Crybbe aka Curfew

'Hmm,' said Alex. 'Good cup of tea.'

'Being on the border is a lot to do with it. When we make a frontier… when we split something physically asunder in the landscape, especially when we build something like Offa's Dyke to emphasize it, we create an area of psychic disturbance that doesn't go away.'

Alex stirred his tea, wishing she'd talk about something else.

Jean said, 'Do you think they've taken on more than they can handle? Max Goff and the New Age people?'

'I thought you were one of them.'

'I like to keep a certain distance,' Jean said, 'I like to watch. Can they control it, I wonder? Or is it too volatile for them?'

'Oh, we can't control anything,' Alex said. 'That's something everybody learns sooner or later. Least of all control ourselves.'

It was well after midnight by the time they came out of the vet's.

Without Arnold.

'I couldn't stand the way he was looking at me,' Fay said, it's not been his week, has it? He's in a car crash, sees his master die. Saved from the clutches of the Crybbe constabulary, finds he's become a kind of pariah in the town. Then he gets shot.'

The Mini had been parked for over two hours on a double yellow line outside the vet's surgery in Leominster, fifteen miles from Crybbe. The nearest one from which they'd managed to get a response. The vet handling night- calls had been understanding but had made no comments either way about the wisdom of farmers shooting dogs alleged to be worrying sheep.

The vet had said Arnold would probably live. 'Just don't expect him to be as good as new with all that lead inside him.'

One of the back legs had taken most of it. Bones had been broken. The vet had seemed a bit despondent about that leg. Fay had spent half an hour holding Arnold at different angles while the vet examined what he could, removing shotgun pellets. He might have to operate, he said, and got Fay to sign a paper relating to responsibility if Arnold died under anaesthetic.

Now Fay and Powys were standing on the pavement, unwinding. It was very quiet in Leominster, the other side of midnight. No menace here. Fay thought.

J. M. Powys was shaking out his jacket. It was scarcely identifiable as a jacket any more. It looked as if someone had faced a firing squad in it.

'Oh God,' Fay said. 'I'm so sorry.'

J. M. Powys dangled the jacket from an index finger and looked quite amused. J. M. Powys. Bloody hell. 'It's hard to believe you're J. M. Powys. I thought you'd be…'

'Dead.'

'Well, not quite.'

'That lady, Mrs Seagrove. She called you Mrs Morrison. You're not Guy's wife, are you?'

'No,' Fay said. 'Not any more.'

She explained, leaning on an elderly Mini in a quiet street in Leominster, lights going out around them. Explained quite a few things. Talking too much, the way you did when you'd been through something traumatic. Only realizing she was shooting her mouth off, when she heard herself saying, 'I've got to get out of that place, or I'm going to implode. Or maybe I'll just kill somebody.'

She pulled both palms down her cheeks. Shook her hair, like a dog. 'What am I going on about? Not your problem. Thanks for everything you've done. I shall buy you a new jacket.'

'I don't want a new jacket.' Powys opened the car door. 'I like them full of patches and sewn-up bits.'

He drove carefully out of the town, dipping the headlights politely when they met another vehicle. They didn't meet many. The lights sometimes flashed briefly into the eyes of rabbits sitting in the hedgerows. Once, J. M. Powys had to brake for a badger scampering – that was really the word, she'd have expected badgers to lumber – across the road and into a wood.

Fay realized she hadn't phoned her dad. He'd be worried. Or he wouldn't, depending on his state of mind tonight. Too late now.

'Arnold!' Powys said suddenly, breaking five minutes of slightly sleepy silence.

'What?'

'Arnold. Not Henry Kettle's dog? You aren't the person who's looking after Henry's dog?'

'And not making an awfully good job of it, so far.'

'Stone me,' said Powys. 'Sometimes coincidence just seems to crowd you into corners.'

'Especially in Crybbe,' Fay said. She wished she was travelling through the night to somewhere else. Virtually anywhere else, actually.

The bones were very white in the torchlight. There were also some parchment-coloured bits, skin or sinew, gristle.

'Ah,' Tessa said, less than awed, 'I know what that is.'

Warren was miffed. How the fuck could she know anything about it?

'Yeah,' Warren said. 'It's a hand.'

'It's a Hand of Glory.'

'What you on about?'

'A dead man's hand.'

'Well, that's bloody obvious, isn't it?'

A hanged man's hand,' Tessa said.

Warren squatted down next to her. The spade lay on the grass, next to a neat pile of earth and the square of turf, set carefully to one side so it could be replaced.

'Which means it's got magic powers,' Tessa said. Where'd you find it?'

'Around.'

'All right, don't tell me! What's that Stanley knife doing in there?'

'Well, I…' Buggered if he was going to tell her he'd been scared to put his hand in and take the knife out. 'I'm seeing what effect it 'as on it. You know, like you puts an old razorblade under a cardboard pyramid and it comes out sharp again. New Age, that.' Warren cackled. 'I'm learnin' all about this New Age, now, see. 'Ow'd you know that?'

'Know what?'

' 'Bout it being a hanged man's hand.'

'I think I'd like to draw it,' Tessa said. 'Maybe I'll come up here again.'

'No.' It was his hand. 'Keep diggin' it up, the ground'll get messed up and somebody else might find it.'

'They won't. Do you know why you brought it here, Warren?'

'Good a place as any.'

Tessa smiled.

'What you done with then other drawings, the old feller?'

'Got fed up with him,' Tessa said. 'Passed him on.'

'Who to?'

'Dunno where he might end up,' Tessa said mysteriously. 'Part of the fun.' She smiled and fitted a forefinger down the front of Warren's jeans and drew him towards her, across the old box.

'Let's do it here… do it… by the box. Leave it open, see what happens.'

'Prob'ly come crawlin' out an' pinch your bum,' Warren said slyly. 'Anyway, it's too late now, for that.'

Tessa took her finger out of Warren's jeans, 'I waited for you.'

'Had a job to do.'

'What was so important?'

'You'll find out,' Warren said.

Tessa reached out and touched a white knuckle-bone.

'Cold,' she said, it's nice and cold.'