Crybbe

CHAPTER II

In his room at the Cock, Guy awoke at nine-thirty.

He'd come back here for a good night's sleep, but it hadn't been one, and he awoke realizing why.

He blinked warily at the overcast, off-white morning. At his suitcase on the floor by the dressing-table. At the wardrobe door agape, exposing his leather jacket on a hanger.

And, finally, at the portfolio against the wall next to the door. Especially at that.

He should never have slept with those drawings in the room. In the practical light of morning, Guy knew he should have left the portfolio in his car. Or, better still, dumped them back at The Gallery after his abortive attempt to quiz the girl.

On his way to the bathroom, he picked up the portfolio and left it propped up in the passage, hoping somebody would nick the thing. It was still there when he returned after a pee and a very quick wash – he didn't like spending too long in bathrooms any more, even by daylight.

Back in his room, Guy burrowed in his suitcase for his rechargeable shaver. He shaved, bending down to the dressing-table mirror, wondering about Jocasta, what kind of night she'd had.

Well, yes, he'd felt bad about Jocasta. In a way, especially when she'd clutched at his arm, pleading, 'One more night – just one night. Hereward'll be back tomorrow. Guy, I can't… I can't spend a night there alone.'

'Look,' he'd argued reasonably. 'Why not lock yourself in your, er, suite? You don't have to go near that bathroom, do you? I promise you, I'll find out about this, I'll tackle the girl again tomorrow.'

'You won't,' Jocasta had wailed 'Your crew'll be back and you'll spend all day filming and you'll forget all about me. I've been very stupid, I know… but please, can't you just…?

'No!'

Jocasta had sniffed and wandered back into The Gallery, leaving him alone on the street with the stiff-backed portfolio under his arm.

Dammit, he'd done what he could. Opened her poxy exhibition, been charming to the invited guests, none of whom – it seemed to Guy – could get away fast enough.

And he'd tried to get at the girl – the damned girl in black with the cruel, dark eyes.

'There she is!' Jocasta grabbing his arm in front of everybody, hissing at him and writhing like an anaconda.

'Where? Who?'

'The one who brought those drawings in.'

'You invited her?'

'Of course I didn't. She's just turned up. Guy, we've got to make her tell us what it's all about.'

'We? We have?'

The girl had spoken to nobody, just wandered around inspecting paintings, wearing a faintly superior, supercilious expression – as well she might, he'd conceded, given the standard of work on show; the artist, Emmanuel somebody or other, apparently specializing in brownish pointilliste studies of derelict farmyards.

To Guy, the girl looked far too mature and aware to be still at school.

Jocasta pushing the portfolio at him – 'Please… talk to her. She'll be impressed by you. She won't dare lie.'

But the girl didn't seem even to have heard of Guy Morrison, which didn't make her any more endearing. Add to this the dark-eyed unfriendly face – and the attitude.

'I was very interested,' Guy began smoothly, 'in the drawings you gave Mrs Newsome. The ones in this folder.'

'I don't know anything about them.'

'That's interesting. She tells me you asked her to try and sell them for you.'

'Don't know what you're on about. She's a nutter, that woman. You know she's on Valium and stuff, don't you?'

'Are you saying you didn't do these drawings? In which case, who did?'

'Why don't you get lost, blondie,' Tessa Byford said loudly, sweet as lemon, 'you're really not my type.'

She turned away from Guy Morrison and melted into the 'crowd' – a dozen or so people looking uncomfortable, feeding each other canapes and surface-chat. Except for one very thin woman with stretched, yellow-white skin, standing alone and smiling vacuously at Guy, with small needle-teeth.

Guy smiled back, but she didn't acknowledge him, and he went outside with the portfolio under his arm, to be followed by the faintly tipsy, hysterical Jocasta.

'No!' he'd said firmly. 'Do you understand? No!'

Which was how he'd come to walk away still holding the portfolio, feeling angry and confused. Needing a good night's sleep so he could think this thing out. The girl had obviously known about the ghost of the old man haunting the Newsomes' house. Had given Jocasta the drawings in a calculated attempt to terrify her.

But why? What had the girl got against Jocasta? Was there something Guy didn't know?

In the privacy of his room he'd thought of examining the drawings in some detail, but he found he didn't want to take them out of their folder. The whole business seemed less frightening now than distasteful.

Not the sort of thing Guy Morrison needed while shooting an important documentary.

He didn't need the dreams either.

Last night Guy had dreamed he was back on the rug in front of the fire, where Jocasta straddled him, swinging her hips tantalizingly above his straining loins.

'Yes, yes…' Guy urged in the dream, but she held herself just a fraction of an inch away so he could feel the heat of her but not the touch of her skin.

'Please,' he moaned. 'Please come down.'

Her face was above his; she seemed to be floating, both hands in the air. He felt her pubic hair brush the tip of his…

'Come… down… on me.'

'No!' Jocasta said calmly.

'Oh please! Please… I can't, I can't… I can't hold on!'

He tried to put his arms around her neck to pull her down on him, but his arms went right through her, as though she had no substance.

He dreamt then – the way you did sometimes – that he woke up, still feeling alarmingly excited. He was in his room at the Cock and he could still feel her presence above him, her bodily musk in his nostrils. He moaned and breathed in deeply.

And almost choked.

She smelt foul.

A decaying, rancid smell that filled up his throat and turned the sweat on his body to frost, and when he opened his eyes he stared into the whitened, skeletal face of the woman from The Gallery' with the little needle-teeth.

He really woke up then, in a genuine cold sweat.

No more nights alone in the Cock, Guy Morrison decided. Tonight… well, tonight would have to be a very special night for his adoring production assistant, Catrin Jones.

The lesser of several evils.

Chief inspectors were getting younger. This one was a kind of Murray Beech in blue; steely eyed, freshly shaven although he may have been up most of the night.

'Yes,' she said. 'We'd been to pick up my dog from the vet's. I… I needed somebody to drive the car so I could keep the dog on my knee.'

'No,' she said. 'No I haven't known him long. Just a couple of days in fact. In this job you get to know people quite well quite quickly.'

Don't ask what was wrong with the dog, she pleaded silently. It has nothing whatsoever to do with this. Nothing.

'We got back… I suppose it would have been shortly before seven. Yes, he drove back. The last I saw of him, he was walking home

… to the cottage he was living in. Max Goff had commissioned him to write a book about Crybbe.

'Miss Wade?' she said, 'Yes, I… got on very well with her. I suppose we had similar backgrounds.'

'Rose?' she said later. 'Rose who…?'

'Rose Hart,' replied Chief Inspector William Hughes, a high flier from Off. 'Have you heard of her?'

'No… Oh, wait a minute. Photographs by Rose Hart. On the cover of The Old Golden Land, it said "Photographs by Rose Hart". Is that who you mean?'

'You don't know anything about her? You never met?'

'No… What's the connection here?'

'Mrs Morrison, I have to be intrusive. What's your relationship with Joseph Miles Powys?'

'What?'

'Were you sleeping with him?'

'What…?

'I'm sorry, I have to ask this.'

'Of course I wasn't bloody sleeping with him. I'd only known the bloke a couple of days.'

'And how long had he known Miss Wade?'

'Oh,' Fay leaned back in the metal chair in the bare little room. There was a table and two other metal chairs; the Chief Inspector in one, Wynford Wiley in the other. Fat, florid, red necked Wynford Wiley, with a suggestion of a smile on his tiny lips.

'I see what you mean,' Fay conceded quietly.

'Two days? Three days? Four perhaps?'

'Yes, OK. It was what you might call a whirlwind romance.'

'Quite normal for some people, Mrs Morrison.'

'Yes, but Rachel wasn't…'

'No?'

'No. Listen. Perhaps relationships do form quickly when… when you aren't happy.'

'Miss Wade wasn't happy?'

'She… She wasn't happy working for Max Goff, no. She wasn't happy about what he was doing in Crybbe. She thought he was pouring money down the drain. The thing is… it wasn't too easy to quit, she was being paid an awful lot o money as Goff's PA.'

The way you babbled under interrogation, no matter how smooth you thought you were at handling people.

'How unhappy would you say she was?'

'Look,' Fay said, rallying. 'I think it's time you made it clear what kind of investigation this is. What do you suspect? Suicide? Or what?'

'Or what?' repeated the Chief Inspector.

'Or murder, I suppose,' Fay said.

'What do you think it was?'

'I don't know the circumstances. Are you trying to say – I mean, is this the bottom line? Powys pushed poor Rachel out of the window because she found out he was having it off with me? I mean, bloody hell, come on.'

'It wasn't a window, Mrs Morrison. It was something called the prospect chamber. Do you know it?'

'No. That is… I've heard of it.'

'Did you go out again last night, after Mr Powys had brought you home?'

'No.'

'Is there anybody who can…?'

'My father.'

'I understand he's not been very well, Mrs Morrison. I believe he gets a bit confused.'

'Oh God, Hughes, do you get a kick out of this?'

'It's my job, Mrs Morrison.'

'Still, what have I got to complain about? It'll sound interesting on the radio tonight, won't it?'

Wynford Wiley grinned, which wasn't pleasant. 'Which radio you gonner 'ave it on, Mrs Morrison?'

He looked down at his big hands. Hands like inflated rubber gloves, twirling a pen.

'Only I yeard Offa's Dyke Radio wasn't too happy with you lately, see. Just what I yeard, like…'

Hughes said, 'Mrs Morrison, do you know what happened to Rose Hart?'

Fay shook her head slowly.

The Chief Inspector consulted a file on the table in front of him.

'Twelve years ago,' he said, 'Rose Hart and Joe Powys were sharing a flat in Bristol. It was a Victorian building in a not very pleasant area of town, and Mr Powys told the inquest they were hoping to move somewhere else.'

'Inquest?' Fay said faintly.

'At the rear of the house was an overgrown area which couldn't really be called a garden. One afternoon Joe Powys went up to London to see his publisher – this is what he told the inquest. When he got back he couldn't find Rose anywhere, but a window was wide open in the flat – this is the fourth floor.'

'Oh no,' Fay said.

'Joe told the coroner he dashed downstairs and out the back, and there she was. Rose Hart.'

Fay brought a hand to her mouth. There was such a thing as coincidence, wasn't there?

'The verdict was accidental death. Nobody quite believed that, everybody thought she'd killed herself, but coroners tend to be kind. When there's room for doubt, when there isn't a note…'

'That's very sad,' Fay said.

'It certainly was Mrs Morrison. Half-buried in this overgrown patch at the back of this building in Bristol, where they lived, there were these old railings.'

'Jesus,' Fay whispered.

'They had spikes, rusty iron spikes. Three of them went through Miss Hart. One deeply into the abdominal area where she was carrying what was thought to be Mr Powys's baby.'

Fay said nothing.

'Very messy,' Hughes said.