Sixteen Horses

by Greg Buchanan

  The boat drew to a stop.

  ‘I knew the man. He worked for the government, once. He worked with me. Not at the NCA. Before . . .’ Ada did not look at Cooper. ‘After the fire, the few officers involved were told as little as possible. Those who already knew the truth signed the Official Secrets Act. Why should anyone know?’

  They put their masks on, plastic so clear and hard it might as well have been glass.

  They stepped onto the dock.

  ‘I knew him. It’s why they called me.’

  Ada looked ahead, not yet moving.

  ‘He was my friend.’

  A thin, partially overgrown track led inland, the ground bulging into a slope. It was hard to see much else but the tall green conifers, and the fog that lay between them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Floodlights had been erected outside the house. The people that passed them all wore the same hazard gear, the same masks; some carried supply crates through to the camp. Cooper kept looking around as they walked, but Ada focused ahead, resolute, unfazed.

  Madness had engulfed this place, once. It did so still. Rusted shells of metal littered the building edges; black shadows burned around the doorways, like the blast-echoes of a nuclear explosion. The barns’ chimneys had shrivelled like crisp packets in microwaves. Empty red petrol tanks lay piled up in the overgrown grass. Plants long and thin and wide and short all thrived within the abandoned poison of a murder-suicide. Trees seethed past the cars, past the front porch.

  Officers in biohazard gear conducted police grid searches, string and markers placed along the overgrown lot. Worlds superimposed themselves upon one another, morphing, merging, jostling to cement themselves in Cooper’s reality. The collapse of a man’s mind echoed down the years.

  It led them to a tent up ahead.

  A woman cried out beyond.

  Others ran past them, but Ada led with a steady pace, only diverting a little from their path, the floodlights guiding their way through the numbing fog.

  Up ahead, the source of the cry could be seen, had sat down on the ground, blood welling from a rip in her hazard gear, just above her knee. They’d later discover there were tools buried in the ground near the second barn. The woman had caught her skin against some twisted hooks in the soil. The course of vaccination treatment would take months; there had not been enough time to prepare everyone. She was brought to a hospital within the hour.

  Ada passed Cooper, disappearing into the tent beyond.

  Tables had been set up within, dead crows spread across them. In the centre of the makeshift room, there was a pit in the soil, a thick, stiff sack beside it.

  ‘We’ve provided what equipment we can,’ said Ada. ‘Discover what you’re able to discover. How they died. Who killed them. We want any DNA you can find, especially human. We photographed the scene as we found it; fourteen birds had identical copies of the letter stuffed into their beaks. The fifteenth, we left within.’

  ‘Fifteen?’

  Outside, the work continued in near silence. Few talked. No one chatted.

  Ada smiled, faintly. ‘Everything consumes itself, in the end.’ She turned to go. ‘We found Alec Nichols’s fingerprints on the letter wrappings. We need to know what else is in there.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Ada Solarin walked through the family’s home.

  She had done so months ago. She’d seen the wreck of her colleague’s life. She’d seen what had become of her friend.

  She and her past self, they went together. This place had not changed much, even across the seasons.

  Bowing their heads beneath wooden beams.

  Past it all, into the girl’s room.

  A hole lay within the girl’s wall, beaten through from inside with great force, chunks of plaster and wood still on the floor below.

  Through the hole she saw the treeline, close by.

  There was anger in me once. I dreamt at times of being better. We killed to help and in helping I tasted something in me.

  I have burned fires. I am awake and no one saw me and no one will.

  So many were dead, now, within the space of days.

  So many of them, linked by animals, by violence, by blackmail.

  They’d found the answer to the Eltons just hours before. They’d sent officers round to their property after they had caught up on the case history; Charles Elton had shot himself in the head. His potential testimony had died with him. It was a waste.

  His suicide note, blaming the police for their unjust attention, claiming they drove him to it – an innocent man – that was just embarrassing.

  Ada knew there was no such thing as an innocent man.

  He’d tried to burn a letter in his fire. KILL YOURSELF. An encryption password was found on the back of an envelope, presumably left by the blackmailer as proof of knowledge.

  The idiot hadn’t checked it before departing this world.

  One of the computers confiscated by the police had contained a hard drive.

  1,592 images and 314 videos of child sexual abuse were found within. The forensic work would take weeks – it would scar the officers who had to look at it – but the images and videos didn’t appear to be created by Charles himself, at least not on initial examination.

  He was evil.

  Like most evil people, he was mundane, in the end. Not clever. Not bizarre or beautiful.

  He was an idiot who couldn’t burn a piece of paper.

  Who died rather than face the truth of all he’d done, a truth manipulated by whoever had pulled his and Kate’s strings. Whether that was an individual . . . a group . . . a place. In mundane Ilmarsh, too . . . there was evil.

  One of Ada’s subordinates came into the room. He didn’t say anything. She knew he was waiting for her to turn.

  ‘What?’ she asked, not moving.

  ‘Dr Allen’s finished, ma’am. She wants to talk with you.’

  Ada gave the room one final look. She stared at the hole in the wall.

  She thought about all her friend had done to this place and to himself. She thought about his charred body, found hunched in prayer, one child crying in the distant sheds. The others had been found in the grass.

  She’d read her uncle’s books, once.

  Even though he hadn’t read them, she had – perhaps because he hadn’t, she didn’t know.

  The act of killing your child – it was a godly act. It was Abraham and Isaac. It was fear and trembling, being willing to break all laws – even that of the divine – just because a voice in a bush told you your child was meant as a sacrifice.

  Had a voice told her friend to do what he had done? Had the world, had this place? What had made him the way he was? What made anyone the way they were?

  If the world was in our heads, then the end of a life was the end of the world.

  The taking of a single life, it was an apocalypse.

  To kill a person was to be close to God.

  She went out into the poisoned air once more.

  Forty per cent of homicides went unanswered, whatever stories said. At least she’d known who had killed her friend’s family. At least they knew who, if not why.

  She walked towards the tent, trying not to look at all the strangers stooped to the soil, trying not to listen to the silence.

  Within an hour they were back on the water, and she’d never see that place again. She’d never go back, not even if they made her. She’d do anything to leave this place. Anything.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  ‘Rat poison,’ Cooper said. ‘Warfarin pellets were given to the crows over a few days. Based on how many were killed, it’s probable whoever did this had fed the birds for a sustained period of time beforehand. They were comfortable with him. The necks were snapped post-mortem. Likely after defrosting.’

  ‘The killer froze them?’ Ada’s eyebrow rose.

  Their boat moved back along the surf, the fog almost faded now, but the sky itself had grown cloudy, darker. Both women stood at
its stern.

  Cooper nodded. ‘We’ve not been able to locate any other sites of contamination,’ Ada said. ‘From what we can tell, the soil used to bury the horses’ heads was taken from the same pit we found the birds in.’

  ‘What now?’ Cooper asked.

  The island receded in the distance. It held Ada’s gaze.

  ‘The local police have alibis for Alec Nichols. For key times in this and more.’

  Cooper said nothing.

  ‘But it’s interesting,’ Ada went on, ‘looking at Alec’s record. There’s evidence he was suffering from depression. He discontinued grief counselling. There seems to have been a shadow over his time at his previous department, though we’re still working on clearing that up. There’s also evidence his son was skipping school. Apparently DS Nichols told his counsellor he wished, sometimes, that he’d never even had a kid. That life would be easier once he was alone again. It’s all here.’

  ‘I thought that kind of thing was confidential.’ There was a slight edge to Cooper’s voice as she spoke.

  Ada shrugged. ‘Not in times like these. The boy’s gone, blood found at the scene . . . a letter saying “you could have saved him”. His son is most likely dead, of course. And if he isn’t, if someone’s taken him, well . . .’

  Ilmarsh grew nearer.

  ‘This is about Alec,’ Ada said. ‘He was part of this . . . or part of this is aimed at him. Either way, we want you to find out.’

  ‘Find out what?’

  ‘The truth.’

  Cooper looked at her temporary home, closer and closer now. ‘I’m not a detective.’

  ‘If someone’s watching Alec, they’ll be watching you.’ Ada hesitated. ‘No one in my department has your expertise in this type of crime. I’m confident you’ll—’

  ‘I’m not right for this.’

  ‘It has to be you,’ Ada pressed. ‘You’ve worked with him. He trusts you.’

  Cooper thought of Alec lying in a hospital somewhere, not knowing what these people thought, not knowing his boy was gone, not knowing anything at all.

  She thought of a farmer, lying in a field.

  She thought of smoke, of carelessness, of burning sheep.

  ‘Who else knew about the bird, the snapped neck?’ Ada asked. ‘Who else—’

  ‘Alec might have told any number of people. He might be innocent, he . . .’

  ‘Even if he didn’t do it . . . someone who inspires such hate, such attention . . . a man like that is never innocent. Not of everything.’

  ‘Alec got sick, too. He survives going out to the island, taking the samples, coming back, only to infect himself at the last minute?’ Cooper shook her head. ‘He’s a victim.’

  ‘Everyone’s a victim.’ Ada took out her cigarettes.

  The lights shone along the shore.

  ‘The letter . . . the crows . . . they were for you. They were responding to you, whether you and Alec, or you alone . . .’ Ada lit the match. ‘We’ll clean up. We’ll take care of the sick. We’ll wait for more bodies. But you, Cooper . . . you’ll be able to do more than wait. You’ll be able to solve this. For the dead. For yourself . . .’

  Ada told her that she was there for her. That her government was there for her.

  She told her that we were all in this together.

  ‘I’m not a detective,’ Cooper repeated.

  Ada smiled, exhaling smoke.

  ‘You will be.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  On Ada’s final night in Ilmarsh, she sat in her car out near the forest. She sat just a few yards away from the site of Alec Nichols’s car crash, of a stag’s death, of a boy’s abduction and possible murder. She sat here in her car, the window rolled down, a cigarette in her hand, all the lights on. She was alone.

  The government response had already been deemed incompetent. Ada’s career would probably be over soon. Once the media had moved away from stirring up geopolitical and religious fears, once they’d realized the disaster was home-grown, the news cycle had shifted almost immediately. Many seemed to believe the horses themselves had died from anthrax, in spite of official briefings and discussions. The animals became a footnote, and even Ada’s superiors seemed to adopt this strange position, as if they’d forgotten all else, and perhaps they had. The government, their society, it was meant for greater things. The clean-up was in progress. The local police could handle the finer details of horse theft, mutilation and death.

  People thought fiction was the problem – that films, television, games, comics would all desensitize the world to violence and horror.

  Real things were far harder to care about.

  There were so many of them.

  Day after day we seemed to learn how awful the world could be, the things people could do. It’s why people imagined conspiracies. It made things manageable. It made things human.

  Cooper kept working. She immersed herself in every file, every report, every movement of the case that occurred.

  She kept doubting she was enough. Ada kept telling her otherwise.

  But of course, who knew?

  Cooper would rise to the challenge or she’d serve as bait. She had little official status, her funding still ostensibly provided by the local police who were compensated in turn. If she failed to uncover anything, then she was just a vet who had got in over her head.

  Ada thought about her friend.

  Ada wanted to go back home, back to her office. She wanted takeaways and life and people, she even wanted family again.

  Something moved within the woods. She turned immediately, dropping cigarette ash, gripping the wheel.

  Someone was there. She’d seen them, she’d seen a shape move quickly, like it was dancing.

  She got out of her car, gripping her pepper spray now. She stared ahead, removing her torch and shining it into the darkness.

  There was nothing there.

  In the hours to come, as their men searched the area, they’d find nothing but animal tracks.

  Two Weeks Later

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  You know, I used to have this one really bad dream when I was a kid . . . It was one of the only ones I had more than once, that I remember at least.

  I didn’t know what it was at the time, not at first. The way this thing looked, in my dream I mean . . . it was this place, this black building on a hill, it was dirty.

  Your gran and me, we’d be driving through town – we’d be coming back from a friend’s house, or the beach, sometimes . . . It was cold and dark – colder than anywhere had ever been, in real life at least. And the wind, it blew down newsagent signs and restaurant menus and even dog walkers, it was just silly, really . . . I’d try to look at the sea, but there’d be nothing there, just noise. It was a town a little like this one, but bigger – in better condition, I guess. We’d be in the car, and I’d see this black building . . . this ruin . . . and it looked at us from the hill. I couldn’t make out anything but for some letters – great big dirty white letters, the others all missing. It was tall. And I wasn’t myself.

  He scratched his head.

  I’d see this building and I’d—

  I’d crash my car.

  I’d wake up.

  I’d be myself again.

  You’d never have been born.

  I’d be myself again.

  All the world a dream.

  I’d—

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  When Alec Nichols woke in his hospital bed, at first he could move only a flicker of an eyelid. So no one came.

  His heart took a while to beat at its former pace. He’d always been bad at winking – it had always looked like something was wrong with him.

  He supposed that this was true, now.

  No one came, and he faded away once more.

  He had spent weeks dreaming of houses and hair. Of the last days of his marriage.

  In these dreams he’d be crawling onto his mattress.

  Even in the past, even with sleep music �
�� the sounds of rain, of wind, of birds lulling him to unconsciousness – he could not rest. His wife could. He’d play the big spoon and little spoon with her cold body. He’d put one arm around her, and struggle with where to put the other, whether to allow it to succumb to pins and needles.

  Sometimes he’d be alone, and he’d roll towards her to stroke her hair, but she wouldn’t be there. The bedsheets would be rumpled. It would be difficult to see in this light, though a bulb would be turned on in the hallway. Its strange light would seep under their door, just a bit, suddenly clicking off as he reached out.

  He’d feel hair in his hands, coarse and rigid in the dark.

  It would feel almost like the hair of a horse’s tail.

  It would be his wife’s hair, made from the hair of another. He’d want to stroke it even so, but there was beeping in the cold. Years blurred into years, but the memory hung on. He lost himself in Elizabeth’s time.

  They’d bought the wig together, the day after her diagnosis.

  It was what people did, when they prepared for the worst.

  It had creeped him out, how they had made it from a real person’s donated hair. But she’d wanted something real. She had wanted to feel it was real when she touched her head, she wanted to know someone had helped her, even in this.

  And it would be hard, wouldn’t it? She’d kept telling him how hard it would be.

  She didn’t want anyone to forget her. That was what she was scared of the most.

  She’d known it inevitably happened to everyone.

  She hadn’t wanted to die, she’d told him.

  They’d get through this together, he’d promised.

  He—

  He had the memory of hair in his hands, and even when his eye flickered, even as he came back to the world, he could still feel it, still smell a stolen smell.