Magnus desperately wanted to pee. He searched for something to relieve himself into. The room had been emptied at some point and only the bed and a few sticks of furniture remained. He tried the window. It was locked, but the fastenings were the old-fashioned type that unscrewed without the aid of a key. They were stiff, but he managed to undo them and push up the casement. The window was too high and so he dragged a chair over and stood on it.
Magnus was peeing into the dawn, the morning air on his face, the salt scent of his own urine a small victory of streaming steam, when he noticed the dark shape lying on the grass beneath the wall that edged the garden. At first he thought it was a shadow but something about its outline perplexed him. For a moment he thought the dark blot might be a black bin bag blown in from somewhere else, but then he realised that it was a body, lying motionless on the lawn. The thought of yet another death made Magnus feel weary, but it occurred to him that whoever it was might yet be alive. He tucked himself away quickly, stepped down from the chair and broke it against the bedstead. He lifted the sturdiest of its legs and battered it against the door.
‘Let me out! There’s someone out there!’
It took a while, but eventually Will shouted from the other side of the door, ‘I don’t have the keys.’
‘Get them from Jacob.’
‘He’s not in his room.’
A thought stirred in Magnus. He said, ‘Someone’s lying beneath the trees on the back lawn. I don’t know if they’re alive or dead.’
He heard Will’s boots thump downstairs and went to the window. He reached the garden quicker than Magnus had expected. He ran across the lawn, leaving a dark trail of footprints on the dewy grass. Will faltered, unsure of what direction he should head in. He looked up. Magnus pointed to where the body lay and Will sprinted towards it. He slowed. Magnus knew that whoever it was, they were dead. Will raised his face towards the nursery window and shook his head. Magnus could tell from the heaviness of Will’s limbs as he walked towards the house that it was someone they knew.
‘Please God, don’t make it Raisha,’ he muttered beneath his breath. He waited until Will was below and leaned against the bars of his window. ‘Who was it?’
‘Jacob.’ Will’s face was taut and white with anger. ‘That murdering bastard you came with shot him.’
Thirty-One
It was a terrible thing to see an old man cry. Magnus had never liked Father Wingate, but he put a hand on the elderly priest’s arm as they walked away from Jacob’s grave and whispered, ‘He told me last night that he was still married to Annie. Jacob’s with his family now. That’s what he wanted.’ Magnus did not believe in the afterlife, but Father Wingate did and he needed to comfort himself, by comforting the priest.
The old man patted Magnus’s hand. ‘I’m crying for the end of the world. All things must end, us too, it is the order of things, but I cannot help but mourn their passing.’
They were still alive and the world was not yet completely dead, but there was no point in contradicting him.
Magnus and Will had buried Jacob in a nearby churchyard, close to a recent grave marked by a simple wooden cross inscribed Melody. Father Wingate had delivered the eulogy and then watched as they put the soldier into the ground. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Neither Belle nor Raisha had been there, it had been an all-male funeral, like they used to have on the islands when Magnus’s grandfather was a boy.
Magnus was aching and caked in mud. It had been hard, filthy work digging the grave, but he had been glad of it. The priest had saved his life and they had parted on uneasy terms.
He took Father Wingate by the elbow and helped him into the passenger seat of the truck they had used to drive Jacob’s body to the churchyard. Will was still standing by the fresh grave, his head bowed in prayer or resolution. Magnus watched him in the rear-view mirror and wondered if he was going to be a problem.
Magnus said, ‘I’m leaving this afternoon.’ The remnants of the hymn they had sung when they had buried his father were in his mind, the words only half-remembered.
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens…
Father Wingate said, ‘I made some bread yesterday. You must take some to help sustain you.’
‘Thank you.’
The old man was a poor cook, but the gesture touched Magnus. The truck’s cab smelled of rubber and burning dust. Magnus rolled down the driver’s side window. Will had latched the churchyard gate and was walking towards the car park. Father Wingate shifted slowly to the middle of the seat and Will slid in beside them.
‘Your friend’s a murderer.’ It had been his mantra since he had found Jacob’s body dead on the lawn, his head a gunshot mess.
‘You’re wrong.’ Magnus wished he had paid more attention to Jacob’s theories about Melody’s and Henry’s deaths. He had tried to explain them, but Will’s mind was fixed. Jeb was a convicted killer who had quarrelled with Jacob the night before he was shot dead. They had found a gun in his room, a room that had a clear sightline to where the priest had been shot.
‘You can leave.’ Will turned to look at Magnus. ‘But he stays.’
‘What good will that do?’
Will sighed. His eyes shut and then opened; sea-washed pebbles, brown and slip-shiny. ‘It will prevent him from murdering anyone else.’
Twice in the last few days Magnus had thought Will was about to try to kill Jacob. First by the barn where they had found Henry’s body, then in the kitchen, just before they had crashed in on Belle and Jeb. Both times had been crude and spontaneous, born of drink or frustration, but shooting a man in the head was hardly subtle.
Magnus said, ‘It could just as easily have been you. You hated Jacob and now it looks like you’re trying to take his place.’ It would not hurt that Jeb would be out of Belle’s way too, he thought, but did not say.
‘I didn’t hate him…’ Will faltered, his almost perfect English momentarily deserting him. ‘I would never have hurt Jacob…’
Father Wingate drew his cassock around his thin shoulders, as if he could feel the chill of the recently filled grave in his bones. ‘It wasn’t Will. He’s a good Christian.’
Magnus started the truck and reversed out of the graveyard.
‘Father,’ he said and the word sounded strange in his mouth. ‘We have a saying on my island. Old age does not always bring wisdom.’
The old man nodded. ‘That saying existed well beyond your island and there is truth in it, but it does not follow that all old men are foolish.’
Magnus rolled up his window and steered the truck down the church road, into the village. This was the bit of the route he liked least. There were no bodies in the main street, but there were reminders of how things used to be: a post office with pictures of a smiling postman delivering a package to an equally jolly white-haired grandma; a pub decorated with decaying hanging baskets and the proud boast that it had been established in 1622; a row of terraced cottages, each one with windows behind which anything might lurk. Will stared straight ahead, but Magnus could not help glancing at the overgrown gardens, the drawn curtains and uninviting front paths. Step inside, the cottages seemed to whisper. Why don’t you stop and take tea? There’s always someone home.