“Long time ago, though, wasn’t that?” Lynley murmured.
“Church’s never been the same after that heathen spoke. Never. All those wankers with hair growing down to their arses singing ’bout getting their satisfactions met. And smashing their instruments to nothing. Those things cost money, but do they care? No. It’s all ungodly. No wonder everyone stopped coming to pay the Lord His due respect.”
Lynley was considering a reassessment of the gaga bit. He also needed Havers with him to sort out the old man when it came to his rock ’n’ roll history. He himself had been a late bloomer when it came to just about everything, and rock ’n’ roll was among the many areas of pop culture from the past upon which he could not wax, eloquently or otherwise. So he didn’t try. He waited until Wilkie had run out of steam on the topic, and in the meantime he became as admirably industrious with the whisk broom as he could manage within the confines of the pews and in the church’s inadequate lighting.
Presently, as he’d hoped, Wilkie concluded with, “World’s going to hell in a shopping trolley, you ask me,” an assessment with which Lynley did not disagree.
“Was the parents wanted to see that lad go down for the death.” The old man spoke suddenly, some minutes later as they worked their way along another row of pews. “Benesek Kerne. Parents got their jaws round him and they wouldn’t let go.”
“That would be the parents of the dead boy?”
“Dad especially went off his nut when that lad died. Was the apple of his eye, was Jamie, and Jon Parsons?that’s the dad?he never made bones about it to me. Man’s s’posed to have a favourite child, he said, and the others’re supposed to em’late him to get into the dad’s good graces.”
“There were other children in the family, then?”
“Four in all. Three young girls?one just a wee toddler?and that boy which died. Parents waited for the verdict from the inquest and when the verdict was death by misadventure, Dad came to me. Few weeks later, this was. Dead crazed, poor bloke. Told me he knew for certain the Kerne boy was responsible. I ask him why he waits to tell me this?’cause I’m discounting what he’s saying as the ravings of a man going mad with grief?and he tells me someone grassed. After the fact of the inquest, this was. He’s been doing his own nosing round, he tells me. He’s brought in his own investigator. And what they came up with was the grass.”
“Did you think he was telling you the truth?”
“Isn’t that the question? Who bloody knows?”
“This person?the grass?never spoke to you?”
“Just to Parsons. So he claimed. Which as you and I know is damn meaningless since what he wants more’n anything is an arrest of someone. He needs someone to blame. So does the wife. They need anyone to blame because they think that accusing, arresting, putting on trial, and imprisoning is going to make them feel better, which of course it isn’t. But Dad doesn’t want to hear that. What dad would? Running his own investigation is the only thing keeping him from sliding over the edge. So I’m willing to cooperate with him, help him out, help him through the bloody mess his life’s become. And I ask him to tell me who the grass is. I can’t ecksackly make an arrest on some tittle-tattle I didn’t even hear firsthand.”