Crybbe

CHAPTER I

Around mid-morning. Fay picked up the phone and sat there for several minutes, holding it to her ear, staring across the office, at nothing. The scene-of-crime man had just left, a young detective with a metal case. Lots of prints on the Revox and the desk, but they'd probably turn out to be her own and her father's, the SOCO had said cheerfully, fingerprinting them both. Everybody was a bit of a pro these days. He blamed television.

Fay held the phone at arm's length as it started making the continuous whine that told you you'd knocked it off its rest. She looked into the mouthpiece. The SOCO had fingerprinted that as well.

She tapped the button to get the dialling tone back. Could she really make this call?

… And what's the story. Fay?

It's very bizarre, Gavin. The fact is, I've discovered there are no dogs in Crybbe.

No dogs in Crybbe.

None at all. That is, except one.

Just the one.

Yes, mine. That's how I found out.

I see. And how come there are no dogs in Crybbe, Fay?

Because they howl at the curfew bell, Gavin. People don't like that.

That figures. But if there are no dogs in Crybbe, how do you know they howl at the curfew?

Well, I don't. I'm assuming that's the case, because Arnold howls at it. That's Arnold, my dog. Least, I think he's my dog.

Yes, well, thank you very much. Fay. Look, this illness your old man's got. This dementia. Anything hereditary there, by any chance?

'Oh God!'

Fay crashed the phone down.

Arnold lay at her feet, an ungainly black and white thing with monster ears and big, expressive eyes.

The only dog in Crybbe.

This morning, Fay had gone out soon after dawn into intermittent drizzle. She'd followed a milkman, at whom no dogs had barked no matter how carelessly he clanked his bottles. She'd followed a postman, whose trousers were unfrayed and who whistled as he walked up garden paths to drop letters through letter-boxes and on to doormats, where they lay unmolested by dogs.

She'd walked down by the river, where there was a small stretch of parkland with swings for the children and no signs warning dog owners not to allow their non-existent pets to foul the play area.

Finally, at around 8.15, she'd approached a group of teenagers waiting for the bus to take them to the secondary school nine miles away.

'Does any of you have a dog?'

The kids looked at each other. Some of them grinned, some shrugged and some just looked stupid.

'You know me, I'm a reporter. I work for Offa's Dyke Radio. I need to borrow a dog for an item I'm doing. Can any of you help me?'

'What kind of dog you want?'

'Any kind of dog. Doberman… Chihuahua… Giant wire-haired poodle.'

'My sister, she had a dog once.'

'What happened to it?'

'Ran away, I think.'

'We 'ad a dog, we did.'

'Where's it now?"

'Ran off.'

'I was your dog, I'd run off,' another kid said and the first kid punched him on the shoulder.

'Listen, what about farm dogs? Mr Preece, has he got a sheepdog?'

'Got one of them Bobcats.'

'What?'

'Like a little go-kart thing with four-wheel drive. Goes over hills. You got one of them, you don't need no sheepdog.'

'Yes,' Fay had said. 'I think I see.'

She didn't see at all.

Powys left Crybbe before seven and was back before ten, a changed man.

He wore a suit which was relatively uncreased. His shoes were polished, his hair brushed. He was freshly shaven.

He parked his nine-year-old Mini well out of sight, in the old cattle market behind the square, and walked across to the Cock, carrying a plausible-looking black folder under his arm. Taking Rachel's advice.

'Don't let him see you like that. You have to meet his image of J. M. Powys, so if you can't look older, at least look smarter. Don't let him see the car, he mustn't think you need the money – he's always suspicious of people who aren't rich. And you don't know anything about his plans.'

'Isn't Humble, the New Age minder, going to tell him he caught me nosing around?'

'I think not.'

He entered the low-ceilinged lobby of the Cock, where all the furniture was varnished so thickly that you could hardly tell one piece from another. It was like sitting in a tray of dark chocolates left on a radiator. Powys wedged himself into what he assumed to be an oak settle, to wait for Rachel.

Guy Morrison would be here, she'd told him, starting work on a documentary. He'd once worked with Guy on a series of three-minute silly-season items on Ancient Mysteries of the West for a Bristol-based regional magazine programme – J. M. Powys hired as the regular 'expert interviewee'. His clearest memory was of the day he'd suggested they look beyond the obvious. Taking Guy down to Dartmoor to see a newly discovered stone row believed to be orientated to the rising moon. He remembered the TV reporter looking down with disdain at the ragged line of stones, none more than eighteen inches high, barely below the level of his hand-stitched hiking boots. 'Let's move on,' Guy had said, affronted. Tm not doing a piece to camera in front of that.'

Presently, the Cock's taciturn licensee, Denzil George emerged from some sanctum and glanced across. He displayed no sign of recognition. Still been in bed, presumably, when Powys was sliding out of a side door into the alley just after six-thirty this morning.

'… do for you?" Denzil said heavily. Powys thought of some shambling medieval innkeeper, black-jowled, scowling, lumpen-browed.

'Nothing at all, thanks, mate. I'm waiting for… ah, this lady, I think.'

Rachel had appeared on the stairs, sleek in a dark-blue business suit. 'Mr Powys?'

'Good morning. Am I too early?'

'Only a little. We're terribly glad you were able to make it. Mr George, I'm taking Mr Powys along to the Court, so if Mr Goff calls in, tell him we've gone on ahead, will you? And lunch as arranged,