Authors: Laura Wilson
‘I always wondered,’ said Maisie, ‘if that was why he talked about sin so much. As a warning to others.’
‘Did they have any children?’
‘Not when they were here,’ said Denton, ‘and I don’t suppose they did later on, either, not with him being so ill. There’s a boy stays up at the rectory now, though. Doesn’t go to the school, but I’ve seen him a few times in the village. Nice-looking lad. I’ve heard he’s her son, but if she got married again, we certainly never heard of it, so heaven knows who the father is.’
‘. . . And I suppose it’s possible,’ concluded Stratton. ‘Mind you, it’s one thing to get people believing that your house is haunted, and quite another to convince them that your son is the product of immaculate conception. And even if the Reverend Milburn was too old and feeble to consummate his marriage, there seem to have been several others who were happy to fill the breach – as it were – so it’s not as if she’s a virgin.’
‘That’s just gossip,’ said Ballard, hotly. ‘Old women in the village. Jealousy, pure and simple.’
Struck by the alacrity with which his former sergeant leapt to Mary Milburn’s defence, Stratton said, ‘So she’s worked her magic on you as well, has she?’
Stratton had worried that his meeting with Ballard – the first since he’d left West End Central – might be awkward, but after a couple of minutes’ wariness, they’d slipped back into their old relationship, but with Ballard expressing himself more boldly than hitherto (and without the ‘Sir’). Pretty much, anyway: Stratton was aware that, in the ten minutes or so they’d spent reminiscing about old times, neither man had – by mutual but unspoken agreement – brought up the subject of Davies. Certainly, he’d felt no hesitation in telling Ballard all the facts of the Lloyd
case, including what the boy had said to him about feeling guilty, which he’d relayed in what he hoped was a suitably light-hearted manner. They were sitting in a corner of the snug, away from the trickle of early evening drinkers who, clustered around the bar, talked in low tones and glanced over their shoulders from time to time to check that Stratton and Ballard weren’t eavesdropping.
Embarrassed by his outburst, Ballard stared into his pint. ‘Anyway,’ he said finally, ‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with your inquiry.’
‘Probably nothing,’ Stratton conceded. ‘Well, that part of it, anyway. But I’ll lay good money that Mary/Ananda herself – whose photograph Lloyd treasured so much that he gave it to Wintle for safe keeping, remember – has a lot to do with it. What’s more, she’s disappeared.’
At this, Ballard jerked his head up. ‘No she hasn’t. I saw her this morning. Well, at lunchtime.’
‘You seem to be the last one who did, then. Roth didn’t seem to know where she’d gone or when she’d be back. But she’s clearly,’ he raised an enquiring eyebrow, ‘fresh in your mind.’
‘She did make quite an impression,’ said Ballard ruefully. ‘
You
haven’t met her yet. She has the most extraordinary sex appeal – you almost can’t breathe, let alone think of what to say. It was like being bloody seventeen again.’
‘That bad?’ Stratton grinned. ‘She sounds quite something.’
‘You wait till you meet her. You’ll see I’m not pulling your leg. But she can’t have gone far. Perhaps she’s just gone to stay with friends or something.’
‘Well, if she has, she didn’t tell them at the Foundation. Or
they
didn’t tell
me
– which seems a lot more likely. She seems to have an alibi for the night Lloyd died, though. Went to the pictures with Mr Tynan, apparently. I had the impression he was rather keen on her.’
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ said Ballard. ‘But there’s no reason – other than Lloyd having her photograph – why she should be a suspect, is there?’
‘None at all,’ Stratton agreed, remembering Roth’s certainty about the matter. ‘At least, not at the moment.’
‘I’d no idea she’d been married to the vicar,’ said Ballard, thoughtfully. ‘She’s obviously quite a bit older than she looks.’ He narrowed his eyes in calculation. ‘If they were newly married when they came here in . . . 1937, you said, didn’t you, and she was, say, twenty . . .’
‘And the landlord here told me that Reverend Milburn was at least sixty,’ said Stratton.
‘Blimey. So if she was twenty in 1937 she’d be – what? – thirty-nine, now. She doesn’t look anything like it.’
‘Some women don’t,’ said Stratton, thinking of Diana.
‘Ten years younger, at least,’ said Ballard.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve noticed any anaemic-looking virgins knocking about the place, have you?’
‘Very droll. You’d think someone would’ve mentioned about her being the vicar’s wife, wouldn’t you? Mind you, I never asked.’ Ballard shrugged.
‘Bit mean about sharing information, are they, the local coppers?’
‘They can be. Part of it’s like anywhere – thinking that CID will take over anything where they think there’s a chance of clearing it up, then take all the credit, so you can understand that. But part of it’s the place. It takes a bloody long time to be accepted. Parsons – he’s the village bobby – he told me that when he came here it was six months before anyone spoke to him voluntarily, other than to say good morning, and he’s only from Ipswich – but now that he is accepted, he’s gone like the rest of them, not interested in anything that happens outside the parish boundaries. Anything
inside
them is a different matter, of course.’
Here, Stratton had a sudden memory of how, when he was nine, one of their neighbour’s cows had given birth to a two-headed calf, which had been discussed with a level of excitement and urgency never accorded to the impending war.
He rolled his eyes in sympathy. ‘Don’t I know it! I grew up in a village, remember.’
‘Well, it came as a bit of a shock to me. You always hear that people in the country are like that, but I thought it was just something that town people said about them. I mean, it’s not as if people here have
never
been anywhere – most of the men went away to fight in one of the wars – but you wouldn’t know it to listen to them.’
‘Do you get much crime?’
‘It’s not like London, that’s for sure. Every village of any size has its bad family.’ Ballard put quotation marks round the last two words by raisings of his eyebrows. ‘Well, not so much bad as stupid, really, although of course they don’t see it like that. Always up before the beak for nicking lead, poaching, falling behind with the never-never, driving uninsured . . . Small stuff and pretty dull, but a hell of a lot of it. My guv’nor’s all right, though. Told me DCI Lamb’d had a word with him about all this,’ Ballard jerked his head in the direction of the Old Rectory, ‘and says I’m to “render assistance as necessary”. Talks like a book, but he’s a good sort. Anyway, getting back to that odd business of the boy being . . . you know, like Jesus or Buddha . . . people believe those things because they want to, don’t they?’
‘I imagine that Mr Roth can be pretty persuasive,’ said Stratton, thoughtfully. ‘He’s got quite a presence. And if people are willing to be persuaded, that would be half the battle.’
‘They must do,’ said Ballard. ‘It’s like women who go to seances because they’re desperate to contact their dead husbands or sons.’ He chuckled. ‘That reminds me. You’ll never guess who I saw a few weeks ago.’
‘At a seance?’ Stratton grinned. ‘What were you doing – raiding it?’
Ballard looked sheepish. ‘Pauline wanted to go.’
Stratton must have looked disbelieving, because Ballard, clearly feeling the need to explain said, awkwardly, ‘It’s because she wants another baby. The doctor can’t explain why it hasn’t happened, and she thought the medium might be able to tell her – sort of like a fortune-teller, I suppose. I told her I thought it was daft, but she kept on about it and I didn’t want a row, so—’
Stratton held up a hand to stop him. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘No,
I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t . . .’ Ballard shook his head, more at himself than Stratton. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, with a determined effort to regain his former levity, ‘you’ll never guess who the medium was.’
‘Go on.’
‘None other than Big Red.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’ Until she’d left a few years back, Big Red, otherwise known as Peggy Nolan, had been a fixture in Soho for as long as Stratton could remember. Nicknamed for the improbable magenta colour of her hair and known for scrapping with other girls over punters, she’d been a constant and often violently unwilling visitor to the station, and by the time she retired had racked up over two hundred convictions for soliciting.
‘I’m not. Her hair’s grey now and she’s thoroughly respectable. She didn’t let on she knew me, but she asked us to stay afterwards. Said she had something particular to tell us. Her card said she had “many unsolicited testimonials”. I bloody nearly gave the game away when I saw that, I can tell you.’
‘Didn’t Pauline recognise her?’
Ballard shook his head. ‘She worked at Marlborough Street, remember? Big Red was on our patch.’
‘And you didn’t tell her who she was?’
‘I couldn’t, could I? She’d been so keen to go, and then she was disappointed because Big Red didn’t have any message for her – you know, from the spirit world or whatever it’s called – and I thought if I told her who she was she wouldn’t believe me and . . .’ He tailed off, shaking his head.
‘I understand,’ said Stratton. ‘Difficult subject.’
‘It was funny, though. Funny peculiar, I mean, not funny haha. We’d eyeballed each other as soon as I came in – she’s Madame Sabra now, by the way – and I knew she knew and she knew I knew. I thought she might take advantage of it, knowing what I did for a living, but she didn’t. When she asked us to wait, I thought she just wanted a natter for old times’ sake and I thought I was going to be for the high jump with Pauline for not telling her, but it wasn’t like that at all. She pretended she didn’t know me from Adam and she told Pauline she knew how much she was longing for a child – said she could sense it – and then she told her she’d have one in time and she had to be patient and not worry about it. And that was it. Afterwards I kept trying to think if there was anything we’d done to give the game away, but I couldn’t see how . . .’
‘Like that business with the kid I was telling you about,’ said Stratton. ‘Shakes you up a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘Certainly does.’
‘The thing is,’ Stratton continued, ‘with the usual run of villains, whether it’s murder or pinching sheep or nobbling prize bulls, you know what you’re up against, don’t you? I mean, you’ve got some idea of why they do it, whether it’s need or greed or lust or envy. But with this lot, I don’t know where to start. All this about renouncing your feelings . . . What sort of a world would we have if everyone did that?’
Ballard stared thoughtfully into what was left of his pint, then said, ‘Well, there’d be no wars, would there? And we’d be out of a job because there’d be no crimes committed.’
‘No . . . but there wouldn’t be anything else, either. No emotion, no love, no sense of attachment to anyone or anything. D’you remember Shitty Sid?’
‘That tramp from round the back of the news cinema? What’s he got to do with it?’
‘He used to preach in the early thirties – bit before your time. I heard him once, at Speakers’ Corner. He’d talk about his visions of the Apocalypse, how it was coming soon and the world would be swept away and only the righteous would be saved. He had quite a few followers. Pretty respectable types, some of them.’
‘Bet they followed at a safe distance.’ Ballard grinned.
‘He wasn’t so bad in those days. Lived on the streets even then, but they used to bring him new clothes and food and what-have-you from time to time. Turned out that he could have done with a bit of soap and water, though – his leg started rotting last summer, great festering wound from his knee to his ankle. By the time we got him into hospital the smell was enough to knock you off your feet. Too late even if they’d amputated, but Sid never complained and he never stopped smiling. Just accepted it – dying, everything. It didn’t bother him. What Tynan and Roth were saying reminded me of him.’
Ballard shrugged. ‘Sid was
feeble
-minded, not . . .
high
-minded. But in any case, if everyone was like him – accepting things – then, whether it was because they were simple or holy or whatever else, there’d be no progress, would there? No inventions, no cures for diseases. We’d still be living in bloody caves. The world we’ve got now may not be perfect, but it’s got to be better than
that
.’
‘I’ll say. Just as well, really, as it’s the one we’re stuck with and it’s not likely to change, is it?’
‘Not unless the Soviets drop the bomb on it.’ Ballard rose, draining his glass. ‘Fancy another?’
Stratton had a not-more-than-averagely revolting meal of corned beef rissoles and greens boiled to sludge followed by tinned Empire fruit with synthetic cream, reflecting as he ate that Tynan was, at that moment, undoubtedly dining off lobster bisque with sherry and partridge with foie gras, all washed down with vintage wine. He spent the night at the George and Dragon in a room tucked under the thatch with sloping whitewashed walls and a latched wooden door so low that he had to bend almost double to enter.
The following day, he and Ballard – who, he suspected, was relishing the chance to get his teeth into something more exciting than the usual round of rural crime – arrived at the Old Rectory to question the Foundation’s twenty-odd residents about Lloyd and Ananda. This time, the door was answered and the tea fetched by a man who, despite being no more than about twenty-five, had the air of one who’d accumulated enough wisdom to deal with anything life had to throw at him. Just you wait, chum, thought Stratton. You may be sure of yourself now, but life will have you, just like everyone else.
The young chap, who smoked, showily, in imitation of Roth, had evidently been charged with keeping tabs on them while they interviewed the rest of the students, because he seated
himself outside the door and returned at intervals, accompanied by a gentle, moon-faced woman who got in the way, apologised constantly, stated the obvious, and at one point spilt scalding hot tea agonisingly over Stratton’s crotch. All the time she was doing this she smiled down at the pair of them like an angel of mercy on a particularly bloody battlefield, so obviously selfless that it was impossible to show even the smallest sign of irritation.