Beneath the Tor (7 page)

“Brice, I'm so, so sorry. It was—she was—”

“It sucks, Sabbie. It fucking sucks.”

“If I can help, please tell me. I know I'm miles away, but is there anything I can do?”

“Er, no … not anything. Well, yes, actually. You could come to the inquest. Apparently it will just open and adjourn, but I want to be there and I don't think my parents fancy the long trip in one day and my mates will be working. I wouldn't say no to some local support. It's going to be held at Wells.”

“Okay. I can do that. When is it?”

“Friday at midday. Do you know Wells?”

“A bit. I can't think where inquests are held, but I can find out and meet you there.”

“Thanks, Sabbie, I appreciate that.”

“It will be nice to see you, Brice.”

He hung up then. I hadn't expected him to say it would be nice to see me.

I laid my mobile flat on the kitchen working top and stared at it. I felt shaky as I thought of Brice, of being left without the one you love, the one you thought you'd be with always.

I remembered how Alys had sat up in bed, ill with cramps before going up the Tor. Her head had seemed a bit too big for her body, and the skin across her cheekbones had shone, as though it was stretched and thin. I'd brought her blister packs of painkillers from Esme's bathroom cabinet. She'd taken two ibuprofen and clipped the rest of the packet into the purse on her bed. Could that be part of the possible causes of her death? Probably it was nothing at all.

A nausea welled up in me. Death was like stage magic, it seemed.
Poof!
and you're gone—solid matter, flesh, bone, pulsating blood. So horribly vulnerable to attack. So easy to destroy.

seven

rey

At almost nine that
night, Rey turned up with a couple of take-away curries, lentil for me, beef for him. I watched Rey has he unwrapped the food, lining the naan bread, yogurts, and pickles up on the coffee table, savouring him as if he was part of the goodies. A heavyweight kind of guy, with finger-width, shrew-colour hair clipped tight, his scalp showing pale beneath. The lights were dim and his eyes looked their greenest; they flashed at me as he straightened from the coffee table. I took a step towards him and put my hand on the day's growth of beard. It felt as bristly as a teasel. My head reached his chin, and I had to lean back to touch his cheek. As I did so, he drove his arms round me and kissed my mouth, hard, urgent, long, and rough.

“Food'll get cold,” I pointed out, a problem we'd encountered before.

“Yeah, I guess.”

We poured the wine and chose a TV channel and snuggled up on the sofa with our plates. It was bliss; an hour of normality. I didn't even mention Alys, but I couldn't stop thinking about her and Brice, and the aborted workshop.

The ten o'clock news came on the telly and the realization came over me that the headline might be
Death on Glastonbury Tor!
I zapped it off.

“Hey, I was watching that!”

“I've got something I want to talk about.”

“What?”

“The solstice?”

There was a pause. Rey was a policeman—he didn't like questions he couldn't readily answer. “That was … yesterday, yeah?”

“Yes. I was supposed to be in Glastonbury for the next three days.”

Another pause. “You're back early?'

A little screw of anger drove into my belly. He hadn't noticed I was home early, that I was not my usual chatty self.

“Sorry, Sabbie. I should have realized.”

Apologies always disarm me. The anger slipped away and I felt like crying. “Didn't you hear in the station? About the Tor … as the sun came up?”

“No.” He sat up straight. “Criminal activity? Don't tell me your friend Wolfsbane was involved.”

“A girl died.”

“How?”

“We don't know. She just … dropped.”

“Hell. And you witnessed that?”

“She was there with her husband, Brice. They're Londoners, in their thirties. Bankers. Pretty loaded.”

“You knew her?”

“She was a member of the workshop, Rey. Someone new, as well. We cancelled the entire thing.”

“Don't you have any idea why she died?”

“She was fit, underweight if anything, certainly not the sort who'd have a heart problem. And she was having fun! Dancing, laughing …”

“Drinking?”

“No. Well, not unless her sports bottle was full of vodka. She said it was isotonic stuff.”

“That's a shitty thing to happen.”

“I wondered if they'd be doing a postmortem.”

“Perhaps. This doesn't sound like a suspicious death, so the police wouldn't be directly involved. And it's outside my patch.”

“Brice said the inquest would be in Wells.”

“That sounds right. The coroner's court have their own
co-oped
police department to investigate such things—or rather, the word I should use is
enquire
. They don't investigate, as such.”

“Wolfsbane said that Brice can choose who gives evidence at the inquest.”

“Now that's
not
the case. Only the coroner can summon witnesses, and anyone so summoned must attend if they live in this country. They'd listen to what Brice had to say about the circumstances and if he mentioned Wolfsbane as an interested party—”

“
Interested
?”

“Someone who might have information relevant to the death.”

“No one really knows what's relevant yet.”

“People do know, Sabbie. They know if they've done wrong, or if they saw something untoward.”

He pulled me into his chest and I rested my forehead on his jumper. I'd bought him that jumper for his birthday in May. It was a Fair Isle pattern and very warm. I didn't think Rey looked after himself in his cold, bare, rather grubby flat. I sobbed into the complex pattern, wondering if the colours might run. Rey found a hanky in his trouser pocket and dabbed at the wetness around my eyes.

“Brice has asked me to go with him to the inquest,” I said, sniffing. “I was surprised to be asked. He must have tons of people he knows better than me.”

“He's taking advice. He'll have spoken the liaison officer, they always recommend someone not directly involved—emotionally involved, I mean. He'll need someone like that when the inquest is resumed and all the evidence is heard.”

“When will that be?”

“They have to gather their findings. It could be six weeks. Complex cases can be six months.”

“That's awful. You'd want it over and done, wouldn't you?”

“It's like everything else, Sabbie, there's a shortage of staff and a waiting list.”

I wondered if Brice had realized this, and if I was going to be the one that would have to explain.

“How long do toxicology reports take?”

He gave me the look I knew so well. “So she
had
taken drugs.”

“She didn't honestly look the type, but they were all over the Tor. There were people screaming out, asking who had what.” It was possible drugs were all over Stonedown Farm, but I kept that to myself.

“Sounds like death by misadventure to me.”

I'd always loved that word.
Misadventure.
It summoned up
nineteenth-century
explorers in pith helmets, striking out through unknown jungle territory, or people dangling off mountains by ropes. Now I knew what it meant. The death of someone dancing.

Dancing, dropping, dying.

Misadventure.

“Brice sounded very stoic. Probably bankers are. They try not to let their feelings be shown, or at least known.”

“Bankers don't have any feelings at all.”

“What, like policemen, you mean?”

He laughed. “No, not like us. We're full of feelings, us. It's why there are guidelines to good policing nowadays. Because we used to let our feelings show …” He trailed off.

I lifted my head from his jumper and stared at him. His mouth was a straight line, the lips sucked to thinness.

“What is it, Rey?”

“God, nothing. You've got your own worries.”

“Don't be daft.” I sat properly up. “Here's me going on about this and I didn't even pick up that there's something wrong. There is, isn't there?”

“Not at all. I just hate corruption cases. The evidence is all over the shop … what one person said to another person, overheard by someone else about what some burke expected to be paid … And Pippa likes to play things by the book, which I can understand, but the old ways were … well, quicker, if nothing else.”

“You're a maverick cop. Can't change that.”

“An old dog who likes the old tricks.”

“That's my Rey.” I backtracked through several beats. “Who's Pippa?”

“She's the new DS.”

“You didn't mention you had a new Detective Sergeant.”

“Must have. They've finally replaced Gary Abbott.”

“Pippa as in …”

“Philippa, I suppose. Pippa she likes to be called. Pippa Chaisey.”

“Good name for a cop.
I chaisey the baddies
.” I was summoning up images of Pippa Chaisey, chasing the baddies, and in my mind, her big breasts flopped as she ran on legs that went up to her polished uniform buttons. I tried dismissing this fantasy from my mind. With any luck, she scraped her hair into a bun and had a complexion like a Worcester apple.

“It's a tricky case is all.”

“You've had them before, eh?”

“Once or twice. Nothing to worry about. I'm really sorry about this Alys.”

“And to top that, one of my hens has been taken. Florence. She was my favourite.”

“Taken?”

“Yeah, maybe by a fox, Mr.
Reynard
Buckley.” I'd met Rey the morning after a fox took three of my chickens last year. In my mind, I'd named the culprit Reynard, after the fairy tale fox. When Rey knocked on my door, I wasn't at all sure what the universe was trying to tell me—sometimes I still wasn't.

“That's the pits.”

I got up and cleared the food away. It meant I could compose myself, get rid of the lump in my throat. I didn't want Rey thinking I was maudlin over a hen. Meanwhile, he stretched full out on the sofa and put the news back on.

I took my time, swilling the disposables ready for collection and washing the cutlery. I came back with two fresh glasses of wine and leaned against the breakfast bar, right between him and the screen.

“Sabbie, I'm wa—”

“Yes, I know. You're watching that. Like you live here, or something.”

I had his full attention. “You're a bit sore. 'Course you are. Nasty business witnessing a sudden death. Important night of the year for you, the solstice. It must have shaken you up.”

“It's made me think, yes.”

He didn't reply, but he did have the decency to reach for the remote and turn the TV off.

“I love seeing you, Rey, you know I do. I love you coming here like this, bringing food, sharing normal stuff.”

“You're saying we're getting a bit too settled? A bit too ‘telly on the sofa'?”

“I don't dislike that. We both lead unsettled lives. Neither of us knows when work will finish for the day; heck, I don't even know when mine will begin. But …” I trailed off. I was hoping he'd start guessing.

“Sabbie, are you trying to tell me something?”

“If you like, yes.”

“Only, I thought we were good. I mean, I thought we were okay, seeing each other whenever we can. I know we don't go out a lot. I don't do ‘wine and dine', you know that. Aren't you happy? You have to tell me if you're not happy.”

“Yep. I'm happy. Really—I'm happy.”

“Right.” His hand fingered the remote.

“I see you a lot of you, for a cop. And I'm good with you being here; your place is so small it's not fit for canine habitation. I love it when you get up in the morning and shower for work, but you're using up all my toiletries and the team at work must be thinking you smell a bit … flowery.”

He frowned. “You want me to replace the stuff I used? Of course I can—”

“What I want is for you to bring your own.”

“Shower gel?”

“Suitcase.”

“Huh?”

“God, Rey, however do you solve crimes if you can't unravel the clues? Oh, yeah, of course; you leave it all to Chaisey.”

He frowned. He was still not getting it. “This is about Pippa?”

“Most certainly this is not about Pippa,” I lied. “It's about us. I'm asking you, oh Detective Inspector, if you fancy moving in with me.”

“Move in?” I watched his face. There was genuine surprise in his eyes. He had not suspected I would ask, had not considered this. I peered closer, looking for some sign that he was pleased. “Well, ah …”

“It would be cheaper.”

“Yeah, I guess …”

“Two can live as cheaply, etcetera, etcetera.”

“You might be right.”

“But I'm not on the nail, am I?”

“What? Oh, well, Sabbie, give me a second to get my head around the idea.”

I waited, one moment, two. Rey didn't mean a “second.” He meant proper time.
Twenty-four
hours … a week.

“Do you like the idea? I mean, on principle?”

“Yes.” Finally, I'd squeezed a smile out of my man. “The principle is tempting. Indeed. It's just … it's just I have, well, ties.”

And there we had it. The thing I'd suspected all along. Rey was thinking he would have to discuss this with Lesley, who had not been his wife for almost three years. Who had her own life and a partner she lived with. Yet Rey thought of himself as still married. He liked having a girlfriend. He was allowed a girlfriend. Living together was a step too far.

I sat on the sofa and picked up his hand, the one loitering by the remote. “It's okay. It was just an idea. You know, like in a brainstorm. You put crazy ideas into the pot and throw most of them out again. So just … throw it out.”

“I don't know if it works like that.”

Something crawled up my spine, something that felt like apprehension. What had I done?

“The thought was there. We threw it out. Gone!” I flashed a smile.

Rey laid his head on my shoulder, then slid it down so that it was resting on my breasts. “Let's go to bed, huh?”

In the morning, I got up earlier than Rey, before there was any light in the sky. I didn't even wait for my phone to alarm; I'd been awake for a little while.

I put on the bread machine and took a shower before Rey stole all the hot water. I meditated for twenty minutes. Dawn began to break as I went into the garden. It was going to be a glorious day, I could smell it in the sharp air.

I fed the hens their pellets. There was still no Florence. A pang went through me. I'd been hoping I'd made a mistake about her disappearance; that she'd been hiding under the straw all the time. I recognized the sensation of expecting a miracle to occur and the overwhelming disappointment in remembering that miracles don't happen. Not this sort, anyway.

I was to blame. The hens were my responsibility, and I was always fobbing them off onto the Wraxalls.

She was one hen,
I told myself roughly.
Get over it.

I waited until there was full light in the sky before I did the thing I'd so missed doing on the Tor; the Salute to the Sun.

I was in the middle of the yogic postures and the chanting, when I realized Rey was watching me. I jumped as I saw him, staring through the open back door.