Dying Fall

instead. The trouble is, he lives in a rather insalubrious area of the city. He would probably lose his iPod in five minutes and his kneecaps in ten.
    The pagan ritual fascinated him too. Tim was brought up in a highly religious household and, in his mind, church-going is associated with a kind of hysterical fervour that always made him uncomfortable. Even as a child, he had preferred science, which could be proved, to anything arty, which couldn’t. This is probably what led him into the police force. He doesn’t, for one second, go along with all this ‘mystical gateway’ business but at least fire, water, earth and air are tangible physical realities, unlike the Big Daddy in the sky, a personage his mother always refers to as Father God. Well, for Tim, one father was enough. His dad left the family home when he was ten and Tim has never been inclined to search for him.
    Courteously holding open a five-bar gate for the other mourners, Tim thinks about Pendragon and about Dan Golding and Clayton Henry. None of these men were fathers, unless you count Henry’s stepdaughter. Tim met her when he interviewed Pippa Henry about her husband’s death. By that time, Sam had confessed to the murder and so the visit was a mere formality. Sam had, in fact, admitted everything within ten minutes of entering Bonny Street Station. ‘He’s going to play the nutter card,’predicted Sandy, ‘but he’s as sane as you or I.’ Sandy had appeared not to notice that Sam had still been dressed in a skirt and high heels and Tim admired his boss for realising that cross-dressing was not, in itself, a sign of insanity. He couldn’t help noticing that Sam also smelt strongly of
Ma Griffe
.
    The WPC who had broken the news of Henry’s death described Pippa as a ‘cold fish’, reporting disapprovingly that the bereaved wife failed to shed one tear. Tim was more forgiving. Pippa was calm, certainly, but grief takes people in different ways. The stepdaughter, Chloe, had certainly been upset, wiping away tears when she described how Clayton had been looking forward to their planned summer holiday in Tuscany. Had it been paid for, wondered Tim. Sandy said that Clayton had been up to his eyes in debt, the windmill mortgaged up to the sails. Pippa apparently had some money of her own, but if that had been enough to support the Henrys’ lifestyle, Clayton would surely not have resorted to stealing from the department.
    Pippa gave nothing away as she sat stroking her little dog, occasionally extending a soothing hand to her daughter. It was only when she was showing Tim out that Pippa had said, ‘I warned him. I knew that all this King Arthur business would lead to trouble. There are some very strange people out there.’ This was the first indication that Pippa had known anything about her husband’s membership of the White Hand.
    Tim had agreed that there were, indeed, some strangepeople out there but inwardly he doesn’t feel that the pagans are any stranger than his mother’s fellow worshippers in Basildon. People everywhere need ritual and make-believe to get them through their lives. Tim firmly believes that he is different, that he can exist in a purely rational world. But he is young; he knows he has a lot to learn.
    *
    Nelson too found himself rather enjoying the lunatic pagan service. Well, enjoy wasn’t exactly the word.
Appreciate
, maybe. Certainly it seemed to make more sense than some Christian funerals he has sat though; dreary events in anonymous crematoriums where the minister struggled to remember the name of the deceased and the mourners looked bored rather than heartbroken. A fullblown Catholic funeral is something else, such as the service that Maureen has planned for herself, in exhaustive detail. ‘You’ll outlive me, Mum,’ said Nelson that morning, as he ploughed through the list of music (most of which would need the Berlin Philharmonic for maximum effect). ‘Don’t say that,’ said Maureen, crossing herself. ‘It’s a terrible thing for a parent to outlive their child.’ Well, for a few terrible hours last week, Nelson had thought that this would be his fate, that he would lose the daughter he still can’t fully acknowledge and would be doomed forever to grieve in silence. The thought of this made him feel unusually tolerant towards his mother and he had given Maureen a quick, unexpected hug. ‘You’re good for a few years yet,’ he had said. ‘Oh Iknow that,’ Maureen had replied.