The Circle

place. Couldn't wait, and wouldn't.

Stella had been given some tacky jobs in her years in the police, but this was the tackiest by a long way. Even the feel of the old magazines between her polythene-covered fingers was unpleasant. They smelt musty, they were stained, the paperclips had rusted and the pages dropped out when handled. All that, she tried telling herself, would have been true of a batch of old knitting magazines. You couldn't blame the subject matter for the state they were in.

Certain copies, luckily, could be put to one side straight away. Headlights catered for breast fanciers, men who'd never matured past infancy. Without exception the models had enormous boobs. Did they have implants in 1982? In abundance, it seemed. She pitied the poor models. How could you get comfy in bed with all that to tuck away? Mercifully, the picture of Amelia Snow in Cats showed a normally proportioned woman, so the entire stack of Headlights could be returned to the shelves, along with TNT (Two Nifty Tits) and BSH (British Standard Handful).

'Grow up, guys,' she said aloud.

She started turning the pages of Innocents, which at least featured models she recognised as her own species. Innocent most of them were not, she thought. Their attempts to look inexperienced were about as convincing as chocolate pennies. Some, she guessed, must have had a few drinks before going in front of the camera because the lipstick was badly applied or the hair needed fixing. If nothing else, it supported the story that Blacker used alcohol as the persuader.

Three or four magazines in, and she knew which pages to ignore. The joke section, the letters and the car feature, and the news of the latest X-rated films. There were whole sections of adverts for phone sex. Like any job, it got easier as you persevered.

Things were making more sense at last, but Hen was still unsure why Jessie Warmington-Smith had been murdered. She needed more on Jessie's past. Was it too much to hope that Jessie, too, had once been a chorus girl?

The widow of an archdeacon?

Heaven forbid!

She would take another look at the video of Jessie, and ask Andy Humphreys, whose interview it was, to sit with her. He looked ten years older since their last encounter.

'Do I really have to, guv?' he said. 'It makes me squirm each time I look at it.'

'Why?'

'She gave me the runaround, didn't she? I've taken no end of flak from the others. That stuff about my wedding, and my christening. 'We're all God's children.' I took a right pasting.'

'It wasn't a stand-up fight, Andy. It was about getting information, and you managed that.'

'At a cost, guv.'

'If you keep whingeing, I'll invite everyone to sit in.'

They ran the video, and it was hard to ignore Andy's unease, on screen and off. Some of his questions begged for a sharp response: 'That's a bit whacky, isn't it, a club for writers?'

Hen put Andy to the back of her mind. What had Jessie said about herself? She was one of the first members of the circle, 'at the personal invitation of the chair'. A staunch supporter of Maurice McDade then. This was followed by some flimflam about the benefits of being in a writers' circle. Then the outrage at having her grace and favour living arrangements discussed: 'My late husband spent a lifetime in the service of the church and he couldn't have done it without my support.' She moved on to the offensive after that, questioning Andy's church-going.

Then came that weird claim that she was in touch with the supernatural. 'You have to open your heart. Then you'll be given signs. I get them quite often because I'm receptive, like Joan of Arc, except that she heard them as voices.'

Joan of Arc, no less. Jessie didn't suffer from low self-esteem.

'Only last night I had a sign. Some people would find it disturbing and I suppose it might be to a disbeliever, but I took it as affirmation of all I believe in, the afterlife, the journey of the soul.'

Did she think she was psychic?

'Stop the tape and spin it back. I want to see that section again.'

Andy sank deeper into his chair.

Hen watched and listened a second time and then let the tape run on. Jessie insisted she'd been at home on the night of the fire at Blacker's house, 'or most of it'. Then she spoke about her habit of walking at night before going to bed, when the streets were quiet, 'but always within sight of the cathedral spire'. Andy had asked if she ever took the car out at night. She spotted straight away what was behind the question and pointed out that she had no reason to kill Blacker, who had said something favourable about her book of tips. But she'd admitted she owned an old Mini Metro that ran on leaded and she kept it in her garage somewhere out of sight of visitors to the cathedral.

The interview ended soon after.

'Are you thinking she had some kind of premonition, guv?' Andy asked.

'Of what?'

'Her own death.'

'Why do you say that?'

'The bit you wanted to hear again, about the journey of the soul.'

'I get you. The answer is no.' She got up and took out one of her cigars. 'Did we check Jessie's lock-up?'

'Lock-up?'

'The place where she kept her car. Did someone look inside?'

He said, 'I'm sure of it, guv,' in a way that said he wasn't.

'Do it now. Now.'

She would have gone herself, but she'd just seen something she hadn't expected. Stella, back from the evidence depository already. She was with Johnny Cherry and a couple of others, leafing through a magazine.

Hen went over. It was a copy of Innocents, now open at the centrefold of a naked blonde face down on a bed and turning to look at the camera, which must have been positioned between her knees. The foreshortened view left nothing to the imagination. The girl's face, of negligible importance in a shot like this, and small as a thumb-print, was just visible looking over her raised shoulder. The features weren't in the sharpest focus, but were clear enough to recognise. She had a look of genuine surprise, as if she'd just been woken up.

'Is that her?'

'I'd put money on it, guv. It says 'Mandy, 19, Our Innocent of the Month', but it's Amelia Snow, looking drunk as a skunk. Your hunch was right.'

28

'Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign?'

Said the Bishop, bowing lowly, 'Land and sea, my Lord, are thine.'

Canute turned towards the ocean. 'Back!' he said, 'thou foaming brine.'

W. M. Thackeray, King Canute (1910)

Thomasine had driven out to see where Lord Chalybeate lived. Bosham, pronounced 'Bozzum', is a sailing village of great antiquity, built on an inlet four miles west of Chichester. It is a much visited place, with a Saxon church depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, a watermill (now occupied by the sailing club), and fine, changing views from the shore road. Here King Canute is said to have commanded the tide to turn, and many a visitor to Bosham has wished for the same result. The water looks benign, but regularly washes over parked cars below Lane End. The local sport is watching the drivers return too late.