The Chinese Takeout

by Judith Cutler

  Having no idea why he’d put his formal hat on again – or maybe I mean dog-collar, since he’d been notably open-necked on our flight – I started the car and turned for the M5, a nasty enough road in its way, but nothing like as grim as the A30 or its friend the A303; despite its splendid new improvements in this section, I couldn’t forgive it its tedious single-carriageway, no-overtaking expanses with no decent loos for miles.

  Andy had left his car at the White Hart, so there was no need for discussion about where we were heading. And I simply drove. Let him talk when he wanted to.

  In fact we were near the Wellington junction when he said, audibly relaxed, ‘You’ve no idea what a luxury it is to be driven. And in such a nice car, too.’

  ‘Bought out of White Hart profits, just so you can carry on enjoying it!’

  ‘I deserved that. Usually I seem to bum lifts with middle-aged curates with beat-up Metros and long tales of woe. Your silence is so restful.’

  ‘It would be, after my mouthful earlier.’ We exchanged a sideways glance. Somehow I didn’t think my past would arise for quite some time.

  ‘I was wondering if we might stop off at the rectory. Just to make sure it’s all right for his parents.’

  ‘That’s a very womanly worry.’

  ‘Marcia must have bequeathed it to me. She was house-proud to a fault. If we went away, she’d clean the bathroom before we left, so the chambermaid didn’t have to wipe her toothpaste out of the basin. And strip the bed. A good woman,’ he summed up.

  ‘How long have you been on your own?’ He wasn’t the only one used to phrasing questions tactfully.

  ‘Five years now.’ He reflected, no doubt wanting to tell me about her last illness. ‘A good woman but one very hard to live with.’

  I was so surprised I nearly missed the junction. But I hadn’t worked behind a bar all those years to know that to be a good listener you needed to do more than nod and incline a listening ear.

  ‘She should have been a martyr. Was one, to her various illnesses, all unexplained. I sometimes wonder if she’d made less fuss we’d have – I’d have – taken more notice when she got something serious. You see, she’d complain of this ache or that, and then insist on spring-cleaning a room or making new curtains, all to the accompaniment of pained sighs and sniffs. The end result was a wonderfully spruce home, but a very frayed marriage. Had it not been for my position – more, hers, since she rated any spurious status far more highly than I – I’m sure we’d have ended up apart. There was nothing to keep us together. Apart from the wedding vows we made when we were hardly out of our teens.’

  ‘No children?’ Lest the question seemed intrusive, I made a great show of checking the road as I took the island for our B road. How long had that black BMW been behind me?

  ‘One son. He emigrated post-haste to Australia, where he married immediately and started a family. The message was crystal clear, believe me. And he was right. There was no way my wife could have let his family alone. It would have ended in matricide.’

  I smothered a laugh at the precision of the term.

  ‘Anyway, one day she insisted that a letter had to go in the post, though it was tipping down with rain and she had a vicious cold. The next day she had bronchitis, I thought, and when she wouldn’t let me call the doctor I made her an appointment at the surgery. That morning. An emergency one, with a locum. I did, Josie. I did everything I could. I even got the car out. But she insisted I was just making a fuss. When I brought the doctor in that evening, she had pneumonia and she died two days later.’ He dropped his voice but the words were clear. ‘And I was so relieved.’

  I was near to panic. This conversation should surely have taken place with his boss. Or even his Boss. Not with me, on whom half the villagers would have pinned a nice big scarlet letter A. Not unless he was about to make a pass at me, and then I could have told him straight out that I didn’t do clergymen. Not no-how. They came with consciences and guilt and a life already pledged to someone rather more important.

  Having nothing useful to say, I stayed silent; he sat staring at his nails. The BMW had dropped to a discreet distance, but was still there. Paranoia or years of Tony’s training? I slowed down long enough to clock the number, which I made Andy write down, and then accelerated hard.

  Three miles later, it was still there. Without signalling I took a right, taking us back on our tracks, then nipped straight across the main road into the back lane into the village – one that conveniently passed the rectory.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Andy asked, as if only now having enough breath to speak.

  ‘Precautions. Look, open the garage doors, will you? Quickly!’

  I reversed in as swiftly as Reg – or it might have been Don – had shown me years ago. When Andy joined me, I shut the doors again, and opened the back one, which led on to the garden. We could make a quick exit if only on foot.

  If there had been a black sack in Tim’s garage, there was no sign of it now. Nor, as I sniffed the air, any indication of it ever having been there. He’d made a rather pathetic attempt to over-winter some geraniums and what might once have been fuchsias: now everything was a dried out mess, home to woodlice and a colony of spiders.

  ‘Compost heap?’ Andy asked, picking up a couple of terracotta pots.

  ‘Only place.’

  To my amazement, there was a pair of new green plastic compost converters in the garden: quite out of character with the rest of the place, which, lawn apart, was both undernourished and overgrown. He’d obviously come with good intentions. One converter was quite empty. The other smelt unpleasant, not the sweet rotting moistness of my converter but of unwashed male.

  I pointed.

  Andy gaped. ‘He thought it important enough to hide it here!’

  ‘And I think it’s important enough to take it hotfoot into Taunton nick.’ I bit my lip.

  ‘Can you trust me to do it?’ His humility sounded genuine. ‘I mean, you’ve got responsibilities.’

  ‘Trust? I was about to beg and implore! I know there are no meals tonight, and the lads are more than capable of running the whole place without me… All the same.’ I thought of the black Beamer. ‘And, while you’re about it, could you drop the film in for overnight development? Two sets of prints. No, three. Stick one set in your church strong box, with the negatives. One set of prints for me; the other for the police.’

  ‘You’re really worried about that car, aren’t you?’

  ‘Once run over, twice shy. All the same… Look, how good an actor are you?’

  He goggled. ‘I blacked up for Othello at school once, in the days a white kid could. Why?’

  ‘Tony always told me to trust my instincts, however oddly they might make me behave. So I’m going to. And my instinct tells me something’s wrong. I want to protect you – No, listen to me. This is self-interest on my part, pure self-interest.’

  ‘Self-interest? Protecting me?’ He shook his head.

  ‘When I stop at the White Hart, you and I are going to have a very public row. You’re not going to come in. You’re going to bellow and shout and I’m going to tell you to give me back my camera. And you’re going to drive off in a huff. Real spurt of gravel stuff.’

  ‘I don’t know whether modern cars run to spurts of gravel.’

  ‘If you try hard enough they will. Then I shall slam inside with the passion of a teenager.’

  ‘So we’re not part of a team any longer.’

  Were we before? ‘Quite. But – this may sound…’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how it sounds. Just tell me.’ He raised his hand, but then let it fall.

  ‘I want you to phone me, every few minutes. Say every twenty. If I don’t reply in person, call back a minute later. If I don’t reply then, get the police in. I know it’s all very Boy’s Own,’ I pleaded, ‘but just in case.’

  The BMW lurked in a lay-by fifty yards down the road. The driver made no effort to tail me this time: why should he? He knew
where I lived, after all. He and his passenger.

  ‘You’re hysterical! You’re off your head.’ Andy gave my face a remarkably convincing stage-slap.

  I reeled but recovered. ‘Listen to you. You’re so full of it. Just give me my stuff and get out of my life. Now!’

  And so on and so on. I was better at it than he, of course, and to a large extent reprised a performance I once gave in the middle of Birmingham when Nick had had Tony sent down for the last time. On that occasion, when I’d slung my shoe at the offender – a very high stiletto, as I recall – he’d returned it with a courtly bow you wouldn’t credit from the present all-grey Nick. This time I was wearing soft casuals – all I could bear with the bruises – and I slung first one, then the other, at the retreating Ford. They could lie there in the road for all I cared.

  Later on I’d creep back and get them. Ignominiously.

  Ignominiously?

  Like hell I’d do anything ignominiously. Especially with that pair in the black BMW now watching me from the bus stop lay-by. Barefoot I strode towards them, arms akimbo.

  ‘And what might you be looking at? You! With that silly grin! Eh? What are you smiling at? My life’s something to do with you, is it? I don’t think so. So let’s have a bit of respect. That’s better.’

  They both dropped their eyes. I’d won. This round at least.

  ‘I’ve seen you round here before, haven’t I? Well, I don’t want to see you here again. You or your little mate. Get that?’

  They nodded in unison. It was hard not to laugh. Or it would have been if one of them hadn’t run me over. It must have been him, surely, in the 4x4.

  I started again. ‘Lowlifes like you don’t trail round the sticks like this just because you like a bit of fresh air. You’re under orders. So tell your boss you’ve got to try the air somewhere else.’ I leaned much closer. ‘Understand? No one messes with Tony Welford’s widow. No one. Now, get out of my face. And stay out.’ I nodded home my point and stepped back, arms now folded implacably, to watch them on their way.

  If cars had tails, this one’s would have been between its legs. I watched it out of sight. No way was I going to spoil my act by ferreting stiffly for my footwear.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I settled more comfortably on the barstool, transferring the phone to the ear that wasn’t getting irritatingly deaf. ‘The trouble is, Andy, they didn’t recognise Tony’s name. Either they’re not high enough in the pecking order or his reputation no longer strikes fear. I suspect the latter,’ I confessed, knowing he’d appreciate the swing to formal speech. ‘All the same, I reckon you can cancel the twenty minute phone calls. They’ll have to decide what to tell their boss – never nice if you have to admit you messed up – and he’ll need to work out his next move.’

  ‘I shan’t cancel the phone calls. If you’re in danger, you’re not facing it alone. Especially as it involves the Church. Indeed, the Church involved you.’

  ‘It was my nosiness that involved me. I could simply have done the sensible thing and nagged the fuzz a bit harder and more often. They’ve got the resources and the manpower.’

  ‘I’m not sure about their commitment. And the tension between Lawton and Nick seemed to be bringing out the worst, in Lawton, not the best.’

  ‘Funny thing about sex,’ I agreed, ‘you can never predict how it’ll make people react.’ There was a long silence. ‘I’ll give them another call. That nice kid Bernie Downs’ll take some notice, surely.’

  A couple of villagers mooched in, two middle-aged men who could, probably would, make a pint last a whole night. I might not get much custom from them but they could offer something far more valuable: protection. Smiling, I gestured one minute.

  ‘The bar’s filling up,’ I told the still silent Andy. ‘I must go. Talk to you later.’ So why had I stooped to the current cliché, as if acquiescing in his repeat calls, and not merely said goodbye?

  The regulars notwithstanding, I was reluctant to risk Lucy’s taking my place in the bar – just in case. So when she appeared, beaming with apparent pleasure at the prospect of spending an evening writing an essay between demands for booze, I shook my head.

  ‘What I really need you to do, love, is something my back won’t let me. Not at the moment. Would you mind making up the beds in the staff accommodation – the ones Father Martin’s parents will be using?’ That’d take her ten minutes, that was all. ‘After that, you just get on with your assignment, eh? I can fend off the rush down here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Look, Lucy, this barstool may look hard and unyielding to you, but it’s the most comfortable chair I’ve found since my accident. And I’m giving it up to no one!’

  The two drinkers were soon joined by a couple of men from the St Faith and St Lawrence choir. They’d been putting in an extra practice just in case Father Martin’s family wanted their service, they said. Four or five others trickled in minutes later. Suddenly the snug was living up to its name.

  ‘Tell you what, Josie,’ one said gruffly, ‘you’re doing right by that young man and no mistake. Both of them, truth to tell.’

  ‘So are you people,’ I said, nodding at his colleagues. ‘Going the extra mile.’

  ‘Only right, isn’t it?’ He leaned closer. ‘Not like some you could mention.’

  I knew better than to ask outright. ‘Surely we’re all…’

  ‘Oh, no. There’s those who don’t want to get involved.’ He mimicked – badly – a refined accent.

  I fished. In the name of conversation of course. ‘You mean Mr Malins and Mr Corbishley? Why wouldn’t they want to be involved? Come on, I bet you can’t name me a single person in this village who won’t do everything they can to give Tim a decent funeral.’

  ‘Well, you just named them. Keep themselves to themselves. That’s fine, that’s folk for you. But I say Christian is as Christian does: it’s all well and good pouring money into a church that’s got burned down, but what about one that’s still intact, that’s what I want to know? We’ve still got subsidence and dry rot and leaking gutters. A bit of their cash wouldn’t have come amiss. After all, we’ve still got a congregation – I know some of them women can backbite, Josie, and don’t blame you for moving on. But you must have seen how few were going to St Jude’s. Why not pool our resources, that’s what I’ve always said.’

  Another nodded. ‘It’s a sad fact we can’t keep all the churches going. But some are more important than others. St Faith and St Lawrence is big enough to hold all the congregations, and room over.’

  Special pleading? But this was getting me nowhere. ‘So why do you think they’re so wedded to St Jude’s? If they had a different vicar it would make sense, I suppose. But the five churches have been sharing the same one for years, haven’t they?’

  ‘Maybe it goes back to the time when they didn’t,’ the first – Mike? – mused. ‘Before my time, of course – twenty-five years ago, I should think. Maybe more.’ Just yesterday, then, in the eyes of the average villager. ‘Tell you what, I’ll ask around, shall I? Discreet, like – don’t want to tread on any toes, do I?’

  ‘Not with the funeral coming up,’ I said.

  ‘If they let us hold it here,’ he observed, glumly.

  ‘Who’d stop us?’ I asked, neatly returning myself, or so I hoped, to the village fold.

  ‘Well, there’s talk of cathedrals and such. We want the service here: he was our parson after all.’

  I wouldn’t talk about my hotline to the ecclesiastical bigwigs. ‘I’m sure if you talk to the church wardens, they’ll take your case right up to the bishop, if necessary.’

  ‘That smarmy old git? ’Twas he who confirmed our three. Didn’t like seeing him lay his greasy paws on their little heads, I can tell you.’

  I couldn’t stop myself nodding – in any case, nodding was something landladies had to do, I told myself, whether they were in agreement or not. ‘But everyone at St Faith and St Lawrence is united,’ I prompted.

>   ‘Ah.’

  But that was all I got from him. And at that point my phone rang.

  ‘I said I’d check if you were all right.’

  ‘Perfectly safe, thanks Andy. I’ve pretty well got a football team in here: better than the Household Cavalry!’

  ‘And have you phoned the police?’

  ‘Next thing on my agenda,’ I declared gaily. And cut the call. Since everyone had stopped talking and all eyes were on me, I said, ‘Just a friend. I had a spot of bother with a couple of lads earlier.’

  ‘Them two in the big black car? Nasty pieces of knitting, they looked. Been around the village quite a bit.’ You could see Mike’s shoulders bracing for action. Major action. Before he became a central heating engineer Mike had played rugby for Cornwall. ‘Not giving you any trouble, are they?’

  The people of Kings Duncombe might not like me, but as a resident at least I had the edge on invaders from outside.

  ‘Not after the mouthful she give ’em earlier,’ his mate declared. ‘She’s a tough old bird, our Josie.’

  Yes, in one breath I’d become one of them. I nearly wept. Worse, I nearly stood drinks for everyone on the house.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ said DI Lawton, the next morning, her mouth turning down disapprovingly, ‘is why it took you so long to tell us you’d been tailed. Twelve hours. More. Fighting crime isn’t a nine till five job, you know.’

  ‘Indeed, my late husband often used to lament the fact,’ I beamed, pouring her more morning coffee and pushing forward the pastries plate. ‘From inside his prison cell. Come on, don’t tell me you didn’t check me out. Anyway, I gave them an earful. The chief reason was to detain them long enough for Mr Braithwaite to deliver the bag of Tang’s garments we’d found. I take it it arrived safely? And will be extremely useful?’ I prompted. ‘No, we didn’t open it, so it shouldn’t be contaminated, should it?’ I added, having received singularly little response.

  ‘It did arrive safely, and it’s already at the forensic science lab,’ she said stolidly. ‘But I really must insist, Mrs Welford, that there’s no need for all these mock heroics. This is work for the police.’