But it was not so simple.
‘Who are you? What are you doing here? What’s going on?’
The voice was a woman’s from the doorway—no doubt the boy’s mother—a woman a few years into her forties in a denim skirt with a Tenerife sweat-shirt, and one of those hairstyles that look like a haphazard tangle but are presumably consciously planned and cost money.
‘My name’s Kenworthy.’
‘That isn’t a passport to anywhere—least of all to private premises.’
Kenworthy had heard the Harpurs’ name several times in his short stay here, and everyone who had spoken it had laid the blame for the youth’s condition squarely on his mother’s stupidity. The father commuted to Derby, where he was a design engineer. He spent more time out of Peak Low than in it and his wife set the tone of their domestic life. She hadn’t a friend in the village, though she had by now been here twenty years. She was an intellectual snob—as well as a snob in other areas that it was difficult to define—and had brought up their son in the confident belief that he had talents out of the ordinary and was a soul apart from these hill-folk.
‘I came in to speak to this young man. We were talking about the model he is making—and about perpetual motion in general.’
She saw then the spikes that he was still holding.
‘And to plant those things here, I suppose. I can quite understand that the police greatly prefer to have that sort of chore done for them by men without official standing. Julian—go into the house.’
He obeyed with resentment, but as if he had no will of his own.
‘I suppose you think Julian’s fair game,’ she said.
Relaxed, she might have been an attractive woman, but Kenworthy wondered if she ever were relaxed. There were forty-odd years of confident superiority here, but that, ingrained though it was, must surely by now hide a complex turbulence. Had she completely failed to come to terms with the fact that her beliefs had got her nowhere? Must it be everyone else who was wrong?
‘I would like to use your telephone, please.’
‘Certainly not. I do not propose to be a party to adducing false evidence. Kindly hand those things to me. Since you claim to have found them here, they are my property.’
‘You know what they are, do you?’
‘I can guess. I am capable of reading newspaper reports.’
‘So how do you account for their being here—ignoring your childish suggestion that I brought them?’
‘Don’t waste my time, Mr Kenworthy. Put the things down and go.’
Her attitude must cloak some measure of uncertainty. She dared not risk leaving him to go into the house. He, on the other hand, knew that if he parted with the spikes and left, they would disappear without trace. It was a pity that a woman as wrong-headed as Mrs Harpur believed so fervently in the stance that she was taking.
There was no tidy way of extricating himself from the situation. He sized up the lie of the workshop. It would mean barging past her through the door, possibly having to shoulder her aside. He was not sure whether she would actually attack him. He would have to dash across the yard, could easily vault the wall, would then have the freedom of the field.
He moved his shoulders as if he were going back to the work-bench. She took a step forward to try to stop him—and he was past her and out of the door. Only when he pulled himself up breathless in the field did he wonder why he was still running.
He rang the Incident HQ to report his find, was told that Gleed was away for the rest of the day. A Chief Inspector, whom he did not know, was temporarily in charge. He took the Z-irons from him and promised that Gleed would be in touch.
The country was told in the news bulletins that night that an unnamed man was helping inquiries. Peak Low bristled with the unsurprising tale that it was Julian Harpur who had been driven over to Derby.
A formal press release let it be known that Larner had died from roughly inflicted injuries to his head, and that it was not yet determined whether these had been incurred in the car crash.
Chapter Twelve
Freddy Kershaw had taken to buying several daily papers and it always looked as if they had pages of situations vacant. But practically every job demanded some skill or semi-skill that he did not possess. It was an infamously bad time to be looking for employment. Not that his mind was fully made up. It still depended, he told himself, on how they treated him when he was up before the Board next week. Was he still in any doubt about the outcome?
Personnel Management—A few years’ experience necessary —Degree in sociology—The successful candidate will have worked for some years—
His landlady struggled up to tap on the door of his bed-sit. She had always assured him that the stairs did not worry her, but her attitude to him had cooled since this had blown up.
‘A gentleman downstairs for you.’
‘Did he give his name?’
‘I’d say he was an official gentleman.’
A Derbyshire woman, a country woman come to town, she’d have thought it bad manners to ask an official gentleman his name. She was obliging and motherly, but not all of her had arrived in this century yet.
‘I’ll come down.’
‘You can take him into the sitting-room,’ she said, but he knew she was hoping he wouldn’t. She was watching Crossroads.
‘No. I’ll bring him up here.’
At the door was a neatly dressed, dignified man, no longer young.
‘My name’s Kenworthy.’
Kershaw had a sharp memory and knew many Yard names. In the years when he had lived for detection, he had read all the casework he could lay his hands on. His taste for all that had finished a week ago.
‘Got somewhere we can natter?’
‘A bit untidy, sir. I dare say I can clear somewhere for you to sit.’
Shirts, socks, underwear, books higgledy-piggledy. Kershaw had not been expecting visitors.
‘Made a pig’s ear of it, didn’t you?’ Kenworthy asked.
Kershaw bristled. So Kenworthy took the same view as the rest of them. For a moment he was tempted to answer tactlessly—or not at all. What did Kenworthy want here? Kershaw began to understand why a child sometimes sulks: it is the last feeble hope of making opposition go away.
‘I know how you feel,’ Kenworthy said. ‘I’ve not been in your precise spot, but I’ve had spots of my own in my time.’
He wasn’t smiling, but he had none of the pomposity that Kershaw would have expected of him.
‘I’ve stopped thinking about it. I’ve said what had to be said and now all I can do is stick to it and wait.’
‘Shit or bust, we used to call it. But then I was brought up in a vulgar school. And for God’s sake don’t make me go over it again: is that what you’re thinking?’
Kershaw told himself to think before he opened his mouth. The words readiest to his tongue would have helped no one.
Oh, piss off—
‘I don’t know that I’d be behaving any differently if I were in your shoes,’ Kenworthy said.
Patronizing sod—
‘But you did have three weeks, as I understand it, of working in and around this circus before the real troubles started. If my name had been Fewter or Gleed, I’d have wanted you on the case, whatever else had happened. You must be a mine of information.’
‘Mr Gleed did say that that was what he felt. But by then things had gone too far for him to do anything about them.’
Kershaw was surprised to hear himself talking affably.
‘And, of course, I’ve given them all the help I could. I’ve answered all their questions. I’ve told them everything I know—and some of the things I think.’
‘So what do you make of the state of the case now?’
‘I know nothing about the state of the case now—and I’m doing my best not to hear anything. I told Gleed all I knew. He told me nothing.’
‘You wouldn’t expect him to.’
‘No.’
‘So
who had it in for Larner?’
‘How can I know that?’
‘In your opinion?’
‘I don’t know enough of the facts to have formed an opinion.’
‘Splendid answer. But at least you know who disliked him.’
‘A good many people.’
‘Not including your lady-friend.’
‘She isn’t my lady-friend.’
He was in danger of losing his temper again. Possibly Kenworthy wanted that. A man out of control of himself will talk uncircumspectly. They taught you that on the course. And Fewter was always saying it. It was the only item in his methodology.
‘No? It’s immaterial, anyway. What is more to the point is—are you prepared to help me?’
Kenworthy outlined his position vis-à-vis Furnival.
‘I’ll have to consider it.’
‘Well, don’t consider it for too long, lad. I’m not asking you to break any laws—or standing orders.’
‘You’d better tell me what it is you want me to do.’
‘Every time you open your mouth, Kershaw, the better I like your style. Well—first tell me everything that happened in Peak Low last Saturday—everything.’
Kershaw did that. And it was only when he reached the Doncaster match-end that he had found in Ricarda Mommsen’s bed-sit that Kenworthy stirred in his chair.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Assignment number one—who knew that Larner was going to drive home from The Grey Cat in his own car? Do you think you could start working on that? And just one other thing. That young lady: whether she’s yours or not, she needs company. I wouldn’t neglect her too long.’
A piece of news came down from the hospital. Ricarda had stirred in her coma and said an audible word, which was duly noted down by the woman officer on duty beside her bed.
Wayne—
Chapter Thirteen
Kenworthy made a circuit of the grounds, was tempted towards the theatre by an orchestral burst that reverberated from the woods. This was wild music, bodisome, rhythmic and discordant—a cross between The Hall of the Mountain King and The Entry of the Dahleks. Szolnok, in an Aran sweater big enough to envelop three of him, seemed in a mood to mow down his players with his baton, if only it had been a sub-machine-gun. On stage, in front of rudimentary scenery, Larner’s understudy, his back to the auditorium, a leather thong at his wrist, was lashing the money-lenders from the Temple.
A down-beat chord from Szolnok, a signal to the wings from Hajek, and a clip of film began to play itself out on a backstage cyclorama: Threadneedle Street under the silhouette of St Paul’s; a bishop’s mitre embroidered in cloth of gold, emeralds glinting in his crozier; a clochard in black rags huddled over a grating within sight of Notre Dame; a glass case, glittering with filigrée reliquaries; the marble foyer of a bank, on one of whose leather settees a rotund, tonsured monk was eating a whole roast chicken in his fingers.
In the wings a knot of extras were idling, nibbling at Kit-kat bars, drinking coffee out of plastic tumblers. The sound engineer was sitting at his console, a cigarette on his lower lip, one eye looking up obliquely now and then at the screen, the other keeping track of a heavily annotated script. He seemed adept at dividing his attention, most of which was absorbed in a girlie magazine propped up against his bank of switches. The ultimate spectacle might be lavish, but most of the graft was going on in an atmosphere of bored cynicism.
The Christ figure made a sweeping gesture with his thong. The shadow of the gesture was supposed to cut across the projected image. But the lighting effects were still unperfected, and the result was lame.
‘Cut! Cut! Cut!’
Szolnok dropped his stick. The orchestra subsided like mass failing bagpipes. There was an interruption minutes long while electricians experimented with spots and Fresnels. Finally, Hajek decided that this was a problem that had best be solved by technicians on their own—working through the night if need be.
‘I want it right before we start tomorrow.’
Szolnok, who had been utterly absorbed in his music, utterly committed to it, sat down with weary resignation. The enmity between him and Hajek had become a legend within weeks. Szolnok, a Pole, came allegedly from aristocratic stock, the young scion of a cavalry family, left over in England by the war. Hajek, the Budapest deviationist, was still at heart a political creature. Only now and then did their hostility break out at rehearsal; more often it expressed itself like this, in silent contempt.
Kenworthy turned to look at the face of the man at the console: Jimmy Lindop, one-time Stalagmite. He had a smile of faint superiority, nourished by the sight of the show going wrong; a provocatively casual way of attending to his side of the business—and yet an on-the-second efficiency which seemed to cost him no effort. It took more to produce the Passion than would be apparent to the Mothers’ Union.
‘Let’s have the last ten seconds of the violence.’
Fast wind of video-tape, then the final expulsion of the usurers. The kaleidoscope translated the exodus into a contemporary environment. The monk, still snatching bites at his chicken, was scurrying into the thick of a city crowd.
From a back seat, Lord Furnival had seen Kenworthy arrive, and now got up to join him.
‘All wholesomely radical, I’m sure you will agree.’ ‘Just as long as your box-office doesn’t get itself ejected too.’
‘Somehow I don’t think the man to do that is likely to honour us with a visit.’
A banker in a morning suit was plunging with a furled umbrella through a group of sightseeing nuns. An oil sheikh was knocked flying on his back. A street-corner preacher was howling assurances of eternal damnation at the backs of the fleeing crowd. He picked up his soap-box and stumbled after them.
Then came peace and calm. The imagery advanced to stained-glass windows: Monet’s Rouen, borrowed from Fantasia. A requiem was led by the violas and ’cellos, with overtones from a choir of descant clarinets. The understudy struck a pose in silhouette—or in what would be silhouette when the technicians had done their homework. Then came a link-passage, the melody modulated into a new theme on a mightily amplified guitar, intended to be soul-disturbing. Kenworthy decided that it very nearly was. Given the full theatrical illusion, it very well might be—for some. It was a question of over-stimulation—of an audience who would have come, some of them, to have their souls disturbed: religion on the plane of emotional masturbation. And this was the cue for one of the Larner songs that was due to be manoeuvred into multi-million sales.
In the cloisters of my heart—
The Voice—with purple light spilling over into gothic aisles.
As in that garden—
A recording: Larner brought gar-den up a satisfying fifth. Even the backstage card-players were cocking an ear.
In that cool Syrian shade—
But then something else happened. Larner coughed and stopped singing. The guitar stumbled over a chord, then gave out.
‘Sod it! I’m getting pissed off with this. Every time I sing that line, I have to compete with that bloody trombone. Do something about it, Szolnok.’
It was unmistakably Larner’s voice. And Hajek spoke, also on the recording:
‘Cut! Give him the lead-in again. Cut the trombone altogether, Szolnok.’
Then Hajek spoke in the flesh:
‘Scrub it, Lindop!’
Furnival was advancing down the aisle, clambering on to the apron-stage, shouting at the engineer.
‘It isn’t the first time you’ve done this to us, Lindop. When are you going to get those tapes sorted out? Don’t you have anything properly logged? I don’t want this to happen again. Work through the lot—by tomorrow. I want all the false starts taken out and erased.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
A cheerful apology. Kenworthy lost himself beyond the fringe of the theatre until the company was dismissed for lunch. Then he stepped unobtrusively into the wings, as Lindop was fast rewinding the last tape he had used.
‘Mr Jimmy Li
ndop, I presume.’
‘Correct, sir. And to what do I owe—?’
Mockery: Lindop clearly knew who Kenworthy was. His tone implied that he was prepared to be tolerant of authority, but must not be expected to respect it.
‘So what’s your next trick, Lindop? Accidentally obliterate every master-tape you’ve got of Larner? Or play all the duff recordings on the opening night?’
‘Now, really, Mr Kenworthy—you shouldn’t go about putting ideas into people’s heads.’
Kenworthy’s tone became as casual as Lindop’s.
‘It makes a change from harassing one Mary Magdalene after another,’ he said.
‘Are you accusing me?’
‘Not at all. On what grounds could I? Maybe I expressed myself badly. Perhaps I should have said it makes a change from waiting to see what will happen to Mary Magdalene next.’
‘I like the sound of that better. It makes me feel less vulnerable.’
‘How vulnerable do you feel about the microphone that might have electrocuted Joan Culver?’
‘More than vulnerable—resentful. Microphones are strictly my department, and I don’t like people buggering about with my toys.’
‘And the trapdoor that inexplicably fell open?’
‘That’s the stage-manager’s kingdom. I didn’t even know there was a trapdoor there. You really must be careful about the way you sling slander about, Kenworthy. You should think of the consequences. Furnival wouldn’t want the shop stewards blowing their whistles, would he?’
‘You think you could bring them all out? You think he wouldn’t sack the lot of you?’
‘Kenworthy—’
‘Look: let’s come to an understanding, Lindop. Have you thought what sort of a case you might find yourself having to answer? You’ve dug yourself well into this show. You have possession of Larner’s tapes—some superb—and some deplorable. You have unrestricted access to the stage and you have a lot of know-how. I could find plausible motives for you to want Larner to look a fool. So if friend Gleed is being pressed to show interim progress, he might call you in for a prolonged interview. You were the one who used the word vulnerable. How long before Gleed has that microphone down to you?’
Passion in the Peak Page 8
