Angel Hunt (20 page)

Interesting. I filed it away mentally and decided to play the whole of side one.

There was no indication of how long the side lasted, but I reckoned I had 15 to 20 minutes in which to have a snoop around outside, which was another reason I'd set up the disco close to the fire exit. It wasn't much and I would have preferred a longer record that I knew better. But you just can't trust the recording companies these days. Some of them actually extend the gaps between tracks so you can't fit a whole LP on one side of a C90 cassette. There's no trust left in the world.

I cued up the record and turned to tell Stephanie what I was doing. Her face was buried in the plastic cup she'd brought me, which was half-and-half non-alcoholic lager and vodka.

‘That's not bad,' she said, slamming the empty cup down and wiping her mouth with the back of a hand. ‘I've never had one of those before.'

Well, there you are: no day is wasted.

‘Listen, I'm putting the whole of this side on, okay' She nodded. ‘And I'm nipping out to my car for a minute. If there's any problem, just cut the amp here – ‘ I showed her the amplifier power on/off switch ‘– and I'll hear it.'

‘Sure,' she said, standing up. Then she leaned over to see what the record was. ‘Oh, not that! Geoffrey's always playing it when he's by himself.'

I wondered how she knew, if he was always by himself, but I let it go. She said she'd get some more drinks in and, as I sneaked out of the fire door, having locked the bar up so I could get back in, I watched her pour herself an alcohol-free lager at the refreshment table.

She pulled a face at the first sip, then tried another. Then she sniffed the contents of the plastic cup and finally held the can up to see if she could see why it didn't taste the same as mine.

I decided it was a good time not to be there.

 

I had a torch in the back of Armstrong and, though it wouldn't have been as suspicious as it would in London, because all after-dark pedestrians used them here, I left it there. I reasoned that I could say I'd got lost in the dark should anybody catch me where I wasn't supposed to be.

It wasn't far back to the vicarage – sorry, rectory – even when cutting across a piece of what I classed as waste ground but the locals probably called a field, to come at it from the back garden. On the way, I saw a couple of torch-holding revellers heading towards The Five Bells, and I wondered if they needed the torches when they left at chucking-out time.

The rectory, or at least its ground floor, was lit up almost as brightly as the pub; in particular, the large room at the back with no furniture and the French windows. I eased my way towards the windows, fearful of stepping in anything unspeakable, which was always a hazard out here in the backwoods, keeping one ear open for the muted hum of the disco working on auto-pilot.

Hugging the rectory wall, I could hear other muffled sounds from inside, but couldn't make them out. I sneaked a look in through the French windows, pretty confident that I wouldn't be seen unless someone was looking straight at me.

Nobody was. They were all looking at the Reverend Bell, though it took me a few seconds to recognise him.

He, and the other dozen or so people in the room, were dressed in judo gear, the full pyjama suit outfits with belt sashes, some coloured but mostly white. All except Bell and another man – and most of the others seemed to be women – were seated in lotus positions on the bare floor in an oval. In the middle, Bell was saying something I couldn't hear and turning to each of – I suppose it was a class – in turn. Then the man with him took up a defensive fighting stance just like a kid would do coming out of his first Kung Fu movie, sideways on to reduce the size of the target he offered. (Even I knew that, and my idea of self-defence is a pre-emptive strike, preferably nuclear.)

Bell's assistant, if that's what he was, fixed his arms in an outstretched position and settled his legs bending at the knees, but made no other move. Bell disappeared from my line of vision for a second and reappeared with a roof tile, one of the old red, ridged sort called treble tiles, which were probably common as muck around there but fetched a pound a time among the shadier landscape gardeners operating in Hampstead these days.

The assistant took the tile in his outstretched hands and braced himself. Bell took a big pace backwards and then his right foot came up and smashed the tile to smithereens. It seemed that before the pieces had tinkled to the floor, he had landed with both feet together and his forehead touching the now empty hands of his assistant in a formalised bow.

The class didn't applaud or cheer or anything, they just lowered their heads and put their hands out in front of them, fingers splayed and tensed almost as if they were arthritic. The assistant was now centre stage and, as he tensed himself, Bell appeared with a block of inch-thick timber, maybe a foot square. The assistant looked at it as Bell offered it, then drove his forehead into it, splitting it cleanly in two.

He didn't even shake his head. Maybe it really didn't hurt him. Well, he couldn't have any brain in there, otherwise he wouldn't have done such a thing.

I was about to change position to see if I could identify Lara in there when I sensed something behind me. If it was one of the Karate Kids, I wasn't sure I wanted to see it coming, but I turned anyway.

Stephanie was standing about five feet away, hands on her hips, head on one side, her right high-heeled shoe tapping impatiently on the grass.

‘I told you you needed a black belt before they'd talk to you round here,' she said primly. Then, accusing: ‘And another thing.'

‘Yes, what?' I made flapping motions with my hands to try and keep her voice down.

‘We've run out of vodka.'

 

I got her back inside the disco just as the record finished, and I was able to slot in a tape to cover me while I charged out again, this time to The Five Bells.

The landlord gave me a funny look when I asked for a treble vodka, but it was a busy Friday night and he was not going to argue. As nonchalantly as I could, I sidled towards the Gents, and there I poured the contents of the glass into the empty quarter bottle I'd rescued from the disco's deck, where Stephanie had left it. Then I filled the bottle with water from the washbasin tap and screwed the top back on. I hid the bottle in my jacket pocket and left the glass on the bar as I pushed through the crowd.

Sneaking back through the fire door again, I got a very revealing view of Stephanie leaning right across the turntable deck trying to talk above the music to a pretty blonde girl with glasses.

I pushed by Stephie's proffered backside and fumbled for another record. She grabbed at my shoulder and yelled into my ear.

‘Manderley wants you to play something by Bros!'

Manderley? As if the poor kid hadn't enough problems without being a Bros fan.

‘Sorry – got none,' I shouted back, and Stephie leaned over again to yell in Manderley's ear. I got the distinct impression what she actually told her was ‘Piss off!' but I couldn't be sure.

I got another record going and cued up my Armstrong wildtrack tape. Most of the audience were past caring what was being played, as long as it kept going. Only about a third were dancing; the rest were getting down to some serious petting in the chairs around the wall.

I liberated a couple of chairs and sat Stephie in one. She didn't mind. She'd already found the bottle of vodka and was adding liberal splashes to a plastic cup of coke.

‘Okay, supersleuth, you seem to know all about it. What gives with the martial arts set-up?'

There was no good reason why she should tell me anything. I could have threatened to tell on her for drinking under age, I suppose. And I could have really frightened her by telling her there was no Santa Claus.

‘It's not martial arts,' she said, and when she saw my look of disbelief she put on a fake resigned expression and began to explain it to me.

‘It's Kateda. That's what they do. It isn't a martial art because there's no combat involved. It comes from Tibet and is based on control of breathing. In yoga, you breathe to relax, but in Kateda you breathe to get control of your muscles, and you can therefore harness your reflexes.'

‘And it's not violent?'

‘Well, of course it can be, but it is only used in self-defence.' Oh yeah? ‘There are no attacking moves, only defensive ones.'

She knew her stuff, which I suspected had been picked up listening at keyholes as she followed the good rector around.

‘And Bell – Geoffrey – teaches this Kateda?'

‘Yes, he's run classes since he came here, but he says I'm too young. He won't take anyone under … 18.' She had been about to say ‘16,' and even in the flickering strobe lighting I could tell she was blushing. ‘But I think it's because of my father. He's in the local Hunt, you see.'

Then, because I was obviously moronic, she added: ‘Foxhunt.'

‘So he's the local squire, is he?'

I'd better be careful; there could be horse-whippings talked about if one messed with Stephie.

‘He's a builder, actually,' she said, as primly as she could above the music. ‘Fox-hunting is no longer the prerequisite of the landed rich, you know.'

I wondered where she'd heard that.

‘You mentioned the “hunt” when I first met you this afternoon. What did you mean?'

‘I assumed you were one of Geoffrey's animal-lovers. They always start to appear from the woodwork when there's a meet in the offing.'

‘A what?' I thought for a minute she'd said ‘meat.'

‘Boxing Day Meet.'

‘What's that?'

‘Boxing Day? It's the day after Christmas Day,' she giggled, thinking either she or the vodka had made a joke.

‘What meet?'

‘The local hunt always meets on Boxing Day morning near the Caxton Gibbet. Loadsapeople turn out to watch. My dad says it helps them work off the turkey and Christmas pud.'

‘And what does Geoffrey do?'

‘I expect he'll have his student friends there demonstrating like he did during the spring. They have banners and stuff and make a lot of noise trying to distract the hounds.
Bloody childish if you ask me.'

I nodded sympathetically.

‘Geoffrey makes a bit of a spectacle of himself, does he?'

‘Yes.' In front of Daddy too.

‘And you thought I was one of them? A hunt saboteur?'

She leaned forward and screwed up her face.

‘I couldn't give a fiddler's fuck if you were.'

I bet myself she hadn't heard that in the vestry after choir practice. Oh, I don't know, though.

She reached for the vodka bottle, which she'd put under her chair, but I beat her to it. It was already half-empty.

‘Hey!' she grabbed at my hand but missed. ‘Don't you tell me I've had enough,' she said.

‘I wasn't going to. I was going to tell you it was your round.'

 

The Reverend Bell arrived just after 10.00, and I knew he was in the Parish Room before I saw him, from the way the glow of several distant cigarettes suddenly vanished and from the number of young ladies who hastened to the loo, adjusting their clothing.

Things were pretty well under control, in fact. The last bus connecting neighbouring villages had gone at 10.00, so quite a lot of the kids had had to leave before then, allowing for the obligatory 15-minute farewell sessions with boy/girlfriends. Stephanie had sulked off for a final dance and I'd made a start on packing things up. With luck, we'd hit The Five Bells half an hour before closing.

No such luck.

‘Everything okay?' asked the rector, flashing a weak smile. His hair was slicked down from a shower and he was wearing jeans and a Lynx sweatshirt in the same ‘Roar of Disapproval' series (against fur trading) as my T-shirt.

‘Sure. Last waltz just about to start.'

I phased the volume down so we didn't actually need semaphore to communicate.

‘Good. I'll help you clear up. Lara's over at the rectory setting up the video. I'd like you to see what we are using it for.'

I feigned an oh-yes-I'd-forgotten-about-that expression and cued up the last track of side one of the Simply Red LP.

Stephanie and Amy appeared wearing their long coats and flat shoes and began to clear away empty cans and crisp packets as Bell started to fold away some of the chairs down one side of the hall.

‘Last record, folks,' I announced into the microphone. ‘And a real beauty to charm you on your way. This one's even older than me.'

I flicked the turntable release and ‘Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye'
wafted out through the speakers.

Stephie gave me a filthy look, then rolled her eyes to the roof and giggled something at Amy.

The Reverend Bell just gave me the filthy look.