“I suppose you could call him that,” said the Colonel.
Tinkler looked at me. “But he was supposed to have had an affair with Valerian.”
Nevada shrugged. “He still could have done.”
“But how? He was a eunuch.”
“That just means his testicles are gone,” said Nevada. “He can’t produce spermatozoa but, if it happened after puberty, he can still do everything else.”
“Everything else?” said Tinkler.
“Yes.”
“How do you know these things?”
“The further benefits of a classical education,” said Nevada. “Anyway, that’s why those calls you occasionally hear for castration of rapists are such spectacular nonsense.”
Tinkler shifted uneasily in his chair, crossing his legs. “Let’s just agree not to use the word ‘castration’ again for a while, okay?” he said.
* * *
So, scratch one suspect.
Tinkler and I stayed in the West End to visit Styli while Nevada headed home. Styli was a record store just off Tottenham Court Road. It wasn’t the same since its owner, Jerry, had died, but it still offered up the occasional treasure. Not today, though. I came home empty-handed.
And found that my reception from Nevada was distinctly icy. She turned her mouth away when I tried to kiss her and offered only the most perfunctory greeting. Then frosty silence. “What have I done now?” I said.
“Have you listened to your messages?”
I went into the sitting room and dialled up voicemail on our landline. There was one message, from Adela at Dr Osterloh’s office. But it wasn’t concerning Osterloh. Instead she said how nice it was to have met me today and asked if I’d like to get together for a drink sometime. I hung up and looked at Nevada, who was watching me with a scowl.
“Why is she ringing you?”
“I have no idea.” I could have said that I was just naturally irresistible, but I decided this wouldn’t go down well. “She probably doesn’t meet many people,” I offered. “She’s at work all day, and the people she does meet are the patients of a psychiatrist. So not necessarily the most enticing bunch. Then I come along…”
“Then you come along.”
“I just mean, I wasn’t there as a patient, I must have seemed a bit different…”
“What did you say to her?”
“I didn’t say anything. Wait a minute, I said her coffee was terrible. That’s probably why she wants to meet. Because she wants revenge. She probably wants to kill me. When we meet she’s going to kill me with a knife. An axe. Whatever they use in Sweden. A ski pole.”
“When you meet?”
“If we meet,” I said hastily. “We’re not going to meet. It’s not going to happen.”
* * *
That night Nevada slept on the far side of the bed, twisted away from me. Fanny, the turncoat little trollop, snuggled up tight beside her. I was left all alone on my side and it was a cold night. I could have done with all that extra body heat. I lay awake for what seemed like half the night, reduced to hoping that Turk might come in, with or without a disembowelled mouse, and curl up beside me.
The next morning while Nevada and Fanny were in the bath—or rather while Nevada was in the bath and Fanny was sitting on the wicker chair we keep in the bathroom, enjoying the steam—I made a phone call. I rang Dr Osterloh’s surgery, wanting to speak to Adela. I was going to tell her that I wouldn’t be able to meet up with her, because although that was a charming prospect, I was already spoken for.
But Osterloh himself answered. He sounded hurried and harassed, although he became much more civil when he realised who I was. “Sorry if I was a bit abrupt,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
I was a bit wrong-footed by not having Adela answer the phone. I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask to speak to her, though. So I made up some story about wanting to talk to him further. To check on some details. “Well, it won’t be for a few days, I’m afraid,” said Osterloh. “We’ve had a bit of trouble here.”
“Trouble?”
“Yes, I’m afraid there’s been a break-in.” I went cold. “Last night,” said Osterloh. “The worst thing about it was that I was right here in the house when the intruder entered. They were downstairs while I was upstairs.”
“Jesus.”
“Yes. I must say it gives one a very strange feeling indeed. And they must have known I was here. I was making plenty of noise. And yet they came in anyway. This is suggestive of a certain type of personality, a bold sociopath—the sort of human being I am in no way eager to have a closer acquaintance with.”
“Shit.”
“Yes. Needless to say I’m going to have a new security system put in. So everything’s a bit chaotic. I hope you’ll understand if I’m not available for a little while.”
“What exactly did they take?”
“I’m sorry?”
I said, “They broke in. What did they steal?”
“Ah, yes. We’re still trying to ascertain that, exactly.” His voice changed, taking on a note of pride. “I think they might have got some copies of my book.”
After I hung up Nevada came and sat on the sofa beside me. She was wearing her dressing gown and her hair was still wet. I told her what had happened to Osterloh, but she didn’t seem particularly interested. “Why did you ring him?” she said.
“I didn’t. Not really. I was ringing his secretary.”
“The Scandinavian Amazon?”
“Yes.”
“The Swedish Stalker?”
“Yes, I was going to explain to her gently that I’m already seeing someone.”
Nevada smiled and kissed me. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said. I did if I knew what was good for me, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. She relaxed against me, folding her legs up on the sofa, and I put my arms around her. Her hair was damp and fragrant. Fanny came in and saw us sitting together and promptly hopped onto the sofa to join us. Having spent all night nestled beside a warm body obviously wasn’t enough. She found a little spot where she could lie fairly comfortably across both of us and settled down for the long haul. As if sensing she was being left out of something, Turk ambled in, yowled, and hopped up on the back of the sofa to join us. She reclined there, her thick fur tickling the back of my neck.
We all sat there together, my little family unit, in a moment of total peace. Or it would have been if I could have stopped thinking. Blacklock was a dead end because there was nothing there. The grave in Canterbury was an even more frustrating dead end because there might be something there, but we couldn’t get at it.
We were nowhere, and it looked as though it was going to stay that way. I was beginning to wish I’d never got involved. I’d told them I didn’t do missing persons.
All I was good at was finding records.
I remembered what Tinkler had said about the Evil Elves. He’d arranged for us to go there on a weekend and look through their vinyl, of which they apparently had quite a lot. And much of it had indeed been acquired during Valerian’s stay in the house. So who knew what gems were lurking?
I felt the old excitement beginning again, moderated a little by the memory of the gloomy house with the tree outside, falsely receiving offerings for the poor dead girl.
I thought about the brothers and the tree. The way it had become a shrine. Like Valerian’s grave in Canterbury.
I remembered what the vicar had said. The old man, Valerian’s father, had known about the tree and what had happened to it. And he had taken measures accordingly.
A tremor ran through me.
The cats were the first to sense it. Stirring restlessly then getting up and moving off us. Nevada turned and gave me a curious look. I eased myself up, disentangling myself. “What’s up?” she said. “You ruined a perfectly good communal cuddle.”
I said, “You remember, in the churchyard in Canterbury, were there any other graves with flowers on them?”
“Any other grav
es?”
“Besides Valerian’s and that one with the artificial rose.”
She was staring at me. “No, just Valerian’s and that one with the extraordinary name. What was it? Endure. I remember because that’s what I thought was going to happen to us. That we were going to have to endure a bollocking from the vicar about coming there into his lovely peaceful churchyard to gawp at Valerian’s grave. Until luckily I tapped into his cineaste side with my lively dissertation about the films of Stanley Kubrick. Wasn’t that brilliant?”
“It certainly was,” I said. “But it’s just those two graves. Valerian and…”
“Mrs Endure’s. Or I suppose it could be Miss Endure’s. But somehow I see her as a married woman.”
“Marnie something Endure.” I felt the anticipation growing.
“Valmont. I remember it because of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. He’s the hero, though I suppose you can’t actually call him a hero. Or, hang on, was it Valmond with a ‘d’? Wait a minute.” She took out her phone. “I took a picture. Yes. With a ‘d’.”
The laptop was on the dining room table. I went over and sat down and switched it on. I typed the name.
MARNIE VALMOND ENDURE
Then I sat and stared. Within a few seconds I felt a warm shock of triumph. Nevada came over and sat down beside me. She looked at it. She got it immediately.
“It’s an anagram,” she said.
VALERIE ANNE DRUMMOND
24. THE PATHS OF GLORY
“You mean we get to desecrate someone’s last resting place after all?” said Tinkler. “Stupendous. For a moment there I thought I was going to miss out.” He was sitting opposite me at our dining room table, which is a somewhat grand name for a rather scarred item of furniture obtained from the Ikea sale. But at least it’s circular and has just one central pillar leg to support it, rather than four of them, one at each corner, so as to provide maximum opportunities for knee-bruising by long-legged people like me.
Sitting either side of Tinkler and myself were Nevada and Clean Head. We were all wearing dark clothing, as had previously been agreed.
Cats have a way of sensing when people are discussing something important or serious, and they seem to want to be part of these discussions. At any rate, Turk did. She jumped up and sat on the table in the exact centre of our small group. As we talked, Clean Head thoughtfully stroked Turk’s back, running her long fingers through the thick, dark fur. Tinkler watched the two of them, quite obviously wishing it was him that was being stroked. I considered kicking him under the table, but Nevada might well have done that for me because he suddenly pulled himself together, looked away and got serious.
“I almost forgot,” he said. “Look what I brought.”
He reached down on the floor and picked up a bag. I’d been hoping it contained food to take with us. Not that I was certain I’d have much of an appetite before, during or after tonight’s activities. But it didn’t contain food. Instead Tinkler proudly reached into it and drew out a stack of t-shirts. All of them black this time.
With bold white lettering that read, I WENT TO CANTERBURY AND ALL I ROBBED WAS THIS LOUSY GRAVE.
“Jesus,” I snarled, “Tinkler!”
He looked nonplussed. “Steady on, big fella.”
Nevada immediately intervened, putting a hand on my shoulder. “He’s just a little stressed out,” she said to Tinkler. “We all are, getting ready for the big night.”
“The big night,” I said.
Tinkler fingered the stack of t-shirts. “I got one for everybody this time. It’s like a bonding thing. Team spirit.”
Clean Head studied the shirts with interest. “Are they organic cotton?” she said.
“But of course.”
* * *
By common consent (three out of four) we left the t-shirts behind and set off just after midnight in Tinkler’s car, humming down an empty motorway at high speed. With Clean Head at the wheel it took us less than an hour to get to Canterbury, cut through the town, and find the lane leading to the churchyard. Clean Head stopped just past the turning for the lane and reversed into it.
I remembered what she’d said about the car’s reverse gear as she drove smoothly and swiftly down the lane, backwards. We came to a stop by the church gate, the front of the car pointing back in the direction we’d come.
She was just showing off, of course, although her reasoning was sound enough. “Now we’re ready for a quick getaway,” she said.
We all got out and began to unpack our equipment, using the small halogen torches Nevada had bought for us. The light from them was a lurid red. Nevada was under the impression that red light was much less likely to be noticed at night than the usual white beams. She might well have been right about this, although all I knew was that it was favoured by the military because it didn’t spoil your night vision.
We moved our kit, of which there was a lot, into the lychgate, setting it on the benches on either side. “This is handy,” whispered Tinkler. “What is it, like a mini-church for outdoor sermons?”
“It’s a lychgate,” I said.
“What’s a lych?”
“It’s an Old English word for corpse,” said Nevada. That shut him up.
I went to help Clean Head wrestle the tent out of the car. We manoeuvred it carefully through the outer gate into the alcove where Nevada and Tinkler waited.
“This is a lychgate,” said Tinkler to Clean Head. “Lych is an Old English word for corpse.”
“What the hell?” she said. “Why would anyone want a gate for their corpse?”
“It’s to keep them out,” said Tinkler blithely. “The walking dead. It was a medieval anti-zombie measure.”
Nevada immediately put a stop to this nonsense. “It’s a place for pall bearers to wait, out of the weather,” she said. “And it’s where the cleric would meet the corpse.”
“Meet?” I said.
“Maybe that’s not the best word choice.”
“Be formally introduced to,” suggested Tinkler.
We began to gather our gear and transfer it from the gate into the churchyard. But just as we stepped into the yard there was a sound, very loud and very near at hand.
An unearthly scream.
We all froze, looking at each other.
“Fox?” said Tinkler. His voice trembled.
“Owl, city boy,” said Clean Head, moving forward with one end of the tent. I followed, carrying the other end. It wasn’t heavy, but it was unwieldy. Definitely a two-person lift. Maybe that’s one reason Nevada had been able to get a deal on it. She had gone to a lot of trouble researching tents. We had decided we couldn’t risk just digging up a grave, even if it was the middle of the night, without our activities being somehow screened. So, to stop any late night passer-by or dog walker glimpsing our lights, we would set up a tent around the grave and work inside it.
“What is that thing?” said Tinkler. His voice had steadied and he was back to normal, if any of his states can be said to be normal.
“Tent,” said Nevada.
“Tent?”
“And, because nobody fancies hammering tent pegs into the ground and wrestling with guy ropes in a darkened graveyard, it had to be one of those handy new self-erecting ones.” Nevada had spent hours poring over the computer, comparing makes and models. The idea was to buy a tent and cut the fabric out of the bottom of it, so it would be open to the ground and we could get at the grave.
This meant some of the self-opening designs were out of the question because they depended on being airtight, and cutting the bottom out of the thing would tend to compromise that. Also, they required an electric air pump to inflate them, with the concomitant noise factor.
All these considerations had led Nevada to very reluctantly forego the Ninja Jump tent—she just loved the name—and go with something else instead. The model she’d chosen depended on the operation of curved metal uprights that were folded under tension to cause it to spring open.
“Self-erect
ing tent,” Tinkler chortled.
“A pop-up tent,” said Nevada hastily.
“That’s no better!”
“You have a filthy mind, boy,” said Clean Head. She sounded amused, and for a moment there was a sense of happy intimacy among our little crew as we stood there in the darkness. For all I knew Tinkler and Clean Head might have been holding hands. I reached out and found Nevada’s hand and took it.
“Or we could have used night-vision goggles,” she said. “Why am I only thinking of that now?”
“No, I like the tent,” said Clean Head. “Keeping prying eyes off us.”
I thought that if prying eyes were to be turned in our direction then it was already too late and a tent would be no help at all. But I kept this to myself. We moved deeper into the graveyard. Tinkler looked up at the large cross adorning the church spire above us. It obviously put him in mind of his deeply religious sister, because he said, “Maggie must never hear about this night’s doings. All right?”
“That’s a pity, because I was going to text her,” said Nevada. “Now, let’s get started.”
* * *
We had previously cut the floor out of the tent, but we had retained the piece of material and divided it into two. Each strip thus created was spread out on either side of the grave. We’d put the dug-up earth onto these strips of fabric. This would, theoretically, make it easier to return the dirt to the hole when we were finished, and also had the advantage of keeping the ground around the hole clean, and hopefully not leaving too many telltale marks on the grass.
I found that I was a lot more comfortable thinking of it as a hole than a grave.
Nevada had reasoned that, while ordinary white light might have shone through the tent walls, the material would certainly be thick enough to screen the red lights we were using. She was entirely correct about this, but what we’d failed to anticipate was the hellish mood this ruddy glow would lend to proceedings.
So we set up the tent, lay the strips of fabric on either side, cut the turf with the turf cutter and carefully stacked it in neat squares behind Marnie Valmond Endure’s headstone. Then we got out our shovels and, with a light that looked like it came straight from Satan’s personal cook stove, we started digging.
The Run-Out Groove Page 23