Crybbe aka Curfew

'I am not…'

Ivory swept the nine cards together in a heap. Guy noticed his fingertips were white.

'… trying to say…'

He snatched his hands away, as if the cards were tainted.

'… anything.'

And pushed both hands underneath his thighs on the chair, looking like a scared but peevish schoolboy.

Larry Ember shot half a minute of this then switched off and slid the camera from its tripod. 'Fucking tosser,' he muttered.

Hilary Ivory went to her husband, looking concerned in a motherly way.

A single tarot card fell over the edge of the table. Guy picked it up. It was The Hanged Man.

He put it carefully on the table, face-up in front of Ivory.

'What's this one mean?'

'It's very complicated,' Hilary said. 'The little man's hanging upside down by his foot, so it's got nothing to do with hanging, as such.'

'Look, would you please leave?' the tarotist almost shrieked, his face sweating like shrink-wrapped cheese under the TV lights. 'I… I don't feel well.'

Larry Ember lit another cigarette.

'No,' Mr Preece said, 'I won't.'

He and his wife had not been inhospitable. Catrin Jones, Guy's production assistant, had been given the second-best chair and a cup of milky instant coffee.

'But you see.. She didn't know where to begin. The blanket refusal was not at all what she'd expected, even though she conceded it had been a difficult week for Mr Preece, with the drowning of his grandson and everything.

'Biscuit?' offered the Mayor.

'Oh no, thank you.'

Catrin wondered why there was an onion in a saucer on top of the television.

'Because what we were thinking,' she said rapidly, 'is that it would be far better to talk to you in advance of tomorrow night's public meeting rather than afterwards at this stage, because…'

'You are talkin' to me,' said the Mayor simply.

'On camera, Mr Preece,' Catrin said. 'On camera.'

'I'm not going to change my mind. I'm keeping my powder dry.'

'Oh, but, you see, you won't be giving anything away because it won't be screened for months!' Catrin's voice growing shrill and wildly querulous. 'And it's not a great ordeal any more being on television, we could shoot you outside the house so there wouldn't be any need for lights, and as well as being terrifically gifted, Guy Morrison is well-known for being a very understanding, caring sort of producer,'

'That's as maybe,' Mr Preece said. 'All I'm sayin' is I don't 'ave to be on telly if I don't want to be, and I don't.'

'But, you will be during tomorrow night's meeting. What's the difference?'

'I doubt that very much.'

'Mr Preece, you are supposed to be chairing the meeting.'

'Aye, but as you won't be allowed in with that equipment, it makes no odds, do it?'

Catrin, outraged, sat straight up in her chair. 'But it's a public meeting! Anybody can go in. It's all arranged with Max Goff!'

'Max Goff?' Mr Preece's leathery jowls wobbled angrily. 'Max Goff isn't running this town yet, young woman. And if I says there's no telly, there's no telly. Police Sergeant Wynford

Wiley will be in attendance, and any attempts to smuggle cameras in there will be dealt with very severely.'

'But…' Catrin was close to tears. She had never before encountered anyone less than delighted and slightly awed at the possibility of being interviewed by Guy Morrison.

' 'Ave another cup of coffee,' said the Mayor.

What he kept seeing was not Rachel plunging out of the sky. Not the willowy, silvery body broken on the rubbish pile.

He would not think of that – not here, in this grim Victorian police station. If he thought of that he'd weep; he wasn't going to indulge in that kind of luxury, not here.

No, what he kept seeing was the grey-brown thing, falling like smoke.

He'd seen it again as he waited for the police. It lay where it had landed, three or four yards from the pile, light as the fluff which collected in a vacuum cleaner.

I've seen them before, Powys thought now. In museums, in glass cases, labelled: remains of a mummified cat found in the rafters, believed to have been a charm against evil.

The cat had fallen to the ground after Rachel.

He hadn't told them that.

'And you heard her scream, did you?'

'She cried out. Before she fell. '

'She wasn't screaming as she fell?'

'I don't think so. I mean, no, she wasn't…'

'Didn't that strike you as odd?'

'Nothing struck me at the time, except the sheer bloody horror of it.'

Telling it four times at least. How he'd attacked the rubbish heap, frantically hurling things aside to reach her.

Lifting her head. Staring into her face, eyes open so wide that you could almost believe… until you fell the dead weight, saw – last desperate hopes corroding in your hands – the angle of the head to the shoulders.

Staring stricken into her face, and the curfew bell began to toll, a distant death knell.

'… can we return to this point about the door, Mr Powys. You say you tried the rear door to the courtyard and found it locked. You couldn't budge it.'

'No, It was locked. I put my full weight against it'

'Then how do you explain why, when we arrived, this door was not only unlocked but was, in fact, ajar?'

'I can't explain that. Unless there was someone else in there with Rachel.'

'Someone other than you…'

'Look, I've told you, I…'

They'd gone over his statement several times last night and then said OK, thank you very much, you can go home now, Mr Powys, but we'll undoubtedly want to talk to you again.

But he knew, as he tried to sleep back at the cottage, that they were out there, watching the place, making sure he didn't go anywhere. And it was no real surprise when the knock came on the door at 8 a.m., and the car was waiting – a car, to take him less than a quarter of a mile across the bridge to the police station.

'You didn't tell us, Mr Powys, that this wasn't exactly a new experience for you. You didn't tell us about Rose.'

So who had?

Somebody had.

He sat on the metal chair, alone in the interview room, wishing he still smoked. He could hear them conversing in the passage outside, but not what they were saying.

'So you went to Leominster with Fay Morrison?'

'Yes.'

'Attractive woman, Mrs Morrison.'

'Yes.'