Late of This Parish Read online

  ‘All the same, it was a near miss, wasn’t it?’ Her gaze on his face was intent, and perhaps he didn’t imagine the concern behind it. ‘I was in Bognor that weekend with Seb and I didn’t hear about it until I got home.’

  ‘Bognor? With Seb?’

  She correctly interpreted the frown that appeared between his brows. ‘Now, Pop, don’t be so stuffy!’ she said impatiently. ‘Seb’s OK. He’s good fun – and Mr Loadsa-money at the moment – but don’t go getting any ideas. I’ve already told him it’s his motorbike I love and not him.’

  He wasn’t sure he was keen on the idea of her racketing around on the back of a Harley Davidson, either. He pushed aside his empty cereal bowl, and looked at her, careful not to show the dread he felt at the thought of where her fearless and headstrong nature might take her.

  But with unexpected gentleness she said, ‘You shouldn’t worry so much about me, Pop. I’m a big girl, now. I’ll be all right.’

  He wished he could believe that. But nothing she’d done so far gave him too much cause for hope.

  CHAPTER 4

  Did other fathers, Mayo asked himself, fatalistically accept that they must in some mysterious way be to blame when their daughters suddenly became as incomprehensible as some creature from another planet? He suspected that most of them did, that it was all part of the contemporary human condition. But that didn’t make it any easier to cope with. Julie had come home after three weeks with her grandmother, still of the same mind. And left again after three days.

  ‘All she’ll say is she doesn’t want to make any major decisions yet – only little things that don’t matter, like chucking up a career and leaving college and knocking around the world like some blasted gipsy.’ He added tonic to gin for Alex before subsiding into a chair on the opposite side of the hearth with his own whisky. ‘Before her teeth fall out and she’s married and saddled with six kids and a mortgage, to be precise.’

  Alex grinned and sipped her drink. ‘Didn’t we all. Ancient as I am and feel, I can still remember the urge.’ Well, maybe. He thought of himself at Julie’s age, twenty-five years earlier. Recalled a vague restlessness, the feeling that the world was out there and why weren’t you out there with it? But had he ever wanted to kick over the traces so completely? He found his memory for things like that was growing dimmer, the older he became. Still not quite yet into the sere and yellow, he sometimes felt that he understood so little of people of Julie’s generation he might have been born before the Flood.

  ‘It’s endemic in the student population,’ Alex said calmingly. ‘She’ll be all right when she’s got it out of her system. Itchy feet, they all get it.’

  ‘Not half way through a college course!’ He didn’t want to be smoothed down. He wanted to be allowed to give vent to what he felt.

  ‘Especially half way through a college course. All right, they don’t all pack it in, but at least she’s not doing it without thought – give her credit for that.’ Alex settled back into the sofa with her high heels kicked off and her feet up on a small table, anything but the crisp, efficient police sergeant she’d been an hour before. Their free time coinciding for once, they were in Mayo’s flat, he was doing the honours and had in mind for their strictly non-vegetarian meal a large mixed grill, including pork chops and kidneys. Then afterwards, hopefully, she would stay on, though he couldn’t ever be sure of that. Just glad to pick up whatever crumbs were on offer, you poor old mutt, he told himself, knowing it wasn’t true, because such terms between him and Alex could never be acceptable to either.

  ‘You’d better believe she’s serious about it, Gil. It takes courage to do what she’s done. She must’ve known what your reaction would be.’

  ‘Good God, I’m not that frightening! Am I?’

  Alex looked amused. ‘Well, maybe a bit Victorian papa – thinking about your daughter not being a sweet, biddable little girl any more. Sorry, shouldn’t have said that. Not my business.’

  ‘No, what you say makes sense, I suppose – but what d’you mean, it’s not your business? Anything to do with me is your business, I hope.' He thought about pressing the point, but he’d no desire to spoil a good evening before it started. They’d achieved a compromise which for the moment suited them both. If he were honest, he’d admit it was a truce rather than a compromise but it was for the time being working, and he wasn’t going to push his luck by breaking the rules and asking her to marry him yet again. There’d been a time when he’d thought she wouldn’t marry him because she wasn’t yet completely free of Liam, her Irish ex-lover. Now that he’d apparently gone into limbo (and bad cess to him, bloody Liam of the Sorrows) and no longer appeared to occupy her thoughts so much, he had to realize she had ambitions beyond marriage: a career she didn’t intend jeopardizing by the demands of a husband and maybe children. She’d seen too much of that happening with her female colleagues, she said. There was some truth in that, but the threat of her promotion hung over him like the sword of Damocles – and perhaps over Alex as well. He sensed a tension in her tonight – but he was always on the edge of apprehension with Alex. Moodily, he swivelled the ice around in his glass and switched problems again. ‘What gets me, I suppose, is that I can do damn all about it, though I won’t give up without a try.’

  ‘No, Gil, I suspect you won’t.’

  He acknowledged this with a wry smile. There was silence between them while she slowly felt herself relax. It was very easy to do that up here in this quiet top-floor flat. Carly Simon, in deference to her own tastes, on the turntable. The tick-tack-tocking from the old clocks, knackling away from every corner of the rooms – something she’d once thought might well drive her mad but which she’d grown used to and and would have missed had they gone. The evening shadows growing long in Miss Vickers’s garden below and the scent of the wallflowers her brother had massed into the borders wafting in through the wide open windows. The flat had a different look about it. Not noticeably tidier, mind, but warmer, more personal, less of a bachelor pad. Julie had departed northwards again only yesterday but she’d left traces of her presence. Records, magazines ... there were even some fresh flowers inexpertly stuck into a vase, certainly not Mayo’s doing. One bloom is worth a thousand words – a bunch of daffodils to express regret: I’m sorry, Dad, I love you but ...

  Alex knew that all these authoritarian father noises Mayo was making were no guarantee that he wasn’t deeply worried about Julie, though she thought there was no need. She herself thought that Julie would probably regret later what she was doing now, but there was a core of good sound common sense in the girl, which he’d admit to when he’d had time to come round. Meanwhile, a daughter apparently hell-bent on wrecking her chances, as he saw it, was something he regarded as unfinished business, which wasn’t in his book.

  ‘Half your problem is you’re going to miss her dropping in and stocking up your freezer with all that delicious food!’ she teased, trying to lift his mood.

  ‘Not if it’s nut rissoles, I’m not – and half way to Australia’s a bit different from college, two hours up the motorway, you must admit.’ He leaned back, rolling the malt round his tongue, savouring it before swallowing. He looked tired as well he might, having been out catching thieves until dawn, but he was used to that and a good night’s sleep would make up for it. His big frame sagged in the chair. She must remind him to get his hair cut. It was beginning to curl up at the back in the way he hated. Suddenly he grinned, looking ten years younger. ‘Hell, no. To tell you the truth, for the first time ever I’m not sorry to see the back of her for a while. I’m not sure I can take any more at the moment. I’ve had vegetables and peanut butter and going green rammed down my throat till I’m up to here! What in God’s name’s got into her? She never used to be like this.’

  ‘Oh come on, if you don’t have ideals at eighteen –’

  ‘It’s not just ideals. I could understand that – or try to. But she’s in a funny mood. Dangerous. Dammit,’ he said, sitting up again, ‘I won’t
let her go traipsing round the universe!’

  ‘She’s not under age, Gil. Nothing you can do, though I suppose you’d feel better if she wasn’t going on her own.’

  ‘She’s not going on her own, that’s the whole point! Didn’t I tell you, there’s a boy – a man – another student anyway. Some sandalled weirdo who’s put all these screwy ideas into her head.’

  ‘Ah.’ So that was what had really been bugging him. ‘No, you didn’t tell me. That does make a difference.’ She looked thoughtful but before she could elaborate on what the difference was, the telephone rang.

  Mayo swore and let it ring.

  ‘It won’t go away.’

  Muttering under his breath he got up to answer it. While he listened to what was being said at the other end, Alex heard the clocks begin to chime in unison, one very slightly off-synch with the others. Like their relationship, she thought. Just one degree off being perfect.

  ‘Just a minute.’ Mayo held his hand over the instrument until the chimes stopped, using the time to gaze thoughtfully at the wall in front. ‘Go on.’

  By the time he put the receiver down, Alex knew that this was destined to be yet another evening gone for a burton.

  It was a thwarted but resigned Mayo who sat back in the passenger seat while his sergeant, Martin Kite, put his foot down on the stretch of road in front. Tough luck that Castle Wyvering was situated at the furthest point of the division, just inside the boundary – another mile or two and it would have been Hurstfield’s pigeon. After a while, he settled down. Having had DC Farrar with him over the last couple of weeks while Kite had been conducting an investigation into a series of break-ins at local supermarkets, he was more than usually appreciative of his cheerfully capable sergeant by his side once more. Farrar was OK by his own lights – bright and alert and plenty of initiative, even if he did know it all and dressed like a male model. In fact nobody – least of all Farrar – could understand why he’d twice failed his promotion boards.

  ‘Manage to get something to eat before we left, did you –?’

  Kite only just bit back the ‘sir’. He knew Mayo found too many of them boring and unnecessary between them but years of discipline and training made the habit hard to kick. He’d better watch it, though, or there’d be some caustic comment. Very sarky he could be when he wanted, the gaffer. Still, like most of the team once they were used to him, Kite considered himself lucky to be working with Mayo. He was fair, if you were fair with him, not soft but not case-hardened, either. He’d arrived in Lavenstock with a sharp reputation behind him. Wariness had changed to respect, respect to liking – though most of the team would have been hanged, drawn and quartered before they’d admit this.

  Another of Mayo’s little ways that Kite had grown used to was that he was inclined to forget about food when the job was under way. Not everyone shared this tendency. Especially Kite, whose metabolic processes kept him as thin as a long drink of water but demanded frequent stoking. He had, however, learned to suss out where he stood regarding meals and act accordingly, hence the question.

  ‘An omelette,’ Mayo answered, sounding glum. As though it had been hastily gobbled and lay heavily on his stomach. ‘Left a mixed grill behind and all.’

  ‘Shame. We had Lancashire hotpot. Sheila’s a dab hand – lashings of onions and the potatoes all crisp and brown.’

  ‘I should be so lucky.’

  Kite looked smug and thought of Sheila and his two kids, and pitied Mayo. And envied him because he might, or might not have, Alex Jones. Or maybe pitied him for that, too. Sergeant Jones wasn’t anybody’s soft option.

  Mayo asked abruptly, ‘What’s the form then, Martin?’

  Kite relayed what he’d been told: that a parson by the name of Willard had been found dead in his church. That the doctor called in hadn’t been the dead man’s usual one, but a locum who wasn’t satisfied that it was a natural death. That Ison, the police surgeon, had been contacted at a formal dinner party and would arrive as soon as he could. In sum, no more than Mayo already knew. He added, ever optimistically, that it would like as not turn out to be nothing.

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right, and we can all go home.’ Not every suspicious death was murder and not every murder by any means required a prolonged and intensive investigation. More often than not, the murderer would be waiting for them, shocked and speechless at what had happened in a moment of uncontrolled rage, wife, husband or some other relative dead at their feet. ‘The Press’ll have a field day, if not. Imagine the headlines!’

  Kite was more concerned with finding his way. Surely there should’ve been a signpost before this, he was asking himself when Mayo spoke again, asking to be put in the picture about this benighted spot they were making their way to. ‘I suppose you’ve been here before?’

  Kite, locally brought up, was used to briefing his chief, as a comparative newcomer to the district, when it came to the more distant parts of his bailiwick, though by now there weren’t many parts he wasn’t familiar with, nearer to hand. He thought for a moment. ‘Not a lot to it, as I recall, but not a bad place. Remote. High up. Castle ruins. Last time I came here was on a school outing and all I remember is seeing who could roll fastest down the grass on the castle hill ... Here we are.’

  The sign for Castle Wyvering had at last made itself manifest and he executed a smooth right turn, steering the car into a dark narrow road made darker by the trees arching together to form a natural tunnel above it. Winding upwards, it passed on the way a pair of large wrought-iron gates with a gold-lettered notice-board announcing the entrance to Uplands House School. There was no other sign of habitation until, leaving the trees behind at the top of the hill, at a point where the ruins of an ancient castle stood dramatically silhouetted against the rapidly darkening sky, the road levelled out and turned sharply into Wyvering itself.

  Most of the houses were in darkness as they drove down Main Street, itself unlit save for the brash fluorescent anachronism of the Mobil garage and a few television screens flickering through uncurtained windows. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys. Two men having a late gossip and a smoke over their garden fences turned to watch the police car as it sped by. More lights, and sounds of muted revelry issuing from the Drum and Monkey. Otherwise, silence.

  ‘Strewth! Bet it all happens here of a Saturday night,’ Kite remarked, so disgusted he almost overshot the narrow turning which PC Wainwright, the local policeman, had declared they couldn’t miss. Having spotted it just in time, he braked and turned right, slowing to negotiate an exceedingly narrow street of small, very old houses whose upper storeys leaned towards each other.

  Dobbs Lane gave no indication of what was waiting at the end, where it opened out into what was in effect a kind of miniature cathedral close. In the middle, in its own churchyard, was St Kenelm’s church, a grey sandstone edifice with a strong square tower, gilded by the rays of the setting sun. The churchyard stood on a green sward and surrounding it was a narrow road of houses of vastly disparate styles and sizes, their doors and windows opening directly on to the pavement. Mayo drew in his breath with pleasure. Although erected haphazardly over the centuries, the buildings had grown into a natural sympathy with each other and most of them, he was glad to see, had escaped the tarting-up that always set his teeth on edge. Quiet and harmonious, Parson’s Place lay undisturbed by the twentieth century.

  Undisturbed except for two cars, one of which was Wainwright’s police car, ignoring the No Parking sign outside the church gates. As Kite drew up to join them, a black furry object stirred in the shadow of the lychgate, revealing itself as a huge Persian cat which glared at them and then lifted its tail and stalked off, all offended dignity, on its stocky legs.

  Dr Hameed, the locum, with Wainwright in attendance, had apparently been writing up her notes while waiting for them at the back of the church. She was small, slim and brown, her face a perfect oval and her expressive eyes large and dark and not a little disdainful. There was gold in her ears and a
faint emanation of chypre issued from her. She was fashionably dressed in western clothes. ‘I don’t have much time,’ she told them crisply, consulting her watch, ‘but I’ll give you any information you need before I leave. I have been asked to call on Miss Willard. Her father dying like this must have been a great shock to her.’

  Her accent was that of the educated Indian, pedantically correct and precisely enunciated, with a borrowed touch of the pukka memsahib and a corresponding put-down effect; it seemed a safe bet from the colour of PC Wainwright’s ears, glowing like traffic lights, together with his mortified expression, that he’d recently said something which had put him at the receiving end.

  ‘I understand and you won’t be kept longer than necessary, ma’am, though I’d appreciate it if you could wait for our police surgeon,’ Mayo replied, putting what was virtually a command in the form of a request out of consideration for the wait she’d already had. ‘Meantime, perhaps you could tell me what you found when you arrived that made you suspicious.’

  Her eyebrows lifted, rather as if she thought he was questioning her integrity, and she said stiffly, ‘I think we should look at the deceased.’

  ‘Shall I tell the Rector you’re here, sir?’ asked Wainwright, anxious to assert himself.

  ‘Not for the moment. Doctor?’

  The young doctor snapped her case shut with thin and delicate hands before leading the way through the elaborately-carved wooden screen separating the tower from the nave. Mayo and Kite followed her in procession down the aisle, their footsteps muffled by the strip of matting down the centre. Her legs, Mayo noticed, were nowhere near equal to the rest of her.

  It was dimly-lit and very cold and he was sharply aware of the smell, peculiar to very old churches, an amalgam of stone and ancient dust, a chilly damp that any amount of modern central heating would never entirely dispel, overlaid with the scent of massed spring flowers, beeswax and Brasso. A faint breath of incense and he was back in his pre-agnostic High Church days, a very young thurifer swinging the censer in some festival procession. Death was too recent for it to have made its own olfactory presence felt. But it was also there, an odour in the mind.