Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (109 page)

         
'She had me going for a while,' Fay
said. 'However - as I did try to tell you at one point yesterday - I checked
out the Bottle Stone. It was in that field in Radnor Forest and it was shaped
like a bottle and he did take it away.'

         
Powys reeled.

         
'I'm a reporter,' Fay said. 'I came
back that way from the library and went to the nearest farm. Took a while - you
know what farmers are - but I got it out of them. That land - about eighteen
acres - still belongs to the Trows. It was funny, the farmer actually called them
Worts, sort of contemptuously. He rents the grazing, but they wouldn't sell the
land.'

         
'Andy?'

         
'Andy showed up there - about ten
years ago, the guy said, but it was probably twelve - with a stone on the back
of a lorry, and he had the stone planted in the middle of the field, which annoyed
the farmer, but he couldn't do anything about it. Andy promised to come back
and take it away, and he did - last week.'

         
'Why didn't you . . . ?'

         
'You kept saying you didn't want to
talk about the Bottle Stone, and anyway . . .'

         
'And there was I, thinking you had
faith in me.'

         
'Oh, I did, Joe. That's the point - I
didn't need to have the Bottle Stone bit confirmed. It was . . . a formality.'

         
Powys said, 'Your eye looks better.'

         
'Let's not start lying to each other
at this stage,' Fay said.

'Of
course . . .' Chief Inspector Hughes, hands in pockets, was pacing the square.
'There are still things we don't understand.'

         
'Really?' Col Croston was trying to
sound surprised. A slow, dawn drizzle glazed the square. There was the acrid,
dispiriting smell of fire and water.

         
'Oh, I've got most of it,' Hughes said
quickly. 'And I think I grasp the social pressures which caused it.'

         
Col had forgotten that Hughes was one
of the 'new' policemen with a degree in something appropriate.

         
'You look at the background,' Hughes
said. 'The kid's stifled by it. Rural decline, brought up in this crumbling
farm. And let's face it, this town's a good half-century behind everywhere
else.'

         
'At least,' said Col.

         
'So young Preece listens to rock music
and he dreams . . . without much hope. And then along comes Salvation with a
capital S, in the shape of our late friend Mr Goff. He sends Goff a tape of his
band, and Goff, no doubt conscious of the politics of the situation responds
favourably.'

         
'How do you know this?'

         
'Letter from Epidemic in Warren's
pocket. Charred, but readable. We can only assume he made another approach to
Goff and Goff told him to clear off. I'm telling you all this, Colonel, in the
hope you can throw a bit of light . . .'

         
'All new to me, Chief Inspector.'

         
'So we're assuming this is what pushed
Warren over the edge. Given all the other pressures - losing his only brother
and then his father's tractor accident. The boy seems to be of limited
intellect - must have thought the whole world was against him.'

         
'Psychiatrists will have a field day,'
said Col. 'Where is he now?'

         
'Hospital, I'd like to think he was
going to be fit to plead one day, but I wouldn't put money on it. He took most
of Wiley's nose off with that Stanley knife before we disarmed him.'

         
'Lovable little chap. I'm furious with
myself. I was just yards away when he killed Goff.'
         
'Who would have expected it?'

         
'I was trained to expect the
unexpected, for God's sake. Do you know how many he's killed? I make it four -
Goff, the vicar, poor old Hereward Newsome . . . and of course that chap,
Trow.'

         
'Tie things up nicely if he put his
hand up to the Rachel Wade business, too - her signature was on the letter
suggesting Warren's music wasn't half bad. But what I was going to ask you,
Colonel ... the Trow killing's somewhat different in style. I can't go into
details, but Warren seems to have finished him off by bludgeoning him with this
other skull. We thought we had another murder when he came out of the old house
with that thing, but it's obviously of some age. So where did it come from?
Have any graves been disturbed locally?'

         
Col thought this over. 'Well, he was
obviously in the church and there are a couple of tombs in there. Might be
worth sifting through the ruins.'

         
'Oh, we'll do that, all right.
Obviously, it's not a major issue, but it's something we have to clear up.'

         
'Well, I have to congratulate you.
Chief Inspector. You seem to be putting it all together very nicely.'

         
Hughes nodded. 'Open and shut,
really,' he said.

Fay said,
'I could be making a fortune at this very moment. There'll be a hundred
reporters here before breakfast, like a flock of pigeons scrabbling for crumbs.
Even poor bloody Ashpole seems to have missed it all.'

         
'And what are they all going to say?'

         
'Hard to say precisely
how
they'll work it, but I can guarantee
that, by tonight, Warren Preece will be very famous.'

         
'And Michael Wort?'

         
'Who's Michael Wort?' said Fay.

         
More to the point, Joe Powys thought,
where
is Michael Wort? Back - hopefully
- in his own carefully constructed limbo. He was still unsure what had happened
over the Bottle Stone - whether it had been installed at the riverside cottage
and then replaced with another stone, or whether the power of suggestion had
made him see the Bottle Stone in the tense, burgeoning atmosphere before
Rachel's death. In that case, where was the original Bottle Stone now?

         
Powys looked over his shoulder,
half-expecting to see the thing sprouting from the earth behind him.

         
Fay said, 'I have to say it didn't
occur to me for quite a while that what she . . . what Jean was doing at the
stone was trying to generate - in
me
- enough negative energy for him - Andy, Wort, whatever - to make some kind of
final leap. To save himself . . . itself.'

         
'It occurred to me,' Powys said.

         
'Well, it would, wouldn't it. You're a
clever person. And you know what we thinks about clever people yereabouts.'

         
Arnold limped towards them and fell
over. He stood again and shook himself, exasperated.

         
Fay Morrison and Joe Powys looked at
each other. Eyebrows were raised.

         
Neither of them had said a word about
Arnold's remarkable turns of speed at critical moments. One day, Fay thought,
she'd dare to mention that strange, glowing, phantom fourth leg. But not yet.

         
'He's a dowser's dog,' Joe said
laconically.

         
As she bent down to pick up the dog, a
disturbing thought struck her. 'What about the girl . . . Tessa?'

         
'She should really be taken away,' Joe
said, 'and put through some kind of psychic readjustment programme. Except they
probably don't exist, so she'll go on causing minor havoc, until she grows up
and turns into something even nastier. Like Jean.'

         
'Is there nothing anyone can do?'

         
'World's full of them,' Powys said.
'Crybbe'll always attract them, and sometimes it'll manufacture its own.'
         
'We can't just leave it.'
         
'We bloody can.'

         
'Yes,' Fay said. 'I suppose we can.'

         
And she turned her back on the town,
albeit with an uncomfortable feeling that one day they might feel they had to
come back.

         
They got into the car. They were going
to Titley, to Henry Kettle's cottage, which Joe had said was the best sanctuary
he could think of. For a few weeks at least, he said, there'd be danger of
residual nasties from Crybbe clinging to them. Grace type things.

         
Fay said, 'Can we handle that?'

         
'Count on it,' Joe Powys said grimly.

         
From the back seat, Rasputin the cat
mewed in protest at his confinement in the laundry basket.

         
Fay said, 'When you said you, er,
needed me . . . what did you mean exactly?'

         
'I don't know. It just came out. Heat
of the moment.'

         
He turned on the engine.

         
'However . .
  
Joe said, looking straight ahead through the
windscreen. 'I know what I'd mean if I were to say it now.'
         
Fay smiled. 'What did the police
say to you?'
         
They said, "Don't leave
town." '
         
Joe Powys grinned and floored
the accelerator.