Tragedy at Two (26 page)

“And Josie, and you and Derek and anybody else who can help. Even Greg, though I agree with you that he’s looking more and more unreliable.”

Gran was somewhat mollified, and said, “Oh, I see, right then. I suppose we’d better just carry on. But for God’s sake be careful, Lois. It’s not just yourself you have to think about, you know. Now, d’you fancy scrambled eggs with cream and baby mushrooms?”

This was Gran’s proudest achievement, and although Lois knew that it was not really the healthiest of meals, she accepted with enthusiasm. Then the telephone rang, and she disappeared to answer it in her office.

It was a brief conversation. Mark’s mother was calling to say that he had woken up, been violently sick and looked pale and miserable. Would Elsie like to pop in and help cheer him up? It was probably best not to stay too long.

 

 

MARK BROWN WAS PROPPED UP ON PILLOWS, LOOKING PALE AND miserable, and the thought of Elsie Weedon visiting did nothing to cheer him up. He had surfaced with the memory of the desperate and awful thing he had done. His father had been sitting beside him when he woke, and had held his head over the bucket as he retched and retched. Through the unbelievable pain, he had still been aware of Joe’s hand smoothing his hair.

When the nausea had subsided, the next thing he thought of was Sally. Christ! He had been supposed to meet her at the surgery! He had asked if she had phoned, but she hadn’t. Without thinking, he’d asked Joe if he would ring the hall and tell her he was ill, and his father had been so surprised he had meekly left the room and made the call.

Then he shut his eyes and dozed until he heard women’s voices in the hall. Sally? No, it was old women’s voices, his mother and nosy old Elsie Weedon. He shut his eyes again, thinking he could pretend to be asleep. But it was too late, and the two women came in, his mother with her accustomed compassionate look fixed on her face, and his heart sank even further.

“Markie, how’re you feeling, dear?” Nancy Brown was trying hard to stem the tears, and Gran took over.

“Now then, Mark Brown,” she said. “What’s all this about? You’ve not been living in Farnden for two minutes before you’re in trouble. No need, you know. So what’ve you got to say for yourself?”

“How long have you got, Mrs. Weedon?” Mark said, stung by her accusing tone. His voice was getting stronger with each word. “And do you really want to know? You’d be the first person who did, and that includes your precious daughter Lois.” He glared at her, waiting for a reply, and to his surprise, Gran burst into peals of delighted laughter.

“That’s it, lad!” she said. “I knew you’d got it in you. Now you can shut up and rest for a bit while we do the talking. And don’t interrupt. You can have your say when we’ve finished.”

Nancy began to protest, but Gran was looking at Mark, and her soft heart lifted when she saw the glimmer of a smile on his pale face. “Carry on, Mrs. Weedon,” he said. “Say what you’ve got to say, and make it helpful.”

After what Gran considered a satisfactory time, she patted Mark’s hand and got up to leave. She heard another voice in the hall, and looked back at the pale lad languishing against his pillows. “I hope you’re feeling stronger now,” she said with a smile, and stood aside as what appeared to be a human whirlwind entered the room.

“Mark! What the hell d’you think you’re doing? How could you, without talking to me first?” And then Sally flung herself on the bed beside him, smothered him with kisses, and also burst into tears.

Gran gave Nancy Brown a firm push out of the room, shut the door behind them, and the two retreated downstairs. “A cup of coffee, Mrs. Weedon?” Joe Brown said, appearing from the kitchen. Gran said that would be very nice, and anyway, she’d been wanting a word with him for some time.

ATHALIA LEE AND THE OTHER GYPSIES WERE CURSING, looking up at a leaden sky, and this time it had nothing to do with Long Farnden village. They had become mired in a tidal flood swollen by heavy rain, now fast approaching their stopping place by the river Loare.

“It’ll all be gone in a couple of days,” the publican had said to George and Jal, but added that the mud left behind took a lot of hard work to clear. “My customers are saying you lot have brought bad luck to the village. You’d better be on your way as soon as you can,” he had added mildly. He was not against the gypsies, and quite liked to see them arriving to and fro Appleby. It was a link with the past. There had been trouble with some of them, of course, like that rough pair with a killer dog, but they weren’t around so far this year.

Though the publican did not know it, this was not strictly true. The dog, admittedly dead, had arrived mysteriously on its own, and Jal had sworn he had seen one of the brothers, Harry, he thought, in the nearby town on market day. “Got the usual junk stall on the fringe,” he had said to George.

“Did you see Sid?” George had asked. Jal had said not while he was there, but the younger brother would have been around.

George had shrugged. “Ah, well. None of our business, as long as they keep well out of our way.” He appeared to Jal to be dismissing the subject, but in fact he was worried, and pondered on the dead dog and absence of Sid for some while. Then the flood had threatened, and this had become more urgent.

Now he and Athalia were having a conference in her trailer. “How quickly d’you reckon we can be gone?” he asked, and she said it had been known to take as long as ten minutes. Then she laughed and said probably by the next morning, once they had decided.

“We shall be early in Appleby,” she warned. “Still, we’ve done that before.”

George nodded. “We’ll get a good place for the trailers and horses. So shall we go tomorrow?”

“Have a walk down to the river, see how far the water’s come up,” Athalia said. “Then we can decide.”

George went off to the pub to ask about tides, and discovered the best time, with the tide right out, would be now. He collected Jal, and the two of them set off to judge how long they had before the water reached their scrubby field.

It was an alarming sight. The deep channel where they had seen the dead dog was now full of water and lapping over the edges. “And that’s with the tide out!” Jal said. He was a more nervous soul than George, and was all for moving on as soon as possible.

The Loare pathway, with its seats and promises of wonderful views and bird-watching, was now under six inches of water. “Another night of heavy rain, and this’ll be halfway up our wheels,” Jal said.

George laughed. “Cheer up, lad,” he said. “You can swim, can’t you?”

They kept to the higher ground, and reached the small bridge crossing the channel. It wouldn’t be long before this was submerged, too, and they leaned over and stared at the swiftly flowing, muddy surge. Suddenly Jal shot back into the centre of the bridge. “George!” he said. “For God’s sake, did you see it?”

George was looking grim. “Yeah. I saw it. Come on, quick, it’s bound to get caught up in those reeds over there—yes, it has! Come on, Jal, we’ll get it out.”

Jal had absolutely no desire to get the body out of the water. “Leave it!” he shouted. “It’ll get free again, and we won’t have to have nothing to do with it.”

He could have saved his breath. George was already off the bridge and splashing along the path. He reached the reedy patch and waded in. “Get over here, Jal!” he yelled. “I’ve got a hold, but it’ll need both of us to get it out.”

Reluctantly Jal joined him, and between them they heaved the bloated body out and on to dry ground. There they collapsed and sat down, George staring closely at the face, and Jal moaning quietly to himself.

“It’s him, innit?” Jal said finally. “It’s Sid, poor bugger. What do we do now?”

George frowned. “What d’you do, you mean. This is what you do. You go straight back to the telephone box outside the pub, dial 999, and tell the police to come here. Tell them it’s an emergency, and tell ’em why. Then wait on the green so’s you can guide them.”

Jal looked terrified. “What’re
you
going to do, then?” he squeaked.

“Stay here, o’ course. We lost the dog, didn’t we? So we don’t want to lose poor old Sid. Nobody believes what we say, Jal, so we need the evidence. Go on, bugger off, and do exactly what I said.”

“But what about the tide coming in?” Jal objected. “It’ll cover him and you.”

“Not yet,” answered George. “Which is why the sooner you get going the better!”

After Jal had gone, George settled down to wait. He looked again at Sid’s pitiful corpse. It was difficult to see any telltale marks on his head. There were plenty of marks where the body had bumped into obstacles on its watery journey, but impossible for George to tell exactly what had caused them. Still, once the police had got him, they had ways of identifying gashes and bruises.

The tide was on the turn, and George watched, now anxiously, as the water crept over previously dry grass. He turned to see if there was any sign of the cops, but only heavy, dark grey clouds hung over the landscape. He looked again at the water, and decided he had an hour or so yet in comparative safety. But unbeknown to him, the danger was coming from another direction. He was beginning to doze. It was almost dark under the approaching sky. His eyelids closed.

He was awoken by a voice in his ear.

“What you got there, then, Georgie boy?”

He leapt to his feet, and saw Harry, swarthy and unshaved, standing only inches away from him, and holding a gun.

“This ’ere belongs to me,” Harry said, putting the toe of his boot under the arm of his dead brother. “I’ve always looked after ’im, an’ you can help me look after him now,” he added, and laughed.

God in Heaven! The man was mad, George realised with horror, and once more glanced over his shoulder in the hope of seeing Jal and the police. There was no one, not a single person in sight. His heart sank.

JAL HAD SO FAR FAILED. ON HIS WAY BACK TO CALL THE POLICE, he had been horrified to meet Harry, and though he tried hard to dodge him, had ended up dumped in a crumbling shed by the path, bound hand and foot to a metal post. The binder twine that secured him was tough, and he had rubbed his wrists raw in trying to break it. He was desperately worried about George. Harry had knocked Jal about a bit in an attempt to get George’s whereabouts from him, but Jal had refused to tell. It was not, unfortunately, difficult for Harry to work out. There was only one path, and Jal had just come up it.

 

 

ATHALIA HAD BEGUN TO WORRY ABOUT GEORGE, AND JAL, TOO. She looked up at the threatening sky, and thought they should be back now. Surely it didn’t take this long to sum up the flood situation? She had seen the two of them disappearing across the marsh some time ago, and the light was almost gone now. It was treacherous ground, and whilst she knew George was skilled at negotiating difficult territory, in her imagination she saw them half submerged in sucking mud.

The other trailers and vans were quiet now. Many of the gypsies had gone off hawking or to meet up with others passing through the nearby town. There was nobody she could send after the missing two. Except herself. She turned around and looked for her boots. It was some time since she had ventured across that tricky ground, though she had been stopping here every year for half a century. She went down the steps from her trailer, and paused. She turned around and went back inside. A shiver of fear had sent her back, a feeling that something was seriously wrong. Her mother had claimed second sight, and although Athalia would not say she had inherited it, she still got warnings from somewhere, and they were always right. She took an old policeman’s cosh from a drawer and put it in her deep pocket. Just as well her long departed husband had insisted on her keeping it handy.

Halfway to the now visible flood water, she passed the hut. A muffled sound came out of it, and she paused. Probably a rat. They arrived in large numbers in this weather, feeding on the detritus brought in by the floods. She was about to walk on, when the sound came again, and louder. She pulled open the rickety door and saw Jal. In minutes she had him free, and his story was told. “George?” she said.