The Magus of Hay (14 page)

‘Bookseller, bartender, builder, carpenter…’

Gore grinned.

‘Patronizing bastard.’

They set up two pairs of steps either side of the doorway, a little uneven on account of the way the ground sloped. Gore Turrell drilled four holes in the oak sign, two either side, and plugged the walls. Then he went on the higher steps with a screwdriver and some long screws, Kapoor on the other end holding it up, getting it aligned, Gore calling to Robin on the ground.

‘That about right for you?’

Robin looked up, felt a tremor.

Thorogood Pagan Books

Jeez, they’d arrived. Part of the town. And, more than that, part of the castle. The castle of Richard Coeur de Livres. Book-heart. Though from down here, the renewed red chimney stacks of the Jacobean extension looked like a modern affirmation of the castle’s original military purpose: a row of bullets in a magazine.

He’d never thought of it that way before. He felt a momentary dismay, but what the hell?

‘Yeah,’ Robin said. ‘Thanks. Thanks, guys.’

‘They reckon the King had a handful of blokes like this,’ Kapoor shouted down. ‘It was how the new Hay was made.
Miles of bookshelves sawn and hung by local craftsmen. Makes you feel inadequate, don’t it?’

‘I
am
inadequate,’ Robin said.

Turning away so they wouldn’t see the terror on the face of a guy who knew nothing about bookselling and was too crippled to go up a ladder. Jesus, in a life full of false starts, this could be the—

He heard Kapoor’s cut-off cry, a scraping of wood on tarmac that turned into a near screech as he swung round, saw the ladders swaying then toppling, Kapoor on the ground, the oak sign coming down on him like a falling tree.

24

We shall come again

B
LISS WOULDN
’
T TALK
about it on the phone, not even in the car park. After work, he came over to Ledwardine, running crookedly through the rain, from the vicarage where he’d left his car.

‘Forgot you were on holiday at Lol’s.’

It had gone quite cold; Merrily had lit the stove. Bliss looked around Lol’s living room.

‘Not too bad, as holiday homes go. Nice stereo. But then I suppose he would have, in his trade.’ He sat on the edge of the sofa, upright, as if he was still afraid of suddenly losing consciousness. ‘So we have a problem, then, do we?’

‘I’m trying not to overreact, but…’ She put coffee in front of him. ‘Yes. I think so.’

‘Makes me manic, this stuff, did I tell you?’

‘You may have done.’

‘Suggests you want me not to underreact. Interesting.’ He sipped, put the mug down. ‘Let’s take it from the start. The woman who stands to collect… let’s say over a million… is not exhibiting conspicuous signs of… what? Joy… gratitude? I don’t know how excited they get at that age.’

Merrily dropped into the armchair near the stove.

‘This is a woman you normally can’t get near. She tells you no more than she feels you deserve, in between the barbs and the insults. She doesn’t want you to like her. Or – even worse – pity her.’

‘That’s what I’d heard.’

‘From whom?’

‘You, probably.’

Merrily sat down with a glass of water and told him all of it. All of what she’d assured Athena White he’d dismiss as bollocks. Solidifying the story with what she’d learned about Peter Rector from Huw Owen. Putting it all together for someone else gave it a cohesion and credibility that she hadn’t expected.

‘These neo-Nazi cults,’ Bliss said. ‘I’ve come across a couple over the years. Not round here, up north. The situation is, in Germany, Scandinavia, these guys are bad news, all tooled up. Over here, usually a disappointment. Tends to be some little twat with a swazzie tattoo, a reedy voice and a mountain bike.’

‘So what about the photograph? The woman with the bloody—’

‘Merrily, as we agreed, we’ve no way of knowing if that’s something or nothing. It’s certainly not enough to launch an inquiry.’

‘When we found it, we didn’t know there was any connection between Rector and Nazism, and now we do.’

‘Yeh. Thanks to you. I asked you to check out his place and, as it turns out, I did the right thing. So, yeh, now we know he was the inspiration for our friends with the reedy voices and the mountain bikes. But did he really move back over the border because he was scared of these buggers? I don’t see it.’

‘Maybe he’d just had it up to here with their attempts to bring him back into the fascist fold. I don’t know, either. I don’t think Athena’s saying he was scared exactly. He just didn’t like the way they kept showing up at his place in the mountains. Where he wasn’t able to screen the people signing up for his courses. Not as easy then as it is now.’

‘It’s not enough, is it?’

‘If you put it all together…’

‘Yeh, but that’s not how we work, the police. We don’t collect many points for preventing the hypothetical. All right, occasionally
it blows up in your face, and you all look like dicks. What I’m saying, I do appreciate what you’ve done, but…’

‘This is the payoff, is it?’

‘Heard from Billy Grace this affy. He says Rector drowned. There was a cut in his head, but nothing too damaging. Probably scraped on a rock, as we thought. No complications, nothing requiring further investigation. Maybe his hat blew off into the pool and he was clambering over the rocks trying to reach it.’

‘He seem to you like the sort of ninety-odd-year-old man who’d go climbing over rocks to get his hat back?’

Bliss sipped his coffee.

‘End of the day, Merrily, like I say, while we don’t like mysteries to remain unsolved, we don’t go out of our way to create them. Can I have another spoonful of sugar in this?’

Merrily went into the kitchen, replaying Athena White in her head.
They like to claim certain places… As portals where the energies they’re seeking can be drawn down. Or up. Places of sacrifice
.

Mystical drivel. Bliss was right, of course. It was a different language. When she came back with the sugar bowl and a spoon and another mug of water for herself, he was rubbing stiffened fingertips hard into his brow and didn’t look good.

‘Frannie, do you have anyone at all you can, you know, call on? At home.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re not, though, are you? What if things get difficult? However much you play with words, it’s still a head injury. Unpredictable.’

Bliss looked furtive. Really,
furtive
was the only word that came to mind.

‘Gorra friend,’ he said gruffly. ‘Comes weekends, mostly. All right?’

‘Oh. Woman?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You can’t tell?’

Chances were, a cop.
Someone who could shaft me bigtime with West Mercia if we ever fell out
. Absolutely no use asking him; he was already steering the conversation into a different lane.

‘Another reason to gerrout of Gaol Street was in case I inadvertently told Brent he’d been fast-tracked up his own bum. Like you said, bit of a tightrope. Merrily, I’m grateful for your help, just don’t want to waste any more of your time, that’s all.’

Merrily lifted Ethel on to her knees.

‘Athena White, the thing about her, as we know, she worked in some capacity for the security service. Just happened to be studying the cabala over lunch in the park instead of
The Times
crossword. All I’m saying, she’s not some New Age airhead. If Athena White’s on edge, I think that’s cause to worry.’

‘About what? Rector’s dead. Do we have a specific other person to get anxious about? Miss White herself?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Let’s just keep an eye on it.’

Merrily nodded. What could she say?

‘I’ve got one more thing, Frannie. Arranged to meet Huw up at Capel-y-ffin on Saturday, hopefully to get an idea of what Rector was doing up there.
He
thinks I’ll find it significant, anyway. And seeing I could be on holiday from tomorrow, when my locum moves in…’

‘Merrily… have a rest.’

‘If anything starts looking dangerously rational, I’ll let you know.’

Bliss finished his coffee.

‘If anything dangerously rational happens, you won’t need to.’

Half an hour after he’d gone, she was still staring into the reddening stove. You started out doing a small favour for Bliss, finding out, within a day, that there was something here that probably needed pursuing, and then he was backing off.

But
you
couldn’t. You didn’t need rationality. Rationality was not your remit.

The cat jumped down, and Merrily stood up, finding she was shaking, the image of the woman’s slashed skull as vivid as when it fell out of a book about religious life in the Black Mountains. What struck her now was that it hadn’t been a professional-looking picture. It was a
snap
.

Didn’t know whether it was rage or fear or a sense of helplessness, but it sent her out of the front door on to the empty square.

Needed to go to the vicarage, anyway. One more night to pick up the mail and check the answering machine before it became Martin’s responsibility. She went back for her keys.

The mail amounted to one item. Postcard. Picture of Hereford Castle from across the river.

Dear Ms Watkins,
After learning that you
were
not
away, as I was
told, we came to call on
you.
We shall come again.
Yours sincerely,
Sylvia Merchant

We shall come again
.

She read it again. We
shall
.

This was getting both ridiculous and borderline night-marish.The answer might simply be to ring Ms Merchant, go and see her if necessary, tell Sophie and the Bishop about it afterwards. Or maybe, as a first stage, ring George Curtiss, see what he’d learned.

She came out of the vicarage drive holding the postcard away from her, between two fingers, as if it was contaminated.

Footsteps behind her.

‘You all right, vicar?’ Gomer Parry said.

25

The quiet

T
HE SKY HAD
cleared, setting up a rare soft evening. Sandy light on the town, shadows deep as clefts in rock, and Robin was aware of a strange sense of seaside. In a coastal town, you could sense the sea even if it wasn’t in view – that constant hidden pressure.

Only here it wasn’t the sea, it was the river after which the town was named and which had become a secret presence, barely visible even from the castle hill.

It occurred to Robin that virtually nowhere in the town of Hay-on-Wye could you see the Wye from the ground and he was aware of no sign anyplace that pointed you to it. A whole street of stones had been built centuries ago with its back to the water. Even the road bridge crossing the river into Radnorshire was accessed through not much more than a slit between buildings.

Crazy. This was
the Wye
.

Watched over by castles and abbeys and cathedrals. And Hay didn’t want to share it. This symbolized everything he didn’t understand about Hay, which was…

…almost everything. He’d realized that, leaning on his stick while the easy-going Gore Turrell was fixing up his shop sign with no hassle at all, and Robin had thought,
It’s too soon. We’re not ready
.

A split second before the wooden steps skittered on the sloping ground, and Kapoor lost his footing and crashed into
the road, the steps coming down on top of him. If they’d hadn’t, he’d have taken the full weight of the sign and he’d be dead, his skull smashed, blood running down Back Fold.

The cold overcoat of foreboding had slid back around Robin’s shoulders. Paganism dealt in portents. How clear did you want your omen?

What if Kapoor had died?

And he hadn’t even thought to offer to hold one of the pairs of steps he couldn’t climb himself to see they were steady. Asshole. Liability. At the end of it, he’d been shaking more than Kapoor, his hand still unsteady around the phone, half an hour later when he was calling Betty.

Betty was doing business. He’d phoned to ask what time he could pick her up, bring her back to Gwenda’s Bar to hear the wisdom of booksellers. She was waiting for a call from the agent who, in turn, was awaiting a call from the people who’d been to view the bungalow. He knew that, at some stage, she’d sell the bungalow, at whatever price. Betty was practical, pragmatic, while he was… don’t ask.

When the mobile bleeped again, the day was thinning and the candle in the window had melted down, so that the serrated edge of the Yale key was actually visible inside the hot wax.

‘I don’t know what you told them, Mrs Thorogood,’ the estate agent said, ‘but I passed on the information that you were considering their offer and – and I can assure you this doesn’t happen often these days…’

Pause for effect. Betty’s thoughts were stilled. She’d given up three hours ago, deciding the people from Coventry must have shrugged and walked away. A thousand more suitable properties were on offer in the area; if they couldn’t get a cheap deal, why would they bother?

But now the agent was calling from his home.

‘They came back ten minutes ago. They liked all the bookcases. And they liked the fact that it hadn’t been tampered
with. Seems all the other similar houses they’d looked at had had their front gardens paved over to provide more parking space. Or there was an extension or a terrace for the barbecue. Things like that.’

Betty smiled.

‘They offered within five hundred of the asking price.’

‘Gosh,’ Betty said.

She felt far away.

‘Someone up there is on your side.’

‘Evidently,’ Betty said.

‘Congratulations. I don’t get to say that very often any more.’

‘Thank you,’ Betty said.

When she went back into the living room, the front door key was projecting from the candle like a blackened finger bone with a tiny flame on the end.

He never did find the river.

Wound up back on dusky Castle Street, walking down to where the Gothic clock tower stood, centuries younger, Robin guessed, than the buildings around it but bestowing its own sense of the medieval. A circle of wan light in the clockface, the weather vane puncturing a cobalt sky. Around the tower, squares of yellow and orange light were appearing in stone and whitewashed buildings, with the castle’s shadowy crust up behind.

Robin stood on the edge of the terraced area, near the Granary, where he’d eaten earlier, alone. Across the junction, discreetly recessed, dimly but enticingly lit by a wrought-iron hanging lantern, was Gwenda’s Bar.

The clock said it was gone half-nine. He hesitated. Circumstance had flattened the old confidence, which he now saw as brashness, unlikely to endear an American to the Brits, whether he was trying to sell them a house or a second-hand book.

A long shadow met his own.

‘Strange, quiet evening,’ Gwyn Arthur Jones said, like they’d
been standing here together for hours. ‘Always distrust quiet, see, in a town.’

‘Not good for business?’

‘Unless it’s police business.’ Jones looked across the street ‘Gwenda’s, is it?’

‘Kapoor suggested I called in.’

‘Makes sense, boy. A booksellers’ drinking hole waiting to happen, for many years, and now it has.’

‘I was thinking it had been here since forever.’

‘Couple of years, that’s all. An example of how new people can become accepted very quickly, if they learn the rhythms. Nothing too fancy. Nothing too posh.’

That old Gareth Nunne patter.

‘Booksellers’ bar,’ Jones said. ‘Walked in, with her boyfriend, and hit the Hay zeitgeist, as they say. The worse bookselling gets, the more gets spent at Gwenda’s. Anything happening, you hear about it first in Gwenda’s.’

‘I guess they’ll’ve heard about how Kapoor was nearly killed fixing up our sign.’

‘Boy’s all right, I’m told. Bar the odd bruise. Were you hurt?’

‘No. This was someplace else, he’d sue my ass. All my fault for wanting an oak sign I was never gonna be able to fix up myself. Then I’m just… like standing there, watching it happen.’

‘Hardly be expected to throw yourself at it, in your condition.’

‘That’s the whole point. I’m a goddamn curse.’

Gwyn Arthur was shaking his head, wearing his 2H pencil-line smile.

‘But it’s done?’ he said at last.

‘Me and Kapoor finally held it up between us, the sign, and Gore Turrell took most of the weight.’

‘Strong boy. Comes from swimming in the Wye and running all the way up to Lord Hereford’s Knob before breakfast. Only outsiders do that, of course, as you know.’

‘Not me.’

‘No. I’m sorry. I meant no offence. Anyway, you’re installed. Your name is up there. You exist.’

‘Yeah. I exist.’

Jones was a strange guy. Robin watched him walking away, bent forward like some curious goblin, occasionally glancing to one side or the other like he was looking for a reason for the silence.