Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Jesus, what a mess,’ Sam breathed.

‘The cruel bastards,’ Zita said. ‘Who’d do a thing like this?’

‘Who indeed? Jud echoed. ‘Just one thing, though: where’s the back end of the cow?’

‘Poachers?’ Sam suggested.

‘Messy way to steal a cow, isn’t it?’ Jud said, thoughtfully. ‘You’d think it’d be easier to steal the whole animal and butcher it later. And how on Earth do you cut a living cow that size so neatly in the middle of a field. Look, someone could have come along with a huge axe and bang! ’ He mimed chopping with one arm. ‘Sliced cleanly in two, like you’d cut an apple down the middle.’

The flies buzzed even more hungrily to form a blue-black mist above the exposed internal organs. Sam could smell the raw meat. ‘You said there was something else, Jud?’

‘There is. Follow me.’

They followed again.

Jud talked back over his shoulder at them. ‘Are you noticing what I’m noticing?’

Sam looked down at the grass where Jud was pointing as he walked. ‘I don’t see anything,’ Sam said. ‘Only grass. What is it?’

‘Bear with me. I don’t want to lead you to any conclusions, if I can help it. I’d prefer that you reach them yourselves.’

Sam stared hard at the crisp, spongy grass. He saw nothing unusual.

Zita, folding her arms, looked too, sharp eyes probing.

She didn’t say anything, but Sam had the feeling she was seeing more than him.

‘Here’s another curio,’ Jud said, like he was pointing out an interesting archaeological site. ‘Take a close look at that bottle on the grass.’

Sam dutifully looked. ‘It’s broken,’ he said.

‘Not broken.’ Jud pointed one of his thick fingers at it but didn’t touch it, any more than a cop would touch anything on a fresh crime scene. Sam realised that for Jud the cow and the bottle were evidence. Evidence of what, exactly, he didn’t know. ‘Take a closer look,’ Jud invited. ‘Does it look broken to you?’

Crouching, Zita peered at the bottle where it lay, minus its neck. ‘It looks as if it’s been cut with some kind of saw.’

‘A clean cut at that. In fact, would you say as clean a cut as whatever bisected that cow?’

Zita nodded.

‘A cut cow? A cut bottle?’ Sam asked.

‘We’re amassing some strange anomalies here, aren’t we?’ It was the kind of thing someone could have said with a broad grin. Only Jud’s face was deadly serious. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘just a little farther. I’ve one more thing to show you.’

It took only a moment to reach it.

‘Oh, my God.’ Zita put her hand to her mouth and her eyes went wide.

It was the front part of a bike. For an instant Sam wasn’t sure why she found a bike’s handlebars, connected by the fork to little more than a half a front wheel, so shocking. It lay on the ground, part of the tyre lying beside it like a black snake. But then he looked more closely.

This time he saw.

This was worse than half a cow spilling its insides back there on the turf.

There was a human hand still grasping one of the handlebars. The attached forearm had been severed midway along. A watch still encircled a wrist that was slick and red with blood. The fingers had uncurled a little from the rubber handgrip on the handle-bars. Sam found himself hypnotised by those still fingers. The fingernails gleamed a bloodless white in the sun. Fine hairs bristled across the back of the hand, which was suntanned and dotted here and there with brown freckles.

‘Again, you’ll notice a clean cut,’ Jud said in a flat voice. ‘It looks as if a surgeon’s amputated it, doesn’t it? No ragged edges, no torn skin… Are you all right?’

Zita had turned away from it.

‘Just give me a moment,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘I’ll be fine.’

A thought occurred to Sam. ‘What time does the watch say?’

Jud crouched down, tilting his head to one side. ‘Ten to three.’

‘The same as mine.’

‘And mine.’

‘Jesus H Christ,’ Sam murmured, staring at the front of the bike frame where the hand still gripped the handlebars. Hell, the thing could have been a perverse work of art. ‘Not a pretty sight, is it?’

‘No, not one bit,’ Jud agreed.

‘I guess this one’s for the police to sort the nuts from the screws.’

Jud shook his grey head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve a feeling this might be one case that’s beyond them.’

Zita said, ‘Jud?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s the grass, isn’t it? It’s two different lengths.’ She looked at Sam. ‘Don’t you see it?’

Sam stared down at the ground.

Call me dense, stupid or just plain myopic , he told himself, mystified. But he saw nothing wrong with the grass.

He gave a puzzled shrug.

Jud walked away from the severed hand half a dozen paces or so, then he stood and looked back in the direction of the amphitheatre and the river.

‘When I was a boy,’ he said, ‘the fair would come every year to the park. I enjoyed it like any other boy – or girl, come to that. But what fascinated me was when they packed up the rides and went. On the way to school on the morning after they’d gone, I’d rush to the park and stand and look at the grass where the caravans and the rides had been. To me it seemed… I don’t know, magical. You could see the ghost patterns of the rides and the caravans and the candy floss stalls in the grass. Do you remember? The grass was always longer where the rides had been. You could stand in a perfect circle of longer grass where the roundabouts had stood. There was nothing magical about it, of course. The grass had just been forced where it had been covered by the rides and the caravans. It had grown faster than the rest of the grass. It was a paler green, too.’

Sam looked back down at the turf.

‘This is all the same shade of green,’ said Zita. ‘But you see it now, don’t you, Sam?’

Sam looked. ‘I see it,’ he said, feeling a burst of wonder. ‘It’s longer at this side of the bike than the other. By no more than half an inch. But it’s definitely longer.’

‘You’ll find it’s the same at the bottle with its neck cut off and the half a cow.’ Jud rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Also, I’d bet you a week’s pay packet that you’d find the line that marks the boundary between the two different grass lengths runs exactly – exactly – along the line of the cuts in the bottle, the cow and that poor devil’s arm.’

‘You’ve got an explanation for that?’ Sam asked.

‘I have.’ Jud nodded. ‘And, Mr Baker, Miss Prestwyck, I’m pretty sure it’s the same explanation sitting right there in the front of your minds right now.’

Zita said slowly, ‘It’s time, isn’t it? It’s all gone wrong.’

Instead of going to the pub on the main road as they had originally planned, Sam and Zita returned to the amphitheatre with Jud Campbell. The sun blazed down. A heat haze shimmered across the grass, blurring and deforming the once straight lines of telegraph poles that marched across the meadow. Tourists were sitting on benches or on the grass. A good number had bought cold drinks from the visitors’ centre.

It seemed that none of the cars or the coach would start. At least three of the cars had their bonnets propped open. A man wiped his oily hands with a rag while staring at the engine, clearly at a loss over which cable or wire to push or pull next.

That atmosphere of agitated confusion seemed to have spent itself. People looked calmer. The man in the Dracula cape had bought a Coke from the vending machine and, as far as Sam could see, seemed pretty much in control of himself