Simon Beckett - Stone Bruises

The customer begins to bluster, but it’s half-hearted. He allows the woman to lead him away. Lenny turns back to Jules as if I’m not there.

‘Hurry it up.’

It’s more an order than a request. Jules flushes as the other man goes back to where the two drunken girls are waiting.

‘Business calls.’ He gives a hard smile, attempting to regain face. ‘I’ll tell Chloe I’ve seen you. She’ll be thrilled.’

I stay where I am after he’s gone. A man waves his credit card at me.

‘Hey, you serving or just standing there?’

I turn and walk into the kitchen. Sergei says something to me but I don’t hear what. I go through the fire-escape door and out into the alleyway at the back. There’s the sweet smell of garbage and urine.

Letting the door close behind me, I slide down the wall and close my eyes.

‘YOU AWAKE UP there?’

The words are a towline to consciousness. I open my eyes as it drags me up, not knowing who called or even if I dreamed it. The thump of someone banging on the trapdoor convinces me that I haven’t.

‘Come on, wake up, you lazy bastard!’

It’s Arnaud. My first thought is Gretchen. I jack-knife upright in bed, half-convinced she’s still there. But I’m alone, thank God. The chest of drawers is still on the trapdoor, where I pushed it the night before. Overkill to keep out an eighteen-year-old girl maybe, but just as effective against her father. In a waking panic I think he must know his daughter was here, before I remember I’m supposed to be helping him with the traps.

‘All right,’ I call. My head is thumping from the rough wine and Arnaud’s cognac, and the rude awakening hasn’t helped.

‘About bloody time!’ I can hear the wooden steps creak under his weight. ‘Hurry up and get your arse down here!’

‘Give me five minutes.’

‘Make it two!’

His footsteps clump away from the trapdoor. I groan, hanging my head. It can’t be much past dawn. A grey early light filters into the loft. Wanting nothing more than to fall back onto the mattress and sleep for another hour, I pull on my overalls and go downstairs. I stop off at the tap to drink thirstily and splash water on my face and neck. Beads of it cling to my beard and its cold is a temporary salve for my headache.

Arnaud is waiting outside with Lulu, a canvas workman’s bag slung over his shoulder. He carries the rifle broken over one arm. There’s a hangover pallor, and the white stubble looks like a skim of frost against his brown face. He glowers at me.

‘I told you to be ready early.’

‘I didn’t know you meant at the crack of dawn. What about breakfast?’

‘What about it?’

He’s already walking across the courtyard. Lulu fusses around me like a long-lost friend as I go after Arnaud. I expect him to follow the track towards the road, but instead he goes down the side of the stable block. I thought I knew the farm well by now, but there’s a path here that I never knew existed. It makes me wonder what else there is here I don’t know about.

I trudge along it behind him. There’s a clamour of birdsong, bell clear in the chilled air and lowlying mist. Wishing I’d put on a T-shirt under the overalls, I rub my arms and feel the outline of the plaster. The morning feels momentarily colder as I remember Gretchen’s amnesia of the night before. In some ways it’s even more disturbing than her attacking me in the first place. It could have been an act; God knows she’s certainly capable of histrionics. But this isn’t the only time it’s happened: I remember after she set fire to the photograph she never so much as mentioned it again. At the time I thought she’d just developed a convenient memory, choosing to ignore an awkward incident.

Now I wonder if it wasn’t something more than that.

The path has taken us into the deep woods above the house, the buffer between the farm and the rest of the world. Trying to put Gretchen from my mind, I concentrate on not tripping over tree roots. Ahead of me, the back of Arnaud’s neck is stiff and uncompromising, seamed with horizontal creases. Looking at the gun, I belatedly wonder if coming into these lonely woods with him is such a good idea. I don’t know what Gretchen might have told him but Arnaud is hardly the type to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. The sound of a shot would pass unnoticed out here, and a body could lie undisturbed amongst the tree roots indefinitely.

I shake off the morbid thoughts. Arnaud is nothing if not direct: if he meant me any harm I’d know about it by now. Besides, the way my head is aching he’d only be putting me out of my misery.

There’s a stillness to the woods, a sharp silence through which every sound seems heightened. Something rustles a few yards to one side. Lulu bristles and bounds after it, until Arnaud checks her with a sharp word. The dog reluctantly slinks back to him, casting regretful looks behind her.

At a bend in the path Arnaud leaves it and heads off into the trees. The grass is beaded with dew, darkening the bottoms of my overalls where they swish against it. Lulu begins to run ahead, but Arnaud again calls her, taking hold of her collar to thrust her behind him.

‘Aren’t you worried she’ll get caught in a trap?’ I ask.

‘I don’t let her near them.’

‘What happens if she wanders into the woods by herself?’

‘Then it’d be her own fault.’ He scans the ground ahead of him. ‘Here.’

There’s an open trap concealed in the grass. Arnaud picks up a dead branch and jabs at the square plate at its centre, springing the jaws in a snap of breaking wood. He slips the knapsack from his shoulder and takes out what looks like an old army entrenching tool, folded in half. My first impulse is to back away, but he only opens it and hands it to me.

‘Dig up the spike.’

I take the spade and lean my walking stick against a tree. I sometimes wonder how much I really need it any more, but I don’t feel confident enough to do without. The trap is tethered to the buried spike by a length of chain. One end of the entrenching tool is a pointed spade, the other a pick. I hack with the pick until the ground is broken up, then prise out the spike in a shower of dark earth.

Arnaud is waiting with a sack. I drop the trap into it and hold out the entrenching tool.

‘You can carry it,’ he says, setting off back to the path.

We dig up another two traps before we come to an area of woodland that’s familiar. I look at the scene below me. The view of farm, trees and lake is ingrained in my mind like a bad dream. Arnaud is waiting by a tree. Its exposed roots are gashed where a knife stabbed into them. Nearby an empty water bottle lies on its side. The trap is still sprung shut at the tree’s base, the edges of its clamped jaws clotted with black.

‘Well?’ Arnaud demands. ‘What are you waiting for?’

I put the entrenching tool down. ‘You can do this one.’

There’s a malicious spark in his eye. ‘Brings back bad memories, does it? Don’t worry, it can’t hurt you now.’

I don’t answer. His smile fades. Dumping the bag and rifle, he snatches the tool from me and begins chopping at the ground around the spike, gouging indiscriminately at earth and tree roots. He’s a powerful man, but the spike is well buried, as I know from experience. It takes longer than the others to work loose and Arnaud is sweating before it’s done. He opens his shirt, revealing his white and hairless torso. When he bends to pick up the trap he abruptly stops and presses a hand to the small of his back.

‘Put it in the sack,’ he says as he straightens, grey-faced. ‘Or is that against your principles too?’

He stalks off, leaving me to finish up. I lift the trap by the spike. There are bright scratches still from where I tried to prise it open. It spins slowly on the chain, an ugly pendant of bloodstained metal.