Graeme Cameron - Normal - The Most Original Thriller Of The Year

The snow had returned by the time I was back on the road. It came down in a dense flurry, blanketing the ground in minutes and forming a bright, focus-bothering tunnel as I drove.

The road through the forest was unusually quiet, even accounting for the weather; I was making my own tracks and hadn’t passed another vehicle since leaving town. At times like this, unlikely as it seems, it’s perfectly possible to feel at one with nature from inside a heated van.

Two miles after the trees moved in to hug the road, I pulled onto the unmade Forestry Commission trail that follows the main railway line. It’s used in fair weather by dog walkers and cyclists and is inaccessible to motor vehicles, thanks to a steel pole secured to its trestles by a chain and padlock. Fortunately, I have a key.

I locked the gate behind me and, swallowing my regret at disturbing the virgin snow, guided the van along the rutted track for the half mile that would take me out of sight of the main road.

This is what winters were like when I was a child. The snow shin-deep on the ground. Soft, delicate flakes falling around me in their thousands, settling in my hair and gently tickling my face. The air so crisp and still as to dull the cold. Breath rising in front of my eyes, floating up toward a pure, white sky. The soft crunching underfoot with each deliberate step. The blissful, unbreakable silence.

Back then, winters were long and filled with all kinds of mystery. There were the treacherous road trips with my father to far-flung outposts in rented cars. The old stables along the driveway became an arctic shipwreck; discarded junk on high shelves was pirate treasure. And then there was the birch wood beyond the garden, where the ground stayed dry enough to sit and read under a canopy of blankets, and where the shouts and screams from the house could never reach.

Today, though, I had little time to reflect. I’d parked the van where the track meets a swathe of open heathland cut through the forest. From here the ground slopes away toward the railway line, beyond which is a steep drop into a wooded marsh, which lies alongside the river. Where I was standing, the ground falls sharply into a tree-lined crater, about a hundred yards across; at the bottom is a shallow pond fed by a tributary of the river, which winds its way through the marsh and under the railway. Down here the line is supported by a brick tunnel, built when the railway was laid in the 1840s to allow the passage of boats into what was then a working flint pit. Repeatedly pinned and reinforced over the years in a valiant yet inevitably vain struggle against gravity and decay, it shudders and wails with the passing of every train.

Reaching this place requires care even in ideal conditions. In deep snow, carrying a dead weight, it’s a pain in the arse. I had to make two trips, leaving the heavy rubble sack beneath the bridge and returning for the smaller bags and shovel. This time of year, unfortunately, calls for something of a compromise. There’s plenty of good ground out here, firm enough not to be turned over by the occasional trampling; after all, what’s accessible to me is accessible to you, too. However, in these temperatures it’s impossible to dig a hole in it. Any ground soft enough to dig in the depths of winter will be all but impassable in the summer, and therefore, almost inevitably remote and overgrown and generally no place to be carrying luggage.

The error giving rise to the term “shallow grave” is a classic one made time and again by panicked first-timers. It’s common for them to underestimate the time and effort involved in digging up a forest floor; the net result of this is, generally, a very small hole. In order to adequately cover the body, they are forced to build up a sizeable mound of earth from the surrounding area. Since this looks just like a shallow grave, they will then attempt to disguise it with a layer of bracken and moss. And of course, at the first sign of a stiff breeze, the toes are poking out.

Today, I’d be going five feet deep. This could take all winter.

CHAPTER THREE

In death, my father finally smiled. He was still warm when I left him the first time, his skin still soft, cheeks flushed. The blood pooled in the sawdust under his neck, tiny woodchips floating, dancing with one another, drawn together into little snowflake patterns that mimicked the ones still melting into my coat.

I knelt over him, searching his eyes for a flicker of life. The first and only time this strong, proud man would look up at me—his last chance to look at me at all—and yet still unable to truly look at me.

In those few moments, I saw the full range of his emotions pass across his face. The pain of betrayal. The regret of self-inflicted failure. Perplexity at the fascinations of a small boy. Frustration at the demands for attention. Disappointment, anger and loathing. Fear.

After breakfast, I returned and sat beside him, shivering for hours on end, watching the blood congeal and his face wax over. Around midday, the snow on the roof became top-heavy and slid to the ground, startling me. Every now and then a curious vulpine nose snuffled along the gap beneath the door. Otherwise, I had only the silence and the cold for company.

By nightfall he was cool to the touch, his fingers curled into rigid claws, and my hunger got the better of me.

I stumbled back through the garden to the warmth of the house, praying all the way that I’d find my dinner in the oven, my mother there to make sure I ate my vegetables before she tucked me into bed with the promise that tomorrow, everything would be just fine. But I’d seen the look in her eyes when she’d kissed me goodbye that morning, a life and sparkle that I’d never seen there before. Deep down, as I’d watched her grab her bags and sail out of the house, leaving me alone with my porridge, I’d known this exit was different from all the others. This one felt final.

I did the only thing I knew how. I gorged myself on shoo-fly pie and waited for someone to find me. Funny thing is, they never really did.

* * *

Preheat the oven to 260 degrees centigrade.

Juice six oranges; zest two of the rinds and roughly chop the rest. Take two medium-size fillets from the bird of your choosing and make an incision in each. Insert equal measures of the chopped rind and place the whole ensemble in a baking tray with half an inch of water. Bake in the oven until the skin is golden brown and lightly crisped, then turn it down to 150. It’s going to take about an hour.

While that’s cooking, take your zest and the freshly squeezed juice and pop them in a pan along with two-thirds of a cup of sugar. Place the mixture over a medium-to-high heat and reduce it until you’re left with about a quarter of the volume. Throw in a tablespoon of bitters, and set the pan aside.

Boil two cups of chicken stock in a separate pan, then add the orange mixture and simmer it for ten more minutes.

When the meat is done, drain the fat from the baking tray and place the tray on the stove. Pour a cup of Grand Marnier into the tray and cook off the alcohol. Make sure you’ve got a wooden spoon to hand as you will need to scrape the bottom of the tray almost continuously. Next, pour a cup of the orange sauce you made earlier into the tray and cook it for a minute or so.

Finally, remove the orange rinds from the steaks and combine the orange sauce with the remaining juices from the baking tray. Serve with a simple accompaniment of new potatoes and runner beans, et voilà. Sarà l’orange.

I built my garage large enough to comfortably accommodate a full-size van and three cars. An automatic climate-control system maintains a constant temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenheit and minimizes humidity. Twin reinforced canopy doors are operated by remote control, which utilizes a double rolling-code system to ensure maximum peace of mind. I have three transmitters; I keep one on my keychain, and the spares are in a locked box in one of the kitchen cupboards, along with a collection of souvenir door keys amassed over time. The key to the box is on my keychain. Note to self.