December (67 page)

      
As they climbed into the cars, he heard Meryl saying rather
sulkily that she'd follow behind as far as Ystrad Ddu and see what the place
was like, not specifying whether she meant the village or the vicarage.

It took no more than twenty
minutes to get to Ystrad Ddu, despite the mist being dense around them the
whole way.

      
Four cars in slow procession, like a funeral cortege, minus
the hearse.

      
'OK, David?'

      
'Fine.' Dave's eyes were fixed on the car in front, Moira's.
      
Sure he was fine. They all were.

      
Even though he couldn't see much of it, Prof sensed a
roughening of the landscape. They were moving towards the Black Mountains of
North Gwent, which were hardly mountains in comparison with Snowdonia or even
the Brecon Beacons but appreciably harder than the placid pastures they'd left
behind on the Hereford border.

      
They stopped in the village, and Simon went with Meryl and Tom
into a plain detached house opposite an undistinguished little church. After
about twenty minutes, Tom and Simon emerged and Simon nodded briefly to the
others.

      
So that was that sorted out. Prof felt sorry for Meryl, but more
sorry for himself.

      
A hundred yards or so from the edge of the village the road had
shrunk to not much more than a lorry's width. The mist was rolling around them
like wadding, leaving a dusting of rain on the windscreen.

      
'You remember this road, David?'
      
Dave smiled, said nothing. He
glanced at the rear-view mirror and Prof, hunched in the front passenger seat,
looked round, momentarily imagining there was a third person with them, in the
back. He had a sensation like a caterpillar crawling along the back of his
neck.

      
The cold mist was a muffling stillness around the car creating
a silence Prof needed to break.

      
'Could've been a nicer day, David.'
      
'It's perfect,' Dave said.
'Wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression.'
      
'Be prepared, eh?'

      
'Anxious is the word. Be anxious. You'll find it makes you anxious
anyway.'

      
'Right little bloody ray of sunshine you are,' said Prof.
'What are you anxious about?'

      
Dave didn't reply, but he didn't stop looking at the car in
front, containing Moira and a couple of guitars in cases on the back seat, one
of them leaning forward, as if it was whispering something in Moira's ear.

      
Prof's next breath locked in his throat.

      
It wasn't a guitar; it
was another woman.

      
Wasn't it? Wasn't that another woman, very thin and sharp-featured?

      
Prof gripped both his knees and squeezed.
      
Let
me out.

      
Too late now. The cortege was no longer moving and when Prof looked
out and up, he saw two lines of enormous, still, grey-robed people hanging over
them out of the quivering mist, with their arms linked above their heads.
      
Not people. Stone arches.

      
Whatever happens, Prof,' Dave said, 'do try and remember it was
your idea to come here.'

VI

Ferret

Three o'clock, almost.
Couple of hours' daylight.
      
Decisions, decisions.
      
'What we gonna do then?'
      
'Fetch Daddy,' Vanessa said without
any hesitation. Big eyed and dead certain.

      
Having unloaded all his cargo, Weasel had filled the van with
petrol at a service station near the main roundabout at Wilton, outside Ross.
      
'Just like that, eh?'

      
The kid had to be feeling isolated. Confused. Messed up. Look
at the things that had happened to her since she last saw her old man.
Beginning with the crash, two dead neighbours. No, not
quite
beginning with that - even before then. Vanessa knew
something was going down. All that
Daddy's
coming
stuff. How many times had she said that, like a mantra, like it was
information
being fed to her?

      
Begging the question: how much like her old man was she? Being
the first daughter of a seventh son of a seventh son didn't signify any miracle
powers that Weasel knew of. But this was
no
ordinary kid
. She seemed to handle things the doctors and the books and
these counselling geezers said was impossible for a Down's child. Annoyed the
hell out of Shelley, what the experts said. Shelley was a fine woman who wasn't
into playing it by the book, who'd made a point of reading the book and then chucking
it away.

      
Weasel decided he'd play it Shelley's way and chuck away the
book.

      
He swivelled in his driving seat to face the kid. She was
sitting, all demure in her brown skirt and jumper, blazer neatly folded on her
knee.

      
'Princess,' Weasel said, 'where
is
your Daddy?'

      
'You know, silly,' Vanessa said.

      
'I don't. I told you I don't. Cross my heart.'

      
'You
do,'
Vanessa
insisted, contemplating him real seriously through those milk bottle specs.
      
'Is he wiv Morticia -I mean Meryl.
Is he wiv Meryl?'

      
Vanessa shook her head.

      
Not good so far. According to Shel, even Meryl had said Tom
was with her. Had said she was 'connecting' with him.

      
'Is he wiv Mr Case? You met Mr Case, didn't you? Nah, shit,
you didn't.' This was a useless idea. Maybe he'd take her back, call in a
phone-box first and ring Shelley.

      
Weasel started up the engine. 'We'll find him. Princess. I swear
we're gonna find him.'

      
Just not today. Weasel pulled out into the traffic heading for
the M50.

      
'M ...' Vanessa said, '... oira.'

      
Weasel hit the brakes, horns blasting him from all sides. He
pulled up against the double-whites, set the hazard lights going.
      
'D'you say Moira?'
      
Vanessa looked blank.
      
'Simon,' Weasel said.

      
At least the kid didn't shake her head nor nothing.
      
'Dave.'

      
Vanessa smiled. Why'd she do that? She didn't know any Daves
in the village, he was pretty sure of that. And the school was all girls.

      
Weasel said, 'Er ... Elsie.'
      
Vanessa shook her head.

      
'Doris.'

      
Vanessa looked at him like he was stupid.
      
'Ruth.'

      
Vanessa turned away in disgust.

      
And then he said, like it was just another name:

      
'Abbey?'

      
Vanessa pushed her school blazer from her knees to the floor of
the van, screaming and squirming like she had a bad stomach ache.

Actually, Prof's first
reactions to the Abbey included a fair bit of relief.

      
What, if he admitted it, had been bugging him more than
anything was the thought that the place would immediately reflect his worst
dreams.

      
Yes,
those
dreams.

      
The one in particular involving a distressed young woman
running through a skeleton of arches, open to the night sky, running hard and
fast, her lungs ready to burst with the agony of trying ... trying to fly. And
when she failed, when she came to the final arch and a big blank wall, she
flung herself at it, sobbing and clawing at the stone. And falling all around
her like black rain, was a derisive, discordant chanting - Gregorian gone sour.

      
In the dream, the arches had been great, soaring hoops of
stone, like dinosaur ribs. Whereas these, when you got close, had a squat and
rotting feel in the clinging mist. Not pleasant but not awesome either. No
wonder the place didn't get many visitors.

      
A considerable relief, all the same.

      
'Home from home, Prof?' said Dave, standing in the bit of a courtyard
where the cars were parked. He had his white scarf wound around his neck and
was clutching a guitar case to his chest as if it was a huge hot-water bottle.

      
'I've been in worse places, David. I did National Service son,
never forget that."

      
'Where were you? Aden? Malaya?'

      
'Aldershot,' said Prof. 'Piss-awful place.'

      
He wished the mist would lift, so he could get a feel of the
landscape
 
and the setting, but he supposed
it would simply get darker.

      
'Give it a couple of days,' Dave said. 'You'll grow to love it.'
      
'You seem chirpy.'

      
'Hysteria,' said Dave. 'Wait till you see the stairs.'

      
Two towers were visible from the courtyard, one beyond it
looked half-ruined. The other, sprouting from a corner of the yard, had obviously
been shortened and partly rebuilt; it had wider slits and a long, Gothic window
under the conical, slated roof.

      
It was Simon, in an old sheepskin jacket and jeans, who led
the way into the tower. Like Dave, he was exuding false confidence. It was more
convincing from Simon, but it was still false.

      
First, they went down some steps into a kind of shallow well,
with a big oak door at the bottom. There was a massive great keyhole but the door
was unlocked and led into a short passage with two more doors, one closed, the
other ajar with a couple of steep steps visible in the salty light from above.

      
'Studio's through that end door, Prof. Best if we unload our
gear first, then you can start to familiarise yourself with the equipment. I
don't think you'll have any problems. It's comparatively primitive gear,
24-track, exactly the same as it was in 'eighty.'

      
'The arthriticky old fingers should be able to cope with
that,' said Prof. 'Gordon Bennett! How's anybody supposed to get a suitcase up
there?'

      
He was going to be hard-pressed to get
himself
up there, the width and steepness of these steps.

      
'Take it easy.' Simon jammed the door wide. 'Let me take your
case.'

      
'I'm not
that
old
yet, son.' It was a very tight spiral with a low, curving stone roof, a real
corkscrew. 'How many steps?'
      
'About fifty, but you'll only need
to make it up a dozen or so. You're on the first floor.'
      
'How many bloody floors are there?'

      
'Five, I think, one room on each. It was a hotel for some
years, back in the sixties. Good gimmick at first, but I don't suppose anybody
stayed here more than once. Keep going; it's steep, but it's not
that
easy to fall down a spiral
staircase.'

      
'Take your word for it. Shit, me calf muscles are playing up
already. This it? This alcove?'

      
A slit window with cobwebbed glass in it marked the floor,
which amounted to a small door in a recess guaranteed to crick Tom Storey's
neck every time. The door was ajar; Prof
 
battered it open with his suitcase.

      
'Won't be throwing too many parties in here.'

      
Somebody had tried to brighten it up with a coat of yellow emulsion,
but Prof's room was essentially very dreary, largely due to the small, recessed,
metal-framed window being too high in the far wall to show you anything but
clouds and fog. The bed had four rickety posts but no curtains. There was a chair.
A wooden partition with a door concealed a washbasin and newish lavatory.

      
'Good job it's us and not bloody Pink Floyd is all I can say.
The other rooms any better?'

      
'Marginally,' Simon said, head bowed in the doorway. 'we
wanted to save your legs.'