Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

‘Not while I’m cooking.’

‘My day was great,’ Alec lied, putting his hands round her waist again.

She turned from the saucepan, thrusting the wooden spoon into her husband’s hands. ‘Stir,’ she said.

So he stirred.

‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ Alec lied.

‘It’s fine,’ his wife also lied, moving along to take the boiling spaghetti off the heat.

‘It’s just this case . . . You wouldn’t believe what we’re dealing with.’

He waited. The music kept playing. The kid kept playing.

He continued. ‘I said, you wouldn’t believe what we’re dealing with.’

‘I heard you.’

‘You’re clearly angry about something,’ Alec said. ‘What is it?’

‘You’re clearly angry about something,’ she repeated, her tone all silly, mocking, ridiculous.

‘Oh, great.’

‘Oh, great.’ She reclaimed the spoon and took over stirring, tasting, preparing. He caught the beginning of a smile in the corner of her mouth, and he smiled too.

‘You’re just copying me.’

‘You’re just copying me.’

‘I think Alec Nichols is very sorry for whatever bad thing he did.’

‘I think Alec Nichols is bla bla bla blah.’

The little boy laughed at this. Alec smiled too, in spite of himself.

‘Hey,’ he said, touching his wife’s arm, gentler than before. She turned, clearly tired. ‘I think Alec Nichols doesn’t know how lucky he is.’

She didn’t repeat this, only frowned.

‘Hey,’ he said again, his eyes staring into her eyes, both of their expressions fading into light smiles.

‘Let’s . . . let’s just get dinner on the table, OK?’ she said, after a pause. ‘We can talk later, when he’s in bed.’

Alec took a moment to move, but when he did, he scooped his son up off the floor onto his feet, and told the seven-year-old to tidy his things away.

He went back to the hall and took off his coat while his wife served dinner at the table. There was still snow on his sleeves; it had probably fallen on Elizabeth when he’d grabbed her.

He was tired. He rubbed his eyes, a headache brewing at his temples.

He wondered if—

Alec stopped. He needed to stop.

Standing outside his house, his clothes still crusted with horse-mud, there was no fire inside, no music playing, no warm kitchen.

It was empty. It was a different building, in a different place, in a different time. Though Simon was still with him, he was out camping with a friend tonight. The boy was eighteen now, bigger every day. He was almost ready to leave school, and it had been years since he’d hung his toys across the seats. He went swimming in the sea, despite Alec’s protestations about safety, about tides. He spent most of his time at home reading. He played games on screens. He sat with Alec a lot of nights, and neither of them said a thing, neither one knowing what they wanted the future to be. He’d come up with all sorts of jobs. Police officer, briefly, surprisingly. Doctor. A vet, maybe, if he couldn’t get the grades to be a doctor. Alec didn’t know if one path was harder than the other, but it had to be, hadn’t it? It had to be more difficult to save the life of a human than a dog.

And Alec had tried to explain the potential problems his boy might face with university applications – that from his brief searches, so many difficult futures lay ahead, but still, Simon didn’t know.

It was strange, what we asked of eighteen-year-olds.

The sky was dark now. The sun had set on the horses. Caught in an early November battle between autumn and winter, the next couple of days were supposed to be getting warmer and warmer.

It was hard to imagine after the rain of today. It was hard to imagine the weather at any time, these days.

He opened his door.

He flicked on the light and pulled off his dirty boots. He threw them back into the porch and locked it shut. The house was cold inside. The heating had been off.

He was smeared with mud and half-dried splashes of marsh water, all six feet of him. His black trousers and jacket stank. The muck had even seeped into the white shirt beneath. He had thrown his coat on when the rain had started in earnest, but maybe he should have left it off. Maybe he should have let the sky rinse him clean.

Alec undressed right down to his baggy boxers. He looked in the hallway mirror, cracked, damaged.

He needed to throw it out. Get something new.

But it felt like bad luck to let it shatter. And it still worked, sort of. He could still see his reflection. There was dirt across his dark stubble, even a hint of blood on his cheek. He must have scratched himself.

He blinked, his head hurting a little. He was dehydrated, too.

He went over to the kitchen.

Normally, the television would be blaring from the lounge at this time.

Alec sighed. He paced to the kitchen, put the kettle on, grabbed all his muddy clothes and threw them into the washing machine. He went to the shower and remained there for ten minutes, heat searing against skin and muscle. He’d had long baths as a teenager. It had given him space where he’d had no space.

He thought about how this investigation would go.

As much as the scene had distressed him, it had fascinated him, too. They’d have their four days to look into all this – the inspector wasn’t one to waste money – but there would be a deterioration, wouldn’t there? As fresh bad news replaced the old, as the week brought new horrors here and far away, people would soon care less than they did now. He expected to have the initial statements and records of each of the horse owners by the morning; the department was keen on the insurance angle, and even if that turned out to be a blind alley, the questions they were asking as a result might benefit them. Whoever they were, these people knew about horses; they knew where they were kept and how to handle them and how to kill them.

An owner was not out of