Bereft (9 page)

Quinn heard a soft crack behind him. He leaped to his feet and fumbled with his revolver. He faced the direction of the noise. It sounded as though someone were stepping about in the darkness beyond the fire's light. He aimed and cocked the weapon. “Who's there?” he hissed. “Show yourself.”

He angled his head to give his right ear—which he perceived to be less damaged—the chance to detect something but heard nothing more. He stayed where he was, just breathing. The sodden sponges of his damn ears. Again he moved his head this way and that, straining to hear. There was only the sputtering growl of the nearby fire.

Then, to his right, in the fire's flicker, he made out something gathered about a low bush. It was several feet away, unclear in the darkness. He stared until he could see the glint of silver or brass. He tensed. A piece of cloth. A torn piece of cloth. Now a button. Two buttons. A man's uniform, English by the look of it. He blinked and peered further. A hand, unattached to any limb, the wrist a bloody tangle of wiry veins and gristle blackened where it had been ripped from the forearm. There was a muddy boot on the ground.

Then the snap of a twig behind him. Without thinking he wheeled and fired his gun, always surprised at the weapon's sullen buck. The revolver's blue smoke hung in the night air. A whiff of gunpowder. He stood unmoving. Nothing.

After several minutes, as he prepared to sit again, convinced he had imagined the entire thing, the crash of something thumping through the undergrowth some distance away, the noise of it growing ever fainter, retreating along the ridge. Quinn swore. Was it possible his sister's murderer knew already he had returned, and sought to kill him? His heart quickened. He checked his revolver. He waited. He prayed.

Part Two

THE GIRL

8

T
he next morning, Quinn opened his eyes from a tangled sleep before dawn. The light was thin, aquatic. The air was fresh and cold. He was lying on his side beneath his trench coat, hands clamped between his thighs for warmth.

The fire was now little more than a smoking pile of grey shards. Startled, he looked around. There, on the other side of the fire, squatted a rangy, blonde-haired girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old, who was watching him with frank interest. Quinn sat up and prepared to draw his revolver, but the girl didn't move. She appeared to be alone.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The girl sniffed and wiped a hand under her nose. She wore a ragged dress that might once have been blue but had faded to the colour of a week-old bruise. A pink cardigan, no shoes, toes like stubby shells at the ends of her feet. She had a sharp chin, hobnail teeth hammered into her gums.

Quinn's mouth was sticky with sleep. Dirt crumbed from his face. His neck was sore from sleeping on the uneven ground. He ran a hand through his hair. “Who are you? Have you been there for long? Watching me? Are you alone?”

The girl didn't seem to register the fact he had spoken at all. Not only were her eyes the dark brown of a moth's wing, but—even open, as they were now—they fluttered gently, almost preparing for flight. She stared at the surrounding trees as if listening to what they were saying, idly scratching one foot as she did so. She was perhaps not right in the head. Another simpleton, like that Edward Fitch.

Neither of them spoke. She made Quinn uneasy. He brushed himself down and set about rebuilding the fire, throwing on handfuls of dry leaves and blowing on the smouldering embers. He was hungry, although this was nothing new: he had been famished for years.

The girl watched him with her dark eyes. “What are you doing up here?” she said at last.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

She pursed her lips and pondered this. “Go on then.”

“What?”

“Ask me, then. What I'm doing up here.”

“That would be idiotic.”

“Not if you wanted to know it wouldn't be.”

He snapped a branch in half across one knee and threw it on the embers. “To be honest, I don't really care.”

The leaves had begun to burn and now the larger pieces of wood crackled and glowed. He drew unaccountable pleasure from this limited control over such a dangerous element. He blew on the leaves some more and tossed on another handful of bracken. The girl watched him in the manner of someone who knew a better way to do the task at hand but was biting her tongue. The fire took hold. He sat back on his haunches and decided to humour her. “Alright, then. What are you doing up here by yourself so early?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Why not?”

“It's a secret.”

Quinn smiled despite himself, then covered his mouth with one hand. Although the scar stained only the left part of his mouth and jaw, there was a certain tightness about his entire face when he assumed particular expressions. His smile, he knew, was now lopsided and somewhat sinister, as if one half of him were amused while the other unimpressed by the same joke. He stood and put on his trench coat.

“What happened to your face?”

Quinn blushed and kicked at the edges of the fire. “The war. I got injured.”

“I always live up here. I live in these hills.”

Quinn doubted this boast, but nodded by way of answer. He had wandered these ranges as a boy and knew there was little here apart from boulders and bushes, the dark and disordered press of trees. No people lived up here now the miners had gone.

The girl licked her lips. “I have a house. A
whole
house, hidden away where no one can find it.” She looked inordinately pleased to have told Quinn this and said nothing more for a few minutes, before standing to stretch and yawn. Now she was upright, Quinn could see she was a bony cat of a girl, all angles and joints. “But you never answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Why are you up here when your house is down there?”

“How do you know where I used to live?”

Her smile was thin-lipped, as if what she prepared to reveal pained her. “I know all sorts of things.”

Quinn was suspicious, but the girl appeared guileless. She had probably heard whispers about him, from her parents or town gossip. People around here talked when they had nothing better to do and invented facts to fill the spaces in their knowledge, the way ancient cartographers surmised entire continents into existence. And children, he knew, were most susceptible to these fantasies, because their understanding of the world was so limited.

“Are you by yourself?” he asked.

The girl ignored him and untangled a twig from her hair.

“I'll make a deal with you. I'll tell you why I'm up here if you tell me if there's anyone with you.”

That got her attention. She regarded him. “You go first then.”

“I'm here to see someone. Someone I need to help.”

“A friend?”

“A relative.”

“Who?”

He paused. “I can't tell you that.”

“That's not a proper answer.”

“Now it's your turn. Are you up here with anyone?”

“No.”

Quinn was not convinced. Had she been as vague in her answers as he had been? In the brightening morning light the girl seemed insubstantial, and he recalled fairy tales of wars between giants and men, how the still-warm blood of the dead villains was given to the few imps who remained so they could assume the shape of people. And in Europe after the war, orphans ran through villages stealing bread and firewood, planting curses on the old men and women. Although they were probably just tall stories, he suspected such mythical children were best kept at a distance.

“Where are your mother and father?” he asked.

She glanced away, muttered something.

“What?”

“My father left years ago.”

“Did he go to the war?”

“Not to the war. Before I was born. Mother is dead because of the plague. There's a plague, you know.”

Quinn flinched and mentally chastised himself. These days it was sometimes best not to enquire after anyone's family, lest the answer be one such as that. “Oh, I'm sorry. What about a brother or sister? Who's looking after you then?”

She scratched her arm. “I can take care of myself. I told you. I have a house. Over there.” And she gestured behind her.

The girl was at once frail and self-possessed, and although he was intimidated by her, this was tempered by a curious compulsion to befriend her. “How old are you?”

“Twelve, I think.”

“You think?”

“Well. How old are you?”

“I thought you knew lots of things?”

She tugged at the sleeve of her cardigan.

Quinn regretted his insolence. He had an idea. “Are you looking for a sheep? A lamb? I saw one yesterday down the other side of this hill. We could find it? I'll show you where I saw it.”

The child shook her head. “He's not mine. I told you—I live up here. I'm not a shepherd.” She added in a softer voice he could barely hear, “But that wasn't yesterday. That was days ago.”

This took a moment to register. “You were watching me?”

She said something he didn't understand.

“What? What did you say? The guns have damaged my ears. You need to speak up.”

“I said: He
told
me about you.”

Quinn chuckled. His initial instinct was correct: the child was simple. “Right. The lamb told you.”

“Said you hugged him, too.”

“Don't be ridiculous. You must have been watching me.”

“I wasn't. He told me.”

He was incredulous. “You know how to talk to sheep?”

She pouted. “No. Only how to understand them.”

“And how do you do that?”

“Listen. You just have to listen to them. I told you before. I know about lots of things. I know about the wind and stars, about what happens in rivers.” The girl shrugged limply.

“What else did the lamb tell you then?”

She brushed back a tumble of hair from her face and withdrew a burning twig from the fire. She waved it around until the tiny flame was extinguished, then watched the thread of smoke unfurl from its glowing tip. The end of her tongue edged provocatively between her lips. “He told me what you said to him.”

Quinn dug out his tin of tobacco and set about rolling a smoke. His fingers trembled. The tobacco was as friable as soil and repeatedly crumbled from the thin paper.

“And that you were
crying
,” the girl added.

Quinn blushed and devoted unnecessary attention to his cigarette. The girl unsettled him. A magpie warbled nearby.

“You don't believe me, do you?” she persisted.

Quinn jammed the cigarette between his lips and lit it with a branch from the fire. It was a good question; he was no longer sure what to believe. It seemed equally that all things were possible and also that very little was. The cigarette smoke irritated his throat. He coughed.

The girl wandered off a little way, nudging at leaves with her bare feet, stooping here and there to examine objects she spied in the dirt. Quinn put his free hand into his pocket and fondled the revolver. He supposed he could withdraw it if he needed to.

By now the sun had risen over the lip of the earth, releasing its warmth. The day was getting underway. He wondered about his mother and father down there in the valley. The residents of Flint would be starting to go about their business, eating boiled eggs and drinking mugs of tea.

The girl approached him. “Are you going to shoot me now?”

She was bold, he would say that for her. Quinn withdrew his hand from his pocket. “Don't be ridiculous.” He paused. “Was that you last night in the bushes? Were you watching me?”

Unsmiling, she made a gun of her hand, pointed her index finger at him and cocked her grubby thumb. “
Who's there? Show yourself.”

They stood unmoving for several seconds before she dissolved into laughter and sauntered about as if she owned the place. Quinn drew on his cigarette. He flicked the stub into the fire and sensed—like waves building far out at sea—a coughing attack that, sure enough, started as a series of tight gulps before cascading into spasms of painful spluttering.