The cows had been through the yard a few hours earlier; the ground under their feet had become a thin colloidal ooze, sucking their boots until they reached untrampled grass. There stood a field full of black-and-white cows that gazed at them dumbly. Breen’s London had never touched the senses in such a way as this place did; a thick, autumnal smell of decay filled the air.
“How’s your arm?”
“Not too bad.”
One of the cows started ambling towards them with a slow step that looked menacing to Breen. Another joined in. Tozer seemed not to notice.
“My father, he’s like a sore tooth. Even more than last time I was here. He doesn’t say a word. He said anything to you?”
“No. Just a hello last night. I haven’t seen him this morning.”
The cows came nearer. They seemed much bigger close to, thick with meat and muscle, nostrils emitting drool and steam.
“He’s getting worse, I reckon. He used to laugh all the time. One time I was in this nativity play at school and I had the part of one of the three shepherds. I was so proud because I was playing the part of a farmer. Follow the star, you know? Only with my big police girl’s feet, I tripped up on one of the cows that were lowing and fell right on top of Mary. I knocked Jesus’s head right off. It was this doll, see? And the head rolled right across the stage and ended up under the piano. One of the shepherds had to fish it out with his crook. And you could have heard a pin drop.”
The cows were too close for Breen now. He had fallen back, walking slower, letting Tozer go on ahead alone.
“And then my dad started laughing. Not just tittering. Real loud laughing. Everybody shushing him, and he just couldn’t stop. Half of me was dead embarrassed. Half of me was pleased I’d made him laugh so much.”
She turned and looked at Breen, standing there hesitant, and then back at the two cows that now blocked their way forward.
“Are those animals OK?”
“You’m a bit scared, in’t you?” Extra Devon accent for comic effect.
“Yes.”
She laughed. “They’re only heifers.” She turned back to the cows. “Ga’an,” she shouted, waving her arms. “Get gone.” Instantly, the cows bowed their heads, jerked around and skedaddled back over the field. Breen followed her, avoiding the cowpats.
Halfway across the field she paused and stared at a distant clump of trees tucked in the fold of a hill, where three fields came together.
“Is that it?” he asked her. “The place where they found your sister?”
She nodded, turning away from him so he could only see her back. A large wide-winged bird circled over the clump of trees.
“How did they reckon he took her there? Or was she there already?”
She felt in her coat pocket for her packet of cigarettes, pulled one out. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I’ve tried thinking it through a million times and I don’t know.”
The field dipped down towards the estuary. The tide was out and flocks of birds were picking at the dark brown mud that stretched out far into the distance. Thousands of them, small clumps of gray and brown against the dark mud.
Tozer began making her way along the edge, keeping away from the mud by ducking under the scrawny oak limbs.
“Me and Alex used to swim there. We taught ourselves. Neither of our parents could swim. Each summer it was like a competition. First one in.”
“Isn’t it muddy?”
“Bit.”
“Didn’t you mind?”
“No. She went in one hot day in May when the water was still freezing. I beat her next year by going in in April. God it was cold, though. Made your bones hurt.”
“So you won?”
“No. She beat me in the end.”
He stopped. There was a piece of china under his foot. Picking it up he examined it; a cracked triangle of blue willow pattern, fringed by a little weed on each edge. A piece of a small angular bridge. He looked around him. There were dozens of small worn pieces of pottery among the stones, and frosty bits of glass too, green and brown and blue.
“The New Year before she was killed, Mum and Dad were out at a party, so we had a party of our own. Just me and her. Fireworks and everything. Well, some sparklers,” she said. “We’d sneaked a couple of bottles of Bulmers into the barn and built a fire out back. Happy New Year. I drank too much and fell asleep by the fire and missed it all. She woke me up some time after midnight, stark naked in the moonlight, teeth chattering. She said, ‘Pinch, punch, first of the month…and oh, by the way, I beat you.’ She had gone in at five minutes past. She was soaking. Her skin was blue. I remember her, standing there, skinny as a ghost, goose bumps, shaking with the cold. But she’d beat me.”
“That could have been dangerous.”
“Says the man who is scared of cows…”
“I wasn’t scared.”
“You mean she could have killed herself or something?” she said.
“No.”
“She could have saved someone else the bother?”
She walked on ahead, down the narrow causeway of rocks and shells. Breen tottered along behind her, trying to avoid falling. His socks had fallen down into his wellingtons and his feet were cold.
“I thought if I got in at the stroke of midnight next year I’d beat her and she’d never be able to beat me again. Never got the chance. She caught bronchitis, though. Served her bloody right.”
Birds hung in the air above the farm, like the one he’d seen over the spinney where they’d found her sister’s body. She saw him looking at them and said, “Butcher birds.”
They rounded a corner, startling a group of ducks who took off, squawking angrily. They flew off across the mudflats, out towards the sea.
“It’s beautiful here,” he said, because it was true and because he thought she’d like to hear him say it.
“Isn’t it?” she said. She picked up a stick and beat a path through brambles, back into a field. “I can’t stay here anymore, though. It’s all ruined for me.”
The car splashed through mud on the way out of the Tozers’ farm, engine roaring up the steep road out of the valley up towards Dartmoor and then west towards Cornwall.
In daylight, the countryside looked no less wild. Dead bracken and granite rocks. Stunted trees bent in the wind. Ground that looked thick with water. Sheep huddled against stone walls. It made Breen feel cold just looking at it. The sun disappeared into cloud. They had left the warmth of the lower valleys behind. As they approached Liskeard, a low mist closed in.
In the daylight, Tozer took the lanes fast, braking for bends at the last minute which did nothing for Breen’s nerves.
Driving up the lane out of the town towards the Sullivans’ house, they came to another bend. Suddenly, round the hedge-blind corner, a car came roaring out of the mist.
Breen tried to shout “Brake!” but nothing came out. There was not enough time anyway because the other car was coming so fast. Hemmed by high banks on either side, the lane left little room for escape.
Tozer yanked the steering wheel to the left. Branches cracked across the windscreen. A dazzle of glass exploded all around. In that millisecond Breen wondered if he had put his seat belt on. Or if the car was even fitted with them.
Again, at what seemed the same moment, his body was thrown forward towards the glove compartment. Then sideways. He was conscious of a loud bang, and the world distorting as the other vehicle smashed into them. The smell of brake asbestos and rubber.
And then suddenly it was still. No birdsong, just the sound of another car engine roaring down the hill, away, noise gradually receding. And pain in his arm.
Someone began swearing quietly. “Oh, fuck.”
Must be Tozer. He was relieved to hear her voice.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Almost like a song sung to soothe a child. “We were lucky, hey?”
Cautiously he opened his eyes.
Seventeen
You OK?” Tozer was looking at him. She was shiny, light glinting off her skin.
Breen lifted his good hand to his face. It was peppered with splinters of glass. She too was covered with glittering shards.