A Murder of Crows

by Ian Skewis

  Besides, he thought vindictively, you’ll all be going to the slaughterhouse soon enough.

  He turned to go and was startled to see Jerome, leaning on his walking stick and smiling malevolently.

  ‘How long have you been standing there?’ Jack demanded.

  ‘Long enough to watch you lose your dignity,’ was the laconic reply.

  ‘I think your cows need a good anti-psychotic.’

  ‘This is their territory, Mr Russell. And you’re trespassing.’

  ‘I’m a cop. I can go anywhere I like.’

  ‘Antagonising my animals, Mr Russell, is a criminal offence. Now you don’t want me to be reporting this to your superiors now, do you?’

  He had a point. But Jack wasn’t going to be beaten by a lowlife like him.

  ‘I’ll be coming back to speak to you, Mr Jennings. Don’t go anywhere, will you?’

  ‘Yes, you go and have a good clean-up, Mr Russell, and mind you give your nails a scrub – that stuff can smell for days.’

  Jack let him have the last word for now and made his way back to the station, pretending not to be bothered by the copious amounts of shit that he was covered in, which had begun to dry to a thin scab. Nor bothered about the fact that everyone who saw him in the street gave him a wide berth. And certainly not bothered that he’d been humiliated by a smart arse farmer and his herd of mad fucking cows. In fact, he was so not bothered that by the time he arrived back at the station he found he was on the verge of bursting into tears. However, Jack manfully pulled himself together, opened the door and walked into the reception area, bumping straight into Campbell. And Margaret Crawford, who screamed at the sight of him – an apparition made of dung.

  ‘Jack fell down and broke his crown,’ he said, with deadpan delivery, and he was about to march off when he was stopped in his tracks by a cleaning lady, armed with a mop and bucket. She glanced at his shit covered shoes, then at her nice, clean floor – and then she gave him a warning look. Jack stared unflinchingly at her – and started undressing. He observed with detached interest her face growing red with embarrassment. She drew her mop closer, almost hiding behind it, as Jack then ceremoniously began to peel off his trousers. He out-stared them all, daring them to say anything, and gave the landlady a sarcastic smile. Her look of tear-stained accusation was one that he wasn’t prepared to tolerate. He strode past them in his underwear, carrying his dirty clothes and his shoes. Padding down the corridor, head held high, he turned into the locker rooms.

  Once in the shower he fumed about how he was going to get back at Jerome. He needed something that would wipe the troublesome smile from the farmer’s face. He decided that he would take a leaf out of Colin’s book. With this being my final case, I really have nothing to lose, so why not break a few rules for once? He supposed he could get at Jerome by bringing his son in for questioning again. He recalled something that the farmer had said. You leave my son out of this. Was this genuine concern for the lad or was he worried that Scott might tell all? Now was the time to find out. Jack felt he had been too soft on them both. The gloves were coming off. No holds barred. I need to know what Scott saw that night. I’m sure he saw something. I’ll break him in two if I have to. And yet the tough guy act made him feel uncomfortable. I feel less than human today, he brooded guiltily.

  He thought how dumbstruck Margaret had been and concluded that she was embarrassed at the sight of his near-naked body. Then he recalled that her husband had only passed away several hours earlier and he hadn’t offered any condolences. Disgusted with himself, and the brown water that swirled at his feet, he stepped out of the shower.

  It crossed his mind again to call his wife, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He recalled the photo of her on his desk at home: her short, black hair, plump face; her determined look behind the smile. But it wasn’t the photo of Rachel that was important – it was the person who had taken it, a person who wasn’t there anymore.

  Jack realised with a start that perhaps in some strange way he too had gone missing. He was no longer the man his wife had married, that was for sure. A stranger had taken his place. Absent Without Leave, that was Jack.

  He finished dressing and left the locker room, intending on going back to his office to lick his wounds, when suddenly he remembered something. He phoned the forensics department.

  ‘Given the amount of blood that was found on the forest floor and the distribution of splash particles, I would say that the puncture was caused by a particularly sharp object at least six inches long.’ The forensic scientist spoke quickly and methodically, much to Jack’s pleasure, for he was in no mood for hanging around.

  ‘A knife?’ he suggested.

  ‘Almost certainly,’ came the reply, ‘but we can’t be sure yet.’

  ‘The kind you might find hidden in the handle of a walking stick?’

  A pause. Jack began impatiently drumming his fingers.

  ‘Well, I’d have to see it first, I suppose, but yes, it is possible.’

  ‘Okay, thank you,’ replied Jack, and he hung up. Jerome seems quite able-bodied, he mused, so why does he always have it on his person? Can’t just be for the sheep.

  ‘I’m on to you,’ he said with a grim smile.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  September 6th

  Alice Smith was trying to remember something.

  She was standing on the garden path, and had been for some considerable time. Something strange happened here, on this very spot, but Alice couldn’t remember what the strange thing was, or even when it occurred. Increasingly frustrated, she scanned the scenery, searching for clues. In her mind’s eye, the village below was smaller than it was now and the forest was bigger. The fields were no longer abandoned and overgrown. They were shorn and neat. So was her garden. It was hot and sunny and the air was filled with dandelion seeds. A small lizard darted across the paving stones. And there was a boy. Two boys. And she remembered.

  *

  It was the last day of summer and Alistair was about to start secondary school. His ascent into adulthood had taken Alice by surprise and it pained her to hear little Alistair’s voice beginning to break. Already he seemed more grown up than any of the other kids at his school. Of course, he had to be, given that his father wasn’t there anymore.

  Alice felt a bitterness well up inside her as she cast her mind back to those sunny days that were clouded with sadness. William went missing towards the beginning of Alistair’s final term at primary school. He was often gone for weeks at a time, she recalled, trawling for cod off the coast in all weathers, so she was used to him being away. Yet on this occasion his return was overdue and so Alice, thinking that there had been an accident out at sea, had phoned the coast guard.

  ‘I can assure you, Mrs Smith, that if William had met with some mishap you would be the first to know,’ came the authoritative voice at the other end. He went on to explain that William had finished his shift and, on arriving safely back in the harbour, he had clocked out as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just another day. But that was the last anyone had seen of him. A fact that had haunted Alice ever since.

  His disappearance, suspicious as it was, became doubly so when the police looked into his employment records and discovered there was a further anomaly. There was nearly always a two-day hiatus between him clocking out and returning home. This was a startling and somewhat embarrassing revelation to Alice. No one knew, or appeared to know, where he disappeared to on these little detours. There was a rumour he had been sighted fishing in Loch Ness, but it was never truly substantiated. Alice had her suspicions, and the gossip in town showed that the neighbourhood had similar ones. Inevitably, the rumours became rife. She thought back to how it had got to such a point that even one of the police officers had the audacity to suggest, ever so succinctly, that her husband might be having an affair. Naturally, she denied it, because it would be bad enough if he’d left her for someone else, but how could he leave their only child? Alistair was just 12 y
ears old.

  Alice could not explain to her boy where his father had gone, let alone why, and it caused her all the more pain to see him suffer as a result. She summoned up the difficult memory of how he had started missing classes, putting her into an awkward situation because she was a teacher at the same school. This was further exacerbated by the feeling that she was being quietly judged by her colleagues. It was evident in the way they all looked at her and what they insinuated in their conversation. They all offered their respective shoulders to cry on, but she had alienated them because she did not feel the need to weep about her husband. In fact, she had remained very stoic about it. His sudden and inexplicable disappearance had left her feeling numb, because she was still expecting him to walk in through the back door at any time, taking his boots off before he entered, as was customary. Besides, as far as Alice was concerned, it was a family matter and that meant it was private. But as time went on and her hope dwindled, she couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would want to waste their energy grieving for someone who probably wasn’t dead in the first place, and who had probably betrayed not only her but her son, too.

  It all came to a head when the local minister approached her and suggested she might want to erect a headstone in remembrance of him.

  She looked at the minister, and then said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why on earth would I want to remember him when he forgot all about us?’ Thus alienating him, too.

  The truth of the matter was that Alice was done trying to figure out what had happened to her husband and why. She was exhausted by it, and there was no longer any time to consider the past. Her main concern was looking after her son, who was very much in the present.

  She carried on regardless through the rest of term and could not wait for the summer holidays; anything to get away from the prejudice of others. Her intention was to go abroad somewhere, taking Alistair with her. But when the holidays finally came, Alice was struck with lethargy not of her own making. She had regarded herself as a very motivated person. Even when she had time off, Alice had taken pride in keeping herself busy – pruning the garden, shopping for groceries and generally keeping her house in order. Now she was spending her days lying in bed and her meticulously organised life soon fell into disarray. The dishes piled up, the fridge gradually emptied and the garden fell to wrack and ruin. She supposed it was belated grief of a kind.

  By the time she pulled herself together, the summer holidays were coming to an end. Alice felt guilty because she knew she had neglected her son and reneged on her promise of some time away, so when she arrived downstairs and couldn’t find him anywhere, she panicked, thinking that he had abandoned her too.

  It was one of her school pupils who came to the rescue. A seven-year-old boy called Scott – a precocious kid who she didn’t particularly like. One day in class, he asked her to call him Moley because his mother called him that. Alice’s response was to give him a punishment exercise, ordering that he write his full and proper name 100 times. The exercise was never completed, though, because Scott’s mother complained very loudly to the headmaster about it. As a result, Alice’s own conduct was brought into disrepute, and so she took great pleasure in undermining Scott whenever she could. But when, after frantically searching the entire house and garden, she saw him that day walking up the hill with Alistair – and he announced innocently that they were going to build a scarecrow together – she could have kissed him.

  Alice could see them now, the two boys toiling in the waning sun of the holidays. She recalled how eager she was to become involved, given that she had been somewhat dormant of late. Inevitably, the schoolteacher in her took over and she found herself supervising the proceedings. They collected some wood and straw from Scott’s father’s farm and they built the scarecrow in the garden. First, Alistair began hammering two wooden planks together. This would be the scaffold that the mannequin would be attached to. Scott complained loudly that he wanted to hammer some of the nails in too.

  Alistair turned to him and said, ‘This is a man’s job.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Alice interjected diplomatically. ‘You’ll get to build the scarecrow’s body – that’s the best bit.’

  Scott grinned eagerly and she took him by the hand. They went upstairs to hunt for some old clothes, and found a jumper and a pair of long johns that had belonged to William. She held them in her hands for a moment, for it felt as if she was teetering on a precipice, as if the very thought of utilising her husband’s old clothes was somehow an act of violation against some long-held belief. But once they were out in the garden again, and she was showing Scott how to stuff straw into the jumper, she realised that there was something quite cathartic about it. By the time Alistair had finished assembling the scaffold, the feeling of guilt was forgotten and she began to discuss what they should do about the scarecrow’s head.

  ‘A pumpkin?’ suggested Alistair.

  ‘This isn’t the season,’ replied Scott knowledgeably, to which Alistair winked at his mother as if to say, Kids, eh?

  But Alice was deep in thought. She went back into the kitchen and came out again with some old sackcloth. ‘We’ll use this,’ she said.

  They got to work on stuffing the sackcloth and, once done, Alice retreated to the peace and quiet of the new conservatory, which she and William had only purchased the previous year. She stitched the body parts together, whilst the two boys stayed outside and played. A couple of hours passed, then the boys came to see her. She detected their impatience and said, ‘Not long now,’ in a sing-song voice.

  Scott looked at the buttons she had stitched onto the head and remarked accusingly, ‘You’ve given him blue eyes.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He should have red ones. They’re much scarier.’

  ‘And he shouldn’t be smiling, either,’ added Alistair, sneering at the black wool mouth his mother had stitched onto the face.

  ‘And we don’t like the duffel coat, do we?’ said Scott, turning to Alistair, who shook his head in agreement. Alice was a little put out by her son’s disloyalty and her gaze fell on his favourite blue cardigan that he was wearing. She was about to suggest they use that instead, but she thought better of it. There was an uncomfortable silence during which she pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows expectantly – her displeased teacher’s face – then the two boys turned and walked back out. Alice stuck out her tongue and resumed making her masterpiece.

  An hour or so later, she was finishing off the last of the stitching when Scott entered, looking subdued. Alice put her handiwork to one side and went over to him. Scott had a permanent tan from being outdoors so much, but he was pale even by his own standards. She felt his brow. It was hot and damp.

  ‘You’ve been out in that sun for too long,’ she said. Just then Scott vomited and swallowed it back down again – an act which disgusted Alice.

  He saw the look on her face and said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m just chewing the cud.’

  ‘Chewing the…?’

  ‘Cud. Dad’s cows do it all the time. They eat the grass and then it’s brought back up into their mouths to be chewed a second time and then they swallow it again. They’ve got two stomachs, you see.’

  ‘Scott Jennings, shut up and sit down,’ ordered Alice, in the voice she reserved for her most disobedient pupils. It had the desired effect. She observed him closely whilst Scott shifted uneasily in the chair and waited for further instructions. Then a thought suddenly occurred to her.

  ‘Where’s Alistair? I thought he was supposed to be looking after you?’

  Scott smiled wanly. ‘He’s outside.’

  ‘Where outside?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Wait here.’ As she hastened out of the conservatory, Alice tried to ignore the feeling of panic in the pit of her stomach. But she couldn’t help herself, and increased her pace as she went through the house, until she was running out the front door and down the garden path. Her worst fears were confirmed when she saw that the gate had b
een left open. She stumbled down the hill and into the valley below, the wind lifting her dress up in front of her face, momentarily blinding her. Then she stopped suddenly because she could see him, or rather his blue cardigan, making its way through the field of yellow rapeseed. Her relief was quickly replaced by anger because he had gone there without telling her and he’d left Scott on his own. She was about to call his name when she realised that he was bent double and carrying the full weight of the wooden scaffold on his back. The sight of him struggling, and yet determined to go on, evoked a tenderness in her. Alice’s fears seemed unfounded, because for the first time her son was like an adult, straining under the will of the world and the burden of responsibilities yet to come. Nevertheless, the fear quickly resurfaced, for in her mind’s eye she could see the weight of his father’s abandonment bearing down on those all too young shoulders. She couldn’t help but worry how it might affect him – and it seemed he was carrying his own crucifix.

  As Alice made her way into the pasture, she saw him fall, disappearing amongst the reeds of rape. She shouted his name, and when he did not reply, Alice ran over to where she had last seen him and was relieved to find that he was all right. In fact, he was lying on his back and laughing. It was infectious, and she couldn’t help but join in, and suddenly their endeavours that day seemed ridiculous. Eventually, they made their way to the centre of the field to finish what they’d started. Alice remembered that she’d left Scott alone in the house, and hurriedly made her way home as Alistair dug out a hole using a trowel from her garden that he’d put in his back pocket.

  ‘Bring the tattie-bogle!’ he shouted after her.

  ‘Yes, Master Smith,’ she muttered sarcastically, but nevertheless admired his new-found gift for good word usage, a gift she had given him.