Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (95 page)

   
'Well, thank you, Mrs Morrison,'
Col said. 'You've given me a lot of food for thought.'

   
'Col, it has to be food for action,
or something unbelievably awful's going to happen.'
   
'Look,' Col said 'I'll come back to
you, OK?'
   
'No, don't go . . .'

   
But he'd gone
   
'Oh, please. Fay Morrison breathed
into the foul-smelling dark. 'Please . . .'

CHAPTER XV

The dog was in a pool of light on the side of the Tump where the grass
looked almost white, and the dog was barking nonstop.

   
'Wait,' Joe Powys whispered to
Minnie Seagrove. 'Don't go any closer. Stay out of the light.'

   
He moved quietly around the
base of the Tump to see what was happening, who it was.
Don't look at me, Arnold. I'm not here. Ignore me.

   
There was a single spotlight
directed at the mound from the field, on the side facing the road, the side
from which Henry Kettle had come on his last ride in his clapped-out old
Volkswagen Variant.

   
The light went out. The dog stopped
barking.
   
Powys waited.

   
He heard a vehicle door slam.
Moved closer. Saw a match flare and then the red glow on the end of a
cigarette.

   
'Well,' a voice said, 'you buggered
yourself yere all right, boy.'

   
'Gomer! Mrs Seagrove had
appeared at Powys's side. 'It's Gomer Parry!'

   
'Oh Christ,' they heard, and an
orange firefly crash-landed in the field.

   
'Gomer. It's Minnie Seagrove.
You replaced my drains.'
   
'Flaming hell, woman, what you tryin'
to do, scare the life out of me? Ruddy dog was bad enough. Hang on a second.'

   
Two small lights appeared in
the front of what proved to be a tractor with an unwieldy digger contraption
overhanging the cab. Powys had last seen it parked in the square.

   
He whispered, 'Ask him if he's
alone.'

   
'Course I'm bloody alone. Who
you got there with you, Mrs Seagrove?'

   
'It's a friend of mine.'

   
'Choose some places to bring
your boyfriends, all I can say.'
   
'You mind your manners, Gomer Parry.
We're coming down.'

   
He was scrabbling in the grass
when they reached him. 'Dropped my ciggy somewhere.' The digger's sidelights
were reflected in his glasses. 'Sod it, won't set a fire, grass is bloody wet.'
He peered at Powys. I seen you before, isn't it? You was with that radio lady,
Mrs Morris, hour or so ago. Get yourself about, don't you, boy?'

   
'Gomer!' Mrs Seagrove snapped.

   
'Aye, all right. Nice lady,
that Mrs Morris. Very nice indeed.'

   
'Pardon me for asking, Mr
Parry,' Powys sad, deadpan, but somebody wouldn't by any chance be paying you
to take out the rest of the wall?'

   
'Now just a minute! You wanner
watch what you're saying, my friend.'

   
'Only it's, er, kind of outside
normal working hours.'

   
'Aye, well,' said Gomer Parry.
'Bit of an accident, like. Got a bit confused, what with the ole power bein'
off, no streetlights, and I come clean off the road. Dunno what come over me. I
never done nothin' like that before, see, never.'

   
'Don't worry about it,' Powys
said. 'Not as if you're the first.'

   
'What's that?' said Gomer,
suspicious. 'Oh, bugger me . . .'Enry Kettle! Is this where 'Enry Kettle . . .
?'
   
'You knew Henry?'

   
'Course I knew 'im. 'Enry Kettle,
oh hell, aye. Wells, see. Wells. 'E'd find 'em, I'd dig 'em. Talk about a
tragic loss. Friend o' yours too, was 'e?'

   
He nodded and put out his hand.
'Joe Powys.'

   
Gomer shook it. 'Gomer Parry
Plant Hire.'
   
Powys did some rapid thinking. Gomer
had gone off the road, probably at the same spot as Henry. And yet Gomer had survived.

   
'What happened? When you came
off the road?'

   
'Bloody strange,' Gomer said.
'Thought I muster been pissed, like - sorry Mrs S - but I'd only 'ad a couple,
see. Anyway. it was just like I'd blacked out and come round in the bloody
field . . . only I never did. And then it was like . . . well, it was like goin'
downhill with a hell of a strong wind up your arse - sorry, Mrs . . .'
   
'You see anything?'

   
'Oh, er . . .' Gomer scratched
his face. 'Got in a bit of a panic, like, tell the truth. See all sortser
things, isn't it? Thought I'd seen a feller one second, up there, top o' the
Tump, 'mong the ole trees, like, but nat'rally I was more bothered 'bout not turnin'
the ole digger over, see. Best one I got this. Customized, fixed 'im myself, big
David Brown tractor an' half of this ole JCB I got off my mate over Llandod
way. Bloody cracker, this ole thing. Managed to stop 'im 'fore I reached the
ole wall - if 'e '
ad
gone into it,
I'd've been pretty bloody sore about it, I can tell you.'

   
'Word has it,' said Powys, 'that
you were pretty bloody sore when somebody borrowed your bulldozer.'

   
'Don't you talk to me 'bout
that!' said Gomer in disgust. 'Bloody vandals.'

   
'You were warned off, weren't
you? You could've had this wall down no problem, but they warned you off.'
   
"Ow'd you know that?' demanded
Gomer.
   
'Made sense.'

   
'Oh aye? You know anythin' else
makes sense?'

   
'Going back to this figure on
the top of the Tump. Where exactly were you when you saw him?'

   
'You're askin' a lot o' questions.
Mister. You with the radio, too?' Although he didn't sound as if he'd mind if
this were the case. 'No, see, I said I
thought
I seen 'im. 'E was prob'ly another tree with the light catchin' 'im funny,
like.'

   
'Your headlights are that
powerful, that you could see a man standing on top of the Tump when you're
coming down and the lights are pointing down?'

   
'Light. Only got one 'eadlight
workin', Joe.'

   
'So when you said a tree caught
in the light . . .'

   
'Aye,' Gomer said thoughtfully.
'You're right. Not possible, is it? See, I'll tell you what it was like. You
know kids when they gets a torch and they wants to frighten other kids and flashes
it under their chin and their face lights up really well, on account of half
it's in shadow. Well, it was like that, only it was like his whole body was lit
up that way. Scary. Only I'm strugglin' with the wheel, I thinks, get off, it's
only an tree.'

   
Minnie Seagrove looked at
Powys. 'I used to think like that when I first saw the Hound. You do. You look
for explanations, sort of thing.'

   
'The hound?' said Gomer.

   
Arnold began to bark.

   
'Right,' said Gomer, opening
the door of the cab. 'If there's anybody else up there I'm gonner bloody find
out this time.'

   
The single headlight spotlit
the Tump again, and Powys watched as Arnold ran into the white circle.

   
Ran
. Arnold
ran
into the
light.

   
He'd lost a leg just a few days
ago, and he was running.
   
Was
this Arnold?

   
'Arnold!' Powys shouted. 'Come
on!'

   
The dog trotted down to the
foot of the mound and ambled across. Powys bent down and the dog snuffled up at
him and licked his hands. Gently, Powys slid one hand underneath, he could
actually feel the stitching.

   
Arnold squirmed free and made
off, back across the field towards the Tump, looking back at Powys every few
yards and barking.

   
'He's found something,' Minnie
Seagrove said. 'He wants to show you something.'

   
I can't believe this, Powys thought.
This is seriously weird. He isn't even limping.

   
Arnold's tail started to wave
when he saw Powys was following him. He ran a few yards up the side of the Tump
and then sat down.

   
He
sat
down.

   
The dog with only one back leg
sat down.
   
Arnold barked. He turned around and
put his nose into the side of the Tump and snuffled about. Then he turned round
again and started to bark at Powys.

   
Powys thought - the words springing
into his mind in Henry Kettle's voice -
he's
a dowser's dog.

   
He wandered back to the digger,
rubbing his forehead. 'Gomer, what are the chances of you doing a spot of
excavation?'

   
'What?' Gomer said, in there?'

   
'Be a public service,' Powys said.
'That Tump's a liability. If it wasn't for that Tump, Henry Kettle would be
alive today and locating wells.'

   
'Protected Ancient Monument,
though, isn't it?' Gomer said. 'That's an offence, unauthorized excavation of a
Protected Ancient Monument.'

   
'Certainly is,' said Powys.

   
'That's all right, then,' said
Gomer, glasses twinkling. 'Where you want the 'ole?'

CHAPTER XVI

The acoustic in the square was tight and intimate, like a studio, and
the voice was deep and resonant: strong and melancholy music. Wonderful
broadcasting voice, Fay thought, trying to be cynical. Radio Three, FM.

   
'When you think about it,' the
voice said, 'any town centre's an intensely powerful place; it's where energy
gathers from all directions, thoughts and feelings pouring in. It's where we go
to tap into a town, to feel its life rhythm.'

   
Pure radio, Fay thought. The
purest radio of all, because we can't see anything. No distractions. He can
design his pictures in our minds.

   
'The town centre is where the
centuries are stored,' Andy said. 'Smell them. Smell the centuries.'

   
All I can smell, Fay thought,
is shit. Four hundred years of shit. And all I can hear is bullshit. Had to
keep telling herself that. This was Andy Boulton-Trow, of Bottle Stone farm. Descendant
of Sheriff Wort, scourge of Crybbe, black magician, the most hated man in . . .

   
'What you can smell,' Andy
Boulton-Trow said (and she felt, most uncomfortably, that he was speaking
directly to
her),
'is many centuries
of human life. There haven't always been sewerage systems and hot water and
fresh vegetables. This town lived on the border of two often hostile countries,
and it had to live within itself. It ground its own flour, killed its own meat and
kept its own counsel.'

   
He paused. 'And its secrets. It
kept its secrets.'

   
Fay thought, drab secrets densely
woven into a faded, dim old tapestry.

   
Boulton-Trow's voice was the
only sound in the square. The only sound in the world - for this square
was
the world. None of them could leave
it, except - perhaps - by dying.

   
Should have been a terrifying
thought. Wasn't.

   
She couldn't remember, for the
moment, quite what he looked like, this Boulton-Trow. Only that he was tall and
dark and bearded. Like Christ; that was how people saw Him.

   
But she couldn't see Boulton-Trow.
She couldn't see anybody. You'd have thought your eyes would have adjusted by now,
so that you'd be able to make our at least the shapes of men and women. But
unless they were very close to you, you could see nothing. This darkness was
unnatural.

   
Not, however, to Andy. She
could feel that. He knew his way around the darkness. If anybody could lead
them out of here it would be him, and that would be comforting to these people.

   
Perhaps it was comforting to
her.

   
But there was no immediate
comfort in Andy's message.