by Phil Rickman
‘Would you?’ Caroline dabbed at her face with a tissue and went back to the coffee machine. She pulled two cups from a shelf. ‘Would you come back and tell us? If there was something. Anything at all?’
‘Of course.’
Terrence suddenly moaned. ‘The festival! I’d forgotten. We’ve got the ceremony this afternoon. To launch the festival. Crowds of people. We might even have the Press here.’
Oh yes, Merrily thought, you can certainly count on having the Press here this time.
‘Fuck the festival!’ Caroline slammed down both cups. ‘How can you even think of that at a time like this?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Terrence’s shoulders shook. His unshaven cheeks were wet.
At the entrance to the mews, Merrily almost bumped into a woman distractedly coming down from the market place.
‘Oh.’ Alison Kinnersley stepped impatiently to one side. She wore a genuine Barbour, one of the very long, expensive ones, like a highwayman’s coat. ‘Vicar. I’m so sorry. Excuse me.’
She hurried past Merrily into Church Street then stopped, called back.
‘Lucy Devenish – the cottage with the red door?’
‘I think so.’ It was not yet seven-thirty, early for a social call. ‘Brass knocker in the shape of an elf or something.’
‘Thank you,’ Alison said. It had begun to rain. It was clear she was in no mood for a conversation. She didn’t seem to have heard about Colette’s disappearance or noticed any police activity.
Alison strode off down the street in her highwayman’s coat, and didn’t look back. Merrily tried to imagine what she could want with Lucy Devenish. Tried to imagine her with the less-than-flamboyant Lol Robinson – living with him, chatting with him over breakfast, sleeping with him. And couldn’t.
She turned back towards the vicarage, almost running, because her legs felt too short and everything in her life seemed to be moving too fast for her and it was raining harder.
Jane had the door open before she could even get out her key. The kid’s hair was uncombed, her eyes swollen. She looked very young and forlorn, like a battered child.
‘Mum?’
‘Could you make some tea, flower?’ Merrily stepped inside, unzipped her coat. ‘The sanctuary man still here?’
‘You haven’t had anything to eat again, have you?’
‘What’s eating? Remind me. Can you make some halfway-edible toast?’
She tossed her coat on to the hall table and went through to the kitchen.
‘Mrs Watkins ...’ Lol Robinson was on his feet. ‘It’s OK, I’m going. I just wanted to say thanks for what you did.’
‘Sit down, Lol,’ Merrily said. ‘You too, Jane.’
‘I’m making the toast.’ Jane walked across the stone flags, gathering up a half-wrapped loaf. She tossed three slices of bread into the toaster, plucked a butter knife from the drainer.
‘Listen. Colette Cassidy didn’t come home last night. The village is full of police.’
Jane dropped the butter knife.
‘They’ve searched the village and the orchard. They’re now starting to question her friends.’
Jane had gone pale.
‘Which includes you, flower.’
‘The stupid ...’ Jane picked up the knife and dug it into a slab of hard, cold butter.
‘So if you know anything,’ Merrily said, ‘maybe you should tell me first.’
Lol said, ‘This isn’t any of my business. I should go.’
‘You really don’t have to go,’ Merrily said. ‘But you should know the police are at your house. They found it had been broken into. In the course of their inquiries.’
Lol didn’t get up.
‘They probably think it was a bunch of stoned tearaways,’ she said, ‘from the party. So perhaps you need to tell them about your unpleasant musician friend.’
But she found herself wondering if this guy really existed. And what else she didn’t know about Lol Robinson, friend of Jane.
Lol was slowly interlacing his fingers. Jane pulled out the knife with a slab of yellow butter on the end, and looked at it. ‘What do they think happened to her?’
‘They don’t know, flower. Do they? What do you think happened to her?’
The kid pulled a smoking slice from the toaster, oblivious to the heat, laid it carefully on a Willow-pattern plate and began buttering it.
Lol Robinson turned his head towards her. Merrily turned her back on the Aga but hung on to its rail.
The knife was scraping backwards and forwards across the same crisp slice. Scritch, scratch, over and over.
‘Do they think she’s dead?’
‘Why do you say that?’ Merrily’s voice rose, like the voice of the single tone-deaf parishioner you regularly heard at the end of a hymn.
‘Somebody will be.’ Jane stopped buttering, picked up the plate and carried it across to her mother. Her hands shook.
‘You’re not making sense, Jane.’
‘I thought it might be you. Came in last night and I ... prayed for ... for a long time. I was going to go to the church this morning, do it properly, but then I thought you’d be there, so it ...’
‘Prayed? You?’
‘Only that you wouldn’t die,’ Jane said miserably. ‘I always have. I’ve never prayed for anything else in my whole life except that you wouldn’t bloody die on me.’
‘Flower,’ Merrily said gently, ‘why did you think I was going to die?’
‘When you see fruit and blossom on an apple tree at the same time, it means someone close to you—’
‘We haven’t got an apple tree.’
‘It was in the orchard! That used to be the church’s. The apple dropped off and rolled at my feet. My feet. Couldn’t have been more obvious if it was that big finger in the sky from the national lottery.’
‘That bloody Lucy Devenish!’
‘No! You bloody Christians!’ Jane said wildly. ‘You’ll believe any old shit if it’s in the Bible. Anything else—’ She sat down opposite Lol. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s dead or not. But somebody must be. These things don’t just happen.’
Lol said, ‘What happened with Colette?’
Merrily took a seat. All three of them around the table, like some screwed-up, dysfunctional family in a suitably dim and draughty kitchen. She told them everything that had happened this morning. Except for seeing Alison. And except for the poster about Merrily Watkins’s black mass.
‘Could she have gone off with some bloke?’
‘Maybe,’ Jane said moodily. ‘I think she did want to get laid at her party. Although being sixteen and able to do it legally seems to have taken the magic out of it.’
‘You think she wanted to go into the orchard to have sex with someone? Anyone in particular?’
‘The mood she was in, anyone other than Dean Wall. And in the orchard, maybe because ... because the orchard’s a taboo place. Colette loves, you know, breaking taboos.’
‘A taboo place? This is because of Edgar Powell’s suicide?’
‘Partly. And because things happen to you in the orchard, but they never happened to her. And—’
‘Excuse me,’ Merrily said. ‘Stop. Just stop there a minute. Things happen to you in the orchard? What things? And to who?’
‘Whom,’ Jane said.
‘Don’t push it, flower. Because sooner or later I’m going to have to talk to you about your sitting room. Plus, I’ve had next to no sleep. Plus a lot of other ... What things?’
Jane looked down at the table. There came a clipped, authoritative knocking on the front door.
‘Oh.’ Merrily found a narrow smile. ‘I didn’t expect you so soon.’
‘Well, something was brought to my attention.’ Annie Howe wore a loose, white raincoat over her dark business suit. ‘Which rather puts Jane at the top of our list.’
‘Oh?’ Merrily held open the door, not daring to think what it might be. DC Mumford followed his boss into the hall.
&nbs
p; Merrily shut the door. ‘Er ... before you talk to Jane ...’
Howe tilted her head impatiently. Police officers always seemed to think only they were entitled to ask questions.
‘How seriously are you, the police, taking all this? I mean, Colette’s ... how can I put it?’
‘A bit of a trollop,’ Mumford said. ‘We know.’
‘Or at least,’ Annie Howe added, ‘that seems to be what she’d like people to think. Times change, don’t they, Ms Watkins?’
‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘Not really.’
Howe smiled. It was glacial.
‘You ask how seriously we’re taking this matter. In view of the circumstances, more seriously than we would if she’d simply left home. You can appreciate that.’
‘Yes. Right. Sure.’
She looked at Annie Howe and thought how clean-cut and purposefully single-minded she seemed. Merrily felt much older and yet younger. She felt vulnerable, somehow, for Jane and for herself too. Which was stupid. Wasn’t it?
‘We’ll do everything we can to help,’ she said lamely.
They followed her into the kitchen. Jane was at the sink, washing up. There was no sign of Lol. Merrily introduced the police, realizing that Jane was washing up to remove the cups – three of them – from the table, so Howe wouldn’t suspect they had company. She’d even pushed the third chair under the table. Co-conspirators, Jane and Lol, in something else she didn’t know about.
Merrily said, ‘I’ll stay. If you don’t mind.’
‘It’s important that you do, Ms Watkins.’
‘Merrily,’ she said. ‘I’m Merrily.’
Howe didn’t say that she was Annie. What did I expect, Merrily thought sourly, instant bonding of two youngish professional women together in a man’s world?
‘Tea? Coffee?’
‘Thank you, Ms Watkins, but we had more of both than we can handle at Cassidy’s Country Kitchen.’
There was going to be no softening Annie Howe. She pulled out one of the chairs, like this was an interview room at police headquarters.
‘Right, sit down, Jane, we won’t keep you long. What time did you get home last night?’
‘Not too sure.’ Jane went around to the opposite side of the table and pulled out a chair of her own. ‘After one.’
‘After two,’ Merrily said automatically. ‘I heard you come in.’
Howe raised a hand. ‘Let Jane answer, please, Ms Watkins.’ She sat down. ‘Colette Cassidy’s a good friend of yours, isn’t she?’
‘Well, we’ve only known each other a few weeks. But ... yeah. We get along OK.’
‘Do you remember where you last saw her?’
‘Yeah, it was ... on the square. I mean, you know about what happened inside, with Barry?’
‘Yes. Perhaps we can come back to that later. What happened on the square?’
Merrily went to lean against the stove, which put her behind Howe and facing Jane, while the kid, with – surely – transparent honesty, related what had happened when Colette Cassidy had decided to take the party outside after the row with Barry Bloom. How Colette had bullied Dr Samedi, the DJ, into setting up his boom-box outside and then, when people came out to protest and it looked like her parents were on the way, had run off with it towards the orchard.
Howe leaned towards Jane across the pine table.
‘What exactly did Colette say when she invited everyone to go to the orchard?’
‘Well, she just ... I don’t know. I don’t remember.’
‘Let me remind you then, Jane. We have several witnesses who say Colette shouted something like, “Follow me. Or Janey. Follow Janey. She knows.” Would that be you she was talking about, Jane? Is that what she called you?’
‘Yeah.’ Jane blinked. The first sign of nerves. Merrily gripped the Aga rail. What was this about?
Annie Howe said, ‘Yeah, that’s what she called you, or yeah, it was you she meant?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
‘Good. All right.’ Howe leaned back. ‘Why would Colette have suggested they follow you? Why would she have said, “she knows”?’
Jane didn’t hesitate. ‘Because we got a bit pissed the other weekend and some boys were chasing us and that’s where we wound up. In the orchard.’
‘With the boys?’
‘No, we’d shaken them off.’
‘Did you and Colette often get pissed?’
‘Just that once. It was only cider. I mean, I thought it was only cider. I’d never had it before. It was stupid.’
Annie Howe smiled. ‘It’s all right, we aren’t going to charge you with under-age drinking.’
‘Thanks.’
Howe frowned. ‘But you didn’t go with her into the orchard last night, did you?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because ...’ Jane looked at Merrily. ‘Because my mum wasn’t very well, and I didn’t want to stay out too late.’
‘You didn’t think two a.m. was already a little bit late?’
Jane shrugged, looked at Merrily again. Annie Howe, obviously suspecting eye signals, said, ‘Ms Watkins, why don’t you come and sit at the table with us?’ And Merrily, not wanting to give the icy bitch any reason to suspect anything, reluctantly left the meagre comfort of the stove and went to sit down next to Jane.
‘So,’ Howe said, ‘you watched her go off into the orchard, and then what did you do?’
‘Just sort of wandered around.’
‘You didn’t talk to anyone?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure about that, Jane?’
‘Yeah. Oh ... Well, I did talk to Lloyd Powell’ Jane sighed. ‘I asked him to go and get them out of the orchard. He owns it. His family.’
‘Mr Powell seems to think you were worried about Colette.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Because you thought she might be attacked?’
‘No. I mean—’
‘Then why?’
‘Because ... Colette’s kind of headstrong. She gets like carried away.’
‘You’re saying you were more worried about what she might do than what might happen to her?’
‘Yeah. I suppose I was.’
‘What did you think she might do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘All right, let’s go back to the party. Did you know there were drugs about?’
‘I think so.’
‘You knew the people who were supplying them?’
Jane didn’t reply. Oh no, Merrily thought. Oh, surely not. I’d have known. Wouldn’t I?
‘Do you know Mark Putley?’
‘Not really. We go to the same school, that’s all. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him.’
‘What about Colette?’
‘I don’t think she knew him at all. She’d have no reason to. She goes to a different school.’
‘Then why was he at her party?’
‘Gatecrashed, I suppose. Him and a couple of others.’
‘As far as you know, Colette hadn’t invited them.’
‘No. I mean ... No.’
‘Were you going to say something else there, Jane?’
Jane trailed her finger through some spilled tea on the tabletop. ‘I suppose I was going to say not officially.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I ...’ Jane hesitated. ‘Oh hell ... She thought the kids her parents approved of – because they knew the kids’ parents and everything – she thought they were all going to be a bit like safe. She wanted to kind of spice things up a bit. So like, yeah, she might have made it easier for the local guys to get in. Like that’s the sort of thing she does. I mean, you never really know what she’s going to do.’
‘Or who with?’ Annie Howe stood up. ‘Thank you, Jane. You won’t be going out, will you? We may want to talk to you again. Thank you, Ms Watkins.’
Merrily saw Jane blow out her cheeks in some kind of relief, and in the middle of it, Howe suddenly turn
ed back to her.
‘Oh ... one last thing, Jane ... Did you see anyone else around after the party? Anyone you didn’t know. Or perhaps someone you knew hadn’t been invited?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
Annie Howe said, ‘How well do you know Laurence Robinson?’
Jane was caught out. She looked startled. Even Merrily thought she looked startled.
‘I ... I’ve met him a couple of times,’ Jane said. ‘He sometimes helps out at Ledwardine Lore. I’ve seen him there.’
‘Have you ever been to his house?’
‘No. Not really. I’ve been ... sort oipast his house.’
‘And Colette. Does she know Mr Robinson?’
‘I suppose so. I mean, yes. We all kind of know him, because he used to be a kind of rock star. Sort of.’
‘When you say we all know him, who do you mean? Other girls?’
‘No, just Colette and me. And Lucy Devenish.’
‘When did you last see Mr Robinson, Jane?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘You can’t remember all the way back to last night? When you were seen talking to Mr Robinson in Church Street?’
‘Was I? Oh. Yes. I think I met him on my way to the party. Yes, I did.’
‘But he didn’t go to the party. Or did he?’
‘No, he didn’t.’
Howe smiled her ice-maiden’s smile. ‘Well, thank you again. As I say, we may come back. Or if there’s anything you or your mother want to tell us, there’ll always be someone at the Country Kitchen. Until we find Colette.’
Merrily followed them numbly to the door, where Annie Howe said, ‘Do you know Laurence Robinson, Ms Watkins?’
Merrily said, ‘I may have met him. I don’t really know him.’
‘He lives alone, doesn’t he?’
‘So I believe. He had a girlfriend. She left, I’m told.’
‘And you felt ... all right ... about Jane seeing him. A man twenty years older, living on his own.’
Merrily said softly, ‘Is there a problem?’
‘He’s just someone we need to eliminate from our inquiries. I suppose I can tell you. As a clergyperson. I know it’ll go no further.’
‘You have my word,’ Merrily said.
‘Mr Robinson isn’t at home, but his cottage is in rather a mess. It may be a break-in, it may be a burglary – because there certainly isn’t much furniture in there. But there are signs of what might have been a struggle. The stereo left on. A damaged vinyl record on the turntable. There’s no sign of the owner or anybody else. And Mr Robinson – this is the confidential part, at this stage – has a history. A record.’
