There was a rumble that could have been thunder, and Dog lowered to the ground and then stood up again and looked at me. ‘It’s not my fault,’ I had told him. He accepted this and carried on fossicking in the razor grass where he usually found something that had dragged itself there to die. There was no way of knowing how long my sheep had lived for, how far she had dragged herself before she died, what she saw.
We’d walked the length of the little bay quickly, and I emptied my pockets of the dust of bones and hair. In the last of the light we went back up the hill with the wind behind us.
The crows roosted in the trees like unopened buds. My stomach growled and I thought of the chicken I’d bought at the weekend. I should stew it, but that would take time; more likely I’d flatten it with a fist and put it in the oven and eat it with bread as soon as it was done.
I rounded the bend of the pathway and stopped dead. A man stood in the shelter of the hedge with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, staring straight ahead. He had a silk scarf wrapped around the bottom half of his face, and wore a suit. His hair was plastered to his head and he had a polythene bag hanging around his wrist. I kept walking as if I hadn’t seen him, but clenched my fists until my knuckles clicked. I could smell him, like old vegetables. We walked home quickly, the thought of the chicken gone. Dog let out a low growl, but kept close to me.
‘Fucking kids,’ I said again, to myself, just to have something to say. I’d tried not to run. I went home and loaded my gun. I looked at the phone and bolted the door.
‘I’d like to report a trespasser,’ I said, and the policewoman busily entered something into her computer. She looked up again.
‘Can I have your name please?’ She looked me up and down in a way I don’t think she expected me to notice. ‘And, er, your age?’
A policeman came out of a door behind the reception. He had grey hair at his temples and a comfortable-looking jumper on over his regulation one. ‘I’ll take care of this, Gracie,’ he said, with a swagger. A frown passed over the woman’s face.
‘Yes, Sarge,’ she said and tapped more buttons on her keyboard, very quickly.
‘This way please.’ The sergeant opened a perspex gate that said NO ENTRY and ushered me through. The policewoman watched out of the corner of her eye. I felt my bum controlling my legs again.
‘Terrible this cold, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘Have to double up on my jerseys.’ He smiled and plucked at the collar of his jumper. ‘It’s been a busy old month,’ he said as he showed me down a corridor, ‘what with Christmas and New Year, and just before that the real-ale festival — literally coach-loads over from the mainland.’
Faces looked out from each doorway we passed, people leaning back in their chairs to look up at me.
‘Oh,’ I said.
He opened the door to his office and gave me a small frown and a chuckle. ‘The problem’s more logistics than anything else.’ He gestured at a chair for me to sit in, and he sat in his behind the desk, and leant back. I noted the window and its view of the edge of Hurst Forest, and the spiny telecom receivers that flagged the prison, hidden deep in the woods. ‘See, the festival organisers don’t provide maps to the place, and I have to send my team out there to direct — to tell the coaches where to park, to answer questions, to direct the whole thing really.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘If you ask me, it’s the fault of the funders — do not have a festival if you cannot afford the proper and requisite means to staff it.’ He chopped his hand on the desk firmly and I shifted in my seat. There was a pause.
‘I’d like to report a trespasser.’
A look came over him. ‘Now there’s an accent we don’t hear round these parts much,’ he said. ‘I didn’t quite hear it before, but it’s there, isn’t it?’
I smiled and showed my teeth then drew breath to carry on, but he cut in:
‘My son-in-law’s an Australian,’ he said, nodding. ‘They met at a conference in Singapore, would you believe. HR she works in.’
I tried to gauge how long a gap was polite to wait before changing the subject back.
‘Over in Adelaide now — course the wife’s always on that we should go, but my thinking is they can come over here — got a thing about spiders me, you see — know how many different types of spiders you have out there?’
‘I—’
‘Close to three thousand. Know how many people get bitten each year? Close to four thousand.’ The policeman sat back in his chair and regarded me. ‘You do the maths,’ he said.
‘Look.’ I smiled. Teeth. ‘It’s just that I live alone and—’
‘Ah. Lonely place to be, on your own,’ he said. ‘Young woman like yourself ought to be with someone. Cheers you right up.’
‘That’s not the problem,’ I said, trying not to stiffen too much. ‘It’s that someone has been killing my sheep, and now there’s some bastard creeping around on my land.’
‘You a farmer then? Sheep is it? Well, don’t hide your light under a bushel, that’s a hard job.’
‘Yes, look, could we…’ I felt unreasonably hot.
His face took on an entirely different look. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get a report done, and that way you’ll feel better and we can get you back to your sheep, quick smart.’
‘Great. Thanks.’
He took a pen and paper out from a drawer in his desk. ‘Never could get the hang of computers — I’ll throw this over Gracie’s way and she’ll type it up no problem. Now, what is your name, pet?’
‘What did you call me?’
The air in the room stilled.
‘Eh? What’s that?’ Someone next door coughed. Probably they were listening to us. The sergeant looked at me with mild surprise and a little smile. ‘I just need your name.’
I bit the end of my tongue. ‘Jake Whyte.’
‘Address?’
‘Coastguard Cottage, Millford.’
He looked up, as I knew he would. ‘Ah, it all makes sense now, doesn’t it? You live in old Don Murphy’s place.’
‘Yes. I bought it off him.’
‘Never see you about. We was all wondering when you’d pop your head out.’
I smiled. More teeth.
‘Should take yourself out down the pub, make some friends, that’ll stop you feeling lonely.’
‘I’m not lonely.’
‘Well, if you say so.’
‘Two of my sheep have been killed.’
‘Rogue dog you think?’
‘No — they’ve been gutted, sliced about.’
‘Well, it’s amazing what dogs can do — I seen a lurcher go at a fox one time, and just the force alone of the dog’s snout on the fox’s ribs, ripped him right open — no teeth at that point, but fox is a goner. Didn’t last much longer after that I can tell you, more or less spat his own stomach out. I don’t mind telling you, it was a rough thing to witness.’
‘Kids have been hanging round the place.’
‘It’s not a great place for kids, the island, I’ll give you that — past a certain age anyway. They get bored. Real-ale festival is about all they have to look forward to, and even then they’re not supposed to be there.’ He pointed his biro at me. ‘Tell you what though, I’ll have a word, get them to stop haranguing you.’
‘How will you know which ones they are?’
The sergeant tapped the side of his nose. ‘I’ve a pretty good sense of who’s a troublemaker round these parts. Where’d you find them?’
‘On the Military Road.’
‘Military Road? I thought they were trespassing?’
‘No, it was someone else, down on the bridleway down to the sea.’
‘Well, that’s not trespassing, is it?’
I fought the urge to knock over his tea, gripped the arms of my chair instead and spoke clearly and slowly: