The boy swerved as if Lessing had delivered a hook to his jaw. Gasping he changed his direction and made for the cricket pitch.
Lessing picked up the tie and examined the slip knot. A noose. Intended for two wrists, apparently. The boy had pulled one hand clear. This time Lessing braved the wet grass, but when he reached the hollow no-one was there.
He stood and looked down at the flattened grass. There was vomit on a dock leaf and near it a tiny globule of blood. His mouth was suddenly sour with disillusionment. This had been his place – his place of youth. Now he would always see it this way. With disgust. With unease. What the hell had happened to the child – and how the hell had the other one got away so fast? He had no doubt at all that there had been another one. He made a quick search of the area and found nothing.
He fingered the tie, his mind on young Fleming. A child playing?
But this child now hadn't been playing.
Sick with fright. Just an expression before – but now it took on meaning.
Fleming senior had a case – or might have a case.
On balance it would be better if he didn't have a case. One rotten apple took some time to turn the rest bad. After the inquest Brannigan could be warned to start searching for that rotten apple – and damned fast.
In the meantime… He unknotted the tie and dropped it deep into the heart of a convenient bush.
Five
THE REVEREND SIMON SHULTER wore his dog collar on Sundays only, but on this morning made an exception. It looked incongruous with his blue sports jacket and jeans, but it stated his identity and cut out a lot of unnecessary explanations. He waylaid Fleming on his return to The Lantern after his visit to the doctor and suggested they should have a drink together. "I read the piece about your staying here in the paper this morning and I came straight over. The Marristone Grange boys attend my church. I knew David. We'd had a chat or two about confirmation."
Fleming's first reaction was a curt refusal, but he bit it back. Here was another stranger who had known his son. Confirmation? David? Religion hadn't played any role in his life at all. Ruth had arranged with her local pastor to have him christened, and he had a vague recollection of the ceremony in Ruth's non-conformist chapel. After that – nothing.
He agreed to the drink, one pint of bitter. Shulter ordered the same. They took their drinks over to the window recess where the watery sun gleamed intermittently and dazzled on Shutter's gold-framed spectacles so that he was forced to move his chair sideways to the table.
He was used to bereavements, but not to one of this nature and he made the usual speech of condolence hesitantly.
Fleming politely heard him out. Irreparable loss. It was odd how even a young cleric, just a few years out of theological college, fastened on to the well-worn cliches. This one had difficulty with his r's… not an impediment exactly, but one r too many which didn't quite come out as a burr. 'Deepest sympathy' would come next followed by 'God's will'.
Shulter said quietly, "I've made the usual noises at you. I haven't the gift of tongues, I'm afraid. There aren't any words for this. I have a young kid of my own. If it had happened to him, I'd feel as you feel. I think I can just about reach out and touch the edge of what you're feeling."
They sat in silence.
Fleming was the first to break it. "The autopsy is going on now."
"Try not to think of it."
"How can I help but think of it?"
"I know. But nothing is ever quite as bad as we imagine it is. I'm sorry I wasn't at the mortuary with you. Brannigan or Preston should have told me." He raised his glass of beer and watched the sunlight send little diamond flashes of foam into oblivion. That Fleming was seeing the autopsy in every small detail he had no doubt and he didn't know how to stop him seeing it. Now was the time to talk about the body and the spirit and he knew he didn't dare. This was raw and real. One word now delivered with unction rather than with belly-aching truth and the small thread of communication that they were beginning to establish would snap. Fleming would get up and go and he would chalk up another failure. It was his job to be here – God help him. Literally God help him. He didn't know how to help Fleming.
"Would you have agreed to the confirmation?" He asked the question for the sake of saying something. The answer no longer mattered.
"I don't know. I suppose so." It was a life-line of words and Fleming held on to it. Go on, he thought, talk to me. Tell me about the living David.
"Marristone Grange is C, of E. as you know. Confirmation is usual if the parents agree. I'd asked David about his own feelings on it and he said it was okay by him if it was okay by you. I sensed there was a close bond of affection between you."
"Yes."
"He didn't accept things easily. He questioned the Creed. Why would Christ descend into hell? He wanted chapter and verse quoted for everything. And then the Trinity – who or what was the Holy Ghost? He more or less accused me of inventing the Holy Ghost." Shulter smiled slightly. "He had a very literal mind, your son. Did you. know that?"
"Tell me more."
"I take Scripture classes several times a term – not with any of the set examinations in mind, but just to get to know the boys. It's part of the Marristone Grange tradition. My predecessor had let it lapse and it seemed a pity. I remember asking David's class about their favourite Biblical character and David surprised me by saying Zaccheus. It had taken guts, David said, to climb that tree with the mob trying to elbow him out."
Fleming drew his beer towards him. He asked the question with some disquiet. "Did you sense that David himself was being elbowed out – by the other lads?"
Shulter's obvious surprise reassured him. "Far from it. He was likeable."
"He had no obvious enemies? No boy in his class that he was afraid of?"
Shulter, aware that the flat lands of pain had assumed the unpredictability of quicksand, began treading with caution. Enemies? What young boy didn't have enemies? An enemy of a day or a week metamorphosed into a friend of a day or a week. Marristone Grange wasn't terrorist country. Fleming was speaking of children.
"I can't imagine your lad being afraid of anyone. Certainly of no-one in my Scripture class. If something specific is worrying you, I think you should tell me more."
He listened, perturbed, as Fleming told him about the sketch. Consolation was called for and he tried to give it. "I think you're probably reading more into it than you should. He had been ill. Medication can have odd side-effects. He might have had a drug-induced nightmare and then drawn the picture."
"He might. It wasn't an explanation that Doctor Preston put forward. Perhaps he was trying to protect his pills as you are trying to protect the school." It was bitter.
It was also, Shulter thought, unjust. If he were trying to protect anyone he was trying to protect Fleming himself. Whatever had happened it was over and finished. Fleming's acceptance of the boy's death was the first necessary step towards healing. The balm of Christian faith could only be applied when the wound was ready for it. The next question he had to ask would rub in salt, but it had to be asked.
"I'm not trying to protect the school. It just seemed to me that it could be physiological rather than psychological." He balked at the question and then eventually rushed it out. "I wanted to see you this morning to ask what you intend doing about the funeral?"
Fleming felt shock waves travel through his pores. His mind hadn't taken him that far. Shulter, aware how close he was to a breakdown, wished they were anywhere other than in a public bar. He moved his chair so that Fleming was partly screened from any curious onlooker.