Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (87 page)

   
At which point, spangled
brightness burst out of the wrought-iron chandeliers - an electrical blip - and
Fay saw the Mayor, Councillor James Oswald Preece, standing on the edge of the
raised area, holding his arms as though, with his frail frame, he could conceal
the carnage.

   
'Silence!'

   
Even Wynford Wiley stopped, so
suddenly that Fay almost bumped into his big blue back. The big lights stuttered
again, leaving the Mayor with a momentary jagged aura of yellow and black.

   
'Listen to me!'

   
'Is he dying?' a woman demanded
from the New Age quarter.

   
One of the men in suits said,
'Look, I'm his legal advisor and this is . . .'
   
'Is Max
dead
?'

   
'. . . I insist you call an
ambulance.'

   
'
Is he
. . .?'

   
'Will . . . you . . . be . . .
quiet
madam!'

   
A new and significant Jimmy
Preece, Fay saw. No longer the husk of a farmer, flat-capped, monosyllabic -
'ow're you, 'ow're
you
. . .
Authority there now. Resonance.

   
'Now,' Jimmy Preece said. 'I'm
not going to elaborate on this. Isn't the time. So don't none of you ask me.
I'm speaking to you as your First Citizen, but I'm also speaking as a Preece and
most of you'll know what I'm saying yere.'

   
The Mayor's eyes flickered to
one side. 'For all the newcomers, I'd ask you to accept my word that . . . that
we are in . . . well . . .'

   
He stopped. His jaw quivered.
   
'. .
. in serious, mortal danger
. . . '

   
He let this sink in. Fay looked
around to see how they were taking it. Some of the Crybbe people looked at each
other with anxiety and varying amounts of understanding.

   
'Serious. Mortal. Danger,'
Jimmy Preece intoned again, almost to himself, looking down at his boots.

   
The lawyer said, 'Oh, for
heaven's sake, man . . .'

   
'And it's more than us what's
in danger. And it's more than our children and . . . and their children.'

   
The doctor stood up, flecks of
blood on his glasses.

   
'No!' somebody shouted. 'Oh
God, no!' And the New Age quarter erupted.

   
Jimmy Preece held up a hand. 'I
. . .' His voice slumped. I'm sorry he's dead.'

   
'. . . through the oesophagus,
I'd imagine,' the doctor told Col Croston quietly, but not quietly enough.

   
'I mean it,' the Mayor said. 'I
wished 'im no harm, I only wished 'im . . . gone from yere.'

   
Fay glanced at Guy. His face
sagged. His blond hair, disarranged, revealed a hitherto secret bald patch.
Catrin Jones was several yards away, looking past him to where Larry Ember was
walking up the aisle, camera on his shoulder.

   
'Who let you in?' Jimmy Preece
said wearily, 'Switch that thing off, sir, or it'll be taken from you.' Guy
turned, tapped Larry's arm and shook his head.

   
To the side of Guy, the
Newsomes mutely held hands.

   
'I'm going now,' Jimmy Preece
said, 'to see to the bell. I urge you all - and this is
vital
- to stay absolutely calm.'
   
'. . . come with you, Jim,' somebody
said.

   
'No you won't. You'll stay
yere. You'll
all
stay yere.'

   
'Ah, look . . .' Col Croston
said, 'Mr Mayor, there's been a murder here. It's not a normal situation.'

   
'No, Colonel, it's not normal,
and that's why nobody goes from yere till I sees to the bell. I don't say this
lightly. Nobody is to leave, see. Nobody.'

   
'Who's to say,' Col came close
to the Mayor, 'whoever did this isn't still in the room?'

   
'No. 'E isn't yere, Colin, you
can . . .'

   
Wynford Wiley pleaded, 'Let me
radio for assistance, Jim. Least let me do that.'

   
'Leave it, Wynford. You're a
local man, near enough. This is not a police matter.'

   
'But it's a murder,' Col
Croston protested.

   
'It's a
Crybbe
matter, sir!'

   
'Jim,' Wynford whined, 'it's
more than my . . .'

   
'Your
job
? A blue vein throbbed in the Mayor's forehead. 'Your piffling
little
job
? You'll take out your
radio, Wynford Wiley, and you'll put 'im on that table.'

   
Wynford stood for a moment, his
small features seeming to chase each other around his Edam cheese of a face. 'I
can't.' He hung his head, turned away and trudged back towards the main door.

   
But when he reached it, he
found his way barred by four large, quiet men of an unmistakably agricultural
demeanour.

   
'Don't be a bigger fool than
you look. Wynford,' said the Mayor, walking slowly down the aisle. 'Just give
me that radio.'

   
Wynford sighed, took out the
pocket radio in the black rubber case with the short rubber aerial and placed
it in Jimmy Preece's bony, outstretched hand.

   
'It's for the best, Wynford.
Now.' The Mayor turned and looked around him. 'Where's Mrs Morrison?'

   
Oh Christ.

   
'I'm here, Mr Preece.'

   
His deeply scored lips shambled
into something that might have become a smile. 'You're not very big, Mrs Morrison,
but you been stirring up a lot o' trouble, isn't it?'

   
'What's that supposed to mean?'

   
One of the men opened a door
for him. Another handed him a lamp, a farmer's lambing light.

   
'Means I don't want you left in
yere,' said Jimmy Preece 'Christ alone knows what ole rubbish you'd be spoutin'.'

   
He pushed her out of the door
in front of him.

   
Outside, it was fully dark.

   
It was only 9.40.

Oh my God, my God. . . Oh .
. .

   
'It's only a dead body,' Mr
Preece said, 'It can't hurt you, any more than that Goff can hurt anyone now.'

   
'It's horrible,' Fay said. 'It's
. . . perverse. You knew it was here, didn't you, like . . . like this?'

   
She was shaking. She couldn't
help it.

   
'No,' said the Mayor. 'I didn't
think it was gonner be like this. But it don't surprise me.'

   
'But, Mr Preece, it's your own
grandson. How can you bear it?'

   
'I can bear it, 'cause I got no
choice,' said Mr Preece simply. He turned the light away from the coffin and
pulled her back, but she could still see the image of Jonathon showcased like a
grotesque Christmas doll.

   
Glad the power was off. Only
wished somebody would disconnect the atmosphere.

   
Was she imagining this, or was
it Jonathon she could smell, sweet corruption, bacteria stimulated by exposure
to the dense, churchy air?

   
'Would you mind if I waited outside?'
   
'You'll stay yere.'

   
'It's . . . I'm sorry, Mr
Preece, it's the smell.'
   
'Aye. We should lay him flat and put
the lid back on.'
   
Don't
ask me to help. Please don't ask me to help.
   
'Gonner give me a hand, then?'

   
No . . . !
But he was taking her arm. 'We 'ave time. Ten minutes
yet, see.' Guiding her into the body of the church. She held fingers over her
nose.

   
'Mr Preece . . .'

   
'What?'

   
She took her hand away from her
face. 'Why me? Why'd you really bring me along?'

   
The question resounded from invisible
walls and rafters.

   
'Just hold that.' Giving her
the lambing light.

   
Fay stayed where she was, well
back, and shone the light on the coffin, looking away.

   
'Closer, girl. Shine it
closer.'

   
She felt him watching her. She
moved a little closer. The smell was appalling. She imagined bloated, white
maggots at work inside Jonathon Preece, although she knew that was ludicrous.
Wasn't it?

   
Fay pushed knuckles into her
mouth to stifle the rising panic.

   
Mr Preece was on his knees
beneath the coffin, its top propped against the pulpit. 'Never get 'im back on
that trolley. Lay 'im ... flat ... on the ground. All we can do.' He pushed at the
coffin until it was almost upright and the body began sag and belly out, like a
drunk in a shop doorway.

   
'Jesus, Mr Preece, he's slipping!
He's going to fall out! He's going to fall on me!'

   
'Push him back in, girl! Put
the light down.'
   
'I
can't!'

   
'Do it, woman!'

   
She did. She touched him. She
pushed his chest, felt the ruched line of the post-mortem scar. He was cold, but
far from stiff now, and she remembered him on the riverbank, soaked and
leaking, tongue out and the froth and his skin all crimped.

   
She closed her eyes and
pretended the stink was coming from elsewhere, until the coffin, with its
sickening cargo, was flat on the stones and Jimmy Preece was fitting the lid
on. Then she was bending over a pew, retching, nothing coming up but bile, like
sour, liquid terror.

   
'Dead, poor boy,' Jimmy Preece
said.

   
She stood up. Wiped her mouth
on her sleeve. The smell was still in the air, sweetly putrid. Would she ever
get away from that smell?

   
Heard herself saying. 'Who was
it, Mr Preece? Who did this? Who made a sideshow out of him?'

   
'Dead,' he said. 'Can't hurt
you now, can 'e?' He came close. 'Won't hurt that dog, neither, will 'e?'

   
Oh no. Something had been
whispering to her that it was going to be this, but she'd kept pushing it back.

   
'That's why you brought me,
isn't it? That's why you made me touch him.'

   
He stood there, recovering from
the exertion, his breathing like coins rattling in a biscuit tin. Max Goff
stabbed to death something unspeakably vile seeping into Crybbe, but it was the
death by drowning of one Jonathon Preece, young farmer of this parish . . .

   
'Family thing,' he said, voice
as dry as wood ash. 'Something I 'ave to know before I die. Jack sent Jonathon
out to make away with that animal of yours.'

   
'And why?' she said, but he
didn't answer that.

   
'And he never came back.'

   
'OK, I'll tell you,' Fay said,
in a rush. 'I'll tell you what happened, OK?'

   
His words of a moment long ago
lurched back at her . . .
before I die?
Have to know before I die.

   
She didn't even want to think
what he meant by this, so she told him everything. Everything except for the
feelings Joe Powys had said he'd experienced on the riverbank with the gun in
his hands and the urge to kill.

   
Mr Preece went on breathing
like a dying man. When she'd finished, he said, 'There's more to it than that.'

   
'No, there isn't, I swear.'

   
'Jonathon was a strong boy and
a good swimmer. 'E also - unlike that brother of 'is - 'e had a bit o' common
sense.'

   
'I'm sorry,' Fay said. 'I can't
tell you what happened when he'd gone. Perhaps... I mean, with hindsight, we
should have stayed. With hindsight, we should never have thrown the gun in the
river in the first place. I'm sorry. I really am desperately sorry, Mr Preece .
. .' She was aware of her voice becoming very small and a bit pathetic.

   
He was moving away towards the
entrance, pulling out a pocket watch the size of a travel alarm-clock. It had
big luminous hands.