Joe Country

The owl flew screaming from the barn, its wingtips bright with flame. For a moment, silhouetted against the blank sky, it was a dying angel, scorched by its own divinity, and then it was just a sooty husk, dropping like an anvil into the nearby trees. He wondered if it would set the wood ablaze. But the trees were thickly layered with snow, and any spark that survived the fall would be smothered on contact. He turned back to the barn in time to see the roof collapse, and a cloud of dust burst upwards. Kind of beautiful, if you liked that sort of thing. This must be what got arsonists stoked.

But he was no arsonist; just following instructions. They’d burned the barn to erase their recent presence, and it hadn’t occurred to either of them that this was an extermination; that there’d be an owl inside, plus any number of mice, rats, spiders, whatever. Not that it mattered. But he should have been aware of the possibility. That way, his heart wouldn’t have leaped up his throat when the burning bird emerged, desperately hunting the last few seconds of its life.

It had found them now. Up there in the great grey yonder, while its one-time home was transformed by the miracle of flame into a smoky mass.

Something gave with a crash and a heave of sparks, and that was as good a signal as any. Time to leave.

“We done?” he said.

“Not as done as that bird. What was it, a chicken or something?”

“. . . That’s right. A chicken.”

Jesus Christ.

He checked the straps on his backpack, tightened the cuffs of his quilted jacket, pulled his hood up, and led the way to the footpath. Behind them smoke curled upwards, while the falling snow grew lumpier, and the world flattened to a single tone. The barn hadn’t been in use, and was miles from anywhere. The pillar of smoke would rouse attention, but they’d be long gone, their tracks covered, before any professional response arrived, and there was a ready-made scapegoat here in the wilderness: kids. Country life wasn’t all driving tractors and shovelling shit with happy grins. They’d be doing meth, white cider and setting fire to barns. That’s what he’d have done, if forced to grow up round here.

Once the bodies were found there’d be a circus, of course, but that wouldn’t happen until the flames died down. And the blood on the snow would be a muddy mess by then, trampled by the first responders.

His right cuff was too tight, so he adjusted the Velcro fastener. Better. Good jacket: kept the weather out. The woman had been wearing one similar. New-looking, though she’d managed to rip it scrambling over a fence or something, leaving a triangular tear on the right breast; a flap of fabric hanging loose, showing the spongy material beneath. As for the man, he hadn’t been dressed for the cold, and would have caught his death even without intervention.

The footpath left the cover of the trees, and they were out in the open again. The weather was coming in from the coast and they were walking towards it: on the way he’d call the boss, arrange a meeting-point. With any luck, the boss would have found and killed the kid this morning, but they were boots up now anyway. Sometimes jobs went south, that was all. Sometimes colleagues got killed. When it happened you chalked it down to life-lessons, then went home and waited for the bruises to heal.

His companion spoke. “I could murder a drink.”

“Not until we’re back among the lights.”

By which he meant England, obviously. There might be lights in Wales, but he wasn’t convinced they weren’t powered by hamsters on wheels.

A black shape flitted overhead, a bird heading home, and he thought about the owl again; how the flames were already consuming it as it fled the barn. He had a memory about owls: that they were omens of something, probably death. Most omens had to do with death, if horror movies were anything to go by.

He reached a stile and clambered over it. Behind them lay a few complicated days, and a black curl of smoke etching an ideogram in the sky; ahead, a whitening landscape, and beyond that the sea. As he set off to meet it, he thought: that owl had been right on the money, even if late with its prediction. Death had visited the area, making a collection. It had had a tougher job than it might have expected, given that the opposition had been from some rejects’ department: Slade House? No, Slough House . . . Slough House, because the boss had called them “slow horses.” A harder job than expected, but it made no lasting difference.

The man was dead. The woman was dead.

Slough House was going to need some new slow horses.