Now why do that, Ave thought?
‘Explain yourself.’ A further rich vibration. It was like listening to the opening chords of some grand oratorio.
‘It’s our glorious free press.’ Suhami spoke quietly into May’s ear. ‘Exercising their divine right to muckrake.’
‘This is private property.’ May began to descend, billowing in plenipotentiary splendour. Her feet, encased in damson velvet slippers thickly studded with brilliants, appeared and disappeared beneath the hem of her gown like gorgeous little boats. ‘Who are you?’
‘Who are you?’ replied Ave, like someone out of Alice. Raptorial fingers hovered near the starter button of her machine.
‘That’s of no importance.’ Clickety click, wheeze click. ‘Stop doing that!’
Briefly Terry held his fire. He was staring hard at the less exotic of the two women, and coming to the conclusion that she was no more a Chatterjee than he was despite the vermilion caste-mark. The brown skin was simply tanned white skin, plus the face was really familiar. Where had he seen her before? He closed, raising the Pentax. She took up a pewter plate from the second of the wooden chests and threw it, striking him sharply on the side of the head.
‘Do you frigging mind, lady?’ he shouted. ‘I’m trying to take some pictures here.’
‘Dear child ...’ May turned, showing a shocked and distressed countenance. ‘That is not the way. Not the way at all. What would He have said?’ Suhami burst into a storm of weeping.
‘Now look,’ said Ave, putting down her bag and microphone but in a manner that made it clear this was temporary. ‘I hate to pour cold water on all this virtuous indignation but we were invited here - right, Terry? So let’s stop carrying on as if it’s a break-in to rape and pillage the ancestral marbles.’
‘You must be mistaken,’ said May firmly.
‘Ask Mrs Beavers,’ replied Ave.
All heads turned to where Ken and Heather stood looking greatly discomposed. Apprehension, embarrassment and exasperation vied for supremacy on their features. They kept screwing up their eyes and exchanging ‘you say - no you’ grimaces. Eventually Heather spoke.
‘There’s been a misunderstanding. This person rang up and I completely got the wrong end of the stick. She gave me the impression that some sort of interview was already fixed and all she needed was directions on how to find the place.’
‘You’re wasted here, kiddo,’ said Ave. ‘You should be in Westminster.
‘Heather’s right,’ chimed in Ken. ‘I was standing by the phone at the time.’
‘I put the idea of an exclusive to them.’ Ave spoke directly to May. ‘They asked me to ring back in five minutes. When I did they said fine - come on down. Apparently they’d talked to some astral wanker called Hilarion and he’d okay’d the whole shoot.’
‘Is this true, Heather?’
There was a long pause then Ave said, ‘If things are going to start getting tacky, I think I should say that all my incoming calls are taped.’
‘Of course it’s true!’ burst out Suhami, staring at the Beavers with contemptuous disgust. ‘They’ve sold us. You’ve only got to look at them.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that!’ cried Heather. ‘It’s all very well for you. Rolling in money all your life. Maybe if I’d got half a million to chuck about -’
She broke off, clapping her hand across her mouth, horrified at such impious backsliding. Ken, looking sheepish and responsible, as though his wife was some large ill-tempered pet that he had failed to keep under control, started to pat her in a clumsy manner.
Terry, who had been listening with lip-curling relish to this tirade, now realised why the girl looked so familiar. He stepped back a little then sideways, trying to frame her head and shoulders while she was still distracted. What he really needed was a bit of elevation. Stairs no good - he’d just get the back view. He looked around, saw the perfect spot and climbed. Ave too had twigged the girl’s identity. She picked up the microphone.
‘What was your father doing down here, Sylvia? D’you think he was involved in the murder? Were you having an affair with the victim?’
‘Aahh ...’ Pain flared in the girl’s voice. ‘You’re vile ... Isn’t it enough to lose him? The dearest man ...’
‘He was your lover then?’
‘Go away ... for God’s sake go away!’
‘If I do, you’ll only have the others on your back. You won’t be able to step outside without being blinded by cameras and deafened by questions a whole lot nastier than the ones I’ve just put. But give the Pitch an exclusive and they’ll leave you alone.’
Terry, climbing on to the Buddha’s plinth, waited for this untruthful suggestion to work. It frequently did. Even intelligent people fell for it. Desperation mainly. Better the devil you’ve just been introduced to. Pity saris were so high-necked. She’d got lovely tits.
May was making a great effort to re-draw her karmic blueprint. Sensing that the visitors were in some way demonic, she had conjured her guardian angel and saw him now, beating his great wings, directly beneath the lantern. She pictured her bones and tissues being flooded by the pulse-beat of his celestial light. She would need all his support. How quickly and easily these people had appeared, no doubt through the great tear in the house’s protective shell made by the Master’s death. The woman was speaking again.
‘I said - if you give us an exclusive you’ll be left in peace.’
‘Such a collusion would be against all our principles.’
‘We’ll pay. Lots.’
‘That is precisely what I mean.’
‘The community uses money, surely, like everyone else?’
‘The community!’ Ken stared, stunned. ‘But I thought -’ Heather gave him such a violent nudge in the ribs he almost fell over.
‘We’ll make the cheque out to the Golden Windhorse then you can fight it out amongst yourselves.’
‘We are not like that.’ May spoke with simple dignity.
‘Everyone’s like that if there’s enough swag on the table.’
At this point Terry, having rammed an air-pumped Reebok into the discreet drapery of the statue’s crotch, was poised for a tasty full-length frame of the Gamelin profile. As he took it, she emitted a shriek of fury.
‘Look where he’s standing! That’s a rupa ...’ Terry winked and clicked, again getting an immaculate shot of her beautiful, frenzied face. ‘A sacred thing. Get off ... get off!’
An anguished and muddled hesitancy momentarily seized the group. The outrageous violation shocked them into immobility. Suhami stared around, silently imploring, her eyes glazed with misery.
The pause was brief. Suddenly an urgent stream of flying cheesecloth passed them by. Ken, having sussed an opportunity to make perhaps some tiny measure of amends, hurled himself with great force at the Buddha’s plinth - knocking over the floral tribute and getting cold water and lupins in his face. Gasping for breath, he scrabbled at the slippy stone, heaving and straining upwards, crumbs of grit beneath his suffering nails. Reaching Terry’s foot, he gripped the Reebok’s laces and tugged.
Locking both arms around the statue’s neck, thus turning away from Ken, Terry started to kick backwards savagely with his free foot. Ken received a couple of painful blows in the shoulder. There was no problem at this distance in reading Terry’s socks although their directive seemed, given the behaviour of the feet, to add an unnecessary gloss. At the third blow, Ken released the laces and went for Terry’s ankles.
Briefly, almost gracefully, he was swung out on the end of an even more violent kick only to go crashing face-first back into the plinth. Grappling more and more fiercely, he tugged at the denim calves, thighs and cheeks in a grotesquely literal representation of male bonding. The end came when he reached, and seized, Terry’s groin.