by Rob Parker
The grass was matted down in patches. Dark flecks of blood spattered the grass.
‘Oh my God,’ whispered Roisin, as she turned to embrace Thor, the gravity of what had happened to him painted starkly in the light of day.
‘Now you know why I look like this,’ Thor whispered back. ‘Who could have done this to you…’
‘Some nasty bugger or other,’ said Thor, as he smoothed her hair. ‘I’m alright, you know.’
‘I know,’ she said, and their eyes met again. It led to a quick urgent kiss, and Thor had never felt more connected, nor more loved than in that moment.
‘Let’s see what we can find.’
They walked hand in hand around the site, before Roisin stopped in her tracks.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we supposed to leave it untouched? For the police? Won’t we mess up any evidence?’
‘I’m not going to the police yet,’ Thor replied. ‘Whoever did this should believe I’m dead, that is, if they haven’t seen me already this morning. I was after the element of surprise.’
Roisin suddenly left his grip and walked to the edge of the flattened grass. ‘I see something.’ She bent down.
‘My wallet,’ said Thor. ‘Great.’
‘At least you’ll get your money back.’
‘All seven quid of it. Bank card and ID is here, though, so that saves me a job of cancelling them.’
‘But why? Why take out your wallet and chuck it aside? Seems so stupid,’ said Roisin.
Thor turned back to the combine, flexing his wallet in his hands, bending the old leather. At last something made sense to him.
‘It was to ID my body. That combine was supposed to scramble me to jam. Whoever did this wanted to make sure my body could be identified. They’d find my body, search the field, find the ID. It’d look like one big accident.’
‘Jesus.’
‘They wanted me dead, and they wanted everyone to know I was dead too.’
‘But for God’s sake why?’ ‘I don’t know.’
Thor glanced around the field—then he felt something. A prickle of instinct, a nag of memory. Something close yet shrouded. Something else making sense.
The field. Where they stood. What was it about this place?
His eyes suddenly caught a glint in the green by the combine cab. He picked it up immediately. It was a thin, clear tube with a black sort of cap adapter at one end—a vial of some kind.
‘A vaporiser cartridge,’ said Roisin.
‘Finally something to go on.’ He rolled it over in his hand. It was empty, and he gave it a sniff. ‘Smells like bleach and blueberries.’
‘You can buy flavoured ones these days.’ ‘So… our killer vapes. Narrows it down a bit.’
Thor started running through the suspects in his mind. He knew very few vaporiser users, which certainly drew the net tighter, and one name from his original list came to mind instantly: his old school mate, Jason Dwyer.
Dwyer was always vaping in the pub, because you were allowed to. No EU directive had stopped vaporisers from being used in public places.
Suddenly, he had it. The field! How could he have been so dense? He just never came here, never bothered to think about such things since he’d left Loxley Farm. It was—
‘Thor, look.’ Thor saw Roisin pointing back to the field entrance.
Three figures were walking towards them.
‘Who the hell is that?’ he mused. Roisin came to him. He spoke quietly. ‘Don’t say anything about last night.’
She nodded back firmly. Thor felt like it was them against the world—a grimy northern Bonnie and Clyde.
As the three people closed in, Thor saw they were two men and one woman, dressed all rather well in suit and tie and a trouser suit, respectively. They all appeared to be middle-aged, and could have been three siblings thanks to their similar appearance.
‘Hi there,’ said one of the men. He had grey hair with stubborn gold streaks in it slicked back from his brow, and crisp stubble dusted his chin like specks of tinfoil. His voice exuded confidence and an accent that, even though Thor couldn’t place it, was unmistakably not from round these parts.
‘Hey up,’ said Thor, holding his position and giving nothing away. ‘Nice day for a walk before the weather comes in,’ said the man.
His sidekicks wore smiles of the purest smugness. ‘If you believe everything the papers tell you.’
‘Good man. Good man.’ There was a gleeful edge to the man’s reaction, as if he enjoyed Thor’s. ‘I’m Lionel Clyne.’
‘Good morning, Lionel,’ Thor replied steadily, holding firm. ‘Can I make a wild guess at who you two are?’
This was getting too strange. First the attempt on his life, and now guessing games with a besuited weirdo at the site of the attempted murder. It was one veer too far into X-Files territory. Taking Roisin’s hand, he started to walk away from the newcomers.
‘It’s Thornton Loxley and Roisin Crook, isn’t it?’ Clyne said, rooting Thor and Roisin to the spot.
‘Quite the story, aren’t you?’ Clyne continued. ‘Not that I don’t like it. I love it. Love against the odds, following your gut and all that, tremendous. Very Romeo and Juliet.’
Thor was baffled. How did this guy know?
‘Romeo and Juliet was a love affair between a couple of kids that resulted in murder and suicide,’ Roisin said. ‘I hardly think that fits.’
‘Fair point, Miss Crook. Forbidden love was what I was alluding too, but there you go.’ He looked past the pair of them at the combine. ‘Well, that’s seen better days.’
‘Is there a reason you’re here, Mr. Clyne?’ said Thor. He was fed up being jerked around by people. He wanted answers—no more guessing.
‘Just getting the lay of the land, really. Getting a sense of the scale of things here. It’s lovely, isn’t it?’
‘Who are you, Clyne, and what do you want?’ Thor said.
‘Me? I’m just a simple engineer,’ Clyne replied with a shark’s smile. ‘And a fan of bright young things going places.’
‘Is there a reason you talk in riddles, or is it a syndrome of some kind?’
‘You are lively, I’ll give you that.’
‘And you’re boring me to tears—I’ll give you that. Let’s go Roisin.’ ‘The village hall, behind the church,’ Clyne said. ‘There’s an event
there this afternoon, at two o’clock. Would be great if you could attend—both of you.’
‘You’re having a bake sale, how nice.’
Thor marched straight past him. As he and Roisin walked, he could just make out Clyne’s laughter.
‘I like him!’ said Clyne in the distance.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Roisin, who was keeping pace at his side.
‘I honestly don’t know, sweetheart, and I’m not sure I want to find out either.’
A black Range Rover was parked right behind Roisin’s Corsa. It had tinted windows, a current plate and black rims.
‘Simple engineer, my arse,’ said Thor.
‘We could do with finding out who he is. What do you think about the event at two? Want to go? I have to admit, it’s got me interested.’
‘I’m not sure,’ replied Thor. He looked back down the road, a road he had travelled up and down every day of his youth, going to school and back, or going into the village to go to the shops. It was very near home. His old home. ‘There’s something I need to check up on. Can I give you a call in a bit?’
‘Sure. Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I just… I need to go and see my family. And I’m not sure it’ll go down too well.’
‘Well I’d love to meet your folks properly, but I’m not sure today is
the best time. I think I’ve got a bike helmet in my boot if you want it for a bit of extra protection.’
Thor gave her a sideways glance and a smile, but he was at least partly tempted to take her up on it.
12
Thor made the short walk in about five mi
nutes, and it had only taken that long to decide that he was going nowhere near his parents. He was still going back to Loxley Farm, but there was another family member he needed to see.
The lane soon grew less leafy and more flat, and the bulk of the Loxley Farm buildings loomed like an old factory on the horizon. The barns were just as he remembered them, the roads still just as battered and potholed. There was no gate as such, no official entrance, just a gap in the wire fencing, which he passed through with speed. If he were to take a right, he would pass through the barns and end up at the weathered two-story frontage of Loxley farmhouse, home to his mother, father, the three middle elder siblings, and their various cats and dogs.
He instead took the left, walking along the dirt track to the grain storage tanks, which looked more like missile silos. Pressed right up to the tanks sat a bungalow, whose front lawn was like a seabed festooned with the shipwrecks of kids’ bikes and toys—Rue and Barry’s place.
When Rue and Barry got married, and then had kids, Thor’s parents had undertaken to look after them the only way they knew how: by smothering them with Loxley rites and traditions, suffocating them with the thick smog of family. Which meant, among other things, building a bungalow for them on an obscure corner of the property, so that they would never escape. The bungalow was a short, squat development frosted in sky-blue paint and perennially unfinished. It had been started ten years ago, built by Wilkes Sr. and his other sons (Thor included, as a fifteen-year-old) but Rue’s first pregnancy ended sooner than the build did, and a brief pause in construction to greet the birth of their first born had somehow gone on until the present day. There were still piles of bricks stacked under the front windows, originally meant for a utility room of some kind. One day.
As Thor opened the small picket fence gate, two dogs appeared from round the back of the house in a frantic burst of fur and teeth.
‘Easy!’ he shouted on reflex, hoping the dogs remembered him. They did. Otter was a muddy brown mongrel terrier with a healthy dollop of greyhound heaved in at some stage way back. Beaver was second, a bulldog with a jaunty canter and a big smile. They ran around Thor’s shins with glee, and he patted them with simple joy.
‘Nice to see you, boys,’ he said, as he walked to the house. The door opened almost immediately and his sister Rue emerged, baby glued to hip. She wore a faded denim shirt over thick patterned tights, and boots. Her blonde hair was pulled back from her face, and she looked youthful, but also exhausted. That’s what four young kids will do to you, thought Thor. He smiled on seeing her.
‘Hi, sis,’ he said.
Rue looked at him with pursed lips. The baby also seemed apprehensive. Finally she sighed.
‘If you looked bad at a distance, I should have guessed you’d look worse up close. What in God’s name happened to you?’ She surveyed his face with concern.
Thor reached for the baby, adopting a daft grin to soothe the wary infant. The baby went to him without fuss, and immediately grabbed his bottom lip. ‘Hello, Andrew. At last, someone in this family with a sensible name. The kids still at Sunday school?’
Rue playfully tagged him on the arm. ‘Yeah, I don’t know what I’ll do when they eventually get bored of it. The quiet on Sunday lunchtimes is the highlight of my weekend.’
Barry appeared in the doorway behind Rue wearing a high- visibility jacket. The creases in his tired face suddenly cleared when he caught sight of Thor’s face.
‘Jesus, Thor, what the hell happened to you?’ he said, before rummaging behind the door.
‘You know I’m a clumsy bugger at the best of times,’ Thor answered.
Barry pulled out a pair of scarred work boots, and stamped them on. ‘Well, be careful, you daft eejit.’
Barry always seemed to know what side his bread was buttered on, and Thor’s arrival provoked the spectre of impending family politics, none of which he wanted any part of. He said goodbye to Rue and the baby, nodded to Thor, then left.
They went inside. The house was just as Thor remembered it: cramped, lived in, with a faint pervasive odour of agriculture, as if more of the active farm just yards away leaked in with every opening of the front door. But this was Rue’s place, and thanks to his sister he had enjoyed many times here and had always felt comfortable and welcome.
When Thor was born, there was such a gap in the ages of the siblings that the eldest, aged fifteen and fourteen at the time, saw him as some kind of strange pet who had appeared too late in the day to be truly interesting or useful. All except for Rue, who was seven, and loved her baby brother. She had a maternal streak already fully developed by dolls and farm animals, and she was magnetised to Thor. Consequently, with the clamour and demands of all the older siblings, Rue had taken care of Thor for much of his formative years.
They went into the kitchen, which was as faded as an old Polaroid. Remnants of their breakfast still sat on the table, and Rue checked the teapot briefly. Satisfied, she put the kettle on.
‘I’m sorry I’ve not been around in a while,’ said Thor while taking a seat at the table, placing Andrew onto his knee carefully. He loved kids, and thanks to the number Rue had had, he got quite a bit of practice with them.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Rue, taking a seat opposite him, absentmindedly brushing crumbs into her hand. It seemed as if she couldn’t switch off at all.
‘Well, I’m sorry either way.’
‘It’s alright, Thor, you’re a big boy now, you can look after yourself.’ ‘I’ve not been able to talk to the others about it,’ Thor said, nodding
in the general direction of the farm, and his other siblings.
‘You’ve not even talked to me about it.’ Rue took the handful of crumbs and dropped them in the huge plastic bin in the corner of the room. She then picked up the boiled kettle and made the tea. ‘How long ago was it now?’
‘Two years, almost,’ said Thor, without missing a beat. It was about to get uncomfortable.
Abruptly, two years back, Thor had had a huge disagreement with his father, which had resulted in Thor packing his bag and leaving the property. Mo and Ahmed at the post office had offered him the flat upstairs at a reduced rate until he found his feet, which he quickly did. Since then, those same feet had not once set foot on the old farm he had called home all his life. It hurt at first, but now it was nothing more than the way things had to be. Thor was stubborn, as was Wilkes Sr. There would be no budge from either.
‘Obviously we got Dad’s side of things,’ said Rue.
‘I can guess that was the only part that our brothers and sisters were interested in,’ Thor answered.
‘I can’t speak for them, but the general perception was that you didn’t want to be a Loxley anymore.’
That seemed to prod Thor in the ribs, the sense of injustice. His choices and thoughts had been pre-decided without his voice, but then he remembered that that was the whole problem in the first place. He hated that his decisions had been taken from him. He felt he was from a different generation, and a different way of thinking, and when Wilkes Sr. worked that out, it had been too late.
‘Can I trust you with something?’ said Thor.
‘Of course you can,’ replied Rue. She was guarded, seemingly mindful that it must demand a degree of effort for Thor to reach out like this.
‘I don’t want anyone to find out, because there’s a list of people I trust at the minute and it’s not very long.’
‘I better be on that list.’ Rue smiled and placed her hand on the table in front of her brother. It wasn’t a touch, but it would do for now, Thor thought.
‘Someone tried to kill me last night, with the old combine harvester.’
Rue’s eyes widened instantly as if Thor’s words were a shot of adrenaline. She looked down at the floor, and then immediately back up to him. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered, before catching her language and crossing herself hastily. ‘Here? In the Hollow?’
‘Yes. Somewhere that, the more I think about it, the more important i
t could be.’
‘How did it happen? Did you see who did it?’ Rue asked, as she took his hand. She squeezed hard, and Thor squeezed back. He had missed his sister terribly, and he had enjoyed more son-and-mother moments with her than he had with his own mother, who had delegated the chore of raising him but retained the official name of their bond.
‘No. Pretty big guy, all dressed in black, plastic shoe covers on.’ ‘With the combine?’
‘Yeah, he bashed me about a bit, tied me up, then set it in gear to mow me down before scarpering.’
‘How did you get away?’ ‘Narrowly, let’s put it that way.’
A moment’s silence passed. The baby cooed, and Thor automatically jiggled his knee.
‘You don’t think one of us lot did it, do you?’ she said.
‘I honestly don’t know, sis. I’m not Mr. Popular around here, I know that much.’
‘But murder, Thor—murder. Think about what you are saying. Look, we are all set in our ways to some degree, even you, though you’re too bolshy to admit it, but murder?’
‘I know, Rue.’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t a prank gone wrong?’
‘If it was a prank they got me good and proper. A for effort.’
‘But, who would want you dead? What have you been up to since you left here? Seriously?’ Rue leaned closer, while Andrew burbled to bring the focus of the conversation back to him.
‘I have no idea, Rue. None. But I’ve been thinking. You know why I left, right? You must have guessed by now.’
‘Assume I’m as thickheaded as Otter and Beaver and give it me in your words.’
Thor chose his words carefully. He had mulled over his reasons for months, and now he wanted to sound justified.
‘It was that stupid Loxley tradition—the one Dad was so obsessed with. It was the assumption that I’d go along with it.’
‘Which one, Thor? There are a few of those.’
There were Loxley traditions that ranged from the order of Christmas present opening to the cracking of the first egg at breakfast in the morning. Every morning. Every single one of them felt pointless to Thor.