The Chalice

Neither of them had spoken on the way down from the Tor. Not until they'd emerged from the gate into Wellhouse Lane and the Range Rover had surged through their lamp beam, and there'd been a muffled scream and a glimpse of struggling figures in the rear, wild eyes over a glove.

Back at Jim's, Juanita had opened up the Volvo and he'd gone quietly into the house and emerged with the hip flask. Offering it to her first.

She'd shaken her head. Felt unbearably tired. The walk to the cottage had almost finished her. But she'd said, 'I'm going to get her.'

Jim had climbed silently into the Volvo.

'Like a buggering black comedy, eh?'

'You're not laughing,' Juanita said.

In a way, she was grateful for this: something to set her mind racing in another direction, to put speed and distance between them and the humiliation. She hurled the car out of Wellhouse Lane.

'Please.' He put a tentative hand on her arm. 'Slow down. You know where they're going.' His voice was sounding dry and old and frail, a voice that couldn't laugh, not a voice she'd heard before.

'Yes '

'You don't even know what you'll do when you get there.'

'I'll get out. You'll stay in the car. And this time I'll over-react.'

'Juanita. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

She released the accelerator with a thud, threw both arms round the wheel and hugged the car into the kerb.

He didn't look at her, stared straight forward through the windscreen at distant lights.

'I really thought I was going to die, you know.'

'I thought you were going to die!' She was not going to burst into tears, she was bloody not.

'I'd accepted it. I mean, it does happen. In the States and places. Crazy sects. Mass suicides. Inexplicable abominations. I can still hardly believe I'm alive, that's the worst of it. I still think it could have happened.'

'Yes.'

'He really might have done it. I'm not just saying this. I think he… I think he simply changed his mind. I think-'

'What I think,' Juanita said without emotion. 'And this is the last I'm going to say about it. I think he actually thought the hat would be a better joke.'

'The buggering… hat.' Jim crumpled up then in the passenger seat. She could sense his shoulders heaving, the shock finally coming down on him, like a landslide: the white moon in the sickle as it descended. The moment of singing silence. Before the gleeful chuckle.

I can chop it off. Or you can give it to me. As a sacrifice. As an offering to Gwyn ap Nudd.

And then, ultimate surrealism and humiliating degradation – the picture of Jim kneeling, getting his coughing over, wiping his face.

And then solemnly presenting the man who called himself Gwyn ap Nudd with his soft tweed hat – the last appalling image Juanita saw before they pulled the oily rag out of her mouth, put the lamp into her hand and prodded her on to the stony path.

Halfway down she was violently sick.

Then, moments before the blind rage, came that disgusting, craven sense of relief which almost amounted to being grateful to the bastards for sparing them their lives.

The only sound was the Volvo's engine ticking over; Juanita was always scared to switch off at such moments in case it wouldn't start again. Now she slipped into second gear as Jim said precisely what she'd been expecting him to say sooner or later.

'Swear to me, Juanita. Swear to me you'll never tell anybody about this.'

'They shouldn't get away with it, Jim.' She touched the lump in her cracked lower lip. 'They could be charged with assault. Robbery with menaces.'

'One tweed hat?'

Would he ever recover his self-respect, get over his humiliation? He hadn't backed down on the Tor, but God knows how it would look in the local papers if it ever came to court.

'OK,' Juanita said. 'If you don't mention it, I won't either.'

He didn't reply. She guessed he was thinking about what they'd done to her, convicting himself of cowardice, about to say, Bugger it, let's nail the bastards.

She got in first. 'It never happened, Jim. That's the finish.' She drove steadily out of town along Cinnamon Lane. To Bowermead.

Confrontation. It was all confrontation tonight. And menace.

Gerry Rankin was an ex marines officer, hard, shrewd and clothed for action in a Barbour and a leather cap.

'Then get him,' Juanita snapped.

'You really are wasting your time, Mrs Carey.'

The Hall hulked behind Rankin: a fortress, very few lights on. But then, the place was better in the dark. The appeal of Bowermead Hall – sixteenth century but brutally Victorianised – began and ended with its misleadingly lovely name.

Juanita said, 'Oh come on, do you really want the police here?'

Rankin was smiling with closed lips, leaning casually against a stone gatepost under a security light, a hard light on Jim, who was slumped inside his overcoat like a refugee, keeping his promise to say nothing.

'The police?' Rankin shook his head in pained disbelief. 'To investigate an allegation that Lord Pennard kidnapped his own daughter? Diane? Mrs Carey, the police know about Diane.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' As if she couldn't guess.

'We all know what it means,' Rankin said affably. 'If that girl was a commoner like you and me she'd be in a foam rubber boudoir in what's politely called a Residential Home. She had a real chance to make something of herself and reinforce this family.'

'You mean bring in some wealth and a couple of grandchildren to consolidate the future.'

'I'm not going to discuss family business with you, Mrs Carey.'

'You're not "family", Gerry. Anyway, you've confirmed she's here. Now go and get daddy. Tell him I'm offering his mentally ill daughter some care in the community.'

Rankin said, 'You really don't understand, do you? Lord Pennard doesn't want her in the community. Not this community. For her own good, Mrs Carey.'

'Hmmph.' Jim shuffled inside his overcoat. 'Soul of compassion.' Juanita glared at him.

Rankin stiffened. 'I don't know who you are, friend, but if you want to be abusive about Lord P, this is not the place.'

Jim grunted and moved back into the shadows of the gatepost, Juanita was quite glad Rankin didn't know him. He knew her, of course, because he'd once been into the shop, assuming it to be a general bookstore and requesting the lurid memoir of some SAS hero. There was silence. Then Jim whispered, 'Perhaps we should come back in the morning.'

Rankin had good ears. 'Yeah, I'd strongly advise that course of action.'

'I'm sure you would. God knows what you'd have done with her by then.' Juanita strode over to the gatepost, where he lounged in his well-worn Barbour, his leather cap shadowing his eyes. 'But I'll tell you one thing. If we do come back tomorrow, it'll be with a bunch of reporters and a couple of TV crews.'

He wasn't intimidated. 'Let me spell something out for you, Mrs Carey You are not taking on the soft-bellied aristocracy here. This is a business fighting for survival in a hard world. Two hundred acres and shrinking fast. Lots of overheads. A real business, Mrs Carey, not spooky books and incense burners and fucking tarot cards. We don't piss about. Am I making sense to you?'

'Perfectly.' Holding her Afghan coat together at the neck, Juanita stepped back into the full glare of the security light. 'But I do sound rather authoritative on the phone, when you can't see my beads and my crystals. They'll come, Mr Rankin. They'll all come, the papers, the radio, the television They can't afford to take the chance. If there is a story, they won't want to have missed it. I just have to wave my wand and utter the magic word… Pennard.'

He went very, very quiet. Quiet enough to hear a barn owl in the distant woods. Rankin gave Juanita a look harder than a punch in the mouth, and she almost recoiled. Then he turned tightly and walked away along the drive. After about twenty yards he turned back to keep them in view, removing something from a pocket. Juanita wondered, not altogether fancifully, if they should take cover.