`I'm listening.'
Vikki outlined her strange encounter the previous day with the Zulu warrior. She omitted the sexual details but Ellen sensed the girl's embarrassment when she had to answer a few questions. The older woman decided not to push her -- the sexual fantasies of a healthy young girl were not for parading or scrutiny outside her peer group.
`And all this happened in broad daylight when you were wheeling your bike?'
Vikki nodded. The feeling of euphoria that had marked the start of her day was gone. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes.
`Well I can promise you that you weren't hallucinating.'
A tear escaped and coursed down Vikki's cheek.
Oh, God -- she really is frightened.
Ellen stood and put a comforting arm around the girl's shoulders. `Listen, Vikki. What you experienced was nothing to worry about. At your age your hormones are still way out of kilter. They're tugging your emotions this way and that. You were walking along a route that you've used hundreds of times --you don't have to think about it because you know every rut and stone. Your mind drifts to your Zulu poster and that sets off your daydream. That's all it was -- a good, old-fashioned daydream. We joke about them when we're older, forgetting just how powerful and disturbing they can be.'
Vikki shook her head. `It was more than a daydream, Miss Duncan. I found myself knowing things about the Zulus that I'd never been taught.'
`About their sexual practices?'
The girl coloured slightly. `Yes. I looked them up in dad's All God's Children CD encyclopedia last night. Everything in the daydream was right.'
Ellen straightened. `So obviously you've looked them up before and forgotten about it.'
`No!' Vikki's tone was uncharacteristically vehement. `I've never looked up anything like that before. And even if I had, I would've remembered those sort of things. I know I would've.'
Guilt and denial at work here, thought Ellen. `It doesn't need a positive effort on your part, Vikki. You heard something years ago -- a TV narration or a talk on the radio. Little snippets that have lodged in your mind without you knowing they were there. Then you have this daydream and they all drop into place and become alive -- like a door suddenly opening on a room you didn't know was there. The brain's like that. It could even have been something you heard when you were in your pram.'
Vikki respected Ellen's knowledge, and what the older woman said made some sort of sense. It was a valued straw. `Yes -- I suppose so.'
`No supposing about it.'
`There's something else, Miss Duncan. Please don't laugh at me but I think I saw something that looked like a mechanical crab just after the daydream.'
Ellen didn't laugh but she did ask for more details.
`It moved very quickly,' Vikki explained. `I didn't get a good look at it, not really. But it looked real enough. Like a clockwork crab.'
`Well -- if it was right after your daydream, it was probably your brain unwinding. A hard week at school? Lots of homework?'
Vikki nodded. `I'm taking ten `O' Levels.'
Ellen grinned. `I'd be seeing formations of flying pink elephants if I were swotting for ten `O's.'
The schoolgirl managed a weak smile. Ellen's practical down to earth commonsense had a greater effect than the older woman guessed.
`Was your Zulu good looking?'
`Oh, yes.'
`And well-equipped, no doubt.' Ellen gave the girl a playful nudge. `Well next time he pops up -- pun intended -- send him along to me.'
This time Ellen was rewarded with a broad, grateful smile.
Chapter 15.
WHAT A BLOODY TIME for the clutch to play up!
Mike Malone swore roundly, stood on the brakes, and hooked his unmarked Escort behind the Southern Electric maintenance van that was labouring up Duncton Hill. The last overtaking opportunity northbound on the A285 between the South Downs and Pentworth would be gone after the next bend so he dropped into second and made another attempt. The same thing happened again: the engine revs surged ahead of his road speed as he pulled out -- a sure indication of a slipping clutch. A diagnosis confirmed by the pungent smell of burning clutch plate liner sucked through the heater. There was nothing for it but to tuck in behind the van, nurse the ailing Escort as best he could, and try to be patient -- something Malone wasn't noted for, particularly as the van seemed to be having much the same trouble. It had slowed to a crawl; the black smoke it was spewing from its exhaust smelt worse than the clutch. The driver kept tight to the verge and waved him on but all Malone could do was flash his lights and hope that the driver understood.
Strange that an unladen two-year-old vehicle in good condition should be having similar problems with the hill. Another mile or so to the top -- maybe he'd be able to get past going downhill.
No such luck.
The bloody clutch even slipped going downhill! And what was really bizarre was that jamming the pedal to the floor to disengage it made bugger all difference: there was a strange resistance clawing at the car similar to the dragging effect of driving through shallow flooding. The van driver banged his palm impatiently on the outside of his door, urging his labouring steed to keep going. A colleague driving a Southern Electric cherry picker in the opposite direction was also having a struggle. He made a circular gesture with his finger pointing to his head.
I know how you feel, matey. If it wasn't March, I'd think the bloody road was melting.
The bewildered expressions of all drivers coming in the opposite direction suggested that the trouble wasn't confined to a few vehicles. This was a big, bold ten on the weird scale.
It had to be some new road surface that Highways had come up with. And yet this was the same road he drove on nearly every day; there hadn't been any resurfacing work on this stretch for a year.
He found that the clutch slip wasn't nearly so bad if he kept his speed down. At 25mph the rev counter needle gave a correct reading for his speed in top gear. But trying to go faster sent the engine revs up but not the road speed. Nothing for it but to drop well back from the smoking van, tease the Escort along in top at 20-25, and ignore the high-pitched rattle of the engine's valves pinking their stems off.
Malone was three miles from Pentworth when the strange effect suddenly ceased and the Escort surged forward. The car behaved perfectly. Snick into 2nd, gun the engine, and he sailed effortlessly past the van, which was also picking up speed. He gave the driver a friendly wave as he swept past. He would be five minutes late for his appointment with Cathy Price, and after that he was due at Pentworth Lake to see Ellen Duncan and the search team. Thinking about her -- in particular, the warmth of her body against him when he had carried her into her shop last night, took his mind off the recent strange behaviour of the car for a few moments. But what had just happened was too extraordinary to banish for long. Maybe he had imagined it?
But the lingering taint of burnt clutch plate liner told otherwise.
Chapter 16.
THE REAR OF ELLEN'S TERRACED shop and flat was in such contrast to its narrow, north-facing frontage, overshadowed by the high prison-like wall surrounding Pentworth House, that visitors shown the garden were invariably overwhelmed by the magnificent vista spread out before them. It was as if the row of drab little Victorian shops had deliberately huddled themselves together to shut out the splendours that would otherwise be visible from North Street.
Her garden where it joined the house was the same width as her shop, but her plot was wedge-shaped, widening rapidly as the land fell steeply away from her two greenhouses in a series of slopes and terraces from the sandstone escarpment that Pentworth was built on.
Following the death of her mother ten years before, Ellen had decided to turn the shop into a real herbalists in which she was assured of fresh supplies by raising her own crops wherever possible. Five years back-breaking work clearing the scrubby woodland had resulted her creating a seemingly wild environment in which a huge variety of herbs and wild flowers flourished in an
apparent random fashion. But they had been planted with great care, taking advantage of the well-drained, south facing slopes, to ensure that they were provided with the right conditions of soil, and sun or shade.
On this surprisingly warm Saturday morning in March, four days after the storm, and following a week of hard frosts, she was pleased to see how well many of her less hardy crops had withstood the winter. Even a small stand of the Mediterranean borage, protected from the south-westerly prevailing wind by a dry sandstone wall that she had built, had come through well. In addition to ginseng, the tea that Mike Malone had made the night before contained a tisane of borage that would have given his nervous system a sharp adrenalin hit.
Ellen walked on, picking her way carefully down a well-trodden, steep path beside a swollen stream, one of many that discharged into Pentworth Lake, now a dazzling sheet of filigreed silver that covered the entire flood plain, dotted with the white flecks of herring gulls. On the far side she could see the police car and another two vehicles that had joined it. Two divers in wet suits were manoeurvring a Zodiac inflatable boat into the middle of the lake.
She paused occasionally, taking stock, her quick eye missing nothing. Her attempt to root mistletoe cuttings into an old apple tree that she had spared for the purpose had not been a success. Just as well really: the efficacy of the herb's viscotoxins as an anti-cancer drug was a contentious issue although her reasons for wanting a fresh supply was for her choline-based high blood pressure remedy -- a well-known cure; she had no wish to be drawn into the mistletoe-cancer debate.
Her fennel was doing well, some new growth relishing the unseasonal warmth; the scurvy grass was a mistake -- it was taking over. There was now enough to treat every case of acne in the south of England. Her little crop of heartsease wasn't thriving despite being native to Europe. There was enough to keep Dawn Linegar's epilepsy in check but Ellen would've preferred more.
She reached an outcrop of weathered chalk erratic where the stream swung east on a new course that David Weir had dug with his Kubota. The miniature digger had done a good job of diverting the stream away from a chainlink fence enclosure and along the contour of the rise before being allowed to tumble into the lake. The chalk line was bounded by a sheep proof, layered hedge, and an evil-smelling ginkgo (maidenhair) tree which marked the end of her cultivated area and the edge of the land that she rented to David Weir. The ginkgo, prized by Chinese herbalists, was a survivor of the Jurassic Age. It stood guard over her crops because no deer or rabbit would risk having its olfactory system jammed by its prodigious pong which could turn a peaceful ramblers' hike into a panic-stricken stampede. The nuts were delicious when cooked and provided a range of herbal remedies.
Further down the slope was the ugly chainlink enclosure, topped with a coil of razor wire, guarding a parcel of land about 30-metres square. This was the `dig'.
The discovery had come about the previous year when she had braved the ginkgo's appalling stink and set to work with a pickaxe to break up the hard pan of Weald clay at the foot of the chalk face, intending to enlarge the stream into a small pond at this point, and had found the remains of the flint miners' camp -- a bed of flint chippings nearly half a metre deep. More artifacts had come to light as the site was cleared under the direction of the Weald and Downland Museum.
Carbon-14 dating of ash and animal bones had established the camp as being over 40,000 years old and was therefore regarded as a major find. Excavation work had stopped in November and would not resume until the following month provided she and David could recruit enough volunteers for the painstaking work in close proximity to the putrefying dead camel smell of the ginkgo tree. Luckily the prevailing wind kept the stench reasonably at bay most days.
Ellen reached the fence and stared through the wire at the dig. Strange how her elation of last year was now gone; she wasn't particularly looking forward to the coming season's work. She knew what they would find: more flint chippings, more bone hammers, more undecorated antler knife handles. Never a trace of art or ornamentation. Not so much as a solitary decorated bead had turned up in the carefully-sieved spoil.
Maybe the miners of prehistory who had worked here were too preoccupied with the grim business of survival to make carvings; maybe they didn't have the talent, inclination or time. Yet they had knapped wonderfully artistic axheads. No... that was wrong. She looked on them as artistic because they were so beautifully symmetrical and polished. But their elegant symmetry was for balance so that they could be swung accurately when bound to a long handle, and the polish prevented them from jamming. Was craftsmanship art? Or was art any embellishment, no matter how crude, that signified imagination and the leisure time to apply it?
David's theory was that leisure time was the first attribute of wealth and that the production of ornamentation was intended as visible evidence of that wealth. The more intricate the ornamentation, the greater the wealth.
She looked around at the landscape, wondering why her Cro-Magnon flint miners hadn't concerned themselves with art when they had lived at a time that marked the flowering of Palaeolithic art across Europe.
Her gaze took in the great sandstone scarp at the eastern end of her land. The flat platform of rock protruding from a wooded hillside, was a noted observation point. It was known locally as the Temple of the Winds and had been one of Alfred Lord Tennyson's favourite spots on his walks from his nearby home. It was easy to believe that the scowling gargoyle face that rain and wind had carved into the great outcrop was that of a legendary god that ruled the sky, the earth, and the eternal winds. On hot days it was a place that Ellen liked to visit for solitary sunbathing -- a place where she felt as one with and in close harmony with nature. Very close sometimes, as Harvey Evans had discovered last summer when had come on her unawares when flying his microlight aircraft. But the demands made on her time by the dig and her growing business meant that such opportunities were rare now.
With one backward glance at the fence, she swung over a stile, scattering some of David's southdown sheep, and tramped around the perimeter of the lake's flood margin towards the little group of vehicles surrounded by long streamers of fluttering police barrier tape.
Now that she was closer, the lake had lost its silvery sheen and taken on a yellowish silt hue. In its centre was a solitary diver sitting in the Zodiac inflatable. She was not pleased to see that Asquith Prescott's Range Rover had joined the party. Prescott had been made chairman of Pentworth Town Council, not on the grounds of merit but on the Buggins' turn principle. The landowner was standing by his vehicle, talking to Inspector Harvey Evans. Both men broke off what looked like the beginnings of an argument when they saw her approach.
A small, crab-like creature followed her at a safe distance, darting silently along the bottom of the hedgerow, keeping in the shadows and undergrowth to minimize the risk of detection.
Chapter 17.
MIKE MALONE USUALLY ENJOYED the company of women, but Cathy Price, was deliberately trying to unsettle him with frequent crossing and uncrossing of her admittedly very attractive legs.
You've picked a wrong one in me for your game-play tactics, sister.
He perched on the edge of Cathy Price's settee and concentrated on stirring his coffee. He recalled her as a somewhat reserved young woman who had once sought his advice on her burglar system about two years back. He didn't allow his eyes as much as a momentary flicker in the direction of his host's undoubted charms. But he did glance around at the exercise equipment that looked out of place in the octagonal living room. The cycling machine was no ordinary piece of domestic kit, but a substantial stainless steel affair. Expensive -- built to withstand robust commercial gymnasium usage. She had been making serious money recently.
`You have some nice equipment, Miss Price.'
The grey eyes watched him speculatively.
So do you, Mike Malone her eyes signalled.
`Thank you, Mike. Do you mind if I call you Mike? I like to keep in shape.'
; Malone did mind but said nothing. He wondered why her dark hair was so close-cropped. The 1960s Audrey Hepburn urchin style was popular again but it didn't suit her. She was sitting in a high-wing armchair, a teasing, amused half-smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Hard to credit that she was disabled. There was no sign of a wheelchair, but there was an oddball radio remote control box on the coffee table. Presumably her wheels could be summoned wlen needed.
`You seem to be better organized than on my last visit, Miss Price -- electric front door lock. A lift. All mod cons.' The coffee was good. She had made it before he arrived. He poured himself a second cup from the vacuum jug without asking.
`Is this a social call or business, Mike?'
`Business. I want to thank you for your call last night.'
`Did you catch them?'
`Let's say that the damage to Miss Duncan's shop front will be repaired at no cost or inconvenience to her.'
`It's been painted over,' said Cathy. `What was underneath?'
`You've been out?'
`I had a delivery to make.'
So you got dressed this morning, went out, and changed back into a nightdress and silk dressing gown for my visit?
`I often slip out in my nightie and dressing gown first thing,' said Cathy, as though she had read Malone's thoughts. `I love thrashing my Jag along winding country lanes at illegal speeds. Heater and stereo going full blast. There's something tremendously sexual about it, especially in an E-Type.' She laughed. `Deep down I'm a bit of a rebel. No -- not so deep down really.' As if to emphasise the point, she crossed her legs yet again to expose more thigh and was disappointed that her guest did not lower his gaze. Cathy's sexuality was a means to an end -- she enjoyed exercising power over creatures physically stronger than her. Before her accident she had often tormented her stallion by riding him near the stables set aside for brood mares. The power of denial and reward. `So what did those two oiks spray on Ellen Duncan's window?'
Malone told her. Her reaction was too prompt to be a lie. `EX2218?' she echoed, genuinely surprised. `What does that mean?'
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