Crybbe aka Curfew

The door had been painted green. Once. A long time ago.

Powys knocked.

No answer. Unsurprising. Nobody in his right mind would want to spend too much time in Keeper's Cottage.

OK, either he isn't here or he is, and keeping quiet.

Powys felt old sorrow and new sorrow fermenting into fury, he called out, 'Andy!'

No answer.

'Andy, I want to talk.'

Not even an echo.

Powys walked around the cottage. It had no garden, no outbuildings, only a rough brick-built shelter for logs. The shelter was coming to pieces, most of the bricks were loose and crumbling.

So he helped himself to one. A brick. And he went to the back of the house, away from the path, and he hefted the brick, thoughtfully, from hand to hand for a moment or two before hurling it at one of the back windows.

A whole pane vanished.

Powys slipped a hand inside and opened the window.

Dementia, Alex thought, was an insidiously cunning ailment, it crept up on you with the style of a pickpocket, striking while your attention was diverted.

One didn't wake up in the morning and think, hello, I'm feeling a bit demented today, better put the trousers on back to front and spray shaving foam on the toothbrush. No, the attitude of the intelligent man – saying, Look, it's been diagnosed, it's there, so I'm going to have to watch myself jolly carefully – was less effective than one might expect.

And the problem with this type of dementia – furred arteries not always letting the lift go all the way to the penthouse, as it were – was that the condition could be at its most insidiously dangerous when you were feeling fine.

Today he'd felt fine, but he wasn't going to be fooled.

'Keep calm, at all times,' Jean Wendle had said. 'Learn how to observe yourself and your actions. Be detached, watch yourself without involvement. I'll show you how to do this, don't worry. But for now, just keep calm.'

Which wasn't easy when you lived with someone like Fay, who'd made a career out of putting people on the spot.

She'd come in just after six and put together rather a nice salad with prawns and other items she obviously hadn't bought in Crybbe. Bottle of white wine, too.

And then, over coffee…

'Dad, we didn't get a chance to finish our conversation this morning.'

'Didn't we?'

'You're feeling OK, aren't you?'

'Not too bad.'

'Because I want to get something sorted out.'

God preserve me from this child, Alex thought. Always had to get everything sorted out

'The business of the Revox. You remember? The vandalism?'

'Of course I remember. The tape recorder, yes.'

'Well, they haven't actually pulled anybody in for it yet.'

'Haven't they?'

'And perhaps you don't think they ever will.'

'Well, with that fat fellow in charge of the investigation, I must say, I'm not over-optimistic.'

'No, no. Regardless of Wynford, you don't really think…'

'Fay,' Alex said, 'how do you know what I think or what I don't think? And what gives you…?'

'Because I heard you talking to Grace.'

'Oh,' said Alex. He had been about to take a sip of coffee – he didn't.

Fay was waiting.

'Well, you know,' Alex said, switching to auto-pilot, 'I've often had parishioners – old people – who talked to their dead husbands and wives all the time. Nothing unusual about it, Fay. It brought them comfort, they didn't feel so alone any more. Perfectly natural kind of therapy.'

'Dad?'

'Yes?'

'Has Grace brought you comfort?'

Alex glared with resentment into his daughter's green eyes.

'Why did you think it was Grace who smashed up the Revox?'

He started to laugh, uneasily. 'She's dead.'

'That's right.'

Alex said, 'Look, time's getting on. I've a treatment booked for eight.'

'With Jean? What's she charging you, out of interest?'

'Nothing at all. So far, that is. I, er, gave her a basic outline of the financial position and she suggested I should leave her her fee in my will.'

'Very accommodating. Perhaps you could make a similar arrangement regarding your tab at the Cock. Now, to return to my question…'

Alex stood up. 'Let me think about this one, would you, Fay?'

How could he tell her his real fears about this? Well, of course dead people couldn't destroy property on that scale. Even poltergeists only tossed a few books around. Even if dead people felt a great antipathy to someone in their house, it was only living people who were capable of an act of such gross violence.

But perhaps dead people were capable of making living people do their dirty work.

Did I? he asked himself as he walked up Bell Street. Was it me?

Alex felt terribly hot and confused. Just wanted to feel the cool hands again.

The microphone was in the way. Jarrett had it on a bracket-thing attached to the ceiling so that it craned over the couch like an old-fashioned dentist's drill.

Guy said, rather impatiently, 'What do we need that thing for, anyway, if we're recording the whole session on VT?'

'I understand that, Guy,' Jarrett said, 'but I need it. I keep a record of everything. Also, it acts as a focus for the subject. I'm using the microphone in the same way as hypnotists do to swing their watches on a chain.'

'OK,' Guy said, 'I'll go with that. We'll do some shots the mike, make it swim before our eyes. OK, Larry?'

'No problem, I'll do it afterwards, come in over Catrin's shoulder. We OK with the lights?'

Guy looked at Graham Jarrett, small and tidy in a maroon cardigan, silver haired and just a tiny bit camp. Graham Jarrett said, 'One light may actually assist us if it isn't directly in her eyes, because we'll all be thrown into shadow and Catrin will be in her own little world. Can you make do with one, say that big one?'

'I don't see why not,' Guy said, gratified, remembering the hassle he'd had with Adam Ivory. Nice to know some New Age people could live with television.

Jarrett arranged a tartan travelling rug over the couch and patted a cushion. 'OK then, Catrin, lie down and make yourself comfortable. I want you to be fully relaxed, so have a good wriggle about… Where's your favourite beach… somewhere on the Med? West Indies?'

'Porth Dinllaen,' Catrin said patriotically. 'On the Lleyn, in north Wales.'

Guy turned away, concealing a snigger.

Jarrett adjusted the mike, switched on a cassette machine on a metal table on wheels, like a drinks trolley. 'OK, can we try it with the lights?'

Guy signalled to the lighting man, and Catrin's face was suddenly lit up, he thought, like a fat Madonna on a Christmas card. There was a tiny, black, personal microphone clipped into a fold of her navy-blue jumper.

'Right, Catrin,' Jarrett said softly, it's a soft, warm afternoon. You're on the beach…'