I shall lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help.
And there were the hills on the other side of the glass, stark and promising nothing as Merrily turned to the altar, thinking about a prayer for Tamsin Winterson.
‘Cosy as buggery, eh, lass?’
She spun. He could move quietly when he wanted to, in his old trainers, his frayed and etiolated denim jacket.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Bloody hours. What kept you?’
‘Traffic congestion. In Hay. There’s a missing girl.’
She told him about Tamsin. Huw walked back towards the door where he stood with his hands behind his back, hair like old silage around his bone-yellow dog collar. He stared down at a little sculpted mouse on the font lid.
‘Well, that’s a bit coincidental. I was going to tell you about another.’
‘Another what?’
Huw looked up through the window at the hill from whence might come help. Or not.
‘Another missing girl. Two, in fact,’ he said. ‘I’ve arranged for this bloke to meet us here in a hour. Local. Knows about Rector and a lot besides. Just gives me time to show you what makes Capel the strangest place I know.’
36
The Wire
MOST OF THE short journey to Hay, Betty was silent. They weren’t exactly not talking, but they certainly weren’t communicating. Too much had happened inside a single day. And a single night.
She’d been waiting for Robin in the hallway of the bungalow, with the folding table they were taking for a book display. She’d watched him prising himself from the truck at the side of the road, edging up the bungalow’s shared driveway with his back to the fence. She’d observed his attempts to look normal, absorb the pain. She’d winced at the stricken grin when she’d asked him,
‘So how was the Black Lion?’
‘It didn’t have you, Bets, otherwise…’
‘Now that’s odd. Because when I rang the Black Lion they said that nobody called Thorogood was staying there. So, in case you’d checked in with a woman under an assumed name, I described you.’
‘Jesus, Betty!’
‘And nobody—’
‘Maybe it was the Swan.’
‘And then I rang the Swan, just in case I’d got it wrong.’
‘I… What am I supposed to say?’
‘I’m taking it that you slept at Back Fold.’
He looked like he’d been mugged and left in the gutter. Bloody idiot.
‘All right,’ he’d said, ‘I slept at Back Fold and I’ve had better nights. OK?’
* * *
She hadn’t let it go and got it out of him in the end: for reasons so crazy and convoluted that he must indeed have been very pissed last night, Robin – a man who needed an orthopaedic mattress, for heaven’s sake – had slept in the bloody bath.
If she hadn’t been driving and it hadn’t been so bruised, she might have smacked his face.
He’d said that he’d had bad dreams. Somebody had told him he’d be living on the site of centuries of animal suffering and slaughter and he’d had a creepy encounter with a creepy old lady who whistled in the night and he’d had too much to drink, and he’d seen all the changes that were needed in the shop and it had all gotten on top of him and no, he was never gonna sleep there again, not until there was a bed and both of them were in it, OK?
‘Robin…’ Betty was peering beyond the line of cars. ‘What’s going on here?’ She saw police. Several police cars, police tape, vehicles being redirected, some turned away. ‘What is this?’
‘No idea,’ Robin said. ‘None of it was happening when I left.’
A policeman came round to Betty’s side window. She lowered it, and the policeman leaned in.
‘Did you, by any chance, park here yesterday, madam?’
Robin said, ‘I did.’
‘Until when?’ The cop came round to Robin’s side. ‘When did you leave?’
‘Um… this morning? Half-seven?’
‘Can you tell me where you were parked, exactly?’
‘I dunno, somewhere down the far end? The place you got all taped off?’
‘And you’re saying you were here all night?’ The expression in the policeman’s eyes altered, like traffic lights changing from amber to red.
‘Not me,’ Robin said. ‘The truck.’
‘This truck was here all night?’
Betty saw that half the car park had been taped off. The cop pointed to a space on the right.
‘Park there, please, sir, and let’s have a chat.’
‘What about?’
‘Just park there. I’ll follow you over.’