Three Bags Full (15 page)

“Here’s a nice piece of work! Why all this nonsense was necessary”—the butcher pointed to McCarthy’s upper body—“I can’t imagine. Just makes ’em nervous.”

“It’s unnatural.” George shook his head. “A real murder. Who’d have believed it?”

The butcher looked at George in alarm. “We really ought to go to the police.”

“Just a moment,” said George. “Just a moment. We must think first. We’ve stumbled into a right old mess here. Think, McCarthy of all people. What might that connect up with? Who would they suspect? Who’d have had a reason to kill McCarthy?”

“Josh, of course, for one. Sam, Patrick, and Gerry,” said the butcher. “Michael and Healy.”

George nodded. “Eddie, Dan, Brian, O’Connor, Sean, and Nora.”

“Adrian and Little Dennis,” said the butcher.

“Leary.”

“Harry and Gabriel.”

“You for another,” said George.

“You too,” said the butcher quickly. “Well, everyone, really. Except maybe for Lilly.” The butcher waved his hand dismissively.

George bent over McCarthy again. “Just about anyone could have done it.”

Ham nodded. “Some would’ve done it better, some worse.”

“You’d have done it better,” said George. “If we go to the police now, the first thing we’ll have to prove is that it wasn’t us. We need…” He pushed his cap back on his head. Melmoth knew that George was thinking hard when he pushed his cap back on his head. “We need an alibi. The only question is, when for? Can you say roughly how long he’s been dead?”

“Hmm,” said the butcher. “I keep them in the cold store, of course. But it’s not what you’d call hot here either. So supposing he was a pig, I’d say at least …hmm…let’s put it at four days. Only if you’re lazy, of course, and don’t process the animal at once, and then you’re in trouble.”

“And suppose he’d been in the warm for some time and he’d only just been brought here?”

“Even then,” said the butcher. “At least three days. See these bruises? Two days for them to come out, and as noticeable as this…three days, I’d say.”

George’s cap was pushed even farther back on his head. “Three days. Three days ago was Sunday. I was out at the caravan, thought I’d have a nice restful day for once. And you were probably sitting alone watching the telly?”

Ham nodded, embarrassed.

“A bad business, a very bad business,” muttered George. “If we report this now they’ll turn our homes over. And they’ll search the whole caravan. That’s all I need. Me, end up in jail because of McCarthy? Not likely! I say we leave him here. The next comer can find him!”

George turned and marched firmly off the way they had come. The butcher whistled to his dogs and followed him with long, hasty strides. Melmoth stood beside McCarthy and watched them go. Even in his deep and woolly weariness he was surprised. The carrion eater in flight from a dead body! Who’d have believed it? Melmoth watched his certain death trudging away again.
Trudge, trudge. Stone and bone. Trudge.

The butcher stopped and turned. A deathly cold crawled over Melmoth’s horns and into his head. He couldn’t bear to die again today. First the fear, sour and steamy, then courage in the face of death, rigid but clear, then relief, soft and soupy, and now fear again. Melmoth knew he couldn’t be brave a second time. Not now.

“What’s the matter?” asked George. He had stopped too.

“I have this funny kind of feeling,” said the butcher. “As if we’d overlooked something.”

Melmoth froze.

George laughed bitterly. “If you ask me, we’d have done better to overlook a whole lot more.”

But the carrion eater was on the move. Coming Melmoth’s way.
Trudge, trudge, stone and bone.

“There’s something wrong,” muttered the butcher. “Something doesn’t fit. If I only knew what!”

Melmoth closed his eyes. This was the moment of final surrender to the carrion eater. Any moment he’d remember what was wrong, and then …Well, it wasn’t much use keeping his eyes closed.
Trudge. Trudge. Over stone
. Melmoth could smell the hot, rancid scent of the butcher coming toward him.

“In the shop, in the shop,” muttered Ham. “In the shop today, three pieces of pork loin for Kate, then Josh comes for his ten kilos of minced beef, he needs it for the pub, and there was twenty sausages for Sam’s birthday—no, that wasn’t it. Josh, Josh and his ten kilos of mince.”

The butcher stopped again, so suddenly that George stumbled into him and swore.

“Damn it, Ham, are you off your head?”

But Ham was not to be distracted.

“And then there were the pickled pork ribs. Can’t remember who bought those now. Maybe Dan. Or Eddie. And then there was someone else. But I’m sure about Josh. Josh told me McCarthy was in the Mad Boar yesterday, Josh was pretty sour about that, said McCarthy’s plans had all passed the authorities, nothing to be done about it now. Yesterday, he said that was.
Yesterday
.”

George whistled through his teeth. It was the whistle he normally used to call Tess to round the sheep up. Tess was still quite young, and sometimes it didn’t work, but Tess wasn’t here today, and it worked even less well on the butcher’s dogs.

“I can’t make it out,” said the butcher. “Who was drinking in the Mad Boar yesterday?” The butcher briefly shone the light on McCarthy. Its beam brushed past Melmoth. “Not him for one.”

“Are you sure Josh said yesterday?” asked George.

The butcher nodded. “Yesterday. If you don’t believe me, I’m sure to have it on the CCTV video.”

“There’s no sound on that, is there?” said George.

“Yes, there is,” said Ham.

George raised his eyebrows, but the butcher went on, undeterred. “I did wonder. They ignore McCarthy for weeks, and suddenly there’s three or four people talking about him. Well, I thought to myself, if it’s all out in the open now…”

George struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. Melmoth knew that this gesture was kept for the big ideas in George’s life. Like the idea of putting luminous paint on rats so as to see which hole they used for getting into the shepherd’s caravan. Or the idea that it was Maple stealing the syrup from his bread. Or the idea that you could catch Melmoth by catching Ritchfield. Because Melmoth and Ritchfield went together like sandy ground and sea grass. When George struck his forehead with the palm of his hand, he was always right.

“It was them,” said George.
“All of them.”

The butcher looked at him blankly.

“Who do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, exactly which of them I don’t know,” said George. “But a lot of them. A whole bunch of them. So many that all of them in the Boar yesterday are in it together. My God, Ham, think. They just decided to do it, the way they decided that the village hall needed a new roof. Those bastards. And they hid him here. Now they’re going around telling everyone he was in the Boar yesterday. And once he’s found a bit later, when the time of death can’t be so easily established, they’ll all have wonderful—well, alibis, dating from yesterday onward. Appointments with lawyers and doctors, trips to town. You only have to watch them over the next few days and you’ll soon see.”

“But…” The butcher waved his fat arms about helplessly. “You mean all of them? O’Connor too? And Fred?”

“I don’t know exactly who actually did it, Ham,” said George irritably. “But everyone who was in the Mad Boar yesterday was in on it, anyway. And probably some who weren’t. I guess whoever really pulled the strings kept well out of that business with the pub.”

“But suppose I’d gone to the Boar? I thought about it, sure I did. There was nothing on TV.”

“Then McCarthy would only just have left. Or he wouldn’t have turned up yet. Or they’d have seen him in the supermarket. Or at the playground, telling the kids about his bloody plans. If there’s enough of them in it all together, it comes to the same thing.”

“I just don’t believe it,” wailed the butcher. “I mean, they all buy my sausages. My chops. And they’re
murderers
all of a sudden? I don’t believe it.”

“That’s human nature, and you’d better get used to it,” said George, but the butcher wasn’t really listening.

“My joints of beef. How can I go on selling them joints of beef when I know for sure that they killed a man?”

For a moment Ham’s breath hovered soundlessly in the cold air.

George suddenly froze. “Shut up, Ham,” he growled through his teeth. Very quietly. When George was very quiet, it was important. But there was no stopping Ham now.

“They won’t get any more meat from me, none at all!” he announced angrily.

“Ham!” George spat. Something about the expression on George’s face made Ham stop. That soundless breath hovered in the air again. And there were footsteps. Footsteps on stone. Footsteps rapidly retreating. Then silence.

“Shit!” said George.

“Shit!” said the butcher.

Neither man said anything for a moment.

George sighed. “Well, now they know. We were okay up to this point. Now we really are in the shit.”

The butcher’s eyes widened. His scent changed to a bitter, sourish note: the carrion eater was afraid.

“George, you don’t mean they’d…? George, they like us. They didn’t like McCarthy.”

George shook his head. “They killed McCarthy just for a bit of cash. What d’you think they’ll do with their own skins at stake?”

“The bastards.” Ham clenched his fists. “Security, that’s the thing! You have to safeguard yourself, you always have to safeguard yourself. I’m not going to make it that easy for them!”

You always have to safeguard yourself
, thought Melmoth.

“But how, though?” the butcher went on. “We stumbled into this mess like idiots. Now they know. What’s going to help us now?”

“Thinking will help,” said George. “We have to find their weak points.”

Find their weak points
, thought Melmoth.
Thinking will help
.

“They don’t have any weak points,” sighed the butcher. “There are so many of them. You know how it is, George, one crow doesn’t peck another’s eyes out, and if there are so many of them all in it together…” He flailed his meaty arms about, at a loss.

“Don’t panic, Ham. Think. There are always weak points.”

There are always weak points
, thought Melmoth. He would never have thought that George and the butcher could say so many clever things.

George pushed his cap back from his forehead again. “Hmm, well, we have a little time. They’d have to discuss it first. None of them will dare act alone.”

“We’re outsiders now,” said the butcher. His voice was trembling. “Don’t you see, George? There’s no going back. Once you’re out, you’re out for good. Oh
shit
!” Now the butcher’s whole large frame was trembling.

George put a soothing hand on his shoulder. It looked rather funny, because Ham was so much taller than George. “Ham, did you ever herd sheep?”

Ham shook his head.

“A flock of sheep can be herded because you know something about them. You know they’ll stay together. They’ll do all they can to stay together. That’s why you can herd them. You can’t herd a single sheep on its own. A sheep on its own is unpredictable. Sometimes being alone is an advantage.”

Melmoth and the butcher were listening to George wide-eyed.

“If we’re outsiders now, we’d better exploit the situation,” George went on. “Find evidence. Your CCTV video—that’s not a bad idea. And you sell newspapers in the shop too…”

Ham looked doubtfully at George. “Newspapers? Yes, but…”

“Good!” George nodded, pleased. “Are they in view on the video? Because then we can prove it—about the date.”

Ham nodded, with his jaw dropping. What George was driving at seemed to be gradually sinking into him.

But George had been thinking some more. “Excellent,” he murmured. “Excellent. There are a lot of them. And a whole crowd together don’t risk anything. We’ll make sure the police find McCarthy right away. And you make copies of that video. Then we’ll hide the cassettes. And if anything happens to us it will all get out!”

“If anything happens to us it will all get out,” repeated the butcher. “Yes. Right! They’ll soon find out what I’m like! I’ll be at the lawyer’s with all that stuff tomorrow. And my will. To be opened on my death!”

George nodded. “Only they’ll have to know about it as soon as possible, or it’ll do us no good at all.”

“First thing tomorrow!” said the butcher firmly. “The first customer to walk into my shop will know!”

They turned again and walked off even faster than the first time.

But then George turned and beamed at Melmoth. “Melmoth,” he said in a friendly tone. “Come here, boy.”

Ham snorted crossly. “How can you stop to think about that animal now?”

“Because he’s mine. My lost sheep. Which of us goes to church every Sunday, eh? Come on, Melmoth.”

George was enticing him with his friendliest voice, the I’vegot-a-slice-of-mangel-wurzel-here voice. Melmoth could scent that George didn’t have a slice of mangel-wurzel there. All the same, he would have liked to go with him. Back to the flock.

But he couldn’t.

No going back. Once you’re out, you’re out for good.
That’s what the butcher said.

Melmoth was alone. He must stay alone now.

Sometimes being alone is an advantage.

He retreated from George, step by step, until his hindquarters came up against a rock. George kept on coming. He took Melmoth’s young horns in a friendly grasp with one hand, the way he’d done many times before. Melmoth fought against that grasp as he had never fought anything in his life.

In the end George gave up.

“Want me to help?” asked Ham.

George shook his head. “It’s useless,” he said. “He doesn’t want to come.”

Suddenly George had a knife in his hand. He came toward Melmoth again and took hold of the wool right beside his throat, looking for something. Melmoth stood perfectly still. Then George found what he was looking for: a narrow thread, buried deep in Melmoth’s fleece. He cut it. A key clinked as it fell and lay on the ground, smooth and shining. George bent down and picked it up. He sighed.