Sixteen Horses

by Greg Buchanan

  He woke up.

  He was not himself. He’d never been himself.

  His eyelid would flicker, sometimes, until the end of all his days.

  And he’d smell that hair.

  He’d feel it, lying in the dark of his bed. Coiled on a distant farm.

  The world was all nightmare, now and always. The room sang with machines. Doctors came into the room. Their mouths moved, and in his confusion Alec realized he could not speak. He had tubes in his nose, in his throat. His arms were dark with welts and scars.

  His heart had stopped twenty days ago. It had been healed through the company of strangers. His wife had died once, too.

  As they pulled the tubes from Alec’s chest, tears fell from his eyes, but no expression of horror or dread, nothing to indicate true tears or sadness.

  So it was only water. It was only skin.

  His body would never be what it had once been. He couldn’t breathe.

  It was only horses.

  He thought of their number. He grasped for their names.

  ‘We’d like to book you in for counselling.’

  The doctor stood by his bed. Time had passed; he wasn’t sure if it was even the same day any more, or if—

  ‘It says in your file you previously saw a Dr Tillman for a depressive episode a few years back? What we’re going to do here is more of a cognitive behavioural approach. Near-death trauma, losing a loved one, it can take a toll, but—’

  What were they talking about?

  ‘You can frame negative events in a different way,’ the doctor said. ‘It can really help. We may not even need drugs here.’

  His eyelid still shook.

  He tried to sit up, and the doctor looked away as he did so, as if the motion itself were something private, something embarrassing.

  ‘Wh—’ Alec swallowed, his throat dry. With difficulty, he went on. ‘What’s wrong?’

  The doctor stared at him. ‘Nothing’s changed in your diagnosis.’

  ‘What diagnosis? I don’t—’

  ‘You don’t remember? We talked about this.’ The doctor frowned. ‘This isn’t an optimal sign, you know.’

  Alec tried. He was trying, but this man – this—

  The sun was falling outside. How many days had he lost?

  ‘My son . . . Where is Simon? Where is my son?’

  THE HORSES

  HORSE #1: Palomino colouring. Pony.

  Location: Elton Riding School and Livery

  Owner: Tessa Knowles (17)

  HORSE #2: Piebald colouring. Horse.

  Location: Elton Riding School and Livery

  Owner: Charles and Louise Elton (71 and 65)

  HORSE #3: Dark bay colouring. Clydesdale. Horse.

  Location: Elton Riding School and Livery

  Owner: Charles and Louise Elton (71 and 65)

  HORSE #4: Grey colouring. Clydesdale. Horse.

  Location: Elton Riding School and Livery

  Owner: Charles and Louise Elton (71 and 65)

  HORSE #5: Bay colouring. Horse.

  Location: Elton Riding School and Livery

  Owner: Leanne Hook (29)

  HORSE #6: Black colouring. Horse.

  Location: Elton Riding School and Livery

  Owner: Eric Brown (24)

  HORSE #7: Brown chestnut colouring. Horse.

  Location: Elton Riding School and Livery

  Owner: Jordan Hill (48)

  HORSE #8: Bay colouring. Horse.

  Location: Joe’s Tyres

  Owner: Michael Stafford (43)

  HORSE #9: Dun grey colouring. Horse.

  Location: Smythe Bay, Field

  Owner: Nicolette Jones (32)

  HORSE #10: Sorrel chestnut colouring. Icelandic. Horse.

  Location: Homestead Farm

  Owner: Henry Schaffer (58)

  HORSE #11: Dark bay colouring. Thoroughbred. Horse.

  Location: The Grove

  Owner: Joanne Marsh (63)

  HORSE #12: Grey dun colouring. Thoroughbred. Horse.

  Location: The Grove

  Owner: Joanne Marsh (63)

  HORSE #13: Black. Arabian. Horse.

  Location: The Grove

  Owner: Joanne Marsh (63)

  HORSE #14: Black colouring. Shetland pony.

  Location: The Grove

  Owner: Joanne Marsh (63)

  HORSE #15: Chestnut colouring. Horse.

  Location: ???

  Owner: ???

  HORSE #16: Brown colouring. Horse.

  Location: ???

  Owner: ???

  Day Twenty-Four

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘Three weeks ago, on November eighth, the mutilated remains of sixteen horses were discovered, partially buried, on a small farm on the outskirts of Ilmarsh at around 5.10 a.m.’

  The cameras snapped light all around the spokesman. His forehead creased. His face bobbed back and forth before the assembled journalists. A phalanx of microphones had been assembled in front of him. He sat in the middle of a long yellow formica table. The tent was too warm.

  ‘An initial examination of the remains suggests multiple individuals were involved in these killings. Almost all those who have come into contact with the burial site have fallen ill, resulting in three deaths, including that of the owner of the property in question. Several individuals are in critical condition and undergoing treatment, including three police officers and a liaison officer from Public Health. The remainder of those who have visited Well Farm in recent days are under observation as a precautionary measure. I can confirm reports that anthrax spores have been found in the soil, isolated to that location. This is being treated as a major incident.’

  The assembled journalists sat in the tent and listened. They were half a mile from the roadblock.

  ‘It is believed the killings took place on November seventh, most likely during or shortly after the town’s Bonfire Night celebrations. We appeal for information from anyone who may have noticed anything unusual that evening, particularly those in the vicinity of the Lynndale area.’

  The room was quiet but for the snapping of cameras, the scratching of pens.

  ‘A town-wide quarantine was established until we were able to determine there was no further risk to public health. We have now made this determination as a result of the government’s diligent and swift clean-up operation. As of tomorrow, beyond certain locations, people may now come and go freely from the area. We do, however, ask that the public remain vigilant.’

  Details appeared on the screen behind him.

  ‘Thank you. We’ll take two or three questions.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The murder of a place, of the two thousand souls within, went on.

  Orders of horse chocolates, fireworks, food syringes for use in contagion-themed cocktails, came in the weeks before Christmas. The county lines started once more, children spilling out of the arcades with fresh narcotics. People were walking down the seafront again. Couples from distant places sat on benches in their coats, wondering at the sea, at what had happened here. More and more ash began to cover the streets.

  One day, someone realized the street-cleaning crews were no longer coming in, a mix-up over their contract supplier, but there was more to it than that. There was somehow more waste even though fewer people went outside. Half-drunk cans and bottles stood like little funeral stones, as if whoever had been doing the drinking had just vanished into thin air.

  One day, a smoker slumped against a doorway in the market, cross-legged, his sleeping bag wedged behind him. The neon signs had been switched off. The seagulls had scavenged the last of the day’s discarded chips.

  The joint hung firm, clenched in his split lips, his eyes shut, and he’d had to click the lighter a few times to feel it go, to smell it.

  He inhaled.

  The spice was like a car crash, like a hug.

  It was like home.

  They found new cleaning contractors but the change stuck. A
bandoned poisons spread, half drunk, half smoked, half felt.

  On Well Farm itself, there was vandalism. People broke in and stole things belonging to the Coles. Items of Grace’s make-up. Rebecca’s photos. The father’s tools. Someone wore the girl’s clothes.

  The boy was forgotten in the public horror.

  The police kept looking.

  Or at least they said they were. But who was left to look?

  The extra support officers had dwindled after the quarantine. The volunteer searches had faded out.

  This was not a little boy or girl. This was not someone with a history of vulnerability, though they stressed that Alec’s son had most likely been injured, that he’d need help.

  All this had done was make people think he was dead.

  Sympathy passed like a fever. Christmas came closer and closer.

  Cooper had gone on the walks when she could, even so.

  She had gone to the volunteer centre, she had signed herself up, she had walked through marshland and scrub.

  So much of the land seemed tainted, so many homes and farms now abandoned or lost.

  She kept coming back to the letter. She had a photocopy with her most of the time, folded in her pocket.

  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.

  The claim to have a moral motive was key to this, somehow, Cooper knew, regardless of whether that claim was sincere. ‘Anger’ had led to wanting to be ‘better’, to ‘helping’, but an awakening had apparently changed everything. His actions had led to him ‘tasting something’ within himself – if this person was indeed a ‘him’, but this seemed right in her mind, somehow, and she wondered why it was so. Whether ‘killed’ referred to the slaying of the dogs and cats in the crates, or the horses, or even humans, could not for now be known.

  Then there was the fact that the killer had taken a risk in placing these letters back on the island, a second ritual to mirror the burial of the horse heads.

  An attempt at communication: to Cooper through the use of birds, to Alec through the presence of his fingerprints.

  I have burned fires. I am awake and no one saw me and no one will. These things I did I did and no one knew until I let them.

  These lines were easier to understand and typical of such letters. The boasting, self-important ego of a psychopath was recognizable anywhere.

  The reference to fire was the main detail of interest – there had been few arson incidents in recent years, and the letter’s discovery next to the burned-out buildings of the island had seemed conclusive enough. But Ada and her department were sure the father had acted alone in setting his fires, and with all the bodies of the family accounted for, there had been no evidence of an extra party.

  Ada answered her calls less and less frequently now. Her email replies had grown more and more delayed.

  Cooper wondered if she was letting this woman down. She took a breath. She read the letter again, resolving not to email more thoughts until she received a response.

  I have held the dancing plague.

  She looked up dancing plagues. Most incidents happened throughout Europe from the 1300s onwards. Groups of people would dance spontaneously, usually starting with a single individual, stretching out to hundreds as more and more people joined, dancing until they dropped down dead from exhaustion.

  I blossom, now.

  The smile is yours.

  You could have saved him.

  The last time Simon had gone to school had been 6 November – the day before the town’s Bonfire Night. Since then, not a single soul in Ilmarsh could remember seeing him.

  He was eighteen, almost out of school. He had a poor attendance record.

  In his room, they’d find posters, schoolwork, notes on history.

  His laptop was gone. No evidence he’d returned after the crash, and there would have been evidence, wouldn’t there? There would have been blood.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Trace quantities of spores had been found in the detective’s hallway, on unwashed and muddy clothes sitting in a basket from the day he’d first visited Well Farm. These were then incinerated, the carpet stripped off the floors, and the whole place thoroughly cleaned after the initial search. Several of Alec’s neighbours had needed to move out of their homes temporarily. They were all checked for symptoms.

  The authorities concluded that the fingerprints on the crow-letter wrappings were most likely lifts from elsewhere rather than actual proof of Alec’s involvement in all this. But everything else was inconclusive, wherever they went.

  On Alec’s dining room table, a piece of paper had been found on its own, flotsam from another time, another life.

  A phone number in his own handwriting.

  They rang it and rang it, and no one ever answered.

  But it had been answered once – more than once – by another.

  In Simon Nichols’s mobile phone records, sent through from his network, they’d found evidence of over two hundred calls to and from the number over the last four months.

  Whoever the number had belonged to, they had phoned Alec’s son a few minutes after the crash.

  There had been no activity since.

  Alec had, for some reason, ordered an emergency locksmith the day after the horses were found. Officers had already interviewed the man. This was how Cooper followed most of the case, reading the notes of others.

  The locksmith told them about his client. Alec had thought someone might have broken into his house, though there had been no signs of forced entry, nothing but dried muddy footprints on the stairs. But when the locksmith had examined the scene himself, he’d barely been able to make the prints out. And there had been mud on Alec’s own shoes; the guy had been leaving trails of it along the floor.

  ‘He seemed like he hadn’t slept in a while.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the interviewer had asked.

  ‘He was fidgety. Had bags under his eyes, half-drunk cups of coffee all around his desk. Kept pacing, looking out of the window. You get people who need our services . . . careless people who lose their keys down drains . . . women running away from cruel exes . . . And you get people who call us out for, you know, different reasons.’

  He’d paused, then, taking a drink of his lemonade.

  ‘You get people who don’t feel safe. Who’ve probably never felt safe a day in their lives.’

  He’d put his can down, playing with the ring pull.

  ‘And he was a policeman, you know? If he doesn’t . . . who does?’

  There was something wrong with the colours in his back garden, too – Cooper was aware this most likely had little to do with anything, but she kept thinking about it all the same. Many of the gardens all around had a similar issue. A grass that was slightly too green. Winter blue flowers grown red, rare scrub and weed that had not developed in this part of the world for decades. She sent illicit samples to a botanist friend, but he did not answer her, and by the time she would push, all investigations – and their lives as they had lived them – would be over.

  Nevertheless, even if nothing was ever found, something about these colours upset Cooper. Something about them always would.

  In the garden bins, they’d found the usual rubbish. Alec and his son had seemed to subsist off ready meals and takeaways, mostly Chinese and pizza. He’d put a lot of cans and bottles in the main black bin instead of the recycling collection.

  Beneath it all, there were glass mirror shards. Some of them had Alec’s blood on them, dried. Based on the evidence, and the shadow in Alec’s hallway, right at the base of the stairs, it was determined that at some point prior to the horses being found, a person-length mirror frame had been smashed. Evidence of recent scarring on his right hand suggested that Alec had fractured it a second time, intentionally or otherwise, with his own fist.

  On his computer, passworded with the name ‘Julia’ – itself bizarre, considering no one in his life a
ppeared to be called that – they found no evidence of wrongdoing and no explanation for the mirror. There were a few online dating profiles, a few messages sent and received, but each exchange appeared to have petered out within a few days of implementation. The descriptions Alec had posted of himself had evolved over time. He had become less and less. Where once on his dating profile he’d identified Italian food and long walks as interests, had gone into great detail about films and television series he liked (claiming he was not much of a reader), on the final profile he’d just said he was a police officer, that he was a father, that he was looking for someone nice. Many of the women he had talked to had lived miles away. Most of them were a certain type – lean, dark-haired, in colourful clothes.

  All the botanist would find, when the time came to look at the samples of Alec’s garden flowers, was a harmless mutation, passed down along the years.

  In the home itself there were none.

  Cooper would walk through Alec’s home, sometimes. She would sit on his sofa, pour water from his tap in the sink, boil his kettle.

  She’d read folders about his life.

  His father – a wife-beater – now lived in a care home six hours away, paid for by the sale of his home and some of Alec’s own salary. There was no record of Alec ever visiting.

  There had been a short career in a detective fast-track programme before funding was cut, most positions gone. It had taken Alec a few more years after that to get back into CID.

  Arrests, but no major rogues’ gallery, no one who they could find who might have some grievance against Alec in particular.

  No link between Ilmarsh, between Kate Babbit or Charles Elton or Albert Cole, beyond the fact of their moving here.

  Alec’s wife had fallen to cancer just a few years before. There was still some of her stuff here, even though she’d never lived in this place – a box in the attic, some medications long past their use-by date, no doubt caught up in their move or else returned to the widower. Even older still, they found anti-depressants, they found some weight-loss supplements. Only a few of the supplements had ever been taken.