He waited long enough to see a ripe tomato burst on Wragge’s cheek, he watched Wragge wriggle as a clot of seeds and juice slid down inside his tunic collar, then he turned away. He didn’t want to witness another second of his men’s humiliation.
Throw some apples
Throw some eggs
Hazard’s had it
Stop, he begs.
Just keep throwing
More and more
That’s what Pelting
Day is for —
Taking Hilda by the hand, he began to push his way through the crowd. Cheers scored the air as if to celebrate his departure. He found that he was trembling.
‘You look cold, John,’ Hilda said. ‘Perhaps a glass of mulled wine?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ He tucked his double chin into his collar.
‘A pretty good turn-out, wouldn’t you say, sir?’
He turned round to see Dolphin standing beside him. In Dolphin’s arms, the most enormous pink bear that he had ever seen.
‘Better than I expected.’ Peach’s eyes shuttled between Dolphin’s face and the monstrous bear. He had known all along that this winter fair was a mistake. Look at the effect it was having on his men.
‘I won it, sir. In the hoop-la.’ Dolphin bounced the bear in the crook of his arm. ‘My daughter’s going to love it.’
That may well be, Peach thought, but for Christ’s sake stop carrying it around like that. It’s bad for credibility.
Hilda tiptoed back with two glasses of mulled wine. ‘Oh, Sergeant Dolphin. If I’d known you were here I would’ve brought you a glass too. It’s very good.’
Dolphin sketched a bow. ‘Very kind of you, Mrs Peach. But I’m on duty.’
‘And that, I suppose,’ Hilda scintillated, ‘is your new partner.’
Dolphin became foolish. ‘My new partner? Oh yes. I see. Haha.’ He grinned down at his bear.
Peach now took his deputy aside. ‘Any trouble?’
‘Not really, sir. Mustoe’s in the pub. Pretty far gone, as usual. Telling everybody what he thinks of Pelting Day. Says it’s a put-up job. The police just pretending to be human for a few hours. That kind of thing.’
Peach tutted. Though Mustoe was right, of course.
‘Apart from that — ’ bugger all. Dolphin finished the sentence in his head out of respect for the Chief Inspector’s wife who was standing beside them. He turned his mouth down at the corners to indicate that there was nothing he couldn’t handle. ‘Most people seem to be here.’ He looked left and right as if about to cross a road. ‘Amazing turn-out. Never seen anything like it.’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’ Peach was only making minimal contact. He was wondering whether this new lease of life, these new high spirits, could have anything to do with Moses Highness’s recent visit. Had word got out? ‘You haven’t heard any rumours, have you, Dolphin?’
‘Rumours, sir?’
‘Rumours that might — might be subversive?’
Dolphin frowned. ‘I don’t quite understand you.’
‘Never mind.’
Another roar from the stocks. Hazard had just opened his mouth to swear at Cawthorne and promptly had it filled by a lump of bread soaked in sour milk.
‘All I can say is, I’m glad it’s not me,’ Dolphin said.
‘Quite,’ Peach said. ‘Well, I should be getting along.’ He took one step then, confidentially, over his shoulder, whispered, ‘I should leave that toy somewhere until you come off duty, Dolphin. Otherwise people might not take you seriously.’
Dolphin knew him well enough to detect the presence of a command beneath that quiet suggestion. Nodding, he moved away with Hilda. They stopped by the fire for a moment to warm their hands.
He gazed at the charred effigy crouching at the centre of the fire. Of its own accord and sparked by something he couldn’t yet identify, his mind began to slip forwards, incisive, remorseless, as if unleashed. It had picked up some kind of trail or scent. Something in the atmosphere (the fairy lights? the jangling music? the clamour of voices?) had reminded him of the twenty-four hours he had spent in London. Something buried in those twenty-four hours, he now knew, could help him solve the problem of how to kill Moses.
He began to scrabble at the loose earth of his memories. The blonde girl on the train? No. That Asian boy in the middle of the night? No, not there. His meeting with Madame Zola? Not there either. Then he remembered the enigmatic landlord of that pub on Kennington Road. Terence, wasn’t it? Somewhere in that conversation, perhaps.
He sifted more carefully now. Words, gestures, nuances. Bit shady, by all accounts. No, it had come later. During the second drink. When Terence opened up a bit. When Peach asked him, ‘What else do you know about the place?’
‘Well, there’ve been some pretty mysterious goings-on — ’ The landlord liked to leave his sentences hanging. At times he had reminded Peach of people in the village.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Vandalism, for a start.’
‘Vandalism?’
‘There’s been a series of break-ins.’ Terence ran the tip of his tongue along his moustache to signify the delicacy of the subject. ‘Too many for it to be a coincidence, if you know what I mean — ’
‘What kind of break-ins, Terence?’
‘Oh, I don’t know exactly. Let’s just say there’s been talk of a vendetta, though.’
Peach was still staring deep into the fire. His eyes were smouldering now. Everything had clicked.
He handed his glass to Hilda. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home.’ He was already ten yards away, walking backwards. ‘Something very important, dear.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, no. It’s all right. You stay here. Enjoy yourself.’ The fire threw black streamers of shadow across his face. ‘I’ll see you when you get back.’
Then he was running away over the grass, leaving Hilda standing by the fire in her burgundy suit with a glass of mulled wine in each hand.
When he reached his study he unlocked his bureau and pulled out the pink file. His heart was hammering against the bars of his ribs. He sat down, unfastened the top button of his tunic. He shuffled through his papers until he found the plans he had drawn up a few weeks before. Plans of The Bunker.
‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘Just as I thought.’
The Bunker had no fire-escapes. The only way out of the fourth floor, so far as he could see, was down the stairs and through the black side-door. So if a fire started on the ground floor …
He smiled.
There would be a fire at The Bunker. A tragic fire. He could see the headlines now:
Nightclub Blaze Leaves One Dead
Or perhaps:
Man, 25, Dies in Mystery Inferno
(And if that black bastard got killed too, so much the better.)
There would be nothing to connect Peach with the fire. Nothing to implicate him. He would burn the pink file beforehand, though. Just to be on the safe side. It would have served its purpose, after all. There was a nice symmetry about that. The file. The nightclub. Both pink. Both burning.
A sudden blast of heat passed across his face.
Why wait?
Why not do it now? Leave tonight. Return first thing in the morning. Nobody would miss him. It was Pelting Day. Turn the chaos to his advantage. Leave now. No time to tell Hilda. Tell her tomorrow. Explain the whole thing then. He would think of something. He was Peach.
He leered. Yes, why not?
A Christmas gift for Moses.
Death.
Hands trembling with strange electricity, he hurried from the room.