Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

‘Shoot a dog?’

Jane’s fingers stiffened.

‘“Lost a few points there, Cornel,” he said. And after that I was always aware he was watching me, making these little remarks, asking could I hold my drink, stuff like that. Like testing my resolve, how determined I was to move on. So I’m drinking more and I’m blasting off at anything that moves. Mostly missed, but not always. Getting better. Bought my own shotgun. Getting there. And he kept asking for more money, and I kept giving it to him. It’s a rite of passage, he’d say. Cost me over a grand for the cockfight, and that was before the betting started. That was him in the yard at the Swan. That was Kenny. My mate.’

His mate? Telling him his balls had fallen off and to go back and cry himself to sleep? Come and see me again when you’re grown up.

There was something horribly wrong about all this. Cornel’s fingers were easing Jane’s apart, pushing between them. Didn’t like that; made her think of sex. Jane let the hand he was holding go limp, thinking to slide it out of his grip and get the hell out. Her ankle wasn’t broken, only twisted. She could do this. Best to run into the conifers. He was fit and had long legs and he could get to her easily if he could see her. The trees were her only chance. Be like midnight in there.

Cornel said, ‘You ever meet Kenny?’

‘I’ve never even been in one of his shops. Look, Cornel, I didn’t lie. That night at the Swan, I didn’t actually see anything. It was too dark. I just heard some of it. From the bottom of the yard. And, like, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want it to sound like I was trying to humiliate you or anything, OK?’

‘Absolutely fine. Fine, fine, fine.’

‘It’s actually not fine, is it?’

‘It’s answered a few questions.’

‘Like I keep telling you, I just want to see Savitch brought down.’

‘Sure you do.’

‘I do.’

Cornel stood in the space where the wire had been cut, looking down into the clearing as if he was trying to think what had happened next. Jane could see his jaw working in the moonlight, hear his teeth grinding.

‘So it was Kenny took me to the cockfight. Bunch of us were supposed to be going, but in the end it was just him and me, and a bunch of gyppos and local trash. Some experience, though. Booze and coke everywhere. Crazy. Like something from another century. And you get drawn in – it wakes you up, the excitement. Incredible violence. Real energy. Came over with the Romans, cocking, did you know that?’

‘They seem to have got off on cruelty,’ Jane said. ‘The Romans.’

She could feel the sweat forming between their fingers.

‘I was drinking pretty heavily,’ Cornel said. ‘Had a few hundred on this cock and the bastard lost. Felt pretty pissed off, and Kenny says, put it in a sack. Get Barry at the Swan to cook it for you. Losers get eaten. Law of the hunt. Makes perfect sense.’ Cornel looked around. ‘Right. It’s clear. Come on.’

Finally letting go of her hand, but before she could move away and maybe start running, his big hand was around her left buttock, steering her, his fingers lingering on the wet seat of her jeans.

‘Round there. The door’s in front of you.’

A big padlock was hanging loose.

‘Ha… good. Didn’t think they’d have time to fix it.’

Cornel pulled off the lock, tossed it over his shoulder. Jane looked up. It was just a big shed with a convex roof and heavy doors set into a wall of concrete blocks.

‘Are you sure-?’

‘This is it. Go on… push.’

He prodded Jane with his torch and she went up against the doors, which immediately opened a body’s width, and she went stumbling through, down some steps he hadn’t warned her about. Pain jabbed into her ankle. She sank to her knees holding on to the step above her.

Heard the doors close behind her. Didn’t move.

‘Go on,’ Cornel said. ‘Go down.’

‘The dead bird in the sack,’ Barry said, ‘I just thought, get this bastard out of my bar. I’d had a bellyful of Cornel. Never once thought of cockfighting. Gomer sure about this?’

‘Doesn’t usually make mistakes,’ Lol said. ‘Not where Jane’s involved.’

‘Would Savitch do that on his own doorstep? I’d like to think it was him, and, yeah, if Cornel was involved… He’s not exactly compos mentis is he, Cornel? That makes sense – always needs somebody to blame. Fighting cock lets him down, he wants it cooked for his dinner. Juvenile. Well, worse than juvenile. I tell you what happened after that incident with Jane?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Lol felt the pull of the stitches in his wrist, remembering Cornel peering into the bar. Wherever you are, you little bitch, I just want you to know it doesn’t end here.

‘This is while everybody’s talking about Mansel Bull,’ Barry said. ‘Cornel – very drunk, if you recall – goes into the Gents’, presumably in search of paper towels. When he only finds a hot-air hand-dryer, he forces the lock on the cleaner’s room and then he smashes his way into a couple of cupboards to locate the necessary, which he leaves scattered all over the floor. Then he strips off his wet jeans and his underpants and marches upstairs to his room, naked from the waist down. Not long afterwards, a guest opens the door of her room to see a half-naked man pissing down the stairwell.’

Lol winced.

‘What did you do?’

‘I know what I wanted to bleedin’ do, but I’m a genteel hotel manager now. I did a mop-and-bucket job and then I rang the guy at the bank who booked Cornel’s room and said perhaps they should think twice about the kind of people they send on these courses. And he puts me on to another guy, and I tell him what happened, and he apologizes and says, in this meaningful way, to leave it with him. Obviously, I never heard from him again, and Cornel left the next night. At least I thought he’d left. Until he shows up with the bird in the bag.’ Barry finished his beer. ‘Odd that Danny hasn’t told you what they found at The Court.’

‘To be honest, so much has happened since that until you mentioned Danny I’d kind of forgotten about it.’

‘If you’ve got Danny’s mobile, give him a call.’

‘I’ll do it now.’

But when Lol brought out his phone it was playing the riff from ‘Sunny Days’.

‘Lol? That you, man?’

‘Eirion?’

‘I’ve been everywhere,’ Eirion said. ‘Left messages. She doesn’t do this. I mean, you never know which way she’s going to jump, but she doesn’t stand you up. You know?’

‘Jane?’

Annie Howe – you thought you knew how she was wired, but now it was as if something in the system had gone awry. This normally emotionless woman pinched and twisted by some painful, insistent electricity. She’d had a shock and she was still getting aftershocks. Her questions were fluid and focused but some of them seemed disconnected and illogical, and somehow not…

… not police questions.

Merrily drank a second cup of coffee – too much, but she needed to be on top of this.

‘I can’t quite believe what you’re implying,’ Sollers Bull said. ‘You really think I’ve been serving up pedigree livestock for some kind of ritual slaughter?’

‘Somebody has, Mr Bull.’

‘We’re not talking about halal?’

‘We’re not talking about halal.’

‘Then perhaps you should be looking at rustlers rather than poor bloody farmers. That hidden heap of uninvestigated crimes in the countryside.’

Sollers was on his feet, leaning back against the Aga’s chromium bar. Annie Howe sitting next to Merrily at the table, the long coat hanging open.