Phil Rickman - The Chalice

Rankin was smiling with closed lips, leaning casually against a stone gatepost under a security light, a hard light on Jim, who was slumped inside his overcoat like a refugee, keeping his promise to say nothing.

'The police?' Rankin shook his head in pained disbelief. 'To investigate an allegation that Lord Pennard kidnapped his own daughter? Diane? Mrs Carey, the police know about Diane.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' As if she couldn't guess.

'We all know what it means,' Rankin said affably. 'If that girl was a commoner like you and me she'd be in a foam rubber boudoir in what's politely called a Residential Home. She had a real chance to make something of herself and reinforce this family.'

'You mean bring in some wealth and a couple of grandchildren to consolidate the future.'

'I'm not going to discuss family business with you, Mrs Carey.'

'You're not "family", Gerry. Anyway, you've confirmed she's here. Now go and get daddy. Tell him I'm offering his mentally ill daughter some care in the community.'

Rankin said, 'You really don't understand, do you? Lord Pennard doesn't want her in the community. Not this community. For her own good, Mrs Carey.'

'Hmmph.' Jim shuffled inside his overcoat. 'Soul of compassion.' Juanita glared at him.

Rankin stiffened. 'I don't know who you are, friend, but if you want to be abusive about Lord P, this is not the place.'

Jim grunted and moved back into the shadows of the gatepost, Juanita was quite glad Rankin didn't know him. He knew her, of course, because he'd once been into the shop, assuming it to be a general bookstore and requesting the lurid memoir of some SAS hero. There was silence. Then Jim whispered, 'Perhaps we should come back in the morning.'

Rankin had good ears. 'Yeah, I'd strongly advise that course of action.'

'I'm sure you would. God knows what you'd have done with her by then.' Juanita strode over to the gatepost, where he lounged in his well-worn Barbour, his leather cap shadowing his eyes. 'But I'll tell you one thing. If we do come back tomorrow, it'll be with a bunch of reporters and a couple of TV crews.'

He wasn't intimidated. 'Let me spell something out for you, Mrs Carey You are not taking on the soft-bellied aristocracy here. This is a business fighting for survival in a hard world. Two hundred acres and shrinking fast. Lots of overheads. A real business, Mrs Carey, not spooky books and incense burners and fucking tarot cards. We don't piss about. Am I making sense to you?'

'Perfectly.' Holding her Afghan coat together at the neck, Juanita stepped back into the full glare of the security light. 'But I do sound rather authoritative on the phone, when you can't see my beads and my crystals. They'll come, Mr Rankin. They'll all come, the papers, the radio, the television They can't afford to take the chance. If there is a story, they won't want to have missed it. I just have to wave my wand and utter the magic word… Pennard.'

He went very, very quiet. Quiet enough to hear a barn owl in the distant woods. Rankin gave Juanita a look harder than a punch in the mouth, and she almost recoiled. Then he turned tightly and walked away along the drive. After about twenty yards he turned back to keep them in view, removing something from a pocket. Juanita wondered, not altogether fancifully, if they should take cover.

'Mobile phone,' Jim said. 'I think you've hit the right nerve.'

'Let's hope so.'

'But you haven't made a friend.'

'Who wants friends like that?'

'Equally,' Jim Battle said, 'who wants an enemy like that?'

It was almost midnight when the Volvo turned into Chilkwell Street.

'I'm sorry.' Diane was wiping her eyes. 'I'm really, really sorry. They're probably right. I mean, you never know it yourself, do you? Nobody thinks they're insane.'

'Shut up,' Juanita said.

Jim Battle sat behind them, hunched inside his muddied overcoat. Juanita thought she should take him home without delay to his cottage and his canvases. Turps and linseed oil acted on Jim like smelling salts. She probably wouldn't see him for several days. He had a lot to paint out of his system.

With Diane, it had been surprisingly easy. Rankin had come off the phone and they'd waited in silence until a familiar plump figure had appeared on the drive. Juanita and Rankin had not looked at each other as Diane had come slowly towards the gate. With the security light and everything, it was rather like one of those Cold War movies, Soviet and Western spies being exchanged at Checkpoint Charlie. And then the recognition and the tears, and a final glance between Juanita and Rankin confirming that none of this had happened.

Juanita thought, The longest night of my entire life and none of it happened.

Diane was saying, 'It's just that – I'm sorry – I've just got to know that Headlice is OK. If we could just perhaps go past the camp…'

She obviously meant the boy they'd had up against the tower, who Jim had sort of rescued.

'Forget it, Diane. They'll all be back by now. I'm not going into that field tonight, not after…'

She heard the breath go into Jim, who'd insisted that even Diane shouldn't be told they'd been on the Tor tonight.

'… I mean, after what happened to this guy, they're probably blaming you. Anyway, if he's been badly hurt, what can you do about it?'

She was in no mood, anyway, to trust Diane's assessment of the situation. This was the Diane who'd told her on the phone yesterday that the bloody- travellers were frightfully nice people, once you not to know them. Jesus.

'We're taking Jim home, OK? Then we're going back to my place.'

Diane said, 'It's just that I'm sort of scared for him, anyway. There was some sort of frightful ritual on the Tor. I mean with hallucinatory drugs and things. I think they were using him in some way to… I don't know. He'd been sick. What I mean is, he was already in a bit of a state before the Rankins attacked him.'

'Shit,' Juanita said.

'Juanita…' Warning rumble from Jim.

'He might look like a hard case,' Diane said, 'with the swastika on his head and everything. But he's really quite, you know, naive and vulnerable.'

The lights of Glastonbury ahead. Also the turning to Wellhouse Lane. And to Don Moulder's bottom field.

'Fuck it,' Juanita said and spun the wheel.

At first she thought she really must be hallucinating when, at the entrance to the bottom field, the Volvo's headlights found Don Moulder himself with a big stick and a heavy-duty hand-lamp.

Moulder was wearing a bulky sheepskin jacket. Pyjamas showed in the gap between the jacket and his Wellingtons.

He was shining the lamp across the field.

Juanita pulled into the side of the lane, just short of the ditch. 'Stay,' she said sternly to Diane.

When she got out, feeling quite unsteady, Moulder had his back to the hedge and his stick clutched under his arm, pointing down.

'Don't you be coming near me, I got a twelve bore.'

'What's it fire, acorns? Calm down, Don, it's Juanita Carey.'

Don Moulder relaxed. 'Don't waste no bloody time, do you, Mrs Carey? Well, I'm telling you now, lady, 'twas their own decision. Can't say's I'm sorry, mind, but a deal was struck and that's that, s'far as I'm concerned. That don't entitle you nor Miss Diane to no money back is all I'm sayin'. They coulder had the full rime. Man of my word, always have been.'

He marched over to the five-bar gate and shone his lamp triumphantly into the bottom field.

'I don't understand,' Juanita said. 'Diane, no!'

Diane had rumbled from the car and pushed past them through the gate.

'What's to understand?' Don Moulder said.

As far as the beam would go, the field was conspicuously empty. No buses, no ambulances, not even debris, just a single white van with pink spots.