Bardwell spent all morning clearing up the barn at the Retreat. He’d wedged open the main doors to allow a drift of gentle air through the old stone building. Sunlight seemed reluctant to enter, bunching up into intolerable brightness at the threshold so everything outside took on the bleached whiteness of bones in the desert.
Bardwell had found an old portable radio on one of the high shelves at the back. He’d taken it apart, blown out the dust, painstakingly run over a few dry joints on the circuit board with a soldering iron, fitted new batteries.
Resurrected, it sat on the workbench tuned to a classical station that didn’t go much for chatter. The treble part of the speaker was shot, buzzing on the high-frequency like a bottled wasp, but good enough for background. Bardwell had spent too many years in amongst artillery fire to have much of an ear left for music.
He’d already sorted the end furthest from the hay, stacked a dozen ageing bags of fertiliser into sandbag order, swept and tidied. He’d found a stash of old jam jars, a throwback to the days when farmers’ wives bottled their own fruit. He’d lined up the jars on the workbench in parade ground order, was filling them with odds and ends.
Just after lunch, Bardwell heard Ian Hogg’s scraping footsteps, the tick of the terrier’s claws on the concrete. He looked up, saw Hogg halted in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the light.
“Hello, Patrick,” came the greeting, a hint of strain in the voice. “You’re quite the new broom around here.” He came forwards then, features taking on definition as the shadows equalised. “The place will never be the same again.”
Bardwell scooped a handful of assorted bolts into one of the jars. “Just a bit of order.”
Hogg limped further in, leaned against a fifty-gallon oil drum, shifted his weight off his bad leg. “And the Landie’s looking very spruce.” He waved in the direction of the yard where the vehicle sat in its usual place outside the byre, new dark blue paintwork gleaming.
“Turned out all right.”
Hogg didn’t respond right away. Bardwell put down the copper roofing nails he was sorting, wiped his hands on the seat of his old combat trousers. He leaned against the bench, a mirror of the other man’s stance, and waited.
Hogg reached down and fussed with the terrier for a moment. “You heard the news?” he asked finally, jerking his head to the radio. “That young policeman who was shot—he died, God rest him.”
“Did he?” Bardwell wondered if that changed things and, if so, how.
“He was only twenty, apparently. Just a boy.”
He was old enough to put on the uniform. Old enough to fight. But he said nothing, folding his arms across his chest.
“Look, Patrick, the thing is…will you talk to them?”
Bardwell’s only reaction was to let his eyebrows come up sharply. “Talk to who?”
“The police,” Hogg said, not meeting his eyes. “After all, you were an army sniper, weren’t you?”
“Not anymore.” Bardwell turned back to the bench, grabbed another handful of nails and cupped his palm to funnel them into another jar, speaking over his shoulder. “Army reckoned I wasn’t up to the job and, truth to tell, by the end I reckoned it, too.”
“But you understand how this man’s mind works. You—”
“No,” Bardwell said. Roughly, he put the jar aside, braced his hands on the bench for a moment and let his head drop, as if seeking strength. He turned back. “Came here to get away from all that—orders and questions and senseless killing.”
Hogg regarded him with an unfathomable gaze. “Well, it seems to have followed you.”