Crybbe aka Curfew

CHAPTER I

Monday morning and, over the dregs of an early breakfast, Fay finally found out the truth about her father, Grace and the house. And wound up wishing, in a way, that she'd remained ignorant, for in ignorance there was always hope.

It was not unknown for Alex to be up for an early breakfast – on one best-forgotten occasion five or six weeks ago he'd been clanking around in the kitchen at 5 a.m. and, when his swollen-eyed daughter had appeared in the doorway, had admonished her for going out and not leaving him any supper.

No, it hadn't made any sense, except in terms of the quantity of blood reaching her dad's brain, and Fay was resigned to it. With a cold, damp apprehension, she'd accepted there would come a time when it might be necessary to change the locks on the front door and deprive him of a key so he wouldn't go out wandering the streets in the early hours in search of a chip shop or a woman or something.

However, there were still times – like last night – when it might almost be in remission.

But last night – Dad, why is Grace haunting us? – they'd parted uncomfortably, Alex mumbling. 'Talk about it in the morning.' The prospect of him remembering had seemed so remote that even Fay had expunged it from her memory.

Then this morning, she'd come down just before eight, and there was her dad fishing a slice of bread out of the toaster with a bent fork and making unflattering observations about the quality of Taiwanese workmanship.

'Been remiss,' he'd mumbled 'Shouldn't have tried to cover up.'

'So you burnt the toast again,' Fay said. 'No big deal, Dad.'

'No – Grace, you stupid child. I'm trying to say I should have told you about Grace.'

'Oh.'

And out it all came, for the first time, as if the blood supply to his brain had suddenly tripled, making him more cogent, more aware of his own defects than she could ever remember. This Wendle woman… was it conceivable she'd pulled off some astonishing medical coup here?

'Grace…' Alex said. 'This lady with whom I'd had a small dalliance over twenty years earlier, she rather more serious about it than I. I mean, she really wasn't my type at all, not like your mother. Grace was a very proper sort of woman, prissy some might say.'

'I never liked to say it myself, Dad.'

'Such a sheltered life, you see, here in Crybbe. And then the secretarial job with the diocese. I think – God help me – I think she really believed that having an affair with a clergyman was somewhat less sinful than having a less… er, less physical relationship with a layman.'

'Nearer my God to thee,' Fay said wryly.

'Quite. She was quite unbearably understanding when… when your mother found out and threatened to get us all, via the divorce courts, into the News of the World. Tricky period. Things were quite hairy for a while. But, there we are, it ended surprisingly amicably. Quite touching, really, at the time.'

Fay said, 'You mean she accepted her martyrdom gracefully, as it were, to save your precious career.'

Alex lowered his eyebrows. 'Quite,' he said gruffly. 'Of course I felt sorry for Grace and we kept in contact – in an entirely platonic way – for many years.'

'Even when Mum was alive?'

'Platonically, Fay, platonically. Came back to Crybbe to live with her sister, as you know, then she died, and Grace was alone, a very aloof, proper little spinster in a tidy little house. Terribly sad. Do you think I might have another…?'

'I'll pour it.'

'Thank you. And then, of course, I had the letter from young Duncan Christie at the cathedral, just happening to mention Grace was in a pretty depressed state. Not too well, sister recently dead. Feeling pretty sorry for herself, and with reason. Never been quite the same since… you know. Well…'

'You've told me this bit A chance for you to make amends.'

'Nemesis, you see. I had ruined the poor woman's life, after all.'

'That might be questionable.'

Alex shook his head, in a rare hair-shirt mood. 'And, well, I just happen to turn up there one day, just passing through, you know. And I just happened to stay. So, after all these years, Miss Legge finally becomes Mrs Peters – or, as she liked to put it, Mrs Canon Peters. And Alex resigns himself to a year or two of ministering to this rather severe elderly lady, incurably ill and incurably set in her ways – odd, really, she seemed much older than me, although she was twenty-odd years younger.'

'Yes, but…'

'I know. I'm coming to it. Woodstock. Why didn't I sell this place when Grace died and go back to Woodstock?'

'The very question I've been trying to ask you for months, Dad.'

'Er… Yes.' Alex slurped milk into his coffee. Fay looked up as hard rain spots hit the window. The dried-blood bricks of the houses across the street gleamed drably.

'You see, there are things you don't know about Woodstock. Like the fact that it.er…well, it wasn't mine to sell, actually.'

Fay closed her eyes.

'Still belonged to Charlie Wharton. I may have conveyed the impression I'd bought it off him. Fact is, I was only sort of keeping it warm for his retirement, and I was surviving rather longer than either of us had envisaged. And they were about to boot him cut of the bishop's palace, you see, so he was pretty anxious to have the place back. In fact, I, er, well, I might have been facing a spot of legal action to remove me if I hadn't cleared off when I did. To be honest.'

Might have guessed, Fay thought. Might have bloody guessed.

'So what it comes down to,' she said, smiling icily, 'is that you were rather more anxious to move in with Grace than she was to have you.'

'Well. Until I, er, raised the possibility of marriage.'

Fay nodded, still smiling.

'Problem is, as you know, money and I have never got along terribly well together. Ladies, horses, unwise investments…'

Alex stirred his coffee. The rain came down harder. Fay noticed a damp patch near the kitchen ceiling. It was getting bigger.

'Dad,' she said, 'you are a total, unmitigated shit.'

Alex went on stirring his coffee and didn't deny it.

Fay went to wash the breakfast dishes, digesting the information and its significance: that her father was not a wealthy man, that his total assets amounted to little more than a very small terraced cottage in a back street in Crybbe. A cottage which, even if sold to, say, Max Goff. would hardly pay a year's rent on a basement room in Battersea.

She wondered what kind of pension he'd got. And if he had debts she knew nothing about.

So much to think about that it seemed silly even to raise the issue. However…

'You've seen her, haven't you? Since she died, you've been seeing her.'

'Oh, Fay.' Alex rubbed his eyes. 'This part's so difficult. The past few months – such a blur. I don't know what I've done, what I've seen. These past couple of days… It's as though I'm waking up. Wendy perhaps, I don't know.'

'You know what I'm talking about, though. Let's not piss about here, Dad. Grace's ghost.'

She shivered, just saying the words, Grace's empty fish-smile in her mind.

'I… This really is hard. Especially for me, as a priest. All my life… so many anomalies. So many things one can't encompass within the scriptural parameters. That business in Y Groes a year or two ago. And now young Murray and his evil children.'

'You haven't told me about that.'

'Sworn to silence, child. And, you see, there's always a rational explanation, always a psychological answer. Murray rushing ahead with his career in the blissful certainty that a clergyman can operate more effectively if he doesn't believe.'

'Sod Murray, Dad… Grace.'

'You don't, have to bring me back to the bloody point. I'm not rambling.'

'Sorry.'

'All right. So I'm guilty of whatever crime it might be to smooth things out for two elderly folk in a bit of a mess. The problem is, when Grace popped her clogs rather sooner than expected, my overwhelming reaction, I'm sorry to say, was one of relief. There we are. Truth out. I'd got a roof over my head and she wasn't under it any more. How's that for a Christian attitude?'

'Not so deplorable.'

'It may not seem deplorable to you, wretched child, but I wanted to suffer. I needed to suffer. I'd been getting away with things all my life and here I was again landing on my feet.'

Fay thought, Christ, what's he saying? Is he saying that, in his dislocated mental condition, he created Grace's ghost, a resentful avenging presence to remind him of his sins?

'And you,' Alex said. 'Why the devil did you have to come back and look after me? I didn't want to inflict myself on you. Prissy little Grace didn't want you in her house.'

The crux of it. He might be able to project Grace, like a gruesome magic-lantern slide on his own dusty mental screen.

But you can't make me see her, Dad. You can't do that.

How could she tell him what she'd seen? (Did I really see it? Did I see it?) What would that do for his remission?

'OK, Dad.' she said. 'Drink your coffee. I understand. Look, I've missed the news now.'

Fay switched on the Panasonic radio on the kitchen window ledge. She had indeed missed the news and had to listen to a couple of minutes of sport before the headlines were repeated.

'And to recap on today's main story: in Crybbe, police are investigating the death of a personal assistant to billionaire businessman Max Goff. The dead woman, thirty-five-year-old Rachel Wade, appeared to have fallen from a high, window in historic Crybbe Court This a Offa's Dyke Radio News. Next bulletin: ten o'clock.'

For long, long seconds, Fay didn't move at all. Stood frozen at the sink, a damp dishcloth hanging from one hand.

The kitchen clock, two minutes fast, said 9.17.

Alex, sliding his chair back, getting to his feet, said, 'How come you didn't pick that one up, Fay?'

'I normally make the police calls before you get up,' Fay said numbly. 'We had breakfast instead. Offa's Dyke have an early duty reporter, in at half past five.'

'Ah.' Alex brought his coffee cup to the sink. 'Expect you'll be off to find out what happened.' He looked up, his beard pure white in the dull morning. 'You all right, Fay? How well did you know this woman?'

'Fine, Dad,' said Fay. 'No, I… I didn't know her very well. Excuse me.'

Arnold struggled to his feet to follow her out of the room fell over again. Fay picked him up and carried him into the office, her face buried in his fur.

As she put him down on the fireside chair, she caught a glimpse of her own face in the gilt-framed mirror, a face as pale as dead Grace.

Fay picked up the phone, called the Information Room at Divisional HQ.

'Not much we can tell you, I'm afraid.'

'It was an accident, though?'

'All I can say is, investigations are proceeding.'

'You mean, it might not have been an accident?'

'Hang on a minute,' the police voice said, then she heard, 'Yes, sir, it's Fay Morrison from Offa's Dyke. Sure, just a sec. Mrs Morrison, the duty inspector would like a word.'

'Good morning, Mrs Morrison, Inspector Waring here, if wonder if you'd be good enough to pop into the police station at Crybbe, see the Chief Inspector.'

'Why?'

'Just a few things you might be able to clear up for us.'

'Like what?'

'I think I'd rather the chief told you that, if you don't mind.'

'Oh, come on,' said Fay. 'Off the record.'

A moment's hesitation, then, 'All right, off the record, we've a chap helping with inquiries, Joseph Miles Powys. Says he was with you yesterday.'

'What?'

'Would you mind, Mrs Morrison, just popping into the station? They won't keep you long.'

'I'm… I'm on my way,' Fay said.

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.

CHAPTER III

People were flinging themselves out of windows to the ground, and the grey masonry was cracking up around them.

The single bolt of lightning had caused a great jagged cleft in the tower. Fire and smoke spewed out.

'What's this one mean?' Guy Morrison asked.

Adam Ivory didn't look up. His wife whispered, 'This card is simply called The Tower. Or sometimes The Tower Struck by Lightning. It signifies a cataclysm.'

'Is that good or bad?' Guy was not greatly inspired by the tarot. What he'd really been after was a crystal-ball type of clairvoyant One could do things with crystal balls televisually. He supposed it might be possible to match up some of these images with local scenes, but it would be a bit contrived.

'What I mean is, are we talking about something cataclysmically wonderful, or what?'

'It can be either way,' Hilary Ivory said She was older and bigger than her husband; her hair was startlingly white. 'Good or evil. A catharsis or simply a disaster, with everything in ruins. It depends on the spread.'

The cameraman, Larry Ember, looked up from his viewfinder, the Sony still rolling. His expression said. How long you want me to hold this bloody shot?

Guy made small circles with a forefinger to signify Larry should keep it running. Initially this was to have been no more than wallpaper – images of New Age folk doing what they did. But then he'd persuaded Adam Ivory, who called himself a tarotist, to try and read the future of the Crybbe project.

Guy had managed to convince him that this was being shot with Goff's full approval and would in no way threaten the Ivorys' tenure of this comfortable little town-centre apartment. It occurred to him that the opportunity of relocating to form part of a like-minded community in Crybbe had been something of a godsend for Adam and Hilary; the tarot trade couldn't have been very lucrative in Mold.

Ivory had agreed to be recorded on VT while doing his reading but had stipulated there was to be no moving around, no setting up different angles, no zooming in or out, or anything that might affect his concentration.

Larry had done a bit of snorting and face-pulling at this. Cameramen weren't over-concerned about public relations and it was evident to Guy that this cameraman thought this interviewee was a snotty little twerp.

Guy Morrison would not have disagreed completely, but in the absence of a crystal-ball person, this might be the best he'd get in the general area of divination.

The camera had been rolling for nearly seven minutes, and for the last four the shot had been entirely statis: Adam Ivory – who wore a suit and looked more like a dapper, trainee accountant than a clairvoyant – intent on the spread of nine cards, the last of which was The Tower.

Little gaily dressed puppet-figures hurling themselves to the ground.

Guy thought of Rachel Wade. An unfortunate incident. It would bring regional news crews into Crybbe, if they weren't here already. Trespassers on his property.

'Adam, are you going to tell us what the cards are indicating?' Guy asked softly.

Silence.

Larry Ember, who'd been a working cameraman when Guy was still at public school, stepped back from his tripod, the camera still running.

He looked straight at his director, the way cameramen did, conveying the message, You're supposed to be in charge, mate, what are you going to do about this fucking prat?

Then, turning away from Guy, Larry lit a cigarette.

Hilary Ivory was on him in seconds, furiously pointing at her husband and shaking her hair into a blizzard. Guy tensed, just praying she didn't snatch the cigarette out of Larry's fingers; he'd once known a film unit cameraman who'd hit a woman in the face for less than that.

Adam Ivory himself rescued the situation. He moved. Larry bent over his camera again.

Ivory's movement amounted to taking off his glasses, cleaning the lenses on the edge of the black tablecloth and putting the glasses back on again.

He resumed his study of the cards and Larry's shoulders slumped in disgust. Time, Guy realized, was getting on. Goff was coming back, he'd heard, in the wake of this Rachel Wade business. His eyes were drawn back to The Tower. It would be inexcusably tasteless to cut from shots of policemen and the upstairs window at the Court to these little puppet-figures tumbling from a greystone tower struck by a bolt of lightning. Pity.

Adam Ivory looked up suddenly, eyes large and watery behind the rimless glasses.

The soundman's boom-mike came up between Ivory's legs, fortunately out of sight.

'Forget it,' Ivory croaked. 'Scrap it.'

'Scrap it?' Guy said. 'Scrap it?'

He didn't believe this.

'I'm sorry,' Ivory said. 'It isn't working. I don't think it's… It's not reliable. The cards obviously don't like this situation. I should never have agreed to do a reading in front of a TV camera. As well as…'

He fell silent, staring hard at the cards, as if hoping they'd rearranged themselves.

'As what?' Guy said, trying to control his temper. 'As well as what?'

'Other negative influences.' Ivory glanced nervously at the glowering cameraman and glanced quickly away. 'The balance is so easily affected.'

Guy said carefully, 'Mr Ivory, are you trying to say the cards were… the prediction was unfavourable?'

The camera was still running. Guy very deliberately walked around to Ivory's side of the table and peered over his shoulder at the cards. He saw Death. He saw The Devil.

'I am not…'

Ivory swept the nine cards together in a heap. Guy noticed his fingertips were white.

'… trying to say…'

He snatched his hands away, as if the cards were tainted.

'… anything.'

And pushed both hands underneath his thighs on the chair, looking like a scared but peevish schoolboy.

Larry Ember shot half a minute of this then switched off and slid the camera from its tripod. 'Fucking tosser,' he muttered.

Hilary Ivory went to her husband, looking concerned in a motherly way.

A single tarot card fell over the edge of the table. Guy picked it up. It was The Hanged Man.

He put it carefully on the table, face-up in front of Ivory.

'What's this one mean?'

'It's very complicated,' Hilary said. 'The little man's hanging upside down by his foot, so it's got nothing to do with hanging, as such.'

'Look, would you please leave?' the tarotist almost shrieked, his face sweating like shrink-wrapped cheese under the TV lights. 'I… I don't feel well.'

Larry Ember lit another cigarette.

'No,' Mr Preece said, 'I won't.'

He and his wife had not been inhospitable. Catrin Jones, Guy's production assistant, had been given the second-best chair and a cup of milky instant coffee.

'But you see.. She didn't know where to begin. The blanket refusal was not at all what she'd expected, even though she conceded it had been a difficult week for Mr Preece, with the drowning of his grandson and everything.

'Biscuit?' offered the Mayor.

'Oh no, thank you.'

Catrin wondered why there was an onion in a saucer on top of the television.

'Because what we were thinking,' she said rapidly, 'is that it would be far better to talk to you in advance of tomorrow night's public meeting rather than afterwards at this stage, because…'

'You are talkin' to me,' said the Mayor simply.

'On camera, Mr Preece,' Catrin said. 'On camera.'

'I'm not going to change my mind. I'm keeping my powder dry.'

'Oh, but, you see, you won't be giving anything away because it won't be screened for months!' Catrin's voice growing shrill and wildly querulous. 'And it's not a great ordeal any more being on television, we could shoot you outside the house so there wouldn't be any need for lights, and as well as being terrifically gifted, Guy Morrison is well-known for being a very understanding, caring sort of producer,'

'That's as maybe,' Mr Preece said. 'All I'm sayin' is I don't 'ave to be on telly if I don't want to be, and I don't.'

'But, you will be during tomorrow night's meeting. What's the difference?'

'I doubt that very much.'

'Mr Preece, you are supposed to be chairing the meeting.'

'Aye, but as you won't be allowed in with that equipment, it makes no odds, do it?'

Catrin, outraged, sat straight up in her chair. 'But it's a public meeting! Anybody can go in. It's all arranged with Max Goff!'

'Max Goff?' Mr Preece's leathery jowls wobbled angrily. 'Max Goff isn't running this town yet, young woman. And if I says there's no telly, there's no telly. Police Sergeant Wynford

Wiley will be in attendance, and any attempts to smuggle cameras in there will be dealt with very severely.'

'But…' Catrin was close to tears. She had never before encountered anyone less than delighted and slightly awed at the possibility of being interviewed by Guy Morrison.

' 'Ave another cup of coffee,' said the Mayor.

What he kept seeing was not Rachel plunging out of the sky. Not the willowy, silvery body broken on the rubbish pile.

He would not think of that – not here, in this grim Victorian police station. If he thought of that he'd weep; he wasn't going to indulge in that kind of luxury, not here.

No, what he kept seeing was the grey-brown thing, falling like smoke.

He'd seen it again as he waited for the police. It lay where it had landed, three or four yards from the pile, light as the fluff which collected in a vacuum cleaner.

I've seen them before, Powys thought now. In museums, in glass cases, labelled: remains of a mummified cat found in the rafters, believed to have been a charm against evil.

The cat had fallen to the ground after Rachel.

He hadn't told them that.

'And you heard her scream, did you?'

'She cried out. Before she fell. '

'She wasn't screaming as she fell?'

'I don't think so. I mean, no, she wasn't…'

'Didn't that strike you as odd?'

'Nothing struck me at the time, except the sheer bloody horror of it.'

Telling it four times at least. How he'd attacked the rubbish heap, frantically hurling things aside to reach her.

Lifting her head. Staring into her face, eyes open so wide that you could almost believe… until you fell the dead weight, saw – last desperate hopes corroding in your hands – the angle of the head to the shoulders.

Staring stricken into her face, and the curfew bell began to toll, a distant death knell.

'… can we return to this point about the door, Mr Powys. You say you tried the rear door to the courtyard and found it locked. You couldn't budge it.'

'No, It was locked. I put my full weight against it'

'Then how do you explain why, when we arrived, this door was not only unlocked but was, in fact, ajar?'

'I can't explain that. Unless there was someone else in there with Rachel.'

'Someone other than you…'

'Look, I've told you, I…'

They'd gone over his statement several times last night and then said OK, thank you very much, you can go home now, Mr Powys, but we'll undoubtedly want to talk to you again.

But he knew, as he tried to sleep back at the cottage, that they were out there, watching the place, making sure he didn't go anywhere. And it was no real surprise when the knock came on the door at 8 a.m., and the car was waiting – a car, to take him less than a quarter of a mile across the bridge to the police station.

'You didn't tell us, Mr Powys, that this wasn't exactly a new experience for you. You didn't tell us about Rose.'

So who had?

Somebody had.

He sat on the metal chair, alone in the interview room, wishing he still smoked. He could hear them conversing in the passage outside, but not what they were saying.

'So you went to Leominster with Fay Morrison?'

'Yes.'

'Attractive woman, Mrs Morrison.'

'Yes.'

'What was wrong with the dog?'

'He had a badly injured leg'

This could lead back to Jonathon Preece in no time at all. Holistic police-work. Everything inter-connected.

Joseph Miles Powys, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Jonathon Preece, Rachel Wade and Rose Hart. You don't have to say anything, but anything you do say…

Perhaps I should confess, he thought, looking up to the single, small, high window and seeing a hesitant sun in the white sky, wobbling nervously like the yolk of a lightly poached egg.

Maybe I did it. Maybe I killed her, as surely as if I'd been standing behind her in the prospect chamber, with both hands outstretched.

He thought, If I start believing that, we're all finished. So he went back to thinking about the cat.

CHAPTER IV

The sun was out for the first time in ages, hanging around unsurely like a new kid standing in the school doorway.

Fay walked aimlessly up the hill from the police station towards the town square and the Cock, pausing by the railings alongside the few steps to its door. Even a weak sun was not kind to this building; its bricks needed pointing, its timbers looked like old railway sleepers.

The Cock didn't even have a sign, as you might have imagined, with a bight painting of a proud rooster crowing joyfully from the hen-house roof. But, knowing Crybbe, would you really imagine a sign like that?

And anyway, whoever said the name referred to that kind of cock? A far more appropriate emblem for this town, Fay thought, would be a decidedly limp penis.

Crybbe. Crybachu (to wither).

Fay looked down the alley towards the brick building housing the Crybbe Unattended Studio and wondered if she'd ever go in there again. They were obviously handling the Rachel Wade story themselves; nobody had even attempted to contact her.

I need the money. Fay realized suddenly. I need an income. I need a job. Why are they doing this to me?

She thought of Joe Powys – I think I've got problems – helping the police with their inquiries. Quite legitimately, by the sound of it.

Rachel Wade… the dead woman, Rachel Wade.

He couldn't have… surely. She liked Joe. He seemed so normal, for the author of a seminal New Age treatise.

Well, comparatively normal.

Oh God, what was happening?

She didn't notice the door open quietly in a narrow townhouse to the left of the Cock, didn't hear the footsteps. When she turned her head, the woman was standing next to her, looking across the square to the church.

'Good morning, Fay.'

Fay was too startled, momentarily, to reply. She'd never seen this woman before, a woman nearly as small as she was, but perhaps a quarter of a century older.

Well, never seen the face before.

'Jean Wendle?' Fay said.

'I am.'

Last seen in a hat, sitting very still, impersonating the ghost of Grace Legge.

May I perhaps offer you a coffee?' Jean Wendle said.

Catrin Jones knew Guy would be furious about the Mayor's ban on cameras at tomorrow's public meeting.

She also knew from experience that when bad news was brought to him Guy had a tendency to take it out on the messenger.

The need to salvage something from the morning had brought her to this subdued, secluded house opposite the church, at the entrance to the shaded lane leading down to Crybbe Court.

'I'd be delighted to help you, any way I can,' said Graham Jarrett, hypnotherapist, small, silvery haired, late-fifties.

'I was thinking perhaps this, what is it, recession…?'

'Regression.'

It was very quiet and peaceful in the house, with many heavy velvet curtains. Catrin could imagine people here falling easily into hypnosis,

'Yes. Regression,' she said. 'This is… past lives?'

'Well, we don't like to talk necessarily in terms of past lives,' Graham Jarrett said, matter-of-fact, like a customer-friendly bank manager. 'But sometimes, when taken back under hypnosis to an area of time prior to their birth, people do seem to acquire different personalities and memories of events they couldn't be expected to have detailed knowledge of.'

'Fantastic,' Catrin said.

'I certainly wouldn't be averse to having you film a session, if the client was in agreement.'

'That would be excellent,' Catrin said.

'But I have to warn you that many of them do prefer it to be private.'

'Oh, listen, my producer – Guy Morrison – is a wonderfully assuring man. They would have nothing to worry about with him.'

'Perhaps he would like to be regressed himself?' said Graham Jarrett with a meaningful smile.

'Oh. Well…'

'Or you, perhaps?'

'Me?'

'Think about it,' Graham Jarrett said lightly.

Fay sat in the wooden bow-chair. Jean Wendle was on the edge of a huge, floppy sofa with both hands around a mug of coffee. She wore a white cashmere sweater and pink canvas trousers.

'I heard it on the news,' she said. 'About poor Rachel Wade.'

'Yes,' Fay said, wondering if she'd also heard about Powys helping with inquiries.

'It's a crumbling old place, the Court. What was she doing there at that time of night?'

'I don't know. I've only heard the news, too. I'll expect I'll be finding out. All I know is…'

Oh, what the hell, the woman was supposed to have been lawyer, wasn't she? Maybe she could help.

'All I know is, the police aren't convinced it was an accident. Joe Powys apparently saw her fall and called the police. They're kind of holding him on suspicion.'

A sunbeam licked one gilt handle of a big Chinese vase with an umbrella in it then crept across the carpet to the tip of Jean Wendle's moccasins.

'Oh dear,' Jean said.

Fay told her how things had been between Joe and Rachel, in case she wasn't aware of that. She described her own interrogation by the police. What they'd told her about Rose.

'Can they hold him, do you think?'

'It doesn't sound as if they have any evidence to speak of,' Jean said. 'They can't convict on a coincidence. They also have to ask themselves why this man should engineer the death his lover in the same way that a previous girlfriend died, then immediately report it as an accident – knowing that the police would sooner or later learn about the earlier misfortune. I wonder how they found out about that so quickly. Did Joe tell them himself, I wonder? Do you mind if I smoke?'

Fay shook her head. Jean went across to the Georgian table, put down her coffee mug, lifted the lid on an antique writing box, found a thin cigar and a cheap, disposable lighter. She picked up a small, silver ashtray and brought everything back to the sofa.

'It could be, of course, that the police are looking at possible psychiatric angles.'

Fay was thrown.

Yes, I'm an accredited crank, Joe had said. Had said several times, variations on the same self-deprecating theme.

'You're saying they think he's possibly a psychopath who is into pushing women out of upstairs windows. And – I don't know – subconsciously he's seeking help and that's why he called the police after he'd done it?'

Jean shrugged. 'Who knows how the police around here think? Perhaps they'll do some checks with Bristol police and find out if he really was in London the afternoon Rose died. If they arrest him he'll need a solicitor. Until they decide what they're going to do, I don't think there's anything we can do. Meanwhile…'

Jean Wendle turned serious, quizzical eyes on Fay.

'Tell me about yesterday. In the church. Tell me what that was all about.'

Fay sighed. It seemed so long ago. And, in retrospect, so foolish. Also, it said too much about her state of mind that even when Jean had turned in the pew to look at her, she was still seeing somebody else.

'It's very silly,' she said. 'I thought you were Grace Legge – that's my father's late wife.'

Jean Wendle nodded, showed no surprise at all. 'You've been seeing this woman?'

'Once. I think. I mean, how can anyone say for sure? They don't really exist do they, only in our minds.'

'That depends.'

'On what we mean by existing, I suppose. Well, all I can say is that, whatever it was, I'm not anxious to see it again.'

Jean smiled. She was, Fay thought, the sort of woman – sharp, poised – you wouldn't mind being like when you were older. That is, you wouldn't mind so much being older if you were this relaxed.

'I don't quite know what came over me. You were just so completely still that the thought occurred to me that there was nobody at all sitting next to Dad, but I was seeing Grace.'

Jean said, 'The time you really did see her – when you saw – whatever it was you saw – where was this?'

'In the house. In the office, which used to be her "best" room. The room that, when she was alive, I suppose she thought of as her sacred place – so neat and perfect because nobody really used it. Maybe she thought this room had been violated by my desk and the equipment and everything. Or maybe I thought she'd be angry and so I conjured up this fantasy…'

'You don't think that for one minute,' Jean said.

'No,' Fay admitted. 'All right, I don't think that.'

'Then please, only tell me what you do think. And stop looking at me as though you're wondering what I might change you into.'

'Miss Wendle…'

'Jean.'

'Jean. Look, I'm sorry, but it gets you like this after a while, Crybbe. I've been here nearly a year, and it gets to you.'

'You mean you can't relate to the people here. You don't understand what makes them tick.'

'Do you?'

'Well, I think…' Jean lit the cigar at last. 'People talk a lot about energy. Energy lines, ley-lines. Trying to explain it scientifically. Makes them seem less like cranks if they're talking about earth energies and life forces.'

She inhaled deeply, blew out a lot of blue smoke.

'The pronouncements of New Age folk are wrapped up in too much glossy jargon. Concealing massive ignorance.'

'What are you doing in Crybbe, then, if you think it's all bullshit?'

'Oh, it isn't all bullshit, not by any means. And at least they're searching. Trying to reach out, as it were. Which itself generates energy. In fascinating contrast to the natives, who appear to be consciously trying not to expend any at all. And perhaps to the electricity company, who can't seem to summon sufficient to see us through an entire day.'

'I'm sorry. What are you saying?'

'I'm saying that perhaps the people of this town are as they are because they've known for generations what a psychically unstable area this is, and most people – sadly, in my view – are afraid to confront the supernatural and all it implies. For instance, I should be very surprised if you were the only person who was seeing the shades of the dead in this town.'

Fay shivered slightly at that. The shades of the dead… sounded almost beautiful. But Grace wasn't.

'I try to avoid letting anything get touched by the dead hand of science or indeed pseudo-science,' Jean said. 'But let's suppose that in certain places certain forms of energy collect. Our friend Joe Powys says in his book that the border country is… Have you read it?'

'The psychic departure lounge.'

'Yes, and poor Henry Kettle, the dowser, couldn't abide such terminology because he was really awfully superstitious and terrified of admitting it."

'Nothing psychic.'

Jean waved her cigar. 'A terrible old humbug, may he rest in light. Henry, of course, was just about as psychic as anyone can get. Anyway, your ghost. Grace. Did she speak?'

'Not a word.'

'And she didn't move?'

'No.'

'Harmless, then.'

'I'm so glad,' Fay said sceptically.

'Can I explain?'

'Please do.'

'OK, if we stick to our scientific terminology, then pockets of energy can accumulate in certain volatile areas, and in such areas, the spirits of the dead, usually in a most rudimentary form, may appear. Like a flash of static electricity. And they go out just as quickly. Or you'll get sounds. Or smells.'

'The scent of fresh-cut lilies or something.'

'Or fresh shit,' Jean said harshly. 'It depends.'

'I'm sorry. I wasn't flippant when it was happening to me.'

'I doubt you were,' Jean said. 'All right, sights or sounds or smells – or tastes even. Rarely anything simultaneous, because there's rarely sufficient energy to support it. If there was a massive accumulation of it then one might have a complete sensory experience.'

'I only saw her. And it was cold. It went cold.'

'Energy loss,' Jean said. 'Quite normal. So, if I may give you some advice, if you should see your Grace again, blink a couple of times… and she'll be gone. She can't talk to you, she can't see you; there's no brain activity there. Entirely harmless.'

'Not pleasant, though,' Fay said, reluctant to admit feeling better about the idea of Grace as a mindless hologram.

'No,' Jean said, 'the image of a dead person is rarely pleasant, but it's not as much of a problem as these damned power cuts.'

'You really think that's connected?'

'Oh, it has to be. Psychic activity causes all kinds of electrical anomalies. Voltage overloads, or whatever they call them. Sometimes people will find they have terrific electricity bills they can't explain, and the electricity people will come along and check the meters and the feeds, and they'll say, "We're really sorry, madam, but you must have consumed it, our equipment cannot lie." The truth is the householders may not have used it. but something has.'

Fay remembered poor Hereward Newsome and his astronomical bills.

'But your wee ghost,' Jean said, 'is the least of your problems here. Sporadic psychic activity on that level isn't enough to cause power fluctuations on the Crybbe scale. Whatever's happening, there's much more that needs to be explained before you can get close to it.'

'You've been very reassuring,' Fay said. 'Thank you. I'm also very impressed with what you're doing for Dad. He's almost his old self again. I mean, do you really think there any hope of…?'

'I never discuss my patients,' Jean said severely.

By the time Fay left Jean Wendle's house, the sun had vanished behind an enormous black raincloud and she hurried down the street to make it home before the rain began again.

She saw Guy across the square, followed by his cameraman with the camera clamped to his shoulder and a tripod under his arm. Guy made as if to cross the road towards her, but Fay raised a hand in passing greeting and hurried on. She couldn't face Guy this morning.

'Fay,' someone said quietly.

She turned her head and then stopped.

Blink a couple of times, Jean Wendle had advised, but this apparition didn't disappear.

'Joe,' she said.

He looked terrible, bags under hopeless eyes, hair like cigarette ash.

They had to let me go,' he said, insufficient evidence.'

Fay said nothing.

'Can we talk?'

'Maybe it's not a good time,' Fay heard herself say. 'I don't think you killed Rachel, let's just leave it at that for now.'

Which was the last thing she wanted to do. She bit her upper lip.

'They had you in, presumably,' he said.

'Yes.'

'And they told you about Rose.'

'Yes.'

'And that's why you don't want to talk about it.'

'Look,' Fay said. 'I've lost the only real friend I had in this town, I desperately want to talk about it, I just…'

'It wasn't an accident,' Powys said.

'What?'

'It wasn't an accident. After she fell, something else came out.'

'What are you saving?

'A cat.'

Fay looked at him. There was something seriously abnormal about all this. About Joe Powys, too.

'I don't mean a live cat. This one's been dead for centuries.'

'Tiddles,' Fay said faintly, getting a picture of black eye-sockets and long sabre-teeth

And her. She was becoming abnormal. She had to get out of here.

'Cats that've been dead for hundreds of years don't hurl themselves three storeys to the ground while somebody puts on a light-show under the eaves.'

'Hallucination,' Fay said.

'No.'

Fay thought about Jean Wendle and the energy anomalies, about Grace, about the curfew and the howling and the town with no dogs.

Joe said, 'Can you spare the rest of the day?'

No! she wanted to shriek and then to push past him and run away down the street and keep running.

'I might have a job. I have to go home and talk to my father and check the answering machine.'

'If it turns out you're free, can I pick you up? Say, twenty minutes?'

Would that be entirely safe? she wanted to ask. Am I going to be all right as long as I stay away from open windows?

'All right, 'she said.

CHAPTER V

They said, Don't, leave town. Or words to that effect.'

Joe Powys floored the accelerator.

'Fuck them,' he said.

Fay tried to smile.

They'd left Crybbe on a road she wasn't too familiar with, the road into Wales by way of Radnor Forest, which didn't seem to be a forest at all but a range of hills.

He hadn't said where they were going.

She didn't care. She felt apart from it all, in a listless kind of dream state. She was watching a movie about a woman who was out for a drive with a murderer. But in films like this, the woman had no reason to suspect the man was a murderer, only the viewers knew that; they'd seen him kill, she hadn't. The woman in this particular movie had a black and white three-legged dog on her knee. Must be one of those experimental, surrealist epics.

The car moved out of an avenue of trees into a spread of open, sheep-strewn hills with steep, wooded sides and hardly any houses.

Before they left she'd written a note for her dad, fed the cats and listened to the answering machine, which said, 'Hi, Fay, this is James Barlow from Offa's Dyke. Just to say we understand Max Goff's coming back to Crybbe and he'll probably be holding a press conference around four this afternoon, following this Rachel Wade business. But don't worry about it, Gavin says to tell you he'll be going over there himself…'

So I'm free. Fay thought bitterly. Free as a bloody bird.

As if he were watching the same movie, Powys said, 'If I killed her, why would I report it?'

'Why did you?'

'Had to get an ambulance. There might have been a chance.

'Did she…? Oh God, did she die instantly?'

'I heard it, you know, snap. Her neck.'

She thought his voice was going to snap too and tried not to react. 'What were you doing there, anyway? How come you happened to be under the window when she fell?'

'Still don't know how much of that was coincidence. Don't know if she saw me. If she was trying to attract my attention and fell against the bar. But she didn't call out to me. She just screamed. As if she was screaming at something inside the house.'

'And couldn't she get out? The house was locked up with her in it?'

'It was locked when I tried the doors. It wasn't when the police got there. So they say. Work that one out.'

'So she was killed by somebody in the house… If she was killed. Humble?'

'Well, they didn't like each other. But that doesn't explain the light. Doesn't really explain the cat either.'

'Maybe Rachel was holding the cat, for some reason, and it took longer to reach the ground because there was no weight left in it. Joe, I have to ask you this… What exactly were you doing at the Court?'

'Told the cops I was looking for Rachel. I think I was really looking for Andy. Oh God…' He sighed. 'What happened was he'd planted a stone outside the cottage, an exact replica of a thing that's been hanging over me for years.'

'A stone?'

'The Bottle Stone. Do you want to know this? It'll be the first time I've talked about it to anybody. Apart from the people there.'

'Do you want to tell me?'

'I don't know… OK. Yeah."

He fell silent.

'What do you want?" Fay said. 'A drum roll?'

'Sorry. OK. It goes back over twelve years. To the Moot.'

'The Moot," Fay said solemnly.

'It's organized every year by The Ley-Hunter magazine. It's a gathering of earth-mysteries freaks from all over the place. We meet every year in a different town to discuss the latest theories and walk the local leys.'

'I bet you all have dowsing rods and woolly hats.'

'You've been to one?'

Fay laughed. It sounded very strange, laughter, today.

'This particular year,' Powys said, 'it was in Hereford. Birthplace of Alfred Watkins. Everybody was amazed there wasn't a statue – nothing at all in the town to commemorate him, which is how I came to establish Trackways a couple of years later. But, anyway, all the big names in earth mysteries were there. And we were all there too. Rose and me. Andy. Ben Corby, who was at college with us, bit of a wheeler-dealer, the guy who actually managed to sell Golden Land to a publisher. And Henry Kettle, of course. We knew there was a deal coming through, and on the Monday morning after the Moot, before we all set off for home, Ben rang the publishers and learned they'd flogged the paperback rights for ten thousand quid.'

Powys smiled. 'Bloody fortune. Well, it was a nice day, so we decided, Rose and I, to invite the others – the people who'd been in on the book from the beginning – to come out for a celebratory picnic. We wondered where we could go within reach of Hereford. Then Andy said, "Listen," he said, "I know this place…'

She looked out through the side window of the Mini. She didn't recognize the country. One hill made a kind of plateau. She counted along the top – like tiny ornaments on a green baize mantelpiece – three mounds, little tumps. A thin river was woven into the wide valley bottom.

Powys was dizzily swivelling his head. 'Somewhere here…'

The third mound had a cleft in it, like an upturned vulva.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes.' He hit the brakes, pulled into the side of the road. 'It was down there.'

'The Bottle Stone?'

Powys nodded.

'Let me get this right,' Fay said. 'This… legend, whatever it was…'

'It's a common enough ritual, I've found out since. It can be a stone or a statue or even a tree – yew trees are favourites for it. You walk around it, usually anticlockwise, a specific number of times – thirteen isn't uncommon. And then you have an experience, a vision or whatever. There's a church in south Herefordshire where, if you do it, you're supposed to see the Devil.'

'But you didn't see anything like that?'

'No, just this sensation of plunging into a pit and becoming… impaled. And there was nothing ethereal about it, I can feel it now, ripping through the tissue, blood spurting out…'

'Yes, thank you, I get the picture.'

'But it happened to me. That was the point. No indication of any danger to Rose.'

'Was she unhappy?'

'Not at all. That day at the Bottle Stone, she was very happy. That's what's so agonizing. I've had twelve years to get over it… I can't. If I could make sense of it… but I can't.'

'And it was… how long, before… she fell?'

'Not quite two weeks. OK, thirteen days.'

'Hmm.' Fay's fingers were entwined in the fur around Arnold's ears. 'Was… was she unhappy at all afterwards? I mean, pregnant women…'

'It was at a very early stage. I don't even know if it had been officially confirmed.'

'She hadn't told you?'

Powys shook his head. 'The post mortem report – that was the first I knew about it.'

'So this experience you had on the so-called fairy mound… What are your feelings about that? Do you feel you were being given a warning, that there was something you should have realized?'

Powys said, 'You're interviewing me, aren't you? I can spot the inflection.'

'Oh God, I'm sorry, Joe. Force of habit. How about if I try and make the questions less articulate?'

'No, carry on. At least it's more civilized than the cops. No, it didn't make any sense. Any more than the average nightmare.'

'And you told Rose?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because it had been such a nice day up to then. Because the future looked so bright. Because I didn't want to cast a pall. I just said when they dumped me on the mound I must have fainted. I said I was very dizzy. I did tell Andy about it after… after Rose died.'

'And what did he say?'

'He said I should have told Rose.'

'That was tactful of him.'

'And what do you think, Fay? What do you think I should have done?'

'What about Henry Kettle. What did he say?'

'He wanted nothing to do with it. He used to say this kind of thing was like putting your fingers in a plug socket.'

Fay glanced at him quickly, uneasily, over Arnold's ears. Was it possible that Joe Powys was indeed insane? Or, worse perhaps, was it possible he was sane?

He was hunched over the steering wheel. 'Oh, Fay, how could I have killed Rachel?'

He looked at her. 'I'm not saying I was in love with her. We'd only known each other a couple of days, but…'

She looked up into the hills, all the little tumps laid out neatly.

He said, 'Think Arnold can manage a walk?'

Arnold struggled to his feet on Fay's knee.

'He obviously thinks so,' Fay said. 'Come on, then. Let's go and find the Bottle Stone.'

Max began to breathe hard.

It was astonishing.

'Take me over again, Mel,' Max said. 'Then maybe we'll get Guy Morrison and his crew to come up with you. We have to have pictures of this. For the record.'

He leaned forward, thoughts of Rachel's death blown away by all this magic.

Melvyn, his helicopter pilot, took them over the town again making a wide sweep of the valley. Max counted six standing stones – first time round he'd missed the one by J. M. Powys's cottage near the river.

He couldn't believe it. A week ago Crybbe was scattered… random, like somebody'd crapped it out and walked away. Now it had form and subtle harmonies, like a crystal. It had been earthed.

He could spot, clear as if it had been blasted in with a giant aerosol paint-spray, the main line coming off the Tump. It cut through the Court, cleaved a path through the woods until it came to a small clearing, and in the centre of this clearing, surrounded by tree stumps and chain-sawed branches, there was a tall stone, thin and sharp as a nail from up here.

Lucky he owned the wood. Lucky, also, that nobody in Crybbe seemed to give a shit about tree conservation.

Nice work, Andy.

Andy. Such a plain and simple user-friendly name. But the thought of Andy made him shiver, and he liked to shiver.

The line eased out of the wood, across the graveyard and sliced into the church, clean down the centre of the tower. Then it ploughed across the square and hit this building.

Which building?

Go in a bit, Mel.'

The helicopter banked, and Max looked back. Shit, it was the Cock, he'd never realized the line cut through the pub… the pub he'd known intuitively he had to buy. Maybe, sleeping there in that crummy room, he'd picked up the flow. These things happened when you were keyed into the system.

His thoughts came back to Rachel. Who, for once, had not been keyed in. Who hadn't known how to handle country people. Who hadn't believed in the Crybbe project, hadn't believed in much.

Should he feel any kind of guilt here? Leaving her to handle things while he was in London, knowing she was out of sympathy with the whole deal?

'OK, Max?'

'Yeah, sure, Mel. Take us in.'

Thrown out on the fucking rubbish heap – like the Court itself didn't want anybody in there hostile to the project. Rough justice. Jeez.

Was this fanciful, or what?

What he'd do, he'd have some kind of memorial to Rachel fashioned in stone. A plaque on a gate or a stile along the ley-walk, well away from the Court. Couldn't have people staring up at the prospect chamber – 'Yeah, this was where that woman took a dive, just here.'

But accidents were bad news. First thing, he'd need to have that cross-bar replaced, arrange things so the whole room was sealed off until it was fully safe.

They cleared the river and headed back over the town towards the Court. The other leys were not so obvious as the big one down the middle; this was because fewer than half the new stones were in place, several farmers refusing to give permission until after the public meeting. Or, more likely, they were holding out to see how keen he was, how much he was prepared to pay. Yeah, he could relate to that.

Cars in the courtyard. People waiting for him. Press conference scheduled for 5 p.m.

He looked at his Rolex. It was 11.15. Time to find out precisely what had happened. Talk to the police before he faced the newsmen and the TV crews, whose main question would be this:

Mr Goff, this is obviously a terrible thing to happen. It must surely have overshadowed your project here?

The press were just so flaming predictable.

Arnold was in fact moving remarkably well. 'He doesn't think he's disabled,' Fay said. 'He just thinks he's unique.'

They climbed over a stile. Arnold managed to get under it without too much difficulty. She picked him up for a while, carried on walking across the field with the dog in her arms. The few sheep ignored them.

The sky was full of veined clouds, yellow at the edges, like wedges of ancient Stilton cheese.

Powys had watched Fay wander down the field and at one point Memory, vibrating on its helipad, turned her into Rose in a long white frock and a wide straw hat, very French Impressionist.

He blinked and Rose was Fay again, in light-blue jeans and a Greenpeace T-shirt.

She put Arnold down. He fell over and got up again.

Fay stopped and turned to him.

'Where is it, then?'

He said faintly, 'It isn't here.'

'I thought perhaps there was something wrong with my eyes,' Fay said.

'I don't understand it. This was the field. There's the river, see. The hills are right. There's the farmhouse, just through those trees.'

Fay didn't say a word.

'You think I'm bonkers, don't you?'

'Scheduled ancient monuments don't just disappear,' she said. 'Do they?'

CHAPTER VI

One of the women who cleaned the church was paid to come into the vicarage on weekdays to prepare Murray's lunch. He rarely saw her do it, especially in summer; it would just be there on a couple of dishes, under clingfilm. Variations on a cold-meat salad and a piece of fruit pie with whipped cream. She never asked if he enjoyed it or if there was something he would prefer.

He lifted up a corner of the clingfilm, saw a whitish, glistening smudge of something.

Mayonnaise. He knew it could only be mayonnaise.

But still Murray retched and pushed the plate away. This had been happening increasingly, of late – he'd scraped the lunch untouched into the dustbin. He never seemed to miss it afterwards, rarely felt hunger, although he knew he was losing weight and even he could see his face was gaunt and full of long shadows. Pretty soon, he though sourly, there would be rumours going around that he had AIDs.

Next week he might let it be known that he was interested in a move. He would see how he felt.

Today was not the day to do anything hasty.

Today he'd left the vicarage as usual, before eight, and walked the fifty yards to the church where he'd found what he'd found.

The church door had not been damaged because it was never locked. Nothing had been torn or overturned. Only the cupboard in the vestry, where the communion wine and the chalice were kept, had been forced.

Murray had heard of cases where centuries-old stained glass had been smashed or, in the case of Catholic churches, plaster statues pounded to fragments. Swastikas spray-painted on the altar-cloth. Defecation in the aisle.

Nothing so unsubtle here.

What was missing was that element of frenzy, of uncontrolled savagery. This was what had unnerved him, made him look over his shoulder down the silent nave.

Candles – his own Christmas candles – had been left burning on the altar, two of them, one so far gone that it was no more than a wick in a tiny pool of liquid wax. Between the candles stood the communion chalice, not empty.

What was in the bottom of the cup was not mayonnaise.

Murray had looked inside once, then turned away with a short, whispered, outraged prayer – it might have been a prayer or it might have been a curse; either way it was out of character. His reserve had been cracked.

With distaste, he'd placed the chalice on the stone floor, remembering too late about fingerprints but knowing even then hat he would not be calling in the police, because that was all they'd done.

And it was enough.

It was inherently worse than any orgy of spray-paint and destruction. The single small, symbolic act, profoundly personal, almost tidy. Appalling in its implication, but nothing in itself, simply not worth reporting to the police and thus alerting the newspapers and Fay Morrison.

'They always ask you,' he remembered a colleague with an urban parish complaining once, 'if you suspect Satanism. What are you supposed to say? It's certainly more than anti-social behaviour, but do you really want some spotty little vandal strutting around thinking he's the Prince of Darkness?'

But this, he thought – staring down at his cling-wrapped lunch, suddenly nauseous and unsteady – this is another gesture to me. It's saying, come out. Come out, 'priest', come out and fight.

However, as he'd thought while rinsing out the chalice this morning, this can hardly be down to Tessa Byford, can it?

Murray had thrown away the candles, performed a small, lonely service of reconsecration over the chalice and decided to keep the outrage to himself. By the time the Monday cleaner came in at ten, there had been no sign of intrusion.

As for the small cupboard in the vestry – he would unscrew it from the wall himself and take it to an ironmonger's in Leominster, explaining how he'd had to force the lock after being stupid enough to lose the key. Silly me. Ha ha.

Impractical souls, vicars. Absent-minded, too.

Just how absent-minded he was becoming was brought dramatically home to him when the doorbell rang just before two o'clock and he parted the lace curtains to see a hearse parked in front of the house with a coffin in the back.

It had slipped his mind completely. But, even so, wasn't it at least a day too early?

'Ah, Mr Beech,' the undertaker said cheerfully. 'Got Jonathon Preece for you.'

'Yes, of course.'

'Funeral's Wednesday afternoon, so it's just the two nights in the church, is it?'

'Yes, I… I wasn't expecting him so soon. I thought, with the post mortem…'

'Aye, we took him for that first thing this morning and collected him afterwards.'

'Oh. But didn't you have things to, er…?'

'No, we cleaned him up beforehand, Mr Beech. If there's no embalming involved, it's a quick turnover. Right then, top of the aisle, is it? Bottom of the steps before the altar, that's where we usually…'

'Yes, fine. I'll… '

'Now you just leave it to us, Mr Beech. We know our way around. We'll make 'im comfortable.'

'In that case,' Jean Wendle said firmly, 'do you mind if I come in and wait? If that wouldn't be disturbing you.'

A refusal would be impossible. This was a deliberate, uncompromising foot-in-the-door situation, it having occurred to Jean that if she took it easy, she might actually get more out of the wife.

Mrs Preece took half a step back. With no pretence of not being reluctant, she held the cottage door open just wide enough for Jean to slide inside. There were roses around the door, which was nice, which showed somebody cared. Or had cared.

'Thank you.'

The first thing Jean noticed in the parlour was a fresh onion on a saucer on top of the television.

She was fascinated. She hadn't seen this in years.

Mrs Preece actually had hair like an onion, coiled into a tight, white bun, and everything else about her was closed up just as tight.

She looked unlikely to offer her guest a cup of tea.

'I do realize things must be very difficult for you at present,' Jean said, if there is anything I can do…'

Mrs Preece snorted.

Jean smiled at her. 'The reason I'm here, the public meeting will be upon us tomorrow evening and I felt there were one or two things I should like to know in advance.'

'If you're yere as a spy for Mr Max Goff,' Mrs Preece said bluntly, 'then there's no need to dress it up.'

Jean was not unpleasantly surprised.

'Do you know, Mrs Preece,' she said, being equally blunt, 'this is the first experience I've ever had of an indigenous Crybbe person coming right out with something, instead of first skirting furtively around the issue.'

'Maybe you been talking to the wrong people,' said Mrs Preece.

'And who, would you say, are the "wrong" people? By the way, I wouldn't waste that nice onion on me.'

'I beg your pardon.'

'Just don't tell me,' Jean said levelly, 'that the onion on the saucer is there to absorb paint smells or germs. You put it there to attract any unwelcome emanations from people you don't want in your house. And when they've gone you quietly dispose of the onion. Will you be getting rid of it when I leave, Mrs Preece?'

Mrs Preece, face reddening, looked down at her clumpy brown shoes.

'Or am I flattering myself?' Jean said.

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Och, away with you, Mrs Preece. I'm no' one of your London innocents.'

'You're none of you innocent,' Mrs Preece cried. 'You're all as guilty as, as…' Her voice dropped. 'As guilty as sin.'

'Of what?' Jean asked gently.

Mrs Preece shook her head. 'You're not getting me going, I'm not stupid. You must know as you're doing no good for this town.'

'And why is that, Mrs Preece? Do you mind if I sit down?'

And before Mrs Preece could argue, Jean had slipped into the Mayor's fireside chair.

'Because it seems to me, you see, that all the new people love Crybbe just exactly the way it is, Mrs Preece. They would hate anything to happen to the local traditions. In fact that's why I'm here. I was hoping your husband could tell me a wee bit about the curfew.'

Mrs Preece turned away.

'I'm also compiling a small history of the town and its folklore,' Jean said.

'Nothing to tell,' Mrs Preece said eventually. 'Nothing that's not written down already.'

'I don't think so. I think there is a remarkable amount to tell which has never been written down.'

Mrs Preece stood over Jean. She wore a large, striped apron, like a butcher's. Discernible anxiety in her eyes now.

'Tell me about it, Mrs Preece. Tell me about the ritual which your husband's family has maintained so selflessly for so many centuries.'

'Just a bequest,' the Mayor's wife said. 'That's all. A bequest of land a long time ago in the sixteenth century. Depending on the bell to be rung every night.'

'This is codswallop,' Jean Wendle said. 'This is a smokescreen.'

'Well, we 'ave the documents to prove it!' Mrs Preece was getting angry. 'That's how much it's codswallop!'

'Oh, I'm sure you do. But the real reason for the curfew, is it not, is to protect the town from… well, let's call it the Black Dog.'

Mrs Preece's face froze like a stopped clock.

Into the silence came lazy footsteps on the path.

'Be my husband back.' Very visibly relieved.

Damnation, Jean almost said aloud. So close.

But it wasn't the Mayor. A thin, streaky haired youth with an ear-ring shambled in without knocking.

'All right, Gran? I come to tell you…'

'You stay outside with them boots, Warren!'

'Too late, Gran.' The youth was in the living-room now, giving Jean Wendle the once-over with his narrow eyes.

Ah, she thought. The surviving grandson. Interesting.

'Hello,' Jean said. 'So you're Warren.'

"s right, yeah.' From his ear-ring hung a tiny silvery death's head.

'I was very sorry to hear about your brother.'

Warren blew out his mouth and nodded. 'Aye, well, one o' them things, isn't it. Anyway, Gran, message from the old… from Dad. All it is – they brought Jonathon back and 'e's in the church.'

'I see,' said Mrs Preece quietly. 'Thank you, Warren.'

'In 'is coffin,' said Warren.

Jean observed that the boy was somewhat less than grief-stricken.

'Lid's on, like,' Warren said.

Jean thought he sounded disappointed.

'But 'e's not screwed down, see, so if you wanna go'n 'ave a quick look at 'im, there's no problem.'

'No, I don't think I shall,' his grandmother said, 'thank you, Warren.' Tiny tears were sparkling in her eyes.

'If you're worried the ole lid might be a bit 'eavy for you, Gran,' Warren said considerately, 'I don't mind goin' along with you. I got half an hour or so to spare before I got to leave.' He turned to Jean. 'I got this band, see. We practises most Monday and Wednesday nights.'

Mrs Preece said, her voice high and tight, 'No, thank you, Warren.'

Warren watched his grandmother's reaction with his head on one side. This boy, Jean registered with considerable interest, is trying not to laugh.

'See, it's no problem. Gran,' Warren said slowly and slyly. ' 'Cause I've already 'ad 'im off once, see, that ole lid.'

He stood with his hands on narrow hips encased in tight, leather trousers, and his lips were just the merest twist away from a smirk.

Jean had been listening to the tension in the air in the small, brown living-room, humming and then singing, dangerously off-key, sending out invisible wires that quickly tautened and then, finally, snapped.

'Get out!' Mrs Preece's big face suddenly buckled. 'GET OUT!' She turned to Jean, breathing rapidly. 'And you as well, if you please.'

Jean stood up and moved quietly to the door. 'I'm really very sorry, Mrs Preece.'

'Things is not right,' Mrs Preece said, sniffing hard. 'Things is far from right. And no you're not. None of you's sorry.'

They'd stopped for coffee but hadn't eaten, couldn't face it.

Fay still felt a bit sick and more than a bit alone. She badly needed someone she could rely on and Joe Powys no longer seemed like the one. But while she felt slightly betrayed, she was also sorry for him. He looked even more lost than she felt.

'All I can think of,' he said, driving listlessly back to Crybbe, 'is that the stone near the cottage is the actual one – the Bottle Stone.'

'You mean he had it dug up under cover of darkness and…'

'Sounds crazy, doesn't it?'

'I'm afraid it does, Joe. Why would Boulton-Trow want to do that, anyway?'

'Well, he knows that was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and…'

'And he wanted to bring it all back by confronting you with the stone again? That would make him… well, you know… quite evil. I can't imagine…'

'I'm sorry. I'm asking too much of you. Maybe I ought to stay out of your way for a while.'

Fay looked at him hopelessly. 'Maybe we'll take some time and think about things. See what we can come up with.'

She decided she'd go, after all, to Goff's press conference, in a private capacity, just to listen. See what questions other people raised and how they were answered.

'I don't think we have much time,' Joe Powys said, 'I really don't.'

'Why? I mean… before what?'

'I don't know,' he said.

He looked broken.

Alone again, Mrs Preece shut herself in the living-room, fell into her husband's sunken old chair and began to cry bitterly, her white hair spooling free of its bun, strands getting glued by the tears to her mottled cheeks.

When the telephone rang, she ignored it and it stopped.

After some minutes Mrs Preece got up from the chair, went to the mirror and tried to piece together her bun without looking at her face.

Out of the corner of her right eye she saw the onion in its saucer on top of the television set.

Then Mrs Preece let out a scream so harsh and ragged it felt as though the skin was being scoured from the back of her throat.

The onion, fresh this morning, was as black as burnt cork.

CHAPTER VII

Goff said, 'As you say, Gavin, it's been a hell of blow, obviously cast a pall over things here. Rachel'd been with me nearly four years. She was the best PA I ever had. But you ask if it's gonna dampen my enthusiasm for what we're doing here… I have to say no, of course it isn't. What we have here is too important for Crybbe… and for the human race.

Gavin Ashpole, of Offa's Dyke Radio, nodded sympathetically.

At the back, behind everybody. Fay groaned. Nobody noticed her, not even Guy.

There were about a dozen reporters and two TV crews in the stable-block, everybody asking what Fay thought were excruciatingly banal questions.

But, OK, what else could they ask? What did they have to build on? If it hadn't involved Max Goff, all this sad little episode would have been worth was a couple of paragraphs in the local paper and an Offa's Dyke one-day wonder. A small, insignificant, accidental death.

OK, Goff didn't want the residue of anything negative hanging on him or the Crybbe project. But if Rachel had been here, she'd have talked him out of this mini-circus; it wasn't worth a press conference, which would only draw the wrong kind of attention.

But then, if Rachel had been here… Fay fell the clutch of sorrow in her breast and something else less definable but close to anxiety.

Joe had said, 'Got to sort this out. I'm going to find him.'

'Boulton-Trow? Is that wise?'

'I want to take a look at this place he's got, in the wood.'

'I saw it. Yesterday, when I look the short-cut to church. It might be better inside, but it looks like a hovel.'

'We'll find out.'

'I didn't like it. I didn't like the feel of the place.'

Joe had shrugged. She'd felt torn. On one hand, yes, he really ought to sort this thing out, even it meant facing up to his own delusions. On the other hand, well, OK, she was scared for him.

'You go to your press conference,' he'd said, touched her arm hesitantly and then walked away, head down, across the square towards the churchyard.

So here she was, sitting a few yards behind Guy's stocky, aggressive-looking cameraman, Guy standing next to him, occasionally whispering instructions. The chairs had been laid out in three rows in the middle tier of the stable-block, so that the assembled hacks were slightly higher than Goff.

And yet, somehow, he appeared to be looking down on them.

Goff was at his desk, his back to the window and the Tump, as if this was his personal power-source.

'Max,' one of the hacks said, 'Barry Speake, Evening News. Can I ask you what kind of feedback you're getting from the local community here? I mean, what's the local response to your plans to introduce what must seem to a lot of ordinary people to be rather bizarre ideas, all this ley-lines and astrology and stuff?'

Goff gave him both rows of teeth. 'Think it's bizarre, do you, Barry?'

'I'm not saying I think it's bizarre. Max, but…'

'But you think simple country folk are too unsophisticated to grasp the concept. Isn't that a little patronizing, Barry?'

There was a little buzz of laughter.

'No, but hold on.' Goff raised a hand. 'There's a serious point to be made here. We call this New Age, and, sure, it's new to us. But folks here in Crybbe have an instinctive understanding of what it's about because this place has important traditions, what you might call a direct line to the source… Something I'd ask the author, J. M. Powys, to elaborate on, if he were here… Yeah, lady at the back.'

Fay stood up. 'Mr Goff, you're obviously spending a lot of money here in Crybbe…'

'Yeah, just don't ask me for the figures.'

Muted laughter.

Fay said, 'As my colleague tried to suggest, it is what many people would consider a slightly bizarre idea, attempting to rebuild the town's prehistoric heritage, putting back all these stones, for instance. What I'd like to know is… why Crybbe?' Who told you about this place? Who told you about the stones? Who said it would be the right place for what you had in mind?'

Goff's little eyes narrowed. He was wearing, unusually, a dark suit today. Out of respect for the dead Rachel? Or his image.

'Who exactly are you?' he said. 'Which paper you from?'

'Fay Morrison.' Adding, 'Freelance,' with a defiant glance at Ashpole.

'Yeah, I thought so.'

He'd never actually seen her before. He was certainly making up for that now, little eyes never wavering.

'I'm not sure how relevant your question is today,' Goff said. 'But, yeah, on the issue of how we came to be doing what we're doing here, well, we've been kicking this idea around for a year or two. I've had advisers and people looking…'

'What kind of advisers? Who exactly?' The questions were coming out without forethought, she was firing blind. In fact, what the hell was she doing? She hadn't planned to say a word, just sit there and listen.

Goff looked pained. 'Ms Morrison, I don't see… Yeah, OK… I have many friends and associates in what's become known as the New Age movement – let me say, I don't like that term, it's been devalued, trivialized, right? But, yeah, it was suggested to me that if I was looking for a location which was not only geophysically and archaeologically suited to research into forgotten landscape patterns and configurations, but was also suited – shall we say atmospherically – to research into human spiritual potential, then Crybbe fitted the bill.'

He produced a modest, philanthropic sort of smile. 'And it was also clearly a little down on its luck. In need of the economic boost our centre could give it. So I came along and looked around, and I… Well, that answer your question?'

'Was it the late Henry Kettle? Did he suggest you came here?'

'No, I sought advice from Henry Kettle, in a very small way, at a later stage. We were already committed to Crybbe by then. What are you getting at here?'

Goff leaned back in his leather rock-and-swivel chair. He was alone at the desk, although Humble and a couple of people she didn't recognize were seated a few yards away. Fay didn't think Andy Boulton-Trow was among them.

'Well,' she said, still on her feet, 'Henry Kettle was, of course, the first person to die in an accident here, wasn't he?'

'Aw now, hey,' Goff said.

Several reporters turned their heads to look at Fay. Maybe some of them hadn't heard about Henry. He was hardly a national figure, except in earth-mysteries circles. His death had been a minor local story; his connection with Goff had not been general knowledge, still wasn't, outside Crybbe.

It occurred to her that what she'd inadvertently done here was set the more lurid papers up with a possible Curse of Crybbe story. She imagined Rachel Wade looking down on the scene from wherever she was, rolling her eyes and passing a hand across her brow in pained disbelief.

Fay started to feel just a little foolish. Gavin Ashpole, sitting well away from her, was smirking discreetly into his lap.

She knew Goff had to make a move here.

He did. He gave the hacks a confidential smile.

'Yeah, take a good look,' he said, extending a hand towards Fay. 'This is Ms Fay Morrison.'

More heads turned. Guy's, not surprisingly, was one of the few which didn't.

'Ms Morrison,' drawled Goff, 'is a small-time freelance reporter who earns a crust here in town by stirring up stories nobody else can quite see.'

Some bastard laughed.

'Unfair,' Fay said, starting to sweat, 'Henry Kettle…'

'Henry Kettle' – Goff changed effortlessly to a higher gear – 'was a very elderly man who died when his car went out of control, probably due to a stroke or a heart attack. We'll no doubt find out what happened when the inquest is held. Meantime, I – and any right-thinking, rational person – would certainly take a dim view of any sensation-mongering attempt to make something out of the fact that my company had paid him a few pounds to do a few odd jobs. I think suggesting any link between the death of Henry Kettle in a car accident and Rachel Wade in a fall is in extremely poor taste, indicating a lamentable lack of professionalism – and a certain desperation perhaps – in any self-styled journalist who raised it.'

Goff relaxed, knowing how good he was at this. Fay, who'd never been much of an orator, lapsed, red-faced, into a very lonely silence.

'Now,' Goff said, not looking at her, 'if there are no further questions, I have ten minutes to do any TV and radio interviews outside.'

The heads had turned away from Fay. She'd lost it.

'You don't do yourself any favours, do you. Fay?' Ashpole said drily, out of the side of his mouth, passing her on the way out, not even looking at her.

'I suppose,' Guy Morrison said, 'you'd know about all the suicides around here, wouldn't you?'

Seven p.m. The only other customer in the public bar at the Cock was this large man, the local police sergeant, Wynford somebody. He was leaning on the bar with a pint, obviously relieved at unloading the two Divisional CID men who'd spent the day in town in connection with this Rachel Wade business.

Guy was feeling relieved, too. His heart had dropped when Max Goff had approached him immediately after the conclusion of the appalling press conference – Guy expecting to be held responsible for his wayward ex-wife and, at the very least, warned to keep her out of Goff's way in future.

But all Goff wanted was for the crew to get some aerial pictures of Crybbe from his helicopter, so that was OK. Guy had sent Catrin Jones up with Larry and escaped to the pub. Sooner or later he'd be forced to have a discreet word with Goff and explain where things stood between him and Fay – i.e. that she was an insane bitch and he'd had a lucky escape.

Meanwhile, there was this business of the suicide and the haunting. This was upsetting him. He wouldn't be able to concentrate fully until it was out of the way because Guy Morrison didn't like things he didn't understand.

He waited for Wynford's reaction. He'd got into suicides by suggesting that perhaps Rachel Wade had killed herself. Would they ever really know?

Guy Morrison was an expert at manipulating conversation, but Wynford didn't react at all.

As if he hadn't noticed the silence, Guy said, 'Doesn't do a place's reputation any good, I suppose, being connected with a suicide. I was talking to that woman who runs The Gallery. It seems her house is allegedly haunted by a chap who topped himself.'

Wynford didn't look up from his beer, but he spoke at last. 'You been misinformed, my friend.'

'I don't mean anything recent,' Guy said. 'This probably goes back a good while. Talking about the same place, are we? Heavily renovated stone farmhouse, about half a mile out of town on the Hereford road?'

'Yes, yes,' Wynford said. 'The ole Thomas farm.'

'Well, as I said, it could be going back quite a while. I mean, any time this century, I suppose, maybe earlier.'

How long had there been cut-throat razors anyway, he wondered. Hundreds of years, probably.

'Bit of a romancer, that woman, you ask me,' Wynford said. 'From Off, see.'

Meaning a newcomer, Guy supposed. It was an interesting fact that he personally was never regarded as a stranger in areas where he was recognized from television. If they'd seen you on the box, you'd been in their living-rooms, so you weren't an intruder.

Except, perhaps, here in Crybbe.

'No, look,' Guy said, 'this happened in the bathroom. Oldish chap. Cut his own throat with one of those old-fashioned open razors.'

Wynford licked his cherub's lips, his eyes frosted with suspicion.

'What's wrong?' Guy asked.

'Somebody tell you to ask me about this, did they?'

'No,' Guy said. 'Of course not.'

'You sure?'

'Look, Sergeant, what's the problem here?'

Wynford had a drink of beer. 'No problem, sir.'

'No, you do…' Guy was about to accuse him of knowing something about this but keeping it to himself.

He looked into the little inscrutable features in the middle of the big melon face and knew he'd be wasting his time.

Wynford swallowed a lot of beer, wiped his mouth. His face was very red. He's on the defensive, Guy thought, and he doesn't like that.

He was right. Wynford looked at him for the first time. 'Somebody said you was married to that Fay? Or is it you just got the same name?'

'No, it's true. I'm afraid. We were married for… what? Nearly three years. I suppose.'

Wynford smiled conspiratorially, a sinister sight. 'Bit of a goer, was she?'

What an appalling person. Guy, who didn't like people asking him questions unless they were about his television work, looked at his watch and claimed he was late for a shoot. And, actually, they had got something arranged for later; Catrin had set up one of those regressive hypnotist chaps and agreed to be the subject.

Should be entertaining. Perhaps in some past life she'd actually been someone interesting. He wondered, as he strolled into the square, what crime she could have committed to get landed with the persona of Catrin Jones.

In the Crybbe Unattended Studio Gavin Ashpole sniffed.

He knew the pace used to be a toilet, but that wasn't what he could smell.

This was a musky, perfumed smell, and the odd thing was

that Gavin wasn't sure he could actually smell it at all. It was just there.

Probably because Fay Morrison used this studio for an hour or so every day.

There were a few of her scripts on the spike in the outer room. All hand-written, big and bold in turquoise ink.

Gavin picked up the phone and sniffed the mouthpiece. Sweating comfortably, cooling in his shell-suit. Gavin was a fitness freak, kept a hold-all in the back of his car with his jogging gear and his trainers inside. Any spare half hour or so he'd get changed, go for a run. Tuned your body, tuned your mind, and other people could sense it, too. You were projecting creative energy, dynamism.

He'd got an hour's running in tonight. Been up into the hills. Felt good. In control of himself and his destiny. Within a year he'd either be managing editor of Offa's Dyke radio or he'd have moved on.

Unlike Fay Morrison, who was over the hill and going down the other side fast. Left to him, the station would never have agreed to use her stuff. She was unreliable, awkward to deal with. And obviously unbalanced.

Bloody sexy, though.

The thought hit him surprisingly hard, a muscular pulse, where you noticed it.

He hadn't really considered her on this level before. She was older than he was. She'd had a lot more experience on radio, and although she never mentioned that, it was always there in the background, making her sound superior.

And she was a nutter. Not rational. Not objective as a reporter.

He'd see the boss tomorrow and explain precisely what had happened at Goff's press conference. She's doing us a lot of damage, he'd say. If she's put Max Goff's back up, who else is she antagonizing? No need to say anything to her or put anything in writing, just fade her out. Use less and less of her material until she stops bothering to send any. Then we'll put somebody else in.

Gavin attached a length of red-leader to the end of his tape. It hadn't taken much editing, just a forty-second clip for the morning.

He rang the newsroom to tell them he was ready to send, put on the cans, waited for the news studio to come through on the line.

He felt Fay in the cans. She'd worn them over that dark-blonde hair.

Sexy bitch.

He stretched his legs under the desk, feeling the calf muscles tighten and relax, imagining her in here with him, in this tiny little studio, not big enough for two, you'd be touching one another all the time.

Projecting forward to tomorrow night. He was back in Crybbe covering the public meeting, the big confrontation between Goff and the town councillors. Fay had followed him in here, apologizing for her behaviour, saying she'd been worrying about her father, letting it take her mind off her work, couldn't handle things any more, couldn't he see that?

He could see her now, kneeling down by the side of his chair, looking up at him.

Got to help me, Gavin.

Why should I help you?

I like muscular men, Gavin. Hard men. Fit men. That's how you can help me, Gavin.

He put his hands out, one each side of her head, gripped her roughly by the hair.

Her lips parted.

'Gavin!'

'Huh?'

'We've been calling out for five minutes.'

'You couldn't have been,' Gavin rasped into the microphone. He was sweating like a bloody pig.

'We could certainly hear you panting, mate. What were you doing exactly?'

'Very funny, Elton. I've been for a run. Six miles. You going to take some level or not?'

'Go ahead, I'm rolling. Hope you're going to clean up in there afterwards, Gavin.'

Angrily, Gavin snapped the switch, set his tape turning. This was another little clever dick who'd be looking for a new job when he was managing editor.

He took his hand out of his shell-suit trousers, put it on the desk below the mike and watched it shaking as if it wasn't his hand at all.

CHAPTER VIII

On reflection, maybe chopping holes in this particular wood wasn't such a crime. It was not a pleasant wood.

Something Powys hadn't consciously taken in when they were here yesterday and Fay had been so incensed about the slaughter of the trees, and Rachel had…

No. He didn't like the wood.

And it was uncared for. Too many trees, overcrowded, trees which had died left to rot, strangled by ivy and creepers, their white limbs sticking out like the crow-picked bones of sheep, while sickly saplings fought for the soil in between the corpses.

The wood was a buffer zone between the Tump and the town, and some of what would otherwise have reached the town had been absorbed by the wood, which was why it had such a bad feel and why people probably kept out.

And perhaps why Andy Boulton-Trow had chosen to live there.

Until you reached the clearing, the path was the only sign that anyone had been in this wood for years. It was too narrow for vehicles; a horse could make it, just about. But nobody with car would want Keeper's Cottage.

It was redbrick, probably 1920s, small and mean with little square windows, looked as if it had only one bedroom upstairs. It was in a part of the wood where conifers – Alaskan Spruce or something – had choked out all the hardwoods, crowding in like giant weeds, blinding Keeper's Cottage to the daylight.

A sterile place. No birds, no visible wildlife. Hardly the pick of Goff's properties. Hardly the type of dwelling for a Boulton-Trow. Even the gardeners which he assumed certain

Boulton-Trows would employ wouldn't be reduced to this.

The door had been painted green. Once. A long time ago.

Powys knocked.

No answer. Unsurprising. Nobody in his right mind would want to spend too much time in Keeper's Cottage.

OK, either he isn't here or he is, and keeping quiet.

Powys felt old sorrow and new sorrow fermenting into fury, he called out, 'Andy!'

No answer.

'Andy, I want to talk.'

Not even an echo.

Powys walked around the cottage. It had no garden, no outbuildings, only a rough brick-built shelter for logs. The shelter was coming to pieces, most of the bricks were loose and crumbling.

So he helped himself to one. A brick. And he went to the back of the house, away from the path, and he hefted the brick, thoughtfully, from hand to hand for a moment or two before hurling it at one of the back windows.

A whole pane vanished.

Powys slipped a hand inside and opened the window.

Dementia, Alex thought, was an insidiously cunning ailment, it crept up on you with the style of a pickpocket, striking while your attention was diverted.

One didn't wake up in the morning and think, hello, I'm feeling a bit demented today, better put the trousers on back to front and spray shaving foam on the toothbrush. No, the attitude of the intelligent man – saying, Look, it's been diagnosed, it's there, so I'm going to have to watch myself jolly carefully – was less effective than one might expect.

And the problem with this type of dementia – furred arteries not always letting the lift go all the way to the penthouse, as it were – was that the condition could be at its most insidiously dangerous when you were feeling fine.

Today he'd felt fine, but he wasn't going to be fooled.

'Keep calm, at all times,' Jean Wendle had said. 'Learn how to observe yourself and your actions. Be detached, watch yourself without involvement. I'll show you how to do this, don't worry. But for now, just keep calm.'

Which wasn't easy when you lived with someone like Fay, who'd made a career out of putting people on the spot.

She'd come in just after six and put together rather a nice salad with prawns and other items she obviously hadn't bought in Crybbe. Bottle of white wine, too.

And then, over coffee…

'Dad, we didn't get a chance to finish our conversation this morning.'

'Didn't we?'

'You're feeling OK, aren't you?'

'Not too bad.'

'Because I want to get something sorted out.'

God preserve me from this child, Alex thought. Always had to get everything sorted out

'The business of the Revox. You remember? The vandalism?'

'Of course I remember. The tape recorder, yes.'

'Well, they haven't actually pulled anybody in for it yet.'

'Haven't they?'

'And perhaps you don't think they ever will.'

'Well, with that fat fellow in charge of the investigation, I must say, I'm not over-optimistic.'

'No, no. Regardless of Wynford, you don't really think…'

'Fay,' Alex said, 'how do you know what I think or what I don't think? And what gives you…?'

'Because I heard you talking to Grace.'

'Oh,' said Alex. He had been about to take a sip of coffee – he didn't.

Fay was waiting.

'Well, you know,' Alex said, switching to auto-pilot, 'I've often had parishioners – old people – who talked to their dead husbands and wives all the time. Nothing unusual about it, Fay. It brought them comfort, they didn't feel so alone any more. Perfectly natural kind of therapy.'

'Dad?'

'Yes?'

'Has Grace brought you comfort?'

Alex glared with resentment into his daughter's green eyes.

'Why did you think it was Grace who smashed up the Revox?'

He started to laugh, uneasily. 'She's dead.'

'That's right.'

Alex said, 'Look, time's getting on. I've a treatment booked for eight.'

'With Jean? What's she charging you, out of interest?'

'Nothing at all. So far, that is. I, er, gave her a basic outline of the financial position and she suggested I should leave her her fee in my will.'

'Very accommodating. Perhaps you could make a similar arrangement regarding your tab at the Cock. Now, to return to my question…'

Alex stood up. 'Let me think about this one, would you, Fay?'

How could he tell her his real fears about this? Well, of course dead people couldn't destroy property on that scale. Even poltergeists only tossed a few books around. Even if dead people felt a great antipathy to someone in their house, it was only living people who were capable of an act of such gross violence.

But perhaps dead people were capable of making living people do their dirty work.

Did I? he asked himself as he walked up Bell Street. Was it me?

Alex felt terribly hot and confused. Just wanted to feel the cool hands again.

The microphone was in the way. Jarrett had it on a bracket-thing attached to the ceiling so that it craned over the couch like an old-fashioned dentist's drill.

Guy said, rather impatiently, 'What do we need that thing for, anyway, if we're recording the whole session on VT?'

'I understand that, Guy,' Jarrett said, 'but I need it. I keep a record of everything. Also, it acts as a focus for the subject. I'm using the microphone in the same way as hypnotists do to swing their watches on a chain.'

'OK,' Guy said, 'I'll go with that. We'll do some shots the mike, make it swim before our eyes. OK, Larry?'

'No problem, I'll do it afterwards, come in over Catrin's shoulder. We OK with the lights?'

Guy looked at Graham Jarrett, small and tidy in a maroon cardigan, silver haired and just a tiny bit camp. Graham Jarrett said, 'One light may actually assist us if it isn't directly in her eyes, because we'll all be thrown into shadow and Catrin will be in her own little world. Can you make do with one, say that big one?'

'I don't see why not,' Guy said, gratified, remembering the hassle he'd had with Adam Ivory. Nice to know some New Age people could live with television.

Jarrett arranged a tartan travelling rug over the couch and patted a cushion. 'OK then, Catrin, lie down and make yourself comfortable. I want you to be fully relaxed, so have a good wriggle about… Where's your favourite beach… somewhere on the Med? West Indies?'

'Porth Dinllaen,' Catrin said patriotically. 'On the Lleyn, in north Wales.'

Guy turned away, concealing a snigger.

Jarrett adjusted the mike, switched on a cassette machine on a metal table on wheels, like a drinks trolley. 'OK, can we try it with the lights?'

Guy signalled to the lighting man, and Catrin's face was suddenly lit up, he thought, like a fat Madonna on a Christmas card. There was a tiny, black, personal microphone clipped into a fold of her navy-blue jumper.

'Right, Catrin,' Jarrett said softly, it's a soft, warm afternoon. You're on the beach…'

'Hang on,' Tom, the soundman, said. 'Let's have some level. Say something, Catrin. Tell us what you had for lunch.'

It was another twenty minutes or so before everyone was satisfied. Guy watched Jarrett taking off Catrin's shoes and draping another travelling rug over her stumpy legs, just below the knees. No bad thing; Catrin's legs wouldn't add a great deal to the picture. Only wished he'd known about this far enough in advance to have set up someone more photogenic.

He thought, with some amazement, back to this morning, when the night-terrors had persuaded him that he ought to invite Catrin to share his room tonight. He shuddered. Thank heaven he hadn't said anything to her.

'OK,' said Jarrett. 'It's very warm, not too hot, just pleasant. Perhaps you can hear the sea lapping at the sand in the distance. And if you look up, why there's the sun…'

The big light shone steadily down.

'Happy, Catrin?'

Catrin nodded, her lips plumped up into a little smile.

'But I don't want you to look at the sun, Catrin, I'd like you to look at the microphone. You must be quite comfortable with microphones, working for the BBC…

Guy, watching her intently, didn't notice her go under, or slide into a hypnotic trance or whatever they did. Nothing about her seemed to change, as Jarrett took her back to previous holidays when she was a child. He almost thought she was putting it on when she began to burble in a little-girl sort of voice, about her parents and her sister and paddling in the sea and seeing a big jellyfish – lapsing into Welsh at one point, her first language.

She would fake it, he knew; she wouldn't want to let him down.

But then Catrin started coming out with stuff that nobody in their right mind would fake.

Hard against the streaming evening light, Jack Preece took the tractor into the top meadow and he could tell the old thing was going to fail him, that poor Jonathon had been right when he said it was a false economy.

Nobody had open tractors like this any more. Tractors had changed. Tractors nowadays were like Gomer Parry's plant-hire equipment, big shiny things.

Jack had sworn this old thing was going to see them through the haymaking, which would mean he could put off the investment until next year, maybe check out what was available secondhand.

But Jonathon had been right. False economy. Especially if it failed him in the middle of the haymaking and he had to get one from Gomer to finish off.

Jonathon had been right, and he'd tell him so tonight. Least he could do.

Jack hadn't been in yet to see his son's coffin; couldn't face it. Couldn't face people seeing him walking into the church, the bloody vicar there, with his bank-manager face and his phoney words of comfort. The bloody vicar who didn't know the score, couldn't know the way things were, couldn't be any help whatever.

But that was how vicars had to be in this town, Father said. Don't want no holy-roller types in Crybbe. Just go through the motions, do the baptisms and the burials, keep their noses out and don't change nothing… don't break the routine.

And Jack wouldn't break his routine. He'd go into the church as usual tonight to ring the old bell, and he'd go just a bit earlier – but not so much earlier as anybody'd notice – so he could spend five minutes alone in there, in the near-dark, with his dead son.

Jack urged the tractor up the long pitch, and the engine farted and spluttered like an old drunk. If it couldn't handle the pitch on its own any more then it was going to be bugger- all use pulling a trailer for the haymaking and he'd be going to Gomer for help – at a price.

He'd be going to Warren too, for help with the haymaking this time, and the price there was a good deal heavier. All these years, watching Warren growing up and growing away, watching him slinking away from the farm like a fox. Jack thinking it didn't matter so much, only one son could inherit – only enough income from this farm to support one – and if the other one moved away, found something else, well, that could only help the situation. But now Jack needed Warren and Warren knew that, and that was bad because there was a streak of something in Warren that Jack didn't like, always been there but never so clear as it was now.

'Come on, then.' Jack talking to the tractor like she was an old horse. Be better off with an old horse, when you thought about it.

'Come on!'

Could be tricky if she stalled near the top of the pitch and rolled back. Jack was ready for this happening, always a cautious man, never had a tractor turn over on him yet, nor even close to it.

'Go on.'

Bad times for the Preeces.

Not that there'd ever been good times, but you didn't expect that. You held on; if you could hold on, you were all right. Farming wasn't about good times.

He'd be fifty-five next birthday, of an age to start taking it a bit easy. No chance of that now.

He saw himself going into the church to ring the bell in less than two hours time, and Jonathon lying there in his box. What could he say?

You was right, son, was all he'd mumble. You was right about the ole tractor.

When what he really wanted to say – to scream – was, You stupid bugger, boy… all you had to do was shoot the bloody dog and you winds up… bloody drowned!

Father always said, You gotter keep a 'old on your feelin's, Jack, that's the main thing. You let your feelin's go, you're out of control, see, and it's not for a Preece to lose control, we aren't privileged to lose control.

Bugger you, Father! Is that all there is? Is that all there'll ever be? We stands there in our fields of rock and clay, in the endless drizzle with our caps pulled down so we don't see to the horizon, so we don't look at the ole Tump, so we never asks, why us?

Tears exploded into Jack's eyes just as he neared the top of the pitch and through the blur he saw a great big shadow, size of a man, rising up sheer in front of him. He didn't think; he trod hard on the brake, the engine stalled and then he was staring into the peeling grey-green paint on the radiator as the tractor's nose was jerked up hard like the head of a ringed bull.

The old thing, the tractor, gave a helpless, heart-tearing moan, like a stricken old woman in a geriatric ward, and the great wheels locked and Jack was thrown into the air.

He heard a faraway earth-shaking bump, like a blast at a quarry miles away, and he figured this must be him landing somewhere. Not long after that, he heard a grinding and a rending of metal and when he looked down he couldn't see his legs, and when he looked up he could only see the big black shadow.

It was very much like a hand, this shadow, a big clawing black hand coming out of the field, out of the stiff, ripe grass, on a curling wrist of smoke.

As he stared at it, not wanting to believe in it, it began to fade away at the edges, just like everything else.

CHAPTER IX

Although her eyes were fully open, she wasn't looking at anything in the room, not even at the microphone suspended six inches above her lips. There was a sheen on her face, which might have been caused by the heat from the single TV light. The only other light in the draped and velvety room was a very dinky, Tiffany-shaded table-lamp in the corner behind Guy Morrison and the camera crew.

GRAHAM JARRETT: 'Can you describe your surroundings?

Can you tell me where you are?'

CATRIN JONES: 'I am in my bedchamber. In my bed.'

They understood she was called Jane. She only giggled when they asked for her second name. But strangely, after a few minutes, Guy Morrison had no difficulty in believing in her. She spoke, of course, with Catrin's voice, although the accent had softened as if a different accent was trying to impose itself, and the inflection was altered. This was not Catrin, not any Catrin he knew.

JARRETT: 'Is it night?'

CATRIN: 'It is dark.'

JARRETT: 'So why aren't you asleep?'

CATRIN: 'I ache so much.'

JARRRETT: 'Are you not well?'

CATRIN: 'I'm aching inside.'

JARRETT: 'You mean you're unhappy about something?'

CATRIN (sounding distressed): 'I'm aching inside… inside.

(Long pause and a mixture of wriggles, half-smiles and

soft moans.) 'My sheriff's been to take his pleasure.'

Strewth. This really was not shrill, plump, chapel-raised Catrin, from Bangor.

Also, Guy realized, watching Catrin licking her lips suggestively, it was suddenly not useable footage.

CATRIN: 'He watches me. Sometimes he comes in the

night and I can see him and he watches me. I awake.

The room… so cold…He is here… uurgh…

he's..His eyes. His eyes in the darkness. Only

his… eyes…aglow.'

Catrin was rolling from side to side, breathing in snorts. The tartan rug slipped from her legs. She dragged her skirt up to her waist and spread her legs.

CATRIN (screaming): 'Is that what you've come to see?'

'Wonderful,' Alex murmured, 'I think this is the only thing I live for these days.'

The cool hands.

'You,' Jean Wendle said, 'are an old humbug.'

'That's Dr Chi's diagnosis, is it?'

'Shush.'

'Hmmph.'

After the treatment. Jean made coffee but refused to let Alex have any whisky in his. 'Time you took yourself in hand,' she said.

'No chance of you taking me in hand, I suppose?'

Jean smiled.

This dementia of yours,' she said, sitting next to him on the sofa. 'When I said the other night that you should relax and observe yourself, I think I was teaching my grandmother to suck eggs. I think you almost constantly observe yourself. I think you have a level of self-knowledge far beyond most of the so-called mystics in this town.'

'Oh, I'm just a bumbling old cleric,' Alex said modestly.

'This… condition. Unlike, say, Alzheimer's, it's far from a constant condition. Sometimes the blood flow to the brain is close to normal, is that right? I mean, like now, at this particular moment, there is no apparent problem.'

'I don't know about that," Alex said. 'Some people would say consulting someone who communes with a long-dead Chinese quack is a sure sign of advancing senility. Oh hell…

I'm sorry, Wendy, I've sheltered so long behind not taking anything seriously.'

'It's Jean.'

'Yes, of course. I… I want to say you've made a profound difference to me. I haven't felt so well in a long time. I feel I'm… part of things again. That make sense?'

'When precisely did you first suspect there was something wrong with your general health?'

'Oh… I suppose it would be not long after poor old Grace died. Feeling a bit sorry for myself. I'd had a spot of angina, nothing life-threatening, as they say, but my morale…'

'Because Grace had died?'

Alex sat back, said, 'You scare me, Wendy. Bit too perceptive for comfort. Yes, I was low because of the guilt I was feeling at being initially really rather relieved that she'd popped

off.'

He paused for a reaction but didn't get one.

Jean stood up, went away and returned, looking resigned, with a bottle of Bell's whisky. 'Perhaps you can start taking yourself in hand tomorrow.'

'God bless you, my dear.' Alex diluted his coffee with a good half-inch of Scotch.

A silence. Alex thought he could hear a distant siren sound, like a police car or an ambulance.

'I gather you've been talking to my daughter.'

Jean rested a hand lightly on his thigh. 'I don't think she knows quite what to make of you.'

Alex looked at Jean's hand, not daring to hope. 'And what about you, Wendy? Do you…?'

The siren grew louder. Jean stood up and went across to the deep Georgian window.

She looked back at him over a shoulder, her little bum tight in pale-blue satin trousers. Coquettish? Dare he describe that look as coquettish?

'Oh, I think I can make something of you,' Jean said.

'Fire Service.'

'Hello, it's Fay Morrison from, er… from Offa's Dyke Radio. Can you tell me what's happening in Crybbe? Where's the fire?'

'You've been very quick, my girl. I don't think they've even got there yet. It isn't a fire. It's a tractor accident. Tractor turned over, one person trapped. The location is Top Meadow, Court Farm. One machine. No more details yet I'm afraid.'

'Court Farm? Bloody hell!' Fay reached for the Uher. 'Thanks a lot.' She put the phone down. 'What do you want to do, Arnie? You coming, or are you going to wait here for Dad?'

Thinking, what if he's here on his own when the curfew starts? Who's going to keep him quiet?

Arnold was lying under what used to be an editing table before somebody smashed the Revox. He was obviously finding it easier to be down than sit. He wagged his tail.

'OK, then, you can come. Need any help?'

Arnold stood up very carefully, shook himself and fell over. Stood up again, seemed to be grinning, like he often did.

Before leaving the office she forced herself, as she always did now, to look back from the doorway to the fireplace, the mantelpiece with its testicular clock, the armchair where the

ghost of Grace Legge had materialized.

She tried to avoid this room now, after dark.

She wished she could talk to Joe Powys.

Preferably on the ground? Away from any windows?

Don't be stupid.

She looked at the clock and saw it was nearly nine and realized she was worried about Joe and had been for over an hour; that was why she was sitting over the phone.

She'd never once worried about Guy. Guy was always OK. In any difficult situation Guy would either find a way out or simply walk away from it as if it had never happened to him. Whereas Joe was vulnerable because, as anybody who'd read his book could deduce, he was a professional believer. Present him with a crackpot theory and he'd make it sound sensible – which was what made him so useful to Max Goff.

She hadn't heard from him since he'd told her he was going to look for Andy Boulton-Trow.

Joe was like a child in a dark bedroom where there's a monster in the wardrobe and a dwarf behind the dressing-table and the lampshade is a human head on a string and every deep shadow is alive, and he was out there now in a town full of deep, deep shadows.

JARRETT: 'Do you live in a house?'

CATRIN: 'At the inn. We all live at the inn. Me and my

sisters and my father. My father is the…'

JARRETT: 'The licensee? The landlord?'

CATRIN (contemptuously): 'He'll never be a lord.'

JARRETT: 'And what's the name of the inn?'

CATRIN: 'The Bull. There's another inn called the Lamb,

where Robert lived.'

JARRETT: 'Robert? Who is Robert?'

CATRIN: 'My man. He's hanged now. The Sheriff hanged

him.'

JARRETT: 'Jane, can I ask you this? The Sheriff had

your… Robert… hanged. And now he sleeps with

you? Is that what you're saying?'

CATRIN (laughing, tears on her face): 'He doesn't sleep

much!'

Guy was transfixed. Something astonishing was happening here. No way had Catrin the imagination to conjure stuff like this.

Unless Jarrett had broken through the inhibitions to a deeper layer of the girl… perhaps this was the real Catrin.

But what about all the Crybbe references? Was it even conceivable that his production assistant was the reincarnation of a woman who had lived in this same town in the reign of Elizabeth I?

Guy didn't understand; he was at a disadvantage; he hated that.

Approximately fifteen minutes later he began to hate the situation even more. Jarrett had brought the character, Jane, several years forward in an attempt to discover how long the Sheriff's exploitation of her had continued, and the responses were becoming garbled.

CATRIN: 'But I am the best of us all, he says, and he will

never leave me, never… never. I'm stroking his

beard, his hard, black beard. Never leave me…

never, never, NEVER!'

JARRETT: 'Jane, please listen…'

CATRIN: 'I'll come down… I'll come down on you.'

Catrin began to giggle and to roll her head again. She started to ignore Jarrett's questions. He looked vaguely puzzled by this and left her alone to squirm about for a few minutes. Larry Ember took the opportunity to change the tape and his camera battery.

Then Catrin blinked, as if trying to focus on something, the giggling slowly drying up.

And her lips went into a pout.

CATRIN (with a new authority): 'Come here. I'm cold.'

Her voice had changed again. It was affected, now, and petulant. And very English.

CATRIN: 'Come on! For Christ's sake, Guy!'

Guy froze. Larry looked up from his viewfinder, the camera still rolling.

CATRIN: 'We are utterly alone and likely to remain so for

two whole, wonderful days. How long have you got?

Inches and inches, if I'm any judge.'

A profound chill spread through Guy.

CATRIN: 'There's a bathroom directly facing you at the

end of the passage.'

Catrin smiled. Guy thought he was going to scream.

CATRIN: 'Don't be long, will you?'

Guy Morrison strode erratically into shot, dragging a wire, nearly bringing the light down.

'Fucking hell, Guy,' Larry Ember yelled.

Guy ignored him, shook his shoe out of the lamp wire, clutched at Graham Jarrett's cardigan. 'Wake her up. For Christ's sake, man, wake her up!'

CHAPTER X

It was cold in the wood.

Still, he waited.

The words in his pocket, scribbled in the pages of a pocket diary, kept appearing in his mind, as though the lines were rippling across a computer screen.

'Alle the nyte came strange noyses and lytes and the dogges

howled in the yarde and when he vysyted me in myne chamber he

apered lyke a clowde and a yellow cullor in the aire.'

By nine-thirty, the air was singing with tension, as if great pylons were carrying buzzing, sizzling power cables across the darkening sky.

Joe Powys was standing by the new stone in the clearing, around the centre of the wood, a hundred yards or so from Keeper's Cottage.

This stone, narrow, like a sharpened bone, would be on the line from the Tump, through the Court to the church.

At either end of the clearing, undergrowth had been hacked away to form the beginning of a track. Or to reinstate an old one. He knew all about this track now. This was the legendary secret passage between the Court and Crybbe church, along which Sir Michael Wort was said to have escaped.

Like most legends, it was a literal interpretation of something more complex.

Something suggested by the notes he'd found in Keeper's Cottage, which had turned out to be a primitive kind of schoolhouse.

Primitive in that there was no electricity, only candles, and it was not very clean. It smelled of candles and mould… and paint.

There was a mattress and a duvet. Andy (or someone) had slept here. Like a monk might sleep in a little whitewashed cell with no worldly possessions. Or a rich philanthropist might feed the need to live like a squatter for a while to restructure his consciousness.

Or a modern man might have a need, somehow, to shed centuries…

'… tolde me he would come at nyte in hys spyryte, by the olde roade.'

These were Andy's own notes, hand-written; Powys had discovered them in the only modern luxury item to be found in Keeper's Cottage – absurdly, a black leather Filofax.

The Filofax had been kept in what once might have been a bread-oven inside the stone open fireplace, which suggested this hovel was rather older than it appeared from the outside.

Upstairs, Powys had found a single room with a skylight, which appeared to be used as an artist's studio. There was a table with brushes and palettes on it and coloured inks and a large assortment of paints, oil and acrylic.

There was turpentine and linseed oil and other dilutants in tightly corked medicine bottles. He uncorked one and sniffed incautiously.

It was urine.

Another one looked like blood.

Eye of newt, he thought, toe of frog.

Christ.

This room, with its skylight, was the only well-lit area of the house; all the windows in the sides of the building were screened by dense conifers.

There was a work in progress on an easel – a canvas under-painted in black and yellow-ochre. Shapes of buildings and a figure.

He decided not to sniff the painting.

There were two chairs up here, just as there were two downstairs. Andy and a lover.

Or a pupil.

He didn't know quite why he thought that. Maybe it was because someone else had been doing what he himself was doing – copying out pages of material from the Filofax. In the bread-oven had been a small pile of loose-leaf pages with writing on them in a different hand – bold, big letters. A schoolboy hand. Or a schoolgirl. There was also a paperback book on Elizabethan magic, with pages marked. He'd read one – and immediately put the book into his pocket, to study later.

The Filofax had contained about thirty loose-leaf pages of closely written notes, together with hand-drawn plans and maps. Powys had sat down at the table with the artist's materials on it, a rough-hewn item of rustic garden furniture. He'd copied everything out as carefully as he could, including the maps and plans, some of which made sense, some of which didn't.

He could have stolen the Filofax; that would have been simpler.

But he suspected that what he held here was something like what the old magicians called a grimoire, a book of magical secrets, a Book of Shadows. It belonged only to one person. To anyone else – if you believed in all this, which he was rather afraid he did – it could be as insidiously dangerous as a radioactive isotope.

So what you did, you copied it out.

He stopped copying at one stage, his wrist aching, a distant siren sounding in his head like the beginning of a migraine.

What the hell am I doing?

I mean, am I out of my mind?

He'd crossed again into the Old Golden Land, where everything answered to its own peculiar and archaic logic.

So, by candlelight, he'd gone on copying material from the Filofax into the blank pages of a slim blue book of his own with photographs of stones and mounds in it and maps of Britain networked with irregular thin black lines. Indented gold letters on the cover spelled out. The Ley-Hunter's Diary 1993. They sent him one every year; he carried it around, the way you did, but this was the first time he'd ever actually written in one.

It took him a long time.

And if Andy had come back, caught him at it?

So what? The bastard had more explaining to do than he did.

He was scared, though. You couldn't not be, in this environment. Not if you were inclined to believe it worked.

As he wrote, he started to understand. Not all of it, but enough. Enough to convince him that the original source of some of these notes was probably Dr John Dee, astrologer to Elizabeth I. That Dee, who lived along the valley, who was not psychic but studied people who were, had been the recipient of the visit from the man who came "at nyte in hys spyryte'.

And that the visitor was Michael Wort. High Sheriff of Radnorshire.

And you can prove that?

Of course not. What does that matter? I believe it.

But you're not rational, Powys. You're a certifiable crank.

He'd put the Filofax back into the bread-oven, wishing there was somewhere to wash his hands, and climbed out through the window again, walking away into the dusk, the wood gloomy, treacherous place now, spiked with fallen branches bramble tentacles.

The night coming on, and he didn't feel so certain of ability to deal with this, this…

diabolical sorcerie.

This phrase appeared several times in the text.

Standing, now, by the stone, feeling the tension like an impending thunderstorm, only denser. And the feeling that when the storm broke and the rain crashed down, the rain would be black and afterwards the earth would not be cleansed and purified but in some way poisoned.

Acid rain of the soul.

He moved a few feet away from the stone, stood behind a thick old oak tree bound with vines and creepers. The logic of the Old Golden Land told him that right next to the stone was not the place to be when the storm broke.

It also told him that the ringing of the curfew every night was some kind of climax and if he wanted to get a feel of what was going on, he ought to stay near that stone for… what?

He stretched his arm towards the sky to see his watch.

For less than half an hour.

He was frightened, though, and really wanted to creep back through the wood to the nearest lights.

So he thought about Henry Kettle and he thought about Rachel. And found himself thinking about Fay too.

She sped through the shadowed streets, Arnold on the passenger seat.

Not the other son – what was his name?… Warren – not him, surely.

She could hear her own voice-piece. The accident came only a week after Warren's brother, Jonathan, was tragically drowned in the swollen river near his home…

The usual reporter's moral conflict taking place in her head. Better for the Preece family if it was someone else. Better for the media if it was another Preece – Double Disaster for Tragic Farm Family.

Better for her, in truth, if she was away from Offa's Dyke Radio, which was clearly in the process of ditching her anyway. And away from Crybbe also, which went without saying.

Headlights on, she dropped into the lane beside the church. Nothing like other people's troubles to take your mind off your own.

Other, brighter headlights met hers just before the turning to Court Farm, and she swung into the verge as the ambulance rocketed out and its siren warbled into life.

Still alive, anyway. But that could mean anything.

Fay drove into the track. She'd never been to Court Farm before.

Firemen were standing around the yard, and there was a policeman, one of Wynford's three constables. Fay ignored him; she'd always found it easier to get information out of firemen.

'Didn't take you long,' one said, teeth flashing in the dusk. 'You wanner interview me' Which way's the camera?'

'No need to comb your hair,' Fay said. 'It's radio.'

'Oh, in that case you better talk to the chief officer. Ron!'

Firemen were always affable after it was over. 'Bugger of a job getting to him,' Ron said. 'Right up the top, this bloody field, and the ground was all churned up after all this rain. Still, we done it. Bloody mess, though. Knackered old thing it was, that tractor. Thirty-odd years old.'

'It just turned over?'

'Ah, it's not all that uncommon,' said Ron. 'I reckon we gets called to at least two tractor accidents every year. Usually young lads, not calculated the gradients. Never have imagined it happening to Jack Preece, though.'

'Jack Preece?'

'Hey, now, listen, don't go putting that out till the police confirms the name, will you? No, see, I can't figure how it could've happened, Jack muster been over there coupla thousand times. Just shows, dunnit. Dangerous job, farming.'

'How is he? Off the record.'

'He'll live,' Ron said, changing his boots. 'Gets everywhere this bloody mud. His left leg's badly smashed. I don't know… Still, they can work miracles these days, so I'm told.'

Fay got him to say some of it again, on tape. It was 9.40, nearly dark, because of all the cloud, as she pulled out of the farmyard.

She was halfway down the track when a figure appeared in the headlights urgently waving both arms, semaphoring her to stop.

Arnold sat up on the seat and growled.

Fay wound her window down.

'Give me a lift into town, will you?'

It was too dark to see his face under the cap, but she recognized his voice at once from meetings of the town council and the occasional 'Ow're you' in the street.

'Mr Preece!'

Oh, Christ.

'Get in the back, Arnold,' Fay hissed. As she pushed the dog into the back seat, something shocking wrenched at her mind, but she hadn't time to develop the thought before the passenger door was pulled open and the Mayor collapsed into the seat next to her, gasping.

'In a hurry. Hell of a hurry.'

The old man breathing heavily and apparently painfully as they crunched down the track. As she turned into the lane, Mr Preece said, 'Oh. It's you.' Most unhappy about this, she could tell, 'I didn't know it was you.'

'I'm terribly sorry,' Fay said, 'about Jack. It must be…'

'Aye…' Mr Preece broke off, turned his head, recoiled. 'Mighter known! You got that… damn thing in yere!'

'The dog?'

The shocking thought of a couple of minutes ago completed itself with an ugly click. As she was pushing Arnold into the back seat she'd felt the stump of his rear, left leg and heard Ron, the leading fireman, in her head, saying, left leg's badly smashed.

'Mr Preece,' Fay said carefully, 'I'd like to come and see you. I know it's a bad time – a terrible time – but I have to know what all this is about.'

He said nothing.

Fay said, 'I have to know – not for the radio, for myself – why nobody keeps a dog in Crybbe.'

The Mayor just breathed his painful soggy breaths, never looked behind him at what crouched in the back seat, said not a word until they moved up alongside the churchyard and entered the square.

'I'll get out yere.'

'Mr Preece…'

The old man scrambled out. Started to walk stiffly away. Then turned and tried to shout, voice cracking up like old brown parchment.

'You leave it alone, see…' He started to cough. 'Leave it alone, you…'

Mr Preece hawked and spat into the gutter.

'… stupid bitch,' he said roughly, biting off the words as if he was trying to choke back more phlegm and a different emotion. And then, leaving the passenger door for her to close, he was off across the cobbles, limping and stumbling towards the church.

He's going to ring the curfew. Fay thought suddenly.

His son's just been mangled within an inch of his life in a terrible accident and all he can think about is ringing the curfew.

Jonathon had been saying for months – years even – that it was time they got rid of that old tractor.

Probably this wasn't what he'd had in mind, Warren thought, standing in Top Meadow, alone with the wreckage of the thing that had crippled his Old Man, all the coppers and the firemen gone now.

The Old Man had been working on that tractor all day, giving himself something to concentrate on, take his mind off Jonathon and his problem of having nobody to hand over the farm to when he was too old and clapped out. Then he'd mumbled something about testing the bugger and lumbered off in it, up the top field, silly old bastard.

Testing it. Bloody tested it all right.

Warren had to laugh.

With the last of the light, he could more or less see what had happened, the tractor climbing towards the highest point and not making it, sliding back in the mud, out of control and tipping over, the Old Man going down with it, disappearing underneath as the bloody old antique came apart.

But Warren still couldn't figure how he'd let it happen, all the times he'd been up here on that bloody old tractor. At least, he couldn't see rationally, like, how it had happened.

It was the unrational answer, the weird option, glittering in his head like cold stars, that wouldn't let him go home.

He followed the big tracks through the mud by the field gate, up the pitch to the point where the tractor had started rolling back prior to keeling over. He followed the tracks to the very top of the rise, to where the tractor had been headed, glancing behind him and seeing the trees moving on top of the old Tump half a mile away.

By the time he was on top of the pitch, he was near burning up with excitement. It hadn't seemed like the right part of the field at all, but that was because he'd come in by a different, gate, looking at it from a different angle.

Warren hesitated a moment and then dashed back down to the tractor. Somebody had left behind a shovel they'd been using to shift the mud so the firemen could get their cutting gear to the Old Man. He snatched up the shovel, carried it back up the pitch, prised away the top sod – knowing instinctively exactly where to dig – threw off a few shovelfuls of earth, and there it was, the old box.

The jagged thrill that went through him was like white-hot electric wire. 'Oh, fuck, oh fuck.' Blinded by his power. 'I done it. Me.'

His fingers were rigid with excitement as he opened the box, just to make sure, and he almost cried out with the euphoria of the moment.

He couldn't see proper, but it was like the hand of bones, the Hand of Glory in the box had bent over and become a fist.

It was curled around the Stanley knife, gripping it, and the blade was out.

Warren shivered violently in horror and pleasure – the combination making him feel so alive it was like he was a knife himself, sharp and savage, steely and invulnerable.

The only indestructible Preece.

CHAPTER XI

At first, the figure was dressed in dark clothes so that when it filtered through the twilit trees only the soft footsteps and the rustlings told Powys anyone was coming.

He moved behind his oak tree, sure it was going to be Andy. Holding himself still, packing away the anger and the grief – an unstable mixture – because, for once, he intended to have the advantage.

What he had to do was break this guy's habitual cool. To raise the vibration rate until the bass-cello voice distorted and the lotus position collapsed in a muscular spasm.

He'd never seen Andy anything but laid-back. This, he realized, was the most impenetrable of all screens. Laid-back people were not evil. Laid-back people were wise. Evil people ranted like Hitler.

They weren't people you'd known half your life. And they were never called Andy.

But then, Powys thought, watching the figure enter the clearing and move towards the stone, the stench from a rotten egg was only apparent when the perfectly rounded, smooth, white shell was cracked.

The stone gleamed pearly grey, collecting what light remained, a ghostly obelisk. Powys watched and tried to slow his breathing. Not yet time; to get a stake into Dracula, you had to wait for daylight.

Or, in this case, until the curfew was over. The curfew was central to the Crybbe experience. The curfew was pivotal. Whatever had been building up – tension, fear, excitement – climaxed and then died with the curfew.

He'd experienced it twice, in radically different ways. The first night with Rachel, when they'd wound up in bed at the Cock so fast they hadn't even been aware of the chemical interacting until the chemicals had fully interacted. And then by the river, when he'd found the shotgun in his hands and come within a twitch of blowing Jonathon Preece in half.

He lifted the sleeve of his sweatshirt to expose his watch; it was too dark to be certain, but he was sure it must be ten o'clock.

Ten o'clock and no curfew?

Staggering into the church, Jimmy Preece was faced with its silent, solitary occupant, a wooden arrow pointing at the altar rails.

He stood gasping in the doorway, and there was Jonathon's smooth, mahogany coffin shining like a taunt, a pale gleam of polish in the dimness.

Mr Preece couldn't find his breath, his legs felt like wet straw, and the urge to pray had never been as strong.

Please, God, protect us, he wanted to cry out until the words leapt into every corner of the rafters and came back at him with the illusion of strength.

And illusion was all it would be. He remembered the trouble there'd been when the old vicar was ill and the diocese had sent a replacement who'd turned out to be one of these Charismatics, some new movement in the church, this chap spouting about something he called Dynamic Prayer, shouting and quivering and making them all sing like darkies and hug each other.

No end of disturbance, until a phone call to the bishop had got rid of him. Not the border way, they told him. Not the Crybbe way.

Oh, Jonathon, Jonathon… Mr Preece felt his chest quake in agony, and he turned away, groping for the narrow, wooden door to the belfry.

The old routine, making his painful way to the steps. But, for the first time, the routine resisted him and his foot failed to find the bottom step. Twenty-seven years he'd done it, without a break, until Jack started to take over, and now Jimmy Preece had come back and he couldn't find the blessed step.

Mr Preece squeezed his eyes shut, dug his nails into his cheeks, raised his other foot and felt the step's worn edge slide under his shoe.

What time was it? Was he late?

His chest pumping weakly like these old brass fire-bellows his wife still kept, although the leather was holed and withered. His foot slipped on the edge of the second step.

Come on, come on, you hopeless old bugger.

He set off up the narrow stone steps, some no more than two foot wide.

Used to be… when he was ringing the old bell every night… that… these steps was… never a problem…even when he'd been working… solid on the lambing or the haymaking and was… bone tired… because…

Mr Preece paused to catch a breath, six steps up.

Because sometimes, in the old days, he'd just, like, floated to the top, like as if there were hands in the small of his back rushing him up the steps, and then the same hands would join his on the rope, because it was meant.

But tonight there were different hands, pressing down from above, pressing into his chest: go back, you poor, tired old bugger, you don't wanner do this no more.

A son in the hospital. A grandson in his coffin.

What if you dies on the steps?

One Preece in the hospital. One in his coffin. One in a heap on the flagstones. And Warren.

Best not to think about Warren.

And a silence in the belfry.

No!

In a rage, Mr Preece snatched out his dentures, thrust them down into a pocket of his old tweed jacket, forced some air into his broken bellows of a chest and made it up two more steps.

He'd do it. He'd be late but he'd do it. Never been so important that he should do it.

He saw the light above him and the ropes. Never more important, now the wall around the Tump had been breached and something was in the Court.

As had been shown by the death of that woman.

But it had never been in the church. It couldn't get into church.

No, it couldn't.

But it wasn't Andy Boulton-Trow, waiting by the stone.

It was a woman. Well, a girl.

And naked now.

She stood with her back to the stone, as if sculpted from it, her eyes closed and her mouth open, and the night sang around her.

Jesus God, Powys whispered, the voyeur behind the oak tree, stunned into immobility.

The pupil!

It was one of those nights when the thoughts were so deep you couldn't remember getting home or putting the car away. Some small thing brought you back into your body – like the tiny grind of metal in metal as your Yale key penetrated the front-door lock.

Fay could just about read her watch in what remained of the light and the glow from neighbouring windows; she couldn't believe how rapidly the days had been shortening since Midsummer Day.

Mr Preece was already a couple of minutes late with the curfew. She imagined him toiling up all those steps to the belfry, poor old sod.

Obsessive behaviour. Did he really think the family might lose Percy Weale's sixteenth-century bequest if the curfew remained unrung for a single night because of a dire family crisis? Had to be more than that. Joe Powys would find out.

Oh, God, Powys, where are you?

One thing was sure: Jack Preece wouldn't be ringing the curfew for a long, long time – if ever again.

What does it mean, Joe?

She ought to have gone with him, even if this was something crazy between him and Boulton-Trow, something that went back twelve years or more.

It was so easy at night to believe in the other side of things, that there was another side. That Rachel – and Rose – had died because of a magic with its roots four centuries deep… or perhaps deeper, perhaps as old as the stones.

With Arnold tucked, not without some effort, under her arm, Fay went into the house. It was far too late now to send the tape for the morning news. The late-duty engineer at Offa's Dyke would be long gone. She'd have to go into the studio early in the morning again, having rung Hereford General to find out Jack's condition.

She lowered the dog to the doormat.

'I wish I could trust you, Arnold,' Fay said, not quite knowing what she meant. His tail was well down; he looked no happier than she was. Jonathon Preece had set out to kill him and had died in the river. Arnold had lost a leg, so might Jack Preece by now…

If this was the seventeenth century she'd have been hanged as a witch, Arnold stoned to death as her familiar.

Stop it, you stupid bitch.

She clenched her fists and felt her nails piercing the palms of her hands. Everyone around her seemed to be carrying a burden of possibly misplaced guilt. Powys for Rose and Rachel. Her dad for Grace and for her mother. She herself…

Fay went down on her knees in the hall, the front door open to the street behind her. She buried her head in Arnold's fur. Arnold who looked no more evil than… than Joe Powys. As she began quietly to sob, all the lights went out in the neighbouring homes.

Bloody electricity company. How could this keep happening?

Fay choked a sob in bitter anger and punched at the wall until her knuckles hurt. Oh God, God, God, God, God.

She stood up shakily.

'Dad?'

There was no response.

She closed the front door behind her. He'd either gone to bed or he was still over at Jean Wendle's having his treatment. Or his end away if he'd got lucky. Fay sniffed and smiled She'd once asked the local doctor what the Canon's condition meant libido-wise. 'He'll be less inhibited,' the doctor had said, 'By which I mean he'll talk about it more often.'

The Canon wasn't back.

But – Arnold whimpering – somebody was.

As Fay stiffened in the darkness of the hallway, she saw vague yellowish light under the door of the office.

Very slowly the office door began to open.

Fay caught her breath.

It did not creak; she only knew it was opening because the wedge of yellow light was widening, and it was not the soft and welcoming, mellow yellow of a warm parlour at suppertime.

This was the yellow of congealing fat, the yellow of illness.

The hallway was very cold. It was a cold she remembered.

'Grace?' Fay heard herself say in a voice she didn't recognize, a voice that seemed to come from someone else.

She felt her lips stretch tight with fear. She kicked the office door open.

'Did she speak?' Jean Wendle had asked.

'Not a word'

Grace Legge wore a nightdress. Or a shroud. Was this what shrouds looked like?

'And she didn't move?'

'No.'

Grace was standing by the window, very straight, a hand on a hip, half-turned towards Fay. She was haloed in yellow light. The yellow of diseased flesh. The yellow of embalming fluid.

She was hovering six inches off the floor.

'Harmless, then.'

'Grace,' Fay said slowly. 'Go away, Grace.'

But Grace did not go away. She began to move towards Fay, not walking because her feet were bound in the shroud, which faded into vapour.

Fay backed away into the hall.

Dead eyes that were fixed, burning like small, still lamps. Burning like phosphorous.

'She can't talk to you, she can't see you; there's no brain activity there… Blink a couple of times.., and she'll be gone.'

Fay shut her eyes, screwed them tight. Stood frozen in the doorway with her eyes squeezed tight. Stood praying. Praying to her father's God for deliverance. Please make it go away, please, please, please…

She smelled an intimate smell, sickly, soiled perfume, and felt cold breath on her face. She opened her eyes because she was more afraid not to, opened them into a fish-teethed snarl and yellow orbs alight with malice, and spindly, hooked fingers – the whole thing swirling and shimmering and coming for her, rancid and vengeful, filling the room with a rotting, spitting, incandescent yellow haired.

Fay began to scream.

CHAPTER XII

It was fear that drew Minnie Seagrove to the window of her lounge. Fear that if she didn't look for it, it would come looking for her.

For a short while, there was a large, early moon. It wasn't a full moon, not one of those werewolf moons by any stretch, but it was lurid and bright yellow. It appeared from behind the Tump. Before it became visible, rays had projected through the trees on the top of the mound like the beams you saw seconds before the actual headlights of an oncoming car. The trees on the Tump were waving in the breeze even though the air all around Minnie's bungalow was quite still.

She'd come to associate this breeze with an appearance of the Hound.

Afterwards, Mrs Seagrove sat with her back to the window in Frank's old Parker Knoll wing chair, feeling its arms around her and hugging a glass of whisky, the remains of Frank's last bottle of Chivas Regal malt.

Oh Lord, how she wished she hadn't looked tonight.

'I'm that cold, dear,' she said, pretending she was talking to young Joe Powys or anybody who'd believe her. 'I can't keep a limb still. I don't think I'll ever get warm again.'

Powys knew it was on its way when the naked girl at the stone began to moan and shiver.

When the moon rose, he saw that the girl was certainly no more than twenty and might even be significantly younger, which made him uncomfortable. He wondered for a time if she was real and not some kind of vision. What kind of a girl would come alone at night into this appalling place and take off all her clothes?

Powys was not at all turned on by this.

He was afraid. Afraid, he rationalized, not only for her but of her.

Afraid because he suspected she knew what was coming, while he could have no conception, except of ludicrous phosphorous fur, fiery eyes and gnashing fangs, and Basil Rathbone in his deerstalker, with his pistol.

He found his fingers were tightly entwined into some creeper on the trunk of the oak tree. He squeezed it until it hurt.

The silence in the neglected wood was absolute. No night birds, no small mammals scurrying and scrabbling. If there was any sound, any indication of movement, of change, it would be the damp chatter of decay.

Max could not move. His eyes were wide open. He took his breath in savage gulps.

He lay in awe, couldn't even think.

He could smell the candles.

As if in anticipation of a power failure, the room had been ringed with them – Max half-afraid they'd be black. But no, these were ordinary yellow-white candles, of beeswax or tallow, whatever tallow was. They didn't smell too good at first, kind of a rich, fatty smell.

Now the smell was as intoxicating as the sour red wine.

The mattress was laid out on the third level of the stable block, so he could lie in the dusk, and take in the Tump filling the window, stealing the evening light, surrounded with candles, like a great altar.

Max lay under the black duvet, feeling like a virgin, the Great Beast/Scarlet Woman sessions with Rachel a faint and farcical memory.

For the first time in his adult life, Max was terrified.

And then, when the dark figure rose over him in the yellow, waxy glow, even more frightened – and shocked rigid, at first – by the intensity of his longing.

Warren looked up into the sky, at the night billowing in, and he loved the night and the black clouds and the thin wind hissing in the grass, his insides churning, his mind clotted with a rich confusion.

But the curfew was coming and the box was screaming at him to close the lid.

He slammed it down.

Then, bewildered, he started to claw at the earth with his hands, set the box down in the hole.

Heard a rattling noise inside, the hand battering the side of the box.

It don't wanner go back in the ground.

It's done what it came for.

Now it wants to go back in the chimney.

And, sure enough, when Warren picked up the box the rattling stopped, and so he ran, holding it out in front of him like a precious gift, down from field to field until he reached the farm, where nobody else lived now, except for him and the Hand of Glory.

In the end, the curfew did come, a strained and hesitant clatter at first, and then the bell was pounding the wood like a huge, shiny axe, slicing up the night, and the girl was gone.

Joe Powys wandered blindly through the undergrowth, repeatedly smashing a fist into an open palm.

The night shimmered with images.

The bell pealed and Rose, in a pure white nightdress, threw herself from a third-floor window, fluttering hopelessly in the air like a moth with its wings stuck together, falling in slow motion, and he was falling after her, reaching out for her.

In the spiny dampness of the wood, Powys cried out, just once, and the curfew bell released, at last, his agony.

He staggered among the stricken, twisted trees and wept uncontrollably. He didn't want to control it. He wanted the tears to flow for ever. He wanted the curfew bell to peal for ever, each clang comet-bright in the shivering night.

The bell pealed on, and with that high, wild cry Rachel tumbled into the air, and then Rose and Rachel were falling together, intertwined.

A needle of light, like the filament of a low-wattage electric bulb zig-zagged across the eaves.

Silently, in slow-motion, the rusty spike pierced the white nightdress and a geyser of hot blood sprayed into his weeping eyes.

CHAPTER XIII

Max awoke to find himself alone, damp and smouldering, like a bonfire in the rain. The cold deluge had been the curfew. When the curfew was gone, he realized at last, the town would be free.

He got up and shambled to the big window, wrapped in the black duvet. It was too dark to see the Tump; it didn't matter, he could feel the Tump. It was like the stables and maybe even the Court itself hid been absorbed by the mound, so that he was, in essence, inside it.

No going back now, Max.

Feeling very nearly crazy, his face and hands slashed by boughs and bushes, Powys followed a dead straight line back into Crybbe.

As if the path was lit up for him. Which perhaps it was – the bell strokes landing at his feet like bars of light. All he did was lurch towards the belt, each stroke laid on the landscape, heavy as a gold ingot. And when he emerged from the wood into the churchyard, scratched and bleeding from many cuts, he just collapsed on the first grave he came to.

Its stone was of new black marble, with white lettering, and when he saw whose grave it was he started to laugh, slightly hysterically.

GRACE PETERS

1928-1992

Beloved wife of

Canon A. L. Peters

And that was all.

Powys scrambled to his feet; from what he knew of Grace, she would take a dim view of somebody's dirty, battered body sprawled over her nice, clean grave.

He walked stiffly through the graveyard, out of the lychgate, into the deserted square, his plodding footsteps marking sluggish time between peals of the curfew.

The power was off. Hardly a surprise. In four or five townhouse windows he could see the sallow light of paraffin lamps. Then, with a noise like a lawnmower puttering across the square, a generator cranked into action, bringing a pale-blue fluorescent flickering into the grimy windows of the old pub, the Cock.

Yes, Powys thought. I could use a drink. Quite badly.

It occurred to him he hadn't eaten since pushing down a polystyrene sandwich in this very pub before setting off to find his old mate, Andy Boulton-Trow. He didn't feel hungry, though. A drink was all he wanted, that illusory warmth in the gut. And then he'd decide where to go, whose night to spoil next, whose peace of mind to perforate.

He clambered up the steps and pushed open the single, scuffed swing-door to the public bar.

It was full. Faces swam out of the smoke haze, pallid in the stuttering fluorescence. The air was weighed down, it seemed to Powys, with leaden, dull dialogue and no merriment. He felt removed from it all, as though he'd fallen asleep when he walked in, and being here was a dream.

'Brandy, please,' he told Denzil, the Neanderthal landlord 'A single.'

Denzil didn't react at all to whatever kind of mess the wood had made of Powys's face. He didn't smile.

So where was the smile coming from? He knew somebody was smiling at him; you could feel a smile, especially when wasn't meant to be friendly.

'Thanks,' he said, and paid.

He saw the smile through the bottom of his glass. It was a small smile in a big face. It might have been chiselled neatly into the centre of a whole round cheese.

Police Sergeant Wynford Wiley had sat there wearing this same tiny smile last night and early this morning while his colleagues from CID had been trying to persuade J. M. Powys to confess to the murder of his girlfriend.

'Been in a fight, is it, Mr Powys?'

Wiley looked more than half-drunk. He was sitting in a group of middle-aged men in faded tweeds or sleeveless, quilted body-warmers. Summer casual wear, Crybbe-style.

'You want the truth?' Powys swallowed some brandy but still didn't feel any warmth.

'All I ever wants is the truth, Mr Powys.' Wynford was wearing an old blue police shirt over what looked like police trousers.

'Amateur dramatics,' Powys said wearily. 'I've been auditioning for the Crybbe Amateur Dramatic Society. Banquo's Ghost. What do you think of the make-up?'

Wynford Wiley stopped smiling. He stood up at once, rather unsteadily. Planted himself between Powys and the door. And came out with that famous indictment of intruders from Off, those few words which Powys suddenly found so evocative of the quintessential Crybbe.

'We don't like clever people.' Wynford stifled a burp. 'Round yere.'

There was that thrilled hush which the first spark of confrontation always brings to rural pubs.

Powys said, 'Maybe that's why this town's dead on its feet.' He finished his brandy. 'Now' – placing his glass carefully on the bar-top – 'why don't you piss off and stop bothering me, you fat bastard.'

He listened to himself saying this, as if from afar. Listened with what ought to have been a certain horrified awe. He'd done it now. Thrown down a direct public challenge to the authority of the senior representative for what passed for the law in this town. In order to retain his authority and his public credibility, Sergeant Wiley would be obliged to take prompt and decisive action.

And Sergeant Wiley was drunk.

And Powys didn't care because tonight he'd seen the appalling thing that was known locally as Black Michael's Hound and witnessed the dark conflagration of its union with a young woman, and in terms of total black menace, Wynford Wiley just didn't figure.

'Let's slip outside, shall we, Mr Powys?'

Wynford held open the door. To get out of here, Powys would have to step under his arm, and as soon as he was outside the door the arm would descend. He was likely to wind up in a cell. If he resisted he would wind up hurt in a cell. If he ran away the town would soon be teeming with coppers. Anyway, he was too knackered to run anywhere, even if there'd been anywhere to run.

'Don't make a fuss, Mr Powys. I only wanner know 'ow you got that face.'

Powys couldn't think of a way out. He stepped under Wynford's arm and the arm, predictably, came down.

Somebody held open the door for Wynford and the big policeman followed him out, hand gripping his elbow. At that moment, as if to make things easier for the forces of the law, the power came back on, or so it seemed, and Wynford's face shone like a full moon.

Powys froze in the brightness, momentarily blinded. Wynford reeled back.

There was a figure behind the light, maybe two. The light was blasting from something attached like a miner's lamp to the top of a big video camera carried on the shoulder of a stocky man with a Beatles hairstyle (circa Hamburg '62) and an aggressive mouth.

Whom Powys recognized at once as Guy Morrison's cameraman, Larry Ember.

'You carry on, Sarge.' Larry Ember moved to a lower step and crouched, the light still full on Wynford. 'Just pretend we ain't here.'

Wynford was squinting, mouth agape. 'You switch that bloody thing off, you 'ear me? When did you 'ave permission to film yere?'

'Don't need no permission, Sarge. Public place, innit? We were just knocking off a few routine night-shots. You go ahead and arrest this geezer, don't mind us, this is nice.'

Wynford blocked the camera lens with a big hand and backed into the pub door, pushing it open with his shoulders. He glared at Larry Ember over the hot lamp. 'I can 'ave you for obstruction. Man walks into a pub, face covered with cuts and bruises, it's my job to find out why.'

'Yeah, yeah. Well, there was a very nasty accident happened up at a place called Court Farm tonight while some of us, Sergeant, were safely in the pub getting well pissed-up. As I understand it, this gentleman was up to his neck in shit and oil helping to drag some poor bleeder out from under his tractor. Fact is, he'll probably be in line for an award from the Humane Society.'

Powys kept quiet, wondering what the hell Larry Ember was on about.

'Well…' Wynford backed off. 'That case, why didn't 'e I speak up, 'stead of being clever?'

'He's a very modest man, Sarge.'

Wynford Wiley backed awkwardly into the pub, stabbing a defiant forefinger into the night. 'All the same, you been told, Powys. Don't you leave this town.'

'Dickhead,' said Larry Ember, when the door closed. 'Shit, I enjoyed that. Best shots I've had since we came to this dump. You all right, squire?'

'Well, not as bad as the guy under the tractor. Was that on the level?'

'Sure. We didn't go, on account of our leader was otherwise engaged, shafting his assistant.'

'Well, thanks for what you did,' Powys said. 'I owe you one.'

'Yeah, well, I was getting bored.' Larry swung the camera off his shoulder, switched the lamp off. 'And I figured he'd never arrest you in his state, more likely take you up that alley and beat seven shades out of you.'

The cameraman, who'd obviously had a few pints himself, grabbed Powys's arm and started grinning. 'Hey, listen, you know Morrison, don't you? Bleedin' hell, should've seen him. We shot this hypnotist geezer, taking young Catrin back through her past lives, you know this, what d'you call it…?'

'Regression?'

'Right. And in one life, so-called, she's this floozy back in the sixteenth century, having it away with the local sheriff, right?'

Powys stiffened. 'In Crybbe?'

'That's what she said. Anyway, in real life, Catrin's this prim little Welshie piece, butter wouldn't melt. But, stone me, under the influence, she's drooling at the mouth, pulling her skirt up round her waist, and Morrison – well, he can't bleedin' believe it. Soon as we get back, he says, in his most pompous voice, he says, "Catrin and I… Catrin and I, Laurence, have a few programme details to iron out." Then he shoves her straight upstairs. Blimey, I'm not kidding, poor bleeder could hardly walk…'

'What time was this?'

'Ages ago. Well over an hour. And they ain't been seen since. Amazing, eh?'

'Not really,' Powys said sadly.

The few oil lamps in the houses had gone out and so had the moon. The town, what could be seen of it, was like a period film-set after hours. An old man with a torch crossed his path at one point; nothing else happened. Powys supposed he was going back to the riverside cottage to sleep alone, just him and the Bottle Stone,

He couldn't face being alone, even if it was now the right side of the curfew and the psychic departure lounge was probably closed for the night.

What was he going to do? He had an idea of what was happening in Crybbe and how it touched on what had happened to him twelve years ago. But to whom did you take such ideas? Certainly not the police. And if what remained of the Church was any good at this kind of thing, it wouldn't have been allowed to fester.

He could, of course, go and see Goff and lay it all down for him, explain in some detail why the Crybbe project should be abandoned forthwith. But he wasn't sure he could manage the detail or put together a coherent case that would convince someone who might be a New Age freak but was also a very astute businessman.

What it needed was a Henry Kettle.

Or a Dr John Dee, come to that.

What he needed was to talk to Fay Morrison, but it was unlikely she'd want to talk to him.

He passed the house he thought was Jean Wendle's. Jean might know what to do. But that was all in darkness. Faced with a power cut, many people just made it an early night.

As he slumped downhill towards the police station and the river bridge, something brushed, with some intent, against his ankles. It didn't startle him. It was probably a cat, there being no dogs in Crybbe.

It whimpered.

Powys went down on his knees. 'Arnold?'

It nuzzled him; he couldn't see it. He moved his hands down, counted three legs.

'Christ, Arnold, what are you doing out on your own. Where's Fay?'

He looked up and saw he'd reached the corner of Bell Street. Sudden dread made his still-bruised stomach contract.

Not again. Please. No.

No!

He picked Arnold up and carried him down the street. If the dog had made it all the way from home, he'd done well, so soon after losing a leg. Arnold squirmed to get down and vanished through an open doorway. Powys could hear him limping and skidding on linoleum, and then the lights came back on.

Powys went in.

He couldn't take it in at first, as the shapes of things shivered and swam in the sudden brilliance. Then he saw that Arnold had nosed open the kitchen door and was skating on the blood.