December (52 page)

      
'Gwyn,' he said, 'how can I explain a feeling?'

      
Bloody feeble
that
sounded. Never been more grateful in his life to hear, behind him, the rattling
of the cast-iron ring handle and the door getting itself pushed open, a little
awkwardly.

      
As you would expect from a woman in a powered wheelchair encumbered
by a giant blue cycling cape.

      
'Good evening,' said Gwyn Arthur Jones, all proprietorial, the
way these policemen could get during an investigation.

      
'Isabel,' said Eddie. 'What brings you out this cold night?
Superintendent, this is Miss Isabel Pugh, who handles the church accounts and
everybody else's for miles around.'

      
'Gwyn Arthur Jones,' said Gwyn Arthur pleasantly.
      
Isabel Pugh nodded briefly to him,
looked around, and then suddenly spun her chair, forcing Eddie up against a pew
end with the wheels trapping his legs.

      
'Eddie Edwards, what the hell is going on here? Funny brown
candles on the altar, and now it's a police matter. What is it we don't know?'

      
'Hey now . .
  
Eddie put
his hands on the chair's armrests. 'Ease up, now, girl.'

      
'And what,' said Gwyn Arthur, leaning down, 'have you heard
about these "funny candles". Miss Pugh?'

      
He was, Eddie decided, about to become a touch exasperated,
suspecting, perhaps, that somebody was, to put it crudely, pissing up his leg.
Isabel, meanwhile, was explaining drily that if you didn't know about the
candles you were either stone deaf or you weren't a resident of Ystrad Ddu.

      
'I see.' Gwyn Arthur straightened up. 'Very well. I shall leave
you two to have a little chat and see what information you remember that you had
forgotten, if that makes any sense. What I shall do, I think, is wander along
to the vicarage to see if the Reverend Simon St John has returned.'

      
He smiled. A certain menace in that smile now, Eddie Edwards
thought.

      
Isabel waited silently for a moment watching the church door
after it had closed behind the policeman.

      
The Tilley lamp made a gassy sound. Eddie thought, as he had
thought many times, what a tragedy it was, this lovely-looking girl imprisoned
in metal and in Ystrad Ddu.

      
Satisfied that they were at last alone, she regarded him inquiringly.

      
He took a deep breath. In his experience Miss Isabel Pugh did
not appreciate people fancy-dancing around a difficult subject.

      
'Human fat,' he said hoarsely. 'The bloody candles were made
with human fat.'

      
'Shi-it.' Isabel sank back into her chair as if she'd been pushed.
Oh, he'd surprised her all right, no question about that.

      
'Aye, that too, I shouldn't wonder. Shit.' And he told her
about sending the candles away for analysis, knowing she'd ask the same
questions as the copper and forestalling her by sighing heavily.

      
'It's the vicar, see.'
      
'Simon?'

      
'If that bugger doesn't know more than he's saying about those
candles I'm an Englishman.'

      
Somehow, this time, she did not look quite so surprised, merely
asking, 'Where is he?'

      
And so Eddie told her of all the times he'd been knocking on
the vicarage door, the place in darkness. 'I thought we were friends,' he said.
'I thought he was about to confide in me. I...'

      
He took a chance.

      
'... I know there is something about the old Abbey.'
      
Isabel looked up at him,
golden-streaked hair gleaming with speckles of rain in the lantern-light. All
the aggression had evaporated from her voice.

      
'He came to see me, Eddie. He caught me by surprise, because
he wanted to know about the Abbey, what happened to me there. Threw me at
first, the vicar asking that. We were going to talk about it. We almost did,
but ...'

      
'Aye. I know how it is.' He didn't, in fact, know anybody to
whom Isabel Pugh had spoken regarding the circumstances of her accident.

      
'And then,' she said, 'I thought about it when he'd gone and I
decided that I did want to. I wanted to talk to him. He wasn't like a vicar at
all, he was just like ... like a chap. With problems. Most vicars, they never
admit to having problems same as the rest of us. At first - you know the way I
am - at first, I was trying to shock him.'

      
Isabel smiled. 'No shocking
him
. So the next night I rang him up. I wanted to talk, Eddie.' The
smile had vanished. 'Wanted
desperately
to talk.'

      
He could understand her desperation, the way some local people
regarded her. And her always so proud and self-sufficient. Would never look for
sympathy among the natives of Ystrad Ddu.

      
'And he was a different man,' Isabel said. 'Spoke on the phone
as if we had never met. Cold. Remote. So remote.'

      
Eddie saw the loneliness in her eyes. He felt so helpless,
wished there was something meaningful he could do for her, say to her, this
bright, clever girl condemned to Ystrad Ddu and memories of the bloody Abbey.

      
'I tell you one thing.' He put a hand on her blue-caped
shoulder. 'That man is scared. He's more scared than you or I.'

      
'And I'm supposed to find that comforting?' Isabel said. 'Jesus,
did you
have
to put them back?'
      
'What?'

      
'One of those reconstructions, is it?'
      
'What are you ...'
      
And then he saw.
      
'Oh, my Christ!'

      
Stiff in the candleholders on the altar, shiny in the
lamplight, and yellowish, like chicken bones.

      
Eddie Edwards closed his eyes, his heart feeling like it would
burst through his overcoat.
      
'Eddie?'

      
Just the one eye struggled open to watch white light shivering
on stone, the shadow of an occupied wheelchair painting the floor between the
pews and the altar.

      
Clutching his chest, as if to restrain his bolting heart,
Eddie dared to raise his gaze, and one was smoking -
smoking!

      
As if it had just been blown out!

      
'Eddie?' Isabel Pugh reached up from her chair, grabbed his arm.
'Eddie!'

X

Monkscock

Several times, Shelley had
been on the point of calling the police to report her husband missing.

      
It was all so terribly difficult. The police would hardly be
doing their job if they didn't see it as a too-remarkable coincidence, a man disappearing
the same night as a horrific death-crash outside his home, resulting in two
visits on the same day to the same prestigious dwelling in a reputedly 'select'
part of the Cotswolds.

      
She'd been glad when Martin Broadbank had arrived without
telephoning first. If he'd phoned she'd have been obliged to put him off.

      
It had soon become obvious that he had something on his mind
and was unsure how to tell her. When she'd put her dilemma to him, he'd looked
immediately uncomfortable, so she knew it must concern Tom.

      
'Shelley, I don't know whether ...' Martin fingered his coffee
cup. He was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a quilted body-warmer over his
polo shirt. A gold identity bracelet on his left wrist said, not quite gentry.
Which she rather liked. He was a rogue, of course; as a businessman, he'd
conspired with Stephen Case to bring Tom to the dinner-table. But that had been
done in all innocence; he was an innocent sort of rogue, the bastard.

      
'Oh hell,' Martin said abruptly. 'The fact is, Meryl called me.
She says she's with Tom.'

      
'With Tom?' Shelley's heart leapt. And then confusion seized it.
'Where?'

      
'That's the problem. She wouldn't say. She said she was
helping him. Something about "spheres of existence …"'
      
Shelley sat down opposite him,
hands flat on the table.

      
'Shelley, this is all getting a bit beyond me. I've never felt
quite so ...'

      
He looked up at her. Bemused was the least of it.

      
Meryl. The housekeeper. The woman dressed alluringly in black,
the sort of housekeeper you might get from an escort agency. The woman who had
passed out when Tom ...

      
'There's an aspect of Meryl you should know about,' Martin said
reluctantly. 'She's obsessed with ...' He looked embarrassed '... I don't know,
psychic nonsense. We're supposed to have a ghost and she talks to the thing all
the time. I've always thought it was pretty harmless. I mean, it
has
been pretty damned harmless,
until... oh God, this is ridiculous.'

      
'No it isn't,' Shelley said.

      
'Thanks.'

      
'Christ, I'm not saying it to make
you
feel better, Martin! I've had to live with it for over thirteen
years, and it's not bloody ridiculous. If you say the woman's obsessed, that's ...
that's not harmless at all.'

      
Remembering now how kind Meryl had been, telephoning hotels
and places to see if Tom had booked in. Oh yes, really bloody kind.

      
'Are you trying to tell me,' she said tightly, 'that your housekeeper
is almost as psychologically disturbed as my husband? Are you telling me these
two are shacked up together somewhere, smoothing each other's psyches? By God,
you've set us all up, haven't you, Martin?'

      
'I'm sorry,' Martin said humbly. 'I had no idea, believe me. Meryl
accused me of playing God, inviting you and Tom and Case and then sticking the
Tulleys on the list just for the hell of it. It ... seemed like an amusing
thing to do.'
      
'Ha ha,' Shelley said bitterly.

      
'I mean, I was being perfectly genuine about the Love-Storey
displays, all that.'

      
'Do you pay this woman? Meryl?'

      
'You make her sound like a prostitute. It isn't like that at
all. It's just been a sort of comfortable arrangement, for us both.'

      
Shelley asked him, 'Have you
any
idea where they might have gone?'

      
He shook his head.

      
'Well, this is bloody marvellous,' Shelley said, defeated.
      
And then the back door opened, and
Vanessa was standing there.

      
'Hullo,' Martin said cheerfully. 'How are you this evening?'

      
The poor child looked so forlorn. Her glasses were misted; it
was a wonder she could see where she was going.

      
'Hey,' said Shelley brightly, 'where've you been, lady? I thought
you were watching telly.'

      
Vanessa said nothing. Shelley became aware of Weasel in the shadows
behind her. Weasel mumbled, 'Any news?'

      
Shelley glanced at Martin, who shrugged.

      
'Martin's had a call from his housekeeper. She's apparently
located Tom and has whisked him off somewhere. For a spot of ... shall we call
it
counselling
?

      
Weasel said, 'That ... wossername? Morticia?'

      
Martin smiled. Shelley said, with half an eye on Vanessa,
'It's actually not that funny, Weasel. We don't know where they've gone. Also...
Morticia is apparently fascinated by Tom in a ... a non-physical sense, if you
know what I mean. If she was only after his body, everything would be so much
simpler.'

      
Vanessa was expressionless. Shelley was pretty sure she wouldn't
have understood any of this.

      
'He'll be back tomorrow,' she told the child. 'By the time you
get home from school he'll be back. With a present, he tells me. Go on. Go and
watch telly. I'll bring you some supper through on a tray. With Vienetta to
follow, how about that?'

      
It cut no ice with Vanessa tonight. But she went through to the
drawing-room.
     
'She's such a good
kid,' Shelley said sadly