Sixteen Horses

by Greg Buchanan

  Cooper drank some more water, reading about what a man had lost.

  The quiet life he’d had with his son. No others, beyond his brief and lonely messages to women on the internet, beyond his closing of accounts.

  She had asked him once, driving over to the Eltons’ stables, why he’d come to this town.

  She closed her eyes, sitting on Alec’s sofa in the dark of late afternoon. For a few moments she rested.

  Cooper woke up, her phone vibrating on the table.

  It was dawn outside.

  She picked it up; there had been five missed calls.

  She didn’t know what was wrong with her lately.

  It was strange, wasn’t it?

  The streets . . . the beachfront . . . even the people.

  It had started to feel, somehow, like she’d always known them.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Everyone remembers their first decapitation.

  It had been a mouse trap. Cooper had been eleven. The snap of the metal mechanism had broken the animal’s neck, a little blood trickling along the wood towards the grey carpet below.

  Her mother had set these traps after a post-Christmas infestation and warfarin poison had failed to produce results.

  Cooper had found it. She had been allowed to bury it in the back garden. Alone, she had ended up accidentally touching the neck, the wound. Bloody fluid had come out from the nose. It wasn’t even alive and it had changed. She looked at it for a while, out in the dusk light. She had then taken a knife from the garage, wanting to see the spine below.

  She’d think about that, in the years to come. She’d just been a kid.

  She’d just said she wanted to help.

  And she had, but that hadn’t stopped her. She’d been curious. She’d—

  Get Well Soon.

  She had a card in her bag for Alec, one she’d never give him.

  No message inside, no words, no signs.

  Get Well Soon.

  Day Twenty-Five

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  They were in the sea. There they had drifted.

  Things came to light.

  The sky was clear at last. The sun rose, the horizon empty but for the distant wrecks of abandoned and burned-out oil rigs, the white blades of ageing wind farms dancing like synchronized swimmers in the cold air, the island further still.

  Cooper was not alone.

  The sand on the beach was coarse, littered with vast strings of seaweed weeping like fingers from the dark sea. A crab moved along rocks out on the bank. If she went close to it, it might disappear beneath the surface. No one might ever see it again. A small group of gulls crowded together on the sea-wall, leaping into the air and diving, not progressing much beyond.

  There was a stiff cold breeze. The sea swelled and retreated, the tides moving in and out.

  ‘How many?’ Cooper asked. It was 7.15 a.m. She wore her green coat, a larger, thicker one she’d bought for these colder days. She had a splitting headache, a reusable cup of coffee in her left hand.

  ‘A dog walker found the first one,’ the inspector said.

  No one ever seemed to call him ‘Harry’. Cooper had tried for a little while, and he hadn’t seemed to like it.

  ‘The inspector’ it was.

  His black trouser legs were flecked with sand. Cooper wore her boots.

  Salt drifted into their throats.

  ‘It was around an hour or two ago. Dog had a collar on, one of those glow-in-the-dark ones. Ran right up to it, green halo all spinning. It must have looked strange.’

  ‘The dog or the walker?’

  ‘What?’ He looked at her.

  ‘What looked strange?’

  He did not answer. He just shook his head and kept walking. Eventually, he said, ‘Two.’ There were two that they knew of.

  They continued their walk along the shore. She could not see any bodies, not yet.

  ‘They smell,’ he told her. ‘It wasn’t like I thought they’d smell.’

  They had been in the water for weeks, moving back and forth with the tides, their bulk and their legs splayed out as if they were flying. Their skin had been pecked by fish beneath the waves, by birds once they had made their journey back to their home shore.

  ‘There,’ he said.

  She squatted down on her ankles next to one of them, a vast curve of hooves with no head or tail. Just flesh, bloated, decomposing, pale, bitten, mutilated in a frenzy, the skin separating in places from the body like a piece of clothing that did not fit. The other body had not been cut beyond its lack of skull and tail, its fleshy long neck extending to nothing.

  Later that day, out in the large animal shed in which she had once dissected sixteen heads, Cooper would confirm it.

  These two strange bodies, these blood-drawn leviathans from beneath the waves, were two of the animals whose heads had once been buried on Well Farm. Three more bodies emerged in the days to come. No others ever did.

  You can do anything if you decide something isn’t human.

  They floated forever in the dark waters, their flesh becoming food.

  The food becoming life.

  The life becoming death.

  Hours passed and a van drove onto the beach. They loaded up the bodies.

  A man stared, a few hundred yards away.

  Legs eleven, the bingo cried.

  ‘He’s stable, now.’

  ‘What?’ Cooper turned. ‘Who?’

  ‘Alec – he’s been up for hours. Seems to be doing better.’ The inspector hesitated. ‘You want to go talk to him, don’t you?’

  She watched as the van pulled away. She didn’t say anything.

  ‘They questioned him this morning,’ he said. ‘Asking all kinds of questions about his bins. About how he treated his boy.’ He turned to her. ‘If you have any kind of sway . . .’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know . . .’

  Still, she said nothing.

  ‘He’ll be grieving, soon. We all know it.’ The inspector scratched his arm. ‘And you know as well as I do . . . he had nothing to do with this. Nothing to do with any of this.’ There was a faint grimace upon his face. ‘That’s what you’re focusing on, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve been round his home. That’s why . . .’ He began, and then stopped, seemingly thinking better of it.

  ‘Did you ever meet Simon, Harry?’

  The inspector seemed surprised at the question. ‘A few times.’ He paused. ‘Did you?’

  Cooper shook her head. ‘I didn’t know Alec for very long.’

  The sun continued to rise over the bay.

  ‘Neither did I,’ the inspector said, turning to the sea.

  The water, vast and grey, had long since lost its magic. Cooper and her sister used to compete to be the first one to see the sea from their car. They would swim out to rocks, they would find every pool and every cave they could. Her little sister had done these things for Cooper, to be like Cooper, to be liked by her. And the big sister would pretend to herself that she’d only realized these things growing up, but that wasn’t true, was it? People liked to be admired, to be copied. Even children aren’t so innocent of wanting stuff like that. Everyone tried to lose themselves in greater things.

  After vet school, whenever Cooper came to the seaside some of the old nostalgia would hit, like re-watching an ancient film, but you’d remind yourself who you’d been when you’d liked it, and you’d move on.

  She didn’t like being in the water. That was all.

  She didn’t remember when she’d last been on holiday.

  ‘Please be kind to him,’ the inspector said, ‘when you see him. He’s not himself.’

  ‘Who is he, then?’

  They parted ways without saying goodbye.

  Search parties for the missing eighteen-year-old Simon Nichols have been called off on their fourteenth night.

  The boy, son of local police officer Detective Sergeant Alec Nichols, was first reported absent after his father’s car crash in what has become known as the ‘Sixt
een Horses’ incident.

  ‘Although this phase of the investigation has ended, we are pursuing multiple active leads,’ Inspector Harry Morgan told assembled press.

  ‘We appeal to anyone who may have information about Simon’s whereabouts to please—’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Alec watched the television coverage. He watched all the clips he could find from the weeks past. Videos from news reports, the horrors of Ilmarsh, of quarantine authorities, of roadblocks and face masks. He saw the boats going out to sea.

  The air in his hospital room didn’t feel like air at all. He kept watching.

  At the press conference, journalists had asked about the rapidity of the victims’ decline, the unusual progression of symptoms. They asked if this was some new form of the infection – if people were in danger.

  Mentions of his son had faded through the terror, through the times.

  The doctors had told Alec that he’d woken multiple times over the past weeks. Each time they’d attempted to explain his situation, each time he had forgotten once more.

  He sat up in his bed, out of the quarantine ward now for days. The other four beds were empty beneath the beeping, unnatural light. He was still feeble from weeks in this place, from the sickness that had ravaged his body, the barely faded bruising of the crash. Alec did not walk much, not yet, insisting only on going to the toilet by himself. They’d helped him with his steps.

  They had given him a laptop on a tray. At the time it had not felt unusual.

  ‘When we tried to find friends we could chase up with . . . we found something sad, you understand. Your son didn’t appear to have any, did he? At least not that we could find. Popular, but no one actually close to him.’

  The detectives had sat around Alec’s bed. It was their third attempt to talk to him, apparently. Even moving his lips felt like an effort.

  ‘Your son wouldn’t have had any reason to run away, would he?’

  ‘What?’ Alec had tried rising in his bed, but—

  ‘We found glass mirror fragments in your back garden bin. We—’

  ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

  They’d stared at him. ‘How did the mirror break?’

  ‘Who gives a shit about a fucking mirror? Who—’

  ‘We found blood on the mirror. Why did we find it?’

  Alec’s nostrils had flared, his breathing harder. He’d tried to control his words. He tried to— ‘Who is in charge of the investigation?’ he’d asked.

  ‘You’ll have to be more specific.’

  ‘Who is looking for my son?’

  Alec found the answer, soon. No one was looking for him; not successfully, anyway.

  A quarantine of two weeks had provided no answers. No trail from the car.

  No body.

  When he eventually managed to get a photo of the crash, he saw Simon’s airbag had inflated. He read the report: based on where the stag had been found, he’d lost control after hitting the animal, exacerbated by a growing delirium from his infection. It had been a perfect storm.

  Though a small trace was found, there was not enough blood in the car to suggest that Simon had suffered any fatal lacerations in the crash itself.

  There had been no trail into the woods, though it was possible the boy had wandered there.

  The only other way out would have been the road itself, just a few dozen yards behind them.

  There was not enough time for a boy on foot – an injured boy at that – to clear the long road to town before the police had tracked Alec’s car. Someone would have seen him.

  Why wouldn’t he have remained and searched for his father? It did not make sense that he would leave.

  So what, then?

  Before emergency services had arrived, someone must have picked Simon up.

  That was all Alec could see. All Alec could think about.

  He wondered why no one else seemed to join him in believing this, in knowing this.

  He found no reference to abduction in any report, in any document, in any news clip, at least none that was available to him.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  It occurred to Alec that these people, they thought he might be lying about his son’s presence in the car. That the disappearing boy might never have been there at all.

  He wanted to see a friend.

  He wanted to see George. He didn’t know why he wasn’t on the case.

  He didn’t know why they were doing this, why they thought so little of him without knowing him.

  He’d only ever tried to do good.

  Day Twenty-Six

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Outside the train station, dark and dismal and thin, a vast blank billboard had been filled with a message for those who had been caught outside the quarantine and roadblock: WELCOME HOME.

  The expected homecoming never occurred.

  Instead, after a small initial influx of disaster tourists unable to keep their distance, residents had begun to leave. Restaurants open for decades began to close. Old people in care homes were left there, unvisited.

  Louise Elton was eventually traced to her nephew’s home on the Isle of Man over a hundred miles away; she claimed she had not known of her husband’s activities, that he had hidden his paedophilic inclinations that had led to their blackmail threat. Cooper had got hold of the interview transcripts, had read them in between waiting for updates from Ada.

  ‘Please . . . just leave us alone,’ the stable owner had pleaded.

  Her purported innocence was a load of shit, of course, but Louise had a good solicitor, and she was right: there was no hard evidence of any further involvement, at least not that would necessitate her immediate return.

  Ilmarsh’s few remaining officers had the task of talking to each and every child who had attended the riding school throughout the past few years. No images of any of them were found on Charles Elton’s hard drive; all of the files appeared to be downloads from other users.

  There was not, and never would be, any evidence that he’d molested anyone himself.

  Cooper ended up speaking to a small group aged between fifteen and eighteen with the attending officers. It had been difficult to get their permission, her limited professional currency almost spent.

  She asked them about two people, showed them photographs of these people, told them stories.

  Simon?

  The teenagers had seen him at school. He was well liked, charismatic, but none of them had grown particularly close to the boy.

  Rebecca?

  Most didn’t know the name. One of them recognized her photo, though. A boy named Peter. She’d been in his class at school. Hadn’t seen her for a long time, but for a single meeting.

  ‘She came to a lesson at the stables – months back.’ The student hesitated. ‘Why?’

  Rebecca had been happy, the student said. She’d said she’d come again, but never did.

  Rebecca had never ridden before, beyond a carriage-ride at the beach.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Seagulls perched on top of paint-flaked facades and black iron lamp-posts. Neon logos screamed ST GEORGE’S CHARCOAL GRILL, TROPICAL CAFE, CAESAR’S PALACE. Empty amusement arcades blared waka waka waka chiptune music and flashing lights.

  There were no other trailers, no caravans left along the seafront.

  No strangers in unpeopled Ilmarsh.

  It was all left for Michael, now.

  The sky was grey. Waves lapped against the shore.

  Cooper walked up to his door and knocked upon it.

  ‘You’re not with the police?’ the carriage driver asked. They sat on the sea-wall nearby, watching the ebb and flow.

  ‘I’m a contractor,’ she said. ‘I work for myself.’

  ‘So you’re a private detective, then?’

  She hesitated, then nodded. ‘I suppose so. For now, at least.’

  ‘I always wanted to be a detective,’ Michael said. ‘When I was young, at least. My dad claim
ed he was one, back before I was born, but I don’t know . . .’

  He took a packet of cigarettes and held it out towards Cooper. She shook her head after a moment and he put them back in his pocket.

  ‘You can still have one,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to—’

  ‘You’ve given up. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  Neither of them said anything for a little while. Seagulls landed on the sand nearby, watching them.

  ‘Show me this photo, then.’

  Cooper reached into her coat pocket and retrieved it.

  He nodded at Rebecca’s image. He hadn’t known her by name. ‘Took a ride for her birthday, ages back. Came again a couple of times. Said the first one was a present.’

  ‘Her birthday was in September, so—’

  ‘No, no. This was a year ago. Nothing that recent.’

  Another boat moved in the distance. All the fishing vessels had gone now.

  ‘Did you talk about much?’ she asked. ‘I know it was a long time ago, but anything you can remember . . .’

  ‘Why are you asking me this? Who is this girl?’

  Cooper scratched the back of her head.

  ‘Was she involved in what happened? Did she do this?’

  ‘She’s been in hospital for almost a month,’ Cooper said. ‘Only recovering just now.’

  ‘She was infected?’

  Cooper nodded.

  He looked away, and down at the photo again.

  ‘She was happy, happier than most,’ he said. ‘And I liked that. She wanted to stroke Annie, seemed to have a real thing for the whole experience, even had someone filming it. She—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Who was filming it?’

  He paused, looking down at the photo and up again. ‘A man, I suppose.’

  Cooper got her phone out and found a picture of Albert Cole. ‘Him?’

  Michael shook his head.