Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13 - WINNER OF THE 2017 COSTA NOVEL AWARD

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Dedication 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Jon McGregor About the Publisher

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published by 4th Estate in 2017

Copyright © 2017 Jon McGregor

Cover photographs © Shutterstock

Photograph © Sandra Salvas

Extract from ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright renewed 1982 by Holly Stephens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and Faber and Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.

Jon McGregor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008204853

Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008204877

Version: 2018-05-01

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

– Wallace Stevens

i.m.

Alistair McGregor

1945–2015

Cover

Title Page Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Dedication 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Jon McGregor About the Publisher

Copyright Copyright Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Dedication 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Jon McGregor About the Publisher 4th Estate An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.4thEstate.co.uk This eBook first published by 4th Estate in 2017 Copyright © 2017 Jon McGregor Cover photographs © Shutterstock Photograph © Sandra Salvas Extract from ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright renewed 1982 by Holly Stephens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and Faber and Faber Ltd. All rights reserved. Jon McGregor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008204853 Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008204877 Version: 2018-05-01

Epigraph Epigraph Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Dedication 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Jon McGregor About the Publisher The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. – Wallace Stevens

Dedication Dedication Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Dedication 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Jon McGregor About the Publisher i.m. Alistair McGregor 1945–2015

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Jon McGregor

About the Publisher

They gathered at the car park in the hour before dawn and waited to be told what to do. It was cold and there was little conversation. There were questions that weren’t being asked. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca Shaw. When last seen she’d been wearing a white hooded top. A mist hung low across the moor and the ground was frozen hard. They were given instructions and then they moved off, their boots crunching on the stiffened ground and their tracks fading behind them as the heather sprang back into shape. She was five feet tall, with dark-blonde hair. She had been missing for hours. They kept their eyes down and they didn’t speak and they wondered what they might find. The only sounds were footsteps and dogs barking along the road and faintly a helicopter from the reservoirs. The helicopter had been out all night and found nothing, its searchlight skimming across the heather and surging brown streams. Jackson’s sheep had taken the fear and scattered through a broken gate, and he’d been up all hours bringing them back. The mountain-rescue teams and the cave teams and the police had found nothing, and at midnight a search had been called. It hadn’t taken much to raise the volunteers. Half the village was out already, talking about what could have happened. This was no time of year to have gone up on the hill, it was said. Some of the people who come this way don’t know how sharply the weather can turn. How quickly darkness falls. Some of them don’t seem to know there are places a mobile phone won’t work. The girl’s family had come up for the New Year, and were staying in one of the barn conversions at the Hunter place. They’d come running into the village at dusk, shouting. It was a cold night to have been out on the hill. She’s likely just hiding, people said. She’ll be down in a clough. Turned her ankle. She’ll be aiming to give her parents a fright. There was a lot of this. People just wanted to open their mouths and talk, and they didn’t much mind what came out. By first light the mist had cleared. From the top of the moor when people turned they could see the village: the beech wood and the allotments, the church tower and the cricket ground, the river and the quarry and the cement works by the main road into town. There was plenty of ground to cover, and so many places she could be. They moved on. There was an occasional flash of light from the traffic on the motorway, just visible along the horizon. The reservoirs were a flat metallic grey. A thick band of rain was coming in. The ground was softer now, the oily brown water seeping up around their boots. A news helicopter flew low along the line of volunteers. It was a job not to look up and wave. Later the police held a press conference in the Gladstone, but they had nothing to announce beyond what was already known. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca Shaw. She was thirteen years old. When last seen she’d been wearing a white hooded top with a navy-blue body-warmer, black jeans, and canvas shoes. She was five feet tall, with straight, dark-blonde, shoulder-length hair. Members of the public were urged to contact the police if they saw anyone fitting the description. The search would resume when the weather allowed. In the evening over the square there was a glow of television lights and smoke rising from generators and raised voices coming from the yard behind the pub. Doubts were beginning to emerge.