Tennis Courts
No choice. Merrily had to go with Spicer.
And she was close to frantic.
‘It’ll take twenty minutes. Please.’
They were getting into Spicer’s Golf outside the rectory. His car, he could call the shots.
‘Merrily, if there was one thing I learned in my former life it’s that preparation and intelligence are invariably more important than skill, technique and courage, all that stuff from the comics. There’s something I need to know before we go anywhere. Something I need to check before we pick up your Mr Robinson. It won’t take long, and it won’t wait.’
‘Are you going to phone the police, then, or shall I?’
‘I told you, it’s in hand. I made a call while you were screaming at poor Winnie. Thought you needed to get that out of your system.’
‘Good of you.’
‘I’ve a trusted friend who’ll contact the right person in the police and explain it fully. Otherwise it could get messy. And another thing you need to know. Tim Loste didn’t kill Winnie. You got that? He didn’t kill Wicklow and he didn’t kill Winnie.’
She stared at him, his face flecked with the colours of the dashlights.
‘On what basis can you possibly -?’
‘Oh, and I didn’t either, in case you were considering that possibility. This is not what you thought. There is evil here. On an almost unimaginable scale. And we do need to collect your friend at some point. Right now, though, there are things I need to know that could save us all some grief.’
‘Grief?’
‘I blew it, Merrily. I left things too late. If it’s anybody’s fault, what’s happened to Winnie, it’s mine. Should have got them out of that church a week ago. Should never have let them in.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Nor me, yet. Not fully.’
Spicer turned left.
‘This is the road to-’
‘Old Wychehill Farm.’ He put on the headlights. ‘Now listen to me. We’re going to be quite open about this. If Preston’s here, it’s best you stay in the car, and I’ll run some parish business past him. It’ll be unconvincing but it doesn’t matter a lot at this stage. I don’t think he’ll be here, but I need to be sure.’
Spicer drove carefully into the valley, on full beams, and pulled up conspicuously in the centre of the courtyard, gravel spurting.
There were lights in the big house and a couple of wrought-iron lanterns twinkling romantically among the stone holiday units. But the outbuildings themselves were in complete darkness and there were no other cars around. No signs of holidaymakers in residence. The Victorian turret, the pines and the monkey puzzles were stage-set silhouettes against the pale, powdery night.
The idyllic effect spoiled only by the figure, naked from the waist up, legs braced, the shotgun levelled at the windscreen of the Golf.
‘ You fucking stop there! ’
Spicer kept the engine running.
‘Best if you don’t get out just yet, Merrily.’
‘You really think…’ Merrily was sinking slowly down the passenger seat ‘… I’m going to get out?’
‘ Get fucking back! I’ll take your fucking head off! ’ Spicer lowered his window.
‘Hugo?’
‘ One more step I’ll blow your fucking windows out! ’
The twelve-bore vibrating, shards of moonlight on the twin barrels.
‘Kid’s a bag of nerves,’ Spicer murmured. ‘Something took him over the edge.’ Shouting out of his side window. ‘Syd Spicer, son. Come for your old man.’
‘You’re fucking lying!’
‘Been a bad night, ain’t it, Hugo? Don’t make it worse. I’m coming out. All right? I’m gonner walk under the lamp, to your left, so you can see it’s me. Promise you I won’t come any closer. Just under the lamp, yeah, so you can ID me?’
‘You keep back…’
A jerk of the shotgun.
‘No worries.’ Spicer got out of the car, walked across to a wrought-iron lamp projecting from one of the buildings. ‘Now. See?’
‘Who’s that with you?’
‘That’s Mrs Watkins. The lady vicar? You’re making her nervous, Hugo.’
Finally recognizing Spicer, Preston Devereaux’s younger son lowered the gun just fractionally. Through the car window Merrily could smell fumes like a smouldering bonfire or an incinerator.
‘Sorry to scare you, son,’ Spicer said.
‘I wasn’t-’
‘Nah, nah, you got good reason to be wary, way things’ve been lately. Louis with you?’
‘He’s with Dad. They’re meeting a guy about… installing tennis courts.’
Tennis courts?
‘Tennis courts, eh? Smart move.’ Spicer walked up to the boy. ‘Be having an eighteen-hole golf course next.’
‘Yeah. Look, I’ll tell them you-’
Spicer’s back blurred across the windscreen. Merrily didn’t see how it happened, but it happened in near-silence, and when Spicer stepped aside he was holding the shotgun and Hugo Devereaux was writhing on the lamplit gravel.
She gasped, sat up, springing open the car door and rolling out to find Spicer breaking the shotgun, taking out both cartridges, putting them one by one in his pocket.
He looked down at the boy. ‘God have mercy on you, son.’
But she saw that he’d taken off his dog collar.
What followed was surreal and desperately chilling. Reality distanced, like she was watching down the wrong end of a telescope. The mind’s way of handling an experience that was both alien and vividly shocking.
They’d followed Hugo Devereaux into the house and Spicer, still wearing his black gloves, was opening doors and cupboards like a burglar. Seemed to know his way around as well as if he had the layout in his head.
Kicking open the door of the Beacon Room with its long window, the British Camp like a high altar, hard under the haloed moon. Syd stopping to listen in the churchy stillness.
‘Cellars, Hugo?’
‘By the back stairs.’
‘Keys?’
‘I’ll get them. But there’s nothing down there.’
‘Good. You go first.’
Spicer no longer had the shotgun with him, just a bunch of keys on a ring. Merrily followed them, hanging back, trying to filter out what was most important: primarily that, if Spicer was correct and Loste hadn’t murdered Winnie or Wicklow, Lol was in no direct danger at Whiteleafed Oak. It was something.
Spicer had followed Hugo to the top of some stone steps going down. Curving. No handrail. Fluorescent lights were stammering on. Hugo – couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen – was stumbling in front of Spicer without argument, his head bent, his body occasionally twitching in pain. Merrily staying well back, a hand on the wall on either side. Not trusting Spicer, not by a long way.
The cellars at the bottom had strip lights at crazy angles on the low ceilings. There were several rooms and Spicer checked them all before motioning the boy into a square and windowless cell where wooden crates and cardboard boxes were stacked.
‘Can I ask you to do something, Merrily? Could I ask you to go back to the car and, if Mr Devereaux or Louis or both should happen to appear in their new Land Rover – or, indeed, if anyone appears in anything – drive out past them and blow the horn, once.’
‘And what will you be doing?’
‘I’ll be talking to my friend Hugo, and if he helps me, as I’m sure he will, I’ll join you in a very short time.’
‘Why have you taken off your collar?’
‘I was hot. I swear to you before God that I’m doing the best I can to spare lives, prevent violence. I might be proved wrong, and that’s my responsibility- No! ’
Hugo had been edging towards the door.
‘Don’t, son,’ Spicer said wearily. ‘Please. I can hurt you very badly in a very short time, and if you insist on making me prove it we’ll both be very upset. No shame in this. In your place I’d cooperate fully because I’d realize the situation was seriously weighted against me. We understanding one another, Hugo?’
Hugo’s narrow face was white under the striplight, except for eyes which looked hot and red. His cheek was grazed and flecked with grit from where he’d fallen outside.
Spicer said, ‘I’m sure Mrs Watkins would be more inclined to do what I’m suggesting if she thought you weren’t going to get hurt.’
‘Fuck off,’ Hugo said.
It had never sounded feebler.
‘Man’s world, eh, Hugo?’ Spicer said. ‘Was that what it felt like when you were dealing with Winnie? That wasn’t like Wicklow, was it? Wait in the cave or somewhere out of sight, then a quick bang on the head and the rest is just… well, just basic butchery, piece of cake for a country boy. Done some slaughtering, have we? Pigs, maybe? Enjoy that, did we? Made us feel like a big, grown man? Power of life and death?’
Hugo sniffed hard, wouldn’t look at Spicer.
Spicer said, ‘Maybe Wicklow was even easier than pigs.’
He glanced at Merrily. She didn’t move, avoiding eye contact. In the blueish, gassy light, Spicer’s face was flat, like his voice.
‘But when they’re in front of you, facing you full on, and they know it’s coming and they’re fighting to stay alive, that’s not so easy, is it?’
He took a step towards Hugo, who edged himself into a corner, stumbling over a crate.
‘I mean, that is unbelievably more difficult. Even when it’s two of you, hard boys against one little woman.’
Merrily’s mouth was suddenly dry.
‘Amazing how long the life stays in them, isn’t it?’ Syd Spicer said. ‘You slash and you slash and they’re all over the place – wouldn’t have believed it, would you, how much life there is to deal with when they’re determined to keep it. Hacking it away, bit by bit, but it still clings on, and you start to panic, too, and she’s screaming and crying and flailing and spitting just to hold on to that precious God-given gift of life. So precious to her and so cheap to you, up to now. And maybe this is when you realize for the first time what a huge item life is. But you can’t stop now, and you just keep slash-’
‘Stop it! Fuck you…! ’ Hugo running at him, face red and wet and twisted. ‘ Just -’
Syd Spicer sidestepped and tipped him almost gently to the stone flags. He said over his shoulder, ‘ Would you do that, Merrily? Wait in the car. Keep a lookout?’
‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t think so.’