Dancing With the Virgins (43 page)

*

'It
was
Leach you had in mind, Ben?' said Diane Fry as
they drove back to Edendale.

‘How do you mean?'

‘You said your friend Fox was being made a scape
goat. If so, he has to be a scapegoat for somebody else.
Who did you have in mind? It must have been Leach. But if it was, you seemed a bit soft on him earlier on.
’

‘
He won't take pushing any further,' said Cooper.

Fry slapped the steering wheel in irritation. Then her
shoulders slumped, and she sighed. 'I don't understand
you,' she said.

‘Shall I call in?' he said.

‘Go ahead.’

Cooper reported in to the incident room. His head lifted as he listened to the latest news. Fry turned impatiently.

‘What is it?'

‘
Information from the RSPCA special investigations'
officer dealing with the Ringham Edge Farm enquiry.'

‘
Yes? Have they got any firm evidence? Enough to act on?'

‘
They've passed on the name of one of their inform
ants. They don't usually do that, because they have
to protect their identities. But this one happens to be
dead.'

‘Dead?'

‘
Yes. One of their informants was Jenny Weston.’

*

Will Leach had already seen the shotgun standing
against the wall, where it had been taken out of its steel
cabinet. He knew this was wrong, that a shotgun should
never be left out. His father had always said so. The
police might call at the farmhouse at any time and see
it, and then his father would lose his shotgun licence.
But he didn't seem to care about that at all now.

Will hated it when his father shouted and swore. But
he hated it more when he fell into a long silence. At
those times, his eyes seemed to be looking far away and his body quivered, like the strands of wire in the electric
fence in the top field. Will had known what his father
was thinking when he had looked at Doll and had been
so silent. And now Doll had gone. Will had tried to
guess what his father was thinking when he had looked
at their mother and was silent, too. And now their mother was gone as well.

It was the first day of half-term, and this morning Will had listened very carefully. His sense of hearing was trained to pick up the sound of his father's foot
steps in the yard or the clink of a glass against a bottle
in the front room. His father had been more silent
this morning than he could ever remember. And
this time, Will thought he knew what his father was thinking.

*

Warren Leach had never really known the meaning of
shame. He had heard people talk about it, but had never
understood, and had just thought them weak. Now it
was an emotion that came upon him suddenly, devas
tatingly, roaring over the hill and scything him down like ripe corn under the blade of the combine.

His cheeks had burned under the policewoman's stare. This woman looked at him differently from the
others. It was more than antagonism, it was contempt.
She had seen what had become of his life, and she
thought it was his own fault. She saw the squalor and
had no hesitation in blaming him for it. And, of course,
she was right.

His world took a sudden shift and became vivid
and clear, as if somebody had shaken it to bring the
picture into proper focus. Now he saw the colours
of his life distinctly, and they were all dark. The revela
tion coalesced in one great lump all the burdens that
had been piling up on him in the last few weeks. He
knew now that they had drained his strength and his will, and had been the cause of all those strange, crip
pling aches in his belly that he hadn't been able to explain.

For the first time, Leach faced the impossible magni
tude of his problems; the disastrous hole that he had fallen into loomed way over his head like the walls of
a deep well. And he had no energy left to climb any more.

‘
But I never hurt the boys,' he said to himself. Then
louder: 'Dougie, I never hurt you, did I?' He reached
out to take his youngest son by the shoulders. Dougie
wriggled to get away, but his father gripped him harder,
making him cry out.

Leach knew he had to make his decision. He was sure
the police would come for him anyway because of what
had happened with the young Ranger. The boys would
be taken away from him. They would end up in one of
those homes. But he had already thought about this
moment, and he knew what he had to do. He let Dougie
go, and the boy ran towards his brother, pale and shak
ing with the fear of the unknown. The boys clung to
each other, watching their father as they would have
watched a wild animal prowling through the house, afraid to move a muscle in case they attracted its attention.

Leach fingered the barrels of the shotgun, feeling the
certainty and solidity of the heavy steel. His hand itched
to grip the stock. He reached out to it like a man greeting
an old friend. Then he drew back, and looked at the
boys as if he had just remembered they were there. He
had made careful plans, but he had nearly forgotten them. That was what his brain was like now. Soft as
sponge. As rotten and stinking as the stuff he scraped
out of the hoof of a cow with foot-rot.

‘Will . . .'

‘Yes, Dad.'

‘You know where your Auntie Maureen lives, don't you?'

‘Yes, Dad.'

‘
You catch the bus into Edendale and walk to the bus station. Get a Hulley's number 26. It stops at the corner
of Bank Street, near the old library. You know your way
from there. There's enough money for the fare for you
and Dougie in an envelope on the table.' Will said noth
ing. 'Can you remember that?'

‘Yes.'

‘There's a letter for your auntie in there, too. Don't open it, Will. It's for Auntie Maureen to read. And
there's two chocolate bars I saved for you. One each.
They're the ones you said you liked. Crisp and crunchy.'
Leach tried a smile, but swallowed it as his throat con
stricted in a spasm. 'And Will . . . make sure young Dougie is all right, won't you? Promise?' said Leach.

‘Promise,' said Will.

‘That's a good boy.’

Leach found his eyes drifting towards the shotgun
again. Not much time now. Not much left to say.
'All the things I did, I did because I was trying to
save the farm for you. For your future? Do you under
stand?' he said.

The boys nodded, because it was what he expected
of them. But Leach could see from their faces that they
understood nothing. Probably they never would. By the
time they were old enough, their mother would have
talked a different story into their heads, one where their
father was a weak fool, a drunkard, a bully, a criminal.
But that wasn't right. All he was, really, was a man who had failed. But probably the boys would never understand that, either. If they were lucky.

‘Dad?' said Will.

‘Yes?'

‘When have we got to go?'

‘
Best go now, son,' said Leach. 'Before it goes dark.’

He stared at the boys, wondering what else he should
do. There were things which Yvonne had always done,
which he had no idea of. He was vaguely aware that
Will had taken charge of some of these things himself
- somehow young Dougie always seemed to be washed
and his hair was clean. But there ought to be some
thing that a father did to look after his sons, some little
thing that showed he cared. Especially when he was saying goodbye.

He saw that Dougie's jacket collar had been turned over by the strap of his rucksack, exposing the lining
underneath. It looked untidy. He reached out a dirt-
stained hand to straighten the collar, his fingers passing
close to Dougie's cheek, so that he felt the warmth from
the boy's skin. Dougie was trembling, and his eyes looked puzzled and afraid.

Leach turned to Will, but the older boy flinched away,
and Leach let his hand fall back to his side. He felt a small flicker of anger and hurt, but it died as quickly
as it had come, leaving him cold. Cold, and ready.

‘Off you go, then.’

He watched them walk across the yard and down
the lane without looking back. He glanced at the cows,
whose heads showed over the wall of the barn. They
were unsettled because they had been brought inside
when there was still grass to be eaten in the fields. But
they would be all right.

Leach went back into the kitchen and stared out of
the window. The rain had left dirty streaks on the panes,
and the world outside looked blurred and distant. The
moor had retreated into low cloud. He could just make
out the car parked in the trees at the top of the track,
but even that held no meaning any more.

In contrast, the objects immediately around him seemed alive and weighted with unbearable signifi
cance. The colours of the boys' clothes draped over the
rail of the cold Aga were bright and painful, and the
smell of the wet earth from his boots on the tiles bit so
hard into the back of his nose that it made his eyes
water. The clutter that pressed around him seemed to
be composed of living things, like an army of rodents gathering to gnaw at his body. If he left it any longer,
the vermin would start to eat him alive. But he wouldn't
give them the chance.

*

The number 26 to Edendale was late. It had been held
up by roadworks and temporary traffic lights in Bake-
well, and by an old lady who had slipped on the plat
form as she fumbled for her bus pass. The driver spent several minutes fussing over her to make sure that she
was all right. It wasn't because he was worried about
a claim against his employers for negligence. It was
because the old woman's daughter knew his wife, and because all the other people on the bus were watching
him, and a lot of
them
knew him, too.

Will and Dougie Leach were standing at the bus
stop, carrying the rucksacks they took to school in the
mornings. They had their clothes in them for tomorrow,
their pajamas and toothbrushes. The driver wasn't surprised to see the boys on their own. He had done
the school run at one time, and he remembered them.
When the Leach boys had first started getting on the bus, they had been accompanied to the stop by their
mother, or sometimes by their bad-tempered father,
who never seemed to have a good word to say to any
body. The driver thought Will was bit of a moody child,
and expected he would probably turn out just like his
dad in a few years' time. He felt sorry for Dougie, though. He always looked unhappy; even more so today.

The driver took the boys' money and watched them
for a moment while they found seats. Then he released
the brake and let in the clutch, and forgot about them
as he accelerated towards the bend and the descent from
the moor towards the A515.

Will's face was frozen. But he saw the tears start in
Dougie's eyes. Just as the bus turned the bend, Will grabbed his brother roughly by the shoulder and pushed his own chocolate bar into Dougie's hands.

‘Here, have mine,' he said. 'I don't really like them anyway.’

The bus was only a few yards away from the stop when they heard the shotgun blast. The boys looked back towards the farm. Above the juddering of the
diesel engine and the grinding of the bus's gears as it
approached the hill, they could hear the rooks that
roosted in the beech trees behind the farmhouse erupt
into the air, complaining raucously; they could hear the
old farm dog, Molly, begin to bark hysterically in the yard.

And then they heard the silence that followed. And
the silence was the loudest sound of all.