Chapter Twenty
Later that morning, Kim drove Edward in the Porsche to her mother’s house.
As the crow flew it was barely three miles west, but the River Otter stood in the way with precious few crossings.
So she took the road to Bulverton and then up to the Bowd junction, turning onto Four Elms Hill.
From there the road led to Newton Poppleford, over the river and then south to Colaton Raleigh.
‘Should we pick up Stevie? Could you call her? She’s close by.’
‘Good idea, if she’s around. The wedding is days away, gulp.’
As if trying to escape the fact of the wedding, Kim put her foot down at that moment and took a left turn a little too fast. Edward ended up leaning right, into her arm. ‘Sorry – hang on—’ She freed herself. ‘Changing gear.’
He did not react, so she said: ‘You really are deep in thought.’
‘This bloody biker story. It’s getting in the way of everything. The false plates are out there now, thanks to last night’s police statement. But they are so bloody cagey on the rest. Ukrainian with a Russian name?’
‘I heard your show. You think there’s more to it, don’t you?’
‘Yes, there must be. The cordon yoyo-ing in and out just doesn’t make sense if it was just a crash.’ Edward gazed out of the window again. Kim stole another glance at him.
‘But the Russian thing, is that just nonsense?’
‘Probably. “Man with slightly Russian name crashes”, I mean …’
‘With false plates.’
‘True. False plates, Russian name. But still, no one hurt except him, and that poor little girl in Exeter General.’
They parked outside the vicarage. Stevie emerged almost instantly. ‘I’ll go in the back,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I haven’t got child-bearing hips.’ The Porsche was tight. ‘So are we going to meet your mother’s boyfriend, Kim?’
‘All set up for us.’
In the back seat, Stevie groaned. ‘We’re going to have to get a different car if this is for us to do adventures in. My legs have gone to sleep back here.’
‘Unexpected item in the bagging area,’ said Kim.
‘Well exactly.’
Ten minutes later, the car slowed outside Barbara’s.
‘So here we are.’ And there Barbara was, as if by magic, standing at the front door.
Kim approached on the garden path, Edward and Stevie following.
As Barbara hugged her daughter, Kim heard Stevie say to Edward: ‘I’ve got to tell you about something that happened at the hospital yesterday. ’
‘Oh?’ replied Edward, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. ‘Can it wait?’
‘Now, Mum,’ Kim began. ‘This is my best friend. Well, both of them.’ The older woman was obviously delighted to see Edward alongside Kim, and had been ever since she had discovered the relationship was serious. Edward Temmis had been, still was, her radio presenter of choice.
The four sat in the living room. Edward made a show of admiring Barbara’s little wooden models, as he called them – it was Kim who corrected the phrase to ‘automata’, which she knew her mum would insist on.
While Barbara was pouring tea in the kitchen, Kim whispered: ‘And don’t mention Fiona Bruce.
Antiques Roadshow came to Honiton, and Mum couldn’t get her bits seen. ’
‘Automata, please, not bits.’
‘One-all.’
Barbara returned. ‘The cameramen spent the whole time focusing on her bottom.’
‘Who, Mum?’
‘Fiona Bruce.’
Edward had lost track. The front doorbell went, saving them. ‘At last!’ said Barbara. ‘Oh, I think he’s staying by the van. Do you need me? Will you come back?’
‘We’ll come back,’ promised Kim. And they all stood and peered through the front door at the man who had arrived in a van painted with the words OLD BATTLES FULL SCALE LIMITED.
David Marner appeared to breathe through a hole in his throat. That was the first thing Edward saw. A clear plastic vent, shaped like the barrel-stopper on a toy gun, protruded from the skin to the left of his Adam’s apple.
He was broad, with enormous thighs which seemed to be wrapped in velvet, a pock-marked face and a small goatee which could easily have been part of a costume. His appearance was confusing, as if he had come half in character, half in his regular clothes.
‘You wanted me?’ His voice was a growl and a hiss combined, the sound of several different dangerous animals. ‘We spoke on the phone, Kim. Mr Temmis, I like your programme.’ He looked at Stevie. ‘Who is this pocket rocket?’
Behind them, Barbara said: ‘He calls a spade a spade.’
‘Shut up woman.’
Kim snapped her head to the right. ‘I hope that’s just banter.’
‘Oh it is,’ laughed Barbara. ‘He is funny as well as being unusually succinct.’
‘Medieval battles tended to be rapid,’ said David Marner, evidently thinking the statement followed logically. ‘Miss Sinker, you asked me about using a bolt and a charge. I have set it up for you.’
‘A bolt and a what?’ asked Stevie. ‘They haven’t kept me in the bloody loop.’
‘You said you didn’t want to know,’ said Edward with a wink. ‘So now we’re going to give you a little surprise.’
‘I never get told anything,’ said Barbara.
They drove behind Marner’s van.
‘This is to do with the sooted hankie, right?’ asked Stevie from the back seat of the Porsche.
‘And the hole in the tree trunk.’
‘Edward,’ said Kim, ‘let me tell her!’
‘No, don’t,’ retorted Stevie. ‘If I can’t work it out then I don’t deserve to know.’
Marner had a field north of Sidmouth with a small area for car parking and a shed carrying an enormous sign: NO LANCES, SHIELDS, SPIKED MACES etc KEPT IN THIS SHED OVERNIGHT.
‘We use this as an assembly point only. I get my customers here, we dress and practise, see how comfortable we are in chain mail or full armour. Then off it comes and off we go, sometimes out of the county.’
Kim, Stevie and Edward stood listening. Feeling that Marner needed a question, Edward asked: ‘Is business good?’
‘The Health and Safety is out of this world. I have to risk-assess every single weapon. They told me I needed plastic swords and I said fuck off and that was it. No further trouble.’
Edward heard Stevie whisper to Kim, ‘I like this guy a lot. But don’t let me forget: I need to speak to you and Edward about something.’
‘Later?’ Kim responded vaguely.
‘Fair play to them,’ said Marner, his voice like the hiss of steam from a kettle. ‘Ever since this’ – he pointed at the vent in his neck – ‘they’ve been onto me like flies on shit. Ramrod injury. Very common. I was a fool.’
Kim frowned at Edward who grimaced at Stevie. No one seemed to want to ask what a ramrod injury was.
‘I wouldn’t normally do this for a customer, but Kim’s no customer, she is the daughter of my queen.
’ At the mention of Barbara, David Marner suddenly seemed to bloom.
His cheeks spread in a ruddy smile and he tossed his fringe away from his eyes.
A kind of medieval bow followed, almost a curtsey, where he put his right foot behind his left ankle and dropped his head as low as it would go. ‘What Queen B wants, Queen B gets.’
‘Very nice,’ said Kim. ‘You can stay.’
‘We have a bit of a walk, I’m afraid.’
He went to the shed door, took what seemed an age to release two padlocks and then grabbed a holdall from inside. ‘Come with me.’
They walked in silence across the field. Edward was conscious, for a moment, of their steps in the mud falling perfectly into time, like soldiers.
At the far end, Marner showed them a solid oak. ‘Not an ash. I know you asked for an ash, but it makes no difference.’
Stevie stepped forwards. ‘I see the hole.’
‘I drilled it earlier from the photo sent to me by Kim. I estimate this opening at three-eighths of an inch. That’s the drill bit I used.
’ He dropped to his haunches and picked up a battery drill half-covered by leaves on the forest floor.
‘Bit embarrassing, leaving it out like this, but it’s been so dry. ’
Stevie said, ‘I think I know what you’re going to do.’
‘Haven’t you been briefed by the others?’
‘They wanted it to be a surprise.’
‘Well,’ said Marner, evidently warming to her, ‘it may well be that. This was a surprise,’ he said, ‘touching the vent on his neck. You do know what a ramrod injury is?’
Edward looked at his feet, embarrassed that they had all let the first reference go.
David Marner said, ‘It was eight years ago. I was using what they called a ramrod, or sometimes a “scouring stick” because it’s also used for cleaning.
With muzzle-loading guns you push the gunpowder in and then the projectile.
The projectile, the bullet, needs packing tight.
There’s always the danger of a spark, and that’s what happened.
Ram the projectile, compress the powder, create the spark and wham.
I was stumbling around with a ramrod sticking in one side of my neck and coming out the other, like Lurch in the Addams family.
Hence my trach vent, because there was so much trauma to the upper airways, they never worked properly again. Hence my voice. But I’m here.’
He turned to the tree. ‘So, the same hole you had in the photos. An oak not an ash. Same height. Young lady,’ he addressed Stevie, ‘you still don’t know what this is for?’
Stevie said, ‘We were looking at a murder in a forest, so no, I have no idea what the hole in the tree was for.’
‘A murder?’ said Marner. ‘How interesting.’
He opened the holdall by his feet and removed what looked like a black stick. He held it in front of him without speaking. ‘Old one, flights torn.’ His fist closed around the centre point of the crossbow bolt. ‘No barb at the front, instead just a snub point. Hold this, Temmis.’
Edward took the bolt. The three were silent. The wind picked up and the leaves above them shivered as if in expectation.