‘Very convincing. Thank you for telling me. Do you know the man’s name? The man who died?’
‘No. Don’t think I ever did. Look, must call in on you next time I’m up there on a buying expedition.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’
She shut down the phone. The old lady was stumping towards her, florid-faced.
‘He don’t believe nothing.’ Peered closer at Betty. ‘I bets you do. You got the look. You go there, just on dawn, you’ll see.’
Betty didn’t smile.
‘Where?’
‘I just said. Where the brook comes in. You go down where the brook comes in. But don’t bloody take him. Bloody Pakis.’
Betty said, ‘Can I just…? You asked Mr Oliver if he’d smelled something.’
‘What?’
‘In the shop.’ Betty pointed. ‘That shop.’
The old lady said, ‘You smelled him yet?’
‘The man who died?’
‘You smelled him yet?’
‘No, but—’
‘You will.’
And she was off, hands rammed into the pockets of her stockman’s coat, Kapoor watching her, trying to smile.
‘You get used to Tessie.’
‘Who is she, exactly?’
‘Exactly – I dunno. All I know is she’s got what you’d call a chequered reputation. Married a rich old bloke called Mr Villiers decades ago when she was a young fing. Landed one of them tall terraced houses, bottom of Castle Street. When he snuffed it, they reckon she drank his money away and now she lets out rooms. She also sees fings. She’s harmless.’
‘So who did she see… where the brook…?’
‘The Dulas Brook. Where it enters the Wye. Little beach down by the sewage works. Don’t ask.’
‘What about the smell?’ Betty said.
‘You brought that up.’
‘I know. Jeeter, might she be talking about the man who died here? Drug overdose? Not found for a week?’
‘Shit,’ Kapoor said. ‘Who told you that? We agreed not to say noffing.’
‘Who did?’
‘Few of us. Not till you was settled, anyway. Not that it means anyfing, but nobody wants to fink of a niffy corpse in the building. He was just a junkie, far’s I know, and it was years and years ago. So any smell…’
Betty said. ‘Do you know his name?’
‘Jerry. I fink. He’s one of those faces the old-timers mention in passing and glance at each other meaningfully and if there’s somebody like me around noffing else gets said. But the idea of some old hippy haunting the place… Or his pong. Do me a favour.’ Kapoor paused, looking at her. ‘You don’t feel uneasy here, do you?’
Well, yes, she did, and not only in the shop. Even in the town centre, now, she sometimes had the feeling of being watched, and not just as a pair of nice legs in a short skirt. Not stalked exactly, just watched. Carrying somebody’s lingering gaze around like a clammy miasma, the way it had happened years ago, before Robin, with the high priest of a coven she’d left pretty quickly.
‘Of course not,’ Betty said.
18
The word
WHEN SHE GOT in, the phone was ringing.
‘I nearly cried off, Merrily. Nearly rang you and said I couldn’t do it after all.’
Plump, comfy Martin Longbeach. As was.
Oh God.
‘What brought that on, Martin?’
‘Couldn’t sleep hardly at all last night. I was thinking I should get out altogether, move to another part of the country. East Anglia, Cornwall. Where nobody’s talking about me.’
Inevitable that, sooner or later, this was going to come up.
‘All they’re saying,’ she said, ‘is that you had a bereavement and a subsequent breakdown.’
Forgive me.
‘But then I thought, how often do you and Jane have a chance of some days out together?’
Might have been a good time to tell him about Jane not being here, how the situation had changed. She didn’t.
‘Anyway. Friday morning be all right to bring my stuff, Merrily?’
‘Or you can move in then. Whatever’s best for you.’
‘That would be good. You’ve been very kind to me, Merrily.’
‘Listen, I’m not coming on Sunday, Martin. You’re on your own.’
Better all round if she wasn’t there to listen to his sermon. If he was planning to unload something on the congregation, she’d rather be out of the village.
Unload something on the…?
Oh, Jesus wept. Merrily clapped a hand over the mouthpiece of the Bakelite phone, took a deep, deep breath. In Martin’s particularly conservative part of Herefordshire, no matter how far this faded into history, it would never be a laughing matter. Nor here, except possibly in the saloon bar of the Ox. To which you could only hope the intelligence had not yet permeated.