The Old Silent

'Very stoically.' Jury turned the map around.

'She's one cool kid.'

Jury turned the map back. 'I agree. One cool kid.'

Ellen's head snapped round. 'You mean you talked to her?'

'That's right.'

Melrose was getting nervous again. He left the window and sat on the arm of the cabbage-rose chair. Between the arm and the cushion was a bright card. He plucked it out. The Hanged Man. He stuffed it back.

'Well, but is there some big secret, or something?' Her voice deepened dramatically, exaggerating the words.

'Uh-uh.'

'I mean, did she say I stuffed her in a snowdrift or tossed her over a wall and then went off she knew not where?'

'Uh-uh.'

'Stop saying that!' Her long earrings clicked and clinked when she stood up, pressing her fingers against her breasts. 'You think I was involved? Moi?'

Melrose said from under the tent of his hand, 'Oh, shut up, for God's sakes; stop being dramatic; and you're talking to a fiendishly clever policeman.'

'Clever,' said Jury. 'But fiendishly? You don't have to hang around, Ellen.'

'Thought you were a cop.'

But she seemed unwilling to go. Now her fingers were spread against her buttocks, thumbs jammed into rear pockets.

It was, Melrose thought, irritated with himself, a very sexy pose. Although with all of that black leather and those nerve-jangling chains, he couldn't see why. For Vivian Rivington, it had always been twin-sets, good wool, or some Italian designer. He shook himself. Jury was handing him the map.

Melrose looked at it, at the line George Poges had drawn across Keighley Moor, at the Oakworth Road and the Grouse Inn. He looked at Ellen's own line. He looked at Jury.

Ellen turned from one to the other. 'You two going to communicate by semaphore?'

Jury smiled. 'You're free to go.'

' Free to go.' You guys actually say stuff like that?' Wearily, she shook her head and picked up the stereo. 'Shit. I'm going upstairs and put on a little Trane.'

***

'Dinner?' asked Melrose. They were standing in the courtyard, shoulders shrugged up against the cold.

'Afraid not. I've got to get back to London.' Jury was facing the barn. At the bottom of the drawn curtain over the small window he could see a ragged edge of light. 'Perhaps you should take your friend Ellen to dinner.'

'All of that business about the route, Ilkley, Harrogate. You don't really think she was out on that moor… you know.'.

'Did I say that?'

'You meant that.'

Jury turned up his coat collar and smiled. 'Tell her I love her.'

'The hell I will.' Melrose's footsteps crunched across the broken shale as he turned and started back toward the house.

Jury walked to the door of the barn, took out one of his cards, folded it lengthwise twice, and wedged it in between the outside wrapper and the silver that covered the stick of gum Ellen Taylor had given him.

He knelt and shoved it under the door.

Part Three. EMPIRE OF LIGHT 27

It had once been a film palace. It had been an old Arthur Rank cinema, but Jury liked to remember these massive structures with their giant marquees and tiers of balconies as palatial venues that set Saturday afternoons off from the rest of a dreary wartime week. He remembered little of life before the war. Why should he? War had bred him, then killed his father, killed his mother.

Jury came up from a confusion of tunnel that reminded him of the flights to an air-raid shelter to a network of streets beneath the deadly Hammersmith flyover. In its bleakness the street looked war-torn. Scraps of newspapers, discarded tin cans, a savaged cat-all appeared to be the detritus from the last concert blown out from the doors of the Hammersmith Odeon, right down to the battered cat slinking alleywise past the announcement of Sirocco and three other groups, together with their warm-up bands. Sirocco didn't need a warm-up. There was the picture of Charles Raine that had appeared on the cover of Time Out magazine. The fresh poster had been crookedly pasted over the faded. Yesterday's concert was like yesterday's news.

SIROCCO rode in two-foot-high black letters on the white marquee, where a young man on a very high ladder was making a slight artistic change; the S was tilted and from its end shot a narrow black line. Jury supposed that the effect was to make it look wind-whipped.

The man climbed slowly down; he was a lad really, probably nineteen or so, wiped his dirty hands on a towel that he stuffed in the rear pocket of his jeans, all the while backing up and looking at his handiwork. Another boy, probably about this one's age, and carrying what looked like three or four instrument cases and a black amp, had crossed the street and was apparently asking directions as he hitched one of the two gig bags more comfortably over his shoulder. He wiped his windblown hair out of his face, pushed his Silva-thin sunglasses back on his nose and entered through a pair of double doors.

The artist of the marquee-board walked backward to get a better look at his artistry and nearly stepped on Jury's feet. 'Oh, sorry.' Then, as if Jury had come for the same reason, as adviser or overseer of this enterprise, the kid said to him, 'Think it adds a bit of class, right?' He shook his longish hair from his forehead and folded his arms across his chest, hands clamped under his armpits.

'It's ingenious. Especially that line that trails off from the bottom of the S. How'd you do that?'

'With three I's, flat down. Hard to do tricky stuff with a marquee, I can tell you. See, I was trying to get the idea of a wind blowing through the name. That's what it means, you know-'sirocco'-a wind blowing,' he added instructively. A stiff wind gusted from the alley the cat had bellied along, a good omen, perhaps. They both shivered. 'Bleedin' cold. I been out here over an hour working on that lot. Think they'll like it, then?'

Jury smiled. 'Absolutely.'

'You come for tickets? Been sold out since it was announced. Listen: I'll give you a tip. Come round on Friday, day of performance, ten a.m. The doors are open, but returns don't go on sale until twelve. Mary Lee, though, she keeps back five, maybe six in case some nob comes along.' The boy's laugh was wheezy. 'A couple did once. I think they were some duke's kids. Mary Lee really kept 'em on the ropes. I think she permed her hair while they hung around the window looking like they had to pee. After you.' With a grand gesture he opened the door.

'Thanks. And thanks for the tip.'

The boy waved and hustled across the big lobby and took the wide stairs two at a time. Jury looked round at the emptiness and pictured what a crush it would be two nights from then. The deserted lobby still had that gummy smell of packed bodies, sweat, and beer. Breathing must be difficult. Did Wiggins really go to these concerts? He craned his neck upward to gaze at the huge, open circle over whose railing hundreds of beery smiles would look down on that night. And farther up in space to a baroque ceiling that brought his fancy back to those long-ago afternoons. The picture palace.

'We're sold out!' The childishly nasal voice pulled Jury from his fancies of picture palaces and he turned and saw a youngish woman with a haircut that looked done by a lawn mower on burnt grass hitting a cold-drink machine. Her face looked as parched as her hair, as if this mirage of a machine was the only thing that would keep