Omega (8 page)

'Do not suppose, Mr Wharton. Confine yourself to what you saw and heard.'

'Yes, sir. Actually I didn't see any more of them, because it was then that the motor-cyclists arrived and the crowd scattered. I managed to get outside the ring of cycles before it closed. I saw one of them run over Miss Sutton's body.
...
I knew there was nothing I could do so I found my clothes and escaped down the hill to my car.'

'Being too afraid to inform the police,' the coroner said.

'Yes, sir, I was. I'm not proud of it but I've seen what these people can do.'

The coroner looked at him inscrutably for a moment, and then asked: 'The man's athame, Mr Wharton. Would you please describe it?'

'An ordinary sheath-knife, sir. About a twelve- or fifteen-centimetre blade. You know, sharp along one edge and thick along the other.'

Appalled and furious, Moira was gripping Dan's arm, unable even to whisper. She saw that one or two reporters were hurrying out of the press box. She was so angry that she hardly heard the coroner's questions, clarifying points in Wharton's story. Her attention was dragged back by a sudden cry of 'It's true!'from a woman who had jumped to her feet from the witnesses' seats.

The coroner restored order, and then asked: 'Miss Chalmers, isn't it?'

The woman, a frightened-looking creature with mousey hair, nodded as though she had lost her voice.

'Do I understand that you wish to add to, or amend, the evidence you gave earlier?'

Now the words came in a flood. 'Yes, sir, I do. I was afraid, like him. He's right about what they can do. . . . But I saw those two stab Miss Sutton and her collecting the blood. Just like he said. It was awful . . .'

'Can you describe them?'

'No more than
he
did, sir. It was all that hair.... Then I saw them running, and I
did
follow them, not too close, they still had their backs to me. And he's right, they
did
pour the blood on the ground, in front of where the Altar had been smashed up. I'm afraid I just turned and ran....'

('Oh, God,' Moira breathed. 'Dan, this
stinks.
But it'll stick! People'll
believe
it!
1
)

('I hope you're wrong, love.')

The coroner, at least, was not credulous. After he had questioned Miss Chalmers, he recalled the pathologist.

'Doctor, when you examined the body of Miss Sutton, did you find any evidence of a knife wound?'

'No, sir, I did not.'

'You gave evidence that the rib-cage was badly crushed. Is it possible that this damage could have concealed the fact that she had been stabbed, by such a weapon as Mr Wharton has described, deeply enough to cause the kind of bleeding he described?'

'No, sir. The wound would still have been detectable to a careful examination.'

'Which you carried out in this case ?'

'Of course, sir. When a cadaver has suffered multiple injuries, one always bears in mind that those injuries may conceal an earlier and significant injury. One is therefore particularly careful to search for such evidence.'

'Thank you, Doctor.'

Andrea Sutton's solicitor rose immediately. 'Doctor -in addition to being run over twice, Miss Sutton's body had also been hit by a falling motor-cycle, had it not?'

'That is so, yes.'

'And would not that machine have sharp projections?'

'Yes. There were several lacerations from such projections, but mostly on the legs and pelvis, across which the machine fell. There was one such wound in the chest, which would appear to have been inflicted by the clutch lever on the left handlebar. It had penerat
r
ed to about six centimetres.'

'You say "would appear to have been".'

'The machine is not available for examination. I was being careful to distinguish between deduction and hard fact.'

'I put it to you, Doctor, that the wound which you
deduce
was caused by a clutch lever could equally well have been caused by a sheath-knife.'

'It could not. The wound would be different.'

'And that difference could be detected after the rib-cage had been badly crushed?'

'This wound was in a part of the chest which was otherwise comparatively undamaged.'

'Ah. Then in the
more
damaged parts, the evidence would be more doubtful.'

'Not at all. It would merely require more careful examination - which, as I have said, I carried out. There was no knife-wound in the chest.'

'I suggest, Doctor, that you are being over-confident.'

'And I strongly resent that suggestion.'

The solicitor sat down, smiling.

The coroner lifted his hand to still the murmur that ran round the court. 'It is clear to me that further police investigation is necessary in this case, before a proper verdict can be arrived at. Among the aspects calling for investigation ...' (he looked steadily at Wharton and then at Miss Chalmers)'.
..
is the possibility that perjury has been committed. Superintendent, you will please speak with me in my office after the court has risen. This inquest stands adjourned
sine die.'

'Sally, I've never been so angry in my life,' Moira said. 'God
knows
what Mike Wharton and that Chalmers woman are up to. But I didn't believe a bloody word of it.'

'Nor did the coroner,' Dan snorted. 'He made that pretty clear.'

'What frightens me is that I don't think they
expected
him to believe it. All that was for Joe Public'

'I hope Joe Public isn't that stupid,' Dan said.

Sally asked drily: 'Do you want to bet?'

'Oh, I know but . . . All right, people will read it but they'll also read that the coroner practically called them liars.'

'Do you want to bet on that, too?'

They were interrupted by the sound of the evening paper, falling on the front doormat. Dan went to fetch it. Moira and Sally heard him pick it up but his footsteps halted halfway down the hall.

'Come on,' Sally called. 'Let's know the worst.'

Dan came in and threw the paper down in front of them. The banner headline read:

'BLOOD SACRIFICE AT WITCH RIOT?
Inquest Adjourned for Probe'.

They read the story through together. The main emphasis was on Wharton's and Miss Chalmers' evidence and on the solicitor's attack on the pathologist's evidence. The coroner's remarks on possible perjury were not quoted.

'The next stage,' Moira said bitterly, 'will be
the bricks through our windows.’

Come Devil or Doomsday, Miss Smith was enjoying herself. It was high summer; she, the caravan, and Ginger Lad were all three in excellent health, and she was quite content to be a directionless nomad for a while. The crisis would erupt soon enough - of that she was still sure -but until she could see the shape of it, she was making no definite plan. It was enough to be mobile and free, and out of town.

She followed the news carefully on the radio and on her little fifteen-centimetre television and bought a different newspaper each day in the hope of getting a cross-section of what was being thought and said; though she had a growing feeling that the media were not being frank. There was no formal censorship as yet but a lifetime in local government had given Miss Smith a sensitive nose for the symptoms of back-door pressures and Establishment manipulation and that nose told her that such influences were increasingly active.

But sniffing the political wind was only a minor part of Miss Smith's new way of life. What she enjoyed most was exercising and perfecting her ability to live off the land.

She was quite skilled at it already; she had been an enthusiastic camper since she was a girl. Then, it had been a bicycle and a tent. In her twenties she had graduated to a Lambretta scooter, and in due course to her first motor caravan. With characteristic thoroughness, she had taught herself how to maintain it. Within a year she could, and did, dismantle and reassemble the engine. Her present caravan was her fourth and most luxurious; she had bought it brand-new two years ago, when her father had died and left her a few thousand in life insurance.

Camping and caravanning had become an addiction with her, as she cheerfully admitted. A boyfriend had once persuaded her to join him in a package-tour holiday in Greece; the boyfriend had been satisfactory, but the confinement of hotel life had been less so. Her eyes had always been on the olive-studded hills and the emptier beaches, while his had been on the bars and the concrete swimming pools. She had liked him but she had been only briefly upset when six months later he had transferred his affections to a night-club hostess in Chelsea.

The following year she had gone alone, in her caravan, to those same hills and beaches; her love affair with the man had been consummated, but her love affair with Greece had not and she had been aware of the frustration all winter. She had driven home to London happy and she had never taken another hotel holiday.

In nearly forty years of camping, Miss Smith had learned a good deal. She knew what she could eat from the fields and hedgerows and what she could not; when she toured abroad - as she had done in places as far apart as Finland and Morocco - part of the fun was seeing how much of the same lore she could acquire locally. It tickled her pride that she could identify at least three High Atlas cacti which would enhance a
couscous
and two Arctic mosses which gave a unique flavour to soups. Such knowledge was gratifying but of course exotic; the British Isles were hei real field of study and she could do well for herself anywhere from the Fens to the Burren, from the Hampshire woods to the Sutherland glens. She could light and maintain a fire in a snowstorm. She could pick herbs to staunch bleeding, soothe headaches or ease constipation. She was an accomplished (and so far uncaught) poacher; she owned a licensed .22 rifle but she could hunt silently when discretion dictated. She disliked snares but had taught herself to use them and she had even had passable success with a catapult.

She did not object on principle to technical aids; her methane cooker was a beauty and she had a well-equipped medical cupboard; but she was wary of becoming dependent on them. She liked to feel she could manage if the gas gave out or the drugs could not be bought. Her little caravan library was strictly practical: road atlases,
Culpepe
r's Complete Herbal, Black's Medical Dictionary,
the caravan workshop manual and so on.

When Miss Smith had driven out of London into Epping Forest a week ago, she was only doing what she had done on more summer weekends than she could count (winter ones, too, come to that). But this time, from the start, the feeling was different. It was one thing to set off on a holiday of two or three days or weeks, knowing that the little house in Vicarage Road lay at the end of it, that minor extravagances were permissible, that whatever was used up could be replaced. It was quite another to accept that this was no holiday but the start of a new life-style, an open-ended journey that might never lead back to Vicarage Road. There were moments, in those first few days, when she asked herself if she was crazy. But her instinct told her otherwise, and in any case it was not Miss Smith's habit to brood on a decision once taken. So she slipped quite naturally into altered ways of thinking.

She must be careful with money, but not miserly because she might as well make the best use of it while it retained its value; and if she was right about the approaching crisis, the time might come when it was so much waste paper. She must reckon on becoming immobile when petrol disappeared from the pumps; but a full tank, and the jerrycans padlocked on her roof-rack, would take her almost a thousand kilometres, so she topped up the tank regularly. She kept on thinking of simple things that might run out. For example, it would be a pity to be reduced to stick-rubbing through lack of lighter flints.
...
So at the next tobacconist's she bought a dozen packets which should last for years as she was a non-smoker, and four lighter-gas canisters. (She had two lighters, which had belonged to her father; it was not till weeks later that she discovered that one could buy Aimless lighters, which annoyed her; such a
silly
thing not to know.)

She busied herself with such thoughts and preparations but she saw no reason to be tense or solemn about them. While petrol could be freely bought, she was determined to have fun wandering.

She had kept moving in short daily hops, circling London to pick up the Thames above Reading, and then on to Savernake Forest, Avebury, Frome and the Mendips. Her westward move was not entirely planless. For one thing, she felt that before too long she should be basing herself somewhere in the Pennine area, because if petrol suddenly became unobtainable, the nearer she was to the centre of the island the more scope would her thousand-kilometre reserve give her; the wider the geographical choice one had, once the crisis took shape, the better. So she wanted to visit some of her favourite southern places before she settled down.