‘Oh,’ Grayle said.
On account of there was no-one else in the dairy.
She saw the bed was half made, the duvet turned back. A lone silk blouse hung limply on a hanger on the closet door.
But there was no sign of Callard’s bags. Grayle went quickly into the other rooms. She opened the closet: empty. No personal stuff in the kitchen, in the bathroom just a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush on the shelf over the basin.
This Mary Celeste feel about the whole place.
‘What’s going on?’ Marcus demanded. ‘What’s happened here. Underhill?’
‘Looks like she checked out.’
‘I don’t understand …’
‘Hold on. Let’s …’
Bobby Maiden had run out into the night, Grayle trailing behind him across the yard, towards the entrance. When they got there, they found the wooden farm gate unlatched, the wind smacking it against the post.
Grayle looked back, rain in her face. She guessed the Cherokee was also gone. They hadn’t heard the motor start up. Probably on account of the wind.
Part Five
From Bang to Wrongs: A Bad Boy’s Book,
by GARY SEWARD Preface to the paperback edition
CLARENCE JUDGE — A TRIBUTE
As you may have read in the papers, since this book first come out, my dear old mate Clarence has been taken from us … taken from behind, in cold blood.
This has gutted me, I don’t mind admitting, like no other incident in my rich and varied life.
Doing it like that is not only the coward’s way, it’s the only way they’d have got Clarence. Right to the end — and he was nearly fifty-eight years old — this was a geezer people didn’t ever mess with if they could avoid it. You knew where you were with Clarence and if you was on the opposite side, Gawd help you.
However, he was a decent man.
Now I know a lot of moralistic gits out there will be going, What?!!! But I stand by what I just said. There’s no denying this business is full of evil double-dealers what would stab you in the back and lift your wallet in a single move. But Clarence was a man of honour, a staunch ally and a faithful friend. Even his enemies, Clarence done right by them — if you was going to be ‘visited’ by Clarence, he would look you in the eyes in the street and tell you to your face, and that was that, because Clarence believed in being fair and upfront at all times. At least one piece of scum, possessed of this advance information, took the opportunity to top himself first, and you can’t say fairer than that.
Sadly, Clarence Judge never had much luck the whole of his life. He was too honest. If the filth accused him of a crime, he would put his hands up straight away — usually to damage a couple of them first, but that was Clarence, an angry man sometimes.
As a result, he spent more than half his adult life in prison.
‘A stupid man, too, then,’ some smirking young talkshow host in a shiny suit remarks to me late one night on BBC 2. I felt like redecorating the set with his face in memory of Clarence, and I would have too if my fellow guests Kurt Campbell and Barry Manilow had not been sat between us in nice clean suits.
Was all the war heroes, the VCs, what went over the top on their own with a rifle, was they stupid men?
Because this is what Clarence was … a brave foot soldier who would lay down his life for his comrades. He never mugged old ladies for their pension money, nor did he give heroin to eleven-year-old schoolkids. The people what Clarence hurt — and yes, all right, he did hurt them, he hurt them grievously, usually — was the scum: the grasses, the snouts, or the cowards what drove off in the getaway car the minute they seen the filth and left their mates to face the music. Like me, Clarence knew what could and could not be tolerated and he stuck by his principles.
But, in the end, it seems, one of the scum got at him, in the cowardly way they operate. So far the police have failed to apprehend the guilty party. I do not know how hard they have tried, but as they are unlikely to offer much of a reward for apprehending the murderer of a ‘notorious criminal’, I shall do so myself. If any reader of this book has information fingering Clarence’s killer and would like to write to me, care of my publisher, I personally will pay them the sum of between ten and twenty thousand clean ones, according to the strength of the information. Naturally, as a law-abiding citizen these days, I shall immediately hand over anything of value to the police.
XXXV
Cindy ate a small breakfast in the otherwise empty, wood-walled bar, the place as quiet as the morning of a funeral.
The wind had not died with the dawn. Cindy had awoken into cold light and the rocking of the inn sign, with its grim, grey, curly-horned ram.
Amy collected his dishes. She wore one of her little black dresses, very Juliette Greco. Quite sexy, he thought sadly. Too late now for him to appreciate such qualities. The course was set; whichever way he turned would leave him leaning suicidally over the abyss.
‘How can they say those things?’ Amy said. ‘They don’t know you. That brother, he’ve got no brains. Just hit out, they do, without a thought.’
Cindy was silent.
‘You mustn’t let them get away with this.’
Cindy smiled with a sorrow which, in the gloom of the bar, Amy would be unlikely to discern.
‘Not as if they’ve sacked you, Cindy, is it? The BBC would not be so daft! You’re a big star!’
‘A big star. Yes.’
The Sun lay folded by his plate. He poured himself a coffee, picked up the paper.
‘Don’t…’ Amy said anxiously. ‘Don’t torture yourself.’
‘A little late for that, my love.’
Cindy spread out the Sun.
THE CURSE OFKELVYN KITE
The enormous front-page headline displayed like an official public warning.
Cindy briefly closed his eyes, opening them to the sub-head:
Brother blasts Cindy as horrorblaze kills Lotto family
This angle came from Brendan Sherwin’s brother, Greg, who did not, Cindy judged with unusual bitterness from the photograph, look like a man who might qualify for Mensa.
Greg, 34, said: ‘My sister in law was very upset when Cindy made that bird come out with all those comments about the new Barrett home and the BMWs.‘Brendan and Sharon were both demoralized. It had got that they were scared to come out of their new house because of the remarks people made.‘One day last week, two little kids were standing at the edge of Brendan’s drive flapping their arms like birds’ wings and shouting, “It’ll all end in tears!”’Greg added, ‘I hate that Cindy now for what he’s caused. It’s like he’s sneering at ordinary people’s good luck.‘He tries to blame it all on Kelvyn Kite, but everybody knows it’s what he really thinks.‘Cindy is sick. If you ask me, he should quit now.’
Oh, how cleverly it had been done. Perhaps some hungry freelance journalist had initially put the words into Greg’s mouth: ‘So how do you feel about Cindy now, Greg? I expect you hate him.’
‘Er, yeah.’
And the use of the beautifully ambivalent line, I hate Cindy for what he’s caused. Causing people to deride Lottery jackpot winners or, in fact, causing their deaths?
Nobody was suggesting such a nonsense, of course. Nothing so direct.
The piece continued across pages four and five. Page four referred to the plane crash and the heart attack. The National Lottery death toll. The paper had spoken to a consultant psychiatrist, whose portentous comments began, If people are constantly warned to mistrust good fortune achieved without any effort on their part and told that such luck will inevitably bring repercussions, then …