Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

Alec tried to stop thinking about it. He knew he shouldn’t bring work home with him.

They’d protected the crime scene as best they could.

He hoped the rain wouldn’t wash it all away.

He turned the shower off.

He dried off with a towel he should have cleaned weeks ago, musty with constant use. When he was done he got dressed, went downstairs, and realized that he’d now have to boil the kettle a second time. He wondered why he’d bothered putting it on before.

He flicked it on again with a sigh. Water began to churn.

As he waited for the boil, he stared at the photo next to the calendar. It had been taken back when Simon was six, when Alec had had a thicker beard, not just stubble.

Elizabeth stood beside them both, arm round Alec, Alec’s arm round her. She was smiling, he was smiling. Her blonde hair was cut short, and his dark hair was longer at the time; he’d been going through a phase. A phase before the arguments. A phase before all that had happened to them, all they had learnt about each other, all they had done to themselves in the learning.

Now his hair was short and scruffy.

Alec wondered why he was thinking about her so much today. Was it because Simon wasn’t here? Was it the day Alec had been through? Being with the farmer and that family, that empty place out in the fields?

He’d walked past this picture a hundred times and had not felt like this. He didn’t know what had got into him.

The kettle continued to boil.

He left it, moving swiftly to the bin. It needed emptying. Why hadn’t he emptied it already?

He grabbed the black plastic rubbish bag in his fist and stormed out into the night, eager to keep busy.

He thought about his day again, about the farmer, about the hermit. He’d made the man smile. He felt good about this. He’d seemed so sad.

The moon was thinning. The night was getting worse. He opened the wet lid of the wheelie bin, pushed the sack down, and began to drag the bin along the garden, wet uncut grass bleeding into his shoes.

Tree leaves shook about him, the wind picking up a little. The garden fence swayed. He opened the gate and pulled the bin through to the alley. Ilmarsh was a town of alleys, even its streets, even its main roads. So much was so narrow, so restrictive. The suburbs had more grazing room, granted, though Alec still felt it out here. A cloying kind of emptiness, south of the centre, right on the edge of the fields.

This area had been bog-land, once. A house extension three streets over had unearthed some old coins with faded faces, a few broken shards of Norse pottery. There had been a story about it in the local paper last year, before the paper had shut for good. This whole area, the marshes and wetlands that had given the town its name, it had been a place for those exiled from other places.

The country had needed more fish. It had needed homes for the fishermen, so they’d reclaimed the wetlands and drained the last remnants of all those who had lived and died among the reeds.

Then they found oil, out in the sea.

In this rain Alec could barely see a thing and his T-shirt was getting soaked, sticking to his body. But he dragged the rubbish along all the same, downpour be damned.

After fifteen feet, he turned around.

It was nothing. There was nothing there.

The alley was empty. Of course it was empty.

On his way back in, he slammed the door so hard that the frame shook.

He walked through the kitchen, eyes catching on the stupid, repeatedly boiled kettle for the third time.

His phone vibrated against his keys, further along the counter.

Pint. At the Stag.

It was a message from George.

He always sent him these messages when the others were going to the pub. Well, maybe not always, but enough that they’d mounted up on his phone. Alec used to make excuses about why he couldn’t go, about casework and his son, about needing to be at home.

He didn’t know what was wrong with him.

He didn’t want to feel like this.

It takes four years to know a place, someone had told him once. Alec didn’t feel even halfway there. He thought about the advice for a moment and got annoyed at it. Why were four years good for anything? Four years went by just like that. Four years were nothing.

He missed her. After all that he had done, and all she had done to him, he missed her.

He changed his shirt and put his coat on.

He thought of a world where she was still alive, a world where he was not alone. He went out into the night.

CHAPTER SIX

The tents shook in the storm, barely holding up against the onslaught of rain. Already water leaked into them, coalescing near the head of a young mare, a chestnut-coloured horse who had been called Sally. She had been her owner’s best friend.

It was hard to see any of this. There were no street lights, not this far from town.

If you stood in those fields that night, you would not have been able to see anyone, even if they were standing right next to you.

Even if they were looking right at you.

You wouldn’t see their grey-hooded gas mask.

You wouldn’t see their tight rubber gloves.

It is a beautiful thing to be seen.

Stars, dead for millennia, kept faith.

They walked out into the night.

CHAPTER SEVEN

There were stag heads mounted on every wall.

‘Do . . .’ Alec paused. ‘Do you think people like me?’

George stared for a moment. Suddenly, his tired face broke into a mass of wrinkles, his chapped lips curling into a great big smile. ‘Do people like you? Jesus . . .’ He shook his head and drank some more of his pint. ‘Where’d that come from?’

A baseball-capped twenty-something sat at the slot machine. He sniffed and scratched his neck. A