A Murder of Crows

by Ian Skewis

  His heart sank in realisation, plummeting down into the depths and anchoring itself to something terrible. There was only ever one choice. He smiled bleakly, knowing he was always destined to go back there. To the place he never wanted to see again. Hobbs Brae had been but a stepping stone into a dark, haunted past, it seemed.

  He came to the end of the dirt track. And there it was. Down below. Where it all began. The scene of the crime. The place where blood was etched into his youth.

  The murky waters of Loch Ness.

  Chapter Forty

  September 7th

  Scott was in the forest, sitting beside his corrugated iron lean to, with Bessie dozing next to him, her chin resting on his thigh. He stroked her head, deliberately stopping every now and then to see her gently nuzzle his hand so he would continue petting her – one of her most endearing quirks. He wanted to remember Bessie this way.

  Scott knew it would be the last time he would ever see her.

  As far as he was concerned, there was nothing to keep him in Hobbs Brae anymore. He had been assaulted by his father so many times that he was at breaking point, and after his interrogation by the police he was feeling doubly bruised.

  DCI Jack Russell has turned into a monster bad enough to rival my dad, he thought, trying to hold back the tears, lest Bessie sense his mood.

  Scott felt he had no option but to leave his old life behind. The prospect filled him with dread because, despite everything, he still loved his father, even if the reciprocation of that love was as cold and remote as the light from the furthest star. He did not want to go, but it seemed he no longer had a choice. He looked down once more at Bessie, who was still napping, unaware of the momentous changes that were taking place in her young master. She was old now – in dog years far older than Jerome. It seemed an act of betrayal to leave her in the hands of an alcoholic who could barely look after himself. Scott couldn’t help but wonder what might happen to her once he was gone.

  Would my dad take his temper out on her? Hurt her?

  Scott winced as he imagined terrible things happening to Bessie. Then he saw the blood as it ran into the river on the night of the storm. He shut his eyes tight, trying to block the anxiety he felt surge through him like a freight train.

  Moley, not once has your father ever harmed our dog, so there is no reason to think that it will happen now, the soothing voice of his mother said.

  Scott opened his eyes. He knew himself well enough to understand that he had a predilection for seeing the downside to everything. With the arrival of adulthood, he now had the added burden of conscience and the weight of responsibility that went with it. For the first time in his young life, he was about to pursue a desire that would affect those he cared about most. His leaving would cause pain, but he would suffer indefinite pain himself if he did not leave.

  He knew just how much his father needed him. With the advent of autumn, it was a particularly busy time on the farming calendar, but Scott’s life was beginning to revolve around an altogether different clock. His recent spurt of self-determination and the fact that he had already learned a trade had given him some confidence. He was acutely aware that he owed this trait to his father. Jerome had taught him in no uncertain terms how to work, and by being so tyrannical he had inadvertently pushed his son into the arena of the independent.

  If it hadn’t been for him, I would not be where I am now, preparing for a new chapter in my life.

  This acknowledgement of his father’s part in his own development made his decision to leave all the more difficult.

  ‘If my mother was still alive, I reckon it would be easier because she would take care of things after I was gone. It was what she did best.’

  Bessie’s ears pricked up and Scott realised he had said this out loud. He smiled. As usual, thoughts about his mother always led him out of the dark tunnel of despair that he often found himself in. Elspeth Jennings – with her rosy cheeks and her good-humoured smile, her buxom figure and her fondness for cream teas – had taken care of the family business ever since the barn had burned down.

  Scott remembered it well, but he had never heard her side of the story before, not until she told him one night, when Jerome was in a drunken stupor upstairs.

  ‘It had been your father’s turn to check up on the animals. He locked the barn door as usual and went to bed. Later that night both he and I were woken up by the smell of smoke and, there it was, the most horrific sight – the barn had turned into an inferno. I called the fire brigade. But it was too late. The barn and everything inside were destroyed.’

  Scott recalled her shoulders shaking at the memory of it, her voice tremulous. ‘But it got worse, so much worse. The firemen explained to me that the cause of the devastation was an oil burner. Jerome had used these to illuminate the inside of the barn because there were no windows or electricity. Well, the oil burner had been left inside still lit and had toppled over onto the hay. The flames spread so rapidly that the entire barn was ablaze in a matter of minutes.’

  Scott recalled gently taking his mother’s hand. She squeezed his palm tightly as she exorcised the ghosts from her past. ‘The following morning, the smoke could be seen for miles around. And the smell of burned hide was carried by the wind into the village.’ Elspeth wept after that and went outside to calm herself down. Scott sat there, mulling over everything that she had said.

  Even now, Scott could clearly recall the remnants of the building still smouldering, the embers winking from deep within the ruins, and the near comical image of their new puppy, only recently named Bessie, walking stiffly on her little legs across the debris, like a wind-up toy gone astray, her tail sticking up like a small antenna.

  ‘Jerome was stunned by the damage,’ said Elspeth when she came back inside. ‘He was usually so careful and he could hardly believe his own clumsiness.’ She leaned in towards Scott and added quietly, ‘But I knew. I could still smell it on his breath from the night before. He was drunk when he checked the barn.’

  Scott watched sadly as his mother sat there, forlorn. Her arms were crossed limply over her knees, her pining gaze, distant, at the memory of it all. ‘I never said anything, never blamed him. I pretended not to know. He later commented on how calmly I had taken it.’ She sat up straight again, recomposed herself, and, brushing something invisible from her lap, said, ‘After that, things were never quite the same between us.’ Abruptly, she got up and left the room to continue with her chores.

  Scott had wondered what she’d meant, but only now did he understand; his father’s drinking drove a wedge between them. If only my mother knew how much worse it was now with her gone, he brooded.

  Over the months following his mother’s death, it became clear to Scott that it had had a profound effect on them both. He understood that Jerome became harder on him because he needed him to fill Elspeth’s shoes, but his teaching methods were infused with impatience. Scott was still only a child – he couldn’t learn things quickly enough, so Jerome’s impatience turned to anger. This, in turn, grew into violence. At night, however, Scott would often hear the painful sound of his father grieving in the privacy of his bedroom.

  Scott was grieving, too. He yearned for his mother terribly. He missed the sound of her voice; her pet phrases such as, ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’. He missed the smell of her perfume. And he missed being called Moley. He discovered that all these things could be summed up in one single fact – what he longed for most of all was his childhood. His father had needed a grown-up to help him run the farm, not a little boy, and Scott had resented him for that. His dreams had been all too quickly replaced by the harsh reality of working life, and the ever-present threat of violence that seemed to stem from every adult male who touched upon his existence. Now it had come to this.

  *

  Scott was standing on a tree-lined road, his haversack on his back, a new bank card and PIN number in his wallet, faced with an agonising decision. The road forked into two paths. O
ne led back to the farm, the other led down to the open sea. Scott took a deep breath. He thought of how he had served his time alone in the forest, and what at first had seemed a kind of banishment he now saw as a rite of passage, for he had entered the woods as a boy and come out a man. In that moment he made his decision because he knew there was no need to delay any longer. There was nothing left to fear.

  He looked at Bessie. She gazed back up at him and panted, gently wagging her tail with an air of expectancy. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all he could say, and Bessie cocked her head to one side in puzzlement as Scott turned and left. Some way further down the road, he heard her let out a little whine, but he kept walking until he knew he was about to disappear from view, trying not to hear her cries. He turned one last time to look at her and she was still there, waiting for him – a sight that broke his heart.

  Once round the corner, he forced himself to keep moving, past the towering trees and the thick hedgerows, which gradually gave way to the freedom of the pastures and the sky above. In the distance, he could see the blackened field where the scarecrow had once stood, the one that he had helped to build at a time when life seemed less cruel.

  He thought back to a few days ago, when he had noticed something black, like a shadow, hovering above the lone figure. It appeared to be changing shape, disintegrating and reforming. He guessed it was just a flock of carrion crows (Corvus corone) and he smiled at his own ability to still remember their Latin name. Yet as he made his way down to the beach, something bothered him.

  Soon he was distracted by the sight of the sunlight dancing on the water, casting luminescent ripples across the ruins of the abbey, which stood like a huge set of broken, jagged teeth by the shore. He remained there for a time, watching the garlands of seaweed undulating in the salt water like clear soup, the tide inexorably dragging the waves back and forth. He walked along the beach, enjoying the sensation that the further he was from home, the freer he felt. He listened to the bubble and squeak of the bladder wrack (Fucus vesiculosus) strewn across the wet sand and clumped over rocks, stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see, the sheer scale of it making him feel small and isolated. But he was so used to feeling lonely that it no longer touched him.

  Suddenly he remembered what it was that had bothered him earlier – the collective noun he’d been searching for in the back of his mind:

  A murder. A murder of crows.

  Something far across the sea caught his attention and he peered into the distance. A herald had appeared on the horizon; a dark cloud that was visibly growing in size.

  And Scott understood immediately. He knew that cloud and he knew what it meant.

  The storm was coming back.

  Chapter Forty-One

  September 7th

  Jerome was out of breath, hobbling through the forest in search of his son again. His hopes of finding him, however, were fading fast, for when he had checked Scott’s room he discovered that most of his clothes were missing and so was his haversack.

  Jerome went downstairs and checked the kitchen table and the windowsill above the sink – but there was no farewell note. He caught sight of the postman walking away and hobbled after him.

  ‘Yes, I gave Scott a letter just a moment ago,’ the postman replied.

  ‘Was it from the bank?’ Jerome enquired, eyeing him sideways.

  ‘Well, I didn’t really take much heed, to be honest,’ replied the postman cautiously. ‘But, yes, I think it may well have been. Looked like one of those slips with a PIN number inside it, which makes sense because I think I delivered a bank card yesterday.’

  Jerome drew a sharp breath and the postman looked a little alarmed. ‘Not that I pry, you understand. It’s just that I can tell at a glance what these things are after all my years’ experience.’ He gave a disarming laugh.

  Jerome grunted and the postman, sensing that something was amiss, made his excuses and left.

  Jerome’s heart denied what he knew in his head to be true, so he went off in a vain search that led him deep into the forest. Eventually, he stumbled upon the corrugated iron roof from his hen coop. He saw the flattened grass around it, saw the footpaths through the bracken leading to and from the farm and in the direction of the old oak tree. So this is where he was hiding, he concluded sadly. With a deep sense of shame, he grasped to what extent he had alienated his own son. There was no sign of him. It dawned on Jerome that there had been no sign of Bessie, either. It was a sobering thought that for the first time in his entire life he was alone in the world.

  He hadn’t expected to feel this way. All those years he and his wife had spent building a life for themselves. All their hard work, all their suffering, had now come to a bitter conclusion. His son had left without saying goodbye and Jerome knew with the utmost certainty that he would never see him again. He sadly pondered the outcome of all those years of tough love and wondered what went wrong. Have I really been too hard on him?

  Jerome was well aware that he had knocked any open displays of emotion out of his son a long time ago, and he also knew that despite his mother’s influence, Scott still shared a lot of his own characteristics – his brooding verbal celibacy for a start. Sometimes it was almost like looking into a mirror. He wondered how his son would fare in the world. Scott had neither friends nor a girlfriend. He was a loner. Jerome pictured him going off with his backpack and he wished him well. But now Jerome was a loner, too. He contemplated the strange twist of fate that had befallen them both, for now that they were apart, they shared more in common than ever before – a reflection of one another; like father, like son. The prospect of being alone filled him with a previously unknown dread.

  He remembered how Elspeth always managed to remain calm in the face of such adversity, how she deftly made her way through each recession, through the foot and mouth epidemics and, of course, that fire. Even as she lay in the hospital bed, her life ebbing away, she was still able to retain some dignity as she gave her last confession to her husband.

  ‘The fire was my fault, Jerry,’ she said. ‘I blamed you for it because you had been drunk that night, but it was all my doing. It’s why I was so quick to get things sorted afterwards – I was trying to make amends.’

  Jerome was utterly confused by this and thought at first that she was delirious, but Elspeth assured him that she was not.

  ‘Several hours after you’d checked up on the cows that night, I was woken by something moving outside,’ she explained. ‘I went out to investigate. My initial thought was that it might have been a fox, so I checked the hen coop, but it was quiet, and when I looked in on the sheep they were still, too. Finally, I checked up on the cows. Again, there was no sign of anything suspicious.’

  He listened as she told of her feelings of relief and of how she went back indoors and upstairs to bed. When the next day the firemen explained to Elspeth and her husband what had caused the blaze, she realised with horror that it had been her fault, for she had been the last one to check up on the animals that night.

  ‘When he told me that an oil burner had been left alight I stood there in shock, knowing that I had condemned our animals to a terrible, cruel death. So I took care of things after that because I never wanted to let you down again.’

  He reassuringly stroked her forearm. She took his hand in hers and squeezed tight.

  ‘You’ll remember that I contacted the insurance company,’ she continued, ‘but they refused to pay out, so I sold off some things that we didn’t need, including some old farming equipment and a derelict plot of land, in order to raise the finances to build a new barn.’

  ‘I remember,’ he replied distantly.

  ‘It wasn’t enough,’ she confided. ‘I had to sell off my late mother’s jewellery.’

  She gave a throaty laugh at his look of surprise. ‘The loss of those cows had been bad enough, but having to part with my family heirlooms hurt me more than I cared to admit. However, it enabled us to continue with the daily running of the farm, and to
be honest a small part of me felt that I deserved it for being so stupid.’

  She cast her gaze down to the wedding ring on her finger and thought for a moment. Then she said quietly, ‘I did resent you for a time, though. You took to the drink around then. You were weak when I needed you most. You were no longer my husband.’

  Jerome smarted at such honesty and couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He felt Elspeth tighten her grip and she began to speak with urgency. ‘I told Scott that it had been your fault. I couldn’t bear the idea of him thinking badly of me. I know how much he looks up to me.’

  Her eyes met his once more and she said quietly, ‘It might be why you two don’t get on. I think that’s my fault. I’m sorry.’

  An uncomfortable moment passed between them. She stared at him tearfully. ‘There, I’ve said it.’ And she playfully rubbed his hand.

  Jerome gave a steadfast smile and tried not to clench his fist.

  ‘Look after Scott for me,’ she continued breathlessly. ‘He’s so young and such a sensitive child. I think he will do well, though. He adores Bessie and he loves animals. I saw him just the other day mending a bird’s wing and letting her fly off. He’s such a clever boy. Be kind to him, Jerry. Don’t drink around him. Please, promise me you’ll be kind…’ She trailed off, trying to suppress her anxiety.

  Jerome smiled sadly. He was unable to say anything much, and so he just held her hand.

  ‘You never did bring me those sunflowers,’ she said, and managed to give him a good-humoured wink.

  He chuckled at the memory and they both sat in silence for a while. When Jerome woke with a start the following morning, her hand was still in his, but it was cold and he knew that she was gone. Elspeth Jennings – the wife and mother; the canny businesswoman who knew when others were trying to undercut her; the strong-willed woman who even hammered some of the nails into the scaffold of the new barn, unaware that she was also hammering the nails into her own coffin by putting enormous strain on her heart.