Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  Near the top of the hill, wooded either side, the phone chimed, making her heart bump in a way it never had before. Oh God. Time to replace the chimes with the blues riff or the barking dog before they were rendered terminally eerie. The chiming and the stroke. Even priests were hardwired for superstition. She really had to talk to somebody about this. The idea of something non-physical inflicting physical harm was outside her experience.

  She dropped down to second gear, took a slippery incline to the right and parked close to the exposed Neolithic burial chamber, Arthur’s Stone.

  Nobody else here; there rarely was. Perhaps there were times of day when Arthur’s Stone – actually a rough arrangement of big stones – would look sinister and forbidding, but mostly it made her think of a prehistoric mechanical digger trundling towards the edge of the hill.

  She got out of the car and laid the phone on the capstone’s tilting table. The phone displayed a four bar signal. The screen said missed call. The number was the gatehouse office. She called it back.

  ‘Merrily, where are you? I’ve rung seven times in the past two hours.’

  ‘I… I’ve been out of signal. It’s Saturday. Is there something wrong?’

  What was Sophie doing in the office on a Saturday?

  ‘You left a message asking me to make you an appointment with the Bishop. He could see you today.’

  ‘Sorry, I was thinking Monday. The Bishop doesn’t usually—’ Or the old Bishop didn’t.

  ‘Or rather, he said he could see you before lunch.’

  ‘I never thought. Bernie would’ve been watching the football.’

  ‘Where did you say you were?’

  ‘Erm, getting a puncture mended.’ Dear God, it had come to blatant lies now. ‘In… in Leominster.’

  ‘I’ll see if it’s still possible, but you’ll need to make it later. He has a meeting with the Archdeacon in about ten minutes, say an hour for that. I can perhaps get you some time when he comes out.’

  ‘Right.’

  She leaned on the stone. Across the Golden Valley, the so-called holy mountain, the Skirrid, had its nose above the horizon, sky and mountain fused by rainclouds. She was sorry she’d asked for the meeting. She was tired. She felt steadied here, didn’t want to leave.

  Sophie was the person she would normally have told about the pointing finger, the chiming clocks. And couldn’t.

  ‘Merrily. When you go in with him…’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Be very careful what you say.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About anything,’ Sophie said.

  24

  Appropriate adult

  USUALLY JANE DRANK cider. This afternoon, in the Black Swan, it was grapefruit juice, and no explanation.

  Years since Lol had given up psychotherapy for full-time music, but Jane… well, you just couldn’t help studying Jane. People with kids went on about the joys of parenting ending at about eleven, before the teenage years inflicted some kind of horrific trial-by-combat, but Lol was glad he’d been on the sidelines during the crazy years. Whatever happened for him and Merrily, he and Jane were never going to have a father/daughter relationship grown from loving memories of bedtime stories and bottle-feeding.

  ‘So how’s Eirion?’ he said, as the Black Swan’s posher barroom filled up around them.

  ‘Oh.’ Jane looked into her glass. ‘Fine.’

  A whoop went up the other side of the bar – somebody scoring on the big-screen TV in the public.

  Fine. Where did you go from here? Try to find out what was bothering her – because something was, and badly – or just back away and let it emerge in its own time?

  ‘I was just thinking he always used to come over at weekends,’ Lol said.

  ‘Not every weekend.’

  Jane’s eyes flickered.

  They’d met on the square, Jane looking into the window of the bookshop, Ledwardine Livres, Lol just looking around, feeling his way back into the village and hoping Merrily might drive in from wherever she’d gone. She’d talked last night about the Bishop but not so much about Raji Khan or what Khan had wanted. Maybe none of his business. Nor was this, really. He was Jane’s friend, that was all.

  ‘Eirion was with you, wasn’t he?’ Lol said. ‘In Pembrokeshire.’

  ‘Just for the first few weeks. Until he had to go back to Cardiff.’

  Eirion was entering his second year at Cardiff University. Then he’d go on to journalism college. He was a nice guy, but he’d been Jane’s first real boyfriend, and an attractive, curious kid like Jane, living in a society that scorned moral parameters… Lol wondered if she ever felt she’d missed out on a wild youth.

  As the bar filled up, background chat rising, they talked about Lol’s first production job, at Prof Levin’s studio, for mad Belladonna, once iconic. A woman who wanted to work with him as a fellow neurotic. Whom he’d first met, memorably, by candlelight at the top of the church tower at Ludlow. Who the fuck are you? Bell had said, with death on her mind. Bell was famous for her recording of ‘Gloomy Sunday’, the Hungarian suicide song.

  ‘Is it good?’ Jane asked. ‘The album?’

  ‘Er, depends what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Lot of late nights?’

  ‘Coming back here, it’s like I’m in jetlag.’

  Jane grinned. It was a mature grin. She’s a woman now, Lol thought, and I’m not her dad. There’s nothing we can’t say to one another. Why not ask?

  He leaned back, looking at the blue light cast on her face through the square of thick old mullioned glass, working up to it.

  ‘So. Here we are, then. Back within a day of each other. At Hallowe’en. Is that an omen?’

  Jane said nothing.

  ‘You do still believe in omens?’

  She looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Not obsessively.’

  Lol stared at her. Jane raised her hands.

  ‘Yeah, I know, whatever happened to Mystic Jane? Look… if she eventually does go to university to study archaeology, ancient history, whatever, she probably needs to wipe the slate clean. Come to it without preconceptions. Avoid looking like a loony. Mystic Jane… cold storage.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Myths and legends,’ Lol said, ‘I think they ground us. Connect us to where we are. But then I just write songs.’

  Jane sighed. Lol thought, You really don’t know where you are, do you?

  He took a breath.

  ‘So, Eirion—’

  ‘Laurence!’ Another stool was dragged up to their table, a black beanie dropped down between the glasses. ‘How yer doing, son?’

  ‘Francis,’ Lol said.

  Frannie Bliss, the cop, sat down, beamed at Lol, then at Jane.

  ‘Can’t stay long, kiddies, I’m on me lunch hour. Well, me lunch twenty minutes today, and I should be having it at me desk under the circs, but I just wanted a quick chat with Jane.’

  Jane blinked but recovered fast.

  ‘Sorry about the tag, Inspector. Must’ve come off. I’ll bring it in when I find it.’

  Bliss smiled fondly.

  ‘Been across to the vicarage, but there was only the cat in. With this being business, I thought your ma ought to be around. But Lol’s probably OK, if he doesn’t mind.’

  ‘What – as my Appropriate Adult?’ Jane raising her eyes to the beams, lowering them slowly to give him the hard stare. ‘You cheeky sod, Bliss, I’m nineteen!’

  ‘Mother of God,’ Bliss said. ‘Doesn’t time fly?’

  ‘Apparently that’s when you get past a certain age. What am I supposed to have done?’

  Bliss sighed.

  ‘What a pity it is, Jane, that your first encounter with the law should’ve involved an officer less soft-shoed and deferential than meself.’

  ‘If you were Annie Howe, I wouldn’t even be talking to you now.’

  ‘She’s a changed woman, Jane.’ Bliss looked sorrowful. ‘Word is she�
��s found love.’

  ‘Like with some sad little bloke who gets off on being beaten and whipped?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, Jane. Listen, I believe you went to talk to a certain Mr Cooper, of the county archaeologist’s department, the other day. What was that about?’

  ‘And that concerns West Mercia Police… why?’

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘If you must know, I was offering to sleep with him in exchange for temporary employment.’

  Lol flashed Bliss an expression to say this was just Jane being Jane, because it had gone beyond banter. She’d always got on with Bliss, knew her mum liked him, but she was behaving like she might have done a few years ago when she was at the difficult kid stage.

  But Bliss was looking wry and patient. Which was also odd. According to Barry, there was a murder investigation on in Hereford.

  ‘Cooper says you met him on Castle Green and you arrived escorted by a guy called Tristram Greenaway.’

  Jane shrugged and picked up her grapefruit juice, swirled it around.

  ‘I just knew he was called Tris. What’s he done?’

  ‘He’s got himself murdered, Jane.’

  The glass went down hard, Jane searching Bliss’s face.

  ‘It was on TV and radio this morning, victim not named because we hadn’t talked to his next of kin.’

  Jane had slumped.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘I’m sorry if you and he…’

  Bliss was watching her, Lol wondering if he was here because he’d wanted to see Jane’s reaction when she heard this guy was dead. Surely not…

  ‘Me and him, nothing,’ Jane said. ‘That was the first time we’d met, and our relationship lasted possibly twenty minutes?’ Mild pain in her eyes now. ‘A nice… nice guy. What happened to him?’

  ‘We’re waiting for the post-mortem. Thing is, Jane, you seem to have been among the last people to talk to him before he was killed.’

  ‘If you want an alibi, I was with Mum for the rest of the day. I may be wrong, but I think it might be against her religion, covering up a murder.’

  ‘So you didn’t know him.’

  ‘I went to the office looking for Coops, and Tris said he was at Castle Green and offered to show me where it was. I suppose I was flattered because he was good-looking. Very good-looking. So I didn’t tell him I knew the way.’

  ‘You thought he fancied you?’

  ‘It’s been known to happen.’

  ‘Course it has, Jane. What did you talk about?’

  ‘I dunno. Not much. I mean, we didn’t like hold hands and arrange to meet later or anything like… God, this feels so weird. Was he attacked in the street or something?’

  ‘I’ll be upfront with you,’ Bliss said. ‘We don’t know why he was killed, but we don’t think it was robbery and we don’t think it was random. He was found at home and nothing seemed to have been stolen. Which is why we’re interested in his movements on the day he died. Who he met, what they talked about. If he’d said he’d have to dash off because he was meeting somebody.’

  ‘You should be so lucky.’

  ‘I can only ask.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jane said. ‘He was very friendly. He didn’t actually make any kind of move on me or anything.’

  ‘He was gay, Jane.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jane had started playing with a beermat. ‘I see.’

  ‘He seem happy, to you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say that. He was very friendly, but I think that was just how he was, his nature. He told me he thought he was going to get a permanent job with the county archaeologist’s department because the head guy was expected to take early retirement and Coops would get his job and Tris would get Coops’s job, but that’s not going to happen.’

  ‘He thought he wasn’t going to be around for long?’

  ‘He said he thought that, with all the cuts, the department itself might not be long for this world, but I think he was just being cynical.’

  ‘So not happy.’

  ‘That’s the impression I got. Then Coops came over, so he didn’t say anything else.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything about Neil Cooper?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Neil say anything about him?’

  ‘You think what happened to him was something to do with his job?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh yeah, he told me Coops had found a new grave on Castle Green after this tree came down in the storm. And there were some bones. When I asked Coops, he…’

  Lol thought he saw a movement, a shadow crossing Jane’s face.

  ‘Go on,’ Bliss said.

  ‘He just didn’t say much. I was like, Oh you found some bones, right? Thinking there might be a big excavation coming off. And he said, Who told you that? And I said it was Tris.’

  ‘And he said?’

  ‘Oh— and I said, Should he have kept quiet about it? And Coops indicated it was no big deal one way or another.’

  ‘He said the bones were no big deal.’

  ‘Words to that effect. Look, I’m just one of the unemployed. He didn’t have to tell me anything.’

  Bliss shook his head gently, and Lol wondered what this was really about. Coming out here to talk to somebody who, chances were, wouldn’t have anything to tell you… well, that surely wasn’t a DI’s job. In a murder inquiry, the DI was supposed to sit in his office and coordinate.

  Jane finished her grapefruit juice, put the glass down. No more Bliss-baiting, her heart clearly wasn’t in it any more.

  ‘Where is your mam?’ Bliss said.

  ‘She’s…’ Jane shrugged. ‘Dunno. Out doing vicar things.’

  Lol said, ‘You want Merrily to call you?’

  ‘I’ll catch up with her,’ Bliss said. ‘At some stage.’

  24

  Agony

  SOPHIE’S DOWNCAST EYES said, I’m so sorry.

  A stark light was pushed into the gatehouse from a white line of sun between tough, gravelly clouds. There were three of them in the office and none was a bishop.

  ‘Bishop Craig’s asked me to talk to you,’ Siân Callaghan-Clarke said to Merrily. ‘As Archdeacon.’

  There’d been no women bishops when Siân, ex-barrister, daughter of a Blair-era baroness, had been appointed as the Bishop’s head of human resources, or she might well have skipped this thankless phase.

  ‘I mean, rather than as a friend,’ Siân said. ‘Although I like to think we are these days. Friends.’

  She looked up from the visitors’ chair, an eyebrow raised, all poise and sleek grey hair. Well, yes, they were better friends now than when Siân had been appointed to coordinate a failed diocesan deliverance panel with the psychiatrist, Nigel Saltash. There was almost trust between them now, but it wasn’t wise to count on it; a new regime could alter the whole diocesan dynamic.

  ‘Don’t look so mutinous, Merrily. Every bishop has a different way of working. Close the door. Come and sit down. Sophie, could we trouble you for coffee?’

  Sophie nodded, moved to the dresser by the sink. If anybody ought to look mutinous it was Sophie – losing control, seeming no longer at home here. Merrily closed the door and went to her chair behind the desk in the window but didn’t sit down. The chair wasn’t in its usual place, and the desk had been moved forward. Siân turned her own chair to face it.

  ‘Do sit down.’

  Merrily wanted to move the chair back against the wall under the window. It didn’t look right and it didn’t feel right when she sat down.

  ‘Bishop Craig’s more into delegation than Bernie was,’ Siân said. ‘Something we all need to get used to.’

  ‘You mean he doesn’t like to break unwelcome news personally. To the shop floor.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not my idea of unwelcome news. He’d like you to consider accepting the post of Rural Dean for your area.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Area supervisor,’ Siân explained, like she needed to. ‘More responsibilit
y. More money.’

  ‘Head prefect,’ Merrily said.

  She felt numb.

  ‘That’s rather unfair.’ Siân’s expression didn’t change. ‘You could be next in line for my job, if not here, then somewhere…’

  Siân’s voice faded. Merrily heard traffic trickling down Broad Street. She felt unplugged. Sophie stood frozen at the dresser, her back to them. The room had dimmed, Merrily sensing those gritty black clouds tightening the narrow line of white.

  ‘What about Mark Shriver? Is he leaving?’

  ‘He’s relinquishing the post. With a view to retirement in a couple of years. The Bishop sees you as an obvious successor.’

  Did that even seem likely?

  ‘Siân, I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t even know me. The one time we met, it was like I wasn’t here.’

  ‘He might give that impression sometimes,’ Siân said, ‘but I can assure you he makes it very much his business to know everything.’

  ‘Yes. Evidently.’

  ‘He doesn’t make these offers without due thought and consultation. He tells me he’s recognized your people skills.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The way you’ve dealt with people facing… critical situations? Isolated people who often find it hard to discuss their problems. Including certain priests. Martin Longbeach always says he wouldn’t have come through his crisis without you, and we both know that country parishes…’

  ‘That mostly you can’t give them away,’ Merrily said.

  Siân didn’t deny it.

  ‘With several churches each and fluctuating congregations, rural priests are finding it increasingly hard to cope, and it’s not likely to get any easier. Making Rural Dean a vital role.’

  ‘And quite a lot of extra work.’

  ‘It’s what you make of it.’ Siân smiled professionally. ‘Have a think about it. I can see you as a very special kind of agony aunt to the clergy of North Herefordshire.’

  How patronizing was that?

  ‘However…’ Merrily took a slow breath. ‘… with the deliverance work as well…’

  Over at the dresser, Sophie clashed crockery.