Crybbe

He didn't need the dreams either.

Last night Guy had dreamed he was back on the rug in front of the fire, where Jocasta straddled him, swinging her hips tantalizingly above his straining loins.

'Yes, yes…' Guy urged in the dream, but she held herself just a fraction of an inch away so he could feel the heat of her but not the touch of her skin.

'Please,' he moaned. 'Please come down.'

Her face was above his; she seemed to be floating, both hands in the air. He felt her pubic hair brush the tip of his…

'Come… down… on me.'

'No!' Jocasta said calmly.

'Oh please! Please… I can't, I can't… I can't hold on!'

He tried to put his arms around her neck to pull her down on him, but his arms went right through her, as though she had no substance.

He dreamt then – the way you did sometimes – that he woke up, still feeling alarmingly excited. He was in his room at the Cock and he could still feel her presence above him, her bodily musk in his nostrils. He moaned and breathed in deeply.

And almost choked.

She smelt foul.

A decaying, rancid smell that filled up his throat and turned the sweat on his body to frost, and when he opened his eyes he stared into the whitened, skeletal face of the woman from The Gallery' with the little needle-teeth.

He really woke up then, in a genuine cold sweat.

No more nights alone in the Cock, Guy Morrison decided. Tonight… well, tonight would have to be a very special night for his adoring production assistant, Catrin Jones.

The lesser of several evils.

Chief inspectors were getting younger. This one was a kind of Murray Beech in blue; steely eyed, freshly shaven although he may have been up most of the night.

'Yes,' she said. 'We'd been to pick up my dog from the vet's. I… I needed somebody to drive the car so I could keep the dog on my knee.'

'No,' she said. 'No I haven't known him long. Just a couple of days in fact. In this job you get to know people quite well quite quickly.'

Don't ask what was wrong with the dog, she pleaded silently. It has nothing whatsoever to do with this. Nothing.

'We got back… I suppose it would have been shortly before seven. Yes, he drove back. The last I saw of him, he was walking home

… to the cottage he was living in. Max Goff had commissioned him to write a book about Crybbe.

'Miss Wade?' she said, 'Yes, I… got on very well with her. I suppose we had similar backgrounds.'

'Rose?' she said later. 'Rose who…?'

'Rose Hart,' replied Chief Inspector William Hughes, a high flier from Off. 'Have you heard of her?'

'No… Oh, wait a minute. Photographs by Rose Hart. On the cover of The Old Golden Land, it said "Photographs by Rose Hart". Is that who you mean?'

'You don't know anything about her? You never met?'

'No… What's the connection here?'

'Mrs Morrison, I have to be intrusive. What's your relationship with Joseph Miles Powys?'

'What?'

'Were you sleeping with him?'

'What…?

'I'm sorry, I have to ask this.'

'Of course I wasn't bloody sleeping with him. I'd only known the bloke a couple of days.'

'And how long had he known Miss Wade?'

'Oh,' Fay leaned back in the metal chair in the bare little room. There was a table and two other metal chairs; the Chief Inspector in one, Wynford Wiley in the other. Fat, florid, red necked Wynford Wiley, with a suggestion of a smile on his tiny lips.

'I see what you mean,' Fay conceded quietly.

'Two days? Three days? Four perhaps?'

'Yes, OK. It was what you might call a whirlwind romance.'

'Quite normal for some people, Mrs Morrison.'

'Yes, but Rachel wasn't…'

'No?'

'No. Listen. Perhaps relationships do form quickly when… when you aren't happy.'

'Miss Wade wasn't happy?'

'She… She wasn't happy working for Max Goff, no. She wasn't happy about what he was doing in Crybbe. She thought he was pouring money down the drain. The thing is… it wasn't too easy to quit, she was being paid an awful lot o money as Goff's PA.'

The way you babbled under interrogation, no matter how smooth you thought you were at handling people.

'How unhappy would you say she was?'

'Look,' Fay said, rallying. 'I think it's time you made it clear what kind of investigation this is. What do you suspect? Suicide? Or what?'

'Or what?' repeated the Chief Inspector.

'Or murder, I suppose,' Fay said.

'What do you think it was?'

'I don't know the circumstances. Are you trying to say – I mean, is this the bottom line? Powys pushed poor Rachel out of the window because she found out he was having it off with me? I mean, bloody hell, come on.'

'It wasn't a window, Mrs Morrison. It was something called the prospect chamber. Do you know it?'

'No. That is… I've heard of it.'

'Did you go out again last night, after Mr Powys had brought you home?'

'No.'

'Is there anybody who can…?'

'My father.'

'I understand he's not been very well, Mrs Morrison. I believe he gets a bit confused.'

'Oh God, Hughes, do you get a kick out of this?'

'It's my job, Mrs Morrison.'

'Still, what have I got to complain about? It'll sound interesting on the radio tonight, won't it?'

Wynford Wiley grinned, which wasn't pleasant. 'Which radio you gonner 'ave it on, Mrs Morrison?'

He looked down at his big hands. Hands like inflated rubber gloves, twirling a pen.

'Only I yeard Offa's Dyke Radio wasn't too happy with you lately, see. Just what I yeard, like…'

Hughes said, 'Mrs Morrison, do you know what happened to Rose Hart?'

Fay shook her head slowly.

The Chief Inspector consulted a file on the table in front of him.

'Twelve years ago,' he said, 'Rose Hart and Joe Powys were sharing a flat in Bristol. It was a Victorian building in a not very pleasant area of town, and Mr Powys told the inquest they were hoping to move somewhere else.'

'Inquest?' Fay said faintly.

'At the rear of the house was an overgrown area which couldn't really be called a garden. One afternoon Joe Powys went up to London to see his publisher – this is what he told the inquest. When he got back he couldn't find Rose anywhere, but a window was wide open in the flat – this is the fourth floor.'

'Oh no,' Fay said.

'Joe told the coroner he dashed downstairs and out the back, and there she was. Rose Hart.'

Fay brought a hand to her mouth. There was such a thing as coincidence, wasn't there?

'The verdict was accidental death. Nobody quite believed that, everybody thought she'd killed herself, but coroners tend to be kind. When there's room for doubt, when there isn't a note…'

'That's very sad,' Fay said.

'It certainly was Mrs Morrison. Half-buried in this overgrown patch at the back of this building in Bristol, where they lived, there were these old railings.'

'Jesus,' Fay whispered.

'They had spikes, rusty iron spikes. Three of them went through Miss Hart. One deeply into the abdominal area where she was carrying what was thought to be Mr Powys's baby.'

Fay said nothing.

'Very messy,' Hughes said.

CHAPTER III

People were flinging themselves out of windows to the ground, and the grey masonry was cracking up around them.

The single bolt of lightning had caused a great jagged cleft in the tower. Fire and smoke spewed out.

'What's this one mean?' Guy Morrison asked.

Adam Ivory didn't look up. His wife whispered, 'This card is simply called The Tower. Or sometimes The Tower Struck by Lightning. It signifies a cataclysm.'

'Is that good or bad?' Guy was not greatly inspired by the tarot. What he'd really been after was a crystal-ball type of clairvoyant One could do things with crystal balls televisually. He supposed it might be possible to match up some of these images with local scenes, but it would be a bit contrived.