The Hunger Trace (12 page)

The gun had a tight choke. Shot had ruptured the right eye, and smashed the skull like damp wood. There had been no time to scream. Louisa looked with some wonder at the boy’s left ear, which was perfect and intricate, untouched by the damage.

The disturbance which finally pierced Louisa’s shock was a rapidly growing sense that she recognised the boy. How could this be? He wore scruffy clothes: a ragged little coat, grey shorts, socks pulled up to the knees. She guessed him to be five years old. He was weak and dirty. She lifted his left eyelid and saw the stunning brown eye of Anna Cliff. The breath went out of her. But they had taken the children away from her years ago, hadn’t they? Louisa could not understand. ‘Shouldn’t be here,’ she said. Blood ran from the child’s nose, down the side of his face.

Louisa went back to the gate to find David walking away, the gun and his cricket bag lying in the grass.

When she caught up with him, he seemed calm, but he began to cry freely and horribly the moment he looked at her. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said. He spoke violently through his tears, like he was issuing a command, as though, she thought later, he could drive the feeling away. She took him by the shoulders to stop him walking and he dropped to his knees, taking her down with him. He convulsed against her. ‘Maybe he was already dead. Maybe it wasn’t me,’ he said. They both knew better. The blood was fresh. There was no doubt. ‘No, David,’ Louisa said.

‘We’ll lose everything,’ David said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

Louisa rubbed the bones in his lower back, then pulled out his shirt from his trousers, and rubbed the bones again, her hands on his skin. She kissed him on the neck, on the line of his jaw, feeling for the first time the shoots of stubble against her lips.

Once she had made her decision, the flush of power within her was thrilling. ‘Pick up your bag, David. Leave the gun in the grass. Pick up your bag, and go home. Get out of here. Don’t say a word to anyone.’

He tensed for a moment and then gradually broke away from her embrace. He held his breath. She watched him stand up, collect his bag, and walk away across the fields, giving himself time to regain composure. When he had gone, Louisa began to run with her eyes closed. She crossed the canal bridge, ran along the bridleway, and emerged onto the road to find that the world, with its cars and pavements, continued to exist.

She calmed herself in the phonebox by reading the spiky letters carved into the black metal of the coin tray. The initials of lovers. She dialled the emergency services, another flash of power running up through her legs. When the call was answered she licked her cold lips. It was hard to form the shape of the words, but she did. ‘I’ve killed a boy,’ she said.

In late November, Maggie and Louisa rescued Diamond from a pond, where he had bound onto a duck. They arrived back at Drum Hill bedraggled but in high spirits. In the cold hallway, Maggie took off her boots and jeans. Her wet socks slapped against the stone floor. ‘You’re completely dry!’ Maggie said, pointing at Louisa.

‘That’s because I wear proper boots, waterproof trousers and a technical coat,’ Louisa said, smiling.

‘
A technical coat
,’ Maggie said, with a wry nod. She took off her top, revealing a crosshatch of scratches from the branches overhanging the pond. She wore matching underwear – sheer pink pants with an ornate leaf design at the waistband. Louisa turned away.

Maggie gathered her wet clothes, and said, ‘Come on. I’ve got something to show you.’

She bounded up the stairs on the balls of her feet. Louisa watched her go. She thought of David walking away from her in the field. Hawking with Maggie brought the memories back. It made her want to leave, but she forced herself to climb the stairs.

By the time Louisa reached the second floor, Maggie was wearing a dressing gown. She handed Louisa a towel to dry her hair and turned on the TV and VCR.

It took Louisa a moment to discern the grainy grey image of her van pulling into Morrison’s car park. Moments later, the herd of ibex trotted into shot.

‘How did you get this?’ Louisa said.

‘I wrangled it off the security guard. Look.’

The picture quality was poor, but Louisa could make out the single ibex kid bolting for the bank, and her own laboured pursuit. Maggie followed, bending at the waist.

‘What were you doing? Were you sick?’ Louisa said, pointing at the screen.

‘No. I was laughing.’

‘At me?’

‘Well. It was really funny,’ Maggie said.

If she squinted at the screen, Louisa could see the end of it all, her body wrapped around the bucking kid, and Maggie waving a hoof at the camera. A fine grey morning. The date and time were incorrectly recorded in the corner of the screen as 1 January.

When Louisa looked up from the TV, Maggie had left the room. Louisa wandered out into the hallway, and heard running water. She found Maggie in the bathroom. The door was open, and Maggie was dabbing awkwardly at the scratches with cotton wool, her dressing gown pulled down to the elbow. The place smelled of TCP.

‘Ouch,’ Louisa said, startling Maggie. ‘You need a hand with that?’

‘No, ta. I think someone else would be too delicate.’

‘Not something I’m known for,’ Louisa said. She stood on the threshold for a moment, unsure of whether to enter the bathroom until Maggie half-turned.

Louisa came to the mirror, took a tube of Zovirax from her pocket and smeared it on the cold-sore which had formed over the gash on her lip. They smiled knowingly at each other in the glass; the brown of Maggie’s eyes and the pale green of Louisa’s were the only colours picked out by the dim natural light. Maggie took some foundation from a little make-up bag. ‘We’re like a pair of girls getting ready to go out on the town,’ Maggie said.

‘It’s been a while since I’ve done that,’ Louisa said. A hundred years, she thought.

‘Yeah, me too. Don’t remember it being quite like this.’

‘Cuts and cold-sores? No,’ Louisa said.

‘Good company though.’

Louisa nodded.

‘You know, next month they’re having a Christmas do in the Church Hall,’ Maggie said. ‘Rosie Wicks from the pub asked if we’d come.’

‘I sincerely doubt that I am invited.’

‘You are. Rosie asked specifically.’

Louisa felt herself becoming angry. There was another feeling, too, a sort of jealousy. ‘It’s not my kind of thing. Those people.’

‘They’re okay,’ Maggie said.

‘Nobody is stopping
you
. Go. If you like,’ Louisa said.

‘No,’ Maggie said, still smiling. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother.’

Louisa sighed. She was pleased that Maggie would decline, though she felt a little guilty about it. Maggie flattened her long fingers on the sink and Louisa recalled the threadbare borrowed glove her friend used when out in the field. She rushed out and came back with a piece of paper, took a make-up pencil from Maggie’s bag. She placed the paper on the toilet lid. ‘Put your hand down on this,’ Louisa said.

‘Louisa, you make the strangest requests,’ Maggie said.

But she eventually complied, kneeling. Louisa got down beside her and traced the hand onto the paper, the pencil’s tip spreading to create a thick line. Maggie flicked up her index finger involuntarily when the pencil touched the soft skin at the base. She laughed and shook her head. ‘Great,’ Louisa said, when she had finished. She took the impression and stood. Maggie rose and went back to the mirror. Louisa walked to the door but turned back. She noticed a small mark on Maggie’s neck, higher than the cuts she had treated, and different in nature. It was a fading contusion, with a speckle of burst capillaries. Little red dots on a smoky blue patch.

‘Sorry Louisa, did you need the toilet?’ Maggie asked.

Louisa did not know how long she had been standing there.

*    *    *

Colour drained from the sky like blood from a clenched fist, leaving them with a high dome, smooth and cold as polished granite. On the ground, winter revealed the secret structures – trees like whalebone corsets, the bare wiring of the undergrowth, nowhere to hide but the soil, and yet everything gone.

One afternoon, they fed salmon to the otters, whose electric squeals rose from the converted well as they spooled and dived.

‘I’ve got plans for this place, Lou,’ Maggie said. ‘It’s overcrowded, now. I want to cut the number of species, widen the enclosures.’

She had read of the psycho-pathologies observed in captive animals: sexual disorders, auto-aggression, the consumption of faeces and the paintwork from cages. She had the drawings for the improvements in her bag.

‘Sounds like a decent idea,’ Louisa said.

‘You’re the first person to say that. Most people reckon I should leave the park as it is. They say this was how David wanted it.’

Louisa shrugged. ‘David was . . .’ She struggled to complete the sentence. ‘He was a good man. But he didn’t know anything about animals.’

Maggie looked down into the water. The rings of light on the brown surface made it look like melting celluloid. ‘I’ll need some help,’ she said. ‘Someone I can trust.’

Louisa opened her mouth as if to object but then stopped. ‘Okay,’ she said.

‘I’ve got to convince the staff first,’ Maggie said.

‘Maybe it’s best if you handle the people side of things,’ Louisa said.

They found Philip Cassidy helping to fit a heavy anti-intruder gate on the entrance to the main enclosures. The flattened tips of his thick fingers curled through the wire, and when he put down the door, the imprints remained.

‘Phil, I need you to organise a meeting for all the staff at the end of the month. I’ll be outlining some changes we’re going to make to the park,’ Maggie said.

‘
We?’
Philip said, with a quick glance at Louisa.

‘We, the staff,’ Maggie said.

‘Right-o,’ said Philip. ‘I’ll sort it. Nothing too drastic, I hope.’

Maggie put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m promoting you to MD,’ she said, with mock seriousness.

Philip smiled at the joke and straightened an imaginary tie at his neck. He rubbed the white stubble on his cheeks, and leaned towards Maggie, away from Louisa. ‘Some more news this morning. A couple of missing animals found. Jack rabbits.’

‘And?’ said Maggie.

‘Dead,’ he said.

Maggie closed her eyes. Philip continued. ‘Also, yesterday there was a sighting of what could have been the ibex on a building site near the city. Climbing on rubble. I sent a couple of lads up there, but they didn’t see oat.’

‘Okay. Thanks Philip. Appreciate it,’ Maggie stroked his arm and the two women departed for Louisa’s cottage. After a few strides, Maggie turned to Louisa, laughing and said, ‘I think he likes you.’

‘I think he’d like to feed me to the pigs,’ Louisa said.

‘Do you ever think about it? Meeting someone, I mean?’ Maggie said.

Louisa shook her head. ‘You?’

‘Too busy with this place. And Christopher. He’s the man in my life at the moment.’

‘That’s a lot of man,’ Louisa said.

Maggie laughed. She looked at Louisa, the root-like tangles of her light hair. Once, Maggie had wanted to befriend Louisa for her connections to David, for the prized vault of her memories. These days she saw Louisa as a friend in her own right.

The cottage came into view above the contours of the land, and the hawks began to scream, as if they sensed the women approaching.

*    *    *

Louisa poured another whisky and watched Maggie spread the plans on the kitchen table. The wintery light bent through the coloured glass of the lightshade, and made green and orange patterns on the paper. Louisa studied Maggie’s neck, but her curls had fallen over the mark there.

The idea, Maggie said, was to restrict the park to animals currently or formerly resident in the British Isles. Like Noah’s Ark, Louisa thought.

‘I’m changing the name to Drum Hill
Conservation Centre
,’ Maggie said, ‘And I’ve started to apply for state funding. The admission receipts are a pittance, anyway. There’s hardly any visitors.’

‘You can’t rely on people forever,’ Louisa said.

‘Well, I figure they’ll come back after the changes,’ Maggie said.

Louisa nodded. Maggie’s plans seemed solid, progressive, and Louisa felt a flare of excitement along with her usual caution. She knew the consequences of friendship and its bitter twists. She was on her third drink, though, and that helped.

‘I’ve been thinking about your breeding programme, too,’ Maggie said. They had been to an autumn sale with falcons lined up on Astroturfed bars under tents, and Arab men wrapped in fur coats drinking tea while their agents bought the palest ashgar saker for twenty grand. ‘I think you should do it,’ Maggie said.

‘I don’t have the capital. It’s beyond my means.’

‘It’s not beyond
ours.
’ Maggie said. ‘David put aside some money, and after the work on the park, there’ll still be—’

‘I couldn’t. I couldn’t involve you financially. It would be an obligation, and . . .’ Louisa trailed off. A month ago she would have dismissed such an offer immediately, but things had changed.