Caroline Graham - The Killings at Badger's Drift

‘“If you wish to save your beloved father’s life you know what you must do,” cried the evil Fouquet.’

Weeping, the girl removed her lace-up shoes, knee socks and bra. The evil Fouquet, not to be outdone, slipped out of his velvet smock, revealing a hairless dark brown chest. Brigitte was now left in the sort of briefs any self-respecting Mother Superior would have consigned to the flames with tongs.

‘But as the lascivious artiste attempted to position the lovely virgin he was swept away on a tide of desire.’

Surprise, surprise, thought Barnaby, yawning. He slipped back through the curtain and waited in the Colditz corridor. The dreary posturings in the art class gave him a sudden sharp perspective on his home life and the clean sweet embraces he shared with Joyce. So her Bakewell Surprise could double as a manhole cover. So his daughter looked like the wreck of the Hesperus and had a Swiftian line in put-downs. He compared her with Doctor Lessiter’s special friend and counted his blessings.

Released at last by a fake orgasmic cry, the punters shuffled out. Young, middle-aged, elderly. No one, it seemed, had come with a mate. They emerged solitarily, blinking in the hard light, like melancholy moles. He gave it a few moments then re-entered the room.

‘Brigitte’ was perched on the artist’s stool, smoking and wearing a wrapper. Her flesh shimmered through the gauzy stuff. The pearly flesh, long silver-white curls and butter-milky complexion gave her an appearance of wholesomeness totally at variance with her surroundings. She looked as if she would be more at home on a farm milking something. She spoke.

‘Give us a bleeding chance, lover. Next show’s half an hour. Pay outside.’ He produced his wallet. ‘Fuckin ’ell.’ She stubbed out her cigarette but not before he had recognized the smell. ‘I don’t take the hard stuff, you know. You’d be on something, believe you me, if you had this bloody job.’

‘I’m making one or two inquiries—’

‘I’m not talking to you without witnesses.’ She disappeared through a door behind the stage. It opened directly on to a tiny dressing room. Barnaby just managed to squeeze in. The room stank of cheap scent, hair lacquer, sweat and cigarette smoke. It was occupied by two girls, their rear ends shoe-horned on to a couple of plastic chairs. They wore bright bedraggled feathers and nipple stars. They sussed him straight away, giving him hard aggrieved stares.

‘What you done then, Kris?’

‘Bugger all. And he can’t say I have.’

Barnaby showed her the photograph of Trevor Lessiter. ‘Do you know this man?’

‘Yeah - that’s poor old Loveless. Or Lovejoy as he calls himself. Dunno what ’is real name is.’

‘Was he here last Friday afternoon?’

‘He’s here every Friday afternoon. And Monday and Wednesday. He’s no trouble. A bit of bondage. The daffodil routine. But mostly straight. His wife won’t let him ’ave any, you know.’

‘Yeah.’ This interjection from the red feathers had the force of a bunched fist. ‘’E gave her a mink coat for Christmas an’ all.’

‘I worked it out,’ said Krystal, ‘and I told him. I’d have to do it five hundred times to buy a mink. A decent one, I mean - not one that scarpered back to the zoo the minute the whistle went.’

‘You’d be too shagged out to wear it, Kris.’

‘You bloody reckon?’ She gave a mirthless shriek.

‘They stink an’ all if you’re out in the rain,’ said the red nipple stars. ‘Them that fall off the back of the bunny wagon.’ More mirthless shrieks. Barnaby cut in firmly.

‘Can you tell me what time Mr Lovejoy left last Friday?’

‘Half-past five. I remember ’cause that’s when I knock off for an hour. He asked me to go and have some tea with him. He was always asking me out. You have to pretend ... you know ... that you like them, and then, some of them - the simple ones - they really believe you. Try to get you to meet them outside. It’s pathetic, really.’

She raised both hands and lifted the heavy mass of silver curls. Underneath lay dirty red hair chopped savagely and clumsily short. She grinned at the chief inspector’s involuntary start of surprise.

‘He thought it was real - didn’t you, sunshine?’

‘I love the innocent ones, don’t you?’ said the girl with the strong vocal attack. ‘They really make you want to piss yourself.’

‘I was innocent once,’ said Krystal. ‘I thought a dildo was a prehistoric bird before I discovered this place.’

Caws of laughter; the tattered feathers shook. They gazed at him with hard bright eyes. They looked both predatory and harmless, like debeaked birds of prey. He made an excuse and left.

The little country church was packed. Barnaby slipped in unnoticed and stood behind a rear pillar. It was a brilliant day; sun poured through the clerestory windows. Behind the chancel rail all was white: the white-haired, white-robed vicar; two lovely arrangements of white flowers flanking the altar; a simple sheaf of lilies on the small coffin.

Most of the mourners were in ordinary clothes but there was an inky spattering of black. Several men wore arm bands, some of the women dark scarves. Barnaby was surprised to see that almost a quarter of the gathering were what he thought of as young: i.e. under thirty.

Miss Bellringer, clad in rusty, jet-encrusted black, sat in the front right-hand pew, her eagle profile expressionless under a plumed cavalier hat, her eyes dry. In the opposite pew (kept for the squire and his relations?) Henry Trace sat, sombre-suited, with Katherine. She wore a coffee-coloured silk dress and a black chiffon scarf with little gold coins sewn into the edge. The Lessiters sat, together but separately, staring straight ahead. You would never have thought they were a family.

Dennis in his role as usher had gone right over the top, tying a huge black bow to his arm, the ends shyly resting on his hip. His mother lay, becalmed, a mountain of bullet-coloured taffeta and grey net veiling in the second pew. Mrs Quine was there showily wiping away a non-existent tear, with Lisa Dawn still sighing and snuffling. Phyllis Cadell was in navy, David Whiteley in jeans and a dark striped shirt. In the back row the old man Jake wept openly, mopping up his tears with a red-spotted handkerchief. Then, when everyone knelt and Henry Trace bowed his head, Barnaby saw Michael Lacey, who remained upright in his seat glancing round at the respectful congregation with a mixture of impatience and scorn. He had made no concession to propriety and was wearing a paint-stained boiler suit and a peaked denim cap.

‘For man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live ...’

Emily Simpson had lived, by comparison with a large proportion of the world’s population, quite a long time, but she had still not been allowed her allotted span. No one, thought Barnaby, should be sent out on to that long journey a day, an hour or even a second before their natural time. He loosened his collar against the heat, closed his eyes and rested his forehead for a moment on the cool stone.

Figures moved behind his lowered lids: Laceys and Lessiters, Phyllis Cadell, David Whiteley, the Rainbirds, Henry Trace. They approached each other, met, mingled, broke apart in a passionless pavane. Who belonged with whom? If he knew that he would know everything.

Barnaby had started dreaming about the couple in the woods: two shapes twisting and turning, loops and knots of white limbs now fixed like sculpture, now softly melting together. Last night they had spun very slowly, a mobile of lust on an invisible thread, and he had waited in his sleep, breath seemingly held, for his first sight of their faces. But as the figures finished their slow circumfluence all he saw were two blank white hairless ovals.