Crybbe

CHAPTER III

Gomer couldn't get near the church, least not within thirtyyards. Not much he could have done, though, anyway. Be a long time before that ole place saw another service. If ever. Roof mostly gone, windows long gone. Still some flames – plenty of wood in the nave, pews and stuff, to keep them well-nourished for some hours yet – but the worst was over. The stone walls would stay up, and so would the tower, even it wasn't much more than a thick chimney by now.

'Bugger-all use fetchin' the fire brigade,' Gomer concluded.

'Burned 'imself out, see.' He turned to his companion; no way of hedging round any of this. 'Pardon me askin' this, but your Jonathon – was 'e gonner be cremated anyway, like? 'Cause, if 'e 'ad to…'

'Gonner be buried. And he still will be, whatever's left.'

They'd come upon Jimmy Preece sitting on the low part of the churchyard wall watching the fire. The digger had crunched out of the wood and there the old feller was, hunched up, knotted and frazzled like a rotting tree stump, sounding like it was gonner take Dyno-Rod to clear his lungs. And it was clear, straight off to Gomer that nothing happening tonight would have been a mystery to Jimmy Preece.

'Who done this, Jim?' he asked bluntly. 'And don't give me no bull.'

Arnold the dog limped over to Jimmy Preece and stood there, watchful. Jimmy Preece leaned down, hesitated for several seconds and then patted him. Arnold wagged his tail, only twice and just as hesitant, and then plodded off. Gomer had the feeling this was a very strange thing, momentous-like and patting a dog was only pan of what it was about.

'I'm glad,' the Mayor said, to nobody in particularly. 'Wish I was dead, but I'm glad. Couldn't go on, see.'

'What couldn't?'

'You're not a Crybbe man, Gomer, is the problem.'

'Well, hell, Jim, I'm only a few miles up the valley, born an' bred.'

'Not a Crybbe man,' Jimmy Preece said firmly. Gomer was near fuming.

'Who done it, Jim? Too late for all that ole crap. Just bloody spit it out.'

Something gave. Jim's grimy face wobbled and what had looked like a smear of thick oil down one side of it gleamed in the firelight and didn't look like oil any more. When he opened his mouth the words oozed out in a steady stream.

'Same one as run your bulldozer in the wall, same one as slashed my face, same one as left me to suffocate, same one as… as done for Jonathon.'

The Mayor looked away. 'Pretended I was dead, see – didn't take a lot o' pretendin' Wanted to close the ole door to the tower, keep the fire out, last duty, see. Then I was gonner lie down. Next to Jonathon.'

Gomer saw Minnie Seagrove trying to climb out of the digger and held up a hand to tell her to stay where she was.

'Couldn't do it,' Jimmy Preece said, studying his boots now. 'Not got the guts. Fire too hot. Ole body sayin', get me out o' yere. Ole body allus wins.'

'Where is 'e, Jim?' Gomer had no doubts who they were talking about any more. 'Where is e? Dead?'

'That's all I got left to hope for,' said Jimmy Preece. 'But I reckon we've long ago given up all rights to hope. In Crybbe.'

'Jim…' Gomer feeling sorry for him now, town falling apart, family collapsing round his ears. 'I'd like to 'elp.'

The Mayor stared for a long time into the ruined church before he replied.

'You reallv wanner do some'ing, Gomer?'

'What I said.'

'Then get rid of all these bloody stones for me. Do it before morning, while every bugger's otherwise engaged, like. Whip 'em out. Make it like so's they was never yere, know what I'm askin'?'

'Tall order,' said Gomer. 'Still… Only I don't know where they all are. Seen a couple around, like.'

'I'll tell you where they are. Every one of 'em.'

'Might mean goin' on people's property, though, isn't it? Trespassin'.'

'Depends on what you thinks of as other people's property, isn't it?'

'Course, if it was an official council contract, like. ..'

'Consider it an official council contract,' said Jimmy Preece wearily.

They carried Alex into The Gallery, Joe Powys and the capable looking guy who'd introduced himself as Col Croston.

He was quite a weight.

'Obviously too much for his heart,' Col said. 'And it was a hell of a big heart. How old was he?'

'Old,' Fay said distantly. 'Pushing ninety.' She sniffed. 'Pushed too hard.'

Alex had still been lying on the cobbles when Powys had stumbled uncertainly into the square, seemingly bringing the lights with him – the power was back. He'd walked past Wynford Wiley and Wiley had hardly glanced at him. Guy Morrison had nodded and said nothing. He'd gone directly to where Fay sat, close to the steps of the Cock, guarding her father's body like a mute terrier. 'I thought you were going to be dead, too,' was all she'd said, and then had laughed – unnaturally, he thought, and he wasn't entirely surprised.

They put Alex on the only flat, raised surface in The Gallery, the display window, under mini-spotlights. He looked peaceful, laid out with pictures. 'He'd hate that,' Fay mumbled. 'Looking peaceful.'

'Don't suppose,' Col Croston said, 'that there's much I can say, is there? The awful thing is, nobody will ever know what he achieved in the last few minutes of his life. Even I can't begin to explain it, and I was there. And I know…' He broke off, looking uncharacteristically lost. 'I don't know what I know, really. I'm sorry.'

'He won't mind,' Fay said. 'It was quick, and he never became a vegetable, did he? That was all he was scared of. The geriatric ward. He might have done something silly. Like half a bottle of malt whisky and some pills, or a last train to Soho or somewhere, with a view to departing in the arms of some… ageing harlot.'

She's rambling, Powys thought. She's blocking it out. Her body's producing natural Valium. Everybody has a breaking point.

From behind them, a small, raw cry.

After letting them in, the woman who ran The Gallery, Mrs Newsome, had remained silently in the doorway, leaving Powys wondering about the weals and bruising on her throat.

Now she was pointing at a door to the left of the glass counter. It was a white door, but there were marks and smears all over it now, in red.

Col saw the blood, flung out an arm to hold everyone back, snapped, 'What's behind there?'

'He…' It wasn't easy for her to talk and her voice, when it emerged, was like a crow's. Hereward's workroom.'

'Anybody in there,' Col called out harshly, 'will get back against the wall and keep very still. Understood?'

The marks on the door included smeared fingerprints and one whole palmprint.

'Mrs Newsome, have you any idea…?'

The act of shaking her head looked as painful as talking.

Col shrugged and nodded. 'Everybody keep back then,' he said and hit the door with a hard, flat foot, directly under the handle. Powys wondered why he didn't simply open it. Shock value, he supposed, as the door splintered open and Col jumped back and went into a crouch.

'Oh, Christ.' Powys stared into the shadowed face of the man he'd left fifteen minutes earlier lying crippled in the centre of a little stone chamber.

Remembered thinking as he'd run out of the Court that Andy might not be so badly injured as he appeared. That someone practised in yoga and similar disciplines might be able to contort his body sufficiently to simulate a broken spine.

But Powys hadn't gone back. He'd kept on running all the way to the car and then driven to the phone box on the edge of town. Which worked, thank God. 'Ambulance, yes. And… police, I suppose. And the fire brigade. In fact, send the lot, Jesus. In force.'

'God in heaven,' Col Croston was saying. 'Don't come in, Mrs Newsome."

The face, Powys saw with short-lived relief, was only in a very large painting – Andy dressed in the kind of sombre clothing Michael Wort might have worn, standing by a door meaningfully ajar. Powys remembered Andy talking about the girl, the artist, who could 'create doorways'. With that in mind he didn't look at it again. But what was beneath it was worse

The unframed canvas was hanging on the wall above a wooden workbench with sections of frames strewn across it and fastened to the side, a large wood-vice with a metal handle and wooden jaws.

The vice would hold a piece of soft timber firmly, without damaging it, unless you really leaned on the handle, in which case it would probably squash anything softer than iron.

Powys nearly choked. He didn't go in. Blood was still dripping to the sawdusted floor and there were deltas down the walls made by high-pressure crimson jets.

The dead man was on his knees, the jaws of the vice clamped like the hands of a faith-healer either side of this giant red pepper, his head, once.

Powys's stomach lurched like a car doing an emergency stop.

Col Croston emerged expressionless, pulling the door closed behind him. 'Mrs Newsome… Let's get some air, shall we?'

Her face began to warp. Col Croston took her arm and steered her into the square. Powys quickly closed the door behind them and stood with his back to it; he didn't want to hear this.

'What's in there?' Fay said from far away.

'A body.'

'Is it Hereward? Hereward Newsome?'

'Hard to say, he's been… damaged. And I don't know him. And if I did, it wouldn't help. Look, Fay, can we…?'

'Warren Preece,' Fay said, as if this explained everything. 'I expect Warren Preece did it.'

She took a last disbelieving look at her dad and watched Powys flick off the lights. She didn't move. He took her hand and towed her into the street. She went with him easily, like one of those toy dogs on wheels. From down the hill, across the river, blue emergency beacons were strobing towards the town with a warble of sirens.

Powys pulled Fay into a side-street. 'It'd be a bit daft to leave town, but I'd rather not be the first in line to make a police statement, would you?'

'Where shall we go?'

'My cottage?' They were in a street of narrow terraces and no lights. 'Or your house?'

'I suppose it is my house now,' Fay said, still sounding completely disconnected. 'Unless Dad's left it to some mysterious totty. I mean… I don't want it. I'll take the cats, but I'm not having Grace. Can you give a house to charity?'

He took hold of her upper arms, gently. 'Fay, please.'

She looked at him in mild enquiry, her green eyes calm as rock pools at low tide.

'I need you,' Powys said, and he hadn't meant to say that.

Fay said, 'Do vou?' from several miles away.

He nodded. They seemed to have been through years of experience together in about two days.

He'd tried to explain briefly what had happened. About the Tump, the head in the box. About Andy. Not about Jean Wendle; it wasn't the time.

What he wanted to tell her now was that something had been resolved. He wanted to say reassuring things about her dad.

But as he reached out for her he felt his body breaking up into awful, seismic shivers. It's not over – the words squeezed into his brain like the fragmented skull of the man in the vice – it's not over.