‘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.’
