One Last Breath

32

Mansell Quinn cut off the forelegs at the first joint and scored the skin of the belly, careful not to pierce through to the gut or bladder. Then he loosened the skin around the back legs. Keeping one end of the hare’s body taut against the other, he pulled the skin down towards the stumps of the forelegs. It was stiff in places where it clung to the body, but slowly it peeled away, uncovering the layers of muscle and sinew. Finally, the skin came cleanly over the head of the animal in one piece.

Quinn gutted the animal carefully, wiping the blood and fluids from his fingers so that the knife didn’t slip in his hands. He wanted to save the liver, which was valuable protein. When he’d finished, he buried the stomach and intestines under a tree and washed his hands in the stream. He watched the thin swirls of blood curling downstream on the surface of the pure, cold water. The smell of the gutted hare would linger in the vicinity for a while, but it couldn’t be helped.

He’d built a small fire to cook the hare. He could survive for a while without food, as long as he could get water. But he mustn’t go hungry for too long, or he’d start to lose his strength and his mental alertness would be blunted. Already, he was feeling a little light-headed. It left him a bit detached from reality, and that was dangerous. It would be too easy to make a mistake if he wasn’t fully alert.

He was pleased with the results of his practice with the crossbow. He’d used one before, many years ago, before he’d gone inside. The strange thing was that he remembered Ray Proctor as the one who’d been interested in them. Ray’s father had let him have an air rifle from an early age, and Ray had bought himself a crossbow as soon as he could afford it on his wages from the building site. He was forever persuading his friends to go with him on to the moors and into the old quarries to shoot rabbits and pigeons. Once, Ray had shot a swan on the river and broken its wing, which had sickened Quinn. But Will Thorpe had been keen on that, all right.

Quinn lifted his shirt to look at the wound in his side. The blood had almost dried now, but he’d have to wash the stains out of the shirt if he was going to avoid being too noticeable when he went down into Castleton again. The cut was clean. The crossbow bolt had penetrated the layer of fat above his left hip — almost the only fat on his body these days. He was lucky that Will Thorpe’s hand had been none too steady when he fired.

In fact, Will had been in a pretty bad way. Quinn told himself that he’d done him a favour, really. There came a point when it wasn’t worth living any more.

To eat his meal, Quinn moved to a vantage point on an outcrop of limestone. It was a narrow valley with thickly wooded slopes and a river running in the bottom. In places, its sides rose into vertical cliffs riddled with small caves and old mine workings. It would take him days to do a proper recce, but he hadn’t prepared for it. It had been the sight of the police swarming in the Castleton car park that had forced him to find a refuge out of the town. Someone must have recognized him leaving the toilets.

After he’d cooked the hare and eaten the thin strips of meat, Quinn washed himself in the stream. He still felt hungry. He had that same gnawing in his belly that hadn’t gone away for days. In fact, it had been there for months. For years.

Later that morning, Quinn noticed the sheep. It was a young ewe that had somehow scrambled through the fence at the top of the slope, no doubt thinking it had spotted some tidbit the others couldn’t reach. Now it was teetering on the rocky edge, finding the ground too unstable to get back up, and too frightened to go any further down. There was always a suicidal sheep or two in any flock. This one would become weaker and weaker until a fox found it or the crows pecked out its eyes. He’d be doing it a favour.

Quinn positioned himself against a horizontal branch and slipped a bolt into the crossbow. With luck, there would be mutton on the menu tonight.

A moment later, he scrambled down the slope to where the sheep had fallen. His bolt had gone through its neck, and its legs were still kicking when he reached it. The twitching hooves were gouging holes in the leaf litter. He grasped a handful of wool and pulled the sheep’s head back, then drew the blade of his knife quickly across its throat, feeling the skin part and the blood vessels sever. As blood gushed on to the leaves, he withdrew the crossbow bolt from its neck and wiped both bolt and knife carefully on a fistful of damp leaves.

Then he stopped and raised his head to listen. He could hear voices somewhere to the west, two females at least, coming his way. He reckoned they must be on the path that ran alongside the river further down the slope. The sheep wasn’t within view of the path, and he if lay still the women probably wouldn’t see him. It was a risk, though.

As they came closer, one of the women seemed to raise her voice and call to someone. A child, perhaps? But then Quinn heard an answering bark. It didn’t sound like a large dog — something like a terrier, perhaps. But that was bad enough.

Reluctantly, he packed everything away and backed up the slope towards the denser woods, kicking the leaf litter over his footprints until he was on dry ground. When he reached the first limestone outcrop, he used the rocks for cover and increased his pace to put distance between himself and the dead sheep.

Within a few minutes, Quinn was out of the dale and over a stone wall into a field. It was a pity to leave, but he could come back later when it was safe. Perhaps after nightfall, when there was no risk of being interrupted.