The Buried Circle (55 page)
Downstairs, the living-room door closes softly. Wherever he’s going, he’s about to set off to find what my grandmother has lost.
There was a bird calling, a crazy wet bird in a bush, singing its heart out to the night as I limped down the track from the hill. Avebury was dark in the blackout, the rain keeping people indoors. My legs wouldn’t carry me further. I wanted warm water, clean sheets, milk in a tall glass, a hand stroking my limp, knotted hair.
I stumbled through the churchyard, past Mam’s grave, still a heap of earth and no headstone. Through the iron kissing gate onto the cobbles of the stableyard, by the museum where I used to work, where the other Charlie lay in his glass coffin. Then up the path between the lavender to the side door of the Manor. The beech trees in the garden rustled anxious, like, telling me to turn back, no good would come of it. No gleam of light between the heavy blackout curtains.
Please, God, let him be here. I knocked. Silence. Put a hand to my forehead, could feel the heat of my skin, the chill of my body where my damp skirt and blouse clung to me. Oh, Lord, he wasn’t here, there was nobody, not even Mr Waters the butler, what would I do now?
Better that, maybe, than Mrs Keiller. What was I thinking of? What would I have done then?
The door swung open, light knifing across the lawn.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said, stepping into the porch. ‘Heartbreaker. You poor little mite.’ Behind him, pulling together the curtains that hung behind the door to preserve the blackout, was Mrs Sorel-Taylour, shock on her face to see me.
Mr Keiller took hold of my shivering arms. ‘You’re soaked to the skin. Mrs S-T, could you ask someone to run a bath? She’ll catch a fever, if she hasn’t already. Did they send a telegram? You poor child, all alone, no wonder you came to us.’
How could he know? The chill in me was so deep I couldn’t grasp any of this. In the parlour, Mr Young was standing by the fireplace. He gave me the kindest smile, but pity was etched on his solemn face. Why were they all here? Words buzzing round the room like faulty electric circuits. Someone said, here, give her this, it’ll warm her, and Mrs Sorel-Taylour handed me a glass of brandy. But one of those words was already melting my frozen brain, beginning to burn, letters of fire.
Telegram
.
Only one thing a telegram meant in them days, and never good.
Drumbeats in the dark, louder, faster, louder, LOUDER…
I come awake to the sound of hammering on the front door, my heart thudding in time, sun hitting my eyes through the thin curtains. My watch on the bedside table says half past nine: full morning.
Shit. Meant to be up hours ago. The knocking starts again. One of John’s clients?
I wrap myself in the threadbare towelling dressing-gown John leaves for guests on the back of the spare-room door. Across the landing the door to his room is half open. He’s spark out, shirtless but still in his jeans, on the bed. Anyone else, I’d give them a good shake, but John’s adamant that people should only ever be roused gently from sleep–another of those moments where, apparently, you can do untold damage by scaring away their power animal. So I draw his door quietly closed and leave him to it, making my way down the narrow uncarpeted stairs on bare feet as the next bout of thunderous knocking begins.
On the doorstep stands DI Jennings. He doesn’t look at all surprised to find me at John’s. ‘Good morning, Miss Robinson. Sorry to be so
early’
–you can tell he doesn’t think it’s early at all, but we’re a pair of slovenly hippies so it would be early to us–‘but I wanted to catch you before you left for the hospital.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Panic shoots up my throat. The police come to tell you when someone’s died, don’t they? No, that’s ridiculous, the hospital would have phoned. Bastard, I bet he knew I’d be freaked. I’m starting to understand why John has a down on the police.
‘I was expecting to find you at Trusloe because our scene-of-crime officers arrived at half past eight this morning to take fingerprints.’
‘Oh, no.’ I close my eyes in frustration. ‘I thought the other policeman said…Nobody told me. And John’s tacked plywood over the back door…Sorry. Look, can I get dressed? We were back late from the hospital. Step inside, I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘I did tell Mr Bolger the SOCOs would arrive this morning. Didn’t he pass it on?’
I leave him in the kitchen, assuring me he’s perfectly capable of making his own cup of tea. Or, translated, of having a good nose round while I’m upstairs. I throw on jeans and a T-shirt as fast as I can, trying to remember what I should have been doing this morning before the world broke up. Well, ringing Corey to cancel my shift at the caf can wait.
‘Would you mind…’ I put my head round the kitchen door to find DI Jennings with his reading glasses on and his fat red face pressed to John’s crop-circle calendar. ‘Won’t be long. I have to call the hospital to find out how my grandmother is.’
DI Jennings’s expression conveys surprise that I haven’t done so already.
‘I was asleep until…’ For Christ’s sake, why am I justifying myself? He’s a master of making the innocent feel guilty. ‘The nurses don’t like people calling too early,’ I finish lamely.
It takes three tries on the phone in the living room to reach the ward. Turns out to be doctors’ rounds, no one able to tell me much. ‘She slept well, though,’ says the nurse, brightly.
At the kitchen table, DI Jennings pushes a mug of lukewarm black coffee towards me. ‘Didn’t know if you took milk.’ He proffers the bottle.
‘Oh, you found the sugar all right?’
‘Just kept opening cupboards.’
I’m sure you did. ‘When will the fingerprint people be coming back?’ I ask.
‘They’ve finished. Your friend John hadn’t done a very good job with the plywood, and he’d forgotten to lock up too. We thought you wouldn’t mind if we let ourselves in.’ His eyes dare me to disagree. ‘We’ll need your fingerprints, of course, and Mr Bolger’s.’
‘Of course.’ I try to sound like I’m completely in control. ‘I want this bloke caught, Inspector.’
‘Well, that’s what I’m coming to,’ he says. ‘You do know your friend John has a conviction for ABH?’
It isn’t John. No way. He’s the most harmless bloke I know.
‘See, Miss Robinson, I’ve no reason to doubt you’re telling the truth when you say you were at work yesterday’ DI Jennings’s narrowed eyes suggest he’ll be checking carefully nonetheless. ‘But Mr Bolger seems to have spent most of the day on his own, apart from the time you were with him.’
‘He wouldn’t,’ I say. ‘He loves Frannie…’ Jennings’s furry eyebrows rear. ‘I mean, he’s an old friend of the family. And he has his own key. Anyway, Frannie would open the door to him. He wouldn’t need to break in–’ The eyebrows writhe like caterpillars, sceptical. If you wanted to make it
look
like a break-in–
No, for God’s sake. The bastard’s trying to manipulate me. John wouldn’t do anything of the kind, and if you really wanted to make it look like a break-in, you’d take her purse.
‘See, half the time these things are family,’ says Jennings. ‘Granny-bashing’s a lot more common than people think. And we talked to your grandmother’s social worker.’
‘Adele.’
‘No, she’s on holiday. The other one, at the day centre. Bob. He says your grandmother is disturbed about something. She starts screaming for no apparent reason. Classic. Maybe your friend John didn’t mean to hurt her, but she started screaming and it wound him up, terrible noise it can be, red rag to someone with a violent temper–’
‘No,’ I say, firm. ‘He
doesn’t have
a violent temper. And if it was him, don’t you think she’d have said? She was conscious, in the hallway, the paramedic can tell you, and John was standing right beside her…’
‘Exactly Intimidating her. She’s frightened to death of him.’
‘She’s not. You don’t know my grandmother.’ ‘Or she’s confused.’
John is still sprawled across the bed, eyes closed. I shake his shoulder roughly.
‘Wh–’
‘Get up. The police want to talk to you. Jennings has already grilled me.’
His eyes come open, bloodshot faded blue, pinprick pupils. ‘Tell them I’ll call them back…’
‘Not on the phone. Jennings is downstairs.’ Rotating his teacup thoughtfully, I bet, to read in the swirling tealeaves the secret of whether it was John or me who beat up Fran. ‘If you took something last night, I hope to God you didn’t leave it lying around.’
John closes his eyes. He looks tired unto death, grizzled stubble furring the seams and gullies of his hollowed cheeks. ‘Don’t
think
so…’
That doesn’t bode well. I leave him to dress, and hurtle downstairs before Jennings finds anything, wondering how to make him understand the relationship between John, Frannie and me.
On my way to the hospital, I park in Avebury outside the main office to explain why I might not be around for a few days.
Graham, eating a custard cream, strolls out of the kitchen as I walk in. Lilian looks up from her computer screen, with a concerned expression. Indy–we weren’t expecting to see you today,’ she says. News travels in Avebury, it seems. ‘How is your poor gran?’
‘Not sure. The doctors aren’t giving much away, and they’ve started talking about doing tests, though what for I can’t imagine. They must have X-rayed every bone in her body.’
‘I heard it was a break-in.’ Graham’s face is unusually expressionless. Oh, God, don’t let gossip about John have started already. Why did it have to be Corey’s husband on duty yesterday?
‘It was a break-in,’ I say firmly.
John’s at the police station. Jennings took my fingerprints himself, at the cottage, but he wants John to have DNA taken. There was blood on some of the broken glass on the floor.
Lilian shakes her head. ‘They’ll never catch anyone. Not unless somebody informs.’ She looks me straight in the eyes as she says it. ‘Your shifts at the caf are being covered. I’ll tell the television people as well, just in case. Let us hear when…you know anything.’
I nod and walk out of the office, feeling two sets of eyes on my back.
At the hospital, Frannie is asleep again. ‘It is sleep, isn’t it?’ I ask the nurse. ‘You’re sure?’
‘She was awake earlier, when we took her down to X-ray. Groggy, but charming the porters. Tired her out, though. She’ll wake if you touch her.’
I lay my hand gently on her forehead.
Be careful how you rouse someone sleeping
. The skin’s warm and papery. Her eyes blink open, and gradually focus on mine. A smile spreads across her face. ‘Oh, how lovely,’ she says. ‘What you doin’ here, Indy? Come to take me home?’
She’s asleep again, only five minutes later. I sit by the bed, back sweaty against the beige plastic upholstery of the visitor’s chair, waiting to slip my hand out of hers until I’m sure it won’t wake her.
What happened, Fran? I asked her.
Don’t recall a bloody thing. Fell over, din’ I? Banged me head or summat. Her accent becoming broader, old Wiltshire, a sure sign she’s frightened. Not of the person who hurt her–I’m sure she’s not faking memory loss this time–but afraid because she can’t remember.
The room fills with the thrum of engines, the clatter of rotors.
‘Air ambulance coming in. Big excitement of our day,’ says a voice, bringing me awake with a jerk. The woman in the next bed nods towards the window with relish. ‘Probably a motorway accident.’ She’s propped up against a pile of pillows, reading
Woman’s Weekly
, enormous boobs encased in a black satin nglig with embroidered pink roses. A nicotine-yellow tube snakes from under the sheet into a plastic sac on a stand. ‘Why don’t you go and have a coffee or summat, my lover? You look wore out. You might want to buy her a nightie in the hospital shop while you’re downstairs.’
Fran’s bony shoulder is draped in a blue hospital gown, faded with much laundering.
‘I never thought. I’ll bring one from home tomorrow.’
‘Bring her two, dear, one to wash and one to wear. Don’t forget her dressing-gown and slippers.’ She flaps her magazine at me. ‘I’ll keep an eye on your nan, don’t you worry, and tell her where you’re to when she wakes.’
I take the lift down to the lobby. As soon as I turn it on, my phone bleeps with a text. It’s from Martin: So sorry about yr gran, petal. If u need place to stay, my cottage empty tonight. Have to be in Bath, but can leave key
The air ambulance is leaving, hovering like a nectar-laden bee over the far end of the car park, as I sit down on the smoker’s bench to text back that it’s a kind thought, but no need.
A second text arrives immediately: And forgive me for being crass yesterday afternoon
I buy Fran essentials–nightdress, pants, comb, toothbrush–and a newspaper from the WRVS shop, then go in search of food. John’s in the coffee shop, at the till with a laden tray. He doesn’t immediately see me. The light from the window behind leaves his face in shadow, hollow cheeks and deep eyes momentarily sinister, until he looks up and his face splits in a smile. Indy–want something to eat? I’ll pay for it,’ he says to the woman at the till.
We sit at a table near the back of the room.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asks immediately.
I play for time. ‘How did it go at the police station?’
‘How you’d expect. They haven’t anything on me, so they took samples, blustered a bit and told me I’d be hearing from them.’
‘What’s this about an ABH conviction?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ John puts down his fork, his eyes chips of flint. ‘Don’t tell me you believe I had anything to do–’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ I say. ‘Jennings wrong-footed me, that’s all. I didn’t know what to say.’
‘You were there–1985, Battle of the Beanfield. I gave a policeman a black eye.’
‘Oh.’ The picture comes back to me, the one in the paper, a startlingly young John being led away by cops with riot shields, blood streaming down his face. ‘Sorry. I’d forgotten.’
‘Given you were four at the time, that’s forgivable. So now you see why I don’t rate too highly with the Wiltshire constabulary. Jennings was probably there too, as a sprog copper.’ He chews another mouthful of battered fish. ‘Anyway, that’s irrelevant. He’s trying to set us at odds.’