and gold.’
Fry thought she had stopped there. She waited for a moment, listening to the click of the tape decks. She had just opened her mouth to nudge Maggie with a question, when she began again.
‘The wind blew the leaves about, and I grabbed
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at them, trying to catch them in my hands. Some of them landed on me; they were on my arms and in my face, touching my skin. They felt cold and clammy, not what I expected at all. They smelled of damp and rottenness. I tried to brush them off my face. There were leaves in my hair as well, sticking there like bats. Then I didn’t think it was funny any more. I brushed at the leaves harder. I had my head down, to get them
off.
The sound of Maggie’s voice had changed. It had a childish intonation that Fry had not heard before. It was slightly shocking coming from the mouth of this woman. It was as if she were recalling a childhood incident, not a trauma from a few weeks ago.
This time the pause was even longer. Fry squeezed her fingers together to stop herself breaking the silence and interrupting. She looked at the tapes to make sure they were both still running. But the silence went on too long.
‘Is there anyone else around?’ asked Fry as gently as she could, though her urge was to push Maggie harder as they reached a critical stage.
‘Anyone else? No, she’s not there.’
Fry shook her head, thinking she had misheard. ‘Who?’
Now Maggie looked confused too, as if two different memories were mingling together.
‘I had my head down, looking at the ground,’ she repeated. ‘I was looking at the ground, where the leaves were. That’s why I didn’t see him.’
Maggie’s voice had become bleak. Her pitch had risen
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slightly as people’s voices did when they were close to that crack in the facade that let through the tears.
‘If I hadn’t kicked at the leaves, I would have heard him coming. I could have got away.’
‘When did you first become aware of another person, Maggie?’
‘He was already close then.’
‘How did you know? Did you hear him?’
‘The leaves were rustling. They were too loud. I wasn’t paying attention.’
‘All right. You didn’t hear him. Did you smell him, Maggie?’
‘Smell him?’ Maggie frowned. Her nostrils flared as if she was drawing in remembered odours.
Fry knew that smells were powerful aids to memory. If Maggie could recall a single whiff of something - a distinctive deodorant, body odour, cigarette smoke - it would be something to add to the picture.
‘I can’t smell him,’ said Maggie. ‘Only the leaves.’ ‘Can you hear him now?’ asked Fry, switching to the present tense that Maggie herself had started using.
Maggie’s eyes were distant. Was she listening? Fry was sure that Maggie could hear something. Some sound was replaying in her mind, but Fry was powerless to know what it was until she felt able to share it.
‘A rustling noise,’ said Maggie hesitantly, at last. ‘The leaves again? He was walking through the leaves. You heard his feet in the leaves.’
‘Yes, there was that too. But something else. A plastic rustling. No, not plastic - nylon. He was wearing a nylon cagoule or anorak.’
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Fry felt a little surge of excitement. ‘That’s very tapes would fail to catch, though they kept on turning. good, Maggie. Think carefully now. Can you see it, this And there was a high, distant noise, like the wheeze in cagoule? What colour is it?’ the chest of an asthmatic, or the faint whimper of a Maggie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Black. Maybe small creature dying at the side of the road.
blue.’ ‘I can’t remember,’ said Maggie. ‘I can’t remember.’ ‘That’s good. Can you describe it? Does it have but tons or a zip? Has it got a hood?’ ‘I can’t tell.’
‘Why not?’
Maggie paused. ‘It’s dark.’
Fry opened her mouth and shut it again. She looked at the tape machine, wondering whether it had heard the same thing that she had. Then she stared at Maggie Crew, resisting an urge to grab the woman by the shoulders and shake her, to force her to answer the biggest question of all.
‘Maggie,’ she said, ‘what were you doing on the moor in the dark?’
But Maggie was silent now. Fry thought she had lost her completely, that she had slipped away into sleep or some other world. But if she had, it was a world where there were only nightmares. Maggie’s body was rigid, her face strained and frightened. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut. She shook her head abruptly, like someone throwing off brambles tangled in her hair. Fry caught a glimpse of red, puckered tissue, glistening as if freshly burned.
Then Maggie put her hands to her face, covering her right eye, her fingers pressed tightly to her forehead for protection. There was only the sound of her breathing in the room, a ragged hiss through her nose that the
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19
‘Golden Virginia,’ said Owen Fox. ‘It’s their favourite.’ Owen had a six-pack of lager in one hand, a tin of tobacco in the other. Ben Cooper followed him uncertainly. He had paid for the lager and tobacco, and he knew perfectly well that he wasn’t going to be able to claim them back on expenses. ‘Are you sure it will work?’ said Cooper. ‘It seems a bit like bribing the natives with glass beads.’ ‘It’s the only way to get close to these spiritual types,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve got to appeal to their materialism.’ ‘Still ‘ ‘Trust me, Ben. I’m a Ranger.’ But Cooper was
