Billy Grace caught hold of his arm, frowning, then steered him along the stream’s edge, away from PC Winterson, the corpse and the waterfall roar, the old bastard diagnosing aloud.
‘Occasional apparent difficulties with balance…’
‘Piss off!’
‘… and a slight, residual slurring of the speech perhaps discernible only to those of us who’ve known you for some years. Still getting the double vision, are we, Francis?’
‘Just gerroff my friggin’ case.’ Bliss dragged his arm away. ‘How about you confine yourself, Dr Grace, to suggesting whether this looks like an accident, or suicide – or if there are complications. Other words, did he fall or was he dumped?’
‘You’re a fool to yourself, Francis.’
‘I’ve been cleared by the medics.’
‘And does one of them owe you a favour, perchance?’
‘Up yours, Billy.’
Bliss steadied himself to walk back to PC Winterson. She seemed smaller. Sometimes his vision was like looking down the wrong end of a telescope.
‘You said funny. Funny how, Tamsin?’
‘Funny peculiar, sir. Seemed very peculiar to me. At least—’
‘Was it you who found out about this?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve a friend who lives here, and the man with the dog… theirs was the first house he came to after he saw what he thought was a body in the pool. So she rang me, and I reported it and then came here with my friend and I realized there was nothing we could do, and she saw the hat and she was like, Oh God, it’s Mr Hambling. So I went up to his house, and the door was unlocked and—’
‘Tell you what,’ Bliss said in an urgent kind of despair. ‘Show me.’
8
No strings
WHEN SHE PUT down the phone, an emphatic echo clanged in the air, as if something had shut her out.
This phone was good at finality: 1950s black Bakelite, heavy as a small barbell. A present from Jane. Useful for keeping the bills down, the kid had said – you couldn’t wait to hang up.
That was when she was a kid.
In the scullery office, silvery early light was draped in the window overlooking the narrowest part of the garden and the churchyard wall. The scullery ceiling was supported by a sixteenth-century beam, gouged and pitted, the colour of old tobacco. Too big for the job now, it had probably been central to whatever the vicarage had been in its young days.
She’d never thought about that before. Never had time.
Guessed you’d be up, Jane had said just now, on the phone. I’m just, like, ringing to see if you’re OK?
Merrily telling her she was every bit as OK as she was last night, when Jane had last rung. Asking what the weather was like down there in West Wales.
Crap, but that’s all right. They can’t get started anyway. Still waiting for the geofizz.
Merrily smiling to herself, knowing how long the kid had been waiting to talk like an archaeologist. Smiling to herself because there was nobody else to smile to. There’d been a change of plan. Jane had gone for the West Wales dig instead of Wiltshire because they’d agreed to take Eirion as well, for a month.
The only difference was it had meant leaving a week earlier. Not a problem for Eirion, who was at university. Not a problem for Jane who’d missed her final two weeks at high school… and thus the appalling Prom.
Slight problem for Merrily.
Back to the kitchen and into the main hall, to the front door, past the framed print of Holman Hunt’s Light of the World. Housewarming present from Uncle Ted, the head churchwarden, to whom she’d been a disappointment, a neglecter of the parish. Here was Jesus Christ with his lantern, outside the kind of weathered old door you found here in Ledwardine, his eyes baggy with sorrow, compassion and a hint of – what – disillusion? Disappointment? Him too?
Avoiding the eyes, she went out and stopped herself from locking the front door behind her. This was Ledwardine. Whoever locked their doors in Ledwardine?
Everybody, now.
A wave for Jim Prosser, cutting the string on the morning papers dumped outside the Eight Till Late – Jim, who kept announcing that he and Brenda were getting out, going back to Wales, somewhere bleak and stony where no incomers came in demanding lychees and fresh figs.
On the edge of the market square, now, opposite the crab-like, oak-pillared market hall, mostly used these days as a bus shelter. Nobody sheltering there from today’s intermittent rain. The cobbles glistening muddily on the square, old guttering dribbling around the roofs of the black and whites.
Ledwardine: an old slapper who could look after herself. She’d be there when they were all long dead, probably looking much the same despite the efforts of various developers and the whisper of money slid under council tables.