CHAPTER
32
S
HE JOINED A
line of cars snaking through the single-track lane that narrowed down into the valley where the village of Iford lay. It was not hard to be patient, she found, as her car trickled down behind others between the hedges. She needed time, because the sudden appearance of the truth shining through that single sheet of music on the music stand had been, in her mind, like a bike slipping its chain. She must get her head back in gear. As she edged forward, her headlights lighting up the bare hawthorn and twiggy dead grass in their turn, she tried to concentrate.
This time it was not Poppy but a trio of lads in fluorescent jackets who waved her into the car park surrounding the village hall. She parked, got out and stood by the car, wondering where Andrew would be. She felt out of place, alone and with dire things on her mind, among the calling-out and door-slamming of couples and kids getting wellies from the boots of cars, remembering their sparklers, insisting on gloves, putting hoods up and hats on. Naked white light from the swinging doors of the hall sliced on and off the surface of the car park with the coming and going of people buying drinks and food inside. They stood around in dark clumps, or stepped out of the glow from the hall in twos and threes to join a straggly line of darkening, thickly clothed figures, like a medieval procession to Calvary, which swung slowly round the side of the building, through the gate at the back of the car park and up into the high field behind. At the top, the Scouts’ bonfire stood waiting behind its barrier of rope. Sara reckoned there must be over a thousand people here. In the dark out on that field, what hope had she? Any number of them could be Andrew. Or Cosmo.
‘Gosh,
hi
!’ Poppy’s voice was like a small explosion four feet away. ‘
You’re
here!’ Can in one hand and food in the other, she brought with her the scent of fried onions with a sharp top note of ketchup.
‘I was wondering where Andrew was,’ Sara said, glad of the dark which must at least partly hide the horror of running into the girlfriend of the man whose arrest she had come to arrange. ‘Loads of people, aren’t there?’ she said, as if surprised.
Poppy nodded, looking round and beaming, before sinking her face back into a paper-wrapped burger the size of a side plate.
As casually as she could Sara said, ‘Have you seen him around?’
Poppy said, chewing and pointing with the hand holding the can, ‘Near the gate. He’s waiting for Valerie. You should get one of these,’ she said, taking another bite. ‘Anyway, may see you up there. Got to help the boys with the guy. Bye!’ She disappeared into the dark, leaving a fried-onion cloud behind her.
Andrew, with his arms crossed in front of him, stood in the dark, almost behind the hedge, by the side of the gate leading into the car park. Cars were now arriving intermittently, their headlights arcing in the same predictable swing across the lane, over the stone gatepost and along the tarmac in front of his feet. The three car-park lads stood in a group on the verge on the far side of the lane, having a fag. Sara ran to him.
‘Andrew!’
‘Sara! Sara? I thought you weren’t coming! Dar—’
‘No, listen! Listen! You’ve got to listen! I’ve found something out. I know what happened now. I know. That music you left, I’ve seen, your cello part, I’ve got to tell you . . .’ But to Sara’s alarm, from somewhere in the dark behind Andrew a rustling noise began softly and grew louder. Someone rather heavy was making his way out of the long grass behind the hedge and coming nearer. Cosmo loomed out suddenly and appeared unsmiling at Andrew’s side.
‘Don’t recommend the bushes. Nettles. At a very awkward height.’
Then he turned to Sara with his usual expression of recognition untouched by either welcome or curiosity. Sara could not recall ever having heard him say hello to anyone.
Andrew said, ‘Cosmo’s been waiting here with me. I’m stuck here waiting for Valerie. She’s coming in her own car. What was that were you saying just now?’
Sara thought quickly. How much had Cosmo heard? If she led Andrew away to speak to him privately, he could easily slip away. But perhaps he hadn’t heard anything, or hadn’t cottoned on to what she meant; he certainly looked calm enough. Shivering slightly, she turned her face up to Andrew. Her heart was thumping and her voice was shriller than she intended it to be.
‘I wanted to talk to you first, Andrew. About Adele. There are things you don’t know. Aren’t there, Cosmo?’ Cosmo swallowed hard and stared at her, shaking his head, pretending not to understand.
Through the gate from the lane now came a metallic trundling noise at which they all turned. Half a dozen duffle-coated boys, accompanied by Poppy, were pushing along a large wheelbarrow which held a life-sized guy dressed in breeches, frock coat, at least two jumpers, gloves, boots and three scarves. A pair of boxer shorts flapped out of one sleeve like a dandy’s handkerchief. It lolled rakishly in the wheelbarrow, its whole head bandaged and wearing a plumed tricorn hat, as if it were being carted home from a marvellous Hogarthian piss-up rather than towards its scorching demise. As they rolled by, one of the boys looked up. He waved. ‘Thanks for the old clothes! It’s really brilliant!’ Cosmo, transfixed by other concerns, did not respond. Poppy called out a loud ‘Hey!’ and waved as she went past. Sara, who had been staring at the guy, looked at Cosmo.
‘Whose old clothes? Whose old clothes are they?’ she asked.
Brightly, as if relieved to be asked a question he could answer, Cosmo explained, ‘It’s just some old stuff of ours. They hadn’t got much to dress the guy in. We found some extra clothes for it, that’s all.’
‘Sara, what is all this about?’ Andrew sounded confused. ‘What’s this thing I’m supposed not to know?’ She turned away from him, wishing that he would do something, anything, rather than just stare in that puzzled way at Cosmo and back at her as if he weren’t sure who to believe.
She looked hard at Cosmo. ‘Look, Cosmo, you might as well admit it. Look, I
know
! I know all about it! Admit it! You used Adele
shamelessly,
you abused her and then you . . . you’ve been cheating Helene, cheating us all! Haven’t you! Haven’t you!’
But he would not admit it. Even in the raw November night air he was managing to blush patchily. He was shaking his head with a stupid search-me look on his face, while from his greasy lips came lying platitudes. ‘Ah, sorry, I’m just not with you. I’m not getting this at all, I’m afraid.’ Either the cold or her anger was making her shake. Whatever it was, it was unstoppable and she could hardly speak.
Andrew placed a hand on her arm and spoke softly. ‘Sara, it’s not altogether clear what you’re saying. Slow down.’
She snatched her arm away. ‘Ask him, Andrew, ask him! He knows! He knows what he’s done! She’s dead!’
Cosmo was shaking his head now, and with a shock Sara realised that in his gesture there was more than a suggestion of pity. ‘If, ah, Poppy was here, I’m sure she’d say that you’re terribly tense,’ he said, almost smoothly.
‘I am not!’ Sara shrieked, her fists clenched and her body rigid.
Andrew’s arm came heavily round her shoulders and he held her tightly against his side, his hands gripping her upper arms. ‘Steady on,’ he said, almost in her ear.
‘Andrew, let
go
of me, you’ve got to listen . . .’
‘Just . . . steady . . . on,’ he repeated. ‘I will listen, when you’re calm.’
Impatiently, Sara took a deep breath, and then another. Andrew’s hands relaxed a little, but he did not let her out of his embrace. Nobody spoke. Another car turned in. Faint tinned chunks of the Royal Fireworks Music being tannoyed from the back of the hall up to the bonfire site reached them from across the tarmac. Over by the door of the hall sparklers swirled in the dark. Sara stared. She blinked. The mirror-image of the silver scribbling in the air appeared on her retinae as streaks of dripped green paint, her own private Jackson Pollock. No one else sees what I see, she thought. She opened her eyes.
Andrew began, ‘Sara, let me take you down to the hall. Cosmo’s right. You are very stressed and—’
‘Andrew, shut up,’ Sara hissed, her voice trembling. ‘I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong with me. I have something to say.’
‘She thinks she’s fine. That’s a classic symptom,’ murmured Cosmo dolefully to Andrew, ‘of mental breakdown.’
‘Adele knew what you were doing,’ Sara said to Cosmo in a hard voice, ‘didn’t she? You were stealing Herve’s musical ideas, getting her to sing them to you backwards so you could pretend the work was yours—’
‘I was
not
,’ gasped Cosmo.
‘You thought she’d never understand it herself, let alone be able to tell anyone else, didn’t you?’
‘How dare you? That’s utter rubbish.’
‘Then she nearly came out with it at that rehearsal. Forwards, backwards. Remember, Cosmo?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said sulkily. ‘You’re mad. Adele was always saying odd things.’
‘Well, Sara, is that it? Satisfied now?’ asked Andrew.
‘You did, you did! It . . . it must have been you,’ Sara whimpered. Had she expected a confession? She had not anticipated that Cosmo would sound so convincingly aggrieved and she felt suddenly uncertain. Andrew placed his arm round her shoulder again. Expecting to hear his voice speaking some soothing thing to her, something about wrong ends of sticks, she was surprised to hear his voice suddenly raised.
‘Wait. Phil. He knew something. Where is Phil?’ he demanded. ‘His outburst at the rehearsal. When he was late. Wasn’t he supposed to have a costume fitting? He knew something. He said Adele had told him everything. She must have told him. He was enraged, upset. She must have told him.
He
knew, too. So where is he now?’
There was a silence while Cosmo went into his mystified headshaking routine again. Sara had not seen the outburst at the rehearsal and had, in the confusion of her discovery over the music, almost forgotten Phil. Poor Phil, weeping in the rose garden for love of Adele. Of course Adele would have told him.
‘If Sara’s wrong, he’s quite safe, isn’t he? Isn’t he, Cosmo? Nothing to worry about,’ Andrew said. It was a challenge.
Out of the dark at the top of the hill came the sound of the crowd cheering.
‘The guy! The clothes! The costume! You dressed the guy!’ screamed Sara, breaking out from the shelter of Andrew’s arm, pointing a shaking hand at Cosmo. ‘The guy! It’s Phil! They’re burning him! Phil!’ She tore away, making for the dark field. As she reached the end of the car park she looked up. Ahead, through the dark moving shapes of people she could see the flames of the bonfire just beginning to take hold.
CHAPTER
33
A
NDREW OVERTOOK HER
easily, turning and shouting back to her that he was running ahead to get the marshalls to douse the fire. She must come up as fast as she could and find him at the top. When Sara got to the top a few seconds later, the crowd had already parted to make way for the man who had just burst through, shouting that he was a police officer and demanding to see the person in charge. Sara could see him being directed towards a hut behind the rope barrier, at least ninety feet from the fire. He was still running but he was going to be too late.
She turned to look at the fire. It had been built broad and low, roughly circular, about twelve feet in diameter and eight feet high. It had been lit from behind and flames were now ripping up through the back in pale gashes. Wood splintered and sank lower, bedding down for extinction. She saw that Phil, trapped in layers of clothes that covered every bit of him, his entire head swathed in white bandages with a comic face drawn in black marker, and the ridiculous hat on top, had been perched right on top at the front. He lay on his back, his legs and arms crooked over the criss-crossing net of planks and branches. Sara looked frantically over to the hut. If they waited any longer, Phil would be dead. Of course he could be already, but she hadn’t time to consider that now. She slipped under the rope barrier and ran across the safety area of no-man’s land towards the fire. The marshalls, diverted by Andrew, were nowhere in sight but she bolted fast, fearing that someone from the crowd might stop her. People called out to her.
The heat and rush of the fire were in her face now. She blinked against its unbearable brightness. Sucking in a breath, she felt her throat fill with sharp hot sparks. Yet she was still running, and a loud roaring sound from the fire, or perhaps it was her own terrified breathing, surrounded her.
‘Phil! Phil! Oh, my God! Phil!’ She was screaming at the top of her lungs, wasting the breath she needed to run. She took one last, hot gulp of breath and threw herself at the wall of black wood, clambered up four or five feet and grabbed Phil’s foot and pulled. He stuck. She pulled again, and this time one side of his body came easing down towards her with a rush of crackling like gunfire. The other arm was still hooked over a branch at the top. She steadied herself, and with half of Phil’s body draped over one shoulder she pushed higher, stretching out with her one available hand to free the trapped arm. No, she had to reach even further. She strained upwards again under Phil’s crushing weight and heard herself groan. If only she could get another breath. A crash and a scream sounded together as a branch under her foot suddenly snapped. Others beneath it were giving way. Below her, rags of flame were weaving upwards trying to bind her feet, and sparks shot up to meet her face, finding her skin. As she fell backwards under Phil’s body she was aware of the smell of her own hair burning.
Fractions of a second or whole hours may have passed, she wasn’t sure. But at the same moment as she realised that the huge, heavy weight that had thumped her hard in the back was the ground, she was aware of Phil’s silly tricorn hat rolling past her across the cold grass. His head was still in it.
CHAPTER
34
I
T WAS NOT
a bad place to be. It was too bright, and the thing she was lying on was too high, but it was padded. Nice blanket, too. Not out of curiosity, for it did not seem to matter where exactly this was, but more for something to do, she moved her eyes. She could see mainly ceiling, dominated by the long glaring strip light. There was a door, light switches. Her eyes travelled down the wall and across to the notices pinned up there.
LAST PERSON IN HERE LEAVE SINK TIDY AND SWITCH OFF LIGHTS—THIS MEANS
you.
Toilet rolls etc in cupboard see caretaker for key
She could still read. That was good, so it was quite odd, really, that she should now burst into tears. She struggled to a sitting position and found Andrew next to her, helping her up. For the next few minutes she sobbed noisily into his chest, until slowly she fitted together her presence in this room and in this state with the last thing she remembered.
‘Phil? Oh, Phil . . .’ she wept.
Andrew’s tone of voice was the one he used when he had been, but was no longer, extremely angry. ‘Sara, the thing you pulled off the fire was the Scouts’ guy. It was just a guy, made out of stuffed tights, sawdust, bits of wire and old clothes. You could have got yourself killed. Rescuing a dummy.’
This was clearly not designed to stop her crying. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she repeated, through the stinging tears and snails of mucous that she was catching in Andrew’s handkerchief.
Andrew sighed and was silent for a few moments.
‘All right, all right now,’ he said, more kindly. ‘I’m angry with myself, too. You swept me along with you. I didn’t stop to think. Let’s just try to calm down now. Look, I’ve made you a cup of tea. Here.’
Sara took the cup and sipped. Swallowing helped, although it made her aware of how raw her throat was. Andrew moved away and sat down at the table, and poured himself tea from a huge aluminium teapot with Iford WI written on it in nail varnish. Sara was beginning to breathe normally. She swung her legs round and let them dangle over the edge of the high first-aid couch.
Andrew said, putting down his cup, ‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare move. I can’t cope with you on the loose just yet. I love you, you crazy bitch.’
Sara couldn’t cope with forgiveness. She gave a short, gasping half-laugh, and at the same time more tears began to fall. She wiped them away. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. I just suddenly felt sure. But I hadn’t worked it out.’
Andrew shook his head. ‘You sure hadn’t. And I shouldn’t have gone along. But supposing it had been Phil, and I hadn’t done anything . . . Anyway, it was a ridiculous idea. Christ, Sara, how crazy to think that anyone would kill someone by dressing them up as a guy and getting them burned, or even dispose of a body that way. It’d be impossible to keep it concealed, wouldn’t it, to say the least? Even if it was possible to do, with dozens of Boy Scouts running around, which is highly unlikely.’
Sara nodded meekly. ‘I’m sorry. I think I got everything a bit mixed up.’ She rubbed her head. ‘I really do feel quite unwell. Can you take me home? Where’s Valerie?’
Andrew looked at his watch. ‘Of course I’ll take you home. Valerie’s not coming. She rang to say there’s some new crisis with Linda the divorcing bridesmaid and she’s gone to Swindon till tomorrow. Her mother’s with the children. It’s only half past eight but I’d better not be late. I want you to stay here and rest a bit longer. I managed to stop them calling an ambulance, but I’ll have to give some explanation and then I’ll get you home quietly. I guess that’s what you want?’
‘Who’s they?’
‘Poppy, for one. She’s very concerned, she’s telling everybody it’s a sign of hypertension. She won’t shut up about the risk of thrombosis if it isn’t treated. Helene. The organisers. And about half the crowd, probably.’
Sara sighed and thought. ‘Tell them I was making a protest. About the ritual effigy burning of Catholics in the late twentieth century. My religious sensibilities deeply offended or something. That’ll do, I expect. God, I do feel a fool.’
‘You deserve to.’
‘But, Andrew, there is the question of the music,’ she began, sitting up properly. She was talking fast and feeling her heart begin to thump again. ‘I’m not mistaken there. Cosmo
has
plagiarised Herve’s stuff and he’s got to be stopped. Exposed for what he is. And Adele did . . . I mean, she did, well, I’m pretty sure she—’
‘Don’t make me say it,’ Andrew broke in, rising from his chair and coming towards her. ‘Don’t make me say I prefer you unconscious.’ He took her in a huge hug. ‘Cosmo seems to have made himself scarce for now. But I will go and see him. I’m not sure it’s a police matter, but at the very least he mustn’t go on hoodwinking his patron. Helene ought to know. All right?’
Sara’s head was giving her trouble. She had begun to cry again. ‘Please can I go home now?’