They say the vast majority of crime is unreported. It is, but not by the good old public. It's largely unreported by such fine upstanding members of the constabulary as P.C. Warburton, who had nothing whatsoever to do with Warburton's bread, though not a week went by without one of his colleagues calling him crusty, or dough boy, or toast (for almost six months after he came back from a holiday in Alicante).
He couldn’t even be in the same room as a dead body anymore. One more ‘What’dya reckon? Brown bread, is he, Warburton?’ and he’d quit. Fuck the pension.
The long and short of it was Mr. Rochette (Bernie) had gone missing in the night after a half a bottle of whiskey, a couple of pints in the pub, and a fight with some gypsies.
It was an everyday story in the Fens. The gypos liked a fight, you could say that much for them. Bunch of psychos. He agreed with the dragon lady (as he’d come to think of Margaret) on that much.
But what the hell was he supposed to do?
He sighed and heaved himself up. Show willing, he supposed. Show willing, poke things with a pencil, mooch around the grounds. That sort of thing set their minds at ease.
Nine times out of ten the husband turned up after a day or two, having fallen down a ditch or into a twenty-year old pole dancer.
He waved his mug hopefully as Dragon Lady finished her retelling. Margaret took his mug and put it in the sink.
‘Well,’ said P.C. Warburton, not one to flog a dead horse, ‘Shall we have a sniff about, see if we can find a clue?’
People liked the idea of clues.
‘I’m sure you could do with one,’ said Margaret.
‘Quite so, ma’am,’ he said, not really listening. ‘Door locked, was it?’
‘Yes. I’ve told you that twice.’ Margaret paused. ‘Three times, now. Would you like me to tell you again? So you can write it in your little book?’
Warburton didn’t want to get his book out again, not with Dragon Lady standing beside him. He didn’t think she’d appreciate the doodles of large breasts and buttocks.
‘No need, ma’am. Photographic memory, see?’
‘Really? For what? Tits and arse?’
Shit.
‘Don’t bother,' she said, forestalling any more nonsense. 'I shall be calling your superiors shortly. Here is the front door. See? Unlocked. I shall be sure to lock it again once you are on the other side of it. Good day, Mr. Warburton.’
‘P.C. ma’am.’
‘How do the young people put it? Whatever. Yes, I believe that is the expression.’
Then P.C. Warburton was on the gravel drive. Suddenly he didn’t want to go back to the station house. Not a little bit. He was going to get a right bollocking.
He was, in fact, brown bread.
*
Margaret fumed for a long time.
How on earth was it fair that they paid so much more council tax and got so much less out of it?
There were plenty of jobs that needed doing around the house, around the farm. On a farm, there is always something that needs doing. But she just couldn’t face it. She couldn’t stomach looking at the dumb cow’s face. It would only remind her of Bernie.
Come on, come on. Think.
There was no way anybody could have broken into the house. The doors were all locked, and the keys where she usually put them.
Maybe there was a noise, Bernard got up, went to investigate…
No, Bernie wasn’t like that. He would have woken her and sent her down.
Maybe they were outside, he woke in the night to go to the toilet, saw them from the window…
What, then Bernie called down? Chased them off?
No. Ridiculous.
Maybe he’d taken his keys, gone out, locked the door behind him…but where?
She shook off that thought, too. He hadn’t taken the car, and if he'd walked far, the policeman would've run Bernie over on the way in, dead from a heart attack or just gasping and tired in the middle of the road.
Don’t be silly, Margaret, she said to herself. She was skirting around the issue, still.
They took him. You know it. Stop beating about the bush. Deal with it. That’s what you do.
Where would they take him, then? Or...would they have killed him?
Don’t think like that. Don’t think it.
But she couldn’t get the idea out of her head.
There were two simple things she was utterly sure of: Her husband was missing, and the gypsies had something to do with it. Anything else didn’t matter. How they did it, irrelevant. What they wanted, irrelevant. The sheer anger and hatred she’d seen in the men in the barroom brawl, irrelevant.
What did she want?
Her husband back. He wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. But he was hers.
Maybe they killed him already?
Damn it, woman!
She really had to stop thinking like that.
That's always the answer, isn't it? When something's tricky or difficult or unpleasant...stop thinking and do something about it.
Margaret retrieved her car keys from the little drawer in the cabinet beside the door. She made sure she locked the front door on her way out.
The Volvo was right there, in the drive. Once she got in and scooted her bum around to get comfortable, she fiddled with the car seat, the mirror. In short, she did all the things she saw Bernard do. She’d never driven in her life, but, she reasoned, if Bernard could do it, how hard could it be?
She stalled once, then lurched along the potholed road with her teeth clenched tight so she didn't break them. By the time she reached the public road, she was smooth, straight, and doing sixty on the way to Davis’ field.
*
Bernie came around and screamed. He didn’t make a sound. That was bad, but not the worst.
The worst thing was that the weight of his head falling down against his chest had cut off his air. He could have died.
The pain in his legs, in his arms, was terrible, terrifying, but it was background. The circulation had cut off. There was nothing he could do about that. But he’d torn some skin from his lips when he’d tried to scream and now he could taste the blood. The taste of fresh blood somehow woke him up in a way that the panic and pain could not.
When you taste blood, you know it’s real.
Then he screamed some more as a strong wind made his makeshift cross sway and the nails in his forearms and his shins grated against the bone. Blood started to flow afresh from the dozen barbs pulled tight into the flesh around his meatiest parts. He sobbed, unsatisfying, muffled sobs.
He was beyond terrified. He was way over into despair. Resignation was the next town over, but he wasn’t quite there yet.
The hood had shifted so that all he could see was a stretch of tilled earth and the outer curve of his gut, his spiteful gut, which was pulling him down.
It wouldn’t be the blood, or the nails, which killed him. It would be his great fat gut, pulling his chest forward, pulling his shoulders back, crushing his ribs, exhausting him, until his head fell again, fell against his chest…Then, he would stop breathing and he would never know if she was alive or dead. He could not bear the thought. To never know if the one and only woman he'd ever loved lived or died right along with him.
Bastards, he thought. Fucking dirty bastards.
For a second, his mind told him to yell, to thrash...but somehow he managed to quiet that instinct...to do so would only hurt him worse.
Bernard didn’t believe in heaven. He didn’t believe they’d meet again. He believed in farm truths: dirt, and worms, and an afterlife as compost.
He didn’t want to die not knowing. He didn’t want to die. Full stop.
So what can I do about it?
'Got to get moving, Bernie. Got to get moving.'
Get to the house.
'And yet,' he thought in a way that was not entirely like him, 'You’ve been planted in a field and you’re nailed to a cross and you can’t see.'
This new voice was full of s
arcasm. An unkind voice that must be his own, but he didn't feel like he knew it had been there, all along.
A stranger, to him. But one that wouldn't shut up.
'If you do somehow get out of the ground, and fall on your face, you’ll be just as dead, because believe me when I say you’ll never get up again. Not in this life. The next thing you know, you’ll be part of the great cycle of life. You know, the one you talk about when you’re drunk and the conversation in the pub turns to God and things of that ilk?
'So, Bernie?'
Bernie didn’t like that voice, but that voice was company. That voice was sanity. Because the other voice, the one he could hear whispering in the background, quiet so far, but with an option on shouting at some point in the very near future, that voice, that voice…
Sanity said to him, 'You don’t need to worry about that.'
Bernie thought, what do I need to worry about?
'Getting out of the ground. Getting moving.'
And, Bernie added silently, not falling down. For God’s sake, don’t fall down.
*
Margaret pulled up on the road. She might have figured out how to drive, but she didn’t have the first idea how to park. She could, of course, if she set her mind to it. She just didn’t want to learn, and she didn’t have the time or the inclination.
She slammed the door and locked it. She’d never trust gypsies again. And she was, as she was sure she’d heard on some television programme or other, in their manor.
As far as gypsies had a manor.
She stomped up the road, across the mud, stepping around or over or through manure and dog’s doings without a thought, to the nearest caravan.
In the centre of the field was a clear area, with some tethered horses (my God, she thought, is that a chain round that horse’s neck?) and some dogs, healthy and mangy alike, sharing the space. All around the centre were caravans, little dirty ones, clean ones, old ones, new ones. Cars in similar states of repair, from the new to the old. Vans, campers, horse boxes, a trap as in a God damned pony and trap, and people.
So many people.
And Margaret was very, very, very aware that despite all of the people doing various people things, she wasn’t one of them. She was different people. She hadn’t understood, not really. Not until now. She was people, alright, but she was her kind of people. These were their kind of people.
But really, that didn’t matter. Not one little bit. Because somewhere, someone, one of these people, knew what had happened to her husband. She was absolutely sure of it.
She became even more sure when she saw the look on the face of a man tugging a dog on a length of rope, eyeing her. She remembered a look of murder, and the face and the memory slid across each other until there was an almost audible click within Margaret’s mind.
‘You!’
You’d think he’d have the decency to run away, she thought. She could do with the exercise. But no, he just stood there, watching her approach. As she started out toward the dirty bastard, someone grabbed her arm in a strong grip, pulling her up short. She was so het up she swung an arm at the man holding her back. He simply ducked aside.
‘Easy, lass. You got bizniz wit’ t’e Mulrones?’ The man looked kindly at her, and though he spoke like the other gypsies she'd heard talk, he wasn't harsh, or aggressive in his tone. If anything, he sounded sad.
‘If that’s them, then yes,’ she said curtly, snatching her arm free.
‘You had best turn around, t’en. Best get gone.’
She shook her head.
‘I can’t. My husband…’
She didn’t need to say more.
‘Sorry I am, then, t’e hear t’at.’ He shook his head and walked away. She turned to watch him go. What did he mean?
Oh, bastard, she thought as she turned around. If he hadn’t stopped her, she could have got the man alone. Now it was too late. Another couple of men walked up to the one she recognised – brothers? Now she was stomping toward three men, because even if there had been a hundred, she had no choice now she'd started. No worse than cleaning the toilet after Bernie, she reasoned. Once you got started...you just kind of scrubbed and thought of other places, other things, other times.
But her legs began to feel weak, despite her intentions, the closer she came.
Those three men were joined by more, and then, they just kept coming.
It seemed the Mulrones were legion.
She didn’t bother counting. There were enough. Suddenly she thought that just maybe coming here had been a bad idea. One of her worst.
A very bad idea indeed.
But that wouldn’t stop a woman like Margaret.
Just like scrubbing up shit with a toothbrush.
‘You there! What have you done with my husband?’
‘Lost him, have you?’
‘You know full well what I’m talking about! And speak properly, damn it!’
‘Get yourself gone!’ yelled a woman. She was young, wearing a short top that pulled up to show a map of stretch marks across a loose belly. The girl – she could be no more than twenty – spat on the ground.
‘Not until you tell me what you’ve done with him. You…you…pikeys!’
They laughed at that. One of them stepped forward and reached out with stained hands to push her. Just as those hands fell on her, another voice called out.
A powerful voice, for all that it was quiet.
‘Hoy! Stop t’ar! Wot ya’s doin’ ta t’ar lady?’
Her words made about as much sense to Margaret as French might, thirty years after the little she remembered from school. A word here, a word there.
A little old woman stalked toward the group of them. Physically, she was incapable of stalking. She was bent almost double. Her joints were like tree knots. The old woman’s stalking days were done, but she stalked, nonetheless. Something else blurted from the ancient woman's wrinkled mouth, some quick fire thing that Margaret couldn't catch at all.
But the words stopped each and every man and woman surrounding Margaret more effectively than roaring aggression would have.
The woman was the boss, here. It was in the set of her face, her stony eyes. Margaret could feel her will from ten feet away, and she was damn grateful for the interruption. She had an idea things were about to go seriously wrong. The kind of wrong, she thought, where nobody but those involved knew just how wrong things went, because nobody else would ever see or hear from her again.
She wished she’d just waited for Bernie to turn up.
But then she knew things had gone way beyond that. These people had hurt him. Maybe done something worse, but she was desperately trying not to think that. And yet, as frightened as she was, she wouldn’t let it go. He was her husband.
‘Wot ya doin’ here, lady?’
‘They did something to my husband! I know they did. They took him. Maybe hurt him. Did you hurt him, you bastards?!’
‘Hoy, ma, she’s callin’ us bastards!’
‘Ya’s are, Rob,' she told the man, turning her hard stare on him. He seemed, almost, to wilt. 'Now, Rob, ya tell it straight. Wot did ya’s do?’
There was a string of something Margaret didn’t understand, then the one called Rob shouted, ‘But he hit ma bo’!’
She stared back, and he fell silent, his head going down, a little kid chastised, but probably in his forties.
‘Ma’be,' said the crone. 'Ma’be. But ya no shuda done t’ar. Ya’s a bad boy, Rob.’
‘You can no say it’s not fair, Ma,’ said Rob. The others in the group were nodding.
Now Margaret had settled her thumping heart, tamed some of her fear, she looked around, hard. She saw similarities between some of them. A family.
God help me.
She was facing down a family of them. Not a family like hers. This was the kind of family people make movies about. The kind of movie where the hero get stranded in the wilderness and ends up being eaten. If it hadn’t have been for the mother (Grandmother? Sh
e dreaded to think how long the old lady had been breeding for, if this was her brood) she would be in trouble. Serious trouble.
In fact, she might already be at that point. Her life was, quite literally, in the old woman’s hands.
The old lady had fallen quiet, there in the middle of her clan. They all watched her, to see which way she would go. A couple of the younger ones bit their nails. One of the young men elbowed his brother or cousin whatever, making a joke, and an older man, forearms covered in tattoos, hit the younger one hard enough to send him stumbling to the floor.
Margaret saw all this, but the old woman didn't move, didn't look up, but stayed there hunched and staring at the ground in thought.
Margaret knew she would get nothing from the kids, cousins, whatever they were. She had one chance. One chance only.
The old woman bit her wrinkled lip with one remaining yellowed tooth.
Rob said, ‘Fair’s fair, ma.’
She held up a hand to silence him. Margaret didn’t think anyone but this one bent old lady could have done that to him, or any of the others. She was like some kind of juggler. Her children were balls of fire. Margaret was willing to bet this old woman had never been burned.
‘Lady,’ said the old woman in a voice quiet, and soft, but deadly hard. ‘Ya go on. Leave now. He be on t’a farm. Ya find him, ya keep him. Don't come back, ay?’
She stared at Margaret. Margaret stared right back.
Margaret had never met her match before in a staring contest, but she knew she wasn’t going to win. She didn’t waste more time, but instead nodded curtly. She was fuming. But she was unhurt, she knew Bernard was alive, and…well? She didn’t know that, but she wasn’t stupid. It was the best she was going to get. It would have to be enough for now.
As she turned on her heel the old woman descended back into that weird language. Not shouting, but cutting and whipping just the same, she had no doubt.
As Margaret headed back to the car, Rob yelled out.
'I'll get you, too, you...'
A Scarecrow to Watch over Her (A Horror Novella) Page 4