Beneath the Tor (26 page)

Hadn't Juke been alone, when he'd arrived? If someone had been there with him, they'd chosen not to show themselves. They'd watched from the wings.

A chill moved over my back. It was the chill of daytime sleep, but it felt like the hand of death on my shoulder.

“I've been using my driving time to think,” said Rey. “And I have a question. Why would Morgan le Fay attack anyone?”

“Because she believes she's a powerful magician and likes to prove it? Because it's a thrill?” I paused for a beat, Juke's words in my ears.
We're on our way. “
I'm wondering if there are two of them, working together. She's started to talk about this
companion-at
-arms
.”

“The attack on Macaskill was brutal; it needed strength.” Brice slowed the car; the hostel was ahead of us. “Three scenarios. One, Brice is sending emails to himself, and the link to the attacks is chance. Two, someone is looking out for attacks, maybe on social media, and then sending Brice prank emails to wind him up—someone who wants to see him off work for a long time, maybe to grab some contract or another. Three, Morgan le Fay is attacking people in the belief that this will atone for Alys's death and that Brice would be pleased to hear about it.”

“I don't want it to be number three, Rey. I know you think I meet trouble halfway, but number three involves everyone who was at Stonedown for the Spirit Flyers' Workshop.”

“Don't tell me you haven't already considered that it might be one of them.”

I was fond of then all, underneath—Wolfs and Shell, all the workshoppers, even Stefan and Esme. “Yes,” I admitted. “I've considered it.”

“Who was there? Was Juke there? The Juke I met in the pub?”

I turned my water bottle round in my hands and listened to the gentle slosh. “Yes.”

“The Juke who accosted
Marty-Mac
at the Angel Café?”

“
Ye-es
.” My voice broke. “Okay, Juke is sometimes a little too earnest for his own good, but …” I raised my hands in submission. For once, my
spirit-based
instincts were falling foul of what I could see with my own eyes.

I'd phoned Juke straight after my foul interview with Pippa, to warn him Macaskill was dead. Had he sounded surprised? Had he sounded guilty? In the shopping centre, we'd parted company on the grounds we were both too shattered to work shamanically. To commit this crime, he would have had to follow Marty out onto the street. Clock where he was headed. Maybe work out where he lived. None of that sounded anything like Justin Webber to me.

There was a girl at the reception desk, a key-worker I supposed, sifting through some paperwork. She looked up as we pushed through the main door.

“We'd like to speak to Anthony Bale,” said Rey, “if that's possible.”

“We texted Yew Merrick earlier, asking if we would could,” I added.

The girl looked us over.“Anthony? Er … yeah. You can talk to him in the communal area, if that's okay.” She smiled. “One of the Residents' Rules.”

“That's fine.”

“Who shall I say?”

“Sabbie Dare and Rey Buckley,” said Rey. I expected him to get out his police ID. When he didn't, I realized it had been taken it away from him.

She got up from her desk and disappeared. Rey instantly leaned over her desk and eased the computer screen towards us until it was legible.

“Rey!” I hissed.

He flashed a wicked grin. “Nothing of importance anyway.”

While Rey was snooping, I took in the hostel surrounds. The magnolia walls were covered in posters and a few cheap prints in frames. The woodwork was painted white. It had been a while since a redecoration; the paint was chipped and scuffed, but the place was tidy. Clean, warm. Welcoming, to a point. There was a smell, though. Nothing like the perpetual ammonia scent of homes for the elderly, but not particularly pleasant either. It was tempting to think the place smelt of misfortune and hardship, but it was probably the dampness that lingers around things that have been kept outside for too long. A musty, sporal scent.

“Rey!” I hissed. Yew was pushing his way through some far doors. He spotted us and waved, walking at a fast pace, his plait bouncing between his shoulder blades. Rey moved away from the desk and put out his hand, introduced himself.

“I hope Anthony is okay about seeing us.”

“I think this will actually help him,” said Yew. “He's fallen into a depression since it happened. Talking about it might put things in perspective.”

Rey shrugged. “He was hardly touched.”

“When you're homeless, you lose friends in the outside world, but you gain enemies. We cope with a lot of hate attacks; there are people out there who think everyone down on their luck is a beggar or a wastrel.”

Rey nodded. “I guess that's depressing enough.”

“Exactly. We even see grudge aggression. Anthony could have been attacked by someone else from the hostel.”

“That's a horrid thought,” I said. Nevertheless, if that's what had happened, we could eliminate Anthony from the Morgan trail of victims. I wasn't sure if I wanted that or not.

“Yep,” Yew was saying, “hostels are like boarding schools. Full of rules, hierarchies, and bullies.”

“Sounds like you know the system!”

“I was a Westminster boy. Boarded from the age of nine.”

“Your parents must have been loaded!” I screwed up my face. “Sorry, that wasn't meant to come out like that.”

“No offence taken. I was on a scholarship. A chorister.”

I giggled. Surprisingly, it wasn't hard to imagine Yew in a red cassock with a white frill, the choir boy who always brought their pet mouse to Vespers.

“You were surely destined for Oxford.”

“Cambridge. I was halfway through my degree when I walked out of my college. Joined some alternative kids I'd met at a festival.”

“Is that when you became an
eco-warrior
, Yew?” I asked, for Rey's benefit.

“It was a magic time, I admit. We thought we'd change the world. We were building walkways and sleeping platforms in the trees, to stop the authorities hewing them down. We led the cops a merry dance. I'm still protesting, in a quieter way. Mostly I write letters—post them or email them—pressing for a cleaner world, one hundred percent renewable. If that doesn't happen soon, I truly believe we'll be choking in the streets. The world will slowly turn become uninhabitable.”

“It's the Arthurian legend, isn't?” Morgan le Fay's message never left my mind. “The wasteland of the wounded king?”

“Yeah. I guess it's always been with us, fear of drought or famine or flood or pestilence,
man-made
or not.”

“Did you ever finish your degree?” Rey asked.

“Nah. All that felt way too privileged … something I didn't want a part of. I never went back and I never cut my hair again.”

The
key-worker
was returning, accompanied by a man of perhaps forty,
forty-five
. Or younger, I thought, but badly aged. I walked towards them.

“Hi. I'm Yew's friend, Sabbie.”

“Yeah.”

“Good to see you looking so well.”

He didn't reply. He stood with one hand pressed against the corridor wall, blocking the way of the girl who'd stopped behind him. “Go on, Anthony,” I heard her say softly. “Take them into the lounge area, eh?”

Anthony walked directly through the doors without looking back, and it occurred to me that things can get so bad, once your confidence has taken a knocking, that you simply do whatever
people ask of you. I followed, Rey at my heels.

The furniture was arranged around the room so that people could talk in small groups; chairs and
two-seaters
with wipeable covers. I eased myself down, ready for the chill against my thighs. Rey perched on the arm of my chair. Anthony settled opposite us, on the edge of a sofa.

“This is Rey,” I said. “He's my boyfriend. I'm afraid I told him about you. How someone threw a stone at you. Hope you don't mind.”

“Oh, right,” said Anthony.

“Thing is, Anthony, I heard about the way you were attacked like that, and it worried me—”

“Why?”

“Sorry?”

“Why would you be worried about me? You don't know me.”

“Well, yes, that's true, but …”

“Yew said you were a shaman. What's that got to do with anything?”

“It's my friend. Brice.”

“Oh, yeah. Yew did say.”

“Brice is Alys's husband.”

He nodded, taking this in. “On the Tor. The poor, poor man.”

He'd hit the nail without knowing it; Brice and Alys had been a golden couple, enjoying the fruits of their golden life. The loss of his wife had brought Brice into a sort of poverty.

“Brice keeps getting frightening emails. Someone who calls themselves Morgan Le Fay.”

“I've never heard of anyone called that. Not outside the telly, anyhow.”

“I wasn't thinking that you know them personally. Just maybe a rumour—a whisper?”

“I can't help you, I don't think.”

Rey leant forward slightly, easing himself into the conversation. “Sometimes, going through what happened on an important day like that one can shed light on things.”

Anthony scratched his stubble. “'Course, but …”

“But?”

“It wasn't me things happened to.” Without knowing he'd done so, Anthony stretched his hand across the empty seat beside him until his finger and thumb gripped the edge of an orange scatter cushion. He drew it to him, right onto his lap. His hands moved over the soft, warm surface, seeking comfort.

“Have a think,” said Rey. “Start at the beginning and run through, slowly. Even the most insignificant thing … it could be essential.”

“Do you think I haven't done that? This copper got it all down. A woman. PC Wynche.”

“Have the police got back to you about their investigations?” asked Rey.

“What investigations? They only came here because Yew insisted. I could see her thinking … it were only a stone someone threw.”

“Someone tried to hurt you for no reason.”

“You ain't here for that, though. Not really.”

“No,” I said. “We're here because of Brice. Who lost his Alys then started getting these poison pen emails. We're here because he's grieving and sick of it.”

“I s'pose he is, but what can I do?”

I had a sudden thought. I dipped into my bag and brought out my phone, scrolling through until I had the emails. I read the first one out.

It has begun. The dancing damsel, the maiden from the well, was cut down on the hallowed hill with a dolorous blow. The wasteland is upon us; a desert of death. Those who laughed—those who pushed forward to gloat—have been punished. The Green Knight has been taken down and others will perish likewise if they bring opprobrium to the ancient land of Logres.

“That is sick.” I could tell Anthony was holding his breath, as he visualized that day. I held mine, in sympathy. After half a minute or more, he breathed out, a long snort of air down his nose. “I weren't bloody gloating. I didn't mean to laugh.”

“Of course not. We've all had that happen to us.”

“She was so young. Delicate. It got me bad.” He made a fist and thudded it against his breastbone. “So I went. Left.”

“I guess a lot of people walked off the Tor at that point,” said Rey.

“Quite a few. People were shook up.”

“What were you wearing?” I asked.

“Me cords. Me shirt. And me jacket, but I was carrying that.”

“What colours were they?”

“Sorta … khaki.”

“Greenish khaki?”

“I suppose.”

“So,” said Rey. “You came down the hill and went into Glastonbury town.”

“To catch the
six-thirty
bus to Yeovil, yeah.”

“Was it empty?”

“No, it was a working day. It was quarter full.”

“Did anyone get on with you?”

Anthony shook his head. “Can't remember.”

“Can you remember who got off at Yeovil?”

“It's the end of the road. Everyone on the bus got off.”

“What time was that?” I asked.

“Bus gets in about quarter past seven, thereabouts.”

“Do you happen to know what time the buses back to Glastonbury leave Yeovil?”

“They go every hour. Why?”

I had been thinking of where each of the workshoppers were after Alys had been airlifted from the Tor. Wolfs and I had started walking back to Stonedown Farm. Shell had been with Brice, and the rest—all the boys—Yew and Freaky, Juke and Ricky, and Anag—had gone into town for breakfast. Anthony's assailant could have gone to Yeovil and been in back at Stonedown Farm by around ten o'clock. None of the workshoppers had arrived before that time, but all of them were back by lunchtime.

Rey leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Was there anything out of place, while you were on the bus?”

“He were on it too? Is that what you're saying? Him that threw the stone at me?”

“Sabbie,” said Rey. “Do you have a picture of Juke on your phone?”

His words were like a slap; like opening the back door to an icy wind. I didn't move for several moments. Rey was using his detecting techniques; a process of elimination. I was using my usual instincts, which, until I'd woken from the dream in the car, had been positive; the generous feel of Juke's aura; his place in the world. I'd had to persuade Juke to come on the workshop and the celebration on the Tor. He'd started out not quite sure, although later, he'd embraced it. I didn't want my client and fellow member of the Temple of Elphame to be carted off for gross bodily harm … for murder.

But I had to show solidarity with Rey or Anthony would close up like a scallop.