The Hunger Trace Read Online Free PDF Page A

what?’ she said. The solicitor turned to the window, looked out at the park.
    Maggie surveyed that same ground from the high berth of the diving platform now. She counted the beating human hearts around her. The park staff would go home in another hour, leaving Christopher, who was skulking around out of sight in his makeshift den by the brook, and Louisa. Maggie had spoken to the villagers about Louisa. They called her Crow Jane, after Tim Nettles heard those words blaring out of the tape deck of her van. It was a shame she was so hostile, they said, because she’d probably scrub up nice if she lost the attitude, stripped off that birdshit-covered coat, spent half a day at ‘Hair Force One’ and took a leaf from her own falconry book on weight-management. In whispered asides, they said they had never understood why David kept her hanging around. But Maggie knew.
    She looked over to the cottage. A light came on. Louisa held parts of David within her: stories, reflections, physical gestures that she had picked up over the long years of friendship. That was precious.
    Two people in a three-mile radius. It was a start.
    Maggie climbed back down to the ground and began to make her way to the house. She came to the wire fence of the ibex enclosure. She noted the wisps of hair and the familiar sharp scent by the wooden posts. She already knew that the ibex had escaped from the opposite end of the park, because the wires there had been cut, but something caught her eye. She crouched down by one of the posts. The top of it was broken and spattered with blood, most of which had soaked into the grain. There were still some dark traces of it on the grass below. Maggie ran her fingers over the blood on the wire. The park felt impossibly big to her at that moment, and she did not know how to defend it.
    *    *    *
    Louisa had always felt her nightmares to be droll and transparent. Of course, there were dreams of Anna Cliff – the hermit – and her children. Those would haunt her forever. She dreamed of walking through the fields with David, the quality of the light on that day in February 1975. Otherwise, her dreams consisted of giving birth to avian spinal cords with teeth, or finding five-foot hawks, their feathers tacky with blood, behind hedgerows. She did not need a mystic to decode those crude images. After the break-in she began to dream of the ibex kid she had saved. Sometimes she lay on the bank with him, sometimes he was steel-clad and in her bed. In all of the dreams she felt the constant repetition of his heartbeat. In the encyclopaedia she read that the ibex was once coveted for its healing properties. People drank its urine, and kept the bezoar stones from its intestines as a charm against cancer. But the heartbeat did not soothe her – it was more like a one-inch punch.
    One night, several weeks after the releases, the beat was strong enough to wake her. She went downstairs to find an envelope which had dropped between her boots by the door. It contained a cheque for a thousand pounds (twice as much as she would need to fix the van), and a postcard: Mrs Muster as Hebe. The painting featured a strong Renaissance woman, staring out. For a moment Louisa did not notice the eagle feeding from the plate in the woman’s hand. She turned the card over:
    Hey there Louisa ,
    Here’s a cheque to cover the damage to your truck. Call me if it’s not enough. Just wanted to thank you once more for your help the other day. I had fun in a weird way! I guess next time we could just go for a drink or something.
    Bit worried about the missing guests. All it takes is for a curious schoolboy to get bitten, and I’m out of business. If you do see any of the animals, another of those fine tackles should do the trick.
    Feel free to call round any time.
    Love ,
    Mags.
     
    Louisa sat down on the corduroy button-backed sofa and picked up her guitar, but she did not play, just looked at the flakes of finger-skin caught on the