Master of the Moor (22 page)

Stephen pulled the hair off and dropped it onto the carpet. He put on the zipper jacket and went out and got into the car. There he sat for a moment or two, breathing deeply, for his heart was racing and his hands were unsteady. He had to concentrate on keeping his hands from trembling as he drove out of Tace Way and down into the village.

The sun had set and the moor lay in a bluish twilight,
not yet dark enough for any but the most prudent motorist to have his lights on. There was hardly any traffic. He only passed one car on his way to Thirlton. A wind was blowing, sweeping the grass and heather of Thirlton Plain with that brushing effect, bending the few, already wind-twisted, trees along the roadside. The sky was heavy with bands of grey cloud, between which, all over the west, the remains of the sunset lay in blood-red streaks.

Now that he was approaching the spot he had been yearning to revisit ever since he had left it on Saturday, he had that curious choking feeling of one’s heart in one’s mouth. That hair could have got into his pocket in other ways. From proximity with some garment of Lyn’s in the cupboard, from when Lyn had last washed the jacket. An aversion to going near the pony level seemed to take him by the throat. Yet he couldn’t make himself drive more slowly, his foot on the accelerator refused to obey him. He was compelled steadily on, out of Thirlton village, over the first hump of the moor, out onto the empty road that wound into Bow Dale. And then, as the road curved round the base of Knamber Foin, the point where the dale opened its whole prospect, he slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a juddering stop. He stopped as dead and as shockingly as if something had burst out from among the boulders and had dashed across the road a yard in front of him.

Down at the ‘bridge’ the road was ablaze with car lights. The lights threw a brilliant white radiance, still and constant, up into the dark blue air. It was like seeing the site of some frightful, multiple accident, from afar off on a motorway, for amid the white light blue police car lights rippled on and off, on and off, and yellow lights winked in a slow regular rhythm.

Stephen’s body broke out in a flood of sweat. He
could see a crowd of people moving about, black silhouettes in the dusk, illuminated into men when they moved into the encompassment of the lights. He sat still, sweating. The engine had stalled. Down there the blue lights on the roof of a police car rippled, on and off, as pretty, as diverting, as a shop-window display. The yellow lights winked. But Lyn was alive, he had heard her speak, seen her in the living flesh and the living golden hair!

To drive down there and find out …? It was impossible. He doubted if he were physically capable of it. He drew in a deep breath and at the second attempt managed to start the car. The steering wheel was wet with sweat from his hands. Once he had turned round and had his back to the brightness and the activity down there in the valley, he put his own lights on. Then he drove back slowly, tensing his body, hunched over the wheel. A police car with its lamp flashing passed him in Thirlton village.

There was news on the television at ten. He had half an hour to wait and he paced up and down. Suppose there was nothing on the news, nothing tonight, tomorrow, ever? Suppose he had hallucinated what he had seen in Bow Dale just as he had hallucinated killing Lyn? He got on to his knees on the carpet and crawled about, looking for the hair he had dropped. Instead of the hair he found a handbag of Lyn’s, a brown leather one, fallen out of a chair between the back and the seat. But at last, after a long time, he did find the hair. He held it between his fingers, drawing it out like a bowstring. It was Lyn’s hair and it was real. Or he thought it was real. If he went to Rip’s Cavern now would he find Lyn’s hair lying in the box with Marianne Price’s and Ann Morgan’s, or had the placing of it there also been a dream and an illusion?

If there was nothing on the news at ten he would go up to Goughdale and into the mine and look for the sack and the hair. Even if it were pitch dark, moonless midnight, he would go. The girl announcer’s face swam on to the screen as he pressed the switch. His watch must be slow, he had missed the headlines.

He crouched on the settee, watching the President of the United States shaking hands with an African prime minister, union leaders talking about a projected rail strike, the search for survivors of an air crash in Turkey. There was going to be nothing, nothing, and he was mad. He shivered, clenching his fists.

The announcer came back. She moved a paper on the desk in front of her, said in that indifferent silky voice: ‘The body of a third victim of the Vangmoor murderer was found this afternoon at the entrance to former lead mine workings near the village of Thirlton. The body has been identified as that of a journalist on a local newspaper, Harriet Jane Crozier, aged twenty-four …’

Stephen jumped to his feet and let out a crow of laughter.

It had
been there since Saturday, its presence had prevented the cat from jumping onto his favourite place, but it was only now that Stephen really saw the book that was lying on the chestnut leaf table.
Muse of Fire, A Life of Alfred Osborn Tace
, by Irving J. Schuyler. Harriet Crozier had brought it to lend it to him as she had promised. He understood now. Lyn had gone and had left the back door unlocked for him and later, much later, Harriet had come with the book. There had been no one at home but by that time the storm had begun. The back door was not only unlocked but a little ajar and she had come in to shelter from the rain. There he had found her, dressed as Lyn often dressed, as a thousand girls did in summertime, in jeans and a tee-shirt, waiting for him, watching the storm.

And that brown leather bag he had found wasn’t
Lyn’s, it was Harriet’s. He took it from the chair seat where he had left it and looked inside. The blue, green and white scarf was there, folded up, her reporter’s notebook, a purse, a credit card and a cheque book, a jumble of pens and pencils, make-up and loose coins. Stephen couldn’t help laughing again. It was so enormously funny. As far as his safety was concerned, nothing could have worked out better for him. He picked up the book. There was no inscription in it, nothing to show it had been the property of Harriet or the
Echo
. Filled with an exquisite relief, he took the book upstairs to bed with him and fell asleep over it, waking in the morning to find it still lying on the covers and still open halfway through chapter one, so deeply had he slept and without stirring.

It was late, after nine. There seemed something absurd in the idea of going to work. He made himself a large breakfast, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, fried bread, and he opened a can of sausages. It was the first proper meal he had eaten for days and when he looked in the glass he fancied he had lost weight. His face looked drawn and there were hollows under his cheekbones.

After breakfast — and after washing up, for though alone, he wasn’t going to sink into squalor — he went up to his study, and because he was calm now and relaxed, knowing himself to be a sane rational man, he was able to mend the crack in Tace’s head without difficulty. While the glue was drying he took out all his books and dusted and rearranged them. It continued to pour with rain and he had to have the light on.

Odds and ends of paint were kept in a cupboard under the sink. He found a tin of black undercoat, half-full. The paint itself was a very dark grey, not quite black. He spread old copies of the
Echo
out on the floor and set the bust of Tace on them and began carefully
painting it with the undercoat, paying special attention to the mended head. While he was painting he noticed Harriet Crozier’s name above an article about Three Towns girls cutting off and dyeing their hair and he started laughing again. To have made such a mistake! But of course it had been as dark as it would be now without the light on and he had never, either down there in the living room or in the old pony level, looked at his victim’s face.

The painting done, he got out the vacuum cleaner and cleaned all the carpets and upholstery in the house. He dusted the rooms. At 1.30 he cooked himself the rest of the sausages with cheese on toast and then he took the car and drove through the rain down into Hilderbridge to shop for more food. The town was full of police, there were policemen and police cars everywhere, and when he came back into Chesney he saw that there were lights on in the gatehouse lodge and police cars parked outside.

The clean and tidy appearance of the house pleased him. From five o’clock onwards he watched television, later fetching himself a meal of cold chicken and precooked chips and packaged salad. For most of the evening he went on eating, chocolate bars, packets of crisps and nuts. He watched every news programme, switching from channel to channel to get all of them. There was an interview with the assistant chief constable of the county who had been censured by someone or other for his refusal to call in the help of Scotland Yard. There was an interview with a man called Martin Smith who said that he had been out with Harriet Crozier a couple of times. He would never forgive himself if he lived to be a hundred for not taking her out on Saturday afternoon instead of going by himself to the first football match of the season which was anyway
cancelled due to the storm. Stephen didn’t go to bed till midnight.

The following day passed in much the same way, pleasantly, peacefully, though without the painting or the shopping. The rain was sporadic and gave up altogether in the late afternoon. Stephen walked as far as Ringer’s Foin and back and for the rest of the evening he watched television, eating pork pie and tomatoes and crisps and chocolate bars. It was years, not since he was a child, that he had eaten so much. Chief Superintendent Malm came on the BBC news at nine to say he was confident they would catch the Vangmoor killer this time. They were optimistic. A few more days or even hours would see the end of it.

Next day, having eaten heartily at breakfast, Stephen went back to work.

Dadda wasn’t so far sunk in misery as to spare Stephen. He looked up with sunken eyes from the inlay he was working on.

‘You’ve come back then. You’ve bloody condescended to come back. Had another one of your bloody viruses, have you?’

‘Afraid I have, Dadda. Sorry about that. I always turn up like a bad penny, though, don’t I?’

‘Aye. Have you ever thought about your bloody future if Whalbys’ goes bust? Noticed all the small businesses going bloody bust in the Three Towns this year, have you? Or d’you reckon I can do the lot on me own, a man with a sick mind like me?’

‘Good Lord, Dadda, you haven’t got a sick mind.’

Dadda turned and spat into the sawdust. ‘You’ve got a wife, you want to remember that, you’ll maybe have kids. What are you going to live on when Whalbys’ goes down the bloody drain?’

‘Actually,’ said Stephen, ‘I haven’t got a wife. Not any more.’ He gave a bright, strained smile. ‘She’s left me, we’ve split up. She walked out on me on Saturday.’

The table creaked as Dadda leant on it to heave himself up. He stood staring at Stephen with great arms hanging. ‘What are you saying?’

‘You heard me, Dadda. Lyn’s left me.’

‘I’ll not believe it!’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to. Good Lord, Dadda, we’re not the first couple to split up. We’ll get over, by or through it.’

Dadda said in a deep, dark, bitter voice, ‘There’s history repeating itself, there’s the sins of the fathers visited on the children.’

It had happened almost before Stephen knew it. One moment he was standing next to Dadda, trying to avoid his eye, the next he found himself clutched in a bear hug, held in a crushing embrace, while Dadda murmured over him just as he had done all those years ago when Brenda first went away.

‘Like father, like son,’ crooned Dadda. ‘We’ll be all in all to each other now, all in all to each other.’

Stephen was more frightened by this now than he had been then. Then it had at any rate seemed natural, natural even to the child. Now there was something horrible about being embraced by this gorilla-like man who on his own admission was halfway to madness. As a child he hadn’t wanted to hurt Dadda’s feelings by protesting, later on he had given way to Dadda in everything for the sake of peace and not to offend. He had always believed he loved Dadda. Suddenly he understood how much he hated him. With this surge of hatred he pulled himself violently away, digging his elbows into Dadda’s chest, bracing his back and jerking himself free, so that Dadda’s arms flew wide and he
staggered — huge, powerful Dadda actually staggered. He gave a low cry. Stephen ran upstairs and got behind the ranks of chaises longues and three-piece suites. He stood against the wall, listening, but there were no more sounds from downstairs.

After a while he crept to the top of the stairs and looked down. Dadda was sitting on a Hepplewhite chair with the whole of the upper part of his body prone on the table top, his head on the table between his outstretched arms. Stephen tip-toed away and went back to the Victorian love seat he had been working on in oyster-coloured velvet and to which he hadn’t given a moment since the previous Thursday. At lunchtime Dadda was gone, though Stephen hadn’t heard him leave. He went out himself and was crossing the square to the Market Burger House when someone touched his sleeve.

It was Troth.

‘Oh, not
again
,’ Stephen said. He felt enough confidence to say that, though if it had been Lyn who was dead he might not have. ‘You don’t want to talk to me
again
?’

‘You don’t know what we want,’ said Troth in that tone of cunning triumph a stupid man uses when he thinks he has got the better of an adversary. ‘I never said. I might be merely warning you about parking your car on a yellow line.’ A fresh outcrop of acne made the near approach of his face offensive. Stephen slightly retreated. ‘It could be just that,’ Troth said. ‘That’s what an innocent man would presume.’

‘Good Lord, I can read, you know, I can watch TV. Any bloke in my position would jolly well
know
you want to talk to me about this last murder. What are we waiting for? Let’s get on with it, let’s get going.’