determined. Few had survived intact, most were split in two, the fragments scattered in the frosty grass.
‘Why the publicity?’ The radio report would have come from police calls. It was rare for them to advertise vandalism.
‘Not my choice. Police think I should have told them about what was going on in the porch. They think publicity will scare them off. I told ‘em that was why the kids did it. To get noticed.’
‘This is the first…’
‘Oh yes. Nothing like this before.’
Dryden bent down and matched some of the broken stone shards to their disfigured headstones. Jack Gotobed 1823–1860. Martha Jane Elliot 1891–1976. Peter Noah Jones 1901–1964. Marjorie Phyllis Carter 1900–1972.
He felt the corrupt damp rising from the ground. He shuffled his feet. ‘Any relatives still around?’
‘Hardly. Rural depopulation. The last burial here was in the 1980s. Still consecrated ground, of course. Anyway, you don’t ask questions about relatives out here. Old joke but it’s true. When they ran a school here in the 1930s there were four family names on the register and twenty-eight children. They have family trees – they just don’t have any branches on them.’
They laughed together, the sound crackling in the frosty air.
‘Cost? Repair?’
‘Don’t think we’ll bother.’ Tavanter folded his hands inside his overcoat in a fluid movement which spoke of a lifetime in vestments. ‘Tidy up perhaps. I might get the tops of the stones rounded off. I’ll make a point of popping in over the next few weeks, leaving the lights on, generating some activity. But it won’t fool anyone. We might get a security light – but in the end it’ll make no difference.’
‘Any fears for the rest of the church?’
Tavanter sighed. ‘I can’t tell you what to write, Dryden, but why give ‘em ideas? It’s totally vulnerable of course. There’s six churches in the circuit I cover – to provide security for all would wipe out our income. And they’re only churches – stone and mortar – we try to concentrate our resources on the people. They could take the windows out I suppose, although they’re meshed. If they got in there’s arson, but they won’t push their luck that far.’
‘Kids then, you reckon?’
Tavanter gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘It’s not the only theory, as I am sure you’ve guessed. The police consider the sanctuary here at St John’s a hotbed of perverts. Buggery and vandalism – what’s the difference, eh?’
‘Where there’s kids there’s parents.’
Tavanter nodded, enjoying himself. ‘On the whole they come under the heading of what I think our American cousins call white trash. Poor white trash.’
Dryden raised his eyebrows in mock shock.
‘We’re all allowed our prejudices,’ said Tavanter, buttoning his overcoat to his neck.
They stood awhile in what had become the night. The only light came from the thick frost now underfoot. They turned together and retraced their black footsteps etched out on the grass.
Dryden stopped before the gap in the hedge that led back into the main graveyard and put a finger to his lips. He pointed down to a track of footsteps which had come out of the trees, shadowing their own to the paupers’ graveyard, but stopping short by the hedge. In the frost a cigarette butt smouldered. They heard a door open somewhere across the fields, letting the sound of a TV drift on the air. A dog barked and stopped when a door slammed.
‘Kids,’ said Tavanter, like a mantra.
6
Laura, the immobile victim of locked-in syndrome for nearly two years, had moved. When Dryden arrived they took him into a consulting room and gave him a cup of tea in a pea- green cup. The consultant neurologist, Mr Horatio Bloom, had a face like a horse, and an incessant insincere smile.
‘Your wife,’ he said, beaming with self-satisfaction.
‘My wife,’ said Dryden, sipping from the pea-green teacup.
Bloom stiffened. They disliked each other. Bloom was not used to insubordination. Dryden was struggling with some complex emotions – not all of them uplifting.
‘Since, er’ – here Bloom referred to his notes – ‘since Laura’s accident your wife has not moved at all, complete paralysis. Obviously the internal organs have been operating but all muscle movement, including that associated with deep sleep, has been absent. Today she moved. I think we should be encouraged, Mr Dryden.’
Dryden sipped. He wanted her back, of course. But he wanted her back as she had been. What he did not want was a painful and tortuous recovery which left him caring for a mumbling shell with a disintegrating personality: a human being by name only, demanding attention but giving nothing in return.
‘And nobody could have moved her?’ Dryden asked.
Bloom readjusted his steel-rimmed glasses. ‘Mr Dryden. The nurses and staff here at the Tower are acutely aware of the importance of your wife’s posture. She is moved regularly to avoid bed sores and circulation problems but these alterations are logged with the charge nurse on duty.’
Dryden didn’t really know why he asked the next question. ‘Is that charge nurse ever Gaynor Stubbs?’
Bloom’s eyes flickered over the notes before him: he coughed and avoided a direct answer. ‘Your wife was checked by the physiotherapist at 5 p.m. today. She did undertake some work with her arms and neck, which she recorded when she returned to the nurses’ station. When she checked again at 5.45 p.m. your wife’s body was very nearly out of the bed, she had turned over on her right side and one arm was hanging outside the bed.’
