‘I’m sure of it,’ he replied. ‘This is the killing ground.’
Evi allowed her eyes to travel upwards, to the gallery that was almost directly above them. ‘That’s revolting,’ she said.
Harry looked up too. ‘There’s something wrong in this church, Evi. I think I knew the first time I set foot in it.’
He felt her fingers brushing softly against his hand.
‘Buildings absorb something of what goes on in them,’ he continued. ‘I wouldn’t expect everyone to agree with me, but I’m sure of it. Normally, churches feel like peaceful, safe places because they’ve taken on decades, sometimes centuries of hope, prayer, goodwill.’
‘Not this one?’ Her fingers were closing around his hand.
‘No,’ said Harry. ‘This one just feels like pain.’
For a second they didn’t move. Then, just as he knew she was going to, Evi turned and reached up to him. It was just a hug, he knew that, a moment of comfort, but it was impossible to be this close to her and not bend his head down to the skin at the side of her neck, to find that freckle, to press his face against her hair and breathe in deeply. Then she moved in his arms, pulled back her head, and it was completely out of the question that he not kiss her.
Moments passed and the only thing he could think of was that the world couldn’t be too bad after all because Evi was in it; and would he be damned for all eternity if he picked her up, laid her gently down on the pew beside them and made love to her for the rest of the afternoon?
Then Evi made a gasping sound that had nothing to do with passion. She’d stiffened in his arms, had pulled away from him, was staring over his left shoulder. Cold air on the back of his neck told him the front door of the church was open. He stepped back and turned.
Gillian stood in the open doorway. For a second Harry thought she was going to faint. Then it looked as though she might hurl herself at them in rage. She did neither. She simply turned and ran.
67
M ILLIE WAS IN THE DOORWAY, WATCHING SOME CHICKENS strut up and down in the lane. Across the drive, her mother was unloading shopping from the car. She straightened up and headed for the door.
‘Will you go back inside?’ she said to the toddler, bending down towards her. ‘It’s freezing.’ She squeezed past the child and disappeared. A moment later her hands caught hold of Millie round the waist. ‘I mean it,’ she said, as she lifted her daughter up and took her out of sight. ‘You’ll fall down those steps.’
For a moment the doorway was empty and then the mother appeared again. She crossed quickly to her car and found the last of the bags. As she straightened up and pressed the button on the thing in her hand that would lock the car, the child appeared in the doorway again. She stole a brief, sly look at her mother before turning to the chickens that had wandered into their garden. Then she climbed down the steps to the drive.
The car hadn’t locked itself. The mother pressed the button twice, three times and then gave up, using the key to lock the car instead, just as Millie set off across the lawn. The mother crossed the drive and went inside. The front door closed. Silence.
Nothing to see, nothing to hear for a minute, maybe two. Then the front door was pulled open and the woman, her face white and her hands clutching her upper arms, appeared in the doorway. ‘Millie!’ she called, as though afraid to shout too loudly. ‘Millie!’ she called again, a bit louder this time. ‘Millie!’
68
‘WHERE DID YOU FIND THESE?’ ASKED HARRY.
‘Environment Agency archives,’ said Gareth Fletcher. ‘Watch those crisps, I’ll get throttled if I get grease on them.’
Harry put his crisp packet down and leaned over the maps. ‘Catchment maps,’ he said. ‘I’ve never heard of them.’
Gareth lifted his pint and drank. A week before Christmas, the White Lion in the middle of Heptonclough was busy and even at nearly five o’clock in the afternoon the two men had been lucky to get a table. Harry almost wished they hadn’t, that he and Gareth Fletcher had been forced to reschedule the chat they’d had planned for days. He’d wanted to help Evi find and talk to Gillian. That was not something she should have to face on her own.
‘No reason why you would,’ said Gareth. ‘The water authorities produce them. They show the countryside from the point of view of the water resources.’
‘And that means what, exactly?’ asked Harry. Across the room, a party of office workers were in high spirits. Several wore paper hats. When they stood up, most seemed unsteady on their feet.
Evi had refused to let him go with her. Gillian was her patient, she’d said, her responsibility.
‘Most maps are about roads, towns and cities, right?’ said Gareth.
‘Right,’ agreed Harry.
‘This one is about rivers. See, this is the river Rindle. Starts as a spring way up in the hills and gradually makes its way down to where it joins the Tane. All these other streams and rivers are its tributaries.’ Gareth leaned across the map, pointing out faint, wiggling lines with his finger. ‘They all feed into it and it gradually gets bigger and bigger. The area they all cover is called the catchment.’
‘OK, got that,’ said Harry, who’d been watching a dark-haired girl with a purple paper hat who reminded him of… how soon could he phone her? Was she with Gillian right now? ‘And the water authorities need these because…’ he prompted, forcing himself to concentrate.
‘If a stream dries up, if it gets polluted, if there’s a fish kill, or a flood threatening, the authorities need to know where it is and what other water-courses it’s going to impact upon.’
‘OK.’ I could be struck off for this, Harry, she’d said to him, as they’d argued at the church gate. You have no idea how serious it is.
‘The modern maps are easier to read, all the different catchments are coloured differently,’ Gareth was saying. ‘This one must be eighty years old. It does, though, have something the more modern ones don’t. This one shows the underground streams. Even some of the deeper aquifers. It dates back to the days when people dug their own wells and needed to know where they might strike lucky.’
‘Still following,’ said Harry. She trusted me, and I’ve let her down in the worst possible way.
‘Now, you can see how a fairly sizeable subterranean stream starts right up here, just below Morrell Tor, and winds its way down through the village, feeding quite a few wells as it goes, probably all abandoned and covered over by now, and eventually goes under the church.’
‘We saw it that day we went exploring. The monks had turned it into a sort of drinking fountain.’
‘Exactly. Now, as we know, it disappears into a grate, running under the cellar, and – this is the important bit, are you concentrating?’
‘Oh, I’m riveted.’ If anything happens to her it’ll be my fault.
‘Just after it leaves the church foundations, it forks in two. The main stream continues down, through the graveyard, under the Renshaws’ garden and then on down the moor. The other part heads west and follows the line of the church wall.’
‘Seriously weakening it?’
‘In my view, yes. If you ask me, there’s not a lot of point rebuilding that wall until you can divert that offshoot of the stream.’
‘If we block it off, will the water continue down the hill with the rest?’
‘Probably, although I’d need to check it out with my friends in water resources. Do you want me to do that before you speak to God about releasing the funds?’
‘Yes, thank you. What’s this?’ In an attempt to take his mind off what might be happening with Gillian and Evi, Harry had been trying to spot places he knew around the town on the map. He’d found Wite Lane, had followed the track he sometimes ran along up the hill. He was pointing at a double circle within a rectangle.