an acrid air of betrayal around the house where the Mumfords lived, in the middle of a brick terrace, isolated now on the edge of one of the new access roads serving Tesco’s and its car park. When they came out, Nigel Saltash had spotted Andy’s dad walking back across the car park with a Tesco’s carrier bag, a wiry old man in a fishing hat.
‘Think I’ll have a word, if that’s all right.’
Mumford nodding glumly, sitting on the brick front wall of his parents’ home, looking out across what seemed to be as close as Ludlow got to messy. The train station, small and discreet, sat on higher ground opposite the supermarket. Lower down was an old feed-mill, beautifully preserved, turned into apartments or something. Then tiers of Georgian and medieval roofs and chimney stacks and, above everything, the high tower of St Laurence’s, like a column of sepia smoke.
‘The doc says she needs assessment,’ Mumford said. ‘Should have had assessment some while back. See the way he looked at me?’
‘It’s how he looks at everybody,’ Merrily said. ‘He’s a psychiatrist.’
Her hands were clasped across her stomach, damming the cold river of doubt that awoke her sometimes in the night — the seeping fear that most of what she did amounted to no more than a ludicrously antiquated distraction from reality.
‘Checking out the old feller now, see,’ Mumford said. ‘Next thing, he’ll have the bloody social services in. This is—’ His hands gripping the bricks on either side. ‘She’s got worse, much worse, since the boy died.’
‘A dreadful shock can do it. Reaction can be delayed. It doesn’t necessarily mean she’s on the slippery slope.’
‘At her age,’ Mumford said, ‘what else kind of slope is there?’
Merrily paced a semicircle. She saw Saltash, just out of earshot. His head was on one side, and he was pinching his chin and nodding, flashing his mirthless smile as Mumford’s dad talked, his carrier bag at his feet. She was remembering Huw Owen’s primary rule: never walk away from a house of disturbance without leaving a prayer behind.
Had she left without a prayer because she was afraid it might have inflamed the situation? Or because Nigel Saltash was there?
‘Just because I’m working with a psychiatrist doesn’t mean other possible interpretations go out of the window.’ She bit her lip, uncertain. Hoping she wasn’t just fighting her corner for the sake of it. ‘What do you think she meant about a woman pushing him off the castle?’
Mumford shook his head. ‘She never said that before.’
‘Does it make any sense?’
‘There was a witness — bloke lives over the river. Steve Britton showed me the statement. Bloke saw him fall. Nothing about anybody else. I… Where’s she get this stuff from? Never said nothing like that before. I don’t… Christ, I need to check this out, now, don’t I? You’re right, it’s easy enough to say she’s losing it.’ He sprang up from the wall. ‘I dunno… at every stage of your bloody life you become somebody you said you was never gonner be.’
‘In what way?’
‘Ah… you’d be on an investigation: murder, suicide, missing person, and there’d always be some pain-in- the-arse busybody relative — never the father, always someone a bit removed from it — who’d be trying to tell you your job. Have you looked into this or that aspect, have you talked to so-and-so, why en’t you done this? You wanted to strangle them after a bit. But the truth is there aren’t enough cops to do half of what needs doing. And so things don’t come out the way they should, things gets left, filed, ignored…’
‘Be careful, Andy,’ Merrily said, for no good reason, knowing she wouldn’t be careful in a situation like this.
‘Airy-fairy sort of feller, apparently — writes poems and publishes them hisself.’
‘Who?’
‘The witness. I’ll mabbe go see him. Got time now, ennit? Got time to be the busybody pain-in-the-arse uncle. Nobody bothered about the kid when he was alive, except for one ole woman.’
‘Andy, I’m hardly the person to be disparaging it, but if she does think she’s been given this information by a… by Robbie…’
‘Could be something he told her days before, ennit? Before he died. Something that’s suddenly clicked. I been agonizing about Robbie’s death for three weeks now. Thinking, leave it till after the funeral, wait for the inquest. Now even Mam’s on at me to do something.
On the edge of the car park, Mumford’s dad had picked up his carrier bag and he and Saltash had started back towards the house in the wake of Saltash’s all-concealing smile.
‘Andy.’ Merrily beckoned Mumford into his parents’ tiny front garden. ‘I think we should try and deal with this… Go back in. But not with him. Think of something.’
7
I’ll Be Waiting
There was another clear reason why the implications of retirement were terrifying Andy Mumford.
His dad.
Reg Mumford was taller than his son and held himself stiff-backed and upright, but it was hard to believe now that he’d ever been a policeman. Still wearing his fishing hat, he was standing with his hands on the shoulders of his wife’s chair, as if it was a wheelchair. Merrily’s feeling was that this was because he didn’t want to look at her.
‘I reckon they’ve started watering the beer again, Andrew.’
‘You said.’
‘Have you found that?’
‘No, Dad.’
‘Always start doing it this time of year when the tourists come.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Prices goes up, too. Don’t seem two minutes since it was one and six a pint.’
‘Before my time, Dad.’
‘Hee, hee!’ Reg Mumford pointed at Andy, who was standing uncomfortably up against the sideboard near the picture that was turned to the wall. ‘You en’t gonner be saying that for long. Now you’re retired, see, time’s gonner speed up, time’s gonner flash by, you mark my words, boy.’
‘Mrs Watkins would like to talk to you again,’ Mumford said.
‘I’d be delighted to talk to this young lady, Andrew. Shall we go out for a drink, the three of us?’
‘She wants to talk to Mam, Dad.’
‘Won’t get no sense out of her,’ Reg said. ‘I can tell you that much.’
Merrily, still standing by the door, glanced at Andy Mumford, watched his lips retract, a sign of extreme frustration. They were getting nowhere here. Nigel Saltash had suggested lunch in one of the splendid new restaurants which, he said, now made visits to Ludlow such an unexpected pleasure. At least she’d got out of that, saying that she had a sermon to write, and then Mumford telling Saltash he had to pick his wife up in Dilwyn, not far from Ledwardine, so he could give the vicar a lift back.
She came over from the door and knelt on the rug in front of Mrs Mumford’s chair. Mrs Mumford contemplated her for a while and then began to nod, light graduating into her eyes as if the action of nodding was powering a small dynamo.
‘Now then. Now. I know who you are. I was a bit confused, the way that man kept smiling at me, but I know who you are now, my dear.’
Merrily smiled back. Somehow she didn’t think Mrs Mumford was going to get this right.
‘You were at the funeral, weren’t you?’
‘Erm…’
