Swan Song

The mist had lifted slightly, bringing a defining shape to the blur of dark forms deeper within the damp grayness. Clumps of grass—wavy hair-grass and toad rush—poked out of the haze, waist high and sun bleached to a deathly paleness, the rigid stems and fuzzy seed heads dotted with dew and rustling softly in the morning breeze. A birch eased out of the obscurity as McLaren stepped into the wood. The mist lay thicker here, as though caged or entangled in tree branches and grasses, and McLaren fell against the birch trunk as he tripped over a tree root. He pushed himself upright, cursing his clumsiness and the early hour, and walked deeper into the wood. Seconds later he saw the boulder. And the depression where the body had lain.
McLaren stood in front of the stone, taking in the landscape, imagining the scene as it might have been one year ago. Snippets of television news items flashed in his mind’s eye—white male, 45 years old, local music teacher, last seen wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, last seen at the Minstrels Court, last seen carrying a guitar case, last seen carrying a cello case, last seen carrying a dark rucksack, last seen in a late model Land Rover, last seen in a used Range Rover, last seen talking to the castle’s curator, last seen talking to a young female fan, last seen talking to his fiancée. Last seen…last seen…
Last seen in the wood near Kirkfield. Dead.
Crouched over and walking carefully, he examined the ground as though he were once more a police constable carrying out a scene of crime search, his fingertips probing among the leaf litter, vegetation and fallen twigs covering the forest floor. Minutes slid away as he pulled up grass and tossed aside branches. At the base of the boulder he shone his torch. Even in the early light of dawn its bright beam threw dense, dark shadows across the ground, stretching the blackness until it blended with the gloom beyond the stone. Again he prodded the grass to yield something significant, but nothing surrendered to his persistence. Eventually, he stood up, his back and hands sore. He stretched and flexed his fingers, snapped off the torch, then wandered a few steps from the bounder. He stood there, viewing the scene from a different angle.
The car track, hardly more than two ruts of bare soil, barely visible in the enthusiastic short grass of the verge, widened on its eastward journey as it approached the village, angling uphill before disappearing among the cliff faces and trees. But here, at the western end of Kirkfield, it had dwindled into a single-lane footpath nearly choked with Queen Anne’s lace and thistles. It merged with the forest floor on the far side of the boulder. As though the rock were a popular destination.
But why had the body been here? Why hundreds of yards from his house? Had he met someone at the boulder? Perhaps, but unlikely. The medical report had stated the victim had been moved and placed here. So again the question: why here?
How long McLaren stood there, he couldn’t have said later. He found himself at times both an onlooker and participant in the processing of the scene, a stranger viewing the scene as from treetop level and as police detective. Lights flashed—police work lamps, camera strobes, torch beams, car headlights, ambulance lights. Sounds familiar and mesmerizing echoed in his ears—police sirens, car doors slamming, twigs snapping, spoken orders, irreverent jokes. The sights and sounds pulled him into the scene with the intensity of a police investigation. He felt nothing, saw and heard nothing but the shimmering scene before him. Was that his partner’s voice or Harvester’s?
A woodpecker tattooed its presence from a dead tree and the percussion jerked McLaren from the trance. He lifted his trembling hand to his forehead, suddenly aware of the sweat and his racing heart. As the police lights faded under the sunlight cresting an oak bough, the body sank back into the shadows, the white work suits receded into the mist. McLaren shook off the siren’s wail and walked back to his car.