Late of This Parish (24 page)

‘What's all this?'

‘He's called Bert, short for Flaubert ... Flaubert's Parrot, association of ideas, get it? Oh well, never mind. Isn't he beautiful?' The bird was deep crimson with black markings on his wings, blue wing-tips and tail. Handsome, as parrots went, certainly. He had a fierce beak and a beady black eye that reminded Mayo of Macey. ‘He's a parakeet, not a parrot, and he doesn't take any looking after. He's very good.'

‘But not quiet,' Mayo said, when he could speak above Bert's shrill cacophony.

‘That's because he's in strange surroundings. He'll soon get used to them.'

‘Oh no he won't,' Mayo said. ‘Not these surroundings, anyway. What am I going to do with a flaming parrot?'

‘He'll be company for you. Oh Dad, don't be a spoilsport! John brought him for me –' John, he thought; well, it was a reassuringly ordinary name – ‘and when we leave he'll be homeless and won't have anywhere to go.' Her eyes were huge. She used to look like that when she was a kid, just before she cried. ‘Dad? Please?'

A bloody parrot, he thought, as he shaved and showered. That's all I need.

Later, after they'd eaten, he learned why he'd been selected as the recipient of this great favour, though by then it came as no surprise. She had come home only long enough to pack a toothbrush. She was leaving before six the next morning, next stop Dijon, and promised to keep in regular contact. He wasn't to be worried about her – Gran wasn't, she thought it would give Julie a chance to get her act together. Had given the enterprise her blessing, especially after meeting John and his girlfriend.

His girlfriend?

‘You weren't listening when I told you, were you? She's French, her name's Marie-Solange, you can't possibly have forgotten.'

‘Oh,
that
Marie-Solange,' he said.

No reason, really, why he should feel so much better. But he did, and said goodbye to her the next morning with a cheerful face and what he hoped was a good grace.

While Mayo was digesting his dinner and a
fait accompli
he could do nothing about, and being given instructions on how to feed his new flatmate, Sebastian Oliver was walking quickly along the high path towards the castle ruins. His light, springy steps made no sound. He was wearing black trainers, his dark roll-neck sweater and navy-blue jeans, and he kept his hands shoved into the pockets. Only his face showed white and set where the light caught it.

Reaching the castle ruins, he stood by the safety railings on the path, under the shade of the horse chestnut trees with their white candles gleaming in the darkness, facing the shadowed sweep of the valley. It was the dark of the moon and windy and the night was full of echoes; small things stirred in the grass-grown moat. He had never before felt the ruins to be sinister, but as he looked and saw them black against the dark sky, he felt a sense of the inimical, a tremble akin to that his Welsh ancestors must have felt in the minutes before the raids over the border to storm just such a fortress as this.

He was keyed-up, aware that his life had reached some kind of crisis. If things went the way he intended tonight, he would cut out, make a clean break with the past, perhaps never come to Wyvering again. What was it about the place that induced this uneasiness with himself, the feeling that there was something lacking in his successful lifestyle? Perhaps old Willers had been right and pursuit of the purely materialistic was not and never could be enough. Thinking of the old man, however, remembering him as he'd last seen him, was hardly to be borne.

Since Willard's death Sebastian's conscience, never before a thing to trouble him much, wouldn't now leave him alone. The chance for revenge – a chance he'd waited for – had come, his quick mind had put two and two together and he had seen the advantage for himself and had acted without stopping to think it through. Too late, he deeply regretted it. Revenge was sweet, but remorse was bitter medicine that he was afraid he might be swallowing for the rest of his life.

He heard a footfall and as he turned towards it a figure materialized out of the darkness, approaching him. ‘You took your time,' he said as he stepped out of the shadows.

Having despatched Kite to see what he could make of Danny's girlfriend Tracey, Mayo went along first thing the next morning to see the man handling the bomb case at the Fricker Institute, Detective Chief Inspector Uttley, who worked from Hurstfield.

Hurstfield's police station was a replica of the Divisional Headquarters at Lavenstock, standard county constabulary architecture, a collection of concrete and brick units constructed on the Lego principle, but not half as cheerful, especially on a depressing wet morning. Rain was slashing down as he parked his car and ran, head ducked against the wind, for the station entrance.

‘What have you got for us, Gil?' Uttley was ready for him, a large placid-looking man with a big hard stomach tightly straining against his trousers. ‘Have some tea, help yourself to sugar. Don't take it? Wish I didn't.' He drank his own tea from a pint pot with ‘Grandad' written on it above a picture of a benevolent old codger in a rocking-chair with a pipe. He had a proven reputation for being sharp, shrewd and ruthless.

‘I was thinking it might be the other way round,' Mayo said, ‘but help might be mutual. I've an idea your bomb at the Fricker Institute and this death at Castle Wyvering just may be connected.'

Uttley's little blue eyes flickered but otherwise he showed no surprise. ‘I suppose you know that's where the director of the Fricker lives?'

‘The fact that Thorne lives there may simply be a coincidence. I don't know yet. I'm still feeling my way.'

‘Hm.' Uttley clasped his hands across the mound of his stomach, his chins settling one on the other. ‘You'd better tell me your side of it first
–
then I can tell you what I've got that may be relevant.'

He listened without comment to the facts of the Wyvering murder, staring into space. The silence continued when Mayo had finished what he had to say. Then Uttley blinked, refilled his visitor's teacup and focused his attention again. ‘Remember that theft from the furriers in Hurstfield a couple of months ago?'

Mayo cast his mind about, remembering it without being able to recall specific details.

‘All right, no reason why you should, I suppose. Not on your patch, and it wasn't a big job. But you might remember the nicked furs being subsequently set fire to on the lawn in front of the golf club when there was a dinner-dance being held there.'

Mayo did remember that.

‘It was a big do,' Uttley went on, ‘car park full of Jags and BMWs, a Merc or two and the odd Roller, and I suppose it was predictable a lot of the women present would own furs and be wearing 'em. At any rate, that seems to have been the supposition. We'd no leads on who the fire raisers were – scarpered before the fire was discovered. They'd made their protest and it got them a paragraph in the local rag, which was presumably what they wanted, though at that point no special group claimed responsibility. But then we got lucky and had a tip-off and subsequently we've been keeping an eye on two women here in Hurstfield: Sylvia Patman and Theresa Quinn. Patman used to work at the Fricker Institute as a typist until about a year ago and Quinn has two brothers in the IRA. There's reason to believe both women are heavily involved in an animal liberation group which may have been at the bottom of the fur job – and which, incidentally, has now got itself a name. Calls itself the Sorority Against Research on Animals, if you please.'

There was silence. 'Bloody silly name,' Uttley added.

‘S-A-R-A,' Mayo repeated, enunciating the letters separately. SARA, as Willard had written it. He wanted to kick himself, hard. Not a girl's name, not even the name of Illingworth's wife, but an acronym made from the initials of an organization.

‘It rings a bell?'

‘It rings several.' He thought further. ‘Christ, Fred, IRA connections?'

Uttley thought not. ‘Apart from a bit of know-how from Quinn's brothers and a streak of inherited violence, I should doubt it. One of these tinpot little outfits that keep mushrooming everywhere. It was a homemade bomb at the Fricker – capable of doing a fair bit of damage, mind – the poor sod who copped it was probably killed accidentally, if that's any consolation to his widow. Between the fur job and the bomb, the members seem to have confined themselves to protests at hunt meetings, letters to the papers and MPs and so on, none of it actually concerning animal research, I might add, but I suppose it's all one to them. After the bomb there was complete silence, which seems to support the theory that they'd gone a bit further than they intended. Until last week, when they claimed responsibility through a telephone call to the editor of the local paper. He's a rare bird – a journalist with a sense of responsibility
–
and realizing this was a lot more serious than burning a few furs, he contacted us before doing anything about it. He agreed with us to hold back publishing their claim, since that's all they want, publicity.' He added sourly, ‘But they'll go to someone else eventually who won't be so high-minded, local radio or TV probably.'

Mayo was still thinking about those initials. ‘Sorority? Does that mean they're all women?'

‘Sorority, sisterhood, I wouldn't put anything past women these days,' Uttley said, with a regretful glance back at the days when women knew their place. ‘But yes, I think so, originally, though they seem to have enlisted the help of a few men recently. Probably need their help if their activities are becoming more militant. Anyway, since the Fricker incident, we've kept as much of an eye on Patman and Quinn as we can spare the manpower for. There was some sort of meeting on Saturday evening at the terraced house here in Hurstfield where they live.'

‘Last Saturday?'

‘Right, the nineteenth. And this is what might interest you – a couple who were followed back to their car when they left. It was an MG
coupé
and it was subsequently traced to a Phyllida Thorne. Don't have to spell out who she is, do I?'

‘Good God.'

But the shock was merely an initial one. It needed no effort of the imagination, as far as Mayo was concerned, to see Phyllida Thorne as a member of such a group and to be convinced that if she were she would be at its militant centre. He didn't share Uttley's view that men had been needed in SARA to run the group's militant activities. In his opinion, she for one would be more than capable of orchestrating the violence and any men who joined would be subject to her will.

‘You don't think she could've been organizing a cell in Hurstfield of some bigger organization? It would account for her being involved here, when she lives and works in London.'

‘Distinct possibility, yes. One we're working on. It's a name we've heard before, by the way,' Uttley said.

‘What, SARA?'

‘No, Phyllida Thorne. About seven or eight years ago she was one of a gang of sixth-formers who made a protest sit-in outside the gates of the Fricker – causing us the usual amount of bother, wasting God knows how much taxpayers' money. Set fire to an effigy and nearly had the gatehouse on fire into the bargain.' Uttley paused. ‘An effigy of the Director. Her own father,' he added, in case Mayo hadn't taken his point.

Mayo understood now what the Thornes had been so evasive about. Why Denzil Thorne had been so uneasy in the garden on Sunday. Did they suspect their daughter's involvement with SARA? And if so, how would they feel about that? How would he feel himself if Julie had transferred her half-baked ideas into something like this? The kind of hopeless despair, he imagined, that all parents must feel when their offspring are intent on pursuing a life-denying, wrong-headed course that can lead only to self-destruction. How far had Phyllida Thorne's involvement with SARA taken her? To the point where her own father had almost been destroyed by her fanatical ideals? As far as Cecil Willard's melancholy end?

‘Does the name Sebastian Oliver mean anything to you?' Uttley asked.

‘Yes, I know him. I take it he was the one who visited the house with her?'

‘That's right. Parson's son, I hear. You wouldn't credit it, would you? Every advantage and they screw up their chances, getting involved in tacky little schemes like this. They were followed after they left the house. Went straight out to that new place in King's Grafton, what's it called, the River House? Had dinner there and then drove back to Wyvering.'

‘That's what they told me – only they omitted to say where they'd been first. D'you know who else was at this meeting?'

Uttley drew a list of names from his desk drawer and pushed it across, followed by a file. Mayo ran his eye down the list, then flicked through the photographs in the file – crowd snapshots and individual ones bearing the name of the subject beneath, with biographical details. Most of those in the crowd snaps had not been identified. One face he wouldn't have been surprised to see was not there – that of the Rector's wife – but there was another which did surprise him.

‘Sebastian Oliver and his girlfriend aren't the only ones who've been lying to me,' he remarked.

‘Someone else in your case?'

Mayo stabbed his finger at a snapshot of a woman caught in a milling crowd, struggling to hold up a banner. If, when trying to envisage something which would have animated her, he had tried hatred, he would have succeeded. The face that looked straight into the camera was alight with fanaticism.

‘This one,' he said. ‘Her name's Ruth Lampeter.'

Things had suddenly begun to look different. SARA was explained, and offered some positive connection with Willard's murder. In some way Willard must have learned of the organization and it was this which had posed his moral dilemma – whether to inform the authorities and implicate his young friend Sebastian Oliver, or to remain silent, with further risk to human life. It could not, Mayo thought, have been a dilemma unresolved for long, as far as someone like Willard was concerned. Only he had not been given time to resolve anything.