The Wounded Thorn

by Fay Sampson

‘You know,’ Hilary said, ‘something was bugging me in the night. Something the inspector asked us. That carrier bag from the hardware shop. Had we seen one like it?’

  ‘The one they found her burka in? But we hadn’t.’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure of that now. Something at the back of my mind tells me that I have.’

  THIRTY

  The crowds of sightseers were becoming thicker again as they neared the heart of the abbey. It looked like an ordinary Saturday morning in early summer. Picturesque ruins, guides in period costume, romantic legends about King Arthur’s final resting place and stories about the Grail and the tree that had once provided the crown of thorns. It seemed almost impossible to believe that twenty-four hours earlier the body of a young woman had lain just there, in the roofless Galilee, between the Lady Chapel and the abbey church’s nave. Hilary felt the wave of grief return.

  ‘Did Rupert Honeydew kill her?’ she said aloud. ‘Had she found out more than she should about the High Street bomb?’

  ‘I thought you decided over breakfast that he wasn’t responsible for both bombs. That there must have been somebody else.’

  ‘Hmm. All I was saying was that there are pieces of the puzzle which don’t match up.’

  As they neared the exit they heard raised voices. A man was shouting something as yet incomprehensible.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Hilary said. ‘Not him again!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘George Marsden.’

  They were now near enough to the gatehouse to hear the tirade going on inside.

  ‘It comes to something when you find a heathen body in a Christian church! What was she doing there, I’d like to know?’

  ‘George, calm down. The woman is dead, God rest her soul. We should be praying for her.’ Sonia Marsden was doing her best to quiet him.

  ‘Don’t you “Calm down” me!’ he roared. ‘I’m a God-fearing Englishman, and this is one of the most sacred places in the whole country. It’s a wonder they even let Muslims inside, let alone have one dying here. It’s not decent. They should get back where they come from and their own mumbo-jumbo temples.’

  ‘George!’ Sonia Marsden’s voice was becoming steely. ‘Go home.’

  Veronica and Hilary tried to edge past. George Marsden saw them and wheeled round.

  ‘You two again! My wife tells me you were inside the abbey yesterday, when she wasn’t allowed past the entrance. And now you’re back again. First that bomb at the Chalice Well, then you were in the High Street when the big one went off, and now you’re here, right where a murder happens. How come it’s not you who are the ones under arrest?’

  Hilary was uncomfortably aware of the queue at the ticket desk stopping, of faces turning towards them in shocked curiosity. She felt herself going red and was all the more exasperated because of it.

  ‘If you think we had anything to do with it, you’ll believe anything.’

  She forged past the Marsdens and the staring crowd of sightseers.

  The breeze blew cool on her face in the courtyard outside.

  She had almost forgotten why they had come back to the abbey this morning and what they had found.

  Veronica picked up her mobile from the front shelf of the car. ‘Do you still want to phone the inspector?’

  Hilary hesitated. ‘Leave it for the moment. I feel I’m on the verge of remembering something. Something really important. When I know what it is, I’ll certainly be phoning him. Meanwhile, it’s time we set our children’s minds at rest and headed out of here. Do you want to drive?’

  ‘So that you can concentrate on getting those little grey cells to work?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Veronica drove the car out of town. Between the residential streets and the pastures of the Levels, they passed a small industrial estate. Hilary let her eye run idly over the store fronts. She leaned forward suddenly.

  ‘Pull over!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here. That DIY store.’

  Veronica steered into the large car park and came to a stop.

  ‘Why? Are you planning on a bit of interior decorating before David gets back?’

  Hilary pointed to the name in large blue letters over the entrance.

  ‘Ring any bells?’

  ‘Arnold’s?’ Veronica shook her head. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘That plastic carrier bag. The one Fellows and Petersen showed us. The one Amina’s burka was found in. It came from here. Don’t you remember? A logo of a hammer and the name Arnold’s.’

  ‘I remember the logo. I’d forgotten about the name. But I thought they’d decided there was nothing suspicious about it. I could see how the cogs must have been going round in their minds. Hardware shop. Muslim. Homemade bomb. But when they came here they found they’d made fools of themselves. She was buying flowers.’

  ‘If that was the whole story, why did they show us that bag and ask if it jogged any memories?’

  Veronica drew her teeth over her lower lip as she thought about this. ‘Ah!’ she said, as the realization dawned. ‘Amina may have been buying flowers, but what if she wasn’t the one who left that burka in the churchyard? What if somebody else had been shopping here at the same time? And that person’s shopping had …?’ Her eyes grew wide.

  ‘Let’s get out and have a look around. I’m becoming more convinced by the minute that this bag may be a whole lot more important than it looked. I know I’ve seen another one like it. I just can’t remember where.’

  ‘Even if you did,’ Veronica said doubtfully, ‘there can’t be many places in Glastonbury like this. There must be a score of shops where you can buy joss sticks, but you’d be hard pushed to find a paint roller. Lots of local people must come here.’

  ‘Humour me.’

  Outside the store, as well as the usual stack of shopping carts, was an array of plants at bargain prices. Hilary stooped to look down at a tray of purple and white petunias. Was it something like this Amina had bought to soften the heart of her landlady? Something wrenched inside her at the thought of this girl who would never watch them bloom.

  She straightened her shoulders and walked inside.

  The place was vast, but there were very few people in it. A handful of morning shoppers. A woman at the till. In the further reaches, a couple of men in blue aprons among the high-stacked shelves.

  Hilary wandered in the direction of the electrical department. She studied the racks with a rather hopeless air. What did she know about the equipment required to make a bomb? Next to nothing. It was all very well to say that you could find the instructions nowadays on the internet, but the thought of actually doing that made her blood run cold. It was not just the horror of what the bomb was meant to achieve, it was almost inconceivable to imagine herself assembling it. Had the bomber worked alone? Had their hands trembled as they connected wires, tightened screws, set the timer? Did they really understand that what they were constructing in a small back room would bring down a house in the High Street, kill seven people, and injure many more?

  She tried to reconcile this calculating manufacture with Rupert Honeydew, prancing through the streets in his top hat and enthusing to anyone he could buttonhole about the healing powers of his Goddess. Or George Marsden, with all his brag and bluster about being a Christian Englishman. Did he even know how to use the internet? His wife Sonia, though … No, they had seen another side of her. She sighed. Let the police work that one out. They had already questioned the Marsdens, but let them go.

  Into her mind came a more unexpected picture. Of Sister Mary Magdalene overtaking them in the shadows outside the abbey walls. Of the gate to the abbey grounds from the retreat house. Of the flattened hedge parsley under the fence. She shook her head vigorously. She was becoming ridiculous.

  She walked up to the woman at the checkout. The other tills seemed to be unstaffed.

  ‘Excuse me. Where you here when the police came asking questions about a customer in a burka? One of those Musli
m gowns that cover a woman from top to toe.’

  ‘You’ll need to ask Mr Arnold about that.’ The woman nodded her head towards the gardening section of the shop. ‘That’s him in the blue overall.’

  Hilary marched towards him, feeling her confidence draining away with every step. What did she hope to achieve that Inspector Fellows and his sergeant hadn’t already done?

  Veronica trailed behind her.

  The large man with greying sandy hair turned at their approach. He wore a name badge on his blue apron which said simply JOHN.

  ‘Are you Mr Arnold? The owner?’

  ‘That’s me. How can I help you?’

  Hilary explained about the police search. ‘I know you remembered the woman in a burka. And that she bought a pot of flowers.’

  ‘That’s right. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather duster. We get all sorts in Glastonbury, but you don’t expect to see one of those. We’re not like Birmingham or Wolverhampton, or one of those places up north. Of course I remembered her. She asked me what she’d need to grow a sprig of Glastonbury Thorn.’

  ‘The inspector didn’t tell us that.’

  ‘Of course, I told her it wasn’t as simple as that. You have to graft a slip of it on to ordinary hawthorn stock. In the end, she said she’d just take a pot of flowers. A farewell present for her landlady, she said.’

  A farewell present. The words echoed in Hilary’s mind. For a chilling moment, she thought about suicide videos. Amina? Surely not? She hadn’t blown herself up. Hilary pushed the thought away vigorously. She pulled herself back to the question which was bugging her.

  ‘But I expect they asked about other things too. Other customers who might have bought the sort of things you could use to make a bomb?’

  ‘Who are you, then? Are you more police?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. But we knew Amina … the woman in the burka. And we were caught up in the High Street bombing. I helped a man with his leg nearly blown off. I’d like to know who did it.’

  ‘So would we all. I’d string them up from the nearest lamp post if I had the chance.’

  ‘So did you remember anyone else? Someone who might have bought that sort of thing?’

  John Arnold shook his head. ‘I’m either in the back office or helping out here in the gardening section. Growing things is what I like best. If I had my time over, I’d be a nurseryman. Now I just sell people plants other people have grown. Still, I like to talk to the customers, make sure they get what they really want and they know how to look after them. Ellie was on the till.’ He nodded to the woman at the checkout. ‘But you can see for yourself, we’ve gone over to do-it-yourself tills for two of the checkouts. Customers just scan what they’ve bought and the machine tells them how to pay.’

  Hilary repressed a shudder. ‘Wretched things. They’re going over to those in supermarkets and the banks are even worse. You can hardly speak to a human being nowadays.’

  ‘It saves on the wages bill. Keeps us solvent.’

  ‘So no one saw anything that could have been suspicious being bought?’

  ‘Sorry, no. They asked to check our till receipts, of course. They did get excited at one point, but if the customer went through the self-service till and paid in cash, that wouldn’t get them any further, would it?’

  ‘No,’ Hilary sighed. ‘I suppose not. Well, thank you for your time.’

  ‘No luck?’ Veronica asked as Hilary joined her.

  ‘Our bomber could have bought the whole caboodle here, and it appears nobody could trace them. Except …’ She walked through one of the self-service checkouts and picked up a plastic bag, ‘through one of these. And even then, it would be a long shot. Not the sort of evidence that would stand up in court.’

  They walked back to Hilary’s car. Veronica stood beside the driver’s door.

  ‘So you still don’t want to phone the inspector?’

  ‘Don’t hurry me. It will come back. I know it will.’

  She stood, feeling the smooth plastic of the bag in her hand. She looked down at the logo. The stylized shapes, which seemed just an abstract design if you stared straight at them, but which resolved themselves into a hammer as you started to look away.

  Where else had she seen that design?

  THIRTY-ONE

  Hilary was just about to get into the car, still puzzled over the bag, when her thoughts were interrupted by Veronica.

  ‘Would you mind hanging on a moment? There’s one more call I need to make.’

  Through the open door, fragments of conversation drifted to Hilary.

  ‘Yes, it’s me, Veronica … I just wanted to say how pleased you must be with today’s front page.’

  Hilary sat up straight, the plastic carrier bag forgotten. Joan Townsend? Veronica was actually ringing Joan to congratulate her?

  ‘They’ve given you credit for another photograph, if not for the whole article. That’s good, isn’t it? You must be so glad you managed to rescue the memory card after Rupert Honeydew smashed your camera.’

  Hilary had a memory of Joan grovelling in the darkened roadway, under the shadows of the Guizer and his dancers.

  Veronica was pressing on. ‘But the second article. The one about the Muslim girl whose body was found in the abbey. That was you too, wasn’t it? I know it didn’t have your name on it, either the text or the photo. But I think you knew, didn’t you? Did you take that photo? The hand holding the Thorn? It wasn’t the real thing, was it?’

  There was a long silence while Veronica listened. Then: ‘Well, actually, we’re on our way out of Glastonbury. We’re going home. We’re outside Arnold’s DIY shop at the moment … Yes, well, I suppose I could.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Shall we say ten forty-five?… Yes, I think I can find it.’

  She snapped the phone shut and climbed in beside Hilary.

  ‘That was Joan.’

  ‘So I gathered.’

  ‘Don’t look so disapproving. I know she hasn’t behaved entirely admirably, but it was after meeting Morag. You saw how she reacted, even though she’d really driven down here because she was concerned about me getting involved. She still couldn’t resist the lure of a good story. I tried to imagine her in Joan’s place. Her big chance. First, an unexploded bomb. Then a real one. And finally a murder. And in between, all the shenanigans Rupert Honeydew was getting up to. It must have seemed like manna from heaven.’

  ‘Not to the people who got killed or injured.’

  ‘Oh, Hilary! You know I didn’t mean that! But it’s the flip side of “No news is good news”. When something happens to hit the headlines, it’s very likely to be tragedy for some people. A journalist can’t help that. They don’t make the news, but they have to report it.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘But, as it happens, there was a bit of ferreting out of my own I wanted to do. That story about Amina. The photo of her hand clutching the Thorn. How did Joan get that? There was nothing in the paper to identify the source, but I had a feeling it must have been her.’

  ‘She certainly does have the journalist’s instinct for turning up wherever there’s trouble. Did she admit it?’

  ‘Not exactly. It may not be admirable, but I got the impression she faked that.’

  ‘I should have guessed.’

  ‘But she did say there was more she could tell me. Something she wanted to show me.’

  ‘If it’s anything to do with Amina’s murder, she should go straight to the police.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But you have to see it from her point of view. If she’s on the brink of another really big story – who killed the mystery Muslim girl in the abbey – she might not want to risk being cut out of it, just as she’s about to put the final piece in place.’

  ‘Is that what she said?’

  Veronica hesitated. ‘Well, not in so many words. But I could tell she was excited. And reading between the lines … Anyway, I’ve said I’ll meet her in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Have you, inde
ed? Where?’

  ‘Apparently there’s a sluice gate on one of the drainage channels on the Levels. I think I’ve got the directions right. I need to take the footpath along the bank. She’ll meet me there.’

  ‘Right. It sounds fishy to me, but if there’s a chance of finding Amina’s killer, it’s worth a try.’

  She settled herself into the passenger seat and snapped on her seatbelt.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know this sounds odd, but she wants me to come on my own.’

  ‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’

  Veronica sounded awkward. ‘Hilary, dear, I know you think you’re the soul of discretion, but Joan can hardly have helped pick up what you think about her.’

  ‘And you’re the maternal one, with the journalist daughter.’

  ‘Something like that. At least, I suppose so. Would you mind if I take the car?’

  ‘And leave me at a DIY store for who knows how long? Can’t I at least come with you to the start of this footpath and sit in the car?’

  Veronica looked unhappy. ‘We-ell, I don’t suppose it could do any harm.’

  A spasm of annoyance came over Hilary. ‘All right, all right! I can tell when I’m not wanted. Run off and exchange secrets with your pathetic protégé.’ She struggled to undo the seatbelt. ‘Take the wretched car. There’s a van over there selling what is probably appalling coffee. Don’t mind me.’

  She started to march across the car park. Veronica leaned out of the car and called after her. ‘No, really, Hilary. I’m sure it will be fine. If you don’t mind waiting in the car at the roadside …’

  Hilary stalked on, fuming. After a little while, she heard the car turn round and watched Veronica drive out on to the road across the pastures of the Levels.

  She had almost reached the van selling hot dogs, burgers and drinks when she became aware that she was still clutching something in her hand. She looked down. It was the blue-and-white Arnold’s carrier bag.

  For a moment she stared at it blankly. Then, unbidden, the picture she had been seeking for so long leaped into her mind.

  Joan Townsend, down on her hands and knees among the feet of the midnight dancers. Frantically scrabbling for the fragments of her smashed camera beyond the police tape, as if there was any hope of fitting it together again. Oblivious to the fact that the only thing that mattered was the memory card. She had been clumsily shovelling all the broken pieces into a bag. A white bag, with a blue-and-black logo. A bag identical to the one Hilary held in her hand.