Ritual (23 page)

‘Try?’ she
said. ‘I’m going to succeed.’ ‘Can I dissuade you?’

For a fleeting
moment, Mrs Kemp almost smiled. ‘You wouldn’t want to dissuade me, would you? You
want to see the Musettes dead just as much as I do, if not more.’

Charlie came up
close and laid his hand on Mrs Kemp’s shoulders. ‘Can I ask you just one
favour? Don’t do anything without telling me first. I’m going to try to get
Martin out of there before anything happens to him. If you get in there on your
own, all you’re going to succeed in doing is make them tighten up their
security. At the moment, they’re complacent. They’re inside the law, however
much you and I may hate them,
no
matter how disgusting
we think they are.

Let them stay
complacent, huh? – at least until I’ve managed to get Martin out.’

Mrs Kemp
reached up and touched his cheek. ‘Is this a punishment, do you think, for the
way we treat our children?’

Charlie tried
to smile.
‘Maybe.
Maybe some people have a different
way of looking at life and death.’

‘Will you want
supper?’ she asked. ‘I’m afraid that I didn’t quite make it to the market. I
got overtaken by the impulse to wreck Norman’s office.’

Til go out to
eat,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you think the sheriff is going to press charges against
you?’

‘Norman? He’d
better not. I’ve known him since he was a big, fat, unpopular kid. He gave me
cough-candy once and asked me if he could marry me. Thank God I didn’t.’

Charlie spent
the next half-hour straightening out his car – scraping the clumps of grass
from underneath the wheel-arches and bending back the cover that protected the
radiator fan. He managed to kick the front bumper reasonably straight, and fit
new bulbs in the headlights. The Oldsmo-bile still looked as if he bought it
second-hand from a family of deranged Mexicans, but at least it went along
without making too much noise. The transmission was okay provided he drove in
second.

He left Mrs
Kemp sitting in her parlour with the last of her bottle of Chivas Regal, and
drove over to Watertown. Once the sun had gone, the evening was unexpectedly
cold. The Oldsmobile’s climate control had been damaged, and he wished he had
worn a sweater underneath his coat. It occurred to him as he drove that it was
time he called Marjorie to tell her what had happened – or at least to tell her
that Martin was missing – but he couldn’t even begin to think of what to say.

‘Marjorie,
listen, we’ve got a problem here. Martin wants to eat himself.’

‘I’m sorry, Marjorie,
but Martin has decided to join a society of cannibals.’

‘Marjorie –’

He arrived at
the Loving Doves. It was a small self-conscious restaurant in the centre of
Watertown, with gilded lettering across the facade and two gilded doves pecking
at each other’s beaks perched on the porch. Its style was New England nouvelle
cuisine, if such a thing were imaginable. Perhaps its most characteristic dish
was a dinner that consisted of three thin slices of brisket, four baby onions,
three miniature carrots, two tiny beets, and a decoration of tenderly cooked
cabbage, all laid out on a circular pool of delicate broth.

Charlie went
inside. The decor was candlelight, brass, and dark green tablecloths. ‘You have
a six-thirty reservation for Mr Gunn,’ he said. The tall, blonde waitress
smiled at him as if life were still ordinary, as if restaurants still mattered,
and led him across to a table in the corner. There, a young woman was waiting –
a handsome young woman with long well-brushed brunette hair and wide dark eyes
and big dangling earrings. She wore a fashionable suit in pale grey, with a
white cotton sweater underneath it. The multi-pocketed purse slung over the
back of her chair was the only give-away that here was a career woman pursuing
her career.

‘Mr Gunn?’ she
said, rising from her chair and extending her hand.

I
t was almost eleven o’clock when they left The Loving Doves. They
stood in the entrance for a while, sheltering from the wind.

‘What are you
going to do now?’ Robyn asked Charlie.

‘Go back to Mrs
Kemp’s, I guess. I feel I have a duty to keep an eye on her.’

‘You won’t come
back to my place for a drink? I still want to talk to you some more.’

Charlie tugged
up the collar of his coat. ‘I’m not sure there’s any more to say. The Celestines
have got hold of my boy, and I want to get him back. End of story.’

Robyn took her
spiral-bound notebook out of her pocket and leafed through it.
Til talk to two other parents in the morning.
I may be able
to get hold of one of them tonight. Then I’ll talk to my editor.’

‘Remember the
agreement, though,’ said Charlie. ‘No publicity until Martin is safe. If M.
Musette gets the idea that I’m going to try to break him out of there, he won’t
even let me through the front gate.’

Robyn closed
her notebook and put it away. ‘I hope I haven’t been too sceptical this
evening.’

‘About what?’

‘The whole thing.
The Celestines.
It is pretty hard to believe.’

Charlie made a
face. ‘I guess the answer is that the Celestines are absolutely no different
from any other fanatical religious sect. They all have a magnetic appeal for
young people, and the reason they do is because the way of life their parents
lead has absolutely no appeal at all. If these sects flourish, it’s our fault,
the parents’ fault.

I mean, what have
we given our
children that has
any spiritual value
whatsoever? I’m not just talking about materialism, either. I’m talking about a
lack of spirit.
A lack of self-respect.’

Robyn eyed him
over her red mohair scarf. ‘You’re talking like somebody who’s been there.’

Charlie took
her arm. ‘Let me walk you back to your car.’ ‘I didn’t bring my car. My
photographer dropped me off. I was hoping maybe you could give me a ride. I
don’t live far: Waterbury.’

‘What if I’d
turned out to be a seventy-year-old hunchback with halitosis and axe-murderer’s
eyes?’

‘In that case,
I would have called for a taxi.’ They walked across to the parking lot under
the trees. ‘I was telling you the truth about driving into their gates,’
Charlie remarked, pointing to the front-end damage. He helped her into the car.

‘I didn’t doubt
that you were.’ ‘But you find the Celestines difficult to believe in?’ ‘I
accept what you’re telling me, but I find it hard to accept that so many people
know about it, the government, the FBI, and yet they let it carry on and nobody
says a word.’

Charlie drove
out toward Waterbury. ‘It’s nothing unusual, when you think about it. The
Scientologists and the Moonies and the Masons are all run openly – to the
extent that they don’t try to conceal their existence. But who knows what they
really do? Provided it’s nothing overtly illegal, they’re going to be left
alone. And it’s the same with the Celestines. The media don’t want to touch the
story because it’s too grisly and the risks of a libel action are too high. The
police don’t want to know because they don’t believe that they’ll get a
successful conviction. And the government certainly isn’t interested because
too many people in high places have embarrassing connections with them.’

‘It’s such an
incredible news story,’ said Robyn.

Charlie made a
face. ‘Sure it is. But what’s the story?
That some
psychopathic sect is encouraging our children to eat themselves in the name of
the Lord?
–
or
that this nation has such a low
regard for human life that they’re letting them get away with it? Do you know
something, there comes a time when the principle of liberty for all has to be
circumscribed. The right to bear arms is one example. I don’t mind people
exercising that right just so long as it doesn’t intrude on my right to a safe
existence, free from fear. And I don’t challenge anybody’s right to worship
whatever God in whatever way they choose – except when it threatens my son’s
life.’

They drove into
the outskirts of Waterbury, and Robyn directed Charlie to a small frame house
painted white and green. There was a bronze station wagon parked in the
driveway, and there were lights on in the living room window.

‘You live with
your parents?’ Charlie asked her.

‘That’s right.
I came back home to recuperate after a spectacularly messy love affair. My mom
wants me to stay for ever, but I guess I’ll be looking for my own place pretty
soon. You can’t be somebody’s child all your life. Sooner or later you have to
be yourself.’

‘Maybe I won’t
come in,’ said Charlie.

‘Oh, do, they won’t
mind. And I do have a room of my own, kind of an office. They’re very proud
that their only daughter is a newspaper reporter.’

Charlie blew
out his cheeks. ‘Okay, then, just for a while.’

Mr and Mrs
Harris were sitting in front of the television when Robyn brought Charlie into
the living room. Mr Harris was skinny and unsmiling; he ran a dry-cleaning
business in the centre of Waterbury and, according to Robyn, thirty years of
other people’s dirty clothes had permanently crippled his sense of humour. But
Mrs Harris was warm and motherly and
fun,
and Charlie
could see where Robyn had gotten her looks and her figure from. She asked them
if they wanted coffee, or maybe some fresh-baked pound cake, but Robyn smiled
and shook her head, and said, ‘This is work, mother.
W-O-R-K.’

‘Still,’ said
Mrs Harris, beaming at Charlie as if he were a potential son-in-law. ‘It’s
always good to meet the people that Robyn works with.’

‘Oh, I don’t
work with her, Mrs Harris. I’m just a news story.’

‘Good news, I
hope?’ said Mrs Harris.

‘I hope it’s
going to turn out that way.’

Robyn took
Charlie through to the small converted bedroom at the back which she called her
office. It was decorated in pale beige colours, and furnished with a modern
pine desk, an angular couch, and two cheese-plants in basketwork jardinieres.
There was a large Mucha poster on the wall, of the kind that used to be popular
in the days of flower-power and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’.

‘Can I tempt
you with a glass of wine?’ asked Robyn.

‘Just half a glass.
I don’t want a hangover tomorrow.’

Robyn took off
her jacket and hung it over the back of her chair. Charlie sat down on the
couch and watched her as she went across to her cupboard and took out a bottle
of Stag’s Leap chardonnay. Under happier circumstances, he would have been very
interested in her. Her personality was incisive and bright; she had an
irrepressible sense of humour; and she was very good-looking indeed. She poured
out two glasses of wine and Charlie found himself wondering about her
‘spectacularly messy’ love affair. It seemed axiomatic that nice girls like her
always got themselves involved with brutes.

‘You said you
might be able to contact one of the other parents tonight,’ said Charlie.

‘Surely.
I’ll give him a try.’ Robyn checked through her Roladex
to find the number, then picked up the phone and punched it out. ‘His name’s
Garrett,’ she said, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. ‘He lost his
daughter just after the Christmas holiday. She was eighteen or nineteen, if I
remember rightly. She was driving through Alien’s Corners to visit her brother
in Bethlehem. They found her car abandoned by the side of the road.’

At that moment,
the phone was picked up at the other end. Robyn waved to Charlie to pick up a
second phone next to the couch, so that he could listen in.

‘Hallo?’ said a
deep, slurred voice.

‘Is this Mr
Robert Garrett?’ asked Robyn. ‘This is Robyn Harris from the newspaper. Do you
remember me? I came up to your house about four weeks ago to talk about your
daughter.’

‘I remember,’ the
voice replied, guardedly. ‘What do you want?’

‘Well, Mr
Garrett, it seems like we may possibly have some kind of new theory about your
daughter’s disappearance.’

‘Oh, yeah?’
Still the voice was defensive.

‘Mr Garrett, I
was thinking today about what you told me... the way you described your
daughter’s disappearance... and I remember being puzzled.’

‘What do you
mean, puzzled? She disappeared, that’s all. They found her car and she was
gone.’

‘But you said
to me – here, I have it in my notebook – you said to me, “She’s at peace,
anyway.”

And – do you
know something? – that isn’t at all characteristic of the parents of missing
children.’

There was a
pause, and then the voice said, ‘What in hell are you talking about? I hope you
didn’t call me up after eleven o’clock at night just to tell me that, because
if you did
– ?’

‘Mr Garrett,
I’ve been working on this story for weeks, and so far I’ve talked to two dozen
parents of missing children. Apart from one other parent, you’re the only one
who hasn’t shown any signs of hope whatsoever that your daughter is still
alive, and you’re the only one who has categorically said, “She’s at peace”,
even though no body has been recovered and you haven’t been able to give her a
proper funeral.’

‘What are you
trying to suggest? Are you trying to suggest I killed her or something? Is that
it?

You’re trying
to say that I murdered my own daughter?’

Robyn said,
‘No, sir, Mr Garrett, I am not. But what I am saying is that you know what
happened to her.’

‘This is
bullshit,’ the deep voice growled. But its owner didn’t put down the phone.
Charlie glanced across at Robyn and Robyn gave him a little wave of her hand
which meant,
This
is it, we’re making headway.

‘Mr Garrett,’
said Robyn, ‘have you ever heard of a religious order called the Celestines?’