Håkan Nesser - The Living and the Dead in Winsford

‘That he didn’t stop there.’ Mark finished off the sentence for me. ‘He carried on pestering you after he came out, did he?’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘He waited for a few months, but before I came here a few things happened that I’m sure he was mixed up in. There was nothing especially remarkable or threatening, so I didn’t contact the police. I was going to leave Sweden anyway, so I didn’t think there was any real danger. But now. . Well, now it seems that he’s found me again.’

‘Here on Exmoor?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

Mark shook his head. ‘How on earth did he manage to do that? But I suppose you’ve had your mail forwarded and so on. . Perhaps it isn’t all that difficult if you really put your mind to it?’

I shrugged, and wondered if I ought to start going into speculation. I decided it wasn’t necessary. No point in getting bogged down in details, as I’d already thought.

‘I think I’ve seen him in a hire car,’ I said instead. ‘Both here in the village and in a few other places.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Mark. I think that was the first time I’d heard him use a swearword.

‘And there are a few other things he might have done as well,’ I added.

‘Such as?’

‘Somebody has been leaving dead pheasants outside my front door.’

‘Dead what. .?’

He paused and sat up straight. Looked at me with a new expression in his eyes that I couldn’t make out. Had he seen through me? But how could he have seen through me? The pheasants were not an invention, nor was the hire car. Or was it just that ability to read other people’s minds that he claimed he had? I decided not to mention the Hawkridge business in any case.

‘Dead pheasants?’ he repeated thoughtfully, scratching at the back of his neck. ‘That sounds really odd. Do you know. . Well, I suppose you can’t very well know what that means, can you?’

‘Means?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What it could mean,’ he said, correcting himself. ‘But it seems pretty far-fetched when I think about it. Anyway, it’s just a matter of an old superstition.’

‘Superstition?’ I repeated, feeling rather silly.

He laughed and held his upturned palms towards the ceiling to indicate that what he was about to say was not something he believed in.

‘In the old days,’ he began, ‘out here on Exmoor in any case, it was seen as a way of warding off death. If somebody was lying ill in their house on the moor, for instance, people would sometimes place a dead animal outside their front door during the night.’

‘Really?’

‘The idea was that when Death came to knock on the door and harvest a life, he would make do with the animal and go away. A sort of primitive sacrifice, you might say, and inevitably there are countless stories to suggest that it really worked. The animal had disappeared by the next morning, which meant that Death had been sent packing and the sick person could recover in peace and quiet. It didn’t have to be pheasants, of course, but there were plenty of them around. You come across them everywhere, and the males especially make very handsome sacrificial offerings — assuming you haven’t run them over with your car, of course.’

‘They were males,’ I said. ‘Both mine. And they seemed to be completely uninjured.’

‘Apart from being dead?’

‘They were most certainly dead. They could have been just the same one, incidentally.’

‘But nobody came to collect them? Or it?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I threw them away.’

Then we sat in silence for quite some time. Mark poured out what remained of wine bottle number two. I thought that if I had still been a smoker this would have been an obvious moment to go out onto the terrace for a ciggie.

But I wasn’t a smoker any longer. Nor was Mark. He really did seem to be sitting there thinking over what I had said.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I should never have brought this up.’

‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘Of course you needed to mention it. What are our fellow human beings there for?’

That sounded a little theatrical, and he noticed that himself.

‘Anyway, I shall obviously do whatever I can to find out who this character is. But I don’t understand that pheasant business. You don’t have customs like that back in your country, do you?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Do you happen to have the registration number of that hire car he drives around in?’

‘I’m afraid not. I’ve boobed there. But it’s a silver-coloured Renault. The rental company is called Sixt, and they have their logo on both sides of the car.’

‘A silver-coloured Renault from Sixt?’

I nodded.

‘Right,’ said Mark, standing up. ‘I’ll do what I can. But now it’s time for afters. Just a simple panna cotta, but you’ll get a full-bodied Sauternes to help it down. What do you say to that?’

I said it might be possible to force it down, and as he stood pottering about by the refrigerator I wondered how on earth he thought I was going to get home.

I certainly wasn’t going to try to walk home with Castor through the dark.

‘A boy may only make love to his girlfriend when the gorse is in bloom. That’s an ancient rule here on Exmoor — are you familiar with it?’

‘No. But I’m not exactly a girl.’

‘I won’t pretend that I regard myself as a boy,’ said Mark. ‘But the point is that gorse blooms all the year round. Even now, in December — perhaps you’ve seen it?’

We were lying under the feather duvet in his wide bed. We really had made love. I couldn’t believe it, but I didn’t want to deny it either. We were both naked, and it had gone really well. Before we removed our clothes I told him that I was fifty-five years old and hadn’t been in bed with a man for over two years. He responded by saying that the figures were not far off identical for him: fifty-two and two-and-a-half respectively.

A cluster of scented candles was still burning on the window ledge. It was half past one. The door was ajar, and had been all the time. Castor was presumably still curled up in front of the fire in the kitchen downstairs. I assumed that Jeremy was asleep in his room on the next floor up. I thought it felt remarkable, and said as much to Mark.

‘You ought to know that this is among the most unexpected things that have happened to me for a very long time.’

‘For me too,’ said Mark, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand. ‘I stopped thinking about this kind of thing ages ago. If you live in a village like Winsford that is the only sensible attitude to take. The number of available women has been rather less than zero for the last sixty years.’

‘I thought lots of tourists come to Exmoor every summer?’

He snorted. ‘If you’re looking for a man you don’t put on Wellington boots and a waterproof jacket and go out on a moor.’

‘But I would like to go walking over the moor with you.’

‘You are different. Presumably you’re not quite right in the head, but that suits me down to the ground. Where would you like to go?’

I thought for a moment. ‘Simonsbath and on towards Brendon, I think. Isn’t that what you recommended? Where you went walking as a child?’

‘Whenever you like,’ said Mark, yawning. ‘Yes, that’s where the moor is at its most beautiful. . And its most desolate. It’ll be as windy and rainy as hell at this time of year, but that’s a risk you have to take. As long as you have the right clothes it’s not a problem.’

I explained that I even had a waterproof jacket for my dog, and he promised that we would go there as soon as an opportunity arose.

‘But not before Christmas,’ he said.