‘Dad… collapsed… there’s an ambulance coming… bloody Parminder Jawanda won’t come…’
‘My God,’ said Samantha. ‘Oh my God.’
They dashed to the car and drove up the road, Miles in his slippers, Samantha in the clogs that had blistered her feet.
‘Miles, listen, there’s a siren — it’s here already…’
But when they turned into Evertree Crescent, there was nothing there, and the siren was already gone.
On a lawn a mile away, Sukhvinder Jawanda was vomiting river water beneath a willow tree, while an old lady pressed blankets around her that were already as sodden as Sukhvinder’s clothes. A short distance away, the dog-walker who had dragged Sukhvinder from the river by her hair and her sweatshirt was bent over a small, limp body.
Sukhvinder had thought she felt Robbie struggling in her arms, but had that been the cruel tug of the river, trying to rip him from her? She was a strong swimmer, but the Orr had dragged her under, pulled her helplessly wherever it chose. She had been swept around the bend, and it had thrown her in towards land, and she had managed a scream, and seen the man with his dog, running towards her along the bank…
‘No good,’ said the man, who had worked on Robbie’s little body for twenty minutes. ‘He’s gone.’
Sukhvinder wailed, and slumped to the cold wet ground, shaking furiously as the sound of the siren reached them, too late.
Back in Evertree Crescent, the paramedics were having enormous difficulty getting Howard onto the stretcher; Miles and Samantha had to help.
‘We’ll follow in the car, you go with Dad,’ Miles shouted at Shirley, who seemed bewildered, and unwilling to get into the ambulance.
Maureen, who had just shown her last customer out of the Copper Kettle, stood on the doorstep, listening.
‘Lots of sirens,’ she said over her shoulder to an exhausted Andrew, who was mopping tables. ‘Something must have happened.’
And she took a deep breath, as though she hoped to taste the tang of disaster on the warm afternoon air.
Part Six
Weaknesses of Voluntary Bodies
22.23 …The main weaknesses of such bodies are that they are hard to launch, liable to disintegrate…
I
Many, many times had Colin Wall imagined the police coming to his door. They arrived, at last, at dusk on Sunday evening: a woman and a man, not to arrest Colin, but to look for his son.
A fatal accident and ‘Stuart, is it?’ was a witness. ‘Is he at home?’
‘No,’ said Tessa, ‘oh, dear God… Robbie Weedon… but he lives in the Fields… why was he here?’
The policewoman explained, kindly, what they believed to have happened. ‘The teenagers took their eye off him’ was the phrase she used.
Tessa thought she might faint.
‘You don’t know where Stuart is?’ asked the policeman.
‘No,’ said Colin, gaunt and shadow-eyed. ‘Where was he last seen?’
‘When our colleague pulled up, Stuart seems to have, ah, run away.’
‘Oh, dear God,’ said Tessa again.
‘He’s not answering,’ said Colin calmly; he had already dialled Fats on his mobile. ‘We’ll need to go and look for him.’
Colin had rehearsed for calamity all his life. He was ready. He took down his coat.
‘I’ll try Arf,’ said Tessa, running to the telephone.
Isolated above the little town, no news of the calamities had yet reached Hilltop House. Andrew’s mobile rang in the kitchen.
‘’Lo,’ he said, his mouth full of toast.
‘Andy, it’s Tessa Wall. Is Stu with you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
But he was not at all sorry that Fats was not with him.
‘Something’s happened, Andy. Stu was down at the river with Krystal Weedon, and she had her little brother with her, and the boy’s drowned. Stu’s run — run off somewhere. Can you think where he might be?’
‘No,’ said Andrew automatically, because that was his and Fats’ code. Never tell the parents.
But the horror of what she had just told him crept through the phone like a clammy fog. Everything was suddenly less clear, less certain. She was about to hang up.
‘Wait, Mrs Wall,’ he said. ‘I might know… there’s a place down by the river…’
‘I don’t think he’d go near the river now,’ said Tessa.
Seconds flicked by, and Andrew was more and more convinced that Fats was in the Cubby Hole.
‘It’s the only place I can think of,’ he said.
‘Tell me where—’
‘I’d have to show you.’
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ she shouted.
Colin was already patrolling the streets of Pagford on foot. Tessa drove the Nissan up the winding hill road, and found Andrew waiting for her on the corner, where he usually caught the bus. He directed her down through the town. The street lights were feeble by twilight.
They parked by the trees where Andrew usually threw down Simon’s racing bike. Tessa got out of the car and followed Andrew to the edge of the water, puzzled and frightened.
‘He’s not here,’ she said.
‘It’s along there,’ said Andrew, pointing at the sheer dark face of Pargetter Hill, running straight down to the river with barely a lip of bank before the rushing water.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Tessa, horrified.
Andrew had known from the first that she would not be able to come with him, short and dumpy as she was.
‘I’ll go and see,’ he said. ‘If you wait here.’
‘But it’s too dangerous!’ she cried over the roar of the powerful river.
Ignoring her, he reached for the familiar hand and footholds. As he inched away along the tiny ledge, the same thought came to both of them; that Fats might have fallen, or jumped, into the river thundering so close to Andrew’s feet.
Tessa remained at the water’s edge until she could not make Andrew out any longer, then turned away, trying not to cry in case Stuart was there, and she needed to talk to him calmly. For the first time, she wondered where Krystal was. The police had not said, and her terror for Fats had obliterated every other concern…
