Crybbe

CHAPTER XVII

Laughter in the dark.

Laughter like ice-crystals forming in the air.

'Andy.'

Who did you think it was going to be, Joe? Did you think you were finally about to meet Sir Michael himself?

Andy, but he wasn't here.

He was mainly grey, shimmering to nearly white at his fingertips, the extremities of him.

Andy, but he wasn't there.

Powys heard the voice in his head. He spoke aloud, but heard the replies in his head.

He wasn't thinking about this too hard, analysis was useless. Couldn't play new games by old rules.

Don't touch him. He can't harm you.

'The box. What's in the box, Andy?'

Why don't you open it, Joe? The lock's no big deal. Ornament as much as anything. Also it's very old. Pick up a stone. Break the lock.

'I don't think so.'

No? You're still very much full of shit, Joe, you know that? You go to all this trouble to get into here, and you won't face up to the final challenge. What's the problem? Not got the guts, Joe? Not got the bottle? Think about this… think hard… what's it been worth, if you don't open it?

'Maybe I will,' Powys said.

You'll find a couple of stones behind you, near where you left your lamp. One's narrow and thin, it used to be a spearhead. The other's chunky, like a hammer. You can slide the spearhead into the crack below the lid.

'But not here.'

The eyes were white, though. The eyes were alight, incandescent.

Andy, but he wasn't here.

'I'm not going to open it here. You can piss off, mate. I'm going to pick up the box, and I'm going to take it away.'

You don't want to do that, Joe. You might awaken the Guardian. You don't want that.

'No. You don't want that. But you can piss off.'

Powys felt a trickle of euphoria, bright and slippery as mercury and, very quickly, he covered it up. Smothered it with fear. Stay frightened. At all costs, stay frightened.

A rapid pattering on the close-packed earthern floor, and something warm against his leg.

'Arnie.'

Stay frightened. It might not be.

He bent down.

And the growling began.

He felt Arnold's fur stiffen and harden under his hand, and the growling went on, a hollow and penetrating sound that came from far back in the dog's throat, maybe further back than that. Maybe much further back. The growl was continuous and seemed to alter the vibration of the night.

'You're not growling at me, are you, Arnie?'

The grey thing hung in the air like an old raincoat, but he was fairly sure that Andy was not there any more.

Powys switched on the lamp and the grey thing vanished.

He walked over to the stone in the centre of the chamber and he picked up the wooden box.

Warm. Cosy. Just as before. The deep, Georgian windows, the Chinese firescreen, the Victorian lamp with the pale-blue shade burning perfumed oil.

'I wondered,' she said, 'if you would come back.'

'Hullo, Wendy,' Alex said.

She was dressed for bed.

And how.

Black nightdress, sort of shift-thing, filigree type of pattern, so you could see through it in all the right places. Alex couldn't take his eyes off her.

'Sit down,' Jean said.

'Wendy, there's something awfully funny happening out there, did you know?'

'Funny?'

'Well, I'd been down to the river and came back up the hill and when I got to near the top, just at the entrance to the square, it all went very dark. I mean, I know it's obviously dark without the electricity supply, but this really was extra dark, as if there was a thick fog. Lots of people about the square, I could hear them talking, but I couldn't see any of them.'

'Oh my.'

'And… hard to explain this, but it was as if there was a sort of screen between all these people and me. Now, I know what you're going to say – the only reason there's a screen between me and the rest of the world is because I've erected it myself – but it wasn't like that. Not at all. This was really well, physical, but not

… How do you explain it?

'I think you should come and sit down Alex and not get yourself get too worked up about this.'

'That's what you think, is it?'

'I think you need to calm down.'

Alex slumped into the sofa and she came down next to him as light as a bird, perching on the edge of the cushion, and the shift-thing riding up her legs. Pretty remarkable legs, had to admit that.

'And I heard Fay,' Alex said. 'I'd walked back – couldn't seem to make progress, you see, kept on walking and wasn't getting anywhere. You know that feeling? Happens in dreams, sometimes. Anyway, I'm coming up the hill again, and this time it's Fay I can hear, talking to some chap. Telling him about how all the people had gathered in this very square exactly four hundred years ago to the night, to get up a posse to go along and lynch old whatsisname… Sheriff Wort.'

'I see,' Jean said. She leaned over and picked up his left hand. One of her nipples was poking through the black filigree shift.

Alex swallowed. 'Then this chap she was talking to, he must have drifted away. I said, "Listen, Fay," I said, "why don't you tell me – tell me – what all this is about…?" But she couldn't hear me. Why couldn't she hear me, Wendy?'

Jean said, 'What's this on your hands?'

'Blood,' he said quickly, it's Murray Beech. He's been stabbed to death. Only realized as I was walking up the hill.'

'Stabbed to death,' Jean said neutrally. 'I see.'

'Don't you believe me?'

'Alex, I believe you believe that Murray Beech has been stabbed to death. And what about Grace?'

'She took me to her grave. We walked together. I think we came to an agreement.'

'I see.'

'But you don't really believe any of this, do you, Wendy?'

Jean smiled.

'Or do you?'

'Alex,' said Jean, 'would you like to sleep with me?'

Alex's throat went dry.

'Well?' she said gently.

'Oh gosh,' Alex said. 'Do you think I could manage it?'

Jean smiled. 'Perhaps we should find out.'

'That's what you think, is it?'

The answer burned quietly, like a kind of incense, in her eyes.

Alex stood up. He felt very calm. Calmer than ever he could remember feeling before. He did not know the meaning of the word 'dementia'. His heart was strong. His eyes, he knew, were twinkling quite dramatically.

The aromatic oil from the lamp was exquisite.

Jean unwound from the sofa and he took her in his arms, his breathing rate quickened at once. She tilted her face to kiss him, but he ran a hand into her soft, short hair and pressed her face to his chest, bent his head and whispered into her ear.

'You cunning bitch.'

Her body went rigid, and he let her go.

What a waste, he thought. What a tragic bloody waste.

When Jean Wendle faced him from across the room, her eyes were in deep shadow, her lips were drawn back and the inside of her mouth looked so black that she seemed, momentarily, to have no teeth at all.

The aromatic oil from the lamp smelt like the floor of a urinal.

'Oh my. You've blown it, now, Alex,' Jean whispered, voice like tinder.

Alex shook his head.

'You'd had it. You were finished. You were going very rapidly into the final decline. A bed in the bottom comer of the geriatric ward, to where the naughty boys are consigned, the nurses treating you like a difficult child when you try to pinch their bottoms. Poor old man, he used to be a priest.'

'Nothing more welcome in hell than an unfrocked priest,' Alex mused. 'Except perhaps a priest who ought to have been unfrocked but never was, because he was too damned plausible – all his life, so plausible, right up to the end, shafting ladies.'

'I brought you back,' Jean said, I fed you energy.'

'But what kind of energy?'

'Och.' Jean turned away with a dismissive wave of the hand. 'You blew it.'

'I don't think so,' Alex said. 'I made a deal. I went up the hill and I made a deal.'

He smiled. His heart was strong and his eyes still twinkled.

Jean Wendle turned her head and peered at him, curious. He saw in her face a pinched look, ravaged, and not the ravage of years.

'Made a deal,' Alex said. 'After a period of protracted and considered negotiation, the Management and I formulated the basis of an agreement, nothing binding, either, party retaining the right to pull out at any given time if the Second Party should happen to lose his bottle.'

Alex walked out of the room. 'Good night, Wendy.'

Bloody waste, he thought sadly.

Joe Powys came out of the passage into the night, into a blinding light and the face of Edgar Humble.

He didn't have to force the fear.

'Hold it. Don't move.'

Powys half out of the hole in the side of the Tump, the wooden box in his arms, Arnold at his ankles.

Humble's eyes were fully open, his lips apart.

'You're dead,' Powys said from a throat full of hairline cracks.

'Course he's fucking dead,' Gomer Parry said, leaning out of his cab. 'Sorry, Minnie.'

Humble lay across the jaw of the digger, quite stiff now, one arm still flung out and his crossbow on his chest. The big shovel was almost blocking the entrance to the passage.

Minnie Seagrove wasn't looking.

Gomer said, 'What you got there, then, Joe?'

'Buried Treasure,' said Powys. is that thing safe?'

'Gimme a second.' Gomer raised the shovel so Powys could climb out from underneath it.

'Right, then.' The little man climbed out of his cab, rubbing his hands on his overalls. 'We got a bit o' talkin' to do yere, Joe. First off, you finished in there? Got what you want?'

'I think so.'

'Safe to block 'im up again, then.'

'Don't see why not.'

'Good. Mind out, then.'

He climbed back into his cab, cigarette end waggling, lowered the shovel, started to tip Humble's body over the entrance of the hole.

'What the hell are you doing, Gomer?'

Minnie Seagrove turned away as Humble's remains tumbled into the soil and rock.

'Nicked that box, did you?' Gomer shouted.

'What?'

'Treasure trove, that, boy. I won't say nothin' if you don't.'

'I had to tell him, Joe,' Minnie Seagrove said. 'I said, I'll go to the police and admit everything. And you'll speak up for me, won't you, Joe? You're a famous writer, that'll count for quite a lot. But he wouldn't hear of it.'

'Bollocks,' said Gomer. 'Could be centuries before they finds 'im, if ever. And if they does turn 'im up, 'ow could it possibly have anythin' at all to do with a sweet little old lady? Sorry, Minnie, I didn't mean old…'

The more Powys thought about it, the less difficult it became to fault.

'You can't leave him near the entrance.'

I shall drag 'im in just as far as 'e'll go, then I'll fill this 'ole up and pack 'im tight, see, and pile up them stones, so it looks like the wall collapsed on it, like.'

'I can't stop to help you, Gomer, I'm sorry. I've got to go somewhere and I don't think there's much time.'

'No problem. I'll take Minnie 'ome.'

'And could you do me another favour – take Arnold, too.'

'I'll take him,' Mrs Seagrove said.

'I'll come back for him.'

I hope.

Or Fay will.

'Thanks, Arnie,' said Powys, pulling the box down and sinking his hands into Arnold's fur, rubbing his face at the dog's encouragingly cold nose.

Arnold licked him once.

'And thank Henry for me,' Powys said, 'if you see him around.'

He picked up the box. It was quite heavy but not too unwieldy. He balanced the lamp on top. 'You're sure this is going to be all right? I have the awful feeling it'll look like a excavation site.'

'Joe,' said Gomer patiently, 'this yere is Gomer Parry Plant Hire you're dealin' with. I already got the reputation of havin' fucked up once on this site – sorry, Minnie – and I'm not gonner risk 'avin' myself pulled in by that Wiley if I can 'elp it, am I?'

Gomer lit another cigarette, lowered his voice. 'Wynford Wiley,' he said. 'Wouldn't give 'im the satisfaction. Fat bastard.'

Powys nodded. 'Minnie. I…'

'She never did nothin',' Gomer Parry said gruffly. 'So you got nothin' to thank 'er for, is it? Bugger off. Good luck.'