Road Rage (25 page)

“In the event, it didn’t work. It was disastrous. But I’ll come to that later, shall I?”

There are about twenty-five different varieties of wild blackberry growing in the British Isles. Most people think only one kind is to be found, but you have only to look at the difference in leaf shapes, not to mention the size, shape, and color of the berries, to understand how they vary. The frail-looking young woman in a faded tracksuit who was picking blackberries, filling a wicker basket, and eating as many as she picked informed Martin Cook of these facts unasked.

“Interesting,” said Cook. “What are you going to do with those?”

“Cook them with elderberries and crab apples. Make an autumn compote.” She gave Burton Lowry an appraising look. Cook was used to that. His DC attracted black and white women alike. “I don’t suppose you’ve come here for a lesson in Elves’ cuisine, have you?”

“I’m looking for Gary Wilson and Quilla Rice.”

“You won’t find them here, they’ve gone. Had a bit of harassment in mind, did you? I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me.”

Cook ignored that. He wouldn’t go on ignoring such provocation, but he would for a while.

“And what might your name be?”

The young woman shrugged. “It
might
be any number of things. My mother wanted to call me Tracy and my father liked Rosamund but in fact what they actually called me is Christine. Christine Colville. What’s yours?” When she got no answer she said to Lowry, “Would you like a blackberry?”

“No, thanks.”

Cook turned away and looked into the depths of the wood. The first tree houses at Elder Ditches were just
visible in the distance. He could see someone sitting in a clearing, apparently holding a musical instrument, but all was silent.

“Is there someone”—he hardly knew how to put it—“well, in charge here?”

“You want me to take you to our leader?”

“If you’ve got one, yes.”

“Oh, we have one,” she said. “The King of the Wood. Haven’t you heard of him?”

The name came back to Cook. He remembered the statement to the
Kingsmarkham Courier
. “He’s called Conrad Tarling?”

She nodded. She picked up her basket, turned to them and beckoned. “Follow me.” As she walked along she plucked bunches of elderberries from the bushes which filled about an acre before the tall trees were reached. Cook and Lowry walked along behind her.

“I’ll come back for the crab apples,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of the King
in
the Wood, have you?”

“You just said it was Tarling.”

“Not that one,” she said scornfully. “In Italy, by the lake of Nemi, in ancient times. This man was called the King in the Wood. He walked round and round this tree, nervous and afraid, armed with a sword, ever watchful, because he knew men would come and fight him, would try to kill him, so that the killer could be the next King.”

“Oh, yes?” said Cook, but Lowry said, “He was a priest and a murderer and sooner or later he would be murdered and the man who killed him would be priest in his stead. Such was the rule of the sacred grove.”

Christine Colville smiled, but Cook said, “The what?”

It sounded a lot like Sacred Globe to him. She eyed his puzzled face and began to laugh. Cook hadn’t the faintest idea what she and Lowry had been talking about, but he
was pretty sure she at least was sending him up. When they reached the trees, when they were among them, Christine Colville set down her basket, lifted her head, and whistled. It was a whistle like a bird calling—pu-wee, pu-wee.

Faces appeared among the branches.

“Someone needs to talk to the King,” she said.

It was then that Conrad Tarling showed himself, as if called forth by the magic word “king,” the Open Sesame word. He emerged from a tree house onto the platform on all fours. He was naked to the waist, his shaven head bluish and gleaming.

“Police,” said Cook. “I’d like to talk to you.”

Tarling retreated behind the flap of tarpaulin that served his crow’s nest as a front door. Cook was wondering what to do now when he reappeared, wrapped up this time in his all-enveloping sand-colored cloak. For a moment Cook thought he would swing down from this considerable height, hand over hand on this branch and that, foot over foot on protuberances on the gnarled trunk. But instead he flicked his fingers at someone unseen and within minutes Christine and a man in shorts and anorak had propped a ladder up against the tree.

Face to face with Cook in the clearing, he was a good six inches taller. His head was rather small, his neck long. The face was an arresting one, hard, clean-cut, as if carved from wood.

Cook asked him about Gary Wilson and Quilla Rice, but the King of the Wood wanted identification before saying a word. Having gravely studied Cook’s warrant card, he asked in a grand manner what the police wanted them for.

“To ask them a few questions.”

Tarling laughed. He had an audience now, half a dozen Elves squatting on the platforms of their tree houses, lis
tening, while Christine Colville and her companion in the anorak sat close by, cross-legged on the grass. Tarling’s voice was very deep and soft, yet ringing. They could probably hear what he said in Pomfret, Cook thought bitterly.

“That’s what you always say. The words of totalitarianism. A few questions. A spot of interrogation. A smidgen of inquisition. And then the fun and games in the police cell—is that it?”

“Where do you people keep your vehicles?”

Another laugh, this time directed at the gallery. “Ugly sort of word that, isn’t it? ‘Vehicle.’ It’s what I’d call a police word, like ‘proceeding’ and ‘inquiry.’ Those of us who have
vehicles
keep them in a field kindly, very very kindly, and I mean that, lent to us by Mr. Canning, a farmer who is an angel of light compared with others of his kind and, like us, opposed to this damnable bypass.”

“I see. And where might this angel’s field be?”

“Between Framhurst and Myfleet. Goland’s Farm. But Quilla and Gary didn’t use it. They haven’t a
vehicle
. They must have hitched, they usually do.” Picking up his basket and turning his attention to an elder tree, Tarling said less aggressively, “They’ll be back in a week or so. For your information, as you’d doubtless put it your
good
self, they’ve gone to the SPECIES rally in Wales and they’ll soon be back. No one believes this environmental assessment is the end, you know. Things don’t happen so easily as that.”

“And you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you have a”—Cook rejected the offending word—“a car?”

If Cook was unacquainted with the works of Lewis Carroll, Lowry was not. Wexford too would have recognized the quotation but to Cook it was gibberish. He
turned away in disgust. Tarling’s words and the tree people’s consequent laughter pursued him.

“I have answered three questions and that is enough,” Said his father, “Don’t give yourself airs. Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off or I’ll kick you downstairs.”

Walking back to the car, he said to Lowry, “I’m getting a bit pissed off with you pulling your university rank on me.

“What did I do?” said Lowry indignantly.

Barry Vine was in the car with Pemberton. They had been at the Savesbury Deeps camp but appeared to have learned less than Cook had. Half of the tree people had gone, many of them on other pilgrimages to seek other violations and injustices.

“Your words?” said Cook belligerently.

“Theirs,” said Vine with a shrug. “I’m off to Framhurst, have a cup of tea in the village.”

A surprised glance was the response to that. Vine explained.

“I’d like to know where they get that muck from they call nonlactic soy milk. I mean, can you buy it in a supermarket, or is it only supplied to restaurants as against retail outlets? And when we’ve refreshed ourselves Jim and I will go and have a word with Farmer Canning.”

Nicky Weaver knew a lot about Brendan Royall’s Winnebago by this time. She knew its registration number, that its color was white, that it was three years old, and that he was usually but not invariably alone in it.

The best piece of information she had about it was that it had been seen that morning on the M25, heading for the M2, by a police car on speed control. That rather
reduced the impact of the piece of news she had just had phoned in from the Elder Ditches camp by DS Cook, that Royall might be found at a SPECIES rally in Wales. Of course, she had checked out the rally and discovered it was to be in Neath, near Glencastle Forest, and due to start on Tuesday. Please God, they would have found those hostages by Tuesday …

If Royall was planning to go there he had been heading in the wrong direction. It wasn’t likely he would go near his parents, but she couldn’t take that for granted. On the other hand, it was practically certain he would pay a visit to the Panicks.

She walked among the desks in the old gym, looking at computer screens, watching for anything new that might have come in. Everyone knew about the SPECIES rally by now. It was an important event in the protesters’ calendar. Should the force be there, a presence, among all those activists?

She glanced out of one of the long windows on the car park side. A car was coming in that she didn’t recognize, a small white Mercedes, probably come to fetch Dora Wexford. Back in Myringham, at the Regional Crime Squad, she would have known every car that came in and out and would have questioned any unfamiliar one. They were nearly all unfamiliar here … No harm in noting down the registration number though. Better safe than sorry. She did so as the car turned the corner around the back of the building and disappeared from sight.

“Let’s just get this straight,” said Burden. “Gloves, the one in gloves, you saw less of him than of any of the others. You saw him on the Wednesday morning at breakfast but not again till you were due to leave. Is that right?”

“Not quite. I saw him on the Wednesday but not again till the Friday, only it was at midday on the Friday.”

“Right. Now food. What did they give you to eat? No, I’m perfectly serious. Food could be a clue as to where you were.”

“Do you mean, what did they give us that Wednesday evening?”

“For a start, yes.”

“I don’t think it will be of much help. There were three large pizzas, cooked but cold, some more of the white bread, five slices of processed cheese, and five apples. The apples were badly bruised. Oh, and more instant coffee and that nonlactic stuff. If we wanted anything else to drink we just got it ourselves from the water tap. And since we didn’t have a cup or a glass or anything we had to put our mouths under the tap.”

Dora drank some of the tea Archbold had brought in to them and took a chocolate biscuit with the appreciation of someone who has recently subsisted on a diet of cold pizza and sliced bread.

“It was Tattoo and the Hermaphrodite that evening. Tattoo and Rubber Face were probably the strongest and the most—well, the most ruthless of them, or that’s the impression I had, but the Hermaphrodite was certainly the weakest, and I could see the moment they came in what Owen had in mind.

“What Roxane did, it wasn’t deliberate, I mean it wasn’t part of a plot, it was just spontaneous. She jumped up and said to Tattoo that she wanted to talk to him. ‘I want to talk to you,’ she said. And then she said, ‘And I want you to talk to us.’ He just stood there, looking at her. Or I suppose he was looking at her—you can’t tell when a person’s wearing one of those hoods.

“ ‘You’ve left us all day without food,’ she said, or something like that. ‘You’ve left us all day without any
thing to eat. It’s outrageous what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘What have we done? We are innocent people. We have done no one any harm. You give us hardly anything to drink,’ she said, ‘and this is the first food we’ve had for ten hours. What is it you’re doing?’ she said. ‘What do you want?’ He didn’t say a word, just stood there, very close to her.

“The Hermaphrodite was holding the tray, a large heavy tray with all that food on it. I could see Owen keying himself up and Ryan too, poor kid, playing at adventures. The door was shut but it wasn’t locked. Roxane—oh, she’s a courageous girl—she looked into Tattoo’s face, his mask, it was about six inches from her face, and she said, ‘Answer me. Answer me, you bastard!’

“He hit her. He hit her as hard as he could across the head. That was when his sleeve fell back, he was wearing a shirt with quite loose sleeves, and I saw the tattoo, a butterfly on his left forearm. As Roxane fell over on the bed Ryan made a rush for the Hermaphrodite. Well, the Hermaphrodite dropped that tray and food went everywhere, pizzas upside down on the nearest bed, apples rolling across the floor, and the tray making a terrific crash. Ryan had hold of him or her by the shoulders, Tattoo sprang round and pulled out a gun. Owen had got the door open but he never actually got out.

“Everything happened at once, it’s quite hard to sort it all out, but the gun went off. I still can’t tell you if it was real or not. It made a loud bang and whatever was fired out of it went into the woodwork around the window. Would a replica gun make a noise like that?”

“It might,” said Burden. “Any sort of gun makes a noise.”

“I don’t actually think it was aimed at anyone. Kitty was screaming her head off. She was lying on her bed, drumming her fists into the bed and screaming. Maybe it
was that or maybe it was the gun, but Owen hesitated and you know what they say about the person who hesitates. The Hermaphrodite aimed a kick at Ryan, a really high hard kick, and it caught him in the stomach and sent him flying, clutching at his body. Roxane was groaning, holding her face. I didn’t do anything, I’m afraid, I just sat there. That gun going off had rather mesmerized me.

“Tattoo must have had handcuffs with him because he got them onto Owen. It was quite remarkable the way while this was all going on neither of those two spoke a word. Owen was shouting and cursing, threatening them with all sorts of punishment to come, ‘They’ll shut you up in high security forever,’ that kind of thing, Ryan was rolling on the floor whimpering, Roxane was groaning, and Kitty was screaming, but those two were utterly silent. I can tell you, it was sinister, it was a lot more effective than anything they could have said.