The Reservoir Tapes

day after day. You’d feel trapped. Sometimes you’d break things just to see what would happen.

7: Clive

The gun was out on the table when the police came into the house, which was awkward.

The younger policeman in particular hesitated as the two of them came into the kitchen, and glanced at his colleague.

You’ll not mind this being out? Clive asked, moving the cleaning rods and brushes aside.

As a matter of fact, sir, it’s the gun we wanted to talk to you about.

Clive put the kettle on.

*

He wasn’t a shooting enthusiast. He’d be suspicious of anyone who would describe themselves as an enthusiast. A gun is simply a tool for a job. A necessary job, sometimes. But there’s no call for getting enthusiastic about it. That would be something else altogether.

It’s a very effective tool, as it happens. A few hundred years ago, someone in Clive’s shoes would have been out with traps and snares. You couldn’t say the snare was a tidy way of going about things. It was a slow way to die. There were accounts of some creatures chewing their own leg off to get loose of a snare. But with a gun, they didn’t even know what was coming. It was just: tock. Done. None the wiser.

Clive kept an allotment, and had done for years. One of the jobs on an allotment was keeping the weeds under control. He wasn’t a puritan about it. Some people had a love of bare soil that was hard to fathom. There was no need to be obsessed. It was only necessary to keep enough of the weeds under control so as to give what you wanted to thrive a head start. That was all.

The shooting jobs Clive carried out were a manner of weeding, was the way he saw it. If there were too many rabbits on an allotment, none of the crops would get started. Too many crows on the moors, the grouse wouldn’t breed. It was only a question of balance. Happened the shotgun was a good tool for restoring balance.

Most of the shooting he did was contract work. Rabbits, pigeons, crows; foxes from time to time. And a few of the more difficult predators, on the game estates. He called it contract work, but mostly it was a case of cash and a handshake. He took no pleasure in it, but there was a certain satisfaction in doing the job well. He avoided busy times, but if people saw him they had no need to be surprised. They still were though, sometimes. Especially some of the newer residents.

There had been the incident with the paperboy, for example. This was what the police officers wanted to talk about, as it turned out. They called it an incident; Clive wouldn’t have used that term. The lad came into the house to wash his hands, and he left again. That was all.

The gun had been out on the table on that occasion as well. He’d been cleaning it. He was a responsible gun owner, it’s what he did. But it may have given the lad a start.

Just for the record, the older policeman said: why was the boy in your house?

The lad had a spot of bother with his bicycle, Clive told them. Just out the front there. So he’d gone and offered some help, and once it was sorted the lad’s hands were mucky with bike oil. So he naturally enough told him to get inside and get scrubbed up.

Naturally enough, sir, the older policeman said.

They had a way of saying ‘sir’, some of them. Clive didn’t appreciate it.

Was there a problem with that? Clive asked. Should he have done a criminal-records check first, was that what they were saying? Did he want to have risk-assessed the soap?

The police didn’t always have a sense of humour. They wanted more details. How long was the boy in the house? Did he only go into the kitchen? Did he say anything about the gun?

Clive was very clear about that. The lad had never mentioned the gun. Clive had noticed him looking at it, and wondered if it might have alarmed him. He wasn’t from round these parts. But he hadn’t said a word, which was why Clive had thought no more about it. Until these two turned up with their questions.

But why had the lad involved the police? Clive asked. He would have been happy to talk to the boy’s parents, and explain about his gun-safety procedures; reassure them. It didn’t seem like a police matter.

The two of them looked at each other.

I imagine there’s a heightened sensitivity, sir, the younger one said. Given current circumstances.

They were talking about the missing girl, of course. No one was talking about anything but, it seemed. It was tragic for the parents, fair enough, but Clive didn’t entirely see why it had to be tragic for everyone else. They all had their own crosses to bear.

Could we ask you, the older one said, just as a matter of routine: where were you exactly, on the afternoon and evening in question?

*

He’d been at home all day, on the afternoon in question. Went to bed early with a hot-water bottle. No one had any business being out on the hills, on a night like that. It got cold quick up there, if you weren’t paying attention. Beautiful, mind. The type of cold it got, that time of year. Ice on everything. All the growth stripped off. You could see the bones of the place. Frost deep down in the soil, breaking it up. Killed off the pests. It was a cleansing, of sorts. Clive liked to see a proper cold spell.

He wasn’t one of those wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud types. He was a practical man. He’d worked his whole career for the water company, starting way back when some of the reservoirs were still being built, helping keep them in operation all those years. Folk had no idea how much was involved. Out of sight, most of it. Sluices and spillways. Hydraulics. Twenty-four-hour job keeping the system in balance.