by Phil Rickman
‘What an ambivalent feller he is,’ Huw said. ‘Fire and brimstone modernist.’
He glanced at Merrily, who shrugged.
‘Stop it there, would you, lass?’ Huw said.
Because this might take longer, she closed the document. Not much left anyway.
‘She’s not a friend. That is, we don’t socialize. She doesn’t have friends. Too time-consuming. But…’ She sighed. ‘… the fact remains that she is extraordinary. As I’ve probably said before, she’s deliberately offensive and can appear heartless… all right, sometimes she is heartless. But her breadth of knowledge is vast.’
‘Aye,’ Huw said.
‘And there are some esoteric crevices I’ve never managed to penetrate, and so… there have been times when I’ve dragged myself kicking and screaming to Athena’s eyrie.’
‘I know.’
She couldn’t remember how much she’d told him.
‘We go where we have to, lass, to get what we need. We weigh one thing against another. Lesser of two evils. What we don’t do is avoid them, pretend they don’t exist. We go in, eyes open.’
‘I suppose.’
Huw pushed a knuckle into his chin.
‘This feller Spring… the canon… is he the kind of bloke who’d go to Innes to grass you up?’
‘Well, that’s it, I wouldn’t’ve thought so. But then I didn’t know he was Cardelow’s son-in-law. She’s never mentioned it to me. Miss White disclosed that there was now a canon in the family, but I never followed up on it. Why would I?’
‘Why indeed, lass. Nowt wrong wi’ an occasional lapse into naivety…’
‘That’s—’
‘Anthea White, she was a proper spook?’
Merrily sighed.
‘When people tell you they were in the civil service, you kind of turn off, so it’s only recently I found out that she’d worked for the security services, MI5, anyway. It makes sense. She’s drawn to secrecy in all its forms. Occult – hidden. She’s hardly the first. Occultism, secrets, codes…’
‘Means she’ll be on somebody’s file, won’t she? Several files. Happen she thinks an old folks’ home’s the safest place for her.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘No, it’s not. People like her, eyes get kept on them. Files get discreetly passed around. MI5 must’ve known what she did on the side. Which might even’ve been useful to them at one time, but once you’re out you can be dangerous.’
Merrily stood up, both hands on the desk.
‘We’re in danger of losing touch with reality.’
Huw didn’t move.
‘Far from it, lass. The Church of England, by tradition, is part of the British government. The whole reason it even exists—’
‘I do know why it exists.’
‘And the reason it survives. The reason it will still survive when even cathedral congregations are down to single figures. Contacts. Politics. Church and State, notes passed under the table.’
‘I hate conspiracy theories. Never really wanted to wind up as a crazy hag howling on street corners.’
‘Keep your nerve.’
‘I’m starting to feel almost physically sick. It’s like I’m walking in my own shadow. You can also hear Innes talking about Jane and her blatant paganism. Where’s he got that from? He doesn’t know Jane. And then there’s my sexual relationship – not a partnership because we don’t live together – with a musician whose past—’
Huw’s hands were up.
‘All right. I get it. All it means is he has a small but growing coterie of clerical snouts in the diocese, who, between them—’
‘Who? Who are they?’
Found she was halfway across the desk. She slumped back into the chair, eyes closed.
‘No idea, lass. Not my diocese. Don’t know who they are, how many of them there are, or if they even qualify as a coterie. But there’ll be a few folks on your side as well. Or there would be if they knew.’
‘That’s so good to know, Huw.’
‘Aye, well, in a situation like this, friends tend to be…’
‘Reticent.’
‘Especially the bloody clergy.’
I just…’ She was feeling almost faint, shook her head hard. ‘This has come… absolutely out of nowhere.’
‘It’s not come out of nowhere. I’ve told you where it’s come from. And it makes you just want to pack in, course it does.’
‘It does, actually. Yes.’
‘Don’t. Just bloody don’t. I’m not saying you won’t get hurt, nowt surer. The Church of England can be like some old-fashioned public school. Bullying is rife. He’ll run you to the edge. But you don’t go anywhere.’
‘I—’
‘You tell him where he can stick his rural dean offer. You tell him you want to stay with deliverance.’
‘What, call his bluff? He’s not bluffing, Huw. I won’t bother playing the rest, but I’ll tell you something else. He said he’d never been to Ledwardine, but I saw him here once with his wife and two of his kids, OK? Having an ice cream?’
She hadn’t planned to tell him the rest. It was, after all, not unreasonable considering the income Ledwardine failed to provide for the Church. Dispiriting, but not unreasonable. Huw would accept that. We bloody suffer. We get extra shit. It was only when you looked at it alongside the rest…
‘He asks Siân if she can explain why it is that a vicarage this big is housing one woman and, as he puts it, one child. A seventeenth-century black and white vicarage which, if sold, would fetch… he puts a figure on it which is probably an exaggeration, but…’
‘And where would he put you and the child?’
‘The property people have been briefed to keep an eye open for the next semi to come for sale up on what Gomer Parry calls “the hestate”. I can’t complain. If they’d put us into a semi when we first arrived I’d’ve been happy enough. I didn’t like the idea of a period mausoleum, and it caused me problems. But you kind of stretch out to fill a place, don’t you?’
‘Just try and give me some time,’ Huw said. ‘All right?’
‘To do what?’
‘I don’t know.’ A very visible pain in his eyes. ‘I’ve never lied to you, lass. I don’t bloody know. But it’s clear that if you turn down rural dean, if you don’t say, Wow thank you, Bishop, how kind, I don’t deserve this… then he’ll want you off his patch for good.’
‘If not out of the job. Who’d want me anywhere else?’ She stood up. ‘Need to get a glass of water.’
‘You’re not sleeping, are you?’
‘Not much. Awful dreams. Had one last night… no, the night before… that was a composite of Ann Evans… Jenny… her experience in her father’s church and… oh God.’
She didn’t get the water. She sat down again and told him, as she’d known she’d have to at some stage, very slowly about her other problem. How she was working a foreigner – a particularly medieval foreigner – at the indirect behest of an Islamic cleric.
And a drug dealer.
She told him everything. The vanished village that had come to a kind of life in an old man’s head. The manifestation/hallucination in the Castle Room. The clocks and the stroke. The bloody fairy stroke.
He listened without a word, as she told him everything. Name, locations, history. The screensaver came up on the computer. It was the cover of Lol’s CD, A Message from the Morning, showing the solid electric guitar he rarely played silhouetted against a purple dawn. Picture by Eirion Lewis. Who seemed no longer to be in the picture himself.
Huw had his head on one side, as if what he’d just heard in one ear might drift away out of the other.
‘I didn’t make any of that up, by the way,’ Merrily said.
‘I don’t see how you could.’
‘No.’
‘Dunmore, you’d’ve told him if he were still Bishop?’
‘Probably. I mean, yes.’ She smiled, aware that it was a crooked smile. ‘It’s almost funny, isn�
�t it?’
Huw wasn’t laughing. Outside, a wind was getting up. She turned and saw the sky over the church wall had become overcast.
‘You need to get rid of it,’ Huw said. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Get rid?’
‘Get it sorted bloody quick and cover your tracks.’
‘How about I just do my best with it? And then go quietly.’
‘Merrily…’
‘What?’
‘I’ll not tell you again.’
44
Walks by night
‘LOT OF MEDIA on the car park,’ Elly Clatter, the police press officer, said on the stairs to the MIR. ‘Two murders, we’ll need to give them something substantial. And like I keep saying—’
‘Elly, for f—’
‘It won’t go away till you deal with it, Francis. I know these people.’
‘Mother of God.’ Bliss’s mitt tightening around his coffee cup. ‘It’s a shop. What kind of friggin’ shop doesn’t matter.’
‘For the red tops, what kind of shop is everything, and they didn’t even need to climb over any walls for the picture you’ll be seeing in tomorrow’s papers.’
She’d shown him her tablet, and Bliss had shuddered. The Darkest Corner website – should he even have been surprised? – was like the front of some missing Black Sabbath album from 1972. No sign of Jerry Soffley, just a dark-eyed witchy woman in a Scottish Widows cloak sitting in a steeple-backed chair in the centre of Organ Yard with a familiar plastic skull in her lap.
He’d had to put someone on to finding out who she was – possibly Soffley’s second wife – and paying her a visit before the hacks found her.
‘For all we know at this stage, Elly, she killed Soffley, and Greenaway’s a completely different case. Why don’t you get the DCI to talk to the press? That’ll give the bastards a scare.’
‘Because the DCI says it has to be you,’ Elly Clatter said.
For DCI read SIO, which was good, a mercy. Two murders, under normal circs you’d automatically get some Worcester suit, but pressure of work – an outbreak of terrorism-linked, nervy stuff, up at the northern end – had removed the threat. Bliss was working for Annie.
‘Boss, surely…’ Vaynor loping upstairs, three at a time, behind them. ‘… given that the nature of Soffley’s business is already on the Net, we can hardly hold back on the gothics.’
‘I’m exercising me right to play it down, and I’m not gonna link it to the murder by introducing them to Steve. Not yet, anyway.’
‘What if they go into Neogoth on the Net?’
‘Without Steve, it’ll tell them nothing. Definitely no Steve.’
The Major Investigation Room was what used to be the Control Room till all that went to HQ to be run by people who’d never been west of Pershore. Day one in the MIR was always going to remind Bliss of the first day at his comp, aged eleven. Little kid in a hostile crowd, too many kids who all seemed to know one another. Hated school.
Near the back, Terry Stagg was laughing with two retired detectives with beer guts from before Bliss’s time. Lot of extra bodies in from Worcester, including civvies and boffins and people who knew how to talk to HOLMES, the Microsoft murder machine. Two linked killings was a three-megabyte problem.
Annie wasn’t here. She’d have issues to offload, delegate, make some space for this, so Bliss was still ringmaster.
He kept his briefing short, Karen Dowell, sitting next to him behind an iPad and three bottles of spring water. Apart from the house-to-house, the shop-to-shop and the CCTV search, today was mainly going to be call-centre stuff, much of it based on names pulled from both victims’ computers.
He looked from window to window, one featuring a lot of lower roof and all three big city churches, the Cathedral, St Peter’s and All Saints, projecting like the prongs of a trident under a darkening sky. Sonia, the CID seagull, was plucking at the remains of someone’s sarnie.
‘I’m gonna give yer all a key-phrase,’ Bliss said. ‘Friends of the Dusk. This is the only significant name found on both lappies. Who are they? What are they? Where are they? Indeed, are they? Do they still exist? I’m assuming none of us, apart from Karen, have come across them. Maybe in the distant past? Anybody?’
He glanced over to the beer guts in the corner. No reaction.
Terry Stagg said, ‘Is it a gay thing?’
‘Soffley, as far as we know, definitely wasn’t. Two ex-wives. One we’ve spoken to who dumped him for serial adultery. Having broken up his first marriage thinking she could change him. So, no, Terrence, gay is on the back-burner. Darth.’
‘What’s the actual context here? In both cases.’
Bliss turned to Karen, who consulted her iPad.
‘Basically, Friends of the Dusk occurs on Soffley’s database of Neogoth members. Greenaway, however, mentions what is probably them the day before he died. This is on an email which simply says, quote, “Gordon, do you have a contact for FOTD. I don’t want to go through Neogoth, if I can help it. I’d also really like to try and get through to JT, though I accept that won’t be easy.”’
‘But as we now know, he did have to go through Neogoth,’ Bliss said. ‘Because Gordon wasn’t able to assist. Replies that he hasn’t heard from any of them in years and thinks the group might have fallen apart. He also says, Karen…?’
‘“I imagine Mr T’s far too big for all that now.” Gordon lives in Totnes, Devon, from where he runs – or ran – an Internet magazine. Devon and Cornwall are finding him for us. Quite soon, I hope.’
‘So. FOTD and Mr T… JT,’ Bliss said. ‘Who is he? We’re assuming that all this relates to Steve. For reasons as yet unknown, Tristram Greenaway wanted the Friends of the Dusk to see that piccy – which we would really like to be of the skull unearthed on Castle Green, but we can’t even be certain about that as Neil Cooper says he didn’t see it for long enough.’
Bliss uncapped a bottle of spring water. Had too much caffeine today, already.
‘Now.’ Wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. ‘Let’s deal quickly with the Hammer Films bit. Because this – although you don’t reveal it to anybody – is likely to inform a lorra your questions during the long call-centre hours.’
Karen brought Steve up on the screen behind them. Bliss talked for a while about deviant burials and the kind of people who might be interested in one. Bringing up the expected smiles when he let the v-word out.
‘So, Francis…’ Rich Ford, the uniform inspector, was leaning in the doorway at the bottom of the room, looking unmoved. ‘… we could be looking for somebody with what you might call a distinctive lifestyle?’
It was rumoured Rich was coming up to his thirty and talking with the brass about pension deals. Already demob-happy.
‘No plan at this stage,’ Bliss said, to get this shit over with, ‘of ringing round the health clinics in search of any bugger with a garlic allergy.’
‘But if we’re looking for someone who walks by night, Francis,’ Rich Ford said, ‘presumably—’
‘Nor will we be talking to Charlie Howe,’ Bliss said.
When Devon and Cornwall came through, Bliss and Karen were down in Bliss’s office. A DC Peter Lord in Exeter. She put him on speaker.
‘Gordon Barclay-Hughes works in some sort of herbal cig shop. Quite legal, ahem. He’s all right, basically. Bit off the planet. Knew Tristram Greenaway, but not about him being murdered. Quite upset, but not too upset. Confirms he exchanged emails with Greenaway about Friends of the Dusk, about which he’s happy to talk to you. You thinking of coming down?’
Karen looked at Bliss, who wrinkled his nose.
‘Might just talk to him on the phone first,’ Karen said.
‘JT,’ Peter Lord said. ‘Jim Turner. My son loves his films.’
‘Films, Peter?’
‘Boy’s room’s full of DVDs. Actually, I didn’t know who JT was either till Gordon told me and I ran him past the kid. Dunno if he’s in this country or not. I’ll leave that to you.�
�
‘Absolutely,’ Karen said. ‘Thanks, Peter. Very speedy service.’
Bliss saw she was already tapping Jim Turner into Google. Not a name he was familiar with either. No wiser when the image came up: beardie bloke with a shaven head, his back to a cinema poster. He stood up, reading over Karen’s shoulder.
‘Let’s get Darth in, he knows all about these arty twats.’
Karen did some rapid tapping and scrolling, freshly washed dark hair bobbing away, then sat back, like she’d given birth.
‘Look at this, Frannie. We on a roll here or what?’
45
Courting the goddess
HUW DIDN’T STAY for lunch, saying he didn’t like the look of the weather. Storms usually came in over the Beacons. There were things Merrily wanted to ask him, but they could probably wait.
She went over to Jim Prosser’s Eight Till Late for some feta cheese and fresh salad material. Jane had not come down by the time she was back. She went through to the scullery and bit the bullet.
The woman – very posh – at Lyme Farm asked if she was Mr Kindley-Pryce’s niece. Friend of the family, she said. Didn’t say which family.
‘When did you see him last?’
‘Oh, quite a while. I’ve…’
‘You do realize he may not recognize you?’
‘I’m prepared for that.’
‘Three o’clock?’
‘Fine. Thank you.’
Her name and address were taken. She gave the right ones – you could only go so far. She’d already called Foxy Rowlestone’s publishers. Their publicity department said Foxy’s editor had left some years ago. When Merrily had suggested they must have an address to send her royalties to and pass on fan mail, they took down her number and her email address. She didn’t, somehow, expect to hear from them.
She rang Martin Longbeach, currently locum vicar at Underhowle, up near the Forest of Dean. Not around. She left a short message on his machine. Martin had been a member of the aborted Hereford Deliverance Panel, with Siân Callaghan-Clarke and the psychiatrist Nigel Saltash. She’d done Martin some favours. His turn now.