Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (56 page)

   
'But . . .' Catrin was close to
tears. She had never before encountered anyone less than delighted and slightly
awed at the possibility of being interviewed by Guy Morrison.

   
' 'Ave another cup of coffee,'
said the Mayor.

What he kept seeing was not Rachel plunging out of the sky. Not the
willowy, silvery body broken on the rubbish pile.

   
He would not think of that - not
here, in this grim Victorian police station. If he thought of that he'd weep;
he wasn't going to indulge in that kind of luxury, not here.

   
No, what he kept seeing was the
grey-brown thing, falling like smoke.

   
He'd seen it again as he waited
for the police. It lay where it had landed, three or four yards from the pile,
light as the fluff which collected in a vacuum cleaner.

   
I've seen them before, Powys
thought now. In museums, in glass cases, labelled:
remains of a mummified cat found in the rafters, believed to have been
a charm against evil.

   
The cat had fallen to the
ground
after
Rachel.

   
He hadn't told them that.

   
'And you heard her scream, did you?'

   
'She cried out. Before she fell. '

   
'She wasn't screaming as she fell?'

   
'I don't think so. I mean, no, she wasn't. . .'

   
'Didn't that strike you as odd?'

   
'Nothing struck me at the time, except the sheer bloody horror of
it.'

   
Telling it four times at least.
How he'd attacked the rubbish heap, frantically hurling things aside to reach
her.

   
Lifting her head. Staring into
her face, eyes open so wide that you could almost believe . . . until you fell
the dead weight, saw - last desperate hopes corroding in your hands - the angle
of the head to the shoulders.

   
Staring stricken into her face,
and the curfew bell began to toll, a distant death knell.

   
'.. . can we return to this point about the door, Mr Powys. You
say you tried the rear door to the courtyard and found it locked. You couldn't
budge it.'

   
'No, It was locked. I put my full weight against it'

   
'Then how do you explain why, when we arrived, this door was not
only unlocked but was, in fact, ajar?'

   
'I can't explain that. Unless there was someone else in there with
Rachel.'

   
'Someone other than you . . .'

   
'Look, I've told you, I . . .'

   
They'd gone over his statement
several times last night and then said OK, thank you very much, you can go home
now, Mr Powys, but we'll undoubtedly want to talk to you again.

   
But he knew, as he tried to sleep
back at the cottage, that they were out there, watching the place, making sure
he didn't go anywhere. And it was no real surprise when the knock came on the
door at 8 a.m., and the car was waiting - a car, to take him less than a
quarter of a mile across the bridge to the police station.

   
'You didn't tell us, Mr Powys, that this wasn't exactly a new
experience for you. You didn't tell us about Rose.'
   
So who had?
   
Somebody had.

   
He sat on the metal chair,
alone in the interview room, wishing he still smoked. He could hear them
conversing in the passage outside, but not what they were saying.

   
'So you went to Leominster with Fay Morrison?'

   
'Yes.'

   
'Attractive woman, Mrs Morrison.'
   
'Yes.'

   
'What was wrong with the dog?'
   
'He had a badly injured leg'

   
This could lead back to Jonathon
Preece in no time at all. Holistic police-work. Everything inter-connected.

   
Joseph Miles Powys, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murders of
Jonathon Preece, Rachel Wade and Rose Hart. You don't have to say anything, but
anything you do say . . .

   
Perhaps I
should
confess, he thought, looking up to the single, small, high
window and seeing a hesitant sun in the white sky, wobbling nervously like the
yolk of a lightly poached egg.
   
Maybe I did it. Maybe I killed her, as
surely as if I'd been standing behind her in the prospect chamber, with both
hands outstretched.

   
He thought, If I start
believing that, we're all finished. So he went back to thinking about the cat.

CHAPTER IV

The sun was out for the first time in ages, hanging around unsurely like
a new kid standing in the school doorway.

   
Fay walked aimlessly up the
hill from the police station towards the town square and the Cock, pausing by
the railings alongside the few steps to its door. Even a weak sun was not kind
to this building; its bricks needed pointing, its timbers looked like old
railway sleepers.

   
The Cock didn't even have a
sign, as you might have imagined, with a bight painting of a proud rooster
crowing joyfully from the hen-house roof. But, knowing Crybbe, would you
really
imagine a sign like that?

   
And anyway, whoever said the
name referred to that kind of cock? A far more appropriate emblem for this
town, Fay thought, would be a decidedly limp penis.

   
Crybbe.
Crybachu
(to wither).

   
Fay looked down the alley
towards the brick building housing the Crybbe Unattended Studio and wondered if
she'd ever go in there again. They were obviously handling the Rachel Wade story
themselves; nobody had even attempted to contact her.

   
I need the money. Fay realized
suddenly. I need an income. I need a job. Why are they doing this to me?

   
She thought of Joe Powys - I
think
I've
got problems - helping the
police with their inquiries. Quite legitimately, by the sound of it.

   
Rachel
 
Wade . .. the dead woman,
Rachel Wade.
   
He couldn't have. . . surely. She
liked Joe. He seemed so normal, for the author of
 
a seminal New Age treatise.
   
Well, comparatively normal.
   
Oh God, what was happening?

   
She didn't notice the door open
quietly in a narrow townhouse to the left of the Cock, didn't hear the
footsteps. When she turned her head, the woman was standing next to her, looking
across the square to the church.

   
'Good morning, Fay.'

   
Fay was too startled,
momentarily, to reply. She'd never seen this woman before, a woman nearly as
small as she was, but perhaps a quarter of a century older.

   
Well, never seen the
face
before.

   
'Jean Wendle?' Fay said.

   
'I am.'

   
Last seen in a hat, sitting
very still, impersonating the ghost of Grace Legge.

   
May I perhaps offer you a
coffee?' Jean Wendle said.

Catrin Jones knew Guy would be furious about the Mayor's ban on cameras
at tomorrow's public meeting.

   
She also knew from experience
that when bad news was brought to him Guy had a tendency to take it out on the messenger.

   
The need to salvage something
from the morning had brought her to this subdued, secluded house opposite the church,
at the entrance to the shaded lane leading down to Crybbe Court.

   
'I'd be delighted to help you,
any way I can,' said Graham Jarrett, hypnotherapist, small, silvery haired,
late-fifties.
   
'I was thinking perhaps this, what is
it, recession . . . ?'
   
'Regression.'

   
It was very quiet and peaceful
in the house, with many heavy velvet curtains. Catrin could imagine people here
falling easily into hypnosis,

   
'Yes. Regression,' she said.
'This is . . . past lives?'

   
'Well, we don't like to talk
necessarily in terms of past lives,' Graham Jarrett said, matter-of-fact, like
a customer-friendly bank manager. 'But sometimes, when taken back under
hypnosis to an area of time prior to their birth, people do seem to acquire
different personalities and memories of events they couldn't be expected to
have detailed knowledge of.'

   
'Fantastic,' Catrin said.

   
'I certainly wouldn't be averse
to having you film a session, if the client was in agreement.'

   
'That would be excellent,'
Catrin said.

   
'But I have to warn you that
many of them do prefer it to be private.'

   
'Oh, listen, my producer - Guy
Morrison - is a wonderfully assuring man. They would have nothing to worry
about with him.'

   
'Perhaps he would like to be
regressed himself?' said Graham Jarrett with a meaningful smile.
   
'Oh. Well . . .'
   
'Or you, perhaps?'
   
'Me?'

   
'Think about it,' Graham
Jarrett said lightly.

Fay sat in the wooden bow-chair. Jean Wendle was on the edge of a huge,
floppy sofa with both hands around a mug of coffee. She wore a white cashmere
sweater and pink canvas trousers.
   
'I heard it on the news,' she said.
'About poor Rachel Wade.'

   
'Yes,' Fay said, wondering if
she'd also heard about Powys helping with inquiries.

   
'It's a crumbling old place,
the Court. What was she doing there at that time of night?'

   
'I don't know. I've only heard
the news, too. I'll expect I'll be finding out. All I know is . . .'

   
Oh, what the hell, the woman
was supposed to have been lawyer, wasn't she? Maybe she could help.

   
'All I know is, the police
aren't convinced it was an accident. Joe Powys apparently saw her fall and
called the police. They're kind of holding him on suspicion.'

   
A sunbeam licked one gilt handle
of a big Chinese vase with an umbrella in it then crept across the carpet to the
tip of Jean Wendle's moccasins.

   
'Oh dear,' Jean said.

   
Fay told her how things had
been between Joe and Rachel, in case she wasn't aware of that. She described
her own interrogation by the police. What they'd told her about Rose.

   
'Can they hold him, do you
think?'

   
'It doesn't sound as if they
have any evidence to speak of,' Jean said. 'They can't convict on a coincidence.
They also have to ask themselves why this man should engineer the death his
lover in the same way that a previous girlfriend died, then immediately report
it as an accident - knowing that the police would sooner or later learn about
the earlier misfortune. I wonder how they found out about that so quickly. Did Joe
tell them himself, I wonder? Do you mind if I smoke?'

   
Fay shook her head. Jean went
across to the Georgian table, put down her coffee mug, lifted the lid on an
antique writing box, found a thin cigar and a cheap, disposable lighter. She picked
up a small, silver ashtray and brought everything back to the sofa.

   
'It could be, of course, that
the police are looking at possible psychiatric angles.'

   
Fay was thrown.

   
Yes, I'm an accredited crank
, Joe had said. Had said several times,
variations on the same self-deprecating theme.

   
'You're saying they think he's
possibly a psychopath who is into pushing women out of upstairs windows. And -
I don't know - subconsciously he's seeking help and that's why he called the
police after he'd done it?'

   
Jean shrugged. 'Who knows how
the police around here think? Perhaps they'll do some checks with Bristol
police and find out if he really was in London the afternoon Rose died. If they
arrest him he'll need a solicitor. Until they decide what they're going to do, I
don't think there's anything we can do. Meanwhile . . .'