When Will There Be Good News? (2 page)

Now the man was walking in the same direction as they were, on the other side of their mother. Their mother was moving very fast, saying, 'Come on, quickly, keep up,' to them. She sounded breathless. Then the dog ran in front of the man and started barking and jumping up as if it was trying to block the man's path. Without any warning he kicked the dog so hard that it sailed into the air and landed in the wheat. They couldn't see it but they could hear the terrible squealing noise that it was making. Jessica stood in front of the man and screamed something at him, jabbing her finger at hi
m
and taking great gulps of air as if she couldn't breathe and then she ran into the field after the dog. Everything was bad. There was no question about it.

Joanna was staring at the wheat, trying to see where Jessica and the dog had gone and it took a moment for her to notice that her mother was fighting the man, punching him with her fists. But the man had a knife and he kept raising it in the air so that it shone like silver in the hot afternoon sun. Her mother started to scream. There was blood on her face, on her hands, on her strong legs, on her strawberry dress. Then Joanna realized that her mother wasn't screaming at the man, she was screaming at her.

Their mother was cut down where she stood, the great silver knife carving through her heart as if it was slicing butcher's meat. She was thirty-six years old.

He must have stabbed Jessica too before she ran off because there was a trail of blood, a path that led them to her, although not at first because the field of wheat had closed around her, like a golden blanket. She was lying with her arms around the body
of the
dog and their blood had mingled and soaked into the dry earth, feeding the grain, like a sacrifice to the harvest. Joseph died where he was, strapped into the pushchair
. J
oanna liked to think that he never woke up but she didn't know.

And Joanna
. J
oanna obeyed her mother when she screamed at her. 'Run,Joanna, run,' she said and Joanna ran into the field and was lost in the wheat.

Later, when it was dark, other dogs came and found her. A stranger lifted her up and carried her away. 'Not a scratch on her,' she heard a voice say. The stars and the moon were bright in the cold, black sky above her head.

Of course, she should have taken Joseph with her, she should have snatched him from the buggy, or run with the buggy Gessica would have). It didn't matter that Joanna was only six years old, that she would never have managed running with the buggy and that the man would have caught her in seconds, that wasn't the point. It would have been better to have tried to save the baby and been killed than not trying and living. It would have been better to have died with Jessica and her mother rather than being left behind without them. But she never thought about any ofthat, she just did as she was told.

'Run, Joanna, run,' her mother commanded. So she did.

It was funny but now, thirty years later, the thing that drove her to distraction was that she couldn't remember what the dog was called. And there was no one left to ask.

Chapter
II

Today
.

Flesh and Blood
.

THE GREEN RAN THE WHOLE LENGTH OF THE VILLAGE, AND WAS bisected by a narrow road. The primary school looked over the village green. The green wasn't square, as he'd first imagined, nor did it have a duck pond, which was something else he had imagined
. Y
ou would think, coming from the same county, he would know this countryside but it was alien corn. His knowledge of the Yorkshire Dales was second-hand, garnered from TV and films -the occasional glimpse of Emmerdale, a semi-conscious night on the sofa watching Calendar Girls on cable.

It was quiet today, a Wednesday morning at the beginning of December. A Christmas tree had been erected on the green but it was still as nature intended, undecorated and unlit.

The last time (the first time) he had come here to scope out the village it had been a Sunday afternoon, height of the midsummer season, and the place had been humming, tourists picnicking on the grass, small children racing around, old people sitting on benches, everyone eating ice-creams. There was a kind of sand pit at one end where people -natives, not tourists -were playing what he thought might be quoits -throwing big iron rings as heavy as horseshoes. He hadn't realized people still did things like that. It was bizarre. It was medieval. There were still stocks on the green, by the market cross, and -according to a guidebook he had bought -a 'bull ring'. He'd thought of the Birmingham shopping centre of that name until he'd read on and discovered its purpose was bull-baiting. He presumed (he hoped) that the stocks and the bull ring were historic -for the tourists -and not still in use. The village was a place to which people drove in their cars in order to get out and walk. He never did that. If he walked, he started from where he was.

He hid behind a copy of the Darlington and Stockton Times and studied the small ads for funeral homes and decorators and used cars. He thought it would be a less conspicuous read than a national newspaper, although he had bought it in Hawes rather than the village shop, where he might have drawn too much attention to himself. These people had a well-developed radar for the wrong kind of stranger. They probably burned a wicker man every summer.

Last time he'd been driving a flash car, now he blended in better, driving a mud-spattered Discovery rental and wearing hiking boots and a fleece-lined North Face jacket, with an OS guide in a plastic wallet hanging round his neck that he'd also bought in Hawes. If he could have got hold of one, he would have borrowed a dog and then he would have looked like a clone of every other visitor. You should be able to rent dogs. Now there was a gap in the market.

He had driven the rental from the station. He would have driven all the way (in his flash car) but when he had got into the driving seat and switched on the engine he found his car was completely dead. Something mysterious, like electronics, he supposed. Now it was being nursed in a garage in Walthamstow by a Polish guy called Emil who had access (a nice euphemism) to genuine BMW parts at half the price of an official supplier.

He checked his watch, a gold Breitling, an expensive present. Quality time. He liked male paraphernalia -cars, knives, gadgets, watches -but he wasn't sure he would have laid out so much money on a watch. 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth,' she smiled when she gave it to him.

'Oh, fucking hurry up, would you,' he muttered and banged his head off the steering wheel, but gently in case he attracted the attention ofa passing local. Despite the disguise, he knew there might be a limit to how long you could hang about in a small place like this without someone beginning to ask questions. He sighed and looked at his watch. He'd give it another ten minutes.

After nine minutes and thirty seconds (he was counting -what else was there to do? Watching the watch.) a vanguard of two boys and two girls ran out of the door of the school. They were carrying football nets and in a well-practised manoeuvre erected them on the green. The green seemed to serve as a school playground. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to be educated in a school like this. His primary school had been an underfunded, overpopulated sinkhole where social Darwinism applied at every turn. Survival of the fastest. And that was the good part of his education. His proper education, where he had actually sat in a classroom and learned something, had been provided courtesy of the army.

A stream of children, dressed in PE kit, poured out of the school and spread over the green like a delta. Two teachers followed and started dishing out footballs from a basket. He counted the children as they came out, all twenty-seven of them. The little ones came out last.

Then came what he was waiting for -the playschool kids. They gathered every Wednesday and Friday afternoon in a little extension at the back of the school. Nathan was one of the tiniest, tottering along, holding on to the hand of a much older girl. Nat. Small like a gnat. He was bundled into some kind ofall-in-one snowsuit. He had dark eyes and black curls that belonged incontrovertibly to his mother. A little snub nose. It was safe, Nathan's mother wasn't here, she was visiting her sister who had breast cancer. No one here knew him. Stranger in a strange land. There was no sign of Mr Arty-Farty. The False Dad.

He got out
of the
car, stretched his legs, consulted his map. Looked around as if he'd just arrived. He could hear the waterfall. It was out of sight of the village but within hearing of it. Sketched by Turner, according to the guidebook. He meandered across a corner of the green, as if he was going towards one of the many walkers' paths that spidered out of the village. He paused, pretended to consult the map again, ambled nearer to the children.

The bigger kids were warming up, throwing and kicking the ball to each other. Some of the older ones were practising headers. Nathan was trying to kick a ball to and fro with a girl from the infants' class. He fell over his own feet. Two years and three months old. His face was scrunched up with concentration. Vulnerable. He could have picked him up with one hand, run back to the Discovery, thrown him in the back seat and driven out of there before anyone had time to do anything. How long would it take for the police to respond? For ever, that was how long.

The ball rolled towards him. He picked it up and grinned at Nathan, said, 'Is this your ball, son?' Nathan nodded shyly and he held out the ball like a lure, drawing the boy towards him. As soon as he was within reach he gave the ball back with one hand and with the other touched the boy's head, pretending to ruille his hair. The boy leaped back as if he had been scalded. The girl from the infants' class grabbed the ball and dragged Nathan away by the hand, glaring over her shoulder. Several women -mothers and teachers -turned to look in his direction but he was studying the map, pretending indifference to anything going on around him.

One of the mothers approached him, a bright, polite smile stuck on her face, and said, 'Can I help you?' when what she really meant was 'If you're planning on harming one of these children I will beat you to a pulp with my bare hands.'

'Sorry,' he said, turning on the charm. He surprised even himself sometimes with the charm. 'I'm a bit lost.' Women could never believe it when a guy admitted to being lost, they immediately warmed to you. (,Twenty-five million sperm needed to fertilize an egg,' his wife used to say, 'because only one will stop to ask directions.')

He shrugged helplessly. 'I'm looking for the waterfall?'

'It's that way,' the woman said, pointing behind him.

'Ah,' he said, 'I think I've been reading the map back to front. Well, thanks,' he added and strode off down the lane towards the waterfall before she could say anything else. He'd have to give it a good ten minutes. It would look too suspicious ifhe went straight back to the Discovery.