Sixteen Horses

by Greg Buchanan

  The son walks into the camera shot.

  He hugs his father, crying, convulsing. The father hugs him all the tighter.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he says.

  It’s OK.

  Simon holds his father, gently takes the knife from his father’s hand, and cuts his throat.

  EPILOGUE

  As I passed by the old infirmary,

  I saw my sweetheart there,

  All stretched out on a table,

  So pale, so cold, so fair.

  Let her go, let her go, God bless her,

  Wherever she may be.

  There’ll never be another like her.

  There’ll never be another for me.

  Sixteen coal-black horses,

  All hitched to a rubber-tyred hack,

  Carried seven girls to the graveyard,

  And only six of them are coming back.

  ‘Those Gambler’s Blues’

  (Songwriter unknown)

  1.

  ‘Why are we here?’ her therapist asked.

  There was no clock in the small, fluorescent-lit white room.

  Cooper had forgotten to bring her watch that day. She didn’t know why, and wondered, if she told the therapist, whether the woman might then ascribe some meaning to it. Some twist of fate, on today of all days. She felt naked without it, kept looking down for the time, for an end.

  She kept gripping at her wrist.

  The hum of the air conditioner continued as the therapist wrote in her notebook.

  Cooper drank some water from her bottle. ‘We pieced it together, from the tape. We found notes in the boy’s bag. He’d left the Grace account unlocked. He—’

  ‘The son was Grace?’

  Cooper did not move her head. ‘Yes. Rebecca, before him. She . . .’

  The sun kept on shining outside.

  Cooper had been back for almost a year now.

  One night a few weeks ago, Cooper had gone online and pretended to be someone else. She had found a photo of a stranger and had talked to other strangers in turn. Had shared fictional stories of abuse and trauma she’d never experienced.

  She had not talked to many people after that. She had not answered her sister’s calls. She had not been on the internet since.

  2.

  The therapist watched Cooper talk, watched her eyes flicker, occasionally darting towards the ceiling lights.

  ‘Can we – I’m sorry . . .’ Her patient hesitated. ‘I—’

  ‘What?’ She waited, and Cooper said nothing, just looked down at her own lap. ‘It’s OK . . . What do you want?’

  ‘It feels brighter in here. Can we—’

  The therapist rose from her seat and turned the dial on the light switch. It was darker now, but for slivers of red sun through the window.

  ‘Is that better, Cooper?’

  She did not nod, did not say yes or no.

  ‘You were telling me about the children.’

  ‘Simon wasn’t a child,’ Cooper spat. ‘We all acted like we were looking for a boy, but he was eighteen. A man.’

  Outside, cars moved along the street. People went about their days, did their shopping, headed back from work.

  She scratched at her arm.

  ‘He thought he loved her. She thought she loved him. And – and that was the start of it, wasn’t it? The start of everything.’

  There were stories we told ourselves, more than we told other people.

  Rebecca had, with Simon’s encouragement, started giving her mother more and more of her medication. Warfarin, typically used to help manage blood-clotting disorders in humans, could also be used to murder rats. Administered gradually – in addition to the normal amount prescribed by the doctor – they had tried to rescue Rebecca from her life of humiliation and pain. They tried to make Grace sick and weak enough to leave her girl alone.

  Cooper turned away from the window’s light. Her voice was flat as she told their story, at least at first.

  ‘Alec wasn’t a careful man. So he didn’t think other people cared either. He’d bring his work home and leave it on the table, on his desk, in his room. He thought – he thought his son didn’t read any of it, didn’t notice any of it, didn’t take an interest in who he was, laid out in plain sight. So when Alec took home evidence of what had happened on the island . . . the fire . . . the poisonings . . . photographs . . . reports . . . it’s how Simon learnt of it all. It was how hate became more than hate.’

  She dug her nails into the skin of her arm.

  ‘From the messages we found on the phone by the lake, it . . . it made Simon feel special to know the things he knew. The kids, the—’ She paused. ‘They felt important, knowing about the infection. Knowing what people could do.’

  She rolled her sleeves down, playing with the fabric.

  ‘One day Grace died. No physical trauma was found on the body, beyond its deterioration in the lake. Whether it was a function of the gradual dose, whether it was something the kids meant to do, I don’t know. The thinking is, her husband pulled his daughter out of school to cover it up. Albert Cole didn’t seem to have known about any boyfriend. He might even have thought what happened to his wife had been an accident. They hid the body, and life went on.’

  Her eyes were empty, red as she spoke. Her arms bore scratch marks, from today and other days. Cooper held her breath as she talked about hurtful things, things she had been told not to think about, things she had tried to move on from, things that just kept coming back and back. Sympathy passed like a fever, and when she tried to aim it at herself, when she tried to show compassion for her own regrets – her failure to get to the woods fast enough, what she’d had to do to that boy – all forgetting ended in the memory of the wooden crate, of the head in the soil, of the hole in the skull.

  The gut lived on after death. The microbiome bloomed and bloomed. But what had lived by that lake . . . what had germinated in the broken families of sinking Ilmarsh . . . Being there had changed her. And now Cooper was broken too.

  Sitting in this room, talking about the case of the sixteen horses, Cooper’s words were so specific, so chosen, that the therapist couldn’t help but wonder if she’d rehearsed them before, to herself, to others. She said things like ‘the thinking is’, or used the pronoun ‘we’, the more their sessions went on.

  Her breathing did not get better. It continued on and on. She kept drowning.

  ‘How did it make you feel, to find his body?’ the therapist asked.

  ‘I’m talking about Grace,’ Cooper said.

  ‘I know you are. I—’

  ‘Rebecca took control of Grace’s account,’ Cooper went on. ‘She pretended her mother had left the country. Maybe she was dealing with her grief and guilt in the process, I don’t know; the chat logs suggested it was more than just a decoy. She developed entire friendships with people, posing as the woman who’d brought her into the world, who’d tortured her in turn.’

  ‘Cooper?’ The therapist stared at her. ‘I asked you a question. How did it make you—’

  Cooper held her breath again as she went on. How did it make her feel? She felt interrupted as she tried to explain. She felt like a husk.

  ‘They broke up, eventually. They couldn’t stay happy. Rebecca returned to her old life a while later. She had a horse-riding lesson; she saw old friends; she even considered a return to school. She was trying to change, she—’

  ‘Why aren’t you answering my questions?’

  ‘I’m trying to . . .’

  ‘Try to focus on how you’re feeling,’ the therapist said, not unkindly. ‘How you’re holding yourself. You hold your breath when you tell these stories . . . your feet curl around each other. You know what it reminds me of?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The way you described the dogs in the crates. The way you said they looked, the way they must have felt in their last hours.’

  Cooper said nothing.

  ‘I think you’re more emotionally invested than you let on,
and it’s OK, Cooper. It’s OK to care, to show people you care. This is a safe place.’

  Cooper’s face grew more and more stern as she sat there. Anger and sorrow swarmed within her, but it was more than that.

  She ignored the therapist, when she next spoke.

  ‘Simon discovered something in himself. He’d helped kill for Rebecca, and now he was all alone, profoundly alone. All he had was a man he hated. A man who had – as far as he was concerned – killed his mother. A man who slept less and less. A man who took all the early morning cases. These two . . . they were Simon’s targets, no matter who else would die, no matter who else might get hurt. It was his father, and his love. He came up with a solution to a problem.’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘The problem of other people.’

  The therapist wrote in her book.

  The red sun began to fall.

  Cooper picked up her water bottle. She looked at it a while.

  ‘He stole Grace’s account. He stole all that girl had left of her own mum. All he did, he did for those people who had left him all alone. For those people he had loved.’

  They reached the end of their time. The therapist did not say anything. She looked concerned, but it was the end. They would never see each other again.

  ‘There were sixteen horses,’ Cooper went on, her voice distant. ‘One for each year of Rebecca’s life. Circles . . . like candles on a cake.’

  3.

  The sun was red over London.

  ‘Are you happy, Cooper?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Were you happy before the horses? Before Alec?’

  There was a longer pause, and she shook her head again.

  ‘In our first session, you told me you helped people. That what you did prevented evil, that you rescued animals, that you were proud of your life.’

  ‘I was. I am.’

  Cooper looked away.

  ‘What would your inner self say about you, if she talked to me right now? How would she tell me you treated her? What would she say about your relationship, your life?’

  ‘Don’t be sad?’ Cooper shrugged.

  ‘What would she say, Cooper?’

  ‘She’d . . .’

  She’d say I’m killing her.

  4.

  Her journey home took an hour and a half, some of it on the Underground, the rest by bus. Much of it involved standing, jostling, trying to make sure she could board each vehicle, and that others could get off. She had to bash a man to the side to let a young mother off. He had his headphones on, wasn’t turning, wasn’t listening, was just blocking the door, even as it was about to close. He didn’t even turn around, didn’t confront her. Just lazily moved aside.

  The bus was easier. It emptied as it drew closer to her stop. The area was beautiful, red-brick, moss on long walls. The streets were full of cafes, of music in places. The summer went on and on.

  She drank a bottle of wine at home, all by herself. She had her favourite ready-meal, oven-baked meatballs. She even boiled some broccoli. She chopped each stalk in half, boiled it for four minutes, drained, salt and peppered with a dash of lemon. It was, she knew, good for her.

  She finished the bottle and watched some television.

  She got ready to sleep. Her flat was small, unshared, fashionable, a studio space with unpainted walls and, once upon a time, multicoloured fairy lights above the fireplace. She hadn’t switched them on since she’d come back, not once. She wondered if she might take them down, but she didn’t do that, either.

  She brushed her teeth, put on her pyjamas.

  She switched on her sleep music and turned from side to side as the minutes passed.

  5.

  Cooper woke up. It was early light and she was splayed across the sheets uncomfortably, the duvet half on the floor. Her pyjamas were twisted round. Her neck and shoulders were hurting.

  Her phone was ringing.

  She pulled herself up, wiping sleep from her eyes. She blinked and reached for her phone in the semi-darkness, almost knocking over her glass of water as she did so.

  ‘Ye—’ She cleared her throat. ‘Yes?’

  There was another assignment for her at last. They put her through to the officer in question.

  She thought of all the therapist had said to her.

  What was the worst thing they had ever done?

  Alec had told her about his wife, his boy.

  She thought then about her own answer.

  She’d keyed someone’s car. She’d seen the owner kick his dog, and so she keyed his car. She’d been thirteen.

  The only problem was, it wasn’t his car. She’d got it wrong.

  She would smile whenever she thought of it. It was silly, but she would smile at who she’d been, who she still was.

  For a brief moment, she wondered if she should put the phone down. If she should end the call, and go to her mother’s like she’d planned.

  She should go.

  She hadn’t seen her family for months.

  All of this – everything she had done, everything that had happened to her in that strange place – she’d told them none of it.

  She’d told no one but that woman.

  She should have a sign by the door, she knew. Like the one in the hotel.

  NO BEING AFRAID.

  NO HATE.

  NO ALEC.

  NO HORSES.

  NONE OF IT.

  She could write these things. She had a permanent marker, somewhere, but sticky tape, that’d be a problem. She—

  The voice on the other end of the phone asked if she was there.

  Cooper?

  Cooper?

  She had killed someone.

  She had killed a boy. Not a man. A boy.

  When she thought of Alec, when she tried to remember, she thought of the crescent smile of the lake. How he’d stood there in that dim video, how he’d walked towards the water, towards Rebecca, towards his son.

  Cooper would go back there one day, before her own end. Her hair would be dark grey. A dog would walk at her side. She’d return to where she’d first taken a life. She’d walk the empty town, walk the abandoned streets one final time.

  She’d go back.

  She’d stand by that lake. Thinking of all the things she did not know. Wondering if anyone else had been there that night. Dead fears and old doubts would never stop blooming. She would carry them with her, and they would infect her, again and again, until she could not sleep at night, until all she could see were figures in the dark, haunting her dreams.

  She’d imagine Alec by her side, asking another stupid question, interrupting another idea, smiling at her with his silly smile. She’d imagine others all around, the ghosts of a hundred cases wondering why she was still here, and they were not.

  This was the life that waited for her if she said yes. If she did not go home. If she did not tell herself she could be happy, that she could be more than a function, that she could still change.

  She didn’t want to be afraid.

  People lived on, they passed themselves on, the good and the bad.

  Alec – all that he was, all that he had become – lived in her mind.

  He had thought he had loved her, she knew.

  And he had thought he had loved his son, too.

  What was the secret of life, the answer to the question of happiness?

  It was simple, Cooper knew. It was a trick.

  It was never having to ask the question at all.

  She held the phone to her ear and spoke.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to my friends G. C. Baccaris, Jose Borromeo, Sarah Longthorne, Anna Wharton, Patrick Weekes, Valerie Price, Gary Kings, and my classmates at UEA for your invaluable feedback and suggestions. Thank you to Claire McGowan, Doug Johnstone, and TLC for your insightful comments on early draft material. Thank you to Dr Harriet Brooks Brownlie for your incredibly useful and in-depth guidance on veterinary pathology, and also Graham Bartlett
for your expert fact-checking of the book’s police procedural elements. Thank you to Giles Foden – your early support of the novel, and suggestion that it be called Sixteen Horses, shaped its future course.

  Thank you to my agent Sam Copeland. My life changed when I sent through a (coincidentally) 16,000-word sample to your inbox; without your feedback and guidance over the last two years, I might have joined the horses and lost my head. Thank you also to Peter Straus, Stephen Edwards, Sam Coates, Tristan Kendrick, Katharina Volckmer, Natasia Patel, Honor Spreckley, Madeleine Dunnigan, my adaptation agent Michelle Kroes, Arian Akbar, and everyone else at RCW and CAA for all you have done for Sixteen Horses.

  Thank you to my editor Maria Rejt for your incisive, thoughtful and caring edits – for helping to create not only a better book, but a better writer as well. I would also like to thank the rest of my UK editorial team – Josie Humber, Sarah Arratoon, Rosie Wilson, Alice Gray, Samantha Fletcher, Claire Gatzen, James Annal – and my US editorial team, including my editor Zachary Wagman, former editor Noah Eaker, Lauren Bittrich, Maxine Charles, Katherine Turro, Lisa Davis, Jonathan Bush, Marlena Bittner, Samantha Zukergood, James Sinclair and Jason Reigal, for all your hard work in getting Sixteen Horses into readers’ hands.

  Thank you to my parents, Tricia and Glenn, and my sister, Amy, for your endless support for my writing and for making me who I am (even if that means sending you five billion drafts of various stories since the age of eight!). Writing a novel can be an exhilarating, exciting, rewarding process, but it can also be a lonely one. You never failed to let me know what you enjoyed about my work, and your constant belief in my writing was instrumental in getting to the finish line. Other family members – Deirdre, Hilda, Ben, James – were really helpful in reading and giving feedback on the novel’s later drafts. I would also like to thank my niece Izzy, who was born on the same day agents got back to me about Sixteen Horses. I hope you enjoy reading this when you are capable of reading!

  Finally I’d like to thank Dr Charlotte Mahood, veterinary surgeon, real-life Cooper, for all your animal advice, emotional support, writing feedback, patience and love throughout the development of this novel. When we met in 2012, I wasn’t a professional writer, you weren’t a vet, I couldn’t click my fingers and you couldn’t whistle. While you’re still working on the last one, achieving three out of four dreams isn’t bad at all, and we have our whole lives to figure out the rest.