Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (44 page)

   
'You think there's something to
know? You think there's good reason why the place is as miserable as sin?"

   
'There's something. Fay. how
did you come to get Henry's dog. I mean, did you know him well?'

   
'Hardly at all. I'd done an
interview with him on the day he died.'

   
'That's interesting. What sort
of an interview? What was it about?'

   
'Er . . . dowsing. I wanted to
know what he was doing in Crybbe, but it was obvious he didn't want to talk
about that, so. . . Anyway, it was never used.'
   
'Have you still got the tape?'

   
'I imagine so. If you want to
hear it, come down to the studio sometime. Up the covered alley behind the
Cock.'
   
'Tomorrow morning?'
   
'Nine o'clock?'
   
'Fine.'

   
'And about Arnold, I got him
from the police because it was obvious nobody else was going to. He was howling
away in full daylight, and I'm pretty sure now that if I hadn't taken him, he'd
have been dead. They'd have killed him. Before nightfall. Before the curfew.'

The torchlight shone in Jocasta's eyes.

   
'It's me,' Guy said. 'Look . .
.'

   
'Yes, I know. Come here, I'm
cold.'

   
'I haven't been,' said Guy. 'I
couldn't go.'

   
'I don't understand - you've
got the torch.'

   
'Jocasta,' Guy hissed urgently,
closing the drawing-room door quietly behind him. 'For Christ's sake, why
didn't you
tell
me we weren't alone?'

   
Jocasta felt very cold. She began
to tremble, crawled to the Aga and scrabbled for her dress.

   
'Who is he?' Guy demanded. She
couldn't see him, only the torch. Is he your father?'

   
Jocasta tried to speak and
couldn't. She tried to stand up, tried to step into her dress, got her legs
tangled, fell back on the rug.

   
'I waited,' Guy said. 'But he
didn't come out.'
   
Jocasta, squatting on the rug in the
torch circle, struggled vainly to zip up her dress. No eager fingers to help
her now.
   
'What the hell's going on, Jocasta?'

   
She found her voice, but didn't
recognize it. 'My father,' she said slowly, 'is in Chiswick. My husband,
Hereward, is somewhere in Somerset. There is nobody here. Nobody here but us,
Guy.'

   
A log shifted in the grate,
sending up a yellow spark-shower, like a cheap firework.

   
'Then who the fuck was that old
man in the bathroom? Having a shave, for crying out loud, with a . . . with a .
. .' His voice faltered. 'With a cut-throat razor.'

   
The improbability of the
scenario seemed to occur to him at last.

   
'How could I see him? How could
I see him when all the lights . . . ?'

   
Guy's voice went quiet. 'He was
a strange kind of yellow,' he said unsteadily. 'A very feeble shade of yellow.'

   
The torchlight wavered as he
advanced on the sofa. 'Where are my clothes? I'm getting out of here.'

   
'
No
!' Jocasta leapt at him, clutching the arm which held the torch.
He dropped it. It lay on the floor, its beam directed into the fireplace. The
logs looked dead and grey in the strong, white light.

   
'Don't go,' Jocasta implored.
'You can't go. You can't leave me. For God's sake, don't leave me here with . .
. with . . .'

CHAPTER IV

The following morning, Sunday, just before 9 a.m., there was a sudden
burst of sunlight, a splash of dripping yellow in a washed-out, watercolour
sky.
   
The light looked to be directly over
the Tump, the trees on its sides and summit massing menacingly around the
watery orb. It was, Rachel thought, as if a green-gloved hand had reached out
from the foliage, snatched the emergent sun and crunched it like an egg.

   
'I think we should call the
police,' she said.
   
'Why?' said Humble. 'Whoever done it
saved us a job.'
   
The Tump squatted under the sun, fat
and smug. You could almost think the Tump was the culprit - as if the great
mound had taken a deep breath, pulled in its girth and then let go, bellying
out and crumbling the wall before it.

   
Then Rachel had seen the
bulldozer, still wedged in the rubble.

   
'And there's Gomer Parry,' she
said. 'What's he going to say?'

   
'Proves him wrong, dunnit? He
reckoned the machine wouldn't go through the wall.'

   
'Without the wall collapsing on
it. Which it has.'

   
A chunk of wall about fifteen
feet wide had been smashed in or wrenched out and then the bulldozer plunged in
again. Clearly an amateur job, but the spot had been well-chosen. It would
leave a jagged gap directly under the huge picture- window in the stable-block.

   
'All we do about Gomer, we just
pay him off,' Humble said. He was unshaven. He wore a black motorcycle jacket.
Half an hour ago he'd rung J. M. Powys's riverside cottage. 'Put Rachel on.'
She'd been quite shocked, didn't see how he could possibly have known about her
and J.M.

   
It meant Max would know by now.
Max would not be particularly annoyed that she was with J. M. Powys, but she'd done
it without clearing it with him first -
that
was the serious offence.

   
Time to move on, Rachel decided
abruptly. The facade's crumbling. Time to negotiate a settlement.

   
'I think the bulldozer's damaged,'
she said. 'Look at the way the blade-thing is twisted.'

   
'Couple of thou' should see
Gomer right. See, Rachel, you bring in the Old Bill, you're causing unnecessary
hassle. Some f . . . body might get the idea we paid him to do it. Max would
not like that.'

   
Him? You sound as if you know
who did it.'
   
'Yeah, well, I got my suspicions.'
   
'Would you like to share them?'
   
'I keep my eyes open,' Humble said.
   
'Not much you don't know, is there, Humble?'
   
Humble smirked. 'Not much, Rachel. Not
much.'

   
The metal plate on the door
said.
When red light is showing, do not
attempt to enter.

   
The red light was on.

   
Not sure what to do, Powys
walked around the dull, brick building which had once been a lavatory. When he
arrived back at the door he was holding up a foot.

   
'Oh shit, what's this?'

   
Making a face, Powys scraped
off the used condom against a corner of the wall.

   
She was watching him in some
amusement from the studio door, open now, the red light still on.

   
'Sorry, should have warned you.
You'll never pick up a dog turd in this town, but French letters ... an
all-too-common hazard. Especially just here.'

   
Powys looked around and counted
five of the things, shrivelling into the gravel. 'Favourite place,' Fay said.
'The grunts and squeals can be quite disconcerting when you arrive here in the
dark.'

   
'Maybe it's the red light gets
them going.' Powys looked up at the sign. ' "Do not attempt to
enter." Obviously nobody takes much notice of that.'

   
'Come in,' said Fay.

   
He followed her into the little
building and looked around. 'Incredible. A radio studio in Crybbe.'

   
'Geographically convenient.'
Fay was unpacking two reels of quarter-inch tape. It's certainly not a
reflection of the importance of the town.'

   
She set the tape rolling. I
won't waste time. This is one bit. Henry Kettle's dowsing masterclass.'

   
'OK. Here we go. Is there any . . . ? Fucking hell, Henry!'
   
'Caught you by surprise, did it?'

   
Powys grinned. 'Bit like sex,
isn't it. The first time. Did the earth move for you?'

   
'Certainly did when he put his
hands over mine. The rod just sort of flipped over. I did wonder afterwards if
he was
making
it happen. Just go get
it over with, get me off his back. He was obviously very busy. But I can be
quite persistent, I suppose.'

   
He thought she probably could.
She looked very nice this morning, in a dark skin and a glittery kind of top.

   
She noticed him studying the
ensemble, 'I'm going to church afterwards.' Pushing the buttons on the
tape-machine and flipping the controls on the console. 'Then I've got to go and
pick up Arnold from the vet's.'
   
He's OK?'

   
'Actually the vet said on the
phone that I might get a bit of a shock when I saw him, but there was nothing
to worry about. Have you ever been inside the church?'

   
He shook his head. 'But you're
a regular churchgoer, I suppose. With your dad in the business.'

   
'Oh hell, nothing to do with
that. And I'm not, actually. What it is, Dad tells me Murray - that's the vicar
- is doing his sermon on the New Age Phenomenon In Our Midst. I'll probably get
a story out of it. Murray's a very mixed-up person. The town's damaged him, I
think.'

   
'You think this town damages
people?'

   
'It's damaged me,' said Fay.
'Listen, this is the bit. Obviously, what I was really interested in was what
Henry Kettle was doing for Goff, and at one point I asked him, straight out.'

   
'. . . So, tell me, Henry, you're obviously in the middle of a major
dowsing operation here in Crybbe. What exactly does that involve?'

   
'Oh, I... Oh dear. Look, switch that thing off a minute, will you?'

   
'He was waving his arms about,
the way people do when you ask them a question they can't answer.'
   
'And did you switch off?'

   
'I did, I'm afraid.' Fay said.
'Sometimes you flip the pause button a couple of times to make it look as if
you have and then record the lot, but I was starting to like him. "Don't
press me, girl," he kept saying.'

   
'Did he say anything to indicate
he was bothered, or upset by what he was finding?'

   
'I think he did, and it must be
on the other tape.' Fay spun all the way back and pulled the reel off the deck.
'Hold this a minute, would you, er. . . sorry, I don't actually know what
the J.M. stands for.'

   
'Joe.'

   
'Joe Powys. Mmm. It's a whole
different person. Now, Joe Powys, some answers.' She had her fists on her hips,
the second reel clutched in one. 'Who killed Henry Kettle?'
   
'Ah,' he said.

   
'You don't think it was an
accident at all, do you?'

   
'Well,' he said, 'I don't think
it's who killed him so much as
what
killed him. I'm sure nobody tampered with his brakes or anything.'

   
'So you think it might be
something, shall we say . . . supernatural? And
don't
say it depends what I mean by supernatural.'
   
'How about you put the tape on, then
we'll talk about it?'
   
'And you went to see Mrs Seagrove
again, didn't you?'
   
'We loonies have to stick together.'

   
'So you
did
go to talk about the black dog . . . OK, OK, I'll put the tape
on.'

   
She dragged the yellow leader
tape past the heads, set it running on fast forward, stopped it. 'Somewhere
around here, I think. I'd caught up with Henry in the wood between the Court
and the church. I'd come straight from another job and I still had about half a
tape left, so I just ran it off, walking along with Henry. When you're putting
a package together you need lots of spare atmos and stuff.'

   
'Atmos?'

   
'Ambient sounds. Birdsong, wind
in the trees. Also, I needed bits of him trudging along doing his dowsing bit.
Radio's nearly as much of a fake as telly, you reshape it afterwards, rearrange
sentences, manufacture pauses for effect in using spare ambience. So here's
Henry in the wood. I hope.'