A new world opens up. The creature steams. He feels its warmth on his face. The final plumes of life escaping like a sorrowful exhalation. The intestines bulge. He marvels at the economy of space and nature’s engineering.
He severs through fat and grey sinew. He lifts the hot intestines in one hand and cuts around and beneath them then puts the blade down and pulls the bloody balloon of guts out. It flops beside him on the tarpaulin. An amorphous thing like a pillow full of blood. A drowned accordion.
It is still early. It is colder today. Later there will be more snow.
He moves around the carcass and then crouches and reaches into the back of the cavity and takes the blade to its oesophagus.
He feels like climbing inside it and staying there for the winter.
He tugs at the oesophagus and pulls it free.
The deer is gutted.
He stands and stretches and catches his breath. Then he takes the machete and begins to work on removing the creature’s head and limbs. He’ll only take the best parts for himself – the choice cuts – those he can hang and cure and dry or cook. The four leg primals: the rump and the topside. The silverside and the knuckle. He’s after the shortloin the tenderloin the striploin. The ribrack and double chop too if he can get a clean cut on them. Poacher’s privilege. He packs what he can carry on his back and caches the rest for later. And that is when he sees her: a solitary smudged figure against the wash of sunless sky.
He ducks out of sight and ditches his cargo and then leopard-crawls through the heather. Through the snow. Stays low. Stops. Raises his head. Sees here again. She is closer this time and her back is to him.
He has seen her face grow towards maturity but always from a distance just as he views her now; unseen and unknown. To her a man like him would be invisible. He has seen her become a little princess. Her father’s greatest achievement.
But she has come too early. She should not be up here on the moor just yet. Not today.
And then suddenly there is a streak of colour and a dog is lunging at him from nowhere. Barking. Lips peeled back and stained teeth flashing. It is wide-eyed. The man hears the snap of its terrier jaws. He leans forward. Raises a blood-smeared backhand and shoos it. Geeit. Shoos it again. It lunges for his wrist and finds a cuff. Snags on it and shakes it as if his arm were a creature caught. A neck to be snapped or back to be broken. He swings wide and tries to fling it away but the dog locks on harder now. It finds the bone angle where hand joins arm. Where the skin is thin. Teeth puncturing. Teeth finding flesh and something beyond it. Agony. Jolts of electricity up his arm. Like nothing he has felt. His arm and shoulder and neck are screaming.
There’s something viscous beneath him and around him and under him and his hand is grabbing out at the sheath on his belt in desperation now and when it finds what it wants what he needs – what he desperately needs – he slips out his knife and he swings it but mainly he slices air as the dog holds fast but then suddenly she arrives from nowhere. The girl nearly stumbling upon him nearly stumbling into him nearly stumbling over him.
She is wearing headphones. Big headphones that look life ear muffs. She sees him before she hears him. Sees a blood-smeared man with a knife. Bent double like a hideous troll. A golem of the hills. The dog has let go and is rearing up. It is part of this grim tableau. The girl gasps and reels and then she screams and she doesn’t stop screaming.
This is not what he intended he thinks. She’s spoiling it all he thinks.
The girl falls silent and she is gasping for breath and her breath is a hot plume and it’s like she is biting chunks from the air but only for a moment because then she screams again and she sounds strangulated and this was not how he planned it he thinks. No. Not this way.
He scrambles. He scrambles backwards. He slips and flails.
He leaps up and says shhh it’s OK but her eyes are wide with horror and there’s blood on the snow and his heart is thumping in his ears and the moor is a wide and white frozen plane and the knife is in his hand.
And the girl. Between short gulps of air she just won’t stop screaming.
He reaches for her he lunges at her he says shhh it’s OK stop your screaming but she doesn’t she won’t she can’t so he tries to clamp a hand over her mouth but she stumbles and he stumbles and they both stumble falling backwards into the snow as he covers her as he squashes her as he flattens her as he enfolds her.
For a moment they are eye to eye and around them there’s blood on the snow. Deer blood or dog blood. His blood or her blood. And then like her dog the girl bites his hand and he strikes her.
He strikes her and he strikes her. And this was not how he planned it. Not how he planned it all.
And then there’s more blood on the snow.
His blood.
Her blood.
And he hits her and he hits her again. He thinks: snow ice flesh fist bones hair legs spread cold beasts breasts blood bite eat hold touch kiss love mother oil men shit bruise burst.
The snow. It’s white.
And he strikes her.
The blood. It’s red.
And he strokes her.
Strikes her.
Strokes her.
Then silence.
THE EVENING DARKNESS brings phonecalls. Ray Muncy is loath to call the local force in but his daughter has been gone eight hours now and her phone is going straight to voicemail and there is no sign of the dog and it is winter. The temperature is dropping further and the forecast is not in their favour. He knows the landscape up there; knows the snow can blanket its pitfalls. It can create bear traps out of frozen bogs and stretch time and distance into new shapes. It is a moor of quarries and shafts and endless heather – a place scarred by early industry and shot through with secrets. From the old industries of pick-axe and dynamite; of slate sheets and ugly stone. The secrets of deceits and trysts and lies and mistakes.
Only rabbits and hawks and deer and mice thrive there now.
And she knows the place too – Melanie. That’s what worries him. That she knows it well yet still has not returned. It is not like her.
So the town force sends up some of the lads; Roy Pinder’s lot.
They arrive with torches and boots and flak jackets. Three of them. They do not seem in a hurry and they do not have a plan. They ask for tea from Ray Muncy and he says no bloody tea my girl is missing what are you asking me for tea for? They shrug and one of them produces a hip flask and they swig from it and Ray Muncy says is that even allowed? and one of them – PC Jeff Temple – says yes it’s bloody allowed. Round here it’s allowed. You should know that.
Then they search the moors together. Muncy and the three policemen. It is up to him to suggest that they fan out and be methodical about this – that they hold the line while they sweep certain sections of the moor in turn. They do this but they see nothing. Ray takes one end of the line and he shouts out his daughter’s name and he whistles for the dog and he scours the snow with his high-beam torch and he wonders what is so funny to cause the policemen to laugh on a subzero night during the search for a missing teenage girl. He can hear them. They are not holding the line. The hip flask is out again. The local lads are passing it. The local lads. The boys. And him. Ray Muncy. On the end on the outside holding the line. Alone and apart. Not a part of it.
SOMETIMES SHE WOULD stick him in the chicken coop. His mother. That’s what she’d do. The chicken coop. Enclosed.
Only now is he beginning to learn that it all started in the coop. Before the cinema before the girls before the shovelling of shit and the school-yard fists. Before all of that the journey started there.
Shoved him in when she was entertaining she did. In the big one. Stick him in there when she was having one of her special parties. One of Black Tits’ legendary all-nighters. Because that’s what they called her. The men. Black Tits. Or sometimes just Tits. Behind her back.
It came from a rumour that had long passed into valley mythology.
A man – then a b
oy – had been up at the farm one day running an errand. Fetching eggs for his father. This was when the place was a working farm a good farm a proper operation with produce and life; a place of growing and cropping; of birthing breeding and slaughtering.
There was no answer when he knocked on the door and no one out back either. No sign of anyone round any of the outbuildings so he walked to the front window and there he saw her with her top off having herself a wash in front of the fire. A whore’s bath. And where her big sagging breasts sat on her chest there was a crust of grime. Two dark smiles of farm scum. Black tits.
Stories stick. And so:
Black Tits was born.
It didn’t put the men off though. No. She was known to give it away cheap. A barrow of coal or a half-tank of diesel or some shoes for the boy and she was anyone’s. Maybe just a ride home from town. Cheap at half the price.
One two three at a time. She could take all-comers. His mother. Up in the quarry or out the back in one of the barns. They’d gather round and then she’d do them in turn or all at the same time. Made no difference to her. Any which way for Black Tits.
Black Tits who would put her son in a box with the beasts when she wanted him out of the house for a while. When his watching eyes weren’t required. Get in with them peckers she would say and then shove him down one end with the green shit and the feathers and the constant flapping. Just boot him in there and lock the gate and leave the lad with the commotion.
Then when the birds had calmed down he’d get himself under the ramp slide beneath the chicken walk and put his sleeve to his nose to mask the acrid ammonia stench and he would curl up. His eyes closed his fists balls his lips locked.
And then they would arrive. He would hear them. First their engines down the valley and then the raising of voices. Voices of men climbing out of cars and down from flatbeds. The odd tractor. Some came on foot.
They would scrub themselves sore and bring food and booze. Starched shirts and work boots buffed with spittle. Made a night of it some of them. Made a weekend of it sometimes.
They would roll up with their plastic containers of cider and home-brew beer and their sides of ham and their cartons of cigarettes and they’d turn it into a party. Four men six men eight men more men.
Men from across the Dales.
Farmhands. Pickers and balers. Quarry men. Pig men.
Married men single men old men. Young men too.
And boys he recognised from his school. Bigger boys. Three four five years above him but still young themselves.
He grew to hate those chickens.
He hated their twitching ducking heads those pink blank eyes staring at him and their beaks blunt from pecking at ground and gravel. Beady-eyed and endlessly clucking. Stupid bloody things.
And still more cars and trucks and tractors would arrive. More doors slamming. Men sharing greetings with long lost friends.
Old men young men. Plastic jugs and glass cider bottles clinking. Smoke and laughter. Throat oysters spat into the yard.
Pissing up the barn doors.
She’d go all night and right through to morning. His mother.
Four men six men eight men. Drovers and diggers and dairy men.
Lined up laughing. Drunk and ready.
Get to the back of the line you. Right. Who’s next?
And the next day there would be meat and there would be milk and there would be logs and money for school dinner and empty plastic jugs of cider placed around the house and empty beer bottles and hay for the horse – plenty of hay – and his mother would be laid up all day resting in silence sore and spent and he – he would have to do even more of the slopping out and the fetching of water and the gathering of eggs and the whole lot of it. The smudges of pecker shit still on his jumper and the feathers of those stupid twitching creatures jammed in his hair and the yard pitted and churned from the tyres of all that heavy machinery. All that coming and going and coming.
IT’S A GIRL. Missing. A teenager.
Brindle’s heart sinks when he’s briefed by Chief Superintendent Alan Tate. Great. Another spoiled little runaway pissed off because her pocket money’s been stopped. He already knows how these play out. These are not murder cases. He should not be having to deal with cases like this one. Not Brindle. Not him. He knows he’s better than these cases knows he’s wasted on these cases doesn’t care about these cases.
Tate is at his desk but he’s refusing to look up from his laptop.
Where? he says.
Tate passes him the call sheet. Brindle’s hand receives it.
Way up in the Dales. Last seen heading towards the moors.
Not my jurisdiction.
You’re Cold Storage. You don’t have jurisdiction.
Brindle looks at the sheet and sighs.
Where in the Dales?
What does it matter where in the Dales? The Dales. The backwoods. It’s all the same up there. Sheep shit and rain. We’ve been called in and I’m sending you. That’s all you need to know.
Brindle considers Tate but says nothing.
Look says his superior. You have to take the meat and potatoes from time to time. I know you like wading waist-deep through blood but it can’t all be high-profile headless torsos and dead minor celebrities you know. Even for you.
Brindle had been a strange child and not because of the birthmark. Darkness had fascinated him. He liked to draw the curtains and read by torchlight. Crime and horror and detective stories mainly. But especially true crime. While others read sci-fi comics or fantasy stories if they read at all by his teenage years James Brindle had read all the books on the Ripper and the Black Panther and the Moors Murderers; he had read the cuttings about Hannibal the Cannibal and Dennis Nilsen and the Acid-bath Murderer and the Railway Killers. All of them. These were the myths of Britain; the folk crimes from the dark side. Secrets unearthed.
I know that says Brindle. But it’ll be a waste of time this one.
You don’t know that.
I have a nose for it.
You’re not too good to take the simple cases.
Cold Storage was built for this?
James Brindle flaps the sheet at his boss.
Cold Storage was built to solve crimes more quickly and efficiently and whenever necessary by utilising the most up-to-date technologies says Tate. Twenty-first century detective work. You know that. We’re the privileged pricks who everyone else hates. Or do I have to personally flatter you to get this done? Do I need to tell you one more time that Cold Storage is only for the best of the best and James Brindle is top of the pile the man to watch the one they’re tipping for the top – is that what you want? More smoke up your anally retentive hole? I’m not sure I can fit any more up there.
Brindle looks at the sheet.
She’s a runaway.
So find her then. What are you afraid of – mud?
You should send a uniform out on this because it isn’t murder. This is not the type of case I work.
Look says Tate. I just need you to get up there and check out the lay of the land. It’s one day. Two tops. Find the girl wherever she is and let’s get this all wrapped up so that her parents know whether to prepare for a happy Christmas homecoming – or the worst they’ll ever know. You’ll get a gold star for effort and a nice juicy corpse case as a new-year reward.
Now?
Yes now.
LATER AT HOME Brindle lifts up the final lid and carefully places it on the container of cooling steamed rice and vegetables and presses it into place. He puts it on top of the others in the bag. He reaches into the fridge and takes out two bottles of distilled water and puts them into the bag too. From the cupboard he reaches for packets of dried fruits – cranberries and raisins and apricots – and cradles them in the crook of his arm as he pauses frowning for a moment and then he opens another cupboard and takes out a packet of Earl Grey tea and a spherical metal strainer. A small tea glass. His spoon – the same spoon he has used since he was a student; the sp
oon he has to use otherwise the tea might poison him or his car might crash or the world might end in great eruptions of molten lava followed by disease and pestilence.
Brindle wraps them in newspaper and then adds them to the bag. He pats them down to make sure they cannot fall and break.
The remnants of the soy milk that is in a carton in the fridge he pours into the sink and then turns the tap on to swill it away. There are vegetables in there too. Broccoli and asparagus. Sweet potatoes. They should keep. He lifts his plants from the window sill and places them in the sink. He waters them.
Brindle goes into his bedroom and stands in the doorway. He looks at everything and then he turns the light off and then he turns it on and then he turns it off again. He does this eight times. An even number. Has to be even. Even is solid even is divisible even has corners and straight lines.
He goes into the kitchen and checks that the power switch for the cooker and range is turned off. It is. He turns it on and off again to be sure. Eight times he does this. Eight is even. Even is solid even is good. Eight is good because eight plus eight is sixteen and eight times eight is sixty-four. Six plus four is ten. An even number. Good. Solid. Good.
He takes the bag with the food and drink and puts it by the front door next to his suitcase. He does a sweep of the downstairs. He quickly checks each room though for what he is not sure. Irregularities perhaps. Oversights. He moves through the rooms and he feels the rooms move through him. His breath is quickening now. Outside. Soon he will be outside.
He returns to the front door and opens it and he sees outside but he decides to check the cooker one more time. He clicks the light switch eight times and then makes sure the tap is off. If it was left dripping and the plants were blocking the plug hole the room could flood. If the gas was on the whole place could blow.
If a light was left on or a curtain was folded over or a lamp tilted at the wrong angle or the television left on standby or his CDs and records not put away or his shoes not lined up in parallel lines then the entire universe would be in disarray. And if he never returned what would this space left behind say about him in his absence?
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