The Color of Darkness (2 page)

“Run!” The man with the terrier rushed out of the clearing, but the others ignored him and stayed, standing over the panting body of the badger, gazing around into the night.

Tom kept his head low, watching them. The shorter of the two had a tough face with a double chin. The taller, with a fat paunch and dark hair, had eyes as silver-cold as knife blades.

“It ain't gamekeepers,” said Cold Eyes. “There ain't keepers here.”

“Let Elvis go,” said Double Chin. “He'll flush 'em out.”

“Go on, then.”

Tom was on his feet and running before he heard the rush of the dog's paws, but he knew it was the Rottweiler, unchained. It didn't waste breath barking, simply bounded toward the sound of him sprinting away through the undergrowth.

He felt no fear. Tom knew this landscape better even than the sounds of the midnight woods: this was his farm, his work, and his life. He broke from the edge of the woods out into the fields and made for the stream at the bottom of the hill, slinging the gun over his shoulder as he ran. His legs were strong and fast: he had a head start, just enough of one, if nothing hampered him.

Behind, he heard the thudding of the dog's paws against the black grasses. Not far now. Not far. And then he was at the shallow stream, splashing through the widest point, running a few steps along the bank and back into the stream again, back out, back in, back out. He heard the dog splashing, stopping, listening, and he leapt out of the stream, hared across a narrow strip of grass, and vaulted over the fence into the lane.

His bike was where he'd left it; he pedaled away into the night, gripping the handlebars with a fury that kept him pedaling at top speed long after there was any further danger of being caught by the dog. He would go back there in the morning, just to check if the badger had survived, but in his heart he knew that she hadn't stood a chance.

And the baiters would be back. Tom knew how men like that operated—how violent and brutal they were, intent on finding ways to carry out their disgusting sport. He could call the police, but it would only be Tom's word against theirs—Johnny would never get involved.

The baiters would be back, and they'd kill more badgers unless he could take away the cover of darkness and shine bright lights onto their horrible cruelty.

I'll find some way of stopping them, he thought as he wrenched the bike up the drive to the farmhouse, his wheels spinning against the gravel. I'll catch them and I'll let them see that I caught them, and that it's
my
badgers on
my
farm that I'm protecting.

And then I'll make them pay.

 

CHAPTER 2

DAD

The dogs had dumped on the carpet again.

Cath Carrera woke up and didn't even have to sniff to know that they'd done it, right in the middle of the living room, close to the couch where she slept. The smell was rising, hot and eggy, into her nostrils. As she breathed, it shot into her empty stomach like a poison-tipped stick.

She sat up and gagged. “Yuck!”

Then she froze. She shouldn't have made a sound. If Dad or Macy woke, they'd make her clean up the mess before she went to school. Even if one of the other kids came into the living room and started screaming about the rotten smell, Cath would still be the one who had to clean it up.

She didn't want to do it. It wasn't fair that Macy's kids got a bedroom while Cath didn't, and it wasn't fair that Dad had kicked the dogs into the living room late last night when Cath had already shut the door, so it was even less fair to make her clean up after them. But if she tried to say no, Macy would probably have a fit and shove her onto the pile of crap, and then she'd have to go to school stinking, like last Thursday, when that English teacher with a neck like a string bag had taken her aside and suggested that she go into the washroom to see if she'd trodden in anything, and was everything quite all right at home?

Cath listened to the sounds of the apartment. One of the dogs was snoring in the corner. Macy was snoring in her and Dad's room, grunts muffled by the closed door. The kids didn't snore, but they always woke up early. There wouldn't be much time before someone else appeared.

She swung her legs off the side of the settee, looking carefully at the floor to avoid the mess. The snoring dog had a clump of pale gray hair stuck to its soggy jaw. Badger hair again, for sure.

Reaching for her school clothes, Cath tried not to breathe as she put them on. If she managed to get out of the apartment and didn't come back till late, someone else would have to clean the carpet. They wouldn't be able to sit in the living room all day with that horrible smell.

*   *   *

She got as far as the hallway, and then the door to the kids' room opened and Sadie stuck her head out. Her blond hair was across her face, but her hard little eyes shone through the white strands. She looked at Cath.

For a second, neither of them spoke. Cath clenched her fist.

“Why are you going out now?” said Sadie, very loudly. “It isn't time for school yet.”

“Shut it!” Cath hissed, grabbing for her schoolbag.

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” yelled Sadie, looking at the door of her parents' room. She pushed away the hair from her mouth and smiled at Cath.

Cath yanked the bag up from under the other schoolbags and turned the key in the front door. She pulled it open just as the bedroom door at the end of the hall opened.

“What the—?”

It was Macy, nightie strap hanging off her shoulder.

“Mum, Cath's going out!” said Sadie.

Cath went out. Running as fast as the walls and stairs would let her, she crashed into the angles of the stairwell and leapt down the floors.

“CATH! YOU LITTLE COW! GET BACK HERE!”

The yell bounced off the walls and zoomed past her ears. She ran, jumped, careered down the seven flights of stairs, slapping her hand on the metal handrail, swinging her bag around the corners of the landing. Macy wouldn't catch her. Macy wouldn't even bother to run—what did she care? Cath's own mum had disappeared ages ago, long before Cath could remember, and the only thing Cath knew about her was that she was “wild.”

“Enough sense to leave you, anyway,” Macy liked to say when Dad wasn't around.

*   *   *

Cath shot outside into the early-morning drizzle. The Sawtry estate was quiet and cold, exhausted apartment buildings sagging toward the earth. Behind the thin rain, a stillness in the air spoke of a world that hadn't yet learned to move.

She slowed to a walk and looked up. She liked the Sawtry in the early morning. If only the day never got old. If only the sun never slunk its way up into the sky, shining light on all the dirty cracks of the earth below. If only nothing ever had to carry on—just to begin, and begin again, and go on beginning, and all the things that began badly wouldn't matter because you'd know they weren't going to carry on any more than just the beginning.

If that was the world—but that wasn't the world. Not this world, anyway.

She shrugged and grinned, baring her teeth to the silent clouds. For a second, she could almost feel the fangs of a wolf growing long from her gums, flashing white against the day. If her fingers were wolves' claws, if she could prowl and spring and sink her teeth into Macy's neck …

Shaking the wolf from her shoulders, she dropped the imaginary fur onto the pavement and was just about to turn the corner of the alley that went toward school, when a voice made her stop dead.

“You little…”

She knew the voice at once. It had said those words to her often enough.

Dad. Outside in the early morning, prowling around the Sawtry. It wasn't unusual, but it wasn't good.

Cath shrank back against the wall. Her chest contracted, trying to hold in the swelling beat of her heart. Her lungs bulged.

And then—somebody else.

“No! Please! Please! Don't!”

The second voice was whining and thin, and it came from down the alley. Johnny White, who lived four floors below. He did stuff for Dad sometimes, though he didn't seem very good at it: only last week he'd turned up at the door, soaked and shivering, with a panicked story about losing money.

At least Dad wasn't talking to her. She breathed out and in again, tasting the sweetness of the damp air. Her feet edged backward, trying to take her away from the alley. But Dad didn't know she was there. There wasn't any need to run.

She put her hands on the wall and peered around the corner, trying to keep everything but her eyeballs out of sight.

“I told you to meet us,” said Dad. “You owed me, big-time. Five grand you lost us last week. Five. Grand. And I said, be fair, give the boy another chance. Let him keep lookout for us while we have a little bit of sport. Nice and easy. Did you have trouble understanding me?”

Heavy and hairy, he was pinning Johnny White up against the alley wall with his massive forearms and solid round belly. Johnny White looked like a little piece of shivering straw.

“No!” Johnny whined, not even putting his hands up to try and push Dad away. “I was going to, I swear … I was coming … I got lost … I swear, on my mum's life…”

“You little maggot,” said Dad. His face was so close to Johnny's that they might have been about to kiss. “Nobody could've known we was in them woods, unless you'd told 'em. Ain't that right, son?”

“No! I didn't … I swear! I'll prove it—I'll go on another job for you! Anything! Anything you want!”

“Too late now.” Dad was fishing around in his pocket, bunching up a gloved fist. “You know, I don't reckon you lost that money at all. I reckon you stole it. You stole it from
me
. Didn't you?”

“No…” Johnny gasped, the skin around his mouth going gray.

Dad carried on. “You
steal
, you double-cross me—you ain't no good for nothing
.
No more guts than a
dead badger
.”

Then Dad pulled back his fist and punched Johnny in the stomach, and his other hand slapped itself tight across Johnny's mouth.

I'd bite him if he did that to me, thought Cath. Johnny's just standing there, and he's twice as big as me.

Dad's fist jerked away, and Johnny gave a strange grunt. His hands fluttered and went to hold his stomach. Dad stepped backward. A spark of wet silver caught the light.

Johnny dropped to his knees. Dad looked down at him, smiling like a rattlesnake, and threw a knife onto the ground.

And then Cath saw that a dark shadow was seeping along the sleeve of Johnny's white sweatshirt, a crimson flower unfurling its petals over the pale cloth. And she understood why Dad had taken his hand off Johnny's mouth. Johnny wasn't going to be shouting now. He didn't have the breath to spare.

Nobody got away with double-crossing Dad.

A piece of invisible fluff caught in her throat. She struggled for air and a sound rasped out, as raw as the croak of a crow.

Dad looked up.

His ice-gray eyes met hers. Cath couldn't look away, because he was Dad, because she saw him every morning, because he was the only thing in the world that she'd always known, because Johnny White … because Johnny White was bleeding …

Dad was on his toes in a second. And Cath ran.

Back over the estate. Over the roads, across the yards, past the benches and concrete planters. Over the cracks and past the railings, around the cars and through the doors. Out of the far doors. Out of the Sawtry.

“Cath!”

He tried calling her, once, in a gentle voice that she'd never heard him use. But she knew him. She knew what he'd do if he ever got hold of her again.

“CATH!”

Now he was calling her in his real voice, that hard, furious roar of anger. His feet smacked against the concrete behind her.

Cath ran. She looked ahead and kept her legs running. There was only one place to go to now, where she might get away from him, where she could bury herself deep in the undergrowth and cover herself with plants and bushes that would keep very still and refuse to give her away.

The park, down by the old railway. She'd crawled into the bushes one summer and found a hidden world of wildness: dark thorns and twisted branches and tiny pockets of space linked by foxes' tunnels. And after that, she couldn't keep away from it.

Normally, she only went when she was alone; she didn't want to risk anyone finding out where she hid. Normally, she could outrun Dad easily, what with his huge hairy shoulders and his fat arms and his heavy belly.

But nothing was normal now.