Crybbe

'Huh?' Col Croston glanced sharply at Alex, who merely nodded. 'Oh,' Col said and walked out.

Alex said bluntly, 'I understand Max Goff was slaughtered like a pig in here tonight.'

Some of the women looked away. Nobody spoke. Alex let the silence simmer for over a minute, observing finally, 'You seem to have thrown the body out. Out of sight out of mind, I suppose. Didn't know the chap myself. However, I did know this poor boy.'

Col Croston had returned with his arms full. Paul Gwatkin and Bill Davies didn't try to stop him, but neither seemed anxious to help him with his bloody burden.

'He's sorry he was late,' Alex said. 'He was obliged to stop on the way, to get murdered.'

Col carried the corpse around the table, where the blotter was brown with dried blood, and curling.

Alex said, 'You remember Murray? Young Murray Beech?'

Col dropped the body like a sack of coal, and it rolled over once, on to its back, a stiff, bloody hand coming to rest against the knee of a woman on the front row, Mrs Byford, clerk to Crybbe town council. She did not move, except to shrink back in her chair, as if retracting the essential Mrs Byford so that the dead hand was only touching her shell.

'That's right,' Alex said. 'Pretend he's not there. But then, you never noticed he was here, did you? He was only another vicar from Off. And now he's dead. But I'll tell you one thing… he isn't as bloody dead as any of you.'

He saw Murray Beech's body, in the light, for the first time. The front of his black clerical shirt had been slashed neatly from neck to navel. The shirt was soaked and stiff.

Mrs Byford delicately removed the hand from her knee, her mouth beginning to quiver. Murray's own mouth was widened from one corner, like a clown's. It continued almost to an ear. Or what remained of an ear.

Alex lowered himself into the chair where another body had slumped. It was sticky. He looked down into a blotter thick with blood and lumps and clots. 'Talk to me,' he said. 'Tell me about what happened four hundred years ago when your ancestors went out to lynch this chap Wort. What had they got in the way of incentive that you haven't, hmm?'

He noticed the Police Sergeant, Wiley, near the back, in full, if disarranged, uniform. Not exactly rushing to open an investigation into the killing of Murray Beech.

Col Croston, back in the chairman's chair, next to Alex, called out. 'No need for inhibition. Consider the issue thrown open to the floor.'

'Well, come on,' said Alex, in exasperation. 'Who's the old bat in the front row trying to avoid Murray, what about you? Mrs Byford, isn't it?'

Mrs Byford spoke with brittle clarity, like an icicle cracking. 'Tell this rude old gentleman, Colonel, that we have no intention of moving from yere nor of entering into any discussion on the subject.'

Alex said, 'Did you have much to do with Murray, Mrs Byford? Your granddaughter did. She sought his assistance. As a priest. She wanted him to exorcise a ghost from your house.

'No!' Mrs Byford pushed her chair back into the pair of knees behind her and stood up. Murray's hand appeared to reach for her ankle and she gave a shrill cry. 'It's lies!'

'Poor old Murray was quite thrown at first,' Alex said. 'Not every day you're recruited to cast out a malevolent spirit. Anyhow, he came to me for advice, and I said, go along and play it by ear, old boy. Nothing lost. So off he goes to the old Police House. Don't suppose you were around at the time, were you?'

Alex could see a number of people beginning to look worried, not least Wynford Wiley, the copper. 'And where do you think he found the evil spirit, Mrs Byford?'

"E wasn't evil!' Wynford spluttered out. "E was…'

'Where do you think he found this malignant entity?'

Her back arched. 'Stop this, you go no right to…'

'You know, don't you?'

'Keep calm, woman,' an old man said from behind. 'You got to keep calm, isn't it.'

Alex stood up. 'He found the evil, Mrs Byford… He found it in her eyes. Ironic, isn't it?'

Mrs Byford's hands, half-clawed, began to tremble. She stumbled into the aisle and stood there, shaking.

'Now…' Alex sat down. 'No, please, Mrs Byford, I'm not trying to bully you. Look, sit in one of the empty chairs on the other side. Thank you. Right, now, did that gentleman mention the necessity of keeping calm? Keeping the low profile? Avoiding direct confrontation? Let's discuss this – but very quickly, please, time's running out. Ah. Mr Davies.'

'What can we do?' The butcher. Bill Davies, had left his post by the door and was approaching the platform, a big man with a sparse sprinkling of grey curls. 'We got lo live yere, isn't it.'

'The Mayor,' said Paul Gwatkin. 'Where's the Mayor?'

'He's probably dead,' Col Croston said flatly.

'You don't know that,' said Wynford Wiley.

'And the church is on fire,' Col said. 'Don't suppose you know that.'

'Aye, we know that,' the clerk's husband, little Billy Byford said tiredly, and sighed. His wife gave him a glance like a harpoon.

'These yere hippy types,' said Bill Davies. 'This Goff. If they 'adn't arrived, with their experimentin' and their meddlin'… They think it's a wonderful game, see. They think the countryside's a great big adventure playground. Do what you like, long as you shuts the odd gate. They wouldn't think of strollin' across their motorways, climbin' all over their power stations. Oh no, you 'andles all that with care and if you' don't know nothin' about it, you stays out of it'

'Sit down, Mr Davies,' said Mrs Byford. 'There's nothing to explain.'

'I'm gonna say this, Nettie. City-type dangers is something they takes for granted – never questions it. But they never thinks there might be risks in the country, too, as they don't understand. Well, we don't understand 'em properly neither but at least… at least we knows there's risks.'

'The inference being,' said Col, 'that Crybbe is an area with a particularly high risk-factor.'

'You live yere,' said Bill Davies, 'you learn there's things you can do and things you can't do. Maybe some people's more careful than others, maybe some people takes it more serious like. But that's same as with a lot o' things, anywhere you goes, isn't it?'

'Mr Davies, we don't have to explain nothing,' Mrs Byford said.

Bill Davies ignored her. 'And it's not like you can get 'elp neither. Can't write to your MP about it, can you? You 'as to live with it, just like your parents and your grandparents, and you accepts the constraints, like.'

The butcher sat down two seats away from Mrs Byford, to the left of the central aisle and crossed his legs defiantly.

'Thank you,' said Col. 'I'm very' grateful to you, Bill. Canon?'

'Yes, indeed. I think Mr Davies has put his finger on it. I can understand entirely that there are certain prevailing phenomena in this particular town which the residents have long felt unable to discuss with outsiders. Problems which, I suspect, first, er, materialized during the reign of James I, when anyone found displaying an interest in matters of a… a shall we say, supernormal nature. .. was in serious danger of being strung up for witchcraft.'

He looked down at the blood-spattered blotter, saw that nothing at all had changed. Outside, the church was burning and a gullible crowd was suspended in the thrall of something even the devil-fearing James I would have been hard-pressed to envisage.

'And one can see,' said Alex, 'how this quite-understandable reticence would, given the comparative remoteness of the town become, in tune, more or less endemic. Yes, I can understand why it's been allowed to fester.

'But, by God,' Alex stood up, his hands either side of the bloodstained blotter, summoning the flames, 'if you don't take some action tonight you'll regret it for the rest of your small little lives.'