Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

employment, Dr Allen.’ The woman looked away at last. ‘You’ll be leaving within the hour.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Their car did not stop at Well Farm. But still, Cooper heard the evidence of their work, saw it, smelt it, even through the partially opened window. The hum of the flies, the birds, the blazing fire.

How things had changed.

Men and women sifted through the grass, the reeds, the abandoned soil of the Coles’ farm. They were like shadow puppets in their hazard gear, their dark silhouettes moving against the red horizon. There were thirty of them, maybe more. They had come to catalogue lives.

Cooper’s new colleague, the woman who had questioned her, she looked out of the window, too. Still, no formal introduction had been made. Her coat had a nametag on it. ADA SOLARIN was printed in bold capital letters above the logo NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY. She could be anyone. She could do anything.

On the other side of the road the last great fire of November burned.

It smelt of food at first.

The black smoke rose.

During Cooper’s education, they’d sometimes gone to abattoirs. Her first visit had been by herself, back before her interview to get into vet school. It was considered impressive if you organized such a trip – a brave willingness to confront the routine and purposeful slaughter of animals whilst working in a profession dedicated to caring for them.

So, after reading this online, Cooper had gone. Being a vet had been her dream. Seventeen years old, she’d found the people working in that place to be nice – nicer than many others she would encounter in her rotations – and they’d make light jokes with her, they’d include her in their tea breaks, they’d ask about her hopes.

Chains jangled as cows were herded through one by one, pigs to follow in the afternoon. The cows did not know of those murdered before them. They were even calm in the run-up, though this turned, as the time came closer, to a slight unease. Before the end, they would understand only that this place was not a good place.

The pigs, they were different. They knew where they were, they always knew. And they screamed in their knowing, next to all those nice men.

Cooper thought of those days and other days, as they drove past the smoke of Well Farm.

She thought of it as she watched the bodies of one hundred and eighty-two sheep systematically tossed onto a pyre. Ada would tell her the number when she asked. The woman had a head for statistics.

Stack upon stack of wooden pallets stood, sourced from the same supplier who had built the town’s bonfire those days past. Fallen between them, spilling from edges fused by fire and dust and wool and wind, there was a shambling mass of the young and the ewes, burned to cinder, feeding those who came after them, collapsing under the weight of all the dead and dying.

Cooper said nothing, but her face must have given her away.

‘Multiple sheep were infected,’ Ada explained. ‘It’s a precaution. It’s necessary.’

Ada watched her. Cooper said nothing.

‘We found a body in the fields. Too late to do anything.’

‘Who?’ Cooper tried to hide her feelings.

‘An old man. Collapsed in the marshes. He had soil from the horses’ burial site caked around his fingers. He’d brought his daughter to the hospital . . .’

Ada paused.

‘Then he went back to where he had shown DS Nichols the horses, just a few days before. He sifted through their burial site. Picked at it in his final moments. Collapsed . . .’

‘Suicide?’

Ada shrugged. ‘He spent his final hours alone.’

He had not survived to see the sun rise.

They drove on, stopping only for a roadblock.

When Ada showed her badge, strange officers waved her through.

No one would ever live here again.

The streets were empty. Even the market was deserted. Flowers trembled in the growing breeze, red and yellow bending as they passed.

‘Will Alec get better?’ Cooper did not turn as she spoke. She just kept watching out of the window.

After a few moments, Ada answered.

‘No one can find his son.’

The car came to a stop, up near the docks. A boat waited.

Cooper hesitated. ‘What do you mean, no one can find him?’

‘What I said.’ Ada undid her belt. The driver turned off the ignition. ‘Simon Nichols was not at home. Not at any friend’s home. There’s evidence someone was in the car with Alec when he crashed. Mud on one of the back seats . . . A small quantity of blood. Others are looking at that now.’

She opened her door.

‘Come on. That’s our boat.’

Cooper got out. They’d given her new clothes, a thick jacket. But she’d have to change soon again, anyway.

The people ahead, they wore hazard protection gear.

She thought of the letter as they walked.

She thought of crates, of heads in fields.

She thought of an abattoir, of cows, of pigs, of the nice people who had killed them.

The smile is yours.

You could have saved him.

CHAPTER FORTY

The boat cut through fog. It was everywhere, the thickening of the world and air, the collision of warmth and emptiness. The clarity of deserted Ilmarsh was lost to them.

Cooper retched within the toilet cubicle, shaken from the motion of the boat. She regretted the croissants.

She went back to the main deck.

Rust lined the edges of the blue-green metal. White bars stood at regular intervals, metal chains blocking off sections from their access. Ada stood at the end – the stern? The bow? Cooper didn’t know what any of it was called. Ada had her back to all these things.

She was smoking, a slight grey mingling into the white cloud all around.

‘Those things will kill you,’ Cooper said.

The woman turned.

‘We won’t see it till it’s right in front of us,’ Ada said, her voice higher and gentler. ‘The place we’re going to . . . it had a family, once. They lived out here for years. Raised sheep and pigs. Sold their produce on the mainland.’

Ada threw her cigarette into the sea.

Cooper watched it catch in the waves. She’d had