He drains of color. “We’re not all of us Stuart Burns,” he says. “But we are all fallible, and that doesn’t make us bad and it’s not the same thing.”
We watch each other.
“All any of us do is hurt each other,” I say.
He reaches for my hand. “You and I have shared something other than that.”
“Have we? I’m drowning.”
“Inti.”
“I don’t want it. I came here to get away.”
“And die slowly of loneliness.”
“What would be so wrong with that?” I shake my head. “You’re being dramatic. I have the wolves. I’m here to work.”
“They’re more dangerous than we are.”
“Are they?” I ask. “They are wilder, certainly.”
“Isn’t it the same?”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s civilization makes us violent. We infect each other.”
“So you’d live like your animals, then. Off in the woods and free of people, but you told me yourself what they need most is each other.”
I don’t say anything because for a moment I hate him.
“What happened to you?” Duncan asks.
“Nothing.”
Then he says, but not like a question, “What kind of thing must you be.”
What kind of thing.
“Somebody has to protect her,” I say. “If you won’t do your job then I will.”
Suddenly it’s dark behind his eyes. “You pull your head in, Miss Flynn. Do you hear me?”
His anger stirs mine. I imagine baring my teeth, showing him how sharp they are.
“I used to think people were good, too,” I say. “I used to think we were mostly kind, all of us forgivable.”
“And now?”
“Now I know better.”
* * *
Duncan’s living room is small and cluttered and warm. We’ve come here without words, only an instinct, as it always is with us. The sparking nature of desire, the combat of it. And something else, something quiet. I sit on the old leather couch and watch him lay the fire. Red bricks. Gray stone. A rough maroon rug beneath his bare feet, beneath mine. Furniture swims in and out of focus in the dim light, all pieces made of timber and broken somehow, crooked or bent or upside down, more and more pieces taking shape as though appearing from nowhere. I feel in a dream. Electric, perilous. I am aware that I have no control left, and deep within there is a surrendering. When he moves he does it uncomfortably. I could look away but I don’t. I want to ask him how he got hurt. There are so many things I haven’t asked, that I haven’t wanted to know until now. He doesn’t offer me a drink and I don’t want one; I am drunk on the rest.
Duncan sits beside me and we look at each other.
“Your face hurts,” I murmur.
“What kind of thing are you?” he asks against my mouth and this time it is a question.
* * *
Later in his bed he holds me, his body so hot it’s as though he has laid the fireplace within himself. I realize how cold I have been, for so long.
* * *
I wake from a dream of a blow to my face. It is so vivid I can almost feel it. But when I open my eyes it’s deep night and I’m alone in his bed.
11
My phone’s dead. It’s colder now, in these earliest hours of morning. The fire has burned down to its coals. I dress quickly and with his dog following on my heels I wander around his little house in case he’s here somewhere. Where does a man go at 3 A.M.? I feel embarrassed, and foolish for having fallen asleep.
“He’ll be home soon, darling,” I tell Fingal, stroking the dog’s worried face before I close him inside the house. My car’s still parked outside the pharmacy, so I have no choice but to walk home. I’m grateful for the air. My head’s pounding, and I wish I’d rooted around in his cupboard for some aspirin.
There is a path but it isn’t visible in this light. All the earth seems dark beneath my boots. I let the trees guide me. Hush, they say, be easy. Thick fog creeps in and I am sure to lose my way. The moon vanishes. I don’t understand why he left, and maybe it’s nothing, but it also feels like something because last night was different.
Go gently, whisper the trees.
I keep walking but more slowly, touching trunks as I pass them. My feet lift over brush and branches. One of them slips as it lands, and I come down on my butt on the spongey green moss. Beside me lies a body, eyes staring into the fog.
A scream rips from me. I scramble backward.
His guts are open and spilling. Mine are tumbling out of me. I slam my eyes closed.
The first thundering thought: What if teeth did that?
I become nothing more than the throb of my too-quick pulse. I have to look. I am so afraid as I look. Not at the wounds of him, the mess of him, but at his face, still intact.
It’s Stuart Burns. Eyes open and glassy; the meat of him left empty.
I lean over and vomit onto the earth.
As my body heaves it rushes through me, what this will mean. I can see it laid out so clearly, the fate of every wolf. This will kill them. I don’t know enough to recognize the forensic difference between a serrated weapon and the tearing of an animal’s teeth, and I can’t look for long enough to make a guess, but I know how this will appear. I know what everyone will believe, and it will send them into the forests to hunt the wolves for having killed a man. And then the ancient forest will go too, all the trees we are trying to save, every effort to rewild Scotland, everything will go. This future comes to me in an instant, and I could weep right here, but not for this man. Once I would have pitied him regardless of what he’s done, because this is a bad end for anyone. But I feel only fury at him for being here, only terror for my wolves.
It looks like they killed him. It looks very much like that. This is how they attack, either at throat or guts, the two most vulnerable spots.
But I know they didn’t do this, they wouldn’t, they don’t attack people. Someone has murdered Stuart Burns and left him here. And that someone either wanted Stuart dead, or they wanted the wolves dead.
I make a very dark choice. Or it makes me.
I bury his body.
12
My shovel barely makes an impact in the hard ground. It takes all the strength I have to dig enough of a hole, and far too much time. As the dirt scatters back over him in heavy dumping loads, he is slowly disappeared, covered over, slowly given back to the earth and the roots and the world beneath the surface. But as I begin to cover his face it stops being his face and becomes mine, my face that is being buried, my throat choked by the cold ground, my body swallowed whole.
* * *
I wash an avalanche of dirt down the shower. I scrub beneath my fingernails and I do it quickly, and I don’t think about anything else. The sun has well and truly risen by the time I am clean. Aggie should be up by now, so I go in to check on her, only to find her awake in bed and staring and when I draw back her blankets I see that she has bled onto the sheets. No. Please, not today. Not this morning. I don’t have it in me to look after her. Except that I must, so I do.
Back into the shower. I wash her under a stream of water. It might be intimate if she were here, instead I am alone with her body and this is a terrible loneliness. Water slides over her and I see that she’s changing, getting softer, thicker, and for the first time we are not physically the same. I hold her in an embrace and press my lips to her shoulder and I grieve for the sameness that is leaving us, stolen from us. I miss her so much and I think I am holding her too tightly, and then I think maybe if I hurt her she will wake.
My grip loosens. She allows herself to be guided out of the shower and this is what disturbs me most, I think, that there should be some level of consciousness, that something of her remains, if only in her muscle memory. I dry my sister and place a pad in her undies before I draw them up over her legs; she steps into them malleably but when I try to meet her eyes there is no awareness there. She is just t
oo tired for it. I hope she is somewhere better. I wish I were somewhere better because here fucking sucks. Here is a waking nightmare.
How long before he’s reported missing? How long before the weather or animals or both dig him up? I covered tracks and marks and it’s true that I am good at this because I have been a tracker all my life, and in looking at that spot I wouldn’t notice anything amiss, but could a better hunter than I see through my attempts? Could a detective? How long before I go insane and tell Duncan exactly what I’ve done?
Honestly, what the fuck was I thinking?
Maybe it’s not too late to come clean. If I tell Duncan now, will he investigate? Or will he put Stuart’s death down to a wolf attack and think nothing more of it? Red McRae will be joyously reaching for his rifle. And what if Duncan thinks I killed Stuart? I buried him, didn’t I? What sane person would do that?
I have to leave it. I’m in it now, it’s done. All I can hope is that he never gets found, and that if he does, I didn’t leave a whole lot of my DNA on his body to frame myself with.
What if a wolf really did kill him? whispers a soft voice within. But I know the answer. If a wolf really did kill Stuart then I did the right thing in covering it up.
* * *
I am at work alone when a knock sounds on the cabin door. Evan and Niels are out collecting data from the Tanar Pack and I’ve sent Zoe to grab us some lunch from town, although when I see who’s standing at the door I wish I hadn’t sent her anywhere.
Duncan’s hat is in his hands. “You must have got away early.”
My insides lurch, wondering if he’s come to arrest me.
“So must you,” I say, and usher him in. “Cuppa?”
“I can’t stay, I’ve got business in town.”
We stand awkwardly and it’s strange that there’s awkwardness, there never has been before and does this mean he knows something?
“I went for a walk,” he says.
“I didn’t ask,” I say, then frown. “At three in the morning? Why?”
“I always walk when I’m sorting things through.”
I don’t ask what he means.
“I thought I’d get back and you’d still be asleep,” he adds.
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”
Everything is different now. I don’t have space. There was a body and I buried it and this is the man who is going to have to search for that body.
“It’s better this way,” I tell him gently, and find that it hurts, far more than I was expecting it to.
He doesn’t ask what I mean. Instead, “Would you come to dinner on the weekend? I have some friends round every now and then. You’d enjoy it. I’d enjoy having you there.” There’s something about his quiet vulnerability that makes my chest ache. He knows something has changed.
“I can’t, Duncan,” I say. “I don’t have anything to give you.”
“Then take from me. I have more than enough.”
My eyes prickle and I look away from him. That way lies danger.
Duncan inclines his head politely, taking my silence as answer enough. “Give me a shout if you need anything, Miss Flynn, or if trouble finds you out here. I’m not far away.”
His boots on the wooden floor echo after he’s gone.
* * *
I feel the exhaustion in my throat, in my eyes and my teeth. Everything aches. The day has ticked by so slowly I thought it would never end. But there is still dinner to be made, and Aggie needs help in the bathroom again, and I forgot to change her bedsheets so there’s also that.
A thought like a wisp of smoke in my mind, leaving behind something new. Our cycles have always been in sync. My period should have started too.
* * *
I’m no longer tired as I take my second trip to the pharmacy in as many days. Mrs. Doyle at the counter places the test in a paper bag for me and says, “Courage, dear,” and I think she must be able to see the fear on my face. Home once more. It’s cold in the bathroom. I unpack the test and wee on the stick, waiting in pieces for the minutes to pass, but it hasn’t worked, I must not have aimed well enough. I unpack a second test and this time, after gulping down a liter of water, I wee into a cup and place the stick upside down within it.
I don’t need to look, not truly. I have known all day, I think, even before the thought formed. But, the proof. Not a double line or anything as vague, a little blue word that reads pregnant, so there can be no confusion.
13
“As you know, Miss Flynn, we’re speaking to anyone who had contact with him during the twenty-four hours before his disappearance.”
The meeting room is small, with a window overlooking a copse of pine trees and no one-way mirror like in the movies. There’s a camera and voice recorder but they’re off. Duncan is across the table from me. A policewoman introduced to me as Bonnie Patel was beside him, but she left to get us tea and hasn’t returned. I guess he’s starting without her.
“Can you run me through Saturday?” Duncan asks me. I must look surprised because he adds, “This is completely informal, we’re just collecting as much information as we can to piece Stuart’s movements together.”
I shift uncomfortably. He sounds formal and distant, like this is our first meeting.
“I went to work.”
“On the weekend?”
“Wolves don’t have weekends.”
“All right, and after work?”
“I went to town, to the pharmacy.”
“What did you go to the pharmacy for?”
I shoot him a look of disbelief.
“Okay, then what happened?” he asks.
“I saw Lainey there. Stuart came in all pissed that we were talking.”
“Why was he pissed about that?”
“Because he’s a dickhead.”
He glances up at me. Perhaps readjusting to my attitude. I remind myself to be polite and get this over and done with as quickly as possible. He’s only doing his job and yet I feel a prick of hurt that he has brought me here at all.
“What time do you put this at?”
“The pharmacy was closing for the night, so whatever time that is.”
“Seven. Then what?”
“I followed Stuart and Lainey outside and spoke a few more words with him. And then you showed up.”
“And what were the nature of the words?”
“Provocative, probably.”
Duncan’s eyebrows arch as he waits. Is he really going to make me say it?
“I was trying to get under his skin,” I admit. “I wanted to see what he’d do if he was pushed.”
“What did you suspect he’d do?”
“Lash out. Hurt me. Like he hurts his wife.”
“Why would you want that?”
“So I could file charges against him.”
Duncan sits back and folds his arms. Sighs. “How do you know he was harming her?”
“You told me.”
“Did I?”
“Not with words.”
“What else is there?”
“Plenty.”
He considers this, studying me. “Would it be fair to say there was animosity between the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“You owed him money, right?”
“Two thousand pounds, for the horse I bought off him.”
“Did he threaten you for that money?”
I consider admitting the truth but I’d rather not create even more motive for myself. “Not really. He just asked for it.”
“Did he ever admit to harming Lainey?”
I sit forward, frowning. “Are you seriously trying to imply he wasn’t doing anything to her?”
Duncan doesn’t reply.
“That’s weak,” I say. “You’re cowering now because he’s missing.”
“But how do you know that’s what was happening, Inti?” he asks again.
“I know,” I snap. “I’ve seen it before. It’s fucking obvious. You know it too.”
“Wha
t happened next?” he asks.
I grapple with my rampaging thoughts. Saturday night. “I told you. You got there and made me go into the pub. So you’d know better than I would what happened next.”
“Was that the last time you saw Stuart?”
I nod.
“Did you see him in any altercations with anyone else that night?”
Just you. And your face was broken. Except I didn’t actually see that, did I? I have no real idea what happened outside. I shake my head no.
“You know anyone else who was as crabbit as you?”
“What the hell is crabbit?”
“Angry.”
A breath of laughter escapes me.
“There’s no one you can point to being a potential suspect in his disappearance?” Duncan rephrases.
“No. Only people I know around here are my colleagues and I’d be surprised if they even know who Stuart is.”
Duncan leans back in his chair, idly playing with his pen. “What brought you to Scotland, Inti?”
“I’m head of the Cairngorms Wolf Project. It would make more sense you asking me all these questions you know the answers to if there was a tape recorder on. As it is, I can’t really work out who this little charade is for.”
“No charade. I just like to be clear. You were trying to get a different project underway, weren’t you?” He’s done his research.
“In Utah. To reintroduce wolves to save Pando, the trembling giant.”
“So why didn’t you go there?”
“There was too much pushback from the locals. You think it’s been bad here, but in Utah we didn’t even get close.”
“But didn’t they already do it in Yellowstone?”
“Yeah, and it was an uphill battle the whole way. They care more about farming and hunting than saving trees.”
“Why shouldn’t they?”
“Because this planet doesn’t belong to them,” I snap. “We aren’t entitled to it, we aren’t owed.”
He is quiet a moment, studying me. “Working the land is as tough a job as they come.”
Once There Were Wolves Page 11