‘It wasn’t our fault about the pigs, lad.’
‘No, I know it wasn’t.’
‘Did you get in trouble?’ asked Wilford.
Cooper shrugged. ‘I’ll be very unpopular for a bit.’
‘It wasn’t our fault/ echoed Sam.
‘We told you about the blood and bone.’
‘The heap rots ‘em down, as long as they’re not too big. Otherwise the knackerman charges you for taking ‘em away.’
247
‘And you don’t want to be paying the knackerman when you can dispose of ‘em natural, like,’ said Sam
They weren’t big enough lor porkers yet, I suppose,’ said Cooper.
‘No, no. Nowhere near. You couldn’t have sold ‘em.’
‘Funny thing about pigs, though,’ said VVilford. ‘Their skin
j c> r o o ‘
is a lot like ours.’
‘It certainly gave those police mates of yours a fair turn,’ said Sam, starting to smile again.
‘They thought they’d found a dead body or two,’ said Cooper. ‘For a while.’
‘Bloody hell, that doctor woman wasn’t very pleased when she got there.’
‘The pathologist. That was a mistake.’
‘I’ve never heard language like it,’ said Wilford.
o o ‘
‘Not from a doctor.’ ‘And a woman too.’
‘Do you know they get sunburnt, just like us?” asked Wilford. ‘Pigs, I mean. You can’t leave ‘em out in hot sun. Those two
o ‘
had been inside, you see, out of the sun. That’s why their skin was so clean.’
‘And white.’
‘Aye. Middle Whites, they were. Some folk like the old breeds, but the Whites grow better.’
Cooper closed his eyes, feeling the conversation running away from him already. Bizarrely, a memory popped into his mind of the slippery fish he used to try to catch by hand as a boy in the streams around Edendale. He knew they were there, lurking in the shady corners, and he could almost get his hands on them in the water. But it needed only a couple of wriggles and they were out of his grasp, every time. He suddenly felt utterly depressed, and wondered what on earth he had hoped to achieve by corning here tonight. He was totally in the wrong place. But he had no idea what the right place for him was just now.
He drained his glass and stood up wearily.
‘Off already?’ asked Sam. ‘Company not suit you?’
‘I’m wasting my time,’ said Cooper, as he walked away towards the door.
248
Outside, the sky was still light and the evening was warm. He stood ioi a moment, breathing in the motionless air and looking
‘ o o
up at the shape of Raven’s Side, looming above the village. He remembered then that there was one place where he always felt he belonged.
The door to the pub had been propped open lo let out the heat, and he didn’t hear anybody come up behind him. But he recognized the slow voice that spoke in his ear.
‘If you ask the right questions, you’ll find out what you want to know.’
‘Oh yes? I’m not sure about that, Mr Dickinson. At the moment, it all seems pretty futile.’
Harry looked at him with sudden understanding. ‘Fed up?’
‘You might say that.’
‘Ah. I reckon you’ve got the black dog, lad.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what we used to say to the young ‘uns when they were sulking or had a fit of temper. “The black dog’s on your back,” we’d say. That’s what’s up with you, I reckon.’
Sulking? It was a long time since he had been accused of sulking. As if he was some temperamental adolescent.
‘Yes, I’ve heard of it, thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it, lad.’
Now the old man had explained the expression, Cooper remembered that he had heard it before. He could hear a faint echo of his own mother’s voice chiding him for having the black dog. It was one of those mysterious expressions from childhood that you only half understood at the time. The black dog. Words with a frisson of
