Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (54 page)

   
'Oh, come on,' said Fay. 'Off
the record.'

   
A moment's hesitation, then,
'All right, off the record, we've a chap helping with inquiries, Joseph Miles
Powys. Says he was with you yesterday.'

   
'What?'

   
'Would you mind, Mrs Morrison,
just popping into the station? They won't keep you long.'
   
'I'm ... I'm on my way,' Fay said.

CHAPTER II

In his room at the Cock, Guy awoke at nine-thirty.
   
He'd come back here for a good night's
sleep, but it hadn't been one, and he awoke realizing why.
   
He blinked warily at the overcast,
off-white morning. At his suitcase on the floor by the dressing-table. At the
wardrobe door agape, exposing his leather jacket on a hanger.

   
And, finally, at the portfolio
against the wall next to the door. Especially at that.

   
He should never have slept with
those drawings in the room. In the practical light of morning, Guy knew he
should have left the portfolio in his car. Or, better still, dumped them back
at The Gallery after his abortive attempt to quiz the girl.

   
On his way to the bathroom, he
picked up the portfolio and left it propped up in the passage, hoping somebody
would nick the thing. It was still there when he returned after a pee and a very
quick wash - he didn't like spending too long in bathrooms any more, even by
daylight.

   
Back in his room, Guy burrowed
in his suitcase for his rechargeable shaver. He shaved, bending down to the
dressing-table mirror, wondering about Jocasta, what kind of night she'd had.

   
Well, yes, he'd felt bad about
Jocasta. In a way, especially when she'd clutched at his arm, pleading, 'One
more night - just one night. Hereward'll be back tomorrow. Guy, I can't . . . I
can't
spend a night there alone.'

   
'Look,' he'd argued reasonably.
'Why not lock yourself in your, er, suite? You don't have to go near that
bathroom, do you? I promise you, I'll find out about this, I'll tackle the girl
again tomorrow.'

   
'You won't,' Jocasta had wailed
'Your crew'll be back and you'll spend all day filming and you'll forget all
about me. I've been very stupid, I know . . . but please, can't you just . . .?

   
'No!'

   
Jocasta had sniffed and wandered
back into The Gallery, leaving him alone on the street with the stiff-backed
portfolio under his arm.

   
Dammit, he'd done what he could.
Opened her poxy exhibition, been charming to the invited guests, none of whom -
it seemed to Guy - could get away fast enough.

   
And
he'd tried to get at the girl - the damned girl in black with
the cruel, dark eyes.

   
'There she is!' Jocasta grabbing
his arm in front of everybody, hissing at him and writhing like an anaconda.

   
'Where? Who?'

   
'The one who brought those
drawings in.'
   
'You invited her?'

   
'Of course I didn't. She's just
turned up. Guy, we've got to make her tell us what it's all about.'
   
'We?
We
have?'

   
The girl had spoken to nobody,
just wandered around inspecting paintings, wearing a faintly superior,
supercilious expression - as well she might, he'd conceded, given the standard
of work on show; the artist, Emmanuel somebody or other, apparently specializing
in brownish
pointilliste
studies of
derelict farmyards.

   
To Guy, the girl looked far too
mature and aware to be still at school.

   
Jocasta pushing the portfolio
at him - 'Please . . . talk to her. She'll be impressed by you. She won't dare
lie.'

   
But the girl didn't seem even
to have heard of Guy Morrison, which didn't make her any more endearing. Add to
this the dark-eyed unfriendly face - and the attitude.

   
'I was very interested,' Guy
began smoothly, 'in the drawings you gave Mrs Newsome. The ones in this
folder.'

   
'I don't know anything about
them.'

   
'That's interesting. She tells
me you asked her to try and sell them for you.'

   
'Don't know what you're on
about. She's a nutter, that woman. You know she's on Valium and stuff, don't
you?'

   
'Are you saying you didn't do
these drawings? In which case, who did?'

   
'Why don't you get lost, blondie,'
Tessa Byford said loudly, sweet as lemon, 'you're really not my type.'

   
She turned away from Guy
Morrison and melted into the 'crowd' - a dozen or so people looking
uncomfortable, feeding each other canapes and surface-chat. Except for one very
thin woman with stretched, yellow-white skin, standing alone and smiling
vacuously at Guy, with small needle-teeth.

   
Guy smiled back, but she didn't
acknowledge him, and he went outside with the portfolio under his arm, to be
followed by the faintly tipsy, hysterical Jocasta.

   
'No!' he'd said firmly. 'Do you
understand? No!'

   
Which was how he'd come to walk
away still holding the portfolio, feeling angry and confused. Needing a good
night's sleep so he could think this thing out. The girl had obviously known
about the ghost of the old man haunting the Newsomes' house. Had given Jocasta
the drawings in a calculated attempt to terrify her.

   
But why? What had the girl got
against Jocasta? Was there something Guy didn't know?

   
In the privacy of his room he'd
thought of examining the drawings in some detail, but he found he didn't want
to take them out of their folder. The whole business seemed less frightening
now than distasteful.

   
Not the sort of thing Guy
Morrison needed while shooting an important documentary.

   
He didn't need the dreams either.

   
Last night Guy had dreamed he
was back on the rug in front of the fire, where Jocasta straddled him, swinging
her hips tantalizingly above his straining loins.

   
'Yes, yes . . .' Guy urged in
the dream, but she held herself just a fraction of an inch away so he could
feel the heat of her but not the touch of her skin.

   
'Please,' he moaned. 'Please
come down.'

   
Her face was above his; she
seemed to be floating, both hands in the air. He felt her pubic hair brush the
tip of his . . .
   
'Come . . . down ... on me.'
   
'No!' Jocasta said calmly.

   
'Oh please! Please ... I can't,
I can't . . .
I can't hold on
!'

   
He tried to put his arms around
her neck to pull her down on him, but his arms went right through her, as
though she had no substance.

   
He dreamt then - the way you
did sometimes - that he woke up, still feeling alarmingly excited. He was in
his room at the Cock and he could still feel her presence above him, her bodily
musk in his nostrils. He moaned and breathed in deeply.

   
And almost choked.

   
She smelt foul.

   
A decaying, rancid smell that
filled up his throat and turned the sweat on his body to frost, and when he
opened his eyes he stared into the whitened, skeletal face of the woman from
The Gallery' with the little needle-teeth.

   
He really woke up then, in a
genuine cold sweat.

   
No more nights alone in the
Cock, Guy Morrison decided. Tonight. . . well, tonight would have to be a very
special night for his adoring production assistant, Catrin Jones.

   
The lesser of several evils.

Chief inspectors were getting younger. This one was a kind of Murray Beech
in blue; steely eyed, freshly shaven although he may have been up most of the
night.

   
'Yes,' she said. 'We'd been to
pick up my dog from the vet's. I ... I needed somebody to drive the car so I
could keep the dog on my knee.'

   
'No,' she said. 'No I haven't
known him long. Just a couple of days in fact. In this job you get to know
people quite well quite quickly.'

   
Don't ask what was wrong with the dog, she pleaded silently. It
has nothing whatsoever to do with this. Nothing.

   
'We got back ... I suppose it would
have been shortly before seven. Yes, he drove back. The last I saw of him, he was
walking home ... to the cottage he was living in. Max Goff had commissioned him
to write a book about Crybbe.

   
'Miss Wade?' she said, 'Yes, I
... got on very well with her. I suppose we had similar backgrounds.'

   
'Rose?' she said later. 'Rose
who . . . ?'

'Rose Hart,' replied Chief Inspector William Hughes, a high flier from
Off. 'Have you heard of her?'

   
'No . . . Oh, wait a minute.
Photographs by Rose Hart. On the cover of
The
Old Golden Land
, it said "Photographs by Rose Hart". Is that who
you mean?'

   
'You don't know anything about
her? You never met?'

   
'No . . . What's the connection
here?'

   
'Mrs Morrison, I have to be intrusive.
What's your relationship with Joseph Miles Powys?'

   
'What?'

   
'Were you sleeping with him?'
   
'What.
. . ?

   
'I'm sorry, I have to ask
this.'

   
'Of course I wasn't bloody
sleeping with him. I'd only known the bloke a couple of days.'

   
'And how long had he known Miss
Wade?'

   
'Oh,' Fay leaned back in the
metal chair in the bare little room. There was a table and two other metal
chairs; the Chief Inspector in one, Wynford Wiley in the other. Fat, florid,
red-
necked Wynford Wiley, with a suggestion of a smile on his tiny lips.

   
'I see what you mean,' Fay
conceded quietly.

   
'Two days? Three days? Four
perhaps?'

   
'Yes, OK. It was what you might
call a whirlwind romance.'

   
'Quite normal for some people,
Mrs Morrison.'

   
'Yes, but Rachel wasn't . . .'

   
'No?'

   
'No. Listen. Perhaps
relationships do form quickly when . . . when you aren't happy.'
   
'Miss Wade wasn't happy?'

   
'She . . . She wasn't happy
working for Max Goff, no. She wasn't happy about what he was doing in Crybbe.
She thought he was pouring money down the drain. The thing is ... it wasn't too
easy to quit, she was being paid an awful lot o money as Goff's PA.'

   
The way you babbled under
interrogation, no matter how smooth you thought you were at handling people.

   
'How unhappy would you say she
was?'

   
'Look,' Fay said, rallying. 'I
think it's time you made it clear what kind of investigation this is. What do
you suspect? Suicide? Or what?'

   
'Or what?' repeated the Chief
Inspector.

   
'Or murder, I suppose,' Fay
said.

   
'What do
you
think it was?'

   
'I don't know the circumstances.
Are you trying to say - I mean, is this the bottom line? Powys pushed poor
Rachel out of the window because she found out he was having it off with me? I
mean, bloody hell, come
on.'

   
'It wasn't a window, Mrs
Morrison. It was something called the prospect chamber. Do you know it?'

   
     
'No. That is . . . I've heard of it.'

   
'Did you go out again last
night, after Mr Powys had brought you home?'
   
'No.'

   
'Is there anybody who can . . .
?'
   
'My father.'