I was occupied by holy thoughts like this when an unmarked police car pulled up at the kerb. From the passenger window DI Moxon stared at me without expression. He didn’t even bother getting out of the car, but made Wally Stubbs squeeze out of the driver’s seat to stumble up the steps into the churchyard.
“Detective Sergeant Stubbs,” he said, flashing his warrant card at the Rev. “Can you tell me how long these two have been here, please, vicar?”
“Mr McClure and his friend? Since about eight o’clock. They’re early risers. Very admirable, don’t you think? And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”
“Really?”
Wally looked dubious. Admirable wasn’t the word he usually heard applied to me down at the station.
“It’s in the book. Would you like to see it, sergeant?”
“No, thanks.”
Wally looked at us and the results of our work, no doubt comparing it to what he could achieve in a couple of hours in his own garden back home. Looking at the blubber round his waist, I reckon we hadn’t done too badly.
“We’ve just been spending a little of our time in discussion of a biblical text,” said the Rev happily.
He was gilding the lily now, I thought. Definitely stretching credulity a bit too far.
“The parable of the man who fell among thieves,” he added helpfully.
“Oh yes?” said Wally, his ears pricking up. There was a tense silence for a moment. “What thieves would these be, then?”
The silence went on and on, like even the Rev might have realised he’d said the wrong thing.
“S’Luke,” said Dave, surprising us all. “The Good S’maritan.”
“Oh. Right,” said Wally. His hand twitched as though to reach for his notebook. His instinct was to get the words down at every opportunity. It could be evidence. He looked at Dave, hoping for more. The big dork could have let it rest there, but it wasn’t in his nature. Not Dave.
“The nose ewer,” he said.
“Eh?” Wally gaped at him, baffled.
“German to the nighties.”
Dave was giving it his intellectual look. Or maybe he just had indigestion. But that was definitely a little twitch of the eyebrows, just like the Rev does when he’s talking at you.
“What are you trying to tell me, Underwood?”
“Acro prop the nose ewer.”
“I see.”
Wally Stubbs was backing away now, looking up at Dave with dismay, like a man who’s just got on a long-distance bus and finds Billy Graham sitting down next to him.
“You can come if you like! On Sunday. It’s my sermon,” called the Rev as Wally scuttled back down the steps. “All welcome!”
Wally got back in the Mondeo and spoke a few words to Moxon, who turned towards us again, his glasses glinting in the sunlight, unbelieving. They drove off with a screech of tyres.
I looked at Dave with new respect. But he only looked down modestly at his hands, as if it was the fork that had done it.
15
Nuala was off work that afternoon, which was handy, because Lisa was due at Hardwick. Trouble was, the new bird was getting suspicious. For a start, she claimed the way I was treating her meant I didn’t care about her. Rubbish, of course. But there was worse. Nuala isn’t too bright, but she does have that highly developed sense of smell that seems to come with women and dogs. As soon as she got in the car she started sniffing. Well, I could smell the cigarette smoke myself, but that didn’t mean anything. What else could she smell, though?
“Do you like my scent?” she said. “It’s Givenchy. It’s expensive usually, but I got it at the Sunday market. You wouldn’t believe the price.”
I would, probably.
“You smell lovely, as usual.”
This was the wrong thing to say, but it slipped out. She’d just told me she was wearing a new scent, and those words ‘as usual’ suggested that it didn’t smell any different from the old scent. It was as bad as not noticing a new hair style. You see how tuned in I’ve got to those subtle meanings that women read into what you say? The only problem is, I don’t remember how to do it until after I’ve already said the wrong thing. The charm usually gets me by. And it’s all lost on Nuala anyway. If she’s not speaking herself, then no one is.
“Have you had a woman in the car?” she said.
“Only in the course of business, love.”
She sniffed. “Well, it’s a funny business you run if you have women in your car smelling like that, that’s all I can say. My mum always said you couldn’t trust a man if you found knickers in his glove compartment.”
With this baffling comment, she opened my glove compartment and began rooting about. There’s nothing incriminating in there, honest. I just don’t like people poking about. It gets me annoyed.
“Give over, you silly tart.”
“What did you call me?”
“You’re getting right up my nose now. Business is business, and it’s got nothing to do with you. So just keep your nose out of my affairs, and your fingers out of my glove compartment.”
“Oh, something to hide then, have you? My mum always said—”
“I couldn’t give a shit what your mum always said. Will you just shut up for a bit? You’re making my ears bleed.”
Magically, she shut up. For thirty seconds.
“You can drop me off here,” she said.
“Don’t be stupid. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
We were, in fact, just passing through a little tea shop village called Norton, where they might not like to be called ‘in the middle of nowhere’. But it wasn’t somewhere for a silly tart with her skirt up her bum to be walking along the roadside on her own. Nowhere is, these days.
“I’ll hitch a lift,” she said. “I can always get somebody to pick me up.”
“I bet.”
“Anyway, you smell of oil. You’ve been playing about with cars again, haven’t you?”
“Business, duck, business.”
“If you think we’re going to have sex in them bushes again, you’ve got another think coming,” she said. “After you speaking to me like that? It’s not on.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d just noticed how much her skirt had ridden up as she wriggled about angrily in her seat. It was revealing such an expanse of thigh that I couldn’t resist just resting my left hand on it for a while to see how it fit. Her leg was smooth and warm, and it moved instinctively under my hand as I stroked it gently.
After a few more minutes, she sighed. “All right then,” she said. “You’ve talked me into it.”
Making love to Nuala is like walking into a busy nightclub. It’s noisy and full of energy, and you have to fight your way through a lot of writhing, sweaty limbs to get to the bar. I hoped there weren’t any rare birds nesting in the bushes we’d chosen, because they’d just been disturbed from their habitat, no doubt moving out in disgust at the behaviour of the neighbours.
They say that part of Clumber Park is where they re-introduced some Red Kite a few years ago. These are huge birds that died out in England once, but a few kept going in Wales. Now they’re back in these parts. I remember a court case once where a farmer got charged with wounding a couple who were having it off his cornfield. He said he mistook the bloke’s bum going up and down in the corn for the backside of a rabbit, and that’s why he blasted it with his shotgun. I don’t think there are folk wandering around with shotguns in Clumber. But sometimes, when I’m with girls like Nuala, I do think of those Red Kite. They’ve got sharp talons, those buggers. And they hunt rabbits.