Longshot. Part 59

There were parking places all along that road, not planned, official, tarmacked areas but small inlets of beaten earth formed by the waiting cars of many walkers. I pulled into one of them, put on the handbrake and, when the boys were out, locked the doors.

Gareth wore of course his psychedelic jacket. Coconut's yellow oilskins had been superseded by an equally blinding anorak and I, in the regrettable absence of my ski-suit jacket, looked camouflaged against the trees in stone-washed jeans and a roomy olive-drab Barbour borrowed from Tremayne.

'Right,' I said, smiling, as they slid the straps of bright blue nylon knapsacks over their shoulders, 'we'll take a walk into the Berks.h.i.+re wilderness. Everyone fit?'

They said they were, so we stepped straight into the tangled maze of alder, hazel, birch, oak, pine, fir and laurel and picked our steps over dried gra.s.s, scratchy brambles and the leafless knee-high branching shoots of the wood's next generation. None of this had been cleared or replanted; it was scrub woodland as nature had made it, the real thing as far as the boys were concerned.

I encouraged them to lead but kept them going towards the sun by suggesting detours round the obstructing patches, and I identified the trees for them, trying to make it interesting.

'We're not eating the bark again, are we?' Coconut said, saying ugh to a birch tree.

'Not today. Here is a hazel. There might still be some nuts lying round it.'

They found two. Squirrels had been there first.

We went about a mile before they tired of the effort involved, and I didn't mean to go much further in any case because according to the map I had in my pocket we were by then in about the centre of the western spur of the Quillersedge woods. We'd come gently up and down hill, but not much further on the ground fell away abruptly, according to the map's contour lines, with too hard a climb on the return.

Gareth stopped in one of the occasional small clearings and mentioned food hopefully.

'Sure,' I said. 'We can make some reasonable seats with dead twigs to keep our bottoms off the damp ground, if you like. No need today for a shelter.'

They made flat piles of twigs, finis.h.i.+ng them off with evergreen, then emptied their rucksacks and spread the blue nylon on top. We all sat fairly comfortably and ate things I'd bought for the occasion.

'Smoked trout!' Gareth exclaimed. 'That's an advance on roots.'

'You could catch trout and smoke them if you had to,' I said. 'The easiest way to catch them is with a three-p.r.o.nged spear, but don't tell that to fishermen.'

'How do you smoke them?'

'Make a fire with lots of hot embers. Cover the embers thickly with green fresh leaves: they'll burn slowly with billows of smoke. Make a latticed frame to go over the fire and put the trout on it or otherwise hang them over the smoke, and if possible cover it all with branches or more leaves to keep the smoke inside. The best leaves for smoking are things like oak or beech. The smell of the smoke will go into the fish to some extent, so don't use anything you don't like the smell of. Don't use holly or yew, they're poisonous. You can smoke practically anything. Strips of meat. Bits of chicken.'

'Smoked salmon!' Coconut said. 'Why not?'

'First catch your salmon,' said Gareth dryly.

He had brought a camera and he took photos of everything possible; the seats, the food, ourselves.

'I want to remember these days when I'm old like Dad,' Gareth said. 'Dad wishes he'd had a camera when he went round the world with his father.'

'Does he?' I asked.

He nodded. 'He told me when he gave me this one.'

We ate the trout with unleavened bread and healthy appet.i.tes and afterwards filled up with mixed dried fruit and pre-roasted chestnuts and almonds. The boys declared it a feast compared with the week before and polished off their chocolate as a bonus.

Gareth said casually, 'Was it in a place like this that someone killed Angela Brickell?'

'Well- I should think so. But five miles or so from here,' I said.

'And it was summer,' he commented. 'Warm. Leaves on the trees.'

'Mm.' Imaginative of him, I thought.

'She wanted to kiss me,' he said with a squirm.

Both Coconut and I looked at him in astonishment.

'I'm not as ugly as all that,' he said, offended.

'You're not ugly,' I a.s.sured him positively, 'but you're young.'

'She said I was growing up.' He looked embarra.s.sed, as did Coconut

'When did she say that?' I asked mildly.

'In the Easter holidays, last year. She was always out there in the yard. Always looking at me. I told Dad about it, but he didn't listen. It was Grand National time and he couldn't think of anything but Top Spin Lob.' He swallowed. 'Then she went away and I was really glad. I didn't like going out into the yard when she was there.' He looked at me anxiously. 'I suppose it's wrong to be glad someone's dead.'

'Is glad what you feel?'

He thought about it.

'Relieved,' he said finally. 'I was afraid of her.' He looked ashamed. 'I used to think about her, though. Couldn't help it.'

'It won't be the last time someone makes a pa.s.s at you,' I said prosaically. 'Next time, don't feel guilty.'

Easier said than done, I supposed. Shame and guilt tormented the innocent more than the wicked.

Gareth seemed liberated by having put his feelings into words and he and Coconut jumped up and ran around, throwing mock punches at each other, swinging on tree branches, getting rid of bashfulness with shouts and action and shows of strength. I supposed I'd been like that too, but I couldn't remember.

'Right,' I said, as they subsided onto the seats and panted while I packed away our food wrappings (which would have started a d.i.n.ky fire). 'Which way to the Land Rover?'

'That way,' said Gareth immediately, pointing east.

'That way,' Coconut said, pointing west.

'Which way is north?' I asked.

They both got it instinctively wrong, but then worked it out roughly by the sun, and I showed them how to use a watch as a compa.s.s, which Gareth half remembered, having learned before.

'Something to do with pointing the hands at the sun,' he guessed.

I nodded. 'Point the hour hand at the sun, then halfway between the hand and twelve o'clock is the north-south line.'

'Not in Australia,' Gareth said.

'We're not in Australia,' Coconut objected. He looked at his watch and around him. 'That way is north,' he said, pointing. 'But which way is the Land Rover?'

'If you go north you'll come to the road,' I said.