The Magus of Hay(144)

Until the stick was snatched away. The cricket bat taken from Kapoor. Robin turned, and the man behind him was like seven feet tall, wearing a suit and a tie. A second man, less formally dressed, looking like shit, accepted the stick from the tall guy and offered it to Robin.



‘This is my colleague, DC Vaynor,’ Bliss said, low-voiced. ‘You’ve done very well, pal, but let’s not get overexcited.’

Robin made out the Mr Punch profile of Gwyn Arthur Jones silhouetted against the Cricket Shop doorway, as Bliss and the tall guy moved in on Gore.

The tall guy had handcuffs ready.

‘George Turrell,’ Bliss said brightly, ‘I’m arresting you for assault. You don’t have to say a friggin’ thing, but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say…’

Robin leaned back into his own fist, knuckles in his aching spine.

‘Goddamn cops,’ he said to Kapoor, blood trickling from his nose. ‘Same the world over.’

She ran past a couple walking slowly down and crossed the road and into the narrow lane, not much more than a track by the side of the vet’s clinic. Mrs Villiers could only have come down here.

A little moonwashed car park at the end of the track, under an industrial building, a small, windowless concrete castle, rough lawned areas in front of it. You could read the sign: sewage works.

A short slope down to a brown pebble beach, creamed by the moon as it slid into the water.

The Wye. Wider than you expected, an arcade of black trees on the far bank. To your right, another dip, another narrow beach alongside a stream feeding into the river.

The mouth of the Dulas Brook, had to be. Where they found the effigy of the King. All the way from the mountains and it met the Wye beside a sewage works.

If you didn’t know that, it would look charming, quite exotic in the moonlight. Two cars were parked here for the night, and there were lights in a house just up the bank.

And was that actually Mrs Villiers?



Sitting in her long coat, leaning against the strong wooden fence of a private dwelling, high up on the bank of the Dulas Brook. Half shadowed, not whistling, just watching the moonlight on the water?

Merrily walked towards her, then stopped.

There was someone else, just below the concrete edge of the car park, also looking across the river, and then turning. You could hardly avoid talking to her.

‘Are you OK?’ Merrily said.

She wore a tunic, elegant and expensive, over black leggings. Both hands clasped around a long champagne flute between her knees. Her make-up was smudged and her eyes were pale under the moon.

‘Could be better, darling,’ she said.





66

A social basis


‘NO, GEORGE,’ BLISS said. ‘You haven’t been charged with anything yet. But if we have to detain you against your will we’ll probably start with Assault Causing Actual Bodily Harm.’

Elsewhere in the Community Centre, someone was photographing Thorogood’s bumps and abrasions. He was still refusing to go to A and E in Hereford.

A metal Anglepoise lamp had been brought into the room they were using for interviews. Bliss had it turned away from himself but wasn’t so crass as to point it into Gore Turrell’s face.

‘Of course that’d just be a holding charge,’ he said. ‘The interesting stuff… we’ll get to that.’ He looked across at Vaynor. ‘Darth, as there’s no lock on the door, perhaps you could carry your chair over and sit with your back to it. We don’t want any bugger disturbing us. Especially any bugger with a PhD.’

‘Still at Cusop, boss,’ Vaynor said.

Also some kind of Oxford graduate but without the college motto tattooed on his forehead.

‘Yeh, well, let’s hope nobody invites him back. Tell him half of Rector’s land’s in Dyfed-Powys’s domain, that should do it. Now then.’ Bliss beamed across the desk. ‘Before we switch on the tape, anything you’d like to tell us, George?’

Turrell was compact and muscular, fit-looking, but not exactly Mr Personality. In other circumstances you might even think he was a Regiment man.



‘I was attacked in the street, ultimately by two men and I defended myself.’

‘And very ably, George, if I may say so. I’m told you’re a bit of a fitness freak. Lots of hill running.’

‘That’s a crime?’

‘Go running on your own?’

‘Usually.’

‘Ever meet other runners?’

‘Occasionally.’

Bliss leaned back, tapping an arm of his chair. ‘Women?’

‘Some.’

‘Where were you off to tonight when you were… attacked?’