Eight

FLEMING SPENT TEN minutes at the undertaker's Chapel of Rest and then tried to walk the experience out of his system. The small coffin was on a trestle covered with purple velvet. There was even canned music. It had nothing at all to do with David. He wished he could have some belief in a spirit life. He often had bursts of conversation with David in his head: "It's a posting to Paris. You'd have liked Paris." And now, as he walked the cliff path: "The propeller came off your aeroplane. The wind from the open window caught it. Fragile stuff balsa."

Purple velvet.

Brahms.

Unspoken apologies heavy in the air.

The divorcing of the spirit from the body made thinking about the body possible. He didn't believe in the spirit but he talked to the spirit. Correction… he talked to David.

Or he talked to himself.

He wished he could see Shulter again, but didn't want to seek him out. A casual meeting might be helpful, but an arranged meeting at the rectory would be too much like a professional appointment with a doctor or a dentist. Your symptoms, Fleming, are to be expected at this stage of the disease. Take a dose of faith twice a day and the prognosis will improve.

On the way to the undertaker's he had looked in at the church, a red-brick, turn-of-the-century building at the corner of Marristone High Street. It had seemed right, mainly for Ruth's sake, to accept Shulter's offer to hold the service there. It was difficult to rationalise his deferring to what he believed would be Ruth's wishes when Ruth was no longer there. Looking inside the church was rather like looking at an execution sword in advance so that familiarity would ease the shock of seeing it on the day. He doubted if he could take the funeral service at all, but so far he had taken everything and survived. There had been a bowl of early summer flowers on the altar and some petunia petals had fallen in an untidy pink pool on the white cloth. The untidiness had made it more acceptable. David had dropped things all over the place, too.

So did Jenny.

Her bedroom would have inspired Herrick to write a poem on it. Sweet disorder. Wild civility. She was as untidy as hell.

When he returned to The Lantern he made a couple of abortive attempts to phone her at the school. Each time the line was engaged. After lunch he drove past her flat in Nelson Street and on impulse stopped and rang the bell. There was no-one in. He remembered she had said she would be on duty. He didn't know what to do with the rest of the afternoon. Time that until now had pushed onwards like an incoming tide seemed sluggishly to reach highwater mark and be still.

He decided to go back to The Lantern and it was there that he ran into the reporter who told him about Corley. It was the same reporter who had written the paragraph in the Marristone Herald about David. Their previous meeting hadn't been easy, but this time it was Kenilworth who had news to impart. He waylaid Fleming outside the bar.

"A child has gone missing from the Grange."

"What?" Fleming, still too deep in his own David-orientated world to be able to think of any child outside it, couldn't at first grasp what Kenilworth was saying.

Kenilworth explained patiently. "A young lad, about the same age as your son, has disappeared from the school. A big police search is on. Brannigan won't talk. And I've just had the usual routine stuff from fuzz headquarters. What's your feelings on it – off the record – at least for now?"

Fleming said shortly, "None. What feelings do you expect me to have?" All the same he was shocked and showed it. It was a like a stone being thrown into a pool and causing a new circle within an existing circle. He hoped wherever the child was he was alive and well.

"You've no comment?"

"What do you expect me to say?" (Bully for the lad for getting over the wall in time?) "You're being very careful, Mr. Fleming." Kenilworth's small blue eyes were regarding him thoughtfully. "I won't land you in a slander action. I know quite well where the line is drawn. But as a father yourself, you'll know what the lad's father is feeling – a comment along those lines wouldn't come amiss."

"What do you want – a statement of sympathy?"

"Something like that."

A lobbying of parents in a massed march of vengeance against the school.

Fleming said, "I'm sorry. You've a job to do and it's not an easy one, but I'm not giving you any quotes."

"And you can't tell me about tomorrow's inquest either?"

"Nothing that you won't pick up for yourself while you're there. You will, of course, attend." It wasn't a question.

"Yes, I'll attend." Kenilworth added, "We may seem a tough bunch professionally but we've youngsters of our own, most of us – not at the Grange, we haven't that sort of salary, and for the first time I'm glad of it. I know how you feel and I know how Corley's father feels. Unfortunately my sympathy carries no weight whatsover." He turned away with a grimace of defeat. No words could be bled out of Fleming now, but there was always tomorrow.

Thirza arrived at The Lantern at a few minutes after five and was told that Fleming had provisionally booked a room for her. She had every intention of staying there no matter what it was like so promptly confirmed the booking.

"Is Mr. Fleming in?"

The reception clerk told her that he was having tea in the residents' lounge on the first floor and directed her there. The lounge, originally a bedroom, had a red flocked paper and was furnished in black imitation leather. Its narrow bay window faced the sea. Fleming, the pot of tea untouched on the small oak table beside him, was standing with his back turned to her looking out.

She said gently, "Hardly my scene – as you said."

Surprised out of his reverie, he turned and smiled at her. "You improve it."

She joined him at the window. "It's a good view – that's its saving grace, I suppose?''

"That and the beer. Now you've seen it, will you stay?"

"I'll stay." She slipped her hand through his arm. "Why order tea if you don't intend drinking it?"

"I forgot about it. It's the only room here with a television set. I'm hoping to catch the local news." He told her about Corley.

She had spent part of the day finding out all the relevant information about the inquest. That Lessing was an old boy of the school hadn't surprised her. Robert Breddon,.the coroner, hadn't let it out, but she had other sources. She was pretty sure that all the inquest would produce would be a statement of identification – a few general questions – and a verdict of accidental death. If John wanted to fight for damages and kill the school in so doing then she would take the battle on, but only if there was the slightest chance of winning it. She didn't think there was. Her own fees she would gladly waive, but litigation was an expensive business. She had never believed in pouring money away in a lost cause. She asked him about the child who had gone missing. ' "He's about David's age,"

"Do you know anything else about him?"

"No."

She looked at him astutely, "You see it as more ammunition?"

"It could be. Let's hope he doesn't end up as David ended up."

She was relieved that he was able to get down to basics. At times they both found it extraordinarily difficult to talk to each other.

They sat and watched the local news. Corley wasn't mentioned at all. She got up and switched off the television. "It's probably rather soon. Lots of children go missing. They don't hit the headlines for a day or two."

It was his suggestion that they should go for a walk before dinner and while she was up in her bedroom changing her shoes he phoned the school again. This time he got through to someone who sounded like Alison Brannigan, but could have been a school secretary if Brannigan ran to one. He gave his name and asked for Jenny. The voice told him to hold the line and at the end of five minutes said that she couldn't be located. He asked if the missing boy had been found. The silence was almost palpable for a minute or two and then the receiver was replaced. An outright no would have been more sensible. Brannigan, he thought, was cursed with a stupid wife.