He said—’ But I struggled to remember what he had said.

‘Of course he woundt. He would never leave us.’

I took my time to think this through, before I replied. ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I do.’ I stopped speaking for a moment and bit my lip. ‘But where is he?’

We took the back road to the village. The pavement leading to Ewart and Martha and their house and garden was sticky with three days of heat. A thin film of condensation, which had sat thick in the air, had dropped and compacted on the tarmac. It was slick.

I had persuaded Cathy to follow me here. She had been unsure.

We knocked the door not once but twice. The first time, I rapped my knuckles gently against the pane of stained glass at the centre of the door. The second time Cathy thumped the wood.

It swung open. Ewart and Martha stood at the threshold, both. Both, husband and wife, held a strange countenance and a skewed stance. They looked between us, my sister and I. They looked above us and around us. They looked behind them into their own home.

I ventured. ‘Have you seen our Daddy?’

Martha glanced at Ewart. Ewart held my gaze.

‘That’s a fine thing,’ he said.

I made no reply.

‘That’s a fine thing,’ he said again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘What’s a fine thing?’

He held me still, with his eyes that is, for a moment more.

‘You two coming here, looking for your Daddy, looking for him. That, I tell you, is fine.’

But he did not mean fine like I mean fine or Cathy or Daddy mean fine when it is a fine day or when you ask for something reasonable and they tell you it is fine.

‘Ewart, love,’ said Martha, ‘it’s hardly their fault. They can hardly be blamed. For any of it.’

‘No? They’re old enough, aren’t they? They’re old enough to participate in the business end of things, why not in this? They’re a tight family, this lot, that’s what they always said. That’s why we took to them. You know as well as I, Martha, that we would never have trusted a man like John, man with his reputation, and let him into our home and into our confidences if it handt been for these two. A father with children is a much more reliable prospect than a single, lone man. It’s all about perception. That’s how these tricksters lure you in, see. Come with a family and you’re trustworthy. They’re probably all in on it. What have you two come for, then, my wife’s jewellery? The car?’

‘Enough,’ demanded Martha. ‘They came to see where their father is, and they thought he might be here. They’re at as much of a loss as we are. They had nothing to do with any of it.’

‘Nothing to do with any of what?’ asked Cathy.

‘Perhaps you’d best come in,’ said Martha.

‘Perhaps they had better not!’

Ewart put an arm across the threshold to bar our entrance. Neither Cathy nor I had made any moves to enter.

‘You could just tell us while we wait here,’ I suggested.

Martha took a deep, leaden breath. ‘Your father came here first thing. At dawn, or just after, even. Neither Ewart nor I were up, but we heard him at the door.’

‘That we did. We were happy to see him. It was early but he always did keep irregular hours. We were used to welcoming him into our homes at all times of the day and night. Trusting fools that we are.’

‘Enough, Ewart. It’s your pride. It’s your pride.’

‘It’s more than my pride. It’s fifty thousand pounds, Martha. Money that wasn’t even ours.’

‘I know that. I know that. But these two children need to know.’

Ewart took a step back and folded his arms over his belly. He couldn’t look at us.

‘He came round here before dawn,’ said Martha again. ‘Your daddy. He asked to come in, and, of course, we welcomed him. He said he had need to see the books. The one where we recorded all the business. All that’s been going on these last months. Well we kept all that in a safe upstairs, all the names and the money they’d been giving us. Because you know there were dues. Union dues, I suppose. Well, those involved, as you may know, were paying their rent money for each week or month to us. To me and Ewart. Just for safe keeping. For if the strike went tits up. Or for if we came to the kind of agreement where the landlords submitted to our demands and in return they got the withheld money back, in whole or in part. And, well, that’s what we agreed to, isn’t it. Your Daddy settled his score with the land for the house in that fight. Price had wanted him to fight for him all along. You two have no idea how much money was riding on that fight, and how much Mr Price stood to gain from John cooperating with him again, fighting for him, like he used to. But separate to all that was the deal we struck with all the landlords collectively. Mr Price, yes, but the others too. And not about your house and land but that of all those in the rented houses and flats, the old council properties. They agreed to a rent freeze. They agreed to a more reasonable rent for those who quite clearly could not afford. They agreed to forget about arrears. And they agreed to fix some of the things that had broken. Not all, mind, we asked people to take care of some of their own stuff too, and people from the community who are good at that sort of thing, but the landlords agreed to do a lot. And we would pay back the money that had been withheld. Not at first, but after we saw that they would keep their word. And, of course, there was something of your Daddy’s fight in that. It sealed the promise. Sealed it in blood. Don’t ask me how. But it did. Only the money, near fifty thousand pounds, given to us by all those good folk who trusted us and expected us to see them right, it’s gone. Your Daddy went upstairs to see the books — we trusted him with the key to the safe — and he rustled away the money. All of it. And then he left.’

Ewart took up the tack. ‘And as the morning wore on we heard stories. Stories on which you two might be able to expand. Stories from Peter down the way and others in the village. A story about a dead boy in the woods. That son of Price’s. The pretty one. The prettier one. Dead. Strangled. And his watch and money robbed.’

‘His watch and money robbed?’ asked Cathy.

‘Aye. Your Daddy clearly wandt content with all he had won that day. Or else his blood was up. Clearly there’s no satisfying men like your Daddy when their blood is up. When they’re in the mood for violence. When that violence is the violence of avarice. They’ll go to the lowest possible limits of greed and thuggery. I should have known. I was a fool. I should have known. A man like that. With his reputation. Mr Price is a wrong’un, to be sure, but his boy was just a boy. Just a lad. And his neck was nearly clean snapped by all accounts, such was the force with which your Daddy gripped it.’

‘It’s not true,’ said Cathy, quietly.

‘Not true, is it?’ said Ewart. ‘You dare to defend him? That’s fine. That’s fine.’

Again, he did not really mean fine. He meant rich, that’s rich. Or he meant, that is absurd, or he meant, that is offensive to me and to everything I stand for.

‘You’ve just assumed,’ said Cathy. ‘Yesterday you were his friend, you were cheering for him with the others, but today you accuse him.’

‘He stole fifty thousand pounds from me!’

‘So you accuse him of strangling Charlie Price. There is nothing to suggest it were him. Only rumours. And only rumours that tell you he was motivated by greed, that he stole from Charlie Price. You believe that he stole the wallet and the watch because you believe he stole fifty thousand pounds from the safe in your house.’

‘He did steal fifty thousand pounds from the safe in my house!’

‘But he dindt kill Charlie Price. I did.’

Ewart and Martha stood in silence. I stood in silence. Cathy was silent too.

Then, after some time, Ewart spoke. ‘You’re a little girl, Cathy. You might think you’re big and tough like your daddy, but you’re a wee girl. Don’t play games with us.’

‘I’m not playing games with you.’

‘Perhaps you’re trying to protect your father,’ said Martha. ‘That’s good of you, really it is, but it’s not helpful here.’

‘I’m not trying to be helpful. I’m trying to tell the truth. I killed Charlie Price.’

‘Cathy.’

‘I killed Charlie Price. I strangled the life out of him. I am glad I did it and I would do it again.’

Martha and Ewart Royce said nothing. They looked at Cathy, aghast. Martha took hold of the wooden door and slammed it shut. The glass pane rattled.

Cathy and I stood for a few moments more, turned and walked back down the garden path.

I did not ask any more of Cathy. I did not ask questions nor request that she repeat what she had said.

We walked along a couple of streets and still said nothing. We split up and agreed to meet back at home in an hour. Cathy went to Peter’s and to some of the others we knew from the village. I made towards Vivien’s house on the outskirts, past the common land, past the stray, back towards where we lived, me, Cathy and Daddy. Cathy had not wanted to come to Vivien’s house. She had said she would rather speak with the honest people of the village. So I walked down the lane alone.

The curtains were drawn, not just the upstairs windows but the downstairs windows too.

I knocked on the door. There was no answer and no sounds from within.

I knocked again. No answer. No hushed voices. No bustle of cooking or cleaning. No radio.

I waited, and knocked, and thumped, and waited. I paced the front garden. There was no answer yet I knew that she was at home. I knocked, I waited, I struck the door with both fists. Once. Twice. I waited.

With each passing minute I knew more fervently that Vivien was truly inside, hiding from me, listening to me knock and thump, perhaps watching me through a slit in the curtains, watching me pace, watching my skin flush, watching tears well in my eyes.

I had come to depend on Vivien with a weight I could only just acknowledge, now, as I set that weight down. Daddy had built me a home — for me and for him and for Cathy. He had built shelter, arranged wood and stone over our heads in such a way that kept off the wind and the snow and the rain. He had given us safety and warmth. But, for me, in a way that I could not quite fathom let alone describe, Vivien had built a home for me too. A nest. It was a different kind from the one by the copse on the top of the hill. There was nothing tangible about the home I felt in Vivien. There were no bricks, no mortar, no rivets, no joints. It kept off no weather. It sank slowly into no mud. But it had a kind of hearth and a kind of fire. It was a place with a future. A place of possibility.

‘Vivien!’ I shouted. I knocked again. And waited. ‘Vivien!’

There was no use in it. I gave up. I turned for the last time and walked back down the path towards the gate and the lane that led home.

As I turned onto the track, Vivien’s front door was flung open, and the woman who I had met the year before, so composed, ran from her house towards me. Unkempt hair was tossed by a sudden gust. Her eyes were red.

‘If you want to talk, Daniel, you’d better come in!’

At first I remained motionless. I stood for a while to take in the scene. Then I followed her inside and she shut the door, but we didn’t make it past the hall. ‘He’s gone, Daniel. And no, I don’t know where. That he wouldn’t say.’

‘But he came to see you.’

‘Yes, he did. You’ve only missed him by half an hour or so.’

‘I should have come here first. I knew I should have come here first. But that means he might still be near.’

‘You won’t find him. When he moves, he moves quickly. And he doesn’t want you to chase him.’

‘He said he would stay.’

‘How could he. There are men after him. Men and dogs. Men that want to kill him. Really kill him, this time. Catch him alive, if possible, drag him back to Price and kill him slowly. This isn’t business, any more, he killed that boy.’

‘He dindt,’ I said.

‘Of course he did.’

‘Is that what he said? Is that what he told you?’

‘Well, he didn’t deny it.’

‘But did he tell you that, really? Did you ask him directly and did he tell you directly?’

‘He didn’t have to. Word spreads fast. I had a phone call from Ewart first thing this morning. He wanted to warn me. He said that your Daddy had killed the Price boy, strangled him to death, nearly took his head off with the force of his fists, then he’d gone to Ewart and Martha’s at dawn and stolen some money.’

‘But still you let him in when he came?’

‘Well, your father had always been wild. I always knew he was no angel.’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But he dindt kill Charlie Price.’

‘Whatever he did. Whatever he did or didn’t do, Price’s men are certain. They found your Daddy’s coat draped over the boy’s body, you know? Like a blanket. Like a shroud.’

‘I believe you.’

‘John’s a marked man. If they catch him, there’s no telling what they’ll do to him. I know he’s tough. We all know that. But this is different. Running was the only chance he had.’

I nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

I looked through an open door into the front room. Vivien did not invite me further into the house. It was cold to me.

‘Did he come here to say goodbye to you?’ I asked.

‘In part.’

‘What was the other part?’

‘He asked me—’ She stopped speaking.

‘He asked you what?’

‘It was a big ask. Beyond what most people would ask of each other.’

‘What did he ask you?’

‘I don’t know if I should say.’

‘Vivien! My father disappeared from me this morning and there are men and dogs hunting him, to kill! Tell me!’

‘He wanted you and Cathy to come here. He wanted me to look after you for a little while until he could find somewhere safe. Then he would come and get you.’

I did not say anything just then. I wanted her to finish.

‘Only it’s a lot to ask,’ she continued. ‘I’ve got my own life, and yes I feel sorry for you, but it’s a lot. And besides, you and Cathy are fairly self-sufficient. You two wouldn’t want to move in here with me. You’re your own family. You’ve got each other. And I’m not one to share my space. I’m too old and too used to living alone, now. Perhaps years ago it would have worked. There was a time in my life when it might have been a lovely thing. But not now. It’s too late.’

‘Daddy asked you to do that?’

‘Yes, he asked that.’

I thought about it for a moment. A scene in which somebody who is running for their life asks an old friend to care for their children, and that old friend refuses. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I suppose you’re right. Cathy and I can make do at the house.’

‘That’s what I thought. You be careful though.’

She seemed to want me to leave.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, we will.’

‘Because Price and his men might come for you, you see. To get to Daddy.’

‘I suppose they might.’

‘So don’t open the door to any strangers.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We won’t.’

I took a step back. ‘Thank you for letting me in.’

For a moment she had forgotten that initially she had not. She looked taken aback. ‘Oh, no, I mean, of course. Of course I was going to let you in. I was upstairs with the vacuum on, that’s all. You’re always welcome here. To visit.’

‘Thank you, that’s kind.’

I opened the front door and stepped out into the sun. I closed the door behind myself, thinking that the right thing to do but it was stiff in its frame and I had to shunt it a couple of times, and Vivien, saying something muffled that I did not hear, pushed it from within.

The walk home was slow.

We hid in the trees when Price’s men came to search the house. It was mid-morning and we heard the dirty, claggy exhausts of their vans long before they got to the top of our hill. Cathy suggested that we stay in the house and confront them. She said we should show them we were not cowards. I persuaded her to leave off on this idea and instead we let ourselves out the back and ducked and skipped as quietly as we could until we hit the cover of the copse. There was no sign of Jess or Becky. I looked for them out on the horizon as we skulked across the open ground but caught no sight.

The soft, wet moss on the woodland floor and the sallow bark of the ash smelt more familiar this morning than ever before. Birds in the branches and the small mammals in the undergrowth kept the silence with us, though I saw shining eyes and flickering indigo feathers through apertures in the leaves.

I breathed slowly and deliberately and felt Cathy do the same. The vans parked on the stony earth outside our front door, and the men in the front seats got out. One rushed to the back to unstick the big double doors of both vehicles and five men climbed from the galley of each. Fourteen there were in total. I squinted to see if any were recognisable, feeling sick at the thought that it might be anyone we knew here, and, clearly, something had shifted. At least four were farm labourers who had come up to our bonfire on that night, weeks ago now. And all the men looked set on work like they were climbing out of the backs of vans to pick strawberries or sort potatoes. A couple even had spades, though to be put to a different use. Others gripped baseball bats and crowbars.

The men started circling the house. No one wanted to knock on the front door but a few — the bravest — went up to the windows, stuck an eyeball against the glass and shielded it from glare with a cupped hand. They paced for the best part of a minute before a smallish man with bulldog shoulders shuffled his crowbar to his right hand then swung it at the door, by way of a knock. I heard the sound briefly resonate within the house, like he had thumped an empty oil-drum.

‘Open up, John! You know why we’re here!’ the man called.

Of course there was no answer. Daddy, as we knew, was not there.

‘Open up, John!’ called another from behind the bulldog man, encouraged by his companion’s engagement. His accent was from north of here: still England but near the Scottish border.

Taking courage, the other men came closer to the house and some started beating on the walls and windows. A pane of glass smashed as one man tapped it too hard with his bat. He jumped back from the scene, shocked. Everybody was on edge. I could feel it.

A man in a grey tracksuit with soft blonde hair and a mawkish face, who could not have been much older than Cathy, went over to the man with bulldog shoulders, who appeared to be in charge. ‘I don’t think he’s in, Doug,’ said the mawkish man.

‘Not answering his door more like. Holed up inside there with the kids, he is.’

‘None of us can see owt through the windows. There’s no sign of them.’

‘So you want us to just leave it, do you?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

‘You want us to go back to Price empty-handed. Do you think that’ll go well for us?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying. If they’re not there, there’s nowt we can do, is what I’m saying.’

‘We better check,’ another man called from around the other side of the house. I could not see him, only hear his voice.

‘That’s right,’ said the man with bulldog shoulders. ‘We’d better check.’

He went back to the front door and started beating at the lock with his crowbar. Others went to the windows and smashed the glass, deliberately this time. I became aware of Cathy at my side. She was flexing the muscles in her arms and thighs as if ready to leap but her fists were clenched tight around the uncovered roots of a large ash, holding her to the ground. Impetuous as she was, at least she had the sense not to run at them. I considered doing something small to reassure her — to remind her that I was still there. My right hand hovered for a moment at the crook of her elbow but I thought better of it. Her whole body was held taut like a hunting trap, and any touch, no matter how slight, might set her off. We had to wait it out.

Our front door was made of oak and it held fast even when attacked at its weakest point. He tried the corners, but still it held. Had Cathy and I been inside we could have locked the extra bolts that Daddy had fitted — for situations like this, no doubt — but as it was, the single lock, fixed from the outside, was enough.

Until they brought out the battering ram, that was. Police issue, by the look of it. Wielded by four men, the door frame came away from the wall and fell to the floor with a single, ponderous thud. The wood was too heavy to bounce. And then they were inside, and we could no longer see them apart from the two stationed at the door, keeping watch.

We heard them well enough. They set about tearing up our things and smashing furniture, some of which I had made with my own two hands.

Cathy remained as she was, poised. But I turned away, confident that they would not hear the undergrowth rustle as I turned my back on them and sat in the moss looking instead into the depths of the copse.

I do not know how long the men stayed inside destroying our things and ripping at the guts of our house but they were quiet when they had finished. A job well done. They came outside and lingered only to catch their breaths before filtering back into the two vans. One started up and accelerated immediately but paused when the driver saw he was not being followed by the other vehicle. A head was poked out the window to check on the situation but he must have been waved on by the driver of the second van because he soon tucked himself back into his cabin and started up again. As the first van sped out of sight, the driver of the second got out, walked around to the front and opened up the bonnet. There was a problem with the engine. I could smell it now: a faint dark smoke had drifted towards us in the trees and had just now reached my nostrils. Burnt oil. As he worked at the engine Cathy kept her eyes fixed upon him like a lion in the scrub watching gazelle.

I was looking out towards the house when I heard the strike at Cathy’s head. It was an unfamiliar sound and so close, simultaneously soft and chafing like a football bouncing on gravel. Then Cathy’s head was in the dirt. I looked down and saw her: I did not look up to see the man who had struck her. She coughed into the loose soil and it kicked back a cloud of umber. She was not unconscious but, a moment later, I was.

Chapter Twenty

I woke in her arms. Cathy had placed my head on her lap and she was cradling it. I felt something cold and wet on my forehead. She mopped my brow with a towel then my cheeks and lips. She had lifted a bottle of water and, seeing that my eyes had opened, she raised my head, put the bottle to my mouth and urged me to drink. The shock of the cold water made my head feel worse but I soon discovered how thirsty I had been. Feeling well enough to raise my arm, I took the bottle myself and finished it then considered that I should have perhaps left some for her.

‘I’ve already drunk,’ she said, reading my thoughts. ‘You’re fine.’

My head was far from fine. I did not need to touch it to check for blood. I could smell it on my face.

‘They got us, then,’ I said.

‘Looks like it.’

‘Where are we?’

‘They put us in a van and brought us out to a farm. Mr Price’s, I think. They locked us in a shed round the back of the house, near a big barn. I was awake the whole time. You were out cold.’

I shuffled my body into a more comfortable position.

‘There’s a load of them,’ she said. ‘Too many for Daddy. Perhaps.’

‘Is Daddy here?’ I asked.

‘Not yet.’ Cathy was still holding her hope out in front of her for all the world to see. I had swallowed mine.

I looked around. The shed would have been completely dark but for a thin row of windows just beneath the corrugated iron roof. There were shelves containing stacks of cardboard boxes, canisters and plastic bottles. Garden twine, sheets of bubble wrap, pull-ties, paraffin. That sort of thing. The floor was mucky and covered with pelts of green AstroTurf, which were mucky too. In one corner there was a table laden with nursery plants, little shoots of something or other poking out of their individual black pots.

‘Did you kill that boy, Cathy?’

She had been busy rearranging the folds and creases in her jeans and did not look across. We were sat right next to each other on the mucky floor and I could hear her halt her breath but she did not look across.

‘I don’t mind if you did,’ I continued. ‘It’s nowt to me. You’re my sister and I love you. I have believed everything you’ve ever said and I will believe everything you ever will say. And if you did it there was reason, even if that reason was just that you wanted to. It’s nowt to me. You’re my sister.’

She still did not look across. Nor did she speak. I put my hand around her shoulder.

‘There was nowt else I could do,’ said Cathy. ‘I wandt strong enough to just push him off. If I’d fought him just to put him down on the ground long enough that I could get away, he would have just got straight back up and caught me again. He was so much bigger than me. So much stronger. If I had fought by any kind of rules I would’ve lost. It’s just like Daddy’s always said. If I’d slapped him round the face or punched him he would have slapped and punched me harder. If I’d grappled with him, he would have had me. Of course he would have. That’s the way it goes. He’s a boy, growing into a man, and I’m a girl, growing into a woman. The only thing I could do was to pretend — for just a moment — that that’s not how the game is played. You woundt understand.’

‘I would. I do. Please tell me.’

‘I just. I just knew that the only way I could regain any kind of control over it all — over myself, my body, the situation — was if that control was complete. My action had to outweigh anything he might do by such a long way that he woundt even have the chance to act. Because, with the way things were set up between us, he had many chances; I had one. So I took it. It was like everything inside me came together in one moment to a single point and that point was my clasped grip around his throat. I held him like that, tightly, for minutes and minutes. Long after he was dead. I had to make sure. Like I said, I had one chance.’

‘I didn’t even know he was there at the racecourse,’ I said. ‘Either of Mr Price’s sons. I handt thought on him much since all this, not since they came to see us that time, and I took them around the copse.’

‘I suppose you woundt. I dindt say anything about it and there’s been other things to think about. He’d been having a go for a while though. You know I dindt like staying at Vivien’s for her lessons so I used to go outside and go round about. I’d go for walks and sometimes just sit beneath a tree or whatever or I’d go and see if I could spot some birds. Just to occupy myself, you know. I were never much into what you and Vivien like. Reading and that. So that’s what I did. Although I’d find myself interrupted by those lads, Tom and Charlie. It happened once that they were out with their dogs and guns and the dogs found me lying on my stomach by a fox den, waiting to see the kits. I’d been going to that spot for a few days, after I’d seen where the den was and that the fox — the dog fox — was going back and forth with food, like it would if it was bringing it home for a suckling vixen. I’d been waiting there for the last few days for the chance of seeing something. And then I heard the hounds howling, coming towards me. I thought they’d got the scent of the foxes, maybe they had, they would have flushed it for the lads to shoot. But then they got my scent and came at me and I jumped up from the grass and Tom had his gun pointed in my direction. I thought he were going to shoot. Maybe that’s what he wanted me to think. And the dogs were all yapping and sniffing round me like it was my scent they’d been given all along. Tom lowered his gun and they came forward. They wanted a chat, they said. I gave them what they wanted, answered their stupid questions, laughed at their stupid jokes. Then I told them after a while that I had to get home and they seemed okay with that. Only they found me again a few days later. And then again.’

Cathy was hunched over her knees. She rested her chin on one and put her hands on her shoes to play with the laces. ‘And well,’ she said, ‘that’s how it went.’

‘Why dindt you say owt to Daddy?’

‘Because it were my thing. It were my problem to deal with. I can’t always go to Daddy whenever anything happens. I have to be able to deal with things by myself.’

‘But not this.’

‘Yes this. Yes this. This were my part of it. Daddy had other stuff to deal with. Daddy and Ewart and the others had to do what they were doing. The Prices were coming at us from all sides and this was my part. And Daddy won’t always be around. And even if he is, it is my life and my body and I can’t stand the thought of going out into the world and being terrified by it all, all o’ the time. Because I am, Danny, I am. And I don’t want to be. I don’t want to feel afraid. All I kept thinking about was Jessica Harman, thrown into that canal, and all those other women on the TV, in newspapers, found naked, covered in mud, covered in blood, blue, twisted, found in the woods, found in ditches, never found. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about them. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about how I’m turning into one of them. I’m older now and soon my body will be like theirs. I dindt want to end up in a ditch. I dindt want that any more than you want to be a fighting man like Daddy, or a labouring man, out sorting potatoes on a farm all day until your limbs get caught and broken and chopped in the dirty machinery, dirty iron and dirty steel. We all grow into our coffins, Danny. And I saw myself growing into mine.’

I took hold of my sister’s hand. The light seeping into our jail from the high windows darkened as she spoke, filtered by a sombre parade of ashen clouds. It had been hot for days. Hot and humid and dense and now the engulfing heavens were trapping the heat within like the stone lid over a sarcophagus.

Chapter Twenty-One

We remained in the shed for at least a day, a night, and another day, but we slept for much of it, curled together like caterpillar and leaf. Food was brought. Bread and jam at breakfast, a couple of microwave pizzas in the evening. We had not eaten anything like it for months, not since school dinners. I was not used to so much white bread. My insides ached. And they were tight with nerves.

Neither of us recognised the men who brought the food. They were different each time. They shuffled in, placed the tray down, then they left. I looked behind them through the opened door to the outside on each occasion but noted nothing. Each vista was a quiet simulacrum of the last: duller, hazier, but no significant alterations. From these brief glimpses of outside I could gauge no movement, no changes to provoke either concern nor hope.

In the evening of the second day, three men came to the shed. The bolts were shunted open and the key turned in the lock. They waited outside.

‘You’re to come,’ said one. He stood in the middle, slightly forward of the other two.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Cathy.

‘You’re to come, that’s all. You’ll find out soon enough, young lady.’

Neither Cathy nor I moved.

‘You’ll be coming either way,’ said the man. He was trying to menace but it was clear he had no real power. Such things can easily be discerned from very little contact. The merest waver in a man’s voice, the smallest declination of the eyes to the floor, a look of minute sympathy. He said, ‘You’ll be coming the easy way or the hard way.’

‘Right. Yeah. Well. You could just tell us where we’re going then we’d probably come, woundt we?’

The man in the middle looked to either side for support. One of them shrugged. The other just stared at Cathy.

‘We’re taking you up to see Mr Price.’

‘Right then,’ said Cathy. ‘In that case, we’re definitely coming.’ She got up and I followed. ‘Was that the easy way?’ she asked as we stepped across the threshold.

He might have given her a clip round the ear but I could tell he was afraid. She was nothing to him in size, of course, but my sister always had a certain manner. There’s power in the truth. In saying what you really mean. In being direct.

We walked with the three men through the back garden. There were further outhouses, a network, for tools, for boots, for guns. We weaved through vegetable patches and greenhouses, other potting sheds. The men did not lead us into the house but around it, on a thin gravel path that skirted the outer wall. We came to the front of the house and to an oval forecourt that stood before the steps up to the grand double front doors. Seven or eight vehicles, of different sorts, were parked around. I recognised Mr Price’s Land Rover, and his Jaguar. There were the Transit vans, and also a pick-up truck with a dirty tarpaulin flung over something bulky in the back.

Another group of men, possibly fifteen, were huddled. Hands in the pockets of dark jackets, all. Mr Price was among them, centred, gazing out towards the perimeter of his property, where an emerald hedge stood high.

The doors of the van we had come down in were open. Its engine was choking. The air around was black with exhaust. The stench hit my nostrils.

Mr Price glanced over at us and quickly away. His face looked hard worn, steadfast.

We were led to the van and bundled in the back.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Where’re you taking us?’

‘Up back to yours, via a stop on the way,’ said the man.

‘Back to ours?’

‘We’ve found your Daddy.’ He winked and grinned with teeth then slammed the van door tight shut, soaking us in a stiff darkness.

Cathy, with a sudden panic, ran to the door and rattled the steel with her fists. ‘Let us out!’ She hammered. ‘Let us out!’

I remained where I was, and held firm to the side of the van. The choking engine spluttered and caught and the van rolled then jolted then accelerated sharp. Cathy fell back and winded herself. I held on but grazed my elbow on something sharp. I felt a moisture in the crook of my right arm. It could have been blood or it could have been sweat. It was too dark to see.

Cathy coughed and caught her breath as the van hurtled forwards. I shuffled my feet apart to balance as the floor rattled beneath us. The roads and lanes round here were rutted after years of frosts and thaws and disrepair. I thought I heard dogs howling in the distance. They could have been ours. I had not seen Jess and Becky since they had run out of the house and down the hill. They often went roaming round about, but usually they found their way home.

We had not gone all that far when the van shuddered to a halt. Men leapt out. Shouting. Doors slammed. The sound of men running on grass and tarmac and gravel.

Cathy crawled to the door of the van where there was a slight crack in the rubber seal. She angled her nose against the metal in such a way that her eye was more or less aligned with the crack.

‘Can you see much?’ I whispered.

She rearranged her body, tilted her head, and looked out again.

‘I don’t recognise the place.’

There was more shouting. No words clear enough to make out. But there was much in the tone. An anger. A brutal excitement.

Cathy shuffled away from the door and sat. I could see her outline, dimly. It was too dark to see features or expression but I knew her well enough to recognise when she was afraid. Her ribs shuddered as she breathed. She was still such a little thing.

‘I don’t feel good about this, Daniel. If you get the chance to get out of this, take it. Go, run, and don’t look back.’

‘I woundt leave you.’

‘But that’s just what I mean. Do. Do leave me. I need you to know that I’ll be fine. No matter what they do to me, what happens to me. I’ll be fine. In my self, I mean. They can do their worst and I promise you I’ll go somewhere else in my mind’s eye, for as long as I need to, and I’ll be fine. An experience is what you make of it. If you tell yourself that it means nothing, then that’s exactly what it means. So you just run. Promise me.’

‘I don’t want to promise that.’

‘Please. I can look after myself, in the only way I know how. And the thought of something happening to you is far worse for me than the prospect of something happening to me. I mean that. I would worry so much. I would never get over it. But if something happens to my body. Well, I am able to put myself in such a position that it’s like it’s not really happening. And if it’s like it’s not really happening that means it’s not really happening. Do you see what I mean?’

I told her that I did not.

‘Well. Never mind. Just promise me you’ll run when I need you to run. I will be safer and better equipped if you run. If I know you’re safe and out of it.’

I said nothing for a long while. The shouting and running had stopped. There was an unnerving silence. I moved over to sit by Cathy and took her hand as I had back in the shed.

‘If we’re off to meet up with Daddy,’ I said, ‘I’m sure we’ll be all right.’

Cathy squeezed my hand, weakly.

‘Promise you’ll run,’ she said.

‘I promise.’

The van accelerated once again and Cathy and I rocked back and forth as the way became rough. Then, all of a sudden, we slid to the back. The front of the vehicle had lifted. We were climbing a steep hill. The hill was ours. Perhaps I could tell from the precise undulations in the track. Perhaps I could smell something of home.

The van stopped and the driver stepped out and walked round to the back. He opened the double doors. Dusk had come and gone and we found ourselves looking out into the night. By starlight and moonlight I recognised the three men that had collected us before. Cathy and I rose.

She whispered to me, ‘Do as I say. We’ll get out with them, we’ll comply, and they won’t manhandle us. Then when I say, you run.’

We stepped out.

The men flanked us but did not seize us.

We began to walk towards the house.

‘Daniel,’ said Cathy, aloud. She meant for me to go. But I remained. ‘Daniel,’ she said again.

We were walking with the men towards our own front door.

‘Daniel,’ said Cathy.

I continued to walk. I was behind her, with two men at either side and one in front, leading the way.

We were nearly inside. The copse was to my right and, beyond, the shaded hills then the flats of the levels.

‘Daniel, run!’ Cathy shouted, frustrated that I was not moving to her command.

I remained where I was. One of the men chuckled, then, of a sudden, he took Cathy roughly by her arms, pinned them behind her body at such an angle that only the shoulders and elbows of a supple and lanky young girl could stand.

It was not the worst thing they could have done, to be sure, yet it hurt her. She moaned, though she did not shriek.

‘Don’t be a damn fool, love,’ said the man who had laughed and grabbed.

With that, I got shoved from behind through the space where the front door had been. These men were full-grown men. These men were strong, burly, full-grown men employed for the purpose of doing harm. They were tough. With but a light push I was half-winded.

We were marched into the kitchen. I stepped on broken glass. The windows had been shattered and cupboards were open with their contents strewn. Two of the chairs I had lovingly crafted with the help of my father had been smashed. The legs of the kitchen table, chopped roughly, lay on the floor at the sides of the room. The top, the long, thick oak board, was absent.

They bundled us in. They were more ragged in their movements than they had been. Rougher, more unkind. They took us to the sides of the room and held us, firm. Another of the men gripped me as the first gripped Cathy. My bony arms were held tight behind my back by the elbows. I was young and thin and flexible too but my shoulders ached, and my ribs where they were squeezed, and the skin at the crook of my arm where the man pinched it with his leathery palms and annealed knuckles. I yelped.

For Cathy the initial pain had passed but her breathing deepened as her body found a way through the discomfort.

Other men filed into the room. They thumped each other on the arms and nodded. There was brief, clipped chatter. Cathy and I were shovelled to the sides, still held tight.

And then hush.

Into the room, into our kitchen, walked Mr Price. Like it was his own. His parlour. His workshop. His counting house. Like we were spiders climbing on his walls. Slugs suckered to his window, peering in.

His face showed wear. He was gaunt. But there was something human. A man whose son had been strangled to death in the woods, not a couple of nights before.

Tom Price, the elder of the two lads, walked behind him. He looked in horror and choler at my sister and I as our bodies were bent by the fists of others.

Father and son arranged themselves in a corner of the room. Mr Price did not direct his gaze at us. Not once. He stared above our heads and above the heads of the men he had hired. His jaw was locked, and it held the rest of his face in stiff composure.

The space was almost full with men at each side, sitting up on the work surfaces, tucked into corners and squeezed against the sides. Only the wall nearest the door was vacant, deliberately so, as men pushed and shoved into all the other spaces.

The silence remained. It was held by Mr Price. His presence settled others with a quiet trepidation. He surveyed.

A moan was heard outside. And it was as if the silence deepened. Everyone heard it. Then a sickening bellow. And something heavy dragging. And the voices of other men struggling to move an object.

‘Push. Push. I’ll guide him in.’ The words were muffled, heard through two shut doors and a whirling wind.

‘The corner’s got stuck on this clump of turf.’

The other man’s response did not make it into the room but was carried away by a sudden gust. They continued to drag whatever they were dragging. Step by step. Push and pull. It scraped and thudded. All eyes were on the door. Another moan was heard. A distinctive moan from distinctive vocal chords.

I couldn’t help it. I called out. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ I shouted.

‘Somebody shut that boy up,’ snapped Mr Price from the corner. He did not look over. He hardly moved his lips as he issued the command.

The man holding me removed one of his fists from my arms and smacked my lower jaw. I tasted blood and with my tongue felt something loose. He shook me for good measure, bound my arms up in his own and pushed down so I had to lean forward and bend my knees.

I panted with the pain. I fiddled with the loose molar. I tasted blood. I fiddled some more with the tooth. I paid attention to this object in my mouth, to the feeling of its rough top as my tongue rubbed against it, and the feeling of the soft, tenderised gum beneath.

The door was opening. The man who had been doing the dragging could just about be seen, his back turned as he attended to his burden.

I concentrated on finding with my tongue the place in my mouth from where the blood was coming in. I fiddled around with the tooth. I enjoyed the distraction of the sharpness.

The man had now backed fully into the room. He was assisted by three others in his task. They held a board of wood. It was the top of our oak table. I saw where the legs had been and how roughly and carelessly they had been hacked off. The men carrying the table top now held it by these stubs.

I fiddled with my tooth. My back was bent in such a way that I had to strain my neck to see any of this. I thought about the pain in my spine, and the ache in my jaw and in my head, and about how I needed a drink of water, badly.

Daddy was strapped to the oak board with leather belts and cable ties. They dragged him into the room and propped him up against the wall that had been left vacant. His hands and wrists were coated in blood and his arms were spattered with it. Blood covered his face too and there were great clots of it on his forehead. On his left side, his white cotton vest was drenched crimson. His feet were bare and bound and they were rubbed and bleeding also. Everywhere the blood was mixed with dirt and mud and leaves and grasses and tar and soil from the land about, and red moved to black-brown.

When he was brought in his eyes were closed. Slowly he opened them and fixed them on mine. He looked over at Cathy, whose attention was as captured. The men who had brought him were busy ensuring his bonds were tight. Others looked at his hands and arms and legs or about them or at each other. None but my sister and I looked at Daddy’s eyes, a stark white, bright like two stars in a bloody firmament.

He groaned. He gurgled with each breath, liquid in his lungs.

Mr Price was the first to speak. ‘It’s a dark day, John. It’s a dark day. And believe me, this brings me no pleasure.’ He spoke quietly. ‘But you know that I require justice. Our kind of justice. Make your confession and it will be quick. Relatively quick.’

Daddy said nothing. Perhaps he could not. His eyes moved from Mr Price, to me, to my sister, to Mr Price.

‘You see that I brought your children here. I will be hard on them and you will see it,’ said Price.

Still Daddy said nothing.

Mr Price nodded to the big man holding Cathy. She struggled as he pushed her down, pinned her to the floor and took a knife to her clothing. The garments shrieked and whined as he ripped them apart. His aim was not to pierce her skin but he nicked it as he made the incisions, and as she struggled, and as he cut and ripped. There was blood on her too now.

Yet she did not scream. Her mouth remained shut firm. Her eyes wide open.

A naked body is just a naked body. Shame is only in beholding. And if I looked at her without shame, she could stand before me naked without shame and there would be no power in it. For why should she care for the way these men, these inconsequential men, looked at her?

Her clothes were cut and her body was revealed. I looked at her with all the intensity I could muster. I looked into her eyes and caught them with mine and I tried with all my might to let her know. Know what? Something. That she was not alone. That these things were only as bad as you imagined them to be and that only she could steady her imagination. But when I looked I saw that she was there already. There, or perhaps elsewhere. A thin, durable film of miraculous unconcern had settled upon her. She was impervious.

She stood naked. The man was still holding her tight but he could hardly be seen behind her radiance. The cuts and spotting that had appeared on her near-translucent skin hardly held attention.

Daddy coughed. Some blood dribbled onto his thick black beard. It would need washing, I told myself. When this was done, Cathy and I would need to wash our father’s clotted beard and matted hair. ‘Please stop,’ he whispered to Price.

Price stared back. ‘Confess,’ he said to Daddy.

Daddy opened his mouth to speak again. There was breath but none which had strength to catch his voice. He sighed, tried again, but again the air fell damp in his lungs.

‘Mr Price,’ said Cathy. Her voice was unusually soft but steady and cutting as the arc of an axe through air. ‘I killed your son, Mr Price.’

Many in the room had been watching her. Many still watched her. But the mode of their gaze was so very different now it could hardly be given the same name.

Mr Price turned his head.

She said again, ‘I killed your son, Mr Price.’

He smiled. Others followed suit. ‘You tell me you had a hand in it? Lured him to the place, did you, so your father could rob him and kill him?’

Cathy shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I did it alone. Daddy wandt there. He knew nothing about it. I was alone. I closed my hands around his neck and I squeezed. I squeezed and I squeezed and he struggled beneath me with all the strength he could muster but still I squeezed and he coundt do owt about it. And he just got weaker and weaker as I held his neck in my hands and he got bluer and bluer until he wandt breathing at all no more and still I held on just in case until my fingers ached. And then I let him go. And I covered him with that coat. And I dindt rob him, but that’s by the by.’

Mr Price was stunned. His mouth gaped in incredulity. ‘Get out of it,’ he said. ‘You dare. You dare lie to me, you little bitch. You dare.’

‘It’s not a lie. Why would I lie? Why would I lie now in this moment when you have us as captives here in this way? Why would I lie when I know truly that you will murder the person who saw to your son? And still I tell you, I killed him. I strangled him with these two little hands. And I’m not sorry. And I would do it again.’

Tom Price, the elder of the two brothers, had been leaning against the wall. He stepped forward. ‘But how could you? You’re a little girl?’

‘She didn’t,’ interrupted Mr Price. ‘Of course she didn’t. She’s playing with us. That’s what they do.’

‘I killed Charlie Price!’ shouted Cathy. ‘I killed Charlie Price!’ she shouted again.

Charlie Price’s father came forward himself this time. He raised his right hand behind his left ear and unfurled it on my sister’s face with a loud crack.

The naked girl shut her eyes against the impact then opened them as quickly as if she had only turned and blinked and nothing more.

‘I killed Charlie Price,’ said Cathy again.

‘Get her out of here,’ said Mr Price to the room, to all of the other men who stood there, who had witnessed my sister’s confession and had come to their own conclusions about the verity of her claims.

One of their number came forward after a moment of pause. He reached out a gloved hand and stroked her neck. ‘I’ll shut her up,’ he stated blankly.

‘Good,’ replied Mr Price. ‘Take her to the next room and do with her whatever you wish. And I mean whatever you wish. Make the most of her.’

The new man with the gloved hands took Cathy from the grasp of the first and lifted her over his shoulder. She did not struggle. He removed her from the room and carried her into our hall then into a bedroom. I heard his footsteps. I heard the door click open and shut. I strained to hear more but there was nothing for several minutes.

In the meantime I was pulled up by my chin. It was Mr Price. The grip at my elbows was eased and I stood straight. Price asked, ‘And what was your part in this, my boy? The man, the girl, and you,’ he said. ‘Your father, your sister, and you. Your sister admitted conspiracy. What of you?’

‘Cathy dindt admit conspiracy,’ I said. ‘She told you that she did for your son and that she did for him alone.’

‘Aye. And I don’t believe her for one minute. A girl like that? Alone? No, I don’t think so. I’m no fool.’

I said nothing.

Mr Price continued. ‘I wonder,’ he said, his voice more gentle than it had been. ‘I wonder if you will come to resemble your mother or your father. In character, I mean. It is clear already that you have taken after your mother in physical appearance. But whose path will you follow? Will you end up like him?’ He nodded towards Daddy, whose eyes had closed, whose breath had softened. ‘Or will you end up like her?’

I lifted my head. I noticed creases in his golden skin and paler places at his lids. Shades of white-flecked pigeon-feather hair. Dry lips. Large ovaline nostrils flared when he inhaled. A flattish brow.

Perhaps he wanted me to ask. Perhaps he wanted for me to plead with him to tell me all about her. I cannot say that I did not want to know. I did. I had wanted to know all these years. I had wanted to ask it of Daddy, one time, on another day, on a very different type of day from this day, a day when we were here in this kitchen before these men came to stand here, any of the many days in the previous year when we had long hours to ourselves. We had had much to discuss but always had spoken little. Silence had been the mode of our exchanges. It had been the rule I had learnt.

So I remained silent, and the silence stayed my curiosity. My mother had come and gone. Until the last time when she had just gone. And not come.

When I was a very small boy I had sat in her arms as she rocked on a swing in the park behind Granny Morley’s house. The chains that held the seat were rusted iron. They crackled as my mother leaned our weight against them, and ferrous crumbs dropped as she rocked. They hit the rubber beneath. I had held her tight. I had held on for dear life. But her fists crunched on those chains. She gripped them until her knuckles bleached out and until her palms were stained with that thin russet pigment, as if the metal had been treated and ground especially to colour that chalked skin precisely the shade of her very own vein-blood.

‘She was always a grumpy girl,’ said Mr Price. ‘Always unhappy about something. You’d look at her and, likely as not, she’d have a downturned mouth and a frown on. What she had to be miserable about, God alone knows. Pretty face, of course, but she never made the most of it. I mean, I tried to do what I could for her. I would have married her if my boys’ mother had died sooner. I made her a good offer. But she chose another path. She frittered her life away. Went about with the wrong sorts of people. Went to the wrong sorts of parties. The farm and the land she’d inherited all went to waste. And if there’s one thing I hate, Daniel, it’s waste. The waste of land especially. Good land, made barren. I can’t stand it.’

Mr Price turned from me and went to the kitchen counter.

‘So by the time I took her in, it was on very different terms. It had to be. She had disgraced herself. But I put a roof over her head, at least! Not that she ever showed any gratitude. And not that she stuck around. Your Daddy — if he is your Daddy — was working for me at the time, collecting rents, winning fights that I set up for him. And the two of them ran off together, didn’t they. Ran off with a pile of cash, my wife’s jewellery and a pair of 1960s Holland & Holland guns.’

He pulled at the brass ring handle of a drawer with a hooked, bloated thumb. It was the drawer that I had helped fit. I had not managed to fix the alignment quite right. It always stuck.

‘Where she is now, God knows. Your Daddy couldn’t hold her down for long either. Like I said, there was always that restless sadness about her. Always that inexplicable, unwarranted misery. If you told me she’d overdosed in a dark alley or Chapeltown brothel, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Daddy kept his knives in that drawer. Every Sunday evening he took them one by one from that drawer, sharpened them with a whetstone and returned them one by one in their particular arrangement.

Mr Price did not select the largest. That was a long, thin filleting knife with a gently curving edge. He chose instead a paring knife with a walnut handle and a stubbed, pointed blade roughly the length of my index finger.

He stepped towards Daddy. He stood close to him, such that they could inhale and exhale each other’s breath. The air entered Daddy clean and left him with a bloody mist, and Mr Price breathed in that mist, the blood with it, and returned it dry.

Mr Price raised the blade and placed the point at Daddy’s shoulder. He struck through. The knife pierced the skin then went further. Mr Price had cut right through to the bone like he was jointing a stag. The blood gushed. Deep burgundy like thickened wine from deeper, more abundant vessels than the thin bright crimson blood splashed and smeared over his skin and candid white vest. The flow dribbled down his chest and arm both, soaked into his armpit.

Still Daddy’s breath did not catch his voice box. He could not muster a scream. He sighed and looked upwards at the ceiling, though his face relaxed into a serene expression like he could see past it, up to the clouds and up to the stars. I did not know whether or not Daddy believed in heaven and hell. I did not think I had ever asked him. And if I had asked and been told, I had forgotten the answer.

Mr Price unplugged the knife. Another red spill.

‘He’ll bleed out,’ Mr Price said to another man.

‘Slowly,’ said the other man, ‘he’s a big one. He may need another for good measure.’

‘Oh I know it will be slow. And I’ll put more on him before I’m done. But that one should be enough to do it.’

It was almost as if Mr Price was irritated by the advice, like he wanted to show that he knew what he was doing, like he, as much as any of the men here, could deal in matters of the body, in matters of slow death.

I watched Daddy as I had watched Cathy.

I wondered if he had come back for us and if that was why he had been found. I thought on what Vivien had said. And on what Ewart had intimated.

There was quiet from the other room. A silence that was unnerving. I cursed myself for being such a coward.

Then a whole lot of waiting. Mr Price leaned on the counter and he watched Daddy as he tried to keep his eyes open.

Then he came back and he stuck his blade into the softer place beneath Daddy’s left kneecap. And then his right. Long, red socks. Price returned to the counter.

Tom’s eyes were wide open now. It seemed as if he could not blink at all. Everything about his countenance was dry, parched, and guarded. His eyes were open wide but his mouth was shut tight. His lips were white: the outermost, cell-thin layer of skin had died and crumbled while we had been standing here. If he smiled the dead skin would crack. If he licked his lips, the dead skin would form a pallid, sticky paste.

Blood was pooling on the floor at Daddy’s feet.

The door swung open.

My sister cast a long shadow. It was heavy, the colour of charcoal, the kind of shadow that can only be cast by fire. It flickered and spat. Its source, held in Cathy’s left hand, had been hidden behind the door frame. She pulled it into view: a rag, doused in oil, tied around a bed post that she had pulled clean off its frame. Looped over her wrist was the wire handle of a tin bucket that swung dully as she moved her arm. It was filled with oil, and but a precarious two feet from the flaming torch.

In her right hand she held a shotgun, its butt locked to her side by her elbow, two thin fingers resting on its trigger.

Her hands and arms were coated with a thick layer of blood. Not her own. It was deepest red at her thumbs and fingertips, and lightest and brightest as it moved up her forearms.

It was as if she had plunged her limbs deep into that man’s guts.

I imagined him stretched out on the bed exhibiting a rough, gaping, bloody hole.

I could not imagine how she had done it.

She stepped into the room. She was still naked. She had found the bucket, the oil, the shotgun. She had not stopped to clothe herself.

And she shone. She had poured oil onto her own skin, and over her head onto her face and her thick, now slicked, black hair.

The man holding me loosened his grip. He recoiled like a spider from the light. I took my chance and leapt to the other side of the room, away from Mr Price, his surviving son, and his men. I took a place between Daddy, bloody, pinned to the oak board, and Cathy, her back as straight as the two barrels she pointed at Mr Price’s breast.

The scene had changed: the tempo, the climate, the aspect. The presence of the flickering flame shifted the saturation. Reds were now hot. Blues became muddy. Whites took on a tempered orange sheen. The skin of men’s faces, pulled back in dismay, tarnished and bruised in the new shadows. The slate tiles rippled between matte and satin like a frozen-thawed-refrozen layer of black ice.

‘One of you will untie my father,’ she said, simply.

There was silence. Nobody moved.

‘She doesn’t have the first idea how to use one of those,’ said a squat, bald man who had not spoken before.

Cathy shot him.

At that range the shrapnel had little time to spray. The full cartridge tore through his stomach and took out a cupboard door behind. The man dropped to the ground and shook a violent shake.

Her aim was natural. I expected no less.

Tom’s jeans darkened at his crotch as his piss spread. One of the men rattled the handle of the back door. It was locked. Cathy shot him. He too crumpled on the floor.

‘Stop!’ shouted Mr Price. ‘Tony, do as she asks.’

Tony was a tall man with faded tattoos the length of his long torso. He took the knife from his employer’s hand. He used it to cut through Daddy’s bonds, beginning at his ankles, then moving to his wrists. It was slow work. The knots were tight and the ropes were tough.

Free, Daddy fell away from the table top and shrunk against the back wall. Blood rubbed against the paintwork and soaked through to the plaster. Tony returned to his master’s side.

‘He’s already dead, Cathy,’ said Mr Price. ‘He’ll bleed out. There’s no helping him.’

‘I can see that.’

The torch was burning lower, closer to the bucket of oil.

The crowd quaked. Men shifted uneasily, dancing on the spot with a desire to run but with no chosen nor possible direction.

Keeping her eyes on Mr Price at all times, Cathy said quietly, only to me, ‘It’s your time to leave.’

I glanced at Daddy. He was fading fast, slipping between states.

I saw the door behind my sister, open, and from there just a few steps to the front door, then the outside.

I remembered what she had said to me earlier that evening. I remembered my promise.

In a single, smooth motion Cathy flung both bucket and torch into the air on a trajectory towards Mr Price.

As flame and oil converged at the height of their arc I slipped through the open door and threw myself out of the house into the cool evening air. Fire erupted behind me. I could hear it and feel it. I could see its luminous contours on the damp grass at my feet.

I ran. I ran and I ran. I ran through the night and noted nothing that I saw. Not the pools of water lying about the land, nor the dark storm clouds in the sky, nor the droplets of rain shooting sharp and fast, spitting at me then dripping down my face.

I ran as quickly as I could, as quickly as I had ever run before, through this landscape that I knew but did not in this moment see. I might have run for hours. I ran until I fell.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Smoke moved over the water. The shadows were long, thin teeth, and light curled around the trees, between trunks and crooked, clad branches. It made parchment of the leaves. It made dust of the morning dew. The water below shone brighter than the sky above and it illuminated the smoke from beneath like a vivid moon behind papyrus clouds.

There was murky water on my tongue. It flowed into my cheeks and out again and the taste of wet then drying earth lingered with each flushed mouthful. The pool padded against the left side of my face and entered my nostrils and eased down my throat. I sipped on dirt and tasted iron blood.

The fire had been built of many parts. It had been built of gas and light and sparks, of flames and ripples and currents. It had devoured damp air and sapless wood and engulfed a small pocket of the cool night. I had run a long way. I had stopped here and settled. I had stooped for water, any water I could find, and raised it to my lips with two cupped hands, trembling, and I had lain my head on the shore for a while, just for a while, and I had slept, it seems, and woken, before I had noted the place.

I could still smell the fire though I was far away. Resin from the burnt embers stuck at the back of my throat, from the rafters of the roof and the ash floorboards. And the sight of it, too, was stuck somewhere at the back of my head, behind my eyes, the sight of those curling, forked tongues licking familiar figures. And the sound of it still thick in my ears: a hiss, a groan, a beat, as beams bent and broke. My skull was full.

The smoke was mist, not smoke at all. It rose from the reservoir in the morning calor. The reservoir was five miles from the copse, perhaps nearer on a direct path, over hedges, ditches and planted fields. That was the route I had taken, I think. My course had been as straight as a train track. I had not swayed from side to side one bit, I think, though my steps had undulated as I had jumped over banks then down to the boggy parts to trudge through acrid organic tar, the aggregate sludge of every autumn rotting. Either the night had been caught with haze or it had been my memory that had reduced solid shapes to spectres. All was unknown, I recall, though I had trodden those tracks many times before. But the levels look different after dark, and the world is distinct for each individual, and I had been made new as I had walked and I had seen the land like it had been new too.

I must have slept again: my eyes were shut. I must have slept without stirring despite the brightening horizon. I slept until I felt another wetness on my cheeks. Damp bristles moved over my brow and caught on my eyelids. A new smell met the igneous residue. A musk. And lips. These were lips. Coarse, meaty, jagged lips, but kind, somehow inviting. And teeth that knocked at my scalp as the lips drew in lumps of my hair. And a tongue — long, viscous — moved down to my neck and wrapped itself around my jaw.

I opened my eyes. The head of a horse. Two large brown eyes, like snooker balls, rolled to scan my face, then the world around, then my face. The horse snorted and tossed her sooty forelock. The sun was full in the sky now, though not high, and as the horse swayed, her head moved in front of it, making a dark silhouette of her otherwise rusty fur, and a stilted halo around her otherwise silky mane.

‘Who are you?’

It was a question to the horse. In my state of half dream, it was a necessary question.

The horse continued to ruffle my hair. Her rider answered, ‘It’s Vivien, Daniel. It’s Vivien.’

If relief were a thing it was possible to feel when the full gush of dread was still swilling within, casked and stoppered, then I might have felt relief. But as it was, the sight of this friend, without much reason, put fear to boil. She did not dismount.

‘There’s been a fire,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘A fire at your house.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was there. I ran away.’

‘I had hoped …’

‘How did you find me?’

‘I’ve been riding for two hours,’ she replied. ‘You look ill.’

‘Not ill,’ I said.

Vivien rearranged the reins in her gloved hands. The horse stepped to one side and planted four hooves such that she stood side on, and Vivien turned too to look upon me. I raised myself up out of the dirt with the palms of my hands, then stood up.

‘Have you found anyone else?’ I knew that nobody had made it out, save for me.

‘I saw a figure.’

‘Who?’

‘I saw the fire last night, all the way from my house. At first I thought it was a bonfire and wondered why I hadn’t been told so that I could come up. And then I saw that it was too big. Far too big to be a bonfire. And I put on my coat and left the house and began to walk up the track. The wind was blowing in my face, so the smoke was too. Directly at me. For a while I stopped being able to see the flames, the smoke was so thick. But then I got closer, as close as I could get against heat, and saw your house. It was on fire. And I saw you, what I thought to be you, rushing down the hill away from me, running as fast as you could. I would have followed but, somehow, I couldn’t. I remained. I watched the blaze, I watched as the house fell apart. I thought I saw figures inside, but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t see well enough. I think the smoke had scorched my eyes, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s possible. And when it was almost over, such a long time later, I thought I saw a figure emerge. But it couldn’t have been. But I thought I saw a thin figure emerge. As the dawn was coming up.’

‘Who?’

‘I couldn’t say,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it was real.’

‘Could it have been my sister?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t really know what I saw. I just had the image, and now just the memory of the image.’

‘But it could have been.’

‘Possibly.’ She peered down at me but I could not seem to hold her gaze. I looked out towards the reservoir.

‘Why did I run?’ I asked.

‘Running was the only thing to do.’

‘I left them.’

‘It was the only thing to do, Daniel.’

‘Cathy told me to.’

‘She was right to.’

The reservoir appeared to lilt from side to side. I stared instead at a sickening ash tree on its far bank. It was too brittle to sway with the wind.

After a while, she said: ‘You could come home with me.’

This time I looked up at her. It was a kind offer. ‘Thank you, but I have got my own family.’

We stood for a moment: Vivien, the horse, and a lanky lad, barely fifteen.

‘Which way did she go?’

‘Daniel, I don’t know. The figure I thought I saw, I thought it moved towards the tracks. I ran soon after, back to mine to get Daisy, to come and find you. I saw nothing clearly.’

‘Towards the tracks?’

‘Yes?’

‘Then where?’

‘I didn’t see.’

I nodded. I looked about me, to see if I had left anything on the ground. There was nothing, just an indentation where I had lain. I had brought nothing with me. I had nothing to bring. For no reason at all, I scuffed the marks in the sand with my foot. I would leave no trace, no tracks. No hunter would find me.

‘I’ll be going then,’ I said to Vivien, and, in part, to Daisy.

Daisy blinked feather lashes. Vivien let out an agitated sigh.

‘Remember what I said, Daniel.’

I walked away from the reservoir, and away from the woman and her horse, following approximately the route I must have taken the night before.

Needless to say, the idea of returning to our house on the hill was suffocating. I watched my feet take each step, one then another. Their tilt, the way they slapped the earth, the way the toes bent.

I did not look back, though a couple of times I heard the horse’s hooves stamp and drag, as Vivien kept there to watch me go.

After around half a mile, I came to a wooden, slatted bridge, barely more than four planks thrust together and stitched with rusted, hooked nails that led across a thin dike. The furrow carried excess water after heavy rain. These parts flooded regularly. In winter, and after summer storms, great torrents rushed from the nearby hills to the flat lands.

There had been rain last night, I remembered. It had rained as I had walked, though I had hardly noticed. It had been all around. I remembered suddenly: fattened, matured plugs of rain had cascaded past me and bounced at my feet. A summer storm. I had walked in it then slept in it. My clothes were still damp. And the reservoir had been high, too. High enough to slap my face, though I had rested on an upper bank.

I quickened my pace. I had to run. The whole landscape was wet.

The figure Vivien had seen. There was more than a chance it was Cathy, saved miraculously from the fire by storm to walk through the smoke to the only remaining landmark she could find in the gloom: the railway track.

I ran and ran. A cloud of smoke, soot and heavy steam rested on the hill. It filled the void where the house had been. I was thankful that I was spared the sight of the absence where, for a blissful year, there had been a home.

As I got closer, I saw baked ribs, the empty structure’s blackened frame. I saw cinders that stood precariously from the ground to the branches of charred trees, burning wood on a scale I had never witnessed. I saw a kind of black that was new to me, condensed, compacted, opaque.

I walked on. I had no desire to inspect the remains: there was no telling what I would find. Besides, the railway track, and the possibility of my sister, lay ahead. But as I walked on past the burnt house, past the burnt chicken coop, past the slim charred vegetable patch, past the ashen copse, I was harried by glinting sparks, the biting revenants of a shredded inferno. They swept and swirled about me like gulls at a trawler. I was their last scrap, their last taste of living tissue and hope of supper before they fell like those before them to the damp earth. I walked on, and they fell.

I came to the tracks. Two sets. Four cords of iron, running as straight as rainwater falls, from north to south. Iron stretched between magnetic poles. The wooden sleepers were dark with damp. The stone ballast was slick. I climbed the embankment, though the grass was slippery, and stood upon the cess. I looked to my left and I looked to my right. I saw no one. But if Cathy had fled the house and come to the tracks she would have continued, and she could be a long way off by now. I looked left and I looked right. North to Edinburgh or south to London. I made my choice and walked.