Deadly Animals, page 8
‘This is it,’ said Ava.
Chapter Nineteen
T
HE CAR SLOWLY EDGED FORWARD, the ground beneath, pockmarked tarmac and cobblestones. The derelict farmhouse’s timbers were bared like bones to the merciless sky, its hide chipped, and half of it slumped in falls of untidy bricks. Emerald moss blobs grew plump as cushions on every surface not already covered with white and yellow lichen. The front door remained, its small, mullioned window murky but intact. A tree had grown through the foundations, up through the chimney flume and spread with spindly victory above where the roof used to be. Strips of faded wallpaper flapped from exposed walls, and remaining windows beheld the brittle lenses of broken glass. The wind whined through drooping pylon lines which looped in lazy skipping-rope arcs.
‘Christ Almighty, nobody’s been here for years,’ Lines murmured.
Suspended in the air, white and bright as spectral fireflies, were tiny blobs which moved whenever the wind picked up, as if gravity had no power over them, and shifted into drifts in corners and cornices. It was too soon for dandelion puff-balls; certainly too wet for . . .
‘What is that? Snow?’ asked Lines. ‘Blossom?’
A tiny fleck landed on the window beside Ava as if greeting her. She smiled. ‘No, feathers,’ she said. Feather down – light as breath – pulviplume.
Beside the broken house stood an equally broken barn and, on the opposite side, a set of mouldering stables and kennel block. A sagging wall bordered the property a little way beyond the outbuildings with a gap in its centre point. The rain eased but the windscreen wipers kept their incessant rhythm, marking time like a metronome while the detectives gazed at their decrepit surroundings. The policemen seemed unable to look away from the main house. Ava loved the state of it: this was the planet if people disappeared – the end of human rule.
The men believed the house to be Mickey’s den. Ava sat very still, very quiet, and hoped they didn’t ask her to confirm this. She’d fulfilled her purpose and, if she remained unobtrusive, they’d ignore her.
Without looking at either Ava or Luke, the men exited the car and shut the doors, stood looking at the house, suddenly boys again, busting to explore. Ava watched as they approached the building. The detectives hadn’t ordered her to stay in the car; they’d temporarily forgotten her. She was free. Ava opened the car door a tiny bit.
‘Aves? What’re you up to?’ Like John, Luke was attuned to Ava’s strangeness, and would be more of a hindrance than help if she wasn’t canny.
‘I’m just . . . going to . . . stretch my legs,’ said Ava. ‘I’ll have a look at the stables.’ Of course Ava would want to look at stables. She loved horses, so Luke wouldn’t suspect her of mischief. She kept her voice neutral: ‘You can come with me if you want.’
Luke pulled his coat tighter around him. ‘Nah, it’s too damp for me. You just be careful though, yeah?’
‘Yes,’ said Ava, and eased out of the car. She stood beside the car as the men disappeared around the ruins. Still barely as tall as the Quattro, even if they turned back they wouldn’t have spotted her.
It was too quiet. There were birds in the trees but not on the farmhouse grounds, only their feathers. This was a wild place, free of human interruption: there should be birds everywhere. Their absence usually indicated heavy predation, with rangy carnivores killing everything remotely edible until extinct, or scared off permanently. Cats and foxes were the likely culprits. Abandoned properties usually teemed with them. But Ava could see no sign of either.
Ava breathed in through her nose deeply. The damp day made scents harder to discern and the wind shoved in fits and starts. Time was of the essence: the detectives might be finished at any minute so she couldn’t falter. To the right, she passed the barn, with holes in its roof, its floor stained with oil. Inside, ancient hay bales had turned gunpowder grey; disintegrated matter seeped from mouldy boxes. Smashed flowerpots and shattered glass – more feathers. No signs of rodents and no sign of feline pest control: no cat-scat, or acrid stink, or fluffy faces peering out at her. No bird nests in the eaves. Weeds thrived in gnarled batches. A corroding hulk of a Land Rover slumped in the corner like a shot rhino, tethered by ivy, its bonnet a crumpled grimace.
She turned to see the car then stepped out of sight of its windscreen with one small, casual step.
The wind was a whine in the wires. The place was haunted – though not necessarily with ghosts. Ava believed in ghosts, but only as maudlin residue of extreme actions in unhappy places. Like Harry Price had said about Borley Rectory. Ava used her senses to explore the world, and while she was cynical about the presence of God or the Devil, she knew about hostile things and miserable places, that death was very much at home in this wretched zone. Something had occurred here; extreme actions that had not ended well.
A block of loose boxes stood opposite, paint peeling, their latches rusted orange. Ava stepped into view of the car again, waved to Luke and then peered into the stables. This wasn’t the den – only storerooms for broken objects. Her quick eye sought a souvenir in the first loose box, but there was nothing except corroding columns of water bowls and a stack of large dog beds. In the other stable, Ava saw a rope with a small leather collar and muzzle at the end of it, attached to a metal ring in the wall. There was a bowl, old straw and a duvet folded into a bed in the corner. On it, she spied a stuffed toy – a black teddy bear with distinctive yellow feet and one eye missing. Newspapers, yellowed and curled, were scattered on the floor, and Ava saw that the youngest was from 30 December 1967 – three days after Ava was born.
The kennel block gates creaked whenever the wind whipped through them. Ava didn’t want to show the policemen the real den until she’d seen it first; she wanted this time to be completely her own before all the noisy grown-up stuff started.
Her eyes were drawn to a single boy’s shoe – a black trainer caked with mud.
This was Mickey’s shoe.
The wall was a crumbly mass of weathered brick with a collapsed centre; and through the gap spread a scrubby piece of land occupied with nettles and weak-linked clovers. Down feathers landed on Ava’s nose, hair and coat. She pinched one between her fingers and studied it closely: the little bits were tipped brown at the ends. But, she knew, that the brown had once been red, bright red. Blood. These feathers hadn’t been moulted or plucked – they’d been torn out.
Ava stepped across the threshold, into the kennels and rounded the corner, pulviplume billowing in her wake.
The smell hit her with the force of a hammer-strike.
The wall concealed its secret but it had also concealed odours. Ava considered her sense of smell excellent for a human, but a dog would never have ventured further. Old smoke, spent fire, burned fabric; she could taste it all on the arch of her palate. Beneath it all was the vile ground note: death.
Ava paused.
In the field beyond lay more ruins and a row of standing stones as grim as decayed teeth in a phossy jaw. To her immediate left, tucked among withered elm trees, were two lock-up garages. A short apron of cracked concrete lay before the building, exuberant weeds sprouting from beneath. Ava’s feet crunched on the ground. Instinctively, she looked down and crouched. Below her feet were bones – thousands of them. Stained, bleached, weathered, marking a path to the garages. Smashed ribs and pelvises crunched underfoot. Tiny bones, hollowed bones: nothing bigger than those of a badger. There were more feathers too. Ava picked up a handful and sifted them in her palm: mostly avian but there were many Theria pieces; paw phalanges with cat claws attached, mice teeth, fur fronds. Ava’s sharp gaze shifted around her: no skulls. Where were the skulls?
This was why there was no life in this place: something was killing everything. Ava had followed Mickey only as far as this spot and then turned back. Back then, the carpet of crushed skeletons hadn’t been laid but last year was a while ago and since then a predator had been busy.
The first garage was securely locked down. The second was open a little at the bottom. A thick brown stain spread out from beneath the door not just in front but around the corner. Dried blood. The mess had dribbled out then set in gobs on the door’s architraves. At the base of the jamb was a single bloodied handprint: a desperate grasp, the thumbprint clear as if stencilled. Up close, the bloodstain was colossal and roughly the shape of South America. It didn’t sweep away and around the corner, as she had originally thought, but towards the garage door, then inside.
Ava faced the door. She studied the frame and the lip of the bottom. Trevor had taught her that such garage doors needed to be thrust upwards with decisive force otherwise they were prone to sticking part-way and then you had to heave – a waste of energy for such a simple task.
Ava reached down and curled her gloved hands around the bottom of the door then threw it wide open. Trevor was right: shove like you mean it.
Chapter Twenty
T
HE GARAGE DOOR SAILED UP and tucked into its niche above with ease. Ava immediately coughed – old smoke and petrol acrid to taste. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Ash was caked into corners by stale draughts and damp. Ava looked around slowly: this was it. This was the den.
Mickey’s bike lay on the floor to her left, his Grifter: chain rusted and wheels partially melted. Shelves had burned to a crocodile-underbelly texture.
A charred rug made from a large piece of tatty purple carpet was on the floor. There was a melted plastic chair, and a battered armchair. The armchair was stained with a filthy outline where Mickey had ‘sat’ steeped in his own effluvium. A wastepaper bin filled with burned litter was next to a weight-training barbell. On a small side table sat scorched copies of magazines, editions dating from last summer. A tipped-over ashtray, used butts smattering the floor alongside empty cigarette packets.
On the floor was a heap of burned fabric and the other trainer. These had to be the rest of Mickey’s clothes. Ava touched nothing because she knew better. She studied the bulkier stains, the blood spray and the blood spots. This was both kill-site and temporary storage, but it did not tell the whole story.
On the floor, in its own blotch, was an ordinary carving knife sheathed in gore: the murder weapon? The killer had left crucial evidence to be found – or perhaps he’d assumed this place would never be discovered.
Or he’d panicked, thought Ava. He’d panicked because he was surprised he’d done it, he’d done murder; he’d actually killed a person. The battle ended here but didn’t begin in this space.
Ava played through the most likely scenario in her mind. The killer had dragged the body in and propped it in the armchair – Mickey hadn’t simply been discarded on the floor. The killer had fled after the fire then returned a while later to discover Mickey’s body was about to morph into an out-of-control mess. What to do? The killer couldn’t just leave the body here, even though the den was far enough away from civilisation. If the killer had wanted Mickey to be found, wouldn’t he have dumped the body in a more obvious location than the bramble den Ava found it in? And this place was not Mickey’s den, but a monster’s lair. Only the monster was gone.
And there was more: older, chunkier stains; partial remains of the other slaughtered animals. Ava’s gaze narrowed on a metal container tucked behind the plastic chair. She stepped forward and crouched in front of it, spotting a thin pile of Polaroid photographs. She saw something in the top image.
She snatched it as she heard her name being called from a distance. Delahaye. She shoved the photograph into her pocket and backed out of the garage. Her exploration was not over yet, but the garage, with its burned, bloodstained den inside, would soon keep the detectives preoccupied.
‘Ava!’ Luke called out in harmony with Lines. Delahaye was closer now, visibly worried.
Ava stood in the gap in the wall so she was visible. The men approached; she could hear the crackle of their feet on the bones and stones, their forms fondled by the down-feathers in the air. She saw the horror in their eyes as they realised what was causing the snapping under their shoes. Delahaye was at the apex, with Luke and Lines flanking him, as they ran towards her. She lifted a hand and pointed at the garage. They’d have to work out for themselves that it wasn’t Mickey’s den. She needed them distracted so she could go and find the missing skulls.
Ava watched them see, heard their grunts of disgust as the stench hit; saw them cover their mouths with ineffectual sleeves, heard their coughing, observed their policeman instincts kick in. She jumped when Delahaye appeared, crouched before her, grabbing her hands.
‘Ava? Are you all right, sweetheart?’ His concern was genuine: he was sorry, guilty that he’d left her. But Ava forgave him – both because he was a good man, and because it suited her. She nodded. His eyes were massive, and in them she saw that he believed her. Then Delahaye turned to Luke.
‘Keep an eye on Ava for us,’ he said, but Luke was transfixed by the big bloodstain. Ava watched the detectives move into the den. She saw Luke move closer to the brown mark.
This was her cue.
Ava rounded the corner of the garage and found a slight incline of mud lined with smashed vertebrae and tiny ribcages. Her burning calf muscles told her the path was becoming steeper, and she tried to clear her mind of all thoughts and feelings. Tomita’s rendition of ‘Arabesque’ played in her head, as if to protect her from what was to come, from what she would see.
She was at the top of the slope now. In front of her, two rows of standing broomsticks marked a path, and atop each perched a large dog skull, all of them glaring down at her from eyeless sockets, their mandibles hinged by fragile dried tendons. Around their weathered pates were desiccated crowns of daisy chains. These were the main focus of the display, crude totems that heralded her passage.
Ava moved further into the macabre garden. And then stopped abruptly. Spread out before her was the ossuary arrangement of a truly deranged mind. Cat, rabbit, rodent and hedgehog skulls discarded on twigs lined the shabby path, margined with barbed wire, twisted brambles and dog roses. More skulls of bigger birds – hawks and ravens – and a chunky badger skull. The tall bushes either side gave Ava the impression she was in a labyrinth, their fronds clasping above her head, creating a mystical chamber. The musk of spilled blood and old meat pervaded the cold air. Above her hung a gruesome mobile: a starling’s wing and a raven’s tail twirled in a helix on thorns. Bells from cat collars chimed in the wind.
She turned briefly to look down the bristling funnel and pondered that awful handprint, brown now, and dry. Mickey had grasped to purchase anything solid, desperate, terrified beyond imagining, but holding on so that he wouldn’t be pulled under. He’d still fought to the end. And the only witnesses were the severed heads of slain animals.
The earth had taken the stains away: the blood percolated into the soil though its scent of rusty iron and boiled sugar remained. Before Ava, the ground dipped then rose in a dry ravine. The bushes huddled closer: their dead fruit shrivelled baubles. The spiked skulls leaned in too, a scene despicably beautiful, wrought from a Grimm fairy tale plucked from Baba Yaga’s bliss. Discarded on the ground was another barbell and, still clinging, was gore and bone shards, tiny as a bird’s. But not a bird’s – these were human. Ava stared at it and blinked. In her head, she tried to match the barbell with the wounds she’d seen on Mickey’s corpse. Was this the tool used to smash his chest? As Ava approached an altar-like structure directly ahead, she saw it wasn’t an altar but a slab of solid granite; a worktop balanced on oil drums, with a giant crack in its centre, like Aslan’s resurrection stand in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There were cups and playing cards, used batteries, a smashed torch bulb with blood flaked on the surface: more evidence of a fight and not a sacrifice. Not ritual then – but resistance.
Ava tried to imagine what occurred that night. Mickey had come here on a whim after the disco and on arrival, he’d found his sanctuary had transformed into a charnel pit over the winter. All these bones and feathers had been a shock to the boy because Ava knew Mickey had loved animals, especially cats.
Mickey was known as a ‘hard rock’ by the local boys. He was a scrapper; fearless. So he’d confronted his killer. There’d been shouting into the night, screams. When Mickey had threatened to tell, that was when he’d been attacked. Mickey was lifted high then thrown down onto the makeshift table, hard and agonising – cracking it with the force. Fighting broke out, but not the typical way men fight, because the experienced predator had weapons and was not afraid to hurt in ways most people considered taboo. A terrified boy against somebody much stronger: somebody with no morality, or fear of law and consequences. Was that all this was? Mickey’s desire to confront a criminal, and his attacker’s desperation to prevent his crime’s disclosure?
In nature, every species recognises its own, and in human culture every tribe knows its kith. Ava descended from ferocious women who’d escaped a starved Ireland for the bellowing factories of industrial England, and from stubborn men blackened and bent from generations in Welsh coal mines. Yet she possessed no root into her history, no pull in her genes. In this place, however, she sensed a rogue in her species, a predator that preyed on his own.
‘DS Delahaye!’ Luke yelled.
Dear Luke, darling Luke, running towards her, his face a Greek mask of tragedy. She pondered how Red Riding Hood won in the better versions: the beast had met its match in hers. It was why Ava was here. It was why she was Ava. With this beast, she was not the hunted but the hunter. Ava pulled her hood over her head and the wind lifted her onto her toes. Her tears made clean tracks in the ash on her cheeks.
Ava was custodian of the dead; this she understood. The idea of hurting an animal, by accident or on purpose, was anathema to her. Even at the height of her curiosity, she would never cut them open to explore their interior anatomies – she was content with books to learn such details. All her subjects were buried intact, they were mourned, and they were given back to nature as nature intended. In the moments before giving them back, they were loved. It was Ava’s calling.
