Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

The woman said, ‘I’ll report you to the committee,’ though in her heart she must have known that the committee were also dead.

‘I’m sorry to dash.’ Magnus swung a leg over the saddle of the Honda. ‘You really have made an amazing job in what has been a tremendously challenging year.’

He must have hit the right note of pomposity and apology because the woman’s mood shifted and she smiled. ‘Do you really think so?’

‘No doubt about it.’

Her smile widened. ‘Please come back. We can have tea outside if the weather holds up.’

Her change of temper was too swift to last, but Magnus risked a question. ‘Was your husband a hunter?’

The woman looked confused. ‘Robin was a member of the RSPB.’

Magnus said, ‘The what?’

‘The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. My husband was a bird-watcher. He opposed hunting in all its forms. He and Mr Perry had a falling-out about it one night at the White Hart. Mr Perry’s a firebrand, but Robin stood up to him. I was worried they were going to come to blows.’

‘Where does Mr Perry live?’

‘Sycamore Cottage, opposite the school, but I’m afraid he’s dead too. I took a clematis from his garden. It’s thriving.’

Magnus dislodged the Honda’s kick-rest. ‘Congratulations on your win.’

‘Thank you.’ The woman’s mood was shifting again. She sounded bemused. ‘I’m not sure what I’ll do now that the competition is over. It’s given me something to focus on.’

‘You need to start preparing for next year.’

She treated Magnus to a smile that said she knew he was patronising her and bore him no ill will. ‘I don’t think there’s much point in that, do you, dear?’

The primary school was a low, flat-roofed building with abandoned cars jammed across its playground and a makeshift sign marked Quarantine Centre hanging from its railings. Magnus remembered the cattle barn he and Jacob had stumbled into, the decaying, swollen-bellied cows, and felt an urge to set fire to the school.

He wheeled the Honda across an empty zebra crossing to Sycamore Cottage. The garden was treeless, but the name was etched in gold in the fanlight above the door and there was a large tree stump in the centre of the lawn that had been sawn into a seat. Magnus guessed the tree had been felled for fear its roots might creep into the foundations. But the cottage had been well named. New sycamore shoots were sprouting, floppy-leaved and resilient, among the weeds in the neglected flower beds and it would not be long before one of them took hold.

Something about the dead-eyed windows of the school unnerved Magnus. He rang the doorbell of the cottage and waited a moment before wheeling the Honda into the back garden and breaking in. There was no sign of Mr Perry, but he had set his burglar alarm before he left and it rang, ear-splitting and urgent, as Magnus made his way through the house.

The interior looked like it might have been inspired by a magazine feature on country living, or maybe a fox-hunting-themed pub. Prints of beagles lined the hallway and a brass hunting horn hung at a jaunty angle over the fireplace. Magnus’s low spirits sank another notch. He had been hoping for someone who stalked deer, a lone predator in need of stamina and keen sites, but Mr Perry had been a fox-hunter, the kind of man who needed back-up from a pack of hounds and a mob of toffs. Magnus knocked a picture of red-coated huntsmen on horses from the wall and ground his heel into the glass. The burglar alarm was pulling his already raw nerves to the surface and stretching them to snapping point. He clamped his hands over his ears and went in search of a gun cabinet.

He found it in the sitting room and smashed its lock with a bronze model of a vixen tending her cubs. The quartet of rifles inside was better quality than the ones he had already collected, but their range was still less than he had hoped for. Magnus sat back on his haunches. The sound of the alarm was enough to make a man shoot himself. The thought bothered him and he strode through to the hallway, broke open the alarm’s junction box and prised out the battery pack powering it. The silence made his ears ring.

Magnus whispered, ‘Mr Perry, I’m going to leave the doors to your house open for foxes to move in.’

He propped the guns in a corner of the hallway and jogged upstairs, his boots clumping. Two bedrooms and a bathroom led off a square landing. The smallest of the pair had been shelved and turned into a library. Magnus lifted a set of binoculars from the windowsill and then went into Mr Perry’s bedroom and investigated his wardrobes. The man had been a few inches larger than Magnus around the waist and a couple of inches longer in the inside leg, but it was nothing that a belt and folded trouser cuffs would not fix. He had dressed as Magnus hoped he would, in country colours, muted browns, greens and greys that blended with the landscape. Magnus ditched his jeans and T-shirt and pulled on a pair of khaki walking trousers with zip pockets, a lightweight shirt and a waistcoat equipped with bullet pouches. A black hooded tracksuit was folded neatly on a shelf. Magnus shoved it in a bag along with a navy ski cap and a couple of changes of socks.

He poked around looking for anything else that might be useful. A cardboard carton was pressed in at the back of the wardrobe, behind a rack of shoes. Magnus slid it out, surprised at the weight of it, and undid the flaps. The box was full of magazines: Muscle Power, Physique, Adonis . Judging by the hairstyles and skinny briefs sported by the pumped-up men on their covers they dated from the seventies and eighties. Magnus closed the box and slid it back where he had found it, feeling shabby.

He was pulling on his boots when he heard a door slam. Fuck . Mr Perry’s rifles were propped downstairs in the hallway. Magnus scanned the bedroom for a hiding place. The wardrobes and double bed took up most of the space. The wardrobes were freestanding and Magnus feared that if he hid inside one, it might topple forward, trapping him for ever like a bride in some gothic tale. The footsteps were on the stairs now. ‘Hello?’ It was a man’s voice. ‘Is somebody there?’

Magnus took two paces, swift and silent, to the window, but it was a long drop with no convenient outhouse or clinging ivy to aid his descent. Across the landing, the door to Mr Perry’s small library opened and closed. A floorboard creaked. Magnus slid beneath the bed an instant before the bedroom door opened.

‘Hello?’ The voice was male and hesitant. Magnus lay on his front in the cool dust-bound shadows. Mr Perry had stored things under the bed, and there was barely space for him. The stranger opened and closed each of the wardrobes. He said, ‘I think someone may have been here.’ His voice sounded less cautious.

Magnus felt the mattress dip as the man sat on the bed. His shoes were brown moccasins, mid-price and unremarkable, the kind of shoe a middle-aged man who did not notice fashion might wear. The stock of a rifle rested next to them, set upright like a walking stick. Magnus held his breath, steeling himself to get to his feet.

‘I know you’re there,’ the voice said and there was something in its tone that made Magnus stay where he was. This was how prisoners felt in the face of death, desperate for one more gasp of air.

‘Are you under the bed?’ A tease had entered the voice. ‘Shall I look?’

A motorcycle engine sounded throatily outside in the street. The man swore and started to his feet. He ran out of the room and down the stairs, slamming the front door behind him.

Magnus let out a groan. He stretched out a trembling hand, feeling for whatever it was Mr Perry had hidden beneath the bed, and touched what might have been a musical instrument case. He crawled out, dragging it with him. The lid was grimed with dust. He undid its clips and flipped it open. The rifle inside was a sniper’s dream. Relief combined with the weight of having to carry his plan through was too much for Magnus and he let out a sob. ‘Mr Perry, I take back everything.’ He rubbed his eyes against the bedspread and tried to make himself laugh. ‘Never judge a book by its cover.’ Magnus reached beneath the bed and pulled out a box of illegally stored bullets. ‘Unless the book in question is by Tom of Finland.’