December (99 page)

      
'... came over dizzy. I
did
want to jump off. Thought about flying. All there was left to do. Dragged
myself to the very edge. I thought, everything I ever want turns to shit.'

      
He said nothing. For years he'd felt that was all there was inside
him. Shit. Rottenness.

      
'... going to let myself go. Just, you know, overbalance. And
then something made me look up and ... You ever tell this to anyone else, Simon
...'
      
'Go on.'

      
'I saw the Skirrid. I didn't think you could see it from here,
I mean, it was dark last time ...'

      
'It was dark
this
time. And foggy.'
      
'... and it was white. All white.
Like the Matterhorn or something. It was beautiful. Blazing white. For about ...
half a second? A quarter of a second? I mean, gone ... but you went on seeing
it. I can see it now. All white. And it reminded me.'

      
Isabel dug a hand into a pocket of Moira's anorak. 'Another dry
cleaning bill.'
      
'What is it?'

      
'Soil. Still a few grains, see. Poor Meryl collected it in a binsack
up on the Skirrid. She gave me a sackful to bring to the Abbey, but I felt
stupid about it. The sack, that is. Wheeling myself in here with a sack. So
what I did, I unscrewed part of the wheelchair frame and packed it with soil.
Bloody thing went like an old lawnmower after that and ... oh, I crashed it eventually,
that's not the ... Anyway, I unloaded as much of the soil as I could get into
the coat pocket - that was another reason see, the cape didn't have pockets -
and when the Skirrid lit up, I dragged myself back and spread the soil in a bit
of a circle around you.'

      
Simon's eyes widened.

      
'And then I imagined the light ... a circle of light around us.'

      
'Who told you to do that?'

      
She's a witch, he thought. Maybe all women are witches.
      
Isabel looked away. 'Sounds daft
now.'

'I am out my depth,' Gwyn
Arthur admitted. His pipe had gone out. There were too many people around.

      
Vanessa was on the vicarage sofa, between her father and his wife.
She was wearing a nightie, a grey blanket around her shoulders. She looked
about nine.

      
All right, fireball hit the hillside, igniting the woods. Fine
so far.

      
Silas Copesake seeming oblivious of this? Well, yes, we are dealing
here with a demented person, schizophrenic maybe. No problem with that.

      
But no way was Eddie Edward's official testimony going to
contain references to a loose shadow around Copesake, like a dressing-gown (or
a monk's robe), or to a hulking thing which appeared at first like a column of
brown smoke rising from the smouldering woods, and began to glow only when it smiled.

      
Smiled
twice.
With
two mouths.
      
Oh no. No indeed. None of that.

      
And what about the flames roaring up behind them and this little
girl, Vanessa, calmly reciting a prayer to her guardian angel while Copesake
was sharpening his sacrificial Swiss Army penknife to release her blood?

      
He needed the blood,
see. The monk needed the blood.

      
Oh no. None of that.

      
And nothing about the column of brown smoke interceding, bending
over her, the little girl lifted up as if on a cushion of murky, swirling air.

      
A moment of violence. Frenzied.
Like a street-fight, Gwyn, just like that...

      
Before Copesake was over the edge.

      
All this time, Eddie lying there in the cradle of rock. Pretty
badly beaten, couldn't get up, certain the flames would have him. And thinking,
irrationally, about the glasses.

      
When the fireball, or whatever it was, hit the hillside, he'd struggled
to a sitting position and taken the opportunity to give Vanessa her glasses,
which he'd found earlier.

      
But they were the wrong
glasses, see. They didn't fit. Too big. She gave them back, Gwyn. And then
afterwards, when Copesake is over the edge, I'm being helped away by these two
men. And one says - funny Northern accent - 'Hey, Dad, you found me glasses.' Just
like that. And he takes them off me and puts them on. 'Blind as a fuckin' bat
without me glasses.'

      
Gwyn Arthur Jones, detective superintendent, leading the inquiry
into the death of Silas Copesake, blues singer, company director and probable
murderer. Did he fall or was he pushed? And who the hell really cared?

      
Gwyn cared. And the reason he cared was that he was going to
have to compile reports for at least four inquests: Silas Copesake, Eric Beasley,
the woman, Meryl, and the musician, David Reilly.

      
The way things were going, these reports were going to read like
plots rejected as too far-fetched by the Brothers Grimm. Even the weather and
atmospheric conditions made no sense: freak thunderbolts and ball-lightning,
hints of seismic activity.

      
They say the Skirrid was
cleft at the very moment of...

      
Oh, God, don't even suggest it.

      
'Not going to talk to me, is she?' Gwyn said to Tom Storey.

      
'Give her a day or so, mate,' Tom Storey said. 'Good night's sleep.
Works wonders, dunnit?'

      
Gwyn pocketed his pipe and stood up. His best witness, a Down's
Syndrome child. And yet, why did he think that when he'd gone, she'd be able to
tell her dad precisely what had occurred?

      
He wandered into the vicarage garden. The air stank. Didn't they
say fire was a purifying force? Didn't smell like it, but who could say?

      
Only Eddie Edwards, worst luck.
      
The other witness.

      
Eddie was at the hospital now, having his ribs strapped up. Gwyn
hoped someone would have the sense to do the same to his mouth. Certainly,
before Eddie made any formal statement, Gwyn was going to have to have a
discreet word - indeed, make a few discreet threats. One way or another,
Eddie's natural sense of drama would need to be severely curbed.

      
Gwyn's brain was still congested with the irrational discharge
from the old chap when he'd stumbled into the churchyard. Well, all right,
could have been a couple of villagers. Gwyn had instructed his foot-soldiers to
try and find them.

      
And they take an arm
each, these two chaps, and they haul me out of the trench - me feeling like the
pensioner who doesn't want to cross the road. What about the little girl? Who's
going to bring her down? But they insist - dragging me away, they are. And now they've
gone ...

      
Gwyn remembered Eddie sitting on the churchyard wall, looking
around as though he might see the two men. And what did they look like, these
two?

      
I ... don't know. Didn't
get a good look at them, see. One was doing all the talking. Merseyside, his
accent, I think. Sure I know the voice ... from somewhere. And the other ...
all I remember about him was he was wearing a white scarf...

At just after eight, there
were footsteps on the spiral staircase and Moira arrived on the roof. She was alone.

      
A couple of hours ago, Prof Levin had stepped between the patches
of smouldering grass and shouted up to see if they were OK. Simon had shouted
back and waved. He thought he'd seen Prof grin through his white beard.

      
Now Moira said, 'You two get to go down in style. They're calling
in one of the builders' guys to work that platform crane thing they were using
to reroof the other tower.'

      
'I could carry her down the stairs,' Simon said.

      
'And break your back!' said Isabel. She laughed lightly. 'I won't
be walking down either. But that's the way of things, isn't it? First you learn
to fly, and then you think about learning to walk.'

      
'Where exactly are you paralysed
from
?' Moira asked curiously. 'If I'm not being intrusive.'

      
'Perhaps not quite as high up as I imagined,' Isabel said with
a self-conscious little smile.

      
Moira looked at Simon. Expressionless. Kind of.

      
'But then,' Isabel said, 'they do say it's all in the head,
isn't it?'

      
'And the heart,' Moira said. 'Don't forget the heart.'

Moira told them everything
she knew, a lot of what she guessed and a few things she just hoped. She told
them about Meryl which distressed Isabel. She told them about Stephen Case, who
was in hospital and would probably lose an eye. And Eddie, whose ribs were
strapped up.

      
Simon said. 'How is he, you know ... otherwise?'

      
'Pretty shaken up, I'm told. Nobody's been able to explain what
happened Just as well, huh?'

      
She told them about Vanessa, who was safe. And Sile, who was
dead.

      
'I looked in Vanessa's eyes,' Isabel said. 'Last night, this was,
the last time I saw her. I felt I could see flames.' She shook her head. 'Very,
very strange.'

      
Simon thought about Isabel's circle of sacred soil and what had
happened inside it. A little outpost of the holy mountain at the heart of the
blackness. A tiny circle of love and redemption from which the evil had been
banished.

      
And so had accumulated around Sile Copesake, like a cloud of
flies around a turd.

      
And had they gone down together, Sile and Richard?

      
'You're going to have to get me out of here, Isabel,' Simon said.
'I've probably seen too much to be a vicar.'

People were clustering at
the foot of the tower, an engine started up.

      
'They're bringing the crane,' Moira said. 'Let's do it, huh?'

      
Simon stood up. 'The guitar case?'

      
'We don't have much time.'

      
Moira picked up the Martin case and laid it at the edge of the
tower. 'You got a prayer for an occasion like this, Si?'

      
'I'm not even a priest any more,' Simon said. 'I broke my vow
of celibacy.'

      
Moira grinned. She snapped open the chromium hasps.
      
'In the movies, this is where a
weird gust of wind comes out of nowhere and we see all this humble muck take
off like a comet.'

      
She flung back the lid.

      
Nothing happened.

      
Moira and Simon started to laugh. Isabel looked at them and shook
her head in pity.

      
'Come on, Aelwyn, you old bastard.' Simon could hear a kind of
hydraulic grinding as the guys down below positioned the platform-crane. 'You
can do better than this.'

      
'Maybe he's shy,' Moira said. 'Anyhow, a Martin guitar needs
its case. I'm gonna dump this stuff out and leave it up here, OK?'

      
She turned the case upside down, emptied out the mess of soil and
bone and ancient wood-dust. 'Good luck, Aelwyn,' she said. Her voice softened.
'Davey.'

      
There was a clink.

      
Amid the human and vegetable debris lay something dull and
metallic.

      
Simon picked it up.

      
It looked like a very old, mainly toothless dog comb. The early
coppery sun shone through the gaps in the metal.

      
Simon and Isabel watched, more than a little perplexed, as Moira
fell to her knees in the ancient dust and began to weep.

      
Overhead, many miles from the sea, a seagull keened.