Braking, I paused before turning into Kiln Close. Once I drove into my old street I would cross a threshold, a change as monumental as when I left.
The council houses accreted on the village. I drove onto the verge, neglected turf smearing beneath the wheels. Plastic toys in the gardens gave the only flash of color, stark against beige fake brick cladding. No one peered out to see who was parking up. They knew better.
I still had my key but checked in the letterbox anyway and wasn’t surprised to find the spare gone. Inside, the air smelled of mildew. I turned on the immersion boiler, the electric fire and the kettle in that order. The water boiled. In the front room the glowing coiled wire scorched the dust that had settled since Dad went missing.
From the kitchen window I could see the village, a nest of ancient buildings filled with rotting families who never had the sense to leave. At least they had a choice. No one left Kiln Close because they had nowhere to go.
Inside the fridge everything was rotten or on the turn. I made a cup of black tea and brought it to the living room. A transit van turned into the street, drove to the end, slowing as it passed, then circled around to leave. I moved close to the window so they could see me. The passenger stared as they drove by. They knew I was here. Saved me a job. In the kitchen I poured the cold tea down the sink.
• • •
This hardness, this solidity, affected personalities. Made people inflexible. Made people go too far rather than admit they were wrong. Lot of blood spilt because some were not willing to say they were sorry. Like when Jamie reversed into the cornershop and refused to pay for the damage.
The paint scrapes matched. Bernie Houlder called in his cousins from Leeds. They weren’t as inflexible as people around here. Willing to turn their hand to anything. Improvise. Any object can inflict pain if you’re inventive enough. They used drills, angle grinders, and tools they found lying around that old barn far beyond the reach of any police.
• • •
• • •
Before going in I paused by the door, reading posters for variety acts and fortune tellers. Spiritualists searching for the dead. There was no shortage of ghosts for them to find.
Inside, the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Government bans didn’t apply in Slakeby. Beneath tables blind sheepdogs barked at the disturbance. I ignored them and the lone barman’s stare, pushing through to the archway beyond and the pool room.
Under artificial light they were still holding court at the largest table as if nothing had changed since I’d left. I dropped a pound coin near a pocket and pulled up a stool to wait.
The sound of shots ricocheting was the only noise. The three men in the corner supped their pints and stared, ignoring the game in progress. Foam dripped onto piles of bank notes.
“If you’re not responsible,” I said, not looking at any of them. “Then you know who is.”
“It’s your game, lad,” Billy Clapham said, nodding toward the pool table. “Winner stays on.”
My opponent was Jack, Billy’s older brother. Before picking up the cue I touched my pocket, reassured by the hidden knife’s weight. I grabbed the coin and tossed it in the air, caught it in my palm, flipping it against my wrist.
“Your call,” I said.
“Winner breaks too,” Jack said. I shrugged, slid the coin into the slot and waited as the balls tumbled through the hidden network of pipes, watching as he dropped them one by one into the triangle and split the pack.
“Someone wrote me a letter. Told me he’d gone missing.”
“Someone around here wrote? Must have gone to the grammar school,” Billy said, a ripple of laughter going around the room. He handed his empty glass to one of his hangers-on, not handing over any money for the drink.
“You stopping at his house?”
“My house now,” I said. The trick was to not let them see they were getting to you. Turn your back on them. Make the cowardly fucks think you didn’t care.
“Council might see it differently. Soon move some single mum in there,” Billy continued. “I’d sort through his stuff. See what you want to keep before they skip it.”
“Where is he, Billy?”
Jack potted the eight ball, took it out and set it back amongst the spread of reds and yellows.
“Haven’t seen him in weeks,” Billy said, absentmindedly flicking through the stack of money. “Maybe he visited you in the big city and got lost. Mind hasn’t been right for a long time.”
Ignoring Jack’s cheating and Billy’s pisstaking I took aim. Two reds went down and I lined up for the next. I listened to Jack’s breathing behind me and hit the cue ball.
“Would be a good idea if we all walked out of here,” I said. “How will you help me find him, if we all fall out now?”
Jack looked at his brother and shrugged. Though he was older he never had the head for running the scams, even when we were all at school, stealing diesel and farm equipment. Apprenticeships for the family business.
No one said anything. Outside a truck passed by the pub, heavy wheels shuddering the walls. I took the next shot and unhooked the cue-rest from the rack on the wall.
“I thought the County Council banned trucks coming through the village,” I said, leaning forward to sight down the cue.
“Depends who the trucks belong to,” Billy said. “Foreign drivers. Don’t take much notice of local rules.”
“Especially when they’re working with you?”
“Don’t know what you mean,” he said. For a moment I thought he was going to say something else. His phone rang. I watched him ease it out, listen then stand up, gathering up the stack of money.
“Would be good if you were gone by the time we get back,” Billy said.
“You know that’s not going to happen, Billy. My old man was never scared of you, and neither am I.”
“You weren’t scared of us because of your old man. Things change.”
“Yes they do,” I said, and watched them leave the pub.
I walked out into the daylight. A second truck passed, side curtain too dirty to read. The slipstream opened my jacket to the cold Dales’ air. I watched the truck navigate its way between the village buildings, barely skimming cornerstones on its way.
The Claphams didn’t live in the village, though it was their little fiefdom’s heart. The family was spread around several farms scattered across the Dale and the moors above. If the police ever did break their money-greased truce with the family any evidence would be long gone. If an urban crew decided to attack, somehow managing not to get lost across the moors, they would be swamped by family with a much better equipped arsenal. A lot of burnt-out cars found on the moors. Lot of dead bodies under the peat. How do I know? Because when I was younger my Dad tried to get me to follow in his footsteps. I learnt enough not to be intimidated and then left.
Back to the house it was easy to tell they’d been there by new splinters around the doorframe. Meant for me to see, of course. Inside, nothing had been tossed or turned over, but I smelt them on the air. The stench of dead sheep and sour beer. I turned on the fire, made myself a cup of tea, then sat on the sofa and closed my eyes.
I decided to give them three days. The first day for them to laugh it off, the second day for them to plan and the third day for them to come for me.
• • •
I stood at the back window. A narrow road clung to the far side of the Dale. Motorbikes flicked between drystone walls, nipping past the tourist traffic and back into the correct lane. They saw the Dales as destinations and racing lines. I saw it as nets draped over the limestone and heather. Traps and knots for the unwary. Whether you were a sheep, shepherd or shop-owner, there were pockets of death in the country too easy to fall into.
Getting out my knife I unfolded the blade and slid the tip into the discolored plastic at the base of the rotting tackle bag.
People like the Claphams they think everyone is on the same intelligence level as them. What they had wasn’t intelligence, but cunning. Take Dad for example. They knew he was fast and dangerous, but they never credited him with any brains.
Dad was smart. Never going to excel at school or go to university, but he was smart. The type of smart that kept him alive in the Dale for sixty years. I didn’t know where he went wrong, but I knew where to look.
The book was slid between tackle bag’s hard base and waterproof coating. I hooked it out and flicked back the red cover. Inside was filled with notes. Not the most detailed records, but the key information. Where the bodies were buried. Sometimes literally. I sat on the bed and read his precise handwriting, making a star next to the most important entries. Turning to the middle pages, a photo fell out. I picked it up off the carpet and turned it over to stare at the two figures who sat on the riverbank.
Age had taken his face in the photo, but there was no mistaking my expression. Pride and love for the man who, despite all his faults, brought me up on his own after my mother died. Now the Claphams had taken him from me. I sat staring at the both of us until the sun set and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I was an orphan.
I woke up in the early hours slumped on my old bed, notebook still in my hand. Opening my bag I turned on the mobile hotspot, connected my phone and began to photograph the pages, uploading them straight to the cloud.
It wasn’t that the Claphams didn’t acknowledge technology, just the ways of inflicting pain hadn’t really changed in a couple of thousand years. They were traditionalists when it came to their working methods.
In 2015 they converted a barn to a studio and recruited camgirls to livestream 24/7. Problem was the Claphams had a very conservative attitude to money. They tended to conserve it for themselves, and not want to share it with others. The girls left on a Sunday morning when the family were at Church, hotwiring an old stolen car hidden behind the cattle shed.
Of course the brothers came back and sent out younger family members to look for them, but they were all gone by then. That was the closest they came to turning legitimate.
Once the photos were uploaded I tucked the original back in its hiding place and went downstairs.
The newspaper lying on the doormat hadn’t been there when I arrived. Word gets around when someone’s away and the local papergirl stops delivering. I picked it up and flicked on the hall light. It was the local rag, The Dales Courier. The date on the front was months ago, long before I found out I needed to return home. Out of habit I turned to Week in the Courts, then to the letters page.
He had a way with words, did Dad. Not a good way with words, but a way. I read the letter several times and sat down on the stairs.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said, to the empty house. “You daft old fucker.”
• • •
They knew where to look in the house, so he never kept anything bulky at home. Once a week he drove to the nearby town, weaving through the streets until he reached the small block of prefabs. The garage cost him £5 and change a week. For peace of mind to keep his memories away from those who would steal from him? Money well spent.
He only took me once. I came home late from college to find him drunk in the front room. He looked up from his bottle of vodka, grabbed me by arm and dragged me to his Land Rover.
At the garage he opened the door and by the headlight glare showed me all the old photos of mum. Photos of her in wedding dress and pictures and jeans. Some of her smiling and some scowling for him catching her unawares, but always with love. I never understood how he stayed whole when that part of him was torn away after he buried her. We never went back to the garage.
A few times over the years I walked up to the door and stood outside, eyes closed, trying to taste those memories on the air. There were none for me to find. My mum died when I was too young to make my own memories. Apart from that drunken drive through the countryside my Dad never spoke about her.
The money must have still been paying the Council, the door still locked with the same padlock. I reached in my boot for a screwdriver, forced it behind the panel and wrenched it free. Security wasn’t meant to stop thieves, just encourage them to look elsewhere.
Inside was stacked with box files. Those in back were crammed with the memories Dad didn’t want infecting the rest of his life. Others in front were newer. I pulled the door partway down behind me and started flipping open the cardboard lids.
Some were full of receipts, tax returns and accountant letters. Legitimate cover for illegal income. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. The County Council’s replies were clipped to copies of letters he’d sent them, every word written out a second time in his tight handwriting. I read them back and forth out of order until I could recite the discussion between him and the Transport and Streets department. With the letters spread like Tarot cards I held my head in my hands and closed my eyes.
“You stupid old bastard,” I said. There was no one left to hear apart from memories.
• • •
Billy picked up the documents and passed them to Jack without a glance.
“He is a bit of an interfering old fucker, your old man. Always has been. You know that’s why he ended up doing work for us? Saved Mags when some bloke was hassling her. The older boys were impressed with how he could handle himself. I knew he’d eventually trip over his own fucking curiosity.”
“I want to speak to Stan,” I said. I stared at the glass-framed picture on the wall in front of me, the two idiots behind me thinking I couldn’t see them.
“Tell them to fuck off, Billy.”
“What if I don’t? What if I have them drag you out, shatter your ankles, powder your wrists, and dump you on Lapwing Moor? What if that’s how it plays out?”
“I’ll be trying to crawl back to civilization, and you’ll be looking for a voicebox donor.”
He looked down at the blade pressing against his throat and laughed.
“Jack, give Stan a ring and see if he’s up for a meeting.”
I didn’t move, still holding the knife in place. Jack dialed a number, said something I didn’t quite hear and passed me the phone.
• • •
I stepped up into the Transit van’s cab, kicking some space for my feet.
We drove in silence through low fields until the road rose up the Dale side, across the moor to a cottage by itself in the middle of nowhere. Out of curiosity I checked my phone signal. The only signals out here were geese cleaving through the sky above us.
Of course I’d asked to take my own car. That was not open for negotiation and I needed to lose the battles not worth winning to stand a chance of making it out again.
Billy parked on the lane with the engine running.
“Aren’t you going to drive all the way up?” I said.
“Nah. If he shoots you, I don’t get caught in the crossfire.”
Climbing out I tried to keep Billy in sight while also watching the cottage for an ambush. There was no cover on the moor. Nowhere to hide. Like all Clapham places, anyone inside could see people approaching from miles away.
I walked through the small garden planted with neat rows of vegetables, knocked on the door, and waited
Stan was Billy and Jack’s uncle, but there was little family resemblance. While the brothers were both tall and muscular, spending as much time in the gym as in the cattle shed, Stan was compact and wiry as any Dale’s tree, skin worn and marked with scars earned over the years in the fields and car park fights.
“Joe isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Come in. You’re letting heat escape. Fire’s a bugger to get right when it goes out.”
I followed him into the cottage, past the kitchen with its range and into the sitting room.
“Tea?” He said, gesturing for me to sit down.
“Thanks,” I said. For a few minutes the room was quiet apart from the fire, and Stan coughing into his hand as he worked around his kitchen making the drinks. Finished, he sat down in the armchair by the fire, took a sip and put the cup down on the hearth.
“Billy tells me you’re looking for your old man.”
“He went missing and someone wrote to me. Seems he contacted the Council about the trucks going through the village.”
Stan nodded and reached for a packet of tobacco, rolling himself a cigarette and lighting it before speaking again.
“You know, in the early eighties your Dad was the best tobacco smuggler we had. Never got stopped by Customs and Excise,” he said, inhaling a lungful of smoke and blowing it toward the yellowed ceiling. “Always an interfering bastard though. Always wanting to know what was going on. More than once I had to convince Keith and Alan he wasn’t a grass. Turns out I was wrong.”
“Come on Stan, where is he? He was complaining about the noise from the trucks going through the High Street, not calling in the fucking drug squad.”
“He brought the Council’s attention to the amount of traffic. Started talking about petitions and press. Where the press goes, the law follows.”
“Just tell me where he is, so I can give him a decent burial. I’m not going to go looking for revenge on you lot am I?” I lied. “How many of you are there compared to me?”
“Not as many as there used to be,” Stan said, shifting around in his chair. “When I were a kid, I had eight brothers and sisters. Two more died as young ’uns. Today, you’re struggling to get families to squeeze out one kid, never mind ten.”
“Couldn’t someone have had a quiet word with him? He was stubborn, but wasn’t unreasonable.”
Stan shook his head and drained his cup in one, chucking the dregs into the flames. He stared at the row of photos on the mantelpiece. The first, black and white, showed a wedding party outside a church door, hair sprinkled with monochrome confetti. The second, the same couple a bit older sat on the sands at Bridlington, toddlers playing around their feet. The third was a long photo showing over fifty people, at the center the same couple still holding hands.
“You miss her, don’t you? Margaret. You still miss her,” I said.
Stan nodded and carried on looking at the mantelpiece.
“Every single day,” he said. “Every single day.”
“So you know how I feel. I don’t have a wife, or kids, or a mother. I just had my Dad. The least you can do is let me know where he is.”
There was a silence. For a moment I thought I’d pushed too hard. Dug in too deep trying to find some humanity left in the worn-out old man in front of me. Don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t weak or broken, just he’d drank too much of the hills over the years. More stone than person.
“From what I understand, someone did go to talk to him.”
I leant forward, keeping my hands on my lap.
“Who?”
There was no need to be aggressive with someone like Stan. He either told you, or he didn’t. If he didn’t there was nothing you could do. You could burn him or scald him. Pour bleach in his eyes, or cut him to pieces inch by bloody inch. Even in his seventies he’d keep his mouth shut.
“Jack.”
“They sent Jack to negotiate with someone? Not Billy or Samuel? Not even Sarah.”
“Joe, I don’t make decisions any more. I’m seventy-four fucking years old. I’ve spent decades in fields either tending beasts or moving crop. I’m old. My body is shagged. I just to want to sit by the fire, smoke fags, and have a pint on a Friday night.”
I knew he was lying, and he knew he was lying. What could I do?
“Get them to take me out to him. That’s all I’m asking. Let me give him a proper burial. At least let me have somewhere to visit when I come back.”
I let him think. I could try and kidnap him, force them to take me to Dad. There was no way I could get him off the moor. Billy was still in the van outside, watching the door very closely. Instead I watched this old man weigh alliances and favors in his head until he nodded.
“Send the lad in. Tell him I need to chat to him about the lethera tups.”
Outside, Billy listened carefully.
“Say it again,” he said, leaning against the van.
I did, speaking exactly the same phrase for a second time.
“Wait in there. I’ll be out after I’ve spoken to him.”
Inside the van I watched mist steam up the window and ran a finger through the moisture. I wondered if they gave Dad the luxury of sitting up front, or if they bound him and chucked him in the back like unwashed fleece.
Billy came back out, opened the driver’s door and climbed in, spitting into the dirt outside like he was sealing a deal with the moor itself.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about what happened,” he said. “Jack can go off on one. I was on a job. I just wanted him to talk to your Dad.”
“Where is he?”
“I’ll show you.”
We drove in silence, Billy concentrating on the road and me just concentrating. Out on the moor there wasn’t even a radio signal to break up the quiet. We left the made road and drove down a dirt track barely visible in the dark. Billy kept the lights off, driving by instinct as much as knowledge.
“Where are we going?”
“To find your old man.”
“And where is he?”
“You’ll see when we get there,” he said.
“Is this the only route?”
Even in the dark I saw him roll his eyes.
“You can go by road, but from Stan’s place this is quicker.”
I shut up then. We carried on, the van chucking one way and another as he tried to negotiate the wheel ruts scarring the moor.
Reaching the moor edge, the track tipped forward and we jagged our way down until we hit tarmac once more. Billy paused and wiped his face with a cloth he pulled from under the seat.
“Last stretch is always a bit hairy,” he said, as if we were friends on a fishing trip.
I said nothing and he shrugged, setting off again into the distance. The van rounded a corner and stopped at a break in the hill.
I climbed out and followed him through the quarry entrance, skirting the rusted-in-place barrier. The quarry was vast, big enough to fit the village. From side to side it was filled with freight containers, stacked so high it was unclear how they’d all been lifted into place. Most were so rusted the company logos decorating their corrugated sides were faded beyond reading.
“Welcome to the graveyard,” Billy said. Something in his voice told me he wasn’t talking about the containers.
I followed him further in. Jagged walls of metal hid the quarry face beyond.
What is this place?” I said.
“A quarry,” he said, searching his pockets for a packet of tobacco.
“The containers?”
Some looked decades old, rotting amongst the moors. Others were fresh. I recognized the curtain side from the truck in the village.
“We’ve expanded a bit since you left. More contacts in the cities. Turns out they’re mostly families like us. Sometimes they need people disappearing. We’re very good at making people disappear.”
“You just load them up and unload the containers here?”
“No one really paid attention. Apart from your dad.”
Billy stopped talking then, scanning the stacks of metal boxes. In the silence I noticed the reek of decay seeping from the stacks around us.
“Over there,” he said, pointing to a container on its own, door closed with hasp and padlock.
I followed him over trying to keep in his blindspot. He hadn’t survived this long by stupidity.
“Stand over there,” he said. “Where I can see you. Come close and I’ll perforate you and leave you on High Street as a warning.”
I said nothing but moved to the patch of dirt he indicated. He kept me in sight and fished a key out of his pocket, unfastening the lock. I should have known when he fumbled the task, almost dropping the key on the floor, and swearing under his breath. I thought it was just nervousness. Being there alone with me. He pocketed the padlock and gestured me over.
Flicking back the clasps, I held the metal handle and pulled, the bar turning and flexing the door out. As soon as the smell hit me, I knew, dropped my hand into my pocket for the knife, swung left and cut through fabric and skin.
The blow knocking me from my feet came from the right. I tasted grit and oil as I fell, my open mouth scraped across the gravel. A boot stamped on my kidneys then my spine, another smashing down on my hand separating the bones from each other inside my skin. I screamed. The kicks continued. Something heavy and metal and cold caught me on the back of the knees, and I heard rather than felt the tendons tear. Then the boots started once more, stamping on my back and my neck until I blacked out.
The sound of chains woke me. I tried to sit up but the floor was cold metal and comforting. A splinter of light came between the doors, then I heard rattling above and the world tilted. The container began to slowly spin and I was thrown into a far corner, the taut chains above lifting it off the ground.
The second concussion took me out for what seemed like hours. I searched my pockets for my phone, staring at the display through the shattered screen. The kicking or the movement of the container had smashed it up. I watched the battery level fade quickly followed by the display.
There was no movement outside. I gave my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. Somewhere above me, standing water had rusted the steel to knives and dripped through to collect in the metal gaps. I crawled over and cupped the liquid in my hands, lapping it out of my palms, trying to ignore the taste of metal and paint.
My thirst was barely touched and my torn body ached. I leant against the wall and tried to collect myself. Let my eyes adjust a little more. Let my other senses follow. Enough air was coming through for me to smell the quarry and the Dales beyond. The mixture of limestone dust and diesel. Peat and the wind whipping over drystone walls. I was not here to be suffocated, but forgotten.
I noticed my Dad soon after, fallen over in the corner where he had once been propped up. To start with I ignored him. Paying any attention would mean accepting the reality of where I was. Accepting what had happened. For the next couple of hours I just sat and stared, as if looking for signs of life. Not daring to approach in case he wasn’t alive, or maybe in case he was. Then, hating the sound of my own breathing, I started talking.
“You fucking idiot,” I said. My voice sounded too loud in the container, steel walls reflected back the anger and amplified it. “Why couldn’t you just leave well alone? Why couldn’t you just keep out of their business?”
I wanted to grab his body and smash it against the walls. Make him fight back, even as I knew that wasn’t possible. Instead I spent the day perched in the far corner in silence, staring across and willing him to speak. Willing him to be faking, or to be in a coma. The only breath I heard was my own.
• • •
The hunger came on the second day. I was able to ignore it for three days. On the fifth day everything changed.
I took out my knife and untucked his T-shirt. The blade slid easily into the flesh above his belt and I cut up, peeling a strip away to expose the fat below, then again down to the ribs. The knife caught on bone as I sawed and the friction filled the container with the stench of burning.
Harvesting the meat from his torso meant my transgression was hidden under his clothes. I pulled down the T-shirt once more, pushing it back into his waistband.
The muscle and fat just sat in my hand until I could think of it as food. Hunger helped. Before the sun went down I’d chewed my first mouthful and taken the knife to his dead body once more.
I tried to ignore the meat’s source as I ate. Fooling myself that it was cattle left to die in the container. Chewing, I tasted the grit of the land in each mouthful and felt it settle in my stomach. I had spent many years eating food not tainted by the mark of stone. Now the flesh I needed to eat to survive was infecting me once more.
Exposed ribs were narrow windows of butchery divulging the lie beneath the skin. Each time I cut down his flanks, steel caught on bone and something deep inside the corpse rattled. I reached into his chest cavity, pushed my fingers between tar filled lungs, and pulled out his heart. The organ sat in my hands, shrunken and crusted with stone, snapped off from the rest of his body where blood vessels could no longer support the extra weight. I turned the petrified organ over in my hands, the weight of the hills raw against my palms. In that moment I knew that I could gnaw out every grain of marrow and it would make no difference. My body would rot to dust in this metal coffin. With the last bit of rage, I weighed the heart in my hand and smashed in the face I could not see, just to stop his dead eyes looking. When I’d recovered from the exertion I started to harvest once more.
• • •
I listened to him shut the van door, and fuss outside, taking off the lock and opening the container. I waited until he stepped inside before hitting him with the lump of stone that was Dad’s petrified heart. He fell and though I was ready for a fight, the impact with the container’s metal floor shattered his skull. I dragged him inside before I began to butcher him. The knife slid through his muscle easier than into my father’s withered corpse, the dulling edge separating strips of meat from his bones. What I couldn’t eat I hung up to dry in the container.
The van keys must have been lost in the struggle, but it doesn’t matter. I found the padlock keys in Billy’s pocket. It will take me a while to work out which keys open which containers. I have no need to go anywhere. All the food I need is in the metal boxes stacked around the quarry, dried out by the still air. I weigh my Dad’s heart in my hand, place it on the floor beside the remains of his corpse and step out into my stolen kingdom.
