by Phil Rickman
‘Or you could go round, see if he’s interested in attending church.’
‘I did think of that, yes.’
‘Merrily . . .’ Lol turned to her. ‘Have you read what he thinks about the clergy?’
‘It was a joke. But no, I haven’t read anything he’s written. But I will have by tonight.’
She stared into the stove, where two logs were making a molten Gothic arch, like the gateway to hell.
All the picturesque backwaters in all the world . . .
In the silence, Lol said, ‘Did I tell you they want me to tour America?’
Merrily sat up, hard.
Of course he hadn’t told her. He knew he hadn’t told her.
‘Who?’
‘Guy called Jeff Caldwell. A promoter I met at the BBC. Prof Levin knows him.’
‘And?’
‘Prof says he’s on the level.’
‘Well . . .’ Ice sliding into Merrily’s stomach. ‘That’s fantastic, Lol. That’s . . . you know . . . Erm, when?’
‘I don’t know. Early next year. Someone backed out. It’s colleges, mainly, but . . .’
‘Well . . . congratulations. You . . . you’ve made it.’
‘You think?’ Lol sat down next to her. ‘People who’ve done it say it’s all motel rooms and . . . other motel rooms.’
‘Exciting. Wish I was coming.’
The rain was heavier now, the slow, sinister beat of individual drops on the glass giving way to a gusting, shuffling rhythm like a whole drum kit out there.
‘Well . . .’ Lol said. ‘I had wondered about that. If there’d be any possibility?’
‘Of what?’
‘Going to America. I mean you.’
‘Me? Who’d pay?’
‘Me.’
‘No, that’s not—How long for?’
‘Five weeks, apparently.’
Merrily said nothing. They both knew how impossible that would be for her, for too many reasons to list. Inside the stove the gates of hell had collapsed in an orange starburst.
‘OK, I’ll ring the guy this afternoon,’ Lol said. ‘I mean, it’s not really what I—’
‘Lol.’
‘What?’
‘You have to do it.’
‘I like it here too much,’ Lol said. ‘And it’s too late.’
‘No! Listen. It was like when you didn’t want to play in front of an audience. When you thought you were incapable of doing it. And then you were forced to. And you didn’t look back, and now you’re so much more comfortable with yourself. You . . . function better.’
‘Um, thanks. But I don’t think it is that important. What’s more important . . . is what happens on Christmas Eve. At the Swan.’
She sat looking at him, saying nothing.
Christmas Eve . . . she’d made a point of not trying to influence him one way or another. He had a few friends – good friends – in Ledwardine, but she wasn’t sure if he had fans. A gig at the Black Swan could be a triumph; it could also be a disaster, especially on Christmas Eve. And he didn’t need it. He’d done Jools Holland, he’d been asked to do America. He’d seen Michael Stipe singing along with ‘The Baker’s Lament’. If he passed on the Swan, what was lost?
‘I’ve . . . said OK.’
‘Oh.’
‘Pushed it to the wire and then rang Barry and . . . he’s having posters done.’
‘What, erm . . . what decided it?’
‘Well, it . . .’ Lol looked uncomfortable. ‘I suppose it was Lucy.’
‘Oh God. Not you as well.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Talking to Lucy. Like Jane?’
‘Not quite,’ Lol said. ‘It was strange.’
Merrily said nothing; anything to do with Lucy Devenish usually was. Lol managing to acquire Lucy’s house – this house, his house now, for God’s sake – had meant, for him, a responsibility. The need to keep Lucy’s spirit sweet.
‘The lines of a song came to me. I’ve got a bunch of songs now – I’ve been putting them together for the second album.’
‘The risky second album.’
He rarely played his songs to her – and never, she suspected, to anyone else – until he thought they were as good as he could make them, and even then they were usually on tape.
‘Same theme as “Baker’s”,’ Lol said. ‘Rural change, rural decay. And other stuff with relevance to what’s happening here. I’ve also adapted three of Traherne’s poems.’
‘That’s a brilliant idea. Was it hard?’
‘Not as hard as I thought it would be. And then I was just sitting around, playing with ideas when these lines kind of came out of nowhere.’
He didn’t sing them, only spoke them in a whisper.
‘Miss Devenish . . . Would ever wish it so . . .’
There was silence. Almost immediately, Merrily heard the words again, in her head.
‘God, Lol. Lucy in a song? You’re actually writing a song about Lucy Devenish?’
The only song he’d ever written, specifically naming a real person, was ‘Heavy Medication Day’, the one about Dr Gascoigne, the psychiatrist big on sedation, who’d caused him problems in the psychiatric hospital. And look at the trouble that had caused.
‘It’s halfway there,’ Lol said.
‘You’ve got a song about Lucy Devenish, and you’re planning to play it for the first time at the Black Swan, in front of people who knew her?’
‘No, the first time, I’m going to play it here, in her house. And if I feel she doesn’t like it . . .’
‘You know she’ll like it,’ Merrily sighed. ‘Because, however it turns out, you’ll think she gave it to you.’
A chiming, tiny but strident, came out of the hall. Merrily jumped. It was her mobile, in a pocket of the waxed coat hanging where Lucy used to drape her poncho.
‘Won’t you?’ she said.
‘You’d better get that.’
She stood up and went out into the tiny hall. The rain was a muffled roar, like a big audience, as she fumbled out the phone.
‘Reverend.’
‘Oh.’
‘Where are you?’ Bliss said.
‘Does it matter? Where are you?’
‘I’m in the car. Outside your vicarage.’
‘Ah.’
‘I need to talk to you.’
Merrily went back into the living room, where Lol sat, looking down at his hands clasped together below his knees.
He looked up and smiled, but she sensed a thick wedge of anxiety behind it.
She bent and hugged him, the phone still at her ear.
‘I’ll come over,’ she said to Bliss.
21
Pebbles
THERE WAS A crack in the cast-iron guttering over Lol’s front door, and a cold stream of water sluiced into Merrily’s hair as she stumbled into the street, pulling on her coat. All down Church Street she saw gutters spouting and drains gulping vainly at the muscular coils of water pumping between the cobbles.
Bliss had seen her, his Honda pulling into the kerb, headlights on, the passenger door already swinging open. She grabbed it, slotting herself in, and he was off like a getaway driver.
‘God’s sake—’
‘Remarkable,’ Bliss said. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever known a woman get dressed that quick. I do hope Robinson appreciates what he’s got.’
‘What do you want, Frannie?’
‘Long term, a whole new life would be nice.’ He drove down Church Street towards the river bridge, waited there for a van to come across. ‘Meanwhile, have a listen to this.’
An MP3 player was wedged behind the gear lever and plugged into the sound system. They were halfway across the bridge, Merrily connecting her seat belt, when the man’s voice came through the speakers. A phone voice, close-up, muffled but precise.
‘You are a disgrace, Ayling. Like the rest of your stinking council, you are a disgrace to Hereford.’
‘Oh.’ She let the seat belt come apart. ‘This i
s Ayling’s answering machine?’
‘You have betrayed your heritage. You have tried to smother the Serpent, in the cause of naked, corporate greed . . .’
Bliss reached out a hand, put the player on pause.
‘You recognise the voice, Merrily?’
‘It’s local.’
‘Local varies.’
‘Hereford, rather than real border.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Sounds like he’s reading it. Like an agreed statement.’
‘Through a handful of Kleenex.’
Bliss drove slowly past the village hall, where the puddles on the car park were starting to join together, forming a moat which continued, deepening, when Church Street became a country lane.
‘I’d turn round when you can, Frannie. Only the four-by-fours are risking it down here.’
‘Always defer to local knowledge.’ Bliss pulled into a passing place, began a three-point turn, the wipers on high speed. ‘And you’ve not answered me question yet.’
‘If it wasn’t for the bypass we’d be almost an island by now. Why are you asking me?’
‘I’ll give you the honest answer, Merrily. Your name was mentioned as someone whose work sometimes brings her into contact with religious eccentrics.’
‘Mentioned by . . .?’
‘The headmistress.’
‘Just that religious eccentrics didn’t sound like her kind of term.’
‘It wasn’t, I just didn’t want to offend you. In truth, her experience of you – can’t for the life of me think why – seems to be as someone who is generally hostile and unhelpful.’
‘That is so hurtful.’
‘Yet seems to have the impression that you and I have a certain rapport. Me being raised a lapsed papist and all.’
‘She instructed you to sound me out?’
‘In her way.’ Bliss put out a hand to the player. ‘Let me give you the rest.’
‘. . . But the Serpent is not dead. Your storm troopers cannot trample the Serpent underfoot. Under tarmac. The Serpent will not sleep, but will writhe in anger under the hill and grow a new skin. Do not imagine it’s over, Ayling. When your road is open and strewn with wreckage and blood . . . you will remember the Serpent. You will remember what you did.’
Pause.
‘We are the Children of the Serpent.’
Click.
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’ Bliss switched off the player. ‘You heard of them?’
‘The Children of the Serpent? Can’t say I have.’
‘You quite sure?’
‘Frannie, what is this?’
‘Do you recognise the voice?’
‘No.’
‘That was a frigging long time coming.’ Bliss leaned back, his hands slackening on the wheel. ‘You know it’s important we eliminate people. You do realise why? Otherwise a lot of innocent loonies are gonna get harassed.’
They were back in Church Street. Before the square, Bliss turned left into Old Barn Lane, accelerated towards the bypass. Evidently determined not to take her home. Wanting her in his car, next best thing to an interview room. She’d never known him like this.
‘Are you OK, Frannie?’
‘This tape, by the way – you haven’t heard it. I’m not supposed to take it out. Got it from Karen, who gets trusted with copying stuff onto hard disk and MP3.’ Bliss slowed. ‘And you’re not surprised, are you? You knew about it. What happened – Helen Ayling told Sophie and Sophie . . .?’
‘Something like that.’
‘I don’t know why I bother. You wanna hear it again?’
‘Frannie, I really don’t know the voice.’
‘Maybe Jane?’
‘Can we leave Jane out of it? She’s—’
‘An adult – correct? I’m gonna leave you the player. Let her hear it. You’ll know if she recognises the voice, won’t you?’
‘What, so you and Annie Howe can bring her in and shine a bright light in her face until she fingers somebody?’
‘Now let’s be sensible.’
‘All right then, let’s talk about Mathew Stooke.’
Bliss braked, his hands squeezing the wheel.
‘You little sod, Merrily.’
‘Calm down, I didn’t make any inquiries. It just . . . reached me. From another source.’
‘What . . . God?’
‘And nobody knows, as far as I’m aware, outside my . . . immediate family.’
‘You’ve seen Stooke?’
‘No, I . . . If Long’s involved, does that mean Cole Barn is some kind of safe house? I mean, there’ve been threats, right?’
‘My, we are au fait with the spook terminology. Safe house. I ask you. Nothing so melodramatic, Merrily. Yeh, there’ve been threats, but it’s considered low-risk.’
‘Islamic, though?’
‘Just threats. It’s even been in the papers. He made a statement through his publishers. Said, if you remember, that he stood by everything he’d written and he wasn’t gonna hide from religious maniacs.’
‘When was this?’
‘When the book came out in paperback. Two months ago? Bit of a coincidence, some people thought.’
‘What are you saying? He was claiming he’d had death threats to get publicity for the paperback?’
‘Always a first thought. Especially as publicity, in this case, had been subcontracted by the publisher to an outside PR company. Naturally, they denied it.’
‘How were the threats made?’
‘Anonymous letters. I think there were three or four of them within about a fortnight.’
‘Long told you this?’
‘Merrily, it was in the frigging papers. Don’t you read the papers?’
‘Well, it’s been a bit . . . So what’s he doing here?’
‘Keeping a low profile. He wants a bit of privacy to finish his next . . . whatever shite he’s working on now. And his wife wanted to live in the country. She likes to walk. Apparently.’
‘Actually,’ Merrily said, ‘a village is not a bad solution. You get gossip within a village, but it very rarely transfers to the outside world. So Jonathan Long . . .’
‘A formality. I gather Mr Winterson, as I believe he’s known, has been left with a phone number, for if he spots anything suspicious.’
‘Like a woman in a dog collar?’
‘Merrily, he eats vicars for breakfast. He’d destroy you with his withering logic.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You just want to see if he’s got little horns, don’t you?’
‘Well, that too.’
‘I gather you wouldn’t recognise him. He’s lost a lot of weight. Anyway, avoid. Don’t betray my trust.’
‘It didn’t come from you. No trust involved. Where are we going?’
‘God knows,’ Bliss said. ‘It’s been a crap day.’
‘You want to talk about it?’
‘Not really. Howe’s under pressure to wrap this up quickly. Probably political, and naturally we’re all getting the heat.’
‘Political pressure?’
‘Killing a senior councillor is tantamount to sedition.’
‘Only if it was done for political reasons. You surely can’t be letting your whole inquiry be dominated by one message on an answering machine. Does nobody remember the Yorkshire Ripper hoax tape? I’m Jack? Put the whole investigation back months, and he was still . . . ripping. And all the cops charging down the wrong alley.’
‘This is different.’
‘Really?’
They were on the bypass now. Not the costliest of bypasses, less than a mile of it before it joined the original Leominster road near a nineteenth-century bridge across the river at a spot known as Caple End. But maybe this was the best kind: not really a bypass at all, when you thought about it, just a more direct way in and out of Ledwardine. Bliss pulled into a long lay-by the other side of Caple End bridge. It was wider than the village bridge, a place where summer
tourists would stop to picnic by the river.
‘Gorra feller coming over from Worcester in about an hour. Archaeologist in charge of the excavation of the Dinedor Serpent. I’ve been directed by the headmistress to meet him on the site.’
‘You going to play him the message?’
‘Word is some of the archaeologists aren’t too pleased at being told to wrap up their dig and bugger off so the new road can go in. So . . . no.’
‘You think the Children of the Serpent could be disgruntled archaeologists?’
Bliss wrinkled his nose.
Merrily said, wanting to help him, ‘Wreckage and blood? You know what that might be implying, do you?’
‘Remind me.’
‘Can I have a cigarette?’
‘It’s a police vehicle.’ Bliss let go the wheel, sagged in his seat. ‘Yeh, go on. But open your window a bit.’
Pulling out the Silk Cut and the Zippo, Merrily wondered how Jane would explain this. Think it out.
‘OK, sometimes . . . when there’s an accident black spot – the kind where there’s no obvious cause, no blind bends, whatever – some people may suggest drivers’ concentration could be impaired, or their perceptions altered, because the road is aligned with – or crosses—’
‘A ley line?’
‘Let’s call it a line of energy. Which our remote ancestors apparently knew about but we, with our dulled senses, can no longer perceive.’
‘Yeh, I know all that. But – pardon me if I’m stating the obvious here – the so-called serpent is not a line, is it? It’s a . . .’ Bliss did the gestures ‘. . . wavy thing.’
‘Still some kind of energy path. According to Jane, it’s possibly connecting the River Wye with the earthworks on Dinedor Hill and reflecting the curves of the river. I’m just trying to give you an idea of how they might see it.’
‘Reflecting the curves?’
‘Literally, perhaps, because of the pieces of quartz which would reflect moonlight.’
‘So the new road cutting through all this . . .’
‘Would be seen as breaking an ancient spiritual link. The secular world, with its noise and its exhaust fumes bursting through the coils of the serpent.’
‘Which our friend insists is writhing under the hill.’ Bliss sighed. ‘I can’t believe we’re discussing this.’
‘Isn’t this what you wanted? How whoever made that call might be thinking? But the person who made the call . . . how likely is that, really, to be Ayling’s killer? As Jane’s always saying, these are people who abhor violence.’