‘I see.’ Seemed clear he’d been told that if she turned up she definitely wasn’t to be allowed in. She could imagine Saltash briefing Steve Britton, in confidence. Not for me to try to influence you, Sergeant, but a woman with a stress problem in a situation this volatile… would that be wise?
‘Inspector Gee’s also very much the right person for this,’ Steve Britton said. ‘You’ll remember Sandy Gee, George – DC here, four, five years ago? Went back into uniform to take charge of family liaison in Shrewsbury. Plump person. Three kids, now. Needs somebody a bit mumsy, I reckon. Seems very young, this girl.’
‘So it is a girl?’ Merrily said. ‘I mean, you’ve seen her yourself?’
‘Who’d you think it was?’ Steve Britton eyed her, curious.
‘Do you know her name yet?’
Steve Britton pursed his lips.
George Lackland snorted. ‘God’s sake, Stephen, how long you known me, boy?’ He turned to Merrily. ‘People help each other in a small town. It’s how things get done. How good connections get made.’
The Mayor turned back to Steve Britton and gave him a long, considering stare, as if their future relationship and all it might promise was on the line here.
‘Samantha Cornwell,’ Steve said. ‘And it wasn’t me told you.’
‘Goes without saying, Stephen. Local?’
‘Ledbury. Like the other one.’
Merrily blinked. ‘That means she knew Jemmie Pegler?’
Steve Britton looked uneasy; he’d already said too much.
‘Thank you, boy,’ George said. ‘It won’t be forgotten.’
Merrily followed the Mayor back onto the square, everything reshaping.
She’d assembled a scenario in which Bell, betrayed, had fled to Marion’s tower, all ghosts together, but it was wrong. Now the scene in her head was a corner table at the café in a mews across the car park from Hereford Police HQ. On the table, a computer printout, e-mail format:
if i emptied every packet and every bottle in there and swallowed the lot. well just be sick as a dog most likely. how sad is that, sam. im not going out sad. im not. when i go theyll fucking know ive gone.
Samantha Cornwell. Sam?
Over by the tourist office, she saw the eight-year-old boy who was waiting for the big bump. He was staying very close now to a woman pushing a pram, presumably his mother, and he was no longer laughing. Often the way with children, the bravado melting in the suddenly frightening heat of reality. The policewoman, Kelly, had known her psychology: just about the last thing this kid wanted to hear was a big bump that would resound in his room at bedtime.
Merrily, too, but what the hell could she do?
The sun bulged like a damaged eye behind purplish cloud. The couple known to George Lackland had shifted their cardboard placard closer to the castle wall.
ONLY THE POWER OF GOD CAN STOP THIS NOW.
Tell that to Nigel Saltash.
Duss, duss, duss.
Mumford
JUST THE ONCE, after denying everything with his usual contempt and arrogance and bravado, Jason Mebus tried to leg it.
Choosing his moment perfectly, when Mumford – and it could happen to anybody, there was nothing you could do – let go this unstoppable sneeze.
Bringing his knee up into Mumford’s crotch, not quite getting it right but enough to break free. Would have been well away, too, up the river bank, through the grounds of the derelict restaurant under the pines, if he hadn’t stopped for the parting gesture, like he always did on the CCTV pictures.
Vicious sneer and a rigid finger up at the camera.
With what he thought was a safe distance between them, he turned round and did it at Mumford, who was on his knees in the dirt.
Mumford did nothing – made a point, in fact, of showing no pain and looking unimpressed, like he’d merely bent to pick up a coin. Which was when Jason started screaming that if he’d had his way, they’d have finished hanging Robbie Walsh. Finished off the job by the time the Collins kid had started crying and run out of the shed and gone to fetch his dipshit dad.
As it was, they’d cut the little gayboy down and they were out of there. Which was a shame, all the trouble they’d gone to, to fix it up like a suicide, even ripping the hanging page out of the history book so it could be left by the body, and then putting the book back in Walsh’s school bag.
Jason telling him all this just in case Mumford thought he was dealing with an amateur. How it would’ve gone down as suicide, no problem ’cause everybody knew Walshie was having a bad time on the Plascarreg. But enough people would know what had really happened to make it crystal clear that there were certain individuals on this estate that you did not fuck with.
‘Now that’s a lie, ennit, Jason?’ Mumford said, back on his feet, strolling nonchalantly towards the vermin. ‘No way, see, that you’d leave a body in a shed next to a crack factory.’
‘Nah, that was gonner be over, anyway,’ Jason said. ‘Couldn’t trust that unit no more. He might’ve told somebody. Might even’ve told you, dad.’
Jason backing off the whole time, along the edge of the water. Knowing he was safe, with his long legs, from this overweight old bastard. Telling Mumford that if his fat face was ever seen on the Plascarreg again it was gonner get sliced off.
Bringing his hand down like a guillotine.
‘Sliced off like a side of bacon, dad.’
And it was as he was saying these actual words, making the gesture, that he backed into an empty petrol can with one of his heels and turned round too quickly and lost his footing and nearly went in the river.
Thank you, boy.
Mumford – brain inflamed with the images of Robbie’s suffering that Jason had so lovingly invoked, and moving pretty near as fast as when he was a promising athlete in his teens and early twenties – went to rescue the boy, at the same time taking him down with a sharp little knuckle-punch to the throat.
Jason retching pitifully, but all Mumford could hear was him saying, with his casual, hard-boy confidence, We was only his very best mates, dad. We had some awesome laughs with Robbie.
The last laugh being at the top of the Keep, at Ludlow Castle.
All added up. They wouldn’t have known about the significance, to Robbie, of the Hanging Tower. The Keep, with steps all the way to the top, was so much easier. What was also useful was that, instead of landing on the public footpath outside, for all to see, the body would drop privately into what they called the Outer Bailey, all locked up for the night.
Jason or, more likely, two of them – Jason and Chain-boy, say – would’ve hidden out somewhere in the castle with Robbie till the place was closed and then taken him up there, thrown him off, quietly vacated the premises, with all the time in the world. No, they weren’t amateurs, these boys.
So why hadn’t Robbie told anybody about the hanging?
Or had he? Could be Robbie had told Mathiesson. Mumford could hear the toe-rag laughing. Gotter be a man… stand up to ’em. Telling himself that Robbie had exaggerated the story. Not telling Angela anything.
Mumford drew back his foot as Jason tried to get up. Pity it was only a trainer.
Still, Jason was cowering away, his eyes alive with fear. Or mabbe it was the look on Mumford’s face that did that – Mumford listening to his poor drowned mother.
And Robbie, he wants to show you all his favourite places in the town, don’t you, Robbie? He’s nodding, see. He’s always saying, when’s Uncle Andy coming?