by Jo Bannister
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Copyright Page
Chapter One
LAND IS LIKE PEOPLE: it has a skeleton under its cloak of flesh. Also like people, some landscapes carry more flesh than others. As gardeners from Lyme Regis to Eastbourne know to their cost, much of the south coast of England is a poverty case, the chalk bones never far below the skin, ready to break through whenever an injury occurs. All you can do is make the most of what topsoil you have and plant as deep as you can before you hit the layer of impenetrable clunch.
Midway through a dry summer the surface was like dust over iron, but that would be true wherever he went. At least here there was scant chance of being disturbed, however long the job took. The man found a spot beside the trees where centuries of leafmould had worked a little softness into the earth and, avoiding the thick roots that mirrored below the ground the spread of branches above, he began to dig.
At this time of year the day’s heat persisted long into the night and soon he was sweating under his clothes. But he didn’t break the steady rhythm of his labour. It was important to get the job done: he could rest later. As the Book of Ecclesiastes observed, there’s a right time for everything. A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck that which is planted. A time for every purpose under heaven.
Which may not have been the perfect analogy, he recognised as he toiled. Some purposes have precious little to do with heaven; and some things are planted with the intention that they remain buried.
A little after two, like a tiny miracle sandwiched between the scorching days, a light rain began to fall, throwing a halo around the moon. The cool was a blessing but the man had no time to admire the optical effects. Before the moon paled he had to be away from here. Before the sun rose he wanted to be in another county.
When he hit hard chalk he considered briefly whether he had depth enough and decided he had. He extended his trench lengthways between the tree-roots. Wrapped in bin-bags, tied with string, he laid his offering in the hole and covered it. Then he spread the leafmould over the top till all there was to see was a gentle hump like another root growing under the surface.
He bent once more, still panting from his exertions, and patted the top of the hump. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he murmured softly. ‘I know it isn’t what you hoped for. It isn’t what I wanted either, it’s just the best I can do.’ Then he turned his back on her and left.
Chapter Two
‘Demon Rock,’ said Daniel Hood thoughtfully, his yellow head tilted to one side like a puzzled labrador. ‘What is that exactly?’
Brodie Farrell looked up from her screen with a grin. Her teeth were so perfect they were almost predatory. Sometimes when she did that grin, and the brown eyes gleamed at him out of the forest of dark curls, Daniel had the uncomfortable sensation of looking down the barrel of a panther.
She regarded him fondly. She knew she intimidated him sometimes and was untroubled. It was a long time since she’d thought Nice Girl was a compliment. She said, ‘You’re out of touch. I bet you knew all the pop groups when you were teaching.’
He shook his head sadly. ‘Not me. I was always out of date. I’m the guy who brought a Beatles LP to the Christmas party only to find everyone else had George Michael tapes. The next year I took tapes and everyone else had CDs.’
Brodie didn’t doubt it. Daniel never lied, even about trivia. Also, it was utterly in character. For a man of twenty-seven he had a curiously old-fashioned quality that only made sense when she discovered he’d been raised by his grandfather. His virtues were the post-war ones of honesty, moral courage and personal responsibility that society still valued then. His vices were, by and large, the same things.
‘How far back do I have to go?’ she asked. ‘Punk? Heavy metal? Grunge?’
‘Grunge?’ he echoed doubtfully, as if she might be making it up.
Brodie sighed. ‘OK. Demon Rock is essentially heavy metal music – think loud: thumping bass-line, crashing guitars – with sex and death lyrics and New Gothic staging. Put it this way: Dracula could go to a demon rock concert and no one would notice.’
‘Sex and death?’ Daniel echoed faintly.
‘Oh yeah.’
‘In that order?’
‘Not necessarily.’
Considering, he turned the flier on her desk with a fingertip. ‘So this is your new image. Brodie Farrell – research done, objets trouvées, mysteries solved, necrophilia by arrangement.’
She laughed out loud. That was what she liked about Daniel: just when you’d got him pigeon-holed – the thick glasses, the why-pay-more? haircut, the outdated manners and gentle self-deprecating humour, even the fact that he could get really excited about the space programme – just when you’d bundled it all up in a box labelled Nerd he said or did something to make you think again. It wasn’t even that the label was wrong, just that the whole was more than the sum of the parts.
‘I’m working for him,’ she explained. ‘Jared Fry, the lead singer. He wants to buy a property round here. Somewhere secluded, where sacrificing virgins on the lawn won’t upset the neighbours.’
‘Cheyne Treacey,’ Daniel said immediately. ‘That’s pretty much a mainstream interest in Cheyne Treacey. I believe the parish council has a sub-committee dealing with it.’
‘That and hanging baskets,’ nodded Brodie. ‘And well-dressing.’
Daniel looked at the flier again. ‘So what is the well-dressed Satanist wearing this year? Ah — black leather, silver chains and – what would you call that?’
‘Body-piercing,’ said Brodie, straight-faced. ‘And I didn’t mean …’ She let it go. ‘It’s all an act, you know. They’re not really evil, they’re just pretending. They’re entertainers. When he leaves the stage and takes off the greasepaint he’ll look as normal as …’
She’d meant to say You and me but thought better of it. Daniel was small and unremarkable, and the glasses, the mop of fair hair and the boyish enthusiasm had led every class he’d ever taught to call him Joe 90 behind his back. Brodie was tall and dramatically good-looking with strong features, a cloud of dark hair and a taut curved figure. Each of them, alone, drew glances. Together, on their way to a pub lunch or any of the little everyday pleasures they shared, they made an absurd couple.
Brodie didn’t care. Daniel was her best friend – not only because she liked him but because she liked herself better for knowing him. He brought out the best in her – reserves of kindness, patience and tolerance that she would never have found alone. He was the cricket on her shoulder: amiable, good company, a friendly voice in her ear, and a conscience for times when it would be easy to ignore her own. He bullied her when she needed bullying, encouraged her when she needed encouragement, held her fast when she needed an anchor. He was the b
rother she never had but without the baggage that blood relatives bring. There was history between them, of course, and some of it had to do with blood, but the only obligations were those they created for themselves and were the stronger for it.
Daniel hadn’t noticed her hesitation. ‘Why doesn’t he go to an estate agent?’
‘Hm?’ Brodie looked at the flier and remembered what she’d been saying. ‘He did. They couldn’t find anything suitable.’
‘What made him think you will?’
‘I made him think that,’ she said firmly. ‘This is how I make my living, yes? Finding things that other people can’t. Buying things that weren’t actually for sale. It works for Meissen shepherdesses and it works for houses.’
Daniel thought about this. ‘You mean, you’re going to knock on people’s doors and say, “Someone’s going to give me a lot of money if I can get you to move”?’
‘Pretty much. Slightly different emphasis, maybe. I tend to stress that my buyer will pay above market value, and if they need help moving I’ll do that for them too, but yes, that’s pretty much the pitch. It doesn’t always work. There are people who won’t move at any price, but most people will if the deal is sweet enough. By the time a buyer’s desperate enough to come to me, he’s ready to sweeten the pot to the point where fillings fall out.’
‘I take it they’re pretty successful then.’ He was reading the flier upside down. ‘Ghouls In Satin’.
‘Souls For Satan! Jesus, Daniel, even I’d heard of Souls For Satan, and I’m too old for demon rock and Paddy’s too young. Some people are famous enough to transcend the boundaries of their own genre.’
‘That’s probably true,’ Daniel agreed slowly. ‘Of Albert Einstein, and Albert Schweitzer, and Alexander Fleming, and David Livingstone, and Pierre and Marie Curie. I’m not sure it applies to pop singers.’
‘I think they think it applies to them. I think their accountants do too.’
‘Now you’re confusing wealth with importance,’ said the man who’d never earned more than a living wage and now earned rather less. ‘How many pop singers’ names will still be part of the language when they’ve been dead for fifty years?’
‘Precious few,’ conceded Brodie. ‘But they don’t expect to be. Right now Souls For Satan are making obscene amounts of money playing loud music to teenagers across half the world. The bubble may burst tomorrow, or they may be around for another few years before a new New Thing finishes them. Just possibly they’ll still be on the A-list in their sixties, like the Stones. But even if they’re not they’ll have made more money in a few years of doing what they’re good at than most of us manage in a career. Maybe that isn’t your idea of importance but it’s certainly success. Not everyone can split the atom. It’s enough to find one thing that, for one brief shining moment, you’re better at than anyone else.’
Daniel’s mild grey eyes danced with amusement. ‘You’re a groupie!’
Brodie chuckled. ‘I’m ten years and one child too old to be a groupie. I’m all grown up, Daniel: I have property of my own, and a business, and taxes to pay, and if I can find a Home Sweet Home for a demon rocker with an income like the GNP of Belgium I shan’t care how fleeting his fame or whether he could be doing something more worthwhile with his time. All I care is he pays my commission before demon rock is the last big thing and what the kids in the music stores are queueing up to hear is singing hamsters.’
Daniel didn’t look over his glasses at people because he couldn’t see them if he did. He marked his disapproval by peering through the upper edge. ‘Now you’re just being silly.’
Eric Chandos didn’t wear silver chains and body-piercing. He wore an expensive suit, a vicuna overcoat against the January chill and handmade shoes, and he drove a white Mercedes. He parked it on the double yellow line in Shack Lane immediately in front of the burgundy door with its slate shingle inscribed Looking For Something? because he could afford to pay parking fines. He went to open the door and seemed surprised to find it locked against him.
Brodie knew Jared Fry’s manager was there. She waited until he rang the bell before answering. This was a consulting room, not a shop – people didn’t wander in off the street, if they didn’t make an appointment they risked her not being free to see them. People approached her with a variety of problems and requests, few of which they would be happy to make public, and she didn’t ask her clients to share a waiting-room.
‘Mr Chandos,’ she said coolly, blocking the doorway with the curve of her body. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
He was a tall man, taller than her, not heavy but powerfully built, his angular face defined by a well-shaped black beard. He had commanding dark eyes with a spark of mischief in them, and when he spoke his voice had a musical timbre that set a quiver in her stomach, like the deep roar of a tiger. He might have been forty.
‘I took pot-luck.’ His lips, sculpted by the beard, spread in a smile. ‘I wondered if you were making any progress.’
Brodie glanced at her watch. ‘I have an appointment in twenty minutes,’ she said untruthfully. ‘But I have a couple of possibilities for you to consider. I’ll print them off, you can take them with you.’ She stood back and let him in, the door closing behind them.
In fact, if Chandos hadn’t called with her this Tuesday morning she’d have called him this afternoon. The urgency of the quest was reflected in the terms of their agreement. Brodie couldn’t imagine why a demon rocker with three other homes in the UK and elsewhere was so keen for a fourth in the Dimmock area, but nor did she waste time wondering. The sooner she met Fry’s arcane list of requirements, the better she got paid.
And she had hopes of a property that had just come to her notice. It wasn’t for sale. It was the subject of a planning application and a neighbour had been telling The Dimmock Sentinel why an old coaching inn which had already been redeveloped as eight flats should not suffer the further indignity of having an extra block of four built in the stable-yard. Subdivided among nine owners, none of whom had expressed an interest in selling, the idea of reuniting it under one title would have scared off the bravest estate agent in Dimmock – which was Edwin Turnbull and therefore not saying a great deal. But Brodie relished a challenge, especially a lucrative one.
Before she showed him The Diligence, though, she made Eric Chandos read the particulars for two other properties she had on her spike. They met some of Fry’s criteria, fell short on others. As she expected the manager shook his head. ‘If I was looking for myself, Mrs Farrell, I’d want to view both of them. But Jared doesn’t know the meaning of the word compromise. It makes him a good musician and a bad house-hunter.’
Brodie tried to look disappointed. She hadn’t expected him to go for either property. She’d shown them to soften him up for The Diligence and the problems it brought. She said, ‘Explain the set-up to me. You’ve got me looking at big, big houses. Will the whole band be moving here?’
Chandos chuckled. ‘Mrs Farrell, I try to avoid having them in the same town, let alone the same house. Johnny Turpin – the keyboard player? – lives about an hour from here and that makes me nervous. The band as a whole gets together for rehearsals, gigs and recording sessions, and it’s as much as I can do to stop them breaking one another’s fingers in the coffee breaks. If they shared a house I’d have a band for about three days. After that I’d have a solo artist, three bumps in the lawn and policemen at the front door. No, this is for Jared. But he has staff, and he needs places to write, play music and entertain. His home is the head office of a big business.’
‘What about you, Mr Chandos? Will you be living there?’
Chandos did the handsome smile again. But he knew the question was designed to peg him in place. ‘That’s right, Mrs Farrell, I’m a member of Jared’s staff too. He has the courtesy to call me his manager but we both know where we stand. I’m a good businessman. But it’s musicians who fill concert-halls, not managers.’
‘I didn’t mean to pry,’ Brodie dem
urred insincerely. ‘It’s just, I’ve seen another property that meets most of your requirements pretty well. It’s a bit unconventional, but if there are going to be a number of people living there it might be an advantage that it’s currently divided into flats.’
One eyebrow rose like a circumflex up his forehead. ‘Do you have a picture?’
It was the right question. The extensive work done to convert The Diligence Hotel to flats as recently as eight years ago had been mostly internal. A few new doorways, extended down from existing windows so as to disturb neither the structural nor aesthetic rhythm of the half-timbering, a fresh coat of butter-coloured paint and a new roof of Wealden tiles had in no way diminished the charm of a property so picturesque it was only saved from winsome by the fact that it had been a working building most of its life and it showed. Brodie put the file in front of Chandos and waited for a sharp intake of breath.
The photographs showed a long two-storey building running parallel to the road, an L-shaped wing and what had once been a stable-block creating a courtyard at the rear. The steep pitch of the roof suggested it had originally been thatched, and a gallery ran round the courtyard at upper-storey level. The outer, public facade was broken by a double row of small windows, cross-hatched with leading, looking over the Downs towards the distant Channel. In the centre part of the building a false floor had been fitted – and could be as easily removed – in what had clearly been a double-height hall. Immediately above it, rising through the roofline like the lamp-room of a lighthouse or the lantern of a very small cathedral, was a solar – a structure comprised almost entirely of glass. Anyone up there would feel to own not only half of southern England but half the sky as well.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Chandos at length. ‘How does it measure up?’
Brodie had answered the question comprehensively in the file but didn’t mind spelling it out again. ‘Surprisingly well. The location is just this side of Cheyne Warren, in the heart of the Three Downs. Do you know the Dimmock area?’ He shook his head. ‘The Three Downs form the hinterland to this strip of coast. Chain Down, Menner Down and Frick Down are part of the whole range of the South Downs, with all the advantages that brings – an expansive rural setting sandwiched between the coast and the road to London. The villages are small and traditional, but you’re only fifteen minutes from the Guildford road which makes it a fifty mile commute to the city. Except at rush-hour you’d do it inside the two hours you specified.’
