Crybbe

'Well, no, as it happens. I.. I've got a portable tape recorder I do all my interviews on, and I can edit down at the studio in town, there's a machine there. But would they know that?'

'Listen.' Wynford was row wearing an expression which might have been intended to convey kindness. Fay shuddered. 'He – they – just came in and smashed up the most expensive thing they could find. Then, could be as 'e was disturbed – or, thought 'e was gonna be disturbed, maybe 'e yers somebody walkin' past…'

'Maybe he wasn't disturbed at all,' Fay said. 'Maybe he just left because he'd achieved what he set out to do.

'I think you're watchin' too much telly.'

'Can't very well watch too much TV in Crybbe. The power's never on for longer than three hours at a stretch.'

Wynford turned his back on her, opened the office door. Arnold walked in, saw Wynford and growled.

'See you've still got that dog Didn't leave 'im in the 'ouse, then, when you went out?'

'What? Oh. No, he came with us,' Fay said. 'What happened with the RSPCA, by the way? Does anybody want to claim him?'

'No. I reckon 'e's yours now. If 'e stays.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well. If 'e don't take off, like.'

He was wearing such a weird smile that Fay pursued him to the front door, 'I don't understand.'

Wynford shrugged awkwardly. 'Well, you might wake up one day, see, and…'e'll be… well, 'e won't be around any more.'

Fay felt menaced. 'Meaning what? Come on… what are you saying?'

Wynford's face went blank. 'I'll go and talk to some neighbours,' he said, and he went.

'Dad,' Fay said, 'I've said this before, but there's something very wrong with that guy.'

"Sorry, my dear?' Alex looked up. His eyes were like floss.

'Sit down. Dad, you've had a shock.'

'I'm fine,' Alex said. 'Fine. If there's nothing I can do here, I'll probably have an early night.'

Fay watched the policeman walk past the window, imagined him peering through it with his face squashed against the glass, like a robber in a stocking mask.

She recoiled, stared at the gutted hulk of the Revox, a bizarre idea growing in her head like a strange hybrid plant.

She turned to Arnold, who was standing placidly in the doorway gazing up, for some reason, at Alex, his tail well down.

'Christ,' Fay said.

Something had occurred to her that was so shatteringly preposterous that…

'Dad, I have to go out.'

'OK,' Alex said.

… if she didn't satisfy herself that it was completely crazy, she wasn't going to get any sleep tonight.

'You go and walk off your anger,' Alex said. 'You'll feel better.'

'Something…' Fay looked around for Arnold's plastic clothes-line. 'Dad, I've just got to check this out. I mean, it's so. ..' Fay shook her head helplessly. 'I'll be back, OK?'

She took J. M. Powys to her room at the Cock. The big room on the first floor that she shared with Max. But Max was in London.

The licensee, Denzil, watched them go up.]. M. Powys looked, to say the least, dishevelled, but Denzil made no comment. Rachel suspected that if she organized an orgy for thirty participants, Denzil would have no complaints as long as they all bought drinks in the bar to take up with them.

Rachel closed the bedroom door. The room was laden with dark beams and evening shadows. She switched a light on.

So this was J. M. Powys. Not what she'd imagined, not at all.

'Don't take this wrong, but I thought you'd be older.'

'I think I am older.' He tried to smile; it came out lop-sided. There was drying blood around his mouth. His curly hair was entirely grey.

'Er, is there a bathroom?'

'Across the passage,' Rachel said. 'The en-suite revolution hasn't happened in Crybbe yet. Possibly next century. Here, let me look… Take your jacket off.'

It was certainly an old jacket. The once-white T-shirt underneath it was stiff with mud and blood.

Gently, Rachel prised the T-shirt out of his jeans. The colours of his stomach were like a sky with a storm coming on. 'Nasty. That man is a liability.'

'I've never…' Powys winced, 'been beaten up by a New Age thug before. It doesn't feel a lot different, actually.'

Rachel said, 'Humble has his uses in London and New York, but

… Just move over to the light, would you… really don't like the way he's going native, I caught him laying snares the other day. Look, Mr Powys, I don't know what I can do for bruising, apart from apologize profusely and buy you dinner. Not that you'll thank me for that, unless you're into cholesterol in the basket.'

'I don't mind that. I had a Big Mac the other day.'

He sounded almost proud. Perhaps J. M. Powys was as loony as his book, after all.

Addressing the fireplace, Alex said, 'Why? You've always been so houseproud. Why do this?'

He mustn't touch anything. Fingerprints. Couldn't even tidy the place up a bit until they'd looked for fingerprints. Waste of time, all that. They wouldn't have Grace on their files.

Alex started to cry.

'Why can't you two get on together?'

A tangled ball of black, unspooled tape rustled as he caught it with his shoe. Like the tape, the thoughts in his head were in hopeless, flimsy coils and, like the tape, could never be rewound.

All the way up the High Street, Fay kept her eyes on the gutter. She saw half a dozen cigarette-ends. A crumpled crisp packet and a sweet-wrapper. Two ring-pulls from beer cans. And a bus ticket issued by Marches Motors, the only firm which ran through Crybbe – twice a week, if you were lucky.

But neither in the gutter nor up against the walls did she find what she was looking for.

When Arnold stopped to cock his leg up against a lamppost, Fay stopped, too, and examined the bottom of the post for old splash-marks.

There were none that she could see, and Arnold didn't hang around. He was off in a hurry, straining on the clothes-line as he always did on the street. She'd have to get him a lead tomorrow.

Now there was a point. Fay steered Arnold past Middle Marches Crafts and the worn sign of the Crybbe Pottery, which her dad said was about to close down. There was a hardware shop round the corner.

Hereward Newsome was emerging from The Gallery. 'Oh, hi, Fay. Out on a story?'.

'You're working late.'

'We're rearranging the main gallery. Making more picture space. Time to expand, I think, now the town's taking off.'

'Is it?'

'God, yes, you must have noticed that. Lots of new faces about. Whatever you think of Max Goff, he's going to put this place on the map at last. I've been talking to the marketing director of the Marches Development Board – they're terribly excited. I should have a word with him sometime, they're very keen to talk about it.'

'I will. Thanks. Hereward, look, you haven't got a dog, have you?'

'Mmm? No. Jocasta had it in mind to buy a Rottweiler once – she gets a little nervous at night. Be good deal more nervous with a Rottweiler around, I said. Hah. Managed to talk her out of that one, thank God.'

'Do you know anybody who has got one?'

'A Rottweiler?'

'No, any sort of dog.'

'Er… God, is that the time? No, it's not something I tend to notice, who has what kind of dog. Look, pop in sometime; there's a chap – artist – called Emmanuel Walters. Going to be very fashionable. You might like to do an interview with him about the exhibition we're planning. Couple of days before we open, would that be possible? Give you a ring, OK?'

She nodded and smiled wanly, and Hereward Newsome walked rapidly away along the shadowed street, long strides, shoulders back, confident.

Fay dragged Arnold round the corner to the hardware shop. Like all the other shops in Crybbe, there was never a light left on at night, but at least it had two big windows – through which, in turn, she peered, looking for one of those circular stands you always saw in shops like this, a carousel of dog leads, chains and collars.