by Phil Rickman
‘I see . . .’
‘I don’t think you do. Not yet. Listen . . . this is the cool part – the little stones include fragments of quartz, which was probably quarried in the area. So if you imagine this river of stones – with a high quartz content – rising from the Wye, across Rotherwas. Imagine Rotherwas when there were no factories there, no warehouses, only open countryside. So imagine the river rising up the side of Dinedor Hill. Now . . .’
Jane went across the landing and snapped off the lamp over the stairwell.
‘. . . Imagine a full moon . . .’
Before her eyes adjusted, Merrily saw this shining chain against smoky blackness. Ascending lights.
‘On the night of a full moon,’ Jane said, ‘all the fragments of quartz would’ve been reflecting the light. So you’d be seeing like tens of thousands of little lights. An incandescent stream down the sacred hill to the banks of the Wye. You see?’
‘The whole Serpent lights up? That’s what it was for?’
‘Awesome, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘It must have been.’
Light against darkness. My God.
Realising that Jane had said something about this before but it hadn’t really registered. There really wasn’t anything like this, was there, possibly anywhere in the world?
‘Jane, why was this not talked about?’
‘Because the council kept it quiet. You think they wanted everybody to know how exciting it was? Mum, it’s like Bill Blore said, these people are not fit to make decisions on anything important. Anything you can’t take to the bank they don’t even understand.’
That night, as the squally rain spat at the bedroom window, Merrily lay awake, thinking about the Serpent, the stones of Coleman’s Meadow and several other recent finds suggesting a rich, unsuspected, ancient heritage along the Welsh border. When you considered the emotive and mystical power of this illuminated umbilical cord and the impact of its severance by a road carrying heavy commercial traffic . . .
Who cared?
Not the council, evidently. Most of them probably hoping the serpent would be washed away by the rain.
‘It’s clear what’s happening, isn’t it?’ Jane had said, when they’d put the lights back on the tree. ‘Hereford’s pagan past is rising again, all around us – and it’s more beautiful and spectacular than anyone ever dreamed. And they hate that.’
‘The Council?’
‘The Council, the secular state. And the Church, what’s left of it.’
Ah, yes, the Church. All this was pre-Christian, not the Church’s problem – official.
And whatever was in Coleman’s Meadow wasn’t a problem for the Vicar of Ledwardine. Yet the beauty and – yes – the sanctity of it all . . . Jane was right, nothing of spiritual value should be discarded. Whether or not you could understand it, there was something you could feel. Something to seize and lift the spirit.
Archaeology to die for.
But archaeology to kill for?
Merrily rolled over. She’d forgotten her hot-water bottle, was feeling chilled, like the vicarage would always be, and she was resisting the warm fantasy of being across the road in Lol’s little terraced house, in the little cosy bedroom with Lol’s warm—
‘Mum?’
The landing light had come on, and Jane stood in the bedroom doorway, bare-legged, a fleece around her shoulders. Flashback to the days after Sean’s death, when she’d stand, bemused, in another bedroom doorway, hugging her oldest teddy.
‘Mum, I forgot – sorry.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Only about half-twelve.’
‘Oh, only half-twelve and you having to go to school in the morning, even if it is the last day of term—’
‘Mum, I forgot, OK? I was going to tell you about it before you asked me about the Serpent and all this Clem Ayling stuff came up, and it got . . . pushed out.’
‘Couldn’t it have waited till morning?’
‘We never seem to have time in the morning, and I want to check the river, and—’
‘OK.’ Merrily reached over to the bedside chair for her bathrobe. ‘Tell me. Quickly.’
‘It was this woman I met yesterday morning. In the churchyard?’
‘You’ve never mentioned a woman.’
‘No, it didn’t seem important, and I was late and . . . Anyway, she called herself Lensi, and she had this posh camera. Said she was a press photographer, freelance, working for . . . I think it was the Independent? She knew about the stones, and she, like, she wants to take some pictures of me?’
‘Not another one.’
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t encourage her, I’m a low-profile person now.’
‘Can’t actually say I’ve noticed.’
‘Anyway, I asked Eirion if he could check her out with his media friends? And, good as gold, he did, and when I rang to tell him it was OK to come at the weekend he told me who he thought she was.’
‘Madonna?’
Merrily dragged the robe around her shoulders as Jane came into the bedroom, pushed the door to behind her and sat down at the bottom of the bed.
‘She says people call her Lensi, right?’
‘You said that. And why am I interested?’
‘That’s what I said to her.’
‘What?’
‘I’m like, why are you interested? This was when she started asking questions like, what sort of pagan are you, Jane?’
‘Oh God.’
‘I didn’t tell her. Not that I’m any kind of pagan, anyway. It’s just like an ethos, isn’t it? But it came up, because she’d been asking about the stones and Lucy Devenish. And then you, a bit.’
‘Me?’
‘She obviously knew who you were. And, like, Eirion always says if you avoid answering journalists’ questions it’ll only make them think you’re covering something up and they won’t let it go.’
‘Jane—’
‘Anyway, Eirion knows this guy who’s like Wales correspondent for the Indy? And he knows this woman photographer who calls herself Lensi. Like, nobody else calls her that . . . it’s about giving herself this kind of professional-photographer image? They used to laugh at her, didn’t take her seriously because she was posh. Rich family in the country. Finishing school, that kind of thing.’
‘And what exactly was the posh photographer doing poking around the churchyard?’
‘She lives here. This is the point. She’s renting Cole Barn. With her husband.’
‘Well, yeah, I heard that had been let, but—’
‘They’ve been here several weeks. Eirion says her real name’s Leonora Phelan. But it’s her husband you’re more likely to have heard of. Mathew Stooke?’
Merrily sat up. The strip of yellow light from the landing was like a knife blade.
‘Yes, that Mathew Stooke,’ Jane said. ‘We’re pretty sure.’
FRIDAY
‘This is an exciting find, not just for Herefordshire and the UK, but apparently, so far, it is unique in Europe. It has international significance.’
Dr Keith Ray,
Herefordshire County Archaeologist
Today, BBC Radio 4
There has been some misapprehension that the whole monument is affected by the road scheme course, and that the intention is to destroy the monument. Neither of these is true.
Herefordshire Council website
18
Working Relationship
THROUGH HIS MUCKY windscreen, Bliss watched Annie Howe powering out of her car in the schoolyard, aiming an unfolding umbrella like a harpoon gun into the rain. Stepping between police vehicles, in her white trench coat – well, not exactly a trench coat and not exactly white, but you got the idea.
Kevin Snape, the office manager, had served the summons last night, leaving the message on Bliss’s mobile: ‘Ma’am wants to see you first thing, Francis. Eight a.m. sharp. At the school.’
That would be before morning assembly. Before the main team
got in. Suggesting Annie wanted to tap him on some background angle, something she didn’t want to share with the whole class. Probably just with DI Iain Twatface Brent, PhD, after Bliss had gone.
He waited until she was in the building, then got out of his car, got wet – never been an umbrella kind of person. Inside the schoolhall-turned-incident-room he shook himself, looked around. Kevin Snape at a computer, Terry Stagg on the phone.
Seeing all the kiddie things pushed into corners reminded him that sometime over the weekend he was going to have to tell his folks up in Knowsley that Kirsty had left him and taken the beloved grandchildren.
This jagged tear in life’s fabric. Hadn’t been able to face going home last night. Cod and chips in the car at ten p.m., not getting back to the house until he was too knackered to do anything but crunch through the Christmas cards on the doormat and crawl upstairs. What he needed was for the Ayling case to roll on through Christmas, turning all the festive shite into a merciful blur.
‘Francis – in here, please.’
The SIO had bagged a classroom for her office. Bliss went meekly in. How come, when Annie Howe was younger than him, she still made him feel like a spotty kid?
‘Sit down, Francis.’
Ma’am at the teacher’s desk, kiddie chairs stacked against the walls. Bliss thought of detaching one and squatting in it, looking up respectfully at the Head, but there was already a teacher-sized chair waiting.
He sat down. Ice-blonde Annie was dressed for the day’s press conferences in a dark green suit with deep lapels, dazzling white shirt, no jewellery. Morning papers in front of her, the Western Daily Press on top.
BEHEADED:
Massive hunt for
city chief’s killer
‘So what’s the state of play with your Worcester witness murder, ma’am?’ Bliss said. ‘Still thinking contract killing, are we? Knowing who ordered it but not who actually did the deed.’
Howe looked up slowly. Clearly aware that what he was really asking her was what the hell she was doing over here, with the Lasky case still live.
‘Actually, it’s the other way round: we’re fairly sure we know who did it, but we don’t know who ordered it. We’re looking at a ring. Two more in Droitwich, another in Evesham. Plus Lasky in Worcester. And the father.’
‘Scumbag.’
The father was the worst of them, in Bliss’s view. Selling sex with his kids? If it hadn’t been for his brother-in-law going to the cops, it might’ve gone on for years.
Now the brother-in-law was dead. They’d found the poor sod knifed in his own garage, two weeks before he was due to testify against the father and the family’s paedophile solicitor, Adrian Lasky. Annie Howe never thinking the man might need protection – all paedophiles being cowering wimps who couldn’t deal with adults.
‘Under the circumstances, however, it seems unlikely that Lasky directly commissioned it,’ Howe said. ‘However . . . my boss is handling it and, as I take it you’re not in a position to assist us, let’s move on.’
‘Contract boys.’ Bliss shook his head. ‘Even ten years ago, a rarity. Now you’ve got kids who’ll do it for a few hundred, knowing the worst that can happen is six years and they come out with a degree in sociology, courtesy of the prison—’
He stopped, Annie giving him the cold stare.
‘Kids,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to return to the subject of kids. Remind me.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Meanwhile . . .’ adjusting her cuffs now ‘. . . you’ll be interested to know that we were right about the connection with the archaeology at Rotherwas and Dinedor. Proven.’
‘Wooh!’ This was too good. ‘Samples matched up?’
Unbelievable, though, this woman. We were right. Not you were right. No Well done, Francis, nicely put together.
‘So we now have confirmatory reports from forensics and from the archaeologist in charge of the project.’
‘Good,’ Bliss said. ‘Excellent.’
‘On which basis, you’ll need to follow it through. I’m having copies of both reports run off for you now, and Iain Brent’s arranged for the archaeologist to be on site at eleven-thirty. Iain will give you the details when he comes in.’
‘You want me to talk to this boffin?’
‘What we need from the guy is a list of people who’d be au fait with the latest findings at Dinedor. We also need to know who’s had permission to visit the site and who’s expressed a more than superficial interest. We need—Is this a problem?’
‘It’s just . . .’ That it was a job for a frigging DC. ‘If you remember, I’d arranged to see the feller from this Hereforward committee – Ayling’s last meeting?’
‘You can leave that for now.’
‘Leave it?’
Leave the meeting relating to the quango of which Clement Ayling had been a member and Charlie Howe still was.
‘It’s not of immediate importance, is it?’ Howe said. ‘I want this thing wrapped, Francis. Obviously, I’m refocusing. I’m looking, as you yourself suggested, for environmental extremists. I’m looking for pagan-oriented fanatics—’
‘What, like the residents who were banged up for aggravated trespass for refusing to leave council premises?’
‘We . . .’ Howe shrugged. ‘We may talk to them, but mostly they’re a little too old for the profile, wouldn’t you say?’
Bliss eyed her.
‘You’ve got something else, haven’t you?’
Howe’s expression, if you could call it that, didn’t change. She’d finally lost the Gestapo-issue rimless glasses – contact lenses now – but she still hadn’t learned how to smile without using her fingers to prise up the corners of her mouth.
‘Ayling . . . had received a number of threatening phone calls. In relation to his support for the relief road and his derisive remarks about the Serpent.’
‘How threatening?’
‘Sufficiently. We have a tape, from his answering machine, so that gives us a voice. Male.’
‘You got this from Helen Ayling?’
‘Something jogged her memory.’
Bliss struggled for control. So this had turned up last night? And Howe hadn’t even told him. Seeing Dinedor had been his idea, any other SIO he’d worked with on a case this big would have called personally to fill him in, no matter how late. When your wild card came up, it was acknowledged.
It was called a working relationship.
A knock on the door and Howe said, ‘Come.’
Come. She probably said that, in the same detached tone, in bed, if you could imagine that. Word was that one of the desk boys in Worcester had run a book on which team Annie played for and had to give back all the money because nobody had ever managed to find out. Figured. Even Bliss wasn’t sure, but he was horribly afraid she might actually, in theory, be straight.
Kevin Snape came in with some papers. Howe nodded towards Bliss, and Kevin put them down in front of him, winked and buggered off. Copies of the forensic and archaeological reports. Bliss didn’t touch them.
‘And of course you might like to consider,’ Howe said, ‘if you know anyone else with a knowledge of religious fanatics in this area and the borderline insane.’
Uh oh.
‘Yeh, I’ll have a think,’ Bliss said, cautious.
‘I’d make an approach myself but the person I’m thinking of is clearly not comfortable with educated women.’
Bliss didn’t laugh.
‘There’s also the daughter. The daughter, as you know, is . . . maladjusted and seems to have contact with many of the crank elements in this area. I’m interested in who she might know.’
‘You want me to—’
‘Get what you can, but be careful how much you disclose. Nothing, obviously, from those particular reports. Not that I need to—’
‘No, you don’t.’
Bliss stood up, needing to get out before he said anything he’d regret.
‘Sit down, Francis,’ Howe said
. ‘I haven’t finished with you.’
Haven’t finished with you?
Mother of God, you could only take so much of this shite. Bliss put his hands on Howe’s desk, took a breath.
‘Look . . .’ close enough now to notice she wasn’t wearing perfume ‘. . . whatever’s on your mind, why don’t you just frigging come out with it, Annie? Because I’m getting a bit pissed off with—’
‘Sit down, Bliss.’
Howe hadn’t moved. Bliss sat down. The next ten minutes brought him closer to throwing in his warrant card than at any other time in his nineteen years as a cop.
19
Hole
PICKING UP SOME cigs in Big Jim Prosser’s Eight Till Late, Merrily saw that Hereford had exploded, debris all over the morning papers.
The Birmingham Post had Clem Ayling pictured last summer at the opening of a new woodland craft centre. Wearing a yellow hard hat, symbolically holding an axe, lavishly smiling. A grinning death mask now, glaringly surreal.
‘I met him just the once.’ Jim stacked up more papers near his checkout, stooping over them. Last of the old-fashioned shopkeepers, four pens in his top pocket. ‘Odd, really. You couldn’t dislike the feller, whatever you think of his council. An ole rogue, but you expect that.’
‘Don’t expect this, though, Jim. Not here.’
‘Aye. Lyndon Pierce was in earlier. Never seen him look as shattered. Like it might be him next. No such bloody luck.’ Jim smiled. ‘Sorry, Merrily.’
‘You can’t be totally against the village doubling in size.’
‘Can’t I?’
‘They’d all want papers.’
‘Aye . . .’ Jim dropped the papers; a nerve had been exposed. ‘From some bloody supermarket where the village hall is, when Pierce swings his lottery grant for a new leisure centre. It stinks, Merrily. It’s not the place we moved to.’
‘It hasn’t happened yet, Jim, we can still ob—’
‘I meant the whole county. Nobody’s ever gonner forget it was Ayling who stuck to it as half the secondary schools would be gone within five years because of the council getting squeezed. But that en’t how I see it. If they can afford new shopping centres, they can afford to keep the schools open. We got more bloody supermarkets in Hereford than any city of its size in the country – did you know that? All the time, they’re expanding on what we don’t need and cutting back on what we do, and it . . . it’s bloody wrong.’