Before she could frighten herself out of it, Dennie made one large stride deep into the overgrowth, planted her foot, reached out with her right hand, grabbed the nearest strawberry off its stem, and reversed her step.
And lost her balance.
She wobbled, pinwheeling her arms desperately. She saw herself collapsing sideways into nettles that were already as high as her head, every hair on every leaf full of poison, or else into the whiplike embrace of brambles. If not them, then there was bound to be broken glass and rusted metal hiding amongst the stems. She would be stabbed and impaled, and her blood would soak into the soil to be sucked up by the hungry roots of plants which had no business growing in God’s earth. Ah, but which god? said a dry voice in her head, and in her terror she was sure that it was the voice of the Neary plot itself.
Then gravity reasserted itself, she reeled back to the safety of the path, and the Neary plot relinquished its nightmare grip on her body and mind. She ran back to her shed and fell onto her camp cot, sobbing.
Viggo came in and licked her until she felt better. She’d tied him up outside to stop him from getting into mischief but had left him enough lead so that he could get in if he wanted. When she felt more like herself she examined the treasure that she had won from her ordeal. For a wild strawberry it was large, unbothered by worm or beetle, and the colour of fresh blood. Tentatively she bit into it, and found that the flesh was very firm for a strawb, almost meaty in fact, and with a peculiar salty aftertaste. All told it was one of the most unpleasant things she’d ever put in her mouth. She spat it out.
‘It’s playing us for fools, my boy,’ she said, scratching Viggo between the ears. There was too much going on that didn’t make sense, and she’d had enough of it. There was still no word about Marcus Overton, Ben Torelli hadn’t been seen for weeks, and plants which had no right to grow were fruiting out of season. Not to mention the unwelcome visitations from Sarah Neary. Dennie had been spending too many nights in her house and had let her watch slip.
‘No more, my boy,’ she said. ‘No more.’ She got up and went to check how much bottled gas she had for her camping stove and to air out her sleeping bag.
4
A PREMATURE INTERMENT
TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF MAY, EVERETT ASKED MATT to use the tractor to dig another hole, just like the other two that had since been filled, in the field behind the long stone barn.
‘I know what these are for, you know,’ he said, as he flicked the levers that operated the back-hoe attachment, and the huge metal jaw with its square teeth scooped another chunk out of the stony soil. He’d carved out the first few feet and was working on deepening the hole.
‘Do you, now,’ replied Everett, barely interested. He had a shovel and was clearing out the loose rubble that kept sliding back in. Gar was collecting the larger rocks and carrying them over to the dry-stone wall to be used as material for repairs.
‘I know what’s in them.’
Everett squinted up at him. ‘Is there a point to this or are you going for some kind of suspense?’
‘They’re graves, aren’t they?’
‘No,’ Everett said, and bent to his task again. ‘Graves are for dead people. These are refuse pits for empty vessels.’
‘You can call them what you like, but I’ve seen them. The bodies, that is.’
Everett stopped again, leaned on the shovel handle, and looked at him properly. ‘Oh?’
‘Yes. He showed me.’ Matt pointed at Gar, who had dropped his rock and was ambling back over.
Everett stared at Gar, incredulous. ‘You showed him?’
Gar shrugged. ‘Ee ask.’
‘He asked and you just showed him? Just like that?’
‘Ee okay. Rust im.’
‘I want you to know that I’m completely cool with it,’ Matt went on hurriedly, before Everett’s displeasure turned to him. ‘I’m not going to tell. I mean, I figure that it’s for their money, or because they pissed you off or something.’
‘It’s for neither of those reasons and you’d better keep your damned nose out of things that don’t concern you.’
‘But it does concern me, because of this.’ Matt gestured to the tractor, the back-hoe, and the excavation. ‘You’ve made it concern me. I’m an accessory now.’
‘You weren’t. If anybody had asked, you could truthfully have said that you were just following orders and that you had no idea what the holes were for, but you’ve buggered that up now, haven’t you? You’ve made yourself an accessory.’ Everett tossed the shovel up onto the grass and climbed out after it. He dusted his hands off and came over to the tractor cab, looking at Matt closely as if seeing him properly for the first time and considering what manner of creature he was. ‘The only question is, what do we do about it?’
Matt was suddenly and uncomfortably aware that Gar had approached on the other side of the cab and that there was now no escape if he tried to make run for it. He began to suspect that this might have been a very bad idea. ‘You let me help.’
‘You were already helping, before you opened your big yap.’
‘More! You let me help more! I can do more than just dig holes. I can do other things. You know… the rest of it.’
Everett’s scepticism twisted his face into a sneer. ‘And yet you can’t even say it. What makes you think I’d trust you to do that? Killing rabbits and lambs is one thing. Killing a human being who knows they’re going to die and seeing the knowledge of that in their face before you
