Singing the Sadness

by Reginald Hill

  He’s got something to tell me, but only if I want to know it.

  Or rather, he emended, if he thinks I need to know it.

  Better try a subtle bluff.

  ‘So are you going to tell me or not?’

  ‘Tell you what?’ said Matthias, looking puzzled.

  Joe glanced around the beer tent in search of an answer. In another man this might have been evidence of complete bafflement. But Joe’s experience had taught him that if God chose to make something plain, He wasn’t choosy as to place and circumstance.

  And found he was staring the answer in the face. Or rather in the back.

  A man hoping not to be identified might imagine that to sit facing the blank canvas wall with his back to the body of the tent was pretty foolproof. But not when it was his bald head seen from behind that triggered the alarm bells.

  ‘About him,’ said Joe pointing. ‘About what he was doing driving round on one of them buggy contraptions up the hill the night that Copa Cottage got torched.’

  Matthias tried to look blank then gave it up and smiled, saying, ‘Nye Garage was right about you, Mr Sixsmith.’

  Then he called, ‘Harry, care to join us?’

  The Yul Brynner lookalike rose and came over to the table. He didn’t seem any more enthusiastic at the sight of Joe than he had when faced with him that morning.

  ‘I think you two have met,’ said Matthias.

  ‘Several times,’ said Joe. ‘But we ain’t been introduced. Joe Sixsmith.’

  ‘Harry Herbert.’

  The tall man’s right arm twitched as if it had thoughts of reaching out in a handshake. Joe made no responding move. This guy was closely linked with the Goat and Axle mob who’d made such nationalistic anti-Anglo noises. And Joe had seen him within a quarter-mile of Copa Cottage the night it burnt. If it turned out he had any responsibility for that woman lying still as a corpse in Caerlindys Hospital, Joe didn’t want to recall he’d shaken his hand.

  ‘Sit down, won’t you, Harry boy?’ said Matthias.

  Herbert obeyed, never taking his eyes off Joe.

  ‘Now, Mr Sixsmith, let’s put our cards on the table, shall we?’ said Matthias. ‘First thing to establish is what you’ve told the good Inspector Ursell about Harry here.’

  Joe considered boxing clever and pretending all kinds of things. But then he’d have to remember what he was pretending, and why he was pretending it. Truth was usually the best option, until it wasn’t an option at all.

  He said, ‘Told him I spoke to a guy on a buggy the night we got lost on the way here.’

  ‘With description, no doubt.’

  Joe shrugged.

  ‘Told him you guys all look and sound the same to me.’

  That got a smile from Matthias, not from Herbert.

  ‘This, I presume, was at your first interview with the inspector and apropos your first encounter with Harry. But you met him again earlier today.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And, if Nye Garage’s judgement is correct, recognized him.’

  ‘Yes. Eventually.’

  ‘And soon after that encounter you were observed in long and earnest confabulation with Mr Ursell. What if anything did you tell him about Harry on that occasion?’

  This, thought Joe, might be a good time to start lying if he’d been chained to the wall in a nationalist dungeon instead of sitting here in this airy beer tent with people all around and a pleasant mix of birdsong, sunshine and choral harmonies drifting through the open flap.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Joe.

  ‘Really? Why not?’

  ‘Didn’t arise,’ said Joe. ‘We were talking about other things.’

  Matthias nodded and said, ‘There, you see, Harry. Told you there was no need to book plastic surgery and head for the hills. If Ursell had been on to you, he’d have had you in leg irons hours ago.’

  Herbert didn’t look convinced, but Joe wasn’t much worried about his state of mind. He was working out the implications of what Matthias was saying and feeling indignant.

  ‘Now hang about,’ he said. ‘I should have told the inspector I thought I recognized Mr Herbert but, like I said, other things got in the way. Nothing to stop me now though, and soon as I see him, that’s the first thing I’ll be telling him.’

  He emptied his glass and set it down with an emphatic bang.

  ‘Same again, is it?’ asked Matthias.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Joe. ‘I’m choosy about the company I drink in.’

  He stared challengingly at Matthias, who didn’t blink.

  ‘Fair enough. But I’d put you down as the kind of man who’d want to be sure what kind of company that was before making such an important decision. Joe, I’m here to give you both an offer and an explanation.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Joe, thinking the more they talked, the more he’d learn. And the mention of an offer intrigued him. Assuming it wasn’t an offer in the Mafia sense of one he couldn’t afford to refuse, it had to be some kind of bribe. This was an area he’d had little experience in and it would be interesting to see how much they thought he was worth.

  Or maybe not.

  ‘I gather you are interested, both professionally and personally, in finding out how and why Copa Cottage came to be burning that night,’ said Matthias. ‘What I’d like to do is persuade you first of all that neither Harry here nor any of the gents you met at the Goat and Axle had anything to do with it. And then, in return for your assurance that you will neither identify Harry to Inspector Ursell nor implicate either of us as the source of anything I might tell you here, to offer you some information which might assist your own investigations.’

  They couldn’t half rabbit on, these people, thought Joe.

  ‘I’m still listening,’ he said.

  ‘That is all I ask for. Let me start by admitting what your own powers of observation plus Dai Williams’s mistaken assessment of your likely political position probably made you suspect, that several of the regulars at the Goat are indeed activists in the nationalist cause, though on the whole more active with the tongue than with the terrorism. But the conspiracy in which those present the other night are primarily engaged at the present time has a closer target than the English occupation of our country. It is the Llanffugiol Festival.’

  Herbert looked around fearfully as if expecting the SAS to come crashing in, and hissed something in Welsh. Joe guessed it was a protest at the music teacher’s frank avowal of criminality in a public place to a man who was unlikely to have much sympathy for a purely local feud.

  Matthias sighed long-sufferingly and said, ‘Harry is concerned you may be wearing a wire.’

  ‘Couldn’t get one my size,’ said Joe. ‘So let’s get this straight. It’s been your lot trying to mess things up? Like cancelling the caterers? And fixing the stage? After what you said this morning, I wondered.’

  ‘I thought you might,’ said Matthias. ‘Harry and some friends had been down here at the festival field the night you saw him. The stage had been erected that day, but as the festival proper was not due to get under way for another twenty-four hours, there was minimal security that night. It was decided to take the chance offered of preparing the stage for its collapse by lubricating and loosening all but a couple of key joints so that when the moment came, it would require only a couple of quick twists of the spanner to destabilize the erection.’

  ‘Destabilize?’ said Joe. ‘It folded like a deck chair. You could’ve killed someone.’

  ‘It was rather more dramatic than we intended,’ admitted Matthias. ‘But in the event no one was seriously hurt, thank heaven. Your own friends were never at risk, of course. We targeted the German choir because they are the festival’s real draw, begging your pardon. And also we knew they would make the biggest fuss. One thing all inhabitants of these islands have in common is a fairly laid-back attitude to minor disasters, and major too. On the continent they take themselves and their dignity rather more seriously.’

&nb
sp; He paused again and looked enquiringly at Joe, as if asking, what do you think of it so far? A group of youngsters came in, a couple went up to the bar to order while the others stood in the doorway immediately behind Joe, debating whether they should sit inside or out. The outsiders won and they pushed a couple of tables together right up against the canvas next to Matthias’s table, but they were making far too much noise to be an eavesdropping threat.

  Joe said, ‘You want I should cheer ‘cos you’re telling me you’re trying to wreck the festival I came all the way from Luton to sing in?’

  ‘No. But I’d like to think you believe me when I say we had nothing to do with the event which has prevented you from adding your doubtless mellifluous voice to the performance of your fellow choristers. I heard them earlier, by the way. Most impressive. I got the sense that your choirmaster really makes you search for the true feeling beneath the music and the words too.’

  This could just have been flannel but it came over so sincere that Joe felt a glow of pleasure at hearing Boyling Corner praised and said, ‘Thanks. Rev. Pot’s been telling us, no use going to Wales unless we can sing from the heart.’

  ‘Singing the sadness, eh? He sounds like my sort of man,’ said Matthias.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ said Joe anxiously. ‘He can be a bit old-fashioned.’

  ‘I was speaking musically,’ grinned Matthias.

  ‘Are you two going to rabbit on about the sodding singing all day or what?’ demanded Herbert surlily.

  ‘Sorry, Harry. Mr Sixsmith, I take it I have carried you with me so far. I realize that by confessing Harry here and the rest of us guilty of a different crime, albeit a lesser one, from that which you suspected us of, I have not necessarily removed from you the natural good citizen’s impulse to help the police in their enquiries. So now we come to the offer. If Harry can tell you something which might further your personal enquiries, would you be willing not to identify him to Inspector Ursell?’

  Joe considered. The kids at the table outside had finished their drinks and were moving on. He felt a sudden and surprising envy of them. To be young and careless, wandering around in the sunlight with your mates, nothing more on your mind than whether the bird of your choice fancied you as much as you fancied her … ‘Stead of which he was sitting here debating whether to do a deal with a bunch of saboteurs. Not that it was such a big deal. All it came down to was, he didn’t finger Herbert as the guy acting suspicious the night of the fire and in return he got … what?

  He said, ‘Depends what it is he tells me. Could be worth dick.’

  It was Matthias’s turn to consider.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ignoring a protesting growl from Herbert. ‘Go ahead, Harry.’

  Reluctantly, the tall man said, ‘I was heading for home after’ – he glared at Matthias as though still objecting to the transparency of his account of the sabotage, then, clearly feeling the damage was done, went on – ‘ after we fixed the stage. I had the tools and the lubricant on the buggy, see, so I had to go roundabout over the fields so as not to be clocked by some nosy copper. Only two places where I needed to cross a road, and blow me if I didn’t run into some bugger both times. Sod’s law, they call it. Second time was your coach. Don’t know how the hell you recognized me when you only saw me for a few seconds with the headlight in your eyes.’

  He glowered at Joe as if suspecting him of some chicanery. Joe, looking suitably modest, prompted, ‘And the first time?’ guessing this was the crux of the offered deal.

  ‘First time was just below Copa Cottage. I’d just got the gate on to the road opened when I heard a car coming up the hill. I switched off the lights and ducked down. Needn’t have bothered. Was going too fast to pay any heed to me. Went on by, then suddenly its lights went off too, just before it reached the turn to Copa.’

  There was a dramatic pause which Joe spoilt by inserting the question, ‘Did anyone get out?’

  ‘I was coming to that,’ said Herbert disgruntledly. ‘I heard the door open and shut, gently like, and then the boot. I counted to twenty, then I started up the buggy and got out of there fast.’

  ‘So you weren’t around when the fire started?’

  ‘No way! Wouldn’t have done much good if I had been.’

  ‘Saving a woman’s life not much good?’ said Joe incredulously.

  ‘Didn’t know there was a woman’s life to save, did I?’ snarled Herbert. ‘No. All I’d have thought if I’d seen the fire start is, expensive little holiday home owned by a pair of poxy Anglos, burning’s the best thing for it.’

  ‘Thank you, Harry,’ said Matthias smoothly, possibly feeling he might be losing his audience. ‘Mr Sixsmith?’

  ‘Well, it’s something,’ said Joe grudgingly. ‘But not a lot.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking you if we had a deal,’ said Matthias. ‘I was merely inviting further questions.’

  Joe was momentarily baffled. Then it came to him. They were all prima donnas, these Welsh. They didn’t tell a story to convey information in the most direct way possible, they turned it into a performance with the listener as straight man.

  Which meant you kept the best for last.

  He said, ‘Didn’t happen to recognize this car, did you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And the driver too?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  This was worse than getting Whitey to take a tablet.

  He said, ‘So could you manage to tell me about them? Please.’

  ‘Don’t need to tell you, do I? Not when you can see for yourself.’

  Herbert pointed dramatically.

  ‘There they are,’ he said. ‘That’s the car I saw. That poxy little red sporty job.’

  Joe turned his head. But he knew already what he was going to be looking at.

  Wain Lewis’s MX-5.

  Something else he saw too. He’d thought all the youngsters had left the table immediately outside, but there was a figure still sitting there, very close. No, not sitting now. Jumping up and moving swiftly away.

  ‘And that’s the bugger who was driving it,’ exclaimed Herbert. ‘Hell! Do you think he heard us?’

  Joe, on his feet now and watching Wain Lewis vaulting into his MX-5, didn’t have any doubt.

  ‘Wain, stop!’ he shouted, stepping out of the tent and waving.

  He saw at once he didn’t have a monopoly. From different angles, at least three others were converging on the Mazda – Ursell, and Leon Lewis, and Bronwen.

  Not that it mattered. Wain wasn’t in the mood for company. The engine roared into life, the boy glanced round once, his pale poet’s face like a death mask. Then he was gone, doing fifty and rising as he exited from the parking field.

  Chapter 20

  Having failed with Wain Lewis, it seemed to Joe that the three pursuers looked around for someone to blame and with one accord settled for him.

  He’d had the same kind of experience before. One occasion in particular was printed on his memory. He’d been King Melchior in the school Nativity Play and during their one and only public performance the girl playing Mary had broken wind loudly, and everyone had turned to look at him. Including Mary. He still saw her round Luton. She’d married a salesman who fathered five kids on her then done a bunk, and she looked ten years older than she was, and she was always real grateful if he gave her a lift, and sometimes they’d chat about the old days when they were kids, but he’d never been able to bring up the Nativity Play fart. It would have seemed like taking advantage.

  She came into his mind now as the trio joined him outside the refreshment tent. It would have been easy to cause a bit of consternation all round by declaring that he had reason to think that Wain was mixed up with the theft of the Decorax from Caerlindys Hospital, and that he was connected with the mystery woman in the cottage, and that he probably had something to do with the fire that had put her in Intensive Care. But it would have had nothing to do with the pursuit of truth or whatever it was he imagined he was doing, just a b
it of self-indulgence at their expense, so when DI Ursell snarled at him, ‘Recognize him this time, do you, Mr Sixsmith? So now your eyesight’s miraculously improved, maybe you can tell me where he might be heading?’ he looked blank and said, ‘Sorry. Can’t help.’

  ‘Then maybe you can tell me why you were so keen to attract his attention. Or were you waving your arms to ward off the mosquitoes?’

  That sounded like a pretty good excuse to Joe, but it had clearly been pre-empted, so he said, ‘Just wanted to have a look at his wheels, is all. Interest of mine, motors.’

  ‘And that was why you came to the Lady House this morning, to discuss automobiles with my son?’ said Leon Lewis. ‘A purpose which your strong sense of professional responsibility prevented you from sharing with me?’

  Joe, after a bit of effort, recalled the line he’d shot the High Master in return for the High Master not shooting him.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘No, not just that. But I got the other thing sorted without needing to talk to Wain. Sorry. Owain.’

  ‘Seen him in the last half-hour, have you then?’ said Bronwen. “Cos you were dead keen to get hold of him in Caerlindys and you hadn’t managed it when I said cheerio to you thirty minutes ago.’

  It’s a conspiracy, thought Joe. Maybe I should just come clean with everything, let them sort it out among themselves.

  He glanced back into the tent as if in search of inspiration. The table he’d been sitting at was empty. Not a sign of Herbert and Matthias. How come everyone else could vanish so easily while he couldn’t even sneak away from Sergeant Prince without a helping hand from fate? Thought of Prince brought him full circle to Ursell’s opening remark. Prince must have been talking to the DI on the phone, and once Ursell had got a description of the burnt woman’s mystery visitor, he’d have had little problem recognizing young Lewis, and even less working out that Joe must have recognized him too.