Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (21 page)

   
'Not exactly. What I feel is,
we might have been a bit premature in explaining them as marking out channels
of earth energy. Why not - because they connect so many burial mounds and
funerary sites, even churchyards- why not simply paths of the dead . . . ?'

   
The customer stepped back from
the dowsing display he'd been fingering. He looked shocked. 'Paths of the
dead?" he said. 'Paths of the dead? What kind of negative stuff is that?'

   
Halfway through the door, he
turned round. 'You
sure
you're J. M.
Powys?'

'Fay?'

   
'Oh. Hullo, Guy.'

   
'You didn't return my call.'

   
'No, I didn't, did I? Well,
Dad's having one of his difficult days.'

   
'He sounded fine last night.'

   
'Well, he isn't now,' Fay said
testily. Maybe he thought she was making it all up about the Canon going batty.
Maybe she ought to produce medical evidence.

   
'No, I'm sorry. It must be
difficult for you.'

   
Oh, please, not the sympathy.
'What do you want, Guy?'

   
'I want to help you, Fay.'

   
No comment.

   
'I'd like to put some money in
your purse.'

   
Fay began to smoulder. Purses
were carried by little women.

   
'As you may know. I'm currently
on attachment to BBC Wales as senior producer, features and docos.'

   
Guy had been an on-the-road TV
reporter when she'd first known him. Then a regional anchorman. And then, when
he'd realized there'd be rather less security in on-screen situations after he
passed forty or so, he'd switched to the production side. Much safer; lots of
corners to hide in at cut-back time.

   
'And I've got quite a nice
little project on the go on your patch,' Guy said. 'Two fifty minute-ers for
the Network.'

   
'Congratulations.' But suddenly
Fay was thinking hard. It couldn't be .. .

   
Guy said, 'Max Goff? You know
what Max Goff's setting up?'
   
Shit!

   
'He's developing a conscience
in his middle years and putting millions into New Age research. Anyway, he's
bought this wonderful Elizabethan pile not far from you, which he plans to
restore.'

   
'And where did you hear about
this, Guy?'

   
'Oh . . . contacts. As I say,
we'll be doing two programmes. One showing how he goes about . . . what he's
going to do. . .how the locals feel about him, this sort of thing. And the
second one, a few months later, examining what he's achieved. Or not, as the
case may be. Good, hmm?'

   
'Fascinating.' The
bastard
. How the hell had he pulled it
off? 'And you've got it to yourself, have you?'

   
'Absolutely. It means Goff will
have this one reliable outlet to get his ideas across in an intelligent way.'
Fay seethed.

   
No Radio Four documentary. Not even
any exclusive insider stuff for Offa's Dyke. So much for Rachel Wade and her
promises. All the time, they'd been negotiating with her ex-husband - obviously
aware of the connection, keeping quiet, leading her along so she wouldn't blow
the story too soon.

   
'So what I was thinking. Fay,
is . . . Clearly we're not going to be around the whole time. We need somebody
to keep an eye on developments locally and let us know if there's anything we
should be looking at. I was thinking perhaps a little retainer for you - I can
work it through the budget, we producers have full financial control now of a
production, which means . . .'

   
Black mist came down. The smug,
scheming, patronizing
bastard
.

   
When Fay started listening
again, Guy was saying, '. . . would have offered you the official researcher's
contract, but one of Max Goff's conditions is that we use the author of some
trashy book which seems to have inspired him. Goff wants this chap to be the
official chronicler of the Crybbe project and some sort of editorial adviser on
the programmes. Of course, that's just a formality, I can soon lose him along
the way . . .'

   
Fay put the phone down.

   
Screwed again.

   
The clock ticked. Arnold lay by
her feet under the table. The chair where, in her mind, the smug, spectral
Grace Legge had sat, was now piled high with box files. Nothing could sit in it
now, even in her imagination.

   
Fay picked up the phone again
and - deliberate, cold, precise - punched out the number of the Offa's Dyke
Radio News desk.

   
'Gavin Ashpole, please. Oh, it
is you. It's Fay Morrison. Listen. I can put you down a voice-piece for the
lunchtime news. Explaining exactly what Max Goff intends to do in Crybbe.'

   
She listened to Ashpole asking
all the obvious questions.
   
'Oh yes,' she said. 'Impeccable
sources.'
   
Fay put down the phone, picked up the
pad and began to write.

CHAPTER IV

The police station was at the southern end of the town centre, just
before the road sloped down to the three-arched river bridge. Attached to the
station was the old police house. Murray Beech strode boldly to the front door
and rapped loudly with the knocker, standing back and looking around for
someone he might say hello to.

   
He very much wanted to be seen.
Did not want anyone to think there was anything remotely surreptitious about
this visit, indeed, he'd been hoping Police Sergeant Wynford Wiley would be
visible through the police-station window so he could wave to him. But he was
not. Nobody was there.

   
As a last resort Murray had been
round to Alex Peters's house, hoping to persuade the old man lo come with him
as adviser, witness and . . . well, chaperone. There'd been no sign of Alex or
his daughter, no answer to his knocks.

   
But Murray didn't have to knock
twice on the door of the old police house. She must have been waiting behind
it.

   
'Good afternoon, Tessa,' he said
loudly, putting on his most clergymanly voice.

   
Tessa Byford looked at him in
silence. Eighteen. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale-faced. Often seen
leather-jacketed on street corners with the likes of Warren Preece.

   
But not an unintelligent girl.
A talented artist, he'd heard. And more confident than most local girls. Born
here, but brought up in Liverpool until her mother died and her father had dumped
her on his parents in Crybbe so he could go back to sea.

   
Murray could understand why
she'd never forgiven he father for this.

   
He thought: sullen, resentful
and eighteen. Prime poltergeist fodder . . . if you accept the tenets of
parapsychology.

   
About which Murray, of course,
kept an open mind.

   
He smiled. 'Well,' he said, 'I'm
here.'

   
Tessa Byford did not smile
back. Without a word, she led him into a small, dark sitting-room, entirely
dominated by an oppressive Victorian sideboard, ornate as a pulpit, with many stages,
canopies and overhangs.

   
Murray felt it was dominating
him, too. He was immediately uncomfortable. The room seemed overcrowded, with
the sideboard and the two of them standing there awkwardly, an unmarried
clergyman and a teenage girl. It hit him then, the folly of what he was doing.
He should never have come.

   
She looked down over his dark
suit.

   
'You've not brought any holy
water, have you?'

   
Murray managed a weak smile.
'Let's see how we get on, shall we?'

   
It occurred to him that, while
she might be an adult now, this was not actually her house. He'd allowed
himself to be lured into somebody else's house.

   
'You should've brought holy
water,' she said sulkily.

   
Murray tried to relax. His plan
was merely to talk to the girl, say a helpful prayer and then leave. He found a
straight-backed dining chair and sat on it squarely - always felt foolish sinking
into someone's soft fireside furniture, felt it diminished him.

   
'I still wish your grandparents
were here.'

   
'Gone shopping,' she said,
still standing, 'in Hereford. Won't be back until tonight. I only stayed to
wait for you. I was going to give you another five minutes. Wouldn't stay here on
me own. Not any more.'

   
Why did he think she was lying?

   
'I wish you'd felt able to
discuss this with them.'

   
She shook her head firmly. 'Can't.
You just can't.' Her thin lips went tight, her deep-set eyes stoney with the
certainty of it.
   
'Have you tried?'

   
Tessa's lips twisted. 'Me gran
. . . says people who are daft enough to think they've seen a ghost ought to
keep it to themselves.'

   
'So you
have
tried to talk to her about it.'

   
Tessa, grimacing, went through the
motions of wiping something nasty off her hands.

   
Murray tried to understand but
couldn't. Neither Mrs Byford nor her husband appeared to him to be particularly
religious. They came to church, if not every week. He'd watched them praying,
as he did all his parishioners from time to time, but detected no great piety
there. Just going through the motions, lip movements, like the rest of them. A
ritual as meaningless as Sunday lunch, and rather less palatable.

   
There was no Bible on the shelf,
no books of any kind, just white china above a small television set. No pictures
of Christ on the wall, no framed religious texts.

   
And yet the room itself stank of
repression, as if the people who lived here were the narrowest type of
religious fundamentalists.

   
Tessa was standing there expressionless,
watching him. The next move was his. Because he was trying so hard not to be, he
was painfully aware of her breasts under what, in his own teenage days, had
been known as a tank top.

   
'I know what you're thinking,'
she said, and Murray sucked in a sharp breath.

   
'But I'm not,' she said. 'I'm
not imagining any of it. You don't imagine things being thrown at you in the
bathroom, even if . . .'

   
Her lips clamped and she looked
down at her feet.
   
'If what?' Murray said.
   
'Show you,' Tessa mumbled.

   
Murray felt sweat under his white
clerical collar. He stood up, feeling suddenly out of his depth, and followed
Tessa Byford into the hall and up the narrow stairs.

All right, Fay?'
   
'I don't know.'

   
She was going hot and cold.
Maybe succumbing to one of those awful summer bugs.
   
All
she needed.

   
'Give me a minute . . . Elton.
I want to make a few adjustments to the script.'

   
'OK, no hurry. I've got a couple
of pieces to top and tail. Come back to you in five minutes, OK?'
   
'Fine,' Fay said, 'fine.'

   
She took off the cans and
leaned back in the studio chair, breathing in and out a couple of times.
Outside it was still raining and not exactly warm; in here, she felt clammy,
sticky, she pulled her T-shirt out of her jeans and flapped it about a bit.

   
The air in here was always
stale. There should be air-conditioning. The Crybbe Unattended itself was
probably a serious infringement of the Factories Act or whatever it was called
these days.

   
And the walls of the studio
seemed to be closer every time she came in.

   
That was psychological, of
course. Hallucinatory, just like . . . She slammed a door in her mind on the icy
Grace Legge smile, just as she'd slammed the office door last night before
stumbling upstairs after the dog. She wondered how she was ever going to go
into that room again after dark. She certainly wouldn't leave the dog in there
again at night.