Barnaby had remained silent. To his mind a woman who can burn salad can burn anything.
‘You’re looking a bit more cheery this morning, chief.’ Sergeant Troy entered, interrupting this voluptuous reverie. He was looking less cheery himself. Rather pale and wan, in fact.
‘Went out celebrating last night,’ said Barnaby. ‘My son-in-law took us all up the Smoke to dinner. To the River Cafe.’
‘I’ve heard about it. By the river.’
‘That’s the place.’
‘Maureen saw it on the telly.’
‘Actually, he’s just got into the National, Nico.’
‘Brilliant,’ enthused Troy. National? National what?
Barnaby put his papers in a bulldog clip then really clocked his sergeant for the first time.
‘You all right, Troy?’
‘Sir?’
‘You look a bit peaky.’
The fact was that Sergeant Troy had had a strange and most disturbing dream. In the dream he had awoken, tried to rise and found himself unable to do anything other than roll his head heavily from side to side. His limbs felt extraordinary, flat and empty like an unstuffed rag doll’s. Then he saw, on the floor by the bed, a neat stack of bones and knew them to be his own. Gruesome or what? Troy blamed this nightmare on the visit to the hospital. And the churchyard next to the Rectory hadn’t helped matters.
‘I’m all right, chief.’ Cockeyed fancies, even involuntary ones, were best kept to oneself. The force didn’t go a bundle on neurotics. Sergeant Troy carried his trenchcoat over to the old-fashioned hat stand and rejoiced in the sensation of warm flesh on living bone. He said, ‘Have you contacted the hospital?’
‘Yes. They’ve done the brain scan and found a clot. They’re operating this morning.’
‘What about feedback from our man on the spot?’
‘Nothing doing,’ replied Barnaby. ‘Nobody in, nobody out. Not even the postman. Presumably Jackson’s still in the main house, “looking after Lionel”.’
‘What a sick scene. Talk about decadent.’ Troy was pleased to be able to make use of decadent. He’d got the word from the sleeve notes of Cabaret ages ago. It was surprising how difficult it was to drop it into general conversation when you considered how much of it there was about.
‘If we phrase it very carefully we can try a public appeal,’ said Barnaby. ‘Simply describe the stolen cycle, the time it was swiped and suggest the direction it may have been taking. Someone must have seen him.’
‘We could say what he was wearing.’
‘For God’s sake! First, we don’t know what he was wearing. Second, we keep any reference to Jackson, however oblique, absolutely out of it. Once he’s nailed, I want no accusations of pre-trial prejudice getting him off. Or the civil liberties mob breathing down our necks.’
‘The press’ll be on to it though. Nobody’s going to believe a public appeal over a missing push bike.’
‘So we’ll stonewall. Won’t be the first time.’ Barnaby slipped his notes into an envelope file, took his jacket from the back of his chair and put it on. Troy held the door open and the DCI strode away from his office. The working day proper had begun.
That same morning Hetty Leathers arrived at the Old Rectory at her usual time of 9 a.m. but without Candy. The dog was coping much better now at being left alone and, as Mrs Lawrence was absent, Hetty felt she should perhaps ask the Reverend’s permission to bring Candy to work.
She went in through the front door, carrying straight through to the kitchen. There she found Jackson wearing a pair of stained jeans and a sleeveless vest, scraping Marmite onto burned toast. His bare feet were up on the table. There was no sign of Lionel.
Hetty turned round and walked straight out again. Out of the kitchen and out of the house. As she made to go down the drive, a movement through the library window caught her eye. She crossed over, rested her hands on the sill and peered in. She insisted afterwards to Pauline that she had no thought of spying and this was probably true. What was also true was that she very much wished she’d walked on by.
The Reverend was crouching over Mrs Lawrence’s writing desk. Letters were strewn everywhere. As Hetty watched, he tore another envelope, already opened, practically apart in his eagerness to rip out its contents. A second to stare angrily at the piece of paper and it joined the others on the floor. He paused, panting for a moment, then started to tug furiously at a little drawer at the back of the desk that would not open.
Hetty watched in shocked amazement. The Reverend’s face, distorted by a fear-filled hungriness that could hardly be contained and scarlet with effort, was barely recognisable. He put his foot against the leg of the desk and this time using both hands heaved on the drawer with all his might. Hetty ran away.