“Are you there? Is the microphone attached? I want to tell you now. Now!”
“Yes! I’m here, I’m listening. Just speak, Richard. Don’t worry, I’ll hear you.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, why are you so cruel? I love you. You know that and what I did was for you. Not me.”
“Richard! Listen! It’s Sharon, not Elizabeth. Tell me, just tell me. There’s no-one else here. Carry on from where Billy was frightened by the bull. Ernie saved him. Remember?”
He started to speak then, and his voice was so quiet and weak that I had to sit on the bed beside him and hold the microphone close to his mouth.
“Oh, I do,” he whispered, “I remember everything. Ernie. Poor old chap. He lived a long time considering that he no sense. Even after his mother died and I found him in that hovel of a house, living on bread and pissing against the wall because the septic was blocked up. He should have starved to death then and would have if I hadn’t taken him in hand.
“Are you managing lad?” I asked a couple of weeks after the old lady passed on and all he did was nod, so I took no notice. I went away, to Ireland to be with Elizabeth, but when came back, I saw little Ernie gnawing at a bloody turnip in the top field and I knew. I went straight to his cottage that evening and the poor sod was standing in his kitchen looking at the gas cooker as though it was a space rocket. He hadn’t a clue. Didn’t even know how to feed himself. The place stank and the poor bugger hadn’t had a change of clothes since his mam died.
“Come on,” I said, “you’re living with me.”
Mrs Kirby, who did for me then, wasn’t pleased, but I made sure that she knew that it was either Ernie, or her job. She soon came round. He died only a few years back, in a nursing home. I put him there when he got really bad, not knowing who I was and not able to get about, but I missed him sitting by the fire, keeping me company.
“Richard!” I interrupted, “tell me about Billy and that Christmas week. What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do. Just tell me and get it off your chest. Then you can sleep easier.”
“…. will I, girl? Are you sure?”
“I think you’d better leave him now, Sharon. He needs to rest. Look. He can barely keep his eyes open. Anyway, its time for his injection.”
“No! You mustn’t, not now. Go away, Nurse. Please. Richard wants to finish his story. Let us have just another little while together and then I’ll call you. Please.”
“This is ridiculous. You can’t interfere with my treatment like this. If you don’t let me near him, I’m going to call Dr. Clewes.”
“Get out! Get out, now.”
“She’s gone, Richard. We’ve got a little time before she comes back.”
“….You’ve been a good girl, Sharon. I loved having you here. So good, so kind. Helping us.”
She’s been good hasn’t she, Mother? She can make the cheese and butter almost as well as you, can’t she, and she’s better than the men with the cattle. It was a good day when she came to us. Do you remember that day when she arrived? You and I were in the bedroom sorting out Father’s clothes and we saw her from the window, walking down the drive. That hat! Those curls flying crazily about in the spring breeze. And when she came into the kitchen I watched as she ate your fruit cake. Two pieces, wolfed down. But so dainty she was in her eating. And her eyes laughing at me over the plate. I was almost too shy to laugh back.
You looked at her ragged cuffs and I saw your mouth curl. Not our sort, was she? Oh, I hoped so much that you wouldn’t send her away. I loved her then.
I tried to tell her about Billy, you know, but she wouldn’t listen.
“Tell me nothing,” she said. “I don’t want to know. Whatever has happened is for you and your family to think about. I’m well out of it.”
She was lucky. I had it on my mind for years. Dear God, I was never free of it. If I got up in the morning and it was frosty with the mist lying low on the mountain, then I was back to that Christmas Day, reeling with the horror of what I’d found. And if my dog, Nell, went scrabbling for rabbits in some place that I didn’t know, then I would feel the bile rising in my throat and have to scream at her to come away.
Billy changed after that business with the bull. He was someone entirely different and we didn’t know how to cope with him. It wasn’t as if he had gone back to being violent. We could have almost managed that because I was well able to look after myself and Mother and now the men took their orders from me.
But then neither was he the dirty, drugged man who had spent his time lying in a stinking bed. Would that have been better? I don’t know. All I do know is that after that day in the bull pen, he barely moved from the chair in the kitchen or slept more than a few hours at a time. My brother had turned into a pathetic frightened wreck, silently refusing food and almost incapable of holding a conversation.
Christmas Day dawned milder than the previous days. But it was dull and misty and the cloud was low on the mountain. Mother and I exchanged small presents, a scarf for her from me and she gave me a heavy gold signet ring. I thought it must have been Father’s and was surprised that it hadn’t been given to Billy, as the elder son. But when I examined it, the initials E.C. were part of the design and I knew who it had belonged to. It was the only hint Mother ever gave and even then she pretended that the fancy scroll was some sort of Celtic design. I was pleased to have it and even more pleased when I found that it fitted my left little finger perfectly. Elizabeth gave me a ribbing about it when she noticed it.
“One of the quality now, are you?” she laughed, but then agreed that it was very fine and that I should be happy to wear it. That was later though.
That Christmas dinner was hellish. Only the three of us: Mother, Billy and me sitting at the dining room table, the forced jollity of the occasion soon giving way to an anguished silence and the dinner eaten without any enjoyment. Mother had laid the table with her customary care, bringing out all the best china and silver and decorated the room with branches of holly and tinsel. But somehow, the decorations only made the whole day more painful. They were a terrible reminder of happier days when we had all had such fun.
We ate at midday as was our usual, even on Christmas Day, we farmers got up early to see to the stock so we couldn’t wait for a later dinner. For all that we ate, though, we might just as well have gone without. The slices of goose, so lovingly prepared by Mother, lay on my plate were only picked at so that the fat congealed white and thick and the vegetables grew cold. Her plate was the same. All we could care about was the still figure at the head of the table who gazed hopelessly into space and didn’t even attempt to pick up his knife and fork.
“Bring in the pudding, Richard,” said Mother quietly, gathering the dinner plates and spooning the left over vegetables into one bowl, but I shook my head. I didn’t want it and I knew that she would only push her helping around her dish.
“Let’s have it later,” I suggested, “when we feel more like it.”
At my feet, Nell whined and scratched gently at my leg. She needed to go out.
“I’ll take the dog for a bit of a walk,” I said, pushing my chair back and standing up.
“All right,” said Mother, “you can have tea and Christmas cake when you come back.”
I looked at Billy. “Fancy a walk?” I said. “Fresh air will do you good.”
He shook his head slowly as he heaved himself upright and wandered aimlessly out of the room. In the kitchen he sank heavily into the chair beside the range.
“How about a little drink?” I said. “Mother’s got a bottle of port here.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said and his voice was more gentlemanly than of late. “No thank you, Dick. Not right now.”
“Sure you won’t come with me?”
“I’ll just sit a while.”
Despite the unseasonable mildness of the air, I felt cold up on the hillside. The mist hadn’t lifted all day and the air was heavy with moisture and the heather wet beneath my feet. Once or twice my boot slipped on a partially buried rock and I was pitched forward onto my outstretched hands. I wanted to cry. I was without human company. I was alone and the earth smelt mouldy.
Nell was in heaven. She ran ahead of me, sniffing out rabbit trails and following them for a while before being tempted by a different scent and changing direction. I walked along behind her, hardly caring where she led me, for my mind was too full. My problems would never be solved; I was destined to be away from Elizabeth for ever. I knew that now. This was my punishment for stealing her.
I was angry, angrier than I had been since I was a young man and left home. The farm had dragged me back, taken my independence and promised me nothing except a form of living that I had already rejected. “No!” I shouted to the blank air ahead of me. “Oh God, no!” But only the squeals and cries of Nell answered me and hot tears spurted into my eyes. I stood, bereft of hope on the damp, heather hillside and wept.
After a while I gave up. It was pointless, infantile and only compounded my desperate misery. Then something that I had heard, but hadn’t registered, came to my ears. It was my dog. She was yelping and the sound was muffled, high pitched and frightened.
“Nell!” I called. “Nell, come here!” But she didn’t appear. Only the frightened barking continued and my stomach twisted in a spasm of fear. Had she fallen? Was she caught? Had she come across a fox and been bitten? All these thoughts tumbled through my head as I pushed forward up the hill towards the muffled sound of her cries.
“Where are you, girl?” I called, looking to right and left through the mist and trying to follow the sound.
I was by the caves now, where we used to play as children and the yelping was closer but I couldn’t see her or the old entrance to the caverns that had once frightened us so much. The rock face looked different, the arrangement of stones had changed and I was bewildered. This was where the cave should be and she was close - I could hear her - but where was that dark hole that Billy used to dare us to enter?
“I dare you,” he would say. “Go in and shake hands with the Bogie-man.” I never dared and only my pal Fred Darlington had called my brother’s bluff, squeezing past the large sharp rock that partially closed the entrance and disappearing inside. His whistling had fooled our Billy. And now, as I looked more clearly, I could see that it was the same place. Large stones had fallen into in the gap, leaving only a little rabbit hole. Nell must have wriggled through.
“Come on,” I called encouragingly, kneeling on the wet scrub of grass and heather beside the closed-off entrance. “I’m here. Come out.” But though I waited several minutes and kept up my urgings, even to the extent of lying down and putting my face close to the little gap and whistling, it was in vain. She didn’t appear.
There was nothing for it, I decided eventually, I would have to pull away the rocks and get her, so I grabbed at the first big stone and heaved it towards me. To my surprise, it came away easily, tumbling out of my hands and rolling heavily down the hillside. I had imagined that these rocks were the result of some sort of fall from the roof of the cave and would be earthed in and stabilised with several years’ growth of weeds. Not so. With increasing ease, I pulled at the stones, throwing them aside and allowing them fall away behind me until soon, a large dark hole that was the entrance to the cave, was exposed.
“Nell!” I called. A man could have got through the gap that I’d made, it was easily big enough, but she didn’t come. Her barking continued, furious and frightened, so I worked on until, peering inside, into a dark made denser by the misty afternoon, I saw her. She was held fast by one leg caught by a band of what looked like a root, a white root. Nettle, maybe, I thought.
“All right, girl. I’ll get you.” I was calm, glad I’d found her. Found this little dog who had so quickly made a place in my heart.
I squeezed in, putting aside my fears of years ago, crawling forward until I was lying beside her and pulled at the band round her leg until it gave way. It was when she hopped out, with a grateful lick at my hand, that I realised it was cloth I was tugging, so looked more closely at the ground.
I cannot explain to you the horror I experienced then. I had crawled in on top of a rotting body, a body in beige jodhpurs and a green jumper.
“God!” I screamed, flailing my hands away from what I’d previously carelessly touched and wriggled my quaking body backwards out of the cave. On that hillside, I vomited up the meagre remains of my Christmas dinner, greasy pieces of meat and cubes of vegetable spewing out onto the rocks, leaving me choking and gasping in utter revulsion. Even when nothing was left, I heaved trickles of burning yellow bile until finally I could only dry-retch and I lay face down, exhausted, in the heather.
When I lifted my head, the mist was beginning to lift. A weak shaft of winter sunshine pierced a hole in the clouds and shone feebly on the ground around me. It warmed my back and helped with the shaking and tremors that wracked my body. In my head, I was back in the jungle, waiting for the Japs, knowing that soon one of them would burst, screaming, from behind a tangle of bamboo and liana and stick his sword into my squirming guts. I reached instinctively for my rifle, but of course it wasn’t there. Nor was the service revolver that I had taken to wearing at my belt in those last months. I was alone and exposed to all that the world might throw at me.
Nell whined and nuzzled at my face and that brought me partially back to my senses and after a moment I got up. Had I imagined what I saw? Was this only another manifestation of those nightmares that had troubled me so much in the months since I had left India? The dog wasn’t bothered. She frisked about my feet, eager for the return journey down the hill, wondering no doubt, why I was lingering so.
I could have done what she wanted and maybe I should have. If I had, then what happened after, could have been avoided and I would have lived my life, this long endless life, without those new pictures which would rest in that compartment in the brain, reserved for the worst things of life. More important than that, I wouldn’t have had to live with the guilt. But I didn’t walk away. I had to look again, even though every fibre of my body willed me not to. Bracing myself, I walked back into the cave.
It was her, the land girl, Dorothy. The face wasn’t recognisable, but the hair was, baby blonde curls lying stiffly about the detritus that was now her head. I could recognise the remains of her uniform and see the tatters of her jumper where it had been ripped away from her chest. Underclothes, stained and torn were exposed and I could see that it had been a small strap lying loose on a wasted shoulder that had caught my Nell and caused me to witness this utter devastation.
The poor young woman lay where she had been placed, after death, I guessed. She must have been killed by my brother somewhere on our farm and dragged up here to be hidden from her grieving parents and the rest of the world.
“Oh, Jesus,” I groaned and imagined what awful viciousness she had known before she died, such terror and despair. I thought of how pretty she’d looked walking through the top field, with the sprig of heather in her hand and I felt the nausea rising again. What a terrible end of a young life.
My blood was boiling with disgust and rage and I knew this time I had to confront my brother and make him confess to his dreadful crime. I turned to go but just then a ray of light from the watery sun pierced the gloom. It shone upon what I first took to be a bundle of sticks further back in the cave but then, as I narrowed my eyes and forced them to focus, I saw what it really was. Not sticks, but bones. A skeleton – maybe even two or three – lay back there, a few scraps of cloth still clinging to the bones and a jumble of shoes, kicked carelessly about the dry dusty floor of the cave.
I don’t know how I kept my mind, on that walk down the hill. The sights I’d just seen were as horrible as any I’d witnessed in the war and I felt that I was right back in the conflict and that I should ready myself for whatever might come next. There was no peacetime for me here, no relief possible, not with how things were. I couldn’t live with it.
The studs in my boots rang harshly against the cobbles in the yard as I marched swiftly across towards the back door and fumbled impatiently at the latch. When I strode into the kitchen, fists clenched and face set, I was ready for what I was about to do.
“Billy,” I said, my voice cutting the gloomy silence of the afternoon, “get up!”
But when I looked towards the chair beside the range where I had left him only an hour earlier, it was empty. The entire room was empty, so I ran into the hall and looked through the open doors of the downstairs rooms. All was silent, neat and unoccupied. In the drawing room a bright fire burned in the grate and Mother had prepared the tea trolley for her promised Christmas cake and tea. But she wasn’t there and neither was Billy.
I began to have the most dreadful feelings of foreboding and climbed the stairs quietly, petrified that I might find something to give me even more pain. Had he guessed what I would find, knowing by some brotherly instinct that I would be coming home ready for the final confrontation and had prepared in advance. He wasn’t in his bedroom, or in any of the upstairs rooms. I even searched the attics but they were still and quiet, my presence merely disturbing the dust and causing a bundle of photographs, left piled on top of an old velvet covered piano stool to slither gently to the floor and scatter across the bare floorboards.
I ran quickly down the stairs again and on the landing I paused outside Mother’s room. To my relief I could hear the faint sound of her breathing and that little popping snore she made. Mother was having her afternoon sleep, so she was safe and relieved but, still sickened, I went to my room and pulled my army kitbag from under the bed.
The service revolver that I’d brought home only weeks before was there, snug in its brown leather holster. I sat on the bed and put the gun down beside me. My head was buzzing and I needed a moment of calm before what came next, so for a moment I lay back on the pillow and turned my head towards the table where my boyhood possessions were still laid out. My Chinese box with the Roman coin, the dagger with the carved handle and some of my old books, all old friends and comforters. Memories of a happy childhood, and they still gave me a measure of peace.
I swung my legs off the bed and picked up the gun. It felt comfortably heavy in my hand, a familiar weight and something I realised that I had missed in those months since my discharge. Now it needed to be checked, so carefully I wiped away the oily dust that clung to the barrel and looked down the sight. Putting it close to my face, I could smell the oil and breathed it in slowly, trying not to get excited. How many times had I told my men that?
And now I loaded in the bullets into the chamber one by one, remembering all the times I had done this before going into battle. Was there pleasure in the routine? Maybe.
“Bed,” I ordered Nell, when I went down to the kitchen and like the good dog she was, she ran to her basket in the corner and curled up. I didn’t want her with me now. Whatever happened, Mother would take care of her.
So I went out again into the afternoon of a Christmas Day that I would never forget. Out to a quiet farm, where the cattle in the enclosure methodically chewed their cud and the hens pecked for worms in the orchard. The bull watched me as I searched the buildings one by one. There was no need to bother to disturb him. I knew that would be one place Billy wouldn’t go.
I found him. He was in the old barn, standing with his back against the far wall, almost hidden by a stack of hay bales.
“I want you, Billy,” I said, moving towards him and pushing over the top couple of bales so that he flinched and stepped to one side. He knocked over the saw horse the men had been using the day before and the big saw and an axe clattered dully to the dusty floor. He didn’t even look down on them but kept his eyes on mine.
“I know what you did and where you put her,” I said keeping my voice even and cold.
At first he didn’t speak but then, in an attempt of his old bravado, he gave a wild laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, our Dick.”
“Yes you bloody do, you wicked bastard. Dorothy. I’ve found her.”
His face was yellow, maybe it was the poor light glancing off the hay but, whatever it was, he looked evil. His lips moved as though he was talking but no noise came out and his eyes moved up in their sockets so that the whites showed up bright like a spooked nag.
He didn’t look at me but kept gazing at the oak rafters. When he finally answered, his voice was sneering and contemptuous. “Who’s Dorothy, then? Some slut that you’ve lost?”
This made my cold anger return to a boiling point and I stepped forward and grabbed him by the collar. “I’ll show you who she is,” I snarled and pulled him forward.
My brother was always stronger than me when he wanted to be and this was one of those times. With a sudden heave of his thick forearm, he shook me off and bringing up his other hand, gave me punch on the jaw that sent me tumbling head over heels onto the floor.
Blood from a split lip seeped into my mouth and I saw stars sparkling in and out as I worked desperately to clear my head. Bits of straw and hay floated in the dust which my fall had raised and as my eyes began to focus properly again, a more frightening sight lurched into view. It was Billy, holding aloft the axe that he’d knocked over earlier and was now only a couple of feet from my head.
I suppose it was my military training combined with some sort of native self-preservation that forced me to my feet. Before he could take another step, I was upright and facing him, with my service revolver pointing at him.
“Stay back!” I said shakily for I still felt groggy. “Or, by Christ, I’ll fucking shoot you.”
He wasn’t that demented, he knew I meant it and he stopped still in his tracks and gave a stupid laugh. “Sergeant Wilde, is it, now. Back in the war.”
It was a war, you know. Good against bad, decency against absolute wickedness and I wanted him to know once and for all that he was a truly evil man. I gestured with my revolver and pointed towards the door.
“We’re going for a walk,” I said. “Move!”
I’ll never know why he obeyed me. Was it the gun? I don’t think so. Perhaps he thought that he would have plenty of opportunity on the hillside to get away from me or even to catch me unawares and attack. Whatever it was, he shrugged and turning, headed off across the yard towards the fields.
The winter light was fading fast now as we climbed the mountain. I never told him once where we were going. I didn’t need to, he knew better than me and he strode out, climbing steadily towards the caves on a journey that he had made many times before. I walked behind him, holding the revolver but it was only a gesture. If he’d turned and struck out at me, I’d have been caught. For my mind had slipped back to years before when we had run and climbed on this hillside, laughing with the pleasure of being young and innocent. This was the place where I found a coin. Just over there was where Elizabeth had flopped down onto the heather, her hair escaped from its ribbons and falling gloriously awry over her shoulders. Even Billy had paused in his search for wheel tracks to admire her. Oh, we had such fun when we were children.
Now on this winter day we were here again. Not a glorious winter day like those in our youth when we’d screamed with excitement as we clung to the sledge rope, flying on greased runners down this very hillside, but a sour, misty adult day. We were two middle-aged men now on a journey that would never have an end.
Billy stopped a few yards away from the entrance to the cave. I hadn’t replaced the rocks and if he hadn’t guessed before, he could be in no doubt now what I had seen. A light rain had started to fall, adding further misery to the afternoon and I watched as it plastered his greying hair to the back of his neck and dripped from his reddened ears. Seagulls, blown inland on the west wind, moaned above us and little movements registering at the sides of my eyes told me that rabbits were hurrying into their burrows to be safe before nightfall. It was the beginning of twilight like any other evening, yet not like any other. We might have been the only two people in the world.
“I’m glad it was you,” Billy said, his back still towards me and his voice though quiet and amazingly conversational, echoed bleakly off the surrounding rocks. “Not someone outside the family.”
“How could you be glad?” I cried, sick at heart and despairing. “How could you want me to see it? Just look at what you’ve done.”
He glanced towards the cave but made no movement towards it. “I only did what was necessary. They had to be killed.”
“Why?” I cried. “Why?”
He shrugged and then slowly turned round to face me. “You know, Dick, as well as I do. They were bad women, sluts. Asking for it. Talking dirty. Doing dirty things. I couldn’t let them be like that, could I? Somebody had to stop them.” He paused and, bringing a shaking hand up towards his face, slowly rubbed at an invisible mark. “They tried to make me different. Like them.” His voice was low and breaking and I saw his face screwing up in a kind of agony. “I had to be respectable. Like Father.”
There it was, in a nutshell. He wanted to be like our Father, that perfect stern man who lived by a set of standards that anyone would want to achieve. In his naivety, how had Billy managed to twist that perfect code? Mother was right. He was ill.
I swallowed. “Is Mary Phoenix in there?”
He nodded.
“Who else?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” He had started to cry now, standing in the rain, his tears mingling with the drizzle and I wanted to go over and take him in my arms. We were brothers who had grown up used to sticking up for each other, why, this was the person who had saved me from drowning. The surrogate Father, generous and always loving.
The gun felt heavy and I let it dangle from my hand. I could stop now and pretend that I’d never seen what was in the cave. What would it matter if I took stones and stuffed them into the hole and covered up the crimes that my poor mad brother had committed? Would it bring any one of them back to life? No, it wouldn’t.
But I looked again towards the cave and thought about the sad disintegrating mess that had once been a beautiful young girl. I thought of the pile of bones that spoke of other murdered women, lost for ever to their families. I knew that I couldn’t ignore it. He would never stop, couldn’t and what he had done was wicked. Nothing he said or I thought, could get away from that.
“I have to tell the police,” I said.
“No.” His weeping had stopped but he put up his hands to cover his face. When he spoke again, his words were muffled but colder and more calculating. “Think about Mother,” he said, carefully, “it will kill her.”
It would, I knew that. Her pride in the family was fierce and Billy’s arrest and subsequent trial would be more than she could bear. Nevertheless… I had made up my mind. I would lead him down the hillside and phone Fred Darlington. Let someone else take over the responsibility.
“I can’t help that,” I said. “I’m turning you in. You deserve nothing from anyone.” I thought again of that poor girl and the others. “You deserve to hang.”
He nodded at that and lowered his hands. He looked submissive for the first time and I felt desperately sorry for him again. When I spoke again it was to soften the blow.
“It won’t come to that,” I said sympathetically. “You’ll be sent to an asylum. We’ll visit you, Mother and I.”
But suddenly he looked bigger and a low growl rumbled as he took in a deep shuddering breath. His chest expanded and as those huge shoulders straightened, he was that Billy of old: broad, strong and fit for the hardest task. I looked down at his hands curling into huge fists and I tightened my hold on the gun, trying to keep it steady. How on earth was I going to get him down the mountain?
I jerked the gun towards the rabbit trail. “Get moving!” I ordered.
He remained still, staring at me with a face so twisted and horrible that I hardly recognised him.
“I should have done for Elizabeth,” he said with a voice so cold and full of menace that my guts squirmed and turned to water.
“She was the biggest tart of them all.” He moved his shoulders, flexing the muscles in his upper arms and balancing restlessly on the balls of his feet. He was getting ready to rush me.
“I might yet,” he gave a short mirthless laugh. “I know where she lives in Ireland. I’ve always known. One of these days I’ll go over there and get her. I’ll make her suffer for her filthy ways.”
His eyes glittered in the fading light and his body loomed large in the mist swirling up from the heather. All I could think of was the ogre he had promised would rush out of the cave and get me.
“I can shut her up,” he was saying, his voice getting higher and more excited, “teach her to lie there, showing me her naked and disgusting body. I’ll take her by the neck and…”
I shot him then. The revolver aimed at his chest almost without my knowing and my finger squeezed the trigger as easily as if I was back in the jungle and a bastard Jap had suddenly appeared out of the trees.
The noise echoed all round the mountain and then died away while I stood there, shaking, looking down at my brother who lay on the ground a few yards away from me. He wasn’t dead. I’d missed his heart, shot him high in the chest but it was bad and blood was seeping quickly through his shirt and jacket.
He stared up at me. His face had returned to normal, the twisted sneering mouth straight and that mad glittering look had gone. He didn’t even seem to be shocked or in pain and, as I gazed down, all I saw was my Father’s eyes, praising me for collecting the laburnum blossoms. And my heart broke.
“Oh God,” I cried kneeling down beside him and pulling aside his shirt to look at the neat bullet hole from where a bright red stream trickled. “Oh, God. What have I done?”
He coughed and a froth of blood bubbled out of his mouth. “Dick,” he gasped, his eyes fixed full into my face.
“What, Billy? What is it?” I cried and put my head close to his lips to catch the faint words.
“You are the best brother a man ever had, our Dick,” he whispered through the bubbles and tiny flecks of his blood spattered onto my face. “I’ve been right proud of you.”
I took him in my arms then and held him. My brother, the person who had loved me all my life and cared for me better than any father, was bleeding to death on this bitter mountainside and I was responsible. And you know, no matter how tight and close I wrapped him in my arms, his body was leaden and cold and I could smell the life draining out of him.
He whispered again. “Finish it, lad. You wouldn’t leave an animal like this.”
It was the right thing to do, but I wept as I shot his brains out.
Mother was waiting for me in the yard, anxious and flustered, her fat little hands winding in and out of her apron.
“Where have you been?” she cried, “I can’t find Billy.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m going out.”
“To look for him?”
I didn’t answer but left immediately, jumping into the car and driving along dark and deserted roads until I reached the village. No-one was about; it was Christmas night and people were together in their homes enjoying the festivities. Happy respectable families who lived normal, contented lives and would never know the horror I had just experienced.
The Police House was full of light and through the undrawn curtains I could see Fred, Miranda and their daughters, sitting round their dining room table. Fred was wearing a paper hat and laughing as he held up a sparkling glass towards his smiling womenfolk. Firelight danced in the grate, throwing a warm and rosy glow over the scene and as I watched, the youngest daughter got up from her chair and ran round to give her father a hug. It was a glorious scene of peaceful family life and here was I about to spoil it.
But I had to.
“What is it?” said Fred when he came to the door and saw my dishevelled and bloodied state. “Come inside.”
“No!” I said, terrified that the women might see. “You must come with me.”
Thank God for Fred. He was a man who understood the meaning of urgency. Without a word he turned and went back inside his house. I heard him exchange some words with Miranda and the girls and moments later he reappeared, paper hat gone and now sensibly dressed in mackintosh and cap. He was carrying a large torch. He nodded his head towards the torch. “I’ll expect we’ll need this.”
“Yes.” I didn’t stop to wonder why he knew that but got into the driving seat of my car and tapped my fingers anxiously on the steering wheel, as I waited for him to get in beside me.
The torch wasn’t necessary on the mountain. The cloud and mist had blown away to the east and a penny moon eagerly lit our way up the track. No words were spoken between us and when I stopped, Fred stopped behind me and waited patiently until I stepped aside and indicated Billy’s body.
He lay where I’d left him. His one remaining eye was open and staring up at the moon. I knew it was my brother, but I didn’t feel that the Billy I had known was this sad piece of humanity. This was a body, not a person.
“I shot him,” I said abruptly. I had to say it. It had been bursting out of my lips since the moment I knocked at Fred’s door and couldn’t be kept to myself any longer. And then, in case he didn’t recognise the corpse of my brother, I added. “It’s our Billy.”
“Yes,” said Fred, kneeling down beside him. “I know.”
“I had to do it. You go in that cave and see what’s in there. It was me or the hangman.”
He got up then and, switching on the torch, went into the cave. This was the brave Fred of old. The one who bested our Billy and showed him that he wasn’t afraid, but I was still the scared little brother and hung around outside, watching new clouds flit across the moon.
“Answers a lot of questions,” was all Fred said when he emerged from the darkness but I realised it wasn’t only the ghostly light of the moon that made his face look stark and white. He handed me the torch while he brought out his handkerchief to wipe his face.
“Mary Phoenix is one of them,” I muttered. “He told me that. He couldn’t remember the others.”
“Jesus, God,” Fred groaned, “He was mad. I told you years ago.”
“I know that, now.”
We stood together beside my brother’s body, facing that dank cave, which contained the bodies of women he had murdered. Could it be that there were other sad corpses in undiscovered places? I thought back over the long years and wondered.
Fred got out a packet of cigarettes, handed one to me and then walked a little distance away from me to smoke his. I watched him as he sat down on a rock in front of the cave and I conjectured what the next steps would be. Would Fred produce handcuffs from his coat pocket and secure me before leading me down the hillside? Or would he read me my rights, like I’d seen at the picture houses. I waited, submissive. I knew what I deserved.
“Right.” Fred ground out his cigarette onto the rock and tossed the stub into the heather. He stood up and took off his Mackintosh and jacket. And as I watched on that Christmas evening I was astonished to see him pull down his braces and unbutton his trousers. He stood on that cold hillside in his shirt and under drawers and looked angrily at me.
“Don’t just stand there. Pick up his shoulders, Dick, and I’ll get his legs.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Get on with it.”
I bent and took my brother under the arms while Fred lifted his legs and, between us, we carried him to the cave. It was hard getting in, squeezing past the big rock, but we did it and laid my brother on the ground beside the other bodies. He lay on his side, so the last vision I had of him was of bloody mess of bone and brain and that has lingered with me always.
It took Fred and me hours to block up the hole, stumbling about on that hill to find stones of a suitable size. We did it better, I think, than Billy had done, first arranging the rocks and then packing them tight with earth and pebbles. Finally, I tore small branches of rowan off the few trees that grew up there and laid them over our work. One of those branches took root, because I saw it green the next year when I was there. I could never stay away for long, I had to keep reminding myself of what I’d done.
I stopped outside his house after I’d driven back into the village. He sat quiet in his seat for a while, not speaking and I sat too. I was drained and sick.
“We’ll never speak of this, do you hear me?” His voice was full of authority.
I nodded.
“I mean it,” he said. “Not to your mother, nor your sister nor me to Miranda or the girls. And we’ll never speak of it to each other. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said and I found myself weeping.
I never have until now, Sharon. I told Mother that Billy had gone away and that is what the whole village believed. But she knew. She washed my clothes and comforted me in the nights that followed when tears came unbidden as we sat beside the fire. But I never did tell her.
God forgive me. I had to do it. It would have brought such shame on the family and Mother couldn’t have borne it. I couldn’t have borne it. But he was my brother and I loved him.”
Richard. Listen to me, it’s all right. I understand. I think you are the bravest man I ever knew. Rest now. It’s over. You’ve told me and we won’t speak of it again. Nothing you’ve said changes what I feel for you. I love you, do you hear me? Just as always.”
“Do you, Elizabeth? Do you? Oh I hoped you would. Let’s go out now. Come for a walk on the hill. Come on, Mother doesn’t need you in the dairy now. Billy knows where the buzzards are nesting, let’s go and see. Come on…”