‘There will be other places with combine harvesters. I think we should get going.’
But the priest was already walking across the yard.
Belle said, ‘Let’s go without him.’
‘Jacob has the van keys.’ Will’s ugly face was blank, his voice flat, but Magnus sensed the anger coiled inside him.
‘So let’s take another one,’ Belle whispered. Her voice was edged with panic, as if she too were worried about the fire’s crowd-drawing potential. ‘This place is full of abandoned vehicles.’
It was as if Will had not heard her. He picked up his shotgun, jumped out of the trailer and followed Jacob across the yard, his footsteps scrunching quick and resolute against the gravel. Magnus saw Will’s free hand clench into a fist and ran after him.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Belle shouted.
Magnus heard the truck’s tailgate slam and the girl’s swift footsteps behind him. Jacob had reached the sheds. He slid a door open and went inside. Will stepped into a trot. Magnus was running full pelt now, but the other man’s legs were longer and he had a head start. Jacob had seemed not to notice he was being pursued, but he was a soldier, with a soldier’s training and Magnus imagined him waiting on the other side of the door, his gun ready.
‘Wait,’ Magnus shouted. He felt sick with anticipation. Will followed Jacob into the shed and slammed the door behind him. Magnus faltered to a halt.
‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’ Belle was beside him.
‘We’re too late.’ Magnus’s words came between gasps of breath.
‘You’re a fucking coward.’ Belle still had the puppies shawled in her arms. She hugged them to her and ran awkwardly towards the outhouses before Magnus could stop her. No shot sounded and after a moment he followed her.
The darkness of the barn was almost blinding after the bright sunshine. The two men appeared like black shadows, side by side, facing away from him in the dimness. Belle came towards Magnus, pale and ghostly. He asked, ‘What’s going on?’ but she ignored him and went outside, whispering softly to the dogs cradled in her arms as if they were in need of comforting. Magnus drew closer and saw that Will and Jacob were standing over the body of a man. He had been dead for some time, Magnus guessed, but it was not the sweats that had killed him. Blood from deep cuts on the man’s wrists coated his legs and belly. A gash yawned on his neck and a black bib crusted across his chest. Before the sweats Magnus had only seen two dead bodies, but now this was nothing to stare at.
Will said, ‘It’s Henry, he was with us for a while.’
Jacob passed the other man the keys to the van without looking at him. ‘You and Belle should go back to base.’ He was staring at the body as if something about it fascinated him. ‘Magnus and I will take care of Henry. We owe him that much.’
It was in Magnus’s mind to say that he was not one of Jacob’s soldiers to be ordered around. He had never known Henry and owed him no more than the cattle they had burned, but then the priest’s eyes met his and he caught an expression in them that might have been fear or a warning.
‘She liked Henry. She’ll be upset.’ Whatever Will had been on the verge of doing was forgotten. He took the keys and left the barn.
Jacob waited until the sound of Will’s footsteps had faded and the truck’s engine gunned into life, then he hunched down beside the body.
‘What do you make of this?’ He touched dead Henry’s wrists with the tip of his gun barrel.
Magnus squatted next to him. ‘Things got too much for him and he cut his wrists.’
‘Look properly and tell me what you see.’ The priest lifted one wrist, then the other with his gun.
‘Two deep cuts on each wrist, one crossed over the other like an X. He meant to do it.’
‘And this?’ Jacob let Henry’s slaughtered arm drop and traced the gun along a dark bruise, striped above the wound like a bracelet. ‘There’s a matching one on the other wrist.’
‘I don’t know.’ Magnus leaned forward to get a closer look. Each death had its own particular scent. Henry’s smelled of freshly spread fields and iron. ‘Perhaps it’s something that happens when you cut your wrists like that.’
‘It’s something that happens when someone sticks a pair of handcuffs on you.’ The priest’s voice was as dead as the corpse on the floor between them. ‘I’ll tell you something else. No one cuts their wrists in one clean slice. It takes a few goes before the natural instinct for self-preservation is completely overcome. Henry didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Magnus whispered.
‘You and Jeb were the only ones who weren’t here when it happened. That means you’re the only ones I can vaguely trust.’ Jacob got to his feet.
Magnus followed him. ‘Raisha and Belle…’
‘Are as suspect as anyone.’ There was a sheet of plastic draped over some machinery in the corner of the barn. Jeb pulled it free and dragged it towards the body. ‘It’s comforting to think of women as a higher species, less inclined to violence than men, but they do occasionally kill.’ He put the plastic over Henry’s corpse, slipping its edges beneath the body, as if he were tucking him into bed. ‘We’ve been through an unprecedented trauma. Life is cheaper than it was before. Who knows what effect it will have on those of us who remain?’
‘What are you going to do?’
Jacob pushed the final edge of the plastic beneath Henry’s head.
‘What can I do? Maybe it was one of our group, maybe it was a stranger. I’ll keep my eyes open and try and make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.’
‘It could have been Jeb or me, we’re strangers.’
Jacob gave a weird grin. ‘Was it?’
‘No,’ Magnus said. ‘It wasn’t.’
Jacob nodded. He looked Magnus in the eye. ‘It wasn’t me either.’
Twenty-Eight
The combine harvester they had found was bigger than the one his father had rented each year for the croft and Magnus guided it slowly through the ripe field of corn. Jacob sat in the cab beside him to ‘learn how it was done’, but Magnus was aware of the gun on the priest’s hip and his own lack of weapon. They were each wearing ear mufflers they had found on the driver’s seat, ready for a harvest that had come too soon for some now-dead farmer and his mate. It was too noisy to talk and neither of them had mentioned Henry’s body. Magnus was glad of the noise. Murder or not, there was nothing he could do about it. He liked the faint, familiar rumble of the combine’s engine, the smell of newly felled corn and the uneven jolt of the field beneath the machine. Sweat was beading his forehead and trickling down his back, but the task felt clean. There was something purifying in the labour and even with Jacob riding shotgun it gave him space to think. He would leave Tanqueray as soon as he had cut the three fields of corn they had agreed on.
Magnus had visited Jeb and told him about Henry. One of the puppies had been curled on the floor of the room, chewing at the bedside rug’s fringes. Jeb had stretched out a hand, caught hold of the dog by the scruff of its neck and pulled it to its feet. He rubbed the dog’s ears. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t Jacob who did it?’
It was a typical police response, Magnus decided, blame the nearest person, but he kept the thought to himself. ‘Why would you think that?’
The dog made a lunge for Jeb’s shirt sleeve and he batted it away. ‘You saw the way he shot the guy who attacked us. He blew his head off with no warning. Jacob’s a soldier. He knows how to handle a gun. Okay, the man had a machete, but Jacob could have taken him out with a hit to the leg, a hit to the body if he wasn’t sure of his aim.’ The puppy jumped at Jeb’s sleeve again. He cuffed it gently on the back of its head and it trotted out of the room. ‘Jacob went for the execution shot. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but if you’re looking for a killer I’d say Father-armed-and-dangerous is an obvious candidate.’