by Phil Rickman
Bliss saw a face in Gyles’s window, then another face the other side of the Christmas tree. So they’d spotted him. It didn’t matter; if Furneaux wasn’t available, it would have to be Gyles. Half a story was better than nothing.
‘Gorra go, Karen. Keep me informed.’
‘What if he’s gone home?’
‘So ring him at home.’
‘You sound awful manic, Frannie,’ Karen said.
‘It’s me accent.’
The faces had gone from the window. Manic? Me? Bliss got out of the car, and strolled directly across the road, pushed the bell and stood there until a light came on over the door and Gyles opened it.
Unshaven, crumpled shirt, open cuffs hanging loose.
‘Well,’ Bliss said, ‘I can’t say this was convenient, to be honest, Gyles, it being Christmas Eve and me off duty, but . . . here I am.’
‘Yes,’ Gyles said.
Bliss waited.
‘Look, I’ve been bailed, Inspector. I don’t—’
‘Why’d you call me, then?’
‘What?’
‘I gave you me mobile number, Gyles, and you called me.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Hang on . . .’ Bliss got out his mobile, opened it up, held it out towards Gyles. ‘Why else would your number be here, under missed calls?’
‘I don’t know.’
Gyles didn’t look at the phone. Bliss gave him a smile that was wry but full of sympathy for the poor bastard’s situation, as Mrs Jones’s voice elbowed in from the hall behind him.
‘Is it that detective?’
Gyles turned, took a step back, telling her it was.
By then, Bliss was inside.
Bliss supposed the reason he hadn’t taken much notice of Mrs Jones before was that Gyles had just confessed to everything. They’d given the house a good going-over and found nothing that Gyles hadn’t already shown them. He had no form, a cleanie.
His wife had been there all the time, assiduously tidying up after them but hiding nothing, saying nothing.
‘We’re glad you came,’ she said now. ‘Aren’t we, Gyles?’
Kate Banks-Jones was plumpish, had long brown hair and a mouth that turned down but made her look unhappy rather than petulant. She wore a long grey cardigan over a striped jumper and jeans and no conspicuous jewellery. Maybe she’d binned it all, in fury. The tension had wrapped itself round Bliss as soon as he’d walked in.
‘I did not phone you,’ Gyles said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kate said briskly. Her face was flushed, her eyes full of stored heat. ‘We’re glad of the opportunity. And I’m glad you’re on your own this time.’
‘Kate, for—’
‘I wasn’t going to say anything in front of all those other police.’ She didn’t look at Gyles. ‘Or the children.’ She spread her arms to show they were alone. ‘Thank God for grandparents.’
A downlighter illuminated a white-framed sepia photo of Hereford Cathedral, misty, across the river. Apart from the artificial tree in the window, that was the only light. No other festive decorations. About five coloured globes hanging from the ceiling looked seasonal but probably weren’t.
‘I’ve made a full statement,’ Gyles said. ‘I’ve admitted everything.’
‘And he thinks that’s an end to it.’
Kate looked up at the ceiling. They were sitting in a triangle, Bliss in a wooden-framed chair that was more comfortable than it looked, the Banks-Joneses at either end of a long settee, a lot of dark blue cushion between them. There was a small plasma telly and a deep bookcase full of books about gems and modern jewellery.
‘Well, yes.’ Bliss leaned slowly forward, hands clasped between his knees, doing sorrowful. ‘It’s very far from the end, Mrs Jones.’ He looked up, from to face. ‘You’ll have read, I’d imagine, about the murder of Councillor Ayling?’
Neither of them expecting that. Kate’s head and shoulders jerked back. Gyles just went rigid. Good, good, good.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bliss said, sliding the blade in. ‘But if you will mix with criminals, it’s no use going into denial about what they might’ve been getting up to when you’re not there.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Gyles said, and his wife turned on him.
‘Don’t be stupid, Gyles.’
Couple of days’ worth of scorn in Kate’s eyes.
‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Bliss said. ‘I’d been taken off the Ayling case to investigate this trivial shite, and I wasn’t best pleased. We do actually prefer working on the big ones. Not well-disposed towards you, Gyles. But I’d forgotten what a small town this was.’
‘It said pagans in the paper,’ Gyles said. ‘I know nothing about any pagans. I don’t see how there can possibly be any connection between Ayling’s murder and . . . and . . .’
‘So you have no connections with the local authority? Or anyone who works for it?’
Gyles’s eyes were all over the place, but he never once looked at his wife. Bliss let the silence take over the room.
‘Look.’ Kate Banks-Jones stood up. ‘He couldn’t possibly have any connection with what happened to Ayling. I mean, look at him. Does he look like a drug dealer?’
She bit her lip and sat down, probably realising what a silly question that was.
‘And what does a drug dealer look like, Mrs Jones?’ Bliss said. ‘Have a bit of a think.’
She didn’t reply at first, just stared at Gyles until he looked up at her. A little furtively, Bliss thought.
‘I don’t have to think very hard,’ she said.
‘No.’ Bliss nodded. ‘Didn’t think you would.’
‘Kate, no,’ Giles said quietly. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘Oh, the hell with it,’ Kate said. ‘A real drug dealer looks a lot like our next-door neighbour.’
The breath that came out of Gyles creaked at the back of his throat. Kate turned away from him.
‘I’m trying to put an end to it.’
‘You’ll put an end to both of us.’ Gyles was rocking on the sofa, gripping his knees, his teeth gritted. ‘Think about the kids.’
Bliss sat still, saying nothing, thinking hard. Rapidly turning things over and over and inside out and, whichever way you looked at it, it made perfect sense that Gyles was no more than the frontman, the façade, the patsy.
‘. . . thought Steve was awfully cool at first,’ Kate was saying. ‘His idea that Gyles should bring selections of jewellery to parties. Steve went to a lot of parties all over the West Midlands. Whole new world, wasn’t it, Gyles?’ A sneer, then turning to Bliss. ‘Look, I’m not saying we hadn’t done any coke before. I mean, when we were first married. We’d been students together. I just didn’t want anything to do with it after we had the kids. But Gyles . . . Gyles, unfortunately, was into his second adolescence. Plus, of course, he was making lots of lovely money.’
‘You weren’t complaining,’ Gyles said. ‘You’d been on my back for years about how little we were taking in the shop.’
Bliss said, ‘So it was Steve who had the contacts?’
‘Steve has contacts everywhere,’ Kate said. ‘He’s a planner in every sense of the word.’
‘And you are a respectable, long-established family firm.’ Bliss looked at Gyles. ‘Perhaps not doing as well as you once did. Funny, I was in a place the other week, used to be just a rural garden centre, way out in the sticks, now it’s twice the size with a massive jewellery department. Bling up to here. Hard times in the old city, eh, Gyles?’
Gyles said, ‘I want to explain—’
‘I think he wants to explain, Inspector, that our neighbour can be quite unpleasant. People who use cocaine like Steve uses cocaine can get awfully aggressive.’
‘Moderation in all things,’ Bliss said. ‘That’s what my old mam used to say. But they say it doesn’t always work with coke.’
‘He knows some fairly horrible people,’ Kate said. ‘People you don’t want to . . . I wanted us to move.
Sell up, get out. But we’re locked into Hereford. Can’t sell the business because Gyles’s parents own half of it, and they know nothing of this. We were going to . . . tell them over Christmas.’
‘Didn’t you say your kids were with them?’
‘With my parents. They don’t know, either. We’ve told them we’re terribly busy in the shop – that’s a laugh – and have to work late. You can see the state we’re in. Look at my hands shaking. Some of our older customers are not going to come near us again, are they? And who wants to buy a small shop these days, anyway?’
‘It’s a problem,’ Bliss said. ‘And I’m very sorry for you, but . . . hard to scrap the charges at this stage.’
‘Not even if we—’
‘We can’t,’ Gyles snapped. ‘He . . . he’ll take it very badly.’
‘Well, of course he will,’ Bliss said. ‘But look at it this way, Gyles – I’m gonna nail the twat anyway, with or without your assistance. It’s just a question of how long he goes away for. Or if he goes away at all . . .?’
Bliss crossed his legs, leaned back. Kate started plucking at her cardigan.
Gyles said, ‘We’d get protection?’
‘Just ask your questions,’ Kate said.
At one time there had been an underworld, a criminal community.
Ordinary people had nothing to do with it.
Drugs had changed all that, the ubiquity of drugs. The discovery, by ordinary suburban people who served on the PTA, that snorting a line or two of coke didn’t automatically turn you into a denizen of the gutter.
Thus, the suburban snorters became part of the new Greater Underworld.
As Kate had intimated, it was Steve who had the contacts. Steve coming in from Brum to take up his new appointment with the Herefordshire planning department. Very pleasant chap, Kate thought at first. Steve would flirt with her, in an unthreatening, flattering way. At the time, Gyles had been wanting to double the size of his shop window, to allow for a bigger display of his fine jewellery, but the shop was on the edge of a conservation area and the planners had been inclined to refuse permission.
Until Steve had a quiet word in the right place. Steve tapping his nose at Gyles: between you and me, OK, mate?
So Gyles owed Steve a big one, and that was the start of it.
‘Who arranged deliveries, Gyles, once the basic structure had been set up?’
‘I did. Steve would come round with what he called his shopping list.’
‘And you’d pay Mebus?’
‘Yes. It would come back . . . threefold. It didn’t seem like crime.’
‘Always for parties?’
‘And personal use. And sometimes he’d come for a large order.’
‘You know what for?’
‘We didn’t ask,’ Gyles said.
‘We didn’t need to.’ Kate sniffed. ‘It was usually before he went away somewhere.’
‘To where?’
‘To something connected with his job. He was on a committee and they went away to thrash out ideas and things.’
‘A blue-sky thinking weekend.’ Bliss smiled. ‘So where’s Stevie now?’
His phone was throbbing in his hip pocket. He placed a calming hand over it.
‘We don’t know,’ Kate said. ‘Birmingham or Gloucester . . . or London. I really couldn’t say. He has a lot of friends . . . and a girlfriend who sometimes lives here. Sometimes he brings her back with him.’
‘Not always the same one,’ Gyles said wearily.
‘You think he’ll be back tonight?’
‘’I think so. He says he likes a traditional Christmas. Talked about going to a service in the Cathedral. A place to be seen, I’d guess. And then he’s having a . . .’
‘Party?’ Bliss said.
‘Inevitably.’
‘Tell me, Mrs Jones, what was his reaction to Gyles getting busted? Sympathy? Some advice about taking it on the chin, pleading guilty and keeping shtum? A gentle warning, perhaps?’
‘Not that gentle, really,’ Kate said.
Gyles, well out of this conversation now, looked like he was about to be sick. Bliss took out his phone and inspected the screen.
‘Right then, guys, I’ll leave you to have a think if there’s anything else you want to tell me. I’ll be just across the road. Someone I need to phone back.’
‘I’m still shaking,’ Karen said. ‘I’d rather abseil down the spire of St Peter’s than do that again.’
‘Good cause, though, Karen.’
‘It better be. Thought I was going to have to sleep with him.’
Bliss stood at the bottom of Gyles and Steve’s shared drive, away from the only street lamp. He had to smile.
‘Karen, I wouldn’t’ve asked—’
‘I know. It’s just I’m not comfortable lying, never have been.’
‘So, cutting to the chase?’
‘The answer’s yes.’
Something throbbed in Bliss’s chest.
‘The wounds?’
‘One through the aorta, but a few more besides. Maybe afterthoughts?’
‘Window dressing.’
‘Yeah. Didn’t fool their pathologist. His feeling was the bloke was dead almost before the knife went in for a second time.’
‘Wooh, wooh, wooh,’ Bliss said.
Between the sporadic clumps of housing he could see the lights of the city, flat as a pinball table, and the silver ball was pinging. Ram another coin into the slot before it stopped.
‘So you asked him for the name.’
‘He said he’d call me back. That was when it got tense. By some incredible good fortune the only guy in the CID room, when he rang to check me out, was Terry Stagg.’
‘He called you back with the name yet?’
‘No.’
‘Give him an hour, then call him again and tell him it’s important we have it.’
‘I so do not want to do this.’ Karen paused. ‘How important?’
‘Well, Karen, I think this might be it.’
‘What’s that mean?’ An edge of panic in her voice. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Turning over stones.’
‘But Frannie, you’re sick.’
Bliss laughed.
‘I mean you’re not part of this, are you? How can you do anything when you’re out there?’
‘I’ll think of something.’
‘It’s Christmas Eve.’
‘Yes.’
He looked across at the city with the thick night clouds on top, like a cold compress. When Karen had gone, as it began to rain, he went back to the car, switched on the radio, low. Sagged back in the seat, closing his eyes as a chapel choir sang Silent night, holy night.
Another idea came to him. He thought about the options, then switched off the radio and rang Ledwardine Vicarage.
52
Blue Light
WHEN THE RAIN came back, it was so hard and loud it was like the scullery window was being thrashed and thrashed with old-fashioned brooms made of twigs. Jane had to hold the heavy Bakelite phone tight to her ear to make out what Coops was saying.
‘. . . Pure conjecture, Jane, so don’t go . . .’
‘No. I won’t. Honestly.’
It was like the rain was speeding up with her excitement. She was finding it hard to sit still. Alone in the scullery under the desk lamp, charged up with the importance of this. Could hear the buzz and clink of chat and crockery in the kitchen – Mum in there with Eirion, Lol and Gomer.
‘OK, say the orchard’s been there since medieval times . . .’
‘Do you actually know that?’ Coops said. ‘I didn’t have much chance to go into the records.’
‘Nobody knows. It’s just always been there. Can’t be the only village in the centre of an orchard.’
‘No.’
‘And it certainly wouldn’t be the only village inside a henge.’
There. She’d said it. Henge. A word you could chew. Jane had her modest collection of archaeological textbo
oks spread out over the desk, cross-referencing.
A kind of circular ritual monument unique to the British Isles with a ditch and a bank . . .
. . . May include megaliths, like Stonehenge and Avebury, or timber posts, as at Woodhenge and Durrington Walls.
She also had the fairly rudimentary map of the village in the centre of an old Ledwardine guidebook, produced in the 1930s when the orchard still formed most of a semicircle and neither the hestate nor the housing at the bottom of Old Barn Lane had even been thought of.
And you could see it. When you knew you could totally see it.
They were all living in the middle of a henge! The whole village part of a ritual site dating back four thousand years.
There was like a blue light inside Jane’s head.
Ledwardine was the pentagram at the heart of the apple.
‘This could mean there are more stones, Coops.’
‘It’s impossible to say. Stones get smashed, taken away, used in buildings.’
‘But even if these are the only stones, Coleman’s Meadow is only a fragment of the monument.’
‘It’s all theoretical, Jane.’
‘You weren’t saying that yesterday. You were totally convinced that Blore had found something, and you were walking all over the orchard in the rain trying to second-guess him. Come on, admit it, you were thinking henge as well.’
‘What I was thinking doesn’t really matter. It’s the purest—There are no obvious signs.’
‘That’s because they’re all under what’s left of the orchard . . . The orchard was actually planted to cover up the henge – maybe the henge was threatened or somebody—’
‘That’s not something we can ever know,’ Coops said.
What was wrong with him? Had he had a row with his wife or something, down there in Somerset?
‘You’d thought about it before yesterday, too, hadn’t you? You’d thought henge.’
‘Look, all right, it wouldn’t be that unexpected. A henge is just a circular area with a ditch and a bank. As you probably know, they found a massive one a few years ago not twenty miles from here, in Radnor Forest. But not this side of the English border.’