LESS THAN KIND by  DAVID ARMSTRONG.

1968, and Charles Somerville, son of
impoverished landowner Philip
Somerville, is on the run from drug
dealers in the Welsh Borders. In nearby
Llantrisillio, newcomers James and Suzie
find their sylvan idyll brutally shattered
by a farming neighbour.. .Also in Border
country is Birmingham policeman John
Munroe, liaising with Welsh colleagues on
a routine inquiry. But a mysterious death
in the area draws him inexorably into an
investigation which is to uncover a tangle
of dangerous passions.

ISBN 0-7089-5262-3



First published in Great Britain in 1994 by
HarperCollins Publishers
London
First Linford Edition
published 1998
by arrangement with
HarperCollins Publishers Limited
London
The right of David Armstrong to be identified
as the author of this work has been asserted
by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Copyright (c) 1994 by David Armstrong
All rights reserved

British Library GIF Data
Armstrong, David, 1946
Less than kind.--Large print ed.-- Linford mystery library
1.	Detective and mystery stories
2.	Large type booksI. Title
823.9'14 [F]

ISBN 0-7089-5262-3
Published by
F. A. Thorpe (Publishing) Ltd.
Anstey, Leicestershire
Set by Words & Graphics Ltd.
Anstey, Leicestershire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
T. J. International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall
This book is printed on acid-free paper

For Jesse and Hannah



'A little more than kin, and less
than kind!'
Hamlet.


The only woman that leuwan Hopkins
had ever seen naked was his wife. They
had been married fourteen years and her
body no longer gave him the thrill or
excitement of surprise and novelty.

Usually, when he looked down from Ty
Uchaf farm across his fields, he saw only
ewes and magpies, crows and cattle, the
familiar hedgerow trees of oak and ash,
and the rutted strip of metalled lane that
wound down to the valley floor. The most
arresting thing that was likely to catch his
eye was a skulking fox, making its stealthy
progress along the hedges towards its prey
at dusk.

Amid these changeless changes, the
sight of the young woman washing herself
at the tap outside Well Cottage two
hundred yards away thrilled him deeply.

His first instinct was to rush into
the kitchen and share the revelation
with Glenys. His second was to stay

alone, concealed beside the old barn. He
stayed.

The young woman lathered herself in
the cold water: her breasts, under her
arms and down to her waist. She brought
the soap and water on to her and shirked
its cold all in one motion. Then she
soaked the flannel and washed the soap
from herself. As she bent closer to the tap
her breasts swayed and leuwan's member
grew huge against his leg.

She washed between her legs and then
began to dry herself with the towel that
was hung on the little brass handle of
the white-painted wooden door. And that
was it. She turned, the big towel draped
about her, looked up the fields that sloped
away from the cottage, and stepped back
inside.

* * *

When they had arrived from London
on a chill March evening a few weeks
ago, Cyril Liptrot, the landlord of the
Horseshoe Inn, had driven them from
the village up the steep lanes to see his

deserted cottage. It lay forty yards from
the pool of still, black water from which,
perhaps two hundred years ago, it had
taken its name.

James and Susie had stood at the
door with the publican and his panting
labrador, and enthusiastically agreed to
take the place at a peppercorn rent, the
only proviso being that they keep the
roof slates on and the guttering and
downspouts free of leaves.

In front of the cottage, beyond the
rough grass with its two damson trees
and gnarled pear, ran a fast stream
just wide enough for a man to jump.
The tufty grass sprouted bunches of big
daffodils that had been left to multiply
undisturbed for many years. A ewe grazed
in the unfenced garden and bleated to the
dusk. The plaintive response of its lamb
came from across the fast water and the
mother scuttled away towards it.

Behind the little house was a wooded
hill that inclined sharply before being
dwarfed itself by a bracken-covered
Montgomeryshire mountain. That evening,
as the light faded behind Pentrefelin Hill,

the crows in the wood disputed loudly
as they circled the tops of the trees and
peered down at the new residents.

Excited and tired and slightly afraid of
the blackness that descended all around
them, they tumbled their belongings out
of the Bedford van and into the stone
cottage. They slept that night on their
mattress on the slate floor, a fire of
crackling dry sticks in the hearth.

* * *

Glenys Hopkins never did find out why
her previously torpid sex life became
increasingly frenetic that spring. But she
was not unhappy to receive once more the
carnal attentions of her ruddy husband,
even though he was a little rough with
her in his graceless way.

For his part, the hill farmer spent
each morning beside the black barn
awaiting the careful ablutions of their
new neighbour.

Humphreys-the-post told the locals that
the new couple 'come from London', he
had been invited into the cottage and

drunk tea with them as he brought the
first of many envelopes. The comely
woman had made him feel welcome and
filled his cup and offered him biscuits
from a tin. At his own home, in the
next village, it was well known that he
was not allowed to set foot upon the hall
carpet without first removing his shoes.

In Well Cottage, he sat at the hearth
in the couple's one big armchair, and
was made to feel an honoured visitor.
This did not endear them to him
(they were foreigners, immigrants whose
inept hospitality was born of a kind
of remarkable ignorance), but rather
focused his resentment against his own
mean-spirited people, people who never
asked you in, no matter how wet and
cold you were as you cycled up the hill
with their bank statements and farming
catalogues.

* * *

The single-storey, random-stone cottage
had been empty since Jack Lewis and his
wife had moved down to the village five


years ago. The vegetable garden that Jack
had dug deep and fed well during many
evenings had been lost in the first full
year. The rich, dark loam became a bed
of thistles and convolvulus that rapidly
colonized the fertile soil. The ground
elder spread its creamy, brittle tendrils
beneath the earth, and the nettles and
dandelions shed their copious seed. By
autumn, apart from a rogue potato tuber
and a few leggy sprout plants, thinnings
not worth the taking to his new patch, it
was as if Jack and quiet Mrs Lewis had
never been there.

For the next five years the cottage
became just another part of the natural
landscape that leuwan Hopkins had
always known. The trees had their
seasons; one year the walnut in the
middle field had good leaf and heavy
crop; the next, the cherry blossom came
early and was soon shaken; the same
year, the lambs dropped in the mild
weather but then many were lost in the
perilous wet.

And Well Cottage, tucked amongst the
fruit trees in the bottom field, glistened

6

in the April rain, baked slowly in the
sun, and was lost in the still,
silence of February's blanket of snow.

Mice scurried about inside and ate
the piece of soap and stubs of candle
that Mrs Lewis had left on the kitchen
window-sill. Outside, as the nails rusted,
slates slipped and fell; more were lifted
in the big October winds.

One year, the cast-iron guttering parted
from the barge-board beneath the weight
of thawing snow, and from that day on
rain-water gathered in a pool beneath the
break.

Liptrot, the rubicund publican, rarely
visited his cottage. He had bought the
place from Colonel Philip Somerville
eight years previously. The Colonel had
let it be known that he was thinking of
selling 'one or two of the cottages on the
estate'.

His manner was cavalier, even dismissive:
he owned several upland farms, and
hundreds of Montgomeryshire acres
had been in the Somerville family
for generations; but the fact was, the
farms were tenanted for life, and the

Montgomeryshire acres were on thin,
stony soil that grew poor grass and
worse corn.

Even here, in these distant hills, the
proselytizing of trades union leaders
had eventually percolated: labour costs
escalated, while the death duties that the
Somerville Estate had been obliged to pay
to a post-war government on the death
of Philip Somerville's father had taken
virtually all of the remaining capital.

Notwithstanding these inconveniences,
Somerville maintained a small stable of
thoroughbreds, rode out to hounds, drove
a huge Rover saloon, and lived, a mile
outside Llantrisillio, in big, draughty,
costly-to-maintain Plas Trisillio Hall.

It was common knowledge in the village
that the marmalade on the kitchen table
at the Hall was long gone before the local
shop was paid for it; and the wheat stood
four inches high in the flat fields that
fronted the river before the agricultural
merchant eventually received payment for
his seed. In recent years, it had only been
through the sale of a cottage here, a parcel
of land there, or a stand of beech to the

8

timber merchant, that the tradespeople
had been paid at all.

Cyril Liptrot, landlord of the quaint
and profitable Horseshoe Inn, erstwhile
sergeant in a Staffordshire infantry
regiment, emasculated by the landowning
Colonel's birth and rank and
very vowels, felt rather smug. He made
the Colonel an offer for Well Cottage. It
was a derisory offer, calculated to slight
the man.

Philip Somerville accepted it by letter
through his solicitors in London the
following week.

Liptrot was a man of property; and, for
that month at least, the garage and the
seedsman and the village shop were paid
their overdue accounts by the penurious
Colonel.



2

Young Charles Somerville left London
before dawn and drove north-west through
the April morning: High Wycombe,
Oxford, Cheltenham and across to
Ledbury. From Hereford on the A49,
parallel to the Welsh border, and never
more than a few miles from it, he wound
all the way up into rolling Shropshire.

Near Chirbury, he crossed first Offa's
Dyke and then the River Severn into
Wales. At Llanfrynach, where the Tanat,
the Vyrnwy and the Trisillio all meet,
he lumbered across the old pack bridge,
and arrived at Len Hughes's yard outside
Llanarmon just after eleven o'clock.

Hughes, a mechanic with doubtful
credentials, bought and sold cars. He had
a string of petty motoring convictions:
bald tyres, no motor insurance, driving
without a current excise licence. But his
most recent offence had merited nearly
half a page in the Welshpool Recorder:

10

he had been convicted of taking thirty
thousand miles off the clock of a middle
aged Austin Mini, and thereby putting on
to its sale price about one hundred and
fifty pounds.

'Clocking' cars was common enough
in 1968, but detection was less likely in
the middle of Manchester or Birmingham
than it was in a village on the Welsh
borders. Unfortunately for Len, the
previous owner of the car met the new
one only a fortnight later at Welshpool
livestock market. After chatting about
the price of store cattle, tups and barren
ewes, the desultory conversation turned
to second-hand cars.

They wandered over to the car park
and stood beside the red Mini. It looked
well. It had had a little bit of touching up
done to the rusty spots on the bodywork
in a colour that almost matched the
original, and the tyres had been given a
coat of black tyre paint which lent them
a new appearance. But it wasn't on the
appearance alone that the farm labourer
had bought the little car, it was on its
'genuine low mileage', as guaranteed by

11

the seller, Len Hughes.

Len was fined seventy-five pounds
and given a suspended sentence by the
magistrates' court one Friday morning.
The chairman of the bench gave a stern
admonition and told him that they didn't
want to see him before them again. By
lunch-time Len was back at his yard
and welding together the chassis of an
insurance write-off that he had bought
in Llanidloes the previous weekend.

* * *

Charles drove in past the hand-painted
sign, Llanarmon Motors. At the sound
of the approaching car, Len turned down
the Everley Brothers on his record player
and came out of the stone cottage that
abutted his corrugated iron workshop.

Even before he had taken in the
appearance of the driver, his practised
eye was surveying the Austin 1100 that
pulled up in front of him, its front wheel
lurching into a deep, oily puddle.

Somerville clambered out. "Good
morning. Is it Len? Len Hughes?"

12

Len knew the gangly young man by
sight, but he had never spoken to him.
The youth had an ungainly lack of
co-ordination that the hulking mechanic
associated with the upper classes.

"I'm Len. What do you want?" The
question sounded more like a threat.

Undaunted, the boy replied, "I'm
Charles. Philip Somerville's son." With
his hands in his pockets, he shifted his
weight from foot to foot, appeared unable
to keep still. "I'm getting rid of this.
I wondered how much you'd give me
for it?"

"What's wrong with it?" asked Len
as he began a slow progress around
the car.

"There's nothing wrong with it. I've
got a new car lined up and I need the
cash from this one. It's a cash deal. No
part exchange."

Maybe, thought Len. He'd heard it all
before. He never believed a word anyone
told him about cars. He never told the
truth. Why should anyone else? But he
asked the questions just the same. It
didn't tell you anything about the car,

13


but it told you a bit about the person
you were dealing with. Like what was
this tall, fair-haired boy in blue jeans and
a checked shirt doing in his yard at eleven
o'clock in the morning trying to sell him a
car. And him not just some ordinary kid
from the village, but a boy with what his
mother had used to call 'breeding'.

The car itself was all right, and he
almost certainly owned it. It wasn't that
kind of set-up. But why was he selling it
here? You could sell a car in the paper, or
to a proper dealer. Len had no illusions
about himself. There must be a reason.
There always was.

He put his unlaced boot up on the
front wheel and gave it a firm, steady
push.

"What do you want for it?"

"What's it worth?" replied Somerville.

"What it's worth and what I'm offering
may not be the same."

"Well, what are you offering?" The boy
was aware of the bit of sham theatre that
the situation demanded, but he lacked the
patience for the ritual.

Len knew a straight car when he saw

14

one, and this car was straight. It had been
washed recently, not very well; the ashtray
was overflowing and there were cigarette
packets and papers and junk on the floor.
But with rich people, what you saw was
what you got. They couldn't be bothered
hiding things and patching them up and
trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
In fact, they always thought the car was
worse than you did: they had no idea
how a good tidy-up would transform it.

"I'll give you two-fifty."

It was about a hundred and fifty less
than the car was worth.

"Make it three hundred," said the
boy.

Len responded according to the well
worn script. "I'll split the difference;
two-seven-five."

Charles extended his hand in agreement.
"I'd like cash, if that's all right with
you."

As the man offered his grimy hand,
Charles added, "Would you run me up
to the house? I've got a bit of stuff in
the boot."

Len went into the cottage, turned off

15

his gramophone player and returned with
the five-pound notes. He locked his front
door, got into the driver's seat of the 1100
and reversed out on to the lane that led
to Llantrisillio four miles away.

16

3

"Do you fancy a bit of sheep-shagging?"

Munroe ignored Superintendent Glover
and walked on into the locker-room.
Glover followed.

"Seriously. Do you fancy an away day?
Get to know our country cousins?"

"Why? What's up?" Inspector John
Munroe had no stomach for banter. He'd
been lying concealed in the back of a Ford
Corsair all night waiting for some robbers
who never came. He was exhausted.
He ached everywhere. His teeth were
unclean. He was unshaven. He'd been
hoping to see the Villa play at home
today. They were playing Birmingham
City. It should be a good game. And
now all he wanted to do was sleep for
a week.

"Rustling. Wales."

Munroe looked up at his Super through
half-closed eyes with barely concealed
contempt.

17

Glover ignored the look of disdain.
"There's been another one. It's big
money, John. They want someone from
the Midlands end. I thought I'd ask you."
He said it as if he was doing Munroe a
favour.

"Thanks," said the Inspector laconically.
He wanted to lie down on the slatted
bench in front of the battered, grey metal
lockers and sleep.

"Well?"

"Why me?"

The DS shrugged his shoulders and
turned away, hands thrust deep into his
pockets. "It's up for grabs. I don't want
to send anybody too stupid though. Got
a reputation to maintain. Thought I'd ask
you first."

Before Glover got to the wire-glazed
door Munroe found the energy to ask,
"Where is it? Wales is a big place."

Glover came back, took from the inside
pocket of his jacket a letter and sat on the
bench beside Munroe. He pointed at the
word. "I can't even bloody well say it!"

The two grown men stared at the
Montgomeryshire Police document and,

18

with their risible Birmingham accents,
tried to make the jumble of I's and
t's and s's sound like something. Even
Munroe managed a wan smile.

Glover got to his feet. "Get your head
down, John. You're knackered."

When the Superintendent reached the
door, Munroe looked up. "When do you
need to know?"

"Soon. They've had two recently, and
they reckon they've got a big one coming
off in the next couple of weeks. Get some
sleep and let me know tomorrow." He
was half way through the door.

"Any extras, allowances?" said Munroe.

"Wellies," said Glover, 'standard issue.'
And he let the door close behind
him.

* * *

A young constable with greasy hair and
dandruff drove the Inspector through
the Saturday morning traffic to the
Victorian terraced house in Coleraine
Road, Handsworth. At No. 29 the curtains
were still closed.

19

Munroe let himself in and pushed off
his still-laced shoes. He climbed the
stairs to the bathroom and took a long,
unwholesome-looking wee.

As he passed the mirror he glanced at
the tired face there. He was thirty-six
and looked ten years older. His brown
eyes were deep in their sockets and
there was an unhealthy mauve shadow
underneath them. His nose was out of
shape where it had been broken going
up for a ball in the penalty area a dozen
years ago when he'd been a passable
centre-forward.

His mouth was rank with the taste
of tobacco and coffee. He looked like
some tired old dead-beat hippy who had
smoked too much dope and just come
out into the light. And him a cop. He
smiled mirthlessly.

In their bedroom he pulled off his
clothes and fell into the faintly warm,
unmade bed. He pulled the sheets around
him and, within a couple of minutes, was
fast asleep.

* * *

20

When he woke, it was to the sound of
distant laughter in the house. There was
a soft light through the curtains at the
window and he felt the pang of regret
that a sick child feels at having missed
most of the day.

From the pavement outside came the
sound of a little girl's voice: "One potato,
two potato, three potato, four; five potato,
six potato, seven potato, more." And,
with each beat, the rhythmic thrip of the
skipping-rope as it tapped the ground.

He opened his arms wide and felt the
luxury of the bed and the gift of the
deep, solid sleep. From downstairs in the
kitchen, and echoing up the dark, quarry
tiled hall, came the far away laughter
again.

The kitchen door opened and footsteps
slapped on the tiles and then, light and
quick, came up the steep stairs. The
bathroom door closed noisily and, a
few minutes later, there was the muffled
flush.
More quietly now, Kath was coming
along the landing towards him. She
opened the door a crack and peered


21



round. "Are you all right? I've been
up twice. You were out cold." It
was a 'routine inquiry'. There was no
affection in it.

She looked pretty. She always looked
together in her clothes. Everything about
her 'fitted'. She didn't seem to spend
any time on it and was rather dismissive
of 'fashion'; he'd never seen a woman's
magazine around the house, ever. She
had small features: good hips, not much
waist, a nice bottom, and a shapely little
bosom that he never saw but wanted to
touch.

Her straight, dark hair was cut to her
neck and she always wore a fringe. He
rarely saw her forehead, they joked about
it. Or had done, once. Her eyes were
brown and often looked rather mournful,
but it was her mouth that betrayed her
emotions: hurt, her lips pursed and lost
all of their colour; angry or moved, her
lower lip trembled.

She had changed hardly at all in the
nine years that they had been married.
He was still very fond of her, probably
still loved her. But he wasn't in love

22

with her any more. Nor she with him,
he felt sure. They both knew it and,
because they had been in love, they
were embarrassed for what had been
and was no more. Also, they were both
sexually attractive people. Certainly, he
still wanted her, almost always.

"I'm OK." He smiled unconvincingly.
"Could do with a bit of help here." He
looked down at the sheets which were
lifting slightly.

"Margaret's here," she said, as if that
explained everything.

He knew it was a hopeless case but
tried a futile, "Give her a cup of tea.  I
won't keep you long!"

"I can't," she said, her tone almost
convincing him that it was genuine regret.

"Your loss," he offered feebly as she
pulled the door to behind her.

After twenty minutes he got up and
bathed. He was rested, but had no
energy, drive or motivation. He walked
around the pile of, clothes on the floor
that he had stepped out of, and stared at
the jeans and corduroy trousers hanging
over the towel rail on 'his' side of the bed.

23

He couldn't make a decision about which
to wear, and put his towelling bathrobe
back on over clean white underpants.

He didn't want to see Margaret or
Kath. He went to the quiet front room,
sat where the last of the evening sun
came, and smoked. Snatches of staff
room gossip filtered down the hall: the
secretary battle-axe who protected the
exercise books from the pillaging staff; the
geography teacher's favourite chair in the
corner; the unruly kids and their sexual
antics in the old block; Chuffer Jones's
foul-smelling pipe; the PE teachers' affairs
and apparently obligatory sadism.

The distant talk and laughter made him
feel isolated and melancholy. He got up
and pushed the door to.

He took from the shelf his selection of
Philip Larkin and sat there with it in his
lap, unopened. The smoke from his Gold
Leaf wreathed slowly towards the ceiling.
As a lorry rumbled down the quiet street
he felt the glazed front door shudder in
its jamb.

There came a protracted, almost hysterical
laugh from the two women in the kitchen.

24

And then a glass smashed to the floor.
After a long moment's silence the laughter
rang out again. He looked at the pencil
sketch of the balding middle-aged, poet
librarian on the cover of the book. The
laughter rose again from down the hall.
He went to the bookshelves in the
alcove, reached down the atlas, and
looked up Llantrisillio in the index.

25


4

Sometimes Hopkins waited for the girl
until nearly half past nine. He worked
around the sheds and barn, tinkered
with this and that, piled things here
and stashed them there, but all with
his eyes flicking back and forth to the
cottage door a field away, watching for
any sign of movement.

One morning it rained cold sleet and, as
he stood there, a hessian sack around his
shoulders for warmth, his nose running,
she came out in a man's long coat, filled
a bucket with water from the tap and
hurried back indoors. It is what she
must have done for the first few weeks
of their stay, before the early April sun
had changed her habits. He wanted to .
shout to her: 'I've been here an hour, "
forget the cold and rain, it'll make
no difference, you're going to get wet
anyway.' But he only mooched off testily
to his work elsewhere on the farm.

26

Another day she was there before him.
It was a fine morning and as he came
round the side of the shed she was
already drying herself. So now he came
early and, on those mornings that she
kept him waiting, stayed late.

The man washed too. He was a dark
haired, spindly youth with no belly yet
and wiry arms. And his hair was worn
like a woman's; long, far too long, and
sometimes it was tied at the back. He,
too, washed his private parts at the cold
tap, but leuwan walked away then. He
had no interest in him.

leuwan might have made it his business
to introduce himself to the London
couple. He could have seen to it that
he went by on his aged Massey Ferguson
as they walked up to the place where they
parked their old Bedford near the well.
Or, when they were in the garden, he
could have been at the bottom of the
field, just across the stream, and they
would have had to-talk. But because he
watched her every day, he did none of
these things.

Humphreys-the-post brought more

27

information: their names (two different
ones); the postmarks on their envelopes
(London, Birmingham, Gloucester,
'abroad'); and the paper that they read
on Saturdays (the Guardian), and gave
it to all the interested parties in the area.
He became something of a celebrity. He
was invited in to farms and cottages that
he had never seen inside before. He made
his information last, rolled his words, took
his time, drank the tea down before
committing himself. People went along
with it. Talk this good was rare. The man
was feted. Let him have his day. This time
would pass. Bill Humphreys would be on
the doorstep again and glad of the shelter
of the porch soon enough. But for now,
let him have his day.

On the evening of the tenth day of
watching her, Hopkins answered a knock
at the kitchen door and there the couple
stood. His ruddy face flushed scarlet. He
knew they had come to confront him.

"Who is it, leuwan?" called his wife
from behind him in the kitchen.

The farmer stood before them, his
fingers tightening on the handle of the

28

door in the dark porch, and was mute.

The young man, fearing that there was
something wrong with the farmer, and
also a little afraid of his silent stare,
called back into the space from where
the woman's voice had come, "It's James.
James and Susie from Well Cottage."

She bustled past her husband said,
"Come in. Come in, dear." And to
leuwan, in the same breath, "What are
you doing there, man, let them come
in."

He followed them into the low
ceilinged kitchen and the couple stood
there awkwardly beside the humming
Rayburn.

"Some tea," said Glenys warmly and,
with both her hands, lifted the big kettle
on to the hotplate.

Across the kitchen, the farmer's eyes
kept darting back to the woman's easy
bosom while his wife made the necessary
talk to the young couple.

The woman answered, the young man
nodded in agreement. He looked a bit
younger than her. leuwan resented him.
It was him that she washed from between

29

her legs each morning.

The farmer's wife spoke slowly in front
of the visitors. It was strange for leuwan
to Hear her using the foreign language in
their own kitchen.

And she was telling them everything.
They were bringing things out of her. But
she couldn't see it. He would have held
back. Glenys was too trusting. Who were these people? What were they doing here?
Not the business that they were talking
to her about: London, noise and traffic
and smoke and no air. Everybody lived
like that in the towns, but they didn't
come here and find places. And where
were their people? Glenys couldn't tell
them enough. She worked in the local
shop and knew the village talk. But these people were from outside. She was giving
everything away. And for what? Hold
back, he thought.

But she was off again. Now they were
laughing. The boy as well. And he
smoked, rolled Golden Virginia and then
folded the packet down very carefully and
slowly. leuwan lit a Woodbine from his
packet of ten. The girl took the tobacco

30

from the boy's knee and rolled a cigarette
too. She was deft. He had never seen a
woman roll a cigarette before. She took
the matches from the boy's hand without
a word, without stopping listening to
Glenys who was telling her about the
fish van that came to the village on
Fridays and the travelling public library
that stopped outside the school once a
fortnight.

leuwan didn't trust them: they must
know more than this, from London. The
woman laughed and drew herself back,
leuwan pretended to laugh so that he
could watch her. But when he looked up
he thought that the boy had seen him.

They wanted to know if the boy could
get work 'anywhere around here'. A day
or two to start, and then see how it went.
He was getting the dole. It wouldn't be
sensible to give it up straight away.

Glenys wouldn't speak for leuwan on
this. Hopkins enjoyed the power. This
was better. This was how it should be
done. They were asking for a job.

"You want to do some work?" he said
disingenuously, and carefully rolled the

31


ash from his Woodbine into the glass
ashtray. "But you're not going to tell the
dole office?"

"Just for a while," said James. "Until
we see how things work out." He was
embarrassed by what he thought was the
man's gormlessness.

Hopkins was enjoying it. But he
couldn't go on. Glenys knew his guile,
and she would scold him. When he had
stretched the moment until it would
break, he said, "You don't want to do
a day or two with me? I could find a
bit. I wouldn't be able to pay a lot,
of course," and, before the boy could
answer, "Of course, you wouldn't want
a lot, with the dole and all, eh?"

* * *

James started work the next morning.
Three weeks ago he had been driving a
lorry around busy London streets. The
evenings had been spent with friends
in Camden and Notting Hill listening
to music and smoking cannabis. Now,
here he was, striding up the hill to

32

going to work for a Welsh
sheep farmer.

From his vantage-point behind the
barn leuwan saw the youth approach.
The boy's job had obviously led to
changes in the domestic arrangements at
Well Cottage: the erstwhile naked woman
had not been glimpsed this morning.

Just as the young man climbed over
the fence at the top of the field, rocking
the flimsy post as he did so, leuwan saw
the girl step out of the cottage door and
stretch herself in the fine morning. He
greeted the boy with a terse rebuke
about not climbing fences that didn't
have stiles or gates, it broke the posts,
then the sheep got out, then he had to
spend all day looking for them. James,
a little surprised by the man's crustiness,
mumbled an apology.

The farmer led away from the sheds
and barns and into the farmyard so that
the long-haired man would not see his
own woman washing naked at the tap.

When he had bump-started the tractor
down a little incline, he braked hard and
James imagined he was to jump on, but

33

he could not see where. leuwan, sitting
on his metal bum-shaped seat, on a
folded sack that he had carried with him,
indicated the swinging metal frame at
the back of the throbbing vehicle. James
stepped up and the tractor lurched away
with a jerk, wrenching James's arms at
the sockets as he clung to the big, flared
mudguards.

They joined the lane that went towards
the village and then forked left and
climbed towards a field that lay on a
slope just below the tree-line. As they
got to the field gate, Hopkins stopped
and waited, looking at the five bars of
rusty metal. There was an awkward pause
until James realized what was required.
He jumped down and struggled with the
hook, which had to have the weight of
the gate lifted from it before it would budge, and then unwound a complex
loop of baling twine. As he drew the gate
open Hopkins drove through without a
sideways glance.

They were to cut thistles. Hopkins
explained that if you cut them now,
just as they appeared, they didn't grow,

34

and then they didn't seed, and you thus
prevented future labour.

The scythes were in the corner of the
field under a tarpaulin with some other
bits and pieces: twine, wire, drums of
chemicals and stones for sharpening the
blades. leuwan began. James watched.
Hopkins said nothing. The farmer had
an easy rhythm. He approached the
renegade plant, swung smoothly through
it and severed it near the ground.

James set off on the awkward gradient.
He found the tool unwieldy and nearly
sliced into his shin within the first five
minutes. When he did hit the weed, he
hit it several inches from the ground,
leaving an untidy stump. Sometimes he
hit the plant at the wrong angle, and the
blade itself made little contact, simply
pushing the sinewy plant over without
breaking it.

After an hour that seemed like half
a long day he was heartily fed up
with walking at an uncomfortable angle
across a thistle-laden field with a silent
companion in the distance. His size eleven
feet ached as he tried to keep his lanky

35

frame upright on the sloping ground.

After another half an hour the farmer
called him over to the parked tractor.
From a canvas bag he produced a vacuum
flask and they shared some lukewarm
milky tea. James drank from the grubby,
plastic inner cup.

The farmer took a Woodbine and lit
it. James rolled a cigarette. But by the
time he was ready to light it, the farmer
was ambling off towards his scythe again.
"See you at dinner-time," he said over
his shoulder as James got to his feet and
arched his aching back.

* * *

When he jumped down from the tractor
outside the cottage that evening, Susie
came to the gate to greet him. They
always read the country column in the Guardian on Saturdays. But real farming!
She couldn't wait to hear.

He lay at forty-five degrees in the
armchair and turned up the palms of
his hands. The blisters that had formed
by tea time in the morning had broken

36

by dinner (which Mrs Hopkins had put
on the table as they walked through the
kitchen door of Ty Uchaf at twelve
o'clock) and continued to ooze sharp
pain and thin blood throughout the
interminable afternoon.

By two o'clock there were no new
positions in which he could hold the
smooth wooden handle of the tool. He
had already taken the jaunty handkerchief
from around his neck and pressed it into
service on the worst of the blisters, but
the relief that it had afforded was only
momentary.

As the afternoon ground on, James
became convinced that the farmer was
involved in some sort of mental battle
with him, and he, too, became engaged
in an imaginary and increasingly hostile
dialogue with the rocking figure who
worked a hundred yards away.

These imagined exchanges galvanized
him: he resolved to suffer his pain and
not to show any weakness.

He carried on, stopping only occasionally
to crouch on his haunches and roll a
cigarette and, at about three, with an

37

uncanny silence between the two men,
to drink another cup of the dreadful weak
tea that had never tasted so good.

* * *

As he lay in the chair, Susie called
excitedly from the back room where the
Calor gas stove stood, "What was it like,
then? Come on, do tell."

He mumbled back, "It's not like the
bloody Ladybird books, that's for sure."

By the time she brought the Nescafe,
he was fast asleep in front of the little
fire.

38

5

The nationwide foot and mouth epidemic
that broke out in the autumn of 1967
had put an abrupt end to all rustling for
over six months, but things were, at last,
returning to normal: Welsh spring lamb
was at a premium in the butchers' and all
the recent restrictions on stock movement
and the attendant fears of infection were
over. For rustlers, it was a good time to
go back to work.

Running sheep and cattle was a
curiosity. It was sporadic. It was seasonal.
But the trade was always worth a few
grand and it didn't involve confronting
security guards or bank clerks who often
appeared to be inordinately enthusiastic
about dying for their employers, just as
long as the tabloid press gave them a front
page headline the following morning.

But 'the sheep-shaggers', as everyone
from Detective-Superintendent Glover
down to the greenest PC on the

39

operation resolutely continued to call
the rustlers, seemed unable to make
up their minds. The Superintendent's
talk of something coming off 'in the
next couple of weeks' proved groundless,
and Inspector Munroe repeatedly went
up and down from Birmingham, through
Wolverhampton and across to Welshpool
headquarters as things looked promising,
and then returned as they went stone cold
again.

The initial word that something was on
had come from Ronnie Cotton, an armed
robber who was due up at the Central
Criminal Court in Birmingham during
the next few weeks. It was expected
that his visit to the court in Steel-house
Lane one day in June would be his
last appearance in public for a very
long time. He was less than sanguine
about the prospect of a long stretch and
was prepared to trade anything he'd got
to ensure that he might see his young
children again before they had forgotten
who he was.

While on remand in Winson Green, he
had heard on the underworld grapevine

40

a whisper about a rustling blag that
was due to come off soon. To the
Birmingham CID, he milked it for all
it was worth. And it was worth a bit. He
gave them all the information he had: a
key name or two, a Birmingham address
and, crucially, the name of the actual
village in Wales where the heist was to
take place. It was good information, and
it might reduce his eventual sentence by
three to five years. His own future would
remain uncertain, though. These things
always got out. He would doubtless have
some anxious shower-times and sleepless
nights in Long Larten or Winson Green.

* * *

And now it was wait.

One of the villains, John McInnerey,
a weasely Scotsman with a mock-Tudor
house in Sutton Coldfield, owned, apart
from his fruit-machine and jukebox
franchising company, one of Birmingham's
licensed abattoirs. If and when the load
arrived, it was surely he that was going
to dispose of it.

41

Munroe was co-ordinating the Midlands
end, and had even managed to get a
brawny cop taken on at McInnerey's
abattoir in Bordesley Green. His counterpart,
Detective-Inspector Tony Rees, and
his team was ready in MidWales.

Rees had narrowed the choice of likely
targets around the village: one afternoon,
in the incident room at Welshpool police
station, he had patiently explained to
Munroe that you couldn't drive a ten-ton
cattle truck up to just anywhere around
here (even in the middle of the night, especially in the middle of the night!) and
have half a dozen thugs load it up with
reluctant, noisy sheep. Hardly anything
moved in the countryside without local
people noticed.

On the other hand, if the villains went
too remote, there would be difficulties
of access and gathering: upland farmers
always spent a day driving their sheep
down from the hills before penning them
in somewhere and loading them up the
next day for market. Rustlers wouldn't
have the luxury of that much time.

Munroe, whose knowledge of the

42

countryside was limited to a twice-yearly
drive to the Lickey Hills on the outskirts
of Birmingham, nodded sagely.

The Welshman explained to his colleague
that local knowledge and 'reconnaissance'
(his careful enunciation of the word
concealed the fact that what it had meant
in reality was himself and his sergeant
poring over their local ordnance survey
map) revealed only two or three places
in Llantrisillio where there were flocks
grazing, that had lanes wide enough for
a big stock truck, and that were not
overlooked by some house or cottage
or farm. Each of these locations was
staked out.

It was no good alerting the landowners:
this was a small community and the word
would be all around the area within
a day. And, if that didn't warn off
the blaggers, the farmer would probably
organize a bunch of twelve-bore vigilantes
who would pepper the next hapless tourist
who happened to come by with a caravan
and a Birmingham accent.

No. The police decided that they'd
keep their operations to themselves. And

43

so, for over a week now, as soon as there
was any suggestion of movement at the
Midlands end, the Welsh teams dug in at
dusk and stayed there through the night.
It was cold and April wet. And they were
getting jerked off with it.

The Welsh boys soon began to resent
the Brummies, thought they were being
made fools of, became convinced the
information must be duff. In Birmingham,
the policemen who sat by telephones and
tape-recorders and lay bent double in cars
and vans for hours at a time, wished
that they had stuck to banks and jewel
thieves.

And then word came. It was definitely
on. The phones between the main players
in Birmingham were buzzing. Some of
the messages were engagingly, naively
cryptic, but in the usual, absurd way.

Munroe was no cryptologist, couldn't
always finish the Daily Telegraph crossword,
but even he could decipher a
tapped telephone message that went,
'What sort of load are we expecting?'

'Twelve hundred feet,' came the leaden
answer.

44

Munroe was touched. Although, tantalizingly,
they refused to name the farm,
he phoned Rees immediately and said
that the thieves were aiming to steal
about three hundred sheep. They were
due to leave Birmingham at seven the
next evening.

In the third-floor operations room in
Colmore Row in Birmingham city centre,
and over at Welshpool headquarters, the
mood was jubilant. They were on.

45


6

Early the next evening., a white Vauxhall Cresta was trailed from Mclnnery's house
in Sutton Coldfield to the abattoir in
Bordesley Green. Here, three more
men joined it. They drove out of
Birmingham, through Wednesbury and
up to Wolverhampton, the fat tyres
hugging the tarmac under their weight.

In the back streets of Wolverhampton,
the Vauxhall turned abruptly into a
haulage contractor's yard in a rundown
part of the town near to the canal.

Ten minutes later, a Thames Trader
stock wagon made its way out of the big
gates and rattled along the rutted streets
on to the main road.

Munroe, in his Zephyr Six, overtook the
lorry as he sped towards his rendezvous
with Inspector Rees at Welshpool HQ.

It was mid-evening when the truck
stopped at a roadside pub in Nesscliff,
outside Shrewsbury. A minute later, four

46

policemen in a fawn Hillman Minx drew
into the car park and parked in a quiet
corner.


A mile up the road, just outside the
village of Knockin, an unmarked Rover
waited in a lay-by.

Just before closing time, and in a warm,
thin drizzle, three members of the gang
climbed up in to the cabin of the truck;
two others continued their journey among
the straw in the back.

* * *

In Llantrisillio, twelve miles to the west,
three groups of wet, nervous policemen,
kept informed of developments by shortwave
radio, sat among the dripping trees
and bracken.

The plan, such as it was, necessitated
the surrounding lanes being blocked
(once the sheep had been loaded), the
waiting pool of police reinforcements
being called up by radio, and the rustlers
being apprehended in possession of the
stolen animals.

It was a good plan. And it would

47

work. In theory. In practice things never
went according to plan: radios didn't
work; someone was taking a piss when
he should have been taking a message;
vehicles broke down and ran off the road;
people took wrong turnings and got lost;
criminals changed their minds at the last
moment; information was awry.

Four of the policemen. Sergeant Gareth
Perry and three constables, were dug in
in the beech copse on Rookery Hill. Plas
Trisillio Hall was half a mile away, the
woody smoke from its chimneys wafting
towards them.

Another group of four was on the side
of steep Pentrefelin.
On the other side of the river, looking
down to the village from the bristling
furze of Mynydd Glas, sat a third knot
of burly policemen, huddled so close
together that, as the rain petered out,
they could smell the damp warmth of one
another. They watched as car headlights
on the main road appeared in and out of the hedgerow trees before winding away
from the valley bottom up to lonely
farms, or on to the next village.

48

At ten forty-five the few cars on the
Horseshoe Inn car park began to leave
and, twenty minutes later, Cyril Liptrot
plunged the pub into darkness as he
went up to bed. The few remaining lights in the village went out until, by
twelve o'clock, only the schoolteacher's
was left on. Then he, too, retired.

They identified a smallholding here
and a cottage there, the last, faintly
illuminated landmarks spread out in
the darkness before them. They watched
as downstairs lights went off, upstairs
ones came briefly on, and then another
building disappeared from the valley
sides.

Seen from Rookery Hill, in the midnight
drizzle, Plas Trisillio Hall had lost its
hard, stone edges and softened into an
indistinct grey mass which hovered below
Perry and his soaking men in the cloudy
night.

On Pentrefelin, above Well Cottage,
James and Susie's nanny goat bleated
to the night air. The cops lying there
giggled, but it was laughter in church: it
covered their real fear.

49


The men on Mynydd Glas watched as
a set of headlights came slowly along the
main road and then turned into the lane
beyond the village.

On Rookery Hill there was a quickening
of the collective pulse as the lights
approached them. Between the squally
gusts of wind they could hear the drone
of the engine as it laboured up the
steep lane.

It rounded the last bend, stopped
beside the five-bar gate of Geraint
Morris's field below them, and the
diesel engine shuddered to a halt.

Sergeant Perry buried his head in his
cape, switched on his pencil torch and
turned on the radio receiver. It crackled,
and he winced. He whispered a hoarse
instruction, "Rookery. Rookery. It's here.
All units. It's Rookery. Get into position.
Over."

There was the dull buzz of the
frequency signal. He moved the dial a
fraction in his cold fingers and there was
a response. It was a familiar voice uttering
a familiar incantation: ' . . . Channel
Light Vessel Automatic: rising seven.,

50

falling, more slowly ... ' "Fucking
police radios," he said.

And then nothing. They waited. An
interminable, eerie silence. The huge stock
truck below them, waiting menacingly in
the gloom; the policemen, aware of one
another's shallow breathing, lying prone
in the wet grass above.

A shrieking owl made them start. A
whole hour passed with only the sound
of the wind in the trees and the creak
of their waterproofs as the men moved
a limb for respite.

At one o'clock, the doors opened.
They could hear the muffled voices of
the men fifty yards below. And then the
sprung truck door was lowered on to the
lane. The field gate was unlatched and
several shadowy figures darted into the
field, their blurred silhouettes skirting the
hedges.

The bleating grew as the flock was
herded towards the gate, the grey huddle
moving down the slope under the agitated
guidance of the accompanying shapes.
The gate swung open again and the
mass funnelled through. The noise of

51


the sheep on the wooden ramp, deadened
by sacks spread on it, was reduced to a
brisk thunder of drumming hooves.

As soon as the rear door was banged
shut, the engine throbbed into life and,
on sidelights alone, the lorry pulled away.

Before it had disappeared round the
bend, Perry and his men stumbled down
the wet grass and bounded over the
fence on to the lane. Jeffries slipped
headlong on the sheep droppings that
lay everywhere; the others, not quite sure
what the plan was, or whether there was
any plan at all, loped after the vehicle
on foot.

At the T-junction before the river, the
truck turned left and the driver notched
it up into a low-revving third. They
were doing twenty-five miles an hour and following the line of the undulating
hedge along the lane.

Round a bend, there was an outline
shape fifty yards ahead. Suddenly, from
the shape, four powerful headlight beams
dazzled him. He braked hard and came to
a juddering halt. There was a cacophony
of bleating and tumbling hooves as the

52

ewes hurtled forward.

The driver sat transfixed, but the
passenger door opened and a man
leapt from it and ran back down
the lane. At the bend he was met
by Perry's chasing men and bundled
to the ground.

The Birmingham police contingent in
the Hillman and the Rover screeched on
to the scene and joined the chaos and
euphoria among their Welsh colleagues.

The drizzle had almost stopped and
there was a warm, surreal quality about
the night as Munroe and Rees leaned
against Munroe's car and smoked.

* * *

At Well Cottage, Susie was awake. Some
little squeak or bleat or squeal of the
country night had woken her.

She moved her hand up James's leg
and laid it over him.

He had never been so exhausted. All
his nerves and sinews and limbs had
ached with unfamiliar tiredness. All he
had wanted, needed to do, when the

53


weariness had abated enough for him to
relax, was to sleep.

She sidled up the bed and put her
breast to his lips. He sucked. She wrapped
her fingers lightly around him beneath the
sheets. He murmured his acquiescence as
the vessels swelled with blood and filled
her hand. When he was big, she eased
him into her.

He feigned sleep; she enjoyed his
drowsy compliance.

Her breathing became shallow and
rapid and her thrusts on to him fast.
He relinquished his pretence of sleep,
put his hands around her buttocks and
pulled her down on to him.

Suddenly, in the night, there was a
distant, unfamiliar crash. She stopped,
arrested, drew back from him. He had
heard nothing. He pushed against her.
She waited. A second. He was half out of
her. Silence. Another tantalizing moment,
he pushed up again. She listened, heard
nothing more, let herself down on to him
in an ecstasy of delayed, pleasure.



At Plas Trisillio, Dorothea Somerville
came to the lattice window of her
bedroom. There were car headlight beams
skewed across the bottom lane at crazy
angles. She opened the old casement and
could hear on the breeze the sound of
distant voices. Through her vodka haze
she wondered what it all meant.


* * 

54

55



7

In 1968, at the Chelsea School of Art,
Charlie Somerville was your man. By the
time of his second year at the School, the
handsome boy, louche and easygoing,
was supplying a wide network of his
friends, and they, in turn, their friends,
with Afghan and Moroccan hashish,
methedrine for all-night partying, cocaine
for stints of work, and LSD for the more
foolhardy adventurous.

This was drugs for handsome people,
nothing sordid and baleful; these were
youngsters with wealthy parents, and
brothers and sisters who went out with
pop stars; brothers and sisters who were pop stars.

From the age of sixteen, at his minor
public school in Shropshire, Charles had
regularly smoked a little dope. All his
friends did. And when Michael Laing,
a year older than Charlie, went up to
Oxford, Laing had introduced him to his

56

dealer in London, and from that time on,
it was Charles who ran the discreet little
business at the school.

When he got to London, in 1967, the whole world seemed to be turning
on. He actually had to restrict the
number of people he was supplying,
the business threatened to overwhelm
him. And although the underground press
suggested a change in the law was both
inevitable and imminent (Timothy Leary
going so far as to suggest that as well as
dope being legalized, there would soon
be deer grazing on Charing Cross Road),
the authorities, as yet, did not share the
emancipated attitude of Charlie and his
many customers to the aromatic herb, Cannabis saliva.

Charlie himself no longer smoked that
much hash, for while he knew that The
Doors and Frank Zappa and Captain
Beefheart did a lot more for him stoned
than straight, its use definitely did not
assist him when it came to what had,
in recent years, become his overriding
obsession: horse-racing.

As a boy, he had been around

57

bloodstock, and grooming and riding
had been an integral part of his life,
but gradually, since arriving in London,
the'dormant gambling gene in him had
grown with the unpredictability of a
malignant cell.
And now, at twenty, he was a gambler
and, in a sense, he was an addicted
gambler. But he was not -- and here
was the crucial difference -- he was not
a compulsive gambler. He could leave
a whole day's racing alone. But, when
the moment was right -- the race, the
jockey, the handicap, the odds and the
ground -- he plunged. And he was doing
very well.

His knowledge of horses and form was
altogether greater than his knowledge of
art. He knew a bit about the history of
painting, could tell a Tintoretto from a
Titian, spent the occasional afternoon in
the Tate or the National, and sometimes
wandered into a smart gallery on Bond
Street. He had even found himself in the
Prado a year or two ago while changing
planes in Madrid on the way back from
a stay with relatives in West Africa.

58

As far as his own ability was concerned,
while he had some technical competence,
he had little feel or touch and, more
importantly, he knew that, as a painter,
there was nothing that he really had to
'say'. But the fact that he was never going
to make any kind of waves as a painter
did not concern Charlie in the least. He
didn't mind one jot.

During that first year at Chelsea, he
had the sense of being in exactly the right
place at exactly the right time. He had
a lovely photography-student girlfriend,
Rachel, whose father was something in
the City; he got up late, spent the
morning poring over the Sporting Life and form guides, spent the afternoon
listening to the racing commentaries in
gloriously seedy betting shops. And in
the evening he ate out and partied late,
often going to bed at dawn.

And the excesses of this happy lifestyle
were provided, not courtesy of a father
who, while he had land and property,
frequently didn't have a red cent in
his pocket nor any black on his bank
statement from one year's end to the

59

next. No, the cash that kept Charlie
in Chelsea clover came on account of
the requests for half an ounce of red
Lebanese here, a few tabs of acid
there and, the icing on this particularly
delicious cake, a decent win every
few days on the horses. For Charlie,
making money really was like falling off
a log.

And all this time, this happy time, was

just time out: within the next few years,

maybe five or seven, or ten at the outside,

Charles would himself be administering

the family estate of several hundred

acres of Montgomeryshire, supervising

the management of the dozen tenant

farms on its land, and planting oak

and beech for his son eventually to

copse and his great-great-grandson to

fell. There was a natural order in things,

and Charlie's relaxed and confident

manner came as a result of his knowing

that he had an exact place in that

order.

Things were about to change.

* * *

60

A friend of a friend wanted a big deal.
A really big deal. Charlie checked out
with his friend, someone on the fringes
of the music business, that the buyer was
kosher. He was all right. He was the
lighting man with an up-coming band.
There was no problem with him. His
regular source had run into a problem
with the law and he was looking for a
new supplier. He was selling on to the
people he was working with, members
of the band, the roadies and the crew.
They were going to be on the road
for seven or eight weeks, and trying to
score could be difficult in the middle
of Nottingham or Hull when you didn't
know the scene there.

The deal was set up. It was mostly
hash, and a bit of acid. And it was a
lot: not a œ50 fine, but a long prison
sentence. The hash alone was the size of
a housebrick.

Charlie couldn't carry the cost himself.
His supplier, a dealer for a criminal
'family' who had moved over into drugs
three or four years ago, told his boss
that Charlie needed credit for twenty-four

61

hours. Charlie was a regular, a boy with a
bit of class, a decent flat in Chelsea. The
deal and the short term credit, strictly
twenty-four hours, was OK'd.

On Thursday evening, as Charlie
waited outside Mornington Crescent
tube station, a dark blue Mercedes
saloon pulled up. Charlie approached
the car, the rear window glided down
and a small blue holdall was passed to
him. Nothing was said and the car slipped
away into the evening traffic.

* * *

The next morning Charlie saw Rachel
approaching the art college and dodged
the traffic to reach her on the other side
of the road. When he had spoken to her
on the phone the previous night he had
told her things had gone wrong, but said
he could say no more. Now he had her by
the elbow and was marching them down
Manresa Road.

"What is it, Charlie? Charlie, you're
hurting my arm. Can we walk a bit
slower?" She pulled her elbow from his

62

grasp and they slowed down.

"Sorry," he apologized.

"It's OK. What happened, then?"

"Let's have a coffee." He looked
over his shoulder again and they went
into the Italian coffee shop off Carlyle
Square. A pretty Italian boy brought
them Cappucino.

"I was robbed. It was a set-up. They
just took the gear from me. There was
nothing I could do. No drama. Nothing.
Just very scary. The one guy had a
shooter. I thought they were going to
top me there and then."

"Oh, Charlie, why didn't you say on
the phone? I would have come round
straight away, you know I would ..."

"I didn't want you involved. I don't
now." He slurped the milky coffee

bubbles.

"But if they've got the hash, what are
you afraid of, they won't hurt you?"

He wanted to hit her. It was a
reasonable question and she didn't know
how the deal was set up, but he was so
afraid he wanted to knock her off her
chair. He stayed calm. "I owe for the

63

gear. I had it on credit. It's got to be paid
for today. These guys, they don't mess
around. They gave me a day. A day they
mean. They'll want their money." His lips
were moving but his teeth were together,
he was spitting the words and clenching
his fist beneath the smoked glass table.

She lit a cigarette. There was a long
silence between them. She felt sorry for
him but was sensitive to his anger at her.
It didn't help.

She composed herself and risked another
question, "What happened? When you
took the stuff? Was it an address you'd
got?"

"I took it to the address in Camden
that Andrew, fucking delightful, 'Oh yes,
the guy's all right' Andrew, gave me. It
didn't feel right, not exactly. But what
does? Down the steps to a basement,
knock at the door, a guy comes and
in I go. Next thing two big bruisers
are standing there, one behind me, one
blocking the way to the kitchen. And
without a word the one gets out a dull
little-barrelled gun. Just points it at my
chest from three feet away. It's not like

64

in the movies, believe me. I would have
given them my grandmother just to get
out, let alone a holdall full of dope. The
guy said, 'No cops,' and then, 'As if you
would,' and grinned. I put the bag on the
floor and walked."

"Whose flat was it, then?"

"The bloke sitting there, I suppose. He
wasn't part of it. He looked out of his
mind. Syringe and a stash of horse on the
table. Maybe he was Andrew's 'kosher'
mate. Maybe he'd been set up. I don't
fucking well know."

He rarely swore and it sounded strange
to her. She reached beneath the table
and took his hand in hers. "It'll be
all right, Charlie, honestly. We'll work
something out."

He squeezed her fingers, but his hands
were clammy and he let her go. He
wanted her to know how afraid he was,
but he wanted to tell her, not for her to
see him quivering.

"I've got about a hundred and fifty,"
she said. "It's so near the end of term.
My allowance is nearly all gone. But you
can have that, of course."

65

"Thanks," he said. "I've got about six
hundred in the bank, I'll get that. Can
you get yours soon. Bring it to college,
in an hour, say?"

"Yes, of course. But what are you going
to do?"

"When you've brought the money, stay
away. Keep away from me. Stay away
from the flat, stay at your own place. I'll
contact you when I've got things sorted
out, OK?"

"OK," she said, reluctantly. "But what
are you going to do?"

He leaned across the table and kissed
her quickly on the lips, "Folkestone,"
he said.

She looked puzzled, her flecked, blue
eyes full of concern for him, "Folkestone?
The ferry?"

"No. The race course."

* * *

Even as Charlie was being robbed, he had
had to acknowledge the painful fact that
there was very little that he could do. If
you were operating outside the law, your

66

only protection, ultimately, was that you
had the required muscle to enforce the
conditions of your business arrangements.
The man with the long, straight nose,
wide nostrils and pistol in his hand
had seen that Charlie had no way of
enforcing his conditions. He was trading
on goodwill. And that April evening in
a basement flat off Camden Square, the
man had decided to foreclose on that
capricious quality.

As soon as Charlie had got back to his
flat he had phoned Andrew. Andrew was
mortified. How could his contact, a mate,
do this? It was a disgrace. It wasn't in
the spirit of the thing. He'd never have
anything to do with him again.

That was fine, said Charlie, "But what
about my money? How am I going to get
it back? I owe two thousand pounds to
some very difficult people. They don't do
things our way."

There was a hint of desperation in
his voice that Andrew had never heard
before, and didn't much like. "You've got
me," said Andrew. "I just don't know,"
and he hung up.

67


Charlie had paced the flat and phoned
a couple of close friends. There was
sympathy and the offer of a bit of cash
and, from each of them,, just a suggestion
of their enjoying the drama: real hoods,
and a shooter,, indeed. And did Charlie
also detect a hint of Schadenfreude? Charlie, who always had it so good, had
taken a little fall. Nothing terminal. He'd
walk again. But there was a cloud passing
in front of the sun that always seemed to
shine on the boy from the Welsh border
country.

Maybe they were entitled to a tiny
gloat.

* * *

At noon, Charlie called at Lloyds in Old
Church Street and withdrew the five
hundred and ninety pounds that he had
on deposit there. With the hundred and
fifty that Rachel brought to the refectory
at lunchtime he had a substantial stake.
In Coral's, off the King's Road, he sat
in the corner on one of the high stools
and stared at the Sporting Life that was

68

pinned to the wall. There was a huge
disparity between actual race courses and
the High Street bookmakers that lived on
the body of the 'sport'.

All that Jockey Club veneer of decorum
at Epsom; the urbane voice on the public
address system at Fontwell Park; the
bowlers and umbrellas, champagne and
sandwiches in the marquees at Royal
Ascot; the Jaguars and Mercedes in the
car parks; the women tottering on their
high heels into the giving grass, their
knees incongruous in the open spaces
and fresh air.

Charlie had stood at the rail at
Sandown and heard the thundering
hooves beat the hard ground, heard
the jockeys swearing at each other and
themselves and their mounts. He'd heard
the horses' rasping chests and seen their
haunted eyes as they flew past. He knew
the smell and the sound and the true fear
and excitement.

And here he sat, in the corner of
the room, as the punters trailed to the
window and pushed betting slips and
folded notes through the little hatch to

69


the shirt-sleeved man on the other side.

Even the petty, two-bit Pinkies that
Charlie despised, and who lived outside
the Silver Ring at Brighton, the clerks and
couples, out for the day with their pound
each-way, backing horses that shared the
name of a favourite nephew, at least they
were in some relationship to what was
happening, there and then on that day,
and in that place.

But Aere? The King's Road? This
crowded, smoke-filled room? Formerly,
he had always enjoyed these afternoons.
He had been detached. A take it or
leave it observer. But now, he, too,
suspected that his frown betrayed the
look of quiet desperation that many of
the other punters wore.

He started on the two o'clock at
gloomy Folkestone and had a result, but
the price was a paltry two to one on.

He backed his next, safe, short-odds
choice heavily, only to hear it beaten by
a head by an eight to one outsider.

Charlie was now in the spiral that
he knew was lethal to any percentage
gambler. He was chasing money on

70

horses he didn't want to back. His
best judgement told him that they were
not the ones he should be on, but the
pressing need to pay his creditor sent
him to the betting-shop window with yet
another wedge of blue notes.

He had the six to four winner in the
three o'clock. But then lost virtually all
that he had accrued on the three-thirty.
Around the corner from the bookmakers
he telephoned William Hill and wagered
up to his credit limit of two hundred
pounds on the second favourite in the
handicap hurdle for two-year-olds, the
uninspiringly named Maureen's Date.

After an agonizing wait back in the
betting shop the result was announced.
In a photo-finish, his horse was declared
the winner at seven to two. Of the two
thousand pounds that he needed, he
still had only, on paper, nearly seven

hundred.

He phoned through the seven hundred
pounds that he was now in credit on his
account and staked it at eleven to eight
on the favourite, Bridego Bridge, in the

next race.

71

He would still be a couple of hundred
short, but he'd got a bit in the building
society down the road for a rainy day.
And'it was certainly drizzling. He'd use
that to top up his debt.

He returned to the bookmakers and
stood amongst the litter and cigarette
ends as the race commentator described
his horse making the early running in the
two-mile chase. It was clearing hurdles
that the trailing horses crashed through.
With three to jump, it was several lengths
ahead. There was a stumble at the second
last. Maybe a foolish punter had made
a sudden move at the fence. There was
always a knot of people gathered at
the fences on country courses, perhaps
hoping gruesomely for a fall, perhaps
just thrilled by the excitement of horses
flying through the air and then smashing
through the hurdles at thirty miles an
hour.

The second-placed horse began to
make the running. At the last fence, the
two horses breasted the birch-twig fence
together, but Bridego Bridge had lost its
stride and rhythm and ploughed through

72

the hurdles, crashing to the ground. The
excited voice on the Tannoy described the
fall of the favourite and then followed the
winner's progress over the line.

The little group that had gathered
near the fallen horse saw it twitch once
and then convulse as its nervous system
shuddered out of life.

The bruised jockey, a pathetic figure in
his bright colours, cradled the huge, vein
swollen head in his hands. The horse's
imploring eyes rolled. Only thirty seconds
after hitting the ground, it was dead.

Charlie was still alive, but very pale on
his stool.

73


8

Mickey Gynn was surprised when Charlie
didn't turn up with the cash the following
evening at Mornington Crescent tube
station.

Gynn had graduated from being a
small-time Walthamstow crook to a
dependable messenger and enforcer for
his employers, the Maitland family.

The Maitlands had used him several
times, on bank cheque frauds and
credit card scams, and found him
up to the work. He didn't stick out
a mile while standing at the counter
in some Old Street bank. He could
pass for a businessman, perhaps not
someone entirely legitimate, like an
insurance broker or shipping agent, but
something marginal, perhaps a minor
record company executive or someone
doing well out of the rag trade boom.

The first thing that Ken Maitland had
done was give him his nickname. Stood

74

at the bar of the Duke of Wellington
in Leyton, the old-style East End boss
had said, "Give Mr Gynn a Gordon's,
Frank."

The little entourage laughed at the
feeble joke and Mickey, from that day
on, had had the awkward and confusing
handle of 'Gordon's'.

Now, he sat in the front passenger seat
of the Mercedes with his hands clasped
behind his head and his legs stretched out
before him. He felt affronted.

Ibrahim, the blue-black Senegalese who
drove Mickey when they were at work, sat
hunched over the big cream wheel of the
Mercedes 190.

At ten past eight Mickey drew himself
up in his seat and said to his silent
companion, "Well, well, we've been stood
up, mate. We'll wait a bit longer, but he
won't come now. We'd better give him
half an hour, so we can tell the boss. But
I'm telling you, he won't come."

Ibrahim switched on the tape-player,
pushed his broad shoulders back into the
soft leather and reclined the seat. The two
men sat impassively as Dusty Springfield

75


went through a medley of her hits.

Two minutes after the arrival of each
tube train way down beneath them, a
gaggle of people emerged in front of
the yellow-tiled station. But there was
no Charlie.

Ibrahim turned the tape over. Half way
through 'You Don't Have To Say You
Love Me', Ibrahim's particular favourite,
Mickey said, "Let's go and check his
drum, I'm pissed off sitting around here."

As they pulled away from the kerb,
Gynn opened the glove compartment
and pulled out Nicholson's London
Streetfinder. The book opened at
Brondesbury Park. He took out the
Stanley-knife blade that nestled in the
spine there, and dropped it carefully into
his jacket handkerchief pocket.

* * *

They parked outside the three-storey
house in Elm Park Road, Chelsea, and
Gynn ambled up the steps and rang
the bell. As he waited at the door,
he looked down to the Mercedes and

76

watched Ibrahim's lips moving to the
words of 'I Just Don't Know What To
Do With Myself.

He wondered how he had ended up
working with the only West African in
the universe to be tone deaf and totally
devoid of any sense of rhythm.

A young woman eventually opened
the front door and Mickey uttered a
peremptory, 'Charlie,' as he brushed past
her and took the wide stairs two at a time
up to the first-floor flat.

He slipped a credit card into the Yale
lock and the door sprang open. It was a
nice, spacious flat. The heavy, maroon,
full-length curtains at the street window
had been left open. In the sitting-room
there was not much furniture, but it
was all good stuff: a nice drop-leaf
table with barley twist legs; a chest
of walnut drawers with a Grundig
TV incongruously sat on top of it;
a Victorian desk and captain's chair; a
big, comfy, floral-covered sofa. In front
of the window was a- wide trestle-table
covered in books and papers. On the
floor, the Bang and Olufsen stereo was

77

still switched on. Beside it, in the alcove,
was a line of LPs, perhaps a hundred of
them.

THrough the door on the right was a
fitted kitchen. There was some scummy
washing up in the sink and an open pot
of Marmite on the table; the butter had
melted in its greaseproof packet in the
radiator warmth of the flat. The coffee
maker had been left switched on and
stewed the coffee. Gynn turned it off at
the socket.
He opened a wall cupboard, pulled out
the Corn Flakes and pushed around tins
of tomatoes and beans and peaches. He
slapped the pasta in its long blue packet
into the palm of his hand and left it on
top of the breadboard.

He went back into the sitting-room
and through into the bedroom. It was
in semi-darkness, the curtains closed. He
switched on the light and sniffed at the
faint whiff of someone else's bedding and
socks. There were some clothes on the
floor, a paisley shirt pulled off inside the
cashmere jumper that had been worn on
top of it, a pair of pants, and a pair

78

of socks in balls that he kicked away
from him.

On the bedside table was a book about
the nude in history, with an ashtray on
top of it, half-filled with stubs. He picked
up a fat one. It was the end of a joint,
made from the thin rolled cardboard of
a yellow Job cigarette-paper packet. He
dropped it back into the ashtray.

Inside the drawer of the bedside table
was a small piece of hashish, cigarette
papers, tweezers, some apricot body
lotion, a packet of contraceptives and
some loose change.

The wardrobe door was hanging open
and he pushed the clothes around. Next
to a traditional Harris tweed was a blue,
big lapel velveteen jacket. He checked
the label on the solitary dark suit: it
was a Chester Barrie. Mickey sniffed the
expensive cloth, fingered the fine, hand
stitching on the lapels and smoothed the
back of his hand down the cool lining.

Back in the sitting-room he sat and
mooched around at the trestle-table that
was covered with art work and books. He
looked with a kind of askance fascination

79



at a big book of Otto Dix. He tired of
the grotesquerie and pushed it aside and
drew to him the next big book.
He carefully turned the pages of
Edward Hopper's work. He preferred
these; the people were recognizable.
Some of them looked like crooks,, or
at least people with secrets; and there
were lonely, sad women who might be
whores. These people had stories to tell.
He found himself quite interested in what
the man at the hotel window might be
doing there.

He walked to the window. Ibrahim
was drumming his fingers on the steering
wheel.

On the floor by the settee was yesterday's
London Evening Standard. There was also
something called International Times, with a picture of a child on the cover
smoking a joint, and a garish magazine in
pink and green called Oz. He'd seen it on
the news stands. It looked unreadable.

He went to the roll-top desk and
looked for an address book or letters,
but there were only bills and receipts:
for brushes, paper, books and framing

80	

material. There were theatre ticket stubs
and a dry-cleaning counterfoil and a bank
statement from Lloyds. This time last
week Charlie was over four hundred
pounds in credit.

From the shelves in the sitting-room he
pulled down books at random. They were
mostly paperbacks. Some he knew: Ian
Fleming and Len Deighton and Dennis
Wheatley. Others he'd seen on the
station bookstalls: Catch 22; Portnoy's
Complaint. Some he'd never heard of: Catcher in the Rye; Island; Brave New
World; Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal
Farm.

Amongst the hardbacks, he fanned
aimlessly through a Charles Dickens, and
then a Thomas Hardy. Pasted into the
flyleaf of The Mayor of Casterbridge was
a label: Presented to Charles Somerville,
Third Year English Essay Prize, Oswestry
School 1962. He slipped the book into
his jacket pocket and left the room.

Downstairs in the hall were individual
letter-boxes made of metal grille. There
were two letters in the box marked
Charles Somerville. It was unlocked and

81

he reached in and took them. When he
turned, the girl from the ground-floor
flat who had let him in was standing at
her open door watching him. He didn't
look like anyone that she knew, and he
certainly didn't look like one of Charlie's
friends.

She was about to speak, raise some sort
of objection to his presence in their hall,
when he waved the letters at her. "For
Charlie. I'll let him have them. I'm going
to be seeing him. 'Bye." And he pulled
the heavy door to after him.

9

82

It was a late frost and James had not
wanted to get out of the bed that he
had built for them along the wall of
the main room of the cottage. They had
kept the little fire in all night, and it was
pleasant snuggled up together, naked and

warm.

He put his fingers down to her and
they made love in a sleepy, relaxed, early
morning way. For another ten minutes
they lay on their backs, side by side,
fingers entwined, and then she rolled
away and put sticks on the fire and the
saucepan on to the Calor gas stove for

coffee.

He washed at the tap, the cold air
about him, the pale sun on his shoulders,
and smelled her on him. But for his work
at the farm, he would have gone back to
her again.

He drank his Nescafe, ate a slice of
toast and tied the laces of his new

83

work-boots with double bows to the
same length.

As a hippy, James would have made a
very' good insurance agent. Even though
he looked the part, with his shoulder
length hair and jumbo-cords, he had
never really achieved the relaxed persona
that was de rigueur in 1968.

* * *

When he had met Susie at a party in Kensal
Green, he was ripe for some sort, any
sort, of conversion. They listened to The
Beatles, made love, went on anti-Vietnam
war and CND demonstrations, attended
the Buddhist temple at East Sheen on
Sunday afternoons, read Krishnamurti
and chanted their mantras in the top-floor
flat off Cromwell Road.

James had no difficulty in convincing
himself that folding his shirts neatly
(which he had always done) and chewing
his pasta mindfully (they had only ever
had spaghetti from a Heinz tin in
Birmingham) was the same thing as
being a Buddhist.

84

For James, this time in London was
growing time. But he was never wholly
at ease there with their drug-oriented
friends. He wore the 'Legalize Cannabis'
badge the same as everyone else but, in a
secret ballot, his paper might have been,
at the least, spoiled.

The temple and the chanting was OK.
And their friends were friends. And the
job driving a lorry was all right, and
Susie said that maybe he should enrol
at a college in September and do some
GCEs. But then a friend at Susie's
work, a secretary at St Mary's Hospital
in Paddington where she was temping,
told them about her home village in the
Welsh hills.

It sounded unbelievable: empty cottages,
space, a village pub. Why not make a
break? Not the familiar Eastern trail
that half their friends had done: Kabul
to Katmandu and, finally, Goa before,
six months later, ending up back in
Hotting Hill.	<

What they were contemplating was
a real move. A move for life. James
liked the sound of the arch phrase.

85


Susie laughed and said it sounded like
a building society advert. But she was
just as keen. There was a new excitement
in their lives. They'd do it. They'd up 
sticks and go.	

They made phone calls, wrote letters, 
handed in notice, said goodbye to friends,
bought maps and an old van to carry
their possessions, and went. It was the
best thing they'd ever done.

* * *

Boot laces neatly tied, jeans tucked into
ex-army woollen socks, James got into
the old Bedford. This morning, in convoy
with Hopkins's stock truck, they were
going to move sheep up to the higher
ground.

The old van started in spite of the cold
and he drew off up the lane towards the
farm a mile away. But the trickle from the
stream that skirted the hedge had spilled
over on to the tarmac and left a sheen
that the tyres could not grip.

The sun had started to thaw the land.
The frost on the slates at Well Cottage

86

was trickling down into the gutters.

Susie stood naked in the doorway and
felt the glow of the sun on her body. She
closed her eyes, drew the chill air into her
nostrils until there was a little ache, and
counted her many blessings.

She could hear the Bedford sliding on
the lane and James revving it too hard.
She smiled.

Hopkins, concealed beside his barn
a field away, had never seen her so
completely, and for so long.

After half a dozen times, with the
clutch burning and the van snaking about
the narrow lane, James gave up, engaged
reverse and backed down to their parking
place. He would go the longer way round,
down to the bottom road that led to the
village and then up through the long,
gentle climb to the rear entrance.

* * *

The move to the country had rejuvenated
their relationship: in London they had
often talked of parting. Now they were
getting on well again, better than ever.

87


Alone, together, they shared everything.
There was no dilution. They talked,
walked together, sawed wood at the
horse that he had made, split logs with
the big axe that they had bought with
great pride at the agricultural merchants
in Llanfrynach. And they made love.
At least every day, often two or three
times.

They saw things that they had forgotten
since primary school. Watched birds
building, saw badger setts, discovered
the flowers and trees coming into bud
and leaf as if this was the first time that
any of these things had happened. And,
in a way, it was.

She turned to the tap and started to
wash. The farmer unbuttoned himself as
she began her familiar movements. He
accompanied her, his rhythm following
hers. He would not wait too long, but
too soon would be to waste her.

At Pentre farm James turned off the
ignition and rumbled down the back,
little-used track. The chained Border
Collies knew his sounds and smell and
ignored his coming. There was smoke

88

from the kitchen chimney, but all was

quiet.

He walked to the slatted, wooden barn
and looked across the hill. All down the
field opposite him the sun was drawing
back the white line of frost and revealing,
each moment, more and more of the
green grass to its touch.

The smoke from the chimney at Well
Cottage rose straight up in the still
morning. Susie was at the tap. He was
shocked and yet charmed to see her
there. He felt a little resentment at
her nakedness which mixed with the
vicarious pleasure of seeing his woman,

unobserved.

The fences and trees had started to
steam in the warmth. She remained there,
naked, her back to him. He watched,
mesmerized.

There was a human sound a few feet
away from him. It was wrong. He walked
to the corner of the barn. As he rounded
it, the farmer, standing in the shadows,
panted and shuddered.

James advanced on him. Hopkins
straightened up and pushed himself

89

into his rough trousers. But no words
came from his mouth. He looked quickly
from the wiry boy to the girl a field
away, and back, but no sounds would
come.

10



90

Cyril Lip trot's first thought was that the
man must be lost. But the tall black
man standing bowed beneath the ancient
timbers simply smiled at the publican and
asked for a rum and Coke. Liptrot folded
his Daily Express and poured the drink in
silence.

At that moment Ibrahim's companion
strode into the bar with a breezy,
"'Morning. Lovely day."

"Yes, very nice," replied the publican.
"What can I get you?"

"Bottle of Guinness, please," said
Gynn.

* * *

Maitland had told them to wait for a day
or two.	

They played snooker, had a bet,
collected rents, visited the pimps and
hookers working their patches, and moved

91
some dope. And several times a day they
sat in their car outside Charlie's flat, and
watched. There were callers. Youngsters
looking for a five-pound deal or to
borrow a record, they guessed. The girl
downstairs answered the front door to
them, and then they left.

One of the letters that Gynn had taken
from the mail-box was a chummy missive
from Charlie's younger sister, Louise. It
was written on headed notepaper. The
place shouldn't be hard to find: there
couldn't be that many Plas Trisillios in
Llantrisillio, Montgomeryshire.

On the third day, Maitland said to
them with a weary air, "You'd better
go up to his place and find him.
Get the money. The two grand, plus
inconvenience and expenses."

"What if he's not there? He could have
gone anywhere?" asked Mickey.

"Look, Gordon's, if he's not there, use
this." He tapped his big skull. "Have
a word with his mater and pater. Tell
them you're collecting a debt. Take a
painting or two off the wall. I don't
fucking care. Just come back with the

92

dosh. He's making me look a prat."
And then, humorously, but filled with
his dangerous rage, "But take it easy.
Keep your heads down. It's not the
Smoke. People'll notice you. Especially
Mister West Africa here, in Llan . . . Llan
. . . wherever it bleeding well is. Go on.
Piss off. And don't give credit to bleedin'
art students again."

* * *

As the landlord poured the stranger's
Guinness, Mickey, hands thrust into
his pockets, cold blue eyes fixed on
the overweight landlord and his thin
lips pursed, defied the man to open
the interrogative conversation that he so
dearly wished to have.

Ibrahim peered down at the photographs
of the village football team which were
yellowing on the wall.

The two men took their drinks over
to a table beside the cold, fireplace, and
Liptrot re-opened his newspaper on the
oak counter.

They said nothing. The black man

93

stretched out his long legs before him
and swirled the rum around the glass.
Mickey looked into last night's ashes.

As Liptrot turned the page to Dempster's
column, he missed the few words that one
of them eventually spoke.

Gynn came to the bar, "Any sandwiches?"
he asked.

"I'll see," said the landlord and walked
to the door marked Private. He took
a look back at the men before he
disappeared into the back room.

When Mrs Liptrot brought them their
food she registered no more surprise at
the men's presence than if they had been
two of the local dominoes team, "Would
you like mustard with your beef? Or some
pickle?" she asked, and walked away to
get both without waiting for a reply.

Liptrot had ceased to be surprised by
his wife's increasingly quirky behaviour.
Only last week he had heard her say to
a bemused regular at the bar, "Isn't it
strange how the sheep graze the grass to
all the same length?"

After they had eaten their sandwiches,
Gynn said good morning to the landlord

94

and the two men left the silent bar.
Liptrot went to the window and watched
them climb into their big car and lumber
away past the ancient church.

Mrs Liptrot looked down at the
uneaten crusts on Ibrahim's plate, "His
hair won't curl when he grows up," she
muttered to herself.

* * *

They had no intention of driving up
to Plas Trisillio, asking for Charles
Somerville and starting to pull his
fingernails out. But they did need to
see him, see what his 'position' was.
Was he out of funds? Was he trying to
go criminal? Or had he been blagged?
Why exactly had he done a runner?
How was he fixed? There was no point
crippling him until they knew what they
were trying to achieve.

They took pot luck and forked right at
the hump-backed bridge over the River
Trisillio. A mile up the lane the grazed
and ploughed fields gave way to parkland
that was dotted with mature trees.

95



Eventually they came to an avenue
of beech trees that lined a drive which
disappeared into shrubs and greenery,
only "to emerge again in front of a big,
sombre house.

As they drove slowly past the gatehouse
and cattle grid at the bottom of the
drive there was the name, fashioned into
the wrought-iron gates: plas trisillio.

96

11

James was a man whose glass was always
half empty, never half full. He had
never been able to believe his good
fortune in having Susie and there was, in
his fatalistic mind, a certain inevitability
about the fact that one day she would
leave him.

The fragile confidence that he had
developed, both in himself and in their
relationship, had been shattered by the
one quaking jolt of witnessing the gross
act of the farmer satisfying himself at the

sight of her.

His gnawing suspicion that, while she was his woman, she would never wholly
be his, had been perversely confirmed in
this one shocking episode.

At first, when he had returned and told
her about Hopkins, although distressed,
she had made little of it. But when she
saw how hurt he was, she comforted him.
It seemed to make him worse.

97



He attacked her directly, said it was
her fault. She fought back. Defended
herself, against his unjust rage. She had
to wash herself, she said. What did he
want? Of course it had been awkward
and unpleasant for him, coming upon 
the man like that. She understood that, 
but it was the pathetic farmer's problem, '
not theirs. Couldn't James see that?

Blinded by jealousy, the abiding image
of the panting farmer feeding his paranoia
and insecurity, he could not.

In this poisoned atmosphere, and now
without his job, the spring days following
the incident became long and oppressive.
They worked around the cottage and
garden, but there was a leaden formality
between them.

Confined within the little cottage, the
evenings were worse. The nights, when
they finally came, were interminable as they
lay stiffly side by side in the narrow bed.

* * *

On Saturday evening they went to the
Horseshoe to escape the confines of the

98

cottage. She assumed a false jocularity
with the labourers at the bar. In fact,
her apparent good humour was genuine
relief at the temporary escape from his
sole, dour proximity. He seethed. Her
laugh filled the crowded bar. He could
have ground his glass into her face. He
drank quickly and far too much and at
nine o'clock he lurched to the car park
where he was sick. He came back and
drank more beer, the taste of vomit still

on him.

When she suggested that they go, he
bought more drinks, waving a five pound
note at anyone with a glass.

The village football team returned from
an away game. They were callow boys,
drunk and loud and emboldened by their
win and the alcohol.

Liptrot sensed the trouble. James
swayed at the bar, slurred his few
incomprehensible words and could not
focus. His hand gripping the pint glass
on the bar, he listened to the easy talk
between Susie and two of the footballers
behind him. The beer had freed them of
the inhibitions that generally made them

99


so polite when they passed in the village
or met her in the shop.

Something was said in a lascivious
undertone. He crashed his glass on to
the bar and turned and struck at the big
boy in one frenzied movement, all his 
anger making him strong and wild. There
was screaming as the boy scuffled the
long-haired drunk from him and landed
sharp blows to his face and shoulders.

She was between them, pulling and
yelling and crying. In the yellow light
and cigarette smoke, the people watched,
fascinated and amazed as the hippy
newcomer from Well Cottage, and Ralph
Jones from the council houses were pulled
apart and stood and snarled and grunted
at one another.

On the glowing fire a log shifted, and
the murmur of the pub picked up again.
A table was righted and people began to
leave. The boy's friends stood close about
him. Liptrot poured James's beer down
the sink and nodded his head towards
the door.

Susie stood at James's side as he rocked
and throbbed. He held a handkerchief to

100

his nose and tilted his head defiantly
back. He tasted the clots of blood as
they ran into his throat. Swaying, drunk,
hurt and ostracized, he felt better.

* * *

The little card stuck in the window
of the village Post Office came as a

blessed relief.

She banged the green door at the rear
entrance of Plas Trisillio. The Colonel
answered it. He towered above her,
straight-backed and youthful in his faded
corduroys, cotton shirt and old Guernsey

sweater.

"Hello, I'm Susie. From Well Cottage.
I've come about the morning job."

When he heard the imploring tone
in her voice and sensed the surprising
urgency in her manner, his stern face
softened into a warm smile. She responded
with a quick, tense smile, immediately felt
awkward, like a schoolgirl, and looked

away.	

He was charming and polite, even
deferential as he walked her slowly

101


through the yard and into the stable
block. He asked her what she knew
about horses. He knew everything, and
here was she, one yellow rosette on top
of her wardrobe back at her parent's home
in Gloucester, gushing like a child. He
walked by her side, his head inclined to
her as he listened carefully.

When they reached the stables, she
approached a black mare whose head
peered out of its stall into the afternoon
sunshine. She stroked the mare's mane
and blew gently into her gaping nostrils. 1
The horse nuzzled her and snaffled back 
appreciatively.	l

Ten minutes later, as she drove down 
the drive, Somerville tipped his cap to 
her, and she smiled genuinely.

* * *

Back at the moody cottage she tried
to cover the yawning gap in their relationship with her enthusiasm for the
job. But in their hearts they both knew
that she had pounced on the work as a
lifeline, an escape.

102

On the Friday afternoon of the first
week of her working there, James insisted
that they go to bed. She felt that she was
being tested, and reluctantly complied.
They had long, cold, uninvolving sex, in
which he remained detached, monitoring
his mechanical performance, and observing
her closely. When he hurt her, she
cried out, but he watched her through
feelingless eyes, and carried on. Later, he
tried to apologize. She made little of it,
but she was hurt.

* * *

While she was at her work with Somerville's
horses, James fixed the fences to keep
out Hopkins's ewes, cut wood and dug
out the couch grass and elder in the
vegetable bed.

When she came back (and he watched
the clock and strained to hear the whine
of the old Bedford as it started to
climb the bottom lane in first gear),
she related the news of the morning:
the Hall, unsteady Mrs Somerville, the
Colonel, their pretty daughter, Louise,

103


the other workers about the estate., the
horses, the mare that she had exercised.
And he listened to it all carefully. And
then lie questioned her.

She knew what his fears were, and
carefully omitted any friendly words
that might have been exchanged, any
kindnesses offered, any admiring look
that might have come her way, from the
grocer's boy to the Colonel himself. She
gave him only plain, unembellished fact.
The sort of truth that is always untruth.

* * *

He saw a bloom on her, there was about
her something new. He was convinced
that there was something going on at Plas
Trisillio. He knew that they were finished.
She had left him in all but name.

He had to have her. But she didn't
want him. He was urgent.

She said it was her period. But he knew
that she had barely started. He knew her
cycle as well as he knew the phases of
the moon and how they affected his behaviour. It was rising now and he

104

was frantic. At this time, his semen was
always up. It was no old wives' tale about
virility and fertility. Planting crops when
the moon was new, nourishing them with
water that had stood beneath a moon that
was full; these things made them grow
well, every country gardener knew this.
The staff on the wards of the mental
institutions knew that the heavenly body's
power was no myth.

But she said no, she said that she had
started, had some discomfort. "Do you
mind?" she asked considerately.

Did he mind?

* * *

The next afternoon, his pent up fears
and insecurity exploded. Out of nothing,
a tiny tiff about how to light the fire, he
rose to sudden fury and leapt up from
the grate and struck her with the back
of his open hand. He was as shocked as
she was. She was frightened out of the
tears that wanted to fall, and didn't cry,
just put her hand to her swollen cheek
in disbelief.

105

He rushed out of the cottage, up
the slope and through the woods of
Pentrefelin. He was gone two hours.
When "he came back, he apologized again.
He was in turmoil, he said, and had no
idea why he had hit her.	

They sat in front of the fire for a long
time in silence. Her swollen cheek that
had partly closed her eye above it was
a reproach to him as he stole a look
at her.

Eventually she said, haltingly, "Everything
was beautiful . . . and then that
thing with Hopkins ... It is a paradise
here, but they're only people."

He looked at her imploringly.

"I'm so sorry," he said.

And he was.

106

12

Charles was relieved to be home. Very

relieved.

He had asked Len Hughes to bring
him to the rear entrance of the Hall. He
wanted to surprise his family, he said. He
watched as Len drove away.

His mother was delighted to see him.
He put his arm around her bony
shoulders and drew her to him. She was
skeletal: frail, striking, brittle. She wore
her black hair brushed defiantly back off
her high forehead; her sharp features and
deep-set eyes had an angular beauty that
refused to yield to her innate despair.

She asked him how long he would
be staying, but then wandered absentmindedly
out of the kitchen before he
had begun to answer her. When she
came back in, she stood close to him
as he made coffee, and asked him if he
would like to have a friend over. "He
could stay for tea, if you like."

107

He thanked her. Most of his old
friends, he patiently explained, were
away.  Either in the army or at agricultural
college or university.

Louise, home for half-term, was always
pleased to see her big, easy-going brother
who could charm her girlfriends to
distraction, and she hugged him to her.

When his father came in from the
estate for lunch Charles told him that
he was home for a few days to do
some landscape drawing for his portfolio.
He fancied the change. There was no
problem at the Art College. He had
come up on the early Saturday train to
Welshpool and taken a taxi from there to
the Hall.

Only Sophie, the family's brown and
white Jack Russell, behaved out of
character: instead of yapping around
the boy's ankles, she ignored him, sniffed
at the door to the vestibule, whined for
some minutes, and was then sick on the
kitchen floor.

He was tired and would have a lie
down, he told his parents. He kissed
his mother lightly on the forehead. As

108

he pulled the kitchen door to, carrying
a wooden tray with coffee and biscuits
on it, he heard his father's exasperated
voice, "Can't you leave it alone? It's not
even lunch-time yet ..."

Upstairs, the coffee went cold, the
biscuits remained uneaten as, exhausted,
Charles fell asleep.

* * *

The next morning he ordered by telephone
the Sporting Life and the Racing Gazette from the newsagent in the village. They
were to be placed in the clay land-drain
pipe that the delivery boy would find at
the rear entrance. Charles would settle
the bill himself.

On the Monday, he was up early and
went straight to the rear gate. The fat
racing papers were stuffed into the pipe.
He took coffee to his room and spent the
next two hours in unbroken concentration
trying to decipher the form and breeding
of horses which, unravelled correctly,
would open the bookmaker's coffers.

He came down to eat some breakfast at

109

ten and then returned to his room where
he went over his myriad calculations
again. All things being equal., Ribble
Valley should pass the winning post
before any of the other eleven horses
at Wincanton at a little after two forty
this Monday afternoon.

His mind preoccupied,, he traipsed
down the drive heedless of the bunches
of pale daffodils and the grey-barked
beech trees. Sophie skipped and hopped
and yapped at rustling leaves and fallen
twigs.

His father was in the distance working
On one of the horse jumps that were scattered about the fields in front of the
house.

* * *

Last evening the two men had sat
opposite one another in the Colonel's
study as the boy asked his father for
a loan. He said he needed some cash.
For the first time in his life he asked
for money. Not school fees to be paid,
or the doubtful privilege of living in a

110

big draughty house, but actual five-pound
notes. He knew he was clutching at less
than a straw.

Somerville felt perfectly well-disposed
towards his children, but in a detached,
rather distant way. His children were a
part of the warp and weft of his life;
they were a thread, but there were other
threads in that cloth: there was an estate
to administer, horses to tend, trials to
organize, hounds to supervise and, of
course, his mistress in the next valley

to see.

The Somervilles lived apart now: under
one roof, they lived separate lives. They
rarely conversed. They had their own
bedrooms, used different bathrooms.
He sat in his study; she watched
television in the small sitting-room until
the broadcasts ended. There was drink
concealed everywhere. But the handsome
crystal decanters were no longer used.
The bottles came in the back door from
the local grocer's van, and she carried
them straight to one of her rooms where
she slopped the whisky and vodka into
big, rarely washed tumblers.

Ill

 
The children no longer knew whether
their mother was drinking to escape her
wretcjied state, or whether her plight had
come about because of the drinking. They
had no idea. They had not been at home
to see the marriage fall apart.

* * *

His father had listened to him carefully.
Charles felt as if he was back in the
headmaster's study.	

He asked Charles what exactly he
wanted the money for. The boy said it
was a 'business opportunity'. It was cast
iron and very short-term. A week, two at
the most. He felt his throat constricting.
He was aware that the timbre of his voice
was hopelessly at odds with what he was
trying to assert. He had meant to be
strong and now he felt like a twelve
year-old. He was afraid of the Londoners
hurting him, doing him serious injury,
yet he was too embarrassed to share this
simple truth with his father.

The phrases that the boy used were
wholly alien to the man. He virtually

112

flinched as the boy uttered: 'business
opportunity'; 'cast-iron'; 'short-term'. But
he heard him out, and only shifted his
long legs once. Finally, his father asked
him how much he needed.

"About fifteen hundred," said Charles.

"Pounds?" said the Colonel.

"Of course pounds," said Charles,
unable to disguise his irritation.

"It's out of the question, of course. I
could raise a hundred or two in cash.
But fifteen hundred! You'd be better off
asking one of the lads on the estate.
That's where the money is these days."

* * *

As Charles got to the gate-house, a two
tone Bedford van clattered over the cattle
grid and careered up the drive. He stood
aside as it shook past. It was driven by
a girl in blue jeans, who gave him a
smile and wave. He raised a hand as
she passed.	

113


13

Sophie sniffed her way along the scented
hedgerow as Charles wandered up the
lane. They went past the bluebell copse
on the corner with its silver birch trees,
their white bark peeling, lime green leaves
just emerging. At the top of the little
incline, they paused and Charles looked
down to the back of the Hall. In the
distance he could see the fair-haired girl
and his father standing together in the
stable yard.

There was the sound of a car coming
up the slope, its languorous engine throb
amplified by the narrow lane and high
hedges. He clambered up on to the
verge and called the dog to him. Sophie
trotted around his feet, out of the path
of the approaching vehicle. As it neared
them, he reached down to hold the dog
by its collar, but the car accelerated
and lurched up the grassy verge across
him.

114

He was trapped against the hedge.
The passenger door of the car sprang
open, and he was pushed further into
the sharp, leafless thorns. A black man
was on him and at his throat, his hands
clamped around his neck. The engine of
the car throbbed, and the dog circled the
man and barked frantically.

The man released his grip, but as soon
as Charles lifted his hands to his neck, he
felt a crippling blow as Gynn's iron fist
sank into his stomach.

He folded with the sickening pain and
collapsed to the ground. The dog was
demented. Gynn swung his pointed shoe
at the little bitch and kicked it away
from him. There followed immediately
a pathetic whelping from where the dog
lay broken on its side.

Charles covered his head and looked
out from watering eyes as the men stood
above him. The birch trees behind them
moved slightly in the breeze.

The man he knew only as Mickey
appeared to be taking in the landscape.
He didn't look down at Charles as he
said quietly, without emotion, "You owe

115


us money. You've put us to a lot of
trouble."

Charles didn't want them to talk about
how much trouble they had been put to.
He was certain that it would correlate with his own intense suffering. He tried 
to interrupt and gagged, backing as far 
into the roots of the hedge as he could, 
"I'm getting it. I'm getting it. That's why  I'm here. I'm trying to get it together."
He pushed the small of his back into the
hard spiky roots of the blackthorn.

The man didn't respond. He didn't
seem to have heard. Charles's bowels
were hot. The man took something from
his top pocket. The sharp, bevelled metal
glinted between his thumb and forefinger.
He still looked over the hedge into the
middle distance, taking in anything and
nothing, focusing nowhere. He took a
deep nasal breath, as if about to begin
something unavoidable but regrettable.
The voice was still devoid of feeling.
"We don't do credit. It's a strictly cash
operation we do. I gave you a day, by
arrangement. You didn't pay. Worse, you
went away. We've had to come and find

116

you. It's all time. And money. My boss
doesn't like it. He thinks we're on holiday
up here." The dog started to skulk away,
a cry with every step.

Charles had no place to go. His voice
was quavering, "I just need a day or two.
Honestly. I had a problem. The guy
who wanted the stuff. They turned me
over. But your money's coming, honestly.
That's why I'm here."

Gynn looked down to the high chimneys
of Plas Trisillio. He was derisive, "You've
got all that, and you want me to wait for
a miserable couple of grand? You've got
plenty. I want mine."

There was a frightening finality about
his words.

Charles started to cry. "I can't get it
just like that. I need another day, maybe
two, that's all. I swear, please."

As Gynn bent down towards him
Charles instinctively covered his face.
For a moment he felt nothing and then
there was a searing ache and his calf was
hot and wet and blazing with a terrible,
rending pain. The shock cauterized his
tears and mobilized his instinct to survive.
117

Gin  moved his foot, and Charles took
A sticky, blood-soaked hand from his leg
and tried to shield his head. But
this time the man just drew his black
shoe slowley through the damp grass to remove the mud that marked it. Charles
felt the wet grass on his lips, the
earth in his nostrils, all of his
nerves startlingly alive.	
'you've got today and tomorrow. This
time Wednesday. Right here. And don't
run away. You'd find out what we can do. 
only to you. You've got people down...
He looked at him
He nodded in the direction of the
118 stables.

He was terrified that they were going to
kill him, but his jaw set and his look
was of only loathing and defiance, not
the fear an and terror that convulsed him-that  should have told him that
they wanted their money, and anyway,
wouldn't kill him on a country lane
outside his own house. But they had
followed him this far. They had cut
his leg, long and deep. They weren't
normal people. They could do what the liked.

"Wednesday. Half eleven. Here.
No mistakes."

Charles watched the car sink on its
springs as each man got in. A jet of
white exhaust smoke hung in the grass
as it pulled away and left him wet and
crying, relief mixed with the pain.

119

14

Charles wrapped his handkerchief tightly
around his leg and limped across the
lane and up the little bank into the
birch copse. Out of sight, he tried to
clean his hands and leg with damp leaves
and grass.

When the bleeding eventually stopped,
he lifted the handkerchief from his calf
and looked at the gash that the blade
had sliced open. His stomach heaved as
he saw how deep the incision was. He
propped himself up against a tree and
lit a cigarette. The nicotine made him
giddy but the blue smoke was a familiar
comfort.

The dog whimpered up to him, lay
by his side and whined. After he
had cigarette-burned through the double
stitched and hemmed part of his shirt,
he was able to tear off a strip all the
way round below the waist. He made
a better bandage from this, one that

120

wrapped twice around the wound and
could still be tied.

An hour later, having wrestled a stake
from a newly pleached hedge nearby,
he limped along the lane. He tried to
disguise the pain at the same time as
not putting weight down on to his injured
leg. Frequently, the blood began to trickle
down him again, but eventually he crept,
unseen, through the stable-yard and up
the deserted back stairs.

In his room he put a damp cloth
around his neck to reduce the swelling,
and bandaged his leg properly with strips
cut carefully from an old school shirt.

He smoked another cigarette, cleared
his throat and tested his voice and, when
he could delay no longer, he controlled
his breathing sufficiently to telephone
the bookmakers from the phone on the
landing.

* * *

**,

It was a long wait. He lay on his bed,
the terrier at his side, and then hobbled
to his bedroom window and watched as

121

his father pottered about with the horse
jumps at the far end of the top field, the
old green David Brown tractor pumping
out its exhaust smoke beside him.

He was on the phone to the turf
accountants before the race had finished.
The start had been delayed by a few
minutes when a horse unseated its rider.
He waited and pressed the phone close to
his ear to try and hear the commentary
on the closing stages.

There were only muffled noises in
the background in the office and
the incomprehensible urgency of the
commentary as the race reached its
climax. And then it stopped. He waited.
There was the sound of someone at
the desk picking up the phone through
papers on it. "Ribble Valley. Nine to
four." There was a pause. "Hello. Are
you there?"

"Thank you," said Charles. "Thank

you."

Back in his room, he fell prostrate
on to his bed. A great feeling of relief
suffused him. He had been right. The
favourite, Time to Turn, could not win.

122

The weight was too great. A mile and a
quarter, maybe; even a mile and a half
with the ground uncharacteristically firm,
but not over a mile and six furlongs.
The three-year-old simply didn't have
the stamina. Nine to four wasn't a great
price, and he had not been the only
gambler to have unlocked the secret of
her potential, but bookmakers were the
most cautious men on earth. That's why
they came to work in Jaguars while the
punters parked bicycles against the wall
outside the betting shops.

He lay on the bed and smoked, his arm
trailing over the side; Sophie crept over
and licked his fingers. At first tentatively
and then with feeling. The dog was
tasting the blood. Charles managed a
wan smile. They were regaining their
ground.

* * *

Charles avoided his father all evening. He
called to his mother that he was working
and would have a sandwich later. Walking
to the lavatory at the end of the passage,

123

he came face to face with his sister. They
were both embarrassed. She was clutching
something white in her hand. She looked
flushed. He took the initiative, played the
older brother, and she responded, blurting
out an explanation in a shorthand that
they both understood, "Father ... he would come to the barn then ... I was
with Peter." She unclenched her fingers
and a little cotton brassiere unravelled
from her hand.	

Charles smiled at her indulgently,
leaned forward and drew a wisp of
hay from her auburn hair, "Naughty
girl," he said kindly, and then, more
seriously, "Be careful."

"Of course," she said, glad of his
concern for her, a concern without
censoriousness.

She sensed the strange awkwardness of
his standing there and looked up at his
swollen neck. "What's happened to you,
Charles?"

"Oh, you wouldn't believe me. I
walked into a branch. I was walking
and reading something. I went straight
into this branch." He made a decapitating

124

gesture across his throat and raised his
eyebrows in a ham theatrical manner.

"Oh yes?" she said. He was right, she
didn't believe him.

His leg was beginning to throb again.
But he couldn't move without betraying
himself. She smiled at him, came close
and planted a little kiss on his cheek.
She smelled sweet. "Night-night," she
said, and turned into her room.

* * *

He had frightful dreams that replayed
the reality of the day. When he woke
it was still black night and the sheet was
coiled about him. He struggled free and
lay there panting.

The wind was buffeting the house
and howling and moaning in the tall
chimneys around him. A metal bucket
went crashing over the brick floor of
the stableyard, and then he heard a
slate dislodge from the roof above him
and rumble and scrape down the eaves
before smashing to the ground.

He leaned on the window-sill and

125

sucked hard on his cigarette. His leg
ached. He wished that the light of the
morning would come, but there was no
sign of the dawn, just the tops of the 
trees moving in the wind and the rain
thrashing at the house.

When he woke at seven, it was to bright
sun and showers of fine, gusty rain. The 
world was fresh and clean and this was
its last rinse. From his bedroom window
he could see a rainbow that came from
behind the house and reached down into
the next valley.

At the bottom field, which always
drained badly, there was a broad lake of
rainwater that had not been there on the
previous evening. And beyond that, on
the lane itself, there was a fallen ash.
m	H

The ash was a curious specimen. Its 
black buds felt like moleskin to the
touch; of all the English hedgerow trees,
it was the last to come into leaf, and
then, after its brief season, it shed its
big, sad, yellowing leaves before any of
the other trees. Its grey ribbed bark had
none of the gnarled, fairy-tale mystery
of the oak, the smooth eeriness of the

126

beech with its almost human limbs. And,
to cap it all, this curious, most English
tree, would suddenly shed an apparently
healthy bough for no obvious reason.

He slipped out quietly and collected his
newspapers from the clay pipe at the rear
entrance. The muddy drive was running
bright little rivulets as the hill behind the
house drained its storm water down the
fields and into the streams that fed the
River Trisillio a mile away.

He took coffee to his room and for
the next two hours was lost to everything
about him as he engrossed himself in that
day's form at Market Rasen. He was over
a third of the way to his target and had
a big credit stake. He needed only one
short-odds winner.

By noon he had made his selection.
It was the two-year-old Santa Fe. The
horse had travelled nearly two hundred
miles across country from his stables
in Somerset to take part in the major
race of the afternoon, the three o'clock
Younger's Cup.

His room was stuffy and the air would
do him good. He would walk down the

127

drive and on to the lane to exercise his
leg. He couldn't hide from his family
for ever.

* * *

He got out of the house and hobbled
and limped and even, with a huge effort,
actually convincingly walked a few steps
down the drive. After several minutes
he heard a car approaching through
the rhododendrons. He leaned against
a huge beech and opened his fingers
against the bark and began to sweat
profusely. It was Mr Jones from the
village shop making his delivery. The
portly, whitecoated grocer waved and
drove past.

When he got to the lane, council
workmen were clearing the limbs of the
fallen ash. Chain-saws were screaming
and the wood chips pluming into the
air. The tree still had all its being in
it. Even as they lopped and severed its
branches it remained vibrant, seemed to
retain its glistening hold on life.

As Charles approached, they throttled

128

the saws down. They were pleased to be
involved in this muscular work. It was,
for a change, important, even vital work.
And, as if to compound their satisfaction,
as they revved up the motors on their
two-foot-long Stihl and Husqvarna saws,
ready to attack the limbs again, one of the
men asked Charles rhetorically where the
Post Office crew was. They hadn't even
arrived yet. It would probably be days
before they turned up in their yellow vans
and restored the telephone lines. Charles
walked to the hedge and looked into the
sodden field. Between the fallen poles,
and brought down by the limbs of the
tall, leafy ash, were the lifeless cables.

Back at the Hall, he lifted the black
telephone receiver and heard only the
disconnected silence. It was nearly two
o'clock. How many other lines were out
of operation? Was the village telephone
box also out of order? It probably was.
It was almost certainly on the same line
as theirs.	<

He would drive to a phone himself, just
keep going along the valley road until he
got to one that was working.

129

* * *

His father was trying to start the Land
Rover in the yard. The small trailer
was attached, full of conifer rails for
fencing. Charles stood at the larder
window and watched. The old diesel
eventually spluttered into life and filled
the yard with black smoke.

As soon as he had pulled away up
the rear drive Charles picked up some
change for the phone and hurried out
to his mother's Mini Traveller. As he
approached the dusty car he saw that
it was listing. The rear tyre was flat. He
swore.

Time was getting short. How far
would he have to drive, he wondered,
to reach a telephone that was working?
He approached his father's Rover.

Should he chase after him, try and
catch him, and risk an outright refusal,
or simply take the car and certainly incur
his wrath? Perhaps if he were lucky, he
might get back before his father even
knew that he had used it. He smiled
lightly at his own deception and climbed

130

into the black 105.

He pushed the seat back several
notches, pulled out the choke and
turned the key. The six-cylinder engine
came to life and he backed out of the
wooden building and drove slowly down
the drive.

* * *

The bottom lane was strewn with the
twigs and small branches that had
been torn away in the stormy night.
The drainage ditches on either side
were running like streams, the streams
overflowing into the fields.

The rain continued to fall in short,
gusty showers as the sun broke through
the cloudbursts. There was another
rainbow in the sky ahead of him as
he neared the village. The Trisillio was
hurtling under the hump-backed bridge,
and piling the water-borne debris from
upstream at its funnelling buttresses.

He turned on the radio, but it was The
Archers and he turned it off immediately.
At the rectory he passed the rector, his

131

sly-looking black and white Collie loping
along beside him. The elderly cleric
raised a hand in acknowledgement.

Once out of the village and on the
road to Llanfrynach, he switched on
the cassette-player. It was the Mozart
violin concerto. He pushed back into
the seat. He fancied himself in a film:
moody weather, empty roads, a big car,
his own real drama, and this music.

He was stealing a glimpse of his father,
knowing that he must listen to this as
he went across to Llandrinio in the
next valley to visit his mistress, Nicola
Latham. For as long as Charles had been
able to remember, his father was always
'out' on Tuesday evenings.

* * *

There was a large branch lying across
the road on a bend and Charles braked
hard to avoid it, the Rover's long bonnet
dipping as he did so. It brought him
back to the present and he drove more
carefully.
It started to drizzle and he switched on

132

the windscreen-wipers. If there was also
rain at the Lincolnshire racecourse, it
would help him; his choice would prosper
in heavy going.

There was a Post Office van and
two engineers working outside the green
junction box at the side of the road in
Llanfrynach. There was no point stopping
and he drove through the village and
joined the main road to Meifod. There
were fewer hedgerow trees and less debris
on the wider road and he picked up speed
a little.

He looked down at the Smith's car
clock with its green hands. It was a
quarter past two. He had plenty of time.
There would be a phone in Meifod.

The rain stopped abruptly and a bright
sun burst through. There was a fine little
swish as he drove through the shallow
puddles on the long straight. There was
not another vehicle on the road and he
accelerated up to sixty miles an hour. The
car was flying over the wet tarmac.

There was a shattering explosion and
the wind and cold was booming and
battering in at him. The violin concerto

133

was still playing but he could see nothing.
He swung the steering-wheel from side
to side, but there was no response from
the car.

And then, suddenly, with tremendous
violence, for Charles Somerville, everything
ceased.

134

15

Built in 1958, the anodised aluminium
and glass police headquarters at Welshpool
was a stark reminder of architectural
enthusiasm for the then current ideas,
no matter how unsuited to their milieu.
If anything said '1958', this building did;
as you drove past it you almost expected
to hear a xylophone combo playing in the
background.

Behind the building were the softly
rounded Carno Hills but, only ten
years ago, a Swansea architect in his
wisdom had decreed that this three-storey
oblong edifice, with its blue and yellow
pre-formed panels, acres of glass and
strips of dull steel, should sit at the foot
of these bosomy hills and draw attention
to him, and it, rather than merge with
them.

The local planning committee had
needed only one meeting to give
overwhelming approval to the project

135

and, after its completion and opening
by the High Sheriff of Montgomeryshire,
the architect was never again seen.

*	* *

Munroe drove up to Welshpool early
in the afternoon. There was to be
an 'end of case' party, traditional at
the successful conclusion of any major
inquiry. The Inspector was expected
there, plus a few others from the
Birmingham end, and more than a
dozen of the Montgomeryshire team.
They'd become matey with some of the
lads. They were a good bunch, a bit slow
perhaps, a bit plodding, but solid.

*	* *

At home in Coleraine Road, things
between Kath and Munroe had reached
an atrophying deadlock. They had agreed
to talk and sat in the kitchen with a
bottle of Bell's and some of the sweet
Woodpecker cider that she liked on the
table before them.

136

Ten years ago she had been at college
in Birmingham training to be an English
teacher. He was a raw cop on the beat,
two years into his basic training and
doing A-levels at evening class to try
and get out of uniform and into CID.

There was a charming innocence about
their polite chat over coffee in the
college's refectory that first evening. He
found it hard to understand her interest
and obvious liking for him rather than
her duffel-coated, wispy-bearded student
cronies.

They were all going to the Stage Door
coffee bar and folk club. There was some
shuffling and awkward delay while she
got her coat on. He sat there diffidently,
wanting her to invite him.

"Why don't you come too?" she finally
said. "Do you like 'folk'?"

"Yes, some," he said, hesitantly. "But
not tonight, I have to work. Thanks,
though." He looked away, embarrassed.

The next week, when the others left for
the club, she stayed seated and said she
would join them later. The talk was easy
between them. He was a cop because he

137

was interested in people. He had wasted
his time at school, achieved nothing, got
into fights and scrapes and left early.
Since then he had done menial jobs until
he had decided to join the police.

It was like a second chance to him and
he took it with enthusiasm. He wasn't
a brute copper, he was a thinking man,
he wanted to understand people, fathom
their behaviour. He knew that he had
to do this to understand their crimes.
He was training to be a cop for the
same reason that she was training to be
a teacher: he wanted to do some good.

He still lived at home with his parents
in Great Barr. She shared a flat with a
friend in Erdington. They went to the
cinema together, saw On the Waterfront and Blackboard Jungle, and the theatre to
see Antony and Cleopatra, her favourite
Shakespeare. In a pub near the theatre
before the performance, she explained to
him the essence of the story, told him to
listen for certain speeches.

During the play she held his hand, her
fingers closing on his as Antony mused to
his lover, "Here is my space. Kingdoms

138

are clay ..." He was moved.

When her flatmate went away later
that month they spent their first night
together. Neither of them was a virgin,
but neither had ever spent a night with a
person of the opposite sex. It was good.

Within a year they were married, and
for several months they continued to grow
and share and learn together. They were
lovers, but they were companions too.

Kath was a good teacher. It was the
early 'sixties and there was opportunity
and experiment and unbridled optimism
in the air. Educationally, anything seemed
possible.

Her heart was in the right place and
the kids at school loved her. Even great
hulking fifth-form football yobs listened
to her long enough to be snared by her
enthusiasm for Steinbeck or Sillitoe.

But she reached a stage where she
could not let go: another course, another
qualification, another promotion. A
new school, bigger department, more
responsibility, and then more meetings
and more sub-committees to put the ideas
into practice that she worked so hard at.

139

And who was he to talk? He was the
same. He didn't even seem to have to
work at it. His selection came through
and he was out of uniform and down to
the Italian tailor in Digbeth that all the
young guys used. He felt the part, he
had arrived. For the first time in his life
he felt absolutely comfortable with who
he was and what he was doing. He was
the part.

The years piled up. Promotion came.
Senior officers left, retired, transferred.
They were experienced, but they were
yesterday's men. They had been in service
during the Second World War. It seemed
a lifetime away: it was another world.

And he was a good cop. He had a sharp
mind. He knew which corners to cut and
when to delegate and when to run and
when to hide. His instincts served him
well. He even stayed on top of his 
paperwork. His progress wasn't meteoric,
but he moved through the ranks quickly,
and to achieve it, he worked all the hours
God sent.

And Kath? The cinema? The theatre?
It was too painful to think of. What had

140

happened? Where had they gone? Where
had they come apart?

She was out most evenings: parents'
meetings, staff meetings, Departmental
functions, the occasional trip to the
cinema with a friend from school.

Nowadays, they didn't eat together,
rarely went to bed at the same time,
found sex awkward. He fell asleep in
front of Match of the Day, a whisky
in one hand, a Gold Leaf burning in
the fingers of the other. He didn't like
what was happening; he didn't much like
Kath and he didn't like himself at all.

They didn't even talk about having
children any more. It had slipped down
the agenda, lost in his thoughts of corpses
in shallow graves, and hers of reading
schemes for slow learners.

He said he had started to feel a stranger
in his own home. When she was there,
there were always people in the kitchen,
friends of hers. Yes, they were amiable
enough. He'd say hello and they'd say
hello but then there was that awkward,
vacant smiling until he backed out of the
room again.

141

And so they sat estranged in the
kitchen that they had once decorated
together, the drink between them. She
was exasperatingly literal, said that it was he who had just been away, not her. By
now, half drunk, he confessed that he
spent more time at the police club or
doing overtime than he needed to just
to be out of the house, away from her
and the tension that he felt when they
were together.

She fought back. The tension in their
relationship emanated from him, she
said, not her. They each rehearsed their
familiar routines, delivered their hollow,
set-piece speeches.

But they both knew that the whole
thing was half-hearted. It was an end of
season game, there was no atmosphere,
the crowd had gone, the stadium was
empty. They were going through the
motions, but they both knew there was
nothing to play for any more.

They drank whilst they talked. And the
drink was the sole arbiter. They moved
from the treacherous shifting sands of
their relationship into the safer, neutral

142

ground of work. He told her about
the operation in Wales and she seemed
genuinely interested. It was a relief to talk
of these things.

By eleven o'clock, they had drunk half
the Scotch and all of the cider; the
kitchen, where she always preferred to
sit, was full of cigarette smoke. They
were half drunk and her speech was
a little slurred. Her eyes revealed her.
Their very wariness towards one another
added a quiet excitement to the walk up
the stairs.

She had behaved sluttishly. The cider
and whisky had freed her. He lay on the
bed, his mouth set into the absurd, fixed
grin that nowadays accompanied imminent
sex or the appearance of a camera.

She slipped quickly out of her clothes
and climbed naked on to the bed. He
caught a whiff of the sweet cider. She
straddled up him, further and further,
rocking slightly on the sprung mattress.

He realized that he had actually become
a little afraid of her.

* * *
143

At his room above the pub in the High
Street he had slept and shaved and now
he was back at Headquarters, anticipating
a night he wasn't looking forward to.
Last night's disquieting and inconclusive
meeting with Kath had left him feeling
uneasy: the last thing he wanted was
to get legless on strong beer and warm
whisky with a lot of burly cops.

He pulled his Zephyr into a parking
place across from the row of six concrete
garages. The Chief Superintendent's
chocolate on sable Austin Princess was
in the end one. There were a couple of
CID vehicles adjacent and then a Ford
Transit van. Further up was a Triumph
Herald, probably stolen somewhere and
abandoned up here, with a yellow 'Do
not touch' label pasted on to it. And,
in the last garage, there was the horribly
mangled wreck of what had been a black
Rover.

Inside the austere building it was that
early, desperate time of the evening; the
room too big, brightly lit and sparsely
peopled. There were huge, ceiling to floor
orange curtains, not yet drawn, at the

144

plate glass windows in the first floor bar,
and behind them, out there in the May
evening, the last of the day disappeared
behind the Carnos that stretched away to
the west.

He joined the small group at the bar
and ordered a round, even though their
glasses were three-quarters full. Inspector
Tony Rees was telling a joke, a sure sign
that there was very little happening. He
listened and grinned vacantly but, as the
punch line arrived, he edged closer to
the barman and paid so that he wouldn't
have to fake his own hollow laugh. In
any event, he'd heard it in Birmingham
months ago.

An hour later the atmosphere had
thickened: the cigarette smoke grown
dense, the volume increased and the
beer slopped. The curtains had been
closed, but where someone had yanked
at one of the big drapes, several curtain
hooks had been pulled out and the thing
hung there forlorn. 

At about nine o'clock Chief Superintendent
Nicklin rapped the bar with his
glass. He began his vote of thanks by

145

explaining that, in the eyes of the public,
witness the press reports, they had been
involved with something along the lines of
an Baling comedy. Just as poachers were,
in the public's collective mind, goodhearted,
wily chaps who were engaged
in an unequal struggle against rich
landlords and spoil-sport gamekeepers,
so rustlers were perceived as a bunch
of wayward chaps doing no more or less
than rounding up a few sheep. The fact
that they were real villains, with real form,
were often very dangerous and in pursuit
of large profits, was not something that
the press, from the Daily Telegraph to
the News of the World was interested in.
For the press, it was just a good yarn.

"No matter how many trucks go rolling
around country lanes at night; how much
surveillance is undertaken, how dangerous
the chase and arrest, in the final analysis,
there's something faintly ridiculous in
grown men, good coppers like you, being
involved in all this, just for the sake of
bleedin' -- sorry, bleatin' -- sheep."

As far as the misguided public was
concerned, he said, even cattle wouldn't


146

be so bad: after all, a steak was a steak,
was a steak; a cow a big thing. But sheep?
A sheep had never been, and never could
be, anything but intrinsically absurd.

But, said the Chief, they knew better.
They had been involved. They had
courted the danger; they had made the
dawn arrests; they had apprehended the
villains, villains who, if they were not here
in the hills of Wales (he swept his arm
around to indicate the landscape on the
other side of the garish curtains) would
be holding up banks and security guards
instead. No, let no one be in any doubt,
they had done a good job. They had done
a great job. Not a man or woman here,
not anyone who had been involved, would
find that their career prospects had been
anything but considerably enhanced on
account of their involvement with this
important operation.

He then paid tribute to the successful
liaison which had taken place, and the
friendships that had- been struck up
between 'us Welsh boys and our friends
from Birmingham'. (Here he did a quite
passable impersonation of Sergeant Joey

147

Cleaton's Dudley account.) And that was
it. He counselled the two dozen men and
three women to celebrate their success
this evening and to keep up the good
work. There were a few boozy, 'Hear,

Hear's and then, when they were quite
certain that the rambling Chief had
finished his tribute, the general hubbub
picked up again.

The CS was a happy man. His
involvement in the case, as befitted
his elevated status, had been, apart
from signing one or two warrants and
being kept informed of progress, nil. And
yet every single national newspaper had
mentioned him by name in its coverage
of the arrests. The Western Mail had
even done a feature article on rustling
in Wales, in which he had been quoted
three times. He was a very happy man.
Retirement was only two years away. He
felt that the chances of being able to
look over to the fireside of the large
retirement bungalow at Harlech, and see
on the mantel-piece the coveted CBE,
had been greatly increased during the
last few weeks. The trial, convictions and

148

sentencing were a formality. The future
looked pleasant indeed. He had another
whisky and water and then slipped away
to his house on the outskirts of the quiet
market town to watch The Untouchables on TV.

* * *

Munroe stood at the window with Tony
Rees and Richards, the big, young cop
who had been infiltrated into McInnerey's
abattoir in Birmingham. The lad was
looking very pale. Ten minutes ago he
had been giving the two senior men the
benefit of his experience in undercover
police work. Now, he was going to be
sick. Munroe knew it. He hoped that
the youth did too. He certainly didn't
want vomit on his new trousers and clean
shoes.

The lad had become very quiet
and started to sway. Munroe took the
initiative, "I'm going down for a breather.
Why don't you come down too, son, you
look as if you could use a bit of air?"
The young man offered no resistance. He

149

was beyond bravado. They walked away
together, Munroe slightly unsteady, the
boy stepping across the swirling carpet
with concentrated purpose.

In the front car park the boy walked
directly towards the bushes that had been
planted around the building, bushes that
seemed to bear little relationship to the
natural, living world.

Munroe lit a cigarette and wandered
round to the back of the building where
he had left his car. He could slip away
now, but it would be rude. He hadn't
said good night to his colleagues, and
the youngster who was now retching in
the dusty evergreens had to be taken care
of, too.

A yellow light was thrown into the open garages by sodium lamps hung
from big brackets on the wall of the
main building. Munroe went past the
Chief's empty garage, the CID cars and
the Triumph Herald.

In the end garage was the crashed
Rover. A wreck was a magnet to him.
In his twelve years with the police, he
had never even begun to overcome his

150

fascinated revulsion at motorized death.
The jagged inertia before him represented
someone's violent end: smashed glass,
wrenched metal, stained upholstery. He
had seen it all during his years, but he
still felt the trauma, the deep wrench of
his guts. He lit a Gold Leaf from the
stub of the one in his fingers. The boy
groaned and gasped twenty yards away.
Munroe sucked hard on his cigarette and
took a couple of steps into the shadowy
garage.

The workings of the car that man, with
his endless ingenuity, sought to conceal,
were exposed. It was like putting someone
on an operating table and opening his
chest. There: that's how it really works.
Forget the cotton shirt, the woollen
jumper, the nylon tie and leather belt.
This is the bloody, beating heart that
really makes you tick. Cars are pressed
and shaped and painted and smoothed,
upholstered and dressed, all their entrails
cleverly concealed. But here was the other
side: the bag burst, the pieces fallen out.
The brown, dry metal of the underneath;
the oily places; the doors impacted open,

151

polythene linings and wires and springs,
all spilled out.

The front end had suffered the impact;
the engine housing was concertinaed and
the engine casing itself had been forced
up from its mountings. The windscreen
had been smashed out. The driver's head?
In spite of himself, he forced open the
passenger door and looked for the telltale signs.

In the driver's seat there was glass
and a lot of dried blood. The bleeding
had been heavy. Lacerations to the face;
chest injuries, certainly, but actual death
must have been caused by the skull
being fractured on the windscreen at
high velocity. It was only conjecture,
but he'd seen enough in the past, read
the reports, written them, given evidence
at harrowing inquests.

Always on the floor was the pathetic
thing that he knew would unhinge
him: a cardigan, a chocolate wrapper,
a coin, even a road map, something
that belonged to the person, that made
them real, gave them a life, a life that
they no longer had. And here it was. He

152


picked it up. A cassette-tape box. The
Mozart Violin Concerto, the Deutsche
Gramophon recording. His eyes flicked
up. The tape was still in the player. It
was still pressed home. It had been on.
This was the last thing that the driver
had ever heard. "Of life dispatch'd, Cut
off . . . No reckoning made ... "He
muttered the pathetic words of Hamlet's
father. He wanted to take it out. Take it
away and play it. Start it at this very point,
where whoever it was who had died on
this windscreen had stopped listening.
He leaned against the rough, breeze
block wall and inhaled deeply. Of
course he mustn't take the cassette, or
anything else. The whole thing would be
the subject of investigation. You never
touched evidence. It was a cardinal rule.
He shouldn't even be in here.

He pushed himself up from the wall
and turned to leave. He looked back into
the garage and saw the bonnet. It was
leaning up against the wall at the far end.
In the shadow he hadn't seen it there.

He went in again and, in the semidarkness
of the far end, looked from

153

the bonnet to the car and back again.
was still almost in shape: an expensive
English saloon was horribly smashed and
destroyed, and yet here was its bonnet wich, apart from a few dents and scratches, could probably be repaired by
the average car enthusiast.

From the bushes the lad called out weakly, "Inspector? Inspector Munroe, are you going home soon?"

Munroe flicked the stub of his cigarette away and walked towards the youth.

154

16

The next morning Munroe called at
the station to clear what had been his
temporary desk. He parked around the
back and opened the boot of his car.

Inside the headquarters there was an
air of unusual quiet: last night had taken
its toll and there was little of the usual
noisy banter. Munroe greeted Rees, who
was on the phone, and acknowledged the
desk sergeant who had never shown the
Birmingham man any friendliness and
did not appear to have changed his
position today.

From the front office Munroe could see
the footsteps that young Richards had left
in the soft earth of the flowerbeds as he
had vomited into the bushes.

He carried two boxes of files to his car
and then sauntered the few paces to the
corner of the building. He stood in the
full, bright sunshine and looked towards
the wreck. He turned and walked away,

155

refusing to be drawn.

Inside the station he shook hands with
Rees and a couple of the other men.
There were promises to see one another again, but they all knew that it was  the kind of pact that is made between
holidaying families on Mediterranean
beaches.

As he went past the front desk, the
hostile sergeant muttered, "'Bye, boyyo."

Munroe depressed the clutch, pushed
the column change up into first and
turned the key in the ignition. As the
engine fired into life he turned it off, got
out of the car and slammed the door hard
shut. He swore at himself.

Inside the garage he ignored the shell
of the car and went directly to where
the bonnet stood. He gazed at it for
some moments, followed its long, elegant
lines with his thoughtful eyes. He stepped
forward and drew it to himself in both
hands and ran his fingers down the smooth,
lipped metal. As he trailed gingerly down
its length, proceeding carefully for fear of
tearing his skin, the fingers of his right
hand touched something soft.

156

* * *

Munroe had arrived at a notion of evil
which was almost apocalyptic: massacres
in India; tidal waves in the Philippines; a
mudslide in a Welsh village; ritual killings
in California. His only rationale for these
arbitrary slaughters was a vague theory
of a malign presence that stalked the
globe, smacking an apartment block to
the ground with a petulant hand, stirring
the ocean to a fury with a finger and, at
day's end, pushing a helpless child into
a disused mineshaft, its pathetic cries to
go unheeded.

In their early courtship, Kath had
offered the troubled policeman Gloucester's
lines from King Lear as some sort of
panacea:

'As files to wanton boys are we the
Gods; they kill us for their sport.

Not a week had passed since without
his mouthing them to himself.

It was these same gods that plucked jets
from the sky, crushed Saturday afternoon
crowds at football matches, put 'guns in
the hands of young children', and here,

157

before him now, had certainly snuffed
out a life in the wreck of this mangled
car.

But, as a policeman, Munroe had
learned to ask, Why? Had Shakespeare's
wayward divinities really had no help
from their dark agents on earth? The
apartment block sometimes didn't fall
down of its own accord, but because
the structural engineer had deceived the
building contractor, or because a careless
architect had pencilled in a line too thin.

* * *

"You back already?" said the dour
sergeant.

Munroe ignored the facile question,
and posed his own. Nodding towards
the garage, he asked, "What happened
to the Rover?"

Without looking up, the desk sergeant
replied, "Head on. Hit a tree. English
boy killed. More money than sense." And
then, facetiously, "All right?"

"All right," said Munroe, and walked
out of the door again.

158

He sat in his car and lit a cigarette. It
was too soon after the beer and tobacco
of last night and it made him feel heady
and slightly sick. When he had smoked
half of it he bent it roughly into the
ashtray and went back into the rear
office.

He called Rees aside, "Who's on the
Rover, Tony?"

"I am. Why?" asked the Welshman.

"Have you come up with anything?"

"What do you mean -- come up
with anything? It's a straightforward.
No other vehicle involved. Lost control.
Slight bend and a little camber on the
wet road. No booze, according to the
post-mortem. Happened last week. We're
just waiting for the vehicle examination
boys from Cardiff to go over it for the
inquest."

"Who died in it?" said Munroe.

"Local lad. Philip Somerville's son,
Charlie. The family goes back generations.
Why, do you know them?" he jested, "No
Birmingham in that line, I don't think,
John!"

159

* * *

The two men stood in the shadows of
the garage and examined the car.

"Why's the front end this smashed, and
yet the bonnet's virtually intact?" asked
Munroe guilelessly.

"The accident report said that the
bonnet was in a ditch by the side of
the road. It must have got torn off when the car went through the hedge,"
replied Rees.

"What if it came off before the car
started to crash?" said Munroe.

"Why should it?" said Rees.

Munroe opened the palm of his hand.

"What's that?" said Rees.

There was a blob of white rubber gum
an inch in diameter in the policeman's
palm. Munroe lifted the bonnet from
where it stood and manoeuvred it into
the daylight. Rees came round to see
where Munroe pointed. There was a
moist spot where, until ten minutes ago,
the gum had been wedged.

* * *
160

Over beer and a cheese sandwich back
at the White Horse Hotel in the High
Street, little more than a pub with a
couple of rooms available for guests,
Rees and Munroe discussed their next
moves.

Rees's experience of crime had been
limited to the Montgomeryshire area, and
he had never been involved in anything
more serious than a missing person
inquiry. (The woman was eventually
found: she had thrown herself from the
Froncysyllte aqueduct in neighbouring
Denbighshire, but her body was not
found for several days, and even then,
it was by a canoeist on the River Dee,
not the police.)

Munroe's experience was wider. He
had, as a young DI, already led the
investigations on two Midlands murder
inquiries: one, the killing of an eccentric
homosexual by a male prostitute; the
other, a woman by her husband and
his lover.	

Rees was glad to have Munroe along.
And Munroe was tacitly relieved to be
able to postpone going back to his wife

161

and an uncertain future in Coleraine
Road.

It wouldn't be strictly true., but it
wouldn't be a mile wide of the truth,
when he phoned his Chief at headquarters
in Birmingham and said that something
had come up on the sheep blaggers'
inquiry which would delay him for a
few days longer.

* * *


By the time that they were having their
second pint in the bar of the White Horse,
they were having their first disagreement.
Munroe wanted to keep the lid on his
suspicions. Experience had taught him
two things about interesting or important
investigations: if they were interesting
enough, someone higher up took them
over; and even if they didn't, you soon
had half the division getting involved
and blocking out the light. There was
a world of difference between having the
assistance of people when you wanted it,
on house to house, or forensic, and having
every Tom, Dick and WPC getting in the

162

way of your inquiries.

DI Tony Rees would have none of
it. The notion of not keeping his boss
and colleagues informed was anathema to
him. It was dishonest and unprofessional
and, he argued, it would probably prove
counter-productive. On a local case like
this, his colleagues on the force might
well have information to hand that he and
Munroe could spend days looking for.

Munroe was touched by his friend's
gauche faith in his colleagues. "But if
something's going on," said Munroe
patiently, "if someone interfered with
that car, the sooner they know that
there's an inquiry under way, the sooner
they can try and cover their tracks. It's
true in Brum, so it's even more so out
here where nobody farts without everyone
knows."

While Rees resented the disparaging
allusion to his closeknit community,
he reluctantly recognized the force of
Munroe's argument. There was a little
hiatus as each man sipped his beer.
Rees's pride would not allow him to
cede such an early victory to the other

163

man: it would somehow undermine his
authority as resident cop.

For Munroe's part, the lure of the
mystery was over-whelmingly seductive
and determined his preparedness to
negotiate. At this moment, nothing
would have mortified him more than
to get into his car and drive back down
the A5: there was a mangled wreck in a
police garage a few hundred yards away
from where they were sitting; a young boy
lay dead in the local undertakers, and in
Munroe's jacket pocket, in a little piece
of polythene, was a blob of rubbery gum.
It was out of the question that he should
leave now.

Appearing to draw on huge reserves of
magnanimity, Munroe said, "Look, let's
split the difference. For a couple of days,
three at the very most, let's see what we
can turn up. And then, no matter what,
we'll go public. What do you say?"

It was a face-saver. The sort of
acceptable compromise that diplomats
and trade union negotiators spend hours
and days behind closed doors trying to
arrive at.

164

* * *

Huddled in the corner of the quiet lunch
time pub they pooled their thoughts. Rees
had seen the place where the car had
left the road. It had flown through a
hedge and hit an oak tree after sliding
thirty yards across a wet, fallow field.
There was a slight bend on the road,
but nothing much. The road had been
damp and a bit greasy. It was the night
after the big storm. Munroe had been in
Birmingham.

"Could he have killed himself?" asked
Munroe disingenuously.

"Well, he did!"

"You know what I mean," said
Munroe.

"It's not a sensible way to try and do
away with yourself," said Rees.

Both policemen had seen the result of
crashes in which cars left the road at
sixty or seventy miles an hour and no
one in them should have survived. But
the facts contradicted these impressions.
If God was on your side He could throw
you from the smouldering wreck, hurl

165



you from a broken window before the
metal crushed you, or tuck you down
in some safe spot as your friends had
their strings of life pulled apart like

marionettes.

"What about the family? Anything
there?"

"Nothing unusual. Grief, terrible tears
from the mother. She's a bit too fond of
the bottle these days, but no amount of
gin would have helped her that day. The
father's old-school, ex-military, a colonel,
stiff upper lip. He doesn't show much,
but he was devastated. They're one of the
biggest families up here. Live in the Hall
over at Llantrisillio. English, but they've
been here generations. Our youngsters get
killed in farming accidents, a tractor turns
over, or they get caught up in the reeds,
swimming in the mere on a hot summer's
day. Their kid kills himself in his father's
big car."

"Was it just the three?"

"There's a girl. A younger sister,
about fifteen or sixteen. She cracked
up. Devoted to him. Older brother and
all. It was me that went up to the Hall

166

to tell them. Took Jane with me."

"Jane?"

"The young WPC. You know, she was
on the rustling team. She was here last
night. All the lads fancy her. It was
her first fatality. I took her along to
help comfort the mother and daughter.
But neither of them would let her near
them. That mother broke down, just
collapsed. They got the doctor to her.
The girl wouldn't believe it, and then
she just ran out of the room and down
the drive. I could see her running full
pelt, poor kid."

"What was the lad doing in the car?"

"No one seemed to know. The old
man didn't say much, but he couldn't
understand why he was in it. Apparently
the boy didn't usually use it. I got the
feeling the old man didn't like anyone
using it, really."

"So where was he going?"

"No idea. In his pocket he had a bit of
paper with some figures on it. It's with
all his personal stuff in the evidence bag.
It could have been anything. Some sort
of calculations, I think. He had a few

167

bob in change. A packet of fags, and
some cigarette papers, but no tobacco.
And that was it. Bit of a mystery what
he was doing."

"What did he do for a living?"

"He was at college in London. Art
college. His father said he was up here
on some sort of drawing holiday."

"What about this, then? Any thoughts?"
Munroe put the polythene bag with the
ball of rubber gum in it on the table
between them.

Rees picked it up, shrugged his
shoulders and said, "To hold the bonnet
down? Maybe it was rattling, or loose
or something. We'd better ask the old
man.

"Yes. Maybe. But what if this is all that was holding it down?"

"What? Fixed that way? But who
wanted to hurt Charles Somerville?"

"Kill him, as it turned out."

"Yes. Kill him."

The landlord called 'time' and the two
men went out to the urinal in the yard.
It had the male, lunch-time pub smell of
tobacco and beer and urine. They stood

168

there, Munroe with a hand stretched out
to the white-painted wall in front of
him, Rees looking down at the glazed
trough as sodden cigarette ends floated
past him.

169


17

It started to drizzle as Munroe drove 
the few miles to Llantrisillio. The rain
comforted him. He had walked a beat
often enough to know that it could
be one of his best friends. Smalltime
crooks stay indoors, perhaps not West
End bank robbers and airport heisters,
but opportunist burglars. Crime figures
were always down in Birmingham on wet

weekends.

When he got to the village, he stopped
on the bottom lane and looked up the
sweeping fields to the house itself. The
rain was falling heavily now, a steady,
warm, May downpour. He flicked the
wipers on and off to swish the water away
and the windscreen demister whirred
quietly to clear the condensation inside.

The Hall looked sombre. It faced south
and lay tucked in beneath a fine stand
of beech which was just losing its grey
austerity as it flushed into spring leaf.

170


Like most of the older houses in the
district, it was built of the local grey
blue stone which made it look cold and
forbidding. From two of the six tall
chimneys, smoke funnelled up through
the steady downpour.

He wound down the window, dropped
his cigarette stub into the wet hedgerow
and rattled over the cattle grid.

Rees had told him that Somerville did
farm, but in a faddish sort of way: he was
unlikely, he said, to be found laying land
drains or planting corn. The ewes that
grazed the fields around Plas Trisillio
were lawn-mowers and not, primarily,
beasts for market.

Munroe's car crunched to a halt on the
gravel in front of the porch on the west
side. He pulled on the bell and stood
waiting for some minutes.

Eventually the door was opened by a
small lady with striking black hair and
opaque blue eyes.

"Good afternoon. Mrs Somerville? I'm
John Munroe. Inspector Munroe. I'm
sorry to trouble you, but I'm here to clear
up a few points about your son's accident."

171

Her gaze was unremitting. After
an uncomfortably long pause Dorothea
Sormerville said, "I see," and turned away
intoo the vestibule. Munroe stepped inside
on to the cold, red quarry tiles.

She paused at the sheaf of letters and The Times that were still arranged neatly
on the hall table. She fingered through
the; post, picked up none of it, and then
shuffled down the dark passage.

Assuming that he was to accompany
her, he followed. She disappeared through
a big, squat door to the right and he
followed her into the kitchen. It was painted in cream gloss, and had very
high ceilings. The colour reminded him
of the sort of young person's detention
centre that he might have visited years
ago>. There was a copy of Country Life on the table and a cup with some coffee
in :it on a sideboard near the Aga. The
saucer to the cup was on the table.

She peered into a mug, shook Nescafe
into it from an open jar and then stood
waiting by the electric kettle. He could
see that it was not switched on. As
if reading his mind, she pressed the
172

switch. He waited rather awkwardly while
they listened for the water to come to
the boil.

Neither of them spoke and he looked
around at the vast kitchen. It was an
extraordinary mixture of 'modern' kitchen
units that had not been fitted, either to
one another or to the walls, and aged,
dark, heavy furniture that had presumably
been in the family for generations and
would make a fortune at auction.

Next to a tall oak dresser with pink and
white Worcester cups and saucers, plates
and serving dishes randomly displayed
upon it, was a cheap automatic washing
machine which had wandered a foot
away from the wall during the course
of completing its last cycle. There was a
stack of picture-moulding in one corner
beside a long-range cobweb remover, a
few pheasant feathers tied to a six-foot
piece of cane. Hanging from the ceiling
was a slatted wooden clothes airer from
which were suspended several shirts and
a pair of long pants.

On the dresser was a half-full bottle of
French red wine, and in the rack, several

173

others. When she reached behind her to
get the milk from the refrigerator, he
saw that there was a bottle of vodka
in there.

Before the kettle had come to the boil
she poured the water into his mug and
put the coffee before him.

"Thank you," he said.

She sat and he took the chair that
was closest to him. Her skin was very
pale and had an unhealthy sheen, as if
she was never exposed to the fresh air.
She was about five feet four, wore loose,
department-store jeans with a little cotton
blouse underneath a maroon jumper.
Around her shoulders hung a cardigan
which was far too big for her. She looked
as if she needed several substantial meals
and a good night's sleep.

She looked directly at him, apparently
ready to talk. Her blue eyes had milky
whites, like those of blind people. He
couldn't read what was there. She was
detached, appeared to have little interest
in him nor in anything he was likely to
say. She was obviously still in shock, and
he wished that he had not come.

174

"Your son ..." he began hesitantly.

"Yes?" she said, looking up at him.

"I am sorry, but I have to ask you a
few questions about ..."

She looked at him, but still registered
nothing.

"... about the circumstances in which
he died," he continued.

"A car crash," she said.

"Yes. It was a car crash, of course."
He opened his note-book and scrutinized
a blank page. "Do you know where
your son was going, Mrs Somerville? Or
why?"

She looked at him and there was
that unsettling pause again that somehow
denied him the initiative in the questioning.
"No, I'm afraid I don't. Your colleagues
have asked me the same question."

"I see," he said. "But where might he have been going?" And, keen to
encourage her, "Shopping? To see a
friend? A girlfriend, perhaps?"

"I really don't know," -she said. It was
the 'really' that carried the message of
dismissive superiority. She immediately
tried to ameliorate the slight with a

175

conciliatory, "He was a grown-up young
man, you know. He came and went..."

"OF course," said Munroe, accepting
the olive twig.

He drank some of his lukewarm coffee
and a rotund little house dog waddled
into the kitchen, completely ignored the
policeman's presence and flopped down
on the rug in front of the Aga.

He tried another approach. "We can't
understand why the car left the road. It
shouldn't have done. It wasn't an old car.
It was your husband's, I believe?"

"Yes," she said.

"There was no other vehicle involved.
Your son had not been drinking. The
normal things that one looks for, perhaps
expects to find ... in this kind of
situation. There seems to be a mystery."

He hadn't asked a direct question but
she was not responding to suggestion. He
was beginning to flounder. She didn't
help him. Perhaps she was in shock;
maybe she was alcoholic, but she was
making him feel ridiculous. His words
sounded absurd. His Birmingham accent
gross. It was a class difference. All his

176

experience was worth nothing before
people like this. They never doubted their
place, and that made them unassailable.
He felt uncouth and lumpen because she
was wealthy and spoke well and shook

the coffee from an open jar and didn't
use a butter dish. The house was like
a slum that had fallen about inside a
museum. But people like this had nothing
to prove. It was people like him who read
the Sunday colour supplements and went
to evening classes to learn things and
percolated their coffee and preened their
houses in pastel shades.

He was irked by her totally effortless
superiority. He had come with sympathy
and understanding and a wish to solve the
apparent mystery of her boy's death. And
now he felt resentful and antagonistic and
was almost smug that she was grieving
over her privileged son. But immediately
he loathed himself for this callousness.

"Do you understand me, Mrs Somerville?
What I'm saying is that we're not satisfied
that your son's death was an accident."

There was no gasp of shock or even
acknowledgement from her. She said, "I

177

see," and then, quietly, "I'm going to
have a drink. I don't suppose . . . ? You
never do in the films ..."

He was tempted to, just to contradict
the convention, but he still had the
alcohol of the previous night coursing
in his veins, as well as the couple or
pints from lunch-time. "No, not for me,
thank you. It's a bit early," he lied.

There was a certain easing of the
atmosphere as she played the red wine
around the tumbler and then took
frequent sips at it.

Without revealing the gum on the
bonnet, he eventually spelled out for
her his suspicions: it was possible that
the car had been tampered with; if
that was so, then the likely victim of
any accident would have been the usual
driver: her husband. Had she any idea
of anyone who would wish to do the
Colonel any harm? Business enemies?
Had he dismissed any staff in the last
year or two? Anything of the sort at all?

If she was non-committal when answering
about her son, she was positively taciturn
about her husband. There had been

178

casual workers, she thought, people who
came and went, seasonal employees, but
no bad feeling of which she was aware.
He would have to speak to her husband.
She didn't know the details of what went
on on the estate.

"Is your husband available?" he asked.

"He's gone to Scotland. To buy cattle.
He's . . . trying to keep busy. It's his way
of ... " Her voice trailed away. "He
should be back in a day or two."

Munroe said he would call back and
see him soon.

Before he left, he asked her permission
to see her son's room.

"Of course," she answered, and led
him up the stairs to the door.

It had been tidied since the boy's death
and, although his things were there,
someone had folded his clothes and put
them into the wardrobe and dressers; his
books were stacked neatly on the desk
beneath the window. The waste basket
was empty; there was no towel on the
oak, free-standing rail. It was now a
room without an occupant, and told
him little.

179


He thanked her for her time, offered 
his condolences again and left. The rain 
had stopped and the sun come out from 
a cleared sky.

As he walked to his car he was
drawn by a noise from the stable-yard.
Inside one of the boxes there was a
rhythmic slapping and rubbing sound
and it was some moments, stepping
into the darkness of the stable out of
the bright light of the yard, before he
discerned a girl in Levi's and a man's
checked shirt saddle-soaping the leather
horse-tackle that she had spread over one
of the partitions of the stalls.

She was working with absorption and
he stood for a few seconds watching her
as she rubbed the soap into the dark,
damp leather.

He was about to turn and go, leaving
her to her work, when she looked round.
She stood up, arched her back and
pushed the voluminous shirt into her
jeans with one hand. She smiled and
came towards him, beads of sweat on
her brow, the wet, lathered sponge in
her hand. "Hello, I'm Susie. Are you

180

looking for the Colonel?"

"Munroe. John Munroe," he said,
stepping forward and extending his hand.
"I was just talking to Mrs Somerville."
He paused, "About Charles. Are you

. . . you're not his sister are you?"

"No. I work here. With the horses. Part
time, just a few hours a week."

"I see."

The girl took the initiative. "It's a
terrible thing." She paused and frowned
and looked at him, as if reminding him
of the tragedy, "About their son."

"Yes," he said feebly. He was charmed
by her appearance. Her nose was a little
large for her face and gave her a slightly
gawky, unusual look that he liked. She
had full lips and a fresh complexion with
a few freckles around her nose. She wiped
her forehead at last. There was a rip in
the underarm of her shirt and he glimpsed
the fair hair there.

"I'd hardly met him," she said. "I saw
him a couple of times, just to say hello to.
But we haven't been here long. He was
home for a day or two. And then there
was the . . . you know . . . the accident."

181

She had a faint yellow bruise beneath
her cheekbone. It could have been a birth
mark of some sort, but he thought not.
He wanted to ask her.

He took out his cigarettes. "Do you
mind?" he said.

"Not at all, but not in here . . . the
straw and everything."

"Of course," he said. They walked to
the door and he offered her a Gold Leaf
from his packet, but she declined. They
sat on the step together and she rolled a
cigarette from the tobacco tin in her shirt
pocket.

"Are you a friend of the family?" she
asked hesitantly.

"No. I'm a policeman." And then, too
soon, "I'm making a few inquiries." He'd
said this ten thousand times, but it always
sounded ridiculous.

"I see," she said.

They each paid close attention to their
cigarette-smoking.

"You're not from round here. Not with
that accent," she said.

"You noticed!" he said, and they both
laughed far too extravagantly.

182

He didn't want to tell her that there
suspicious circumstances about the boy's
death. "It's the normal sort of thing after
something like this. We have to check the
car. See if everything was all right. See
that there's nothing more ..."

"Yes?" she said.

"Unusual ... out of the ordinary."

"And so you want to speak to the
Colonel? He's away, I'm afraid."

"There's no hurry. I'll catch him
sometime." He got to his feet, took
off his jacket and slung it over his
shoulder in an exaggerated display of
a casual demeanour. They each had a
damp patch on their outer thighs where
her wet sponge had sat between them on
the step. "I don't suppose you've seen
anything suspicious, have you? Anyone
out of the ordinary, heard anything odd,
anything at all unusual?"

"This is the 'normal sort of thing' is
it?" she said, looking at him knowingly.

"More or less," he replied.

"We haven't been here long enough
to know what is usual. We'd only been
here a few weeks when there was that

183


big rustling arrest. We left London to
get away from things, and suddenly,
we're in the middle of this enormous
police operation with people watching
from hideouts with binoculars and car
chases on the lane and roadblocks and
God knows what." She glanced away
from him, surprised herself with the
beginnings of a blush as she remembered
making love to an exhausted James that
night.

"It wasn't quite like that," he said.

"Were you involved?" she asked,
interested.

"Only a bit," he replied modestly.

"Well, that's the way they tell it in the
pub. Only I suppose it gets better at each
telling! When the press were down here
afterwards, they were throwing money
around like mad, just to get anybody to
say anything."

"Yes, I bet. Was there anything
else, though? Anyone around here? Any
strange types? Anything at all that didn't
look right to you?"

She played with her tobacco tin, rotated
it slowly through her fingers, and pushed

184

" 

it up on her knee, and then round again,
and up.


"Don't laugh." She was quite stern
with him and he liked the friendly
little admonition that signalled a kind
of understanding between them. "But I
did see something that I thought was
strange. At least for round here." She
got to her feet, "About a week ago, it
must have been the day before Charles
. . . you know . . . had his accident ... I
was on my way to work here and I saw
a big car parked on the bottom lane."

"And?" he said.

"That's it. Just a big car with two men
in it. And the driver was black. It did
strike me as a bit unusual. I haven't
seen any black people up here. Not one.
I told you it was nothing." She got up
and started to walk with him towards the
front of the house.

"Not at all," he said. "It could be
useful. When you say it was a big car,
do you know what it was?"

"I'm hopeless with cars. I can't tell one
from another. But it was big. And it was
blue. Dark blue."

185


"Have a look at mine."

They walked through the yard with its
pleasant smell of sun after the shower on
the red brick, and the sweet tang of the
hay in the stalls.

As soon as she saw the Zephyr she
laughed, "No, it was a really big car.
It was like . . . enormous. Much bigger
than this. I don't think it was English.
It was huge and low. Dark blue. I'm
sorry. I said I was hopeless. I'm just
not interested in cars, never have been.
Look." She pointed to her green and
yellow Bedford van that was listing in

the shade.

"Thanks, anyway," he said. "You never
know what leads to something ..."

"What is it you're looking for?" she

asked seriously.

"It's nothing I can go into now. We just
need to check a few things. I'd be glad if
you'd not mention our having had a chat.
It might be better." She didn't answer but
her look invited him to tell her more, and
he was tempted. She looked so pretty and
her eyes had a quick, trusting intelligence
about them.

186

Something would not let him leave
without asking. With one hand on the
open car door, he lifted the other to
her cheek, very close but not touching,
"What happened? Is it a bruise?"

"It's nothing," she said evasively.

"Nothing?"

"A friend."

Now he waited, unsatisfied. He wanted
her to say more. She struggled for a
form of words, but only repeated, "It's

nothing."

He raised his eyebrows and got into

the car as she stood there.

"What does your 'friend' do? Does he
live around here?" The question was
legitimate, but by no means disinterested.

"No, not any more," she said.

He turned the key in the ignition and
smiled at her. "Good. I hope I'll see you
again. Would you tell the Colonel that I

called?"

"Sure," she said, and watched him

bump slowly away down the drive.

187


18

Tony Rees was a nice man. He walked his dog) often read Gwennan, his youngest,
her bedtime story, played football with
Gwyn in the park on Sunday afternoons,
and usually made the early morning tea
on Saturdays. But he had his pride. And
when Munroe, barely able to contain his
excitement, led him into the corridor to
spill his hot news about two strangers
in a big car being in the area recently,
Rees took a certain professional pleasure
in dropping his Welsh wet blanket on the
Birmingham man's news.

He already knew all about the two
men, up from London in their blue
Mercedes; everyone did. They had been
like celebrities in the village pub at
Llanfrynach where they stayed. They
were looking for a hotel, or a country
club in the area. Londoners, a bit flash,
but they seemed all right. They'd been
here for a couple of nights, and then

188

gone. Maybe they'd found what they
were looking for, who knows?

"But when did they leave?" asked
Munroe of the other man. "When
exactly?"

"I don't know, John," said Rees, the
use of his colleague's forename signalling
his slight testiness at being questioned
in this way. "They'll be able to tell
us at the Bear. Is there a connection,
then?"

"I doubt it," said Munroe. "It's
probably nothing, but I'll check them

out.

"

"How did you get on with Somerville?"
asked Rees as the two men walked
towards the office.

"He wasn't there. He's gone to bloody
Scotland, won't be back for a couple of
days. But I spoke to his missus. Didn't
get anywhere at all with her. What's going
on there?"

"Nothing! Somerville's been playing
away for years. George Fry's wife over
at Llandrinio."

"Who's Fry?" said Munroe.

"Solicitor in Shrewsbury. Has his own

189

practice, biggest in the county," replied
Rees.

"Bloody hell. Far from the Madding
Crowd ..." muttered Munroe. "And
does he know?"

"Do I?" said Rees laconically.

"And he doesn't mind?"

"He has his own particular . . . friends,
so they say."

"I see. And Mrs Colonel? What about
her?" asked Munroe.

"I think her comfort comes out of a
bottle these days. A shame. She used to
be the belle of the ball. You can still just
see it on her good days."

"Why didn't you tell me this before I
went up there?" said Munroe, chagrined.

"You were in such a hurry." Rees
tapped his nose, "Local knowledge, you
see, John. Local knowledge."

"Touche," said Munroe.

* * *

Munroe went up to the empty, quiet
snooker room on the first floor of the
police station. It was a good table. Plenty

190

of nap on the baize, well-brushed, and
neatly cut pockets. He took off his jacket
and put the colours on their spots. The
regulars' cues were hung in their metal
tubes, each one padlocked and named,
but even the guest cues in the rack
were good: all ash, with long, even
grain and good, well shaped, rounded
tips.

He flipped his notebook on to the
window-sill, lit a cigarette and laid it in
the ashtray; the blue smoke curled up in
the sunlight.

Perhaps the Colonel had had a minor
bump? Someone had reversed into him
while parking, or he had run into a car
in a traffic queue.

His right leg rigid, he crooked his left,
playing the cue through his bridge and
potted the yellow off its spot. The white
ran through sweetly for the green.

He had stuck a bit of gum between
the bonnet and the grille to stop the
movement or rattle. 

He overhit the green and it juddered
in the jaws before dropping in. The white
followed through and stopped tight up

191

against the cushion. Only two shots and
his game was starting to come apart. He
hit the brown full on and the white fouled
into the centre pocket.
And he had 'killed' his own son?
He re-spotted the white and met the
brown and the cushion perfectly, the ball
hugging the side and dropping into the
far pocket.

It could have been the Colonel himself.
But if someone had bumped his car, he
would have told the police by now?
He played the long blue and missed it
by a mile.

He needed to speak to him. But he
was in Scotland, and Munroe couldn't
wait. He also had a nagging doubt about
Londoners who arrived in the sticks to
look for hotels at the same time as
wealthy youngsters died in mysterious
circumstances.

He laid his cue on the table and picked
up his jacket. The Gold Leaf cigarette
burned on in the ashtray. If Somerville
had had only a minor bump, either the
local garage or his insurance broker would
probably know. Downstairs in the back

192

office he phoned the Rover main dealer
in Shrewsbury.

The service manager consulted his
records and reported that the car had
received all its services: one, a post
delivery check; a fifteen-hundred-mile
running-in check; and then three-thousand
mile services, always within a few hundred
miles of the due time. There was no
damage to the car when they had serviced
it two months ago and there had been
no other communication from Colonel
Somerville since that time. Munroe
thanked him for his time and rang off.

He checked the plastic wallet of
documents that had been taken from the
car's glove compartment, and telephoned
the Colonel's insurance broker. The
broker knew about the fatality, but apart
from this terrible tragedy there had been
no insurance claim of any sort during the
last twelve years.

When he had rung off the Inspector
wondered if, for whatever reason, Somerville
might have put a claim through direct to
the insurance company. It was possible.
He might have opened his file, seen the

193

company's name and rung them direct,
especially in the heat of the moment,
after a little accident, for example.

Trie receptionist at Northern Star put
him through to claims and a girl there
sent him back to inquiries as it wasn't
a current claim but an inquiry about
whether one had been lodged. That
would be filed in another department.
En route around the huge building in
Manchester, he was cut off and had to
dial again. This time he got through
to the right place. As the woman on
the other end of the line made clear
rather sniffily, most people knew whether
they had a claim against an insurance
company without having to telephone
to find out. He told her again that he
was a policeman and was involved in an
investigation. She was unimpressed and
he heard the receiver hit the desk as she
went off to check his inquiry.

He could hear that the other girls in the
office were going to Sandra's hen party
that Friday, but still hadn't decided what
to buy for her with the thirty-five shillings
that they had collected in the department.

194

After a few minutes he heard the shuffle
of papers as Mrs Connell picked up the
receiver.

"Hello. We've no record of any claim
against that name." She frowned at the
silence from the other end of the phone.
The Inspector was irked.

"Hello, are you still there? Was there
something else?" she asked haughtily.

Munroe dropped the receiver into its
cradle.

195


19

The next morning,, while Rees was in
court giving evidence on a burglary
case, Munroe used the Yellow Pages
and turned up the addresses of the

half-dozen garages within a few miles'
radius of Llantrisillio.

It was pleasant enough police work,
tootling around on a warm May day,
introducing himself to one-man garage
owners with greasy hands, and asking
them if they had ever done any work on
Colonel Somerville's black Rover.

They all knew the man. It was a
community that knew everyone in it
for twenty miles around. But none of
the garages that he called at had ever
done more than sell the Colonel a few
gallons of petrol.

Munroe had that sensation of looking
for the lost cricket ball: of course you
have to look in the hedge, just here,
but all the time there is the suspicion

196

that the object of the search may be
somewhere else entirely, all your time
here being completely wasted.

He pulled on to the forecourt of the
fourth garage on his list, Geraint Lewis's
two-pump, corrugated-iron workshop affair on the edge of the village of Llansillin.
It was twelve noon lunch-time, and the
owner was sprawled at the doors of his
workshop in a seat that he had removed
from an Armstrong-Siddley years ago. It
was a massive brown leather thing the
size of an armchair. The man looked
up from his local paper and watched
closely as Munroe walked towards him.
He made no attempt to move or greet
the policeman. When Munroe was close
enough to see the depression that the
man's dirty fingers had made in the
white bread sandwich in his hand, the
garageman volunteered a "Morning."

"Morning," said Munroe, "lovely day."
He was learning. A month ago and he
would have already asked his questions
and been driving away by now. But in the
short time that he had been working here
he had learned to adjust his interrogatory

197

clock. He said no more, half turned his
back on the man lounging in the chair
and togk in the view of the Carno Hills
in front of him.

Lewis watched closely as Munroe,
caricaturing a tourist, breathed in the
vista. He had not himself consciously
looked at the hills for months. They
were as much a part of his landscape
as the baked bean tins and cereal packets
on a grocer's shelves are to a grocer:
sometimes they were green, sometimes
blue or mauve or filled with black clouds
and rain; sometimes covered with snow in
March, but always they were just there.

Eventually, the corpulent man's curiosity
triumphed. "What can I do for you?"
he drawled. Munroe had won the first
round.

"Just an inquiry," said the policeman
nonchalantly. He turned and showed the
man his warrant card. The garageman
peered at it and was still trying to
examine it as Munroe folded it away.

He struggled out of the low chair and
got to his feet. "What is it, then?" he
asked.

198

"Only routine. Colonel Somerville's
car. I wondered if you'd ever done any
work for him?"

"Colonel Somerville," repeated the
man slowly "Lives at the Hall at
Llantrisillio? His boy died in that terrible
crash?"

"That's right," said Munroe, "that's
him."

"I don't think we've ever done any
work for him. I suppose he goes to
Brian Davies in Llanfrynach, if he goes
anywhere local.' That would be the
nearest. Have you spoken to Brian?"

"Brian Davies . . . Llanfrynach ..."
Munroe looked at his notebook. "Yes,
I've seen him. He says he never did any
work on the car I'm interested in. It was
the big Rover."

"The one that his boy died in?" said
the Welshman, sniffing the possibility
of someone else's wrong-doing and the
chance that he might himself benefit in
some as yet undefined way.
"It's just a routine inquiry. You know,
when something like this has happened,
we have to check everything."


199


"Of course," said the man, conspiratorially.

"Do you have anyone else to help you

here?"

"Only me and the wife. There's no call


for more than that."


"No one else?" said Munroe, dejected.

"Just a lad on Saturdays."

"Right," said Munroe. He wandered
over and looked in at the dark workshop
with its trolley jacks, oil cans, spanners,
sockets and pile of used batteries in the
corner. The pit was covered with a line
of oily railway sleepers. "Thanks for
your help," he said, and walked towards

his car.

The man followed him, the sandwich
held slightly away from his chest in his
dirty hand. Now that the policeman
was going, and his own impunity was
assured, he wanted to play a part, be
involved, "Just Saturday mornings ..."

he offered.

Munroe got into his car and started to
pull the door to. "Sorry?" he said.

"He doesn't work Saturday afternoons.
Plays for Llantrisillio. Centre-forward.

200

He's always in the paper. Scores bloody
goals every week."

"Good," said Munroe, not even bothering
to feign interest.

The window was half way down. The
man was looking in. The Inspector wound
it all the way and rested his arm on
the sill. He started the engine. "Good
afternoon."

The man took a step back from the

car.
Munroe disengaged the gear. "Just for
the record ..."

Lewis looked at him vacantly.

"I'd better have his name. For the
record." He took his notebook from the
passenger seat and propped it against the
steering-wheel. Lewis thrust his head in
the open window. His breath smelled of
cheese and onion. Munroe averted his
face and wrote down the boy's name.
The man wasn't sure of the number of
the council house where he lived, but
there were only a dozen in the block,
and Peter Ryan's was the one by the
lamp post. You couldn't miss it.

"Thanks," said Munroe.

201


"It's a pleasure," Lewis said earnestly,
as the Inspector pushed the column

change up into first. As he drove out
of earshot, Lewis shouted, "Anything I
can do, sir. Any time."	

* * *

Back at the station, Rees had left a
message that he would be back at about
six. Munroe went to the filing cabinet
and took out again the notes on the boy's
post-mortem. He scanned them, and
picked up the phrase that had troubled
him the first time that he had seen it:
'Left calf, deep laceration, unlikely to
have been caused by trauma sustained
in fatal car crash.'	

The crash had happened over a week
ago and, as far as the pending inquest
was concerned, there were no suspicious
circumstances. Apart from reporting the
fatality to them, and his own inconclusive
visit yesterday, no one had yet questioned
Charles's family. More importantly, the
police had seen no reason to visit the
boy's London address.

202

According to Dorothea Somerville, no
one from the family had yet been there.
Her husband intended to go to the boy's
flat and bring his things home next week,
after the inquest.

Munroe knew that if there was anything
to see, any clue as to why someone might
wish to harm the boy, he had to see
the flat now. It was nearly three in the
afternoon. The last thing he wanted to
do was start the two-hundred-mile drive
to London.

On Rees's desk he left a note, "Gone
South, young man. Will call you later,
John."

* * *

At Montford Bridge on the River Severn
he filled up the Zephyr with four star
and headed down the A5 towards
Wolverhampton. The light was beginning
to fade and the thunderous trucks were
rumbling down the black tarmac road
to the industrial Midlands and beyond.
He slotted into the rhythm and began to
weave in and out of the traffic, just this

203

side of danger. He felt resigned.

He stopped for coffee and a warm grey
pasty on the M6 outside Birmingham and
listened to the desultory chat and music
on the car radio. He smoked to try and
stay alert. The ashtray was overflowing.
At Hendon he narrowly avoided a rear
end shunt as he searched the glove
compartment for the London A to Z.

He had missed the rush hours, and it
was still too early for people's evenings
out,, so the roads were quiet. With the A to Z that refused to stay open propped
on his knee, one finger trailing the grey
lines, he skirted Regent's Park, crossed
wide Marylebone Road and headed for Chelsea. He found the flat in Elm Park
Road and arrived at just gone eight.

He pressed the bell at the front door
and heard the faint ring in the distance,
through a couple of doors and up a flight
of stairs. He opened the heavy door with
the key that he had taken from the plastic
bag of the dead boy's belongings at the
station.

There was a timer on a push button for
the light on the staircase and he depressed

204

it and went up to the first floor. The
words 'Charles Somerville' were printed
on a cardboard slip, and pinned to the
door surround of the first-floor flat. With
the Yale key he opened the door.

The flat had a musty and stale air
about it. He switched on the lights. He
felt more like a thief than a policeman.

The place was in disarray. Had the boy
left in a hurry? A real hurry? Did he live
in this kind of mess always? Someone had
surely been here after him. But there was
no sign of a forced. Maybe someone had
a key. A friend? His girl?

The mess was the kind of thing he had
seen at countless professional burglaries.
Not the out and out destruction by kids
after they had lifted the bit of cash and
jewellery, but the methodical turning over
of the absent resident's possessions. Of
course pro's didn't fold things up and
put them back in the drawers, but at
least they didn't chuck flour about and
urinate in the back of the television set.

Munroe was delighted that the place
had been gone over: unless it was a
random burglary it meant that someone

205

had an interest in Charlie and his flat and
his doings which might give substance to
the Inspector's hunch about his death.

He 'opened the refrigerator. The milk
was off. There was a cup of tinned
tomatoes which had developed a gauzy
green fungus. The butter was rancid.
Although the boy had died only a week
ago, he had been in Llantrisillio for two
or three days before that, and the flat
appeared to have been unoccupied at
least since then.

On the table by the window, among
the junk mail and art books, was a
London Evening Standard dated Friday
the twenty-sixth of April.

It was open at the car ad's. As he
dropped it back on the table, he noticed
a faint pencil ring around a couple of the
cars among the hundreds listed there. He
put the paper in his jacket pocket.

As he opened the door to the windowless
bathroom, an automatic fan started
to whirr on the far wall. He stood at the
door and watched the regular drip of the
cold tap in the bath that had left a green
mark over the years. On the tiled floor

206

there was talc and dust and a knot of hair
that someone had pulled from a hairbrush
and let fall where they had stood.

In the bedroom he rifled through the
clothes and drawers. There was a piece
of cannabis in the bedside cabinet, and he
recalled the cigarette papers and cigarettes
in the evidence bag.

He took a last look, turned off the
lights, and closed the door of the flat
behind him. In the bathroom, the fan
continued to whirr, and the little knot of
hair moved back and forth on the floor.

* * *

Downstairs, the girl from the ground
floor flat was waiting for him. She had
heard his movements in the flat above.
She was a little afraid of confronting him,
but as soon as she saw him on the stairs
she knew that she had nothing to fear. He
looked tired, but there was no aggression
in his brown eyes. "Hello," he said.

"Hi," she replied, and took a step
back from the banister where she was
waiting.

207


"Do you live here?" he asked.

"Yes, in there." She pointed to the
door behind her in the hall. "Are you
looking for Charlie?"

He didn't know what to answer.
Charlie was on a cold slab two hundred
miles away. "Not exactly," he said.

"You don't want to see him, 'exactly',
but you're in his flat for half an hour."
She drew back. "Who are you? What do
you want Charlie for?"

He drew out his warrant card. "I'm
a policeman. Charlie's had an accident,
I'm afraid."

"What kind of accident?"

"In a car."

"Is he all right?" she said, concerned.

"Do you think we could ... ?" and
he indicated the door to her flat.

She hesitated but then led them into
the ground-floor room that looked out
on to the road.

The room smelled of incense and
there was a pink scarf draped around
the table lamp in the corner; there were
some spindly plants that were probably
cannabis standing by the window. He

208

had seen plenty of rooms like it over
the years. Every little drug bust that he
had been on took place somewhere just
like this. He had seen the magazines on
the floor and the records on the shelves
and the posters on the wall: Hendrix and Pink Floyd and The Doors. He'd
seen the facile aphorisms that exorted
the world to turn on, tune in and
drop out; that the longest journey began
with the first footstep; that the Hobbits
lived in Middle Earth; and that if you
joined the army you could travel the
world, meet interesting people, and kill

them.

Over the marble mantelpiece was a
print of one of the maxims of Kahlil
Gibran:

You give but little when you give

of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself

that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but

things you keep and guard for


fear you may need them tomorrow?

209

They sat opposite one another either
side of the fireplace. "When did you last
see Charlie?" he asked her, as she lit a
cigarette.

She ignored the question, and insisted.,
"What's happened to him?"


"Look," he said, "tell me what you
know, and then I'll tell you all I can."

She looked at him carefully and then,
resigned, began, "He came in, packed a
couple of bags and left. I saw him go.
I was with a friend of mine, we'd just
got in from a gig at the Roundhouse.
It was Friday night, well, four or five
in the morning. Charlie came to the
front, went upstairs, and half an hour
later he was gone. We were sitting in the
window watching the dawn come up. He
just waved and went."

"Was he in a car?"

"Yes." She sat forward and knocked
the ash from her cigarette into the cold
marble hearth, "That was weird, I'd never
seen him driving. I didn't even know he could drive."

"What kind of car was it?" he asked,
without expectation.

210


"An Austin 1100. Sherwood Green, 'E'
registered; it must have been a '65."

He thought that she was having some
sort of joke at his expense. "Are you a
student of cars, Miss . . . ?"

"Tudor. Elaine Tudor. And no, I'm
not. But I've got two brothers who are.
And if you'd spent as many Sunday
afternoons and holidays as I have driving
with a father and two brothers who are
identifying every last feature of every
new car that they pass on the road,
you'd either end up totally mad, or as
knowledgeable as I am!"

He smiled, and looked around the
room with its posters and records, books
and plants. It was a world away from the
one that she had just alluded to. His look
said to her, "And all this?"

She shrugged and said, "Old habits die
hard," and then, seriously, "What kind of
accident has he had?"

"He had a car crash; a very bad one.
I'm afraid he's dead."

"Oh no!" she said, and her eyes filled
with tears. "How? Where?"

"Near his home, in Wales. Shortly after

211

 
he arrived there. He lost control of the car
on a bend."

"I don't know what to say," she offered.
She had never known anyone who had
died; her grandparents were all alive. 

After some moments' silence she was
glad when Munroe began again, "I'm
sorry to ask you questions, but I have
to know ..." His faltering voice and
hesitation was a sham, a respectful
pretence of grief. His own emotional
feelings had, for several days now, been
replaced by an intense curiosity about the
real reasons for the boy's death.	

"Has anyone been to see him during
the last few days?" he asked.	

She knew that Charlie dealt drugs,
there were a few callers at the flat
every week. "One or two," she answered
evasively. "Friends ..."	
He sniffed the hesitation. "Anyone in
particular?"

She was trying to connect the unpleasant
man on the stairs a week ago, and his
chilling statement, "We'll be seeing him,"
as he took Charlie's letters from the postbox,
with a car accident now.

212


She had learned to be wary of the

police, but she knew that the man she
had seen on the stairs that day looked
more like her idea of a real criminal than
the kind of people who were outside the
law because they smoked a bit of dope
or dropped an acid tab at weekends.

"A man did come. A day or so after
Charlie left. He didn't look very nice.
You know, sharp suit and mean face. He
was wearing a big gold watch. He came
in the evening, in a Mercedes. Another
guy was driving. I couldn't see the driver.
The man went into Charlie's flat. I was
afraid of him and all he said to me when
he left was, 'We'll be seeing him.' He was
a frightening guy."

Munroe took a detailed description
from Miss Tudor of the man she had
seen.

"Anyone else?" he asked.

"No one special. Just the usual people.
His friends from the college, that kind of
thing." And then she added involuntarily,
"This is terrible. It's so awful."

He said, "Yes, I'm sorry," in his most
maudlin voice. In fact, he couldn't wait

213

to pursue the men in the German car and
find out what they were really doing in
Montgomeryshire at the same time as the
son of the local land-owner was dying.

As he left he gave her his telephone
number and, at the metal grille that held
the letters, removed the half-dozen that
were addressed to Charles. "Thanks for
your help," he said.

'"Bye," she said, and managed a wan
smile.

214

20

At a fake velvet and brass pub around
the corner from Charles's flat, Munroe
took out the Evening Standard that he

had taken.

The first pencil ring circled a '1965
Mini, cloth upholstery, 26,000 miles,
good condition, 325 pounds 00 penceo.n.o.,' a Kensal
Rise telephone number.

The other was a 1966 Austin 1100.
'One owner, low mileage, VGC, 395 pounds pence
No offers.' Very severe, thought Munroe,
'No offers.' indeed. It was a Wimbledon

number.

He bought another pint of the gassy
Worthington beer and tried not to slip
off the red nylon plush seat. So why had
Charlie Somerville bought a car the day
before he left London? Had he needed
to move something? Had he needed to
get out fast? Get away from men who
came to his flat, and then followed him
a couple of hundred miles to the Welsh

215


borders? Faster than he could have done
travelling by train? And where was the
car now?

In the corridor that led to the gents'
there was a payphone on the wall. He
phoned Welshpool. The contrary desk
sergeant told him that Rees had gone
home. But he'd left a message. There
was a pause while the playful sergeant
waited for Munroe to ask him what it
was. "He said, 'Thanks for your message;
no message.'"

"Thanks," said Munroe, and replaced
the receiver.

He dialled the Mini at the Kensal Rise
number and a woman answered.

"I'm sorry to phone so long after the
advert was in," he began, "but I've been
away for a few days. Do you still have
the car for sale?"	'M

There was no response from the other
end, but the phone hung from its cord
and bounced on the wall as he heard,
"Dec . . . Ian . . . There's someone on
the phone about the car."

He heard the thump-thump of stairs
being descended rapidly.

216

"Hello? Hello, is it about the car?" The
speaker had a soft southern Irish burr, a
young man's voice.

"Yes," said Munroe. "Do you still


have it?"

"I do. Someone said they were coming
round to see it but never turned up."
There was a pause. "It's a good car.
Never let me down."

Munroe tried to sound interested. All
he wanted to know was if Charles had
been to see it, or phoned. He asked the
first thing that came into his head, "How
many owners has it had?"

"I'm the third," came the dispirited

reply.

"Thanks, that's fine," said Munroe,
stalling. "I'll call back when I've had a
word with my wife."

"Sure," said the Irishman.

"One thing," said Munroe, just before
the man could hang up. "A friend told
me about your car. I think he may have
phoned you about a week ago."

"So?" said the Irishman.

Someone pushed past him in the
corridor on their way to the toilets.

217


"He didn't buy it ... obviously . . . but
I think he phoned you . . . Do you
remember him, I wonder, a well-spoken
young man . . . ?"

"Look, do you want to see the car or
not? Loads of people phoned. No one
bought it. It's still for sale. Do you want
it? Do you even want to see it? Or do
you want something else?"

"I'm sorry," said the Inspector, "it's
just that ..." and before he could
continue, the phone at the other end
of the line was slammed down.

He went to the gents' and when he
got back to the phone a girl was using
it. He stood as far away from her as
he could, while at the same time letting
her know that he was waiting to make
a call. She twirled the cord around
her arm as she talked quietly in the
narrow corridor. Eventually her mumble
became more audible and animated. The
end of the conversation. He approached.
She replaced the receiver without even
glancing at him. "Thank you," he said
unnecessarily.

He got through to the Wimbledon

218

number and a woman answered. She
was wary, even with the safety of a
phone line between them. She had a
northern accent, Lancashire. Were there
any Londoners in London, he wondered.
He guessed from her voice that she
was in her early twenties. She was sorry,
the car was sold. It had been sold on
the first night that she had advertised

it.

Munroe told her that he was a
policeman and needed to know about
the buyer. Her tone changed immediately.
He sought to reassure her. No, there was
nothing wrong with the car.

"Incidentally, what colour was it?" he

asked.
"Why?" she retorted, surprised and

rather defensive.

"Please," he said, patronizingly, "what

colour was it?"

"Sherwood green. What exactly are you
trying to find out?" she asked.


He decided to come clean, or at least
tell her half the truth. "There's nothing,
wrong with the car, but the buyer may be
related to an inquiry that we are pursuing.

219

We need to know about his movements.
Anything that he did in the last week
or two might help us with the picture.
It won't take long, I assure you. Just a
couple of questions."
She agreed before she realized that he
meant he would need actually to see her.

She gave him the address and insisted
that she would not speak to him unless
he had identification.	

Just across the road from the pub he
stepped into the unworldly yellow light
of a late night florist's. He picked up 
some freesias and put them to his nose,  but all he could smell was the beer and
tobacco on his own breath. Daffodils and 
narcissi were everywhere. The pink tulips
caught his eye but they were still in tight
bud, and he only liked them when, in
the warmth, they opened themselves to
reveal their mysterious insides. He settled 
for blue and yellow iris.

The florist took the details. "They'll be "
there first thing tomorrow morning," said
the lady. Her greasy, orange foundation 
and red lips looked surreal in the yellow light. "What message?" she said, her

220

ballpoint poised above a little greetings

card.

"Just say, 'To Kath. With my love,'
please." And, as an afterthought, "No
Cellophane or spray with them. Just the
flowers, wrapped in paper. Is that all

right?"

"Certainly," she said, rather haughtily.
He seemed to think that it was these flowers that would be delivered to the
address in Birmingham the following
morning!

* * *

He drove south across Putney Bridge and
out through pleasant Roehampton into
Wimbledon. No. 34 Oldfield Road was
a terraced house in one of those forgotten
little streets off Wimbledon Park Road.

Built at the turn of the century in red
brick, each house in the short street had
a tiny bay window, most of which had
furtively parted from the main structure as
they sank into the inadequate foundations
of the London clay. There was a neat box hedge at No. 34 and behind it, the

221


original leaded, stained glass front door.

She checked his identification carefully,
stepping out into the front porch to do
so. When she was satisfied that he was
who he said he was she let him down
the hallway and into a kitchen which had
been opened up and now incorporated
the larder and old wash-house to make a
spacious, airy room. There were French
windows leading out on to a paving-slab
patio with a dozen plant pots filled with
primulas and bunches of daffodils that
had been tied up as they started to
die back.

She had fair, straight hair cut quite
short. He thought he might have heard
it called a 'choir boy'. Or was it 'page
boy'? She wore spectacles and smart
office clothes, a blue skirt and a nice
cream shirt; the jacket was draped over
a chair, but carefully, not to crease it.

She stood at the tidy work surface and
made them coffee.

"You said on the phone that you sold
the car straightaway?" he said.

"Yes. He was the first person to see

it.

222

"Was this him?"

She put the cups and tea-towel down
and squinted at the black and white
photograph of a young man outside a
riverside pub. He was acting the fool,
hands around the neck of a pretty
eighteen-year-old in a summer dress.

"Yes, that's him, I'm sure that's him."
She handed the photograph back to
the Inspector, was uncomfortable with
the picture of the happy, slightly out
of focus couple, to whom something,
she felt certain, must have happened.
"What's he done? Has he been involved
in something?"

"He's had an accident."

It confirmed her fears. "In my car?"
she said, shocked and afraid.

"No. There's no problem with the car
that you sold him. At least, as far as we
know there isn't. I haven't actually seen
your car. That's one of the things I'd like
to know. Where it is. Why he bought it,
and where he went in it."

She asked him if the boy was all right.
He avoided answering her.

"How did he seem, when he came

223


here? Did he seem all right?"

"Yes, I think so. He looked at the car,
started it up, looked under the bonnet,
and bought it. The only thing he asked
me was if it was all right. He took my
word for it. And it was," she added
defensively.

"How did he get here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did he come on his own or did
someone bring him?"

"Well, he was on his own when he
looked at the car. I suppose he came
on the tube. Wimbledon Park station's
only round the corner. And the bus stops
on the High Street. He can't have come
by car, because when he'd counted the
money out, I gave him the log book and
he drove off."

"Did he say why he was buying it?"

"No."

"Was there anything strange about him
or the way he was behaving? Did he seem
agitated? Worried?"

"No, I don't think so. He seemed all
right. He was rather nice, actually. He
spoke well. You know, well-educated. He

224


was wearing jeans and desert boots, but
like a well-off student, really."

"How did he pay?"

"I told you, in cash."

"How exactly? What notes?"

"Tens and fives. I paid them into my
building society the next morning."

They drank another cup of coffee and
chatted in a desultory way. She was in
London from Stockport, shared the house
with two other girls. They were all doing
well-paid secretarial work, and spending
their money on clothes and going to
the films and shows. They were having
a good time.

He made a note of the registration
number of the 1100 as he stood beside
her at the front door. She asked again
what had happened to the boy. He
was tired and had no resistance to her
question. "He had an accident. Nothing
to do with your car. I'm afraid he's

dead."

"Oh God, how terrible," she said.
"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm sorry."
He walked the two steps to the

pavement and she closed the door

225

quietly behind him. He looked back
and saw her shape through the glazed
door making its way down the hall.

He drove on to the North Circular
at Richmond and wound up to Hendon
Way, just short of the start of the Ml.
He was exhausted. It was impossible to I
drive up to Birmingham, his eyes were
closing. He pulled in at a busy lay-by, locked the doors and climbed over the 
bench seat into the back of the car. With
his coat pulled around him and the traffic
rumbling by, he fell asleep.

21

226

There was a tapping outside the car. He
wiped the condensation from the window
and saw the traffic booming past. The
tapping continued. It was insistent, it
was saying, 'I'm here, this side.' He
ran his shirtsleeve across that window.
There was a pretty young face, eighteen
or nineteen years old, framed by a head
of long dark hair.

He leaned towards the handle and
flipped it up. His back was hell. The
girl opened the door, stood back and
said, "Are you going to Birmingham?"

The air in the closed car was fetid.
He ached from his neck to his ankles.
"Uuum," he groaned.

"Does that mean yes?" she insisted.
She was urgent in her demands.

"Yes, sure. Just give me a few

minutes."

"OK," she said, and took another step

back from the car.

227

He stretched his neck and back, put
on his shoes but didn't lace them, his
feet had, grown half a size during the
night. He creaked up and down the lay-by
and stamped his soles to get rid of the

pins and needles. The place was already
full of trucks and conversations between
men who had been driving all night and
were already in animated possession of

the day.

He urinated behind the dusty hedge,
full of sweet wrappers and worse and
shivered in the early May sunshine.

The girl got into the front seat with him
and they drove off towards the motorway.
She wore an Indian cotton skirt, tie-dyed
T-shirt and short, rather smelly Afghan
coat. She was talkative. She'd hitched to
here this morning. It was easy. She'd got
family in Birmingham, was going up to
see them. She lived with friends in a
communal house in Netting Hill. She
did a bit of bar work or waitressing if
she needed money, but on the whole,
she just hung out, 'taking what's mine,'
as she put it. She talked, he listened. It
wasn't yet eight a.m.

228

She asked him what he did but hardly
waited to hear the answer. He thought
it politic not to be too specific and
his comment that he worked 'for the
government' was lost in her next tirade. She
was becoming quite animated. She was
an anarchist, a soldier in the class war.
The enemy was everywhere: landlords;
the electricity and gas companies; tax
officials; car owners; shop keepers, from
whom goods had to be liberated, and
anyone with money in the bank. All these
people were, by definition, corrupt and
dishonest. But it was the police who were
the subject of her most virulent attack.
They were the real plague of a free
society: uniformed automata who were
sworn to secret oaths and who would
use any means to intimidate and destroy
freedom fighters like herself.

He advanced a token argument or two,
but she had answers to everything he
could summon. Of course there wouldn't
be civil disorder and rape and pillage
without law enforcement; that was an
argument put about by the present
repressive law-makers and their capitalist

229

lackeys, the judiciary.

He wanted to declare a truce; his
head was splitting and he needed a
cup of coffee. He admitted that he'd
met some nasty cops in his time, but
he'd also met unpleasant cranedrivers
and labourers and teachers and shop
assistants; he wasn't convinced, he offered
weakly, that the cops had a monopoly on
malevolence.

They stopped at the Blue Boar service
station and he bought her coffee and a
slice of apple tart. When he asked her if
she thought that it might be dangerous to
hitch-hike, a young girl, alone, she said
that she could look after herself. "And
anyway," she added, almost as if he were
in some way to blame for today's act of
industrial anarchy, "I've no choice: the
trains are on strike again."

She thought that she must have
offended him. He got up from the table
abruptly, left his coffee cup half full and
rushed towards the door. "I won't be a
minute," he called back to her. A couple
of the truck-drivers looked up from their
bacon and beans and fried eggs.

230

He leaned into the back seat of the car
where the Evening Standard that he had
taken from Charlie's flat lay. From the
car ad's page he turned to the front page.
Beneath the date, Friday, 26th April, the
banner headline shouted, MORE RAIL
MISERY TODAY.

He rejoined his bemused companion
and gave her a warm smile. "Thanks,"
he said. "Another coffee?"

She looked at him warily, "If you like,"
she said.

He cleaned his teeth in the gents' toilet
and bought a newspaper. He thought the Guardian might interest her, but as soon
as she had scanned the headlines, she
threw the paper into the back seat,
dismissing it with the words 'capitalist
propaganda press'.

"The Guardian?" he said, rather
abashed that his attempt at detente
had been rejected.

"They're all in league," she informed
him. "Just under different banners to give
the illusion of press freedom."

"It's an orchestrated policy?" he asked.

'Of course," she said contemptuously,

231

a,

"The only people who tell the truth
in this country are the underground
press." And she pulled from her pocket
a pamphlet entitled Anarchy.


Her view of the press was not negotiable
and, with the pamphlet clutched in her
fist, she glared out of the window so as
not to miss the oppression being wrought
on the proletariat in the streets of Watford
and Hemel Hempstead.

The tacitly confrontational atmosphere
gave him the chance that he needed to
reflect on the case: Charles Somerville
had left London at dawn a little over a
week ago. He had been seen leaving in
a car that he had bought the previous
evening from a lady in Wimbledon. He
had paid 395 pounds for it, in cash. He had
arrived at his home the following day,
telling his parents that he had travelled
by train. In fact, the trains, having been
on strike, were disrupted. Since he had
left London, two men in a Mercedes had
been to his flat looking for him.

Shortly after Charlie had arrived in
Montgomeryshire, a couple of strangers
in a Merc had stayed at the village

232

pub; but two days later, very soon after
Charles had died driving his father's
car, they had left. The car in which
Charles had died had almost certainly
been tampered with.

He was still deep in thought as they
approached Birmingham on the M6.
"What part of Birmingham does your
family live?" he asked.

"Erdington," she said sullenly.

"I'm going to Handsworth," he replied.
"I'll let you off at Gravelly Lane. You can
take a bus from there. It's not far."

"I'm going to Erdington," she said
sharply.

There was something distinctly unpleasant
in her tone. Something that he
had not heard before, even at her most
persecuted and zealous.

"Well, I'm going to Handsworth.
That's as far as I'm taking you," he
said sternly.

She pulled up her long, mauve skirt
with one hand and pushed her fingers into
the waistband of her knickers with the
other. "You're taking me to Erdington,
or you'll be in court for trying to rape

233

me. And I want some money. If you
haven't got twenty quid on you, stop
at a bank and get it." She didn't look
at him, looked straight ahead out of the
windscreen.

He pulled off the motorway and
drove through Castle Bromwich and
into Handsworth. Instead of going down
Soho Road and out towards Erdington,
he pulled up abruptly outside the old
red-brick police station in Holly Lane.

She looked up at the police station and
sneered, "You think I'm kidding."

"No, I don't think you're kidding." He
pulled his warrant card out of his pocket
and held it close to her face. "Get the
fuck out of my car, you tramp."

"You bastard," she said.

"I'm just glad it was me instead of
some other poor fucker. Go on, piss off.
Up the revolution!"

* * *

There was no one in at Coleraine Road.
Two days' milk was on the front doorstep
and a bunch of iris was propped up in

234

the corner of the porch. It was wrapped
in Cellophane and had a bunch of spray
with it. On the floor inside the door was
some post.

He went through to the kitchen. He
called, to make sure, but he knew
the sounds of an empty house, "Kath
. . . Kath ..."

He took a cup from the draining-board,
swilled it under the tap and spooned
coffee into it. After he had put the
kettle on he went through to the phone
in the hall.

"Rees? This is John here. Tony, is that
you? It's a very bad line." He could barely
hear the Welshman through the crackle
of static all the way to Welshpool Police
Station.

"What's going on, John? Where are
you?" said Rees.

"I'm at home, in Birmingham. I've
been to London to see the boy's place.
I think we're on to something. Can you
hear me, Tony? You sound as if you're
in a foreign country! You have got the phones connected properly up there, have
you?!"

235


"I can hear you, boyyo, forget the
bloody jokes. What have you got, then?"

"It might be nothing. But he bought a
car. The evening before he left London.
A girl at his flat saw him drive off in it.
But his mother says he came home by
train."

"You can't rely on her, John," Rees
shouted down the line, "I told you, she
sees everything through the bottom of a
glass."

"I know, but she seemed sure enough
on this. The boy told them he'd come up
by train that morning. But he can't have
come by train, Tony. They were bloody
well on strike."

"Of course they were," said Rees.
"Good work, John. So where's the car?"

"God knows!" said Munroe.

"Where do you want me to start?"

"Anywhere you can think of," said
Munroe, and he gave him the details
of the 1100. "And give Swansea DVLC
a ring, just on the off-chance that any
documents have come in. I'm going to
get my head down for an hour or two
and then I'll come on up, OK?"

236


"Fine, John, leave it with me. See you

in a while."

He took the coffee to bed and lay there,
one hand crooked behind his head. He
didn't need to open the wardrobe or the
chest of drawers.

When he woke he went to the bathroom
and felt the flannels that lay over the side
of the bath: they were stiff, hadn't been
used for a couple of days.

He had a quick bath and changed his
clothes. He tipped the contents of his
holdall on to the floor in a pile on
his side of the bed and rummaged in
the airing cupboard for clean underwear
and socks. There were a couple of clean
shirts, and he took those too.

* * *

He drove north-west in a trance-like state
of post-wakefulness. He had known for
some time now that he and Kath would
part. And he had feared it. It was a step
away from the familiar. A step into the

unknown.

He was waiting for the pain to begin.

237

He drove on, too fast, and watched his
feelings closely, expecting at any moment
to be smothered by gloom and sadness
and hurt.

But it didn't come, and he actually
found it difficult to keep at the front of
his mind what was happening, and where
the pain should lie.

He found down the window and let
the warm breeze play through his damp
hair. He thought of the girl with the faint
bruise and gawky nose and fair hair under
her arm. He felt unaccountably good, and
switched on the radio. Buddy Holly was
singing Peggy Sue and he sang along with
it, quietly at first, and then louder, until
he was singing at the top of his voice.

He only ever felt high like this when a
case was close to being solved. But this
case was nowhere near a solution.	

He smiled, carried on singing, and
thought of the girl.


238

22

At Welshpool Police Station Rees met
him in front reception and walked him
straight to his waiting car.

"What's up?" said Munroe.

"We've found it," said Rees.

"The 1100? Already?"

"The very same," said Rees.

"Where is it, then?" asked Munroe.

"Len Hughes's yard."

"Len Hughes?" said Munroe. "Who s
he? Where did he get it?"

"He's not saying," said Rees.

"Not saying? What do you mean, he's
not saying?"

* * *

Rees negotiated the steep bends up to
Hughes's yard in his .Morris Oxford.
He slowed to a crawl as he took
the last of the corners before the
yard. The hedgerows were rampant:

239

ox-eye daisies, succulent, green-shafted,
grey-budded blue-bells, speedwell, red
campion and wild chamomile.	

Thdy parked in a passing place just
beyond the handpainted sign, Llanarmon
Motors.	''

At the gate stood a uniformed sergeant
who cupped his cigarette in his hand as
the two men approached.	

There was the sound of a radio playing
in the yard and a man's feet were sticking
out from beneath an old black Vauxhall
Wyvern.	

Dr Child was sitting on the cottage
doorstep, his eyes shaded from the low
afternoon sun. There was the sweet,
coconut smell of gorse on the air. As
the policemen approached, the doctor moved towards the inert body beneath
the Vauxhall.	
Munroe could tell from the man's j legs that he was dead: he had assumed
a writhing shape, unlike anything that
belonged to the living.	

"How?" said Munroe as the little 
doctor came towards them.	

His checked green and brown suit had 

240

a comfortable, lived-in appearance, but
his brogues were clean and he walked
gingerly among the ruts and oily patches
on the ground.

"How? Asphyxiation, I imagine. The
Inspector here asked me not to move
him until you'd arrived. When I got here,
there was no sign of pulse. He was clearly
dead. Warm day, but the man was cold.
He had obviously been dead for some
hours. It's not possible to say how long
until we have a look at what he had for
breakfast." The country doctor appeared
to be looking forward to examining the
contents of the dead man's stomach.

The Inspector got down on his knees
and peered beneath the car. He swallowed
hard to control the spasm that rose
violently from his gut to his throat as
he saw the tortured expression on the
dead man's face. He got up and inhaled
deeply, the coconut scent drawn in until
he felt heady with it.

The policemen took a few steps away
from the body. "Who found him?" said
Munroe.

"Postman," said Rees. "Brian Jennings.

241


He came up here with a parcel at about
eleven o'clock this morning. The radio
was on,,and he saw Len working under
the car. He gets down to tell him he's got
a parcel and gets the shock of his life. He
threw up in the grass over there. Then
he cycled down to the village where he
phoned us from the post office."

The Beatles sang Lady Madonna over
the scene. Munroe, affronted by the
incongruity, shouted at the sergeant at
the gate, "Turn that bloody thing off,
for Christ's sake."

"Funny thing is," continued Rees, "as
soon as I got here, it wasn't Len that
I saw first, but that." He pointed to
the green Austin 1100 that was parked
beside the fence.

They walked towards the car. There
were mud splashes around the front wheel
arches where Len had ploughed through
puddles on the lane, and he'd draped an
old grey blanket over the driver's seat to
K protect it from his greasy overalls, but there was nothing else to distinguish it
in any way.

Munroe said to Rees, his fingers on the

242

wing of the car, "I've just driven a four
hundred-mile round trip to find this!"

Rees offered the comfort, "If you
hadn't gone to his flat, we wouldn't
even have known that we were looking

for it."

"Funny though, eh?" said Munroe

mirthlessly.

"Hilarious," said the Welshman. "What
about Len? Shall we get him out now?"

"Yes, sure."

"Poor bastard," said Rees with feeling.
"All for the sake of an axle stand.
What are they? Couple of quid from
Halford's?"

There was a crow's squawk, and a
loose, dry twig bounced through the
branches of a tree from one of the
ramshackle nests near by.

"Who was he?" asked Munroe.

"Local fixit. Bit of mechanicking, you
know, work on your car for the M.O.T.,
that sort of thing. Not very good, but
cheap."

"Nothing else?" said Munroe, "Any

form?"

"Nothing serious. A bald tyre, no tax,

243

that kind of thing. He was up before the
local worthies a few months ago for a bit
of clocking on a Mini he'd sold."

"So'what's he doing with Charlie's car
here?"

"You've got me. Maybe he bought it.
Perhaps the youngster needed the readies,
and Len gave him them?"

"And then Charlie ends up dead? And
not much more than a week later the guy
who's got his car is dead too? Do you
know any Hardy, Tony?"

"No, but I like the song." He started
to hum 'All Over the World'.

"Not Francoise, you berk. Thomas, the
writer!"

"Only joking, John. Dylan's the only
Thomas we read at school round here.
Why? Is he good on suspicious deaths?"

"He always puts in just one coincidence
too many: the accidental meeting; the
letter that doesn't arrive; the person who
walks by at just the right time to hear the
crucial conversation. It makes me uneasy.
And this is the same. Coincidences:
definitely one too many."

"Maybe," said Rees, slow to acquiesce.

244

Policemen in overalls started to
manoeuvre the big trolley jack underneath
the car while Munroe and Rees smoked
and the doctor peered down at his
corpse.

"What do you reckon's going on then,
Tony?"

"I've no idea. This used to be a quiet
spot," the Welshman said, "It's a good
job the hippies are moving in if we're
going to lose the locals at this rate!"

Munroe grinned. "What about DVLC
on the 1100? Any good there?"

"Nothing yet. Too soon, I should
think."

"Have you had a look inside?" said
Munroe, nodding towards the cottage
that abutted the workshop.

"A quick look. I can't see anything
obvious. The log book's probably in the
post. But what'll that tell us that we don't
already know?"

"Just the day he bought it, not that
that's of much use, even if he puts the
exact right date on it. I'd better take a
look, anyway."

"Shall we get it up, sir?" shouted the

245

sergeant from beside the huge black
Wyvern.

"Yes, carry on," said Rees, and the car
was inched up from the man's crushed
chest.

246

23

Mickey Gynn had registered in his own
name at the Bear in Llanfrynach, and
tracing him to his London address was
a straightforward matter. A couple of
Metropolitan CID men picked him up
and he gave the detectives the address
of his colleague, Ibrahim Malik. He, too,
was detained at his house in Peckham.

The two men, isolated from one
another, were driven through the night
to Wales.

The next day, at Welshpool HQ,
kept apart and interviewed separately,
their stories remained identical. Charlie
Somerville owed them some money; 'a
loan'. They'd come up to collect it. He
might have left London to avoid them.
Who knows? In any event, they had come
up and 'seen' him. 'Had a word', as they
delicately put it. He said he was going to
get the money. Said he had it in hand.

And the deep gash on Charlie's leg,

247

asked Munroe? A gash that was very

recent and not likely to have been caused
by the fatal crash, according to the
examining pathologist.

"I don't know nothin' about that," said
Gynn indifferently.

In Munroe's experience, contrary to
received wisdom, you certainly could judge books by their covers. He was
a convinced physiognomist. The thug
lounging in the chair in front of him
had the expressionless eyes and cruel
mouth that Munroe habitually associated
with a capacity to inflict pain, and a
callous indifference to the feelings of
others.	

It was only in the pages of fiction and
on the cinema and TV screens that, for
novelty's sake, the kindly man and sweet
looking woman committed barbarous
acts. The murderers and rapists that
Munroe had sent down resembled, if
not Rotweilers and Dobermans, at least
cunning terriers and sly mongrels.

Depressingly, Rees and Munroe had
no answer to the question they posed
themselves: Why would these two, having

248

used violence and intimidation against

Charles, then want to kill their debtor.
And, indeed, in such an absurdly contrived
manner. And anyway, if they had come
up here to fulfil a contract on young
Somerville, they would hardly have
registered at a village pub in the
area, and certainly not in their own
names.

The arranged meeting between Gynn
and Malik and the boy the following
day had never taken place. They were
having a drink in the Bear that evening
when they heard one of the locals relating the tragedy of the fatal accident. They
checked out of the inn the next morning
and returned to London empty-handed.
"Such is life," said Gynn dismissively.

Munroe asked, "How much did he
owe you?" And before he could answer,
"Enough for two of you to come up here
and cut him up? How much?"

"I got nothin' to say about that. He
owed us a couple of grand. Not a
fortune, but it had to be paid," said
Gynn phlegmatically.

The trouble was, it was all entirely

249

plausible. The Met had told Montgomeryshire
that Gynn and Malik were with the
Maitland firm. So it was drugs-related
money. But what did that mean? That
Charlie dealt in drugs. Maybe the boy
had been stung, or rolled. But so what?
That didn't assist them. Did he owe
others money, too? Why would someone
want him dead?

They pummelled away at them for
hours, on and on, exploring all the angles,
but these weren't local, small-time hoods
who were going to be frightened at the
sight of the town beak. They knew the
score. And the score was no score.

In desperation, and with considerable
professional chagrin, Munroe decided to
wheel out to Malik the old nonsense
about Gynn having told them 'the truth',
and that in his own best interests, Malik
had better now collaborate.	

The six-foot-two Senegalese bared his
white teeth and laughed a huge, good
natured laugh at the two detectives who
were prepared to insult his criminal sangfroid
in this way. He said nothing and
continued to smoke Pall Mall from the

250

red paper packet and suck the smoke
from his mouth up into his wide nostrils.
With regard to Len Hughes, they said
that they'd never heard of the man,
and Munroe suspected that they were
probably telling the truth.

* * *

Later that day, as Gynn and Malik
headed down to London in an unmarked
police car, the detectives returned to Plas
Trisillio.

The Colonel came out to meet them
on the gravel forecourt and shook hands
with each of them. Munroe offered his
condolences to the bereaved father, and
Somerville ushered them into the kitchen.
"Tea? Coffee, gentlemen?"

The Colonel pulled his cap from his
sandy hair and started to make instant
coffee in three mugs.

Munroe began, "You have probably
heard that Len Hughes was found dead
yesterday?"

"Yes. One of the men told me last
evening. Tragic. He was working under

251


a car and the thing fell on him. Is
that so?"

"Yes, it looks like it," replied the

 Inspector.

"Awful," said the Colonel. He spooned
the coffee into the mugs.

"Did you know that he had a car of
your son's in his yard, Colonel?"

"A car of Charles's?" He turned and
looked at Munroe, puzzled. "Charles
didn't have a car."

"It seems that he bought one. The day
before he left London."

"Charles did?" replied the Colonel,
"Are you sure?"

"Yes. He drove up here in it, and we
found it at Hughes's yard."

He looked from one policeman to the
other. "But Charles told me that he had
come up by train."

"I don't think so," said Munroe.

"Well, why should he say that? And
why would he buy a car and not tell

me?"

He turned and poured the boiling water

on to the coffee.

"I don't know," said Munroe. "He

252

certainly bought the car. And equally
certainly he didn't travel by train out
of London that day: the trains were on
strike. Why he told you that he did is
something of a mystery to us."

"And to me," offered the Colonel.
He leaned back against the huge Welsh
dresser and a couple of china serving
plates rocked ominously.

"When he took your car -- " Munroe
paused respectfully -- "the day he died
... do you have any idea where he might
have been going?"

"I'm afraid not." He reflected. "It was
unusual for him to take my car. I prefer
being the only driver." Even now, after
this tragedy, there was the hint of an
admonition about the comment. "But his
mother's had a puncture, and I was out in
the Land-Rover, so whatever it was that
he needed to do, he felt that he had to
take mine, I suppose."

"Had your car been involved in any
accident at any time? Anything that
might have damaged the bonnet at all?"

asked Rees.

"No. Why do you ask?" said Somerville,

253


as he placed the men's coffee in front of
them on the table.	

"There's a possibility that it had been
tampered with. We need to make certain
that the bonnet hadn't been damaged in
any way before your son's accident in it,"
said Munroe.

"What do you mean? Who would
tamper with my car?"

"Perhaps you can help us answer that
question," said Munroe.	

"I don't see how, but do go on," said
the Colonel.

"Are you sure you have no idea where
your son might have been going?"

"None."	
"Do you know that your son gambled,
Colonel?"

"Yes, I know he had the odd bet."

Rees interrupted, "He had more than
the 'odd bet', sir. He gambled heavily.
For a young man at college he was
spending a lot on horses."

"No, I didn't know that," said the
Colonel. "He was losing, I imagine?"
He thought of his son's plea for a loan
only two days before he had died.

254

"As a matter of fact, he was doing quite
well," said Rees.

Munroe drew from his jacket pocket a
copy of the turf accountant's statement.
He pushed it across to the Colonel. "It
was only recently that he seemed to have
run into some difficulty." The Inspector
put his finger on the two big debits of
ten days ago, "He had a couple of big
bets, and they both went down. But then,
although it's not shown on this statement,
he paid in two hundred and seventy-five
pounds a couple of days after he arrived
up here. He paid it in at the little branch
in Llanfrynach. The last telephone bet
that he made was on the day before his
death. He staked four hundred pounds
on a horse called Rhyme 'n' Reason."

"Four hundred pounds! He bet four
hundred pounds on one horse?"

"Yes. It came in at 9 to 4. Gave him
credit of about thirteen hundred pounds.
We understand that he owed someone
about two thousand pounds."

"Do you have any idea what for?"
asked Somerville cautiously, fearing the
worst.

255

"We can't be certain, but it very much
looks as if he was involved with selling
drugs."	

"I see," he said despairingly.	]

"When he died, he had a piece of
paper in his pocket with some figures
on it. It mystified us at first, but now
it seems that they were the probable
odds on a horse that was running that
day. He owed these characters a couple
of thousand, and it seems that he was
using his gambling knowledge to try and
raise it. I'm afraid it all fits. Except his
death."

"You don't seem entirely surprised,"
said Rees. "Did he tell you that he needed
money?"

"Yes," said the Colonel, "Not in so
many words, but he asked me for a loan.
The day he came home. He asked me if I
could lend him fifteen hundred pounds."
The two men waited. The Colonel looked
up. "Naturally, I couldn't," he said,
defensively.

"And did he say why he wanted it?"

"A business deal. A 'short-term business
opportunity' were his exact words." He

256

pushed his fingers through his hair. "But
where does the car you mentioned fit in
with all this?"

"We think, he bought a car to get out
of London quickly . . . then he sold it
... to Len Hughes, so that he could
get some cash, some collateral, into his
bookmaker's account. He needed stake
money."

"And where was he going in mine?
Where was he driving to?"

"To place his bet," said Munroe.

"But you've just said he'd got an
account. He was in credit. Why couldn't
he telephone the bookmakers?"

"We think that's what he was doing."

"What do you mean? There are phones
in the house. He could have used any one
of them."

"On the contrary. The day your son
died was the day after the storm. It
brought down all the lines. I think he
was trying to get to a phone-box that
was still working."

"I see. And the urgency? His 'creditors'
I suppose?"

Rees nodded agreement.

257


"They came up here?" said Somerville

forlornly.

"Yes we think so," said Rees.

There was a pause while the policemen
let the Colonel absorb the facts.

Eventually he said, "Forgive me,
gentlemen, but how does any of this
tie in with someone tampering with my car?"

Munroe answered him with a question,
"When I spoke to your wife, I asked
her if she knew of anyone who might
want to do you any harm. Do you
know of anyone with a grudge against

you?"

"No, I don't think so," he said

thoughtfully.

"No one at all?" said Rees.

"No."

"Would you think about it, and if
anything occurs, give us a call? It could
be important."

"Of course," said Somerville.

Munroe got to his feet, "Before we
leave, is your wife available for a few
words, sir?"

The Colonel reached out for Rees's

258

empty cup, "I'm afraid my wife is in
hospital. Dr Child arranges for her to
spend a few days there occasionally."
He put the cups in the sink. "She has
a ... dietary problem, you know."

The policemen glanced at one another.
This was an original euphemism. They
expressed their sympathy.

"Frankly, she hasn't been coping since
Charles's death," said her husband.
"Perhaps some other time," said Munroe.
"Of course," said the Colonel. "If you
find anything, you will let me know?"

"Certainly," said Munroe. "Just before
we go, your groom -- " he looked at his
notebook -- "Susie Peterson, and her
friend -- James, James Orme, the young
couple from Well Cottage. How well do
you know them?"

There was a little hesitation before the
Colonel replied, "She's very good with
the horses. Excellent, in fact."

"What about the boy?" said Munroe,
"Have you ever had anything to do with
him? They've split up recently."

"No, nothing. I've never spoken to
him. I saw him working with Hopkins

259

from Pentre farm once, passed them on
the lane once or twice, that's all."

The three men walked along the
corridor to the front door. On the drive
the Colonel put on his tweed cap and
stood waiting. The terrier sniffed at the
gravel.

Rees got into the car, but Munroe walked
a few yards towards the rhododendron
bushes; the Colonel followed him. The
Inspector looked at the tight buds at
the ends of the leathery green leaves.
He spoke very slowly and deliberately,
"Colonel Somerville, your son has died.
It looks like murder. I think that you
may well have been the intended victim.
I think that you owe it to your son's
memory to be honest with me."

"What are you talking about?" said
the Colonel. "Be honest with you about
what?"

"You said you knew of no one
who would wish to hurt you. In my
experience, the husbands of women who
are having affairs tend to want to hurt
their rivals."

"Fry!" said Somerville derisively. "Good

260

God! Heaven preserve us from policemen.
Do you ever solve anything?"

His indignation was genuine and
Munroe faltered, "What do you mean?
Are you telling me that George Fry
doesn't know about his wife and you?"

"Of course he knows. He knows and
he's perfectly happy. He has his own
. . . 'interests'."

"Go on," said Munroe.

"The man's a solicitor. In and out
of court, dinner with JPs, even the
Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire now and
again. He can't turn up at functions
and cocktail parties with his boyfriends!
Nicola is his appendage. He keeps her
well, doesn't interfere with her life;
she's discreet and sits through Rotary
dinners and Town-twinning lunches.
It's an arranged marriage, Inspector.
And the arrangement works very well.
The idea that George Fry is going to
bugger it up (you'll forgive the phrase)
by interfering with me is, frankly,
absurd."

Munroe felt extremely stupid. He
shuffled to the car and, as he stepped

261

in, said bitterly, "Give my regards to
Mrs Somerville."

"That was a bit severe, wasn't it?" said
Rees, Us they drove away.

"Yes," said Munroe.

262

24

A mile and a half by the twisted lane, five
hundred yards as the crows flew between
Plas Trisillio's beechwood and Pentrefelin
Hill, Munroe and Rees made their way
up to Well Cottage.

Rees was about to get out of the car
when Munroe put his hand on the other
man's elbow. "Tony, do you think it
might be better if just one of us spoke
to them at first? You know, burly cops
and all."

"No," said Rees, "I don't." He winked
at Munroe, "But good luck!"

* * *

The cottage door was open and the
choral movement of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony filled all the little house and
garden. The girl was singing along with
it. He knocked, put his head into the
room and called, "Hello."

263


She came from the kitchen and turned
the music down. Her legs were brown in
a short skirt of blue velvet, her feet were
bare and she had painted nails, which his
mother had once assured him only harlots
and film stars wore.

"Hello again," she said, warmly, "come
in. Would you like some tea, I've got the
kettle on?"

He sat in the armchair as she made
the tea and the music reached its
demented crescendo. On her chair was
a well-read copy of Sons and Lovers. There were several pictures on the wall,
mostly watercolour landscapes, and pretty
bunches of wild flowers on the table and
the mantelpiece.

When the music stopped she came
in and said, "Shall we have something
different?" She knelt down to the stereo
and her little skirt rode up to her thighs.
Her brown legs had downy, fair hair that
she obviously didn't shave. It looked
lovely and soft, he thought.	

As she went back into the kitchen Bob
Dylan began to sing. It was 'Freewheelin'.
He had often heard Kath play it and

264

he felt a hypocrite as he called, rather
proudly, "I've got this, too."

"It's James's. One of his he didn't
take," she replied from the kitchen.

She brought in the tray with a pot of
tea and nice blue and white teacups with
matching saucers. "Honey?"

"Do you have any sugar?" he asked.

She went back to the kitchen and
returned with some gloomy-looking sugar
in a teak bowl.

"Are you reading this?" He held her
battered Penguin in his hand.

"Yes. It's my favourite novel. I've read
it once every year since school. Do you

like it?"

He felt the colour rising in his neck.
Kath had introduced him to what she
called 'proper' books. And very many
of the authors that she had helped him
discover, he loved. He probably read
more poetry than she did now, found
that he could read a poem or two,
whereas it was often .difficult finding
the time to get through a chapter of a
novel. But he had started his education
late, and read slowly and carefully; he

265


had huge gaps. He had never read any
D. H. Lawrence. "I haven't read much
by him," he muttered.

"I'm sure you'd love it," she said.

He was charmed that she made no
attempt to expose his obvious lie.

She looked up at him, "He knows so
much. And when he's writing at his peak,
he's like a man possessed."

Munroe began to feel threatened by the
bearded writer. "Yes, I'd like to read it,"
he said sincerely.

She went to the kitchen for milk and

lemon.

He found it easier when she wasn't
beside him, "Has James . . . ?" he called.

She didn't help him.

"Your friend . . . James . . . he's gone
somewhere . . . ?"

She walked back in. "Yes, he's gone,"
she said inconclusively.

"I was hoping to speak to him. When
did he leave?"

"A couple of days ago." She sat on the
floor facing him, her legs tucked under
her, and poured the tea. "Things haven't
been very good between us. When we got

266

out of London, it was all right for a while,
and then there was some awful business
with the farmer up the hill." She related
the story of the farmer's voyeurism. "It
seemed to eat away at James. He quit
the job, of course, so we had very little
money, only the dole." She looked up
at him, "You won't tell anyone this, will

you?"

"Of course not," he said.
"We came back from the village a
couple of days later, and there was an
envelope wedged in the door jamb. It had
some money in it. What the farmer owed
James, and another twenty pounds."

"He was buying your silence?"

"I suppose so. James wouldn't have told
anyone, anyway. I suppose he was afraid
of his wife finding out. We like Glenys.
We wouldn't have told her something like
that, just to hurt her."

"Neither of you?" probed Munroe.

"Neither of us," she said.

"Then what?"

"Things just started to fall apart. He's
jealous. I'm cramped. It's worse than
London. And we've almost no money

267

as well. When I saw the job at Plas
Trisillio, I'd have done it without pay,
just to get out of the cottage for a few
hours each day."

"I see," he said. Every time that she
glanced away he looked to her thin,
brown arms and nice bra-less bosom
beneath her pink T-shirt.

"The job at Plas Trisillio just made
things worse. He couldn't bear me being
out of his sight."

Dylan sang plaintively of 'The Girl
from the North Country'.

"Eventually, we just couldn't carry on.
We tried to talk it out. But in the end we
decided to try being apart for a while."
"Where's he gone?"
"To the Channel Islands. To Guernsey."
He sat forward, "Listen, Susie." He
thrilled to say her name, and she smiled 
slightly, knowing this, even though what
he was saying was grave. "James was
jealous, right? First the farmer, then the
Colonel. And wasn't there something in
the pub when he got into a fight?"

"Yes, there was. He hit a local boy, a
boy from the village. I don't even know

268

why. He was getting impossible."

"So what about the Colonel's car?

Charles's death? You've heard the rumours,

surely?"

"Yes," she said.

"Do you think he might have tried to

hurt the Colonel ... if he thought there

was something going on between you and

him?"

"Look . . . Inspector Munroe." She
dwelt on the two syllables and felt rather
silly calling him this, especially with his
nice brown eyes taking her womanness
in, "Did you ever meet James? His idea
of a crime is buying the Daily Telegraph. He was jealous, and I tried to reassure
him. He may not have been convinced.
He was insecure about us. But we are
the people who sit in Trafalgar Square
protesting about Vietnam. We don't kill
people."

She went to the table and got her
cigarette tobacco. "I know he had a
temper when he was jealous. He hit me,
just because that farmer had watched

me.

n

"Yes," said Munroe. He lifted his

269

finger to his own cheek at the place
where the bruise had been on hers. "I
remember."

"But he couldn't have been involved
with the Colonel's car. I would have
known. I'd have been able to tell."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I just know" she said. She met his
eyes and they looked at one another for
as long as either of them could bear.

Dylan sang, "here the winds hit heavy
on the border line ..." The words
were affecting. He had never heard them
before. Not really heard them. Sitting
here with her, he no longer heard the
whining voice that he had moaned to
Kath about, that he had foolishly mocked.

"He had done something, though,"
she said. "I don't know what it was.
He wouldn't tell me. He took a trip,
you know, an acid trip. It was a stupid
thing to do.

"He'd taken it in the morning, while I
was at work at Plas Trisillio, and when I
came home he was in the corner there,
all folded up. I comforted him. I just held
him very close.

270

"In the evening, as he started to
come down, he told me that he'd done
something bad. But he wouldn't tell me
what. He said I'd never forgive him."

"Why didn't you make him tell you?"

"Have you ever taken LSD?" she asked
considerately, but certain of his answer.

"Yes, we take it as part of basic
training!"

She indulged his sarcasm. "People are
on the edge, push them and they might
go over. It's happened to friends of mine.
It is a dangerous drug and it may be
stupid to play around with it. But it can
also be the most enlightening experience
that most of us will ever have."

Her obvious sincerity neutralized his
Pavlovian response. He listened.

"If you're going to take it, or be with
people who have taken it, you need to
be very careful. The last thing I would
do would be to push James to tell me
something that was causing him this
much distress."

"And afterwards? The days after. What
did he tell you then?"

"He wouldn't tell me anything. He said

271


it was just a bad trip."

The policeman's instinct returned with
a crude vengeance. "Great. The man's
there and he's about to tell you. Don't

you see? He wants to confess to the
killing."

"I don't believe it!' she interrupted.

"It's obvious. He tried to kill the
Colonel in a fit of paranoid jealousy,
and he killed his son instead." He put
his thumb and forefinger together, "And
he got that close to telling you."

"I don't believe it," she said again. "I
know James. If he'd done it, I would have
known, and if I'd known I would have
gone to the police."

"Would you?" he said instantly. And
then conciliatory, "Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not sure," she said. "But I think I would."

The song ended and she turned down
the volume after the first few words of
the strident 'Masters of War'.

He looked at her. She looked chagrined,
as if her faith in her former lover had been
shaken a little.

"I'll have to go and see him," he said.

272

I've got to talk to him."

"Yes," she replied, dispirited.

"Do you have his address?"

She jotted it on a bit of paper and
handed it to him.

The record went round, but there was
only a faint tinniness. Between them there
was silence. Neither of them knew where
to look. The record eventually stopped
and the gap of their silence lengthened.

He lacked courage. "I'd better go," he
said very quietly.

She didn't respond, and they both sat
there, avoiding each other's eyes. He
watched the little muscle in her brown
forearm twitch and pulse. He wanted to
reach out and lay two fingers on it, but
he only pushed his toes harder against
the sole of his shoes.

What was happening? His mind was
spinning. He seemed capable of anything,
and yet inert, as if he might slip from his
chair to the floor. He wanted this woman
with a deeper yearning, than he had felt
since he was sixteen. And yet his wanting
wasn't that deep lust and urgent animal
passion of teenage. He wanted to touch

273

her ankles and wiry arms, kiss tenderly
her breasts, hold her close to him, kiss her
neck and nose and forehead and eyelids.

What was happening? He was a cop
from Birmingham who liked a beer and
to watch the football on TV. The woman
kneeling in front of him smoked cannabis,
had all Bob Dylan's records and painted
her toenails bright red.

"Perhaps I could borrow one of Dylan's
other LPs sometime?" He felt absolutely
mortified as he heard himself saying the
fey words.

She smiled slightly, her lips parting.

At the door, they shook hands, a
nervous, barely touching little brush, as if
all their fingers had electricity in them.

Rees was lounging against the car.
Munroe joined him. He was smiling.

"He wasn't there, then?" said the
Welshman gauchely.

Munroe said nothing.

Rees turned the car round and started
down the lane.

She was standing at the cottage gate.
He stopped. She passed a record in
through the open window.


274

25

When they got back to the station, the
desk sergeant pointed to the woman
sitting in reception who had been waiting
for them for over an hour.

A couple of poachers were making their
feeble excuses in the interview room on
the ground floor and so the two detectives
led the woman up the stairs and into the
chaotic incident room with its phones
and files and crisp packets and coffee
cups with rings on them. Rees called for
some tea.

She looked tired and rather grubby.
Her dark hair was lank and greasy, her
complexion oily. She was wearing purple
slacks with elastic at the bottom of them
that held them tight around the soles of
her feet, and cheap white shoes with a
little heel. Her cream jumper rode up her
midriff and there was a faint stain on the
big, shapeless chest.

She sat across from Rees. Munroe

275

propped himself up in the corner of
the room. Behind her was one of the
blackboards that was being used on the
Somerville and Hughes cases and which
was covered in a smudgy maze of lines
and dates and times.

"Billy killed him," she began. "It was
an accident. He sold us the car. I told
him we couldn't afford it, but he said
it'd be all right. He scraped everything
together, he even sold his old bike. It
cost us a hundred and thirty pounds."

Rees made no attempt to get any of it
down. When the constable barged open
the door and brought in the tea, he gave
him a nod and pointed to the chair by the
door. The youth sat quietly and listened,
and was finally glad that he had joined
the police force rather than gone into the
Forestry Commission.

She carried on. The words came
tumbling, without thought. "There was
nothing but trouble with it. He hadn't
done the work that he'd promised Billy
he'd do before we had it. He said he'd
make it all right, but he didn't. He went
back to Hughes, and they had a row, a big

276

one. But it was an accident. Billy would
never do anything like that. We've got
children.

"I told him: 'We've got to tell the
truth. Tell the truth and they'll believe
you. We can't live with something like
this.' You will believe him, won't you?"
she pleaded.

"I'm sure you've done the right thing,"
said Rees, without hope.

She started again, "When he came back
that day, I knew something was wrong.
He wouldn't say what had happened. He
went to the pub that night, but didn't eat
all day. He got drunk, and fell asleep.
When I woke up it was three o'clock in
the morning and he wasn't there. I went
downstairs and he was sitting in the dark,
crying. I made him tell me."

"Where is he now?" asked Rees,

quietly.

"At home, with the children. He's
waiting. You will believe him won't you?"
she said again.

* * *

277

Her husband was just as she had
suggested: a small man, who was cowed
by the world in general and now by
his nionstrous crime in particular. He
wanted to oblige: as Rees interviewed
him, he tried to complete the end
of the detective's sentences with him,
mouthing the last few words as they
drew to a close.

He smoked constantly, rolling thin
cigarettes from a battered Old Holborn
tin, the first two fingers of his right
hand shiny nut-brown from the years of
nicotine.

He filled in the details. He'd gone
back for the fourth time. The clutch was
slipping. It was the last straw. Hughes
had been dismissive. "What do you want
for a hundred quid?" he had said.

"I want a car that goes for longer than
a week," said Williams.

He made some half-hearted threats
about legal action, but Hughes had
laughed them off.

"Get off my land," said the mechanic.
I've work to do. Go on, get off."

He had slid under the Wyvern and seen

278



the man's footsteps disappear. Hughes
had the bleed spanner on the brake
nipple.

Williams, twenty yards away, was
coming to the boil. Hughes was a
powerfully built man, altogether bigger
and stronger than him. But not at this
moment. The man exploded with the rage
of years. Every injustice that he had ever
felt was pent in the kick that he lashed
out at the pile of bricks. The Vauxhall
rocked for a moment before it collapsed
on the prone mechanic.

Then, said Williams, he had begun his
heroic struggle. He tried to lift the car
from on top of the dying man.

Whether this was true or not was hardly
material. His 'brief would have invented
it for his defence anyway, 'mitigating
circumstances'. What was true was that
this small, frightened man with a tattoo
saying 'Sylvia' on his forearm had killed
another. He had panicked. Was scared
stiff by what he had accidentally done,
and so had driven away.

His wife had eventually made him
come and tell the truth. She said that

279


it would be all right, that he would be
believed. He would be believed, wouldn't
he? He started to cry uncontrollably.

Rees' pushed his packet of cigarettes
towards the man.

With a sympathetic jury, if he got a
haircut, had his wedding suit cleaned,
and got a decent lawyer to take an
interest for the price of a legal aid fee,
he might be out of Winson Green in five
or six years.

"Yes, you'll be all right. Don't worry,"
said Rees despondently. "You'll be fine."

280

26

That night, in the pitch black of his
room in the White Horse in Welshpool,
Munroe found it impossible to sleep. In
the darkness, he fingered his chin against
the growth and knew from the stubble
that it was only four or five o'clock. He
lay there and sweated. Even thoughts of
the girl at the cottage could not divert
him from his anxiety.

He loathed the prospect of flying. If
asked to put next month's salary, or even
his mortgage, on whether the Viscount
would crash or not, he knew that his
money would be secure, invested in the
safe landing of the aeroplane. But his
was an irrational fear: the engines that
screamed at an apparently unsustainable
pitch; the ambling, yawing of the huge,
ungainly structure, its aluminium shell
stuffed full of wiring and brimming to
its dangerous gills with high-octane fuel.
The way it lumbered down the tarmac

281

and how, at the end of the runway, the
captain seemed to jest with the mortals
strapped in their seats as he tested the
spongy brakes.

And then, the gut-wrenching moment
of ascent, the parting of the huge,
spinning tyres from the tarmac, the
absolute letting go, the point of no
return as the passengers became literally
suspended between life and death.

Munroe was well aware that an anxiety
about allowing your fate to be in the
hands of others was a basic manifestation
of insecurity. He had read all about
it. But so what? Knowing that didn't
help. It was like a condemned man
being expected to draw solace from his
understanding of gallows technology.

For he also knew that this plane,
hurtling through thin air at hundreds
of miles an hour, had had its oil topped
up, and its bolts tightened, and its wiring
checked by men exactly like the ones at
his local garage who left the top off the
engine-oil filler in his car, connected the
spark plug leads in the wrong order,
and never inflated tyres to the correct

282

pressure. They, too, had rows with their
wives, had too much to drink at the club
or pub, and lost a mother or a favourite
dog. But they still came to work and
tightened the bolts and checked the wires
and topped up the oil on the plane.

In Munroe's view, aeroplane maintenance
should be undertaken only by celibates,
men who spent their rest days and weekends
in prayer and quiet contemplation.

* * *

The flight from Birmingham's Elmdon
airport to Guernsey was not until two
in the afternoon, and Munroe had left
himself plenty of time to call at the
hospital in Shrewsbury on his way down
to the Midlands to speak to Dorothea
Somerville and her therapist.

At reception he was directed to the
doctor's room by a young lady whose
moving lips he watched closely. When she
had finished gesturing each right and left
turn in the corridors with the 2B pencil in
her hand, Munroe knew that she was left
handed, bit her nails, smoked (holding

283


the cigarette in her right hand), and that
she had a double filling in her lower left
jaw. Unfortunately, he still had absolutely
no idea where Dr Pickering's room was.
He thanked her and, continuing to watch
her, walked hesitantly away down the
corridor, gesturing vaguely ahead of him,
hoping that she might either confirm or
contradict his route for as long as he had
sight of her.



* * *

Nigel Pickering, consultant psychiatrist at
Shelton Hospital, was a well-intentioned,
kindly man who gave generously to
charity, pushed hospital beds around
the centre of the town to raise money
for the new wing, and was an excellent
father. When he had read bedtime stories
to his children, Nathan and Iphigenia, he
had made the noises, pulled the faces,
grimaced the grimaces and even cried
the tears.

When they were older, the family,
in all weathers, walked Offa's Dyke,
the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path and the

284

Pennine Way. The Pickerings observed
other holidaying families with a sort of
benign dismay as they ate ice-cream and
squabbled in the back of Ford Escorts.

By the time that they were at the
local state grammar school, and their
chums were going on sudden excursions
to Majorca or the Costa Del Sol, Nathan
and Iphigenia were accompanying their
parents to the Austrian Tyrol and the
Italian lakes, where the air was clean
and the lakes were not full of people
with Dudley accents who piddled in the
water.

On their alpine holidays, Dr Pickering
eulogized the flowers and the clouds and
the birds. Any that he did not know he
looked up in one of the little books that
he carried in his canvas knapsack, along
with interesting articles from Psychiatry
Today and a selection of crosswords
that he had collected from the Observer during the month preceding the holiday.

Nathan and Iphigenia emerged from
adolescence as emotionally stunted children
whose capacity to respond directly to
almost anything had been effectively

285

nullified by their over-zealous father.
The good, liberal psychiatrist, who had
devoted his career to helping the mentally
ill, and whom his children had once
heard wax lyrical about a pile of sheep
droppings on the alpine pastures, had
virtually appropriated their capacity to
feel. They never forgave him.

* * *

At work in the hospital, even in a
profession which dealt daily with the
deranged, the deluded and the mad, his
ability to get under the skin of both those
in his care, and his peers, was nothing
short of remarkable.

As Munroe sat in the psychiatrist's
room opposite the robustly healthy,
prematurely balding man, he felt an
indefinable antipathy towards him: what was it about a man's eating an apple in
public that sought to confer upon him
such moral superiority, he wondered?

* * *

286

Dorothea Somerville had been in the
hospital several times during the last three
or four years. He could get her file and tell
the Inspector the precise dates, 'if you so
wish' (the implication was that he would
not be going to do this). She exhibited
many of the traits and symptoms of the
middleaged, female alcoholic: a husband
who no longer appeared interested in her;
children growing up and leading more
or less independent lives; essentially, an
overwhelming sense of her own innate
worthlessness.

On her admission to Pickering's unit,
the process now followed an established
routine: withdrawal from all alcohol,
regular intake of vitamin B supplements,
and a course of Nembutal, which helped
to combat her anxiety and produced the
drowsiness and detachment that allowed
her some fitful sleep. When ready, she
would join the psychotherapy group, and
would rehearse her problems under the
careful guidance of 'my good self.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "once
out of the hospital environment, she
will no doubt begin again the steady .

287

drinking that will eventually lead to her
re-admission in a few months' time." The
doctor twirled his apple core by its stalk
between his thumb and finger. "Very sad.
Very tragic," he said thoughtfully.

"There's no chance of her giving up
her drinking?" asked Munroe.

"None whatsoever," said the doctor
emphatically. "There are many treatments for alcoholism, Inspector Munroe, but
there is one absolute requirement: the
patient has to want to stop. Mrs
Somerville has never expressed any real
wish to do so."

"I see," said Munroe, feeling rather
chastened by the doctor's use of his name
and rank, as if he were in some way
responsible for Mrs Somerville's malaise.
He patted his jacket pocket and took out
his cigarettes. Pickering immediately went
to the french windows of his room and
pushed them open.

"And at what stage is her treatment at
the moment?" asked Munroe as he lit a
Gold Leaf.

"She's still in detoxification," said
the doctor, emphasizing the word and

288

theatrically averting his face from Munroe's
cigarette smoke. "She'll be feeling groggy
for a while. Is it about her son's death?"

"Yes," said Munroe. "You obviously
know about it?"

"Of course," said the doctor.

"I have to ask her a few questions. But
it's not urgent. It'll keep."

"She won't be much help to you for
a day or two yet, I'm afraid," said the
doctor.

"Thank you," said Munroe, getting to
his feet. "I'll call back, then. May I go out this way? I've got a bit of time to kill.
Perhaps I could walk round the field?"

"Certainly," said the doctor, "Be my
guest." As the two men stood at the
french windows Pickering drew back his
arm and threw his apple core as far as
he could into the field. Munroe looked at
him, a little surprised. "Biodegradable,"
said the doctor, "biodegradable."

"I see," said Munroe. To his eyes it
looked like a half-eaten apple core on a
nicely mown cricket field.

289


27

Detective-Inspector Lefebvre met Munroe

at Guernsey airport. The man looked
like a prop forward, and thereafter
Munroe always associated his formidable
stature with the low Channel Islands
crime rate. His appearance belied his
good nature: he displayed none of the
tiresome inter-force rivalry that plagued
the mainland divisions.

He naturally wanted to know what the
young man, James Orme, had done that
could warrant bringing an Inspector all
the way from Wales. Munroe bluffed,
told him it was routine, related to an
accidental death. The Channel Islands
policeman was quietly unimpressed with
this baloney and told his wife at supper
that evening that he believed the Inspector
with the Birmingham accent was probably
here to detain a murder suspect.

He drove Munroe up the steep road
that looked down to the harbour where

290

the boy had taken lodgings with a
jewellery retailer's widow.

Les Vardes was a boxy, flat-roofed
building that was cleverly designed on
two levels to tuck neatly into the contours
of the hillside. Covered in glistening
white stucco it needed repainting every
two years as it took the buffeting of
the Atlantic winter storms before they
blew down to the gulf of St Malo thirty

miles away.

Lefebvre sat in the driver's seat of
the Peugeot, with the door open, and
smoked Gitanes while Munroe went up
to the garden. The ornamental bushes
were pruned, the flowerbeds weeded and
mulched and the hedges neatly clipped.
The brass door-pull and handle shone
and the timber plaque upon which the
name of the house was mounted was
worn smooth by years of polishing. Even
the gravel on the path looked clean.

As he stood in the warm sun at the
door a tortoiseshell cat,came up to him
and arched its back against his calf.

Mrs Sandy, crippled by arthritis, led
him into the kitchen. She confirmed

291

that she had taken the young man as
a lodger, and explained to the Inspector
that she liked to feel the presence of
somebne else in the house. He had
replied to her advert in the Guernsey
Chronicle. On the telephone he had
sounded very nice. But when he had
walked through the wrought-iron gate
an hour later and she saw his long
hair, she had been ready to lie to him
and tell him that the rooms had been
let.

It was not that she was afraid of
him: more than twenty-five years ago,
German officers had stood on her balcony
and surveyed the harbour approaches. It
would take more than a long-haired boy
in blue jeans to frighten her. But she
really didn't care for the hippies that
visited the island in greater numbers every
year now, looking for work in the tomato
packing warehouses or picking flowers
in the huge commercial greenhouses or
serving ice-cream in the beach cafes.
They did the work, but there was also
talk of drugs, and they busked in the
square and many of the tourists didn't

292

like them and their dirty looks. They
were a mixed blessing.

But by the time that she had been
ready to explain to him that she could
no longer let the room, he had won her
over. His hair might have been down to
his shoulders but he was courteous and
polite. He talked to her about her illness,
seemed to know quite a lot about the
different forms of it, said his grandmother
was also incapacitated through it. She
castigated herself for being such an old
fuddy-duddy, told herself that it was the
beginning of the end when you started
looking inward and rejected everything
that was new.

She had showed him the room and
they had agreed the terms there and
then.

The boy was out at work, driving
Turner's mineral water lorry. He would
be back at about five, she told the
Inspector. Mrs Sandy wanted to know
what he had done, but he told her only
that he needed to speak to the boy.

* * *
293

They heard the gate open and then the
heavy front door. The boy came into
the kitchen. He was wearing jeans and
plimsolls and a T-shirt. He had already
caught the sun and started to tan. He
looked well.

When Munroe said that he was a
policeman, the boy showed no real
surprise. They went up to his room on
the first floor. It was tidy. There were
clothes hung on hangers on the back
of the door; a new Dansette portable
recordplayer sat on a low rattan table,
some books and a pile of long-playing
records were stacked next to it.

The boy sat on the bed, the Inspector
in the low wicker chair. "So, what do you
want with me?" he asked.

"It's about Charles Somerville. About
his death. The 'accident'." He drew the
word out long and mocked the notion
of it as he said it. "We've got a few
queries. We thought you might be able
to help."

"Susie," he said derisively.

He ignored the boy. "The fact is, the
boy dies a mysterious death, and you

294

leave the village a few days later. It looks
suspicious. And there are other things,
things that you and I both know."

"Oh yes, 'you and I'," said the boy,
sneering. "Such as?"

"Such as the problem that you have
with your emotions," said Munroe.

"I told you it was Susie. I'm disappointed
in her. Very disappointed." His supercilious
tone was offensive to the policeman.

"She told me about the farmer; then
there was the stuff in the pub with one
of the locals. And what about where
she worked? Did you think there was
something going on there?"

Orme was silent.

Munroe softened his tone. "You're
going to have to tell me, you know.
It's got to be sorted out; the boy was
killed. We know it was no accident."

James took the easy bait, "Why
should I want to kill him?" he said
disingenuously.

"Come on, do me a favour. We're from Birmingham. So people think we're
stupid. The accent. But we know better,
don't we? We're not that dim. Charlie

295

Somerville wasn't supposed to be the
victim. Even the rumours would have
told you that. It was the old man.
The old man . . . who's got a bit of
a reputation. And you and Susie, you
were going through a bad patch. She gets
a job there. Come on, what next?"

"I didn't do anything," he said.

"It won't do, James. It won't do at
all. I know you had something on your
mind."

"Do you?"

"Yes, I do."

"And how the fuck do you know that?
'Cause she told you, right?"

"She's been questioned. She's got to
tell the truth. It's not her fault. She had
to tell me what she knew."

"So what did she tell you?"

"She told me . . . that you had things
on your mind. Things that you weren't
happy about. That you'd done. Maybe
it would be best if you told me in your
own words."

He was not stupid. "She didn't tell you
anything, did she?"

Munroe didn't answer. "If you've

296	

nothing to hide, why not tell me what
happened? Between you and her, and the
other thing?"

"I did do something. I did something
so shitty that I'm ashamed."

"Yes?"

"I don't want to tell you. Or anybody
else. And why should I?"

Munroe paused, looked at him and
smiled, "Because until you convince
me otherwise, you're my number one
suspect."

"You're joking!" said the boy.

"I don't think so," said Munroe
seriously. "But I'll help you if I can,
I'm on your side."

"Like fuck you are," said the boy and
he swung down from the bed and went
to the kitchenette. He poured himself a
tonic water and gulped it down.

Out of sight of Munroe he began in a
voice that he tried to make strong, "I did
think there might have been something
going on between her and Somerville."
And then, troubled, "I still don't know
whether there was . . . when I asked her,
she denied it."

297

"Yes," said Munroe gently.

He deepened his voice, "I wanted
to warn him off. Warn him, and tell
him how much I loved her. Loved all
of her."

"Yes?"

"I got one of her Tampax." Munroe
could hear him breathing, gasping to say
the words. "I sent it to him."

There was an uncomfortable silence,
the two men out of sight of one another.
Munroe eventually said, "A used one?"

"Yes, for Christ's sake," he said angrily.
"What do you think I'm saying? A used one. Her blood on it. Herself. I wanted
to disgust him, and her."

Munroe lit a cigarette and the smoke
plumed across the sun-slatted room.

The boy's disembodied voice came
again, "I was going to tell her what I'd
done. To show her how I felt. But then
I couldn't. I was afraid of what she'd do.
It got more and more grotesque after I'd
done it, and I couldn't tell her. And I
still don't know the truth. You've got to
have truth. That's what the acid shows
you. You've got to tell the truth. And I

298

didn't, and maybe she didn't and that's
why it's all gone wrong."

He stopped gushing and there was only
the silence and the blue cigarette smoke
in the room and the sun and dust motes
slanting through the blinds.

"You happy now?" he said pathetically,
still out of sight in the kitchen. "You
can't get much lower than that, eh?"

"I don't know what to say," said
Munroe. "And you didn't touch the
car? You were prepared to do ... that
thing, but you're telling me you didn't
interfere with the car?"

The boy stepped forward into the
kitchen doorway, "No, of course not."

"How do I know you're telling me the
truth?"

"You don't. What did she say when
you asked her? Does she think I did
it?"

"No, she doesn't," offered Munroe.
He immediately tempered the consolation
with, "But she could be wrong."

Orme's confession had been cathartic.
He felt some relief, some lifting of the
oppression of his guilt. "Do you want a

299


drink?" he asked the policeman.

"Yes, please," said Munroe.

"What do you want?"

"What have you got?"

"Orangeade, lemonade, cherryade,
American cream soda, ginger beer,
dandelion and burdock."

Munroe was glad to smile. "Dandelion
and burdock, please."

The boy poured the pop and handed it
to him. "Perks of the job," he said, and
sat on the edge of the bed again.

Munroe sipped the first dandelion and
burdock he'd had in twenty years. It was
exactly as he remembered it. Only now
it tasted awful.

"So what happened?" said Munroe.

"What about?"

"You know, the er . . . "

"I don't know. Nothing happened. He
must've got the message. He didn't say
anything to Susie. Or if he did, she never
told me."

A lazy wasp battered itself against the
window. Orme walked over, picked up a
paper and squashed it against the glass.

Munroe believed him. He got to his

300

feet and handed him the half-full glass.
"Are you staying here?"

"Where?"

"On the island."

"Sure. Why?"

"At this house? And in your job?"

"Yes, I'm not going anywhere."

"I'll need to know where you are. I'll
make arrangements for you to report to
the police every day. It's the best I can do.
I could take you back to the mainland."

"I'll be good, don't worry."

They walked to the top of the stairs.
"I'll make the arrangements and the
island police'll get in touch with you.
And you'd better not contact anyone
who's involved with the case for the
time being. No letters to -- "

"Susie," he interrupted.

301


28

The next day Rees and Munroe used
the White Horse in Welshpool for
their debriefing session. They chewed
over Billy Williams's confession, and
Munroe filled Rees in on his day trip
to Guernsey and Orme's gross gesture
with the sanitary wear.

Billy Williams was exactly what a
policeman doesn't want: a pathetic creature
who makes one terrible mistake and spends
the rest of his life paying for it. Both Rees
and Munroe knew that 'real' criminals got
away with murder, sometimes literally,
and yet this poor bugger was going to get
himself sent down for six or seven years
for doing away with a nasty little rat who
no one had a good word for.

But the bit that grated was the way
Williams had just walked in and given
himself up. They had been nowhere with
the Len Hughes killing, when in steps
Billy with his hands up.

302

They had been thrown, of course, by
Charlie Somerville's car being there. The
classic mistake of putting two bits of a
story together that seem to fit, and yet,
finally, have no connection: Len Hughes
had no more to do with Charlie than
buying his car; his subsequent death was
a purely local affair, no more, no less.
Munroe should have known better. He
went to the bar and bought another

round.

James Orme, Munroe felt, was innocent.
His confession about the Tampax had
been bitter and genuine. He was not
trading a sop to them. Munroe felt
that the extent of the long-haired boy's
crime was this bit of perverse malice. He
might be wrong, and the youth had to
be watched, but he thought he was out
of the frame.

But there were questions, things that
didn't fit, or didn't fit quite right: why
hadn't Somerville said anything about the
Tampax? Was he simply, too embarrassed?
Or had there, as Orme suspected, been
something going on between the Colonel
and the girl?

303


Munroe seemed sure there had not.
Rees gave his friend a knowing look. So
why had Somerville not mentioned this
deed, they wondered? They would go
and see him again, later this afternoon;
and they would speak to the detoxifying
Dorothea Somerville soon, perhaps
tomorrow, depending upon the advice
of Dr Pickering.

* * *

Back at the station, there was a message
for Rees. The desk sergeant said Somerville
had been on the phone for him. It was
nothing urgent. He would call back.

"Maybe he's going to do you for
insubordination," joked the Welshman
to his Birmingham colleague.

The two men went through to the
incident room and Rees dialled Plas
Trisillio. As soon as he got through and
heard the Colonel's rounded vowels, the
hint of lunch-time insobriety disappeared
and he straightened up.

"Colonel . . . DI Rees here, I got
your message . . . Yes . . . yes ... of

304

course . . . not at all ... it might be
useful. No, it could be important. Let me
just get it down in my notebook . . . Yes
... I know him ..."

Rees gestured to the other hand-set and
Munroe lifted it carefully to his ear.

"Please, Colonel, go on."

"It was nothing. Nothing at all. But

you did say ..."

Rees raised his eyebrows to Munroe.
"Yes, Colonel, we did say ..."
Somerville continued, "I was naturally
irate. She's little more than a child. I
gave him a flea in his ear and saw
him off. I suppose he might have some sort of grudge. Only God knows what
I'm supposed to do when I come out
and find him .in the barn with my
daughter. Ask him in for a whisky and

soda?"

"Quite," said Rees. He'd noticed that
people like the Colonel said 'quite' when
they had nothing much to add. "I think
we'd better have a word with him. We'll
get down to see him as soon as possible.
And as soon as we know anything, we'll
get back to you, all right?"

305


"Fine. I'm sure it's nothing. But you
did say ..."

"Ye,s, Colonel, we did say. Just one
thing, sir, before you go." He looked
across at Munroe and the other man
nodded his agreement. "We've been
speaking to the boy from Well Cottage,
you know, your groom's boyfriend, James
Orme."

"Yes," he said.

"He says he sent you something." Rees
balked at describing the item, "Something
in the post ..."

"Yes?" said Somerville.

"Did you receive anything . . . ?"

"What do you mean? What did he
send? When?"

"Have you received anything from him,
Colonel?"

"Look, what's all this about? I don't
know the boy. Why would he be sending
anything to me?"

"Don't worry, sir, he's probably making
it up. Just some story." He looked
across at Munroe who shrugged and
gestured to him to put the phone
down. "We'll look into it and see

306

what he's up to. Don't worry about
it."

"If you say so," said the Colonel, rather
testily, and Rees hung up.

"So?" said Munroe.


"You heard most of it. The usual stuff,
he didn't think it was important . . . but
maybe he'd better mention it, etc. The
night before his boy died, he hears
something in the barn, stalks over, and
there's his lass with a lad from the village
having a bit of nooky, you know."

"I know," said Munroe. "Go on."

"That's it. He shunts the low-life off
the estate and bawls the daughter out."

"Sounds all right to me," said Munroe.
"People have killed for less. So who's
the kid?"

"Pete Ryan. He's been in a bit of
trouble, but he's all right. Bloody good
player. Centre-forward for the village.
Good in the air. Jumps like a salmon,
hangs there and then powers it in. They
say West Brom are interested in him."

"Oh yes," said Munroe, deeply
unimpressed. Villa were his team, West
Brom the local enemy. They were, in his

307

view, just the sort of club who'd sign a
murderer.

"There'll be a riot round here if he's
involved," continued Rees. "He's got the
ball control of Georgie Best."


"If he's involved, he'll have lots of time
to work on his ball skills," said Munroe
sardonically.

"Not the same inside though, is it?"
said Rees regretfully.

* * *

He was big for his age, seventeen and
good-looking, with blond hair down to
his collar. He exuded youth and health
and a certain cocky assuredness.	

His mother and younger brother were
in the noisy house and the policeman
asked him outside for a chat. He loped
towards the car, and both men felt creaky
and old beside him. If he had bounded
away, they knew they would never have
been able to catch him.

Munroe sat in the passenger front seat
and Rees shared the back with the boy.
They asked a few open-ended questions

308

to get his measure.

He didn't deny that he'd been with
the girl on the night in question. And
yes, the crusty father had run him off
the estate.

"We'd got half our gear off ... bloody
right state we were in ... but not as bad
as him! He went ape-shit. What's he think
we do at night? Go to the village hall for
the whist drives?"

Munroe didn't like his familiarity. He
was stringing them along, telling them the
'truth' about the part of the evening and
the events that he knew that they would
check, and yet at the same time making
light of it, all boys together.

He was either telling the truth, was
innocent and had nothing to fear, or
was cunning and clever.

They homed in on him. The Colonel's
car, the one that had been involved in the
fatal accident, it had been interfered with.
Munroe swung round, "Do you know
how Charlie Somerville was killed?"

"I know the talk. Everybody does. The
bonnet was gummed down. So that it'd
fly up and kill some poor bugger." He

309

saw all too clearly where their logic was
heading. "Come on," he said. "You're
not suggesting ..."

"You work in a garage?"

"Yes, I work in a garage. On Saturday
mornings. So what?"

"You'd know how to secure a bonnet
with gum?"

"So would my granny!" he sneered.

The car was filled with cigarette smoke.
The boy grimaced and wound down the
window. It was stiff, rarely used.

Rees took the nice-guy part. His
question was pointed, but the tone was
conciliatory, "You hit James Orme in the
Horseshoe . . . ?"

"That hippy? He hit me. I just hit him
back. He asked for it."

"You've quite a temper, it seems," said
Munroe, watching him in the mirror.

"Come off it! That woman of his, no
bra, she's putting herself about ..."

Munroe swung round, his jaw set, his
eyes blazing, and pushed his fingers into
the boy's throat, "Watch yourself, son,
all right!"

Ryan pushed himself back in the seat,

310

frightened. "What's up with him?" he
said to Rees.

Rees muttered to Munroe, "Take it
easy, John. Go on, Peter."

"She's ..." He looked up at Munroe,
afraid of provoking him. "... you know,
being friendly with the boys. We've had
a win away. I was a bit pissed. We're all
getting on fine except for her bloke who's
just standing there miserable. Suddenly
he lunges at me, and so I rolled him
over and dropped him. He was a piece
of piss. I could've killed him, easy."

"You could have killed him, you say,"
said Munroe.

"A manner of speaking," said the boy
sarcastically. "He was nothing. These
hippies, they're all love and peace,
man. They don't know anything about
scrapping."

"And when Colonel Somerville runs
you off his land, you're telling me you
don't want revenge? Didn't take revenge?
A little something to get your own back
that went wrong?"

"Course not. He doesn't bother me.
Louise and me, we can go anywhere.

311


There's plenty more half-terms, lots of
fields and barns. I know them all round
here. She comes down here sometimes,

when my old lady's out, slums it. She's
all right, Louise."

They told him to stay in the car and
they sauntered up and down the little
road of council houses.

"Nice boy," said Munroe.

"Come on, John, he's all right. Bit
rough, at least for round here, but not
a killer."

Munroe was not so sanguine. "It didn't
start off as a murder attempt, just a scare
thing. The kind of thing he could do.
What's his previous?"

"He's had a couple of fines . . . and
he's on probation," said Rees reluctantly.

"What for?"

"Assault," said Rees.

"Oh yes?" said Munroe, smug.

"Down at the local dance. It's not
unusual. That kind of thing's been going
on for years round here. Local rivalries.
Your village against mine. One week it's
the flower show for the trophy, the next
it's the choir competition, and now and

312

again, on a Saturday night, the local
youth bust one another's heads. It's
nothing, I'm telling you, John. The kid's
probably no better or worse than his dad
and grandad were. There's just more of
us bloody lot chasing 'em."

Munroe was unimpressed by Rees's
tolerance of local tribal customs. "I think
we should take him in, Tony. Put him
under a bit of pressure. He's too obvious
to leave out. And let's face it, we haven't
exactly got a cell full of suspects down

there."

"I suppose it'll keep Nicklin off our
backs for a bit. But we're wasting our
time. He's a bit of a yob, that's all. And
my missis'll kill me; she was born here
and we've got Llandrinio in the semifinal
of the Cup next week. He can confess to
anything but he's coming out to play in

that one!"

"Fair enough," said Munroe.

They took the boy back into the house.
Some of his jauntiness had disappeared.
They explained to his mother that they
were taking him to the station at
Welshpool so that he could help them

313

with their inquiries.

"For how long?" she asked, alarmed.

"Just for a while," said Rees.

"As'long as it takes," added Munroe
ominously.

The boy went up to his room with
Rees to get a jacket. Against the wall,
and below the Manchester United team
posters and the huge portrait of George
Best, was a drawing table.

Peter Ryan hadn't been an outstanding
success at school, and when his art
teacher had told divorced Mrs Ryan that
the boy had real talent, could probably be
a successful commercial or graphics artist,
she had resolved to give him all the help
that she could. His artist's bench had cost
her a fortune.

Rees looked over the illustrations,
designs and fanciful logos. At the top,
to secure loose sheets of paper, was a
malleable ball of white artist's rubber.

Rees went to the top of the stairs that
ran up the house directly from the front
door, and called, "John, come up here a
minute. You too, Mrs Ryan, please."

314

29

At the therapy room in Shelton Hospital,

Dorothea Somerville joined the little
group and went to her seat. The red
plastic chairs had no arms and she folded
her hands demurely in her lap.

Dr Pickering smiled warmly, making
eye-contact with each of the patients, and
began to speak. In the next room, through
the open door, the television nickered
silently. From the kitchen beyond came
the sound of detached, fragmented,
normal life. Staff prepared food and
washed cups; stainless steel surfaces
clattered; incongruous laughter occasionally
rang out.

As the doctor droned on, Dorothea
started quietly to speak. At the first
sound, three or four of the others looked
across at her. The doctor was surprised.
She had rarely spoken during her previous
sessions.

She shivered involuntarily, "I was

315


cold. I'd been watching Come Dancing. Charles was in his room. Philip was out.
He was in the Land-Rover." There was
a long pause.

"How did I know how to do it?

"A week before, my car was rattling. I
stopped at a garage and asked them to
check it.

"The man showed me how the bonnet
hadn't shut properly, but he said that
it was all right because of the safety
catch." There was another long delay.
Pickering looked very concerned. One
of the patients began to gnaw at the
skin on her fingers where the nails had
once been.

"I went to Philip's car. I'd never sat in
the driver's seat before. My feet wouldn't
reach the pedals. I pulled the handle and
the bonnet jumped up.

"Do you know the worst?" A tear rolled
down her cheek into the corner of her
mouth. "I used Charles's rubber. His
drawing rubber. It gets too dirty in the
end. He'd put it in his bin. And I saw
it there. I wedged it into the catch and
then I put some bits round the edges."

316

"She started to sob and rock and
wrapped her arms around herself. The
girl opposite drew rapidly on her cigarette
so that the lighted end was one long piece
of hot ash.

"I'd lived with his affairs for years.
Nothing would have happened. If she
hadn't sent me that thing. Why did
she do that? She had him. But she
taunted me. She was saying that she
was still alive. She knew that mine had
finished.

"It was horrible. Sophie had got it first.
It was torn and chewed in the vestibule.
It was horrible. The dog was sick. I
cleared it up. Said nothing. But they
couldn't do that to me. I was somebody
once, too."

Pickering came forward and sat in the
chair next to her. "It's good to talk,"
he said, and gently put a hand on the
woman's arm.

"Poor Charles," she said. "Poor, dear
Charles," and the teardrops blotted into
her print dress.

* * *
317

When she was sedated and in her room,
Pickering walked the grounds for an hour.
He was deeply troubled.

Back in his office, he dialled Welshpool
Police Station, "Can I speak to Inspector
Munroe, please?" he asked.

318

30

Munroe had to return to Birmingham
the following day to tie up paperwork
on a case that was coming to court the
next week.

That evening, he drove back to his
empty house in Handsworth. Kath had
been back and there was a brief note on
the table which ended with the address
of her solicitor in offices in the Rotunda
in Birmingham city centre. He wished it
had been a cheaper address.

He opened drawers and cupboards
at random. Most of her clothes were
now gone. He wandered aimlessly from
room to room. He could detect no
particular significance in the things that
she had left behind: it wasn't as if she
had left every dress that he had ever
bought her, nor taken every one that
he had.

If he had known enough about fashion,
what was in, what was hopelessly out,

319

there might have been a clue there. But
he didn't.

He  went down into the cellar and
stood and smelled its musty cool that
he liked.


Upstairs, he opened a drawer in the
dressing-table. There was some underwear
there, and a swimming costume that he
remembered from a holiday in Spain. In
another one there were slips and cotton
tops. In 'his' wardrobe there was a sad
winter coat, some more dresses and a
couple of skirts.

In the front room the bookshelves had
big gaps where her books had been. In
the kitchen, familiar utensils had gone.

From the sitting-room she had taken
the standard lamp, an occasional table
and the chairs from the three-piece suite.

She had gone to live with a man who
owned a sofa but not a kitchen whisk or a
pestle and mortar. He grinned to himself.

He went out to his car and brought
in his bag and the record that the girl
had given him. On the cover was the
young Dylan; his face was defiant, angry,
honest.

320

He put the record on the gramophone
player and the boy started to sing about
an encounter between 'a girl called Rita'
and Tony Perkins. He lit a cigarette and
sat on the back of the sofa with his feet on
the cushions and listened. It was funny.

He turned the volume up and wandered
again through all the downstairs rooms of
the empty house.

Upstairs, he sat on the unmade bed in
the half light of the early evening.

The words of the boy came up to him.
It was a different, serious song, and the
thin, insistent voice pleaded the refrain:

"Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now ..."

He didn't turn off the gramophone;
the record was still playing in the empty
house as he headed up Soho Road, and out
of Birmingham towards the motorway.

* * *

He drove up the lane in the absolute
blackness of a country night, the twin

321

headlights of the Zephyr piercing the dark
and drawing him in.

Her van was there. He parked beside
it.

There was a lamplight in the cottage
and he knocked., very softly.

She drew open the door and they
looked at one another. He wanted to
speak, but had no idea what he was
going to say. She stepped up to him,
on tiptoes, and put her lips to his. He
felt her little body against his and put
his arms around her.

They made love straight away, wordlessly,
on soft blankets that she spread before
the glowing fire. Afterwards, they lay
wrapped in one another's arms for a
long time.

She kissed his neck and leaned across
him and picked up her book from beside
the hearth. He felt the weight of her
breasts as she leaned across him.

The fire warmed his naked side.

"Listen," she said softly, and began to
read to him the two pages where Paul
Morel makes love with Clara Dawes
beside the River Trent.

322

When she reached the words 'He kissed
her and gave way to ;by', he took the
book from her, lay it down and folded
her in his arms again.

THE END

Other titles in the
Linford Mystery Library:

A GENTEEL LITTLE MURDER

Philip Daniels

Gilbert had a long-cherished plan to
murder his wife. When the polished
Edward entered the scene Gilbert's
attitude was suddenly changed.

DEATH AT THE WEDDING
Madelaine Duke

Dr. Norah North's search for a killer
takes her from a wedding to a private
hospital.

MURDER FIRST CLASS
Ron Ellis

Will Detective Chief Inspector Glass
find the Post Office robbers before
the Executioner gets to them?

A FOOT IN THE GRAVE

Bruce Marshall

About to be imprisoned and tortured
in Buenos Aires,, John Smith escapes,
only to become involved in an
aeroplane hijacking.

DEAD TROUBLE

Martin Carroll

Trespassing brought Jennifer Denning
more than she bargained for. She was
totally unprepared for the violence
which was to lie in her path.



HOURS TO KILL

Ursula Curtiss

Margaret went to New Mexico to
look after her sick sister's rented
house and felt a sharp edge of fear
when the absent landlady arrived.


THE DEATH OF ABBE DIDIER
Richard Grayson

Inspector Gautier of the Surete
investigates three crimes which are
strangely connected.

NIGHTMARE TIME

Hugh Pentecost

Have the missing major and his wife
met with foul play somewhere in
the Beaumont Hotel, or is their
disappearance a carefully planned
step in an act of treason?

BLOOD WILL OUT
Margaret Carr

Why was the manor house so oddly
familiar to Elinor Howard? Who
would have guessed that a Sunday
School outing could lead to murder?