December (68 page)

      
'What for?" Prof dumped himself on the bed. 'Sorry, I shouldn't
moan.'

      
Oaths and clumping on the stairs told them the others were
moving in, full of phoney banter.

      
'... stupid can you get, putting a frock on?'
      
'Just when you think you've
forgotten ...'
      
'... what a shithole this is ...'
      
'Yours is the penthouse suite,
Tom.'
      
'Like fuck it is.'
      
'Is that a rat?'

      
'Where? Oh, you bastard, Davey!'

      
Prof grinned. 'Sounds like a Sunday school outing.'

      
'Mmm,' said Simon. 'Let's just pray the accommodation is the
worst of it.'

      
'You do a lot of praying, Simon?'

      
'Most of the time,' Simon said. At first Prof thought his expression
was deadpan, then realised there was a lot of truth about it. 'I'd like us to
pray together tonight, if that doesn't offend you.'

      
'No, no,' Prof said vaguely, 'not at all.' Strewth, he thought.

Laying a small pile of books
on the altar, Eddie Edwards said, 'I have been thinking about the Abbey.'

      
'I've thought of bugger all else in twenty years,' Isabel Pugh
said without rancour.

      
It was getting very much colder now; she wore a woollen beret
and a thick woollen cape that hung over the arms of the wheelchair. Even inside
the church, Eddie's breath was turning to steam. No heating, see. No heating,
no lights; they were going to have to find somewhere more congenial to meet.
But where else could you go in a village like this without being overheard and
being thought quite mad?
      
Or not.

      
'Funny, isn't it?' Eddie said. 'Everyone here knows about
those candles and Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones and his "discreet"
inquiries about satanism. Yet, is there a big fuss about it? Oh, we must
protect our children against this evil? Not a bloody word. They were
laughing
about it in the Dragon last
night, Len Hughes doing an impression of Gwyn Arthur and his mouldy old pipe.'
      
'People have different ways of
coping in the country,' Isabel said. 'You just haven't been here long enough to
understand the psychology of it.'

      
'I'm getting wiser.' Picking up the books from the altar,
Eddie sat on a front pew, arranged his overcoat over his knees as a table for
them. 'But the villagers are an open book compared with Simon. Unless ...' He
gave her a shrewd look '... you know him better than me.'

      
Isabel said, 'What's your opinion, Eddie? If a man has an
session, sexual, with a twelfth-century monk, is he a good bet for a husband?'
She laughed, really laughed, finding a tissue up her sleeve to wipe her eyes.
'My luck all over, that is.'

      
'Yes,' Eddie said. 'I've been giving it a lot of thought, what
you were telling me, about the candles - and the monk.'
      
'Just never tell Simon I told you,
that's all.'
      
'Never,' Eddie promised. 'Let me
tell you about my researches. Spent most of the day, I have, in Abergavenny museum
and then Hereford Library. He lifted the topmost book from his knees. 'Giraldus
now, if you read between the lines ...'

      
'Skip the boring bits,' said Isabel. 'Skip the sources and dates.
Just give me the dirt.'

      
'A hard, snappy woman you are, Isabel.'

      
'A cold woman I am.'

      
'Ah, no,' Eddie said. 'Not cold. Never that.'

      
'Well, you're too old for me anyway,' Isabel said, not unkindly.
'I'm sorry. Go on. Your researches.'

      
'I'm not going to bore you. You want the dirt, I'll give you the
dirt. Richard Walden, founder of the Abbey. The facts are rarely spoken of. A
pederast. Expelled from his monastery for giving it to choirboys. Or monastic
novices, as they were then. Corrupted half the youth of South Herefordshire.'

      
'There's novel.'

      
'Aye, and does a man like that change his spots just because he's
had a holy vision?'

      
'Well, in theory he does,' said Isabel. 'Isn't that what holy visions
are supposed to do?'

      
'Humbug.'

      
'You've got a point.' Isabel nodded. 'Not much light left in
here. Shall I put a match to a candle or two?'

      
'I don't think so, really. You don't know where they've been.
My God, I've been thinking and thinking about that, the most charitable conclusion
being that the poor boy is seriously confused.'

      
'No. I think he's telling the truth. I do.' Isabel's broad
face shone with a most unlikely faith.

      
'Candles from the Middle Ages? I can't deal with that. It's
even more lunatic than the idea of a satanic cabal in Ystrad melting down
bodies.'

      
'But the monk...?'
      
'The monk, yes. The obsession with
the monk, certainly. It's not nice, not in my old-fashioned view, but it's not
unlikely. Nobody likes to think of their vicar as a shirt lifter; however, a lot
of them are, that is an established fact. And it stretches credibility not at
all to imagine that Simon knows all about Richard's unsavoury activities and is
perhaps using that to make sense of his own ... base desires. Here is a flawed
human being, he is saying, just like me. But look, he went on to found a great
abbey!'

      
'But can we
help
him?'

      
'That's what you asked me the other night. That's why I spent
all day deep in my researches. Can we help him?' Eddie sighed. 'Buggered if I
know.'

      
Isabel was jiggling up and down in her chair with frustration.

      
'But he's in there now, Eddie! He's gone to the Abbey, with
the others. Last time he was there he reckons this ... monk - Abbot Richard, if
you like - transmitted thirteen of these filthy candles and arranged them around
the studio. And then it all went wrong for them and there was that terrible car
crash. All I'm saying is, we can't just sit around and wait for something
else
to happen.'

      
But wasn't that the pity of it. All she
could
do was sit around.

      
'Isabel, why's he doing this? Why did they have to go back,
these people, this band?'

      
'Because they're all as barmy as him, presumably,' she said glumly,
and then her hands tightened on the chair arms. 'No! Because they want to get
their lives back, rescue their sanity, that's why they've gone back. You might
not be able to understand that. But you know something? After twenty-one years
like the last twenty-one, I think I bloody can.'

      
She set her chair in motion.

      
'Hang on.' Eddie stood up. 'Twenty-one years. And fourteen
years since the other business?'
      
The chair squeaked to a halt. 'So?'

      
'Multiples of seven, that's all. Did anything happen at the Abbey
in - let's see - nineteen eighty-seven?'

      
'Not that I can think.'
      
'Ah well, another one bites the
dust.'

      
'Another what?'

      
'Theory. Puzzle. I don't know. You had your terrible
 
fall twenty-one years ago, this other incident
was fourteen years ago, and December 1994 makes it another multiple of seven.
Were the dates the same? Forgive me, I ramble too much.'

      
The chair rolled back to where he sat. Isabel said, 'Look at me,
Eddie.'

      
He never objected to that. He liked the way her eyebrows were
just slightly irregular and that twist to her lips which could be either petulant
or humorous and sometimes, intriguingly, both. He only wished it was light
enough in here to see her better.

      
'Go ahead, then,' he said. 'Make your point.'

      
'My accident was on the tenth, OK? The car crash was in the
early hours of the ninth. No anniversaries here, but close enough. Don't think
I haven't thought about that. And don't ever dismiss anything as too
far-fetched. It can be a fatal mistake.'

      
Eddie smiled. This was quite the reverse of the way Marina spoke
to him at home.

      
'Aelwyn,' he said suddenly. 'Aelwyn Breuddwydiwr.'
      
'Who? Oh ...
him.'

      
Eddie put an arm around the back of the chair and gave one of
her shoulders an affectionate squeeze. 'Just another one my far-fetched ideas.
Leave this with me.'

Weasel had two ten-pence
pieces and pushed them both in. This was a drag; 10p bought you sod-all time
these days. About time Love-Storey equipped him with a mobile. He called the
shop.

      
'Hello, yes.'

      
'That you Shelley?'

      
'Tom ...?
'

      
'Nah, nah, it's Weasel. I'm sorry.'

      
'God, for one moment ... What's wrong. Weasel? Oh, listen, a
woman rang for you ...'
      
The money counting itself down on the
meter, 18p, 17p,

      
'Shel...'

      
'From London. I'm sure I recognised the voice, but she didn't
leave a message, just a number. It could be about Tom, so could you call her
back and then ...?'
      
14p, 13p, 12p...

      
'Shel, listen, I got Vanessa wiv me ...'
      
'Vanessa's at school. I'm picking
her up in ...'
      
'Nah, she ain't. She stowed away in
the van.'
      
'She did
what
?'

      
10p, 9p …

      
'Hid in the van. Listen. It's Tom. I fink we found him.'

      
'Where are you?'

      
'I can't explain about this, I just got to check somefink out and
then I'll get back to you, OK?'
      
5p, 4p, 3p ...

      
'Weasel, what the hell...?'

      
'The money's running out, I got no time to explain, I'll call
you ...'

      
'Weasel, where are you? Bring Vanessa back at ...'
      
'... later,' Weasel said into the
dead phone. He ran back across the road to the dark green van parked outside
the Dragon Hotel in Ystrad Ddu.
      
'Least she won't worry now, Princess.
Gives us more time to play wiv.'

      
He was dead chuffed. They'd cracked it. Him and the kid between
them, what a team!
      
Rolling into Ystrad-wotsit - and
what a bleak and lonely place this was in a mist - who should they see, who
should be the
first person
they seen
... but bleeding Morticia, weird as life, striding across the road with a
shopping bag.
      
Into the pub she goes; turns out
it's a kind of village store, provisions and that. Weasel's treading on the
brakes - you stay there, Princess, don't move - and off into the boozer after
her.
      
Inside, there's no sign of Morticia,
maybe she went to the khasi but the two geezers standing at the bar just reek
of the recording industry. One has a little pony-tail and one of these
shapeless jackets that cost a bomb, the other's got long hair and shades and
looks kind of familiar.

      
'Looking for Tom,' Weasel says, dead casual. 'Tom Storey.'
      
'Who are
you
?' asks pony-tail, like Weasel is a piece of shit that just
dropped off somebody's shoe.

      
'Weasel. Tom's roadie. Everybody knows me. Got his gear in the
van.'

      
'What makes you think he's here?'
      
'Well, blimey, they ain't gonna
send me here if he ain't. You're wiv Tom, are you?'

      
'Stephen Case,' pony-tail says coolly. 'TMM. Wait there, would
you?'

      
Bingo. And Morticia here too, Knew it, bleeding Morticia and
this slimy git are hand in glove. Say no more.

      
Geezer keeps him waiting five, six minutes; when he comes back
at least he's a bit more pleasant.

      
'You say you've a van outside, Mr, er ...'
      
'Weasel.'