Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (62 page)

CHAPTER VIII

On reflection, maybe chopping holes in this particular wood wasn't such
a crime. It was not a pleasant wood.
   
Something Powys hadn't consciously
taken in when they were here yesterday and Fay had been so incensed about the
slaughter of the trees, and Rachel had . . .
   
No. He didn't like the wood.

   
And it was uncared for. Too
many trees, overcrowded, trees which had died left to rot, strangled by ivy and
creepers, their white limbs sticking out like the crow-picked bones of sheep,
while sickly saplings fought for the soil in between the corpses.

   
The wood was a buffer zone
between the Tump and the town, and some of what would otherwise have reached
the town had been absorbed by the wood, which was why it had such a bad feel
and why people probably kept out.

   
And perhaps why Andy Boulton-Trow
had chosen to live there.

   
Until you reached the clearing,
the path was the only sign that anyone had been in this wood for years. It was
too narrow for vehicles; a horse could make it, just about. But nobody with car
would want Keeper's Cottage.

   
It was redbrick, probably 1920s,
small and mean with little square windows, looked as if it had only one bedroom
upstairs. It was in a part of the wood where conifers - Alaskan Spruce or
something - had choked out all the hardwoods, crowding in like giant weeds, blinding
Keeper's Cottage to the daylight.

   
A sterile place. No birds, no
visible wildlife. Hardly the pick of Goff's properties. Hardly the type of
dwelling for a Boulton-Trow. Even the gardeners which he assumed certain
Boulton-Trows would employ wouldn't be reduced to this.

   
The door had been painted
green. Once. A long time ago.
   
Powys knocked.
   
No answer. Unsurprising. Nobody in his
right mind would want to spend too much time in Keeper's Cottage.
   
OK, either he isn't here or he is, and
keeping quiet.
   
Powys felt old sorrow and new sorrow
fermenting into fury, he called out, 'Andy!'
   
No answer.
   
'Andy, I want to talk.'
   
Not even an echo.

   
Powys walked around the
cottage. It had no garden, no outbuildings, only a rough brick-built shelter
for logs. The shelter was coming to pieces, most of the bricks were loose and crumbling.

   
So he helped himself to one. A
brick. And he went to the back of the house, away from the path, and he hefted
the brick, thoughtfully, from hand to hand for a moment or two before hurling
it at one of the back windows.

   
A whole pane vanished.

   
Powys slipped a hand inside and
opened the window.

Dementia, Alex thought, was an insidiously cunning ailment, it crept up
on you with the style of a pickpocket, striking while your attention was
diverted.

   
One didn't wake up in the
morning and think, hello, I'm feeling a bit demented today, better put the
trousers on back to front and spray shaving foam on the toothbrush. No, the attitude
of the intelligent man - saying, Look, it's been diagnosed, it's there, so I'm
going to have to watch myself jolly carefully - was less effective than one
might expect.

   
And the problem with this type
of dementia - furred arteries not always letting the lift go all the way to the
penthouse, as it were - was that the condition could be at its most insidiously
dangerous when you were feeling fine.

   
Today he'd felt fine, but he
wasn't going to be fooled.

   
'Keep calm, at all times,' Jean
Wendle had said. 'Learn how to observe yourself and your actions. Be detached,
watch yourself without involvement. I'll show you how to do this, don't worry.
But for now, just keep calm.'

   
Which wasn't easy when you
lived with someone like Fay, who'd made a career out of putting people on the
spot.

   
She'd come in just after six
and put together rather a nice salad with prawns and other items she obviously
hadn't bought in Crybbe. Bottle of white wine, too.

   
And then, over coffee . . .

   
'Dad, we didn't get a chance to
finish our conversation this morning.'

   
'Didn't we?'

   
'You're feeling OK, aren't
you?'
   
'Not too bad.'

   
'Because I want to get
something sorted out.'
   
God preserve me from this child, Alex
thought. Always had to get everything sorted out

   
'The business of the Revox. You
remember? The vandalism?'

   
'Of course I remember. The tape
recorder, yes.'

   
'Well, they haven't actually pulled
anybody in for it yet.'

   
'Haven't they?'

   
'And perhaps you don't think
they ever will.'

   
'Well, with that fat fellow in
charge of the investigation, I must say, I'm not over-optimistic.'

   
'No, no. Regardless of Wynford,
you don't really think . . .'

   
'Fay,' Alex said, 'how do you
know what I think or what I don't think? And what gives you . . . ?'

   
'Because I heard you talking to
Grace.'

   
'Oh,' said Alex. He had been about
to take a sip of coffee - he didn't.

   
Fay was waiting.

   
'Well, you know,' Alex said,
switching to auto-pilot, 'I've often had parishioners - old people - who talked
to their dead husbands and wives all the time. Nothing unusual about it, Fay.
It brought them comfort, they didn't feel so alone any more. Perfectly natural
kind of therapy.'

   
'Dad?'

   
'Yes?'

   
'Has Grace brought
you
comfort?'

   
Alex glared with resentment
into his daughter's green eyes.

   
'Why did you think it was Grace
who smashed up the Revox?'

   
He started to laugh, uneasily.
'She's dead.'
   
'That's right.'
   
Alex said, 'Look, time's getting on.
I've a treatment booked for eight.'

   
'With Jean? What's she charging
you, out of interest?'
   
'Nothing at all. So far, that is. I,
er, gave her a basic outline of the financial position and she suggested I
should leave her her fee in my will.'

   
'
Very
accommodating. Perhaps you could make a similar arrangement
regarding your tab at the Cock. Now, to return to my question . . .'

   
Alex stood up. 'Let me think
about this one, would you, Fay?'

   
How could he tell her his real
fears about this? Well, of
course
dead people couldn't destroy property on that scale. Even poltergeists only tossed
a few books around. Even if dead people felt a great antipathy to someone in
their house, it was only living people who were capable of an act of such gross
violence.

   
But perhaps dead people were
capable of making living people do their dirty work.

   
Did I? he asked himself as he
walked up Bell Street. Was it
me
?

   
Alex felt terribly hot and confused.
Just wanted to feel the cool hands again.

The microphone was in the way. Jarrett had it on a bracket-thing
attached to the ceiling so that it craned over the couch like an old-fashioned
dentist's drill.

   
Guy said, rather impatiently,
'What do we need that thing for, anyway, if we're recording the whole session
on VT?'

   
'I understand that, Guy,'
Jarrett said, 'but
I
need it. I keep
a record of everything. Also, it acts as a focus for the subject. I'm using the
microphone in the same way as hypnotists do to swing their watches on a chain.'

   
'OK,' Guy said, 'I'll go with
that. We'll do some shots the mike, make it swim before our eyes. OK, Larry?'

   
'No problem, I'll do it afterwards,
come in over Catrin's shoulder. We OK with the lights?'

   
Guy looked at Graham Jarrett,
small and tidy in a maroon cardigan, silver haired and just a tiny bit camp.
Graham Jarrett said, 'One light may actually assist us if it isn't directly in
her eyes, because we'll all be thrown into shadow and Catrin will be in her own
little world. Can you make do with one, say that big one?'

   
'I don't see why not,' Guy
said, gratified, remembering the hassle he'd had with Adam Ivory. Nice to know
some New Age people could live with television.

   
Jarrett arranged a tartan travelling
rug over the couch and patted a cushion. 'OK then, Catrin, lie down and make
yourself comfortable. I want you to be fully relaxed, so have a good wriggle
about . . . Where's your favourite beach . . . somewhere on the Med? West
Indies?'

   
'Porth Dinllaen,' Catrin said
patriotically. 'On the Lleyn, in north Wales.'

   
Guy turned away, concealing a
snigger.

   
Jarrett adjusted the mike,
switched on a cassette machine on a metal table on wheels, like a drinks
trolley. 'OK, can we try it with the lights?'

   
Guy signalled to the lighting
man, and Catrin's face was suddenly lit up, he thought, like a fat Madonna on a
Christmas card. There was a tiny, black, personal microphone clipped into a
fold of her navy-blue jumper.

   
'Right, Catrin,' Jarrett said softly,
it's a soft, warm afternoon. You're on the beach . . .'

   
'Hang on,' Tom, the soundman,
said. 'Let's have some level. Say something, Catrin. Tell us what you had for
lunch.'

   
It was another twenty minutes
or so before everyone was satisfied. Guy watched Jarrett taking off Catrin's
shoes and draping another travelling rug over her stumpy legs, just below the
knees. No bad thing; Catrin's legs wouldn't add a great deal to the picture.
Only wished he'd known about this far enough in advance to have set up someone
more photogenic.
   
He thought, with some amazement, back
to this morning, when the night-terrors had persuaded him that he ought to
invite Catrin to share his room tonight. He shuddered. Thank heaven he hadn't
said anything to her.

   
'OK,' said Jarrett. 'It's very warm,
not too hot, just pleasant. Perhaps you can hear the sea lapping at the sand in
the distance. And if you look up, why there's the sun . . .'

   
The big light shone steadily
down.

   
'Happy, Catrin?'

   
Catrin nodded, her lips plumped
up into a little smile.

   
'But I don't want you to look
at the sun, Catrin, I'd like you to look at the microphone. You must be quite
comfortable with microphones, working for the BBC . . .

   
Guy, watching her intently,
didn't notice her go under, or slide into a hypnotic trance or whatever they
did. Nothing about her seemed to change, as Jarrett took her back to previous holidays
when she was a child. He almost thought she was putting it on when she began to
burble in a little-girl sort of voice, about her parents and her sister and
paddling in the sea and seeing a big jellyfish - lapsing into Welsh at one
point, her first language.

   
She would fake it, he knew; she
wouldn't want to let him down.

   
But then Catrin started coming
out with stuff that nobody in their right mind would fake.

Hard against the streaming evening light, Jack Preece took the tractor
into the top meadow and he could tell the old thing was going to fail him, that
poor Jonathon had been right when he said it was a false economy.

   
Nobody had open tractors like
this any more. Tractors had changed. Tractors nowadays were like Gomer Parry's
plant-hire equipment, big shiny things.

   
Jack had sworn this old thing
was going to see them through the haymaking, which would mean he could put off
the investment until next year, maybe check out what was available secondhand.