'Yes, thank you, I get the picture.'
'But it happened to me. That was the point. No indication of any danger to Rose.'
'Was she unhappy?'
'Not at all. That day at the Bottle Stone, she was very happy. That's what's so agonizing. I've had twelve years to get over it… I can't. If I could make sense of it… but I can't.'
'And it was… how long, before… she fell?'
'Not quite two weeks. OK, thirteen days.'
'Hmm.' Fay's fingers were entwined in the fur around Arnold's ears. 'Was… was she unhappy at all afterwards? I mean, pregnant women…'
'It was at a very early stage. I don't even know if it had been officially confirmed.'
'She hadn't told you?'
Powys shook his head. 'The post mortem report – that was the first I knew about it.'
'So this experience you had on the so-called fairy mound… What are your feelings about that? Do you feel you were being given a warning, that there was something you should have realized?'
Powys said, 'You're interviewing me, aren't you? I can spot the inflection.'
'Oh God, I'm sorry, Joe. Force of habit. How about if I try and make the questions less articulate?'
'No, carry on. At least it's more civilized than the cops. No, it didn't make any sense. Any more than the average nightmare.'
'And you told Rose?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'Because it had been such a nice day up to then. Because the future looked so bright. Because I didn't want to cast a pall. I just said when they dumped me on the mound I must have fainted. I said I was very dizzy. I did tell Andy about it after… after Rose died.'
'And what did he say?'
'He said I should have told Rose.'
'That was tactful of him.'
'And what do you think, Fay? What do you think I should have done?'
'What about Henry Kettle. What did he say?'
'He wanted nothing to do with it. He used to say this kind of thing was like putting your fingers in a plug socket.'
Fay glanced at him quickly, uneasily, over Arnold's ears. Was it possible that Joe Powys was indeed insane? Or, worse perhaps, was it possible he was sane?
He was hunched over the steering wheel. 'Oh, Fay, how could I have killed Rachel?'
He looked at her. 'I'm not saying I was in love with her. We'd only known each other a couple of days, but…'
She looked up into the hills, all the little tumps laid out neatly.
He said, 'Think Arnold can manage a walk?'
Arnold struggled to his feet on Fay's knee.
'He obviously thinks so,' Fay said. 'Come on, then. Let's go and find the Bottle Stone.'
Max began to breathe hard.
It was astonishing.
'Take me over again, Mel,' Max said. 'Then maybe we'll get Guy Morrison and his crew to come up with you. We have to have pictures of this. For the record.'
He leaned forward, thoughts of Rachel's death blown away by all this magic.
Melvyn, his helicopter pilot, took them over the town again making a wide sweep of the valley. Max counted six standing stones – first time round he'd missed the one by J. M. Powys's cottage near the river.
He couldn't believe it. A week ago Crybbe was scattered… random, like somebody'd crapped it out and walked away. Now it had form and subtle harmonies, like a crystal. It had been earthed.
He could spot, clear as if it had been blasted in with a giant aerosol paint-spray, the main line coming off the Tump. It cut through the Court, cleaved a path through the woods until it came to a small clearing, and in the centre of this clearing, surrounded by tree stumps and chain-sawed branches, there was a tall stone, thin and sharp as a nail from up here.
Lucky he owned the wood. Lucky, also, that nobody in Crybbe seemed to give a shit about tree conservation.
Nice work, Andy.
Andy. Such a plain and simple user-friendly name. But the thought of Andy made him shiver, and he liked to shiver.
The line eased out of the wood, across the graveyard and sliced into the church, clean down the centre of the tower. Then it ploughed across the square and hit this building.
Which building?
Go in a bit, Mel.'
The helicopter banked, and Max looked back. Shit, it was the Cock, he'd never realized the line cut through the pub… the pub he'd known intuitively he had to buy. Maybe, sleeping there in that crummy room, he'd picked up the flow. These things happened when you were keyed into the system.
His thoughts came back to Rachel. Who, for once, had not been keyed in. Who hadn't known how to handle country people. Who hadn't believed in the Crybbe project, hadn't believed in much.
Should he feel any kind of guilt here? Leaving her to handle things while he was in London, knowing she was out of sympathy with the whole deal?
'OK, Max?'
'Yeah, sure, Mel. Take us in.'
Thrown out on the fucking rubbish heap – like the Court itself didn't want anybody in there hostile to the project. Rough justice. Jeez.
Was this fanciful, or what?
What he'd do, he'd have some kind of memorial to Rachel fashioned in stone. A plaque on a gate or a stile along the ley-walk, well away from the Court. Couldn't have people staring up at the prospect chamber – 'Yeah, this was where that woman took a dive, just here.'
But accidents were bad news. First thing, he'd need to have that cross-bar replaced, arrange things so the whole room was sealed off until it was fully safe.
They cleared the river and headed back over the town towards the Court. The other leys were not so obvious as the big one down the middle; this was because fewer than half the new stones were in place, several farmers refusing to give permission until after the public meeting. Or, more likely, they were holding out to see how keen he was, how much he was prepared to pay. Yeah, he could relate to that.
Cars in the courtyard. People waiting for him. Press conference scheduled for 5 p.m.
He looked at his Rolex. It was 11.15. Time to find out precisely what had happened. Talk to the police before he faced the newsmen and the TV crews, whose main question would be this:
Mr Goff, this is obviously a terrible thing to happen. It must surely have overshadowed your project here?
The press were just so flaming predictable.
Arnold was in fact moving remarkably well. 'He doesn't think he's disabled,' Fay said. 'He just thinks he's unique.'
They climbed over a stile. Arnold managed to get under it without too much difficulty. She picked him up for a while, carried on walking across the field with the dog in her arms. The few sheep ignored them.
The sky was full of veined clouds, yellow at the edges, like wedges of ancient Stilton cheese.
Powys had watched Fay wander down the field and at one point Memory, vibrating on its helipad, turned her into Rose in a long white frock and a wide straw hat, very French Impressionist.
He blinked and Rose was Fay again, in light-blue jeans and a Greenpeace T-shirt.
She put Arnold down. He fell over and got up again.
Fay stopped and turned to him.
'Where is it, then?'
He said faintly, 'It isn't here.'
'I thought perhaps there was something wrong with my eyes,' Fay said.
'I don't understand it. This was the field. There's the river, see. The hills are right. There's the farmhouse, just through those trees.'
Fay didn't say a word.
'You think I'm bonkers, don't you?'
'Scheduled ancient monuments don't just disappear,' she said. 'Do they?'
CHAPTER VI
One of the women who cleaned the church was paid to come into the vicarage on weekdays to prepare Murray's lunch. He rarely saw her do it, especially in summer; it would just be there on a couple of dishes, under clingfilm. Variations on a cold-meat salad and a piece of fruit pie with whipped cream. She never asked if he enjoyed it or if there was something he would prefer.