Cornel’s face, in the mean light, was creamy with sweat. Cornel was a mess, Cornel was a tosser. Keep telling yourself that. Jesus, tell him.
‘Cornel,’ Jane said – even though she knew it was the wrong, wrong thing to say, she said it. ‘You’re an educated guy. You ever think this could be making you just a little bit insane?’
Don’t waste time looking for his reaction, look for a way out of here: those stepped concrete blocks, the seating, the back row seemed to be some distance from the wall. Would have to be, because this was a Nissen hut and more than half the wall was curved, part of the roof, so there had to be a space.
‘You’ll get another job.’ Stepping back, her raised voice gathering echoes. ‘Look at the totally bent, disgraced politicians who keep bouncing back. And they’re, like, old?’
So there was likely to be a concealed channel – walkway, crawlway – around the perimeter. Follow that and you’d get back to the doors.
Cornel said, ‘Don’t try to engage me in conversation, Jane – we’re way past that.’
A two-one from the LSE: he wasn’t a complete idiot, was he? Jane saw him place something on the end of the concrete bench and pick up the hammer. Each time he smashed it down, with a dull, metallic splintering, she winced and jerked and backed a bit further away. It had to be her mobile.
‘Please, Cornel…’ Suddenly near to tears, and they were seeping into her voice. ‘You can’t rape me.’
The word was out, pathetically, but carrying a long echo…ape me .
Jane zipped her jacket all the way up as his voice came back at her, petulant, along with a spurt of torchbeam.
‘Doesn’t have to be that.’
‘Just because you feel sorry for somebody,’ Jane said steadily, ‘doesn’t mean you… doesn’t mean you can fancy them.’
Well, she didn’t feel sorry for Cornel at all. He was a victim of his own greed, his own obsession. She hated him. She sank slowly down and fitted both hands under one of the shards of concrete which had flown off under the lump hammer. It was too heavy to throw at him, but she had nothing else; she held it against her stomach, letting her body take some of the weight as she backed away from the lamp.
‘And this place is horrible. It stinks and it’s not even a proper ancient site. It’s just cobbled together out of old… building supplies, and you know what? I… I think you’ve got this all wrong, Cornel. I think you’ve been conned. This is just a scam to make money out of guys like you.’
Jane flattened herself against the rough bottom wall and began to drag herself along it, thinking maybe Cornel wanted this place to bring out a side of him he still wasn’t sure was there. As if just being here, doing violent man things…
‘It’s just a scam, Cornel, to make money out of rich, gullible-’
‘Do you see what’s in my hand, girlie?’
Jane screamed.
‘I’m not looking!’ Aware that he was pointing the torch at himself – oh please – down there. ‘You come near me, Cornel, I swear I’ll have your eyes out.’
74
Sleeper
As they drove up towards the Brecon road, the clouds had fled. The still-wintry moonlight was spread like sour cream on the fields where the man who slaughtered the Bull might have gone running, his head floating inside the feral fury of his haoma high.
Try explaining that to the Crown Prosecution Service, Annie Howe had said.
‘Even if Sollers had no hand in the killing, if he was there he did nothing to stop it. Then into his car and off to his restaurant to fix himself an alibi.’
‘What was he like when he arrived at the restaurant?’
‘Stagg talked to the staff. They were agreed that Sollers was in one of his reorganizing moods. Calling the team together – we should do this, we need to do that. Busy, busy.’
‘Hyper. That figures.’
‘Then, after a suitable period of time, he comes back and, according to his statement, hears the cattle making a noise in the sheds, walks up with his shotgun and discovers the carnage.’
‘Shotgun?’
‘Common enough reaction for a farmer at night. Especially in an area portrayed by Countryside Defiance as the badlands. Expect the worst. Be ready. Don’t expect any help from the police.’
‘How did it all go sour?’
Merrily sank back against the headrest, thinking of Arthur Baxter and his smallholding. The good life, eh? Where did all that go? The Baxes, in their shapeless home-made sweaters replaced by the Mostyns in killer camouflage.
‘And where’s Mansel’s murderer now?’
‘Conceivably in some London nightclub or the theatre,’ Annie said. We’d need a list of Jones’s clients, present and past. It’ll take work, liaison with the Met, manpower, overtime… money. Even before we try to penetrate the well-protected, lawyer-lined heart of the City.’
‘Will that be so much harder than penetrating the old farming families of Herefordshire?’
The car climbed the last hill to the Brecon road.
‘You know why he explained in detail – Jones – how the candidate came alone and slept in a tent and fasted for a day? You know why he told us all that, instead of delivering his need to know line? That’s just in case this guy really did do it. Killed Mansel.’
‘So Jones could say he was on his own? Nothing to do with me, guv.’
‘You could be in the wrong job.’
‘I thought the entire clergy was in the wrong job as far as you were concerned.’
Annie Howe laughed and drove out onto the Hereford road, put her foot down. Before leaving Oldcastle, she’d rung the hospital. Frannie Bliss had come round for about five seconds.
It was enough.
Annie Howe had smoked one of Merrily’s cigarettes.
The lump of ridged concrete was too heavy, and it was hard for Jane to think how she could smash it down on Cornel if he came for her. But he hadn’t, he’d gone quiet and she’d lugged the slab with her into the gap behind the seating blocks, sinking down there, feeling like a rabbit hiding from a rabid fox.
The space was narrower than she’d expected; maybe Cornel wouldn’t fit in here. She packed herself into it and waited in silence, hearing him moving around and then a double grunt as if he was heaving himself up on something.
She heard a muted thuck, thuck.
Oh Christ, he was barring the doors.
Jane let the slab slide down between her feet, shut her eyes and prayed for help, but when Cornel spoke again his voice was quieter.
‘Wherever you are, girlie… don’t move. If you don’t want to get hurt.’
But there was a kind of anticipation, his voice like the whisper before a performance. Jane said nothing in case he was still just trying to find out where she was. She hunched herself up, back against the curving metal, arms around her knees, the chunk of concrete between her feet. Could see the top of the long concrete bench above her, black against a grey haze. If she stood up, she’d be able to see over it. But if she stood up, Cornel could reach her, get his arms around her.
She shrank into herself, and there was more silence. She could hear him breathing, one long gritty… snort.
Oh God, more coke. Jane grabbed the opportunity to squirm a little further down. Heard Cornel moving around on the concrete bench, breath coming in little spurts now. All pumped up, Superman. Oh please, please, please, please…
A creak from the top end of the building, where the doors were, and Cornel went quiet. Nothing for a while, and then, unmistakably, soft footfalls on the steps.
What?
Jane saw the torchbeam bouncing erratically across the metal roof, and she didn’t think it was Cornel’s.
The torchbeam steadied.
‘Evening, Kenny,’ Cornel said.
Merrily unlocked her car in Gaol Street and sat behind the wheel, discovering that she was no longer tired. Perhaps the relief: Bliss, nothing life-threatening. She called Lol and then Jane. No answer from either. She left messages.