Murder Being Once Done (26 page)

A mobile shop selling soft drinks, crisps and chocolate had already been parked in the avenue, and a queue of hungry youth had formed alongside it. The stronger-minded were staking claims to desirable sites and banging in tent pegs. Through the gates came a thin but steady stream of new arrivals, on foot, in cars and on motor-cycles. Wexford jerked his head in the direction of the quarry and walked down the steps.

The lucky ones – those who had taken a day off work or missed a college lecture – had got there in the morning and established their camps. A boy in a Moroccan burnous was frying sausages over a calor-gas burner while his friends sat cross-legged beside him, entertaining him vocally and on a guitar. The Kingsbrook flows through Sundays park, dipping under the Forby Road and meandering between willows and alders close to the wall. It had already become a bathing place. Several campers were splashing about in the water, the girls in bras and panties, the boys in the black scants that served as underpants or swimming trunks. Crossing the little wooden bridge, Burden looked the other way. He kept his eyes so determinedly averted that he almost fell over a couple who lay embraced in the long grass. Wexford laughed.

‘“And thou,”’ he said, ‘“what needest with thy tribe’s black tents who hast the red pavilion of my heart?” There’s going to be a lot of that going on, Mike, so you’d best get used to it. Letts’ll have to put a couple of men on that quarry if we don’t want gate-crashers.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Burden. ‘You couldn’t get a motorbike in that way.’ He added viciously: ‘Personally, I couldn’t care less who gets in free to Silk’s bloody festival as long as they don’t make trouble.’

On the Sundays side the chalk slope fell away unwalled; on the other it was rather feebly protected by broken chestnut paling and barbed wire. Beyond the paling, beyond a narrow strip of grass, the gardens of three houses in The Pathway were visible. Each had a tall new fence with its own gate. Wexford looked down into the quarry. It was about twenty feet deep, its sides overgrown with brambles and honeysuckle and wild roses. The roses were in full bloom, thousands of flat shell-pink blossoms showing against the dark shrubby growth and the golden blaze of gorse. Here and there rose the slim silver trunks of birches. In the quarry depths was a little natural lawn of turf scattered with harebells. One of the flowers seemed to spiral up into the air, and then Wexford saw it was not a flower at all but a butterfly, a Chalkhill Blue, harebell-coloured, azure-winged.

‘Pity they had to build those houses. It rather spoils things, doesn’t it?’

Burden nodded. ‘These days,’ he said, ‘I sometimes think you have to go about with your eyes half-closed or a permanent crick in your neck.’

‘It’ll still be lovely at night, though, especially if there’s a moon. I’m looking forward to hearing Betti Ho. She sings those anti-pollution ballads, and if there’s anything we do agree on, Mike, it’s stopping pollution. You’ll like Miss Ho. I must admit I want to hear this Vedast bloke do his stuff, too.’

‘I get enough of him at home,’ said Burden gloomily. ‘John has his sickly love stuff churning out night and day.’

They turned back and walked along under the willows. A boy in the river splashed Wexford, wetting his trouser legs, and Burden shouted angrily at him, but Wexford only laughed.