Helen slotted tins of peas and new potatoes into the kitchen cupboards, glancing sideways out of the window, where she could see Gwen pottering in the garden, carefully deadheading roses with a pair of secateurs. She looked frail and unsteady on her feet, her skin translucent in the morning light angling from above Win Low.
‘Have you talked to Grandma yet?’
Harry was deep in his morning paper. Unlike many of the men his age, who preferred the sports coverage and sensational headlines of the tabloids, Harry took the Guardian. He said he liked to know what was really going on in the world. ‘All this
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stuff about TV celebrities and royal hangers-on. That means nowt to me,’ he would say.
‘What should I talk to her about, then?’
‘She’s upset.’
‘When isn’t she? The woman’s got neurotic in her old age.’
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‘Granddad, she’s very worried. She thinks you’re in trouble with the police. You have to reassure her. She won’t listen to anyone else.’
‘Ah, they’re all talking about me, aren’t they?’ said Harry.
‘They’ll talk. But nobody believes you’re involved.’
‘Why not, then?’ he demanded.
Helen waved her hand, stumped for an explanation when challenged. ‘Well ‘
‘Aye, I know. It’s because I’m old. You’re just like them coppers. They haven’t questioned me, you know. Not properly, not like they ought to have done, seeing as I found the body. They think I can’t have done it, you see. Because I’m old. Well, they’re wrong, and you’re wrong too.’
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‘Don’t be silly, Granddad. We know you didn’t do it, Obviously.’
‘Oh ave. Obviously.’
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‘Grandma knows. And Mum and Dad and me, we know that you’ve done nothing wrong. We would know — we’re your family.’
‘And that’s it? just the tew of you and no more?’
Helen felt a chill at his dismissive tone. ‘Your family has always meant a lot to you. You know it has.’
Harry sighed and folded his paper.
‘Well, hasn’t it?’
‘Of course it has, lass. But there are other things as strong as family. Stronger even. Women can’t see it, because they’re made different — family, that’s everything for them. But there
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are other things. Friendship. When you’ve had a bloke at your back that you trust with your life, and he trusts you the same, that’s different. That’s a bond you can’t break, not for anybody. You get so as you would do anything not to betray that trust,
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lass. Anything.’
Harrv was looking Helen in the face, a look deep in his eye
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that was almost appealing, asking for her help. And she did want to help him, but she didn’t know how to. She waited for Harry to explain what he meant.
But he stared at the front page of the newspaper, where a picture of Central African refugees with desperate eyes stared back at him.
‘You’d kill to help that sort of friend,” he said.
Ben Cooper sighted along the barrels, shifted his grip on the wooden stock and breathed in the scent of the gun oil as his fingers felt gently for the trigger. The shotgun fitted snugly into his shoulder, and the weight of the double barrels swung smoothly as he turned his body to test their balance. With that effortless movement came an eagerness to see the target in his sights, a desire for the kick and cough of the cartridge. He was ready.
‘Pull!’”
The trap snapped and a clay flashed across his line of vision. As
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if of th<“‘r own Accord, the barrels swung up and to the right to follow its trajectory, and his finger squeezed. The clay shattered into fragmcnts tnat curved towards the ground.
‘Pull!’
The second clay flickered overhead. Cooper carefully increased the pressure on the trigger, timing the extra squeeze as the target’s line steadied and the clay shattered like the first.
‘What do you think of it, Ben?’
‘Nice,’ he said, lowering the shotgun and breaking it open. He laid the gun across the bonnet of the Land Rover, and his brother walked across from the trap gun they used for practising. Matt was six years older than Ben, with the barrel chest and well-muscled shoulders and torso of a working farmer. He had the same fine light-brown hair
