‘What was?’
‘I dunno, I’m not sensitive. Small things. A light I’d switched off came on by itself. The light was weird. Nothing felt like it was how it should be. Maybe it was me, but being drunk out on the streets, down in the town, that felt good. More than good. Soon as I shut myself in here, bad. Sick. And now I’m thinking this whole thing was a wrong move. If the deal on the bungalow goes through, why’n’t we just pay Oliver off, load the books back in the truck, find someplace else… anyplace? Take the money and run.’
‘Oh God, Robin…’
He moved towards her, tears coming, and the door opened.
They broke apart.
The doorway was darkened by the thickset detective, Stagg, three uniform cops behind him.
Stagg watching Robin weep.
‘Mr Thorogood,’ Stagg said, ‘we’d like another word.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Robin said.
Stagg didn’t reply.
‘Four of you?’ Robin felt his blood pumping, like he’d cut his wrists and it was dripping down into his hands. ‘Four of you would like a word?’ He was in severe pain. ‘Well, I’ll give you a word. I’ll give you two words.’
‘Shut up, Robin,’ Betty said quietly.
But it was too late for that. He knew it would be. It was almost laughable the way these guys were determined to piss on the party he’d never have. He stood facing Stagg, hands clawed by his sides.
‘We’d like to take a look around, if you don’t mind, sir,’ Stagg said.
‘The hell I don’t mind! You got a warrant?’
‘I think you’ll find, Mr Thorogood, that when we’re looking for a person we believe might be at risk… we don’t need a warrant.’
He nodded to the uniformed cops and they came in like they owned the place.
39
Convoy
HUW SAID, ‘WELL?’
‘They’re just appealing for sightings of her car.’
Merrily switched off the radio, climbed out of the Freelander.
‘Nowt new, then.’ Huw nodded towards a small man in a farmer’s woollen shirt and a plaid tie, walking down towards St Mary’s Church. ‘Emrys Walters. Baptist minister. His dad were one of the artisans hired by Eric Gill to tart up the monastery, create a Catholic chapel inside. He raised a hand. ‘All right, lad?’
‘Ow’re you, boy?’
He was older than Huw, probably in his seventies, fit-looking, weathered, short white hair.
‘This is Merrily Watkins, Emrys. Vicar of Ledwardine, over the border.’
‘Ledwardine. Well, now.’ Emrys spoke slowly, shaking hands with Merrily. ‘Gomer Parry lives there, that right?’
Merrily smiled, like you did when anybody mentioned Gomer.
‘Worked with him down in Hay, years back,’ Emrys said. ‘He still piloting that great big…?’
Emrys did the motions of steering pulling levers.
‘JCB? Oh yes. And digs graves, cuts hedges.’
‘Thought I hadn’t yeard he was dead.’
Huw said, ‘Let’s go and sit down, eh?’
* * *
The little church had a steadying air. Pews like park benches under the white walls, the gallery with its wooden rails, the message in the white window about the help in the hills. Huw shut the door and they sat at the ends of separate pews and talked about Peter Rector.
‘Never knowed he was back, see,’ Emrys said. ‘Not a whisper. Cusop, well, that’s no distance. Not as I’ve ever been there, mind.’ He shook his head. ‘Drownded. Well, well.’
Huw leaned forward, hands clasped.
‘When you last hear of him, Emrys?’
‘Gotter be twenny, thirty years since left the farm, sure to. We thought he’d gone abroad somewhere, see, and died out there.’
‘Common misconception,’ Huw said. ‘Can I take you back thirty, forty years?’
He got Emrys talking about Peter Rector’s return to Capel after the death of his parents and the publication of his bestselling book, with lots of money to spend.
‘And he did spend some, too,’ Emrys said. ‘Done up all the outbuildings – barns, sheepsheds, the lot. Water, electricity. Kept me in work for over a year, on and off. I was still a young man, then, never made no claim to be an expert tradesman, but I gotter say he always treated me with respect.’
Emrys talked vaguely about the residential courses, with Rector as a kind of guru, as they called them then.
‘He looked like a guru, see, with his height and the commanding way he walked. Long black hair, and those eyes – intense way he had of looking at you. Like he could see through your appearance to the core of you. Not everybody liked that. However polite he was, there were plenty who avoided meeting him in the lane, just because of the way he looked at you. What they didn’t understand – he told me this once – was how much pleasure the hills gave him after his years in a POW camp. The air, the freedom.’