The Vacant Casualty (11 page)

It took a few minutes for order to be restored. The tables were put back in place, cups of tea re-poured and returned, and at last enough of a pretence of decorum returned to the meeting for
Lord Selvington to invite in another candidate.

The next person to come through the door was also a man, but quite a different proposition from Brian Blessed in every way. He stood in the centre of the room with the proud gait of a matador,
tall coloured feathers sprouting from his headdress, a long black cloak swathing the rest of him from head to foot. He looked gauntly down at them all, one by one, and they were each struck by the
thunderous certainty of his gaze, which seemed to say, ‘You know me as your superior; I see you and have the power to crush you.’

‘Now, you must be Angharad,’ said Selvington.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ muttered the mayor.

‘SPEAK NOT, WHITE MAN,’ said the apparition, leaping onto a table and upsetting most of the cups of tea. ‘I know your tricks! I would out-spell you with my magic.
A-WOOO-YAH!’ And he back-flipped off the table, getting one of his feet caught in his own gown and hitting the floor with a painful-sounding crunch.

‘Ah, fuck!’ said a small voice from within the swirling cloaks.

‘Timmy?’ said Selvington, looking up. ‘Is that you?’

The cloaks were pulled back at once to reveal the furious sage, looking more over-serious than ever. ‘SPEAK NOT TO ME, MAN-WHORE! I CURSE YOU TO A THOUSAND YEARS OF WALKING ON HOT BROKEN
ORANGINA BOTTLES.’

‘Timmy, get
up
!’ said Lord Selvington, rising himself. ‘This is not the place for your stupid pranks. Look, even your face paint’s starting to come off. You could
have broken your ankle with that jump, and then you’d miss the bloody boat race. Come on, get the hell on home with you, and I’m stopping your allowance for a month.’

‘I CURSE YOU, WHITE MAN!’ shouted the apparition again as it sped limping out of the door, to the relief of pretty much everyone except the Miss Quimples, who clapped excitedly.
Meanwhile Mrs Trench dutifully mopped at the many cups of spilled tea.

‘NEXT!’ bellowed Lord Selvington.

‘Ah, there you are, Dad, old chap,’ said a posh young man, coming in and sitting down in the chair reserved for the interviewees. ‘I was wondering if I could borrow a bit of
money.’ Sam immediately recognized him as the man whom he and Bradley had nearly crashed into yesterday.

‘What’s his name again?’ asked Bradley.

‘Horace. Or Sir Egbert, I think,’ whispered Sam.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Selvington. ‘This is not the place! I’ve just had your idiot brother in here making an absolute bloody mockery of this meeting.’

‘Oh yes, I know that. I gave him a lift up here. Thought it was rather a jolly wheeze.’

‘And you thought you’d come in here afterwards and try to knock me up for some cash?’

‘Well, yes, I did rather – just a couple of thousand to see me until my next book advance comes through.’

‘Don’t you know we’re trying to replace Terry Fair-breath?’

‘Oh yes, that’s right. I knew there was something else. I want to be on the Parish Council too.’

‘Well, you can’t! Just go over there and sit in the bloody corner, will you, and we can talk about this later!’

‘But what about Timmy? He’ll be waiting for me in the car.’

‘He can fly home with his spirit guide for all I care. NEXT!’

Horace (or Sir Egbert) came and sat next to Sam in the corner, where they said a cheery hallo to each other as the next candidate came in.

‘Now
you
must be Professor Angharad Trefusis,’ said Lord Selvington to the six-year-old child who came in and sat on the chair. The mayor slapped his hand against his
forehead, while Sam settled in for a bit of a snooze.

‘W
ELL
,
THAT WAS JOLLY
, wasn’t it?’ said Horace as he handed Sam a cigarette. They were standing beside the
door as the others made their way out behind them.

‘What, the bit where your father turned down your request for money, calling you a pointless wastrel and piece of pond scum, or where the little girl wet herself during his questioning
over her policies?’

‘Yes, the search for Terry’s replacement goes on. Hey, listen, never mind the old man. He’s just cross with me because of the whole “public intellectual” thing I
insist on doing, he thinks it’s beneath the dignity of the family.’

‘What’s that, then?’

‘Oh, you know – I knock out a book now and then, a novel here, bit of psychogeography there. New one’s my reminiscences of doing crack with W.G. Sebald on the fens. Appear on
Newsnight
now and then, just to keep old Jozza happy.’

‘Jozza?’

‘Yes – you know Jozza. That chap who introduces
Newsnight
. Jozza Paxo. Jeremy Oxocube. Old Pimply Paxington. My old man was at Cambridge with him, they used to gad about on
the river and so forth. So I pop up on
Newsnight
from time to time to chat about this and that. Load of old rot, really, but keeps me busy between games of croquet.’

‘And your proper name
is
Sir Egbert, right?’

‘Ah – not any more, no.’

‘Oh dear. What’s happened?’

‘Well, it would appear I’m now Lord Ickham of High-church.’

‘What’s this, a promotion?’

‘If you want to put it that way, yes. My great-uncle passed away, on my mother’s side.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

‘Well, he was a hundred and seven.’

‘Ah. So his hang-gliding days were over.’

‘Oh, good Lord, yes! He had to stop that way back in March. Although, to be honest, even then it was on the orders of the local magistrate. He said, “Wear some clothes, or
don’t do it at all.” So he chose not to do it at all.’

‘He was a man of principle.’

‘Well, that was Uncle Hugo all over, you see. Could never bear to back down from a position. He was that way when it came to the Nazis, and the same when it came to nude
hang-gliding.’

‘A staunch opponent of Hitler,’ said Sam.

Lord Ickham looked awkward for a moment. ‘Y-y-y-yes . . . Yes. Let’s say that he was that.’ He swiftly changed the subject. ‘You haven’t seen an ogre round here by
any chance, have you?’

This made Sam’s head swim for a moment as he tried to work out how to answer diplomatically. The first remark that came to mind was, ‘No, but I saw Gandalf having a wazz behind the
bike sheds earlier.’ Instead he managed to mumble, ‘Er, no, I’m pretty sure that would have stuck in my mind. Why, er . . . why do you ask?’ he ventured, with some
misgiving. People who abused alcohol and handed out amphetamines could be a lot of fun, but those who saw ogres tended to be acid-soaked hippies or paranoid schizophrenics, neither of whose company
he found very relaxing.

Horace was frowning as he scanned the bushes and trees in the corner of the graveyard. ‘Oh, no reason,’ he said lightly, still glancing over his shoulder. ‘Hey look, anyway
– you seemed interested in some pills last time we met. Can I sort you out with anything?’

Sam looked over
his
shoulder to check that Bradley wasn’t nearby. He seemed to be chatting to the vicar for the time being. ‘That would be great,’ he said. ‘What
have you got?’

‘Well, now, let’s not be too obvious. Come back here behind this sarcophagus and I’ll see if I can’t sort you out with something . . .’

The two young men retreated to a place of greater privacy and there conducted some business with which both sides were very happy: Horace taking away the best part of a hundred pounds, and Sam
pocketing eight pills and a small clear plastic envelope of white powder.

‘Now, the pills are very nice indeed,’ Horace was explaining. ‘A very special batch.’

‘I’ve not seen any like this before,’ said Sam, holding one of the pills up to look at it. ‘What is it?’

At that moment the vicar and the detective appeared around the side of the church from the opposite direction they had expected, and rather than try to make up a reason why he was standing in a
graveyard buying pills from the minor aristocracy, Sam flung the tablet into his mouth. Then for no reason in particular he threw one arm behind him, leant back against the sarcophagus and affected
a highly theatrical and suspicious air of nonchalance, staring with deep fascination at the new Lord Ickham, nodding and saying, ‘Mm-hmm, mm-hmm,’ as though agreeing with him, even
though the other man wasn’t saying anything at all.

‘You
idiot
,’ he thought to himself. ‘You could easily have said that you were getting an aspirin off him, feeling like your headache might come back. There was no need
to take the pill! You’ve never even taken these things before. How fast do they act?’

‘Reverend Archie Smallcreak, meet Sam Easton. Sam’s a writer.’

‘How lovely to meet you,’ said the little man, shaking his hand somewhat damply. ‘You seem remarkably well turned out, may I say. I always understood the cliché of the
young writer these days was of an alcoholic drug addict.’

‘Ha-HAAAH!’ yelled Sam manically. ‘Steady on,’ he thought. ‘They haven’t even kicked in yet.’

‘What do you write?’ enquired the vicar, smiling.

‘Oh,’ said Sam, sure he was making a fool of himself and determined not to say any of the titles of his awful books. ‘Oh, just . . . just shit, really.’

‘I see,’ said Smallcreak. ‘Well, if that’s your game, you should try and get into the loo-book business. That
I Before E (Except After C)
book was jolly good fun
– I bought six copies!’

‘Jolly good,’ said Sam softly, keeping his composure by replaying in his mind the scene from
The Omen
where the priest gets impaled from above by an iron spike.

‘Archie was suggesting that we visit the library. Miss Elvesdon will be most happy to help us, apparently, and she’s there this afternoon.’

‘I’m just as concerned for Terry Fairbreath’s welfare as anyone,’ said the Reverend. ‘He was a gentle soul, very well read and always good company. I’m still
quite new here, but at the back of my mind is a lurking fear that there may have been other missing persons cases, and I was thinking you should have a look at the newspaper archives.’

‘Bloody good plan,’ said Sam. ‘Er, sorry,’ he added, and did the sign of the cross. ‘Surely it can’t be kicking in this quickly,’ he wondered. A moment
before, the young intellectual aristocrat had slipped into the shadows at the mention of drugs and so Bradley and Sam walked back to their car alone.

‘
I Before E
,’ said Sam spitefully. ‘
I Before Bollocks
, more like!’

‘That’s not a very nice thing to say, Sam,’ said the detective complacently.

‘Not at all,’ said Sam, getting into the car. ‘That’s what my follow-up parody of
I Before E
was called. Bloody thing didn’t sell a copy.’

‘Oh, well. At least the Reverend liked it.’

‘You’re not really listening, are you?’

‘I think the library’s just on the left, down here . . .’ said Bradley, pulling away.

T
HE LIBRARY WAS
housed in what had once been a somewhat grim-looking Victorian schoolhouse on a deserted side street. As they were standing outside
waiting to be admitted, Sam noticed something strange further up the road: what looked like a hundred or so bags of rubbish by the kerb. It seemed totally out of keeping with the rest of the area.
Instead of being cleared up, as he thought anything unsightly around there would surely be at pretty much a moment’s notice, it had been cordoned off with roadworks signs.

They pressed the bell again and looked doubtfully up at the library building. It didn’t seem as though there was anyone inside, or indeed that it had been open any time in the past twenty
years, but presently Miss Elvesdon came to the door and opened it.

‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen,’ she said demurely.

Sam was about to reply that it was perfectly all right when a strange, deep rumbling sound stopped him. For a moment he thought it was his stomach, or Bradley’s, and then for an even more
awful one, that it was Miss Elvesdon’s. But it was too deep, too loud. It seemed to come up from beneath them to shake the cobblestones.

‘What—’ began Bradley.

‘This way, please, gentlemen,’ the librarian said briskly, ushering them inside. Then she was marching them down the corridor towards her small office at the back of the building.
‘Early closing today, but I stayed open for you. It’s nice to have official guests,’ she said. ‘Or exciting for me, anyway. We mostly get the little old ladies round here.
One so rarely has male company . . .’

‘Is it just me,’ said Bradley into Sam’s ear, ‘or was that the largest fart I’ve ever heard in my life?’

Sam refused to reply. Partly because he couldn’t think of anything to say, except that he’d never felt an underground fart (or rather, an underground explosion) before, and partly
because his mind was starting to race.

Seen close up, Miss Elvesdon wasn’t quite so fusty as Sam had first imagined. The ‘prim librarian’ was clearly a look that she had cultivated on a professional basis, but
behind the large glasses and deliberately unshowy hair with strands of grey, she was a slim forty-year-old, who was in conspicuously too good a shape to be a country librarian.

As he walked behind her, it began to occur to Sam that trapped as he was here in this tiny town, besides this morning’s haughty waitress, this was the first female he’d seen to whom
he could summon up even the mildest attraction. Added to this, he noticed that the individual candle bulbs placed along the walls were giving a slight strobing effect that was making his mind race
excitedly.

‘Oh no,’ he thought. ‘It’s starting already . . . Look straight ahead. Take deep breaths. I’m horny and trapped in what looks very much like the 1930s, and
I’ve just taken a barbiturate of unknown strength.’

Looking straight ahead, though, Sam found himself following the movement of Miss Elvesdon’s hips beneath her brown wool skirt. Stop it!

‘Here we are,’ she said, leading them to a desk. Behind it several metal storage cabinets stood open and there were many cardboard boxes laid out on the tables, a few near the top
showing that they contained old editions of the local newspaper, the
Mumford Argus and Advertiser.