‘Do you get much crime?’
‘It’s not like London, that’s for sure. Every village of any size has its bad family.’ Ballard put quotation marks round the last two words by raisings of his eyebrows. ‘Well, not so much bad as stupid, really, although of course they don’t see it like that. Always up before the beak for nicking lead, poaching, falling behind with the never-never, driving uninsured . . . Small stuff and pretty dull, but a hell of a lot of it. My guv’nor’s all right, though. Told me DCI Lamb’d had a word with him about all this,’ Ballard jerked his head in the direction of the Old Rectory, ‘and says I’m to “render assistance as necessary”. Talks like a book, but he’s a good sort. Anyway, getting back to that odd business of the boy being . . . you know, like Jesus or Buddha . . . people believe those things because they want to, don’t they?’
‘I imagine that Mr Roth can be pretty persuasive,’ said Stratton, thoughtfully. ‘He’s got quite a presence. And if people are willing to be persuaded, that would be half the battle.’
‘They must do,’ said Ballard. ‘It’s like women who go to seances because they’re desperate to contact their dead husbands or sons.’ He chuckled. ‘That reminds me. You’ll never guess who I saw a few weeks ago.’
‘At a seance?’ Stratton grinned. ‘What were you doing – raiding it?’
Ballard looked sheepish. ‘Pauline wanted to go.’
Stratton must have looked disbelieving, because Ballard, clearly feeling the need to explain said, awkwardly, ‘It’s because she wants another baby. The doctor can’t explain why it hasn’t happened, and she thought the medium might be able to tell her – sort of like a fortune-teller, I suppose. I told her I thought it was daft, but she kept on about it and I didn’t want a row, so—’
Stratton held up a hand to stop him. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t . . .’ Ballard shook his head, more at himself than Stratton. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, with a determined effort to regain his former levity, ‘you’ll never guess who the medium was.’
‘Go on.’
‘None other than Big Red.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’ Until she’d left a few years back, Big Red, otherwise known as Peggy Nolan, had been a fixture in Soho for as long as Stratton could remember. Nicknamed for the improbable magenta colour of her hair and known for scrapping with other girls over punters, she’d been a constant and often violently unwilling visitor to the station, and by the time she retired had racked up over two hundred convictions for soliciting.
‘I’m not. Her hair’s grey now and she’s thoroughly respectable. She didn’t let on she knew me, but she asked us to stay afterwards. Said she had something particular to tell us. Her card said she had “many unsolicited testimonials”. I bloody nearly gave the game away when I saw that, I can tell you.’
‘Didn’t Pauline recognise her?’
Ballard shook his head. ‘She worked at Marlborough Street, remember? Big Red was on our patch.’
‘And you didn’t tell her who she was?’
‘I couldn’t, could I? She’d been so keen to go, and then she was disappointed because Big Red didn’t have any message for her – you know, from the spirit world or whatever it’s called – and I thought if I told her who she was she wouldn’t believe me and . . .’ He tailed off, shaking his head.
‘I understand,’ said Stratton. ‘Difficult subject.’
‘It was funny, though. Funny peculiar, I mean, not funny haha. We’d eyeballed each other as soon as I came in – she’s Madame Sabra now, by the way – and I knew she knew and she knew I knew. I thought she might take advantage of it, knowing what I did for a living, but she didn’t. When she asked us to wait, I thought she just wanted a natter for old times’ sake and I thought I was going to be for the high jump with Pauline for not telling her, but it wasn’t like that at all. She pretended she didn’t know me from Adam and she told Pauline she knew how much she was longing for a child – said she could sense it – and then she told her she’d have one in time and she had to be patient and not worry about it. And that was it. Afterwards I kept trying to think if there was anything we’d done to give the game away, but I couldn’t see how . . .’
‘Like that business with the kid I was telling you about,’ said Stratton. ‘Shakes you up a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘Certainly does.’
‘The thing is,’ Stratton continued, ‘with the usual run of villains, whether it’s murder or pinching sheep or nobbling prize bulls, you know what you’re up against, don’t you? I mean, you’ve got some idea of why they do it, whether it’s need or greed or lust or envy. But with this lot, I don’t know where to start. All this about renouncing your feelings . . . What sort of a world would we have if everyone did that?’
Ballard stared thoughtfully into what was left of his pint, then said, ‘Well, there’d be no wars, would there? And we’d be out of a job because there’d be no crimes committed.’
‘No . . . but there wouldn’t be anything else, either. No emotion, no love, no sense of attachment to anyone or anything. D’you remember Shitty Sid?’
‘That tramp from round the back of the news cinema? What’s he got to do with it?’
‘He used to preach in the early thirties – bit before your time. I heard him once, at Speakers’ Corner. He’d talk about his visions of the Apocalypse, how it was coming soon and the world would be swept away and only the righteous would be saved. He had quite a few followers. Pretty respectable types, some of them.’
‘Bet they followed at a safe distance.’ Ballard grinned.
‘He wasn’t so bad in those days. Lived on the streets even then, but they used to bring him new clothes and food and what-have-you from time to time. Turned out that he could have done with a bit of soap and water, though – his leg started rotting last summer, great festering wound from his knee to his ankle. By the time we got him into hospital the smell was enough to knock you off your feet. Too late even if they’d amputated, but Sid never complained and he never stopped smiling. Just accepted it – dying, everything. It didn’t bother him. What Tynan and Roth were saying reminded me of him.’
Ballard shrugged. ‘Sid was feeble-minded, not . . . high-minded. But in any case, if everyone was like him – accepting things – then, whether it was because they were simple or holy or whatever else, there’d be no progress, would there? No inventions, no cures for diseases. We’d still be living in bloody caves. The world we’ve got now may not be perfect, but it’s got to be better than that.’
‘I’ll say. Just as well, really, as it’s the one we’re stuck with and it’s not likely to change, is it?’
‘Not unless the Soviets drop the bomb on it.’ Ballard rose, draining his glass. ‘Fancy another?’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Stratton had a not-more-than-averagely revolting meal of corned beef rissoles and greens boiled to sludge followed by tinned Empire fruit with synthetic cream, reflecting as he ate that Tynan was, at that moment, undoubtedly dining off lobster bisque with sherry and partridge with foie gras, all washed down with vintage wine. He spent the night at the George and Dragon in a room tucked under the thatch with sloping whitewashed walls and a latched wooden door so low that he had to bend almost double to enter.
The following day, he and Ballard – who, he suspected, was relishing the chance to get his teeth into something more exciting than the usual round of rural crime – arrived at the Old Rectory to question the Foundation’s twenty-odd residents about Lloyd and Ananda. This time, the door was answered and the tea fetched by a man who, despite being no more than about twenty-five, had the air of one who’d accumulated enough wisdom to deal with anything life had to throw at him. Just you wait, chum, thought Stratton. You may be sure of yourself now, but life will have you, just like everyone else.
The young chap, who smoked, showily, in imitation of Roth, had evidently been charged with keeping tabs on them while they interviewed the re
st of the students, because he seated himself outside the door and returned at intervals, accompanied by a gentle, moon-faced woman who got in the way, apologised constantly, stated the obvious, and at one point spilt scalding hot tea agonisingly over Stratton’s crotch. All the time she was doing this she smiled down at the pair of them like an angel of mercy on a particularly bloody battlefield, so obviously selfless that it was impossible to show even the smallest sign of irritation.
‘You look as if you’re in quite a bit of pain,’ Ballard murmured when the woman, still apologising, was dispatched to fetch a cloth to mop up the mess on the table.
‘I’ll live,’ said Stratton, through gritted teeth. ‘Let’s have the next one, shall we?’
This proved to be a spruce middle-aged man who exuded a version of Miss Kirkland’s joyousness and enthusiasm so great that he seemed to be permanently leaning forwards. So keen was he to tell them about the Foundation’s ‘power for good’ that they had a hard job getting him to say anything about Lloyd at all. His story of his first meeting with Roth was, Stratton thought, not dissimilar to Tynan’s, and told in much the same language, except that the death of a beloved mother was replaced by a general disillusion with the state of the world and a feeling of powerlessness to change either it, or himself. He talked of a new experience of ‘oneness’ with his surroundings, a heightening of his senses and a consciousness of a deeper level of existence.
There was a lot more of this as the morning progressed – a procession of straight-backed, smartly dressed individuals who, although giving every appearance of being helpful, were actually much more interested in telling Stratton and Ballard how the Foundation had changed their lives for the better than in shedding even the smallest light on why Lloyd might have been killed. They had all arrived at the Foundation after him, and after Ananda and Michael. None of them had seen Lloyd since he’d left in April, none of them had given him money, and none of them seemed to know anything about his writing a book, either. They expressed disgust at the idea that he might have had any sort of intimate relationship with Ananda, and, although she’d told several of them about the film she’d seen on the 30th, none of them seemed to have any clue at all as to her present whereabouts. Whether Roth had instructed them to tell him nothing, or whether they genuinely didn’t know, Stratton wasn’t sure, but the whole thing had a curiously stage-managed feeling. He imagined Roth sitting upstairs, the all-seeing, all-knowing presence, and the students reporting back to him after they’d been interviewed. He was reminded, oddly, of the annual village concerts of his boyhood – the muttered tension behind the scenes as each child was pushed through the curtain to sing or recite in front of a throng of proud but anxious parents. And – now he came to think of it – those occasions were always full of the same stuff, too: sentimental for the girls, rousing Victorian patriotism for the boys.
A male student spoke, with an ease born of practice, of having had a drink problem, another of being dogged by illness; a woman spoke about grief at the death of her fiancé, another of a feeling of hopelessness, another of a feeling that she could sense things that other people did not, and several of both sexes, including Miss Kirkland, of a feeling that there must be ‘something more to life’. They seemed, too, to have a collective dislike for the personal pronoun, replacing ‘I’ with ‘one’ at every opportunity. Over and over again Stratton heard the same words and phrases – truth, wisdom, unity – until, two hours in, he felt that, barring changeable particulars, he could have recited their scripts for them without too much difficulty. Besides the revelation of meeting Roth, a marked theme was the futility, stupidity and general crappiness of the outside world, from its politics to its popular music. It was clear that at the Foundation they felt themselves safe, in their straight-laced, well-ordered world, with all forms of vulgar modernity kept at bay. That, thought Stratton, was presumably the reason Michael was taught here – to ensure that he remained as unsullied as possible.
Left alone for a few minutes between the departure of one student and the arrival of the next, Ballard, who looked as punch-drunk as Stratton felt, murmured, ‘They don’t blink much, do they?’
‘Perhaps it’s something they’ve learnt.’
‘Downright creepy, if you ask me. And have you noticed how tired they look?’
Stratton, who’d noticed a lot of pinkish eyes, nodded. ‘Perhaps that’s part of it, too.’ He waved a hand at the quotation on the wall about the big stick. ‘From what they’re saying, it sounds like a pretty full programme – manual labour as well as lectures and meditation and what not. Must be the discipline that Roth was telling me about when he suddenly blew up about sex.’
‘They’re all sincere, though, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I do. True believers – I think they can’t understand why everyone isn’t doing it. They’re well-intentioned, too. And I can’t really see how you could say they’re brainwashed when they obviously want to believe that this is a higher way of life or whatever you want to call it. I mean, it works for them, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Stratton rubbed the back of his neck. ‘But it’s not getting us very far, is it?’
Ballard shook his head despondently. ‘Give me a decent villain, any day.’
‘I suppose,’ said Stratton, remembering what Tynan had said about how the place was financed, ‘that most of them must have private means. If they had to work for a living, I don’t see how—’
‘If they had to work for a living,’ said Ballard dismissively, ‘they wouldn’t have time to muck about with all this. After all, if you’ve got money, it’s easy to say that material possessions don’t matter. Rise above the daily grind, and all that.’
‘Not the only thing they’re meant to rise above,’ said Stratton. ‘Roth said the sex instinct was …’ He leafed through his notebook. ‘“Debased and gross.” He said something about not being a slave to one’s impulses, as well. Still, if Mary/Ananda is as sexy as you say she is’ – Stratton pretended to ignore the slight flush that had crept into Ballard’s cheeks – ‘then she must have caused a bit of a stir, at least. Perhaps Lloyd was having an affair with her and one of the other chaps was jealous.’
‘It’s not impossible, I suppose, but they don’t seem the type, do they? I mean, if one of the blokes we’ve seen this morning was jealous, I should have thought he’d be more likely to have the spiritual equivalent of a cold shower than get on a train to London and do his rival in. I’ve never met this Roth bloke, but I can sense his presence all right.’
By the end of the morning, Stratton felt himself having to make a supreme effort not to slump in his chair as the last student arrived. Like the others, Miss Banting was polite, well spoken and middle class, but she seemed a different type, several years younger than nearly all of them and dressed not in tidy tweeds but unseasonably, in the sort of clothes Stratton thought of as ‘arty’: a dirndl skirt and a blouse in the peasant style with a parti-coloured woollen shawl flung dramatically over her shoulders. Her eyebrows, above thick spectacles, were painted in arches of surprise – or possibly menace – and she wore a necklace which looked as though it had been made out of chunks of wood, and a bracelet which seemed to have been constructed for the purpose of noise-making. She was, Stratton realised, the first student he’d seen who looked distinctive: she’d retained the trappings of her former life and personality, whereas the others, to a man and woman, were unadorned and bland.
Despite this, her composure and responses were as uniform as the others’ had been, with much made of her need to find a meaning to life and wish to connect to a higher awareness – until Stratton asked her whether she’d seen Jeremy Lloyd since he’d left the Foundation.
Her eyes widened in outraged surprise. ‘Of course not!’
‘Why “of course”?’ asked Stratton.
‘One does not communicate with those who leave.’ Her tone was vehement. ‘We are told—’
Here, the man who had seated himself outside the door gave a d
iscreet but audible cough. It was an innocuous sound, but it stopped Miss Banting in her tracks as absolutely as the shout of ‘Stop!’ Stratton had heard on his previous visit to the Foundation had arrested the woodcutters in mid-chop. For a moment she froze, mouth partially open and then, as swiftly as if a light had been extinguished, the passion left her face. She glanced apprehensively upwards, much, Stratton thought, as a medieval peasant might, who feared he had angered heaven and would bring down the wrath of God upon himself – or, in Miss Banting’s case, the wrath of Roth.
‘I simply meant,’ she said, after a moment, ‘that I had not seen him. I’m afraid that one has rather a habit of complicating things. We were told that he had gone to live in London, so of course, being here, there was no opportunity to see him.’
‘I see,’ said Stratton. And he did see, very clearly, that leaving the Foundation meant excommunication, in the manner of the Catholic Church. Either you were in or you were out, and there were no halfway measures – except, of course, for Tynan, but then he’d paid for the place and, equally clearly, had a foot in both camps. But for all Roth’s insistence that he’d ‘neither approved nor disapproved’ of the fact that Lloyd was writing a book, the leader had cast him out as surely as Adam and Eve had been expelled from Paradise.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Returning to London with a sense of futility, Stratton thought that this, after Lloyd’s knock-back from the priesthood, must have come as a double blow. Nodding off at home over the Daily Express – EISENHOWER: SUEZ ATTACK AN ERROR, alongside adverts for Nestlé’s Condensed Milk and Craven A – he was trying to summon up the energy to go upstairs to bed when a thunderous banging on the front door announced Pete. ‘Penny for the guy, guv? Remember the fifth of November, and all that.’
A Willing Victim Page 10
