by Phil Rickman
CHAPTER IV
The sun was out for the first time in ages, hanging around unsurely like a new kid standing in the school doorway.
Fay walked aimlessly up the hill from the police station towards the town square and the Cock, pausing by the railings alongside the few steps to its door. Even a weak sun was not kind to this building; its bricks needed pointing, its timbers looked like old railway sleepers.
The Cock didn't even have a sign, as you might have imagined, with a bight painting of a proud rooster crowing joyfully from the hen-house roof. But, knowing Crybbe, would you really imagine a sign like that?
And anyway, whoever said the name referred to that kind of cock? A far more appropriate emblem for this town, Fay thought, would be a decidedly limp penis.
Crybbe. Crybachu (to wither).
Fay looked down the alley towards the brick building housing the Crybbe Unattended Studio and wondered if she'd ever go in there again. They were obviously handling the Rachel Wade story themselves; nobody had even attempted to contact her.
I need the money. Fay realized suddenly. I need an income. I need a job. Why are they doing this to me?
She thought of Joe Powys – I think I've got problems – helping the police with their inquiries. Quite legitimately, by the sound of it.
Rachel Wade… the dead woman, Rachel Wade.
He couldn't have… surely. She liked Joe. He seemed so normal, for the author of a seminal New Age treatise.
Well, comparatively normal.
Oh God, what was happening?
She didn't notice the door open quietly in a narrow townhouse to the left of the Cock, didn't hear the footsteps. When she turned her head, the woman was standing next to her, looking across the square to the church.
'Good morning, Fay.'
Fay was too startled, momentarily, to reply. She'd never seen this woman before, a woman nearly as small as she was, but perhaps a quarter of a century older.
Well, never seen the face before.
'Jean Wendle?' Fay said.
'I am.'
Last seen in a hat, sitting very still, impersonating the ghost of Grace Legge.
May I perhaps offer you a coffee?' Jean Wendle said.
Catrin Jones knew Guy would be furious about the Mayor's ban on cameras at tomorrow's public meeting.
She also knew from experience that when bad news was brought to him Guy had a tendency to take it out on the messenger.
The need to salvage something from the morning had brought her to this subdued, secluded house opposite the church, at the entrance to the shaded lane leading down to Crybbe Court.
'I'd be delighted to help you, any way I can,' said Graham Jarrett, hypnotherapist, small, silvery haired, late-fifties.
'I was thinking perhaps this, what is it, recession…?'
'Regression.'
It was very quiet and peaceful in the house, with many heavy velvet curtains. Catrin could imagine people here falling easily into hypnosis,
'Yes. Regression,' she said. 'This is… past lives?'
'Well, we don't like to talk necessarily in terms of past lives,' Graham Jarrett said, matter-of-fact, like a customer-friendly bank manager. 'But sometimes, when taken back under hypnosis to an area of time prior to their birth, people do seem to acquire different personalities and memories of events they couldn't be expected to have detailed knowledge of.'
'Fantastic,' Catrin said.
'I certainly wouldn't be averse to having you film a session, if the client was in agreement.'
'That would be excellent,' Catrin said.
'But I have to warn you that many of them do prefer it to be private.'
'Oh, listen, my producer – Guy Morrison – is a wonderfully assuring man. They would have nothing to worry about with him.'
'Perhaps he would like to be regressed himself?' said Graham Jarrett with a meaningful smile.
'Oh. Well…'
'Or you, perhaps?'
'Me?'
'Think about it,' Graham Jarrett said lightly.
Fay sat in the wooden bow-chair. Jean Wendle was on the edge of a huge, floppy sofa with both hands around a mug of coffee. She wore a white cashmere sweater and pink canvas trousers.
'I heard it on the news,' she said. 'About poor Rachel Wade.'
'Yes,' Fay said, wondering if she'd also heard about Powys helping with inquiries.
'It's a crumbling old place, the Court. What was she doing there at that time of night?'
'I don't know. I've only heard the news, too. I'll expect I'll be finding out. All I know is…'
Oh, what the hell, the woman was supposed to have been lawyer, wasn't she? Maybe she could help.
'All I know is, the police aren't convinced it was an accident. Joe Powys apparently saw her fall and called the police. They're kind of holding him on suspicion.'
A sunbeam licked one gilt handle of a big Chinese vase with an umbrella in it then crept across the carpet to the tip of Jean Wendle's moccasins.
'Oh dear,' Jean said.
Fay told her how things had been between Joe and Rachel, in case she wasn't aware of that. She described her own interrogation by the police. What they'd told her about Rose.
'Can they hold him, do you think?'
'It doesn't sound as if they have any evidence to speak of,' Jean said. 'They can't convict on a coincidence. They also have to ask themselves why this man should engineer the death his lover in the same way that a previous girlfriend died, then immediately report it as an accident – knowing that the police would sooner or later learn about the earlier misfortune. I wonder how they found out about that so quickly. Did Joe tell them himself, I wonder? Do you mind if I smoke?'
Fay shook her head. Jean went across to the Georgian table, put down her coffee mug, lifted the lid on an antique writing box, found a thin cigar and a cheap, disposable lighter. She picked up a small, silver ashtray and brought everything back to the sofa.
'It could be, of course, that the police are looking at possible psychiatric angles.'
Fay was thrown.
Yes, I'm an accredited crank, Joe had said. Had said several times, variations on the same self-deprecating theme.
'You're saying they think he's possibly a psychopath who is into pushing women out of upstairs windows. And – I don't know – subconsciously he's seeking help and that's why he called the police after he'd done it?'
Jean shrugged. 'Who knows how the police around here think? Perhaps they'll do some checks with Bristol police and find out if he really was in London the afternoon Rose died. If they arrest him he'll need a solicitor. Until they decide what they're going to do, I don't think there's anything we can do. Meanwhile…'
Jean Wendle turned serious, quizzical eyes on Fay.
'Tell me about yesterday. In the church. Tell me what that was all about.'
Fay sighed. It seemed so long ago. And, in retrospect, so foolish. Also, it said too much about her state of mind that even when Jean had turned in the pew to look at her, she was still seeing somebody else.
'It's very silly,' she said. 'I thought you were Grace Legge – that's my father's late wife.'
Jean Wendle nodded, showed no surprise at all. 'You've been seeing this woman?'
'Once. I think. I mean, how can anyone say for sure? They don't really exist do they, only in our minds.'
'That depends.'
'On what we mean by existing, I suppose. Well, all I can say is that, whatever it was, I'm not anxious to see it again.'
Jean smiled. She was, Fay thought, the sort of woman – sharp, poised – you wouldn't mind being like when you were older. That is, you wouldn't mind so much being older if you were this relaxed.
'I don't quite know what came over me. You were just so completely still that the thought occurred to me that there was nobody at all sitting next to Dad, but I was seeing Grace.'
Jean said, 'The time you really did see her – when you saw – whatever it was you saw – where was this?'
'In the house. In the office, which used to be her "best" room. The room that, when she was alive, I suppose she thought of as her sacred place – so neat and perfect because nobody really used it. Maybe she thought this room had been violated by my desk and the equipment and everything. Or maybe I thought she'd be angry and so I conjured up this fantasy…'
'You don't think that for one minute,' Jean said.
'No,' Fay admitted. 'All right, I don't think that.'
'Then please, only tell me what you do think. And stop looking at me as though you're wondering what I might change you into.'
'Miss Wendle…'
'Jean.'
'Jean. Look, I'm sorry, but it gets you like this after a while, Crybbe. I've been here nearly a year, and it gets to you.'
'You mean you can't relate to the people here. You don't understand what makes them tick.'
'Do you?'
'Well, I think…' Jean lit the cigar at last. 'People talk a lot about energy. Energy lines, ley-lines. Trying to explain it scientifically. Makes them seem less like cranks if they're talking about earth energies and life forces.'
She inhaled deeply, blew out a lot of blue smoke.
'The pronouncements of New Age folk are wrapped up in too much glossy jargon. Concealing massive ignorance.'
'What are you doing in Crybbe, then, if you think it's all bullshit?'
'Oh, it isn't all bullshit, not by any means. And at least they're searching. Trying to reach out, as it were. Which itself generates energy. In fascinating contrast to the natives, who appear to be consciously trying not to expend any at all. And perhaps to the electricity company, who can't seem to summon sufficient to see us through an entire day.'
'I'm sorry. What are you saying?'
'I'm saying that perhaps the people of this town are as they are because they've known for generations what a psychically unstable area this is, and most people – sadly, in my view – are afraid to confront the supernatural and all it implies. For instance, I should be very surprised if you were the only person who was seeing the shades of the dead in this town.'
Fay shivered slightly at that. The shades of the dead… sounded almost beautiful. But Grace wasn't.
'I try to avoid letting anything get touched by the dead hand of science or indeed pseudo-science,' Jean said. 'But let's suppose that in certain places certain forms of energy collect. Our friend Joe Powys says in his book that the border country is… Have you read it?'
'The psychic departure lounge.'
'Yes, and poor Henry Kettle, the dowser, couldn't abide such terminology because he was really awfully superstitious and terrified of admitting it."
'Nothing psychic.'
Jean waved her cigar. 'A terrible old humbug, may he rest in light. Henry, of course, was just about as psychic as anyone can get. Anyway, your ghost. Grace. Did she speak?'
'Not a word.'
'And she didn't move?'
'No.'
'Harmless, then.'
'I'm so glad,' Fay said sceptically.
'Can I explain?'
'Please do.'
'OK, if we stick to our scientific terminology, then pockets of energy can accumulate in certain volatile areas, and in such areas, the spirits of the dead, usually in a most rudimentary form, may appear. Like a flash of static electricity. And they go out just as quickly. Or you'll get sounds. Or smells.'
'The scent of fresh-cut lilies or something.'
'Or fresh shit,' Jean said harshly. 'It depends.'
'I'm sorry. I wasn't flippant when it was happening to me.'
'I doubt you were,' Jean said. 'All right, sights or sounds or smells – or tastes even. Rarely anything simultaneous, because there's rarely sufficient energy to support it. If there was a massive accumulation of it then one might have a complete sensory experience.'
'I only saw her. And it was cold. It went cold.'
'Energy loss,' Jean said. 'Quite normal. So, if I may give you some advice, if you should see your Grace again, blink a couple of times… and she'll be gone. She can't talk to you, she can't see you; there's no brain activity there. Entirely harmless.'
'Not pleasant, though,' Fay said, reluctant to admit feeling better about the idea of Grace as a mindless hologram.
'No,' Jean said, 'the image of a dead person is rarely pleasant, but it's not as much of a problem as these damned power cuts.'
'You really think that's connected?'
'Oh, it has to be. Psychic activity causes all kinds of electrical anomalies. Voltage overloads, or whatever they call them. Sometimes people will find they have terrific electricity bills they can't explain, and the electricity people will come along and check the meters and the feeds, and they'll say, "We're really sorry, madam, but you must have consumed it, our equipment cannot lie." The truth is the householders may not have used it. but something has.'
Fay remembered poor Hereward Newsome and his astronomical bills.
'But your wee ghost,' Jean said, 'is the least of your problems here. Sporadic psychic activity on that level isn't enough to cause power fluctuations on the Crybbe scale. Whatever's happening, there's much more that needs to be explained before you can get close to it.'
'You've been very reassuring,' Fay said. 'Thank you. I'm also very impressed with what you're doing for Dad. He's almost his old self again. I mean, do you really think there any hope of…?'
'I never discuss my patients,' Jean said severely.
By the time Fay left Jean Wendle's house, the sun had vanished behind an enormous black raincloud and she hurried down the street to make it home before the rain began again.
She saw Guy across the square, followed by his cameraman with the camera clamped to his shoulder and a tripod under his arm. Guy made as if to cross the road towards her, but Fay raised a hand in passing greeting and hurried on. She couldn't face Guy this morning.
'Fay,' someone said quietly.
She turned her head and then stopped.
Blink a couple of times, Jean Wendle had advised, but this apparition didn't disappear.
'Joe,' she said.
He looked terrible, bags under hopeless eyes, hair like cigarette ash.
They had to let me go,' he said, insufficient evidence.'
Fay said nothing.
'Can we talk?'
'Maybe it's not a good time,' Fay heard herself say. 'I don't think you killed Rachel, let's just leave it at that for now.'
Which was the last thing she wanted to do. She bit her upper lip.
'They had you in, presumably,' he said.
'Yes.'
'And they told you about Rose.'
'Yes.'
'And that's why you don't want to talk about it.'
'Look,' Fay said. 'I've lost the only real friend I had in this town, I desperately want to talk about it, I just…'
'It wasn't an accident,' Powys said.
'What?'
'It wasn't an accident. After she fell, something else came out.'
'What are you saving?
'A cat.'
Fay looked at him. There was something seriously abnormal about all this. About Joe Powys, too.
'I don't mean a live cat. This one's been dead for centuries.'
'Tiddles,' Fay said faintly, getting a picture of black eye-sockets and long sabre-teeth
And her. She was becoming abnormal. She had to get out of here.
'Cats that've been dead for hundreds of years don't hurl themselves three storeys to the ground while somebody puts on a light-show under the eaves.'
'Hallucination,' Fay said.
'No.'
Fay thought about Jean Wendle and the energy anomalies, about Grace, about the curfew and the howling and the town with no dogs.
Joe said, 'Can you spare the rest of the day?'
No! she wanted to shriek and then to push past him and run away down the street and keep running.
'I might have a job. I have to go home and talk to my father and check the answering machine.'
&n
bsp; 'If it turns out you're free, can I pick you up? Say, twenty minutes?'
Would that be entirely safe? she wanted to ask. Am I going to be all right as long as I stay away from open windows?
'All right, 'she said.
CHAPTER V
They said, Don't, leave town. Or words to that effect.'
Joe Powys floored the accelerator.
'Fuck them,' he said.
Fay tried to smile.
They'd left Crybbe on a road she wasn't too familiar with, the road into Wales by way of Radnor Forest, which didn't seem to be a forest at all but a range of hills.
He hadn't said where they were going.
She didn't care. She felt apart from it all, in a listless kind of dream state. She was watching a movie about a woman who was out for a drive with a murderer. But in films like this, the woman had no reason to suspect the man was a murderer, only the viewers knew that; they'd seen him kill, she hadn't. The woman in this particular movie had a black and white three-legged dog on her knee. Must be one of those experimental, surrealist epics.
The car moved out of an avenue of trees into a spread of open, sheep-strewn hills with steep, wooded sides and hardly any houses.
Before they left she'd written a note for her dad, fed the cats and listened to the answering machine, which said, 'Hi, Fay, this is James Barlow from Offa's Dyke. Just to say we understand Max Goff's coming back to Crybbe and he'll probably be holding a press conference around four this afternoon, following this Rachel Wade business. But don't worry about it, Gavin says to tell you he'll be going over there himself…'
So I'm free. Fay thought bitterly. Free as a bloody bird.
As if he were watching the same movie, Powys said, 'If I killed her, why would I report it?'
'Why did you?'
'Had to get an ambulance. There might have been a chance.
'Did she…? Oh God, did she die instantly?'
'I heard it, you know, snap. Her neck.'
She thought his voice was going to snap too and tried not to react. 'What were you doing there, anyway? How come you happened to be under the window when she fell?'
'Still don't know how much of that was coincidence. Don't know if she saw me. If she was trying to attract my attention and fell against the bar. But she didn't call out to me. She just screamed. As if she was screaming at something inside the house.'
