Jan Siegel - The Traitor’s Sword - The Sangreal Trilogy Two

‘Respectable,’ said Pobjoy. ‘Squeaky-clean businessman, plenty of good works, pillar-of-the-community image.’

‘Highly suspicious, in fact,’ said Bartlemy with a faint smile.

Pobjoy read few novels, but he took the point. ‘Real life isn’t much like thrillers,’ he said. ‘Pillars of the community are usually stuffy, but …’

‘Upright?’

‘Yeah. Just one point: he’s a publisher. Educational books, art, that sort of thing. He might have heard of the Grail.’

‘His name?’

‘I shouldn’t be telling you that.’

Bartlemy offered the policeman another biscuit.

‘Hackforth. Giles Hackforth. The company’s called Pentacle Publishing.’

‘A long-established firm,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Very reputable. So … we can infer that Hackforth is a cultured man, who might well have an interest in local antiquities, and the folklore that accompanies them.’

Pobjoy nodded. ‘I’d say you were imagining things,’ he went on, ‘if it wasn’t for Purlieu-Smythe. But lawyers like him don’t do charity work. There has to be a connection with someone , and Hackforth seems to be your best bet. I don’t see what we can do about it, though. Suspicion isn’t evidence.’

‘As you say. However, all information is valuable. Is there anything more you can tell me about him?’

Pobjoy hesitated. ‘Your nephew, Nathan Ward …’ There was a certain constraint in his manner. He was still uncomfortable at the mention of Nathan’s name, not least because in his view any individual, once suspected, was suspect forever, and he found it hard to change his mindset.

‘What about him?’ Bartlemy’s tone, as always, was mild.

‘I heard he was at Ffylde Abbey. Scholarship boy.’

‘Yes.’

‘So’s the problem child. Damon Hackforth. Should have thought they’d expel him, but apparently not. I expect Daddy’s buying the school a new wing or something.’

‘Ffylde Abbey is fundamentally a religious institution, remember. Perhaps they feel they cannot abandon the stray lamb – they want to bring him back to the fold.’

The inspector, cynical from experience, made a sound something like a snort.

‘Don’t dismiss the possibility,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I’ve seen things that would surprise you.’ And, on a note of irony: ‘You do not know the power of the light side.’

But Pobjoy missed the allusion. ‘I ought to be going,’ he said, finishing his tea. The biscuit plate was empty.

‘Next time,’ Bartlemy said, ‘you must stay to lunch.’

Nathan was accustomed to his uncle’s cooking, but habit didn’t take the edge off his appetite. He, Hazel and their friend George Fawn were devouring roast lamb with teenage enthusiasm the following Sunday and talking about Jason Wicks, the village’s aspiring thug, when Bartlemy inserted his question.

‘Do you have any problems of that kind at Ffylde?’

‘The teachers keep a close eye on things,’ Nathan said. ‘They try to stamp out bullying before it gets really nasty.’

‘No school bad boys?’ Bartlemy persisted. Annie looked thoughtfully at him.

‘There’s Nick Colby … he was caught insider-trading. He overheard his father talking about a merger and bought up shares for half the class.’

‘Did you get some?’ George asked, awed.

‘He’s the year below me.’

‘Anyone else?’ Bartlemy murmured.

‘Well … Damon Hackforth, in the Sixth. He’s been in trouble with the police. We’re not supposed to know, but of course everybody does. There was a rumour he’d be expelled. He’s always having long talks with Father Crowley. I expect they’re trying to reclaim him – some of the monks are very idealistic.’

‘Do you think they’ll succeed?’ Bartlemy asked.

Nathan made a face. ‘Don’t know. I’ve never really had anything to do with him, but … he gives off very bad vibes. You can feel it when he walks past. A sort of – aura – of anger and aggression. Worse than Jason Wicks. Ned Gable’s parents know his parents, and Ned says they begged the school not to chuck him out. They must be pretty desperate about him.’

‘They care about him, then?’ Annie said, flicking another glance at Bartlemy.

‘I expect so.’ Nathan was still young enough to assume that parents generally cared about their children. ‘He’s got a sister who’s an invalid. Ned says Damon’s jealous because she gets all the attention. She’s very ill – something they can’t fix, where she just goes on and on deteriorating. Muscular dystrophy, maybe. Something like that. She’s in a wheelchair. Ned says she’s very pretty and clever.’

‘How awful,’ Hazel said, thinking of a girl who had everything she didn’t, trapped in a wheelchair, wasting away.

‘Awful,’ Annie echoed, thinking of the parents, with their violent, mixed-up son and dying daughter.

‘Stupid,’ said George, ‘being jealous of someone who can’t even walk.’

‘Good point,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Most of the unhappiness in the world is the direct result of stupidity – of one kind or another. Who’s for baked apple?’

Afterwards, when Nathan, Hazel and George had left, Annie said: ‘So what’s your interest in this boy Damian?’

‘Damon. Did I say I was interested?’

‘You didn’t need to say. I could see it.’

‘I don’t know that I am interested in him,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I might be interested in his father.’ He told her about his conversation with Pobjoy.

‘Is it going to start again?’ Annie whispered. ‘Like last year?’ She was remembering a man with a crooked smile who had been nice to her – a thing made of river-water with a woman’s face – a very old corpse in a white-cushioned bed. And the secret she had never shared with her son, the secret of his paternity …

‘You’ll have to tell him,’ Bartlemy said, as though reading her mind.

‘That’s for me to decide.’ Annie’s tone was almost tart. ‘He doesn’t have to know yet. Perhaps he never will.’

‘That’s just it,’ Bartlemy sighed. ‘He ought to know. It’s important. It may be relevant.’

‘To what?’

‘Trouble,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Like last year.’

As the light failed, Bartlemy moved round the living room, drawing the curtains. He was alone now except for the dog, who stood by one of the windows, staring through the latticed panes with cocked ears and a faint stirring of the hackles on his neck. When Bartlemy joined him, he thought he saw a movement outside – the branches of a nearby shrub twitched, new leaves shivered as if in the wake of something, but whatever it was, it had gone too swiftly for him to have even a glimpse of it. ‘Something small, I think,’ Bartlemy mused. ‘Smaller than a human.’ Hoover glanced up at his master, his shaggy face alarmingly intelligent. ‘Well, well,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I see.’

When the darkness deepened he swept the hearth and laid a fire that wasn’t made of coals. Presently, pale flames leaped up, casting a flickering glow that played with the shadows rather than dispersing them. Bartlemy threw a powder on the flames which smothered them into smoke. The chimney was blocked and the air in the room thickened, till the eyes of both man and dog grew red from the sting of it. Bartlemy began to speak, soft strange words that swirled the air and shaped the fume, sucking it into a kind of cloud which seemed to spin inward upon itself, until there was a shifting at the core, and the smoke cleared from an irregular space, and in the space was a picture. At first it looked like a television picture, only the definition was far better, but as it developed the perspective changed, until it was no longer smoke-deep but profound as reality, a peephole into another place. Sound followed image, and a draught came from it bearing the scent of roses. Bartlemy saw a woman in a garden cutting flowers. The garden was beautiful and the woman well-dressed, but when she lifted her head her face was pinched and sad.