Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Yes. Yes, he did.’

  She felt disconnected, incapable and so cold inside and out. ‘He’ll be missed,’ Patti said.

  Merrily looked down the narrow road to where he would be missed most, and back at the Mercedes crushed under the tree, not more than an arm’s length from the bonnet of the Freelander on the other side. For a darkly glowing moment, she saw both cars as low-worth, expendable pieces in some cosmic chess game, sacrificed for some hideous victory.

  She was shaking.

  ‘We’ll want a statement from you, Mrs Watkins,’ Patti said. ‘What you can remember. Why you were here. Formalities. Shouldn’t take long. Nobody’s at fault here. Act of God, as we used to say.’

  ‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘Blame God.’

  Patti stood looking at her, hands on her big hips, yellow waterproof flapping but otherwise unmoved by the wind.

  ‘You’re a vicar, aren’t you?’

  ‘At present.’

  Jane tried 1471, but the woman on the phone had taken the trouble to conceal her number.

  Twice, she’d been sent into the hall by a ping from the phone, as if it was about to ring, but it hadn’t. The way she was feeling today, there was something ominous about it.

  tell her she’ll be called.

  called forth singly and by name

  Stop it! For Christ’s sake.

  She spun away from the phone, as the doorbell rang, as if the two were linked: summoners. She glanced out of the hall window, and he was looking directly at her from the shelter of the porch.

  Mum had left by the back door. The front door was still locked and bolted; it took half a minute to get it open.

  He wore a short brown overcoat with a velvety collar and a tired, tilted smile, and like no way was she going to be intimidated. It was another part of pulling herself together.

  Right then.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Khan,’ Jane said.

  ‘Ms Watkins.’

  ‘Mum’s out.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Any idea when she might be back?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I don’t suppose another chap’s been? I’m rather later than I expected, due to the conditions.’

  ‘No. Nobody.’

  ‘Oh. Well. I’m very sorry to have bothered you. It’s… Jane, isn’t it? I suppose I shall have to try to reach your mother… somehow.’

  ‘Always worth phoning first,’ Jane said. ‘Can save a lot of time.’

  ‘Indeed it can. I shall call ahead next time. Or she may like to telephone me, if you can convey that—’

  ‘Did you get your car fixed? I mean the bodywork.’

  He looked at her in silence for a few beats and then a smile twitched into place.

  ‘I did. In fact…’ His hand went to an inside pocket, came out with a narrow, buff envelope. ‘This is some money I received to pay for the repair. Quite inadequate, but a touching gesture. I was going to return it.’

  Jane grinned.

  ‘Jude Wall? No, Dean, right?’

  ‘Is that the older one? The money was left for me at my Hereford office, without an address. Or a name, come to that. Luckily one of my staff recognized him and knows where he lives… roughly.’

  ‘He’ll be gone by now. Has a job and so does his mum. Some days Jude even goes to school. Erm… you came all this way for that?’

  ‘Well, not really, but…’

  ‘But you’re returning Wall’s money?’

  ‘As a way of conveying to him that he remains in my debt.’

  Wow. Jane felt her eyes widening. Either his tongue was well into his cheek or this guy was shameless.

  ‘Is that saying what I think it’s saying?’

  ‘And what do you think it’s saying, Jane?’

  ‘I think it might be saying that you might, like, approach him or his brother one day with, erm, an opportunity to repay what he owes you. And if he doesn’t…’

  Raji Khan laughed, sliding the envelope back inside his coat.

  ‘What imagination! Tell me… I’m curious. There was an attempt to inscribe on my car a word that looked like “children”. I couldn’t, for the life of me, think what that might refer to.’

  ‘Oh, I can tell you that. When they were here, in the porch, trying to blag some money, you did actually refer to them as children. They were offended.’

  ‘Ah!’ His hands came up. ‘Of course. A matter of respect. My goodness, how discredited that word has become.’

  ‘They’re just kids. When Dean saw what they’d done, he was… not at all happy. He was like… well, the words shit and scared come to mind.’

  ‘Gives me no pleasure at all to inspire such an adverse reaction.’

  ‘I bet it doesn’t.’

  He looked almost affronted.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Jane said. ‘To save you another journey, how about I give Wall his money back?’

  ‘You’d do that for me?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Raji Khan peered at her, hands clasped over his chest. Then he looked back up the drive. Obviously still waiting for someone, or hoping Mum would drive up. He looked back at Jane, wry smile.

  ‘You know, Ms Watkins, there’s something about you which, in spite of my instincts, I do rather admire. You have your mother’s…’ He separated his hands, made small motions with the fingers. ‘If not more so.’ He took out the buff envelope. ‘You really want to do this?’

  Jane thought of the weight of gritty history between her and Dean Wall, right from when she and Mum had first arrived in Ledwardine and he and his mates had come after her and poor Collette Cassidy in the churchyard at night.

  ‘It would give me no end of pleasure, Mr Khan,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t so hard after all,’ Vaynor said in Bliss’s office. ‘I told Turner that at present we were looking for a killer, that was all. Indicating that other issues might be overlooked if we feel we’ve been assisted in our principal task. Was that all right?’

  ‘You didn’t record that, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, boss.’

  Bliss nodded.

  ‘When’s he sending?’

  ‘Karen’s dealing with it, and that computer guy from Worcester. There are some download firms that can get it done quickly, once the compatibility problems are sorted. Might still take a few hours, though, for him to dig it out. He says.’

  ‘I’ll run this past ma’am first,’ Bliss said, ‘but I’m thinking it might not be a bad idea, when we’ve had a look at it, to screen it for the masses in the MIR. Few fellers in there who might recognize faces that were before our time.’

  ‘Let’s just hope nothing goes wrong.’

  ‘Put it this way, Darth. If Turner says it got deleted during the process, tell him you’ll be taking steps to have him extradited. Now go and supervise. What?’

  Vaynor had stopped in the doorway, looked back at Bliss over a shoulder.

  ‘Mrs Watkins is outside. She’s not looking for you, is she?’

  Bliss was on his feet.

  ‘She’s looked better,’ Vaynor said. ‘Quite a big dressing on her face.’

  ‘You’re saying she’s hurt?’

  ‘May be wrong, but I think she was involved in that accident on the Cwmarrow road. The fatal?’

  Bliss moved past him, rapidly down the stairs and out into the weather, looking round urgently. Finally locating Merrily Watkins with Mills and Calder from Traffic, up against their blue and yellow car. Mother of God, if he hadn’t been told he might not have recognized her. Forget the facial dressing and the ripped Barbour, she looked bloody rough.

  ‘Oh, Merrily, Merrily.’ Strolling over, dead casual. ‘Just look at the state of you.’

  Calder looked at him, with suspicion.

  ‘This incident at Cwmarrow?’ Bliss said.

  He waited. Come on… a place he’d never heard of and it had come up twice? Darryl Mills shook his big head.

  ‘Nothing
for you, boss.’

  As a former detective and not a bad one, he’d know.

  Patti Calder said. ‘Mrs Watkins came into town with us, Frannie, to make a statement, and she’s without transport. We’re giving her a lift home.’

  ‘Patti,’ Bliss said. ‘There’s a lorra mad bastards out there, driving without due care and attention in seriously advairse conditions. Why don’t you and Darryl go and pull a few over. I’ll give Mrs Watkins a lift home.’

  Merrily looked at him then down at her shoes, nodding. He waited while she shook hands with Patti and Darryl, thanked them and then she followed him to the Honda. By the time they were halfway to Ledwardine, it was easy to understand why she was having new doubts about the existence of a benevolent supreme being.

  He, on the other hand…

  57

  A fence

  ‘I’M NOT MAKING too much of this, Merrily. Not even calling it coincidence. It’s just nice to discover we’re on parallel lines here.’

  ‘We are?’

  All the lines she could see stretching out ahead of her were buckled and twisted.

  Bliss had pulled into a lay-by that had become a picnic place because of its view of Cole Hill, behind which Ledwardine was sunk. It had stopped raining; the wind was still irritable but no longer worth a warning on the radio news.

  ‘I don’t question it any more,’ Bliss said. ‘That’s your territory, and sometimes I’m glad there’s a fence. Considering the subject matter I was gonna have a word couple of days ago. Would’ve tried harder if I’d known there was common ground.’

  ‘I don’t know that there is. You’re investigating the murders of two people I’d never heard of until they were murdered. Jane talked to one for about twenty minutes but hadn’t met him before. That doesn’t make it common ground either.’

  ‘The shared focus, Merrily, is a place called Cwmarrow. In a context in which you tend to see things I don’t.’

  ‘You have more confidence in me than I do. It’s not that I don’t want to help… I’m just not in the best of places right now.’

  She felt uncomfortable, restricted, caged. The dressing over her right cheek felt like a huge swelling caused by toothache. It didn’t hurt that much, there’d been no glass in the cut. The paramedics had applied the dressing at Cwmarrow after she’d refused to go to A and E. She’d left soon afterwards in the police car without seeing anyone from Cwmarrow Court. Which was probably sensible but felt like cowardice and left a raw ache stronger and more insistent than shock.

  ‘Well, yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘I do realize that almost gerrin’ killed…’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t. It wasn’t pleasant, my car could be a write-off, but compared with what happened on the other side of the tree…’

  She shook.

  ‘It was an act of God, Merrily.’

  ‘Why do people keep—?’ She rocked back into the headrest, letting her eyes close. ‘Never my favourite phrase. It’s washing our hands and backing off.’

  ‘You knew him. Feller who died. The doctor.’

  ‘I was on my way to see him. And his daughter. Particularly his daughter.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Frannie, but you don’t need to know that.’

  ‘All right. You went to see an elderly feller called Selwyn Kindley-Pryce yesterday. Is that correct?’

  She opened her eyes and turned her head towards him. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Presumably some management person at the home where he lives, when one of my team rang to ask if he was up to being interviewed. Seems he isn’t. Seems he’s been three sheets in the wind for years.’

  ‘Why would you want to interview him?’

  ‘Friends of the Dusk,’ Bliss said. ‘Heard of them?’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘It was a group of people interested in the British vampire. Or, more specifically, the Hereford vampire. Make any sense?’

  ‘It… Oh God, it may be. Never heard of the Friends of the Dusk, though. Sounds vaguely Masonic.’

  ‘You know anything about the gatherings that Kindley-Pryce had at his place?’

  ‘I know he needed money for restoration, so he hosted festivals involving music and poetry and discussions about local folklore. For which people presumably paid.’

  ‘I should tell you that Victim One, Tristram Greenaway, was connected with the group. As was Victim Two, Jeremy Soffley, though to a lesser extent.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘So why did you go to visit the old feller?’

  ‘Because, it had been suggested that— See, this is going to sound like complete crap to you—’

  ‘Merrily, how long’ve we known each other?’

  ‘All right. People ask me to “exorcize” places. They have no idea what it means, but it sounds final. Like I can just go in and say the magic words and everything’s back to normal?’

  ‘Whereas you need to know what you’re dealing with.’

  ‘In order to condition the response, yes. OK. In confidence…’

  ‘Yeh, yeh.’

  ‘A guy there, at Cwmarrow, his wife believes that whatever they’re sharing the house with may have caused him to have a stroke. Kindley-Pryce left the old house because he’d – perhaps quite quickly – developed dementia. Places, in my experiences, can damage people.’

  ‘True enough. Radon gas. Proximity of pylons…’

  ‘Not a huge step to toxic history. I just needed to be sure there was nothing Kindley-Pryce could tell me. In one way or another.’

  ‘And was there?’

  ‘I… If it doesn’t make sense to me, it wouldn’t make sense to you. Not going to burden with you with something I’m not sure about. Especially as it doesn’t relate to either of your victims or… the Friends of the Dusk. Who I knew nothing about.’

  Bliss thought about this, gazing out at conical Cole Hill across the flurrying fields.

  ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’

  ‘Feeling sick.’

  ‘I’ve some video coming over from the States, shot by a man called Jim Turner who—’

  ‘He was going to buy Cwmarrow Court from Kindley-Pryce.’

  ‘Aha. Yes.’

  ‘Pulled out and went to America?’

  ‘Very quickly, it seems. We were wondering why the appeal of the house seemed to have waned for him.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to him?’

  ‘We have. He was going to make a documentary about the hunt for the old feller’s Hereford vampire.’

  ‘Was there a—?’

  ‘We’ll get to that. He’d already shot some film, video, at one or more of these weekend festivals, which we’ve asked him to send us electronically. If you feel you’re up to it, I’d like you to come in and view it, probably this afternoon. Because, as I keep saying, you’re quite likely to spot something – or somebody – that I’d miss the significance of.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not about whether I feel up to it. Just that if you want to do this officially, you’ll need to make an approach to Sophie in the Gatehouse. Sophie then consults the Bishop, and the Bishop – I’m just guessing here, Frannie – tells you, via Sophie, to sod off. Only in more civilized, episcopal terminology.’

  ‘Yeh, I’d heard he was a bit of a twat. What’s his problem?’

  ‘Take too long to explain. Suffice to say he strongly disapproves of exorcism in the Church. And seems to want me out.’

  ‘Out?’

  ‘Out of the job, possibly out of his diocese. This is absolutely not me being paranoid.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Merrily. It’s the fuckin’ Chairch!’

  ‘Don’t get me started.’

  ‘Mother of God.’ Bliss gripped the steering wheel, both hands. ‘All right, one thing, then I’ll leave yer alone. Simple question. Deviant burials. What do you know about them?’

  ‘I know what they are. To an extent. Why?’

  ‘When the
tree blew down on Castle Green the other week, some bones were found underneath. Basically, a skeleton with his head between his legs and a stone in his gob.’

  ‘I didn’t know about this.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to,’ Bliss said. ‘In fact I haven’t told you.’

  ‘A stone?’

  ‘Between his teeth. To stop him chewing up his shroud, apparently. I call him Steve, though we’ve not actually met yet.’

  ‘Or to stop him speaking.’

  ‘Yeh, that would work. If he could speak.’

  Merrily sat up.

  Bliss said, ‘What?’

  ‘Stop him summoning.’

  ‘Just tell me in baby talk what that means.’

  ‘You need to talk to someone who’s more of an expert than me. And who doesn’t need permission from the Bishop and would react very badly if she thought she did.’

  ‘You very nearly smiled then, Merrily. Yeh, that would be all right. As long as it’s not Jane.’

  ‘You just have to be honest and upfront with her.’

  ‘As distinct from me normal furtive, lying self?’

  ‘If we go back to the vicarage now and you give me five minutes to go in and explain why I look like I’ve just been discharged from a women’s refuge… I’ll let you in. Back way. Park on the square.’

  58

  Timeless beauty

  MERRILY WATCHED BLISS assembling a handful of people he called trusties in his office. She was sitting at the back under the window, wearing jeans and a dark green hoodie, no dog collar, no visible cross. She’d removed the dressing and replaced it with a single pink plaster over the deepest cut. She watched and said nothing.

  ‘I’ve gorra warn you,’ Bliss said to everybody. ‘It’s arty stuff.’

  He meant shot from oblique angles, sometimes against jagged spears of light from window slits or sconces on the stone walls or feeble flames from what DC Vaynor said were rush-lights. He meant that faces were shadowed and unclear and you didn’t hear any voices because Jim Turner had applied a music track at some later date: pipe organ, Vaynor said. Occasionally you’d get a glimpse of people playing instruments that looked like plumbing debris.