Free The Grail Tree by Jonathan Gash

now. Maybe I was sickening for something but I didn’t think so.
    ‘This is like going to London via Cape Horn, Lovejoy.’ Even the tolerant Sandy was narked at me now. Great.
    I began to wish I’d never heard of old Reverend Henry Swan and Martha and their faked bloody sword. I didn’t even wave to Liz.
    Approaching Buresford, a police car overtook us, flashing and wailing. I watched it, my heart heavy with foreboding. Mel drove one-handed, gave it a silent toast, his glass of port raised.
    ‘They took no notice of us!’ Sandy complained.
    ‘It’s their loss, dear,’ from Mel.
    We braked suddenly.
    ‘Mel! You’ve spilled my drink!’ Sandy squealed. ‘Oh, it was
doomed
from the start.’
    Ahead the road curved to enter Buresford near the church, the black-and-white cottages in headlights by the river bend. A constable flagged us slowly on. Two police cars at rest flashed impatient lights in Martha Cookson’s gateway. An ambulance whirred out of the drive and tore past.
    I racked the window down. My hand was shaking.
    ‘Can we go in, Constable?’
    ‘There’s been an explosion. I’ve orders to admit no one.’
    ‘Anybody hurt?’ The feeling was gone now, only a certainty of tragedy remaining.
    ‘Yes. One member of the family and two anglers.’ He seemed worried and somewhat lost.
    I told Mel to drive through the gateway. The policeman was relieved somebody else had made a decision and waved us in. I honestly don’t know what the police are playing at these days, sending bobbies out the way they do. They all seem worried sick and green as grass. No wonder there are criminals about.
    We couldn’t reach the house because of two motorcycles propped across the drive. It looked like a film set with lights and cables. Three policemen were talking and scribbling by the ornamental fountain. I made myself observe the lunatic scene yard by yard. A small cluster of people were down by the river. A few others were gathered around the ambulance parked incongruously in the centre of the lawn’s edge. The ground everywhere was scored by tyre marks.
    For some seconds the essentials failed to register in my mind. Then I began picking them up more sensibly, one by one. It was as if my mind was checking off items accepted for recognition. The two white-coated figures. A nurse running the few steps in to the ambulance for something shiny. Tubes. An inverted bottle of yellow fluid. One doctor with shiny shoes, one doctor in white slipper things. Another constable being told to hold on to this for a moment, please, just like that thank you, and kneeling his creased trousers into the muddy ground carefully doing as he was asked. Sweat trickling from under his helmet. Smoke pouring up from the river and two fire vehicles blinking redlyacross the other side of the water. Hoses snaked down and pulsing in time with the throbs from the engine. One fireman in a yellow helmet shouting orders from among the bulrushes. Another ambulance over there, with doors flung wide and two white coats huddled down.
    ‘My
God
!’ I heard Sandy say faintly. ‘Lovejoy . . .’
    A policeman was holding me back on the drive. Somehow I was pushing past and saying get out of the bloody way. Then running to the little riverside terrace and the people there.
    A long bundle on the ground. Anglers on the opposite bank in twos and threes talking and looking, one with his small son carefully folding a keepnet as black oily smoke rolled among the weeds. Everything was in half shadow, macabre.
    Then the longboat. I never realized their hulls were so flat underneath, flat as a pavement. Rust showed and some weeds stuck along the sides. Smoke billowed. I mean that it
billowed
like smoke in famous poems and children’s pirate stories, roll after roll from the barge. You only need to see a devastated boat for all the sea sagas ever written to become instantly understandable. Oh, I know a ruined house or a wrecked plane that can never fly again is utterly