Clement stood aside as I went down the steps two at a time into the darkness. The main bulb had been turned off and the cellar was lit only by the candles that had been placed around the rim of a chalk circle that had been drawn on the floor. Leonard, Parkinson and Collier were standing inside the circle. Collier’s dog lay by his feet shivering.
Outside the ring, Hanny was lying on the mattress, the baby next to him. Both of them were motionless — Hanny curled up with his hands around his knees as he had been when I left him, the baby half wrapped in a sheet.
The swaddling clothes had come apart, and although Leonard quickly stepped out of the ring to draw the sheets back over the child, he wasn’t quick enough. I saw the baby’s blind grey eyes. Its shrivelled yellow face. The grotesque swellings on its neck. The mangled claw of a hand.
I say baby. I’m not sure that it was human.
Leonard knelt down by Hanny and shook him gently by the shoulder. Hanny woke blearily. He rubbed his face with the backs of his hands and sat up. After a moment he seemed to recognise me, though his eyes were still half-closed and drooping, and Leonard helped him to his feet. The bleeding had stopped and he came to me without a limp.
‘Now what dost tha think?’ said Parkinson from the gloom beyond the candlelight.
I felt Hanny put his hand into mine. It was warm and heavy.
Parkinson laughed quietly to himself. Seeing my expression of disbelief, Collier laughed too. The dog barked once and shook its collar.
Still the baby didn’t stir. It lay there with its eyes half open staring at the ceiling.
The sea thumped against the rocks and faded and returned but more faintly now than it had been before.
‘The tide’s going out,’ said Leonard.
‘The sands will be clear by two,’ said Parkinson.
‘The fog won’t lift though,’ said Collier.
‘No?’ said Leonard.
‘It’s cold as you like out there,’ said Collier. ‘Especially with allt flood water. They’ll sit well inland all afternoon wilt frets.’
‘Good,’ said Leonard. ‘Then there should be fewer people on the roads.’
He looked past me at Clement, who had come down the steps without me noticing.
‘Is everything ready?’ he said.
‘Aye,’ replied Clement.
‘Well then,’ said Leonard. ‘I think we ought to conclude our business here.’
‘Gladly,’ said Parkinson and he took a candle to the end of the room, returning with the palm leaves Mummer had used on Easter Sunday. He had evidently stolen them from the kitchen when he’d come to Moorings with the Pace Eggers.
Setting the candle down, he pushed the leaves into his fist and offered the first draw to Leonard.
‘Oh no,’ said Leonard with a quiet laugh. ‘You know full well I was never part of the disposal, Parkinson. We agreed that from the start.’
Parkinson looked at him and then moved on to Collier, who took a leaf and glanced sidelong at Clement.
‘Go on,’ said Parkinson.
Clement shook his head and Parkinson smiled and drew one for him anyway, placing it into his hand and closing his fingers around it.
Clement began to cry, and I was so taken aback to hear him sobbing like a child that I didn’t realise that Hanny and I had been given a leaf each until Parkinson was ready to draw the lot.
‘Let’s see then,’ he said and everyone showed their leaves.
Parkinson smiled and Collier let out a breath of relief.
‘The best result eh, Parkinson?’ said Leonard.
‘Aye,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Couldn’t’ve been better.’
Clement sniffed and wiped his nose on his arm.
‘You can’t do this,’ he said, holding Hanny by the shoulder. ‘He’s only a lad.’
‘Nay,’ said Parkinson, holding out the rifle for Hanny to hold. ‘Fair’s fair. He drewt shortest straw.’
‘Come on,’ said Clement. ‘Tha knows tha tricked him.’
‘You sawt straws, Clement. There was nowt amiss.’
Still dazed, Hanny took the rifle and looked at it curiously before he slipped his hand around the small of the butt and placed his finger lightly on the trigger.
‘Draw it again then,’ said Clement, turning to Leonard, thinking that out of the three of them he might have some pity.
‘Fuck that,’ said Collier anxiously. ‘It’s been done. It’s not right to do it again.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Parkinson, reaching into his jacket and taking out one of his butcher’s knives — a cleaver that looked as though it could split a pig in one blow. ‘The lad’s not going anywhere until everything’s been cleared away.’
‘Leave him alone,’ said Clement. ‘Look at him. He’s still out of it. He dunt understand what tha wants him to do.’
‘Oh, he will,’ said Parkinson.
Clement swallowed hard and after hesitating for a moment, he took the rifle out of Hanny’s hands.
‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Go on.’
Collier looked at Parkinson again. Parkinson dismissed his worries with a little shake of his head and put the knife away.
‘Such nobility, Clement,’ he said. ‘I never knew tha had it in thee.’
‘It can be something of a false victory, though, nobility,’ said Leonard, who came out of the gloom wiping his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’
He slowly folded the handkerchief and put it back in his pocket as he looked down at the baby on the mattress.
‘I mean it might seem as though Clement’s relieved your brother of an awful task, but I’m afraid it doesn’t really matter who drew the short straw. And I’d hate you to think that his graciousness has somehow taken the pair of you out of the equation. You’re down here with us like it or not. We could lay the blame at your door whenever we wanted to. But I think you know that.’
‘And they wouldn’t like prison much, would they Clement?’ said Parkinson.
Clement looked down at his feet and Leonard went over to him and held him by the shoulder.
‘No one’s going to prison,’ he said, looking from one person to the next. ‘Not if everything that’s happened here is buried away for good. Right, Clement?’
Clement looked at Leonard and then extracted himself from his hand and took Hanny and I by the arms towards the stairs.
‘Don’t listen to them,’ he said. ‘None of this has owt to do with you. You don’t belong down here.’
He gave me and Hanny a shove.
‘Go on,’ he said, fretful that we were taking so long to leave. ‘You’ll be able to cross now. Go home.’
He nodded up the stairs and then went back over to Leonard who was waiting for him by the mattress. Leonard clapped him on the shoulder and Parkinson gripped him playfully round the back of the head.
‘Don’t worry, Clement,’ he said. ‘Dog’ll eat whatever’s left.’
Clement closed his eyes and began to pray and his voice followed us up the stairs as he begged God for mercy and forgiveness.
But there was no one listening.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Coldbarrow is still all over the television.
I saw yesterday morning that they had erected a tent on the sands close to where I almost drowned all those years ago. They were working quickly to collect as much forensic evidence as possible before the tide turned, though there can’t have been much left. Not now.
The reporter was standing on the mainland, shouting over the driving gales and sleet. The police had now launched a murder inquiry, he said. Two elderly local men had been taken in for questioning, and they were searching for a third.