Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  She yips at the ditch. I stand on tiptoe but there’s nothing I can see, beyond dark heathland and endless black emptiness. Then she runs a few metres further down the road. I follow, as another flurry of bangs erupts.

  In all the time I knew him, Callum told me nothing about his regiment’s overnight march towards Goose Green, about crossing eleven miles of countryside in the winter darkness. I learned from written reports that the Paras marched silently through flat, barren land, knowing the enemy outnumbered them and had had time to plan their defences, to become thoroughly entrenched.

  I fail to see a dip in the road and stumble.

  The moor the Paras crossed that night in 1982 became a mantrap. Men fell into bogs, twisted ankles on hidden rocks, learning to hate the land they’d sailed so far to protect. They drew closer to where they knew enemy soldiers were waiting, wondering whether the first sound of gunfire might be the last thing they heard. Ever.

  Callum did tell me that on that first march they were made to turn around and retrace their footsteps twice, so that by the time they finally engaged in battle they were soaking wet and exhausted. He told me that due to some gigantic cock-up, the BBC announced to the world that the British army was poised to liberate Goose Green, effectively giving away its plans to the enemy.

  Callum, already stressed by our adventure on the Endeavour last night, has spent the day surrounded by death. He watched me shoot one animal after another, heard nearly two hundred gunshots. For hours today, Callum has been subjected to the heartbreaking sound of animals dying. He’s listened to people crying, to shouts of recrimination. Now he’s somewhere in the darkness, on the same hillside where he once fought a terrible battle.

  Callum, when I first knew him, had firearms. He kept them in the locked box in the back of his Land Cruiser. I should have checked that box.

  Queenie’s white face appears on the other side of the ditch. With a growing sense of unease, I jump down.

  Callum told me nothing about the trenches, the ditches both sides dug to offer protection from hostile fire. It was from others that I learned about the Paras stumbling into enemy trenches to find them festooned with childish reminders of home: toy cars, comic books, letters, photos. He didn’t tell me about finding rifles with religious pictures on the butt and severed hands clinging to the triggers. He didn’t tell me about headless corpses, about faces with huge gaping holes, about men, still living, whose limbs had been blown clean off. About flesh melting away beneath horrific phosphorus burns. He didn’t tell me that napalm had been dropped.

  I found all that out by myself.

  I can see torchlight. Directly north of my current position. About a hundred metres away. I keep moving, as the Paras did, twelve years ago. Queenie stays a little way ahead.

  I should never have let Callum stay on the beach today. Driving back across camp at night, hearing fireworks that can sound so much like gunfire, might just have been enough to tip him over the edge. To spark another flashback.

  So now I’m miles from anywhere in the middle of the night and somewhere close to me is an emotionally unstable, trained killer who might think he’s back in 1982 and about to go into battle. And who might be armed.

  Somehow, I manage to keep moving.

  As the Paras neared the site of the battle, they started taking fire from all directions. Mortars, bullets, grenades and anti-tank weapons came at them as they leapfrogged their way forward, one tiny patch of cover at a time.

  That’s what I’m doing now. Leapfrogging forward, getting closer and closer without being seen.

  As they neared the enemy position, the Paras heard the almost crippling news that their commanding officer, Colonel H. Jones, call sign Sunray, had been killed in a suicidal charge against a machine-gun post.

  Sunray is down. Repeat, Sunray is down.

  I really need to find Callum.

  I reach the top of a ridge and get a better view of my surroundings. I can see the car and the lights of Mount Pleasant air base, three or four miles away at most. Queenie has vanished.

  I pick up my pace as much as I dare. Another ridge and I can see a small building. I know where I am now. The building is an animal-feed storage hut. This is my land, but I rent it out. It’s years since I’ve been here.

  I’ve lost sight of the torch completely and I can’t help feeling that it, and the man carrying it, have gone inside the hut.

  Towards the end of that first battle, when the Argentinians knew they were beaten, a white flag appeared on a heavily fortified schoolhouse. Three men from Callum’s own company went to take the surrender. Callum must have been watching as the men drew near, confusion arose and fire opened up. The men were killed, as were all the Argentinians in the schoolhouse.

  I draw closer to the hut and no one shoots me. I see no sign of anyone inside but I’m sure I’m being watched. I get close enough to pull open the door.

  The food-storage hut of my memory is not as I remember it. The floor is wood, as it always was, to keep the damp away from the sheep fodder, but someone has made a rudimentary attempt to introduce some human comfort. A single mattress has been pushed against one wall. It has a pillow and an old, stained patchwork quilt. The hut smells of human waste and I can see a pile of small brown faeces in one corner.

  ‘Callum.’

  ‘I’m here.’ I turn and see his shape, dark and massive, blocking the doorway.

  ‘What’s going on? What is this place?’ I’m scared. I don’t like being here, trapped in this rank-smelling hut. And I don’t like what I can see of Callum, nothing more than a large, dark silhouette.

  ‘I saw Archie. Or I think I did. Standing by the side of the road, watching us drive past. Sorry, I didn’t think you’d wake up.’

  ‘You saw him?’ I turn round, taking it all in one more time. ‘Is this where he’s been?’

  ‘I guess so. Looks like someone was feeding him.’ Callum is looking at crisp packets on the floor. From behind, Queenie squeezes in and makes straight for a chocolate wrapper.

  ‘And giving him beer.’ He nods towards the beer can near the pillow. ‘It’s nearly full. Looks like the kid didn’t like the taste. Thank God for that, a can of lager could do some serious damage to a kid that size. Leave that, Piglet.’

  Callum seems rational. His voice is even, his breathing regular. Not a flashback then. Thank God. ‘So where is he?’

  ‘Christ knows. He can’t have gone far, but we need help. We can’t search this area in the dark by ourselves.’

  One last look around the hut and I follow him out. Queenie comes reluctantly.

  ‘I’ve been shouting but I think he might be scared of a bloke. Maybe you should try.’

  I do. I shout Archie’s name, I tell him he’s safe, that we’ll take him back to his mummy and daddy, but he either doesn’t hear us or doesn’t believe us. We shine torches to both sides of the path, but if Archie is behind the rocks and bushes, he keeps to his hiding place.

  ‘How did you manage to lose him?’ I ask, when I need to give myself a break from yelling.

  ‘I couldn’t stop too quickly or you and Piglet would have gone through the windscreen. By the time I’d jumped down, he’d squeezed through some bushes and vanished again. I yelled, went in the direction I thought he’d gone, but I couldn’t find him. I was about to give up when I saw that hut.’

  We’re back at the road now, the car about thirty metres away.

  ‘At least he’s alive.’

  ‘Yep. He needs to be found tonight though. I only saw him for a second but he didn’t look good. He looked like a ghost. Hang on. Cat, did you leave the driver door open?’

  Callum jogs ahead to the car. I’d do the same thing but I can barely put one foot in front of the other. I watch him reach the vehicle, peer inside and stop dead. I can’t see the expression on his face.

  I pick up my pace as he leans into the car. My heart is starting to thud. I’m running as he stands up again. This time two pairs of eyes look back at me. Callum i
s holding Archie West.

  Not a ghost. Not dead at the bottom of a peat bog. Not under dirty blankets in some paedophile’s house with fingermarks around his throat. Not rotting slowly in a long-abandoned, sea-swept wreck. While Callum and I have been searching the moors, this clever little boy has climbed into our car.

  ‘Sitting on my seat, bold as brass.’ Callum frees one arm and pulls out the blanket. ‘He’s bloody cold though.’ Archie is passed from Callum to me and, for the first time in three years, I have a living, breathing child in my arms.

  12

  ‘No way did he wander this far by himself.’ Callum switches off the radio and changes up a gear. ‘It wasn’t an impulsive kidnapping, either. Someone planned it. Someone prepared that hut.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem hurt, though.’ I look down at the silent, shivering boy in my lap. Archie’s face is pressed against my shoulder. His eyes are closed but I don’t think he’s asleep.

  Callum says nothing.

  ‘Abuse leaves signs. Apart from a few cuts and bruises, he looks OK. And he’s still dressed.’

  Callum drops his voice so that I practically have to lip read. ‘That hut stank of sex.’

  I’m shocked. I smelled a small boy’s wee and poo, the earthy aroma of peat and, I think, the beer from the opened can. I didn’t smell …

  ‘Can Stopford and his colleagues process a crime scene?’ I ask. ‘Do they even have the equipment?’

  Callum swerves to avoid a hole in the road. ‘They’re going to need help for a case like this. They certainly can’t afford a cock-up. It’s only a matter of time before it’s all over the British press.’

  ‘What about the army? They have military police.’

  He shakes his head. ‘They work to a completely different set of rules. I guess someone will be flown in from the UK.’

  ‘He’ll have his work cut out, trying to keep that cruise ship here.’ Some way in the distance, I think I can see lights. People are coming towards us. ‘Not to mention all the visitors who came independently. They’ll all have schedules.’

  Callum doesn’t reply.

  ‘What?’

  Still nothing. He drives me nuts when he does this.

  ‘You think I’m kidding myself that it could have been one of the visitors?’

  ‘It’s not completely impossible, I suppose.’

  We both fall silent. The lights ahead of us have become a string. Vehicles getting closer all the time.

  ‘I’m thinking of going home.’ Callum is staring at the convoy coming our way. For a second I’m confused. Does he mean now? After we’ve handed Archie over?

  ‘Scotland, I mean,’ he adds. ‘For good.’

  We drive on. He doesn’t take his hands off the steering wheel, or his eyes off the road.

  ‘It’s not that different to here. On the coast anyway. Crap weather. Lots of big noisy birds. Everyone knowing everybody else’s business.’

  The truck stops, suddenly. I look for the pothole, the stray sheep, the dead dog. Nothing, the road is clear. Callum has turned my way. I stare ahead, at my reflection in the windscreen as the car rocks gently with the beating of my heart.

  ‘Come with me,’ he says.

  * * *

  It feels like hours before Queenie and I get home and I’m struggling to put one foot in front of the other. I throw off my clothes and then the two of us huddle beneath the quilt. Exhausted though I am, it takes sleep a long time to come.

  One of the things I had cause to reflect on, as I grew older, was that as we cast our net of love ever wider we make ourselves stronger and weaker at the same time. When I was very young, three people comprised the universe: Mum, Dad and me. At age eight, Rachel leapt into the mix and my little trio gained an extra voice, loud and rich, to sing its harmonies. When I lost both my parents, at far too young an age but these things happen, Rachel and Ben held one hand each and stopped me from falling. For a few years we were three again, and then we cast out silvery strings around us and reeled in the boys. First Ned, then Christopher, Kit and Michael, four tousled-haired, strong, noisy, smelly, cheeky little boys, marvellous, joyful individuals that together were as close as a pack of wolves. They’d have licked each other’s wounds if they’d had to. Then I became pregnant for the third time and Rachel told me she was trying again too. The four were to become six and we knew, we just knew, they’d be two more boys. Some women are born to bring warriors into the world and that was our role. For a few brief years, it seemed the world wasn’t big enough to hold all the love in my heart.

  And there was Callum.

  * * *

  I sleep for an hour and dream about slaughter. Then I sit in the garden, wrapped in a quilt, with Queenie on my lap, amid my own personal collection of dead whales. As the sun comes up I feel as though I am being slowly swallowed by death and it seems entirely appropriate.

  ‘Come with me,’ Callum said last night, minutes before we gave little Archie to his weeping parents. Come and live in Scotland, so very like Falkland, where the weather is dreadful, the people nosy and the wildlife big and noisy.

  As if on cue, a bird swoops low directly in front of me. It is an albatross, huge and powerful, a bird that, even here, is rarely seen flying above land, and suddenly I’m thinking about Rachel’s favourite poem again.

  The ‘Ancient Mariner’ is on a long voyage south when, in a senseless act of violence, he shoots dead an albatross. Throughout the rest of the story the dead bird, worn around the Mariner’s neck, symbolizes the guilt and grief the old man feels.

  I sometimes think we all have an albatross around our necks.

  The living, breathing one above me finds an air current and sweeps high, then turns and heads out to sea. I watch it until the fleck it has become is indistinguishable among the clouds.

  I’m sorry, my love, it’s too late. I’m leaving today and I’m never coming back. But it’s not you who’s coming with me. It’s Rachel.

  DAY FOUR

  Thursday, 3 November, 15.45 hours

  13

  It’s time. The Daily Mirror’s front-page story – sensationalist, ignorant nonsense with its ridiculous photograph of me on the Speedwell beach – gives me the excuse I need. No one tries to stop me when I say I’m going home. They assume I’m upset, that I need some time to myself.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt calmer in my life.

  The furore in the office, though, has given me one big problem. I didn’t have time for the phone call. I’m winging it. I step outside into a sort of creepy twilight, as though the world has fallen into the shadow of something sinister. For a moment, I’m frightened. Then I remember the eclipse. Were I to look up right now, as people around me are doing, I’d see the moon eating away at the sun’s light.

  I am not a superstitious person, but this seems entirely appropriate.

  I switch on my headlights as I set off. The houses, shops, offices of Stanley fly past. The road curves upwards. I’m heading out of town.

  Someone tries to stop me. I see a shape, eyes that I know, but it’s too late. Too late to stop the car, engage in conversation, be a normal person. I am not a normal person. I’m a killer. A monster. Thanks to my picture on the front page of a national British newspaper, the whole world knows what I am.

  They don’t know the frigging half of it.

  I drive faster than I should given the poor light but this road is always quiet. I turn the corner and see the whitewashed house with the blue roof. Rachel’s house.

  There is someone in the road. A child. For a second I think it is Archie West, materialized out of the bushes at the side of the road again, and that his appearance marks the final stage of my descent into madness. Then my head clears enough for me to see that this isn’t Archie. Nor is it either of my own boys. This child is thinner than Archie, maybe a little smaller, with fairer hair and bright blue eyes, but altogether more substantial than the ethereal figments of a disturbed mind that have been haunting me for three years.

  This
child looks like Rachel. This is Peter. Peter Grimwood, her youngest son. And this is an opportunity that even my darkest prayers couldn’t have asked for.

  Run now, Peter. Turn and run.

  He’s in the middle of the road, staring at me as I hurtle towards him. He is frozen in place. Unafraid. Staring.

  How much easier it will be, to take the child, instead of the adult. How much more devastating for Rachel, to lose her baby rather than her own life. Perfect revenge.

  I jump down hard on the brakes and the car slides to a stop. Peter is feet away from me. He cannot be alone.

  He is. I can see Rachel’s car in the driveway but there is no sign of her, or the two older boys who should be home from school by now. I wind down my window and listen.

  Nothing other than the cries of the skuas and the grumble of the ocean. And the uncontrollable hammering of two hearts.

  Run, Peter. Forget everything you’ve been told. Monsters are real and this one’s coming to get you.

  Leaving the engine running, I get out of the car, fully expecting him to turn and flee, to disappear back within the safe confines of the family garden. He doesn’t. He continues to stare. I wonder, for a second, whether it is the sight of the vanishing sun that has scared him, the sudden darkening of his bright world, but no. It is me that he’s looking at. He has never seen me before in his life but there is recognition in those harebell-blue eyes. Or maybe I have acquired the ability to hypnotize. The way a snake can.

  Last chance, Peter. Break the spell. I’m a step away. An arm’s reach away. A single blow away.

  The spell holds. Peter doesn’t move. So I do.

  PART TWO

  Callum

  ‘Shoot him! Fucking shoot him.’

  ‘You shoot him!’

  Hope fading in the lad’s eyes. None of the men with the stomach to kill a frightened kid. A single bullet. A sharp upward stab of the bayonet. The kid falls to the mud. My bullet. My bayonet. Sometimes, the buck just stops.