The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

on the fire to boil and then made his way to the small clearing McCue had hacked out with his machete to prepare the dead animal. Four stakes were hammered into the soft earth and lashed together into A shapes, a bamboo pole laid across the top. The pig was hung upside down from the pole, tied by the hocks. McCue had made two neat incisions in the carotid artery behind the ears, allowing the blood to drain into a pot beneath the head. ‘We should save the blood,’ he said.

Elliot shook his head. ‘We can’t carry any more than we’ve got. We’ll have to eat what we can and leave the carcase.’

McCue shrugged. ‘Pity. This little mother could have fed us for days.’

Elliot watched, fascinated, as McCue wielded his hunting knife with dexterous ease to gut the pig. He pinched the abdomen as high as he could, raising a pouch of flesh and cutting a slit big enough for him to slip in two fingers. Using the fingers as a guide for the knife he cut upwards towards the anus, taking care not to damage the internal organs. Then he cut downwards the same way as far as the breastbone, holding back the gut with his left hand as it began to spill outwards. When he had completed the cut, he let the gut hang down so that he could inspect it for signs of disease. ‘Looks okay,’ he said. He removed both kidneys and the liver, then cut through the membrane covering the chest cavity and took out the heart and lungs and windpipe. ‘Better bury this stuff.’

Elliot started digging a hole to take the animal’s innards. ‘You not going to skin it?’

McCue shook his head. ‘You never skin a pig. We’ll have to remove the hair over the fire. Did you boil that water?’

Elliot nodded. ‘Where’d you learn to use a knife like that?’

McCue sat silent for a while, his lean cadaverous face taut and thoughtful. ‘My Pa was a small-time farmer in the Midwest,’ he said. ‘He was a real hard bastard, but I guess I loved him. Ma died when I was just a kid and Pa had to raise me and my three brothers on his own. I was the baby of the family. When we was having bad times, like when the crop would fail or the animals got diseased, he would pack me off to his sister’s. I spent half my life there when I was a kid, but I guess they didn’t like me too much. I was none too happy staying there neither. I used to run off sometimes, and then I would get sent home and my Pa would beat the crap out of me. I didn’t mind that, though. I just wanted to be home.

‘He didn’t have much patience, my Pa, and his temper worked on a short fuse, so I got the buckle end of his belt more times than I can remember.’ He paused, lost in some childhood past. But there was reverence in his voice, more than rancour, when he spoke of the beatings. ‘He taught me to use my fists. Stand up for myself. I was a bit of a runt, even then, and he said I had to be big in other ways.

‘I was about nine or ten when he took me out in the yard one day and gave me a knife and told me it was my turn to kill a pig. ‘You seen how it’s done,’ he said. ‘So do it right. Kill it with the first stroke. You get it wrong I’m gonna beat the shit outa you.’ So I got it with the first stroke. He taught me everything I needed to know about using a knife. Never needed nothing else since.’

‘Is he still alive?’

There was a moment of pain in McCue’s eyes and his voice took on an edge as sharp as his knife. ‘Two of my brothers was killed in Nam. The other got a bullet in the spine. He’s in some hospital somewheres for the rest of his days.

‘While I was out there the bank foreclosed on my Pa’s loan, tried to put him off the farm. Some shit, huh? He’s worked that land all his days, two of his boys is killed fighting for their country, they give a third wheels for legs and stick me down a hole chasing gooks. They took all his boys, he wasn’t about to let them take his land. It was his life, you know? So he blew his brains out in the back room.’ He examined the blood on his hands. ‘God bless America.’ He got up to cut down the pig. ‘Better get this old hog on the fire.’

Slattery awoke to the smell of meat cooking. ‘Jeez,’ he said. ‘I had this dream. I was at this big medieval banquet. They was just about the serve up the pig when I woke up. Christ, I can still smell it!’ He looked at Elliot and McCue crouched around the embers of the fire. ‘Hey, what you guys doing? Shit, am I still dreaming?’

‘It’s no dream, Mike,’ Elliot said. ‘It may not be a banquet, but the pork’s just about ready.’

*

It was dark when they set off again to cross the paddy fields in the valley below. The moon was not yet up, and it was fully twenty minutes before their eyes adjusted to the pale light cast over the land by the stars. Picking their way along the narrow paths that ran between the lines of irrigation ditches on either side of the paddies, it took them another half-hour before they reached the spot where the soldiers had dumped the bodies earlier in the day. The corpses, some still semi-clothed in torn black rags, others naked, were already being claimed by the mud. Men and women, some young, some old. Most had been stabbed, probably with bayonets. One or two had been shot in the head. Single