The Witch Maker (15 page)

Masters laughed. ‘If you knew Zelda like I do, it'd never occur to you to even ask that question. Zelda's not one to run. Never has been.'

‘So how long do you think she'll be?'

Masters shrugged. ‘Not long.'

‘There's other things I can occupy myself with for an hour or so,' Woodend said. ‘But then I'll be back, an' if Zelda's not here by then I might just take it into my head to wander around the fairground lookin' for some of them safety violations we talked about.'

‘You're a hard man, Chief Inspector,' Masters said.

Woodend grinned. ‘I get the distinct impression you're not so soft yourself, Mr Masters,' he countered.

‘You'll be wantin' a cup of tea,' Jed Thompson said, as he showed Monika Paniatowski into his front parlour.

Paniatowski weighed up her options.

She probably had no more than half an hour before word of what she was doing got back to Tom Dimdyke – and once that had happened, he'd come storming in on her and Thompson as he had stormed in on Woodend and Raby. That definitely argued for refusal.

On the other hand, she'd often found that drinking tea with the person she was questioning helped to create an intimacy between them – an intimacy which often led to that person saying more than he or she had ever intended to say.

On balance then, the tea won out.

‘I'd love a cup,' she said.

Thompson disappeared into the kitchen. For the next five minutes Paniatowski was assailed by the sound of china banging and water running, but there was still no sign of the promised tea.

She glanced down at her watch. The half an hour she'd allowed herself was rapidly ticking by. She couldn't wait much longer for Thompson to complete his simple task.

She rose from her seat and went to the kitchen. The place looked like a disaster area. Loose tea was spread all over the counter, and was starting to mingle with a pool of spilled milk. A saucer and cup lay smashed on the floor. The kettle was whistling furiously as it boiled itself dry. And standing in the middle of all this chaos was Jed Thompson, with clearly no idea of what to do next.

‘Why don't you go and sit down in the parlour, Mr Thompson?' Paniatowski suggested.

The man waved his hands helplessly in the air. ‘But what about the tea?' he asked. ‘Who'll make the tea?'

‘I'll make it. It's more woman's work anyway,' Paniatowski told him, hating herself even as she uttered the words.

Thompson returned to his parlour, Paniatowski cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, and within a couple of minutes they were sitting facing each other, cups and saucers resting on their knees.

The records said Thompson was in his mid-forties, Paniatowski reminded herself, but if she hadn't known that, she could have taken him for twenty – or perhaps even thirty – years older. During the war, as she and her mother had wandered about a devastated Europe, she'd seen plenty of men burned out before their time – but she didn't think she'd ever seen a worse case than this one.

‘You're the local postman, aren't you?' she asked, wondering how he ever found the strength to lift his leather post bag, or the concentration to sort through his letters.

Thompson nodded weakly. ‘Yes, I'm the postman.'

‘I don't envy you your job,' Paniatowski said breezily. ‘Getting up so early in the morning! Covering the whole of the village in all kinds of weather. I tell you, I don't think I could do it.'

‘Neither could I, if people didn't help out.'

‘That
is
kind of them,' Paniatowski said, continuing her impersonation of a little ray of sunlight while recalling that it was illegal for anyone but an authorized postman to handle the mail. ‘A couple of your mates, are they?'

‘Are who?'

‘The people who help you out. Are they a couple of your mates?'

‘No.'

‘They're
not
your mates?'

‘It's all kinds of different people who help. They just come here for the sack. I don't know who's doin' the job from one day to the next.'

Paniatowski nodded understandingly. ‘I know this is painful for you, but would it be possible to talk about your wife?'

‘She hanged herself, did my Beth,' the postman said mournfully. ‘In the lavvy. I found her myself. It was so hard, so very, very hard. I really did love her, you know.'

‘I'm sure you did,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘Did you ever wonder why she did it?'

‘I
know
why she did it,' Thompson said, with a fierceness and sudden strength which took the sergeant completely by surprise. ‘She did it because she didn't believe. But I believe. I
have
to believe. It's the only thing that stops me from goin' completely mad.'

‘Believe in what? In God?'

‘God!' Thompson repeated contemptuously. ‘God – if there is one – is on the side of
them
!'

‘Them?'

‘The squires who ride round on their fine horses an' watch us breakin' our backs labourin' in the fields. The priests who collect their tithe whether we can afford to give it to them or not. Aye, an' them judges in Lancaster, who don't know what it's like to live Hallerton, but who slip the black caps on their heads anyway, an' tell two poor souls that they'll be hanged by the neck until they're dead.'

‘I'm sorry?' Paniatowski said, completely taken aback.

‘You think I'm rantin', don't you?' Thompson demanded.

‘No, I—'

‘You think them squires an' priests an' judges are all a thing of the past. But they're not. They may wear different clothes these days. They may talk different.
But they're still out to get us
.'

‘Out to—?'

‘You asked me what I believe in. Well, I'll tell you, Miss. I believe in the village.'

‘But what exactly does that mean?'

‘It means the village is my world. I'd die for it if I had to. We'd all – each an' every one of us – die for it if we had to.'

‘But what about the
wider
world?'

‘
What
about it?'

‘You can't just ignore it,' Paniatowski said. ‘You can't just pretend it isn't there.'

‘Why not?' Thompson asked her. ‘It's what we've doin' for the last three hundred an' fifty years.'

W
ilf Dimdyke looked down at his Witch, and frowned. There was something missing, he told himself. He had got her right
physically
at last, but the
essence
of Meg Ramsden was still not quite there – and without that essence he had produced no more than an artfully constructed dummy.

His Uncle Harry would never have noticed the difference, he thought, but the Witch Maker before him – Great-Uncle George – would have seen it right away. He found himself wishing his great-uncle was still around to advise him, but George, like so many Witch Makers of the past, had completed his life's work and then simply faded away to an early grave.

When the barn door swung open, Wilf expected either his father or his sister to walk in. But it was neither of them. Rather, it was the big bugger from Whitebridge.

Woodend looked across at the young man, standing over the Witch with his chisel in his hand, and the expression of great concentration – and obvious artistic distress – on his face. He had expected to find Tom Dimdyke standing guard over the new Witch Maker, but luck was on his side for once, and the other man was absent.

‘Dad isn't here,' Wilf said curtly.

‘An' why would you assume it's him I want to talk to?' Woodend asked mildly.

‘Well, because ...'

‘Because he
is
your dad? Because he's the head of the family?'

‘I suppose so,' Wilf said.

‘But you're the head of the whole
village
, aren't you?' Woodend asked. ‘The monarch of all you survey?'

‘I wouldn't put it quite like that,' Wilf said, sounding confused.

‘Wouldn't you?' Woodend responded interestedly. ‘Why not?'

It was strange to be talking to this outsider, Wilf thought. Part of the strangeness, he supposed, came from the fact that he didn't normally talk to any outsiders at all. But there was more to it than that. Woodend was the enemy – at least, that was how his dad saw the man – yet he seemed very kindly for an enemy. There had been no challenge in his questions, merely a curiosity. It was almost as if he really
did
want to understand what was going on in the village.

‘Cat got your tongue?' Woodend asked amiably.

‘No, I ...'

‘So what's the problem, lad?'

‘I was just thinkin' about what you said. I'm not like a king at all. A king can do what he wants. There are so many things I
can't
do.'

Woodend chuckled. ‘You shouldn't believe everythin' you read about the royal family in the papers, you know.' He paused. ‘Although, of course, you probably don't read the papers anyway, do you?'

‘No. None of us do.'

There was no need to ask who ‘us' was, Woodend thought. Wilf was talking about the whole village.

‘When people talk about the monarch havin' freedom, they're missin' the point,' the Chief Inspector continued. ‘Can you imagine the Queen goin' down to the Black Bull on Saturday night for a few pints an' a bit of a knees-up?'

Wilf grinned. ‘Not really.'

‘If truth be told, she probably doesn't even want to. But if she
did
, she still couldn't. There's hundreds of things she's constrained from doin'. But she
is
still the Queen, an' – in certain matters – if she says jump, then everybody round her leaps into the air. An' I imagine it's pretty much the same for you.'

‘Maybe,' Wilf said dubiously.

‘When did they first tell you that you were goin' to be Witch Maker?' Woodend asked.

‘I've ... I've always known,' Wilf said, with a wonder in his voice which came from the realization that he'd never really thought about the matter before.

‘
Always?
' Woodend asked.

Wilf frowned. ‘I can remember my mum's funeral,' he said, almost as if he were slipping into a trance. ‘I wasn't more than three or four at the time. We were standing by the grave – me an' my dad. Mary wasn't there. She was too young.'

‘I understand.'

‘I ... I wanted to cry, but just before I did, Dad squeezed my hand very hard. I don't think he meant it to hurt, but he sometimes doesn't know his own strength.'

‘Aye, he's a powerful feller, all right,' Woodend agreed.

‘Then he bent down an' whispered somethin' in my ear.'

‘What did he say?'

‘He said, “You can't cry now, son. Not while you're on show. Save it till later. Once we're back in our home, we'll
both
have a bloody good bawl.” An' we did. We were up half the night, sobbin' away.'

‘I'm sure you were,' Woodend said. ‘I was a grown-up when my own mam died, but it still hit me harder than I'd ever imagined it would.'

‘That's not the point,' Wilf said impatiently.

‘Then what is?'

‘I knew what he meant when he said I couldn't cry. I knew
why
I couldn't cry. Do
you
know?'

Woodend nodded gravely. ‘Because even then you understood that you were goin' to be the Witch Maker – that one day you'd wear the crown.'

‘I'm not a king!' Wilf said angrily. ‘I'm
not
. I'm just the lad who knows how to make the Witch.'

‘You don't really believe that, do you, lad?' Woodend asked. ‘That you're no more than the lad who knows how to make the Witch?'

‘Why shouldn't I believe it?'

‘Because if all you were doin' was makin' a dummy, it wouldn't take so much out of you. Buildin' the Witch isn't just a mechanical experience, is it? There's somethin'
religious
about the whole process.'

‘We don't believe in religion in Hallerton,' Wilf said.

‘I know that,' Woodend said. ‘So maybe “religious” isn't the right word. Would you be happier if I called it a
spiritual
experience?'

The bobby was getting too close to the truth, Wilf thought – too close to what he thought himself.

‘My thoughts are my own business,' he said.

‘Aye, so they are,' Woodend agreed. ‘But would you mind if I asked your
opinion
about somethin' that's been puzzlin' me?'

‘You can
ask
,' Wilf said, not yet ready to give an inch.

‘I was thinkin' about the Witch Maker an' how he's selected,' Woodend said. ‘I never knew your Uncle Harry, but I've seen enough of your dad to be able to form an impression of him, an' it seems to me that—'

‘Don't go attackin' my dad!' Wilf said with new fierceness. ‘Don't you
ever
dare do that. He's the best man who ever walked this earth.'

‘I wasn't goin' to attack him,' Woodend responded. ‘Like I said, I was just thinkin'.'

‘Thinkin' about what?'

‘That he really cares about this village, an' what it stands for.'

‘He does.'

‘An' that he'd have made a perfect Witch Maker.'

‘He would. He'd have put his heart an' soul into it.'

Woodend pulled out his packet of cigarettes and offered it to Wilf, and when the young man shook his head, he lit up one for himself.

‘So what I don't understand,' the Chief Inspector continued, after he'd inhaled deeply, ‘is why it wasn't your dad who was chosen. What's the answer?'

‘I don't know,' Wilf admitted.

‘But surely you must have asked yourself the question?'