‘That Milo woman said something odd to me,’ he said, pulling out a bar stool and sitting down.

‘That fucking mare! Well, what? What did she say?’ Shauna flung off her jacket.

‘As we were leaving the solicitor’s, she said to ask you about the Cleaver boys.’

Shauna’s face took on a hard scowl. ‘What about them?’

‘She said something happened. Something with her and her dog.’

‘What the fuck’s she talking about? They’re just pig farmers. They live up the road from the site where your dad and me lived years ago. He was always babbling on about the great life we had there, I suppose he must have mentioned them to you?’

‘Yeah. He did.’ Connor didn’t tell her he’d been down there, looking at the campsite, the funfair. She’d only hit the roof. Shauna Flynn thought herself – and her son – far too good for all that now.

‘Great life, my arse. It was a shit hole, and I was glad to get out of it.’ Shauna turned away, busied herself with the tea.

140

140

Some days after the reading of Dad’s will, Claire’s words were still playing on Connor’s mind. No good asking Mum about it, she’d made that plain. So he drove out again, past the campsite and on to the Cleaver house, passing Bubba Pole’s site as he did so.

He parked near the farmhouse, and walked up. At the rusted, ruined gates, he hesitated. It was shady here; the temperature felt ten degrees colder than it did half a mile along the road. The house seemed to loom, as if inviting him to come closer. And if he did? Well, then it would just open the door (and its hinges would creak like a coffin lid, he knew it) and swallow him whole.

The place looked bleak. For the first time he noticed a jokey statue of two mating pigs perched above the porch. A dog was barking inside the house, a big one. He stepped forward and then a voice behind him said: ‘What you doin’ here?’

Christ! He hadn’t heard anyone approach. He turned quickly, nearly overbalancing on the rutted entrance and going arse over tit. He righted himself and stared at the man who’d appeared there. The man was not tall, but he was big. He was solid, wide, with sloping shoulders and a bull neck. He was dressed in an old mac and heavy mud-coloured work boots. He had dark hair turning white and a matted grey beard. And he was staring at Connor with tiny, hostile eyes.

And . . . oh shit . . .

Connor felt his bowels turn to liquid. Felt his head go light.

The man was carrying an axe.

‘You want to tell me what you’re doing here?’ he repeated when Connor didn’t answer. ‘I’m Jeb Cleaver and I’m not at home to visitors.’