Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

don’t know how people compliment houses. Sorry.’

‘It’s OK.’

They fell silent, drinking their hot drinks. Outside, snowfall started to pick up in the night, more and more falling through the air, drifting in vast plump flakes.

‘You all . . .’ he said, staring at his cup. ‘You let my son die.’

He shook his head.

She said nothing for a moment, her face frozen, her eyes wide.

The snow continued to fall, accumulating on the grass, on the windowsill outside. Colours flashed on and off in the dark, Christmas tree lights in the garden opposite.

‘I’ve been doing everything I can, I—’

‘Then it wasn’t enough.’

The family photograph appeared to have been moved from its original place in the kitchen. It now sat on the mantelpiece.

Alec had a thick beard in that photo, not just the stubble he had now.

Simon had been a little boy.

His wife beside them both, her arm around her husband, his arm around her in turn. Both of them smiling.

‘Everything you’ve done . . .’ Alec said. ‘It wasn’t enough.’

Cooper put her cup down.

‘Why did you make me coffee, if you feel that way?’

‘It’s . . .’ He scratched his eye. ‘It’s what I do.’

‘What you do? I don’t understand.’

‘When people come round . . .’ His hand was shaking, the cup spilling liquid splashes on his trousers, on the fabric. He didn’t seem to notice. Suddenly, his expression changed. ‘Please—’ he pleaded.

‘Alec?’ She got up.

‘Please – let me help,’ he whispered, the cup falling from his hand. ‘Please—’

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

Cooper was going to go to sleep on the sofa, then she’d head back in the morning. She refused to leave Alec alone in this state.

‘We can talk about the case,’ she’d told him, not intending to talk about it at all.

He took the other sofa, the stairs still too much for him.

‘I used to have trouble sleeping,’ he said.

He almost smiled, but the moment faded quickly.

She left and went to find him a blanket. She passed a shadow on the wall, where once a mirror had been broken.

She went up stairs once muddied by a stranger.

When she came back, he was changing into a T-shirt from the wash-basket. His back was covered in old scars, too old to have been caused by the crash, by any of this.

‘You don’t have to stay,’ he said. ‘I’ll be – I’ll be OK.’

She sat on her own sofa, still dressed.

He sat on his own.

‘I asked you once – I asked you the worst thing you’d ever done,’ he said.

‘You did.’

He lay down to sleep. He didn’t say anything more, not until they’d been there for a while.

She lay down, too.

He looked so small, so feeble.

‘I do need your help,’ Cooper said, quiet, watching how Alec’s eyes couldn’t keep still, even as he looked at nothing. ‘Of course I need your help. Of course I’ll involve you, you just . . . you just needed to get better. And now . . . and now you’re better, aren’t you?’ He turned away as she spoke, and her voice grew gentler. ‘We’ll find him – we’ll find who did this, we’ll find your boy . . . everything’s going to be OK.’

He did not answer this, did not turn back to her.

She went to switch off the lamp on the small table nearby.

Time passed before he spoke again.

‘It was what I did to her . . .’ he said, barely more than a murmur. ‘Elizabeth . . .’

No other words came, not really. At one point, she thought she heard him saying something about Christmas, but there was only silence after that, and she decided she might have dreamt it.

The night passed.

In the morning, Alec asked questions about the island. About anthrax. About the crumbling buildings, the fires that had raged there, the pit, and the father who had done all those terrible things. He asked, not once acknowledging he’d lied to her about his prior knowledge, not once apologising. And Cooper let him ramble. He needed connections, he needed hope. He looked into other outbreaks, about how the government had tested weapons against sheep on distant shores, and how they had failed to clean up the work of all their bombs. What if this too had been a test? What if it wasn’t just incompetence and neglect? What if they were being lied to?

He’d ask these things, in the days to come. He’d wonder about these other fathers who had died in their farms, whose children had lived on forever changed.

For now, sitting at his dining table over breakfast, he just asked about the first.

‘Did it happen to him, too?’

Cooper didn’t understand. ‘Did what—’

‘I mean . . . what if he was targeted, too? What if whoever’s doing this to me did it to him and his family?’

‘There’s no evidence anyone else was involved. No one has even—’

‘His daughter survived,’ Alec went on. ‘We should go and speak to her.’

‘She can’t speak.’

‘Can’t, or won’t?’ Alec finished his coffee and shook his head. ‘It’s a lead, isn’t it? Maybe her parents knew Grace . . . maybe they met her, or, I don’t know . . .’

She hesitated. She tried to show him pity. ‘We’ll look at it . . . it’s worth thinking about. And just . . . don’t worry, OK? We’ve got plenty to look at. You’ll get sick of being in the car with me, by the time this is over.’

He smiled weakly. He went to put his coat on.

‘We’ll find him,’ Cooper said, and Alec nodded.

In the car, he kept talking about it, kept repeating himself.

Some force in the world had taken notice of him, had ruined his family like it had ruined so many others. It was not his fault.

None of this was his fault. Everyone would see.

Cooper said nothing for a while, as she turned down the drive.

‘I don’t think you’re viewing it all the right—’

‘The right what?’ Alec scowled.

‘What happened on the island . . . what that man did to his own children, to his wife . . . I know you think you’re like him, but you’re not.’ Cooper paused, trying to find the right words. ‘He destroyed everything. We know he did it, we know he meant to do it. We know he’s dead. There’s no culprit there, nothing to uncover, at