A Ghost in the Machine

13

There was a depressing little queue outside the Church of the Near at Hand. The building itself was hardly less depressing. About the size of a village hall, it was made of overlapping clapboard shingles once coloured a rather sickly clover. Now little of the paint remained. Just a few loosely attached shavings curled up in the August sun. The corrugated iron roof, heavily stained, was scabbed with moss. Its rusty extremities had crumbled away leaving a rather pretty scalloped edge, like a lace doily. One of the rear windows was cracked.

Sentinel along each side of the church and dwarfing it even further were six yew trees. These were immensely tall and so dark as to be almost black. Even on a bright, summer’s day the church seemed threatened by their long, pointed shadows. They made it appear both isolated and sinister, like a house in a fairy story, suddenly and mysteriously present in a woodland clearing.

A board had been hammered into the grass just behind the scruffy railings. On it, a white square of card in a plastic cover read: “The Spirit Is Willing: Matthew 26, 41.” This reassurance was garlanded by tiny moth-like creatures with human faces and patterned wings drawn with a felt-tipped pen. They were smiling in a dreamy sort of way and holding hands. Beneath their twinkling feet another notice. “Key with Mrs. Alma Gobbett, Paradise Bungalow, 17 Midgely Road.”

The queue was plainly, even poorly, dressed. It was mainly female and some of the women had bags of shopping. A pinched-looking girl wore a sling holding a tiny baby. She was smoking, blowing the smoke carefully away from the baby’s face, not seeming to notice when it drifted back. Two stout elderly reeking men were supporting each other back to back, like a pair of bibulous bookends.

Near the opposite pavement a new primrose-yellow Beetle was parked close to the kerb. Inside, Cully Barnaby and her husband Nicolas, watched as the little line began to shuffle forward.

“They’re opening the doors.” Cully took the keys from the ignition. Nicolas stretched over to the back seat and picked up his jacket. “You’re not coming.”

“Try and stop me,” cried Nicolas.

“Nico, you promised to wait outside.”

“Would I promise such a thing? With Mother begging me on her death bed—”

“Your mother’s fine. I saw her in Sainsbury’s on Wednesday.”

“So you say. Anyway, the principle’s the same. ‘See if you can contact your Aunty Ethel,’ she cried. ‘Ask her where that Victorian tantalus—’”

“That’s exactly the sort of attitude…” As she spoke Cully sprang out of the car and targeted the locks. A fraction of a second too late.

Nicolas beamed at her over the gleaming roof. “What do you mean ‘attitude’?”

“Snorting derision. Look what happened last time.”

The last time was a week previously. They had both gone to a spiritualist meeting in Causton. The medium, poised delicately on four-inch rhinestone heels, had begun fervently to roll her thumb and index finger together. Conjuring the gradual formation of a crumb of invisible dough she enquired if someone had recently lost a baker. Nicolas stood up and asked earnestly if the crumb could possibly be clay as he had recently lost a sculptor.

Cully struck out firmly across the road. Nicolas kept alongside, mocking her with principal-boy strides. He produced an exercise book, slapped his thigh with it, then waved it under his wife’s nose.

“Look—look! See what a help I shall be.”

“What’s that for?”

“To take notes—discreet notes,” he added quickly as she turned to glare at him. “You can’t be expected to remember everything.”

Nico offered one of his best audition smiles—sincere but with a hint of irony to show he was intelligent. Cool but not overly detached. Humorous while appreciating that something really serious was happening right here, right now. A hundred per cent engaged yet a free man, able to walk calmly away should the situation not work out while still remaining overwhelmingly aware of the powerful inner radiance of his talent.

“Don’t do that, Nico. I’ve just had lunch.”

“Sorry.”

To Cully’s surprise in the short space of time that they had been arguing the queue had grown much longer. Cars were being parked and quite a lot of people were making their way towards the church. By the time she and Nicolas entered, the rows of narrow, unvarnished hard-backed chairs were almost full.

This was the fourth meeting they had attended in as many weeks and the interior of all the churches proved to be remarkably similar. The Church of the Near at Hand was different only in that it was crowded with shadows. The few patches of sunlight admitted through the dense yew trees shimmered on cream walls. A dais, shabbily carpeted, was backed by dusty black velvet drapes. These had been drawn back to reveal a poorly designed and crudely coloured stained-glass window. A man with golden curls and doll-like crimson cheeks and lips stood in a rackety rowing boat. He wore a long white robe and a long white wing sprouted clumsily from his nearest shoulder. About his head was a rainbow made in several sections and clumsily conjoined.

A card table on the platform held a carafe of water with a glass turned upside down on the neck. A sunburst of vivid plastic flowers balanced on a mock marble column. A portable gas heater at the back of the stage was unlit and some rather old-fashioned sound equipment played “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Nicolas came to rest beside Cully, who gave him such a savage nudge he almost fell off the seat. Muttering, he got up and settled himself further down the hall. Looking round, he thought what a washed-out, colourless lot they were. And curiously similar. Not in feature perhaps, but in the vacant stolidity of their expressions. No frisson of suppressed excitement at the thought of soon getting in touch with the dear departed. No expectant glow lightened their tired, parched skins. What a bunch of losers. Nicolas risked glancing over his shoulder at his gorgeous wife in her vivid patchwork jacket, saffron silk shirt and dark green velvet trousers. She looked like an orchid on a dung heap.

The woman next to Nicolas pulled some knitting from an Iceland carrier bag. He entertained himself by wondering what had happened to the angel’s second wing. Was its absence laziness on the artist’s part? Or an unwillingness to wrestle with the problems of scale and perspective? Maybe the money had just run out.

In the front row an elderly man who had been welcoming people at the church door now stood up from his seat, clambered the few steps to the dais and turned to address the gathering. He smiled broadly, his false teeth glittering, raising his voice above the swelling strings.

“Friends, welcome. Welcome to another afternoon of love, light and laughter. I hope everyone will be able to stay on afterwards for tea. There will be a collection as usual, which this Sunday is in aid of the Animal Healing Centre. Our cosmic inspirer today is Ava…” He paused, nodding in response to the smiles, murmurs of satisfaction and even some handclapping. “Ava Garret – known and I’m sure I can say loved – by you all.”

Nicholas positioned himself directly behind the person in front so as to be invisible from the platform. His crafty scribblings had never yet been remarked upon and he’d prefer things to stay that way. But if comments did arise he had his story ready. They were simply questions from his mum on the off chance that today might be the lucky day that her late sister decided to come through.

He had expected the woman beside him to abandon her knitting at this stage but she clicked on regardless. It was like sitting next to a lively deathwatch beetle. An immense tan-coloured sausage depended from her four steel needles and he could see a teddy bear’s head with one vast ear poking out of the bag. Nicolas tried to picture the bear’s eventual dimensions and did not envy the toddler squaring up to it on Christmas morning.

A youth with long greasy hair and rings through every visible orifice attended to the sound equipment. He wore a leather jacket with flying witches painted on, and army combat trousers. As the music faded Cully leaned forwards slightly, emptied her mind of all but the present moment and concentrated on the stage. The previous sessions had been remarkably similar and, should this follow the same pattern, Cully had already decided it would be the last.

The signs were not encouraging. The setting had been exactly as she expected. As for the performance, Cully was afraid that by now she could write the script. The medium would be fat and dressed in flowing garments stiff with tacky but bombastic decoration. She would be wearing quite a lot of flashy jewellery, even more highly coloured make-up and her coiffure would never, ever move. Her patter would mix sickly endearments with sentimental messages from the dear departed and deeply unfunny humour. Psychomancy as showbiz.

So when Ava Garret stepped on to the stage Cully had quite a shock. The first idea that came into her head was Aubrey Beardsley, for the woman closely resembled one of his illustrations. Then a quick and less charitable thought – Morticia Addams. Tall, sinuous and robed simply in black, she leaned on the plastic column and threw back her dark flowing hair. She began to drift back and forth across the stage, stretching out her hands in a most peculiar way. The left, palm out in front of her face as if warding off a rush of seekers after truth. The right, vaguely groping upwards as if to seize any shy, celestial beings before they changed their minds and dissolved once more into etheric vapour. At every turn she kicked the long train of her dress neatly behind her before setting off again. Cully, acting in her cradle, acting before she could even lisp the word, recognised a trick of the trade when she saw one.

“Someone is coming through now…” Estuary English overlaid by Received Pronunciation in a nice reversal of the current mode. “I’m getting a Graham—no, tell a lie—Grace. Does Grace connect with anyone here?”

“Very much so.” A woman on the end of the row opposite Nicolas stood up. She had bright ginger hair cowled in net veiling scattered with red and black beads. They looked like tiny insects.

Nicolas wrote down: “Could do with a good spray.”

“Grace wants you to have your legs looked at, my darling. Because you’ve only got one pair and I believe there’s been trouble in that department already, am I right?”

Nicolas stretched his neck and looked across at the woman’s legs. They were thin and straight, fragile sticks with tiny, bony bulges, like little basins, sticking out at knee level.

“My GP says it’s cramp, Ava.”

“Earth doctors.” She laughed, shaking her head at the naïve conclusions of these simple inadequates. The audience joined in. Someone at the back started clapping. “Grace suggests a pendulum.”

“Oh! Thank you—”

“Plus a fenugreek massage.”

“Could you ask her—”

“I’m sorry but someone else is calling now, a gallant gentleman holding a red rose. I’m getting the letter T…Yes? A lady towards the back…”

“My son…” A shabbily dressed figure got up. “Trevor—he…was on his motorbike…”

“Now, my love, this is going to sound a little bit hard but Trevor has seen you on your tod having a weep over his picture and it makes him very sad. And we don’t want that, do we?”

The woman, unable to speak, covered her mouth with a scarf and shook her head.

“Because he liked a bit of jollity – didn’t he, young Trev? A little glass of something…I’m getting quite a lot of bubbles here…”

Trevor’s mother struggled with unintelligible sounds. Eventually a strangled resemblance to the word “snorkelling” emerged.

As she subsided the next communication arrived. This was Tom with apologies to Mavis for passing to spirit before he’d had time to finish liming her outhouse.

After Tom messages came thick and fast. Nicolas wondered if everyone was supposed to receive one before they went in for tea, the way all children at a party expect a present. He was longing to look around at Cully but knew, if she caught him, he’d never hear the end of it.

“I’m being wafted shades of green now – overalls and masks. Bright lights and a definite scent of ether. A dear one recently lost in the theatre, perhaps?”

Nicolas wrote down, “Gielgud?”

“And here’s someone – a bit of a Charlie, he tells me. And an Albert. Do these names connect at all?”

What a question, thought Cully, yawning. The miracle would be if two of the most common names of the last century did not connect with such an elderly audience. Where were the Crispins and Algernons, that’s what she wanted to know. Why didn’t Rollo and Georgiana, Araminta and Pauncefoot “come through”?

And why were there no really helpful or exciting messages? Like a recipe for low-calorie chocolate fudge. Or a new sonnet from William S. Something that would give pith and moment to the whole tedious procedure.

“I hear a baby chuckling now in the world of spirit…”

“My grandson, little Darren.” A man in the front row burst into floods of tears.

“You wouldn’t know him, my darling. He’s getting to be a lovely boy, because they do grow up, you know, in the higher realms.”

The man, amazed, started to dry his eyes.

“And he has his very own guardian angel – Brother Thundercloud – so rest assured no harm can ever come to him.”

“Thank you, thank you. Oh! Darren, we think of you all the time. Nana sends her love…”

It was at this stage that Nicolas stopped sneering to himself at the audience’s credulity and started to feel angry on their behalf. Angry at the easy promises and consoling images tossed to rows of hungry faces like crumbs from the table to starving birds. The words “bread” and “stones” came to mind.

Then, as the medium tilted back her head, the light fell fully on to the right side of her face and Nicholas noticed for the first time a pinkish, plastic shell tucked neatly inside her ear. Deaf – oh, brilliant. Able to talk to the deceased a trillion, zillion light years away but unable to hack it with the living at spitting distance. After this observation all his light good humour returned.

There was a silence from the platform. The pause lengthened. Nicolas’s neighbour nudged him and whispered kindly, “Nothing for you today then, dear?”

“No.” Nicolas glanced down at the tan sausage, which had grown alarmingly. It now looked more like a chair leg. “I’m here on my mum’s behalf. Hoping for contact from my Aunty Ethel.”

“Her sister?”

“They got very close towards the end.”

“Aah – peaceful was it?”

“Lovely.”

Nicolas was beginning to feel worried at the ease with which he was slipping into this by now familiar scenario. I’ll be believing it myself next, he thought, and vowed, if Cully’s research went on, to invent a more colourful departed relative to talk about. A mad axe murdering uncle perhaps, now chuckling in the world of spirit as he laid about him with a sawn off, double-barrelled harp.

The meeting was getting somewhat restless when Ava Garret, now positioned dead centre, front of stage, lifted both of her hands and held them, palms facing out towards the audience. A strange expression had transformed her face. It was marked now with a deep frown of concentration. Apprehension too. It seemed that easy access to the higher spheres had suddenly deserted her. However, all was not lost.

“I’m getting…a D…and an E…The name’s becoming clearer…It’s definitely Dennis.”

Two women in the front row turned to each other. One built, as far as Nicolas could make out, along the lines of his formidable father-in-law, appeared very excited. The second woman raised her arm, high and straight in the air like a child at school.

“There is a message for you, my dear. It is…a distressing one…”

A feeling of unease pervaded the hall. Messages were never distressing. The congregation started to shift around, rustle bags. Began to crave refreshment.

“I’m aware of some strange shapes…” She opened her arms wide, then leaned back slightly. Her eyes widened as if seeing a frightful vision. “Huge constructions like nothing I have ever seen…They throw great shadows…white walls are all around with windows high in the air. A man, small with red hair, clad in green, approaches them. But he is not alone…Someone else is hiding in the shadows…someone who means him dreadful harm. I see them handling one of the machines…causing damage…Now it is no longer safe. The merest touch could bring it crashing down…”

A concerted gasp swept the church. Even the lady with the chair leg stopped knitting.

“As the man draws nearer the watcher in the shadows creeps forward too…coming as close as they dare to gloat…to watch a terrible plan succeed. The mist around this figure is clearing now…I can almost see an outline…even perhaps a face…”

A baby cried – the tiny baby held in a sling against his mother’s breast. He was wet and he was hungry. His cries became yells and screams.

The tense atmosphere ruptured beyond repair. People started to relax, a few laughed, marvelling aloud at the amount of noise coming from such a minute scrap. Someone held him while the mother got her things together. For a moment the medium hesitated. Then she caught the eye of the man in the grey suit, made a negative movement with her head then swept slowly from the stage, gazing ahead as if tugged by some magnetic force.

As the service finished the youth who had switched on the hi-fi at the beginning worked the rows with a velvet drawstring collecting bag. Nicolas dropped in a jingle of drachmas he had brought back from Corfu. The music began again and the congregation filed out to Dean Martin’s liquid gargling: “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.”

Cully and Nico had been the last to move. She pretended to search for something in her bag as the others streamed by. But the Master of Ceremonies was walking up the centre aisle, sweeping and shooing with both hands, as fussy as an old woman rounding up hens. He bared his teeth in a fearsome grimace of synthetic friendliness.

“Get that smile,” muttered Nico, allowing himself to be eased into the general stream. “Like a mouthful of Chiclets.”

About ten minutes later everyone was in a large room off the hall, enjoying their tea. Cully was taking dainty bites out of a fragile cucumber sandwich. Nico gnawed on a huge chunk of bread pudding. Smiling, nibbling and gnawing, responding politely when spoken to, they waited for an opportunity to slip backstage.

The MC had accepted a plate of food composed by the lady with the teddy bear knitting. There were a lot more teddies on a large table under an Oxfam poster, amended to read: “Teddies For Tragedy.” They were hand-knitted too and all wearing different clothes. There was a teddy surgeon, a policeman and a gardening teddy with a little hoe. They were all for sale at different prices.

“I rather like the idea of teddies for tragedy,” said Nico, helping himself to a cream horn. “Why shouldn’t they have a rotten time like the rest of us? Want one of these?”

“I think I’d rather have one of those.” Cully nudged her husband round to face another smaller table behind them.

“Aaarrgghhh!” cried Nicolas, sotto voce.

He was looking at the most extraordinary display of candelabra. They seemed to be made of string, knotted and tangled then glued into twisty Gothic shapes. From time to time the glue had dripped a little, hardening into tiny orange beads.

“Look,” whispered Cully. She pointed out a card which read: “Geo. Footscray. Candelabra & Pot Holders. Chandeliers to order.” “We could have a chandelier.”

“But they’re only to order.” Nicolas too spoke with quiet reverence. “You said we wouldn’t be coming back.”

“Damn.”

“How’s he doing – Mr. Sparkle?”

They both stared across at the MC. He was in earnest, not to say excited, conversation with the woman who had responded so positively to the advent of the final visitant. Cully gulped down the remains of her cucumber sandwich. No one noticed them slip away.

“I don’t know why we’re bothering,” said Nico, following Cully down the deserted aisle. “She won’t be any different from the other two.”

“She’s already different.”

“How?”

“That last connection was pretty strange. And what’s with the ‘we’?”

“I’m here to help.”

“So wait in the car.”

Cully climbed on to the platform, her hand stretching out to the velvet drapes.

Nico, a step behind, whispered, “Shall I take notes?”

The two people already behind the curtains had very little room to move. Ava Garret was sitting on a fold-up chair by a small table, staring into a mirror on a stand. Her hands were raised, the fingers loosening gauze that secured a wig. The only other piece of furniture was a moth-eaten old chaise longue. A child was drying glasses by a small stone sink. She saw the intruders first. Flinging her tea towel down over the table she gave a sharp cry.

“What do you want?” Ava Garret jumped to her feet. “No one’s allowed back here.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Garret. I didn’t realise—”

“If it’s healing, George will be in the Salamander Suite at five.”

“I was hoping to talk to you.”

“Then you’ll have to take your chance in the vestibule with the others. And I’m quite exhausted so I shan’t stay long.”

Pompous cow, decided Nicolas. Who did these people think they were? Take your chance indeed. She’d be giving them her autograph next.

“Do you see people privately?”

“No.”

“Not even on special—”

“Not never,” said the child.

Cully responded with an apologetic smile. She studied the little girl without seeming to, taking mental notes as she always did, storing stuff away. The most utterly colourless creature she had ever seen. Totally washed out. Long straight hair, blonde as far as one could tell – it looked pretty filthy. Skin, fine as paper. An almost perfectly heart-shaped face, which was not nearly as appealing as it sounded in fairy stories. The chin came to a very sharp point indeed. You could have eased the lid off a jam jar with it.

“It was all just so…amazing.” Cully gave Ava Garret a deeply admiring smile. “I’m longing…that is, if you could possibly explain how—”

“I’m just a channel through which departed souls contact the living.” She rattled it off, plainly bored.

“Do they come to you one at a time?”

“They throng, dear, and that’s the truth. Once one’s through they’re all at it.”

“I see. Any special ord—”

“Mother’s family on the left. Father’s on the right.”

“And do you see them clearly?”

“Not always. There’s a lot of murk around the openings to the dromeda stratosphere.”

“What’s she asking all these questions for?” said the girl to Nicolas. “What d’you want?”

“That final…connection was rather—”

“I don’t encourage common curiosity. Now I have to change. Go away.”

“But it isn’t common curiosity.” Nicolas spoke hastily, having noticed a certain stubborn persistence tightening Cully’s lovely profile. “My wife is an actor. She’s playing a medium, you see—”

“You’re in the business?” Ava Garret stared at them, an expression of longing softening her hard, heavily painted face. A wistful smile completed the transformation. She looked at Nicolas. “The theatre?”

“Yes.” Eagerly Cully seized this stroke of luck and ran with it. “I’m rehearsing Blithe Spirit at the moment. For the Almeida.”

“Aahh…” sighed Ava, “the Almeida. I used to dance there as a little girl. I was in all their shows.”

Cully and Nicolas remained silent, carefully avoiding each other’s gaze. The Almeida, one of London’s most exciting theatrical companies, was presently performing at an old bus depot at King’s Cross. Before then it was in the shell of the Gainsborough film studios. Soon they would be back at their real home in Islington. A movable feast.

“I sensed there was something.” Cully smiled warmly, linking herself and Ava in starry complicity. “You can always tell.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t quite…?”

“Cully. Cully Barnaby. And this is my husband, Nicolas.”

“I’m an actor too,” cried Nicolas, thinking to build on the goodwill so suddenly and surprisingly present.

“I don’t know if you know the play,” said Cully, “but Madame Arcati—”

“Aaah, poor Margaret Rutherford. She used to come to me with all her troubles.”

“I do like to research my character. And you are plainly outstanding in your field.”

“Say no more.” Ava waved at the chaise longue. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

Nicolas and Cully sat down on what felt like thistle stuffing. Cully did not care. She had got what she wanted. Nico wondered if it would be safe to take notes, risked asking and was given permission.

Then Ava leaned forward with a gesture of confiding grace. The wise sibyl about to reveal the secrets of the universe. The storyteller with a million legends up her sleeve. Once upon a time, in the little market town of Causton…

Ava Bunton had always wanted to be somebody. As a child she thought of being a dancer or a singer and danced and sang at home while constantly pleading for lessons. Eventually, driven half mad by this theatrical posturing, her father boxed her ears and threatened to tie her ankles together. And, when she cried, started unravelling the Sellotape. That soon shut her up.

But the dreams continued. She did errands and delivered papers to buy tap and ballet shoes and pay her subscription to Causton Amateur Society’s Junior Club. Every Saturday morning she improvised becoming a tree or a kettle or a hedgehog. She exercised her voice, did pliés at the barre and acted her little socks off. She was in all the pantomimes to which no one in the family came, not even when she played the cat in Dick Whittington.

In her last term at school she ran away to London, got a room through a flatshare agency and started office temping to keep herself and pay for more tuition and glamour photographs. She grabbed The Stage the second it was on the newsstand, went to any open auditions, tried to get an agent. Ava was never defeated. A fatal mixture of rock-hard confidence and a blinding lack of intelligence protected her from the unhappy understanding that she was completely untalented. Not even good enough to be called mediocre.

Eventually she got a job dancing on a second-rate cruise liner and spent the next seven years more or less afloat, occasionally winging it in nightclubs in Turkey and Beirut. It was in Lebanon that she met Lionel Wainwright Garret, a once-handsome ex-public schoolboy, now living seedily on what little he could earn giving English lessons. Impressed by his accent and thrilled with the idea of going up in the world, Ava moved in with Garret, parting with nearly all her savings in the process. For a short while he took some sort of interest in her – enough to make her pregnant at any rate – before reverting to his previous passion for young boys. Ava returned to England, sadder though no wiser, for she was the sort of person who blamed her troubles on everyone but herself. But then, something wonderful happened.

Ava was not looking forward to having a baby. She was in her late thirties and, had she not returned from the Far East too late for a National Health Service abortion, would certainly never have had the child. And that would have been a real mistake because, not too long after the baby was born, Ava became aware of a strange new presence, an intelligence at work which she had not experienced before. She put this down to some mysterious genetic intermingling between herself and Lionel Garret. What else could it be?

However, the assurance which had seen her through so many years of rejection and sordid show business wrangles unaccountably absented itself when the question of how to make the best use of this new opportunity arose. It was so strange, for a start, so outside all her previous experience. In fact, it was quite a long time before she worked out how best to handle things. Bringing up the little girl took a great deal of her time, and struggling to make ends meet took a hefty chunk out of what was left. But eventually a way, an opening, presented itself almost out of the blue. And what an appropriate phrase that was, Ava had thought, even back then.

At the time she had joined a friendship club for the divorced and separated, passing herself off as a widow. Refusing to admit to loneliness, she referred to this move only as extending her circle of friends. But her devoted self-interest made friendship impossible and she was on the point of abandoning these meetings, where everyone talked endlessly about themselves, when she met George Footscray.

George, a middle-aged man living with his mother and into one or two deeply unadventurous hobbies, showed the keenest interest when she told him about the messages from other realms that were now transmitting almost daily. He said excitedly they should be shared with the world and described her as a born medium. Another Doris Stokes. Ava had never heard of Doris Stokes and was somewhat uneasy with the word “share,” but her longing to be someone burned as strongly as ever. If anything, years of disappointment had fanned the flame to an even fiercer strength.

George explained that she would not necessarily have to be a platform medium. There were those who did only private sittings or group seances. But Ava loved the idea of rows and rows of faces looking longingly up at her, hanging on her every word. And in respectful silence too, not laughing and drinking or making obscene gestures and rude jokes as they had in nightclubs and aboard ship.

She was not so keen on George’s suggestion that a certain amount of training was important. That, for example, she must learn how to prepare before working from the platform. How to handle a congregation. What to do when a spirit manifested only to be met with indifference or blank incomprehension. Never mind how to cover when no one came through at all. Ava assured George that would never happen as her connection was absolutely genuine. And anyway, she’d practically been born on a stage. Improvise was her middle name. It was not until she realised that without a certain degree of training she would not be allowed to tread the boards at all that she grudgingly gave way.

George took her to several church meetings to illustrate the way of things and one or two established mediums kindly attempted to take her under their wings. Ava listened. She gritted her teeth at what she saw as patronising condescension but she listened. Her confidence disturbed them. She seemed to have no nerves at all.

From the very beginning, like an old-style travelling magician, Ava was always supported by an assistant, her daughter, Karen. She would carry Ava’s long black velvet cloak, set up her mirror and cosmetic tray, check that everything on the platform was in its correct place, brew her special herbal tea. She had also, in the early days, presented Ava with a bouquet “from a grateful client” at the conclusion of each meeting; flowers which Ava herself had purchased earlier. However, this was abandoned after complaints from other psychics that a precedent was being set. A precedent that not everyone could afford.

From the first all went well. The voices never let her down and Ava revelled in the attention; in the silent waves of intense longing that poured over what she still thought of as the footlights the moment she began to speak; the gratitude of the gathering afterwards, thanking her, shaking her hand, telling her she was marvellous. That she had changed their lives; brought sunshine out of sorrow. All very nice.

The trouble was that three years later, though everything was still going well, she found herself trapped, journeying round and round the same restrictive circuit. Occasionally she was invited to “guest,” as they put it, in a few churches somewhat further afield, which she was happy to do, and also to take part in various “evenings of clairvoyance,” which she always refused. But fame, as experienced by Doris Stokes, who Ava now knew all about, remained elusive. Like most of the other mediums she came across, outside the limited world of spiritual and psychic practice Ava Garret was still a nobody. And the money was no great shakes either.

At this point, perhaps recognising she had drifted somewhat from her glowing representation of an outstanding oracle to her visitors, Ava suddenly stopped speaking. Then, with an artificial start of Eureka-type astonishment she clapped her hands and cried, “How fortunate that we have met. You’ll need advice, of course. Practical, artistic, psychic. I will sit in on your Blithe Spirit rehearsals. No—but me no buts. I won’t hear a word against it. The matter’s settled.”

“Notice how she veered off when you brought up the question of that last visitation?”

“Of course I noticed!”

“No need to be snippy. If it wasn’t for me telling her you were in the business you’d have got zilch.”

“As far as any helpful research is concerned I did get zilch. We heard her life story—”

“Boy,” said Nicolas, chewing on a frangipane, “did we hear her life story.”

“But I couldn’t pin her down as to how the actual experience of transmission felt.”

“Probably indescribable.” He pushed his plate aside. “Like these tarts.”

“Mine’s all right.”

They were in the Secret Garden Tea Rooms, having decided that all that listening had left them in dire need of more refreshment. Sitting at a little window table they watched the world go by. There wasn’t much going on at half-past five on a warm Sunday afternoon. A few people wandered past. Some backpackers sat on the kerb licking ice lollies.

“Let’s walk round a bit before we go and see the folks,” said Cully. “It’s such a lovely day.”

Nicolas went to pay the bill. The proprietress was behind the cash desk. She didn’t put herself out on the charm front. Experience had taught her to recognise those who might become regular customers from the passing trade.

Nicolas, recalling the terraced houses on either side and spotting a brick wall through the café’s rear window asked, faux naïf: “Where is the actual garden, then?”

“That’s the secret, smarty pants.”

Nicolas gave her one of his warmest smiles. “My mother made cakes just like yours.”

“Really?” The sour lemon pucker of her lips loosened slightly.

“Mm.” He retrieved the pound coin he had left under the saucer and slipped it into his pocket. “They were actually cited in the divorce petition.”

As they emerged, hand in hand, into the sunshine Nicolas said, “Whatever happened to have a nice day?”

“Don’t be pathetic. You surely don’t think they mean it?”

“I’ve no problem with people who are insincerely pleasant. It’s the sincerely unpleasant that get up my nose.”

They wandered round the village, unwilling wholeheartedly to admire what Nico described as yucky, picture-postcard kitsch, yet drawn into the quiet, apparent serenity of the place in spite of themselves.

“Take that, for instance.” Nicolas scornfully faced an exquisite, tiny thatched cottage with mullioned windows. “Half a dozen peasants used to live in that six-figure biscuit box. Mud floors, chickens scratching about, water coming through the roof, children in rags…”

“That was then, darling.” Cully took her husband’s hand and led him across the lane, past a vast orchard of apple trees and towards the parish church of St. Anselm’s. “And since when have you cared tuppence for the peasants?”

“True, true.” Nicolas laughed. “Mind, to be fair, I don’t expect they ever cared tuppence for me.”

They wandered around the churchyard, looking for interesting gravestones. Some were quite new and shining, addressing rectangles of sparkling white or green gravel. Others were so old the inscriptions were almost worn away. A few of these were listing dangerously and one had fallen on its back. Some graves, even more ancient, were just gentle bumps in the ground. They were so numerous it was difficult not to walk on them.

“Careful, Nico.”

“What?”

“Look where you’re standing.”

“They won’t know.” But he moved all the same. “God, I am so incredibly glad that I’m not dead.”

“Me too.”

“So utterly overwhelmingly mind-blowingly glad. Imagine, no more first-night parties.”

“Or last-night parties.”

“No more applause.”

“No bacon and eggs at Groucho’s.”

“No Margaritas at Joe Allen’s.”

“Or frocks from Ghost.”

“No sunrise.”

“Or sunsets.”

“No sex.”

“Oh, Nico. Worst of all.”

“I shouldn’t worry. In twenty years’ time they’ll have found a way to keep us immortal.” He turned, looking backwards at a splendid Norman tower. “D’you want to look round?”

“I’d rather go.” Running from the impartial cruelty of time passing Cully was already halfway down the rose-brick path, calling over her shoulder, “It’ll be locked anyway.”

Nicolas caught up with her at the lych-gate. Saw shadows fall across her face as she slipped through. Thought they were caused by leaves in the elm trees. Then was not sure.

“You all right, Mrs. Bradley?”

“Fine.” No Mum and Dad. No terrible meals and touching hints about possible grandchildren. No bear hugs and garden cuttings or surprise presents. No sensible, loving advice…

“Oh, shit. Sorry.”

“Here.” Nicolas offered his hanky and drew her close. “Have a good blow.”

“Sometimes I hate loving people, don’t you?”

“No. Not when you think of the alternative.” He paused. “C’mon let’s hear it for the Lion King.”

Cully trumpeted loudly into the handkerchief. Gently Nicolas wiped her tears away. Then they linked arms and walked back into the street. Just a few yards further it humped itself into a bridge with a little carved parapet. They leaned over together and listened to the fast running water rattling the pebbles. Diamond-bright water; crystal clear.

“We could bottle this,” suggested Nicolas. “Make our fortune.”

“Those sheep are pooing in it.”

“Added minerals.” Nicolas pulled out some loose change before replacing his hanky. “I think we should throw money in. Like people do at the Trevi Fountain.”

“That’s because they want to return, silly.”

But Nicolas threw his money in anyway. He tossed a fistful high into the air and it descended in a glittering shower to lie winking and sparkling on the sandy bed of the stream.

By nightfall every coin had been removed by village children and consequently Nicolas and Cully never returned to Forbes Abbot. On the other hand Cully’s father, a detective chief inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department of nearby Causton, got to know it very well indeed.

14

Like all villages Forbes Abbot had its down side. There was more to it than the bijou constellation of Barrett homes with their fake leaded windowpanes, swirls of bubble glass and electric carriage lamps. More than the few large, beautiful old houses in their own grounds, the renovated Edwardian terrace and carefully restored nineteenth-century cottages. Unfortunately there were also council houses.

The blessing was that these, of which there were around twenty in the form of a crescent, had been sensibly constructed right on the edge and so could be fairly easily ignored. Of course, they were full of people who would insist on going in and coming out, but most of them appeared to have cars and shopped in bulk at Asda or Tesco, which mainly kept them free of the local Spar. It was grudgingly admitted that nearly all the houses had well-cared-for gardens and clean curtains. Some were even privately owned with fancy front doors and lemon mock stone cladding. Even so, living there, confided the upside residents to each other, definitely constituted a stigma.

The majority of the council tenants had no idea they constituted a stigma and wouldn’t have given a monkey’s had anyone been brave or foolish enough to point it out. But there was one exception. Returning from the Middle East seven months pregnant, Ava Garret had been reluctantly taken in by her now elderly parents. Rows started almost immediately and, contrary to all received wisdom, nothing changed once the baby was born. Ava’s mother, barely able to cope with the stairs and already on the waiting list for a council bungalow, made some increasingly urgent phone calls, and when Karen was six months old, she and her husband moved out.

Ava stayed on in sole possession of a modern, two-and-a-bit bedroomed, centrally heated home on which both the rent and council tax were paid. Far from being grateful she seethed with resentment. Removing the number of her house and renaming it Rainbow Lodge merely confused the postman. The neighbours, who laughed at her pretensions, had not always been unkind. When she was first on her own they would ask her round for a cup of tea and a chat. A surplus of allotment vegetables occasionally appeared on her doorstep. The family next door even offered to sit with Karen in an emergency. But gradually it became clear that, though Ava proved to be the world’s greatest taker, giving was not her bag. Gradually people came to see that they were simply being made use of and the offers of help dried up. Ava was not surprised. It was the story of her life. Everyone all sugary smarmy till they got what they wanted, then you could be on fire and they wouldn’t widdle on you to put it out.

However, no such resentments clouded her thoughts on the morning after her most recent appearance at the Church of the Near at Hand. In fact Ava sat at the kitchen table as near to happy as she had been for years. Two things had happened within the past seven days, that looked fair to turning her fortunes round. The latest was her meeting with Cully Barnaby, which reawakened in Ava all her early dreams of theatrical success. And how understanding the young actress had been. How intelligent her questions. How impressed by everything that she, Ava, had had to say. Heavens, the husband even took notes!

And to be invited to the theatre as a consultant. It would be the legitimate theatre too, not some sleazebag cesspit in Soho crammed with fawn raincoats jacking off under the Evening Standard. She wondered what the pay would be like. If they would offer a fixed sum and expect her to be available when needed or if she would be asked to attend every rehearsal. If that was the case she would insist on a taxi, door to door. Either that or a hired car. You had to make your status clear from the very beginning or no one would respect you.

Ava lit her first cigarette of the day, sorted through a stack of junk mail and pulled out a leaflet about a carpet sale in Pinner. On the back she wrote “Almeeda,” underlined it, chewed on her pen for a moment then added, “Blithe Spirit.” She must get hold of a script, that was the first thing. Spending money would hurt but it was in a good cause. The film, which she had seen on the box a year or so ago, was now just a memory. Anyway, the play – and it had been news to Ava that there was a play – was bound to be completely different. When people made movies out of books and such they always changed everything.

“Clothes.” Clothes were vital. If you looked the part you were home and dry, and in show business that meant glamour. She could not turn up at the theatre in the boring old things she wore to drive to church meetings—ordinary skirts or trousers, a padded jacket, her old camel coat. Fortunately she had some money. A sudden windfall had dropped into her hands a few days ago. Just in time, as it happened, to accommodate this second stroke of luck. An omen if ever there was one. Her stars had been spot on as well: “A meeting with a stranger could expand your horizons.”

Ava decided to go up West to get the things. She saw herself making an entrance and knocking them dead, like she had at auditions in the old days. A dress some way above the knees – her legs were still good – and matching coat. Or a really stunning trouser suit in cream with a patterned shirt, possibly turquoise or aquamarine, matching earrings and her tan slingbacks from Dolcis sale, still in their box at the back of the wardrobe. She must also get a smart briefcase for her copy of Blithe Spirit.

Next, hair. Ava chewed on her pen for a while then wrote “ends trimed plus rinse.” Of course the colour must be in no way frivolous. Her natural shade, faded mouse, was commonly enhanced by Strawberry Fayre highlights but wouldn’t they be rather inappropriate? Partyfied rather than workmanlike? She decided to go for Autumn Leaves, a warm chestnut plus an ash-grey streak to denote competence and sincerity. Here Ava paused and reflected briefly on her mother who had recently died (thank you, God). About the only sensible bit of advice Mrs. Bunton had ever passed on was: “Get your hair right, everything else falls into place.” And in spite of the fact that her own had always resembled a supernova of rusty iron filings, Ava believed her mother, then and to this day.

She stubbed out her cigarette in a smear of marmalade and poured some more tea. Overhead Karen was clumping about in some shoes she had got off a girl at school in exchange for doing her homework. They were ridiculous, Ava thought. Hideous even. Dull black leather with ankle straps and platform soles so high they looked like surgical boots.

“That’s right,” she had said as Karen had proudly staggered through the front door, “break your bloody neck.” It never occurred to her that the child might know she looked ridiculous but still longed to wear what everyone else was wearing.

Roy, the paying guest, on nights this week, was sleeping upstairs. He had been staying at Rainbow Lodge for around eighteen months. Since, in fact, he had come to the end of his time in the children’s home at Causton. Of course, the neighbours had shopped Ava. Couldn’t wait. Living off the fat of the land already, wasn’t she? On the social, drawing child allowance, housing allowance, family allowance, fucking ferret-keeping allowance as like as not, and now subletting and pocketing the divvy. I should cocoa, said righteous Fred Carboy (invalidity benefit/moonlighting for Cox’s MiniCabs), residing dead opposite and well placed to observe chicanery in his near neighbours.

The powers that be called round. Ava swore Roy was staying temporarily, doing the garden and decorating the house in lieu of rent. Roy, desperate for a real home in a real house instead of yet more hostel accommodation, backed her up. He pretended to leave after a couple of weeks, then came back, then went again, and after a bit more of this toing and froing the neighbours gave up trying to cause trouble and Roy stayed for good.

Karen had been pleased. She liked Roy. He was going to be a comedian one day and was always trying out jokes. Also he was interested in a lot of weird things. Ancient civilisations: Egypt and the Pharaohs and King Arthur and magic and dragons. In fact his main reason for helping out at the Near at Hand was to learn how to raise the dark forces and use them to his advantage. But he wasn’t at all frightening himself and often brought little treats home from Tesco where he worked mainly in the warehouse, but also filling shelves if someone was off sick.

Alas, Roy’s rent, which Karen had assumed would really make a difference to their pretty constrained lives, didn’t. At least not to hers. Her mother smoked more and better quality cigarettes and fresh pots of cream and stuff started appearing in the bathroom but the food didn’t change and Karen still had to get all her clothes from charity shops. As Ava crossly explained when asked if there might now be some pocket money, seventy-five pounds went nowhere these days. If Karen wanted money, she’d have to earn it. Other kids did. What was wrong with a paper round? But you needed a bike for a paper round.

Now Karen, having safely tottered across the landing, began to descend the stairs, tightly gripping the banister. There was a pleasant smell of warm toast.

“Hello, sweetheart,” cried Ava as her daughter safely negotiated the final stair. “Brekkies up.”

Karen paused, hesitated. She almost looked over her shoulder to check that no other person, the “sweetheart” of the greeting, had mysteriously materialised. She wasn’t hungry, but who could resist such a welcome?

“Great—thanks.” The table was full of rubbish: dirty plates and cutlery, a huge glass ashtray brimming with scarlet-tipped butts, an empty jam jar, a scraping of marge in a saucer, the Evening Standard. “I’ll get some cornflakes then.”

But Ava had already gone back to her writing. Karen found a waxed bag with a rubber band round it and shook out the few remaining fragments. She added some UHT milk (£1.50 for a packet of six). Unopened it kept for ever. You bought it off a lorry on the market. The side rolled down and things were stacked really high inside. Everything was past its sell-by date and some of the tins were rusty and had labels you’d never heard of but it was all incredibly cheap. Karen sat down, then got up again to move the ashtray, which smelled disgusting.

“If you’re making a list we want some more cereals.”

Ava immediately put her arm around the bit of paper like a child at school. Not that she was embarrassed to reveal that she was planning to treat herself but because Karen would then know she had some money and would begin looking for it. She’d probably tell Roy too, just to start something. The pair of them were as thick as thieves.

“I’m just making some preliminary notes for when I’m called to rehearsals. Aahh—Blithe Spirit’s such an enchanting play.”

“Good idea.” Karen left it at that, though she had been present at the conversation with Cully Barnaby and knew that any future involvement was all in her mother’s mind. It wasn’t easy to keep silent. When Ava discovered her mistake all in the immediate vicinity would suffer from the fallout. Would be castigated and lectured as if caught out in some crafty misdemeanour. Her ability to shift blame was awesome. On the other hand, attempting to point out any error in advance could also bring about unpleasant repercussions. Either way you couldn’t win.

Karen picked up the Standard, blew some ash off a picture of Phil Collins and turned to Entertainments. She started to read down the theatre column: Adelphi, Albery, Aldwych, Ambassadors, Apollo, Arts, Astoria…Then paused and read backwards, running her nail carefully past each name lest she had missed one out.

“Ava?”

Ava made an impatient yet regal gesture, like a pasha swatting some importunate insect. Karen, having taken the risky decision to speak added boldly: “It’s not in here.”

“What?”

“The theatre.”

Ava looked up and sighed. “What are you on about?”

“The Almeida.”

“Let me see.”

Ava snatched the paper, folded it, brought it up to her eyes and squinted. Karen watched as alarm flickered over her mother’s face. The corner of her eye twitched.

Ava said. “If they’re rehearsing I expect it’s closed.”

“But don’t they put the number in anyway,” asked Karen, “in case people want to book for shows and things?”

Ava had by now got to Wyndhams and was anxiously retracing her steps. It was true. The Almeida was not listed. That bitch of a girl – that so-called actress – must have been stringing her along. She started furiously flicking the pages, turning them back, reading around the listings.

“There!” Ava was so relieved she almost choked. Her finger stabbed the Standard so hard it went through the paper. “See?”

“Oh, yes.”

“There is such a thing as fringe, darling. Though you wouldn’t know – not being in the business.” She frowned at the clock, then at Karen, now lolling about in the chair opposite with all the time in the world at her disposal. And she’d be doing it for the next six weeks. Whoever invented school holidays, thought Ava bitterly, couldn’t have had any kids.

“We must get on. There’s a lot to do today.”

“I haven’t finished my breakfast.”

“Don’t whine, dear. Whining’s for wimps.”

Karen scraped at her cereal bowl, licked up the last of the grey metallic-tasting milk. “Could I have some toast?”

Ava sighed again and adopted one of her put-upon looks. The child had been like this since the day she was born. Want, want, want. Never satisfied. Hoping that silence meant yes Karen found a heel of bread in the bin and put it under the grill.

“I expect you’ll be out most of the day with a friend?”

“Don’t know.”

“Stay with them for lunch. And tea,” suggested Ava. “Eat someone else out of house and home for a change. That’s what friends are for.”

Karen had no idea what friends were for. She had never made one. Never come even close. Ava had taught her that. Don’t trust anyone, then you won’t be hurt. Karen saw the sense in this; saw indeed that it was true. Of course she would never know how much hurt she’d been saved but tried to believe it was an awful lot as this made never having a friend easier to bear.

“Alternatively,” continued Ava, “the lounge could do with a good going over.”

A short while later, when Karen was washing up, the telephone rang. Ava answered and in next to no time was engaged in quiet but rather frenzied conversation with George Footscray. He had called to say that her revelations at the conclusion of yesterday’s meeting had struck him as so sensational that he had contacted the Causton Echo. They very much wanted to do an interview. Should it be convenient a reporter and photographer would come to Rainbow Lodge that very afternoon. As her representative he would naturally be present to support and advise her.

Ava put the phone down with great care. She sat still, breathing very slowly, calming her nerves. It would never do at this stage to go to pieces. Not that there was much chance of that – she could cope with Fame; had been training for it all her life. Of course, George would have to go. Setting up an interview with the local rag was one thing. The nationals, radio and television, the media as a whole was something else. Ava made a careful note of the name Max Clifford.

Kate was gradually feeling more and more at home in Appleby House. It was over a week now since Dennis had died and yesterday his ashes had been interred, at Benny’s request, in the churchyard of St. Anselm’s. The Lawsons had been surprised at the turnout. Most of the village had been present and all the staff from Dennis’s office. His partner’s wife, Gilda Latham, organised everything and also put a notice in The Times, which probably explained the presence of quite a few mourners strange to the village. For such a private person Dennis seemed not to have been as short of friends as was generally imagined.

Of course, Kate’s main concern was Benny – how she would cope with such a painful occasion so soon after her traumatic experience at Kinders. So Kate was relieved, if a little surprised, when Benny said she was not going to the funeral but would pay her respects in her own time and in her own way. Benny was continuing to hold herself together with what seemed to Kate a determination bordering on the manic. Her pursuit of “justice for Dennis” remained both fiery and constant and she wrote more and more letters, though Kate could not help noticing there were still no replies. Perhaps Benny had given up hoping, for she no longer stood at the gate at ten o’clock looking out for the postman.

This morning, thought Kate, watching her help to clear the table, Benny appeared to be listening for something. As she handed cups and cereal bowls to Mrs. Crudge at the sink her head was cocked on one side, like that of a bright bird. Something was going on between those two. Kate had noticed complicitous smiles. Lips tightening with satisfaction, raised eyebrows, whispered conversations that stopped if anyone happened by. They were like two children bursting with a secret.

The telephone rang. Still attached to a toast rack Benny shot across the room and snatched up the receiver. She listened briefly, said something barely audible and hung up. Her face was burning quite red with excitement as she stared at Doris.

Doris’s eyebrows went up so high they almost disappeared into her hairline. She stuck her thumb up in the air and cried, “What’d I tell you?”

Benny gave a choked-up little squeal and ran from the house.

Well, if they think, thought Kate, I’m going to ask what it’s all about they can think again. Even at school she had never wanted to join any of the supposedly secret societies. She picked up her clipboard and pencil and went off to finish listing Aunt Carey’s furniture. An antique dealer from Aylesbury was coming that afternoon to value what she and Mallory wished to sell.

To Kate’s surprise this was nearly everything, for Benny, offered whatever she would like, had chosen a single picture that had always hung over Carey’s bed, a small but beautiful oil painting of a pewter jug holding rich, creamy roses and a tangle of honeysuckle resting on a highly polished table. You could see reflections of the flowers, their outlines wavery and indistinct as if underwater, the colours subdued but still full of life. Benny, stammering out her gratitude, had pressed it to her heart.

Kate had worked her way through the attics, all the bedrooms and the two large rooms on the ground floor. The ones with french windows that opened on to the terrace where she and Mallory had sat drinking Pimm’s and dreaming their dreams and waiting for Dennis to come to dinner. But that was all behind them now, or would be once Benny had given up this mad crusade. Kate wondered how long that would be. She hoped not too long. It was painful to watch Benny, as Kate saw it, deliberately wounding herself afresh every day. Fighting to prove something that had already been disproved beyond any shadow of a doubt.

While Kate had been checking out the furniture, Mallory had been reading the very last book in the very first bag. Kate was trying not to get disheartened about the future – heavens, the company wasn’t even registered yet. But hours of wading through leaden prose, duff syntax and jokes unfunny when they were first cracked over a thousand years ago had left her feeling she never wanted to pick up a book again – hardly an ideal position for someone about to start their own publishing house. Kate was chastened to realise just how much sifting must have been done before her monthly bag of reader’s manuscripts arrived. They didn’t call it the slush pile for nothing.

She found Mallory stretched out on one of the old steamer chairs in the conservatory, seemingly engrossed. For a moment Kate stood quietly, watching him through the glass. Unaware, as relaxed as she had seen him for some little while, Mallory frowned, quickly turned a page and read on. It was a relief to see him really involved in something, if only temporarily. Over the last few days he had sorted through his aunt’s papers, visited the offices of Pippins Direct and met and talked with their workers in the orchard. He had done a fair amount of tidying in the garden and been welcoming and sociable if people called, but Kate knew that all these activities occupied him only tenuously. Always at the back of his mind she sensed a growing anxiety and assumed it was to do with Polly. Where she was, how she was, what she was doing, who she was doing it with. Kate longed to share the anxiety – indeed, had quite a bit of her own after discovering Polly had been in trouble – but her concern was mixed with considerable irritation. After all, their daughter was grown up. She’d probably just gone off somewhere for a break with some friends. Why couldn’t Mallory ever let go?

“Mal,” she moved down the black and white steps, “I was just wondering…”

“Mmm.”

“What you think about—”

“Hang on a sec.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve found something worth reading.”

There was a cry from the kitchen. Then another. Two voices joined in overlapping jubilant conversation. Someone (it sounded like Doris) started to screech with excitement. Kate hurried to see what the matter was.

She discovered Benny sitting at the kitchen table with Doris leaning over her shoulder. They were reading a newspaper. Both became silent as Kate entered, staring at her with expressions she could not quite fathom. Defiance perhaps, on Benny’s part. Doris seemed to be struggling to express nothing at all and succeeded in looking merely constipated.

“What is it, Ben?” asked Kate. “What’s happened?”

“This has happened,” said Doris, leaning over and tapping a black-and-white photograph. “That’s what.”

“Can I have a look?”

Benny hesitated, not passing the newspaper straight across as Kate had expected.

Kate said, “For heaven’s sake,” reached out and took it. She saw the picture of a woman excessively made up with shoulder-length black hair and heavy lidded, dark eyes. She had on a black dress with long sleeves and a lowish scoop neckline. A large jewelled cross rested on the solid shelf of her bosom. Her name was Ava Garret and she could have stepped straight out of a Dracula movie. Kate, immediately inclined to giggle, sobered as she read: “MEDIUM MURDER SENSATION. THE TRUTH FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.” Suddenly uneasy she pushed the Causton Echo back across the table.

“I think you should read it, Mrs. Lawson.” Doris, vindication personified, swelled visibly. “It’s about poor Mr. Brinkley.”

“Dennis?” Reluctantly Kate dragged the Echo back. Read the rest of the article. Folded the paper so the relevant page was on the inside and crammed it into the waste bin. More disturbed than she was prepared to admit she said, “How can people believe such nonsense?”

“Well, I’m very sorry,” said Doris, un-sorrily, “but it’s not nonsense. She described the room that the machines were in, all the details. Everything.”

“So you see, Kate,” said Benny, “the police will have to listen to me now.”

“Benny.” Kate reached out and took Benny’s hand. Little swellings, shiny knobs of incipient arthritis were developing on the knuckles. Kate stroked them gently. How could she make her affection clear without colluding in this extraordinary fantasy? “Can’t you let go of all this?”

“Oh! why won’t you believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” lied Kate, “I’m just afraid you’ll make yourself ill.”

Benny stared stubbornly at the table. Doris turned to deal with the congealing dishes in the sink. Kate went away to gather early windfalls for an apple charlotte. Later on, putting the russet peelings in the bin, she noticed the newspaper had disappeared. And so had Benny.

“That mad woman’s here again,” said Sergeant Troy.

“What mad woman’s that?” asked Barnaby. He never seemed to meet any other sort these days. Recently he had successfully concluded a case featuring a poet who wore only latex, lived on liquorice allsorts and worshipped a horse she believed to be the reincarnation of Radclyffe Hall. And she was the straight man.

“The one who thought her friend was murdered, remember? Those weird machines?”

“I thought we’d sorted that.”

“She’s now got proof.”

“So talk to her. Find out what it consists of.”

“She wants to see you.”

“Everybody wants to see me. Joyce asked what the chances were only last week. She was quite rude, actually.”

“It won’t take long.” Troy paused. “We’ve got an easy day.”

“The first since Christmas.”

“She’s terribly excited.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Could be she’s really on to something.”

“Oh God. What was her name again?”

Benny came in confidently, holding her embroidered bag, a smile all across her earnest pink face. She sat down facing the chief inspector and said, “I knew you’d understand how important it was.”

“I believe you have some vital information for us, Miss Frayle.”

“Absolutely. Cutting the flim-flam, chief inspector, and coming straight to the point, here is proof positive,” continued Benny, opening the Causton Echo, “that my dear friend, Dennis Brinkley, was murdered.”

Troy perched on the wide windowsill and flipped open his notebook. He listened. Barnaby listened. Benny finished reading. The DCI turned his head and glared at his unfortunate sergeant. Troy closed his notebook and prepared to show Miss Frayle out.

“You do understand what this means, I hope?” Benny, now sounding slightly less confident, got out of her chair.

“I do, Miss Frayle,” said Barnaby and thought he spoke the truth. He understood that she had loved Dennis Brinkley and that his death had left her deeply disturbed. He wondered briefly about her family. If someone was supporting her at home and if she was seeing a doctor. Thankfully it was none of his business.

“You’ll look into it now?” cried Benny over her shoulder as Troy eased her firmly through the door.

“Don’t worry, Miss Frayle,” replied Barnaby. “We’ll do everything that’s necessary.”

15

Andrew Latham leaned back in Dennis’s office chair. His long legs were crossed at the knees, his arms crooked in the air, hands linked behind his neck. He was staff-watching through the open door and deriving much pleasure from the process. He was used to barely concealed animosity from the men. Now the women too seemed to have turned against him. Even Gail Fuller, whom he had had every which way across the photocopier after hours. But Andrew enjoyed their resentment, the quick ceasing of conversation when he came into the room. He knew what they’d been talking about for all their maudlin pretence at sorrow. What happens now? Are our jobs safe? Will we get another? That was until today. Today they were passing round the Causton Echo, agog with amazement, amusement, derision, distress.

Gilda appeared to take the article very seriously. At breakfast, moodily forking a lard omelette to and fro, she had announced an intention of getting in touch with the medium in question straightaway.

“What on earth for?” Andrew addressed his remark to an undercooked sausage. He had no stomach for looking directly at his wife without protective lenses, especially first thing in the morning. A blubber mountain draped in gingham, a moon face nodding and wobbling on a column of fat so soft and loose it was corrugated, like a squib. Only her coarse, beige hair, confined by several large rollers, pleased the eye, giving the charming impression of young hedgehogs at play.

“To see if Daddy comes through, of course.”

“Of course,” repeated Andrew. “It would be interesting to see how he’s getting on up there. What the scrap iron situation might be.”

Gilda looked at her husband sharply. This was not the first “take it two ways” remark he had made lately. She hoped he was not getting above himself. Then hoped he was, because it would be such a pleasure yanking him down again.

“Anyone can be sarky, Andrew.”

“Can they, darling?”

“It’s the lowest form of wit.”

He decided not to essay any higher form of wit. It might just strike her on the funny bone and Gilda had a laugh like a machine gun. He forced himself to look across the table and smile. How typical of her to home in on a really disturbing item of news and immediately translate it into something relevant only to herself. The alarming suggestion that someone they had both known well had possibly been murdered seemed to have passed her completely by. Andrew pointed this out.

“They who live by the sword shall die by the sword.”

That was the Reader’s Digest talking. She was always writing down pithy sayings to toss into the conversational pool on the rare occasions they had guests. It made her very unpopular. No one loves a know-all.

“If you say so, dear.”

Gilda immediately contradicted herself. “Of course, it’s all made up. We’re not the sort of people to know people who get themselves murdered.”

“Why go and see the medium then?”

He should have known better. The next twenty minutes was filled with a lecture on how those who depended on others for their bread and butter should know better than to keep picking those others up or putting them down all the time. And she was there to tell him that the patience of those others was not inexhaustible. But years of this had left Andrew indifferent. By the time he had backed his Punto out of the double garage Gilda’s onslaught was not even a memory.

Back in the present moment he smiled again, knowing himself to be in the happy position of being about to wrong-foot a whole roomful of people who didn’t like him. Any minute now Brinkley’s solicitor would be arriving. He had rung asking for an appointment the previous day and the hour was nigh. It would no doubt be something to do with the disposition of Dennis’s half of the business. Given their mutual antipathy Andrew did not expect to benefit in any way himself. He just hoped the benefactor would be easygoing and not the sort to yack on about the Protestant work ethic every five minutes. Should this be the case Andrew planned to say that actually he was only a sleeping partner and just came into the office from time to time to rally the troops. If he thought Gilda wouldn’t find out, and if she’d given him enough money to enjoy any sort of life, this would have always been his preferred modus operandi. But perhaps the new partner would be a man after his own heart. One for the ladies, prepared to cover up for Andrew’s lapses in return for similar favours. Pretty unlikely given that he would probably be a friend or relative of Dennis. Still, you never knew your luck.

Gail Fuller rang through to say that Mr. Ormerod had arrived. Andrew strode into reception with a professional smile and outstretched hand. The solicitor looked more like a farmer: a stout man, dressed in cords and a multi-pocketed sleeveless jerkin over a tweed polo-necked jumper. He also wore a fly fishing hat. Andrew attempted to conceal his surprise and Mr. Ormerod murmured something about meeting a client directly afterwards at the cattle market. As Andrew led the way to his inner sanctum there was a tug on his sleeve.

“A moment, Mr. Latham, if you please.”

Andrew frowned. “What is it?”

“It would perhaps be more relevant if I conducted our business here in the main office. Perhaps the lady in reception might also be present?”

Andrew felt a chill of apprehension. He called Gail Fuller, then walked to the nearest desk, picked up a large, extremely heavy metal tape dispenser and crashed it down, making everyone jump.

He said: “Take a break – for a change,” followed by, “This is Dennis’s solicitor – Mr. Ormerod.”

A few murmurs of greeting but most people just looked bewildered. Andrew noticed Leo Fortune didn’t look bewildered, the shit-faced weasel.

“I’m sure you must all have been concerned about the situation here. About your futures.” The tone was encouraging and kindly. Mr. Ormerod smiled at everyone and produced a long foolscap envelope from one of his pockets. “I know how much Mr. Brinkley valued both your work and the friendly and pleasant atmosphere that was constantly maintained here. Not always the case in a large office, I assure you.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake get on with it, you maundering old windbag. Andrew swallowed sour liquid, longed to pee, tried to look as if none of this was anything to do with him. Unaware his hands were trembling.

“Certainly in my experience,” continued the solicitor, removing a single crisp sheet of paper from his envelope, “this type of bequest is unique. Mr. Brinkley has left his share of the business known as Brinkley and Latham to ‘all of the staff currently employed in the said business at the time of my death.’” He paused as excited murmurs broke out. There was some nervous laughter and Jessica, the office junior, started to cry. Gail Fuller gave her a cuddle and said not to worry, it would be just like working in John Lewis. Andrew, white-faced, gulped down more acid. When the noise gentled somewhat Mr. Ormerod spoke over it.

“This share to be divided pro rata and calculated according to the length of service of each individual represented. There is a request that Mr. Fortune – who, incidentally, inherits Mr. Brinkley’s car – should carry out the necessary computation. Are you prepared to do this, er…?” His glance wavered between the men present.

“That’s me,” said Leo. “And yes, I am.”

“Then I shall be hearing from you soon.” The solicitor beamed around the room again and departed, his leather top boots creaking at every step.

Andrew put on his coat, picked up his empty briefcase and followed. No way, no way in the entire motherfucking world would he remain behind. Imagine – shut up in his glass booth pretending to be busy while being forced to listen to the babbling and braying outside of the suddenly solvent. Morons popping corks, hurling party favours about, trying on funny hats.

There was silence as he passed through reception. Silence as he pulled the main door to. Then, running down the stairs, he heard ironical cheering break out. Crossing the market square he paused at the statue of Reuben Cozens and looked back. They were all crowding around the window, waving and laughing.

At Rainbow Lodge things were proceeding apace. The local commercial station, Radio Foresight, based in Uxbridge, had picked up the news item on Ava’s revelations and wanted to interview her on their afternoon chat show. The producer contacted the Echo, who gave them George Footscray’s number. He in turn called on Ava, offering to set up the meeting and to go with her if she would like. Ava, though delighted by the speed of her rapid ascent to stardom, was not best pleased that it was still being handled by a nobody with bad breath and fallen arches. A few brisk, well-chosen words made it clear that she had already moved into another league entirely. George, who had been dreaming that his world too was about to open up and that he might be on the point of managing the next Mystic Meg, ground his unstable false teeth and sadly returned to his crack-brained mother and macramé chandeliers.

The programme ran from 3:30 for an hour. Ava was asked to be there by 3:15. She drove to the outskirts of Uxbridge, then took a taxi to the studio but could have saved the money, for no one was waiting outside to greet her. In reception a slip of a girl wearing a pink plastic skirt no wider than a hair ribbon and a T-shirt reading “Let’s Do It” took her name and asked her to wait. Soon another slightly older girl turned up, this time in a halter top and floor-length black hobble skirt.

“Hi – I’m Cambria DeLane? Corey’s assistant?”

“Good after—”

But the girl, taking pinched little steps, was already disappearing. Ava followed, wondering how someone whose duties included meeting important visitors was allowed to go around with rainbow-striped hair hoicked into a bunch on the top of her head and constrained by a leopard-print bow.

Cambria opened the door of a narrow rectangular room with one glass wall through which you could see the studio. A youth with headphones, Jim by name, was sitting at a control panel and Ava was relieved to see he looked at least old enough to have left school. Another, even older, came forward to greet her. He wore shades, sprayed-on jeans and a baggy vest with “REM” printed on it. His skin and hair were fawn and both looked as if they could do with a good detox. He said: “Hello.”

“Good after—”

“Get us some tea, heart face.” As Cambria disappeared he enclosed Ava’s outstretched hand in both of his own, cradling and squeezing it with careful tenderness, as if it were a ripe peach. “I’m Corey Panting. We’re just so thrilled you’ve agreed to come on the show, Ms. Barret.”

“Garret. And it’s Mrs.”

“I’m so sorry.” He frowned and wondered what other misinformation lay in wait for him. The research department was staffed by barely paid, inattentive graduates. Lightly armed with degrees in media studies, they regarded local radio as merely a stepping stone. Their eyes were always on the next big thing, which frequently proved to be the dole queue.

“I expect,” continued Corey Panting, “you’re familiar with the programme.”

“No,” said Ava.

“Ah.” This had never happened before. Even if the interviewee had never heard of Corey’s People they had not been rude enough to say so. “Well, briefly—”

Cambria came in with the tea. It was not even in a real cup and Ava refused it. This was not at all what she had expected.

Corey continued, “I introduce you. Fill in a bit of background, then start the interview—”

“How on earth do you manage to see anything down here with those sunglasses on?”

“If you could just listen, please? We don’t have a lot of time.” What Corey occasionally did, if the interviewee appeared lively, articulate and intelligent was ask them to stay on for the rest of the programme, contribute to any discussions or phone-ins. Not this one. “So, if I can quickly recap on what we have on you?” He picked up his notes, rattled the information off at some speed, then asked if there were any serious errors.

“Not errors as such but you have left out a recent and extremely important development in my career.”

“What’s that, then?” He glanced at his watch.

“Consultant on psychic matters to the Almeida Theatre.”

“The Almeida?” Now his voice revealed genuine interest and respect. Corey loved the theatre. “How did that come about?”

“The actress playing Madame Arcati in their new production of Blithe Spirit came to see me personally. And things developed from there.”

“I see.” Somehow he found that hard to believe. Yet why lie about a thing so easily checkable? And the stuff last Sunday had apparently been witnessed by a hall full of people.

Time to go in. Determined to appear unfazed, Ava strolled up to a round table on which stood two microphones, sat down and rearranged her paisley shawl.

“Could you take your bag off the table, please?” Then, when she had, “And say a few words into the mike?”

“That won’t be necessary. I have worked in the business for many years. My voice—”

“It’s purely technical, Ava. The engineer needs a sound level.”

“Of course.” Ava squared up to the mike. “Testing. One, two. One two. Mary had—”

“That’s fine.” Corey widened his eyes at the glass panel. The engineer, laughing, stuck up his thumb. And off they went.

It was not an easy interview, which was surprising, for Corey had rarely come across anyone so utterly self-obsessed and with such a need to talk about themselves. The trouble was dragging her to the point at issue. He led her forcibly from glowing accounts of her participation in West End musicals only to be blitzed by a description of cabaret performances that would have turned Ute Lemper green with envy.

“But what I’d really like to talk about,” said Corey, gamely butting in for the umpteenth time, “are your exceptional gifts as a medium. Especially, of course, that extraordinary incident last weekend at the spiritualist church at Forbes Abbot. I understand you were visited by the spirit of a man who told you he’d been murdered?”

“That is correct,” replied Ava. “I saw and heard him very clearly. He gave me his name and described the scene of his death in great detail. The strange machines, the towering walls. The person who killed him was present but only as a shape surrounded by mist. Unfortunately, just as it was beginning to clear there was a disturbance in what is laughingly called the real world—a child crying—and the spirit of Mr. Brinkley vanished.”

“Just like that?”

“They like quiet. Human sounds put them off. I suppose it reminds them of what they’re missing.”

“I can see that it would.” Fatally Corey glanced across at the control booth. Jim, his face completely covered with a white tea towel, was looming over the panel, arms wide, fingers hooked into claws.

“But he will return.”

“How…how can you…so sorry…excuse me…” Corey drank some water, carefully. “How can you be sure?”

“Top mediums – and it’s no secret we can be counted on the fingers of one hand – have special powers of clairvoyance.”

“Could you bring him up now then?”

“This isn’t a game, Mr. Panting.”

“It would be a first for radio. And I know our listeners would be absolutely thrilled to discover ‘whodunnit.’ Of course if you can’t—”

“It is not a question of can’t. It is simply not possible to speak from the angelic octave at the drop of a hat. One has to vibrate in a much higher frequency, which needs intensive preparation. Also the person the spirit wishes to contact must be present. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to talk to you.”

When Corey got his wind back he said, “I know there have been cases where mediums have helped the police considerably during a murder enquiry. Are you in touch with them at all?”

“I expect to hear from them momentarily. Though we must remember that only half the story has so far been told.”

“And we shall hear the conclusion, the unmasking, as it were, this coming Sunday?”

“That is absolutely correct.”

“At the Church of the Sleight of Hand?”

“Near at Hand,” snapped Ava.

“You’ll have a full house,” said Corey.

And they did too, though not for quite the reasons he expected.

Andrew Latham heard Corey’s People almost by default. When Gilda went out she always left the radio on, having heard, via the Neighbourhood Watch committee, that it was common knowledge this deterred burglars. It seemed to Andrew that if the knowledge was all that common any burglar worth his salt would be inclined to think, on hearing a radio play, that the householder was out.

He spooned coffee into the cafetière and, waiting for the kettle to boil, studied Gilda’s wall calendar. It had a square for every day and August was nearly all scrawled over, which was great. Whenever his wife was out Andrew came home, and so far she hadn’t twigged. Right now Gilda would be at her art class. This meant another insipid watercolour Blu-Tacked to her study wall. God alone knew why she called it a study. The only serious academic effort made was an Open University Foundation Course a couple of years earlier. A month had been enough. After a warning from her oculist that further intensive study could seriously damage her eyes, pens, folders, set books and stacks of virgin paper were hurled into the dustbin.

Andrew made the coffee and returned to the calendar. Tomorrow night: play reading at Causton. Friday a.m.: massage, Shoshona, though how the poor girl ever found her hands again was a miracle. Friday p.m.: hair, eyebrows, manicure. No expense spared to keep madame entertained, intellectually challenged and ravissante. Whereas poor monsieur…

Andrew poured the coffee, hot and strong. He needed it. After leaving the office he’d gone into the Magpie and spent the last of this week’s allowance on several large glasses of red wine and a large dish of moules marinières. Eating at Bellissima would not have been an option. Gilda would want to know why the missing food and what he’d been doing at home in the middle of the day devouring it.

She’d be back around five but that was all right. He’d explain that everyone had knocked off early for a bit of a do after hearing about their collective windfall. He wondered how she’d take the news. Torn two ways, was his guess. Hovering between delight at his discomfiture and annoyance at the sudden existence of a splinter group. He wouldn’t put it past her to try buying some of them out. One sale would tip the voting balance her way. It would certainly be worth her while. The business was thriving and already worth double Berryman’s original stake.

Andrew was trying not to dwell on this unpleasant example of Sod’s law (to her that hath shall be given) when the Corey Panting interview began. He couldn’t not listen. The whole business was connected to Dennis, after all, as well as sounding really weird. Could this woman be genuine? Impossible. They were all fakes, necromancers. Be a funny old world if they weren’t. Pretty scary, too. Andrew’s spine felt suddenly tingly and cold. He shook his head and shoulders, shrugging off such a ridiculous notion. And laughed aloud, a cheery sound in the quiet kitchen. Then he drew a bentwood stool up to the worktop, took a deep swig of Lavazza’s Crema e Gusto and settled down to be entertained.

Standing in the larder at Rainbow Lodge Karen was fretting about her tea. Nothing had changed since breakfast time. The same curling remnants of Kingsmill lay in the bread bin. And there was still a coating of peanut butter sticking to the otherwise empty jar. Karen scraped it on to a piece of bread, folded it over and crammed it into her mouth. Dry and stale, it almost choked her. She swallowed some water, then filled the kettle, plugged it in and wandered into the lounge.

“D’you want a drink, Ava?”

Her mother was lying on an old put-u-up, feet draped over the arm, eyes closed. Pressing the palm of her hand to her forehead she gave an exquisite moan.

“Are you all right?” Karen hated picking up her cue so promptly but years of habit were hard to break.

“Just exhausted, darling. The press are so demanding.”

“I expect they are.” Karen’s face and voice were expressionless. “Did you do any shopping while you were out?”

“Shopping?”

“Only Roy’ll want to eat when he comes in.”

The terms of their lodger’s agreement supposedly covered his room, breakfast and supper. Fairly quickly his supper, which had started off in a quite hearty way with sausages or faggots or a little chicken curry in the microwave had dwindled, first to beans or an egg on toast and then to a piece of cake or a biscuit and a cup of tea. Ava calculated, rightly, that he would not complain. Where else would he find such comfortable accommodation so near London for seventy-odd pounds and no extras? And it was not as if he had fares to find. Roy travelled to and from Tesco each day on his moped.

“How did you think the broadcast went?” asked Ava.

“Brilliant,” said Karen, who had lost herself in a book and forgotten to switch on.

“They’ve asked me back. Want me to do a regular ‘slot,’ as they call it. Not strictly mystical.” She laughed in a light, merry way. “I’ll be talking about the theatre generally, reviewing new plays, probably interviewing stars.”

“In Uxbridge?” muttered Karen, now back in the kitchen and staring into the small, nearly empty freezer. There was a greyish-pink burger and a few frozen peas. Plus a tin of spaghetti in the cupboard under the sink. “But if I give that to Roy,” pondered Karen, “what’ll I have?” She went back to the lounge, hovering in the doorway.

Ava gave an exaggerated wince and closed her eyes. Sometimes she found it hard to believe Karen was actually her child. Apart from the dreary plainness of her appearance she was just not intelligent. Bottom of the class in almost everything. Incredible to think her father had been to a public school. Sometimes Ava wondered if he had lied about that. God knows, he had lied about everything else. She turned her attention back to the television but was not allowed to enjoy it for long.

“Ava?”

“Look at him.” Ava shook her head, laughing. “That Richard Whiteley.”

“Could we have some fish and chips to celebrate?”

“I must make contact. Get him on my show.”

“It’s the Rumbling Tum, Wednesday.”

This mobile chippy came to Forbes Abbot once a week. It did only modest business in the village proper, where people were a bit shamefaced to be seen queuing at the counter and hurrying home with greasy parcels. But almost everyone in the Crescent would be buying. The fish and chips were excellent. Crisp and hot with little triangular boxes of tartare sauce for only twenty p extra. Roy had treated Karen one time and she thought she had never tasted anything so delicious.

“Ava?”

“Celebrate what?”

“Your new spot.”

“Slot.” But a little celebration was not a bad idea. She could afford it And it would stop Karen doing her starving waif act. Though Ava had to admit, grudgingly, that she did it very well. She was her mother’s child and appeared to have inherited her remarkable acting talent. But, alas, none of her unstoppable drive. Bit of a waste really.

“What time do they come?”

“Oh, oh!” cried Karen, jumping up and down. “Can we get some for Roy as well?”

Mallory, having had a brief respite from his paternal anxieties by immersing himself in a truly gripping historical novel discovered in the final post bag, was once more at a loose end. Kate had now started the book. He could see her at the end of the croquet lawn, lying in a hammock strung up between the catalpa trees. In the dappled light her blue and white dress was patterned with reflections from the trumpet-shaped flowers. But there was nothing dreamy about her pose. She was reading quickly, flipping the pages over, her profile alert and concentrated.

Mallory began to wander around the large, three-quarters empty house. The dealer from Aylesbury had returned that morning and most rooms were now practically empty. Everything in the kitchen stayed. Here they planned to replace stuff gradually – a decent fridge, some fitted cupboards, a dishwasher.

Mallory’s continued anxiety about Polly quite blunted the sadness he had expected to feel as he watched his aunt’s belongings carried away by indifferent hauliers. Beautiful things that he had been familiar with all his life. Furniture that he had slept on, hidden inside, rearranged to make forts or cars or planes or boats. Boxes of games, mirrors, pictures, ornaments, china. He ticked them all off the list with the man from Aylesbury and felt not a qualm.

As soon as the van drove away he went to the phone and rang Polly’s number. Knowing how much this continual vigilance annoyed Kate he had taken to using the box in the village if she was in the house. Once or twice during the day and most evenings he would go out “for a little stroll.” Sometimes he would manage to nip out and back before she realised he had gone.

But tomorrow – ah, tomorrow he should be able to go round to the flat in person. In the morning he and Kate planned to make a really early start, driving back to London to sort out any last-minute packing at Cordwainer Road. A final reading of the electricity meter and a telephone disconnection and they’d be all set to move out that day.

He wished they could leave now. He was sick of killing time, poodling about. He wanted to get on with life. To do something definite and practical, showing real results. Moving would definitely accomplish that. But he also believed, for no sensible reason at all, that once they were properly settled at Appleby House all manner of other things would quite suddenly be well. The Celandine Press would be properly set up and begin to function. He and Kate would get to know people and perhaps become involved in village affairs, as his aunt had been. His probably baseless worries about Polly would be resolved. Maybe she had just taken off somewhere with friends. Students do, after all. And now was the time for it. The autumn term didn’t start for nearly six weeks.

He and Kate were taking Benny with them to London. They had talked this over and decided it was not wise to leave her alone in her present state. Also they were concerned as to what she might get up to. She had already boasted at lunch of one more visit to the police station and of laying new evidence as to Dennis’s death before the CID. Her grip on reality seemed to be slackening by the minute. She didn’t want to go. Mallory persuaded her by pretending that there was still so much to sort out at the other end that he doubted they’d be able to cope alone.

Now he wandered the desolate spaces on the ground floor of Appleby House with all these thoughts running endlessly round and round and round like a mouse in his skull. He needed to be with someone. To have a banal, pointless conversation. Benny seemed to have disappeared. Kate was reading. So Mallory came to wondering if the Parnells had got back from their mid-morning appointment at Harley Street. Earlier on they had left some spinach in the porch of Appleby House. He decided to return the basket and say “thank you.”

No one seemed to hear his knock so Mallory just walked in. A furious tapping and clattering was coming from Judith’s office as well as urgent wheezes from her fax machine. He put his head round the door and she directed a vivid strained grimace in his direction, which he decided was meant to be a smile. Then he was waved away.

Ashley was in the wicker armchair by the sitting-room window, reading The Times. Or rather, holding it in a listless manner while staring out at the raggle-taggle garden. Mallory wondered if the news from the specialist had not been good but hesitated to ask.

Ashley said, “Listen to that.” There was a pause. The racket from Judith’s office continued unabated. “She’s searching the Net.”

“For?”

“This Harley Street bloke gave us a list of clinics that specialise in treating my disease. France, Switzerland, America, Cuba, would you believe? So Judith’s checking them out.”

“I hope it all works out.”

“Christ – so do I. I’m trying not to dwell on it, you know?”

Mallory silently thanked God he didn’t know. The only pain he experienced was the dull ache of ongoing worry. Though he could feel it slowly grinding him down, at least it wouldn’t finish him off. Then he remembered a book he’d read once called More Die of Heartbreak and couldn’t help wondering.

The silence when the machines suddenly stopped, though beautiful, was brief. Judith burst in waving a piece of paper, crying: “This is the place!” Followed by, “Ah – Mallory.” The subtext – you still here? – was practically audible.

So Mallory found himself once again out in the fruitful, fragrant garden and easing his way through the broken wooden gate. Tired of the village street and the shop and the phone box and the duck pond he walked in the other direction, drawn by the sound of water babbling sweetly over stones.

But as he was passing the churchyard he heard a human voice, quietly murmuring to itself. He stepped up and over the low brick wall on to the soft grass, then walked towards the back of St. Anselm’s. Here were two new graves, both covered with wreaths. On the nearest the flowers were so fresh the colours shone. On the much smaller plot, containing Dennis’s ashes, they were already half dead and turning brown.

Benny was sitting on a little fold-up stool of the type used in theatre queues. Sitting as near to the flowers as she possibly could without treading on them. She was pushing her head right down as if addressing not the dead but the merely deaf.

Concerned and anxious, Mallory moved nearer. He was not afraid of disturbing her. All her energy and concentration was focused on the square of dry brown earth. She wasn’t crying, she didn’t even look unhappy, just incredibly intense. Her voice, though it had an extremely urgent under-tow, was muted and he could hardly make out the words, though now and again the odd one was suddenly clear. “Promise…” he heard. “Believe” and “true.” Then “authorities” and “promise” again. And again.

His heart moved to pity, Mallory hesitated. He hated just to walk away. On the other hand, plainly this was something extremely private that Benny needed to do. Perhaps it was her own way of mourning. She had chosen a time in the late afternoon when the churchyard was empty and she might well become distressed at the discovery that someone had been watching. Mallory backed off silently, then turned to leave. As he did so a flock of rooks rose from the elms, cawing and croaking. Benny, scrambling to her feet and flinging both arms across her face, screamed.

“Benny…”

She jumped and cried out again, shrinking from him.

“It’s all right, it’s me. It’s Mallory.” Gently he took her hand then tucked her trembling arm through his own. He kissed her cheek. It was cold as ice. “Time for tea. We were wondering where you were.” Then, as she stood unmoving, staring at him, “Come home, Ben.”

She came with him and not reluctantly. But as they neared the lych-gate she stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. It was a deeply worried look. “Do you think he understood, Mallory?”

Mallory checked a sigh. What could he say? His tenderness for her sorrow was mingled with irritation that made him ashamed.

Ava was at the gate of Rainbow Lodge, wearing her floaty black and gold kaftan and ostensibly watching out for the Rumbling Tum. She had been in and out several times, to Roy and Karen’s surprise, for Ava had never before shown the slightest interest in fish and chips. This was her fourth outing. So far there hadn’t been a soul to notice her. No one in their garden, no one outside waiting for the chippy or gossiping over the fence. No one to hiss: “There she is. Look—she was on the radio. You know? Corey’s People? It was ever so good. Swayne Crescent’s really going up in the world.” They nearly all listened to the local station. Ava tuned in to Radio Two but switched to Four if anyone called at the house or the phone rang.

Finally someone did emerge. The awful Mr. Carboy at number seventeen, preparing to clean his Metro. Still, he was better than nothing. Ava waited until he was looking in her direction, then raised a gracious hand. He stared back for a moment, then threw a bucket of water over the car. Ava smiled ruefully and shook her head. How quickly she was being shown the underside to fame. But the resentment of little people with narrow, boring lives would soon be left behind. Her position at the Almeida would inevitably lead to other engagements. More and more people would know her name for she would insist on being listed in the programme as Spiritual Consultant. There would be other newspaper interviews but this time in the posh Sundays. “A Life in the Day of…” One thing was for sure, she couldn’t stay in this dump. Imagine Parkinson having to come to Rainbow Lodge. Or, even worse, Richard and Judy. Time to move on.

“Problem,” Karen was saying inside the house. “I don’t think we’ll get three fish and chips for five pound. Chips are fifty p minimum and cod’s really expensive.”

“Haddock’s worse,” said Roy, now up, washed (well, a lick and a promise) and dressed. He had money in his pocket but this was supposed to be his supper, already paid for. Why should he chip in? Ha ha. “Ask her for some more then.”

“She won’t give me any more.”

“Yes, she will. Tell her you’ll be shown up in front of the queue and they’ll all be talking about how stingy she is.”

“That’s a good idea.” Roy was better at this sort of thing than she was. Of course he was older and Ava wasn’t his mother. “But then she might just change her mind altogether.”

They looked gloomily at the table already set with three knives and forks, the rest of the curly bread, a tub of margarine and Sarson’s vinegar.

Karen made a worried sound. She could never understand why they were so poor. She knew what her mother got from the social for the two of them because she’d seen the books. And there was Roy’s contribution as well as the collection from the church. But last week, when her socks had gone into holes and she’d asked for some more, Ava had shouted, “D’you think I’m made of money?” That same night Karen saw her mother in a dream and she really had been made of money. She was standing very still like a dummy in a shop window and was stuck all over with notes. She had a long tongue made of copper that rolled and unrolled all the time, like a frog’s. And her breath was a mist of gold.

“Are you listening?”

“Sorry, Roy.”

“I said, alternatively…” He got up and went over to the sink. On the windowsill, cleverly concealed behind the curtain and so plainly visible to anyone walking up the garden path, was Ava’s purse. He opened it and waved a second note in the air.

“We can’t do that!”

“She owes me.”

“I’ll get the blame. I’ll be in terrible trouble.”

Roy, recognising the truth in this, replaced the note and returned to the table, digging in to his own pocket. What else could he do?

Ava, half through the door but speaking backwards loudly: “I’m expecting a message from the theatre any minute.” Then she came inside and continued in her normal voice. “I rang their admin number earlier to check on the Blithe Spirit schedule but all I got was an answerphone. You’d think a top venue like that would be a bit more on the kew veeve.”

“They’ll ring back,” said Karen.

“Naturally. But, just in case I’m in the la-la, say, ‘Mrs. Garret’s on the other line,’ and tell them to hold.”

“What if they won’t?”

“I think I’m calling the shots on this one, Roy.” Ava smiled. “Did you hear my broadcast?”

“’Course I did.” Load of crap it was, an’ all. “Took a late lunch and listened on the tranny.”

“What did George say about it?” asked Karen. She really liked George. He was always buying her sweets and crisps, which her mother had promised it was perfectly OK to accept. It had taken Ava all of five seconds accurately to sum up George’s sexuality as nil and his masculinity as minus ten.

“Ah,” she sighed now. “Poor fellow. I’m afraid he won’t be representing me in future.”

“Why not?” cried Karen.

“It’s a matter of savoir faire, really,” said Ava. “That and contacts. I tried to let him down lightly.”

It hadn’t been pleasant. George had done a lot of bleating about how much he had done for her and how loyal he’d been.

Ava had replied, “Loyal doesn’t cut it with me, George.” Then, when he had protested further, “If I’d wanted loyal I’d’ve got a dog.” At this point in her present reflections the telephone rang.

“That’s them,” cried Ava. “I mean, they. Quick –” she seized Karen, dragged her from the table, pinching her arm – “answer it.”

“Me?”

“Find out who it is. Say you’re Ava Garret’s secretary.”

“Ow—that hurts.”

“Just do it.”

Karen, her eyes watering, picked up the phone. “Hello. This is Ava Garret’s secretary. Who is calling, please?” She stared at the other two, then covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s the BBC.”

Ava gave a single sharp intake of breath. She murmured, “So soon” and began to walk with slow, fate-filled steps across the room.

“This is Ava Garret herself, in person. How may I help you?…I’d be happy to, though I am rather overwhelmed with…I see. Just a preliminary chat? Well, I’m sure I can fit that in…” Frantic silent mouthings: “Paper, paper…pen, pen.” Roy grabbed a double-glazing leaflet and a pencil stub.

“Your name is…yes, got that…I am as it happens…” She glanced at the kitchen clock. “Seven would be fine…And will that be at the ‘Beeb,’ as I believe you media people call it?…Langham Place. Near Oxford Circus…Reception desk…Oh! That is a good idea. Just in case, quite. Una momento…” More mouthing: “Mobile, mobile…quick…quick…”

Karen passed over her phone. Ava dictated her number and said her goodbyes. She turned to the others with great solemnity. “This must be he.”

“Who?”

“The stranger who will broaden my horizons.”

“Thought that was Corey Panting,” said Roy.

“He wants to take me out to dinner.”

“You’re going to be R and F all right.”

“You know what this means, Karen?”

Karen didn’t speak. She hoped it didn’t mean that she was going to have to pretend to be her mother’s sister’s child like she had when Ava joined the divorced and separated club. “Just in case,” Ava had explained, “I meet somebody.” Karen often used to wonder what would happen to her if Ava, suddenly ten years lighter, actually did meet somebody. Especially as no sister ever existed. Before she could respond to her mother’s question Roy shouted, “The chippie’s here!”

Karen pushed her chair back and ran out. Ava hurried after, paused briefly at the gate, then called loudly, “None for me, darling. I’ll be dining at the BBC.” She smiled graciously on her return at Roy. She could afford to smile now she would soon be seeing the back of him. “One could hardly arrive smelling of fish and chips.”

“You could wear some scent,” suggested Roy. “Ivy at work reckons a squirt of pong’s worth a pound of soap.”

“Does she really?” said Ava. God – how had she stood it? Look at him. Spots, greasy hair, spindly arms and legs, tattoos, all those dangling rings. He even had them in his nose like a prize bull, except that Roy would never win a prize unless it was for the dimmest, most charmless male animal in the entire universe. He wasn’t even properly clean.

“How’re you getting there?”

“Not sure.” Ava glanced at the clock. It was 5:15. How hasty she had been. How foolish. She should have thought it through; asked for a later time.

“He’ll wait,” said Roy. “He works there.”

“As a senior producer, I expect he does.”

“Best thing is the Piccadilly Line from Uxbridge. Straight through to the Circus. Ten-minute walk up Regent Street, you’re there.”

“How do you know?”

“They took a group of us from the home once. One Sat-day morning.”

More waste of public money, thought Ava, hurrying upstairs. What on earth was the point—she riffled through her wardrobe – of exposing the dregs of society to a fine institution like the BBC? Her mustard two-piece (a quick sniff under the arms) would just about pass. What a pity this invitation hadn’t come after she’d bought all her new things. Such a thought recalled her recent windfall. She took an envelope stuffed with notes from her underwear drawer and peeled off fifty pounds. About to replace the rest she hesitated. The drawer had no lock and with the two of them on their own rootling about…Roy especially she wouldn’t trust. She often wondered just how much of the church money made its way out of the velvet collecting bag and into his pockets. She slid the envelope under the mattress.

No time to make up. She’d have to do that when she got there. There was bound to be a ladies at the Tube station or near by. Her hair was a mess too, but that was easily solved. She would wear her auburn peruke, short and curly and quite youthifying in a gamine kind of way.

When she got downstairs they were both feeding their faces. There was a huge bottle of orange-coloured pop on the table and pickled eggs in a dish.

“I see you’ve not stinted yourselves.”

“I paid for those,” said Roy. “Here’s your change.”

Ava scooped it up.

Karen said, “You look really nice.”

Roy didn’t say anything. He thought she looked like a long streak of piss with a wig on.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” said Ava. “Chris and I are bound to have heaps to talk about.” She was tempted to say, “And no poking around in my room,” but didn’t want to put the idea into their heads.

“Shouldn’t you take this?” Roy held out the leaflet. “In case you forget his name.”

“I’m hardly likely to do that.” But Ava took the paper, just in case. “Don’t stay up late, Karen. When Roy leaves for work you go straight to bed.”

“But that’s only nine o’clock.”

“And don’t think I shan’t know.”

They sat quite still until the car drove off. Karen, her head nervously straining towards the window; Roy with a forkful of batter bits suspended halfway to his mouth. Only when the sound had died away did they carry on eating.

“That was fantastic.” Karen, her shrunken stomach bulging, finally laid her cutlery down. “I was really hungry.”

I bet you were, you poor little sod. “Shall we see what’s on the box then?”

“You said yesterday we could rehearse your jokes.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did, Roy. You promised.”

“Anyway, you never laugh.”

“I will today.”

“And they’re not jokes. Stand-up comedy is…” He could never remember the word. It meant hanging around watching and listening to what people said. “More like proper life.”

“If you get tired, can you do sit-down comedy?”

Roy was pretty confident he could succeed in the entertainment business because they were always laughing at him at work. To get the hang of it he’d been going to a pub with a room upstairs where anybody could have a go on Saturday night. He couldn’t get over how easy it looked. This bloke had just stood there droning on about how hard it was to get a decent shag and they were all wetting themselves.

At the back of Roy’s mind always, and at the front of his mind most of the time, was the idea that when he really made it, perhaps when he won Stars in Their Eyes he would find his mother again. She would be watching and she’d know him because mothers always recognised their own children, no matter how long it had been. Alone, he would rehearse their meeting, perfect the cracking brightness of his smile.

“Roy?” Karen was shaking his arm. “Can I look at one of your magazines?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“They’re too old for you.”

“No, they’re not.”

“Which one d’you want then?”

“The one with men in little skirts with birds’ heads walking sideways.”

“That’s the Egyptians. They were dead mystic.”

“Like the Knights Templar?”

“Nobody’s as mystic as the Knights Templar. They’d walk round for hours and hours in a weird sort of trance.”

“I still like the Egyptians best.” Karen poured some more orangeade and smiled. A rare sight. Indeed, a sorry sight. “Tell me about the mystery of the Sphinx, Roy. Go on.”

“You’ll only get all worked up.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Last time you couldn’t go to sleep.”

“Tell me about the wonderful rose crystal in its bottom. And the evil green stone of Set.”

16

It was mid-morning when Kate put her key in the door of 13 Cordwainer Road. Benny, who had not been there before, was very disappointed. As they were driving through streets of shops and terraced houses she kept looking out for a sudden change in the landscape, for the beginning of spacious semi-detached dwellings with gardens and garages; the sort of home she had always pictured Kate and Mallory living in.

Kate unpacked the fresh milk she had brought and made some tea while Mallory picked up the post in the hall. Nearly all flyers – they had already sent out change-of-address cards to family and friends – there was one personal letter, which was from the new owners. Apparently there had been some hold-up on the transportation of their furniture from Hong Kong and they wouldn’t actually be moving in for another couple of weeks. As this would hardly affect the Lawsons one way or the other, Mallory dropped the note into the bin with the rest of the junk mail. Then, as the tea brewed, he and Kate looked around the sitting room in some dismay.

“Didn’t we say we weren’t going to take that?” He was staring at a stained oak bureau that had belonged to his parents.

“Yes,” said Kate. “That and the zinc table and chairs outside and the big painted cupboard in the back bedroom.”

“That’s right. You were going to ring house clearance.”

“We, Mallory. We were going to ring house clearance.”

“You see, Ben?” Mallory picked up the Yellow Pages. “Can’t manage without you.” He looked up the relevant section. “Try all these people and say we’ve some stuff to clear. But they have to collect from this address,” he scrawled it across the page, “by mid-afternoon.”

“What if no one can come?” worried Benny.

“Then we’ll send it with the rest of the stuff and sell it down there.”

Kate, pouring the tea, stared round gloomily. “I can’t get over all these wretched pots and pans. I thought I’d packed everything.”

“There’s still some space in this box.”

“Not half enough.”

“Also, there’s Polly’s room,” said Mallory. “She should really be here.”

He had rung Polly’s number just before they left Appleby House. Dialling carefully, waiting and waiting while Kate stood by expressionless, feeling her face might crack. And what were they talking about? Two shelves of books and enough clothes to fill a bin liner.

“Polly?” Benny had stopped dialling. “She’s on holiday.”

“Holiday?”

“In Crete. With friends.”

“How do you know?” The rush of relief almost knocked Mallory off balance.

“They rang when she was down at Forbes Abbot the other week. She went out to meet them. To make final arrangements.”

“There you are, Mal,” said Kate. “Now, can we get on?”

“What?”

“We need boxes from the nearest supermarket. Then we have to pack as much as we can of the rest of the stuff before the removal men get here. The van’s due at one.”

“Right.”

“Hello? Hello – is that –” Benny screwed her eyes up at the Yellow Pages – “Mr. Tallis?…Oh, Frank. Well, I’m Benny…Fine thank you, Frank. I hope you are too? Now, there’s some lovely furniture here for clearing…Thirteen Cordwainer Road. Parsons Green, that’s right. Would you be able to come and have a look, only it has to be today?”

Kate caught Mallory’s eye. Both smiled over Benny’s head, awkwardness and suspicion dissolving in the glance. Kate thought, this time tomorrow we’ll be home with a capital H, then everything will be transformed.

Mallory thought, all that anxiety over nothing. There’ll probably be a postcard any day now. Even as he pictured it arriving Mallory felt the notches in the belt of anxiety around his chest begin to slip and slide. His breathing slowed down. His heartbeat softened.

Benny replaced the receiver. “Frank’ll be round in half an hour.”

“Thanks a lot, Ben,” said Mallory. He just stopped himself saying, “Well done.” She wasn’t a child, although the look of pride in her accomplishment might lead one to wonder.

Actually Benny was already thinking of something entirely different. She was recalling her visit last night to Doris’s house and pondering on what a stroke of luck it had been that her friend listened to the local radio station. Having heard an advance announcement of the Ava Garret interview Doris just had time to get her neighbour to record the programme. Listening, Benny realised that she had been right to place such confidence in the medium. How forthright Ava sounded. How vividly she described the communication between herself and the spirit of Dennis Brinkley. And how convincing her promises that their next dialogue would bring forth even more dramatic revelations as to the manner of his death. She should have been on the stage, thought Benny, nodding with satisfaction as the machine was finally switched off. You’d never have guessed that, from start to finish, the whole business was nothing but a pack of lies.

The rest of the morning went so smoothly that Kate found herself poised and waiting for the other shoe to drop. They decided to have toast and tinned soup in the garden, sitting on the grass, as the zinc chairs and table had been snapped up, along with all the other unwanted furniture, by Frank Tallis.

As they were stacking their bowls and plates, Kate spotted in the longish grass a small flowerpot decorated with a glaze of blue and yellow irises. She cried: “Look! Look!” and seized the pot, wrapping it in newspaper and wedging it into one of the cardboard boxes they had collected from Sainsbury’s.

“That is just so lucky. I would have hated to lose it.”

“It’s an omen,” said Benny. “You’ll see.”

The serendipity continued. The removal van arrived a few minutes early. The men were amiable, polite and efficient. Quite quickly the house was emptied of all it contained.

The occupants did not linger. Mallory left to bring the car to the front door. Benny poured the remaining milk down the sink. Kate stood looking round the sitting room where she and Mallory had spent nearly every evening for the past nine years. She felt nothing. A box to live in, merely. Now they were going home.

“You all right, Ben?”

Benny, quiet for a moment, blew her nose on a lace hanky. “Mmm.”

Kate linked arms, squeezing Benny closely against her side. How thoughtless she had been. Content in her own happiness, she had quite forgotten that Benny was returning to a village now bereft of her oldest and dearest friend. At once Kate vowed to love and care for Benny always, whatever the circumstances. They had heard no talk for some days about Dennis’s murder and Kate hoped all that nonsense was over. But if it wasn’t she would be very patient and try to understand and nurse Benny back to equanimity.

Outside Mallory hooted. As they left, Kate carrying the keys to drop off at the estate agents, the back doors of the van were being fastened and secured. The Lawsons, taking short cuts and nippy sideroads, would arrive at Appleby House first. In case of hold-ups or accident Judith and Ashley, who also had a list of what furniture went where, would let the removal men in.

But, of course, there would be no accident. It simply wasn’t that sort of day. The interior of the Golf was already hot and Mallory wound the windows down. He smiled at Kate, who smiled back, then they both smiled at Benny. Kate began to feel she was in one of those uplifting Hollywood movies full of good, shining people committed to the eternal promise of the yellow brick road. Even the removal men could have stood in for the Cheeryble brothers. Then, jumping into her clear, calm, unworried mind came a vivid image of a mile-high dinosaur, flames gushing from its gaping jaws. It reared up directly in their path, blocking the way.

Of course, it wasn’t true. The Fulham Road was going about its normal business. So where do they come from, these sudden visions? wondered Kate. These fearful eruptions crashing through the wall of the mind? Unlike Benny she did not believe in omens. Such superstitious nonsense could have no place in an ordered and rational life. All the same, she found herself unable to regain her previous calm and happy state of mind until they had all arrived safely at Forbes Abbot.

At seven o’clock when the Lawsons were setting off for London, Karen was waking up at Rainbow Lodge. She always did this as slowly as possible to keep the world out. During her first weeks at primary school, a teacher had read aloud The Sleeping Beauty. Karen was entranced. Could such a thing really be possible? To fall asleep for years and years and wake up grown up and in the arms of a handsome prince who truly loved you?

That night she had looked everywhere for a needle but no such thing was to be found. Eventually she came across a brooch with a sharp pin and pushed it so hard into her thumb it really hurt. Fairy-tale oblivion proved elusive but eventually Karen drifted off, only to wake at the usual time with blood on her pillow. Her mother had been very, very cross and Karen had to make up a story about her tooth bleeding in the night.

Now she swung her thin legs out of bed, resting none-too-clean feet on the bare lino. She scratched her head, then sniffed under her arms. It was definitely whiffy there, and down below was even more so. She knew a shower was indicated but this could be a risky business. Installed by her grandfather years ago, the system consisted of an immovable zinc shower head the size of a dinner plate and a single tap that turned both ways, producing a violent rush of either boiling or ice-cold water. Trying to catch the transforming moment meant a constant leaping in and out of the cabinet. Baths were considered an extravagance, though Ava was compelled to have one every day to refresh her aura.

Karen put on a dressing gown and crept out on to the landing. There was no sound from Ava’s room. She had come to bed pretty late. Karen had heard her, stumbling on the stairs and muttering to herself. Once she had called Karen’s name. Karen didn’t respond. Just thought how like her mother to say, “Get to bed early” before she went out, then deliberately wake you up in the middle of the night. No doubt she wanted to show off about what a wonderful day she’d had being famous. Well, Karen didn’t want to listen. Ava had never wanted to know about her day. Never wanted to hear her read. She hadn’t even come to see the Christmas play when Karen had been second page to an Orient king. So Karen had put her head under the bedclothes and pretended to snore.

The kitchen was depressing and still smelled of fish and chips. Neither she nor Roy had bothered to wash up, and greasy paper was still crumpled all over the table. A solitary pickled egg lay in a puddle of vinegar. It was gone seven. Roy would be home any minute, wanting his breakfast unless there had been some unsold sandwiches left over, as sometimes happened. Karen had gone to school one glorious morning on a Full English Breakfast baguette: sausage, bacon, egg, tomato – plus a jam doughnut and Smarties ice-cream lolly.

She stuffed the newspaper in a carrier bag, put the glasses and dirty plates in the sink, then filled the kettle to make some tea. As it came to the boil she heard Roy’s moped coughing and chuffing outside. He lifted the latch and walked in.

“Wotcha.”

“Got anything nice, Roy?”

I should get the family allowance for this one, thought Roy, not that tight old cow upstairs.

“Coupla wafers.” He passed over the Jacob’s Clubs.

“Oohh, mint. They’re my favourite.” Karen lifted the heavy kettle with both hands, filled the pot and gave it a stir. “Um…are there any sandwiches?”

“Not today, love.”

“Remember those croissants you brought once? The ones with chocolate inside.”

“Do I?” He had produced a pack of four. Gut bucket had wolfed three before he’d even got his arse up to the table. He and Karen had shared the last. Now she was putting some mugs out. Roy jerked his head towards the stairs. “Shall I give madam a call?”

Karen shrugged. She would much rather it was just her and Roy. On the other hand, Ava might come down anyway, then there’d be a lecture on how some people certainly knew how to look after themselves when others not a million miles away were lying desperate for a cuppa and parched to the bone.

Roy went to the bottom of the stairs. He shouted, “Tea up!” Waited. Shouted again. Then said, “I’ll give her a knock.”

Karen was putting three sugars in Roy’s tea when he cried out for the third time. This was a different sound. Quite panicky, as if the house was on fire. Frightened, Karen ran to the stairs and met him coming down.

“Don’t go up there, Karen.”

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Your mum’s poorly.” He couldn’t bring himself to say the right word. He just couldn’t do it. “We’ll have to get an ambulance.”

“Wouldn’t the doctor do?”

“Not this time, love.”

Ava had apparently died in her sleep. Roy met the paramedics on the doorstep, relieved to see that one of them was a woman. He told her what had happened. Asked her to break it to Karen. You could see she didn’t like the idea but Roy said he couldn’t bear to do it and there was no one else.

They went into the front room. Roy hovered, listening. He could see the woman putting her arms round Karen, holding her close, talking softly. They rocked, backwards and forwards for a little while. Karen started to cry and murmur, “What’ll I do without her? What’ll I do?” They were huddled together on the sofa when the other paramedic, whose name was Gordon Phillips, came downstairs.

“You find her…erm…?”

“Roy.”

“Must have been a shock. You OK?”

Roy shrugged. He had seen a dead person before. More than once. Last time was a couple of years ago. He’d been out with a gang in Mumps Turvey and they’d come across the body of a tramp lying in a ditch. The others had decided to have a bit of fun setting fire to it and called Roy chicken when he ran off.

“And her name?”

“Sorry? Oh – Ava Garret.”

“Miss? Mrs.?”

“Mrs., so she said.”

“You live here?”

“I’m the lodger.”

“So you’d know something about her?” He paused. “State of health, for instance. Was she on tablets for anything? Heart, blood pressure?”

“Dunno.”

Gordon gave Roy a severe once-over. What did he think he looked like? Greasy hair standing in spikes. A T-shirt flashing a skull, slime dripping from its eye sockets over a “Satan Rules” logo. Ears smothered in metal rings plus one in each nostril joined by a silver chain. I wouldn’t like to be near that bloke when he starts sneezing, thought Gordon. They should put scum like that in the army. He had a pleasurable vision of Roy forcibly scoured, scrubbed and shiny-booted, marching in step.

“Sometimes she took vitamins.”

Roy had a pretty good idea what Gordon was thinking. He was often looked at exactly so and would have been disappointed if he hadn’t been. His own pleasurable vision was of the great god Set springing through the window, seizing Gordon’s round face and sparse hair in his massive jaws and biting his head off.

“Next of kin?” asked Gordon.

“Pardon?”

“Is there a dad around?”

“No.”

“Brothers or sisters?”

Roy shook his head.

“Better get in touch with the social.”

“The social.” The words were thick with disgust. Disgust and fear.

“Well, she can’t stay here on her own.”

“Someone’ll come…a relative…her aunty.”

“Tell them, not me.”

Roy followed Gordon into the sitting room. Karen was sitting up very straight, holding her knees. Roy would not have thought her milk-white skin could get any paler. But now it appeared completely colourless. On her high, bumpy forehead a twisted vein stood out, turquoise colour, like a wriggly worm.

Gordon beckoned to the other paramedic, then whispered to Roy, “Keep this door closed till we’ve got her through, OK?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll need to collect the death certificate. Great Missenden Hospital.”

“Will do.”

“Better ring before you go. They’ll be doing a PM first.”

Roy sat with Karen and neither spoke till they heard the ambulance drive away. Roy, though relieved to see Karen was no longer crying, was still alarmed by her appearance. She seized his hand in both of hers, squeezing and mangling it.

“Look, Karen. I know this has only just happened—”

“Roy, what shall I do, Roy?”

“—but I’ve got to talk to you.”

“How shall I manage? Roy, my head hurts.”

“Listen. This is important. Before anyone comes round—”

“Who’s coming? Who?”

“Bloody listen, will you?”

“All right.”

“The ambulance man might just decide to let the social know. And they won’t let you stay here by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself.”

“I don’t count. What’ll happen—they’ll get a court order and you’ll be put into care.”

“Care.” Karen dwelled on the word for a moment, wonderingly and with interest. It could have been the first step in a new language. She repeated it thoughtfully. “Care sounds good.”

“Well, it ain’t. It’s very bad.”

“Why is it called care, then?”

“They got a warped sense of humour, the social.”

“Oh, Roy.”

“Don’t cry – I’ll get it sorted. Only we got to find you an aunty.”

“I haven’t got an aunty.”

“Not a real one, stupid. We just pretend one’s coming, like straight away.”

“I can’t pretend. I shan’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything. I’ll do the talking—OK?”

“Won’t they come back and check up?”

“Then we’ll just have to duck and dive.”

He tried to sound confident. Fortunately there was so much trouble in the world that if the social worker thought you were properly fixed chances were you’d be left in peace while she got to grips with the next load of human misery. On the other hand, there’d been some terrible stories in the paper lately where kids had actually died and when this happened everything tightened up for a bit. So, chances were, they’d probably want to see this aunty. Talk to her. Find out if she was a suitable person and all that. Ah, shit.

“Roy…?” Karen’s hand crept into his like a small mammal seeking shelter. “It will be all right, won’t it?”

Roy looked down at her. It’d have to be all right. Somehow he’d make it all right. The thought of her shoved in a home – skinny, frightened, small for her age, friendless. Born to be knocked about and made use of. There’d be somebody’s hand in her knickers before the door slammed shut. Roy had been there. He had lived that. It shouldn’t happen to a dog.

“No worries, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be absolutely fine.”

A village worthy had drawn Ava’s recent broadcast to the attention of Brigadier Gervase Wemyss-Moleseed and his wife Marjorie, leaders of the Parish Council. Though highly indignant on receipt of the information, they were not at all surprised. The Council had always considered the Church of the Near at Hand a blot on their exquisitely maintained landscape. They were constantly sending letters to the organisation’s representatives, informing them that their rusty shingles were a disgrace and asking when the broken window would be replaced. Now, as if that wasn’t enough, one of their congregation was deliberately drawing attention to herself in a most unpleasant way. Pretending to have made contact with a recently deceased inhabitant of Forbes Abbot was bad enough. But to start dispensing messages of unspeakable vulgarity via his so-called spirit…

Thank God, as the vicar said at a hastily convened emergency meeting, the excellent Mr. Brinkley was not alive to hear it. It was agreed that the brigadier should write a strongly worded letter to the Causton Echo dissociating the undersigned, a disappointing eleven signatures in all, from such “flaunting, brazen exhibitionism.” He delivered the letter personally within the hour, urging publication at once, if not sooner.

But then, the very next morning, Ava was found to have died. While this was all round Swayne Crescent in ten seconds flat, it took a while to filter through to the smart end of the village. The brigadier was proudly showing off his letter in the early edition of the Echo to the landlord of the Horse and Hounds, only to be informed that the mystical Mrs. Garret was no more. An unpleasant silence followed him out of the pub. At St. Anselm’s Rectory he was also rather coolly received. The vicar who, in his role as impartial shepherd had declined to add his name to the list of dissidents, said it was all very unfortunate. He went so far as to add that writing the letter made them all sound like heartless snobs.

Furiously the brigadier protested that he had been a heartless snob all his life and it had never seemed to trouble anyone before. Perhaps the vicar would prefer someone else read the lesson at morning service?

Doris heard the news just after breakfast from Pauline next door, whose daughter, married to Fred Carboy, had seen the ambulance. Her immediate thoughts were for Karen. Would someone be with her? Someone, that is, apart from that gormless lad who lodged there. Doris’s first impulse was to go straight round to Rainbow Lodge but she was afraid how that might look. It’s not as if she was a relative. Or even a family friend. She put a voice to her worries.

“I don’t want people thinking I’m one of them ghouls like you see on the telly, Ernie.”

“You worried about the kiddie, you check ’em out.”

“D’you think I should?”

“I know one thing. Neither of us’ll have any peace till you do.”

So Doris did. Ignoring the twitching curtains and saying a pleasant “good morning” to anyone out and about, she went up to Rainbow Lodge and knocked firmly on the front door.

Roy, who had heard the gate go, seized Karen’s hand and dragged her under the table. The cloth nearly touched the floor so they couldn’t be seen from the windows. Whoever it was knocked again, waited a couple of minutes then walked away.

“D’you think it was the social, Roy?”

“Maybe. Whoever it was—they’ll be back.”

When Doris arrived home she couldn’t settle. Even though she now knew that Rainbow Lodge was empty and Karen presumably being looked after, the little girl was still on her mind. She was always so lost-looking. So thin and lonely. A motherless child should have very special care. And lots of love.

To take her mind off all this Doris toyed with giving Benny in London the news of Ava’s death. But then, remembering Mrs. Lawson’s earlier scepticism and the dumping of the Echo in the rubbish bin, she thought she might get her friend into trouble. And, in any case, they’d probably already left to follow the removal van down.

Doris got through the rest of the day, having a good house clean. All the nets went into the washing machine. Then she polished the windows, waxed everything waxable, beat all the rugs and chivvied poor Ernest to such an extent that in the end he went off to feed the ducks and get a bit of peace.

Early evening Doris thought she’d try Appleby House and was delighted to see Benny outside on the pavement. With her hand shading her eyes against the sun Benny was scanning the far horizon like a mariner seeking land. Doris called out and Benny turned round.

“I’m watching out for the removal van.” Then, sounding very excited, “Doris, you’ll never guess. I sold some furniture. Did a ring round – you know? Yellow Pages.”

“Listen, Ben.” Doris took her friend’s arm and walked her a little way from the gate. To the low wall in front of the church, in fact. “There’s some bad news.”

Benny did not look nearly as alarmed or distressed as Doris expected. She did not appreciate that having recently received the worse news of her entire life, and in the most appalling manner imaginable, anything that followed for Benny must be a far lesser evil.

“Let’s sit down.”

“Heavens,” said Benny. It had only been twenty-four hours since she’d last seen Doris. What on earth could have happened in such a short time to make her look so grave? “It’s not something at home?”

“No, no. Please…” She pulled at Benny’s sleeve and they bumped down on to the low wall together. “The thing is, Ava’s died.”

Benny stared, incredulous. Seconds passed, then a whole minute and she still seemed incapable of speech.

“Ben?”

“What happened? I mean…how…?”

“No one seems to know.” Doris, genuinely regretful at the skimpiness of the detail on offer concluded, “Probably some sort of heart attack.”

“That’s terrible,” said Benny. “We were going to hear the second half of the prophecy on Sunday.”

“What prophecy?”

“Surely you remember?” Benny sounded really put out. “Last week she got up to just before Dennis died.”

“Of course I remember that.”

“This week she was going to describe the actual murder.”

Here we go again, thought Doris.

“She said so on the radio.”

“That wouldn’t be for sure, though, would it, love? I mean – you can’t swear on these things in advance.” Doris spoke hesitantly.

Benny was looking crosser by the minute. She didn’t seem at all upset that the medium had passed away. Just thwarted. Doris felt some expression of sympathy might have been in order.

Perhaps thinking to provoke one she said, “I’m a bit concerned about her little girl.”

“What am I supposed to do now?” replied Benny, getting up and walking away.

Doris hesitated. She felt bewildered and uneasy. She wanted to continue the conversation, mainly to find out what that last remark meant. Why on earth should Benny have to do anything just because of this woman’s death? It wasn’t as if there was any connection between them. So far as Doris knew they hadn’t even met. Consumed with curiosity, and knowing she couldn’t bear to go away with it unsatisfied, Doris decided to follow Benny into Appleby House. She could say she had come to offer help. An extra pair of hands was always useful.

Journalists on the Echo may not have been in the same league as Fleet Street’s finest but they recognised a startling coincidence when it stared them in the face. A tip-off from someone working at Great Missenden Hospital, once properly confirmed, gave them the headline: “Mysterious Death of Local Clairvoyant.” Their own fervid imaginations supplied the following paragraphs, the gist of which was, did some human hand intervene to prevent the medium spilling the celestial beans?

It was still not a criminal story so normally would never have been brought to DCI Barnaby’s attention. But his bag carrier, laying siege to a divinely pretty policewoman in reception, spotted the newspaper, recognised the link with Benny Frayle’s visits and took it straight upstairs.

Barnaby sat behind his desk, glowering. His domestic life, contentment unlimited in nearly every aspect bar the culinary, had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Joyce, the wife of his bosom and he would have no other, had suddenly taken it into her head that they should become vegetarian. It had taken a good twenty years before she had been able to produce a piece of meat that you could break up and swallow without the aid of a Black & Decker and now she wanted to give this hard-acquired talent up. Already Barnaby was looking back almost wistfully to the time when he had rejected charcoal grilled chops, convinced he had been served the charcoal by mistake because last night, last night had been the absolute end. Elephant’s ears made with scooped out aubergines stuffed with semi-raw chestnuts and garlic. If they’d been from a real elephant, Barnaby had protested, they couldn’t have tasted worse.

And now here was Troy, placing a paper on the desk and standing back almost quivering with pride, like a gun dog delivering a pheasant. The word “pheasant” cut Barnaby unpleasantly to the quick.

“What is it?”

“The Echo, Chief.”

“I can see it’s the Echo. Why are you giving it to me?”

“You remember the old biddy who kept coming in about this bloke and his weird machines?”

“Only as I’d remember a plague of boils.”

Blimey. Better watch your step today, Gavin. “That medium she was on about’s been found dead.”

“So?”

Troy wondered aloud if perhaps the chief hadn’t heard about Ava Garret’s radio interview? The sergeant only knew of it himself because Maureen and her mother had still been pulling the programme to pieces when he arrived home. Troy was furious at the sight and sound of Mrs. Sproat. There had been a definite agreement between himself and Maureen that she would only visit when he was out. Mrs. Sproat’s novel take on personal hygiene (if it don’t smell why wash it?) was only one of the reasons. Troy drank his tea to the accompaniment of his mother-in-law’s screaming falsetto and thought Anthony Perkins hadn’t known when he was well off.

Barnaby said that he did know about the interview. Joyce picked it up on the car radio and had talked about it after supper. They had been together in the rose arbour in the late sunshine. Joyce in the hammock with her legs up, Barnaby in a wicker chair grumbling over an article on heavy-handed policing in The Independent and getting up from time to time to zap greenfly with a foul-smelling spray.

“She sounded strange,” Joyce had said. “Bragging nonstop but kind of sad as well.”

“Gotcha.”

“Do you think any of this spiritual trancey stuff is true?”

“For God’s sake…” Barnaby was disbelieving. Almost contemptuous.

“It could be.”

“No, it couldn’t.”

“She also said she’d been engaged by the Almeida – you know, Cully’s company – as advisor on Blithe Spirit.”

“Mad as well as sad then.”

Joyce went off in a huff after this, saying he had spoiled everything, what with making the roses smell of disinfectant, and sneering. Barnaby went on drenching the Ena Harkness, ending up with an irritable sinus and the beginnings of a headache. So he was hardly now in the mood to indulge in yet further discussion of such ludicrous twaddle.

“But don’t you think, sir,” persisted Troy, “that it’s a mysterious coincidence? Just days before she was going to give the murderer away.”

“You been watching Poirot again?”

This was one of the chief’s favourite gibes. Troy had only ever seen one episode and that was round at his mother’s. He had been a fool to mention it. And even more stupid to follow up with a lumbering joke about having enough little grey cells in his life as it was, thank you. Being a policeman, ha ha ha. Yes, he had laughed as well but he had laughed alone.

“She died in her sleep.” Barnaby, having glanced at the story, pushed the paper aside. “What’s mysterious about that?”

To be honest Troy had always thought such a happening was incredibly mysterious. People were always going on about how terrible death was but it seemed to him that it couldn’t be all that dreadful if it could happen while you were asleep without waking you up. Also, if death was such crap, why were skulls always grinning?

“They’ll have done a PM by now,” continued Barnaby. “We’ll be informed if they find anything.”

Troy, recognising a lost cause, was now eager to get back downstairs. He made his way indirectly. A diagonal shuffle towards the filing cabinets. A little sidestep to study the black-and-whites relating to the Badger’s Drift case, now superfluous as the man had just been caught. A sudden nip to the coat-stand where he absently ran through his jacket pockets. One more manoeuvre and he’d be home and dry.

“Don’t think you’re sidling off,” said Barnaby.

“Pardon?” Troy could not have been more bewildered.

“I know what you’re up to.”

Troy’s puzzlement deepened. Plainly all this was beyond him.

“Chatting up that new WPC.”

“Me?” Puzzlement gave way to astonishment so profound he might have been accused of making advances to the force’s mascot, a comely goat named Ermintrude.

“What’s-her-name Carter.”

“Abby Rose.” Damn. But he couldn’t resist saying it aloud. “Her dad was a Beatles fan.”

“What would Maureen say?”

“We’re going through a difficult time at the moment.”

“That sort of thing won’t make it any better.”

“More than difficult, actually. For two pins…”

Troy didn’t bother to develop this threat. Both men knew the emptiness of it. Both had daughters they would have given their lives for. Abandonment was not an option.

“So you can start to clear that board. Get everything sorted.”

Sullenly Troy began to remove the photographs, the maps and drawings and photostats of documents. Barnaby applied himself to clearing his desktop. Wiping obsolete files, emptying and checking folders, saving some, deleting others. For twenty minutes or so they worked in silence. Then the phone rang. Troy picked it up, listened, then mouthed, “Talk of the devil” at the chief in clear and silent dumb show.

Barnaby, fingers idling on the keyboard, prepared to be entertained, for Troy was hopeless at concealment. Every emotion was writ not only plain but large, all over his face. Even his ears were eloquent. First his eyes widened, then the eyebrows strained into an arch. He fielded Barnaby’s ironical gaze with a portentous shake of the head. He hung up, then paused, turning to face the boss, holding the moment in the interest of dramatic tension.

“Don’t tell me – the butler did it.”

“Garret was poisoned.”

“How?”

“Methanol.”

Barnaby slotted the word into his memory where it vibrated gently. A recollection arose, vague and undefined. Joyce…Joyce with a newspaper…Joyce reading something out to him. A tourist in Egypt drinking a bottle of contaminated Cabernet Sauvignon. And dying.

“In red wine…” he murmured, half to himself.

Troy stared across the room. His mouth slowly rounded into an amazed, petrified circle. How did he do it? Just like that. Not only did he know it was wine but he knew the colour. No doubt if the type and year proved relevant he would know that as well. Long aware of his own shortcomings in the light of the chief’s powers of deduction and analysis, Troy now had to contend with this unexpected gift of second sight. Life was unfair; only a fool would think otherwise. But there should be some sort of limit.

Barnaby sussed all his sergeant’s thought processes with ease. He toyed with the notion of explaining the source of his almost by-the-way comment but decided otherwise. It never hurt to keep the infantry on their toes.

“You know what this means, Chief? She was killed to stop her talking.”

“She may not have been killed at all.”

This remark was almost certainly the forerunner to another little homily guaranteed to set Sergeant Troy’s teeth on edge. He knew without being told what was coming. It was the open mind lecture.

Oh! Sergeant Troy knew all about the famous open mind. He had had the open mind right up to and beyond his own mind’s gagging point. At the very next mention of the words Troy had vowed to throw himself from the office window.

“She could have drunk it in a restaurant, at a friend’s house, at home.” Now Barnaby was putting on his coat. “Don’t just stand there. Get her address. And fill them in at the desk.”

“Sir.” But now it was Troy, hurriedly taking down his jacket, in whom memory flared. “Wasn’t there some antifreeze scandal about wine once? People falling over right, left and centre.”

“Which is why we have to find out where this stuff came from. It might not be just the odd contaminated bottle.”

“Blimey. You don’t think it was Tesco’s?”

“Why?”

“I bought some plonk there at the weekend,” Troy’s arm wrestled unsuccessfully with the entry into his jacket sleeve, “Oz Clarke recommended.”

Barnaby opened the door and stood, impassive, drumming his fingers on the glass panel.

“I think I’ve split the lining.”

“I’m leaving,” said the chief inspector. “And I expect to find you in the car when I get down there. With or without that bloody jacket.”

17

It was now nearly a whole night and day since Roy had discovered Ava’s body. Karen was still in shock, given to tears and the same repetitive cries: “What’ll I do, Roy, without her? What’ll I do?”

Roy tried to be understanding but couldn’t really fathom the reason for all this misery, which seemed to him right over the top. A mother like that – you’d think anybody’d be glad to get shut of her. But what did he know? His own had dumped him in a phone box a few hours old and pissed off the face of the earth.

After the ambulance men had gone he made some tea and sat at the table trying to think. The sudden apprehension of all sorts of grown-up stuff needing to be handled clogged his mind, leaving him deeply disturbed. At the home everyone had told you what to do and you did it till you were old enough to give them the finger and bunk off. Same with school. At work he did his simple job as well as he could, turning up on time and keeping his nose reasonably clean, but there was nothing like what you’d call real responsibility. So—where to start?

“I think we ought to make a list.”

“Why?” Karen had found three custard creams in an old golden syrup tin. She gave him two.

“Because I can’t remember everything in my head, that’s why.”

“What do we have to remember?”

“We’ll know that when I’ve made the list.”

Roy frowned and chewed his pencil. He knew there must be things you had to do when someone died but, apart from collecting a death certificate, he had no idea what they were. Probably there were places for advice but he was pretty sure they would be linked to the council, which somehow rather defeated the object. Better leave the technicalities and concentrate on the definitely dodgy present. On the fact that whoever had turned up on their doorstep yesterday morning would be coming back and sooner rather than later.

He muttered: “We gotta think like they’d think.”

Karen said, “The social?”

“Yeah. First…” He pictured them pushing in, staring round. Looking for things wrong so they could pick on him. “We clean this place up.”

“I can do that,” cried Karen.

“And we’ll have to buy some stuff to eat. If there’s no food in the house we’ll be in deep shit.”

“Roy? Could we have some flowers?”

“You can’t eat flowers.”

“I could pick some.”

“Yeah, OK. Now, money. I’ve got…” He ferreted around the pockets of his Levi’s. “Seven pounds and…forty-three p.” No good asking what she’d got. On the other hand, seven quid wouldn’t go far. The next question was obvious. Obvious but, no matter how you put it, tricky. At the home the minute a room was unoccupied you’d naturally go through it, helping yourself to anything worth having. You’d be a fool not to. But somehow the idea of doing this now, of searching the house, made him feel uncomfortable.

“Um…I wonder if…d’you know…?”

“There might be some money in the toffee tin.”

“Where’s that, then?”

Karen opened and closed her mouth, swallowed and tried again. “Wardrobe. I can’t.”

“No worries.”

Roy pushed his chair back and made for the stairs. But on the threshold of Ava’s room he hesitated, not understanding why. After all, he was only doing a quick straightforward search. Not prying or reading personal letters or anything. And the place was empty. Wasn’t it?

Roy, who had put one foot across the threshold, stepped back. A vivid recollection of just what sort of person Ava had been possessed him. A person with extremely powerful psychic gifts in constant touch with the world beyond. A person who had only just passed over. So what if her spirit was still lurking? Roy drew in a sharp breath over teeth suddenly cold and achy. What would it think, that spirit, seeing someone going through all its possessions? More important – what might it do?

Roy had heard stories about what happened to people who robbed the dead. About how tomb raiders in ancient Egypt were followed forever after by the Curse of the Pharaohs, eventually to meet terrible ends. And once he had seen an old-fashioned film where a little boy in rags stole the coins from a corpse’s eyes and was straightaway run down by a horse and cart.

He heard Karen downstairs, turning the taps on. Getting ready to clean up. Putting her back into it. Disgust at his own cowardice propelled Roy into the room. He walked quickly over to the wardrobe and opened it, spotting the tin straightaway. “Sharpe’s Toffees,” it said on the lid. Green letters dancing over a stout old man, cheeks bulging with sweeties and wearing tartan trousers. The tin was empty.

Roy replaced it and stood quite still, breathing quietly and carefully for some minutes before he realised none of this caution was necessary. He was completely on his own. No atmosphere, no creepy feelings, no bony fingers click-clacking along the radiator. Just him and the empty bed and a not-very-nice smell, which he recognised as Ava’s hair spray. To celebrate the complete absence of any presence Roy flung open the window and let the sunshine in.

Then he went back to the wardrobe and checked out Ava’s clothes, his fingers flicking in and out of every pocket, quick as lightning. Pushing the things back and forth released more smells and a puff or two of dust but no money. Roy gave the dressing table a quick once-over. Jars of pink stuff and browny liquid, powder in boxes and lipsticks, crystals, brighter colours in little pots, necklaces hanging from the mirror.

Ava’s platform wig was on a stand next to a large photograph of herself wearing it. She had told Karen that this must be the first thing she saw each morning when she opened her eyes as it helped her hold the dream. Roy remembered her saying it because, straight after, she had burned every other photograph like a snake shedding its old skin. Now, sorting through a large chest of drawers (jumpers, underwear, tights) Roy thought what a good idea that was. Making yourself over, it was called. He had just started to dream of what his own makeover might involve when he spotted Ava’s handbag.

It was lying on the floor on the far side of the room, halfway between the door and the bed. A black boxy thing with gilt stick-on initials. Roy thought seeing it there was pretty strange. She hadn’t been the tidiest person in the world, but just to chuck it on the floor…Still, didn’t that tie in with her not even bothering to get undressed? She must have been paralytic. Either that or already ill. Roy pushed that thought away. Stamped on the mental picture of Karen fast asleep, with her mother dying just across the landing.

He picked up the bag, sat on the side of the bed and opened it. So much stuff—why did women carry all this rubbish about? Letters, bills, hairbrush, scribbled-on bits of paper, aspirins, half a tube of Polos. No sign of her mobile. A make-up bag was unzipped and Roy got some black stick all over his fingers. He wiped them on the sheet before opening Ava’s purse. Money—lots of money. Nearly fifty pounds. Roy had just finished counting it when he noticed a thin, official-looking booklet with Ava’s name on the cover. A Causton District Borough Council rent book. Seemed Rainbow Lodge cost Ava Garret (Mrs) all of sixty-five quid a week. Sixty-five quid? Roy’s jaws gaped wide. He flinched against the weight of injustice so brazenly revealed. For over a year he had been sleeping on a mattress no wider than a baby’s cot in a hutch roughly eight feet square and existing on scraps while paying a big enough screw to rent the whole house. Greedy cow. He had spoken aloud and didn’t care. He didn’t care and he’d do it again.

“You’re a greedy fucking cow!” shouted Roy, on his toes now, dancing about and squaring up to the empty air with bunched fists. “Come back and haunt me, right? Just try it. Try it and I’ll bloody kill you.”

In the middle of the afternoon of that same day DS Troy parked on the far side of Swayne Crescent and the two policemen walked across to Rainbow Lodge. Barnaby looked disapprovingly at an old red Honda straddling the pavement.

“Not much of the rainbow left,” said Sergeant Troy, scraping at the painted arch on the worn garden gate. The orange and green had nearly gone and the purple was flaking fast.

“Not much of a lodge either.”

DCI Barnaby followed his sergeant up the concrete path, looking about him. His green-fingered soul winced at the scrubby, neglected garden. He ached for the parched lupins and frazzled snow-in-summer. Why plant them in the first place? Why not just pour concrete over the lot and have done with it? Knowing he was overreacting did not improve Barnaby’s temper. He attempted to calm down. He was about to enter a house of sudden death and, for all he knew, genuine grief. Though in his job you’d be wise not to bet on it.

Troy, having knocked once, waited. He noticed the curtains, black velvet patterned with stars and whirling planets, give a little twitch. Encouraged, he knocked again. The door opened slowly, an inch at a time.

The sergeant’s gaze met empty space.

“Hello.”

Troy looked down. A child stood there. A bony, skinny little thing with colourless squinty eyes and hair like straw. She whispered: “Are you the social?”

“No,” said Troy. Then, gentling his tone, “Actually we’re policemen. D’you think we could come in for a minute?”

“Show her your card, Sergeant,” said the DCI, who had already produced his own. Thanks to the glories of television even toddlers seemed to have got the hang of the correct procedure in these matters. Barnaby thought that was a good thing and was only sorry people weren’t as canny when it came to checking out double-glazing cowboys and tarmac touts.

They were standing in a kitchen. It was very clean but when you’d said that you’d said it all. Shabby, ugly units, one cupboard with handles missing. Hard plastic chairs round an old Formica table. A linoed floor, webbed with cracks.

Behind him Barnaby heard his sergeant making a strange noise – it sounded like “nyuhheerr” – and turned to look. Troy had gone a whiter shade of pale. He was paler than the girl, could that be possible, and was staring, bug-eyed, at a stack of bulging carrier bags on the table. Red, white and blue carrier bags. From Tesco.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Troy struggled for composure and gradually common sense came to the fore. Just because they’d shopped at Tesco didn’t mean they never shopped anywhere else. And he had drunk his wine nearly two days ago. By now surely some effects would have been felt. Then he remembered how hard it had been to wake up that morning, how incredibly sleepy he had been, and experienced a lurch of nausea.

Just off the kitchen a toilet flushed. A youth came in and stared very seriously at DCI Barnaby, who stared interestedly back. A day earlier he would have been looking at a different man. Roy, recognising that his appearance was calculated more to alarm than disarm, had systematically set about improving it. Freshly showered, his hair washed free of gel and blow-dried, he now looked not only much cleaner but considerably younger. He had removed the chain and rings from his nose, a complicated, painful progress, and all but two from his ears. Jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, still damp from the wash, concealed most of his tattoos. The one circling his throat, an intricately dotted line under the words “Cut Here,” was harder to hide. Roy had managed it by wrapping one of Ava’s scarves around his neck.

Having come into the situation blind, Barnaby was aware of the need to feel his way carefully. The dead woman could well be this girl’s mother. Maybe the lad’s too. She was whispering, just loud enough for Barnaby to catch the sense of it.

“It’s not the social, Roy.”

“You don’t have to tell me.” Roy jerked his head, indicating a sliding door: accordion-pleated plastic. “If you wanna sit down there’s more space back there.”

“That’s all right,” said Barnaby. Then, hoping to reassure. “We won’t be long.”

Troy sat at the table, moved some scraggly buttercups in a milk bottle and put his notebook down. Barnaby leaned against the cooker. Karen perched on a high stool, her thin legs twining through the rungs. Roy just hovered. He looked extremely wary. The girl even more so. In fact Barnaby had the feeling she was just a breath away from out-and-out fear. He smiled and received a nervous flash of uncared-for teeth.

“Would you tell me your name, please?”

“Karen Garret.”

“And you are?”

“Roy,” said Roy. “It’s French for king.”

“Surname?” asked Troy.

“You won’t find me on any of your files.”

“Just for the record,” said Troy, adding an excessively polite “sir.” They didn’t want any aggro this early in the game.

“It’s Priest, if you must know.”

“And your relationship to Mrs. Garret?”

“I’m the lodger. But,” Roy added hastily, “I’m also a friend.”

“And you’re her daughter, Karen?” asked Barnaby. “Is that right?”

“Not that you’d notice,” said Roy.

“How are you both coping?”

“We’re cool. We got food…” He nodded at piles of oranges and apples; green vegetables. Milk and fresh bread. “Everything.”

“Are you on your own here?”

They answered together, overlapping.

“Her aunty’s coming tomorrow.”

“My aunty’s coming tonight.”

“We told the ambulance men,” lied Roy. “The hospital’s getting in touch with the council.”

“Fine. We’d like to ask a few questions about Mrs. Garret’s movements on Wednesday.”

“Like what?” asked Roy.

“Maybe we could start with the morning?”

“Just as usual really.” Karen screwed up her forehead, thinking hard. “I got up. Ava’d had her breakfast—”

“Which was?” asked Troy.

“Toast and coffee, I think.”

“Did you have the same?”

“I had cereal first. Then a bit of toast. After that she went to the Spar for some ciggies.”

“She used to try sending her, would you believe?” said Roy. “A kid that age.”

“Roy,” said Karen. “Anyway, she brought two packets of Cup a Soup back, mushroom. And we had that, round one o’clock.”

“And where were you during this time, Mr. Priest?” asked Troy.

“In bed.”

“You don’t work then?”

“I certainly do work.” Roy’s indignation filled the room. “Pay my way, an’ all.”

“So you’re not able—”

“Only I’m on nights this week. ’Course, I shan’t be going back till we’ve got the kiddie sorted. They’re being very good, Tesco’s.”

“So, Karen,” Barnaby eased the interview back on course, “after lunch?”

“Then she was on the radio.”

“Was that live?” asked Sergeant Troy.

“Pardon?”

“Did she have to go into the studio?”

“’Course she did,” said Roy. He slapped his forehead in amazement at such ignorance.

“And what time did Mrs. Garret get back?” asked Barnaby.

“Around five.”

“She said we could have some fish and chips.”

Troy smiled at Karen. “You got a chippie in this place?” He couldn’t help sounding surprised.

“Rumbling Tum mobile,” said Roy. “Once a week.”

“And did…Ava eat with you?”

“No,” replied Karen. “She was going to but—”

“What you asking all these questions for?” asked Roy. He sounded quite belligerent. “Did she eat this? Did she eat that?”

His annoyance at being deliberately kept in the dark was understandable. If the girl hadn’t been here Barnaby would not have dreamed of pussy-footing about. Pity he had not been aware of the situation in advance. He could have brought a WPC along. The cause of death was hardly a state secret. It would be public knowledge by this time tomorrow and, even as he jibbed at putting it into words, he recognised that for her the worst had already happened. One could say the cause was almost beside the point. He tried to put it as undramatically as possible.

“Your mother died, I’m afraid, Karen, because of something she either ate or drank.”

“Which is why,” added Sergeant Troy, picking up the tone of quiet moderation, “we need to find out what it was. In case other people might be at risk.”

“And as you’re both OK,” said Barnaby, “it’s obviously something she had and you didn’t. So, do you think she might have stopped somewhere after she had done her broadcast? Perhaps to have tea?”

“Definitely not,” said Karen. “She was too excited. She couldn’t wait to get home.”

“And she didn’t have nothing at the radio place either,” said Roy. “They offered her a drink in a plastic cup and she were that disgusted she wouldn’t touch it.”

“I see.” Barnaby couldn’t help glancing around the seedy kitchen. The phrase “delusions of grandeur” came to mind. “What about when she came home? A gin and tonic, maybe?”

“Ava wasn’t much of a drinker,” said Roy.

“She had a vodkatini once.” Karen made it sound unbelievably glamorous.

“I reckon it was something she had with that bloke,” said Roy.

“Who was this?”

“She got a phone call from the BBC,” said Karen. “A man wanted to interview her.”

“It was in her stars,” said Roy.

“Time?”

“A bit before half-five.”

“That’s right,” agreed Karen. “’Cause the chippy came when she was upstairs getting ready.”

“Hang on a sec,” said Troy, scribbling away. “Ready for…?”

“He wanted to take her out to dinner.”

For no discernible reason Barnaby felt a flicker of unease. Something perhaps about the speed of it. Barely two hours after the programme had gone out? No doubt some thrusting contender at the local station had phoned the story through, presumably with the aim of bringing his or her name to the BBC’s attention. They must have talked it up a storm. Even so, Barnaby found it hard to understand such an immediate, personal response. But then, what did he know? His sole experience with the media was fielding questions at press briefings.

“Do you happen to know this man’s name, Karen?”

“No. But he’s a senior producer,” said Karen.

That rang with a cracked note as well. Producer, yes. Barnaby could hear someone describing himself as a producer. Senior producer? Well, possibly, if he wanted to make an impression. A bit unlikely, though. Almost naff.

“It was Chris,” offered Roy.

“Did you get his other name?” asked Sergeant Troy.

“Ava didn’t say.” About to add, “But she wrote it down,” Roy stopped himself just in time. He pictured what would happen next. Them checking her handbag for the bit of paper. Finding a purse with not a single note or coin in it. Wondering where the money could have gone. Guess who’d get fisted.

“Are we still talking radio? Or was this BBC Television?”

“Must be radio. He asked her to meet him at Broadcasting House.”

“How did she get there?” asked Sergeant Troy.

“Drove to Uxbridge – that’s her car outside – then took the Tube.”

“She had to ask for him at reception,” added Karen.

Barnaby tried to visualise BBC reception. It had been a year or so since he’d been there. Cully was recording a Henry James serial and he’d called to take her out to lunch. He remembered lots of chairs and sofas scattered about a very large area. Anyone could just walk in off the street but you had to announce yourself at the visitors’ desk to get into the building proper. And unless they had an appointment already listed this could prove extremely difficult. Uniformed security staff were discreetly present.

So, it appears his anxieties were groundless and Chris without a surname was a bona fide member of staff after all. Trouble was, thirty years in the force left you with a suspicious mind. Combine that with a fairly lively imagination and you saw treachery round every corner.

“Sir?”

“Sorry.”

Barnaby yanked his concentration back to the present and Troy sourly prepared to read out the last entry in his notebook. Just let his mind wander like that. One second, that’s all, one second and he’d still be getting his ear bent at the end of the shift.

“Apparently Ava got back quite late. Probably around eleven.”

“Did you hear her come in?” asked Barnaby.

Karen didn’t answer. Then, as they waited, some awful realisation possessed her. Her face was terribly transformed. She struggled to speak and when she did her voice splintered with emotion.

“I was in bed but I heard her on the stairs.”

Trembling hands fluttered around her mouth as if trying to trap the words. Unsay them. Roy stared at her, anxious and disturbed.

Barnaby moved to the girl, crouched down, rested his hands on her shoulders. “Karen, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I. She. I can’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Stop.” He took her hand. “It’s all right. Whatever it is, it’s all right.”

“No. What I’ve done. I’m sorry.”

“Tell me.”

“Can’t. Can’t.”

“Try, Karen.” Though he spoke calmly Barnaby was becoming deeply concerned at the situation. “I’m sure we’ll be able to sort it out.”

“Too late.”

Gradually she stopped shaking. The frenzy left her face, leaving dry anguish behind. Her eyes, focused now on Barnaby, were clouded with pain.

The chief inspector, gently releasing her hand, said, “Is it about your mother?”

“Ava.” One long howl.

“Look, Karen, whatever you think you’ve done, unless you talk about it we can’t help you.”

Yeah, thought Roy. Some help the filth’ll give you. He was good at it, mind, this bloke. You had to hand it to him. Butter wouldn’t melt.

Troy waited, thinking of Talisa Leanne. A couple more years and she’d be Karen’s age. If he ever saw her going through something like this he’d crack up. Even the thought of it made him sick to the stomach.

“Did you talk to her that night?” Barnaby was asking now. “Perhaps after she came home?”

This was it. She became unnaturally alert, almost rigid. And very still.

“Maybe you had an argument.” That could well be. Imagine having a row with your mother and her dying straight after. Imagine trying to live with that. “I’ve a daughter myself. We’re always at it.”

Karen shook her head, silvery hair flying.

“But you did talk?”

“No. She. She.” Karen started to cry. “She called me. On the stairs.”

“Why don’t you leave her alone?”

Barnaby made a quick, savage gesture in Roy’s direction but Karen didn’t notice. Her crying increased. Tears streamed down her stricken face.

“I heard her. But I didn’t. I didn’t.”

Then Barnaby understood. Understood and recognised the measure of the burden he had unwittingly placed upon this child. A burden she would carry for the rest of her life if something were not done and done quickly.

“Listen, Karen. The doctor who did the—who discovered how your mother died, said the methanol she swallowed would have begun to take effect straightaway.” He waited. “Karen? Are you listening to me?”

“But…she came home.”

“Yes. It can take a while, sometimes several hours, before the person actually loses consciousness. But the process, once started, is irreversible.”

Karen looked bewildered.

“What I’m saying is that, even if you had got up, there’s absolutely nothing you could have done.”

“Does…would it…hurt…?”

“No. She would simply lie down and drift off, either to sleep or into a coma. Either way your mother would have known nothing about it.”

“You see?” said Roy, as if he had been telling her this all along.

She started rubbing at her face with the sleeve of a dirty blouse. “Oh—is it true?”

“Absolutely true.”

Shortly after this, driving back to Causton, Sergeant Troy replayed the scene over and over in his mind. He had been much impressed by the way the chief had handled things. But it was not in his nature to be impressed without being at the same time resentful. He too had been sincerely concerned about the girl. He would, in his muddled, careful way, also have tried to handle things with kindness and tact. But there was no doubt he was missing the chief’s encyclopaedic knowledge. It was that stuff about the methanol that had really turned the situation round. By the time they left Karen had stopped shaking and crying. There was even a faint shading of colour on her cheeks. Where had he picked the information up? It wasn’t on the PM report. Must be all that reading. He could ask, of course. No harm in asking.

“Sir?”

Grunt.

“Handy you knowing all about methanol.”

“What?”

“Really helped the kid out.”

Barnaby, who knew nothing at all about methanol, grunted again.

That was nice as well, thought Troy. He was laid-back with it, the gaffer. Not boasting or showing off like some would have done. Like he himself would certainly have done. As bosses go, Troy knew he could be a lot worse off. For instance, there was the time—

“Watch that bollard!!!”

“Whoops.” Crunch. “Sorry, Guv.”

Around teatime that same afternoon the programme tape was delivered to the station by a courier. Barnaby was tucking into a warm maple and pecan Danish when Troy brought it into his office and slotted it into the machine.

They were in the fortunate position of being able to picture Ava as she spoke, for Barnaby had asked for a photograph before leaving Rainbow Lodge. It was plainly a professional job – intensely theatrical, luridly lit and dramatically posed – but was better than nothing.

As the tape started to play Barnaby remembered Joyce’s description of Ava as “bragging but kind of sad.” Listening, he missed the sad but there was no way you could miss the bragging. It was quite funny for a while – like two point five seconds – and then just boring. But, in spite of the endless repetition, Barnaby couldn’t risk pressing the fast forward.

“Poor bloke,” murmured Troy. But he still laughed at Ava’s blithe insult to her interviewer’s face. She couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to talk to him.

Barnaby was equally unsympathetic. To his mind any man who allowed himself to be called Corey Panting deserved all he got.

Now she had got on to her special powers, describing how she talked to the dead at the Church of the Near at Hand. Barnaby sat up straight. Troy’s attention became more serious.

“…we must remember that so far only half the story has been told.”

“And we shall hear the rest next Sunday?”

“That is absolutely correct.”

Troy had another chortle, this time at Panting’s “sleight of hand” joke and switched the machine off.

But Barnaby did not laugh. He was thinking what a gift Ava would be to a conman. Insecure, yearning to be noticed, lying her boastful heart out even to herself. One crumb of flattery and she’d dance to any stranger’s tune, let alone one emanating from the magic portals of Broadcasting House.

“She sounded so definite,” said Troy.

“Hucksters have to be,” replied Barnaby. “Salesmen, politicians, actors – they don’t get far without the appearance of cast-iron confidence.”

“You don’t reckon there’s anything in this spirit stuff, then?”

“Don’t you start,” said Barnaby. “Any luck with the checks on ‘Chris’?”

“Some response from the BBC. Radio One has got a Chris but he’s Chris Moyles, who is famous so it’s not him. And they wouldn’t be interested in talking to Ava anyway ’cause it’s not their sort of thing. Radio Two does do docs—”

“Does do docs?”

“Documentaries, Chief. Features. But they’re nearly always related to music or show-biz personalities. They’ve got three Christophers on the staff, though. One’s on holiday, one’s part of a graduate intake, been there a month, one’s a sound engineer. I’ve rung their extensions and left a message. Drew a complete blank at Three. They do very few features. All high-brow stuff. Commissioned. Planned well in advance. Nothing in the pipeline relevant to our investigation. No producers called Chris.”

Barnaby put his head in his hands.

“Chief?”

“Go on, go on.”

“Radio Four should be our best bet. However, quite a few of their programmes are now made by independents. No one knew offhand if one on spiritualism had been commissioned but they’re checking up. There’s a guy called Christopher Laurence in Current Affairs. I’ve spoken to him and he’s not our man.”

“No, he wouldn’t be.”

“I also contacted BBC London Live, and World Service at Bush House—”

“You’ve been very thorough, Sergeant. Thank you.”

“Right.” Troy waited, ill at ease. “Think we’re wasting our time on all this, Chief?”

“Yes, I do. But it’s time that has to be wasted. I can’t go upstairs until we’ve checked every single thing that’s checkable.”

At the words “go upstairs” Troy struck a ridiculously exaggerated attitude of frozen horror and drew a thumbnail across his throat. The chief super was as mad as a hatter. No one entered his office without a wreath of garlic and two sticks crudely assembled in the shape of a cross. Or the twenty-first-century equivalent.

“But he did meet her at Broadcasting House, sir.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Try and get hold of Roy for me, would you?”

“Roy French for king,” laughed Troy, flipping through his notebook for the number and punching it in. “Hello, there. Sergeant Troy, Causton CID…Yes, it is me again.”

“Ask him if she went out with a mobile.”

Troy asked, then listened. “She did, sir. And what’s more they got the impression it was Chris’s suggestion. She certainly gave him the number.”

Barnaby stretched out his hand for the telephone. “Roy, I was wondering if there was another photograph of Ava?…I see…No one’s saying it’s your fault…In that case we may have to call on you for a more accurate description. We need to know how she looked when she went to meet this man…No – I’m afraid money won’t be changing hands on this one…Also, would you mind having a look for her mobile?…Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”

“He’s a lad.” Sergeant Troy laughed again. “What’re you after, Guv? An E-fit?”

“That’s right.”

“D’you think it’ll come to that?”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

18

So, how’s it all going at the office, darling?”

Nobody ever said “darling” quite like Gilda. A mixture of indulgence, weariness and contempt. And the word was never spontaneous. Never tossed carelessly into the conversation but placed with great sharpness and delicacy, like a banderilla, in the recipient’s shrinking hide.

“The office, darling?” replied Andrew, knowing how much she hated hearing her words repeated. Parroting, she called it. Not wishing to answer the question or even think about it, he simply sat, his face fixed in a polite smirk.

God, she’d really pushed the boat out today. Tastefully draped in a flamingo and lilac tarpaulin that would easily have covered a brace of camels, Gilda was wedged into a two-seater sofa. On the mother-of-pearl table next to her was a goldfish bowl of Maltesers. Andrew watched, mesmerised, as his wife’s hand dipped into it. Watched the great white fingers scrabble, close on a dozen or so of the melting little balls and transfer them to her mouth. One vicious suck, a gulp and the whole process started all over again.

“What are you staring at?”

“I was just wondering, my angel, what the collective noun for a gathering of Maltesers might be.”

“Collective what?”

“You know, as in a murmuration of starlings. A pandemonium of porcupines.”

“A bagful.”

“A bagful!” cried Andrew, joyfully clapping his hands.

“Try not to parrot everything I say.”

“Everything you—” Andrew held it there. No point in pushing his luck. The hand that holds the purse strings writes the rules.

“Anyway, you haven’t answered my question. How is everything going at the office?”

“Couldn’t be sweeter.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

Andrew refused to ask what it was she had heard. Or who she heard it from. He liked to display these tiny fragments of independence from time to time. She’d tell him anyway.

How things were actually going was bloody awful. Andrew, naturally thick-skinned, had inevitably developed an extra layer or two during the years of his present servitude. But the new situation at what was now being called, by everyone but himself, Fortune and Latham was already beginning to get him down.

Within twenty-four hours of the will being read, Leo Fortune, having come into, appropriately enough, the lion’s share of the Brinkley bequest, had had his name inscribed on Dennis’s door. This was kept open unless a client was present and people drifted easily in and out talking to Leo, asking questions and advice, just as they had always done. Perversely this annoyed Andrew more than if the man had become incredibly grand and started throwing his weight about.

And whereas Andrew had always enjoyed having his own office where he could look out at the worker ants from a position of idling superiority, he now found this situation becoming unbearable. Frequently, glancing up from the Financial Times, he would find someone staring through the glass at him. It was like living in a bloody aquarium. The last straw had been when the office junior and Gail Fuller, heads together at the coffee machine, had gazed in his direction, plainly struggling to keep straight faces. Then Gail had whispered something behind her hand and the junior had burst into shrieks of uncontrollable laughter and run off into the loo. Plainly the whisper had been about him and Andrew had the terrible feeling it had to do with his sexual prowess. This made him very angry. The unattached Ms. Fuller had been glad enough of a quick shunt after hours. No doubt afraid lightning might never strike the same place twice, her knickers were off before he’d even put his fag out.

Well, this sort of thing shouldn’t be difficult to put a stop to. He’d catch her before she left and make his displeasure known. By the time he’d finished she’d be so grateful to get away she’d keep her mouth shut for the duration. But when the time came someone from accounts was hanging around reception and they left together.

“It was that nice young man who has taken over Dennis’s clients,” said Gilda now.

“What was?” Thank God it was Friday night. End of week.

“Who made me au fait with the office situation.”

“He’s not young. He’s forty-two.”

“Don’t you have any clients at all?”

“I go in every day. I put the time in. I’m out from under your feet. For this you pay me a so-called salary. That was our arrangement.”

“It doesn’t sound very satisfactory.”

Too fucking true, thought Andrew. The only thing that kept him going was that it could not last for ever. Because change was a condition of life, right? Also he had not been quite as supine as the little cockle of his heart supposed. From the moment the slave’s collar had snapped around his neck he had been making plans. Wild plans, subtle plans, short- and long-term plans, plans so completely silly they had no hope of success but were simply designed to make him laugh. None had come to anything, but for the past few weeks he had been working on something that was beginning to look like a sure thing. Fingers crossed.

Alongside the making of plans, Andrew wrote and rewrote, then wrote again his farewell scene with Gilda. Dwelling on every tiny detail, polishing every insult, paring down the prose. She wouldn’t be able to believe her eyes at first. Or ears either. Wouldn’t be able to grasp that her poor, caponised fool of a husband, crushed underfoot for so many years, had put on flesh and muscle and bone and clad itself in shining garments and had taken up a spear in its bold fist and was flinging it towards her heart with all its might. Yes!

As for now, she was still droning on. Better respond. “Sorry, darling. I was miles away.”

“If only,” said Gilda.

Yesterday, after the police had left, for no sensible reason at all, Roy suddenly became much less anxious. It was as if the first big jump had been successfully cleared. He felt capable, able to handle things. He braved the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, having reasoned that asking them what to do when someone dies was less of a risk than having various people coming round wanting to know why he hadn’t done those things. Of course, they tried to get his name and phone number but Roy just made something up.

Then, around teatime, the plainclothes copper who had been round earlier rang back. Would he mind having a look for Ava’s mobile? Roy already knew it wasn’t in her handbag but promised to do his best.

“Roy?”

“What?”

“D’you think Karen’s French for queen?”

“No.”

“It’s got a ‘kuh’ sound, though.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Why?”

Roy really didn’t want to get into all this. He only knew about his own name because of a teacher at school. She had found him crying, heart-broken in the cloakroom. Two girls had told him their mothers knew his mother and she’d only dumped him because he stank and was absolute garbage. Then the teacher had said how could this possibly be true when he had been given a name that was one of the grandest and highest and most important in the world. And that was how he had discovered that Roy was French for king.

Karen, bored of waiting for an answer, had gone back to peeling a big, fat Jaffa.

“Don’t oranges smell lovely, Roy?”

Actually Roy noticed that everything was smelling a lot better now that the reek of stale tobacco was disappearing. Not the furniture and curtains – they’d probably always pong a bit – but the air generally was much fresher.

“I’m glad you don’t smoke, young Karen.”

“Ava wouldn’t let me.”

“Quite right too.”

“She said I’d only end up pinching hers.”

Roy had not stopped worrying about Karen. He’d been watching her closely at times when he thought she wasn’t looking. She’d stopped crying and now, apart from complaining about a nonstop headache, was pretending to be OK. But Roy knew she couldn’t really be. Not already. He’d had first-hand experience of this sort of thing. There had been a boy in the home, only there temporary, whose mother died from a drug overdose. It had taken three care assistants to control him and his screaming had gone on for days.

“Would you like half?” She passed the orange over.

“No. We have a whole one each now, every day. And don’t forget your milk.”

“It tastes nice. Nice but different.”

“It’s fresh. See…” He turned the carton round, pointing. “Use by the nineteenth. If we don’t, it’ll go off.”

“Off where?”

Roy explained what “sour” meant. He thought being with Karen was great. It was like having a kid sister. She looked up to him; asked all sort of questions. Roy hardly ever knew the answers but he always pretended he did and would give them confidently so she would know she could rely on him.

There was a lot to learn, no doubt about that. They’d already tried cooking vegetables. Last night Roy put broccoli and potatoes in a pan and boiled them till the potatoes were soft, by which time the broccoli had completely dissolved. But the fish had instructions on so that was fine.

What they planned to do next was tackle Ava’s room. It seemed a bit soon to Roy but Karen had suggested it. She said it wasn’t right that he should be sleeping in a cupboard when he paid all the rent. And while they were in there they could look for the mobile, which certainly wasn’t anywhere else in the house.

Roy said he would start and Karen could help but only if she felt OK about it. They’d got a few boxes from the Spar shop to put things of any value in. As for the rest—Roy had promised a bonfire.

He started by emptying the wardrobe, folding the clothes in neat piles and putting them out on the landing. The chest of drawers didn’t take long, crammed with fusty old jumpers and whiffy underwear. He filled a bin liner in no time. The wigs and jewellery and handbags, all empty, went into a Walkers crisps box.

Roy left the bed till last. He really didn’t want to touch it. The vivid sight of Ava lying there, eyes and mouth wide open, staring at him, was disgustingly present. Spillage from her mouth had run over the pillowcase and dried into a yellow stain. Roy wondered if he should be wearing rubber gloves but hated to seem poofy, even to himself. Anyway, they hadn’t got any so that settled that.

He would burn the bedding. Duvet, sheets, pillows, mattress – the lot. He decided to throw them through the window, which faced the back garden. It’d make a grand start to the bonfire.

There was a really stupid pattern on the bedclothes. Women in funny stick-out skirts dancing on their toes and men jumping through the air, wearing sort of Robin Hood costumes. Everything was grubby. Ava had told Roy once, just after he’d moved in, that her outstanding gifts put her above housework and that anything Karen didn’t do got left. This ultimately became anything Karen and Roy didn’t do.

It was a job shoving the duvet through. The window, small to start with, was the old-fashioned sort that would only open in two separate halves. The mattress was going to be even worse. Roy decided the best thing to do was drag it on to the landing, down the stairs then round the side of the house. He heaved it off the bed and on to the floor. Lying underneath, on top of the box springs, was an envelope. Roy picked it up by the tips of his fingers and looked inside. It was full of money. Automatically he stuffed it into his pocket, then straightaway took it out again. He would have to start thinking differently from now on. Living life a new way. There wasn’t just himself to consider.

He tried to count the money, which wasn’t easy. The fifty-pound notes were damp and stuck together. He peeled them off carefully. There were nine. Four bundles of two made one hundred pounds four times. And there was one note left over.

“Karen?” He could hear her washing up. She was talking to herself as she often did. Chattering away like an old washerwoman. He called again. “Karen?”

“What?”

“Come and see what I’ve found.”

That same Saturday morning Doris was having a quick whizz through the Echo. She thought there might be a bit more information about Ava’s death but it was the usual light-weight weekend stuff. Sport, horse racing, profiles of local characters, a few recipes. Doris cut out the only one that sounded tasty – a ham and cheese sandwich fried in butter with an egg on top – and passed the rest of the paper to Ernest.

She was keeping an eye on the time. Cheated yesterday of any conversation in the muddle and rush of unpacking, Doris had decided to try to catch Benny at her flat this morning. She was aiming for 9:30, when Benny should have finished breakfast but perhaps not yet gone over to the main house. Just in case, Doris took a note to leave. But she was in luck. Benny was at home but looking terribly upset. She was actually shaking as she opened the door. Doris was immediately concerned.

“Whatever’s the matter?”

“I’ve been reading this book. They asked me – Kate and Mallory. I was so pleased – to be taking part, you know?”

“Yes,” said Doris, going inside. “Is it awful?”

“Terrible. Oh! Doris – I really don’t think I can bear to read any more.”

“Don’t then.”

“It’s about this sword…so amazingly sharp—like magic. It has to cut through leather and flesh and bones and muscle. It can slice a soldier in half. And there’s jousting and horses and heads rolling everywhere…”

It sounded like a jolly good read to Doris. “Listen, love, the last thing in the world Mallory would want is for you to get into this sort of state, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“This where it goes?” She pushed the heavy pile of paper back into a large Jiffy bag. “Now you take that back to the house and tell him you think it’s a real belter.”

“It doesn’t seem a very good start,” said Benny. “Telling lies.”

“You’re in business now. Better get used to it.”

“Right!” Benny seized the package.

“Hang on,” said Doris. “Kate’s not here at the minute. I just saw her go over the road.”

“To the Parnells’?” asked Benny.

She spoke quite coldly and Doris was surprised. It wasn’t like Benny, who seemed to like practically everyone on sight, to be so chilly. Doris, a bit uncomfortable at asking a direct question, raised her eyebrows.

Benny ignored the hint. She would never tell anyone what had happened to turn her against the Parnells—well, only Judith really. Just days after she had given them the lovely present of the Scottie dog soap and sponge she had seen it put out with the rubbish on collection day. Judith had not even bothered to bury it under other things or put it in a bag. This absolute indifference to anyone else’s feelings, for the bin was clearly visible from the gates of Appleby House, had made Benny very angry. She was glad they were going away.

“Tell you what,” Doris was saying now. “I couldn’t half do with a cuppa.”

“Benny apologised, made some tea and produced almond biscuits. There was an awkward moment when she took the tray into the sitting room. Doris was sitting in Dennis’s wing chair and Benny couldn’t help making a little cry of distress, which she immediately smothered. But Doris heard and got up straightaway, protesting that the sun was in her eyes and she thought she’d settle better on the settee.

“You coming to the Near at Hand tomorrow, Ben?”

Benny’s hand trembled so violently the lid of the teapot started to dance. “What for?”

“Well…I expect there’ll be a memorial service. You know, for Ava. Just thought you might be interested.”

“Ava?”

“Ava Garret. The medium who died.”

“Oh, yes.” That Ava.

“I thought there’d’ve been an inquest by now.”

Doris no sooner spoke than regretted it. Benny’s face clouded over and Doris guessed she was remembering the inquest on Dennis. What an awful day that had been, with Benny acting so strangely and making wild accusations.

At this point Benny picked up the pot again and finished pouring the tea. As she put the milk and sugar in, Doris cautiously started to skirt around the real reason for her visit.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said on Thursday, Ben.”

“To do with what?”

“When I told you Ava’d died you seemed really cross. Then you said, ‘What am I going to do now?’”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You definitely did, and I thought—”

“Look at the time.” Benny got up, almost tipping over her cup, such was her haste. “I’m…er…supposed to be over there. Mallory will…um…the Celandine…meeting.” She snatched up the manuscript. “No need for you to hurry, Doris. Finish your tea, have some more biscuits. Pull the door to when you go.”

Doris finished her tea and all the biscuits too. She felt she deserved some sort of compensation. For hadn’t she been the one who’d urged Benny to visit the Church of the Near at Hand in the first place? Without me, thought Doris, poor Mr. Brinkley would still be floating around the etheric grid desperate for a link-up. You don’t expect gratitude for helping people or, these days, even thanks. But to be shut out when a new and mysterious angle on the whole business seemed to be in the offing was extremely frustrating.

Something was going on or Benny wouldn’t have scarpered like that. Doris recalled the clattering cup and saucer, the grabbing of the envelope and Ben flying from the room, calling over her shoulder. She had run away, that’s what she had done. Run like the wind. But from what? Doris, nibbling on the final almond thin, was determined to find out.

Kate was saying goodbye to Ashley and Judith. They had already said it once, all four of them, the previous evening at dinner. Remembering what it had been like the night before she and Mallory moved, Kate had thought asking them over for a meal would be helpful. Not that the Parnells were actually moving but they were going away for an unknown length of time.

It had all happened very quickly. Even before the Harley Street appointment Judith was surfing the Net looking for the best hospital and the best-known and reputable consultant. She showed her brief list to the specialist when they met and followed his advice. Ashley told Kate all about it when Judith was in Causton, booking their flights.

The Clinique pour les Maladies Tropicales, La Fontaine, was in the Alpes Maritimes on the French-Italian borders. Judith would be staying in a hotel very near to the hospital. Apparently the air was wonderful. She was very excited but in a feverish, almost unbalanced way. Ashley was the calm one. When Mallory asked how he felt he just said: “Glad something’s happening at last.”

The meal had not been a success. It soon became plain that Ashley was happy to be present but Judith was only there on sufferance. And she didn’t look at all pleased when Ashley urged Kate and Mallory to eat as much as they could from Trevelyan’s garden as it would only run to waste.

Kate got rather fed up with this surliness – they were, after all, keeping an eye on the Parnells’ house and forwarding all their post – and by the time the caramelised pears had been dished up, was a touch on the surly side herself. She was sorry afterwards, wondering how pleasant and friendly she would be to people if Mallory was frighteningly ill and might never get better. So this morning she collected some of the loveliest and ripest fruit in the orchard and took it across just moments before their cab turned up.

Ashley gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Judith said of the apples, “What on earth are we supposed to do with those?” Then they got into the taxi and were driven away.

It was lunchtime, and Roy and Karen were dining on fresh brown rolls and soup from a carton; spicy parsnip made in Covent Garden. Karen had never heard of Covent Garden so Roy explained about it. How there were cobbled streets and lots of stalls and shops and jugglers and fire-eaters. And a man and a woman covered in silver paint who never moved, not even to blink.

“I’m thinking of doing my first stand-up in the Garden ’cause you can just start anywhere.”

“Can I come, Roy? I’d clap all the time. And laugh.”

“You don’t laugh now.”

“I would then, though.”

“OK. You can take the hat round.”

Which brought them back to the subject of money. Money generally and, of course, the money. Roy had said that they had to be really careful but that didn’t mean they couldn’t treat themselves a little bit. For a start Karen had to have some clothes. The rubbish she wore you wouldn’t put on a scarecrow. And shoes.

“They’re not good for your feet, them big heavy things.”

“Everybody wears them.”

“It’s OK sometimes. But we ought to get you some sneakers.”

“Oohhh, Roy…sneakers…”

“All right, don’t go mad.”

Roy had spent a good hour sitting in the garden with a cup of tea before Karen woke that morning worrying about money. Just about able to add up single figures, anything else was beyond him. But he did know that after he’d given Ava his weekly rent he’d had about the same amount left. Would that be enough to keep two people? Then there was electricity and stuff. All right now, but what about when winter came?

There was no way he could draw Karen’s child benefit. She couldn’t draw it either, even though it was for her and belonged to her. Only Ava was authorised to sign the book and cash the counterfoil. She had always done this in Causton, believing this way no one in Forbes Abbot would know her business. But the one thing Roy had to do to get all the financial support available to someone in his position was the one thing he couldn’t do. Because once the true facts about him and Karen and the house got fed into the DSS computers, all their security and happiness would vanish like smoke.

There was a tugging at his arm. “Roy, Roy.”

“Karen, Karen.”

“Can I get my new things at Covent Garden?”

“No. We’re going to Byrite.”

“When? When, Roy?”

“Today, if you like.”

“Brilliant! Do they have fire-eaters? And silver people?”

“No.”

“Now we’re rich, couldn’t we go to Covent Garden just to look?”

“I’ll take you one day. Don’t jump about like that – you’re making me giddy.”

“Roy?”

“Now what?”

“Can I have a bicycle?”

“No.”

“Can I paint my room pink then?”

Roy had already been to Byrite so knew what to expect, but Karen was devastated. Mouth open, she just stood and stared at the immense space, stretching up over their heads and miles into the distance. At the thousands of shelves crammed with everything you would ever want in the entire world your whole life long.

“I thought it was a shop, Roy.”

“It is a shop. Now you hold on to this trolly, right? And don’t let go. Lose you in this place I’ll never find you again.”

Karen gripped the plastic handles tight. She had never seen so many people. As many as you could see if you watched a football match on television. Except here they were moving about all the time, which was much more frightening.

They started to walk around. With two bus journeys to get back to Forbes Abbot, Roy had been very firm about how much they could carry. Strictly just Karen’s clothes and some paint. So it was unfortunate that the first aisle they travelled was bedding, because there was the most beautiful duvet cover telling the story of Cinderella. The fairy godmother’s wand waved real sparkle and the mice had satin tails. It had a matching lacy pillowcase and a little lamp with a silver shade scattered with more sparkle. Karen offered to carry the lamp.

They had to go through food to get to the children’s clothes section, which meant more exceptional offers you couldn’t refuse. Though Roy drew the line at twelve cans of soup for the price of eight he couldn’t resist a gingerbread house or a big box of chocolates that looked like seashells.

When they did finally get to the children’s clothes section Karen chose three T-shirts, a denim skirt, some jeans and the beloved sneakers, which had a red light that sparkled in the back. Also socks, underwear and a sunshine-yellow fleece. By then their trolly was loaded, yet everything altogether came to only thirty-eight pounds.

Paying the cashier, Roy turned to Karen, proud of their double act, wanting to see her smile. She wasn’t there. She had been standing next to him, now she had gone. The shock stopped Roy’s breath in his throat. He could not move or speak.

She had gone. Sick with fear and trembling all over, Roy abandoned his trolly and started running round the store. Terrible pictures took over his mind. Karen getting into a car with a man who’d been following them round. A desperate woman who couldn’t have kids snatching her arm, dragging her through a doorway. A couple into devil worship, young people, looking so friendly and harmless. They’d got a little girl just like Karen. Would she like to come and play?

Roy stopped running. It was hopeless, the place was so big. He must tell someone and they would put out an announcement. And call the police. He would have to describe her. Thin, small for her age. Hair? No colour really.

Roy leaned against a plaster archway, panting from his run. His heart banged painfully against his ribs. He thought he was better off without all this, sodding hell he was. Caring for somebody, letting them get to you, was absolute shite. A mug’s game. He’d coped all right till now without it. It hadn’t been great, but he’d survived. You could stick this love crap right up your—

And then he saw her. Standing in front of a display of dolls. Relief crashed over him like a dam bursting, almost knocking him over. Then came anger. Putting him through this. Didn’t she know he was trying to look after her? The little…He forced himself to wait till this violence subsided, watching her every second. Then he took a deep breath, sauntered casually up and said, “I was wondering where you’d got to. Coming to help me with all the stuff?”

“Oh, Roy.” She turned a radiant face towards him, seizing his hand. “Look, look! It’s Barbie.”

So then they had to spend the next half-hour trying to decide which Barbie. Horse riding Barbie, film star Barbie, nurse or secretary Barbie, Barbie on holiday, concert pianist Barbie. Then there was all Barbie’s gear. For a doll she certainly knew how to stack it up.

After Roy had paid again (for Barbie the Astronaut) they went into the cafeteria and had warm sausage rolls and chips and Coke. It was Saturday and very busy. Everywhere there were families and Roy proudly took his place among them. He listened to how the parents talked to the children. It mostly seemed to be nagging. Look at the mess you’ve made. Stop kicking that chair. Leave her crisps alone—you’ve had yours. Put that purse down. Now look what you’ve done.

“Karen, don’t spill that drink.”

“I’m not.”

“And finish your chips before they get cold.”

“You finish your chips.”

“Don’t be so cheeky.”

“Don’t keep on at me then.”

“I’m in charge here,” said Roy. Then, “What’s so funny?”

The interior of the Church of the Near at Hand was appropriately dark on the Sunday following Ava’s death. The yews seemed denser than ever. Alive, like Rackham trees in a wild wood, they pressed together, holding back the sun’s rays. Inside, the lights had been switched on but were powered only by opaque sixty-watt bulbs, giving a pale, sickly glow.

George was in a strange mood. Everyone commented on it. He wore a nicely brushed black suit and looked reliably sombre but was very much on the twitchy side. It was as if, one parishioner said, underneath the expression on his face there was a different expression struggling to get out.

Mediumship was not on offer. They were here to commemorate the life of Ava Garret, now passed to spirit, though the reason and actual manner of this passing remained as yet unclear. Murmurings among the congregation had indicated an approval of this situation. Ava was so very far from being an ordinary person that it seemed only right and proper that her demise should be mysterious. The meeting opened with a rumbustious rendering of “Amazing Grace” as George took to the platform.

“Welcome to you all. Cheerfulness breaks in, dear companions, even at a moment of great solemnity for I have just received a message from my Assyrian guide. It appears that our late friend and healer has already linked up with Zacharia, her elemental counterpart.” Scattered applause. “Absorbed into the great firmament of light and love and abiding in crystal caves the great halls of learning will now open unto them. Transfigured henceforth they will live for all time.” George paused for a moment, a thin black bird cocking its head, alert, waiting. “Hamarchis has also been asked to send blessings to you from the Great Designer of all that was and is and ever shall be.”

Everyone sang: “Oh, great spirit. Earth, sun, sky and sea, You are inside and all around me…”

George had asked earlier for a corporate eulogy, not trusting himself to handle the matter in person without breaking down. Grateful recipients of Ava’s consoling ministry stood up in turn to recollect their own specific condolence and generally praise her gifts. This took quite a long time. However, an observant listener might have noticed that only Ava’s psychic skills were praised. No comment was passed on her qualities as a human being, mainly because no one at the Church of the Near at Hand could stand the sight of her.

As the final musical tribute: “Love is the reason for living,” came to an end, George Footscray, by now quite overcome with some indefinable emotion, pressed a handkerchief to his face, hurried from the platform and almost ran up the centre aisle, waving away concerned gestures and crying, “Tea…tea…”

Although no specific appeal had been made for donations, in Ava’s memory a largish cardboard box covered with silver foil was prominent in the Doris Stokes suite among the sandwiches roulade and assorted cakes and pastries. A stuck-on label read: “Funeral Expenses” and most people put something through the slit in the lid. Doris slipped in ten pounds, though what Ernest would have said if he’d known didn’t bear thinking of. Really, she did it for Karen.

Then she mingled and was not surprised to find the conversation generally leaning towards speculation and disappointment. There were a lot of “if only’s” and “I wonder who’s.” Ava’s amazing revelations regarding Dennis Brinkley’s death the previous Sunday, though uncomfortably received at the time, had subsequently generated an atmosphere of high drama. The newspaper headlines and radio interview fanned this excitable flame. The presence of television cameras on the big day had become a foregone conclusion. People definitely had something to look forward to. No one doubted Ava’s promise that the guilty would be described in such detail they would be caught bang to rights within the hour. Equally no one now put into words the thought – perhaps that’s why she died.

Sharing a plate of marzipan doughnuts with Mrs. Gobbett, keeper of the keys and flower rota – each week all arrangements had to be dusted – Doris put her own lesser anxiety into words.

“I didn’t like the look of George, early on.”

“He thought the world of her. It’s only natural.”

“Who d’you think’ll take Ava’s place?”

“They’ll transfer somebody. Otherwise it’ll be down to him.”

Both women pondered this idea in silence. George’s mediumship was erratic, to say the least. Sometimes he was fine. Others he could be so uninspired you could sit through the whole service without hearing from a living soul. And he could be irresponsible. Once he’d brought up and named a man who was on holiday at the time in Cromer and had been threatened with a solicitor’s letter.

“Do you know what arrangements have been made, Alma? Regarding the funeral?”

“They reckon her earthly shell’s still sub judice,” explained Mrs. Gobbett, “because of the police.”

“It’s just – they cost so much money. What’s in that box won’t come anywhere near.”

“She should’ve joined the SNU. We’d’ve looked after her.”

“George said she wouldn’t pay the sub.”

“Who’s sorry now?” asked Alma with regrettable satisfaction. “I saw little Karen this morning.”

“What – in the village?”

On hearing that was indeed the case Doris gathered up her things and hurried away. As she passed the gents’ in the vestibule she heard a strange choking sound followed by some bubbling chortles. These were muffled as if strained through a sort of gag or padding. Then a single squawking cackle broke free and was quickly stifled.

Doris hesitated. Was someone ill in there? Were they telling funny stories? It seemed an inappropriate occasion. An inappropriate place too, come to that. Could they be having a fit? One thing was certain, someone else would have to deal with it. Doris had never been in a gents’ toilet in her life and had no intention of starting now.

Roy was sanding the walls in Karen’s bedroom when there was a knock on the front door. Immediately frightened, he knew it must be them. All that they stood for, all they had put him through, flooded his mind. He had to grip the ladder not to fall. They might be different people now but they were still the social. The ones with the power to tear everything apart. Hatred bubbled into the fear, so strong it almost made him sick. All this took only a few seconds but it was long enough for Karen to open the door. He heard her talking to someone, then she called his name up the stairs.

Roy struggled to pull himself together. He had done nothing wrong. Not only had he done nothing wrong he had done everything right. He was seventeen now, with a job where he turned up on time and behaved himself. In the present emergency he was looking after things the best way he knew how. And anyway, what could they do to him that they hadn’t done already? So when Roy finally braced himself and got downstairs it was a bit of a setback to find only Mrs. Crudge from the church.

Doris was quite set back too. In fact, she didn’t realise at first that it was Roy. He certainly cleaned up well. But the house was a disappointment. She had been expecting something more exotic, Ava being so well travelled. Tiger-skin rugs and souvenirs from round the world. But everything was cheap and shoddy and dull. When Roy invited her into the lounge she couldn’t help noticing how the settee was stained and the recliner covered in cigarette burns.

“Well, my loves.” Doris sat down, putting her handbag by her feet. “How are you coping?”

“We’re cool,” said Roy. “We got all we want. Food – everything.”

“Roy’s painting my room, Doris. Princess Pink. And I’ve got lots of new clothes. And a Barbie. She’s an astronaut. She’s got a helmet and silver space suit and everything.” Karen paused for breath. “We went to Byrite. We had to come home in a taxi we had so many things.”

Doris looked slowly across at Roy. He read that look and shrank as from a savage blow. He must have been blind or stupid or something but that aspect of it had never occurred to him. He’d have his hand off before he’d touch a child that way. Any child but most of all Karen.

“I didn’t buy them,” he said quickly. “We found some money upstairs.”

“I came before.” Doris spoke gently, directly to Karen. “When nobody answered I thought you’d gone away. Like, you were being looked after.”

“I am being looked after.”

“Hasn’t anybody been round from the council?”

“Not yet,” said Roy. “Any minute now, eh?” He gave a strained laugh. You could see her mind working. See her – oh God – perhaps taking Karen with her when she left.

“Do you know what’s happening regarding the funeral, Roy?” Doris felt a bit awkward asking in front of the child but someone had to get it sorted.

“Nothing so far, Mrs. Crudge. You have to register the death first and I’m still waiting for the certificate from the hospital.”

Doris glanced anxiously at Karen on the word “death” but she seemed not at all distressed. A bit unusual after such a short time, but then Ava had never been much of a mother. At least Roy seemed to know what to do and was trying to get on with it.

“They had a collection after the service this morning. I expect George or someone’ll bring it round. But it won’t be nearly enough to cover the cost.”

Roy gave a helpless shrug. He didn’t know what to say. Someone must pay for poor people to be buried – tramps, the homeless – otherwise there’d be bodies lying all over the place. Probably the bloody council again. One way or another he would get drawn back into the net. Be asked all sorts of questions to which he had no answers. They would take the rent book away, which meant his home as well. Then they would take Karen. Roy felt a swell of panic so strong he felt sure to drown. Now she was staring at him, old Mrs. Crudge. Giving him a real funny look, actually. Sending Karen away.

“Good girl. You make us a nice cup of tea.”

As Karen ran off Doris said, “Got a lot on your plate, son.”

“I can handle it.”

“George said it was you who found her.”

“That’s right. I kept the kiddie well away. There was a woman paramedic – she told her what had happened. And Karen never saw them take Ava.”

“That was good, Roy. I can see you’ve been doing your best—”

“I have! I have!”

“But you can’t stay here on your own…”

And then Roy completely lost it and what he lost Doris, devastated by the emotional onslaught, mown down by the force of violent anguished memories, unwillingly and sorrowfully found.

He’d been dumped in a phone box, he told her. Then adopted. New mum died, dad didn’t want him. Fostered twice, handed back twice, dumped in a home. Tough kids, violent kids, kicked him, tried it on, laughed when he cried. Cut his clothes up, did it to him in the shower, over and over. He tried to be in a gang. If you were in a gang you’d be all right. But no one wanted him. Even the crap gangs – all the kids nobody else’d have – didn’t want him. He tried to run away – sleep rough – but the police found him and took him back. Then when he was sixteen he got a real home and someone who needed him, someone to care about even if it was only a little kid. But now it was going wrong like everything else in his rotten life but he’d never let the social take Karen. She’d never go through what he’d been through. They’d run away where no one would find them…

Roy, his eyes bunged up with tears, snot running into his mouth, ran into despairing silence. He sobbed, knowing he was kidding himself. How far would they get, him and Karen? What chance would they have? Old Mrs. Crudge had got up. Blinded, he couldn’t see her but sensed her moving about. She’d take Karen now—there wouldn’t be anything he could do. That would be an end to it. He could handle that. He’d been handling shit like that all his life. It was hopes and dreams that broke you. The settee gave; a weight settling beside him. It eased closer. An arm enclosed his shoulder. A hand gently stroked his hair.

When Karen came in with the tea she was shocked and a little disturbed by what she saw. Because Roy was the strong one, the grown-up who would always know what to do and never be worried or anything. So why was he being rocked in Doris’s arms, howling and crying like a baby? Karen put her tray down and sat quietly, waiting. And as she waited and the tea got cold she gradually came to understand that what was happening was not a bad thing. Not something to worry or frighten. And that when it was over Roy would be himself again.

Over the following few days DCI Barnaby, having offered up all the evidence pertaining to the deaths of Dennis Brinkley and Ava Garret waited to hear from the Top Floor that permission had been granted to set up a murder investigation. On the third day he met formally with Chief Superintendent Bateman. It was an experience with which he was very familiar but one he always hoped never to have to repeat.

He was irascible at the best of times, and the worst of times brought out the beast in the superintendent. He was a man boiling like a pudding inside his own skin. His neck bulged and rippled with purple veins. His eyes, brown marbles flecked with crimson, fastened on DCI Barnaby’s tie. His fingers twitched as if eager to seize it and wrench it round and round until its wearer fell senseless to the floor. Yet his opening remarks were mild enough. Tuning up, the Station called it.

“I can’t quite get the hang of this, Chief Inspector. You’ll have to bear with me.”

“Sir.”

“Am I to understand that we’re talking about two murders here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Two?”

“That’s right.”

“And the first one was written off as an accident?”

“There was no reason—”

“Is there a body?”

“No. Mr. Brinkley was cremated.”

“Not many prints from ashes, Chief Inspector.”

“No, sir.” And none from a cadaver weeks in the grave either.

“And this happened…?”

Barnaby had more sense than to even murmur during the deliberately contrived hiatus. Just watched the sinewy, powerful hands rustling the papers. They were like wolf paws, the backs felted with blackish grey hair. The nails curved and yellow.

“On the twenty-fourth of July? Crime scene pretty much lost to us, I should think.”

“Not necessarily. I believe—”

“I believe we’re looking at some monumental cockup. I believe I’m surrounded by fuckwits who couldn’t spot a murder if it was happening in their own back yard. And for why?”

“Sir?”

“Because they’d be lying in their hammocks, guzzling Canadian Club, wanking off and singing. And what might they be singing, do you suppose?”

Barnaby decided to risk it. “‘Coming through the Rye’?”

“I do the badinage, Chief Inspector.”

“Sir.”

Barnaby risked a glance at the clock. Ten minutes so far and the old man was barely getting into his stride. The DCI waited, unfazed, knowing the attack to be in no way personal. Spleen had to be vented daily, like bad blood.

“So no one has actually talked to anyone who knew this sad bastard. What’s his name, Brinkley?”

“No, sir.”

“Says Brinkley down here.”

“No one has actually talked to anyone about him, sir.”

“Not a single question put anywhere?” Each word savagely gnawed off like a chunk of raw meat. Single. Question. Put. Anywhere. “I find that hard to believe.”

“I’ve already explained—”

“Then you don’t have to tell me again, Chief Inspector. I’ve got a mind like a razor.”

“Sir.”

“And a memory like…a razor.”

“The coroner’s verdict—”

“Coroners.” A single spit with excellent aim and range. “They think they know it all but they are not invaluable.” He paused glaring across the desk. “You find something amusing?”

“Amusing?” Barnaby appeared quite bewildered. “Erm…no…”

“And this second death, this fool of a woman reading tea leaves or whatever. You reckon she’s been poisoned?”

“Yes.”

“Think she was involved in the first one?”

“She described exactly how it happened and promised to reveal the murderer the following Sunday.”

“What an idiot.”

“Quite.”

“Says here she talked to spirits.” He stared suspiciously down his long nose, which had a certain boxiness at the end, giving a fair impression of a snout. “You one of these New Age touchy-feelies, Barnaby?”

“No, sir.”

“Incense up your arse. Needles in your tickling stick.” He started laughing. Hideous barks and gleeful yaps. Joyfully he drummed his wolf paws on the edge of the desk like some lupine shaman. Then he picked up the folder and hurled it forcefully towards the chief inspector.

Barnaby moved quickly, snatching the falling papers from the air. He said, “Are we to proceed then, sir?”