Death in Elysium

by Judith Cutler

  ‘You’ve got me there, Jackie,’ Theo said affably. ‘I paid out of my own pocket.’

  He’d done no such thing, of course, but I didn’t see anyone challenging him. So I added cheerfully, ‘I gave him a considerable discount for cash. Actually, all the work was done by volunteers. All we had to pay for was registering the domain name: twenty-four pounds, valid for two years.’

  ‘I note the term “we”, Mrs Welsh,’ Mrs Mountford said. ‘Whom do you mean by “we”? And who were these volunteers?’

  ‘I should imagine they were those splendid young people who’ve been dashing round the village taking photos,’ Alison Cox said, with a wink. Did she and George spend their evenings together communicating with their eyelids? ‘Did they help build the website – or whatever the correct term is? Such a good idea to fill their time with something constructive. Well done, Jodie.’

  ‘There may be one volunteer less, I should imagine,’ Mrs Mountford said, ‘when they run to earth whoever stole your cycle, Theo. If ever there was an obvious delinquent it’s the young man who’s been helping in your garden.’ Taking the shocked silence as encouragement, she added, ‘Did I not hear on the grapevine that the lad has done what I believe is called a runner? Or perhaps that’s more directly connected with the sad and very sudden death of his mother.’

  Theo didn’t exactly slam his hands on the table, nor did he raise his voice. But he radiated anger. ‘Are you implying that young Burble is both a thief and a murderer? Because I tell you straight, unless you have any evidence, let alone proof, such an accusation is unworthy of you. Please withdraw it and please don’t make it again.’

  I would have said a great deal more, including a firm recommendation that she leave the meeting and indeed my home. Preferably for ever. But then, Theo was the professional Christian, and I just did my best.

  George turned to me, laying a firm hand on my notepad. ‘I don’t see the need to minute any of this, Jodie, from beginning to last. Let Alison’s congratulations be noted, however. Is there any other business?’

  Elaine raised a hand. ‘Just a point of information, George. The WI will be holding a special meeting tomorrow—’

  ‘Not the blessed WI and its excess of confectionery again,’ someone from the Vesey cohort muttered rather too audibly.

  Elaine flushed with what looked like a mixture of anger and embarrassment, but she turned his rudeness to her advantage. ‘The excess of confectionery, as you so eloquently put it, is going to be channelled into helping the pub to survive, thank you very much. What Jodie said about church visitors needing somewhere to eat struck home. We’re hoping to come to an agreement with Suze—’

  ‘That would be the esteemed Mrs Fellows, as well-met as her name implies,’ yawned Mrs Mountford, inspecting her nails.

  By now Elaine was scarlet. ‘I’m not sure what you’re implying by that, Mrs Mountford, but to continue, we are hoping to come to an agreement with Suze to provide morning coffee and afternoon teas in the Pickled Walnut. Thank you, George.’

  ‘Thank you, Elaine. I hope your sterling efforts will be sampled by all here. Do let us know if there’s to be an official opening, won’t you? We’ll all want to be there. And now, Theo, I wonder if you’d be kind enough to wrap up our meeting with a prayer?’

  TEN

  Mazza appeared at the rectory at nine on the Thursday morning: he must have thought it a truly ungodly hour. I sensed his mother’s influence, and maybe a well-directed shove out of the door, but perhaps I misjudged him.

  ‘Thing is, Jodie, I was thinking maybe we could go and talk to the filth. Now his mum’s gone, and she was fucking rubbish as a mum, you gotta believe me, there’s no one to report him missing, like.’

  I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t you think Dave’s already done all he can to interest what I think we ought to call the police? After all, Dave was an officer himself,’ I added, ambiguously. ‘And Theo’s been in touch with the Salvation Army.’

  ‘I’ll bet the police,’ he began, now angry with me too, ‘think he’s done his mum in and legged it.’

  ‘I don’t imagine so for a minute.’ It was time to treat him as an adult. ‘The timings don’t work for a start. According to Dave’s contacts, forensic pathology suggests that she died well after anyone last saw Burble. What I think they suspect is that he nicked my camera and did a runner, and that it’s pretty much my fault for giving him the means to get out of the village.’

  ‘You’re joking. I mean, he’d have guarded that bit of kit with his life, wouldn’t he? He’s … I mean, when people expect you to nick things or smash them up, it’s like, why not? You look down your nose at me, I’ll really give you something to worry about. But, see, you treated him like a mate. Well, you know … He wouldn’t want to fuck up. Wouldn’t admit it to anyone. But I saw him practising – take a pic, delete it, take another of the same thing, delete it. Takes maybe half a dozen of the same bloody house until he’s got one good enough to show you.’

  ‘Which house might that be?’ When he just shrugged at the apparent stupidity of the question, I continued, ‘What if he’d just lost it – felt he’d let me down, somehow, and just took off?’

  ‘Nah. Told me how you’d got it insured. But he did say,’ he admitted, ‘that you were fond of it, like. He was treating it like his baby, Jode, and that’s the truth.’

  Suppressing a flicker of irritation – only Dave and Theo had ever contracted my name like that – I nodded. It fitted what I’d briefly seen. ‘So what do you think has happened to him?’ When he shifted his weight from foot to foot like a kid about to fib, I continued, ‘Would it be bad drugs? Or pressure from his dealer?’

  ‘What do you mean, pressure?’

  ‘You tell me. Someone tells me a well-known dealer’s done a runner.’

  He looked around to check no one could be listening. ‘Coincidence, I’d say. Burble didn’t really do hard stuff, not any more. Just pot. He’s got a mate – that’s who he gets his skunk from. And the guy’s too spaced out to harm a fly, Jode, honest. He’s his own best customer, believe me.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to him.’

  His face was so expressive he didn’t need to speak.

  ‘He might prefer me to the police, Mazza. Come on. Unless you think Dave might be better?’

  ‘But Dave’d have to tell his police mates, wouldn’t he?’ He sighed and chewed his lip. ‘OK. Pill. Short for Philip – geddit? He drifts past the Walnut about seven some evenings. Drives a yucky green Corsa.’ He took a deep breath: this was definitely an end to this part of our conversation. ‘Is Dave up for a walk today? Can’t use the new boots as an alibi for ever, can he?’

  ‘Actually,’ Dave said, appearing over my shoulder, ‘you mean excuse. Alibi means being somewhere else so you couldn’t have committed a crime. Like Burble, when his mum died.’

  Mazza’s face froze. But not at having his vocabulary corrected. ‘What if,’ he said slowly, ‘he just stocked up on her stuff and fucked off, knowing it’d kill her?’

  Neither Dave nor I spoke.

  ‘Nah,’ Mazza answered himself. ‘He never hated her. Not enough to kill her. Just ignored her. Even when she stole his pocket money – yes, his dad used to send him some, years back.’

  ‘His dad?’ I exclaimed, grasping at a straw not even my drug charity mates had offered. ‘Is he still in touch with him? Mazza, you don’t think Burble’s gone to see him, do you?’

  ‘Don’t see why. Hasn’t been in touch for years, so far as I know. Not even birthdays or Christmases. Probably as bad as his mum. Don’t know where he lives, in any case. And Burble’s still not answering his phone, is he?’

  Dave said quietly, ‘I guess you’ll be too busy for a run today, Jodie.’

  Would I indeed? It was news to me.

  ‘What do you say to a decent walk, Mazza – now our boots are walked in, I really haven’t any excuse, have I? The forecast’s good; we could walk Jodie’s running route with a bit of a detour to l
ook at the building activities. Is your phone charged, by the way? We might want to take some snaps.’

  They drifted inside talking walk-talk, raiding my pretty well empty kitchen for supplies, no doubt. Which left me no option, really – if I’d been told I was too busy to run, I might as well make use of the hours freed up to do the other sort of run, the supermarket one. Which meant visiting Violet first, to make sure I bought everything I could from her before plunging into BOGOF territory. Or, since I didn’t want to be greeted like a cross between Mother Teresa and St Joan, I could always send Theo there instead when he got back from collecting whatever might be left of his newly recovered cycle.

  I’d not sorted the Bluetooth connection in the Audi, so I left my phone off. I filled my Sainsbury’s trolley with a huge supply of food, as well as a non-stick sauté pan and a wok, neither of which Theo need know about. Was I being overly touchy? Did he really mean to give the impression that the kitchen and indeed most of the house was some sort of shrine to Merry? Those awful pans … the dingy crockery … At least I’d turned the thin grey tea-towels into dusters without his noticing. To be fair, I’d had rapturous praise when I’d bought bales of thick fluffy towels, though of course I now had the concomitant problem of where to dry them on wet washing days. No tumble dryer, remember, and nowhere to put one either.

  Only after I’d loaded the car did I switch the phone on again, to watch wide-eyed as a stream of texts appeared. The gist was I must be back in the village by noon. Must, must, must! Theo added nothing more, so I spent the journey worrying about the reason for the urgency. Surely if Burble had turned up he’d have told me. Or if he’d been found … dead? No, that’d be a face-to-face job, wouldn’t it?

  My new best friend the satnav told me the M20 was blocked by an accident and that the A20 was struggling to cope. How about some nice empty country roads? For the next few minutes, if I hadn’t been worried sick, I’d have been in car bliss.

  Theo was waiting for me on the doorstep, just like a Victorian papa for an errant daughter. He was also extremely smart, dog-collar agleam against a royal blue shirt. He grabbed my car keys. ‘I’ll unload. Get into smart casual and put on some make-up if you want. We’ve got five minutes.’

  He’d already turned the car and was ready to drive by the time I reappeared. ‘You look lovely, sweetheart. Beautiful. Just what the TV cameras will lurve.’

  So here I was, being filmed for TV. Fifteen minutes of fame. Rather less after the edit, of course. I talked about the shop’s move to the church: why the shop needed new premises, and why the church was in desperate need of an income. I plugged the website as a means of giving to the church appeal. And then we all adjourned to the Pickled Walnut, opened specially for the occasion, according to Suze, the landlady. It was in fact, I suspect, to take sensible advantage of the desire of the assembled media – well, one agency reporter and Dilly Pound, a BBC South East news reporter in her thirties, and her silent cameraman – for food and drink. Perhaps Suze had summoned assistance from Elaine: there were elegant canapés as well as rather too hefty sandwiches.

  As I took a glass of champagne – on the house, it seemed – I thanked goodness that Theo had made me change; I might not be as young and beautiful as Dilly, but at least my clothes and my make-up declared I knew my place in the world.

  Apparently pleased with the way the piece had gone, Dilly was as friendly and affable off-screen as she was on, though when she was off-guard her face was unexpectedly sad.

  ‘And you’ve only been married two months?’ she asked with a dimpled smile, over the champagne. ‘And you’ve lived here …?’

  ‘Two months. Living in sin – what a wonderful old-fashioned term! – isn’t really an option for a clergyman, is it?’

  Her face dimmed. What had I said? But she straightened her shoulders. ‘I suppose not.’ You could see her bracing herself until the smile returned. ‘So here you are, as we said, living in this blissful place and doing good works.’

  I laughed. ‘You make me sound like a heroine in an improving Victorian novel.’

  ‘Not Middlemarch, I trust,’ Theo observed, edging towards us and taking my hand. ‘My Jodie might be as lovely as Dorothea but I hope I’m not a Casaubon!’

  ‘Surely you’d be more like the handsome rector – or is he just a vicar? – in Candida,’ Dilly declared, fluttering her long eyelashes at him.

  He moved to put his arm round my shoulders. It felt protective rather than possessive. ‘The Reverend Morell, fighting for my marriage as Eugene Marchbanks dallies with my wife? My lovely wife’s wonderful with some of the village’s disaffected youth, but I don’t think any of them has got round to wooing her with poetry.’

  They’d lost me a couple of sentences ago, but at least I could pick up on the cue about young people. ‘I dare say they’re tweeting about me even as we speak,’ I joked. And then I couldn’t smile. ‘Apart from the lost one, that is.’

  ‘A lost parishioner? That sounds very biblical, Theo. Can I expect to do a piece about you: the pastor carrying home the wayward sheep on your shoulders?’

  It was as if someone had rolled me in snow. I could see a modern male Pietà: a weeping Theo carrying in his spread arms Burble’s body, head and legs lolling in death. Closing my eyes didn’t shut out the image. Well, it wouldn’t, would it? The image was in my head.

  ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ he said, changing emotional gear as quickly as I had. Had he had the same vision? ‘Off the record, Dilly, what I really fear is that some other reporter – maybe even you – will be doing a piece to camera about an unknown young man’s body being found.’

  She switched off flirtatious and became as serious and professional as I could wish. ‘What do the police say? I used to have a couple of really useful contacts but they’ve both retired. Not entirely voluntarily, I have to say.’

  ‘My cousin used to be in the police – he got retired too,’ I said. ‘The trouble is, Dilly, as I’m sure you’ve seen in your profession, that if you pare resources to the limit, there’s equally a limit as to what you can do. I understand the police are now operating some triage system: they only investigate a crime if they think they can solve it. A teenager goes missing – what’s news, when London’s so close? A lot of lads of that age want to disappear. That, according to Dave, was the line they fed him when he reported that Burble’s not been seen for a week.’

  I thought for a moment she was about to faint, and pressed her down on to the nearest banquette. She swallowed hard, took a decided swig of champagne and looked in a businesslike way at her watch. ‘I’ve got contacts in the Smoke,’ she said briskly, getting to her feet in an easy movement that suggested time in the gym. ‘If that’s where the police think he might have gone, I’ll get my friends to keep their ears open.’ She looked from me to Theo. ‘But there’s more you haven’t told me, isn’t there? Is there a family angle?’

  ‘His mother died soon after he left home,’ Theo said. He didn’t go in for euphemisms like ‘passed away’ or ‘is no longer with us’. Why bother, he’d once explained, when I don’t think death is anything to be feared?

  ‘So this poor kid doesn’t know … What about his dad?’

  ‘He left years ago.’ Why were we telling her this?

  ‘Thank God he’s got you two then,’ she said. She dug in her bag. ‘Look, this story’s touched me.’ As if we couldn’t tell. ‘Let me know how it ends. If it ends here. Meanwhile, I promise I’ll do all I can with my contacts.’

  Theo’s attention was claimed by someone else. I drifted outside with her. Her cameraman, sucking deeply on an electronic cigarette, was engrossed in a phone call.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Dilly?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m fine. Absolutely fine.’

  Or not. ‘I thought you were going to pass out in there – and you can’t blame the heat. That business of Burble’s disappearance really got to you, didn’t it?’

  She clutched my hand. ‘It’s just the tho
ught of someone … anyone … dying totally alone. Once—’ Her mobile trilled. ‘Shit, I’ve got to take this.’ She turned away. I had a clear sense that she was glad to end our conversation. But at last the call was over and she looked up to find me still hovering, although politely out of earshot. Her smile was by now dismissive: friendly, kind, professional – but dismissive.

  It took, however, rather more than a beautiful smile to deter me. ‘Dilly, you mentioned missing person contacts. You wouldn’t have any other contacts who know about building developments, would you? Local ones, I mean.’

  ‘Would this be something …?’ She rocked her hand so all three rings on her engagement finger flashed in the sun. Dodgy, she meant.

  ‘I think so. But I’ve really no idea. And since I’m new here, I don’t know who to ask, confidentially at least.’

  ‘These bloody hamlets! Fart and the whole world knows you’ve eaten beans!’ she exclaimed with an anger that sounded personal. ‘Have you got a card?’

  ‘Here you are.’ At least my rustication hadn’t completely dulled my professional edge. ‘Or you can always find us via the church page on the village website.’

  ELEVEN

  To our post-champagne, lust-filled dismay, within seconds of our return to the rectory, Dave turned up, inclined to be surly. And no wonder: Mazza had waited until two miles into their walk to remark, ultra-casually, that he was supposed to be signing on at the Job Centre.

  ‘As Burble wasn’t there to go with him the little bugger wanted to forget it and keep walking,’ Dave grumbled into his lager, ‘but I told him it was the last he’d see of me if he did. I got him there with three minutes to spare. Anyway, if he’s a good boy, etcetera, I’ll take him another day. Tomorrow, actually. So I ruined your run for nothing. Sorry.’

  ‘I’d have had the same problem and taken exactly the same action, Dave, so don’t worry.’

  ‘Anyway, since it was such a nice day I went back on my own. I didn’t have time for the long route I planned, so I took another – just because it was there. If it happened to take me towards that excrescence of a building site, so what? Anyway, nice day, birds singing – actually heard both a cuckoo and a lark, would you believe? – and there I was, walking along, happy as Larry. Not a care in the world. And then,’ he said, reaching for his rucksack and grubbing inside, ‘I found this. No, don’t touch it. It’s in my sandwich bag for a reason.’ He grabbed my wrist.