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  ‘Yes. That was the idea of Marjorie Dooks, who chairs our committee, and I think it was a good one.’

  Bert stored this up in case he had to argue with Lambert again over the matter. He said with pen poised over his pad, ‘I need to know the names of the other people on that committee.’

  ‘Yes.’ She realized now that she’d known from the first it would come to this, but she had a curious feeling of sneaking, a notion which came back from her schooldays over half a century ago. ‘Well, there’s Mr Lambert’s wife, of course. But I think we can discount her.’

  Bert had a splendid vision of the fun to be had when he warned his wife that her friend Christine was a suspect in this sordid little affair. ‘Nevertheless, we won’t discount her at the moment. Who else, please?’

  ‘Well, there’s young Sam Hilton. He looks about sixteen to me, but I’m told he’s twenty-two and a poet of some standing. He’s getting the northern poet Bob Crompton to come to the festival. I’m sure this threat wouldn’t have come from Sam.’

  ‘Even so, we’ll record his name.’

  ‘And then there’s Ros Barker.’

  ‘The painter?’

  ‘Yes, she’s the one.’ Sue could not quite conceal her surprise that a policeman should know who Ros was. ‘But again, I like Ros and I think she quite likes me. I can’t think she would send anything like that.’ For the first time since she had passed it across the desk, she gestured at that sheet with its thick black print.

  ‘We’ll add her to the list.’ Bert wrote down the name in his large round hand, then looked at her expectantly.

  ‘And of course there’s Peter Preston. I expect you’ve heard of him.’

  ‘Most people who live in this area know Mr Preston,’ said DS Hook rather grimly.

  ‘Peter regards himself as an expert on the arts. That’s a little unfair; I’m quite prepared to accept that he is an expert. The trouble is that he doesn’t think that anyone’s opinion other than his is worth anything.’

  Bert realized that like many people, she had left the person she considered the likeliest suspect until the last. He nodded a couple of times and said, ‘Have you had any disagreement with the erudite Mr Preston?’

  Sue Charles frowned, trying hard to be fair. ‘He might have seen it as that. I would have said that it was no more than a difference of opinion. He doesn’t think detective fiction should be part of a literary festival.’

  ‘And his reason for that?’

  ‘He simply doesn’t consider crime novels to be what he calls “real literature”. He didn’t think I and the rest of the committee should have invited David Knight to speak at the festival, even though he’s a leader in our field. Marjorie Dooks shut Peter up rather effectively from the chair by reminding him that this had already been discussed at length and the matter decided at a previous meeting.’

  ‘But as you write crime books yourself and were the means of persuading Mr Knight to speak in Oldford, Mr Preston’s discontent focussed upon you.’

  ‘I suppose it did, yes. Particularly as he hasn’t a high opinion of either Sam Hilton or Ros Barker and I also found myself on their side in the exchanges within the committee.’

  ‘Mrs Charles, I have to ask you formally whether you think Peter Preston might have sent you this note.’

  ‘It’s inconceivable, to me. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he would do. But then it seems even more inconceivable that anyone else would threaten me like this, even as a joke. Unless it was kids, of course, who wouldn’t realize the distress they were causing. Peter’s the only person I’ve had any sort of dispute with over the last two or three months.’

  ‘It’s important that you don’t try to do anything about this yourself. You could accuse entirely the wrong person and end up at best highly embarrassed and at worst losing a friend. Be assured that we shall follow it up. We can be far more impersonal and we have far more resources than you have.’

  ‘That’s why I came here, Detective Sergeant Hook. The days of Miss Marple are long gone, if indeed they ever existed!’

  ‘I don’t wish to be alarmist, but have you anyone who could move into the house with you for a night or two?’

  She smiled wanly. ‘I could probably pack up my laptop and go to stay with my daughter for a couple of days. I’m due for a visit.’

  ‘That would probably be best. If you give me the phone number, I’ll make sure someone contacts you to let you know the outcome of our enquiries.’

  ‘Thank you again for being so understanding.’

  Hook stood up. ‘We always treat these things seriously. As I say, it will probably turn out to be some tasteless hoax, but it needs investigation.’

  As he prepared to usher her out, a young woman PC appeared in the doorway, looking a little embarrassed. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, DS Hook, but I thought from what this lady said at the desk that her complaint might be related to what you’re discussing with Mrs Charles.’

  Hook saw behind her a diffident young woman, following the officer somewhat reluctantly into the depths of Oldford police station. A fresh-faced woman, with a few freckles still evident in her small, kitten-like features. Older than he’d thought at first; she was probably in her late twenties, he thought. Bert had many years of experience now in assessing ages, a police skill he had found very difficult when he was as young as the officer who had brought in this woman.

  He was about to say that he would speak to her after he had seen Sue Charles out when the new entrant spoke, delivering her message hastily and without pause, as if she feared that she might turn tail and flee if she paused for thought. ‘My name is Kate Merrick. My partner is Ros Barker. This threat was to her, not to me, but she wouldn’t take it seriously. I brought it here because I thought you should see it.’

  She stood panting, then thrust an envelope towards him with both hands, like a child anxious to be rid of something that frightened her.

  Hook looked at her for a second or two without a word as he donned the plastic gloves he had recently discarded to extract the single sheet from within the envelope.

  RESIGN NOW FROM THE FESTIVAL COMMITTEE IF YOU WISH TO REMAIN ALIVE

  He said tersely, ‘I think Chief Superintendent Lambert should know about this.’

  SEVEN

  Spring was advancing quickly. The chestnuts were in leaf; even the oak and the ash were swelling their buds. And the daylight was stretching as the year advanced; only eight weeks now until the longest day.

  Sam Hilton waited impatiently for the darkness to descend. As usual, his anxiety rose as he prepared himself for the latest episode in this other trade he needed to sustain his status and credibility as a full-time poet. Perhaps he should have accepted the man’s suggestion and met him earlier. He wouldn’t have had the time to get nervous then. But there was no real need to be nervous, was there? Perhaps he just wasn’t a natural lawbreaker. Poets were supposed to make their own rules and go their own way. Yet even at school he hadn’t been as happy as the others had been when breaking the stupid little rules.

  He felt better as darkness finally crept in over the Gloucestershire countryside and better still once he was in the city. Here the lighting in the streets seemed to bring the night in so much more swiftly than in the fields and the hedgerows outside. He parked the old Focus some streets away from his rendezvous. A vehicle parked regularly in the same place could excite suspicion. That was the advice he had been given when he started to deal. Perhaps he was, after all, a conformist at heart. Philip Larkin had wrestled with thoughts like that, so he was in good poetic company.

  The White Hart wasn’t near the docks. He didn’t like the pub where he met his supplier and he didn’t like his journey to and from it. He had chosen to meet his biggest customer in a more central and respectable tavern, much used by the middle classes for a drink after work. At this time in the evening it housed a more cosmopolitan group; the increasing number of tourists was another sign that the year was advancing. This ancient inn was
almost in the centre of Gloucester and the streets around it were peopled more thickly than those near the dockside rendezvous where he bought his supplies. Sometimes there was safety in numbers.

  The man he was meeting was a young solicitor — older than Sam, but still no more than twenty-five. Paul Martin was his name. You didn’t use names more than you had to in this trade, and Sam hoped that the client still didn’t know his. Anonymity was a key to safety in this lucrative but dangerous commerce.

  The White Hart had numerous small alcoves, which dated from an earlier age. They were much appreciated by lovers and by anyone with a conversation they wished to conceal from a wider public. Sam glanced up at the illuminated sign depicting a young white stag and slipped quickly into the pub. It was nine thirty-five.

  He found his man immediately, sipping nervously at a gin and tonic in the same niche they had used last time. Paul Martin said edgily, ‘You took your time. I’ve been here for twenty minutes.’

  ‘Your own choice, that. Nine thirty, I said. I arrived here precisely five minutes after that, as planned. The customer must always be there before his supplier. Rule of the game. You don’t hang around any longer than you need to, when you’re carrying more than you can claim is for your own use.’

  ‘All right. Let’s get this done as quickly as possible, then.’ Martin leaned forward to see a little more of the lounge bar of the pub, twisting his face first right and then left, to see if they were being observed.

  ‘You’re drawing attention to us. You should be acting as if you’d nothing to fear, as if what we’re doing was the most natural thing in the world.’ But Sam was secretly reassured. The man was more naive and unpractised than he was in the situation.

  ‘Let’s get it over with quickly then.’ The man looked into Sam’s face and repeated himself nervously. Though he was in his mid-twenties, he clutched notes in his closed fist, like a small child impatient to buy the sweets he had been promised much earlier. Something for the poet in that image, Sam thought automatically. The material for verse was all around you, in life’s rich ironies as abundantly as in its tragedies. But you must keep your senses alive to the richness and the absurdity of the human condition. Everyone used to take drugs, in times past. John Keats might have been a user and a dealer, not a doctor, if he’d been alive now.

  He wrenched his attention back from that unlikely image to the sordid facts of the deal in hand. ‘Good stuff, this. The best coke you’ll get.’

  It was the nearest he came to a sales pitch, and it was as successful as it was unnecessary. Paul Martin was too nervous even to register what he was saying. ‘Two hundred, we said. You’ll find that’s correct.’

  Sam looked at the whiteness of the finger-joints as they clutched tightly round the twenties. The nails were immaculately clean. They didn’t see manual work, these hands, they didn’t grub for a living in the soil. Sam forgot for a moment that his own hands hadn’t touched the soil for many months. ‘I shan’t even count this, mate. Shows how much I trust the customer, that, don’t it?’ He wondered fleetingly why he was dropping into estuary English, when he spent most of his life exploring the richness of language. Role-playing, he supposed. He felt the notes thrust into his palm, felt the fleeting touch of those flawless fingers, leaping away from his flesh as if he had the plague.

  Sam Hilton felt a sudden need to assert his power over the gilded young man, to expose the weakness at the heart of this popinjay. He stowed the folded notes in his pocket. ‘You said you wanted to double your order.’

  Paul Martin made a belated attempt to assert customer rights. ‘I said that I might be able to take double the quantity of coke, if the quality remained the same and the price was lowered. That would acknowledge the increase in the order.’

  ‘“Would acknowledge the increase in the order.”?’ Sam parroted the phrase with Martin’s inflexion, as if storing it up for his future amusement. Then he deliberately hardened his tone. ‘Get real, sunshine! I run the risks, I get the supplies, I call the shots. And the shots I call include price. It will be the same as last time. If I find in the months to come that you’re able to increase your order consistently, I’ll consider an adjustment to my price in due course. If you don’t like my terms, try someone else. But don’t think you’ll be able to come crawling back to me when you get your coke cut with chalk.’

  ‘There’s no need for that. I know you’re providing good stuff. The best.’ He didn’t, because he’d no means of comparison. Like most users, Martin had been drawn into the habit from what he’d thought was a one-off, random use. ‘I was just trying to establish a good relationship between client and supplier.’

  ‘This isn’t like other trades, mate. The less we know about each other the better. I provide the goods, you pay for them. That’s as far as it goes. I’m lucky, because I have quality supplies of a rare commodity. That’s why I control the price.’

  ‘All right. I’m not going to argue.’ Martin’s flimsy resistance fell away and he was back where he had begun, a frightened man who wanted this over with as quickly as possible. ‘Did you get the Rohypnol?’

  Sam relaxed a little, pressing his back against the shiny leather of the bench seat, savouring the power that he felt. ‘Rare stuff, this is. Much in demand. I have to ration it. Might mean you have to ration your shagging, you randy bugger!’

  Martin smiled weakly, hating himself for his dependence on this creature. Another hundred pounds changed hands and he thrust his tiny allocation of the date-rape drug deep into the pocket of his jeans. He hated himself as he said, ‘Any chance of doubling the quantity of this as well?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. There’s massive demand, as I said. You might just have to keep it in your trousers a bit more. Or get her to sniff a line of the white powder with you. Unless it’s a him, of course.’

  ‘It’s not a him!’ the words were out before Paul Martin could stop them, vehement and indignant. He wondered why he needed to assert his heterosexuality to scum like this, who’d just been talking about the need for anonymity. ‘And if you can’t supply, it really doesn’t matter.’

  Sam was tempted to parrot that last phrase again in the lawyer’s diffident tone, to assert how unconvincing it sounded. But he’d had his fun. It was time to be on his way and out of this. He glanced at his watch. ‘You leave first, as normal. I’ll see you here same time, two weeks from now. Anything different, I’ll let you know.’

  Paul Martin wanted to tell him not to ring him at work again. But he was anxious to end a conversation in which he seemed to have lost every argument. He needed to be away from here. He wanted only to be safely at home with the wife he had told he was meeting a client who couldn’t manage a time in office hours. ‘Right. No complaints about the quality.’ He made a final attempt to assert himself. ‘See if you can find a way to adjust your prices and we’ll have a lasting relationship!’

  Sam responded only with a sour smile. He’d give it ten minutes, as usual. That gave you the chance to check that users weren’t stopped and questioned as they left. It was one of the tiny number of precepts volunteered to him by his supplier and he’d always followed it. The idea was that it would at least give you notice of police attention. You would have perhaps three minutes to make your escape by whatever means and whatever route you could devise, if you heard or saw your client being questioned. Not long, but time to ditch your remaining drug stash before they searched you.

  But Martin left without any challenge and there was no sound of raised voices in the street outside. All was going to be well, as it always had been previously. Piece of piss, really, this dealing business, as his supplier had assured him from the start that it would be. He sipped his beer and opened the book he had brought with him; he’d found before that immersing yourself in reading was the best defence against the casual company which sometimes offered itself in pubs.

  He was conscious after a couple of minutes of another presence in his alcove, of someone sliding themselves on to the be
nch seat on the other side of the table, where Paul Martin had lately sat. But he didn’t acknowledge the new arrival by so much as a raised eyebrow, maintaining an absorbing interest in the print before him, putting up the shutters against any conversational sally from whoever had just arrived. His ploy was successful; there was no word from across the table.

  It was perhaps ninety seconds before Sam Hilton stole a glance at the new presence over the top of his book. What he saw startled him so much that he almost dropped his shield. He had no idea what he had expected, but this was certainly not it.

  The man now sitting opposite him was perhaps the most strikingly beautiful male Sam had ever seen. He certainly had the blackest skin, smooth and softly shining in the subdued light accorded by the inn to this private niche. He was a little older than Sam; probably late twenties, he decided. He had neat, regular features, with a nose so delicate and perfectly formed that it might have been a woman’s. His head was not shaved, but his black hair was cut so close that the perfect shape of his cranium was amply evident beneath it. The whites of his eyes were astonishingly white and healthy against the ebony of his skin, As Sam watched surreptitiously, the man smiled briefly at something or someone on the other side of the room, revealing teeth that were perfectly regular and impossibly white.

  As if he was conscious of his exotic appearance and seeking deliberately to accentuate it, the man wore spotless white trainers, light blue jeans which looked as though this was their first outing, and a white cotton shirt, close-fitting and buttoned at the wrists. A being of astounding beauty, Sam Hilton decided. The attraction was increased rather than diminished by the fact that it was completely asexual. Sam had been sure of his sexual orientation many years ago. Indeed, he delighted in the fact that, in the right and perfectly chosen circumstances, poetry drew in the girls. So he could be entirely objective about the attractions of this exotic and unexpected new arrival.