by Ben Cheetham
Seth’s mouth tightened derisively. Barely a week went by without some idiot on the news saying that same thing or a variation of it. He seemed like such a nice man . . . This is a lovely neighbourhood . . . She was a quiet girl . . . No one around here would ever have thought . . . If life had taught him one thing, it was that regardless of who and where they are, underneath, everyone was the same seething mass of hate, fear and greed. To believe otherwise was either stupidity or wilful ignorance, which amounted to the same thing.
His gaze slid over other headlines: ‘Police Appeal for Information on Middlebury Murders’; ‘Detectives Still Baffled by Couple’s Savage Slaying’; ‘Middlebury Vicar Claims Satanists Responsible for Murders’. Seth lingered on the last headline. It was a particular favourite of his, right up there with classics like ‘Aliens Abducted My Hamster’. ‘Reverend William Douglas is convinced Satanists targeted Elijah and Joanna Ingham because of their born-again Christian beliefs,’ began the article.
Parishioners were left stunned after he made the astonishing claim during Sunday Service. Police have this week released further details of the murders, including the gruesome revelation that someone drew on the walls of the Ingham house in the victims’ blood. The drawings, which consist of seemingly random swirls and shapes, look like the work of someone high on the drugs that have become so problematic these days. Reverend Douglas, however, believes they convey a sinister message. During his sermon he claimed one drawing was ‘the all-seeing eye of Lucifer’. Another scrawl was ‘a Thaumaturgic triangle’. A symbol that is supposedly used for summoning demons. The reverend also claimed that the recent series of animal mutilations in fields near the Five Women stone circle is further evidence of bizarre satanic rituals. Police have been quick to state that they have no evidence of occult involvement.
Seth’s attention was drawn to the window as the drumming and chanting started up again with redoubled intensity. The crowd sounded proper pissed off. It seemed things were about to heat up nicely. The noise peaked as two men emerged from the Town Hall. There was a scuffle between one of them and a protester. They fell over and Seth sprang to his feet, standing on tiptoe to try to catch a glimpse of the wrestling figures. A constable jumped in to part them.
Seth rubbed his hands together gleefully. This was what he’d paid to see!
The man was escorted through the crowd and rejoined his companion. One of the pagans approached them and gave them something. What was it? A petition? Some kind of cursed object?
‘Shit,’ Seth swore softly. The two men had their backs to him. Half the enjoyment was in seeing their faces.
No matter. The morning’s entertainment had made the extra outlay on the room more than worthwhile. And anyway, he reflected, soon money wouldn’t be an issue. Soon he would be wealthy enough to stay in any hotel in the world. The men got in their cars and drove away. Seth returned to the scrapbook.
DAY 1
9.48 A.M.
Amanda and Erin walked side by side along a sun-dappled gravel road walled in by dense, drooping pines. The forest’s gloomy floor was carpeted with rusty pine needles and smears of livid green moss. The pines opened out into a large clearing sprinkled with gorse bushes. The clearing was split into three branches, each of which followed a slender channel of water. To the west was Newbiggin Burn. To the north was Blanch Burn. At its centre the streams converged to form the River Font, which flowed south-east towards Fontburn Reservoir. The road sloped down to cross the river on a low stone bridge a few metres beyond the V-shaped confluence.
Amanda took in the view, which brought back so many happy memories. As a child she’d loved to come here for picnics with her parents. As a twenty-one-year-old she’d made love with Tom for the first time on the riverbank. And as a parent herself, she’d watched her own children splash around and build dams in the streams.
‘Come on, Mum. Keep up,’ said Erin, breaking into a sort of skip-run.
Amanda started after her, but hesitated as her phone rang. A flutter rose from her stomach. The planning permission verdict must be in. Which way had it gone? Part of her hoped she’d been wrong and the planners had rejected the proposal. Maybe then she’d get back the man she loved. The man who wanted to make money, but not at the expense of his family’s happiness. She knew how the desire for wealth and the respect that came with it could twist perceptions. How it could make people think they were doing the best for their loved ones, when in reality they were only serving their own interests.
A deep frown formed as Amanda looked at the phone.
‘Is it Dad?’ Erin called to her.
‘No.’
‘Who is it then?’
‘It’s no one. Go play by the streams. I’ll be along in a minute.’
Erin skipped away. Amanda put the phone to her ear, turning towards the trees as if fearing Erin might read her lips. ‘I told you not to phone me.’ Her voice was quiet and carefully emotionless.
‘I’m sorry,’ a man’s voice replied. ‘I tried not to. I really did. But you’re all I think about. Can I see you?’
‘No.’
‘I only want to talk.’
‘I’ve already heard all you’ve got to say. Hearing it again won’t change my mind.’
‘I didn’t put myself across very well last time we spoke. I’m not good with words like you are. All I’m asking for is one more chance to convince you that we’re meant to be together.’
‘We’re not meant to be together. We were a mistake,’ Amanda stated flatly.
‘Please just hear me out and if you say no after that I promise I won’t contact you again.’
Amanda sighed at the wobble in the man’s voice. ‘I’m not meeting up. Say what you’ve got to say now and do it quickly.’
There was a pause as if the man was gathering himself up for one final effort. Then he began, ‘I was thinking the other day how a flower doesn’t know it’s a flower. It just is one. Sometimes love can be like that.’
‘I know how I feel about you.’
‘But do you, though? You didn’t realise you were attracted to me until a few months ago. Isn’t that true?’
‘Well yes but—’ Amanda admitted hesitantly.
‘So couldn’t it also be true that you love me but you don’t know it yet?’ the man interrupted in a tone of eager triumph.
‘No. It. Could. Not.’ Amanda spoke each word like a sentence.
‘I’ve loved you for years,’ the caller continued as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘You’ve only loved me for a few months. It takes time for love to grow and blossom. That’s the best kind of love because it lasts a lifetime.’
‘Enough!’ snapped Amanda, losing her composure.
Desperation flooded the voice. ‘What I’m trying to say is it doesn’t matter how long it takes for you to realise you’re a flower . . . No, I mean your love for me is a flower . . . Because we’ve got the rest of our lives for us to realise it . . . Or rather for you to realise it, because I already know . . . But you don’t know because . . .’
A kernel of sympathy opened inside Amanda as she listened to the man tying himself in knots. She hardened herself against it. She’d already tried the soft route and it clearly hadn’t worked. ‘No,’ she hissed. ‘No. No. No! Do you hear me? Am I getting through your thick skull? My answer is no. I’d rather chuck myself off a cliff than spend the rest of my life with you.’
There was a silence, as if she’d slapped the caller with her words. She added coldly, ‘Flowers bloom and then they die’, and hung up before he could say anything else.
Amanda stared at the phone, tensed for it to ring again. Ten seconds passed. Half a minute. She closed her eyes, silently praying, Please God let this be the end of it. As she turned to make her way down to the bridge, another frown touched her forehead. Her gaze travelled along all three water channels. Erin was nowhere to be seen.
‘Erin!’ she shouted, scanning bushes and clumps of bracken. ‘Come out. I’m not in the mood for hide-and-seek.’
The clearing was silent, except for the chatter of birdsong. A thought quickened Amanda’s footsteps: What if Erin’s fallen in the water? She peered over the bridge’s wooden handrails. Orange-brown water gurgled along a streambed littered with pale-golden stones. She drew a little breath of relief. Erin wasn’t in the water. But then where the hell was she? Her gaze moved to the dark lines of pine trees. Surely she hadn’t gone into them. Amanda had always drummed it into her, Don’t wander off into the forest. All the trees look the same. It’s easy to get lost.
She called Erin’s name for several minutes, but the only reply she got was the echo of her own increasingly anxious voice. Her heart was beating hard now. This wasn’t like Erin at all. Something was badly wrong. Her gaze landed on two figures on the gravel road at the top end of the clearing. She ran towards them. It was a middle-aged man and woman walking a cocker spaniel.
‘Have you seen a little girl?’ Amanda asked breathlessly.
‘No,’ they replied.
‘I’ve lost my daughter Erin. She’s only nine. Will you help me look for her?’
‘Of course,’ said the man. ‘Where did you lose her?’
Amanda pointed vaguely in the direction of the bridge.
‘How long’s she been gone?’ asked the woman.
‘I’m not sure. Twenty minutes at most.’
The man indicated the stream running adjacent to the gravel road. ‘We’ll search along Blanch Burn.’
‘Thank you.’
Amanda ran back towards the bridge, glancing from side to side to side, wondering which branch of the clearing to search. Newbiggin Burn led into the heart of the forest. Erin had no possible reason for going that way. The River Font looped out of the forest, meeting the reservoir not far from where they were parked. Beyond that it snaked its way towards Middlebury through fields of grazing sheep. Could Erin have decided to head back to the car or even into town? But why? Why would she do that? One stomach-clenching possibility occurred to Amanda. Had Erin overheard her on the phone? Surely she’d been too far away. But what if she’d come back up the slope? I’d rather chuck myself off a cliff than spend the rest of my life with you. Picturing Erin repeating those words to Tom, she ran alongside the River Font with a frantic look in her eyes.
‘Erin! Erin!’
After a few hundred metres, the clearing flared towards a patchwork of fields and moorland. Amanda pulled up sharply as someone called, ‘Hey!’ She turned and saw the man gesturing to her. ‘I’ve found something.’
She dashed over to him. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Something about the way he said it made Amanda’s heart beat even faster. He led her to the lower end of Blanch Burn. They splashed through the stream. Amanda tripped and fell face first. Gasping at the cold water, she scrambled upright. She waved off the man’s attempts to help her and continued to the far bank. He pointed to a stone the size of a rugby ball half embedded in the peaty earth. Something dark and wet-looking was streaked over it and the grass beside it. Amanda touched her fingers to it and looked at them. Her fingertips glistened red.
‘I think it’s blood,’ said the man.
‘Blood,’ Amanda echoed as if unsure of the word’s meaning.
‘You should call the police,’ put in the woman.
Amanda took out her phone, but hesitated. All it would take was for the police to check her phone records and her whole world would come crashing down. But what other choice did she have? She’d made her bed. Now it was time to lie in it. She dialled 999 and asked to be put through to the police. ‘It’s my daughter,’ she shakily told the operator. ‘She’s gone and we think we’ve found blood.’
DAY 1
10.18 A.M.
Tom didn’t head for home. He headed for the western edge of Middlebury. Half a mile or so beyond the town, he turned onto a winding lane bordered by sheep-grazed fields and conifer plantations. He left the lane behind for a rutted farm track that terminated after a short distance at a wooden gate. A dry-stone wall enclosed a muddy yard and a small house clad in flaking pebble-dash. A dilapidated barn, its roof sagging and missing slates, was attached to the house.
As always, the sight of the house where he grew up brought back a rush of bittersweet memories. Tom saw himself sitting in the kitchen with his father, whose dour, rugged face seemed to have been constructed from the same stone as the house. He saw his mother setting the table, her features worn hollow from long nights of lambing. He saw his brooding, shy brother whittling wood on the stone-flagged floor by the fire. He shook his head. Christ, they were like scenes from another life.
His mind looped forwards to his parents near the end of their lives, his father crippled with arthritis, his mother’s breath rattling from a succession of chest infections. He’d pleaded with them to give up the farm and move into sheltered accommodation, but they were as immovable as the Simonside Hills. He’d wanted to shake some sense into them. They’d worked their fingers to the bone and what did they have to show for it? Nothing! What little money they’d made had mostly gone on rent, lining the landowner’s pockets. They’d even had the gall to suggest that as the eldest son he should take over the farm. It had been all he could do not to laugh in their faces. He’d rather have drowned himself in a vat of sheep piss than follow in their relentless, cheerless footsteps. Besides, he’d never had any talent for farming. The sheep had always been nervous around him, perhaps sensing his resentment at having to spend his time tending them when his schoolmates were out chasing girls.
Luckily for him and his parents, there was Graham. His brother was a born farmer – steady, tireless, more at ease with animals than with people. Tom could still vividly recall the day his father had signed over the tenancy to Graham. It was bright and bitterly cold. Lambing season was fast approaching, and they weren’t ready for it. His mother was in hospital, quietly succumbing to pneumonia. His father’s knuckles were so swollen he could barely hold a pen. As Graham signed the tenancy agreement, his face – rosy-cheeked, still in its teens – had expressed neither happiness nor anxiety. He’d accepted his poisoned chalice as if there had never been any choice in the matter.
Even now, over two decades later, Tom still felt a stab of something – guilt? shame? relief? – whenever he thought about that moment.
With a hint of hesitancy, he opened the car door. He hadn’t come to see his brother. He’d come to remind himself of how far he’d made it – if not in distance then in almost every other way – from where he started. But now he was here he should say hello to Graham. He crunched through the sun-baked mud past a rusty tractor and rapped on the front door. Silence. Somewhere off in the distance the bleats of sheep, sounding, as they always did to him, strangely pained. He made as if to knock again, but his hand dropped back to his side. He’d knocked once. That was enough. Moving more quickly, he returned to the car. His head twisted at the sound of an engine in the lane. Graham’s mud-spattered blue Land Rover pulled into view with a sheep trailer attached.
The brothers locked gazes, their unreadable faces momentarily reflecting each other. Tom smiled thinly, raising his hand in greeting. Graham’s lips remained straight. He got out of the Land Rover, a wiry black and white border collie at his heels. The dog eyeballed Tom as taciturnly as its master.
‘Hello, Bob,’ said Tom, putting out his hand to the dog.
The dog rolled its eyes up at Graham. At a twitch of his master’s chin, Bob trotted forward and Tom ruffled his thick fur. Tom straightened as his brother approached. They shared the same dark features and broad shoulders, but Graham was a couple of inches taller. Black hairs curled over the open top buttons of his short-sleeved chequered shirt. His arms hung at his sides with the kind of looseness that spoke of powerful, compact muscles. He was three years younger than Tom, but innumerable sleepless, weather-lashed nights had left him with a face that looked at least that much older.
‘What are you doing here?’ There was no animosity in Graham’s v
oice, but neither was it welcoming.
‘I just wanted to see the old place.’ Tom shifted a little awkwardly under his brother’s unchanging gaze. ‘How’s things?’
‘What things?’
Tom held back an irritated sigh. His brother was a master of playing the stone face, bouncing questions back at him when he full well knew their meaning. ‘You know, things. The farm. Life in general.’
‘The farm’s the farm. It ticks over. Life in general’s the same.’
It was one of Graham’s typical conversation-shutting-down responses. Tom briefly considered sharing his triumph with his brother, but he knew his news would be greeted with indifference. ‘I’d better get going. I’ve got work to do.’ With a nod goodbye, he started towards his car.
‘For a moment there, I thought maybe you’d come to see me,’ said Graham. His tone was as flat as ever, but Tom felt the accusation in the words. It had been a year, maybe even two, since he’d last visited the farm. He turned back towards his brother. They stared at each other a few more beats. An apology teetered on Tom’s lips. Holding it in, he ducked into the car.
Graham reversed the Land Rover to a spot where the lane widened like a bulb. Tom kept his gaze straight ahead as he passed his brother. He heaved a sigh as the Land Rover receded from view. It was always the same. He always came away from encounters with Graham feeling that he’d somehow let him down. He knew the feeling was undeserved – Graham was just as guilty as him of not bothering to keep in contact – yet it gnawed at him anyway.