Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (48 page)

   
'How long has he known Jean
Wendle?'
   
'Who?'

   
'Your dad. He was sitting next
to Jean Wendle. In church.'

   
After a moment. Fay trod on the
brakes. The Fiesta was almost in the middle of the road The driver of a BMW
behind hem blasted his horn and revved in righteous rage.

   
'What?'

   
She didn't seem to notice the
middle-aged, suit-and-tie-clad BMW driver thrusting up two furious fingers as
he roared past.

   
'Jean Wendle,' Powys said. 'The
healer.'

   
Fay gripped the wheel tightly
with both hands, threw her head back and moaned.

   
'Oh God, Joe. That was Jean
Wendle?'

   
'It was.'

   
Fay unclipped her seat-belt.

   
'Would you mind taking over,
before I kill us both? I think I've made the most awful fool of myself.'

Alex had given Murray Beech the usual can of Heineken, and this time
Murray had snapped it open and drunk silently and gratefully.

   
'You heard my sermon,' Murray
said. They were in the living-room at the back of the house in Bell Street. The
vicar was slumped in an armchair. He looked worn out.

   
'And you heard my daughter, I
suppose,' Alex said.

   
'What was the matter with her?'

   
'You tell me, old boy.' Alex
had once been chaplain to a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts; Murray
reminded him of the new arrivals, lank-haired, grey-skinned, eyes like mud.

   
'What did you think of my
sermon?'

   
'Good try,' Alex said. 'Full
marks for effort. Couple of Brownie points, perhaps, from the town council.
Then again, perhaps not. What d'you want me to say? You and I both know that
this fellow Goff's congregation's going to be a bloody sight more dedicated
than yours.'

   
'Sour grapes, eh?'
   
'You said it, old chap.'

   
'I don't know what to do,'
Murray said, desolate.
   
Alex sighed.

   
'I could be good at this job,'
Murray said. 'Anywhere else, I could be really good. I'm a good organizer, a
good administrator. I like organizing things, running the parish affairs,
setting up discussion groups, counselling sessions. I've got ideas. I can get
things done.'

   
'Archdeacon material, if ever I
saw it.'

   
'Don't laugh at me, Alex.'

   
'Sorry.'

   
'You see, I did what I thought
was right in the context of my position in Crybbe. The sermon, I mean. I
expected people to come up to me outside. You know . . . Well said, Vicar, all
this. I thought I was echoing their own thoughts. I know they don't like what's
happening at the Court.'

   
'How d'you know that?'

   
'Not from listening to them
talk, that's for certain. They don't even seem to talk to each other. No
chit-chit, no street-corner gossip. Do you think that's natural? Nobody said a
word to me today. I was standing there holding out a hand, thanks for coming,
nice to see you, hope you're feeling better now, the usual patter. And some of
them were taking my hand limply, as if I was offering them a sandwich at the
fete. Then they'd nod and trudge off without a word. No reaction in church
either except for Fay's outburst and the boy, Warren Preece, who was staring at
me with the most astonishing malevolence in his eyes.'

   
'Which boy's that?'

   
'Warren Preece? The Mayor's
grandson, the younger brother of the chap who drowned in the river. Looking at
me as if he blamed me for his brother's death.'

   
'Doesn't make much sense,
Murray.'

   
'Didn't to me, either. I tried
to ignore it. Perhaps it was nothing to do with his brother. He's a friend of
the girl, Tessa Byford. You remember I asked you about exorcism.'

   
'Oh. Yes. How did that go?'

   
'You haven't heard anything,
then?'

   
'Nothing at all, old chap.
Didn't it go well?'
   
'You're sure you haven't heard
anything? You wouldn't be trying to save my feelings?'

   
'Sod off, Murray, I'm a
Christian.'

   
Murray said. 'That girl's
seriously disturbed. Tessa Byford. The Old Police House. I think I'm talking
about evil, Alex. I think I was in the presence of evil. I think she invited me
in to flourish something m my face. As if to say, this is what you're up against,
now what are you going to do?'
   
'And what did you do?'

   
'I ran away,' Murray said
starkly. 'I got the hell out of there, and I haven't been back, and I'm scared
stiff of meeting her in the street or a shop because I think I'd run away
again.'

   
'Oh dear,' Alex said.

   
Murray leaned his head back
into the chair and closed and opened his eyes twice, flexing his jaw.

   
Alex said, 'I seem to remember
asking you what you thought were the world s greatest evils.'

   
'I expect I said inequality,
the Tory government or something. Now I'd have to say I've seen real evil and
it was in the eyes of a schoolgirl. And now, I don't know, in a boy of eighteen
or nineteen. What does that say about
me
?'

   
'Perhaps it says you've grown
up,' Alex said. 'Or that you've been watching those X-rated videos again. I
don't know either. I've been fudging the bloody issue for years, and now I'm
too old and clapped out to do anything about it. Perhaps, you know, this is one
of those places where we meet it head-on.'

   
'Crybbe?'

   
'Just thinking of something
Wendy said. May look like a haemorrhoid in the arsehole of the world, but the
quiet places are often the real battlegrounds. Some of these New Age johnnies
are actually not so far off-beam when you talk to them. You come across Wendy?'

   
Murray loosed blank.

   
'Strict Presbyterian
upbringing,' Alex said. 'No nonsense. Yet she apparently cures people of cancer
and shingles and things with the help of an egg-shaped oriental blob called Dr
Chi. Now, I ask you . . . But it's all terminology, isn't it. Dr Chi, Jesus
Christ, Allah, ET .. . There's a positive and a negative and whatever all this
energy is, well, perhaps we can colour it with our hearts. Pass me another
beer, Murray, I don't think I'm helping you at all.'

   
'I thought you weren't supposed
to drink.'

   
'Sod that,' said Alex. 'Look at
me. Do I seem sick? Do I seem irrational?'

   
'Far from it. In fact, if you
don't mind my saying so, I've never known you so lucid.'

   
'Well, there you are, you see.
Dr Chi. Little Chink's a bloody wonder. And there's you trying to drive his
intermediary out of town. We think we're so smart. Murray, but we're just
pupils in a spiritual kindergarten.'

   
'I think I'm cracking up,'
Murray said.

   
'Perhaps you need to consult
old Dr Chi as well. I can arrange an appointment.'

   
Murray stood up very quickly
and headed for the door. 'Don't joke about this, Alex. Just don't joke.'

   
'Was I?' Alex asked him
innocently. 'Was I joking do you think?'

CHAPTER VII

'But . . .'
   
Well, she couldn't say she hadn't been
warned.
   
The vet, an elderly, stooping man in a
cardigan, said there'd been quite a concentration of shotgun pellets in the
dog's rear end.

   
'Fairly close range, you see.
Must have been. If he'd moved a bit faster, the shot would have missed him
altogether. I got some of them out, and some will work to the surface in time.
But he'll always-be carrying a few around. Like an old soldier.'

   
Arnold was lying on a folded
blanket, his huge ears fully extended. His tail bobbed when Fay and Joe
appeared. His left haunch had been shaved to the base of the tail. The skin was
vivid pink, the stitching bright blue.

   
'But he's only got three legs,'
Fay said.
   
'I did try to save it, Mrs Morrison,
but so much bone was smashed it would have been enormously complicated and left
him in a lot of pain, probably for life. It's quite unusual for the damage to
be so concentrated. But then, dogs that are shot are usually killed.'

   
'He's a survivor,' Fay said.

   
Arnold was not feeling sorry
for himself, this was clear. He thumped his tail against his folded brown
blanket and tried to get up. Fell down again, but he tried. Fay rushed to pat
him to stop him trying again.

   
'Never discourage him from
standing up,' the vet said. 'He'll be walking soon, after a fashion. Managed a
few steps m the garden this morning. Falls over a lot, but he gets up again.
He's young enough to handle it with aplomb, I think. Be cocking his stump
against lampposts in no time. Need a lot of attention and careful supervision
when he's outside, for a while. But he'll be fine. Some people can't cope with
it, you know. They have the dog put down. It's kinder, they say. Kinder to
them, they mean.'

   
With a stab of shame. Fay found
herself thinking then about her father.

   
'And there's one thing,' the
vet said. 'He won't be considered much of a danger to sheep now. I can't see
this particular farmer coming after him again.'

   
'Most unlikely,' Powys agreed.

There must have been twenty or thirty people around the Court this
afternoon, pulling things down, turning out buildings like drawers. And this
was a Sunday; every one of them, no doubt, on double-time. Money- no object.

   
The Crybbe project seemed to
have taken on a life of its own. Everything was happening unbelievably quickly,
three or four months' work done inside a week. As if Max knew he had to seize
the place, stage a
coup
before
bureaucracy could be cranked into action against him.

   
And it was happening all around
Rachel, as if she wasn't there. Had Max ordered her to stay behind here just to
make this point?

   
Max's own energy seemed to be
pumped entirely into his project, as if he didn't have an empire to run. Even
from London, directing people and money to Crybbe.

   
Because, unknown to its
hundreds of employees, this was now the spiritual centre of the Epidemic Group.
Crybbe. The Court.

   
The Tump.

   
She'd caught sight of a
specimen of his proposed new logo: a big green mound with trees on it. In Max's
vision, all the power of Epidemic - the recording companies, the publishing
houses, the high-street shops - would emanate from the Tump.

   
On a wall in the stable there
was a map of the town with every building marked. The ones owned by Epidemic
and now inhabited - or soon to be - by alternative people had been shaded red.
She'd counted them; there were thirty-five properties, far more than Max was
publicly admitting. Far more than even she had known about.

   
She tried to imagine the town
as the alternative capital of Britain, with thousands of people flooding in to
take part in seminars, follow the ley-lines with picnic lunches, consult
mystics and healers. People in search of a spiritual recharge or a miracle
cure.

   
A kind of New Age Lourdes.
   
Crybbe?

   
Rachel shook her head and
wandered across the courtyard, head down, hands deep in the pockets of her
Barbour. Couldn't wait to get rid of this greasy bloody Barbour for good.

   
She arrived at the burgeoning
rubbish pile, which would soon consist of the entire non-Tudor contents of the
Court. Leftovers from four centuries. Reminders of the times when the Court's
other incarnations had been a private school (failed), a hotel (failed), even a
billet, she'd been told, for American servicemen during World War II.

   
It was a shame; a lot of the
stuff they were throwing out would be quite useful to some people and some of
it valuable. A darkwood table, scratched but serviceable. A wardrobe which was
probably Victorian and would sell, cleaned up, for several hundred quid in any
antique shop. Peanuts to Max.