Betty wanted to scream at this Brent that he should know that Robin was a stupid, volatile, arrogant bastard who thought there was some kind of stigma attached to a sticker allowing him to park in convenient places without risk of prosecution. Who actually thought there was a stigma attached to being disabled. Him being disabled.
But she kept quiet. Let them find out, if they wanted to. Let them check his medical records or whatever they did.
‘You’re American,’ Brent said.
‘Makes ya think that?’
‘How long have you been over here?’
‘Years. I’m a UK citizen. You wanna see my papers?’
‘And you’re the owner of a bookshop here,’ Brent said. ‘Did I get that right?’
‘We rent one,’ Robin said.
‘Where?’
‘Just across the road. Back Fold.’
‘And you’ll be open all day? You’ll be there, both of you?’
‘All day. Whatever. Who’s missing?’
‘And why, for heaven’s sake,’ Betty said, ‘would you think my husband would have had anything to do with it just because he left his truck in a car park overnight?’
Brent didn’t reply. One really infuriating thing about the police was their belief that asking questions – and how far was this from an interrogation? – was a one-way street.
‘You’re saying don’t leave town?’ Robin said. ‘You’re truly saying that to me?’
‘What I’m saying—’
‘Ya know what? I always used to be impressed by the British cops. Specially compared to some of the brutalized bastards they allow to police New York. I thought you guys were civilized. Now – no, listen, hear me out – now I think you’re watching too fucking much of The Wire. And pretty soon no one will ever trust you. And just like in New York, no one will ever talk to you without a lawyer. And that’s when this country will lose what little remains of the fucking decency and the fucking charm that made people like me wanna fucking live here!’
‘We’ll probably want to talk to you again, sir.’
‘For leaving my truck overnight on a parking lot? Paying the full fee? You wanna see my ticket?’
‘You know what I think?’ Brent said. ‘I think you were in a physical confrontation last night. Sustaining the kind of injuries most people might have taken to an A and E unit. Or, if they’d been assaulted, to a police station.’
‘I’m not fond of hospitals.’
‘Or police stations?’
And then Stagg asked Robin, in an almost perfunctory way, if he’d noticed a light-green Renault Clio, which he said he hadn’t. They asked him if he’d seen a young woman on the car park. Red hair, freckles, medium height. He shook his head.
Betty started to feel sick.
37
The full Lazarus
HER RIGHT HAND was ruined, as if deformed by leprosy. The edge of the palm was ragged, the fingers had missing tips and the thumb was like a fragment of grey bone, all the flesh stripped away by crows.
There was a lingering pathos in those hands, open to the hills and the low and smoky clouds, as if she were saying, Please God, no more.
The white lady. Life size.
‘Huw… I’ve seen this before,’ Merrily said. ‘In miniature.’
In Peter Rector’s house. A plaster copy. Niches either side of the window. Isis on one side, the Virgin on the other. This Virgin.
‘This was where she’s said to have appeared? This is the spot?’
The former monastery, gaunt and Gothic, steep-pitched roof, not as old as it looked, was built into the hillside, wedged between the trees. More recently, it had been a youth hostel and a pony trekking centre. The statue of the Virgin Mary was on a plinth in its forecourt.
Huw looked up to inspect the statue’s ruined hand.
‘It’s been moved. Happen for its own safety. It was back there,’ he said. ‘In what were called the Abbot’s Field.’
They’d left their cars down in the valley, where the newborn River Honddu ran, and walked up, under dripping trees. On the way, Huw had reminded her of the story of Joseph Leycester Lyne, the ordained Anglican clergyman, who had called himself Father Ignatius and become committed to the formation of an order of Anglo-Catholic Benedictine monks. Falling under the spell of the extensive, romantic ruins of medieval Llanthony Priory, four miles down the valley from here, setting out to raise the money to restore it.
That had proved beyond him, Huw said. But what he’d done here had been more than second best. This was a powerful place. He still called it Llanthony. Still went down in history as the Monk of Llanthony.
And this… the white lady… was Our Lady of Llanthony.