‘I didn’t kill them.’
They regarded each other for a while. The man was in too much pain for Jane to gauge his honesty.
‘So you shot her?’
‘I shot her, yes. What else could I do?’
‘So where is she? There’s only four bodies in the room downstairs.’
‘Outside.’
‘Mind if I check?’
‘I’m not lying.’
‘Still…’
‘Knock yourself out. Down in the barn.’
Jane bit his lip and eyed the gun. He’d be dead before he made one step to wrestle it from the man. ‘I’ll be here when you get back. I’m not going anywhere.’
He was turning to go when the man said: ‘You been here a day earlier, could have been you she got hold of. Think about that, lucky fuck.’
Downstairs Jane pulled Becky to one side. Aidan was scooping rice into a pan.
‘There’s a guy upstairs,’ he murmured. ‘He doesn’t know you’re down here, I think. He’s in pretty bad shape.’
‘You want me to help him?’
‘He’s beyond it. He has a gun. I think he’s dangerous, but he won’t be able to make it down here. I need to check something out. I’m going to the barn. If you hear anything, movement upstairs, you shout at me, loud as you can.’
‘OK.’
‘He shoots me, you take Aidan and fast out the front door. Not the back. No trying to save me. OK?’
‘OK.’
Jane went straight outside and moved fast to the barn. His back seemed to expand. He wouldn’t hear the shot; but there might be enough time to see his heart as it exited his chest. He glanced to his left just before he met the collapsed barn wall and thought he saw skulking figures down by a clump of Corsican pine trees. Inside the barn he found the woman almost immediately. She was sitting up against the far wall, a photograph album in her hands. A single gunshot to her left eye. Jane looked around for something to cover the body but there was nothing. He noticed half a dozen big rats eyeing him and wondered whether they’d got started on the woman somewhere he couldn’t see.
‘Jesus,’ he said, and picked her up. He blanched at the stiff, cold weight of her. The sudden change of position drew a sigh from her lungs that brushed his neck and made him cry out, but he did not drop her. He made to take the album from her hands but it wasn’t going anywhere. He heard the scamper of claws as he took the body outside but the rats would not follow him into the field.
He got into the kitchen and Becky was saying, ‘Oh, Richard.’ And Aidan was saying, ‘Who’s she? Is she dead?’
‘Don’t let him in here,’ Jane snapped as he kicked open the door to the living room. He put the woman next to her baby and covered them both. Could he have done to Cherry and Stan what this woman had managed to do to her family? No. No way. He didn’t have it in him. He could kill himself, he reckoned, but not his boy. You survive and you think you’re chosen for something special. You can’t believe your luck. And then you find yourself envying the dead.
He closed the door and told Becky to wait with Aidan.
‘I want to come with you.’
‘There’s nothing to see. Get dinner ready.’ As if he could eat anything now.
Upstairs the man had died. His position had not altered. He stared at Jane but whatever it was that made life so beyond doubt was absent now. A sheen to the eyes. Elasticism.
A memory from childhood. Lying in bed, getting Dad to play his favourite track from the White Album one last time, before lights out. Hey, Bungalow Bill, what did you kill, Bungalow Bill? Such memories had not impinged as much as they might. It was understandable now, he supposed, yet when he had been on the rigs he had often thought of home, when he was a toddler, usually when he was struggling with a job in the gelid deep. The family garden had been large and well tended. Dad was proud of his lawn, trimmed regularly with his Webb mower so that there were pretty stripes patterning the grass. What do you think, Rico? His dad would ask him, sweating over the handles. Wembley or Wimbledon?
They had grown all kinds of fruit and vegetables in that back garden. Carrots he’d eat straight from the ground. Gooseberries. Beetroot they chopped together for pickling.
That’s glossy, Jane remembered saying of the succulent slices. Like a magazine. His dad had been impressed with that. Glossy… get you.
Memories. Pain. He supposed it was because it might mean a link to Stanley that was too painful to experience. It might also lead him to thinking that Stanley might not remember who he was, or the things they had done together. He thought of photographs stored on hard drives now no more than irretrievable ghosts of code. There was nothing beyond memory. The painful thing was trying to come to terms with the possibility that before too long he’d discover that was all he would ever have.
He pulled the gun from the man’s hands. He clicked the safety catch on and checked the breech. One pellet spent, but otherwise fully loaded with .22s. Jane checked the man’s pockets and found cigarettes, a lighter, two boxes of ammunition. There was a folded photograph of a woman, topless, reclined on a sofa, her arms outstretched. An inscription. Hi Loz. Waiting for you, babe. x Heartbreaking stories everywhere.
He took the pellets and the lighter. He looked around him. A single bed covered in dust and dead insects. A chest of drawers contained nothing but a few wall hooks and a laminated copy of the Lord’s Prayer. There must be more boxes of ammunition somewhere.
He slung the rifle over his shoulder and went downstairs. The smell of curry from the kitchen was good, but it didn’t inspire hunger. He doubted he could eat again after the last hour or so.
In the cellar again he took more care over his search. There was an old pine cabinet pushed against a wall where all the white goods were arrayed. Inside were tools, all well cared for, clean, oiled, free of rust. Trays of nails and screws sorted into different sizes. Rawlplugs. Drill bits meticulously cleaned of plaster dust. All useful. All useless.
But then he found a drawer that wasn’t meant for the slot into which it was embedded. Instead of a handle, double loops of shoelace had been stapled into the front. Inside was gun oil, barrel brushes and jags, cleaning rods. A screw-in silencer that didn’t look as if it had been used. The drawer was only half the length of its neighbours. Jane pulled it all the way out and ignited the lighter. Boxes hidden in the gap at the back. He fished them out. Six boxes of .22 pellets. Six boxes of .177 pellets. He pocketed everything.
They ate in the kitchen but though it was the most flavourful meal he’d eaten in weeks – months, if the dishes scarfed under pressure in the Ceto were included – he didn’t taste any of it. He kept gazing at the ceiling, expecting the man’s blood to blacken the paint, to come seeping through the boards. Or he’d hear the turning of the doorknob and the woman poking her perforated head around the corner, breathing in stitches with words struggling through it alclass="underline" My, that smells good.
He put down his fork and pushed back from the table.
‘I’m going to reorganise the packs,’ he said.
Aidan was playing outside with some toy cars he’d found in a box under the stairs. Becky came to Jane while he was sorting through things they could do without.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, gesturing at the clothes. ‘I’m not going to just bin it. We’ll put it to a vote.’
‘It’s OK,’ Becky said. ‘It’s not that.’
‘What, then?’
She squatted next to him. ‘All I’m asking, suggesting really, is that you keep us in the loop.’
‘I’m trying to protect you.’