The Magus of Hay(86)

‘When was this?’ Betty said.



‘Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday night. It was her, no question. Recognized her picture this morning on News 24. Seen her round town a few times, though not in uniform. Wasn’t in uniform when she was asking about the pool guy.’

‘Where was this, Jeeter?’

‘Gwenda’s. Where everybody goes if they wanna find out anyfing. Reckon I should tell the cops, case nobody else has? Maybe somebody was like stalking her?’

‘Just don’t say you know me,’ Robin said. ‘The guy who parked in the wrong place for too long. And this was supposed to be our first real trading day. How’dya like that?’

‘I don’t,’ Betty said. ‘Because we’re not opening today. Not now.’

‘I’m afraid this isn’t going to take very long,’ Brent told the midday briefing at Hay Community Centre. ‘We’re really not much further. We know a lot more places where Tamsin Winterson might have been since yesterday evening but wasn’t. I think what that tells us is that whatever happened to her happened very soon after she received that call from Kelly James. DI Bliss?’

Bliss, sitting next to Brent at the table opposite the bar, didn’t consult his notes. Every time he’d looked down he’d seen double rows of scrawl, and holding up the pad would look ridiculous.

‘DS Dowell and me, we’ve spent most of the morning in Cusop, basically doing house-to-house with PCs Conway and Trickett. Mrs Claire Loudon, who runs a guest house near the entrance to the lane that curves up from the dingle to the church, thinks she saw a small green car, sometime between six-forty and six-fifty last night. Thought it was a Peugeot, but it might have been a Clio. She didn’t see it return.’

‘So it’s important,’ Brent said, ‘that we concentrate on the car. How it got to the Hay car park, where it was coming from, who was driving it. We’ve traced the driver of a blue Nissan Navara truck which had been parked all night about twenty metres away from where Tamsin’s car was found this morning and… well, there could be more to learn from him.’

He turned to Rich Ford who reported that neither the uniforms on the ground nor the helicopter had found anything in the hills, but all the farmers within a five-mile radius had been alerted. Bliss was thinking of the full statement he and Karen had taken down from Kelly James, who’d been too upset to go into work. And the personal asides: he now knew Tamsin had wanted to be a cop since she was a kid, watching The Bill on the box and trying to train one of the sheepdogs to find drugs – a lump of her grandad’s pipe tobacco standing in for cannabis resin. This was getting to him, now.

Though not conspicuously to Brent.

Facing Bliss, when the briefing was done, over folded arms, a smugness coming off him like aftershave. Brent had probably never met Tamsin Winterson.

‘Francis, we need to deal with this business of the drowned man, Peter Rector. You need to explain to me exactly why you found it necessary to involve Winterson in what seems like a very unpromising inquiry?’

This was a time-waster.

‘Iain… as I’ve stated several times, it was Tamsin who approached me. She lives in the area, she has friends in Cusop, she suspected there might be more to it.’

‘Why were you there in the first place?’

‘As I explained in my report, I had an hour to spare. A body in a small pool sounded worth a quick look in view of another recent suspicious death we both know about and…’ No way round this, now ‘… the docs – while confirming that I’m quite fit to work – say that exposure for long periods to artificial light might delay complete recovery from my… temporary head injury. So I took a break, which included my lunchbreak, drove out here.’



If Brent ever checked with the docs, he could be stuffed here, but the chance were he wouldn’t. Not in the short term, anyway.

‘Also, I think it’s important,’ Bliss said, ‘to encourage young coppers to come forward with their suspicions. Don’t you?’

‘She told you about the cannabis in Rector’s house.’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘And she also showed you Rector’s extensive collection of occult-related literature, indicating he might be part of some… cult?’

‘Nothing so exciting. It seems to be no more than a study group, which includes the barrister I spoke to last night. Who Tamsin thought might have been the last person to see Rector alive.’

‘Rector who was known in Cusop as David Hambling.’

‘Having changed his name in search of a quiet life. A bestselling book he wrote forty years ago had brought him… unwanted followers. He was ninety-three years old. After talking to Claudia Cornwell, I’ve concluded that this very small circle of followers had become more of a support group. Fetching his groceries, his laundry, that kind of thing.’