The Unhappy Medium 3: Wretched Things: A Supernatural Comedy, page 7
‘Come on,’ said Bennet. ‘We may as well get on with it. Sooner we get started, the sooner we get picked up.’
‘Hold on,’ replied Newton, pulling Bennet back by the shoulder. ‘We can’t just leave the car like that. The plates. They’ll trace it … then they’ll trace us.’
‘Ah. Good point,’ agreed Bennet, reaching in and grabbing a lighter from the glove box. ‘We’ll have to take them off. Then we can torch the old girl. Sad. I loved this old banger. Had it for years.’
‘Don’t get sentimental. Say the last rites or something if you have to. But it’s just a car,’ insisted Newton. ‘Here, give me the bloody lighter if you’re squeamish. I’ll do it.’
Five minutes later, the car, its Vehicle Identification Numbers efficiently bashed out of the doorframe, the footwell and the windscreen, was fast becoming anonymous, flames taking hold around the bludgeoned engine.
‘Well, that’s that then,’ said Bennet, after a deep breath. ‘Let’s get cracking.’
‘Uh oh,’ whispered Newton, looking over his shoulder. ‘Company.’
A good 500 yards away, a teenage barmaid, wearing headphones and riding on a pink bicycle towards the nearby pub, had stopped, her young eyes studying them through the darkness.
‘Balls,’ remarked Bennet. ‘Well, look, we can’t help that now. We need to press on quickly before anyone else sees us.’
Bennet and Newton dashed away behind the ruins, a freshening wind twirling the lost £100,000 around them like tinsel in a snow globe. As the petrol tank of the car fireballed behind them, they reached the eastern perimeter of the Abbey, and heaved themselves over the dry stone wall to begin the steep ascent up to Offa’s Dyke.
*****
To foreign ears, Offa’s Dyke has a suitably Tolkienesque vibe, its Dark Age origins fitting neatly into a Game of Thrones romanticism. And fair enough, really. After all, the Dyke had been constructed back in the 8th century, bang in the middle of the Dark Ages, a time when history was so badly recorded that the lines between truth and fiction were not so much blurred as perforated. It had been commissioned by the Mercian King Offa, a man who really wanted the Welsh at arm’s length. It is no mean feat of engineering, even by modern standards. Although the high earthworks topped by wooden barricades and the trench or dyke itself have mostly been sandblasted away over time, it still looks impressive. From Chepstow in the south, the dyke traces the modern border north to Prestatyn, a distance of over one hundred and seventy miles. Above Llanthony, it follows the ridgeline, adding a man-made obstacle to what was already a very steep barrier of bracken, gorse and lumpen geology.
The ascent of Offa’s Dyke would have been bad enough in fair weather, but now that the inevitable rain had started, the two Purgatorians were forced to wallow uphill like mudskippers. Hand over hand, they went, mud and sheep droppings coating them like teriyaki on a salmon steak. Now and again, far more agile sheep would appear alongside them in the darkness, their sarcastic bleating adding to Newton and Bennet’s sense of defeat. One was nonchalantly chewing a twenty-pound note.
It had not been a good night.
Below them in the Abbey, a cluster of police lights had appeared, their electric blue strobes lighting up the ruins like a pop concert.
‘They’ve found the car,’ observed Newton, struggling into an upright position. ‘I really hope you made it untraceable because they’ve doused your motor and they’re all over it.’
‘It won’t be on CCTV,’ insisted Bennet, wiping himself down. ‘Jameson had that sorted at the garage long ago, same as yours. The plates are in your bag, remember. We’ll be fine.’
‘With the police, yes,’ said Newton. ‘Head office, less so. Jameson is gonna skin us alive.’
‘We’re only human!’ protested Bennet. ‘Anyone can make a mistake.’
‘One mistake, maybe,’ said Newton. ‘We’ve made at least three.’
‘Three?’
‘Firstly,’ began Newton, ‘we’ve failed to obtain all three Necromancer handbooks, allowing them to fall into the hands of … well, they could be anyone. We don’t even have one of them.’
‘Ah. Well …,’
‘Secondly,’ continued Newton, ‘we’ve just lost £100,000 of Purgatorian moolah, the bulk of which is now plastered all over the Brecon Beacons National Park.’
‘Oh …’
‘And thirdly,’ added Newton, ‘we have just come horribly close to being nobbled by a lot of policemen. I’m sure they’ll be quite interested in five bullet-ridden cars and clouds of twenty-pound notes.’
‘Well, yes, … when you put it like that,’ conceded Bennet, ‘it does sound a bit off. Can’t say I’m looking forward to explaining it to Mr Jameson. Terribly condescending man, he does have a way of making one feel a trifle … small.’
‘Yup,’ agreed Newton. ‘Gonna be a ball ache. Still, there is no point in pre-empting our dressing down; we should crack on. Hell, it’s 9.30 now, and we’ve got friggin’ miles to go. I’m gonna have to lay off my phone. I’m down to eighteen percent. I daren’t use its map or its torch functions. Run out of juice, and we’ll be blind, deaf and mute.’
‘How are we supposed to know where we are going then? Mine’s completely dead,’ bleated Bennet, his tone eliciting an imitation from the sheep dotted around them.
‘Look, I don’t bloody know,’ snapped Newton. ‘All we can do is go for the top, then head for the nearest lights. Path or no path.’
‘But I’m cold,’ said Bennet.
‘Oh, shut up,’ snapped Newton.
*****
For the rest of the rain-lashed night, the one-time scientist and his holy companion struggled across the fields. Without a map and in the darkness, what should have been a one-hour hike had dissolved into a night of utter misery, their path blocked by thick, spiky hedges, seas of cow manure and endless barbed wire fences.
Daylight, a grey papier-mâché sky that had arrived cloaked in a wet, icy wind, had seen them stagger into the village of Clodock.
Newton and Bennet slopped through the churchyard, seeking refuge from the Arctic damp inside the 12th-century church of St Clydawg’s. Soaked through and freezing, they sat upon a pew, shaking uncontrollably.
‘It’s bloody c-c-c-colder in h-h-h here than it is out … out … out there,’ stuttered Newton.
‘Q-q-q-quick,’ urged Bennet. ‘Call J-J-J-Jameson, get one of the squads down here f-f-f-fast.’
‘P-p-problem,’ chattered Newton, looking at his phone. ‘My iPhhh-Ph-Ph-Ph-Phone’s bloody d-d-d-dead.’
‘B-b-b-but I thought you switched it off.’
‘Obviously not,’ Newton retorted tetchily.
‘P-p-payphone?’ suggested Bennet.
‘Oh, right,’ laughed Newton. ‘What is this? The 1950s? There won’t be a b-b-bloody payphone. We need a ch-ch-ch-charger. Come on, let’s find a p-p-p-pub. There has to be a pub. There’s always a pub.’
And, of course, being England, there was a pub: The Cornewall Arms. Beautifully untouched and fastidiously unmodernised, it was still bearing its signage from the 1930s. It looked so undiscovered that as they approached, Newton seriously wondered if The Cornewall had been abandoned.
‘Looks shut,’ said Bennet, reaching the door first.
‘Of course, it’s shut!’ snapped Newton, ‘It’s dawn.’
‘Yesssss, but I mean shut all the time,’ added Bennet, thoroughly worn down by Newton’s relentless bad temper.
‘Ring the bloody bell!’ barked Newton. ‘And we can find out. Or is that just too rational for you?’
‘Now, look here!’ protested Bennet. ‘There is no call for such a negative attitude. You have no right to talk to me like that.’
‘Yeah, yeah … blah blah blah … you gonna ring it, or would you rather we just sat out here and died of hypothermia?’
Bennet looked at Newton for a second, pondering the fifth commandment.
Then he pressed the bell.
On the fourth attempt, there was movement inside, followed by a long and complex opening of locks before the door eased microscopically ajar.
‘We’re not open,’ came the gruff response. ‘Go away.’ The door began to close.
‘No! Wait,’ exclaimed Bennet. ‘We need help.’
‘You need a life,’ suggested the voice. ‘It’s 9.15.’
‘But,we’ve had an accident. And our phone is dead.’
The door opened a little wider to reveal a face awash with scepticism. It took the pair of them in through narrowed eyes, the landlord scrutinising them with a lifetime’s experience of the worst in people.
‘You look like crap.’
‘Ah, yes, well,’ replied Bennet, ‘we had to walk, you see. In the rain.’
‘We just need a charger,’ explained Newton impatiently.
‘Charger?’ asked the landlord.
‘That’s right … a charger,’ repeated Bennet. ‘You know. For our phone.’
‘I know what a charger is,’ said the landlord. ‘What phone?’
‘Our phone,’ answered Bennet.
‘No, you numpty,’ snapped Newton looking at Bennet like a child. ‘He wants to know what kind of phone it is. It’s an iPhone 14.’
‘I’m a Samsung man,’ said the landlord, ‘But my stepdaughter has one o’ they. Stay here.’ The door closed and locked. There was a slow and ponderous footfall on old wooden stairs, a sudden angry exchange between the landlord’s gruff baritone and a shrill teenage falsetto. Then, equally ponderous steps came back down the stairs, the door opened, and a hand appeared holding a badly treated iPhone charger. ‘’Ere.’
‘Thanks,’ said Newton. ‘But we need somewhere to charge it … a socket.’
‘Why didn’t you bloody say,’ humphed the landlord. ‘I’m not a friggin’ mindreader.’ The door swung aside. ‘Socket’s over there, by the leaflet stand.’
‘Thank you,’ murmured Bennet. ‘We are most obliged to you for your kindne–’
‘Make your calls,’ grumped the landlord. ‘Then bugger off.’
‘Right, yes,’ Bennet plugged in the charger. The landlord had now taken up his operating position behind the tiny bar, eyes glaring. Bennet looked up optimistically. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a nice hot pot of …?
‘Nope,’ said the landlord flatly.
‘Right, no … of course,’ said Bennet. ‘Sorry.’
‘Just charge the bloody phone, Bennet,’ ordered Newton. ‘Soon as we have ten percent, we’ll call.’
There then followed an uncomfortable wait, the landlord in his dressing gown, the Purgatorians in their coating of mud and droppings, regarding each other awkwardly across the intimate bar as the phone took the charge.
‘Lovely place you have here,’ said Newton.
‘Is it now?’ replied the landlord blankly. ‘Is it really?’
The silence returned, only the splatter of thickening raindrops against the window filling the void.
‘Ok, we are in business,’ declared Bennet after ten long minutes.
‘Give it here,’ demanded Newton impatiently. Bennet handed him the phone.
‘I was wondering when you’d surface,’ came the instant grumpy response.
‘Mr Jameson. Hi,’ replied Newton, trying to sound buoyant. ‘Spot of bother.’
‘No kidding,’ said Jameson angrily. ‘You’ll have seen the news?’
‘’Fraid not,’ answered Newton. ‘We’ve been on foot most of the night. Car broke down.’
‘Broke down?’ snorted Jameson. ‘According to the news, it’s burned out, alongside four other cars, all riddled with gunfire.’
‘Ah, ok,’ replied Newton, making a face at Bennet. ‘That’s not good.’
‘No, … it isn’t,’ confirmed Jameson. ‘And that’s not the worst of it. There’s a witness.’
‘There is?’
‘According to their press release, the police are looking for two men, one dressed as a vicar. Any idea who that might be?’
‘I’ve a working hypothesis,’ offered Newton.
‘They go on to report,’ continued Jameson, ‘that there’s also rather a lot of money at the scene, spread all over the mountains, apparently. Our money, I'm guessing. What an utter shambles! Thank goodness you got the books, is all I can say.’
‘Ah,’ grimaced Newton, ‘I’m going to have to stop you there.’
‘You didn’t even get those?’ asked Jameson after an excruciating delay. ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’
‘Nope,’ admitted Newton. ‘Sorry. We nearly did, though, if that helps.’
There was a muffled curse, then another, uncomfortable silence.
‘It doesn’t. Where are you now?’ demanded Jameson.
‘In a pub,’ replied Newton.
‘A pub?’ exclaimed Jameson. ‘It’s barely nine-thirty!’
‘We’re not drinking. Honest,’ insisted Newton. ‘We had to charge the phone. We’re in a village called Clodock, in Herefordshire.’ Newton looked over towards the landlord. ‘Postcode?’
‘H, R, 2, 0, P, D,’ mumbled the landlord.
‘HR2 0PD,’ parroted Newton. ‘We’re in The Cornewall Arms.’
‘Noted,’ said Jameson coldly. ‘Well, you’ll be relieved to know we have people in the area looking for you. I’m loath to give you hope you don’t deserve, but I’ll have a car out to you within the hour.’
*****
Three hours on a cold picnic table later, their lift arrived.
The long drive back to the Reverend Bennet’s parish in West Belvingdon was as silent as it was mercifully uneventful. The driver, sensing the atmosphere, wisely said nothing. Eventually, the excruciating journey ended, their ride crunching into the vicarage drive to find Jameson’s van outside upon the gravel.
‘Hope you are ready for this,’ said Newton.
They prised themselves from the car, their bodies a mass of bruises, scratches and muscular-skeletal strains.
Their line manager, a man possessed of few social niceties, greeted them in the hallway with an icebox glare.
‘Well, well, the “warriors” return,’
‘I know it looks bad,’ began Bennet, hanging up his muddied overcoat. ‘But ….’
‘I wouldn’t bother with the positive spin,’ advised Newton, clocking Jameson’s unempathetic demeanour.
‘In the lounge,’ ordered Mr Jameson, pointing. ‘Let’s get this over with.’ Newton and Bennet passed into the neat sitting room, their boots leaving a trail of regular earthy deposits across the Turkish carpet. ‘Sit down.’
‘But we’ll get mess on the settee!’ protested Bennet.
‘SIT,’ repeated Jameson. They sat. ‘Now then, I’m not going to beat about the bush; last night’s little mess has caused us no end of pain. For starters, you abandoned a car which may have had no end of traceable material in it.’
‘Well,’ said Bennet, ‘I can confirm that I always check that the car is free of anything identifiable. Them’s the rules, and I follow them to the letter. Secondly, I removed the plates as per protocol before torching it … as per protocol.’
‘Did you really?’ said Jameson. ‘Because there’s been a copper here this morning asking about your “stolen” car.’
‘There has?’
‘Yes,’ continued Jameson, ‘there has. Seems a copy of the parish magazine survived your purifying fire. Pity, that.’
‘Gosh!’ exclaimed Bennet. ‘I’m sorry about that. So you told them it had been … stolen?’
‘I didn’t, no,’ answered Jameson. ‘Your housekeeper is clearly more on the ball than you. She fobbed them off.’
‘Oh good. Sounds like things are under control, again?
‘They would have been,’ said Jameson blankly, ‘if you hadn’t been clearly seen … by a child.’
‘Ah …,’ began Bennet.
‘Yes, “ah”,’ barked Jameson, finally raising his voice. ‘Luckily for us, we have an insider in the local police slowing down the investigation. But there is no guarantee they won’t put two and two together and return here for another wee chat.’
‘Oh great,’ muttered Newton.
‘“Great” is not the term I was reaching for,’ snapped Jameson. ‘Fiasco, shitstorm, cock up All those would fit, though, don’t you think?’
‘Harsh, but fair,’ conceded Newton. ‘So, what do we do?’
‘We clean it up pronto, is what we “do”,’ replied Jameson. ‘But before that joyful task begins, I want an explanation as to how this godawful mess actually came to pass.’ Newton and Bennet looked at each other for excuses, like two scrumping schoolboys caught in an apple orchard. ‘Well?’ demanded Jameson. ‘I’m all ears.’
There was an eerie silence, Newton deciding to say nothing, confident that his all-forgiving colleague would do the same.
‘It’s Newton,’ blurted Bennet.
‘It’s whaaat?’ exclaimed Newton, totally wrong-footed by the sudden outburst, an outburst that was all too clearly at his own expense. ‘Bennet … what the actual …?’
‘Nope … no, no, no,’ blurted Bennet. ‘Everyone has their limit, and the last twelve hours have been mine. No more Mr Nice Priest. Oh, dear me no. This whole episode is down to you, Newton Barlow, you and your relentless negativity. Goodness knows I’ve tried to turn the other cheek with you, but I’ve no more cheek to turn. You’ve been rude, disinterested, thoughtless and a major pain in the fundament. There, I’ve said it.’
‘You disloyal swine!’ gasped Newton. ‘So much for “all for one and one for all”. I wasn’t driving the bloody car.’
‘Well, there wouldn’t have been a bloody crash if I hadn’t had to drive away in such a hurry,’ protested Bennet.
‘Riiiight,’ laughed Newton. ‘So bad guys with guns, that was me was it?’
‘Well, you messed up the negotiation,’ continued Bennet. ‘If you hadn’t been so preoccupied with your existential crisis, perhaps you’d have stopped the dealer from reaching out to those bad guys in the first place. Then we’d have had the books to ourselves.’
‘What?’ said Newton, knowing it was close to the truth. ‘You heard the guy; he was threatened into having the others there.’
‘Am I to understand that your negotiations were a little … lacklustre, Dr Barlow?’ demanded Jameson. ‘Because it’s not the first time I’ve heard that your obsession with Purgatorial detail has both aggravated your colleagues and clouded your judgement. Care to elaborate?’
