Magnus had wondered at the way Jacob had shot the Audi driver, but he had seen the grim set of the priest’s mouth as he looked at Henry’s wounds.
‘He took us to the body. Why would he do that if he had killed him?’
Jeb leaned forward, still stern, but more confident than Magnus had seen him since the accident.
‘What’s the point in putting on a display if there’s no one there to admire it? We were trained to look out for the neighbour who’s a little too nosy about the crime scene; the person who’s over-eager to offer an opinion to the news cameras; the man or woman who knows a little too much.’ Jeb opened the desk drawer and took out a pencil and a piece of paper. ‘Describe what you saw in as much detail as you can remember.’
Magnus looked out at the trees beyond the window. Jeb’s story about Cherry and Happy was harder to imagine by daylight. It seemed to belong to the night. He wondered about the truth of it; the woman jumping to her death with the child in her arms, the last terrified look at the world the girl had given before she was plunged into the sky beyond the balcony. Magnus’s trust in Jeb was wavering again, but he found that he wanted to tell him about Henry’s butchered body, the way the priest had touched the wounds gently with the nub of his gun. How he had tucked the dead man tight in plastic, as if preserving him for another day.
Jeb listened silently, jotting down the occasional note. He nodded when Magnus mentioned the lack of defence cuts and the red weals Jacob had said were caused by handcuffs. When Magnus finished Jeb said, ‘I’d like to talk to the priest about this. Do you think you can get him to visit me?’
Magnus had promised to see what he could do.
The corn toppled beneath the combine’s blades in rows that were less straight than his father would have approved of, but which gave Magnus a forgotten sense of pride. He would find a van somewhere, pick up his abandoned motorbike, replace its damaged tyre and press on for Scrabster. The van would speed his progress and the bike would ensure he was not stalled by some obstacle: a tangle of abandoned cars, a collapsed bridge or a barricade that a larger vehicle could not negotiate. When he got to Orkney, Magnus would be able to tell his mother and Rhona (please God let them be alive) that he had done something good.
Jacob was saying something to him. Magnus lifted his muffler, but the words were lost in the din of the engine. The priest pointed at the ignition. Magnus killed the engine and drew the combine to a halt.
Jacob said, ‘Ready for a break?’
‘I can keep going for another hour.’ Every moment he worked was a moment closer to leaving.
‘I’m ready for a break and I think you should have one too. These are dangerous machines. It doesn’t do to drive them for too long.’ Jacob slung the bag with their water and sandwiches in it around his body, opened the cab door and climbed down into the field.
Magnus said, ‘I’ve been driving these beasts since I was sixteen. I don’t need to be told when to have a break.’
His father had been working his neighbour Bobby Bird’s field since sun-up on the evening he died. Bobby supplemented the yield from his croft by working in a bank in Stromness. He paid for the combine’s rental and Magnus’s father cut Bobby’s crop, then used the machine to harvest his own fields.
‘I told him not to batter it,’ Bobby had said tearfully to Magnus at the funeral, ‘but you ken your faither, God bless his soul, he wouldn’t touch his ain fields till he had done mine and he was feart the rain was coming in.’
His father had been right. It had rained for three days after his death; torrential, biblical, sheets of rain. Bobby and the rest of their neighbours had worked in it, Magnus, Rhona and his cousin Hugh with them, to bring in his father’s crop. But it had not brought the man back.
Magnus got out of the cab, slammed the door and jumped down into the stubbled corn. The sky was blue and almost cloudless. There were no jet streams intersecting in the sky, white on blue like ragged saltires. Jacob tipped a water bottle to his mouth. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand and then reached into his bag and passed another bottle to Magnus who unscrewed its lid and took a drink. Jacob was wearing dark Ray-Bans that contrasted oddly with his dog collar. It was hard to see his eyes, but Magnus could feel the priest watching him.
Jacob said, ‘Did you tell anyone about Henry?’ Magnus considered lying, but he hesitated a moment too long and the priest asked, ‘Who? Jeb?’
‘He used to be a policeman. I thought he might be able to tell whether it was murder or not.’
Jacob nodded. ‘The same thought crossed my mind.’
Magnus said, ‘He told you he used to be in the police? You’re privileged.’
‘He didn’t have to tell me.’ The priest smiled, his eyes still hidden. ‘Jeb Soames is distinctive. He’s changed, grown a decade older in two or three years, but I got a feeling of déjà vu when I was setting his leg. The pain brought out those big bones in his forehead. It took me a while to place him, but then I remembered a newspaper photograph of him wearing the same expression as he was taken into court on the first day of his trial.’ The priest paused as if something had just occurred to him. ‘Do you know his history?’
The sun was warm on the back of his neck. Magnus took a hanky from his pocket and mopped his face with it.
‘He told me some of it. He wanted to convince me he was innocent.’
‘Did he succeed?’
Magnus thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’
‘The judge and jury thought he was guilty.’ The priest’s voice was neutral, as if guilt and innocence were all the same to him. ‘The newspapers did too. Jeb was bulkier in the photo, like a human battering ram. I remember wondering how a man his size could bring himself to lay violent hands on a child.’ Jacob stared up the field at the rolled bales of harvested corn. ‘The girl who died was the same age as my younger daughter. Maybe that’s why the story stuck in my mind.’
Magnus said, ‘And you don’t mind having him here?’
‘If I’d realised who he was when we first met, I might have walked away…’ The priest shrugged. ‘He’s here now. Maybe God intended it that way.’ He tilted his water bottle to his mouth and drank. ‘Is he getting close to Belle?’
‘I think he feels sorry for her.’
The priest took off his Ray-Bans, wiped his eyes and put them back on. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes.
‘Love is the thing that will make the post-sweats world bearable, love and children; new life. But it’s probably best if Jeb doesn’t get too close to Belle. From what I remember of the press coverage she’s rather too like the woman he killed for any good to come of it.’ Magnus was about to say that Jeb might still be innocent, but the priest asked, ‘What did he say about poor Henry?’
Magnus shrugged. ‘Nothing much, just that he’d like to talk to you about it.’
‘Did he tell you that he thought it was probably me who killed him?’
‘No,’ Magnus lied. There were whole fields surrounding them and no one to care if Jacob should decide to aim his gun and shoot. He went north, the priest would say, home to his family. ‘Why would he think that?’
‘I would in his position. You’ve already seen me kill and I was the one who found the body. I reckon that makes me a prime candidate.’ Jacob grinned. ‘Don’t look so worried. I’ve no intention of burying you among the corn. At least not until we get our three fields done.’ He reached into his bag and took out the bread and cheese he had been wrapping in wax paper when Magnus had joined him in the kitchen early that morning. ‘Next year at harvest we’ll be eating bread made with our own flour.’