Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (55 page)

   
'I understand he's not been
very well, Mrs Morrison. I believe he gets a bit confused.'

   
'Oh God, Hughes, do you get a
kick out of this?'
   
'It's my job, Mrs Morrison.'

   
'Still, what have I got to
complain about? It'll sound interesting on the radio tonight, won't it?'

   
Wynford Wiley grinned, which
wasn't pleasant. 'Which radio you gonner 'ave it on, Mrs Morrison?'

   
He looked down at his big
hands. Hands like inflated rubber gloves, twirling a pen.

   
'Only I yeard Offa's Dyke Radio
wasn't too happy with you lately, see. Just what I yeard, like . . .'

   
Hughes said, 'Mrs Morrison, do
you know what happened to Rose Hart?'

   
Fay shook her head slowly.

   
The Chief Inspector consulted a
file on the table in front of him.

   
'Twelve years ago,' he said,
'Rose Hart and Joe Powys were sharing a flat in Bristol. It was a Victorian
building in a not very pleasant area of town, and Mr Powys told the inquest
they were hoping to move somewhere else.'
   
'Inquest?' Fay said faintly.

   
'At the rear of the house was
an overgrown area which couldn't really be called a garden. One afternoon Joe
Powys went up to London to see his publisher - this is what he told the
inquest. When he got back he couldn't find Rose anywhere, but a window was wide
open in the flat - this is the fourth floor.'

   
'Oh no,' Fay said.

   
'Joe told the coroner he dashed
downstairs and out the back, and there she was. Rose Hart.'

   
Fay brought a hand to her
mouth. There
was
such a thing as
coincidence, wasn't there?

   
'The verdict was accidental
death. Nobody quite believed that, everybody thought she'd killed herself, but
coroners tend to be kind. When there's room for doubt, when there isn't a note
. . .'

   
'That's very sad,' Fay said.

   
'It certainly was Mrs Morrison.
Half-buried in this overgrown patch at the back of this building in Bristol,
where they lived, there were these old railings.'

   
'Jesus,' Fay whispered.

   
'They had spikes, rusty iron
spikes. Three of them went through Miss Hart. One deeply into the abdominal
area where she was carrying what was thought to be Mr Powys's baby.'

   
Fay said nothing.

   
'Very messy,' Hughes said.

CHAPTER III

People were flinging themselves out of windows to the ground, and the
grey masonry was cracking up around them.

   
The single bolt of lightning
had caused a great jagged cleft in the tower. Fire and smoke spewed out.

   
'What's this one mean?' Guy
Morrison asked.

   
Adam Ivory didn't look up. His
wife whispered, 'This card is simply called The Tower. Or sometimes The Tower Struck
by Lightning. It signifies a cataclysm.'

   
'Is that good or bad?' Guy was
not greatly inspired by the tarot. What he'd really been after was a crystal-ball
type of clairvoyant One could do things with crystal balls televisually. He
supposed it might be possible to match up some of these images with local scenes,
but it would be a bit contrived.

   
'What I mean is, are we talking
about something cataclysmically wonderful, or what?'

   
'It can be either way,' Hilary
Ivory said She was older and bigger than her husband; her hair was startlingly
white. 'Good or evil. A catharsis or simply a disaster, with everything in ruins.
It depends on the spread.'

   
The cameraman, Larry Ember,
looked up from his viewfinder, the Sony still rolling. His expression said. How
long you want me to hold this bloody shot?

   
Guy made small circles with a
forefinger to signify Larry should keep it running. Initially this was to have
been no more than wallpaper - images of New Age folk doing what they did. But
then he'd persuaded Adam Ivory, who called himself a tarotist, to try and read
the future of the Crybbe project.

   
Guy had managed to convince him
that this was being shot with Goff's full approval and would in no way threaten
the Ivorys' tenure of this comfortable little town-centre apartment. It
occurred to him that the opportunity of relocating to form part of a
like-minded community in Crybbe had been something of a godsend for Adam and
Hilary; the tarot trade couldn't have been very lucrative in Mold.

   
Ivory had agreed to be recorded
on VT while doing his reading but had stipulated there was to be no moving
around, no setting up different angles, no zooming in or out, or anything that
might affect his concentration.

   
Larry had done a bit of
snorting and face-pulling at this. Cameramen weren't over-concerned about
public relations and it was evident to Guy that this cameraman thought this
interviewee was a snotty little twerp.

   
Guy Morrison would not have
disagreed completely, but in the absence of a crystal-ball person, this might
be the best he'd get in the general area of divination.

   
The camera had been rolling for
nearly seven minutes, and for the last four the shot had been entirely statis:
Adam Ivory - who wore a suit and looked more like a dapper, trainee accountant
than a clairvoyant - intent on the spread of nine cards, the last of which was
The Tower.

   
Little gaily dressed
puppet-figures hurling themselves to the ground.

   
Guy thought of Rachel Wade. An
unfortunate incident. It would bring regional news crews into Crybbe, if they
weren't here already. Trespassers on his property.

   
'Adam, are you going to tell us
what the cards are indicating?' Guy asked softly.

   
Silence.

   
Larry Ember, who'd been a
working cameraman when Guy was still at public school, stepped back from his
tripod, the camera still running.

   
He looked straight at his
director, the way cameramen did, conveying the message, You're supposed to be
in charge, mate, what are you going to do about this fucking prat?

   
Then, turning away from Guy,
Larry lit a cigarette.

   
Hilary Ivory was on him in
seconds, furiously pointing at her husband and shaking her hair into a
blizzard. Guy tensed, just praying she didn't snatch the cigarette out of
Larry's fingers; he'd once known a film unit cameraman who'd hit a woman in the
face for less than that.

   
Adam Ivory himself rescued the
situation. He moved. Larry bent over his camera again.

   
Ivory's movement amounted to
taking off his glasses, cleaning the lenses on the edge of the black tablecloth
and putting the glasses back on again.

   
He resumed his study of the
cards and Larry's shoulders slumped in disgust. Time, Guy realized, was getting
on. Goff was coming back, he'd heard, in the wake of this Rachel Wade business.
His eyes were drawn back to The Tower. It would be inexcusably tasteless to cut
from shots of policemen and the upstairs window at the Court to these little puppet-figures
tumbling from a greystone tower struck by a bolt of lightning. Pity.

   
Adam Ivory looked up suddenly,
eyes large and watery behind the rimless glasses.

   
The soundman's boom-mike came
up between Ivory's legs, fortunately out of sight.

   
'Forget it,' Ivory croaked.
'Scrap it.'
   
'Scrap it?' Guy said.
'Scrap it
?'
   
He didn't believe this.

   
'I'm sorry,' Ivory said. 'It
isn't working. I don't think it's . . . It's not reliable. The cards obviously
don't like this situation. I should never have agreed to do a reading in front of
a TV camera. As well as . . .'

   
He fell silent, staring hard at
the cards, as if hoping they'd rearranged themselves.

   
'As what?' Guy said, trying to
control his temper. 'As well as what?'

   
'Other negative influences.' Ivory
glanced nervously at the glowering cameraman and glanced quickly away. 'The
balance is so easily affected.'

   
Guy said carefully, 'Mr Ivory,
are you trying to say the cards were ... the prediction was unfavourable?'

   
The camera was still running.
Guy very deliberately walked around to Ivory's side of the table and peered
over his shoulder at the cards. He saw Death. He saw The Devil.

   
'I am not . . .'

   
Ivory swept the nine cards
together in a heap. Guy noticed his fingertips were white.

   
'. . . trying to say ...'

   
He snatched his hands away, as
if the cards were tainted.
   
'. . . anything.'

   
And pushed both hands underneath
his thighs on the chair, looking like a scared but peevish schoolboy.

   
Larry Ember shot half a minute
of this then switched off and slid the camera from its tripod. 'Fucking
tosser,' he muttered.

   
Hilary Ivory went to her husband,
looking concerned in a motherly way.

   
A single tarot card fell over
the edge of the table. Guy picked
it up.
It was The Hanged Man.

   
He put it carefully on the
table, face-up in front of Ivory.
   
'What's this one mean?'

   
'It's very complicated,' Hilary
said. 'The little man's hanging upside down by his foot, so it's got nothing to
do with hanging, as such.'

   
'Look, would you please leave?'
the tarotist almost shrieked, his face sweating like shrink-wrapped cheese
under the TV lights. 'I . . . I don't feel well.'
   
Larry Ember lit another cigarette.

'No,' Mr Preece said, 'I won't.'

   
He and his wife had not been
inhospitable. Catrin Jones, Guy's production assistant, had been given the
second-best chair and a cup of milky instant coffee.

   
'But you see . . She didn't
know where to begin. The blanket refusal was not at all what she'd expected,
even though she conceded it had been a difficult week for Mr Preece, with the
drowning of his grandson and everything.

   
'Biscuit?' offered the Mayor.

   
'Oh no, thank you.'

   
Catrin wondered why there was
an onion in a saucer on top of the television.

   
'Because what we were thinking,'
she said rapidly, 'is that it would be far better to talk to you in advance of
tomorrow night's public meeting rather than afterwards at this stage, because .
. .'

   
'You
are
talkin' to me,' said the Mayor simply.

   
'On camera, Mr Preece,' Catrin
said. 'On camera.'

   
'I'm not going to change my
mind. I'm keeping my powder dry.'

   
'Oh, but, you see, you won't be
giving anything away because it won't be screened for months!' Catrin's voice
growing shrill and wildly querulous. 'And it's not a great ordeal any more
being on television, we could shoot you outside the house so there wouldn't be
any need for lights, and as well as being terrifically gifted, Guy Morrison is
well-known for being a very understanding,
caring
sort of producer,'

   
'That's as maybe,' Mr Preece
said. 'All I'm sayin' is I don't 'ave to be on telly if I don't want to be, and
I
don't
.'

   
'But, you will be during tomorrow
night's meeting. What's the difference?'

   
'I doubt that very much.'

   
'Mr Preece, you are supposed to
be chairing the meeting.'

   
'Aye, but as
you
won't be allowed in with that
equipment, it makes no odds, do it?'

   
Catrin, outraged, sat straight
up in her chair. 'But it's a
public
meeting! Anybody can go in. It's all arranged with Max Goff!'

   
'Max Goff?' Mr Preece's leathery
jowls wobbled angrily. 'Max Goff isn't running this town
yet
, young woman. And if I says there's no telly, there's no telly.
Police Sergeant Wynford
Wiley will be in attendance, and any attempts to smuggle cameras in there will
be dealt with very severely.'