Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke Read online

  I stepped carefully through the herd, counting as I went. I’d reached forty-two when my eye was caught by something in the woods below the field. A beam of torch light flashed against the trees, then another. They disappeared for a moment and then came back again, steady this time. I crouched down and watched. I saw figures in the shadows, then the figures disappeared. I heard a muffled scream. The sound of people struggling. A quick shout. A crack. Another shout, muffled, like it was coming from under a blanket.

  A moment later the torches went out, and for a minute there was silence in the night and another cloud cut across the moon. Some of the cows looked towards the sound of the shouts. Easy, calm animals. They chewed, turned their heads back towards their shoulders and settled down again.

  Now the torch lights came back again, and the shadows were slow and methodical. I could have stood up and made a move towards them, walked the two hundred yards to where they were, asked what they were doing, told them to move on, get off the land, you’re frightening my animals. But there was danger there, menace at work, and watchfulness. I could see two people standing on the boundary of the field and the wood, sentries if you will, or watchmen. Tall figures, black against the black, with the black above and the iron smell of a broken draught in the air. I lay back and rested my head against the side of one of the cows, listened to her stomach rumble and watched the moon. She was impassive, and gave nothing away. The ground was hard, and the grass tinder. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, then twenty. I think it was twenty, because I dozed for a while, and when I woke up the cows were still around me and the moon was still strong, and the woods were still.

  I stood up. I waited. No torches shone. No voices. The sentries had gone. Suddenly, the headlights of a car swung through a lane half a mile away, shooting up the hill, around the first corner and away. I waited until I couldn’t hear it any more, then started walking down to the place where the torches had been.

  I didn’t hurry. I was alert and on edge. I could hear my heart beating, but I didn’t make any noise. I was careful. I was like the vole avoiding a lively owl. I didn’t walk tall. I kept low and rolled my feet slowly over the grass like a Sioux warrior in his moccasins. I stopped. I listened. I moved on again. Stopped. Started. Listened to my breathing. I reached the edge of the wood. Stopped again.

  There was a low barbed-wire fence between me and the trees. I stepped on it with my left foot, pushed it down, lifted my right leg over, stepped down, lifted my left leg, stood still. The woods rustled with bugs and leaves and birds. I flicked the torch on, saw an opening that led down to a narrow path, flicked the torch off and followed my nose.

  As the moonlight cracked through the trees, it left crazed splinters on the ground, and my shadow danced and spun as I walked. Every minute or so I stopped and listened for voices or footsteps. Nothing. I shone the light for a second. I snapped it off. I walked on. I shone it again. Nothing. I looked up towards the place where I’d been sitting with the herd. They were ahead of me. I walked on. Torch on. Torch off. Stop. Listen. A smell in the air.

  Can you smell fear? Is that possible? Or smell fear that’s passed? Mum would say it is, and she’d be right. It was there. It was hanging in the air, musky and rank, copper and rust, fire and cotton. I could have reached out and taken a piece of that fear and broken it off, put it in my pocket, kept it for ever. I could have used it to scare someone I didn’t like, someone who’d threatened me in a pub, someone who’d shown me a knife. It would have chased them away and kept them away.

  I stepped on a stick. It cracked. A leaf, broken from the branch, twirled into my face. The moonlight showed something odd in the trees, something out of place, a failure in nature. I stood still, very still, like I was forgotten. The moment froze its place in the present and flattened it through time. If you could have seen it, it would have looked like a still stretch of black water, reflecting nothing, absorbing everything, willing the future into its arms. Nothing moved. Nothing moved, except… Nothing moved except something in the trees ahead of me, twenty feet ahead.

  I shone the torch, swung the beam through the trees, and the swinging caught the movement of another swinging. Slow, quiet, almost gentle, maybe like the pendulum of a fine clock. A clock built by a man with the finest fingers and the keenest eye, a clock that kept perfect time and chimed the hours with an easy bell. But this was not a very fine clock, and I didn’t want to see what I could see, and for a moment I forced the sight away. I pushed it towards the edge of a cliff in my head and left it waiting there, but that’s as far as I went. I couldn’t push any further, and I couldn’t take any more steps. For here, in the lovely woods with the sweet birds and the dancing leaves, I saw a pair of feet, legs, damp-stained trousers, a check shirt, arms limp and muddy, a twisted face above a roped neck. A hung man, a fresh hung man, the man Spike and I had seen at the hoop house in the woods, the beast of a man with hands like bricks and tiny eyes, dead in these woods now, swinging like a decoration on a Christmas tree. Bad tree, bad Christmas, big boots on a very dead man. And as I stared at him, I felt the frozen moment crack and bend and snap, and all the breath rushed from my body and I reached out and grasped a tree trunk and heaved, but nothing came out, nothing at all, not a drop of anything at all.

  ‌8

  Nothing can prepare you for finding a hung man in a wood. Nothing about the swinging, nothing you imagined, nothing you thought, nothing you heard or wondered about.

  I stood and stared at him for five minutes. He swayed, and the rope creaked and the branch strained under his weight. Everything about the sight reeked of strain, as if the world was under this enormous pressure that could burst in a second. All I had to do was find a pin and push it at the air, and the lot would explode. Everything would go. Nothing would be left, not even the pin. I put my hands over my ears, but the pressure stayed. I looked at my feet. My legs were shaking. I looked up at the man again. I bent my neck to mirror his.

  He could have been floating, but he was not. He could have been a dummy, but he was not a dummy. A trickle of blood twinkled at the corner of his mouth, and more had come from his nose. Once he had been a scary fuck with hands the size of bricks and a deep, growly voice, but now he just looked sad and lost. Lost in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar nothing in his legs.

  And my torch light caught his fingers. They were small and delicate, too small for a big man, and there was dirt under the nails. For a moment I was held by the thought that I wanted to reach out and touch them, wash them, dry them and wrap them in clean towels. No one deserves to die in terror, and no one deserves to die so far away from his family and his friends. And no one deserves to die without a name.

  I wondered what his name was, and I wondered who his mum and dad were. Did he have brothers or sisters? A wife? A child? Who were his friends, and who would miss him? Who would grieve for this body in its hung throne, and who would remember the happy times, the loving mornings and the laughing nights? Who would pick up a newspaper and read a story about him being found hanging from a sycamore tree, the leaves around his face shading him from the moonlight, the birds of the night calling after his terror? Who would say, “Oh my God, I remember him. I went to school with him…” or “I bought him a drink last week…”?

  I did try to move, but my legs refused to budge. They were planted deep and fast, rooted and caught. My blood flushed, and the smell of fear knotted itself around me and held me tight. It was like it loved me and wanted me, or both, and if I didn’t give in I would take a knife in my stomach. I didn’t want a knife in my stomach. I wanted to go home. An owl called from a tree behind me, spooked me wet and rigid. I’d been shining the torch too long. I switched it off, and the noise made me jump. Now I could move. Now I shook some life into my fingers, and they sang at me. I took a step back, turned and started to walk. Then, suddenly, I was running, running fast, crashing through the undergrowth to the barbed-wire fence and stumbling over the fence and falling and pulling myself up, and I was away and into the
field towards the herd. They saw me coming, and some of them stood quickly and lowered their heads towards me. I skirted around them, and when I reached the top of the field I stopped to get my breath, turned and stared back towards the woods.

  They didn’t look changed. They were still the peaceful place where the birds nested and mice hid from their troubles, safe and warm in their holes. The owl watched. The buzzard waited. The foxes prowled and stopped, moved on, stopped again, listened. All the animals’ troubles would pass, and one day the blood would drain away from the ground and the trees would forget their part in the night. But now the blood was fresh and the rope was tight, and all the world was swinging. I turned, jumped the gate into the field in front of the farm house, went to the front door and banged on the door.

  I waited a minute. No one answered. I yelled “Mr Evans!” and banged again, louder this time, and longer. An upstairs light came on and a window opened. Mr Evans’s face appeared, and he looked down and shouted “Who’s there?”

  “Me,” I said. “Elliot. I have to use the phone!”

  “The phone? What are you talking about?”

  “I found a body. I found a body in the woods.”

  “A what?”

  “Someone hanging…”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No!”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  “I told you!”

  He started to close the window. “No! I think someone’s been murdered!”

  He didn’t close the window. He looked down at me. He opened his mouth. His fillings twinkled in the moonlight. “Please, Mr Evans. Let me in!”

  Maybe it was something in my voice, or maybe he just wanted to kick me, but two minutes later he was unbolting the front door. I didn’t stop to say anything. I barged past him, grabbed the phone off the table in the hall, dialled 999 and said, “Police!”

  They were there half an hour later. Two fat men in a blue-and-white car, and the first thing they said was, “What’s happening round here tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “First it was some fracas up the road there…” he pointed to the place where we’d heard the sirens, “and now this…” He took out a notebook. “Caller reports finding a body hanging in woods. Is that you?” He looked at Mr Evans.

  “Not me. Him,” and he jabbed a finger at me.

  “So, sonny,” and they took steps towards me. “You been drinking?” He sniffed. “Been at the old apple juice?”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Mr Evans.

  “So have you?”

  “No I fucking haven’t!” I took a step back. “Come on. I’ll show you!”

  “There’s no need…” said the fattest of the two policeman, “for that sort of language. No need at all.” He reached into his pocket. “In fact, we could arrest you for it…”

  “OK,” I said. “Arrest me. But before you do that, come with me,” and I headed off. “Come on!”

  When I looked over my shoulder, Mr Evans was twirling his finger against his head and making drinking motions with his hands, and the policemen were nodding their heads. For a moment I thought they were going to stay where they were, but then they walked towards me and followed me through the yard gate towards the fields.

  I didn’t walk with them, but I didn’t get too far ahead. I was fit and they were puffing and wheezing, and once, when one of them said, “Hold on, lad,” I stopped to let them catch up. Fifteen minutes later we were standing beneath the swinging body, and their torches were shining in the dead man’s face, and one of them whispered, “Shit…” while the other threw up into a bush.

  “When did you find him?”

  “An hour ago. Maybe less.”

  “Have you moved anything? Touched anything?”

  “No.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  He tried his radio. There was no signal. “OK. Stan. Clean yourself up and let’s get back to the car.”

  Stan threw up again.

  “And you,” he said to me. “Don’t go wandering off. We’ll want to talk to you.”

  The rest of the night was busy. More police came, and the area around the body was cordoned off. As soon as dawn broke, an ambulance came, and police with cameras and boxes of equipment parked in a lay-by at the entrance to the wood. I went back to the caravan and slept for an hour, then went to fetch the cows for milking. I worked in a daze, my legs felt woolly, my eyes heavy and my nose was still filled with the smell of fear. When I wasn’t thinking about the man swinging in the tree I was thinking about Spike in his stupid garage, sitting beneath the drying plants with a stupid grin on his stupid fucking face and his stupid fucking hands reaching up and stroking the stupid fucking leaves. Oh why, Spike? Why don’t you listen to people? Why do you have to follow your greed when all your greed does is lead you to trouble you don’t even recognize? Maybe that was it. Recognize trouble and you’ll protect yourself from it. Or something. I don’t know. Did I care? I think I did, but that was my trouble.

  As I was letting the cows out to pasture – call that pasture if you want, that scorched field, the dust rising, the faint dew making no difference, the birds still gasping on the fence – two policemen in suits came from the farmhouse, and one said, “Elliot?”

  “Yes?”

  “Elliot Jackson?”

  “That’s me.”

  “You’re the lad who found the body?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m DS Pollock. This is DS Brown. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “OK.”

  “We’ll need to take you down the station.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re our main witness, so we need to tape everything you say.”

  “OK. Give me a minute to get a wash.”

  “OK.”

  I stood in the caravan, stripped to the waist and washed as well as I could. As the water ran over my skin I tried to imagine it washing everything away, the sight of the man and the smell of blood, the sound of the creaking rope and the swinging torch lights. And ten minutes later, as I was driven to Taunton, the world became stranger to me. The colours of the fields and trees and sky and road and the inside of the police car and the policemen’s hair and my trousers swirled and pulsed. I’d never been in a police car before, and for some reason I felt as though I’d been swallowed by a dog. A radio crackled, a bored voice said things I didn’t understand, and I said, “I’m very tired…”

  “I bet you are, son.”

  “You get any sleep last night?”

  “An hour.”

  “Get some kip if you want.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and I closed my eyes, and a minute later I felt myself dreaming. Big dreams of talking cows and trees that walked from one valley to another. Dreams of clouds lowering to my face and crawling into my mouth and tasting of milk. Flowing milk, boiling cream, potatoes falling like rain. I jolted awake, and we were in the car park behind the police station.

  They gave me a cup of tea, sat me in a bare room, and I sat between them at a table. When they were ready, they clicked a tape recorder, spoke their names and my name and the date, and Pollock asked me to start at the beginning.

  “So what were you doing in the woods at half-past midnight?”

  “Mr Evans asked me to check the herd. The cows.”

  “Mr Evans, your boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why did he do that?”

  “We always check them last thing. Make sure none have got out.”

  “So you went to check the cows, and then what did you do?”

  “I saw lights in the woods. Torches.”

  “How did you know they were torches?”

  “There were beams of light. It was obvious,” and I told them about the voices and the screams, the shadowed sentries and the deeper, wooded shadows.

  Pollock asked these questions in a slow and kindly way. He was a thin man with ginger hair
and a clean, close-shaved face. When I say he asked questions in a kindly way I only mean that: the rest of him bothered me. I thought he could most likely turn in a second and turn badly, switch to meanness and trouble, and use his little fists to put a bruise somewhere that wouldn’t show but would hurt. His eyes were small and green, and he didn’t blink, and as he listened to me he sat still and quiet, like a monk. And all the time the other policeman, Brown, sat back and watched me, until at the end he leant forwards, rubbed his chin in a thoughtful way and said, “And that’s your story?”

  “It is.”

  “And you’re telling us everything?”

  “Yes. Of course. Why?”

  “Just a feeling, Elliot. You know. Sometimes I get a feeling. In my waters.”

  “I told it like it was.”

  “And you didn’t recognize the body when you found it? You’d never seen the man before?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so? That’s not what you said half an hour ago.” Brown leant forwards again. He was less disguised than Pollock, more upfront and obvious. He hadn’t looked after himself as well as his friend, and was starting to pork out. His face was jowly and his lips were fat, and his eyes were beginning to do that thing that eyes do when they get old. They were watery and distracted, maybe like they’d seen too much for one life and wanted to go home.

  “Well you know…” I said.

  “No, I don’t know. You’ll have to explain.”

  “Maybe I saw him in the pub or something.”

  “Maybe you saw him in the pub or something?”

  “Yes. Or the shop.”

  “Or the shop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which shop?”

  “The post office. In Greenham.”

  “Well which was it – the pub or the shop?”

  I was very tired, and felt the words drop from my mouth. There was nothing I could do to stop them. “The pub,” I said, without thinking.

  “So now you had seen him before?”