Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

‘Somebody left it in the pick-up,’ said Michael.

‘What? Just like that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’

Gail thought she recognized where the lie came from. It was the answer given by a defendant in a court case a few years ago — a farmer who had been sent to prison after shooting a burglar in his house. Michael had cut out the newspaper report, and it was still in a drawer somewhere. She’d noticed it only recently.

‘I think you bought the gun from someone when you went to Manchester at the weekend,’ said Gail. ‘I knew you were up to something.’

Dearden shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘And what exactly are you planning to do with it, Michael?’

He didn’t look at her, but stared out of the window as he spoke. ‘If they come again tonight, I’ll be ready for them.’

‘Don’t talk stupid.’

But Gail could see that his hand was shaking slightly where he clutched the stock of the shotgun. He was wound up to a pitch where he might actually do something stupid.

‘I hope to God there are no bullets in it.’

‘Cartridges,’ he said. ‘They’re called cartridges.’

The phone in the hallway began to ring. Michael placed the shotgun casually on the kitchen chair before he went to answer the call. Gail looked at the gun, seeing it properly for the first time, examining it as an actual working implement rather than some anonymous symbol of violence. She had never seen a shotgun before, except in films, wielded by ancient red-faced aristocrats as they blasted away at innocent birds, or a sawn-off version carried over the shoulder of Vinnie Jones. She wondered how it opened to put the bullets in. No, the cartridges. She had a vague picture of something bigger than a bullet, with a thick metal casing and a section that burst open when it was fired. Were these cartridges packed with lead shot, or something like that? Of course they were — that’s why it was called a shotgun.

She had bought a couple of wild duck once from a butcher in Glossop, and she had wondered what the small black pieces of grit were that had almost chipped her teeth as she chewed the meat. She had mentioned it to the butcher next time she had gone into the shop, and he had laughed at her and told her it was the shot. She had been embarrassed to feel that she had shown her ignorance, and she hadn’t asked any more. But she had realized that was the way they shot wildfowl: with shotguns. Those small black pellets caught the bird in a lethal hail, piercing its flesh and lodging themselves in its muscles and internal organs, maybe in its brain. She shuddered. She supposed it was a quick death, for a bird or a small animal. But what would the effect be on a human being?

Gail looked at the shotgun again. It seemed quite old, and almost had the look of an antique. Even she could see that it was a well-made piece of equipment, the stock made of good wood with an attractive grain, well polished. In fact, the wood looked so attractive and smooth that she wanted to touch it. Her fingers were halfway towards a caress before she drew her hand back, feeling almost as if she had dipped it in something slimy. Beyond the stock, the barrel and the mechanism were dark and covered in a sheen of oil. Now she realized she could smell the gun, that in fact she had been smelling it for several minutes. Its odour was a mixture of oil and metal and varnished wood, dark and sharp and tangy. The smell was part of what had given a new, unsafe feeling to the kitchen. It clashed with the scent of the herbs on the pine dresser and the warm aroma from the Aga. Yet somehow it was at home with those smells, too.

She looked a little more closely at the gun, her nostrils flexing at the smell. She had a feeling that a shotgun opened halfway along, that it sort of broke in half, with a hinge just behind the barrels. But she couldn’t see a lever or a switch that she might be able to press to open the hinge. In fact, she flinched at the thought of even trying to open it. No, she wouldn’t dare to touch the shotgun, in case it was loaded, after all. She was sure to touch the wrong thing, and it would go off in her hands. She would fire it into the wall, or through the window. Probably the lead shot would shred the pair of thrushes pecking about on the bird table. She almost laughed. It would be one way of establishing whether the gun was loaded or not.

Most of all, she wished that Michael would come back and take the shotgun away, out of her sight, and out of her kitchen. But at the same time she hoped that he would never touch it again. She wondered fleetingly whether she could hide it before he came back, in the hope that he might then forget it had ever existed.

And who would leave the gun in the pick-up truck? A neighbour? What neighbours did they have? No one that would give them the time of day. Someone who knew the problems they were having? Or was Michael really lying to her about where he had got it? She didn’t think so. She could usually recognize when he was telling the truth. He didn’t have the wit to make up a story like that. His imagination would fail at the effort. And she didn’t think he would know how to go about buying a shotgun for himself, either. As far as she was aware, he was almost as ignorant as she was herself about guns.

That was the only thought that gave her any reassurance. He surely wouldn’t know how to use the shotgun.

Michael Dearden took the shotgun from the chair and held it in front of him like a shield. The position felt wrong. He tried to remember the way he had seen the shooters carrying their guns when they went up after the grouse. He thought they carried them in the crook of their arm, with the barrels pointing downwards for safety. He tried that, but it still didn’t feel right. If the gun were to go off accidentally while he was walking with it, he would shoot his foot off, surely.

Dearden settled for holding the shotgun clutched across his chest at an awkward angle, with the barrels pointing upwards. An accidental shot would now go through the ceiling of the kitchen into the bedroom above. He thought of Gail lying in bed immediately above him, and he put the gun down hastily. But then he remembered that the gun wasn’t even loaded, and he felt ridiculous and useless.

What sort of a man was he that he had no idea how to hold a gun? Boys were supposed to pick it up by instinct, turning any handy bit of wood into an imaginary rifle to play at shooting people. He hoped it was just a matter of getting used to the thing. Maybe he ought to practise firing it. Dearden glanced up at the ceiling again. Perhaps when Gail was out.

Ben Cooper waited in by his phone that night. He was nervous about the call he was expecting from Angie Fry. He had decided what he was going to say to Angie, but couldn’t quite settle on the words he would use.

He poured himself a beer while he waited, sat down in an armchair, got up again, turned on the TV and used the remote to reduce the volume. Randy put his head round the door from the kitchen, hoping that Cooper might be in a suitable position for settling down with for the evening. But the cat seemed to sniff the air suspiciously, turned away and went back towards the conservatory to sleep by the central-heating boiler instead.

When the phone rang, Cooper jumped as if it had been completely unexpected. He grabbed for the remote, remembered the volume was already down, and reluctantly picked up the receiver.

‘What have you decided?’ said Angie’s voice.

‘I’m not going to do it.’

She let out a long breath that sighed intimately down the phone into his ear. ‘Ben, don’t you care about what happens to Diane?’

‘Yes, I do. And that’s the reason I won’t do it. You’ve picked the wrong person, Angie.’