Singing the Sadness

by Reginald Hill

  This, plus the fact that the DI was probably still hoping he was going to pull a handful of Decorax out of his pocket, made him a good man not to be left alone with.

  Joe felt nauseous. For a second he put it down to the bacon sarnie, then he identified the feeling as simple homesickness. Life had never been complicated as this back in dear ol’ Luton.

  He said, ‘Why’s everyone so keen all of a sudden to get hold of Wain?’

  ‘Owain,’ said Lewis. ‘His name is Owain.’

  He turned away and headed back towards the competition field.

  Bron said accusingly to Joe, ‘You seen my da?’

  ‘No. He not turned up yet?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be asking if he had, would I?’ she snarled and moved off with the measured pace of a hunting tigress.

  ‘Bron, hold on,’ called Joe.

  With an apologetic smile to Ursell, he set out after the girl.

  ‘What?’ she demanded as he caught up with her.

  ‘Just wondered why you were so keen to get hold of Wain. You didn’t seem much bothered about seeing him when I drove you back from town. In fact, you seemed like you’d made up your mind there was nothing there for you any more.’

  She hesitated before answering, then Joe’s open honest gaze did the trick.

  ‘Might as well tell you as I’ve told you everything else. It was weird. I ran into his ma. We’ve always been dead formal since that time she broke us up. But today she was dead nice to me. Talked to me like I was somebody, not just a kid. She said she was sorry about what had happened way back then but now I was older, I’d understand she’d just been protecting both of us, and she hoped Wain and me could still be good friends.’

  ‘She didn’t know that you’d got back together during the Christmas hols?’

  ‘Don’t think so, but you can never tell with mothers, can you? She said she didn’t think he was very happy just now and he could probably do with a real friend to cheer him up, and I said he’d given me a lift to town this morning but he didn’t seem all that friendly, and she said that young men are never very good at expressing their feelings, and he was around the festival somewhere, she’d seen his car, and anything I could do to cheer him up … well, it sounded to me like she was saying it was open season on Wain as far as I was concerned, so when I saw him sitting on his lonesome outside the refreshment tent, I thought I might as well ask him straight out where we stood, only before I could get near him, he took off …’

  ‘Bron, I don’t think it was you he was taking off from,’ said Joe gently. ‘And his mother’s right. I think Wain’s got a lot of things on his mind just now and could do with a friend. One thing I gotta ask, I’m sorry but I need to know, this girl you found him with his hand up her skirt, was she a red-headed nurse from the hospital?’

  Her expression gave him the answer without her words.

  ‘That’s right. Tilly Butler. Little cow. Looks so innocent but you know what they say about nurses. Seen it all and still can’t get enough of it.’

  ‘That what they say? I’ll have to tell my friend Beryl.’

  ‘Oh hell,’ she said, crestfallen. ‘Forgot she’s a nurse. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’

  ‘I know you didn’t,’ said Joe, smiling. ‘You take good care of yourself, Bron. Me, I think Wain lost himself a bargain.’

  He meant it. She was a nice kid. But he didn’t think there was much joy in prospect for anyone with an emotional interest in Owain Lewis.

  The girl went on her way.

  Joe glanced back to see if he’d shaken off DI Ursell and found himself looking into the man’s face.

  ‘Alone at last, Mr Sixsmith,’ he said. ‘Tom Prince tells me you’ve been telling him how closely you and me are working together. He got the impression we are real mates, no secrets from each other. I was pleased to hear it. Always nice to know who your friends really are, isn’t it, Joe? All right if I call you, Joe?’

  Joe thought, if Prince is GM, what’s he doing cosying up to Ursell who clearly isn’t? And did it really matter? Policemen and their relationships wasn’t any problem of his. Also he was suddenly fed up with tiptoeing round them like they were little tin gods. All right, back home it came with the job, but there was no need to make a habit of it. Another day and he’d be out of here.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘And I’ll call you Perry, shall I?’

  Ursell took it in his stride.

  ‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘Which you may yet be if you hold out on me, Joe. Let’s take a little walk, shall we?’

  He put his arm round Joe’s shoulders in a manner which might have looked avuncular but felt like the preliminary to the best of three falls, and urged him away from the tents and the parked cars and activity in general.

  ‘Hey, I don’t want to miss my choir,’ said Joe, glancing anxiously towards the show field.

  ‘Got some money on it, have you? Wise man. Word is that everyone’s been very impressed and the odds are shortening fast, especially since the favourites took their tumble this morning. So anyone who backed your lot first thing may have done themselves a bit of good.’

  ‘Shouldn’t think Nye will like that,’ said Joe, not seeing any point in pretending he didn’t know about Nye’s book with Ursell making no secret of his knowledge.

  ‘Oh, he’ll survive. All that money he took on the Guttenbergers, he’s got a nice cushion.’

  ‘But won’t those bets be void, money returned?’

  ‘Not according to Nye. They’d sung, see, like coming under starter’s orders. So the bets stand. Lucky for Nye they did withdraw, though. Very generous odds you could get right up till the stage collapsed, so that’s where the smart money was pouring in. Suggest anything to you as an investigator, does it, Joe?’

  It suggested a lot, but not anything he was going to share with the police about a man he hoped to talk into selling him the car of his dreams shortly.

  He said, ‘So what’s the verdict on the stage? Accident?’

  The fingers dug into his shoulder.

  ‘Thought we were friends, Joe? You want to play charades, wait till Christmas. I saw you checking out those joints on the scaffolding and I’m sure a man with your engineering background spotted straightaway what even an ignoramus like me could see in a few minutes. It was a fix. And the way you’ve been getting around in the short time you’ve been with us, I don’t doubt you could point your finger straight as mine at the people responsible. But pointing and proving are different things. And so is proving and wanting to prove, eh, Joe?’

  Joe’s natural reaction was to play naive because that came easiest, so playing smart required a bit of effort. Might as well double-check Matthias’s version of events, he thought.

  ‘So it don’t look like the lot trying to sabotage the festival have got anything to do with setting fire to the cottage?’ he said.

  ‘I’d agree,’ said Ursell. ‘Different things entirely. Might be able to help us, though, if by chance they were creeping around the undergrowth doing their guerilla act that particular night.’

  He was sharp, thought Joe. Or maybe he’d just noticed him buddying up with Herbert and Matthias in the refreshment tent.

  ‘Could be to their advantage too,’ Ursell added, watching Joe closely.

  ‘You mean like a deal?’

  ‘This isn’t America, Joe,’ said the DI reprovingly. ‘Nor even Luton. Don’t make deals in Wales. But we do make decisions about resources. See, I’ve got this situation at the moment with Mr Penty-Hooser really keen for me to concentrate everything on finding out who’s trying to undermine the festival, but what I say is, no one got hurt when the stage collapsed so it’s not like arson with a woman critical in hospital, that should be my priority.’

  ‘No competition,’ agreed Joe.

  ‘Only it’s bringing me a lot of flak. Easy thing would be to throw everything at the saboteurs, get that out of the way. Unless they were being real helpful in the more serious case.’

  ‘
Thought you didn’t do deals,’ said Joe.

  ‘Not with criminals in custody. What I’m talking here is free citizens freely offering their help, anonymously through a third party if preferred.’

  The crunch. He wants to use me as the unofficial amateur middleman again, thought Joe. Someone he can deny all knowledge of if I get caught burgling someone’s house or doing deals with criminals, with the additional advantage I’m not going to be around long enough to cause any future embarrassment by shooting my mouth off.

  But the thought had no rancour in it. For the first time he felt as smart as Ursell was pretending to believe he was. He was way ahead of the game. The guy was asking him to act as intermediary in a done deal!

  He said, ‘It’s everyone’s duty to help the police any way they can, Perry.’

  ‘Knew you’d see it like that, Joe. But information’s like fish, the fresher the better.’

  ‘I’ll get right on to it,’ said Joe.

  He knew he should be telling the cop now that Wain had been seen driving up to Copa the night of the fire, but he also knew he wanted to talk to the boy himself first, though he wasn’t certain why. OK, he had Wain’s money in his wallet, but he also had the Haggards’, so claiming professional duty to a client was, if not double-talk, at least one-point-five-talk. But his gut told him loud and clear to speak with Wain before feeding him to the cops, and a man whose thoughts came through like Radio One on a run-down transistor in an electric storm needed a good strong signal to respond to.

  He still felt guilty, but Ursell seemed content to leave things there and move on to the main item in his agenda.

  ‘So, Joe, what have you been up to since we talked about your old friend in Luton this morning? Anything interesting?’

  ‘You could say that,’ Joe replied.

  He gave an account of his adventures in the Lady House, omitting only his small-screen viewing of Long John Dawe and Ella Williams at their exercise in the sickbay.

  Ursell made a good listener. Rapt almost, not speaking till Joe came to a finish.

  ‘So, nothing in any of the cisterns, you say?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘You checked them all.’

  ‘All I could find.’

  Ursell seemed only mildly disappointed. If Prince had passed on the info about the Decorax in the girl’s system, he probably felt that Joe’s evidence gave him enough to go after Wain without needing to show his hand by applying for a search warrant.

  ‘So, these TV screens. Hidden behind the wine rack, you say.’

  ‘They’re behind the wine rack and hidden by it,’ said Joe firmly. He wasn’t sure yet of Ursell’s motives in wanting to get Leon Lewis in his sights, but he didn’t see it as any of his business to feed what might be just another private feud.

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Difference is if the guy wanted a set of security screens in his cellar, he’d have lost storage space for his vino if he’d put them in front of the rack instead of behind it.’

  ‘Maybe. And you say they’re linked to the college security system. How do you know that?’

  ‘Switched on and had a look,’ said Joe.

  ‘Oh. You didn’t mention that before.’

  He was sharp, this guy.

  ‘Didn’t I? Sorry. Yeah, well, they’re just a duplicate of the set Dai Williams has got in his flat. You must have noticed the cameras when you were looking over the college this morning. I suppose Mr Lewis wanted some cover for when Williams wasn’t around.’

  Ursell didn’t look happy.

  He said, ‘And this head in the cabinet, marble, you say?’

  ‘That’s right. He said it came off that cupid he’s got at the front door.’

  ‘But it gave you a fright?’

  ‘You ain’t joking,’ said Joe fervently. ‘Well, I was a bit wound up, wandering around someone else’s house without permission. Plus the colouring made it look, well, not real, but realler, if you know what I mean. But the real shock was having that shotgun pushed against my neck.’

  ‘I can see how that would be an unpleasant experience,’ said Ursell, suddenly full of sympathy. ‘Wouldn’t care to make out a complaint against Lewis for threatening behaviour, would you? Serious offence, waving a loaded weapon at people.’

  Joe shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No complaint.’

  ‘OK,’ said the DI, not sounding surprised. ‘Hard to make it stick anyway in the circs, you wandering around his place uninvited. He’d probably bring a counter-charge against you. Then you’d really find out who your friends were.’

  The threat again. Joe was almost glad to hear it. With his tendency to look for the best in people, it was always helpful if from time to time they themselves prompted him to remember the worst.

  He said boldly, ‘Look, man, I think I know who my friends are already. What I don’t know is what it is you’re after. You’re twisting my arm to help. Ever stop to think a man with his arm twisted is only half as much use as a man with both arms free? At the least, if you tell me where you’re looking to go, then I won’t get in the way by accident.’

  It was, he felt, a reasonable appeal, and for a moment it looked like DI Ursell was giving it reasonable consideration.

  But he was saved the bother of making up his mind by the arrival on the scene of a panting and flustered uniformed constable with the probable causes of his fluster hot on his heels. These were Bronwen Williams and a wiry-framed man in dungarees and gumboots who looked even more out of breath than the copper.

  ‘Sir,’ gasped the constable. ‘Sorry to trouble you, sir, but there’s a report we’ve just had of a car gone over the edge of Stanigord Quarry. Ifor James here it was who farms round there, and he saw the fence was broken and he looked down and could see something under the water and when he took a closer look it was a pick-up truck and he thinks it might be Dai Williams’s …’

  ‘And you told her?’ exclaimed Ursell, glaring towards the distraught girl.

  ‘Me it was who told her,’ said the farmer. ‘First person I saw when I got here and I couldn’t not speak, could I?’

  Ursell looked ready to give him an argument but postponed the moment.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go take a look. Joe, you take care of Miss Williams, will you?’

  He strode away with the constable close behind. Joe turned to Bron but she was also on the move. He went after her and caught up with her by the side of the Morris.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling at the door handle as if she intended to open it before it was unlocked.

  ‘Bron, I don’t think …’

  ‘Come on!’

  And Joe, who knew from long experience that there was no gainsaying a hellbent woman, came on.

  Chapter 21

  It took only a few minutes to reach the quarry, though without Bron to guide him, it might have taken Joe half a day.

  They set out on the narrow road which led to the Goat and Axle, turned off this on to a lane which made the narrow road seem like a motorway, and then off the lane on to a track which Joe wouldn’t have passed fit for ox-carts. But he didn’t even wince as the Morris sank into ruts deep enough to lay a gas main or bounced over rocks high enough to make headstones. Bron’s fear filled the car like nerve gas, paralysing all concerns save that of getting to the scene.

  The scene of what? he asked himself. Accident? Suicide? Murder? Policemen waited till they got all the facts before they made a judgement, but PIs could let their speculations spiral free. He was recalling Dai’s expression as he talked on his mobile that morning, the urgency with which he’d driven off, and the fact that he hadn’t been seen since.

  Ahead he saw Ursell’s car parked on a piece of relatively level ground. He pulled up alongside. Bron was out of the passenger door before he’d stopped and running forward to where the DI stood with the constable and Ifor James, by a broken fence, looking down.

  Joe joined them, looked down too, and
immediately stepped back. He didn’t suffer from vertigo, or anything like that, but this was a hole you could have dropped Luton town hall into and still had room for the car park. How could people live in places that had potholes like this littering the landscape? Thing was, of course, there was just so much landscape. He looked around. In a town you always had things up close. Here, your eyes were always at a strain to reach some distant horizon. At least it got things in a better proportion. Gingerly he moved forward again. Maybe the hole wasn’t so big after all, but it was big enough. Been here a long time too. The sides which fell in three distinct overhangs, presumably marking where whatever had been taken out of them had been taken out of them, were covered with several decades’ worth of thick vegetation. Joe shuddered at the sight of it. Didn’t mind a nice neat garden, but stuff growing sideways into the air, that was jungle!

  And through the jungle directly below his feet a track had been scored. The pick-up hadn’t gone flying through the air like they did in the movies. Would have needed to be travelling at sixty plus to manage that. No, it had gone through the fence and bounced down the side of the quarry to end up where he could see it far below, nose down beneath the surprisingly clear waters.

  ‘How do you know it’s Da’s truck?’ demanded Bronwen.

  ‘Can read the number, see,’ said Ifor.

  Joe screwed up his eyes and got the plate but couldn’t make out any letters or figures. He looked at the farmer doubtfully. Man had to be rising seventy. Jones stared back indifferently through faded blue eyes. Ursell went to the car and came back with a pair of binoculars.

  Slowly he read out a number and Bron’s face confirmed the worst.

  ‘Aren’t you going to do something?’ she screamed. ‘He could be down there trapped.’

  ‘It’s in hand,’ said Ursell. ‘I got on the radio as we drove here. Listen, girl, don’t be rushing to meet things. Nothing to say your father was still in the truck when it went over the edge, is there? Could have left it here and the brake slipped and it just rolled over.’

  Joe studied the ground. There was a slight incline towards the edge of the quarry, true. And the fence was more warning than barrier. But was the DI wise to try and build up hope? Why the shoot would Dai have left his pick-up here and gone off someplace else? In fact, why would he have come here in the first place?