His mother died without his assistance on the weekend after he had had to sell the car. He felt surprisingly little emotion, not even relief, when he came home from the Ridgeway to find her cold and stiff in her bed. She still had the complaining, slightly petulant look on her face which was as much a part of her as the mole on her cheek and her watery brown eyes. He began automatically to wonder which horse he would back in the three fifteen at Newmarket.
After his mother’s death he tried to keep away from the betting shop for a while. He told himself that now he had no reason to escape. But he was wrong. There were other pressures. He cared about the shop and wanted to maintain it in its old glory but it was expensive to run and his regular customers grew older and less willing to spend money. Soon he was in debt. More disturbingly Dorothea Cassidy turned up at the vicarage and began to question his authority in the only place he had ever had any power. Eventually he sold the business and then, even with the gambling, he had a little financial security. But Dorothea Cassidy remained less easy to deal with.
When Dorothea’s car was found on his drive the instinct to escape to the betting shop was irresistible. He felt that in the accepting, unquestioning atmosphere of the shop he would find the strength to sort himself out and decide what to do. After a few bets he would relax again. But when he pushed open the door and waved his usual greeting to Susan behind the counter he found they were all talking about the murder.
‘Here’s Wally,’ one of the punters said. ‘He’ll know what’s going on. Tell us about it, Wally.’
In comparison to them he was well educated and seemed to have a limitless supply of money. They trusted his judgement. They gathered around him wanting information and it was almost the same elated sensation as after a win.
‘Well,’ he said, diffident, in case they should think he was boasting. ‘Actually her car was found on my drive.’
Then he was the most popular person in the place. Was there blood, they wanted to know, any clues? Had the police given him a bad time? Perhaps he could sell the story to the papers and make a fortune.
On Abbey Meadow the fair was still. Men cleared up the mess of the night before. They called to each other, using nicknames and the technical terms of their trade which would have been incomprehensible to outsiders. Joss Corkhill walked among them, an Alsatian as big as a wolf by his side, shouting greetings, feeling immensely at home. He told himself the fair was the only place he had ever belonged. It was his Irish blood, he thought. He needed to travel. He regarded each of the rides with affection. He passed the waltzers where the night before teenage couples had clung to each other, shrieking with mock-terror above the music, and the galloping horses and the old-fashioned helter-skelter with its wooden slide and woven rope mats. His mate’s ride was called the Noah’s Ark. Carved animals spun at great speed around an undulating track. There was nothing heavy to do. Most of the work was in setting up the fair and clearing it away at the end, but Joss was occupied all morning in cleaning and general maintenance and when they packed up at dinnertime his friend gave him ten pounds.
As he worked Joss tried to decide what to do about Theresa. He wanted her with him. It was a matter of pride. He had thought he had persuaded her and then the bloody social worker and the bloody vicar’s wife had got in the way. Yet as he walked around the wooden animals, he smiled to himself.
‘You’re in a good mood today,’ his mate said. Usually, before he had had a few drinks, Joss was bad-tempered, taciturn, inclined to lash out. Once, after a court appearance for being drunk and disorderly, a well-meaning magistrate had asked for a social inquiry report to get to the root of his drinking and his violent mood swings. The probation officer had sent him to a psychiatrist, but the doctor had failed to come up with a convenient label. Corkhill had a personality disorder, he said, and they could do nothing to treat that. So he had been fined and sent away to continue drinking.
Rumours of the murder across the river came early but were not specific. By the time the police came to Abbey Meadow with their photographs and their suspicion of everyone who worked on the fair, Joss Corkhill had left the site and was spending his wages in one of the pubs in the town, his Alsatian under the bench at his feet. He drank quickly and heavily but he did not stay long. He wanted to talk to Theresa. It was time, he thought, for a showdown.
The streets in the centre of town were busy with Friday shoppers and visitors. Joss Corkhill pushed his way through them and walked quickly out of the town towards the Ridgeway Estate, stopping on the way at a small off licence to buy a bottle of cider. At the corner of the street where Theresa lived he paused. There was a smart car he did not recognise outside. It was probably the social worker’s boss, he thought. That was all he needed. Another bloody woman. So he took a drink from the bottle and went back to the bookmaker’s thinking that he would wait until the visitor had gone.
At the door of the betting shop he stopped and let the dog in first. He liked to make an entrance. But when he followed no one had noticed that the dog was there. The regulars were gathered together in a huddle like a bunch of old women. They talked excitedly; not of horses but of Dorothea Cassidy’s murder.
‘She was here yesterday afternoon, you know,’ one said. ‘Down at the Stringers. There’s a policeman in the house now. He came with the social worker. I saw them.’
‘There are cops all over the place asking questions.’
Without speaking Corkhill motioned to the dog and left. He walked to the Otterbridge by-pass and stood by the side of the road to hitch a lift.
In the kitchen of his mother’s house Clive Stringer hungrily ate his chips. He gathered together the greasy paper in an untidy ball and threw it into the cardboard box in the corner which served as a bin. I should have stayed at Armstrong House, he thought. I would have been safer there. The kitchen door was still wide open and the living-room door was ajar so he could hear the murmur of voices as the policeman talked to his mother and Miss Masters, but in his panic he could not make out the words. I should get away, he thought. But escape seemed impossible. There was no back door from the kitchen and the windows would not open since the council workmen had painted the frames two years ago. His only way out was through the front. Why don’t they come and get me? he thought. What are they doing? At last his confinement in the kitchen became unbearable. The voices in the living room had stopped and that added to his tension. He walked carefully sideways out into the hall, sliding his back against the wall in a futile attempt to make himself invisible. He had reached the front door and was lifting his hand to the catch when the inspector spoke.
‘Clive!’ he said and the sudden sound of the stern voice in the quiet house made Clive’s heart pound and his legs shake. ‘ I hope you weren’t intending to leave without talking to us. Why don’t you come in here?’