The Chalice (56 page)

      
'Stupid ' she said. 'I had the physiotherapy, but told the
shrink to sod off. You've got to deal with things yourself, haven't you? Is
there somewhere I can get some cigarettes?

      
'Weil find somewhere.' He held open the passenger door for
her, watched her get in without using her hands, holding them in front of her
as if the gloves were borrowed and mustn't get dirty. She fell back into the
little bucket seat, closed her eyes and breathed in.

      
They stopped at a newsagent's and he bought her forty Silk
Cut. Unwrapped a packet, lit one for her.

      
'Sorry. This is pathetic. But I just feel so ... frail. They tell
you you're going to, but you don't really expect it. You're so looking forward
to your first breath of real air. And real smoke.'

      
Waiting to get into the traffic, he was aware of her taking
the cigarette from her lips, trapping it not very effectively between the very tips
of her fingers. The next time he glanced at her she was shuddering, breathing
very fast.

      
'Can we stop? I'm sorry.'

      
He pulled into the side of the road to a chorus of hooting, revved-up
road rage from behind.

      
'Sorry.' She let him take the cigarette. 'Thanks. I nearly dropped
it. This is ridiculous, I just ... It's on fire, you know? It never occurred to
me before that they were on fire. Christ.' She exhaled. 'I always thought if it
ever came to this I'd get myself quietly put down.'

      
Powys said, 'Dan Frayne's been worried about you.'
      
'Good old Danny.' She leaned her
head back over the seat, stared at the tear in the roof fabric. 'Your publisher
now?'

      
'Possibly. '

      
'You are the only one, aren't you? I mean he hasn't persuaded
a whole bunch of esoteric authors to come to the aid of the disabled
bookseller? I'm not going to find John Michell redecorating the flat, Colin
Wilson hoovering the sitting room.'

      
Juanita sat up, laughed and coughed. 'God, what am I going to
do if half of me's screaming for a cigarette and the other half's terrified to
hold one? Don't forget to note this. For your report.'

      
'I'm doing a report?'

      
'To Dan. He's sent you to find out how crazy I've become,
right? Why I tried to burn myself to death.'

      
'Well, no,' Powys said. 'The official brief is to find out how
crazy Glastonbury's become.'

      
'Glastonbury's always been crazy. He knows that.'

      
He told her about the book Frayne wanted them to co-write. She
spent some time examining her gloves.

      
'Forget it.' She didn't look up. 'He's just being kind. You
don't need me. Were I to write about Glastonbury, the way I'm feeling now, it'd
read like either
Paradise Lost
or
Dante's Inferno
. He doesn't want that.
He sent you because he's feeling a bit of residual guilt from a long time ago,
but he's afraid to come himself.'

      
'He's afraid to see you again. He thinks it might destroy his
marriage.'

      
'Mr Smooth mouth. If he saw me now, he'd be booking the hotel
for his golden wedding.'

      
'I don't think so. Um ... I've read your letters. Everything
you ever wrote to Dan Frayne since about 1977.'
      
After a considered silence, she said,
'l may kill him for this.'

      
She held up a gloved hand. 'I'm not supposed to wear these. They're
quite painful. I'm supposed to let the air get at my hands.
 
How squeamish are you?'
      
'My dog has three legs,' Powys
said.

Diane collapsed against the
Abbey gates. Closed. As if God had shut his eyes.
      
She looked up at the charcoal sky
through her tears.
      
How
could you? Doesn't this town matter to you anymore?

      
Across the street, men with chainsaws were cutting the remains
of the Christmas tree into slices.

Don Moulder had driven her
back into town until they came up against a traffic tailback and diversion
signs. Diane had got out in the Safeway car park where Don could turn round.
He'd been silent most of the way, then, as she was getting out, he'd said, 'Field
I got next to the road, I agreed to let 'em have it for car parking. When the
bishop comes to the Tor on Thursday. I been thinkin', maybe if I was to ask him
- the bishop - to bless the bottom field. Sure to count for something, a
bishop.'

      
Diane had nodded dubiously. 'Anything's worth a try.'
      
Minutes later, she was learning
about the terrible accident from Matthew Banks, the tall, willowy herbalist,
loading apples and grapes and Linda McCartney TV dinners into his 2CV.

      
'This is awful, Matthew. Why did he stop like that? Cat run
across the road or something?'

      
'Oh, something bigger than that,' Matthew had said. 'So big
that nobody else saw it.'

Diane turned her back on the
Abbey, edged around the
POLICE ACCIDENT
signs and the taped-off
area and walked down Benedict Street, where Woolly had his shop.

      
She had to tell him. Not that it would help him much, credibility
wise. The good news: somebody else believes you saw a black bus that wasn't
there.

      
The bad news: it's Lady Loony.

You could see the big house
now, the lights just coming on, winking through the stripped-off trees. Only,
it wasn't a friendly wink; the lights were a baleful white. In Sam Daniel's
view, Bowermead Hall made Dartmoor Prison look like the House at Pooh Comer.

      
The moon had risen over the woods, making it easier to see the
footpath even when it got tangled. So far he was legal, not even trespassing,
although you wouldn't know that from the signs.

      
New signs. Aggressive signs with red lettering.

      
PRIVATE LAND. KEEP OUT.
SECURITY PATROLS. ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

      
Sam knew all these public paths. Two or three years ago, he
and Hughie had joined a protest with the Ramblers' Association when Gerry Rankin
had fenced off a right-of-way with barbed wire. They'd taken wire-cutters to
the fence, and Rankin couldn't say anything apart from,
I'll remember your faces.
Which was when Hughie grew his beard.

      
There was plenty of new barbed wire now, dense and high. But
there were ways. Rankin had to get in and out. Stay clear at the
 
hall was the
 
answer, go for Rankin's farmhouse, which was about five, six hundred
yards from the Hall, tucked into the bottom of a wooded hill. The vineyards
were the other side of it, facing the town and Glastonbury Tor. Between the
farmhouse and the entrance the vineyards Sam saw what looked like new hunt
kennels: two long, low sheds in a cobbled yard.

      
He thought about the possibilities. Maybe he could pull a
stroke the night before, like letting the hounds into the vineyards.

      
Or, presuming the meet was at the Old Bull like it used to be,
with stirrup cups and all this shit ... well, that was over three miles away,
so they'd be using transport - horse transporters, dog wagons. Maybe he could
find out tonight where they'd got the trucks. Then come up here very early Boxing
Day morning and slash all the tyres.

      
Wilful damage, Sammy?
Hughie's voice in his head.
They'll throw
the book at you this time, son. You 're known. You've been warned. Conditional
discharge ... conditional, yeh? Also, you just don't do this kind of stuff when
you're angry. That's how you get nicked.

      
'Oh. I see. You do it when you're feeling rather tolerant about
blood sports. My mistake.'

      
Sam stopped hallway over a rotting wooden stile. Bloody well
talking to himself now.
You really are in
a bad way now, Sammy. You know what this is? It's what love does to you.

      
'Piss off. Don't be soft.'

      
A dog barked in the kennels, and then another.

      
Damn. Once they started, it would go on and on. That was why
it was normally best to do a recce in the daytime. Come the innocent rambler
bit if anyone saw you.

      
Except when they know your face -..

      
Sam detoured off the path and into the woods behind the new
kennels. He was on higher ground now and suddenly he could see the Tor, like an
upturned paraffin funnel prodding the white moon.

      
The Tor would do that, suddenly come into view from nowhere.
If poor bloody Woolly was here now, he'd be climbing to the top of the next
hill to see if he could see the tower of Stoke St Michael church, which was the
next point on his beloved St Michael Line.

      
Poor little sod. He'd probably be hounded out of town, out of
Somerset in fact. And then the old man would swagger back with a bloody huge
majority thanks to Glastonbury First, which stood for Traditional Standards and
road safety and getting rid of nutters.

      
Sam kicked at a branch, which turned out to be dead and
rotten. It shattered into a shower of sodden splinters and one lump flew into
his face.
Bastards
.

      
Everything collapsing. Everything diseased. How could any silly
bugger believe there was a God up there?

      
The full implications were only now becoming sickeningly
clear. The way the scum was rising back to the top: the return of Councillor
Griff, man of the people, and Archer Ffitch smarming his way into Parliament -
the cool, blatant way Ffitch had planted the idea with the TV people that his
little sister was a hopeless fruitcake and you mustn't hold her against him.

      
Sam peered down the slope towards the bulk of a barn. You'd
get a couple of horse boxes in there, no problem. If he got here before daybreak,
came round under cover of this wood, he could do all the tyres before
breakfast. No way they'd get them all replaced in time. Not on Boxing Day. Hunt
off. Piece of cake. Merry Christmas, Mr Fox.

      
So, need to check for padlocks on the doors. Might need some
cutters.

      
Sammy, Going Equipped
for Burglary is the charge, coppers find you with bolt cutters. You'll go down
for three months and when you come out nobody respectable's going to give you
any more work.

      
'Get off my back, Hughie!'

      
Sam was about to slide down the bank towards the big barn when
he smelled something.
      
Smoke. Burning.

      
Well, he wasn't daft. If Pennard was hosting a top-people's
barbecue over the next rise, he wanted to know about it.

      
He scrambled back up the slope, holding on to bushes, torch in
his pocket. Slowing up the nearer he got to the top, trying not to breathe too
loudly.

      
The hill was longer than it looked. Must have been two, three
hundred yards. Scrambling to the top, he nearly toppled into empty air.

      
He dropped flat, didn't move, kept very quiet for two minutes,
the acrid smell everywhere now. Peered over the unexpectedly abrupt edge -
almost like a big slice had been taken out of the hill.

      
It had. That was precisely what had happened. You could make
it out now: a big, wide trench. JCB job.

      
What we got here then,
Sammy?

      
No sign of flames. No sounds, not even an owl. He was well out
of sight of Bowermead Hall and, presumably, Rankin's farm. He pulled a torch
from his jacket pocket, a Maglite, big beam. Snapped it on, stared in
disbelief.

      
Shit on toast!

      
At first, Sam didn't understand. Used to be all woodland here.
Lovely woods. Used to sneak in here as kids. It was legendary for conkers. Giant
horse-chestnut trees. Also beech and sycamore and huge, thick oaks.

      
Now, for as far as the torch beam would stretch, it was a sea
of stumps. And fallen tree trunks whose branches and winter foliage had been
cut off, piled together and burned.

      
Burned. It was horrible. A massacre. When he switched off the
torch he could detect glimmerings of red, the damped down smouldering of
bonfires.
      
I don't get it. I don't get it,
Hughie.