Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  ‘But nothing came of it. Was that the only reason you gave up on the film?’

  ‘You can’t wait for ever. I always wanted to move into feature films, movies, and I got a chance over here.’

  ‘A call from Hollywood.’

  ‘Kind of, yeah. You don’t say no to the big H.’

  ‘When did you last look at the Friends of the Dusk site, Mr Turner?’

  ‘Don’t recall. Don’t know if it’s still extant.’

  ‘Do you know anything about an email sent to the Friends, via Neogoth, from Mr Greenaway?’

  ‘Hell, no… I keep saying, I gave up on all that years ago.’

  ‘So what would your reaction be if you found out that Tristram Greenaway had posted evidence of a deviant burial a short distance from Hereford Cathedral?’

  Pause.

  ‘You’re saying he did, Detective?’

  ‘Suppose it was a human skull with a stone in its mouth. Would that be fairly conclusive to you?’

  ‘Shit, you’re kidding.’

  ‘And obviously a good image for TV.’

  ‘Well, yeah, but—’

  ‘When were you last in the UK, Mr Turner?’

  ‘I live here now. I’m a US citizen with an office in Burbank. Wife, kid…’

  ‘When were you last over here?’

  ‘In the summer. Briefly. Aw, come on…’

  ‘When did you last see Mr Pryce?’

  ‘Years ago. He’s probably dead by now. He had Alz— I dunno, some form of dementia. He was a fucking vegetable. Another reason it was never gonna happen. That side of my life, it’s over.’

  ‘So you weren’t in touch with Tristram Greenaway? You didn’t have an email address or anything for him? Or he yours.’

  ‘Are you kidding? A boy who once ran errands over fifteen years ago?’

  Bliss was impressed with the way the lad had handled it. Could see why he was excited.

  ‘One thing strikes me immediately, Darth. He’s a TV documentary man. All right, he’s making feature films now, but old instincts die hard. He had to abandon his follow-up to Bloodline because it wasn’t sexy enough, but now it’s all lighting up again and he’s got a bloody mairder. How friggin sexy is that? And he’s not displaying any excitement. He’s not asking you any questions.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Vaynor said. ‘And also… he’s lying about something else.’

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘He said he’d had to give up buying this house, the Court, because opportunity was knocking in the States. The call from Hollywood? But the guy I spoke to who knew him, Leo Defford – documentary producer who evidently didn’t crack Hollywood – said Turner was out there for nearly two years, doing menial assistant-director jobs before he got anywhere. Defford says he could never understand why he got out of the UK so quickly, but it wasn’t for the money.’

  ‘That’s nice work, son,’ Bliss said. ‘We can use that. I don’t see him as a suspect in the Greenaway or Soffley cases, but it does look like he’s gorra few things to hide. And – this is the point, Darth – it also looks like he has some video I’d really like to see.’

  ‘At Kindley-Pryce’s parties, ten years ago?’

  ‘You see a better opportunity of gerrin all your suspects on view together in one place? It’s like friggin’ Hercule Poirot in the library.’ Bliss was out of his chair. ‘Get back on to him.’

  ‘He’ll be in bed.’

  ‘Well, get the bastard out of bed. Lean on him. Threaten him. Tell him we’ll talk to the FBI and see it gets leaked to the LA Times that he’s being questioned as part of an investigation into… into the mairder of a young gay man in England.’ Bliss sat down again, pleased with that. ‘I don’t give a shit how you do it, but I want a DVD of Mr Pryce’s parties on this desk by mid-morning.’

  He went up to the MIR to tell Annie. She was with Karen Dowell and the lads going through the CCTV for about half the city. Nobody looking impressed.

  ‘About twenty-five people who might have gone into Organ Yard at an appropriate time. We’ve identified about half of them, and none looks terribly interesting at this stage. But—’

  ‘When you gerra minute, ma’am, there’s something I’d like you to listen to.’ What a turn-on it was, calling her ma’am, especially when a case looked like shifting up a gear. ‘The parties at this Kindley-Pryce’s place, Cwmarrow. We actually think video exists of the Friends of the Dusk at play.’

  Annie raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Interesting. Oh… just so you know – Cwmarrow. Traffic are attending an RTC there. Storm-related. Fallen tree.’

  ‘I do hope there wasn’t a skelly underneath.’ Bliss smiled. ‘Anybody hurt?’

  ‘One dead,’ Annie said.

  55

  Grim visitor

  THE POWER CAME back before ten a.m. Could’ve been worse, often was. In case it went off again, Jane was straight up to her apartment and the computer.

  She’d awoken several times in the night – probably the wind hammering the house – but each time she’d remembered the story from De Nugis Curialium.

  Still hadn’t found a complete English translation, but she had found what was probably the best modern retelling of the story.

  Of all places, it was in a book she’d been dipping into for years, The Folklore of Herefordshire by Ella Mary Leather. The reason she’d forgotten was that it wasn’t part of the book itself, was only mentioned in the introduction by E. Sidney Hartland who’d been discussing burial anomalies, including…

  … the operation of turning a corpse in the grave – that is, turning it so that it will lie face downwards. This is one of the many methods to prevent the restless dead from haunting the living. Mrs Leather records a case at Capel-y-ffin. A ghastlier story, which probably belongs to Herefordshire – at all events, to the diocese – is recorded by Walter Map at the end of the twelfth century, although he speaks of the occurrence as taking place in Wales.

  Oddly, it wasn’t told by Mrs Leather in the book itself. Tempting to think that was because she regarded it as history rather than folklore, but more likely because it wasn’t linked to a specific location.

  Jane copied E. Sidney Hartland’s version into the computer, highlighting significant bits.

  The background had been related to the Bishop of Hereford, Gilbert Foliot. Jane Googled him. An absolutely real person, a monk, appointed to the Hereford diocese in 1148, in the reign of King Stephen. Later became Bishop of London, so he must’ve known what he was doing.

  The man who approached him was an English knight, William Loudun.

  Yes! Jane confirmed that Cwmarrow Castle had been in the hands of the Loudon family. Presumably the same name.

  Hartland wrote:

  A certain Welshman who is described by the epithet maleficus, by which we may infer that he was reputed to have dealings with the Powers of Darkness, had lately died without being reconciled to the Church. After four nights, he came back every night to the village and called forth singly and by name his fellow villagers. Those who were called uniformly fell sick and died within three days. The village was thus being gradually depopulated.

  So far, the story was more or less identical to the one retold by Kindley-Pryce in his Borderlight and later appropriated for Foxy Rowlestone’s The Summoner.

  Gilbert Foliot had been dead for more than ten years when, in 1199, Walter Map had almost become Bishop of Hereford. But, as Map described himself as a man of the Welsh borders, it seemed unlikely that he hadn’t encountered Foliot. Kindley-Pryce hadn’t mentioned this, but then why should he? Borderlight was less an academic book than a showcase for Caroline Goddard’s artwork.

  Had Map actually had this story first-hand from Gilbert Foliot? Like why not?

  According to Hartland’s translation, Foliot suggested William Loudun dig up the body of the summoner and sever its neck with the spade. Both the corpse and the grave should then be ‘asperged’ with holy water and the body put back.

  Didn’t wo
rk.

  The horrible visitations were continued; and soon only a few survivors were left.

  And then the summoner – Hartland was actually calling him a vampire by this stage – called out William himself ‘with a threefold citation’, whatever that was. She’d find out. One day.

  But William had had enough.

  … sprang up with drawn sword and pursued the fleeing demon even to the grave. He overtook the grim visitor just as he was falling back into the earth, and clove his head down to the neck… From that hour, the persecution ceased.

  Now that was interesting. Took Jane back to last night’s research into the djinn. She rechecked. The sword. Both djinns and fairies were said to be repelled, weakened, damaged by iron. Why? It was just there, in universal folklore. It had been speculated that it was because human blood contained iron and therefore connected with human life-energy. Anyway, iron was magical. These threads just went round and round.

  So what was the maleficus: vampire, djinn, or… something else?

  OK…

  On the Net, she’d found nothing approaching a complete translation of the story, but there were samples of it. Like this alleged direct quote from Gilbert Foliot, as he attempted to explain the nature of the summoner.

  Peradventure the Lord has given power to the evil angel of that lost soul to move about in the dead corpse.

  Lost soul implied what was left of the maleficus, but evil angel suggested something more elemental and demonic.

  It suggested possession. A possession beyond death.

  This aspect was not discussed in Kindley-Pryce’s version in Borderlight, but he did take it a little further, saying that Bishop Foliot had invited William Loudun, partly as a way of safeguarding his community, to remove the body and the head from its original grave and bring it to Hereford, where it would be reburied ‘in suitable fashion within sight of the Cathedral but not within its sacred precincts.’

  They had hands-on bishops, didn’t they, in the Middle Ages?

  So… Cwmarrow. Was this the place? The name Loudon certainly fitted.

  Hartland said Map had identified the place as being in Wales. It was likely that Cwmarrow had been in Wales in medieval times – certainly Welsh-speaking. Even now, it was only a few miles from the border.

  The village that disappeared would fit the Map story. It would be interesting to try and find descendants of the last people who had lived there into the nineteenth century. Had anything happened to disturb their sleep, make them feel oppressed? Had there been illness, bad harvests, poverty?

  She didn’t know enough. So much research to be done. Kindley-Pryce, historian, folklorist, anthropologist, must surely have set it all down somewhere.

  As for the summoner… the maleficus…

  It was all around. Jane went back to Ella Mary Leather, looked up the case at Capel-y-ffin, just over the Welsh border in the Black Mountains, that Hartland had referred to in his introduction. Took a long time to get to Capel-y-ffin by road but, as the crow flew, it was barely six miles from Cwmarrow. Mrs Leather quoted a man from nearby Longtown.

  I know what I have sin (seen), I helped myself to turn a man in his grave up at Capel-y-finn; he come back, and we thought to stop him but after we turned him he come back seven times worse… No use of him (the preacher) tellin’ me there’s no ghosts.

  Was he ever confined to his grave? The book didn’t say.

  Six miles away… it wasn’t much. And even closer… another kind of summoner. Mrs Leather recorded the alleged experience of a man known as Jack of France, ‘an evil doer and a terror to all peaceable folk,’ who this time was a victim.

  One night, the Eve of all Souls, he was passing through the churchyard, and saw a light shining in all the windows of the church. He looked in and saw a large congregation assembled, listening apparently to the preaching of a man in a monk’s habit, who was declaiming from the pulpit the names of all those who were to die during the coming year. The preacher lifted his head, and Jack saw under the cowl the features of the Prince of Darkness himself, and to his horror heard his own name given out among the list of those death should claim. He went home, and repenting too late of his evil deeds, took to his bed and died.

  And this was at Dorstone, the nearest large village to Cwmarrow.

  Suddenly, Jane felt driven, the way she hadn’t been for quite a while. It wasn’t about archaeology, it was about something bigger, and bigger, too, than anthropology. These stories lived, they were part of the living countryside. In the early years of the twentieth century they were being told to Mrs Leather by people who remembered.

  Jane was back at the window, looking down on the ancient black and white houses, her hands on the oak in the wall, harder than old bone.

  None of this was over. She could still feel her own mixed-up horror at the sight of the woman in the dead leaves at Cwmarrow. Who might well have been this Aisha who had crowed on Facebook about a relationship across the Divide, where the blood was only the start.

  Jane felt a shivery kind of energy in her spine.

  The Welsh stuff, Eirion might know. Suddenly, she really wanted to call him. See him. Like in the Biblical sense. Whatever had happened between Sam and her, while drunk… whatever had happened, she wasn’t going to find out she was pregnant, was she?

  And no way was she going anywhere near Wiltshire.

  Something flared in Jane like sunlight. She started to laugh. Couldn’t stop.

  She threw herself on to the bed, hugging the pillow, bouncing up and down with this insatiable insane mirth. Heard the phone ringing loudly downstairs like it was joining in. So it was back.

  Jane came off the bed and ran down two flights of stairs, grabbing the phone in the hall just before the machine could kick in.

  ‘Ledwardine… vicarage. Sorry, out of breath.’

  ‘Mrs Watkins?’

  A woman with quite a small voice.

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Will she be long?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m sorry. I’m her daughter, if that—’

  ‘No. I’ll call her. I’ll call her again.’

  ‘Can I give her a name?’

  ‘Well, just… just tell her it’s Caroline, would you?’

  The line went dead.

  56

  Blame

  THERE WERE TWO cops, one female, one male, both reassuringly overweight.

  ‘Don’t look, lovey,’ the one called Patti said. ‘Come on, try to breathe slowly.’

  But it was too late. She swallowed a mouthful of wind and rain, but it wasn’t enough. Something contracted inside and she turned away and threw up into the hedge.

  ‘Come on.’ Streaks of blood in Patti’s blonde hair. ‘Best you sit in our car, there’s an ambulance on the way.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Oh yes, I think you do.’

  With her waxed coat torn and one side of her face wet and smarting, she let Patti guide her away to the edge of the field, and she looked back once, had a sense of smoky, spent violence around the twisted metal, branches clawing the air. You never realized how monumental and vital each tree was until one came down. Maybe a hundred years of growth and now it was windkill.

  And killer. She closed her eyes, and it was imprinted on the screen of her eyelids like an old photo negative, the great tree bending like a crane on a building site, slowly but not that slowly.

  What were the odds against this in a normal world?

  The Freelander was a couple of years too old for airbags. She remembered keeling over on the seat with her hands over her head, feeling the car crushing around her like big boots were standing on it. She remembered that the driver’s door had jammed. She remembered squirming across and grabbing the handle of the passenger door then lying back and pushing at it with both feet. A scraping and rending of metal, as a gap was forced, and then her feet had been in the branches, one shoe hanging off, and she must have lost consciousness then, not sure for how long.

  Mor
e police were visible down towards Cwmarrow. And other people you couldn’t see from here. She could hear a woman wailing.

  ‘They’re not letting them come any closer,’ Patti said, ‘for obvious reasons.’

  ‘Could I perhaps…?’

  ‘No way, lovey. I don’t want them seeing anybody’s blood.’

  Merrily put a hand up to her face. It came away slippery.

  The wind was quieter. The crows were up around Cwmarrow Castle.

  ‘Looks like he was in a hurry,’ Patti said. ‘If the tree hadn’t come down when it did, it begs the question, would your two cars simply have collided head-on?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t even see him coming.’

  ‘Country roads are the worst. You just don’t ever go fast on country lanes. They were made for horses and carts. Tarmac’s just cosmetic.’

  ‘He wanted to be a countryman,’ Merrily said.

  Patti looked at her, curious, and said nothing.

  Merrily moved towards the Freelander’s side of the tree.

  ‘Woah,’ Patti said. ‘Don’t touch anything.’

  ‘Can I get my bag? I need… nicotine.’

  ‘We’ll get it.’

  Merrily nodded, stepped away. She was sure she hadn’t even seen the Mercedes coming up from Cwmarrow. She knew now that the Freelander had become wedged under one of the bigger branches, its windscreen smashed by another, on which she might easily have been impaled. The Mercedes was skewed under the main trunk, as if the driver had swerved as the tree came down. One headlight was still on, the other was like a shut eye on the side that was pancaked. The driver’s head had been out of his side window, and that was what she’d seen before she threw up: the face and the head of Adam Malik, hanging off, almost severed.

  She spun round.

  ‘Where’s the girl? Was there a girl?’

  ‘With her mother and her gran,’ Patti said. ‘You asked before.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘We think she might have a broken arm. She got out by herself. She’ll go in the ambulance, too.’

  ‘That’s her dad in there,’ Merrily said.

  ‘I’ve seen him at the hospital, a time or two. And he came out to a crash on Dinmore Hill. Took off a woman’s leg to save her life. He was a good man. He cared.’