Wiley will be in attendance, and any attempts to smuggle cameras in there will be dealt with very severely.'
'But…' Catrin was close to tears. She had never before encountered anyone less than delighted and slightly awed at the possibility of being interviewed by Guy Morrison.
' 'Ave another cup of coffee,' said the Mayor.
What he kept seeing was not Rachel plunging out of the sky. Not the willowy, silvery body broken on the rubbish pile.
He would not think of that – not here, in this grim Victorian police station. If he thought of that he'd weep; he wasn't going to indulge in that kind of luxury, not here.
No, what he kept seeing was the grey-brown thing, falling like smoke.
He'd seen it again as he waited for the police. It lay where it had landed, three or four yards from the pile, light as the fluff which collected in a vacuum cleaner.
I've seen them before, Powys thought now. In museums, in glass cases, labelled: remains of a mummified cat found in the rafters, believed to have been a charm against evil.
The cat had fallen to the ground after Rachel.
He hadn't told them that.
'And you heard her scream, did you?'
'She cried out. Before she fell. '
'She wasn't screaming as she fell?'
'I don't think so. I mean, no, she wasn't…'
'Didn't that strike you as odd?'
'Nothing struck me at the time, except the sheer bloody horror of it.'
Telling it four times at least. How he'd attacked the rubbish heap, frantically hurling things aside to reach her.
Lifting her head. Staring into her face, eyes open so wide that you could almost believe… until you fell the dead weight, saw – last desperate hopes corroding in your hands – the angle of the head to the shoulders.
Staring stricken into her face, and the curfew bell began to toll, a distant death knell.
'… can we return to this point about the door, Mr Powys. You say you tried the rear door to the courtyard and found it locked. You couldn't budge it.'
'No, It was locked. I put my full weight against it'
'Then how do you explain why, when we arrived, this door was not only unlocked but was, in fact, ajar?'
'I can't explain that. Unless there was someone else in there with Rachel.'
'Someone other than you…'
'Look, I've told you, I…'
They'd gone over his statement several times last night and then said OK, thank you very much, you can go home now, Mr Powys, but we'll undoubtedly want to talk to you again.
But he knew, as he tried to sleep back at the cottage, that they were out there, watching the place, making sure he didn't go anywhere. And it was no real surprise when the knock came on the door at 8 a.m., and the car was waiting – a car, to take him less than a quarter of a mile across the bridge to the police station.
'You didn't tell us, Mr Powys, that this wasn't exactly a new experience for you. You didn't tell us about Rose.'
So who had?
Somebody had.
He sat on the metal chair, alone in the interview room, wishing he still smoked. He could hear them conversing in the passage outside, but not what they were saying.
'So you went to Leominster with Fay Morrison?'
'Yes.'
'Attractive woman, Mrs Morrison.'
'Yes.'
'What was wrong with the dog?'
'He had a badly injured leg'
This could lead back to Jonathon Preece in no time at all. Holistic police-work. Everything inter-connected.
Joseph Miles Powys, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Jonathon Preece, Rachel Wade and Rose Hart. You don't have to say anything, but anything you do say…
Perhaps I should confess, he thought, looking up to the single, small, high window and seeing a hesitant sun in the white sky, wobbling nervously like the yolk of a lightly poached egg.
Maybe I did it. Maybe I killed her, as surely as if I'd been standing behind her in the prospect chamber, with both hands outstretched.
He thought, If I start believing that, we're all finished. So he went back to thinking about the cat.
CHAPTER IV
The sun was out for the first time in ages, hanging around unsurely like a new kid standing in the school doorway.
Fay walked aimlessly up the hill from the police station towards the town square and the Cock, pausing by the railings alongside the few steps to its door. Even a weak sun was not kind to this building; its bricks needed pointing, its timbers looked like old railway sleepers.
The Cock didn't even have a sign, as you might have imagined, with a bight painting of a proud rooster crowing joyfully from the hen-house roof. But, knowing Crybbe, would you really imagine a sign like that?
And anyway, whoever said the name referred to that kind of cock? A far more appropriate emblem for this town, Fay thought, would be a decidedly limp penis.
Crybbe. Crybachu (to wither).
Fay looked down the alley towards the brick building housing the Crybbe Unattended Studio and wondered if she'd ever go in there again. They were obviously handling the Rachel Wade story themselves; nobody had even attempted to contact her.
I need the money. Fay realized suddenly. I need an income. I need a job. Why are they doing this to me?
She thought of Joe Powys – I think I've got problems – helping the police with their inquiries. Quite legitimately, by the sound of it.
Rachel Wade… the dead woman, Rachel Wade.
He couldn't have… surely. She liked Joe. He seemed so normal, for the author of a seminal New Age treatise.
Well, comparatively normal.
Oh God, what was happening?
She didn't notice the door open quietly in a narrow townhouse to the left of the Cock, didn't hear the footsteps. When she turned her head, the woman was standing next to her, looking across the square to the church.
'Good morning, Fay.'
Fay was too startled, momentarily, to reply. She'd never seen this woman before, a woman nearly as small as she was, but perhaps a quarter of a century older.
Well, never seen the face before.
'Jean Wendle?' Fay said.
'I am.'
Last seen in a hat, sitting very still, impersonating the ghost of Grace Legge.
May I perhaps offer you a coffee?' Jean Wendle said.
Catrin Jones knew Guy would be furious about the Mayor's ban on cameras at tomorrow's public meeting.
She also knew from experience that when bad news was brought to him Guy had a tendency to take it out on the messenger.
The need to salvage something from the morning had brought her to this subdued, secluded house opposite the church, at the entrance to the shaded lane leading down to Crybbe Court.
'I'd be delighted to help you, any way I can,' said Graham Jarrett, hypnotherapist, small, silvery haired, late-fifties.
'I was thinking perhaps this, what is it, recession…?'
'Regression.'
It was very quiet and peaceful in the house, with many heavy velvet curtains. Catrin could imagine people here falling easily into hypnosis,
'Yes. Regression,' she said. 'This is… past lives?'
'Well, we don't like to talk necessarily in terms of past lives,' Graham Jarrett said, matter-of-fact, like a customer-friendly bank manager. 'But sometimes, when taken back under hypnosis to an area of time prior to their birth, people do seem to acquire different personalities and memories of events they couldn't be expected to have detailed knowledge of.'
'Fantastic,' Catrin said.
'I certainly wouldn't be averse to having you film a session, if the client was in agreement.'
'That would be excellent,' Catrin said.
'But I have to warn you that many of them do prefer it to be private.'
'Oh, listen, my producer – Guy Morrison – is a wonderfully assuring man. They would have nothing to worry about with him.'