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But the whole landscape was a working environment. Everything had its place. Everything had its job to do. No point being sentimental about it. But he could appreciate seeing a thing work well, and understanding how it worked. The engineer in him could appreciate that.
Same on the allotments, in the spring, all the new shoots coming up, the pea shoots winding around anything close at hand. It was just cracking-good design. Evolution, call it what you like. Was a pleasure to see it.
Or take the rabbits. Some people might assume that shooting the arse out of them indicated a certain disrespect on his part. Not at all. They were wonderful creatures to look at. When you peeled the skin off and saw how the muscles were knit together, the joints, the blood vessels. Nothing wasted. A little masterpiece. Same with the crows: the way the wingspan stitched into the body, the whole structure just built for flight, right down to the hollow bones. We are well made, was the point of it. Fearfully and wonderfully made, as it said in the Bible.
He’d always been struck by the truth of that when he used to go swimming up at the reservoirs. Years ago. When he first started working up there. Him and another lad would go off swimming after hours, in the summer. If you looked at the span of muscle and bone across the shoulders of a strong swimmer, there was something almost wing-like about it. Like wings folded away under the skin there. If he’d been an artist he would have liked to draw it. Study it. The way bodies are slotted together. The engineering of it, to use that term again. The way muscles and bones move beneath the skin. Even the technology of skin itself, the effective waterproofing of it. The way sweat passes out of it but water never gets in. The way water just beads up on the surface and runs down, follows the contours. And the cooling mechanism: the blood flushing to the surface when the body gets overheated. Ingenious, really. A marvellous sight.
*
The police had more questions. Where were you the day after the girl went missing? Did you see anything that day, or the following day? Were you out walking perhaps, did you see anything out of the ordinary?
They weren’t particularly imaginative questions, in Clive’s opinion. They were easily answered.
They wanted to know more about the gun, of course. He showed them his licence, and the certificates. He showed them the locker it was kept in. They asked why the gun hadn’t been in the locker when the lad came into the house.
He’d been cleaning it, he told them. He’d not been expecting company.
The pair of them seemed to run out of steam. Clive got talking to the younger one while they filled out some paperwork. He was the more approachable of the two. Thoughtful lad. A PC Forshaw.
They got on to allotments. PC Forshaw had just taken on a plot over in Cardwell, it turned out. Clive told him the trick with allotments was making sure to put the hours in. Always plenty to do. You reach this age, he said, it gets so it’s something to do with the days. Good way of using up some energy.
PC Forshaw saw the sense in that. He was with Clive on the rabbit problem as well. Said it was quite bad over in Cardwell.
Trouble with rabbits, Clive told him, is they breed like rabbits. This was one of his jokes. They were rotten for it, in the spring. Out of control. Hard to fathom. Some people are like that, it seemed. No self-control whatsoever. Couldn’t see the point of it, himself. All that nonsense.
The younger policeman had been reminding Clive of someone, and it took him a while to think who it was. One of the lads he’d known when he first worked on the reservoirs. Not long after the war. Smart lad. Good engineer. Didn’t chat too much on the job. Good swimmer as well. He wasn’t around for all that long, only a few years. Would have gone back home at some point, Clive assumed. He didn’t k
now where to. A lot of people had moved up here temporarily, when they were still building the reservoirs, Clive among them. But he’d never found a reason to leave, himself. Didn’t have a family to go back to, as it were. Never fancied settling down to family life up here either. Families being a snare of a kind. Not that he’d ever seen someone chew their own leg off to get away from a family, but he’d known some who had come close. Wasn’t for Clive. He liked company but he liked time to himself as well. He kept things in order at home and he liked things quiet.
He’d never done much of the swimming after that other lad had left. Couldn’t find anyone who took the same liking to it.
*
The two policemen had to get going, in the end. They stood up to leave before Clive had finished talking. That happened, sometimes. More than he’d like to expect. He wasn’t a talkative chap. It was just that on occasion he got into a flow.
He asked if they were all square. They said they’d be in touch if they had any further questions. Clive said perhaps they could ask the lad to pop in and say hello. So that he could clear up any concerns the boy might have, any misunderstanding. They said it would be better if he contacted the boy’s parents directly.
He asked if they wanted one more cup of tea before they went, but they said they had to get on.
He turned his attention back to the gun.
8: Martin
It wasn’t even a llama, for starters.
He’d had to clear up that misunderstanding more than once. People had been quick to tell the story – oh, here’s a good one, did you hear about Martin and that llama? Well, the joke was on them, because it hadn’t been a llama in any case.
People liked talking, in these parts. There was always a story going round, and they generally took on a life of their own. But he wanted to set this particular one straight.
He’d been thinking about getting the wife a dog.
Not a great big one. Something easy to manage. But something to keep her occupied. He thought it might cheer her up.
A butcher’s dog. It made sense. He didn’t know why they hadn’t thought of it before.
Things had been sticky with the wife for a while. She’d been unpredictable. Both kids had left home, and the two of them were rattling around a bit. Martin found himself down at the pub more often than not, and who knew where Ruth was some nights. And then the shop was running itself into the ground, on top of everything else.
Things weren’t all roses and sunshine, basically. He needed something to turn it around. He’d been thinking her birthday might be the opportunity.
