Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (7 page)

   
'Whoops'. ... not good enough.
She started to splice the ends of the tape together, wondering if she had time
to go into a field with the Uher and do a quick, 'Gosh, wow, good heaven I
never expected that,' and splice it in at the appropriate point.

   
The phone rang.

   
'Yes, what?' The damn roll of
editing tape was stuck to her hands and now the receiver.
   
'Fay Morrison?'

   
'Yes, sorry, you caught me . .
.'

   
'This is James Barlow in the
newsroom.'

   
'
Which
newsroom?' Fay demanded, being awkward because the voice
somehow reminded her of her ex-husband, who always called people by their full
names.

   
'Offa's Dyke Radio, Fay.' No,
not really like Guy. Too young. A cynical, world-weary twenty-two or
thereabouts. James Barlow, she hadn't dealt with him before.

   
'Sorry, I was editing a piece.
I've got tape stuck to my fingers.'

   
'Fay, Maria says she commissioned
a package from you about Henry Kettle, the water-diviner chap.'
   
'Dowser, yes.'
   
'Pardon?'

   
'Water-diviner, James, is not
an adequate term for what he does. He divines all kinds of things. Electric
cables, foundations of old buildings, dead bodies . . .'

   
'Yeah, well, he obviously
wasn't much good at divining stone walls. Have you done the piece?'

   
'That's what I'm . . .'

   
"Cause, if you could let
us have it this morning . . .'
   
'It's not for News,' Fay explained.
'It's a soft piece for
         
Maria. For
Alan Thingy's show. Six and a half minutes of me learning how to dowse.' Fay
ripped the tape from the receiver and threw the roll on the editing table.
'What did you mean about stone walls?'

   
'Tut-tut. Don't you have police
contacts, down there, Fay? Henry Kettle drove into one last night. Splat.'

   
The room seemed to shift as if
it was on trestles like the editing table. The table and the Revox suddenly
looked so incongruous here - the room out of the 1960s, grey-tiled fireplace,
G-plan chairs, lumpy settee with satin covers. Still Grace Legge's room, still
in mourning.
   
'What?' Fay said.

   
'Must've been well pissed,'
said James Barlow, with relish, 'straight across a bloody field and into this
massive wall. Splat, actually they're speculating, did he have a heart attack?
So we're putting together a little piece on him, and your stuff . . .'

   
'Excuse me, James, but is he
... ?'

   
'. . . would go quite nicely.
We'll stitch it together here, but you'll still get paid, obviously. Yes, he
is. Oh, yes. Very much so, I'm told. Splat, you know?'

   
'Yes,' Fay said numbly.

   
'Can you send it from the
Unattended, say by eleven?'
   
'Yes.'

   
'Send the lot, we'll chop out a
suitable clip. Bye now.'

Fay switched the machine back on. Now it no longer mattered, Take Two
didn't sound quite so naff.

   
'. . . whoops! Gosh, Henry, that's amazing, the twig's flipped
right over. If your hands hadn't been there, I'd've . . .'

   
A dead man said, 'Dropped it, I reckon. Well, there you are then,
Fay, you've found your first well. Can likely make yourself a bob or two now.'

   
'I don't think so, somehow. Tell me, what exactly was happening
there? You must have given it some thought over the years.'

   
'Well. . . it's nothing to do with the rod, for a start. It's in you,
see. You're letting yourself connect with what's out there and all the things
that have ever been out there. I don't know, sounds a bit cranky. You're, how
can I say . . . you're reminding your body that it's just part of everything
else that's going on, you following me? Never been very good at explaining it,
I just does it. . . You can mess about with this, can't you, Fay, make it sound
sensible? Fellow from the BBC interviewed me once. He . . .'

   
'Yes, don't worry, it'll be fine. Now, what I think you're saying
is that, in this hi-tech age, man no longer feels the need to be in tune with
his environment.'

   
'Well, aye, that's about it. Life don't depend on it any more, do
he?'

   
'I suppose not. But look, Henry, what if. . . ?'

   
She stopped the tape, cut it
off after 'Life don't depend on it any more.' Why give them the lot when they'd
only use four seconds?

   
Anyway, the next bit wasn't
usable. She'd asked him about this job he was doing for Max Goff and he'd
stepped smartly back, waving his arms, motioning at her to switch the tape off.
Saying that it would all come out sooner or later. 'Don't press me, girl, all
right?'

   
Later, he'd said, 'Not being
funny, see. Only it's not turned out as simple as I thought it was going to be.
Something I don't quite understand. Not yet, anyway.'

   
She hadn't pressed him. Very
unprofessional of her. She had, after all, only approached Henry Kettle about
doing six minutes for the 'people with unusual hobbies' spot because she'd
heard Max Goff had brought him to Crybbe and it was her job to find out what
Goff himself was doing here.

   
But she'd ended up liking Henry
Kettle and actually liking somebody was sometimes incompatible with the job. So
now nobody would know what he'd been doing for Goff unless Goff himself chose
to disclose it.

   
Fay sat down, she and the room
both in mourning now. He'd been a great character, had Henry, he'd leave a gap.

   
But if you had to go, maybe
Splat wasn't a bad exit line at the age of - what was he, eighty-seven? Still
driving his own car, too. Fay thought about her dad and the sports cars he'd had.
He'd prefer Splat to arterial strangulation anytime.

   
Talking of the devil, she
caught sight of him then through the window, strolling back towards the cottage
with the
Guardian
under his arm,
looking at ladies' legs and beaming through his big, snowy beard at people on
either side - even though, in Crybbe, people never seemed to beam back.

   
The cottage fronted directly on
to the street, no garden. Canon Alex Peters pushed straight into the office. He
wasn't beaming now. He was clearly annoyed about something.

   
'Don't they just bloody love
it?'

   
'Love what?' Fay joined some
red leader to the end of the tape, deliberately not looking up, determined not
to be a congregation.

   
'A tragedy. Death, failure -
'specially if it's one of the dreaded People from Off.'
   
'What are you on about, Dad?'

   
'That's what they say,
"From Off. Oh, he's from Off." I've calculated that "Off"
means anywhere more than forty miles away. Anywhere nearer, they say, "Oh,
he's from Leominster" or "He's from Llandrindod Wells". Which
are places not near enough to be local, but not far enough away to be
"Off".'

   
'You're bonkers, Dad.' Fay spun
back the finished tape. 'Anyway, this poor sod was apparently from Kington or
somewhere, which is the middle category. Not local but not "Off". So
they're quite content that he's dead but not as happy as they'd be if he was
from, say, Kent.'

   
It clicked.

   
'You're talking about Henry
Kettle.'
   
'Who?'

   
'Henry Kettle. The dowser I
interviewed yesterday morning.'

   
'Oh God,' Canon Peters said. '
That's
who it was. I'm sorry, Fay, I
didn't connect, I. . .'

   
'Never mind,' Fay said
soothingly. Sometimes, on his good days, you were inclined to forget. Her
father, who'd been about to sit down, was instantly back on his feet. 'Now look
. . . It's got nothing to with Dr Alphonse sodding Alzheimer.'

   
'Alois.'

   
'What?'

   
'Alois Alzheimer. Anyway, you
haven't got Alzheimer's disease.'

   
The Canon waved a dismissive
hand. 'Alzheimer is easier to say than arteriosclerotic dementia, when you're
going gaga.'
   
He took off his pink cotton jacket.
'Nothing to do with that anyway. Always failed to make connections. Always
putting my sodding foot in it.'

   
'Yes, Dad.'

   
'And stop being so bloody
considerate.'

   
'All right then. Belt up, you
old bugger, while I finish this tape.'

   
'That's better.' The Canon
slung his jacket over the back of the armchair, slumped down, glared grimly at
the
Guardian.
   
Fay labelled the tape and boxed it.
She stood back and pulled down her T-shirt, pushed fingers through her tawny
hair, asking him, 'Where was it, then? Where did it happen?'

   
Canon Peters lowered his paper.
'Behind the old Court. You know the tumulus round the back, you can see it from
the Ludlow road? Got a wall round it? That's what he hit.'
   
'But - hang on - that wall's a bloody
mile off the road.'
   
'Couple of hundred yards, actually.'
   
'But still . . . I mean, he'd have to
drive across an entire field for Christ's sake.' When James Barlow had said
something about Mr. Kettle crossing a field she'd imagined some kind of
extended grass-verge. 'Somebody said maybe he'd had a heart attack, so I was
thinking he'd just gone out of control, hit a wall not far off the road. Not,
you know, embarked on a cross country endurance course.'

   
'Perhaps,' speculated the Canon,
'he topped himself.'
   
'Cobblers. I was with him yesterday
morning, he was fine. Not the suicidal type, anyway. And if you're going to do
yourself in, there have to be rather more foolproof ways than that.'

   
'Nine out of ten suicides,
somebody says that. There's always an easier way. He was probably just
confused. I can sympathize.'

   
'Any witnesses?' Above the
tiled fireplace, opposite the window, was a mirror in a Victorian-style gilt
frame. Fay inspected her face in it and decided that, for a walk to the studio,
it would get by.

   
Canon Peters said, 'Witnesses?
In Crybbe?'

   
'Sorry, I wasn't thinking.'

   
'Wouldn't have known myself if
I hadn't spotted all the police activity, so I grilled the newsagent.
Apparently it must have happened last night, but he wasn't found until this morning.'

   
'Oh God, there's no chance he
might have been still alive, lying there all night . . . ?'

   
'Shouldn't think so. Head took
most of it, I gather, I didn't go to look. A local milkman, it was, who spotted
the wreckage and presumably said to himself, "Well, well, what a
mess," and then wondered if perhaps he ought not to call Wynford, the copper.
No hurry, though, because . . .'

   
'He wasn't local,' said Fay.

   
'Precisely.'

   
Fay said it for the second time
this week. 'Why don't you get the hell out of this town, Dad? You're never
going to feel you belong.'

   
'I like it here.'

   
'It irritates the hell out of
you!'

   
'I know, but it's rather interesting.
In an anthropological sort of way.' His beard twitched. She knew she wasn't
getting the whole story. What was he hiding, and why?

   
Fay frowned, wondering if he'd
seen the spoof FOR SALE notice she'd scribbled out during a ten-minute burst of
depression last night. She said tentatively, 'Grace wouldn't want you to stay.
You know that.'

   
'Now look, young Fay,' Canon
Peters leaned forward in the chair, a deceptive innocence in the wide blue eyes
which had wowed widows in a dozen parishes. 'More to the point, there's absolutely
no need for
you
to hang around. You
know my methods. No problem at all to find some lonely old totty among the
immigrant population to cater for my whims. In fact, you're probably cramping
my style.'