Curfew E-Book

Phil Rickman

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

A standalone supernatural thriller from the author of the chilling Merrily Watkins Mysteries. For four hundred years, the curfew bell has tolled nightly from the church tower of the small country town, Crybbe's only defence against the evil rising unbidden in its haunted streets. Radio reporter Fay Morrison came to Crybbe because she had no choice. Millionaire music tycoon Max Goff came because there was nothing left to conquer, except the power of the spirit. But he knew nothing of the town's legacy of dark magic - and nobody felt like telling him... A PHIL RICKMAN STANDALONE NOVEL

Leseprobe

Curfew

PHIL RICKMAN was born in Lancashire and lives on the Welsh border. He is the author of the Merrily Watkins series, and The Bones of Avalon. He has won awards for his TV and radio journalism and writes and presents the book programme Phil the Shelf for BBC Radio Wales.

ALSO BY

PHIL RICKMAN

THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES

The Wine of Angels

Midwinter of the Spirit

A Crown of Lights

The Cure of Souls

The Lamp of the Wicked

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

The Smile of a Ghost

The Remains of an Altar

The Fabric of Sin

To Dream of the Dead

The Secrets of Pain

THE JOHN DEE PAPERS

The Bones of Avalon

OTHER TITLES

Candlenight

Curfew

The Man in the Moss

December

The Chalice

Originally published as CRYBBE in Great Britain in 1993 by Macmillan.

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Phil Rickman, 1993

The moral right of Phil Rickman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85789-689-6 Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26-27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZwww.corvus-books.co.uk

In memory of Joachim ‘Lupo’ Wolf, a genuine new age healer who partly inspired this book.

CONTENTS

part one

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

part two

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

part three

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

part four

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

part five

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

part six

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

part seven

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

part eight

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

part nine

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

Curfew

IN Crybbe, night did not fall.

Night rose.

It welled out of the bitter brown earth caged in brambles in the neglected wood beyond the churchyard, swarming up the trees until they turned black and began to absorb the sky.

Collecting the shadows of graves, the night seeped out of the churchyard and across the vicarage lawn, where Murray Beech stood, knowing he was the wrong vicar for this parish but not knowing there couldn’t be a right one.

Murray, with a certain distaste, was wondering how you went about an exorcism.

In the centre of the town, patches of night gathered like damp about the roots of timber-framed buildings. They’d been turned into shops now, and offices and flats, but they still shambled around the square like sad old drunks.

Puddles of night stained the boots of Jack Preece, plodding across the cobbles to toll the curfew bell from the parish church, as he did every night and would go on doing until – as, being a farmer, he expected – arthritis got him and young Jonathon took over.

When Jack went to ring the old bell, he walked alone. Nobody else on the streets, the town holding its breath, even the sagging old buildings seeming to tense their timbers.

Nobody went into the Cock; nobody came out. Same with the Lamb down the street.

Tradition.

There was a passageway a few yards from the steps of the Cock, the pub’s upper storey bellying out above it. This was another of the places where the night was born, and the only place from which, in the minutes before the curfew, you could sometimes hear distinct sounds: moans and squeals and panting.

Silly young buggers. To prevent this kind of thing, there used to be an iron gate across the passageway, with a lock. But when they turned the building at the bottom of the passage into a radio studio, they took the gate off.

This was a matter of some concern to the town council, of which Jack Preece was a member (his father, Jimmy Preece, was the Mayor), and negotiations were in hand with Offa’s Dyke Radio and the Marches Development Board to get the gate replaced.

Why?

Same reason as old Percy Weale had given, back in the sixteenth century, for the institution of the curfew: to safeguard the moral welfare of the town.

What other reason could there be?

Minnie Seagrove, sixty three, a widow, had no doubts at all where the night began.

It began in that thing they called the Tump.

She could see it from the big front window of her bungalow on the Ludlow road. Nobody else could see it better.

Not that she wanted to. Ugly great lumps like this were ten a penny in the North and the Midlands where Mrs Seagrove had lived. Only, in those areas, they were known as industrial spoil-heaps and were gradually removed in landscaping and reclamation schemes.

However, this thing, this Tump, wouldn’t be going anywhere. It was protected. It was an Ancient Monument – supposed to have been a prehistoric burial mound originally, and then, in the Middle Ages, there might have been a castle on top, although there were no stones there any more.

Mrs Seagrove didn’t see the point in preserving just a big, unpleasant hump with a few trees on top. It was obviously not natural, and if it was left to her, the council would be hiring Gomer Parry with his bulldozers and his diggers to get rid of it.

Because that might also get rid of the black thing that ran down from the mound in the twilight and scared the life out of Minnie Seagrove.

All right, she’d say to herself, I know, I know ... I could simply draw the curtains, switch on the telly and forget all about it. After all, I never noticed it – not once – when Frank was alive. But then, there didn’t seem to be so many power cuts when Frank was alive.

How it came about, she was watching telly one night, coming up to News at Ten, and the power went off, and so she automatically went across to the window to see if the lights were on across the river, in the town.

And that was when she first saw it.

Horrible. Really horrible. It was ... well, it was like the night itself bounding down from the Tump and rushing off, hungry, into the fields.

But why can’t you just stop looking? Why can’t you stay well away from that window when it’s going dark?

I don’t know.

That’s the really frightening thing. I don’t know.

Yes, I do.

It’s because I can feel when it’s there. No matter what I’m doing, what’s on telly or the radio or what I’m reading, ever since I first dashed to the window during that power cut, I’ve always known when it’s on its way down from the mound. Without even going to the window, I know when it’s there.

And the reason I look – the reason I have to look, even though it scares me half to death – is that I have to know, I have to be sure that it isn’t coming this way.

Crybbe: a small one-time market town within sight of Offa’s Dyke, the earthwork raised in the Dark Ages to separate England from Wales.

A town like a dozen others on either side of the border; less distinctive than most.

Except that here, the night rose.

part one

Some persons have super-normal powers not of a magitien, but of a peculiar and scientific qualitie.

DR JOHN DEE,

Letter to Lord Burghley, 1574

CHAPTER I

SOMETIME – and please, God, make it soon – they were going to have to sell this place. And on evenings like this, when the sky sagged and the bricks of the houses across the street were the colour of dried blood, Fay would consider how they’d have to bait the trap.

On a fresh page of the spiral-bound notepad, she wrote:

FOR SALE

Bijou cottage in small, historic town amid spectacular Welsh border scenery. Close to all amenities, yet with lovely open views to rear, across pastoral countryside towards Offa’s Dyke. Reasonably priced at ...

... what? You couldn’t make it too cheap or they’d be suspicious – and with good reason.

She’d suggest to her dad that they place the ad in the Sunday Times or the Observer, under ‘rural property’. These were the columns guaranteed to penetrate the London suburbs, where the dreamers lived.

They probably wouldn’t have heard of Crybbe. But it did sound appealing, didn’t it? Cosy and tucked away. Or, alternatively, rather mysterious, if that was what you were looking for.

Fay found herself glancing at the bookshelves. Full of illusions. She saw the misty green spine of Walking the Welsh Marches. The enigmatic Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins. And the worst offender: J. M. Powys’s The Old Golden Land, which suggested that the border country was full of ‘secret doorways’, through which you could penetrate ‘ancient mysteries’. And lots of pictures taken through lenses coated with Vaseline and wishful thinking.

She would really hate doing this to somebody, selling the house and perpetuating the myth. But not as much as she’d hate having to stay here. And you couldn’t let your conscience run away with your life, could you?

Anyway, there were some people – like, say, the Newsomes – who rather deserved what this town was doing to them.

‘Off to the pub,’ the Canon called merrily from the hall. ‘Fay, can you hear me? I said, I’m off to the boozer.’

‘OK, Dad.’

‘Spot of social intercourse.’

‘You’ll be lucky.’ Fay watched him stride past the window towards the town square. The old devil still looked deceptively fit for someone who, ever so slowly, was going mad.

He would put on a wonderful performance for the prospective purchasers, always assuming they caught him on one of his better days. That Santa Claus beard and the matching twinkle. They’d love him. More importantly, they’d trust him, the poor sods.

But before she could unleash this ample bundle of ecclesiastical charm on the punters, there was just one minor difficulty to overcome.

The Canon didn’t appear to want to leave Crybbe. Ever.

This was the central problem in Fay’s life. This was what kept her awake at night.

Christ, how could he? He didn’t tramp the hills, wasn’t much interested in peregrine falcons or otters or bog-orchids. How, for God’s sake, could he bear to go on living in this no-hope town now that the woman who’d brought him here had been dead for nearly a year?

Other recent settlers kept saying what a little haven it was. Convincing themselves. A handful of retired people – most of them rather younger than the Canon – drifted into the town every year. The kind who told themselves they needed to be closer to nature. But nature, for them, amounted to a nice view. They came here not to die, but to fade out. To sit amid soft greenery until they grew frail and lighter than air and the wind blew them away like dandelion seeds.

What happened in reality was that an ambulance eventually took them off, rattling along the narrow lanes to Hereford General, twenty-five miles away. Taking too long to get there because all the roads were B roads, clogged with tractors and trailer-loads of sheep, whose milky eyes showed that they had no illusions at all about fading into a green heaven.

‘Don’t do it, Dad,’ Fay said, just to create a new sound – three minutes’ walk from the so-called town centre and all you could hear was the clock on the mantelpiece and the wheezing of the fridge. ‘Don’t leave your mind in bloody Crybbe.’

The Canon seemed, perversely, to revel in the misery of the town, to relish the shifty, suspicious stares he encountered in the post office and all the drinks the locals didn’t buy him in the pub.

His mind was congealing, like a fried egg on a cold morning. The specialists had confirmed it, and at first Fay had refused to believe them. Although once you knew, the signs were pretty obvious.

Decay was infectious. It spread like yellow fungus in a tree stump. Fay realized she herself had somehow passed that age when you could no longer fool yourself that you were looking younger than you felt.

Especially here. The city – well, that was like part of your make-up, it hid all the signs. Whereas the country spelled it out for you. Every year it withered. Only the country came up green again, and you didn’t.

Fay took a deep breath. This was not like her at all.

On the table in front of her lay a small, flat, square box containing fifteen minutes’ worth of tape she’d recorded that morning. On the box was written in pencil

Henry Kettle, dowser.

Later, Fay would create from the tape about six minutes of radio. To do this she would draw the curtains, switch on the Anglepoise lamp and the Revox editing machine and forget she was in Crybbe.

It was what kept her sane.

She wondered what kind of reaction she’d get if she told it like it was to the perusers of the property columns.

Fay picked up the pencil and wrote on the pad:

FOR SALE

Faded terraced house in godforsaken

backwater, somewhere in damp

no man’s land long disowned by both

Wales and England.

Fully modernized – in 1960.

Depressingly close to bunch of run-down shops,

selling nothing in particular.

Backing on to infertile hill country,

full of dour farming types and pompous

retired bank managers from Luton.

No serious offer ignored.

In fact, she added, we’d tear your bloody hand off ...

CHAPTER II

CLOSE UP, she was like a dark, crooked finger pushing out of the earth, beckoning him into the brambles.

When he looked back from the entrance to the field, she’d shrivelled into something more sinister: a bent and twisted old woman. A crippled crone.

Or maybe just the broken stump of a fence post. Maybe only that.

She hadn’t been visible from here at all until, earlier that day, Mr Kettle had put on his thick gloves and pulled away the brambles, then pruned the hedge around her so that she stood naked, not even a covering of moss.

Now he’d brought Goff to see his discovery, and he should have felt a bit proud, but he didn’t. All the time he’d been cutting away the undergrowth something had been pulling at him, saying, Leave it be, Henry, you’re doing no good here.

But this was his job, and this stone was what showed he’d earned his money. It made a nonsense of the whole business if he didn’t reveal the only real evidence that proved the line was there, falling sure as a shadow across the field, dead straight, between two youngish oak trees and ...

‘See that gate?’

‘The metal gate?’

‘Aye, but he’s likely replaced generations of wooden ones,’ Mr Kettle said, his voice rolling easy now, like the hills around them. Even without the final proof he’d have been confident of this one. Wonderful feeling it was, when you looked up and everything in the landscape – every hill and every tree, every hedge, every gateway – suddenly smiled at you and nodded and said you were right, you done it again, boy.

Like shaking hands with God.

Happening again, so suddenly like this, everything dovetailing, it had taken his mind off the doubts, and he’d been asking himself: how can there be anything wrong, when it all falls together so neatly.

He indicated the gate again. ‘Prob’ly the cattle chose the spot, you following me?’

‘Because they’d always go out that way! Out of the field, right?’

‘You’re learning.’ Though it was still warmish, Mr Kettle wore a heavy tweed suit. He carried what once had been a medical bag of scuffed black leather, softened with age. The tools of the trade in there, the forked twigs and the wire rods and the pendulums. But the tools weren’t important; they just made the clients feel better about paying good money to a walking old wives’ tale like him.

Max Goff had a white suit, a Panama hat and the remains of an Aussie accent. For a long time Mr Kettle had found it hard to take him seriously, all the daft stuff he came out with about wells of sacred power and arteries of healing energy and such.

The New Age – he kept on about that. Mr Kettle had heard it all before. Twenty years ago they were knocking on his door in their Indian kaftans and head-bands, following him out to stone circles, like Mitchell’s Fold up in Shropshire, where they’d sit smoking long, bendy cigarettes and having visions, in between pawing each other. Now it was a man in a white suit with a big, powerful motor car, but it was the same old thing.

Many, many times he’d explained to people that what he did was basically about science. Wonderful, yes – even after all these years the thrill was there all right. But it was a natural thing. Nothing psychic about dowsing.

What sun there’d been had all but gone now, leaving a mournful old sky with clouds like a battle-flag torn into muddy, blood-stiffened strips. It hadn’t been a good spring and it wouldn’t be a good summer.

‘Now look up from the gate,’ said Mr Kettle.

‘Yeah, that ... church steeple, you mean?’

‘No, no, before that. Side of that bit of a hedge.’

‘Oh ... that thing.’

The old girl was about a hundred yards down the field, separated from the hedge now, blackened against the light, no more than three feet tall. But she was there, that was the point. In the right place.

‘Yes,’ Mr Kettle said. ‘That thing.’

It was no good, he didn’t like her. Even if she’d proved him right he didn’t like the feeling coming off her, the smell that you could smell from a good distance, although not really.

‘Is it a tree stump?’ And then, ‘Hey, you’re kidding, it can’t be!’ The little eyes suddenly sparking. He’d be ruthless and probably devious in his business, this feller, but he had this enthusiastic innocence about him that you couldn’t altogether dislike.

‘Jeez,’ Goff said. ‘I thought they’d all gone!’

‘Why don’t you go over and have a look at ’er?’ Mr Kettle put down his bag and sat on it under the hedge and patted the grass so that Arnold, his dog, would sit down, too. And they both sat and watched this bulky, bearded bloke making his ungainly way across the tufted meadow. Impatient, stumbling, because he’d thought they’d all gone, the old stones of Crybbe.

Mr Kettle, too, had believed they’d all gone, until this morning when they’d finally let him into the field for the first time and he’d located the line and walked slowly along it, letting it talk to him, a low murmur.

And then the tone had altered, strengthened, calling out to him, the way they did. ‘I’m here, Henry, the only standing stone left standing within a mile of Crybbe.’

Or vibrations to that effect. As megaliths went, she wasn’t impressive, but she hadn’t lost her voice. Not a voice he liked, though; he felt it was high and keening and travelled on a thin, dry wind.

But it proved he hadn’t lost his capacity to receive. The faculty.

‘Still there, then, Arnold. Every time I goes out I reckon it isn’t bound to work any more.’ He scratched the dog’s head. ‘But it’s still there, boy.’

The only conclusion Mr Kettle could reach about why this stone had survived was that there must’ve been a wood here and the thing had been buried in brambles. And if they’d noticed her at all, they, like Goff, might have thought it was just an old tree stump.

He could see the figure in the white suit bending over the stone and then walking all around, contemplating the thing from different angles, as if hoping she’d speak to him. Which, of course, she wouldn’t because if Goff had possessed the faculty there’d have been no reason to send for Henry Kettle.

An odd customer, this Goff, and no mistake. Most of the people who consulted dowsers – that is, actually paid them – had good practical reasons. Usually farmers looking for a water supply for their stock. Or occasionally people who’d lost something. And now and then those afflicted by rheumatics, or worse, because they’d got a bad spring under the house.

‘Why am I still thinking he’s trouble then, Arnie?’

The dog considered the question, looked serious.

Well, hell, he didn’t want to think that. Not at all, because this Goff was the first person who’d ever paid him to go ley-hunting.

‘Mr Kettle,’ he’d said, coming straight to the point, which Mr Kettle liked, ‘I’ve been advised that this used to be quite a centre for prehistoric remains, and I wanna know, basically, what happened to them. Can you find out where they used to be? The old stones? The burial mounds? And I’m told you can kind of detect ley-lines, too, yeah?’

‘Well,’ Mr Kettle had said carefully, ‘I know what you mean. It do sometimes seem they fall into straight lines, the old monuments.’

‘No need to be coy with me, Mr Kettle. I’m not afraid to call a ley-line a ley-line.’

Now this had, at first, been a joy, taking the old chap back nigh on seventy years. He remembered – a memory like a faded sepia photo – being on a hazy hilltop with his father and other members of the Straight Track Club. Mr Watkins pointing out the little bump on the horizon and showing how the line progressed to it from mound, to stone, to steeple. The others nodding, impressed. The picture frozen there: Mr Watkins, arm outstretched, bit of a smile under his stiff beard.

Now, remarkably – and loath as Mr Kettle had been, at first, to admit it – this Goff had stumbled on something Mr Watkins would, no question, have given his right arm to know about.

So it had proved unexpectedly exciting, this survey, this ley-hunt. Bit of an eye-opener. To say the least.

Until ...

One morning, knowing there had to have been a stone in a particular place in Big Meadow and then digging about and finding part of it buried near by, Mr Kettle had got a feeling that something about this was not regular. In most areas, old stones were lost gradually, over centuries, plucked out at random, when exasperation at the damage done to a plough or a harrow had finally overcome the farmer’s inbred superstition.

But at Crybbe, he was sure, it had been systematic.

Like a purge.

Mr Kettle’s excitement was dampened then by a bad feeling that just wouldn’t go away. When he dug up the stone he thought he could smell it – something faintly putrid, as if he’d unearthed a dead sheep.

And, as a man who lived by his feelings, he wondered if he ought to say something. About the purge on the stones. About the history of the Court – John Dee, Black Michael and the hangings. And about the legends, which travelled parallel to history and sometimes, if you could decode them, told you far more about what had really happened than the fusty old documents in the county archives.

Mr Kettle, who kept his own records, was getting more and more interested in Crybbe – wishing, though, that he didn’t have to be. Wishing he could ignore it. Detecting a problem here, a serious long-term problem, and wishing he could turn his back on it.

But, as the problem was likely to remain long after he’d gone, he’d taken steps to pass on his fears. With a feller like this Max Goff blundering about the place, there should always be somebody who knew about these things – somebody trustworthy – to keep an eye open.

He supposed he ought to warn Goff, but the thought of ‘something sinister’ would probably only make the place more appealing.

‘And, anyway, you can’t tell these New Age types anything, can you, Arnold?’ Mr Kettle was scratching the dog’s head again. ‘No, you can’t, boy.’

Ten minutes later Goff was back, puffing, the flush in his cheeks making his close-mown beard seem even redder. Excitement coming off him like steam.

‘Mr Kettle, let me get this right. According to your calculations, this is line B, right?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘And by following this line, as you dowsed it, we suddenly come across what could be the only remaining stone in the alignment. Is it exactly where you figured it’d be?’

‘Well ...’ Mr Kettle got to his feet and picked up his bag. Max Goff eyed it.

‘Got the rods in there? Can we dowse the line some more, maybe find another stone?’

No, we bloody can’t, Mr Kettle thought. You might as well ask, how about if we grabs hold of this electric cable to see if he’s live?

He saw, to his dismay, that Goff was looking at him in some kind of awe; he’d found a new guru. It was not a role Mr Kettle fancied. ‘Getting late,’ he said. ‘I ought to be away. Don’t like driving in the dark these days.’

‘When can you come again?’

‘Look,’ Mr Kettle said. ‘I’m an old man. I likes my fireside and my books. And besides, you got it all now. You know where they all are. Or used to be.’

This Goff was a man whose success in business had convinced him that if you knew a source, knowledge and experience could be bought like ... what would this feller buy? ... cocaine? Mr Kettle, who still read two newspapers every day, knew a bit about Max Goff and the kind of world he came from.

‘Maybe your role in this is only just beginning,’ Goff said. ‘How about I send a car for you next time?’

Money was no object for this bugger. Made his first million by the time he was twenty-seven, Mr Kettle had read, by starting his own record company. Epidemic, it was called. And it had spread like one. Now it was international magazines and book publishing.

‘Well,’ Mr Kettle said. ‘Isn’t much more as I can tell you, anyway. You’ve got the maps. Nothing more to be found, even if you excavates, I reckon.’

‘Hmmm.’ Goff was making a show of being unconvinced, as they followed what Mr Kettle now thought of, wrote of in his journal – but never spoke of – as the Dark Road, the Thoroughfare of the Dead. Returning at dusk, back into Crybbe, a town which had loitered since the Middle Ages, and probably before, in the area where England hardened into Wales.

On the very border.

CHAPTER III

ITWAS the seventh bell they always rang, for the curfew.

Almost rang itself these days. Seventeen years Jack had been doing it. Didn’t need to think much about it any more. Went regular as his own heartbeat.

The bell clanged above him.

Jack let the rope slide back through his hands.

Seventy-three.

His hands closed again around the rope.

Seventy-four.

He hadn’t been counting. At any point during the ringing Jack could tell you what number he was on. His arms knew. His stomach knew.

One hundred times every night. Starting at ten o’clock. Newcomers to the town, they’d asked him, ‘Don’t you find it spooky, going up there, through that graveyard, up all those narrow stone steps, with the church all dark, and the bell-ropes just hanging there?’

‘Don’t think about it,’ Jack would say. And it was true; he didn’t.

There were eight bells in the tower, and that was reckoned to be a good peal for this part of the country.

For weddings, sometimes in the old days, they’d all be going. Even fairly recently – though not any more – it had been known for some snooty bride from Off to bring in a handful of bell-ringers from her own parish for the big day. This had only been permitted for weddings, sometimes. On Sundays, never. And not Christmas. Not even Easter.

And also, every few years some bearded clown in a sports jacket would pass through. And then the church or the town council would get a letter from the secretary of some group of nutters that travelled the country ringing other people’s bells.

The town council would say no.

Occasionally – this was the worst problem – there’d be somebody like Colonel Croston who’d moved in from Hereford, where he was reckoned to have been in the SAS. He liked to keep fit. Jogged around the place.

And rang bells, as a hobby.

He’d been a pain in the neck at first, had Colonel Croston. ‘No bell-ringers apart from you, Jack? That’s appalling. Look, you leave this one to me.’

Jack Preece remembered the Colonel putting up posters inviting all able-bodied folk to come to the church one Friday night and learn the ropes. ‘Give me six months. Guarantee I’ll knock them into shape.’

Jack had gone along himself because he didn’t like the thought of youngsters running up and down the stone steps and swinging on his ropes.

When the two of them had been waiting around for nearly an hour he let the despondent Colonel take him for a drink. ‘Doesn’t deserve these bells, Jack, this town.’

‘Aye, aye,’ Jack had said non-committally, and had permitted Colonel Croston to buy him a large brandy.

He hadn’t bothered to tell the Colonel that even he only knew how to ring the curfew using the seventh bell. Well, no point in buggering with the others, see, was there? No point in making a show. They could have pulled the other bells down and flogged them off for scrap, far as Jack Preece was concerned.

Anyhow, what they’d done now, to save a lot of bother and pestering was to take down all the ropes. Except, of course the one that rang the seventh bell.

Some nights, Jack would be real knackered after a day’s dipping, or shearing, or lambing. He’d stagger up them steps, hurting all over his body, dying for a pint and aching for his bed. Some nights he’d grab hold of that rope just to stop himself falling over.

Still the hundred would be done. And done on time.

And it was on nights like this that Jack felt sometimes he was helped. Felt the belfry was kind of aglow, and other hands were pulling on the rope beside his own.

Spooky?

Well, he didn’t think about it. Where was the point in that?

They walked slowly into the town over a river bridge with old brick walls which badly need pointing, the river flat and sullen below. Past a pub, the Cock, with flaky paintwork and walls that had once been whitewashed but now looked grey and unwashed.

A dark, smoky, secretive little town. There was still an afterglow on the fields, but the town was already embracing the night.

Mr Kettle had never been to Paris or New York. But if, tonight, he was to be flown into either of them, he suspected he wouldn’t feel any more of a stranger than he did entering Crybbe – a town he’d lived within twenty miles of all his life.

This town, it wasn’t remote exactly, not difficult to reach, yet it was isolated. Outsiders never had reason to pass through it on the way to anywhere. Because, no matter where you wanted to reach, there was always a better way to get there than via Crybbe. Three roads intersected here, but they were B roads, two starting in Wales – one leading eventually to Hereford, the other to Ludlow – and the other ... well, buggered if he knew where that one went.

Max Goff, almost glowing in his white suit, was striding into the dimness of the town, like Dr Livingstone or somebody, with a pocketful of beads for the natives.

They’d take the beads, the people here. They wouldn’t thank him, but they’d take the beads.

Henry Kettle didn’t claim to understand the people of Crybbe. They weren’t hostile and they weren’t friendly. They kept their heads down, that was all you could say about them. A local historian had once told him this was how towns and villages on the border always used to be. If there was any cross-border conflict between the English and the Welsh they never took sides openly until it was clear which was going to win. Also, towns of no importance were less likely to be attacked and burned.

So keeping their heads down had got to be a way of life.

Tourists must turn up sometimes. By accident, probably. Mr Kettle reckoned most of them wouldn’t even bother to park. Sure the buildings were ancient enough, but they weren’t painted and polished up like the timber-frame villages on the Hereford black-and-white trail. Nothing here that said ‘visit me’ with any enthusiasm, because there was no sense of pride.

From the church tower, above the cobbled square, a lone bell was clanging dolefully into the musty dusk. It was the only sound there was.

‘What’s that?’ Goff demanded.

‘Only the curfew.’

Goff stopped on the cobbles, his smile a great gash. ‘Hey, really ... ? This is a real curfew, like in the old days?’

‘No,’ Mr Kettle said. ‘Not really. That’s to say, people are no longer required to be off the streets by nightfall. Just tradition nowadays. The Preece family, it is, performs the duty. One of ’em goes up the belfry, God knows how many steps, every night, summer and winter; nine-thirty, or is it ten?’

He looked up at the church clock but it was too dark to make out where its hands were pointing. He was sure there used to be a light on that clock. ‘Hundred times it rings, anyway.’

‘Might only be a tradition, but there’s still nobody on the streets,’ Max Goff observed. ‘Is there?’

‘That’s ’cause they’re all in the pubs,’ said Mr Kettle. ‘No, what it is, there’s some old trust fund arranges for the bell to be rung. The Preeces get grazing rights on a few acres of land in return for keeping up the custom. Passed down, father to son, for four hundred-odd years. Being farmers, they always has plenty sons.’

They stood in the square until the ringing stopped.

‘Crazy,’ Goff said, shaking his big head in delight. ‘Crayzee. This is the first night I’ve spent here, y’know? I’ve always stayed in Hereford. It’s magic, Mr Kettle. Hey, we still on the line?’

‘I suppose we must be. Aye, see the little marker by there?’

A stone no more than a foot high, not much more than a bump in the cobbles. Goff squatted next to it and held his palms over it, as though he expected it to be hot or to light up or something. The dog, Arnold, watched, his head on one side, as if puzzled by a human being who went down on all fours to sniff the places where dogs had pissed.

Two middle-aged women walked across the square talking in low voices. They stopped talking as they walked past Goff, but didn’t look at him, nor Mr Kettle, nor each other.

Then they went rigid, because suddenly Arnold’s head was back and he was howling.

‘Jeez!’ Goff sprang up. The two women turned, and Mr Kettle felt he was getting a very dark, warning look, the women’s faces shadowed almost to black.

‘Arnold!’ With some difficulty – beginning to think he must have a bad spring under his own house, the way his rheumatism had been playing up lately – Mr Kettle got down on his knees and pulled the dog to him. ‘Sorry, ladies.’

The women didn’t speak, stood there a moment then turned and walked away quickly as the howling subsided because Mr Kettle had a hand clamped around Arnold’s jaws. ‘Daft bugger, Arnold.’

‘Why’d it do that?’ Goff asked, without much interest.

‘I wish I knew, Mr Goff.’

Mr Kettle wanted some time to think about this. Because for a long time he’d thought it was just a drab little town, full of uninspired, interbred old families and misfits from Off. And now, he thought, it’s more than that. More than inbreeding and apathy.

He unclamped the dog’s jaws, and Arnold gave him a reproachful glance and then shook his head.

There were lights in some town houses now. They lit the rooms behind the curtains but not the square, not even a little. Folk in this town had never thrown their light around.

‘OK?’ Goff said, feet planted firmly on the cobbles, legs splayed, quite relaxed. Wasn’t getting it, was he? Wasn’t feeling the resistance? Didn’t realize he was among the descendants of the people who’d pulled up the stones.

Mr Kettle was getting to his feet, one hand against the wall. Like his old bones, the brick seemed infirm. The people here, they cared nothing for their heritage.

And their ancestors had torn up the stones.

Goff was just a big white blob in the dim square. Mr Kettle walked to where their cars were parked in a little bay behind the church overhung with yew trees. His own car was a dusty VW Estate. Goff had a Ferrari.

‘Come to dinner, OK?’ Goff said. ‘When I’ve moved into the Court.’

‘You’re going through with it, then?’

‘Try and stop me.’

‘Can I say something?’ Henry Kettle had been thinking about this for the past fifteen minutes or so. He didn’t much like Goff, but he was a kindly old chap, who wanted at least to put out a steadying hand.

‘Of course.’

Mr Kettle stood uneasily in the semi-dark. ‘These places ...’ he began, and sucked in his lips, trying to concentrate. Trying to get it right.

‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is places like this, they – how can I put it? – they invites a kind of obsession.’ He fell silent, watching the buildings in the square hunching together as the night took over.

A harsh laugh came out of Goff. ‘Is that it?’ he asked, rudely.

Mr Kettle unlocked his car door and opened it for Arnold. ‘Yes,’ he said, half-surprised because he’d thought he was going to say more. ‘Yes, I suppose that is it.’

He couldn’t see the dog anywhere. ‘Arnie!’ he called out sharply. He’d had this problem before, the dog slinking silently away, clearly not at ease, whimpering sometimes.

He hadn’t gone far this time, though. Mr Kettle found him pressed into the churchyard wall, ears down flat, panting with anxiety. ‘All right, Arn, we’re leaving now,’ Mr Kettle said, patting him – his coat felt lank and plastered down, as if he was the first dog ever to sweat. This was it with a dowser’s dog; he’d pick up on the things his master was after and, being a dog and closer to these matters anyway, his response would be stronger.

Slipping his hand under Arnold’s collar, Mr Kettle led him back to the car and saw Goff standing there quite still in his white suit and his Panama hat, like an out-of-season snowman.

‘Mr Kettle,’ Goff took a steep breath. ‘Perhaps I oughta explain. This place ... I mean, look around ... it’s remote, half-forgotten, run-down. For centuries its people lived from the land, right? But now agriculture’s in decline, it doesn’t provide extra jobs any more, and there’s nothing here to replace it. This town’s in deep shit, Mr Kettle.’

Mr Kettle couldn’t argue with that; he didn’t say anything. Watched Max Goff spread his hands, Messiah-style.

‘And yet, in prehistory, this was obviously a sacred place,’ Goff said. ‘We have this network of megalithic sites – a dozen or so standing stones, suggestions of a circle or a henge. And the Tump, of course. Strong indications that this was a major focus of the Earth Force. A centre of terrestrial energy, yeah? You see any signs of that energy now?’

‘People pulled the stones out,’ Mr Kettle said.

‘Precisely. And what happened? They lost touch with it.’

‘Lost touch with what?’

‘With the life force, Mr Kettle! Listen, give me your opinion on this. Whaddaya think would happen if ... ?’

Max Goff walked right up to Mr Kettle in the ill-lit square and looked down at him, lowering his voice as if he were about to offer him a tip for the stock market. Mr Kettle felt most uneasy. He was getting the dead-sheep smell.

‘Whadda you think would happen,’ Goff whispered, ‘if we were to put the stones back?’

Well, Mr Kettle thought, that depends. Depends on the true nature of leys, about which we know nothing, only speculate endlessly. Depends whether they’re forgotten arteries of what you New Age fellers like to call the Life Force. Or whether they’re something else, like paths of the dead.

But all he said was, ‘I don’t know, Mr Goff. I wouldn’t like to say.’

CHAPTER IV

HOW OLD was the box, then?

Warren Preece reckoned it was at least as old as the panelling in the farmhouse hall, which was estimated to be just about the oldest part of the house. So that made it sixteenth century or so.

He was into something here all right. And the great thing, the really fucking great thing about this was that no other bastard knew about it. Lived in this house all his life, but he’d never had cause to poke about in the chimney before – well, you wouldn’t, would you? – until that morning, when his old man had shouted, ‘Put that bloody guitar down, Warren, and get off your arse and hold this torch, boy.’

Piss off, Warren had spat under his breath, but he’d done it, knowing what a bastard the old man could be when a job wasn’t going right.

Then, standing in the fireplace, shining the torch up the chimney – the old man on a step-ladder struggling to pull this crumbling brick out – a bloody great lump of old cement had fallen away and broken up and some of the dust had gone in Warren’s eye.

‘You clumsy bastard, Dad!’ Warren fell back, dropping the torch, ramming a knuckle into his weeping eye, hearing masonry crumbling where he’d staggered and kicked out. If he made it to college without being registered disabled through living in this broken-down pile of historic crap, it’d be a real achievement.

‘Come on, Warren, don’t mess about! I need that light.’

‘I’m f ... Hang on, Dad, I can’t flaming see.’ Hunched in the fireplace, scraping at his gritty, watery eye.

And it was then, while picking up the torch – flashing it on and off to make sure the bulb hadn’t broken when he’d dropped it – that Warren found this little tunnel.

It was no more than a deepish recess in the side wall of the fireplace, about eighteen inches off the ground. Which would have put it on a level with the top of the dog grate, when they’d had one. Must have been where he’d kicked back with his heel, hacking off a cob of sixteenth-century gunge.

Warren shone the light into the recess and saw what looked like carving. Put a hand inside, felt about.

Hey, this was ...

‘Warren! What you bloody doing down there, boy?’

Quickly he shoved bits of brick into the opening, ramming them tight with the heel of his trainer. Then shone the torch back up the chimney for the old man pretty damn fast.

In fact, for the rest of the day he’d been a very willing labourer – ‘You stay there, Dad, I’ll get it.’ ‘Want me to mix the cement down here and pass it up, Dad?’ ‘Cuppa tea, Dad?’ Anything so the old man’d get the job done and bugger off out of the way.

The old man had been surprised and pleased, grinning through a faceful of soot, patting Warren on the shoulder. ‘We done a good job there, boy. He won’t set on fire again, that ole chimney. Fancy a pint?’

He’d never said that before. Well, not to Warren. Most nights, sometimes with Jonathon, he just went off to the Cock without a word.

So Warren, too, was surprised and almost pleased. But wasn’t going for no pint with the old man tonight. No way.

‘Told Tessa I’d be round, Dad. Sorry.’

The old man looked quite relieved. Warren had watched him tramping off up the track, eager to wash the dust out of his throat. So eager he hadn’t bothered to clean up the mess in the hearth and so hadn’t noticed anything he shouldn’t.

Stupid git.

Warren got himself a can of Black Label from the fridge and went back to the fireplace to pull out them old bricks.

He’d got the box out, was squatting on the hearth, dusting it off, when he heard Jonathon’s car. He’d tucked the box under his arm – bloody heavy, it was, too – and got it out through the back door and round the back of the barn, where he’d hidden it in the bottom of an old water-butt.

And gone up to his room and waited for Jonathon to piss off.

The way he saw it, you didn’t seal up an oak box like this and stash it away in a secret compartment in the chimney unless there was something pretty damn valuable inside. And, as he’d discovered, just about anything a bit old was valuable these days.

Warren had a mate, a guy who got rid of stuff, no questions asked. He could be looking at big money here on the box alone. It was in good nick, this box, sealed up warm and dry for centuries. Warren looked at the box and saw a new amplifier for the band. He looked harder and saw this second-hand Stratocaster guitar. Felt the Strat hanging low round his hip, its neck slippy with sweat.

The curfew bell was tolling in the distance. His dad had sunk a swift pint and plodded off up the tower to do his nightly duty, silly old bugger.

‘Why do you keep on doing that, Dad? Don’t pay, do it? And no bugger takes any notice ’part from setting their watches.’

‘Tradition, boy. Your grandad did it for over thirty years. And when I gets too rheumaticky to climb them steps, Jonathon’ll do it, right, son?’

Jonathon nodding. He was always ‘son’, whereas Warren was ‘the boy’. Said something, that did.

What it said was that Jonathon, the eldest son, was going to get the farm. Well, OK, if Jonathon wanted to wallow in shit, shag sheep all his life, well, fair enough.

Warren didn’t give a toss about going to college in Hereford either, except that was where the other guys in the band lived.

But Crybbe – he could hardly believe this – was where Max Goff was going to be.

Max Goff, of Epidemic Records.

He’d seen him. Been watching him for days. Somehow Max Goff had to hear the band. Because this band was real good, he could feel it. This band fucking cooked.

The box was in one of the sheds on the old workbench now. He’d rigged up an old lambing light to work by, realizing this was going to be a delicate operation. Didn’t want to damage the box, see, because it could be worth a couple of hundred on its own.

Now. He had a few tools set out on the bench: hammer, screwdriver, chisel, Stanley knife. Precision stuff, this.

Warren grinned.

OK, if it came to it, he would have to damage it, because he hadn’t got all bloody night. But better to go in from underneath than cut the lid, which had a bit of a carving on it – nothing fancy, like, nothing clever, just some rough symbols. Looked like they’d been done with a Stanley knife. A sixteenth-century Stanley knife. Warren had to laugh.

Round about then, Crybbe had another power cut, although Warren Preece, working in the shed with a lambing light, wasn’t affected at all.

*

But Fay Morrison was furious.

She’d always preferred to do her editing at night, especially on the days when she was producing complete programmes. There’d just be her and the tape-machine under a desk-lamp. And then, when the tape was cut together, she would switch off the lamp and sit back, perhaps with a coffee, and play it through in the cosy darkness. Only a red pilot-light and the soft green glow of the level-meters, the gentle swish of the leader tape gliding past the heads.

Magic.

This was what made radio so much more satisfying than television. The intimacy of moments like this. And the fact that you could do all the creative work on your own, only going into a studio for the final mix.

Fay really missed all that. Hadn’t imagined she’d miss it so much.

Tonight, she’d waited until her father had wandered off to the pub for his nightly whisky and his bar-supper. And then she’d gone into her office, which used to be Grace Legge’s sitting-room.

And still was, really, in the daytime. But at night you could switch off the G-plan furnishing and the fifties fireplace, and the front room of Number 8, Bell Street, Crybbe, became more tolerable, with only a second-hand Revox visible in the circle of light from the Anglepoise.

Fay had a package to edit for Offa’s Dyke Radio. Only a six-minute piece to be slotted into somebody else’s afternoon chat-and-disc show on what was arguably the worst local shoe-string station in the country.

But it was still radio, wasn’t it? After a fashion.

And this morning, doing her contribution for a series on – yawn, yawn – ‘people with unusual hobbies’, Fay had actually got interested in something. For a start, he was ever such a nice old chap – most of the people around here, far from being quaint rural characters, were about as appealing as dried parsnips.

And he’d actually been happy to talk to her, which was also a first. Until she’d come here, Fay had encountered very few people who didn’t want to be on the radio: no cameras, no lights, and no need to change your shirt or have your hair done. But in this area, people would make excuses – ‘Oh, I’m too busy, call again sometime.’ Or simply refuse – ‘I don’t want to be on the wireless’ – as if, by collecting their voices on tape, you were going to take their souls away.

Yes, it was that primitive sometimes.

Or so she felt.

But the water-diviner, or dowser, had been different and Fay had been fascinated to learn how it was done. Nothing, apparently, to do with the hazel twig, as such. Simply a faculty you developed through practice, nothing as airy-fairy as ‘intuition’.

And it definitely was not psychic.

He kept emphasizing that, scrutinizing her a bit warily as she stood there, in her T-shirt and jeans, wishing she’d brought a sweater and a wind-muff for the microphone. It had been a bit breezy in that field, even if tomorrow was Midsummer Day.

‘Do you think I could do it, Henry?’ she’d asked, on tape. You always asked this question, sounding as if it had just occurred to you. There would then follow an amusing couple of minutes of your attempting to do whatever it was and, of course, failing dismally.

‘You could have a try,’ he’d said, playing along. And so she’d taken the forked twig in both hands. ‘Hold it quite firmly, so it doesn’t slip, but don’t grip it too hard. And, above all, relax ...’

‘OK,’ she’d heard herself say through the speaker. And that was when the power went off.

‘Bloody hell!’ Fay stormed to the window to see if the other houses in the street were off. Which they were.

It was the fourth power cut in a month.

‘I don’t believe it!’

OK, you could imagine that on some distant rock in the Hebrides, even today, there would be quite a few times when the power got waylaid on its way from the mainland.

But this was close to the epicentre of Britain. There were no high mountains. And they were not in the middle of an electric storm.

She couldn’t remember if it was South Wales Electricity or Midlands Electricity. But neither could be up to much if they were unable to maintain supplies to a whole town – OK, a very small town – for longer than a fortnight without a break.

Hereward Newsome, who ran the art gallery in town, had complained to his MP and tried to get up a petition about it. But he’d given that up in disgust after collecting precisely fifteen signatures, all from newcomers, including Fay and her dad.

Of course, the Newsomes’ problem did appear to be somewhat more serious. Not only were they having to suffer the power cuts but they were affected by other surges in supply which, Hereward swore, were almost doubling their electricity bills. He was getting into a terrible state about it.

Actually, Fay was a bit dubious about the huge bills being caused by a fault in the system. She grinned into the darkness. It was probably Jocasta’s vibrator, on overdrive.

There was a bump and the sound of two empty spools clattering to the floor.

‘Pushkin, is that you?’

Grace’s cats got everywhere.

Fay decided she didn’t like this room very much in the absolute dark.

She felt along the wall for the tape-recorder plug, removed it and went to bed.

Living in Crybbe would drive anybody to a vibrator.

Warren should have known.

Sixteenth-century lock. Not as if it was Chubb’s finest, was it? Stanley knife into the groove, sliding it around a bit, that was all it took. Then the screwdriver pushed into the gap. Hit it just once with the palm of his hand.

It didn’t exactly fly open, the box. Well, it wouldn’t, would it? Being as how it had turned out to be lead-lined.

Fucking lead! No wonder it was so heavy. Good job he hadn’t tried to cut into it through the bottom.

’Course that lead lining was a bit of a disappointment. Warren had been hoping the box weighed so much because it was full of gold coins or something of that order. Lead, even antique lead, was worth bugger all, he was pretty sure of that.

Funny smell.

Well, not that funny. Old, it smelled old and musty. He moved the lambing light closer, poked a finger in.

Cloth, it was. Some sort of old fabric, greyish. Better be a bit careful here, bloody old thing might disintegrate.

On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to waste any time. His old man – who wasn’t much of a drinker – might even now be on his way back from the church. He might, of course, have called back round the pub for one with Jonathon and his mates. (If Warren was in the pub with his mates and the old man came in, he’d turn his stool round, pretend he hadn’t seen him, but Jonathon would call him over, buy him a pint; that was the kind of smarmy git Jonathon was.) But most likely he’d come home, getting a few early nights in before haymaking time and dipping and all that rural shit.

And as he came up the track he’d see the light in the shed.

Warren pulled the lamp down, away from the shed window. He couldn’t see much through the glass, with its thick covering of cobwebs full of dust and dead insects, except that it was very nearly dark and there was a mist.

He was feeling cold now, wanting to get it over with and go back to the house. It was going to be no big deal, anyway. Old papers probably. Some long-dead bugger’s last will and testament.

He prodded the cloth stuff with the end of the Stanley knife and then dug the blade in a bit and used the knife to pull the fabric out of the box in one lump.

What was underneath the cloth was whiteish and yellowish, like brittle old paper or parchment crumpled up.

He gave it a prod.

And the Stanley knife dropped out of Warren’s fingers – fingers that had gone suddenly numb.

‘Aaaa ...’

Warren caught his breath, voice gone into a choke.

The knife fell into the box and made this horrible little chinking noise.

CHAPTER V

MR KETTLE raised a hand to Goff as he drove away. He was thinking, well, somebody had to buy the place. Better this rich, flash bugger surely than a family man with a cosy wife and perhaps a daughter or two, with horses for the stables and things to lose. Good things. Peace of mind. Balance of mind.

He left the town on the Ludlow road which would take him past the Court. It wouldnt be Goffs only home. Well, hed move in and stride around for a while, barking orders to battalions of workmen, changing this and restoring that in the hope it would give the house some personality, a bit of atmosphere. And then hed get tired of the struggle and go back to London, and the Court would become a weekend home, then an every-other-weekend home, then a holiday home, then just an investment.