Crybbe

'My name's Jean,' she'd corrected him softly.

'Dr Chi!' Alex draining his Scotch. 'God save us.'

'Do you really want to know about this, Alex, or are you just going to be superior, narrow-minded, chauvinistic and insulting?'

'Was I? Hmmph. Sorry. Old age. Senile dementia.'

'Are you really old enough to be senile, Alex? What are you, seventy?'

'I'm certainly way past flattery, Wendy. Way past eighty, too. Go on, tell me about this Peking pox-doctor from the Ming dynasty.'

He'd forced himself to listen patiently while she told him about Dr Chi, who, she said, she'd once actually seen – as a white, glowing, egg-shaped thing.

'The name is significant. Dr Chi. Chi is the oriental life force. Perhaps that's the name I've subconsciously given him. I don't know if I'm dealing with a doctor from the Ming dynasty, the T'ang dynasty or whenever. He doesn't speak to me all sing-song, like a waiter serving chicken chow mein. All I know is there's a healing force and I call him Dr Chi. Perhaps he never was a human doctor at all or perhaps he's something that last worked through a Chinese physician. I'm not clever enough to understand these things. I'm content to be a channel. Good gracious, don't you believe in miracles, Alex? Isn't that the orthodox Anglican way any more?'

Regarding the Anglican Church, he wasn't entirely sure what he believed any more.

Powys found the page, ran his finger down the column headed Veterinary Surgeons. 'OK, D. L. Harris. Crybbe three-nine-four.'

Mrs Seagrove dialled the number and handed him the phone.

The woman in the bloodstained blue cagoule sat in the hall. The dog lay on Powys's jacket on the woman's knee, panting.

'Have a cup of tea while you're waiting,' Mrs Seagrove said.

She shook her head. 'No. Thank you..We may have to take him somewhere.'

The number rang for nearly half a minute before a woman answered.

'Yes.'

'Mr Harris there, please?'

'What's it about?' Local accent.

'We've got a very badly injured dog. Could you tell me where to bring it?'

A silence.

'Dog, you say?' Shrill. As if he'd said giraffe or something.

'He's been shot.'

'I'm sorry,' the woman said flat-voiced. "But Mr Harris is out.'

'Will he be long? Is there another vet?'

'Sorry.' Cool, terse. 'We can't help you.'

A crackle, the line broke.

'I don't believe it,' Powys said. 'She said the vet was out, I asked when he'd be back or was there anyone else, and she said she couldn't help me. Can you believe that? This was a vet's, for God's sake.'

'Wrong,' Fay Morrison said bitterly. 'This was a Crybbe vet's,'

'What the fuck was happening up there?' Max Goff lay on his bed in his room at the Cock.

'You tell me,' said Andy Boulton-Trow.

'I never felt so high. Like, at first I was really angry, really furious at the inefficiency. Why weren't they bringing the flaming wall down, why was nothing happening, why was the sound failing?'

'And then?'

'Then I felt the power. The energy. I never felt anything so heavy before. It took off the top of my skull. That ever happen to you?'

'Once or twice,' Andy said.

'Come to London with me,' Goff said. 'Stay at my place.

'I have things to do here.'

'Then I'll stay here. We'll stay in this room. You got things to teach me, I realize this now. We'll stay here. I'll get rid of Ms Wade. I'll send her back to London.'

Andy placed a hand on Max's knee.

'You go back to London, Max. There's such a thing as too much too soon. You'll get there. You'll make it.'

Andy didn't move his hand. Max shivered.

'Took off the top of my skull. And then the curfew started.'

'Yes,' Andy said. 'The curfew.'

'I don't think I like that curfew,' Jean Wendle said, pouring Earl Grey, after the treatment. 'I don't know whether it's the bell or what it represents. I don't like restrictions.'

'Oh, quite,' Alex said. 'Couldn't stand it if it was a real curfew. But as a bit of picturesque traditional nonsense, it's all right, isn't it?'

'I think it is a real curfew, in some way,' Jean said, 'I don't know why I think that. Well, yes, I do – people do stay off the streets while it's being rung, have you noticed that? But I think there's something else. A hundred times a night is an awfully big tradition.'

'I suppose so.'

Alex would give her the benefit of the doubt on anything tonight. He didn't remember when he'd last felt so relaxed, so much at peace. And him a priest. Best not to go into the implications of all this.

'It's a very odd little town,' Jean said. She drew gold-dusted velvet curtains over a deep Georgian window.

'Aren't they all.'

'No, they aren't. This is. There are – how can I put it? – pockets of strange energy in this town. All over the place. People see things, too, although few will ever admit it.'

'See things?' Alex was wary.

'Manifestations. Light effects. Ghosts.'

'Hmm,' said Alex. 'Good cup of tea.'

'Being on the border is a lot to do with it. When we make a frontier… when we split something physically asunder in the landscape, especially when we build something like Offa's Dyke to emphasize it, we create an area of psychic disturbance that doesn't go away.'

Alex stirred his tea, wishing she'd talk about something else.

Jean said, 'Do you think they've taken on more than they can handle? Max Goff and the New Age people?'

'I thought you were one of them.'

'I like to keep a certain distance,' Jean said, 'I like to watch. Can they control it, I wonder? Or is it too volatile for them?'

'Oh, we can't control anything,' Alex said. 'That's something everybody learns sooner or later. Least of all control ourselves.'

It was well after midnight by the time they came out of the vet's.

Without Arnold.

'I couldn't stand the way he was looking at me,' Fay said, it's not been his week, has it? He's in a car crash, sees his master die. Saved from the clutches of the Crybbe constabulary, finds he's become a kind of pariah in the town. Then he gets shot.'

The Mini had been parked for over two hours on a double yellow line outside the vet's surgery in Leominster, fifteen miles from Crybbe. The nearest one from which they'd managed to get a response. The vet handling night-calls had been understanding but had made no comments either way about the wisdom of farmers shooting dogs alleged to be worrying sheep.

The vet had said Arnold would probably live. 'Just don't expect him to be as good as new with all that lead inside him.'

One of the back legs had taken most of it. Bones had been broken. The vet had seemed a bit despondent about that leg. Fay had spent half an hour holding Arnold at different angles while the vet examined what he could, removing shotgun pellets. He might have to operate, he said, and got Fay to sign a paper relating to responsibility if Arnold died under anaesthetic.

Now Fay and Powys were standing on the pavement, unwinding. It was very quiet in Leominster, the other side of midnight. No menace here. Fay thought.

J. M. Powys was shaking out his jacket. It was scarcely identifiable as a jacket any more. It looked as if someone had faced a firing squad in it.

'Oh God,' Fay said. 'I'm so sorry.'

J. M. Powys dangled the jacket from an index finger and looked quite amused. J. M. Powys. Bloody hell. 'It's hard to believe you're J. M. Powys. I thought you'd be…'

'Dead.'

'Well, not quite.'

'That lady, Mrs Seagrove. She called you Mrs Morrison. You're not Guy's wife, are you?'

'No,' Fay said. 'Not any more.'

She explained, leaning on an elderly Mini in a quiet street in Leominster, lights going out around them. Explained quite a few things. Talking too much, the way you did when you'd been through something traumatic. Only realizing she was shooting her mouth off, when she heard herself saying, 'I've got to get out of that place, or I'm going to implode. Or maybe I'll just kill somebody.'