Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (39 page)

   
The Mini had been parked for
over two hours on a double yellow line outside the vet's surgery in Leominster,
fifteen miles from Crybbe. The nearest one from which they'd managed to get a
response. The vet handling night-calls had been understanding but had made no
comments either way about the wisdom of farmers shooting dogs alleged to be
worrying sheep.

   
The vet had said Arnold would
probably live. 'Just don't expect him to be as good as new with all that lead
inside him.'

   
One of the back legs had taken
most of it. Bones had been broken. The vet had seemed a bit despondent about
that leg. Fay had spent half an hour holding Arnold at different angles while
the vet examined what he could, removing shotgun pellets. He might have to operate,
he said, and got Fay to sign a paper relating to responsibility if Arnold died
under anaesthetic.

   
Now Fay and Powys were standing
on the pavement, unwinding. It was very quiet in Leominster, the other side of
midnight. No menace here. Fay thought.

   
J. M. Powys was shaking out his
jacket. It was scarcely identifiable as a jacket any more. It looked as if
someone had faced a firing squad in it.

   
'Oh God,' Fay said. 'I'm so
sorry.'

   
J. M. Powys dangled the jacket
from an index finger and looked quite amused. J. M. Powys. Bloody hell. 'It's
hard to believe you're J. M. Powys. I thought you'd be . . .'

   
'Dead.'

   
'Well, not quite.'

   
'That lady, Mrs Seagrove. She
called you Mrs Morrison. You're not Guy's wife, are you?'
   
'No,' Fay said. 'Not any more.'

   
She explained, leaning on an
elderly Mini in a quiet street in Leominster, lights going out around them.
Explained quite a few things. Talking too much, the way you did when you'd been
through something traumatic. Only realizing she was shooting her mouth off,
when she heard herself saying, 'I've got to get out of that place, or I'm going
to implode. Or maybe I'll just kill somebody.'

   
She pulled both palms down her
cheeks. Shook her hair, like a dog. 'What am I going on about? Not your
problem. Thanks for everything you've done. I shall buy you a new jacket.'

   
'I don't want a new jacket.'
Powys opened the car door. 'I like them full of patches and sewn-up bits.'

   
He drove carefully out of the
town, dipping the headlights politely when they met another vehicle. They
didn't meet many. The lights sometimes flashed briefly into the eyes of rabbits
sitting in the hedgerows. Once, J. M. Powys had to brake for a badger
scampering - that was really the word, she'd have expected badgers to lumber -
across the road and into a wood.

   
Fay realized she hadn't phoned
her dad. He'd be worried. Or he wouldn't, depending on his state of mind
tonight. Too late now.

   
'Arnold!' Powys said suddenly,
breaking five minutes of slightly sleepy silence.
   
'What?'

   
'Arnold. Not Henry Kettle's
dog? You aren't the person who's looking after Henry's dog?'

   
'And not making an awfully good
job of it, so far.'

   
'Stone me,' said Powys.
'Sometimes coincidence just seems to crowd you into corners.'

   
'Especially in Crybbe,' Fay
said. She wished she was travelling through the night to somewhere else.
Virtually anywhere else, actually.

The bones were very white in the torchlight. There were also some
parchment-coloured bits, skin or sinew, gristle.

   
'Ah,' Tessa said, less than
awed, 'I know what that is.'

   
Warren was miffed. How the fuck
could she know anything about it?

   
'Yeah,' Warren said. 'It's a
hand.'
   
'It's a Hand of Glory."
   
'What you on about?'
   
'A dead man's hand.'
   
'Well, that's bloody obvious, isn't
it?'
   
A hanged man's hand,' Tessa said.

   
Warren squatted down next to
her. The spade lay on the grass, next to a neat pile of earth and the square of
turf, set carefully to one side so it could be replaced.

   
'Which means it's got magic
powers,' Tessa said. Where'd you find it?'
   
'Around.'

   
'All right,
don't
tell me! What's that Stanley knife
doing in there?'

   
'Well, I . . .' Buggered if he
was going to tell her he'd been scared to put his hand in and take the knife
out. 'I'm seeing what effect it 'as on it. You know, like you puts an old razorblade
under a cardboard pyramid and it comes out sharp again. New Age, that.' Warren
cackled. 'I'm learnin' all about this New Age, now, see. 'Ow'd you know that?'

   
'Know what?'

   
' 'Bout it being a hanged man's
hand.'

   
'I think I'd like to draw it,'
Tessa said. 'Maybe I'll come up here again.'

   
'No.' It was
his
hand. 'Keep diggin' it up, the
ground'll get messed up and somebody else might find it.'

   
'They won't. Do you know why
you brought it here, Warren?'

   
'Good a place as any.'

   
Tessa smiled.

   
'What you done with then other
drawings, the old feller?'
   
'Got fed up with him,' Tessa said.
'Passed him on.'
   
'Who to?'

   
'Dunno where he might end up,'
Tessa said mysteriously. 'Part of the fun.' She smiled and fitted a forefinger
down the front of Warren's jeans and drew him towards her, across the old box.

   
'Let's do it here ... do
it
... by the box. Leave it open, see
what happens.'

   
'Prob'ly come crawlin' out an'
pinch your bum,' Warren said slyly. 'Anyway, it's too late now, for that.'

   
Tessa took her finger out of
Warren's jeans, 'I waited for you.'

   
'Had a job to do.'

   
'What was so important?"

   
'You'll find out,' Warren said.

   
Tessa reached out and touched a
white knuckle-bone.

   
'Cold,' she said, it's nice and
cold.'

   
'It was cold in the river,
too,' Warren said.

Rachel lay in the brass bed. When he slid in gratefully beside her, she
awoke.
   
'J.M.?'

   
'I couldn't put a light on. The
power's off again.'

   
He'd lit up Bell Street with
the headlights, watching the small figure in bloodstained blue nylon walking to
her door. When she was safely inside, he drove back into the lightless main
street, where all the windows were blind eyes. Then down the hill and over the
bridge. A tight right turn, and there was the perfect little riverside cottage.
He'd almost expected it not to be there, like a dream cottage.

   
The presence of Rachel in the
bed reinforced a sense of home. Before she could ask, he told her where he'd
been, poured it all out, the whole bizarre episode.

   
'Arnold?' Rachel sat up in the
darkness. 'Jonathon Preece shot Arnold?'

   
He told her about the shotgun,
how he'd come to pick it up from the grass.

   
'I really wanted to kill him. I
thought I
had
killed him at one
point. I could feel myself pulling the triggers, both triggers, and then his
chest ... It was as if time had skipped a beat, and I'd already shot him.'

   
'You're overtired,' Rachel
said.

   
'Then the dog - Arnold -
whimpered, and I was back in the second before I did it. Arnold was Henry
Kettle's dog.'
   
'I know.'

   
'You don't know how badly I
wanted to kill that guy.'
   
'This doesn't seem like you, J.M.'
   
'No,' Powys said, it didn't.'

   
There was a window opposite the
bed. Across the river, he saw a few sparse lights coming on, like candles on a
cake.
   
'Power's back.'

   
'And you're a hero, J.M.,'
Rachel said, moulding her body into his. 'Although you'll be a marked man in
Crybbe if anyone finds out.'

PART FIVE

You won't need to worry and you won't have to
cry
Over in the old golden land.

Robin Williamson
From the album
'Wee Tarn and the Big Huge'

CHAPTER I

No, don't move 'im yet, Gomer.'
   
Jack Preece ambled across the field to
where Gomer Parry and his nephew, Nev, were preparing to get the bulldozer back
on the lorry.

   
'Don't speak to me, Jack.'
Gomer didn't turn round. 'Embarrassed? Humiliated, more like!'
   
'Aye, well, I'm sorry, Gomer.'

   
'Sorry? You bloody should be
sorry, Jack Preece. Never before have Gomer Parry Plant Hire failed to carry
out a contract. Never! I should 'ave told your dad where 'e could stick 'is . .
.

   
'Only, see, the district council's
'avin' a bit o' trouble on the new landfill site over Brynglas,' Jack Preece
said. 'Need of an extra bulldozer, quickish, like. Three days' work, sure
t'be.'

   
Gomer Parry turned shrewd eyes
on Jack Preece, standing in the damp old field, between downpours, his back to
the Tump and the famous wall - still intact, except for the bits of masonry
dislodged when old Kettle had his crash.

   
'Reckon you can do it, Gomer?'

   
Gomer shot him a penetrating
took through his wire-rimmed glasses. 'Something goin' on yere, Jack. Don't
know what it is, but there's something.'

   
'Aye, well,' Jack Preece said,
eyes averted. 'No need to worry about your reputation, Gomer, anyway. You'll be
all right. We looks after our own, isn't it.'

   
He started to walk away then
turned back. You seen Jonathon about?'

   
'Not lately,' Gomer said.

   
'Boy didn't come 'ome last night.'

   
'Likely 'avin' 'is end away
somewhere,' said Gomer. 'Only young once, Jack.'

   
'Aye,' said Jack. Sure t'be.'

Powys drove back to Hereford, loaded up a couple of suitcases, a box of
books, his Olivetti and two reams of A4.

   
'Aha,' said Barry, the osteopath
from upstairs. 'Ensnared. He's got you. I knew he would. What was the deciding
factor Powys. The money?'

   
Powys shook his head.

   
The women?'

   
Powys said, 'Just hold that
door open for me, would you?'

   
'I knew it! It's the Summer of
Love in Crybbe. You always were a sucker for a cheesecloth cleavage.'

   
'Barry,' said Powys, 'don't you
have somebody's spine to trample on?'

   
'Good luck, Joe,' Annie said
wistfully.

   
'What d'you mean "good
luck''?' He'd noticed the crystals had been joined on the counter by a small
display of astrological amulets in copper. Where the hell had she found those?

   
'You're going back,' Annie
said.

   
'I am not "going
back".'

   
Annie and Barry smiled
knowingly to each other.

   
During the return drive it rained.
It rained harder the nearer he got to Crybbe. Powys did some thinking, images
wafting across his mind with the rhythm of the windscreen wipers.

   
Seriously unseasonal rain was
throwing the river over the banks like rumpled bedclothes. He saw an image of a
shotgun getting slowly pushed downstream, its barrels clogged with corrosive
silt. Unless Jonathon had managed to retrieve it. Would he ever find out? And
would Jonathon report him to the police?