Playing for the Ashes (2 page)

CHAPTER
1

L
ess than quarter of an hour before Martin Snell discovered the crime scene, he was delivering milk. He’d already completed his rounds in two of the three Springburns, Greater and Middle, and he was on his way to Lesser Springburn, cruising along Water Street in his blue and white milk-float, enjoying his favourite part of the route.

Water Street was the narrow country lane that kept the villages of Middle and Lesser Springburn detached from Greater Spring-burn, the market town. The lane wound between tawny ragstone walls, bypassing apple orchards and fields of rape. It dipped and climbed with the undulations of the land it bisected, overhung by ash trees, limes, and alders whose leaves were finally beginning to unfold in a springtime arc of green.

The day was glorious, no rain and no clouds. Just a breeze from the east, a milky blue sky, and the sun winking in re
fle
ction against the oval picture frame that swung on a silver chain from the milk-float’s rearview mirror.

“Quite a day, Majesty,” Martin said to the photograph. “Beautiful morning, don’t you think? Hear that there? It’s the cuckoo again. And there…one of them larks is going off now as well. Lovely sound, i’n’t it? Sound o’ spring, it is.”

Martin’s habit had long been to chat companionably with his photograph of the Queen. He saw nothing odd in this. She was the country’s monarch, and as far as he was concerned, no one was likely to appreciate England’s beauty more than the woman who sat on its throne.

Their daily discussions encompassed more than an evaluation of flora and fauna, however. The Queen was Martin’s companion of the heart, the recipient of his deepest thoughts. What he liked about her was that, despite her noble birth, she was a decidedly friendly woman. Unlike his wife, who had been born again with a pious vengeance at the hands of a Bible-wielding cement maker some
fiv
e years back, the Queen never fell to her knees in prayer in the midst of one of his bumbling attempts at communication. Unlike his son, who was given to the secretive silences of the seventeen-year-old with copulation and complexion weighing equally on his mind, she never rebuffed one of Martin’s approaches. She always leaned forward slightly and smiled with encouragement, one hand raised to wave from the coach as she was driven eternally to her coronation.

Of course, Martin didn’t tell the Queen everything. She knew about Lee’s devotion to the Church of the Reborn and Saved. He’d described at great length and more than once the spanner that religion had put into the works of his once jovial dinner hours. And she knew about Danny’s job at Tesco’s where he kept the shelves stocked with everything from peas to dried beans and about the girl from the tea shop that the boy was so wild about. With his skin going hot, Martin had even disclosed to the Queen only last week his belated attempt at explaining the facts of life to his son. How she had chuckled—how Martin had been forced to chuckle as well—at the thought of him pawing through the second-hand books in Greater Springburn, looking for something to do with biology and coming up with a diagram of frogs instead. He’d presented this to his son along with a packet of condoms he’d had in his chest of drawers since approximately 1972. These’ll do for conversation starters, he’d thought. “What’re the frogs for, Dad” would lead inescapably to a revelation of what his own father had mysteriously called “the marital embrace.”

Not that he and the Queen discussed marital embraces as such. Martin had far too much respect for Her Majesty to do anything more than hint at the topic and then move on.

But for the last four weeks, their milk-route conversations had petered off at the high point of Water Street, where the countryside stretched to the east in hop fields and fell to the west in a grass-covered slope that dropped to a spring where watercress grew. Here, Martin had taken to pulling the milk-
flo
at onto the narrow strip of pigweed that served as verge in order to spend a few minutes in quiet contemplation.

This morning he did no differently. He let the engine idle. He gazed at the hop
fie
ld.

The poles had been up for more than a month, row upon row of slim chestnuts some twenty feet tall from which strings crisscrossed to the ground below. The strings made a diamond-paned lattice up which the hops would eventually grow. The twiddlers had seen to the hops at long last, Martin realised as he surveyed the land. Sometime since yesterday morning they had worked the
fie
ld, twirling the juvenile plants eighteen inches up the string. The hops would do the rest in the coming months, creating a maze of heavy green drapery as they stretched towards the sun.

Martin sighed with pleasure. The sight would grow lovelier day by day. The field would be cool between the rows of plants as they grew to maturity. He and his love would walk there, just the two of them, hand in hand. Earlier in the year—yesterday, in fact—he would have shown her how to wind the tender tendrils of the plant onto the string. She would have been kneeling in the dirt, her gauzy blue skirt spread out like spilled water, her firm young bottom resting against her bare heels. New to the job and desperate for money to…to send to her poor mother who was the widow of a
fis
herman in Whitstable and left with eight young children to feed, she would struggle with the vine and be afraid to ask for help lest she somehow betray her ignorance and lose the only source of income that her starving brothers and sisters have except for the money her mother brings in making lace to dress up ladies’ collars and hats, money that her father ruthlessly swills away in the pub, falling down drunk and staying away all night when he isn’t drowning in the sea in a storm while trying to catch enough cod to pay for the operation that would save his youngest child’s life. She’s wearing a white blouse, with short puffy sleeves and a low neck scooped out so that when he, the burly overseer of the job, bends to help her, he sees the beads of perspiration no bigger than pinheads glistening on her breasts and her breasts rising and falling so quickly because of his nearness and his maleness. He takes her hands and shows her how to twirl the hop plants on the string so the shoots don’t break. And her breath comes quicker with the touch of him and her breasts rise higher and he can feel her hair so soft and blonde against his cheek. He says, This is how you do it, Miss. Her
fin
gers tremble. She can’t meet his eyes. She’s never been touched by a man before. She doesn’t want him to leave. She doesn’t want him to stop. His hands on hers make her feel quite faint. So she swoons. Yes, she swoons and he carries her to the edge of the field, her long skirt sweeping against his legs as he strides manfully between the rows and her head lolling back with her neck so white so pure so exposed. He lays her on the ground. He holds water to her lips, water in a little tin cup that is handed to him by the toothless crone who follows the field workers in her dogcart and sells them water for tuppence a cup. Her eyelids flutter open. She sees him. She smiles. He raises her hand to his lips. He kisses—

A horn honked behind him. Martin started. The driver of a large red Mercedes was apparently unwilling to risk the wings of her car by easing between the hedgerow on one side and the milk-float on the other. Martin waved and put the float into gear. He looked sheepishly at the Queen to see if she knew about the pictures he’d been painting in his head. But she gave no sign of disapproval. She merely smiled, her hand raised and her tiara shimmering as she rode to the abbey.

He pointed the float down the hill towards Celandine Cottage, a
fif
teenth-century weaver’s workplace and home that stood behind a ragstone wall on a slight rise of land where Water Street veered off to the northeast and a footpath led west to Lesser Springburn. He glanced at the Queen once more, and despite her sweet face telling him that she didn’t judge him ill, he felt the need to make an excuse.

“She doesn’t
know
, Majesty,” he said to his monarch. “I’ve never said anything. I’ve never done…Well, I wouldn’t do, would I? You know that.”

Her Majesty smiled. Martin could tell she didn’t quite believe him.

At the bottom of the drive, he parked the float, pulling off the lane so that the Mercedes that had interrupted his daydream could glide quietly past. The woman driving it gave him a scowl and two fingers. Londoner, he thought with resignation. Kent had started going to the devil the very day they had opened the M20 and made it easier for Londoners to live in the country and commute to work.

He hoped Her Majesty hadn’t seen the woman’s rude gesture. Or the one that he’d made in return once the Mercedes had swung round the bend and sailed off towards Maidstone.

Martin adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could study his re
fle
ction. He checked to make sure there was no stubble on his cheeks. He gave a feather-light pat to his hair. This he carefully combed and sprayed every morning after spending ten minutes massaging a tablespoon of GroMore SuperStrength into his scalp. He’d been actively involved in improving his personal appearance for just over a month now, ever since the
fir
st morning when Gabriella Patten had drifted out to the gate of Celandine Cottage to fetch the milk from him in person.

Gabriella Patten. The very thought of her made him sigh. Gabriella. In an ebony silk dressing gown that whispered when she walked. With the sleep still clouding her cornflower eyes and her tousled hair shining like wheat in the sun.

When the order had come to start delivering milk to Celandine Cottage once again, Martin had filed the information in the part of his brain that took him through his delivery route on automatic pilot. He hadn’t bothered to wonder why the regular request for two pints had been changed to one. He merely parked at the base of the drive one morning, rustled in the float for the cool glass bottle, wiped the moisture off it with the rag he kept on the floor, and pushed through the white wooden gate that fenced the cottage drive from Water Street.

He was putting the milk into the shaded box at the top of the drive where it nestled at the base of a silver fir when he heard footsteps coming along the path that curved from the drive to the kitchen door. He looked up, ready to say, “Morning to you,” but the words caught somewhere between his throat and his tongue when he saw Gabriella Patten for the very
fir
st time.

She was yawning, stumbling slightly on the uneven bricks, with her unbelted dressing gown fluttering as she walked. She was naked beneath it.

He knew he ought to turn away, but he found himself mesmerised by the contrast of the dressing gown against her pale skin. And such skin, like the underside petals of granny’s nightcap, white as shelduck’s down and edged in pink. The pink of her burned him in the eyes, throat, and groin. He stared and said, “Jesus.” It was as much thanksgiving as it was surprise.

She gave a gasp and drew the dressing gown round her. “Good Lord, I’d no idea…” She raised three fingers to her upper lip and smiled behind them. “I’m awfully sorry, but I didn’t expect anyone. And certainly not you. I always thought the milk came at dawn.”

He’d begun backing away at once, saying, “Nope. No. Just about this time. Just about ten
A
.
M
. is the usual here-abouts.” He reached for his peaked cap to give it a pull and cover more of his face, which felt like embers were burning down it. Only he hadn’t worn a cap that morning. He never wore a cap from April Fools’ on, no matter the weather. So he ended up tugging at his hair like some simpleton on one of those fancy-dress television programmes.

“Well, I’ve a lot to learn about the country then, haven’t I, Mister…?”

“Martin,” he said. “That is, Snell. Martin.”

“Ah. Mr. Martin Snell Martin.” She came out of the latticework gate that separated the drive from the lawn. She bent—he averted his eyes—and
fli
pped up the top of the milk box. She said, “This is quite lovely. Thank you,” and when he turned back, she’d taken the pint of milk and was holding it between her breasts, in the V made by the closure of her dressing gown. “It’s cold,” she said.

“Forecast is for sun today,” he replied stoutly. “We should see it by noon or thereabouts.”

She smiled again. She had the softest eyes when she smiled. “I meant the milk. How do you keep it so cold?”

“Oh. The
flo
at. I got some holders’re insulated special.”

“Do you promise I’ll always be able to fetch it like this?” She gave the bottle a turn so it seemed to rest more deeply between her breasts. “Cold, that is.”

“Oh, yes. Sure. Cold,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. “Mr. Martin Snell Martin.”

He saw her several times a week after that, but never again in her dressing gown. Not that he needed reminding what the sight of her had been like.

Gabriella. Gabriella. He loved the sound of it inside his head, trembling like it was set to violins.

Martin readjusted the rearview mirror, satisfied that he looked his best. Even if his hair wasn’t much thicker than it had been before he started his treatments, it was far less wispy since he’d begun with the spray. He rustled in the back of the float to find the pint of milk he always kept coldest. He wiped off its moisture and polished its foil top on the front of his shirt.