by Unknown
'Family thing,' he said, voice as dry as wood ash. 'Something I 'ave to know before I die. Jack sent Jonathon out to make away with that animal of yours.'
'And why?' she said, but he didn't answer that.
'And he never came back.'
'OK, I'll tell you,' Fay said, in a rush. 'I'll tell you what happened, OK?'
His words of a moment long ago lurched back at her . . . before I die? Have to know before I die.
She didn't even want to think what he meant by this, so she told him everything. Everything except for the feelings Joe Powys had said he'd experienced on the riverbank with the gun in his hands and the urge to kill.
Mr Preece went on breathing like a dying man. When she'd finished, he said, 'There's more to it than that.'
'No, there isn't, I swear.'
'Jonathon was a strong boy and a good swimmer. 'E also - unlike that brother of 'is - 'e had a bit o' common sense.'
'I'm sorry,' Fay said. 'I can't tell you what happened when he'd gone. Perhaps... I mean, with hindsight, we should have stayed. With hindsight, we should never have thrown the gun in the river in the first place. I'm sorry. I really am desperately sorry, Mr Preece . . .' She was aware of her voice becoming very small and a bit pathetic.
He was moving away towards the entrance, pulling out a pocket watch the size of a travel alarm-clock. It had big luminous hands.
'Right,' he said. 'You can wait in the porch, by yere, but you don't go out. You don't open that door until the bell's finished, you understand?
'I want to come up with you.'
'We goes up alone,' he snapped. 'Now you remember what I said, you keep that door shut. Understand?'
'Yes. Look . . . Mr Preece . . .'
'Make it quick, Miss, make it very quick.'
She was remembering how controlled he'd been in the hall, how sure that the killer had left the building.
'You know who did this ... to Jonathon, don't you? . . .you know who killed Max Goff when the lights were out.'
He turned his back on her and mounted the first step.
'Don't you?'
He didn't look back, and a turn in the spiral staircase took the light away.
'Is that a Crybbe matter, as well?' she yelled. 'Or is it . . .?'
God, she thought, as the darkness in the church became for a while, absolute, I can still smell it. Still smell Jonathon.
And she put her hands over her face.
Is it a family matter? was what she'd almost said.
Because it ought to be Warren he was bringing up here tonight. It ought to be Warren.
She heard the Mayor stumble on the steps.
'Are you all right, Mr Preece?'
She heard another footstep, and his ratchet breathing starting up again, like a very old lawn-mower.
Quietly, she began to ascend the steps, until she could see his wavering torch beam reflecting from the curved stonework. And then the beam was no longer visible and she climbed two or three steps until the stairway curved round and she could see the weakening glimmer once more.
The footsteps above her stopped. There was a long silence and then,
'Get back, you . . .'
He began to cough, and she could hear the fluid gathering in his lungs and throat, like thick oil slurping in the bottom a rusty old can.
'All right, I'm sorry, I'm going back . . .all right.'
Clattering back to the foot of the stairway, thinking, anything happens to him now, am I going to have the guts to go up there, drag him out of the way or climb over him and pull on the rope a hundred times?
Have I the strength to pull a bell-rope a hundred times? (There's a kind of recoil, isn't there, like a gun, and the rope shoots back up and sometimes pulls large men off their feet.) God almighty, will I have the strength to pull it once?
Leave him. He knows what he's doing. He won't stumble and break his ankle. He won't have a stroke. He won't have a heart attack. He's a Preece.
Like Jack, mangled by his own tractor, under intensive care in Hereford.
Like Jonathon, putrefying in his coffin just a few yards away.
But was there, at the heart of the Preece family, something even more putrid?
She stood at the bottom of the steps, waiting for the blessed first peal which only a few nights ago, walking Arnold in the old streets of this crippled town, she'd dreaded.
Presently, she saw the light hazing the stones again and heard his footsteps.
Don't understand.
He's coming down.
She heard his rattling breath, then there was a clatter and the light was all over the place as she heard the lamp rolling down from step to step.
It went out as she caught it.
'Mr Preece . . . are you . . .?'
He stood before her breathing roughly, breathing as though he didn't care if each breath was his last.
Fay flicked frantically at the switch and beat the lamp against the palm of her left hand until it hurt. It relit and she shone it at him and reeled back, almost dropping the thing in her shock, and the beam splashed across the nave.
She held the lambing light with both hands to stop it shaking and shone it at the wall to the side of Mr Preece so it wouldn't find him and terrify her with the obscenity of it.
It was wrapped around him like a thick snake.
'What is it?' Fay whispered, and as the whisper dried in her throat she knew.
Perhaps it was winding itself around his neck, choking out of him what little life remained.
Mr Preece let it fall to the stone floor.
He said hoarsely, 'It's the bell-rope, girl. Somebody cut the bell-rope.'
And even Jonathon, with his putrid perfume and his post-mortem scar, hadn't scared her half so much as the s face of his grandfather, an electric puzzle of pulsing vessels, veins and furrows.
CHAPTER X
GRACE PETERS
I928-I992
Beloved wife of
Canon A. L. Peters
White letters.
Cold, black marble.
Pressing his forehead against it, he thought, A. L. Peters. That's me, isn't it? But it isn't my grave. Not yet, anyway. Only one of us is dead, Grace.
What am I doing here?
He remembered now, walking in a dignified fashion through the darkened streets, arm in a crook parallel to his chest. In his best suit, of course, with his dog-collar; she would not be seen out with him if he were attired in anything less.
Certainly not a faded T-shirt with the flaking remains of Kate Bush across his chest.
Peered down at it. Too dark to read the words, not white and gleaming like the letters on the grave. But he remembered the name, Kate Bush. Who the hell was Kate Bush, anyway?
Ought to know that.
Or maybe not. He could hear somebody, a woman, saying:
'There's a chance you'll lapse quite soon into the old confusion and you'll have that to contend with, too. I'm sorry.'
Sorry. Well, aren't we all? Hmmph.
Cold black marble.
Cool hands.
What was all that about?
Alex shook his head.
Well, here I am, sitting on Grace's grave at the less-fashionable end of Crybbe churchyard at God knows what time of night. Haven't the faintest idea how the bloody hell I got here. Not exactly a cold night, but this is no place to spend it.
Wonder if I simply got pissed? And a bit maudlin, the way I do. Stagger along to pay your respects to the little woman. Sorry if I dislodged some of these dinky chippings that your will was so insistent we should use to make this end of the churchyard look like a bloody crazy-golf course. No wonder Murray had you shoved out here - probably hoping the wood would overgrow the thing. And the sooner the better, stupid cow, no taste at all, God knows how I ever got entangled with you.
Guilty? Me? Bloody hell, you ensnared me, you conniving creature.
Alex clambered to his feet. Chuckled. Don't take any notice of me, old girl, I'm rambling again. M
ust have been on the sauce, I could certainly do with a pee.
He stumbled into the wood and relieved himself with much enjoyment. There were times, he thought, when a good pee could be more satisfying than sex.
Consideration for the finer feelings of his late wife, who - let's get this in proportion once and for all - did not deserve it, had taken him deeper into the wood than he'd intended, and it took him a while to find his way back to the blasted churchyard.
Emerging, in fact, several yards away from Grace's grave, catching a foot on something, stumbling, feeling himself going into a nosedive.
'Damn.' Alex threw out both hands to break his fall. Bad news at his age, a fall, brittle bones, etc. - and, worst of all, a geriatric ward.
Something unexpectedly soft broke his fall. One hand felt cloth, a jacket perhaps.
'Oh gosh, terribly sorry.' Thinking at first he must have tripped over some old tramp trying to get an early night. This was before he felt all the wet patches.
'Oh dear. Oh hell.' It was all very sticky indeed, and his hands felt as if they were covered in it already. Tweedy sort of jacket. Shirt. And blood; no question of what the sticky stuff was.
'Hello. Are you all right?'
Bloody fool. Of course the chap wasn't all right. Wished he had a flashlight; couldn't see a damn thing.
Tentatively, he put out a hand and found a face. It, was very wet, horribly sticky and unpleasantly cold, poor beggar must be slashed to ribbons. He lowered his head, listening for breathing. None at all.
There wasn't a clergyman in the world who didn't recognise the presence of death.
'Oh hell.'
Alex's sticky fingers moved shakily down over the blood caked lips, over the chin, down to the neck where he felt . . .
Oh God. Oh Jesus.
I've . . .
I've stumbled over my own body!
I was wrong. I am dead. I think I've been murdered. Grace, you stupid bitch, why didn't you tell me? Is this how it is? Is this what happens? Oh Lord, somebody get me away from here. Beam me up God, for Christ's sake.
For the body wore a stiff, clerical collar.
Crybbe Court in view again.
'Uh!'
Humble had prodded him in the small of the back, presumably with the butt of the crossbow.
They were on the edge of the Tump field, facing the courtyard. As Powys looked up at the black house, its ancient frame seemed to tense against the pressure of the night. There was a small sparkling under the eaves, like the friction of flints, and the air was faintly tainted with sulphur.
Powys felt his anger rekindle.
In the moment of the sparks, he'd seen the hole in the eaves that was the prospect chamber. Below it, slivers of light had figured the edge of a piece of furniture halfway up the pile of rubbish which had broken Rachel Wade's fall and her neck.
'We're going in,' Humble said, picking up the lamp from the grass.
'You might be going in,' said Powys, 'it's too spooky for me, quite honestly.'
Humble laughed.
'You must think I'm fucking stupid,' Powys said. 'You want me to go up to the prospect chamber and kind of lose my balance, right?'
It would, he knew, make perfect sense to the police.
'Since you ask,' Humble said, 'that would be quite tidy, yeah, and it would save me a bit of trouble. But if you say no, I get to use this thing on you, which'll be a giggle anyway, so you can please yourself, mate, I ain't fussy.'
'How would you get rid of the body?'
'Not a problem. Really. Trust me.'
'None of this scares you?'
'None of what?'
'Like, we just saw a light flaring under the roof. It wasn't what you'd call natural . . .'
'Did we? I didn't.'
Humble stood with his back to the broken wall around the Tump, a hard, skinny, sinewy, ageless man. Powys could run away and Humble would run faster. He could go for Humble,
maybe try and kick him in the balls, and Humble would damage him quickly and efficiently before his shoe could connect. He could sit down and refuse to move and Humble would put a crossbow bolt into his brain.
Powys said, 'You don't feel a tension in the air? A gathering in the atmosphere? I thought you were supposed to be a countryman.'
Humble snorted, leaning on the butt of his crossbow.
'There are countrymen,' he said, 'and there are hippies. I'm fit, I've got good hearing and ace eyesight. I'm not a bad shot. I can snare rabbits and skin 'em, and I can work at night and ain't scared. Ghosts, evil spirits, magic stones, it's all shit. If the people who employ me wanna believe in it, that's fine, no skin off my nose."
Blessed are the sceptics, Powys thought.
Rachel was a sceptic.
'And I get paid very well. See, I can go in that house any time of the day or night, I don't give a shit. I can piss up the side of a standing stone in the full moon. So what? Countrymen aren't hippies, Mr Powys.'
He was telling Powys indirectly who it was who'd locked the door when Rachel was in the Court. And, maybe, who had pushed her out.
He got paid very well.
'Andy pays you,' Powys realised.
Humble said, 'I'm in the employ of the Epidemic Group - a security consultant.'
'And Andy's been paying you as well.'
Humble lifted his crossbow. 'Let's go.'
'Where's Andy?'
'I said, let's move!'
'No.'
'Fair enough,' Humble said. 'Fair enough.' He moved backwards a few paces into the field until he was almost invisible against the night.
'OK, you made your decision. I got to get this over wiv in a couple of minutes, so you got a choice. You can run. Or you can turn around and walk away. Just keep walking, fast or slow as you like, and you'll never know. Some people like to run.'
Oh Jesus, Powys thought. For the past twelve years he hadn't really cared too much about life and how long it would last.
'I thought you'd never shot anybody.'
'Not wiv a crossbow. On the two other occasions,' said Humble, 'I used a gun.'
Fay, he thought obliquely. Caught an image of the elf with the rainbow eye. I'm going to lose Fay.
'Or, of course,' said Humble reasonably, 'you can just stand there and watch.'
He brought up the crossbow. Powys instinctively ducked and went down on his knees, his arms around his head.
Through his arms, he heard a familiar lop-sided semi-scampering.
'No!' he screamed. 'No, Arnold! Get back! Get away!'
He saw the black and white dog limping towards him from the darkness and, out of the corner of his eye, watched the crossbow swivel a couple of inches to the right.
'Beautiful,' Humble said, and fired.
She ran at the door and snatched at the bolts, throwing one of them back before Mr Preece grabbed her from behind and pulled her away.
She struggled frantically and vainly. He might look like a stretcher case, but his arms were like bands of iron.
She felt her feet leave the floor, and he hauled her back from the porch and set her down under the stone font. The lambing light was in her eyes, but it didn't blind her because it was losing strength, going dimmer.
'What the fuck are you doing, Mr Preece? What bloody use is this place as protection?'
All she could hear from behind the dying light was his dreadful breathing, something out of intensive care at the chest clinic.
There's no spirituality here any more. All there was was the bell and now you can't reach that, there's no way you can resist . . . him . . . in this place. A church is only a church because the stones are steeped in centuries of worship . . . human hopes and dreams, all that stuff. All you've got here is a bloody warehouse'
'Stay quiet,' Jimmy Preece hissed. 'Keep calm. Keep . . .'
'Oh, sure, keep your head down! It's what this piss-poor place is all about. Don't make waves, don't take sides, we don't want no clever people. Oh!' She beat her head into her arms and sobbed w
ith anger and frustration.
Needing the rage and the bitterness, because, if you could keep them stoked, keep the heat high, it would burn out the fear.
She looked into the light - not white any more, but yellow, her least-favourite colour, the yellow of disease, of embalming fluid. The yellow of Grace Legge.
How would he come?
Would he come like Grace, flailing and writhing with white-eyed malevolence?
How would he come?
'What's going to happen, Mr Preece?' she said. It was the small voice, and she was ashamed.
'I don't know, girl.' There was a wheezing under it that she hadn't heard before. 'God help me, I don't know.'
She thought about her dad. At least he'd be safe. He was with Jean, and Jean was smart. Jean knew about these things.
'She can't talk to you, she can't see you, there's no brain activity there . . . Entirely harmless.'
No she doesn't. She isn't smart at all. A little knowledge and a little intuition - nothing more dangerous. Jean only thinks she's smart.
And now Powys had gone to Jean, saying, help us, 0 Wise One, get us out of this, save Crybbe, save us all.
Oh, Powys, whatever happened to the Old Golden Land?
It began with a rustling up at the front of the church near the coffin, and then the sound of something rolling on stone.
'What's that?'
But Mr Preece just breathed at her.
She clutched at the side of the font, all the hot, healthy anger and the frustration and bitterness drenched in cold, stagnant fear. She couldn't move. She imagined Jonathon Preece stirring in his coffin, cracking his knuckles as his hands opened out.
Washerwoman's hands.
Fay felt a pain in her chest.
'Oh, God.' The nearest she could produce to a prayer. Not too wonderful, for a clergyman's daughter.
And then came the smell of burning and little flames, a row of little, yellow, smoky flames, burning in the air, four or five feet from the floor.
Fay watched, transfixed, still sitting under the font, as though both her legs were broken.