Jane used to know kids who loved messing with dead things, but she’d never been one of them, so she’d been dreading this all day.
At this stage of your school career, if you didn’t have any particular classes, you had the choice of coming home, to work on revision. Yeah, right.
When she got off the bus, there was no sign of the Volvo outside the vicarage, so she went directly round the back to the garden shed. At least there’d been no blood on the path this morning.
Not yet four p.m., the sun still high, but weak. The shed was just a lean-to against the highest part of the wall. Wasn’t kept locked and it had been the only place she could think of last night.
Needed some help with this, really. Even Mum who, as a kid, had wanted to be a vet and knew a bit about injured pets and livestock. Mum would have an idea how the bird had died.
Could hardly take it to Mum, though, who knew nothing about the earlier incident with Cornel and the beer. Tangled web. Jane began to part the garden tools, remembering pushing the sack behind them. She threw the door wide, pulled out the spade and the hoe and the rake and the hedge loppers, tossing them onto the lawn behind her, but…
Oh, God, no…
This could only be Mum. Now she’d have to explain everything, which would lead to a chain of explanations, and that would get Lol in bother, too, for not disclosing what had happened on the night of the storm. She was in deep trouble and hadn’t even dealt with the no-university situation yet.
Jane closed the shed door, walked away to the end of the garden, leaned against the churchyard wall, staring over at the old graves. Considering the worst options: could Cornel have pinched it back? Would he have gone to that kind of trouble?
He couldn’t have seen her last night, could he? Couldn’t, surely, have been in a fit state after the kicking he’d had and throwing up in Barry’s yard. Last night, Jane had awoken twice, with the gritty ghosts of dead flies in her mouth and shuddery memories of the quick, efficient way in which Cornel had been damaged, that almost feminine cry of pain. Big, tall Cornel, breast-fed for months and months. Cornel, the winner who could do anything he wanted because the bank was paying. Cornel had been very afraid, had done as he’d been told, had taken the sack away. Except he’d been told to bury it and he’d only buried it in the bin on the square.
But what about the other guy? Who had just disappeared. Who hadn’t seemed like the kind of guy who would just disappear.
Oh Christ. The very worst option: what if he ’d seen her?
Jane began to sweat. Went over the whole garden, frantic now, looking behind all the apple trees, into the long grass under the church wall, leaning over the wall to see into the churchyard. Why the hell had she taken it? What was it supposed to prove?
She ran back around the vicarage, out of the front gate and down Church Street towards the river, pulling out her phone. She’d call Eirion. Hadn’t called him back last night, just dropped him a quick text promising to explain tomorrow. She’d tell Eirion everything.
But his damn phone was switched off. Jane leaned over the bridge, watching the slow water making dark, languid circles around the pillars and buttresses. After the psychotic nights around Christmas, the river was back to its old torpid self, and there was no sign of a bin sack down there.
‘’Ow’re you, Janey?’
‘Oh!’
He was leaning over the bridge next to her, teeth clamped on an unlit ciggy, pale sunlight swimming in his specs. Hadn’t even heard him approaching. Jane looked down at his feet.
‘Gomer… you’re wearing trainers.’
‘Hay ’n’ Brecon Farmers. Two for the price o’ one.’
‘That’s, erm… normal in footwear, isn’t it?’
‘Two pair, girl. Don’t worry, you en’t gonner see me doing no joggying.’
‘You don’t fool me, Gomer.’ Jane found a smile. ‘I bet you’ve got a hoodie and a baseball cap in the back of the JCB.’
‘En’t even seen the bloody ole thing for nigh on two days. Danny’s got him, workin’ over by Walton, makin’ a pond. Been fillin’ my time with a bit o’ spring maintenance in the churchyard. Found some bloody ole briars muster got missed last autumn, so…’ Gomer eyeing Jane, head on one side ‘… took up the vicar’s offer of borrowin’ the ole loppers.’
He put the ciggy back in his mouth, stood with his hands behind his back, rocking slightly.
‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Erm… from the shed.’
‘Exackly. From the ole shed, back o’ the vicarage.’
‘Right. Wooh. So, you, erm…’ Jane looked into Gomer’s glasses: opaque white discs, relief enfolding her like an old bath robe. ‘You probably found a black bin sack.’
‘Sure t’be.’ Gomer extracted his ciggy. ‘Bit of a story to this, is there, Janey?’
Jane felt her shoulders slump.
‘Got him back at my place. You wanner…?’
She nodded and followed him, down from the bridge. They walked up to the bungalow with the fading buttermilk walls, where Gomer had lived alone since Minnie’s death.
Gomer. Sometimes, crap situations just rearranged themselves for the best. With divorce and death and stuff, Jane had never really had a grandad. Her worst recurrent nightmare was probably the one in which Gomer had died.
Gomer didn’t judge. Well, not Jane, anyway, so she told him virtually everything, in the sure knowledge that it would go no further.
He leaned against his wall, listening, chewing on his unlit ciggy. When she’d finished, he opened his garden gate.
‘Dull buggers, some o’ these fellers,’ he said. ‘For all their college papers.’
‘He was really scared, Gomer. And probably shocked. That the guy could, you know, do whatever he did. He obviously knew who it was.’
‘You sure it wasn’t Barry?’
‘I heard his voice.’
‘Only Barry, see, he’s had his times.’
‘Oh, I know Barry could have done it, but he didn’t. Definitely not him.’
Signs of springtime action in Gomer’s garden – a rake and a hoe leaning against the wall, with a stainless steel spade, its blade worn thin and sharp.
‘En’t much into gardenin’, see, Janey, ’cept for the ole veg, but Minnie… her always liked her daffs. These is in memory, kind o’ thing.’
‘They’re nice, Gomer. Erm…?’
Gomer nodded towards the garden table. The black bag was underneath it, tied up with orange baler twine. He went over and dragged it out, placed it on the table, undid the twine.
Jane looked around nervously. The bungalow was raised up behind substantial hedging, tightly cut, obviously. You could see over it back to the river bridge and, in the other direction, the Church Street pitch, all the way up to the market square. But nobody could see into Gomer’s garden.
‘Shot it,’ Jane said quickly. ‘I think they shot it. Cornel, he was going, Oh, I’ll have a blast at anything that moves.’
‘Was he now?’
‘He said it was all OK, as long as you cleaned up afterwards. Scumbags, Gomer. They went onto someone’s property and shot it. I was going to put it back in the litter bin, but then I thought, no, it’s evidence.’
‘Shot, eh? That’s what you reckons?’
Gomer brought it out and laid it on the iron tabletop. It was pretty battered, but you could tell it had been a lovely thing, with like a lion’s mane, all golden. Jane swallowed. Dismay set in.
‘I know this doesn’t really prove anything. They could just say it was an accident. They’re just-’
‘Haccident?’ Gomer ran a hand over the feathers. ‘This don’t happen by haccident.’
‘Huh?’
‘Janey…’ Gomer sighed and brought out his ciggy tin. ‘This boy en’t been shot.’
‘Well, I didn’t really look. It was dark and…’
‘See that?’
Jane saw there were spots of blood around the beak. She didn’t understand.
‘That en’t good, girl,’ Gomer said.