Crybbe aka Curfew

warehouse'

'Stay quiet,' Jimmy Preece hissed. 'Keep calm. Keep…'

'Oh, sure, keep your head down! It's what this piss-poor place is all about. Don't make waves, don't take sides, we don't want no clever people. Oh!' She beat her head into her arms and sobbed with anger and frustration.

Needing the rage and the bitterness, because, if you could keep them stoked, keep the heat high, it would burn out the fear.

She looked into the light – not white any more, but yellow, her least-favourite colour, the yellow of disease, of embalming fluid. The yellow of Grace Legge.

How would he come?

Would he come like Grace, flailing and writhing with white-eyed malevolence?

How would he come?

'What's going to happen, Mr Preece?' she said. It was the small voice, and she was ashamed.

'I don't know, girl.' There was a wheezing under it that she hadn't heard before. 'God help me, I don't know.'

She thought about her dad. At least he'd be safe. He was with Jean, and Jean was smart. Jean knew about these things.

'She can't talk to you, she can't see you, there's no brain activity there… Entirely harmless.'

No she doesn't. She isn't smart at all. A little knowledge and a little intuition – nothing more dangerous. Jean only thinks she's smart.

And now Powys had gone to Jean, saying, help us, 0 Wise One, get us out of this, save Crybbe, save us all.

Oh, Powys, whatever happened to the Old Golden Land?

It began with a rustling up at the front of the church near the coffin, and then the sound of something rolling on stone.

'What's that?'

But Mr Preece just breathed at her.

She clutched at the side of the font, all the hot, healthy anger and the frustration and bitterness drenched in cold, stagnant fear. She couldn't move. She imagined Jonathon Preece stirring in his coffin, cracking his knuckles as his hands opened out.

Washerwoman's hands.

Fay felt a pain in her chest.

'Oh, God.' The nearest she could produce to a prayer. Not too wonderful, for a clergyman's daughter.

And then came the smell of burning and little flames, a row of little, yellow, smoky flames, burning in the air, four or five feet from the floor.

Fay watched, transfixed, still sitting under the font, as though both her legs were broken.

'Heeeeeeee!' she heard. High-pitched – a yellow noise flecked with insanity.

Jimmy Preece moved. He picked up the light and walked into the nave and shone what remained of the light up the aisle.

'Aye,' he said, and his breathing was so loud and his voice so hoarse that they were inseparable now.

Down the aisle, into the lambing light, a feeble beam, a figure walked.

Fay saw cadaverous arms hanging from sawn-off sleeves, eyes that were as yellow-white as the eyes of a ghost, but still – just – human eyes.

The arms hanging loosely. Something in one hand, something stubby, blue-white metal still gleaming through the red-brown stains.

Behind him the yellow flames rose higher.

A foot kicked idly at something on the stone floor and it rolled towards Fay. It was a small tin tube with a red nozzle, lighter fuel.

Warren had opened up the Bible on its lectern and set light to the pages.

'Ow're you, Grandad,' Warren said.

CHAPTER XI

There were too many people in here.

'Don't touch him, please,' Col said. There was quite a wide semi-circle around Goff's body into which nobody, apart from this girl, had been inclined to intrude, there'd be sufficient explanations to make after tonight as it was, and Col was determined nobody was going to disturb or cover up the evidence, however unpleasant it became, whatever obnoxious substances it happened to discharge.

The girl peered down, trying to see Goff's face.

'I paint,' she explained casually, 'I like to remember these things.'

'Oh. It's Tessa, isn't it. Tessa Byford.'

Col watched her with a kind of appalled admiration. So cool, so controlled. How young women had changed. He couldn't remember seeing her earlier. But then there were a few hundred people here tonight – and right now, he rather wished there hadn't been such a commendable turn-out.

He was angry with himself. That he should allow someone to creep in under cover of darkness and slash the throat of the guest of honour. Obviously – OK – the last thing one would expect in a place like Crybbe. And yet rural areas were no longer immune from sudden explosions of savage violence – think of the Hungerford massacre. He should – knowing of underlying trepidation about Goff's plans – have been ready to react to the kind of situation for which he'd been training half his life. He remembered, not too happily, telling Guy Morrison how the Crybbe audience would ask Goff a couple of polite questions before drifting quietly away.

And then, just as quietly, they'll shaft the blighter.

Shafted him all right.

Whoever it was had come and gone through the small, back door, the one the town councillors used. It had been unlocked throughout. That had been a mistake, too.

Couldn't get away from it – he'd been bloody lax. And now he was blindly following the orders of a possibly crazy old man who'd decreed that nobody was permitted to depart – which, if the police were on their way, would have been perfectly sensible, but under the circumstances…

He didn't even know the circumstances.

All he knew was that Jimmy Preece had the blind support of an appreciable number of large, uncompromising, tough looking men and, if anybody made an attempt to leave, the situation was likely to turn ugly.

Not – looking at Max Goff sprawled in his own blood – that it was particularly attractive as things stood.

Every so often, people would wander over to Col, some angry, others quite sheepish.

'It doesn't make a lot of sense, now does it, Colonel?', Graham Jarrett argued, sweat-patches appearing under the arms of his safari suit. 'A man's been murdered, and all we're doing is giving his murderer time to get clean away.'

'Not if he's in this room we aren't,' said Col very quickly.

Jarrett's eyes widened. 'That's not likely, is it?'

'Who knows, Mr Jarrett, who knows?'

Graham Jarrett looked around nervously, as if wondering which of the two or three hundred people it might be safest to stand close to. The main exit was still guarded by large uncommunicative farmers.

'Can't be long now, anyway,' Col said. 'I'd guess the Mayor's already been in touch with the police.'

No chance. This is a Crybbe matter.

Madness. It didn't even have the logic of a street riot. And Col Croston, who'd served six terms in Belfast, was beginning to detect signs of something worryingly akin to sectarianism.

New Age versus Old Crybbe.