at the time.’
‘Sarah, what on earth are you talking about?’ said Howard.
‘I did think about what Emma would say, if she were here. And I knew she’d say “yes”. So I let him take the car. It was while you were away at that conference in London.’
‘Mrs Renshaw -‘ said Fry.
‘I was sure it wouldn’t do any harm. It was a kind of connection. For a while, I was able to imagine that they’d gone out
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together and he’d bring Emma back with him when he returned the car.’
‘I can’t believe this/ said Howard, smacking the wing of the car. ‘You did this while my back was turned. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought you might be angry. I thought you wouldn’t see it the same way.’
‘Mrs Renshaw/ said Fry, ‘who did you allow to use this car?’
‘It was Alex/ she said. ‘I let Alex Dearden borrow it.’
Gail Dearden stood in her kitchen at Shepley Head Lodge and stared at her husband. Suddenly, the kitchen didn’t seem to be hers any more. It had been made unfamiliar by an object that lay on the table.
‘Where did the shotgun come from?’ she said.
‘Somebody left it in the pick-up/ said Michael.
‘What? Just like that?’
‘Yes/
‘I don’t believe you.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you/
Gail thought she recognized where the lie came from. It was the answer given by a defendant in a court case a few years ago a farmer who had been sent to prison after shooting a burglar in his house. Michael had cut out the newspaper report, and it was still in a drawer somewhere. She’d noticed it only recently.
‘I think you bought the gun from someone when you went to Manchester at the weekend/ said Gail. ‘I knew you were up to something.’
Dearden shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘And what exactly are you planning to do with it, Michael?’
He didn’t look at her, but stared out of the window as he spoke. ‘If they come again tonight, I’ll be ready for them/
‘Don’t talk stupid/
But Gail could see that his hand was shaking slightly where he clutched the stock of the shotgun. He was wound up to a pitch where he might actually do something stupid.
‘I hope to God there are no bullets in it/
‘Cartridges/ he said. They’re called cartridges/
The phone in the hallway began to ring. Michael placed the shotgun casually on the kitchen chair before he went to answer the call. Gail looked at the gun, seeing it properly for the first
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time, examining it as an actual working implement rather than s
some anonymous symbol of violence. She had never seen a
shotgun before, except in films, wielded by ancient red-faced aris 5
tocrats as they blasted away at innocent birds, or a sawn-off version |
carried over the shoulder of Vinnie Jones. She wondered how it $p
opened to put the bullets in. No, the cartridges. She had a vague
picture of something bigger than a bullet, with a thick metal casing and a section that burst open when it was fired. Were these cartridges packed with lead shot, or something like that? Of course they were - that’s why it was called a shotgun.
She had bought a couple of wild duck once from a butcher in Glossop, and she had wondered what the small black pieces of grit were that had almost chipped her teeth as she chewed the meat. She had mentioned it to the butcher next time she had gone into the shop, and he had laughed at her and told her it was the shot. She had been embarrassed to feel that she had shown her ignorance, and she hadn’t asked any more. But she had realized that was the way they shot wildfowl: with shotguns. Those small black pellets caught the bird in a lethal hail, piercing its flesh and lodging themselves in its muscles and internal organs, maybe in its brain. She shuddered. She supposed it was a quick death, ” for a bird or a small animal. But what would the effect be on a human being?
Gail looked at the shotgun again. It seemed quite old, and almost had the look of an antique. Even she could see that it was a well made piece of equipment, the stock made of good wood with an attractive grain, well polished. In fact, the wood looked so attractive and smooth that she wanted to touch it. Her fingers were halfway towards a caress before she drew her hand back, feeling almost as if she had dipped it in something slimy. Beyond the stock, the barrel and the mechanism were dark and covered in a sheen of oil. Now she realized she could smell the gun, that in fact she had been smelling it for several minutes. Its odour was a mixture of oil and metal and varnished wood, dark and sharp and tangy. The smell was part of what had given a new, unsafe feeling J|
to the kitchen. It clashed with the scent of the herbs on the pine dresser and the warm aroma from the Aga. Yet somehow it was at home with those smells, too.
She looked a little more closely at the gun, her nostrils flexing at the smell. She had a feeling that a shotgun opened halfway along, that it sort of broke in half, with a hinge just behind the
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barrels. But she couldn’t see a lever or a switch that she might be able to press
