"Excuse me…" The voice was high-pitched – very well bred. His mother would have mocked it as very "refained."
"Scarper!"
The boy looked as if he had heard, but didn't believe what he had heard. "I've come to fetch a rounders ball for Mr. Innis. I think I can see them in that basket over there."
He began treading delicately over Durrani's outstretched leg. Durrant raised it, tripping him. He came down heavily on his hands. His lips trembled. "I really can't go without it."
"No, you really can't, can you? Perhaps now you're here you can't go at all.".Durrant felt his dark mood lighten. "What's your name?"
The child, as still as a spider that is being watched from a vast distance by someone with a huge death-dealing foot, took a minute or two to answer. "Peter."
"You're not Peter here. You won't be Peter any more until you leave. What's your other name?"
"Christopher."
"Peter Christopher – what?"
"Nothing. Peter Christopher. My father owns the Christopher Potteries in Stoke."
"Oh, he does, does he? And what does he make in his pottery – piss-pots?"
The fair skin flushed. "He makes the best dinner services and tea sets in the world."
"He's rich – your old man?"
It was not done to speak about money. "I really don't know."
"You really don't know! You really aren't very bright, are you?" Durrant leaned over and pushed back the grey flannel cuff from the child's left wrist. He looked in disgust at the Mickey Mouse watch. "Is that the best your old man can give you?"
The tears were near the surface. "I like it."
"That's what I mean – you're dim."
"Mr. Innis will be wanting the ball… I really must get it."
Durrant raised his leg as a barrier. "I haven't finished talking to you yet. What did your old man give you for your birthday – a toy duck to put in your bath?"
"As a matter of fact," with great dignity, "he gave me a horse – a real one."
"Oh, I say – now isn't that something! So that piss-pot factory makes bread, does it?"
"I have already told you my father makes…"
"Piss-pots. You've ears like piss-pot handles, did you know that?" Durrant got on his knees and pressed the boy's ears back against his skull. "That's how they should be – flat."
"You're hurting me." As the ears whitened under pressure the child's eyes became bloodshot with tears. Fascinated, Durrant pressed harder and the tears spurted out and trickled down the sides of the tightly closed mouth. He wondered how hard he would have to press before the mouth gaped open and the kid began to bawl. His own pain was forgotten now and he began to feel euphoric. Dust danced in the beam of sunlight. The skin and gristle under his fingers were like organ notes – press harder and the noise would come.
Innis, at the doorway, snapped, "Durrant!"
Durrant, reorientating gradually, released the pressure and his hands dropped at his side.
The child, aware that the door of the torture chamber was open and that the liberator was beside it, began trembling softly from head to foot.
Innis said gently, "It's all right. Fetch the ball and go."
"Yes, sir."
As the child bent over the ball basket Innis saw that his ears under the fall of dark hair were scarlet. He waited for the child to leave the room before he rounded on Durrant. "What the hell's the matter with you?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Be at my study tonight at seven sharp – and I'll tell you precisely what I mean."
Durrani's eyes became limpet soft. "Yes, of course I'll be there. What you saw just now might have seemed – well – rather harsh treatment – but the boy's attitude – he…"
"Keep your excuses until later. I've a P.E. class outside. Seven o'clock."
"Yes."
"Yes, sir!" Durrant looked at him in mild surprise. "Yes, sir. As you say, sir."
"And get out of here and back to your class."
"I was just about to go, sir."
He moved indolently past Innis and out through the gymnasium. Innis, grim-faced, watched him go.
Eight
FLEMING SPENT TEN minutes at the undertaker's Chapel of Rest and then tried to walk the experience out of his system. The small coffin was on a trestle covered with purple velvet. There was even canned music. It had nothing at all to do with David. He wished he could have some belief in a spirit life. He often had bursts of conversation with David in his head: "It's a posting to Paris. You'd have liked Paris." And now, as he walked the cliff path: "The propeller came off your aeroplane. The wind from the open window caught it. Fragile stuff balsa."
Purple velvet.
Brahms.
Unspoken apologies heavy in the air.
The divorcing of the spirit from the body made thinking about the body possible. He didn't believe in the spirit but he talked to the spirit. Correction… he talked to David.
Or he talked to himself.
He wished he could see Shulter again, but didn't want to seek him out. A casual meeting might be helpful, but an arranged meeting at the rectory would be too much like a professional appointment with a doctor or a dentist. Your symptoms, Fleming, are to be expected at this stage of the disease. Take a dose of faith twice a day and the prognosis will improve.
On the way to the undertaker's he had looked in at the church, a red-brick, turn-of-the-century building at the corner of Marristone High Street. It had seemed right, mainly for Ruth's sake, to accept Shulter's offer to hold the service there. It was difficult to rationalise his deferring to what he believed would be Ruth's wishes when Ruth was no longer there. Looking inside the church was rather like looking at an execution sword in advance so that familiarity would ease the shock of seeing it on the day. He doubted if he could take the funeral service at all, but so far he had taken everything and survived. There had been a bowl of early summer flowers on the altar and some petunia petals had fallen in an untidy pink pool on the white cloth. The untidiness had made it more acceptable. David had dropped things all over the place, too.
So did Jenny.
Her bedroom would have inspired Herrick to write a poem on it. Sweet disorder. Wild civility. She was as untidy as hell.
When he returned to The Lantern he made a couple of abortive attempts to phone her at the school. Each time the line was engaged. After lunch he drove past her flat in Nelson Street and on impulse stopped and rang the bell. There was no-one in. He remembered she had said she would be on duty. He didn't know what to do with the rest of the afternoon. Time that until now had pushed onwards like an incoming tide seemed sluggishly to reach highwater mark and be still.
He decided to go back to The Lantern and it was there that he ran into the reporter who told him about Corley. It was the same reporter who had written the paragraph in the Marristone Herald about David. Their previous meeting hadn't been easy, but this time it was Kenilworth who had news to impart. He waylaid Fleming outside the bar.
"A child has gone missing from the Grange."
"What?" Fleming, still too deep in his own David-orientated world to be able to think of any child outside it, couldn't at first grasp what Kenilworth was saying.
Kenilworth explained patiently. "A young lad, about the same age as your son, has disappeared from the school. A big police search is on. Brannigan won't talk. And I've just had the usual routine stuff from fuzz headquarters. What's your feelings on it – off the record – at least for now?"
Fleming said shortly, "None. What feelings do you expect me to have?" All the same he was shocked and showed it. It was a like a stone being thrown into a pool and causing a new circle within an existing circle. He hoped wherever the child was he was alive and well.
"You've no comment?"
"What do you expect me to say?" (Bully for the lad for getting over the wall in time?) "You're being very careful, Mr. Fleming." Kenilworth's small blue eyes were regarding him thoughtfully. "I won't land you in a slander action. I know quite well where the line is drawn. But as a father yourself, you'll know what the lad's father is feeling – a comment along those lines wouldn't come amiss."