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<h2>19</h2>
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<p><em>July: Blackwood Farm.</em></p>
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<p>Ian's gone and twisted his back again but he won't go to the doctor while there's a field yet to be cleared.</p>
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<p>Jean McColl's script was clean and rounded and she had an artistic swoop on the tails of letters below the feint lines. Thirty years and more had aged the ink from a dark to a faded blue, but they had not diluted the fresh quality of the farmer's wife's account:</p>
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<p>"He'll come in for his tea with a hand behind his back and his neck all red from bending away from it, just like last year and he'll say it's just stiff from sitting up on the tractor. God love him. He doesn't want me to worry and yet he'll never take a word of advice. I know where young Ian gets his stubborn streak. The new hand, Joyce, is working well enough though he hardly says a word and doesn't come in for his dinner, but takes it to the shed. They moved nearly ten tons of early Pentlands from of south field, though Ian thinks there's a chance of wireworm in the late crop since it's just been turned this year from old pasture.</p>
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<p>Two tinkers have a tent down by the road and they're to get staying for a day or so while they sharpen the scythes and do a bit of fencing, but Ian says they look a bit shifty for his liking and that's why they're not staying in the outhouse with the new man. Must get the shutter fixed. I thought I saw something moving in the yard and it could have been my imagination but the labourer's a bit of an odd one, though he can dig potatoes. A letter from young Ian today, saying his barley harvest will keep him busy for the next few weeks, but he says he'll be coming to visit at the end of August. I wish he'd bring me news of a different kind of crop, but I'm supposed to be patient.</p>
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<p>The cats have laid out four rats in a row behind the hayrick, as if they expect applause for doing their job. The owl in the barn took a weasel right on the path and that's one less to be in after the chickens. Morag's been lying in the sun behind the byre. I don't see her making another winter, poor old soul, so we'd better start training another collie soon for next year's rounding.</p>
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<p>Picked peas today and shelled them all afternoon. I'll be seeing them in my sleep. There was a Flanders poppy growing in amongst them, a big scarlet flower standing above the pods. Inside it was the most delicate purple. Shame to pick it, but they only last a day. I wore a dress that shade of purple to the harvest dance the year I got engaged. Ian Blackwood looked me up and down as if I was royalty. I could have cried when I picked it, but it was lovely just remembering. Better look out the liniment for his back.</p>
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<p>The Flanders poppy, each petal wide and veined like a butterfly's wings, was pressed flat between the leaves of the book. The red had turned to a deep brown. Beside it, just below the script, done in pencil, was a small sketch of a barn own, wings raised, legs outstretched beyond the heart-shaped head, talons spread wide. The weasel was in the act of turning, a slender and sinuous shape on a stony farm track. Both had been drawn by a deft and confident hand, a thumbnail etching of a small death at Blackwood Farm on a summer's day. All of the years since it was drawn had not diminished the action or the finality of the swoop.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>He had watched the woman. She had looked at him with her bird-quick eyes, and the pounding had started again in his head.</p>
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<p>It had been hard work, trailing behind the rake spines of the tractor, hooking the potatoes out of the ground with the wide-blade fork, bending and lifting, exposing the white, almost skinless crop like lizard's eggs, to the light of day. It had been hot and sweaty, just him and the farmer out in the field, bending and lifting, then stacking the sacks on the trailer. They'd had a break at mid-morning, just enough time for a cup of tea from the flask, then back to work. Just after noon, they'd stopped again. Blackwood had turned the tractor around and they'd come trundling back to the farm to stack the sacks.</p>
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<p>He had been here for three days, and he'd been watching them. The light stayed in the sky until late, darkening it down to a gloaming purple that hid movement. Through the narrow window, she'd be writing in her book and he would be hunched over his model boat, both of them, hardly saying a word, as if they knew that the shadow of death was upon them.</p>
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<p>He could stand still, motionless so that the dogs stayed quiet and didn't start up their racketing as they had the first night. In the dark, he'd be invisible. The light inside would reflect back from the glass, making out opaque. He could stand here and he could watch and wait.</p>
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<p>The shadow was on them. <em>The shadow of the valley...</em></p>
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<p>When they came back from the field, the woman had left his meal on the barrel out by the door of the outhouse, a tray covered by a white linen cloth to keep the flies away. She had invited him inside to eat with them, but he wanted to eat alone, so she just left it for him. Strong cheese, light crusted bread and translucent strips of cured ham. A side dish of lettuce and spring onions and green tomato chutney. A ploughman's lunch.</p>
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<p>He ate in silence, chewing carefully and washing every mouthful down with a drink of thick, warm milk from the jug. The light slanted through the old shutters of the shed where he sat on the low bunk. It formed brilliant chevrons against the wall.</p>
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<p>He blinked against the glare, chewing. The light was in his eyes and he felt the pressure build.</p>
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<p>She came out of the kitchen and into the yard lugging a steaming kettle which she placed on the ground beside a tin basin. The farmer followed her, patting his belly and then arching his back as if he wanted to stretch the kinks and knots away. From the shadow in the bunkhouse he saw them caught in the light. Their shadows puddled on the cobbles where two cats snoozed. Around them, he could see the dark aura that told him the shadow of death was on them. It was close at hand. He could sense it pressing in. The time was nearing.</p>
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<p>The farmer went towards his tractor, heavy boots crunching on the slabs. The woman moved to the chicken coop. He could hear the rattle of the wire-mesh door and the cluck and flutter of the hens as she went among them. The smells of the farm came thick on the air. Beyond the coop, the manure heap, enclosed by walls of stone, angled away from the small byre, empty for now, but crowded with the half-dozen milking cows at four o'clock when they'd come shambling in from the pasture. Swallows came flicking in and out, red and blue streaks on the summer air. Overhead, squadrons of swifts wheeled and squealed. A mouse, or maybe a rat, rustled and scurried in the next-door tack room where the old bridles and harnesses lay in a heap or hung from rusted nails.</p>
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<p>She came back, walking quickly, almost bird-like, holding a white chicken by the feet. It fluttered and flapped in a panic as she crossed the yard to the block. Without any hesitation she laid the chicken across it, pressing down so that it's head was over the edge of the block. She jiggled the hand-axe until the blade popped free of the wood, swung it up and then down. The chicken's wings whirred in a sudden spasm as blood spurted from the neck. The head spun away to land close to the door of the outhouse. Its yellow eye stared up into the dark of the doorway.</p>
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<p>The smell of hot blood came wafting up.</p>
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<p>The sunlight glared from the whitewashed walls of the kitchen. The light was in his eyes and he could see the shadow on the woman. He could hear the approach of the wings. There was a buzzing as flies circled the chicken's severed head. His eyes started to blink.</p>
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<p>______</p>
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<p>It was as she expected. Ian had come in with a hand pressed to the small of his back but it hadn't dented his appetite. He'd left only one slice of the ham and two thick wads of bread, wolfing the rest with relish. She'd had some soup and a cup of tea and little else, not wanting to spoil her own appetite for dinner. Ian had been pleased about the crop which would be in at the end of the week and down to the co-op store. She said she'd kill a chicken for dinner and he'd nodded cheerfully.</p>
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<p>"Make it a big one," he'd said, giving her a squeeze as she passed him on the way out with the freshly boiled kettle. "We'll be starving when we get back."</p>
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<p>The chicken's head flew away and after the flurry of spastic wingbeats, the bird went still but for the slow clenching of the scaly feet into right talon-fists. Ian was over at the tractor, while she poured the boiling water over the carcass to loosen the feathers and damp them down. As she stood up, she had the strange sensation of being watched, but when she raised her eyes there was no-one there. Against the whitewash glare, the outhouse door was a black oval, like a bottomless hole.</p>
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<p>Jeannie McColl plucked the chicken with deft, sure twists of her nimble hands, working from tail to neck. The axe lopped off the ends of the wings and within minutes the bird was bare and pimpled, steaming slightly as it gave up its heat. She slung the sodden feathers onto the dung-heap and took the chicken back to the kitchen. At the sink, she ran the water and opened the bird, watching the drain darken in a spiral as the blood flowed away.</p>
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<p>She bent to the task. Already the leeks and carrots were lined up waiting to be cleaned and chopped and if she got the bird into the oven early, letting it cook in its own juices for a few hours, she'd manage to get the washing out and dried. It was still soaking in the stone tub in the washhouse where a trickle of smoke curled out of the boiler chimney.</p>
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<p>The man they'd accepted as Les Joyce came walking out through the black hole of the doorway. The movement caught her eye and she looked up. He took two steps out and stopped, with his head cocked to one side. His eyebrows went up as if he was considering something. She saw his lips move and then the eyes blinked, twice, three times, very fast, screwed all the way closed as if he'd bitten into a bitter gooseberry.</p>
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<p>Outside the cockerel crowed again and its rival challenged from the other side of the yard.</p>
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<p>The man stopped and blinked some more, then he bent slowly and picked up the chicken head. He held it up, turning it in his hands as if he'd found something of great interest. A drop of blood fell to the cobble, leaving a stain that looked black on the stone.</p>
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<p>Ian called from across the way, but the man seemed not to have heard. He had taken off his shirt and she could see the tattoo high on his arm, dark against smooth, lightly tanned skin. His lower arms were matted with hair. He stood up straight, tall and spare, his hair glistening so black it was almost blue. Ian called out again. The man turned and went back to the doorway. He raised the chicken head up to head height, holding the door steady with one hand while he scraped the severed neck across the paint-peeled wood.</p>
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<p>Jean leaned forward, perplexed, leaving her own bloody hand-print on the window-sill.</p>
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<p>The man repeated the motion twice and then he daubed the bloodied neck on the doorposts and on the wooden lintel above it. When he finished, he casually threw the chicken head over his shoulder. It bounced and skittered against an old trough. Immediately a twisting whirl of flies danced over it. The door of the outhouse closed and she saw what he'd done.</p>
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<p>A dark red cross was slashed on the wood. Some of the blood was running in small dribbles, but the cross itself was plain enough. On either side and above it, splashes stained the grey wood.</p>
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<p>The man with the tattoos turned slowly and walked in front of the byre. He reached the chopping block and stood there as if listening for something, head twisted, straining to hear. His hand reached out and worked the axe out of the wood again.</p>
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<p>A cold sensation twisted in the pit of her stomach. She raised her hand further and pulled back the net curtain, leaving another stain. She leaned towards the window, craning to the left. Ian walked into view. He was saying something and wiping at his head with his handkerchief.</p>
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<p>The man swayed backwards and his eyes twitched again. Ian leaned towards him. The axe came free. Ian turned towards the motion and the sucking sound of metal pulling from wood.</p>
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<p>Jean called out, no words, just an inarticulate cry. Fear suddenly pulsed within her.</p>
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<p>The man spun quickly, bringing the axe up and then down in a fast arc. Ian jerked away from it. The blade came down and caught him hard on the left shoulder.</p>
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<p>"Oh," he said. He sagged to the left, head following the motion. His handkerchief fluttered to the ground.</p>
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<p>The tall man stood blinking, face expressionless. Her husband spun away and went down on one knee. For an instant she thought the blade had missed him, that the man had only hit him with the wooden haft of the kindling axe. Ian turned and she saw the look of surprise on his face. His hat rolled from his bib pocket and down onto the cobbles. His arm was twisted at a strange angle and the fingers were twitching with a life of their own.</p>
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<p>The big man took a step forward, flattening the white flutter of cloth into the muck. Ian lifted his head up and his mouth formed a perfect circle. The blood seemed to drain away from his red face. Joyce looked at him, bending forward from the waist, like a gardener inspecting a rose.</p>
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<p>In the kitchen, Jean tried to call out again but the words wouldn't come. Over on the far side, against the wall of the byre, the cat sensed violence and slunk away. Ian let out a moan or a groan, loud enough to carry over to the kitchen. It was a dreadful sound of shock and gathering pain.</p>
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<p>Joyce straightened up, twisted again and brought the hatchet down on Ian's other shoulder. Her husband cried out, a horrible animal bellow. Blood did not spurt. It simply washed down the front of his shirt in an instant flood, turning the blue chambray to a silky black.</p>
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<p>A wave of sick dizziness engulfed her and she felt herself sag back from the window. The net curtain ripped at the corner under her weight. The dizziness passed over her. Her eyes opened and without warning she was sick. It came blurting up, hot and acid, only tea and the crumbs of a scone, some barley soup. It spat onto the surface beside the sink.</p>
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<p>Ian was down on the ground. He toppled forward and one hand went out to stop himself falling, but there was no strength in the arm and it gave way under him. He twisted and fell hard, rolling over on to his back. He groaned, like an animal. His momentum carried him round and he got slowly to one knee, moving as if through treacle. The back of his shirt was soaked right down to where it was tucked into his bib-overalls. His head was angled to the side and she could see the sun glisten silver on the stubble of his cheek. The left arm was still jittering as if it wanted to fly away, but his shoulder was impossibly slumped and the stream of blood was right down the length of his sleeve to where it was rolled up at the elbow. Dark drops went splashing off to the ground. Ian got one foot under him, managed to push himself up onto one knee. Joyce took three steps back and watched him, blinking fast. Ian looked up, his face twisted in agony and shock, eyes wide and unbelieving.</p>
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<p>Jean's sick paralysis broke. She turned away from the window, hauling for breath. Outside the cockerel crowed again. She went round in a complete circle, banged her hip against the heavy table. For a second she did not know what she was doing, and then her eyes lit on the blackened poker leaning against the oven. She bent and grabbed it, got her other hand to the warm metal handle and ran for the door.</p>
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<p>Out in the sunlight the air was thick with the metallic scent of blood, but it smelled different from the thin chicken's blood on the worn stones. This was human blood, her husband's blood.</p>
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<p>"<em>No Jean</em>," she heard him cry, though the words were hardly intelligible. They came out in a slobber and she saw a bubble of blood froth up. Joyce waded back in again and hit him on the jaw. For some reason the blade twisted and the axe hit flat-on with a hard clank.</p>
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<p>This time Ian screamed. There was no other way to describe it. There were no words, just a high bleat of sound, like the pigs in the slaughter pen. His jaw fell to the side and another bubble of blood burst between his wide open sagging lips.</p>
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<p>The dizziness threatened to come and carry her away, a dreadful rolling dark wave that made her knees want to buckle. She staggered forward and raised the poker. Ian's eyes opened wide. She could see the enormous chasms the axe had ploughed on either side of his neck, making both shoulders slump downwards. The blood pulsed up and out at the turned-down collar of his shirt. She went stumbling forward, gathering all of her strength.</p>
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<p>A black and white streak flicked in front of her. She had heard it first, although in her horror and fear the sound had not managed to get through to her consciousness.</p>
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<p>Morag leapt up, growling in fury. Her jaws opened and snapped shut on the man's upraised arm. Joyce was a big man and Morag, ten years old that summer, was an old dog, but he was taken by surprise and the weight of her charge throw him off balance. The collie snarled and sank her teeth in. Joyce grunted, but it was a grunt of effort, not of pain. He dropped the axe.</p>
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<p>Jean did not stop, she ran straight in and swung the poker at the man's head. It missed but it slammed against his shoulder with enough force to send such a jarring vibration up her arm that the metal rod flew out of her hands and landed with a clatter in the yard. Joyce didn't so much as look at her. He turned again, grabbed the collie by the neck and dragged it off his arm.</p>
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<p>Morag snarled. He didn't seem to notice. He pivoted on his foot and threw the dog down. Jean bent to pick up the axe, got her fingers around it and spun round. She swung it, even harder than she had swung the poker. Trying to crash the blade right into Joyce's blinking eyes.</p>
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<p>The man's hand reached up and stopped the axe in mid thrust. With a simple twist of his wrist, he snatched it from her.</p>
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<p>"The gun, Jeannie," Ian managed to blurt. "For pity's sake, get the gun. Save yourself.</p>
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<p>Morag came streaking in again, lips drawn back in a ferocious snarl. Joyce whipped the axe down and split her skull. The old dog dropped like a stone and flopped to the cobbles.</p>
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<p>"Oh," Ian said again, in a sick expulsion of air.</p>
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<p>Joyce walked towards him and Ian's eyes widened. Blood dripped from the hatchet. Jean tried to cry out but no sound came.</p>
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<p>"Gun," her husband muttered, still thinking of her, even in the extremity.</p>
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<p>She turned, apron flapping, skittered into the kitchen. She bolted through, feet pattering on the hard slate floor and into the hallway. The gun-rack stood against the door. She opened it and grabbed the double-barrelled twelve-bore, pulled it away from the wood panel at the back of the rack. She stopped dead.</p>
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<p>The chain pulled taut on the trigger guard. The gun was padlocked in the rack beside its neighbour, an ancient Spanish birdgun that Ian had inherited from his father. He'd always kept it locked, since their son had been small, just in case of accidents, just in case young Ian wanted to play with the guns. It had become a habit.</p>
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<p>The nausea came looping again. A slimy spittle coughed form her mouth and stained the wood. The chain rattled but it would not come loose.</p>
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<p><em>Find the key. Find the key</em>. It was on Ian's chain. It would be in his pocket!</p>
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<p>Jacket or trousers? She scampered back to the kitchen. His jacket was on the back of the chair. She grabbed it, shaking it for the sound of jangling keys. A boiled mint sweet rolled out and onto the floor. The keys were not there.</p>
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<p><em>Must be in his overalls</em>. The realisation came in a shiver of cold.</p>
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<p>She groped her way to the window again and brushed the curtain back slowly, suddenly absolutely terrified for her own life. She might yet get the keys. She could get them and get the gun and shoot him and get Ian on to the tractor and down to the hospital at Lochend. She stood on tiptoe and peered out.</p>
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<p>Joyce was walking towards the byre, his whole body leaning forward. If she could get the gun, she'd shoot him in the back. He wouldn't even see her.</p>
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<p>Joyce walked further, coming fully into view. He was dragging Ian by the foot. Her husband's shoe had come off and his sock had rolled down. The friction of the ground had pulled his overalls back and several inches of white leg showed. The man was dragging him along, leaving a slick trail of blood on the cobbles. Two of the terriers who had been exploring at the rabbit warren down by the coppice came snuffling into the yard. They reached the trail of blood and bent to sniff it. They whined, confused. Joyce did not stop. He dragged Ian McColl into the byre. Jean watched, listening to the dreadful scrape of wet material against the ground. Her husband's head bumped against the low step and he made a low sound.</p>
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<p>He was still alive.</p>
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<p>His red head disappeared into the shadow and that was the last she saw of him.</p>
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<p>Jean stood frozen, unable to comprehend what had happened. The dizziness rolled inside her again and her vision faded once more. She held tight to the sink, gasping for breath and in a moment her lungs were pistoning uncontrollably in a sudden spasm of hyperventilation. She fell over the old sink, feeling the edge press against her chest, and the spasm passed.</p>
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<p>The gun. She could get it now. Joyce was in the byre. She forced herself to move, got away from the sink and made it to the door. The axe was lying in the middle of the yard. She darted out into the bright day, bent and snatched it up. Her husband's blood trickled down the handle. Her feet were in a puddle of it but she couldn't think about that now. She knew he was alive. He'd be in dreadful pain, and he had lost so much blood, but he could still make it. She could still make him live if she could get the gun.</p>
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<p>The scraping, dragging sound echoed out from the byre. She squirmed from it and backed into the kitchen, following her route again. She got to the gun cabinet and saw the black barrels of the twelve-bore leaning outwards. Without hesitation she chopped at the chain, trying to hit it against the heavy oak shelf. Wood splintered. Twice the axe bit into the base of the rack and she had to jack it back and forth, making it squeal to release it again. She swung hard, managing to bite down on the chain, but there was no effect. The force of the blow merely pressed the steel links into the wood.</p>
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<p>Sobbing sore, she tried again and again, swinging the hatchet down as hard as she could.</p>
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<p>Out in the yard, the terriers set up a frenzied yapping. Jean stopped swinging the axe and looked out through the front door. Joyce was walking fast, coming diagonally from the barn to the house, heading straight for her. In his hands he swung the old chopping axe, the one Ian used for the winter logs. Even in the height of her terror and desperation she realised she would have no chance against it. Instinctively she slammed the door and hit the deadlock snib. Both shotguns were now leaning out from the rack, black and deadly and completely useless. She ran down the hall, went through to the living room, changed her mind and came back again. A shadow loomed at the door, wavering at the other side of the frosted glass and then the whole pane crashed inwards. The man's hand came through, reaching for the Yale handle and found it snibbed shut. She didn't wait, but dashed back to the kitchen, right through to the back room and straight up the wooden stairs.</p>
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<p>A ferocious crash followed her, followed by the hard slam of the front door against the wall. Jean didn't stop. She got through the bedroom and into her work room, where her ironing board and sewing machine were laid out almost side by side, close to the old radio beside the rocking chair where she used to sit and crochet while listening to the evening plays. The door had a heavy iron latch which she clicked home. In here, with the shutters closed, it was dark and warm. A chink of bright sunlight knifed through a crack in the old wood and slipped a blade of silver across the room. Dust motes danced in the light.</p>
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<p>The muffled thud of the axe came pounding up from the hallway and she shivered. He would kill her. He had killed her husband without a thought, chopped him down like an animal. Her jittering mind screened a picture of Ian trying to get to his feet with both shoulders horribly slumped away from his neck and the sheen of blood silken on his shirt.</p>
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<p>Down there, beyond the workroom door, beyond the bedroom and down the stairs, the crashing noise came again. Once, twice, then another two thuds. There was a silence that stretched for a long time. She cold hear her heart beating fast against her ribs and both her hands fluttered uncontrollably. She moved unsteadily to the window, trying to slow her breathing, to make it be quiet. On the dresser, sliced by the blade of light, her diary lay angled towards her.</p>
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<p>She moved towards it and right at that moment a thunderous roar shook the walls. Joyce had the guns. He had got them out of the cabinet.</p>
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<p>In that moment, she knew she was dead. He was going to kill her. She could not get away.</p>
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<p>Jean McColl slowly reached for the book and slid it towards her. Out in the byre, Ian let out a loud and shuddering cry and her heart almost broke in two.</p>
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<p>Down in the hallway, she could hear Joyce walking about, his feet crunching on the glass where the window had caved in. He would come looking for her, that she knew. There was no escape for her. Ian groaned again and she tried not to listen to it. She prayed with all her heart for it to be quick and then she sat in the corner and made her hand be steady.</p>
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<p>She began to write quickly in her book.</p>
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