by Phil Rickman
Charlie Howe said, very slowly, ‘I am saying nothing that might incriminate any of my colleagues on the council.’
‘I see,’ said Merrily.
Charlie drank the rest of his second cup of coffee.
‘So David Shelbone could be getting in quite a few people’s hair.’
‘I think I said as much earlier.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
He cupped his hands over his eyes and nose, rubbed for a moment before bringing them down in the praying position.
‘Got nobody else to tell any more,’ he said. ‘Last thing Annie wants is the old man on her back. Most of the people I mix with… well, you never know quite who you’re talking to, do you?’
‘What happened to your… to Annie’s mother?’
‘Oh, it was a police marriage. Average life expectancy five years. Better nowadays, actually. Now there are plenty of professional women around, so you can take up with one who understands all about funny shifts and late-night callouts and having to cancel your fortnight in Ibiza because you’re giving evidence at Worcester Crown Court. Back then, it was this huge majority of full-time housewives and mothers who didn’t understand at all.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He grinned. ‘Don’t be bloody sorry, vicar. I’ve had a lot more fun in twenty-five unencumbered years than I had with her. Anyway… I met you there at the school and I liked your attitude and I thought we were likely to be on the same wavelength on certain matters. And then that little girl taking the overdose – that rather clinched it.’
‘Well… thanks.’
‘I don’t much like Brother Henry,’ he said. ‘I don’t like him as a businessman or as… as a man.’
‘Because?’
‘Because… well, he’s ruthless and he’s vindictive, for starters. The rest I’d need to think about.’
‘And Layla Riddock’s not even his daughter.’
‘He brought her up, though,’ Charlie said, ‘didn’t he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Me neither, really. I don’t know how long he and Shirley Riddock have been together. But it makes you think, don’t it just?’
‘He must’ve been very disappointed when certain people failed to persuade David Shelbone to take early retirement.’ Merrily broke off a small piece of scone and then put it back on the plate. ‘Oh hell, this is getting ridiculous.’
‘Nothing’s ridiculous,’ said Charlie Howe. ‘Hello…?’
Merrily looked up. A man had come in through reception and was walking directly towards their table.
‘Well, well,’ Charlie said.
Merrily recognized Andy Mumford, Hereford Division CID. Being promoted to Detective Sergeant in the twilight of his career must have given him new heart, because he’d lost weight. Sadly, it had made him look even more lugubrious.
‘Andrew Mumford, as I live and breathe.’ Charlie beamed but didn’t stand up. ‘This your local now then, boy, in keeping with your new-found status?’
‘Hello, boss,’ Mumford said heavily.
‘Dropped in for some career advice, is it? Stick it as long as you can, I’d say. Half these so-called security jobs, you’re just a glorified caretaker. Have a seat.’
‘I won’t, thank you, boss. In fact, it was actually Mrs Watkins I was looking for.’
‘Well… you can study for the ministry up to the age of sixty,’ Merrily told him, ‘but at the end of it, caretakers still earn more money.’
Mumford didn’t smile. ‘Mrs Watkins, Mr Howe’s daughter and my, er, governor would like it a lot if you could come to her office for a discussion.’
‘Oh.’ She sat up, surprised. ‘OK. I mean… Just give me half an hour. Because I do need to pop over to my office first.’
‘No, Mrs Watkins,’ Mumford said. ‘If you could come with me now…’
‘Only somebody’s going to be waiting for me, you see.’
‘If it’s Mr Robinson you mean,’ Mumford said, ‘we’ve already collected him at the gatehouse.’
Mumford’s unmarked car was parked in one of the disabled-driver spaces at the top of Broad Street. He drove Merrily across town and entered the police car park, from the Gaol Street side.
It was the pleasantest time of day, layered in shades of summer blue. Mumford didn’t have much to say. He’d evidently been warned not to spoil the surprise. But he’d said enough.
Annie Howe had been given a new office. Merrily couldn’t remember how they reached it. She didn’t notice what colours the walls were. She didn’t remember if they’d taken the stairs or the lift. She felt like she was walking on foam rubber through some bare, grey forest in the wintry hinterland of hell.
Howe’s office door was pushed-to, not quite closed; they could hear voices from inside.
Mumford knocked.
No answer.
He pushed it a little. ‘Ma’am?’
Inside, the room was dim, the window blinds pulled down. Merrily could see a TV set, switched on. The picture on the screen looked down at a group of people standing about awkwardly, looking at each other as if they didn’t know what to do next.
‘… oom?’ a woman said.
One of the others, a man, nodded and walked across the screen and out of shot.
‘Better wait here a moment, Mrs Watkins,’ Mumford said.
On the TV screen, nobody moved for a second or two, then a woman, much shorter, followed the man.
The sound was not very good, with lots of hiss; you could hear the voice, although you couldn’t see who was speaking.
The voice said awkwardly, ‘Gerard, I think I… need to go first.’
23
Poppies in the Snow
‘SIT DOWN, MERRILY.’ Annie Howe switched off the TV. She went over to the window and reeled up the blind, revealing a small yard and the back of the old magistrates’ court.
It was possibly the first time she’d said ‘Merrily’, rather than ‘Ms Watkins’. Using the first name the way police talked to suspects – patronizing, to make them feel lowly and vulnerable.
Right now, it was entirely superfluous. Merrily sat in an armless chair, one with aluminium legs. She felt sick, wishing she’d said no to the scones. And to Gerard Stock.
The last time she and Annie Howe had been face to face, Howe had said, I don’t know how you people can pretend to do your job at all. To me, it’s a complete fantasy world.
Merrily put her hands on her knees. ‘Where’s Lol?’
‘Robinson’s being interviewed separately, by Inspector Bliss.’
‘Frannie Bliss?’
‘If you only knew,’ Howe said, ‘how badly I’m wishing there was something I could charge you with.’
She was in white blouse, black skirt. Her ash-blonde hair was tied back. She was wearing maybe a little eyeshadow, mauvish. If she’d worn glasses they would doubtless have been rimless, like a Nazi dentist’s – Jane’s line. Merrily thought, There is absolutely nothing I can tell this woman that she’s going to believe.
She bit her lower lip. The whole office was painted butcher’s-shop white. There were no plants, no photographs. The calendar did not have a picture; it was framed in a metal box, and you expected it to have ten days in a week, ten months in a year. Andy Mumford sat in the corner by the door, presumably in case Merrily should try to do a runner.
‘Still,’ Annie Howe said, ‘I suppose by the time you leave here, you’ll at least be in a better position to assess your own degree of responsibility.’ She ejected the videotape from the machine. ‘At some point you and I will have to watch it all the way through, to verify certain points. Did you know you were being recorded?’
‘No. It never even occurred to me.’
‘Two cameras.’ Howe went to sit behind her desk, which was away from the limited distraction of the window. ‘Semiprofessional: one digital, one hi-eight. Both of them wedged between timbers in the ceiling. It’s a fairly primitive ceiling, with small holes and gaps all over it, so a
ll he had to do was prise up a couple of boards in the bedroom and position the cameras underneath – one wide-angle, one focused on the table. Why do you think he wanted it all on tape?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Of the suggestions so far, the most likely is that he may have been planning to make the material available for some future television documentary. I’m told he’s always looking to the main chance. Perhaps – let’s not overestimate the man’s intelligence – perhaps he thought he might even capture something looking vaguely paranormal.’
‘Media-oriented, I suppose. He’s a… professional PR man.’
‘Really? According to people in the village, he’s a washed-up drunk.’
‘He wasn’t drunk when I was with him,’ Merrily said.
‘No, amazingly, he wasn’t. So you didn’t even hear the cameras? One was quite old and noisy.’
‘There was a big fridge, which made a lot of noise. If I heard anything, I would have assumed it came from that.’
Howe thought for a moment, expressionless. It was hard to credit she was probably only thirty-two years old.
‘Doesn’t seem to have been a very successful exorcism, does it, Ms Watkins? Or are they always like that?’
‘They’re all different, in my limited experience. But no, it wasn’t as… productive as I might have hoped.’
‘Depending on how one interprets the word “productive”.’
Merrily winced.
‘What time did you leave?’
‘I’m not sure exactly. It couldn’t have been long after midday. I’d suggested we might go back tonight.’
‘He didn’t seem to take that proposal terribly well.’
‘No.’ Merrily was looking down into her lap. Her hands were on her knees, but they wouldn’t stay still.
‘My impression from the tape is that he’d about had enough of you.’
‘Yes.’
‘He described you as amateurish.’
‘I remember exactly what he said.’
‘You and Robinson left at the same time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘I drove back to Hereford. I had an appointment to meet someone at the Green Dragon.’
‘Who?’
‘You know who; your dad.’
‘Why?’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘It was in his capacity as a school governor. He rang me while I was at Knight’s Frome to tell me he had some information relating to an attempted suicide by a young girl whose parents thought she was… spiritually troubled.’
Howe’s top lip lifted in disdain. ‘And was this attempted suicide before or after you were called in to assist this child in her alleged religious distress?’
Merrily didn’t answer.
‘Really not your week, is it? Did you go directly to the Green Dragon?’
‘No, I went to the Deliverance office first. I parked on the Bishop’s Palace forecourt which, as you know, is only a couple of minutes’ walk from the Green Dragon.’
‘Was Robinson with you?’
‘He followed in his own car. We had a brief discussion, and then I had to go and meet your father. Lol and I agreed to meet up afterwards.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t get my—I can’t believe how quickly this all happened.’
‘If it’s any help, the videotape shows that it happened precisely eleven minutes and fourteen seconds after you and Robinson made your last appearance on the tape.’
‘Useful, that videotape.’ Merrily moistened her parched lips.
‘From our point of view, it’s unique. Like being handed a case gift-wrapped with a pretty bow on top.’ Howe stood up, looking down on Merrily. ‘We can even say that it was approximately sixteen minutes after the event itself when Gerard Stock telephoned here, asked to be put through to CID and baldly informed DC Little that he’d just slaughtered his wife.’
It was an interview room with a tape machine, for suspects, and that didn’t help. DI Francis Bliss was about Lol’s age, with red hair, a Merseyside accent and a chatty manner, and that didn’t help either.
It all took Lol back to when he was twenty, a baby rock star… the accused. So hard to tell with young girls these days, isn’t it, Laurence? How old did you think she was? Stitched up by the police and a ruthless bass-player called Karl, and by the parents of a nice girl called Tracy Cooke. Prelude to the great psychiatric symphony.
‘Listen, I’m gonna get yer another cup of tea,’ DI Bliss said.
‘I’m all right, thanks.’
‘You’re not, you know. You’re in shock. Be a shock for anybody.’ Bliss perched on a corner of the interview table. ‘Sorry about this room, but I’m not based here, so I’ve not gor an office of me own. Known Merrily long?’
‘Just over a year.’
‘And you two just met up in the village this morning, after not seeing each other for a few months, and she told you what she was doing and she asked you to go in with her, yeh?’
‘I know that sounds…’
Bliss put out placatory hands. ‘I’m not trying to catch yer out, Lol, I’m just trying to get the basic picture, that’s all.’
‘I was worried about her doing it,’ Lol said.
‘Because of what you knew about Mr Stock?’
Lol nodded.
‘That’s fair enough, I’d’ve been a teensy bit worried meself after reading that stuff in the papers… and the local vicar himself refusing to have anything to do with him.’
‘It was the vicar who suggested I should try and talk her out of it.’
‘Was it now?’
‘He was suspicious of Stock’s motives. But Merrily doesn’t like to prejudge people.’
‘She’s a very nice person,’ Bliss agreed fervently. ‘I was there during that thing, back before Christmas at… Oh, what was that little church called? Anyway, she was giving it a spiritual clean-out after this bugger broke in and hacked up a crow all over the altar. She wasn’t very well that night, mind.’
‘I wasn’t there.’
‘She was with this priest looked like an old hippy. Hugh somebody. He took it over in the end, ’cause she wasn’t well.’ Bliss had a gulp from a can of Diet Pepsi. ‘See, unlike the Snow Queen in there, I’ve gorra very open mind about all that stuff. Comes with being raised a Catholic in a big Catholic city. You’re a Christian yourself, obviously.’
‘I’m not sure what I am,’ Lol admitted.
‘Just a good friend of Merrily’s, then, Lol.’ Bliss put down the can. ‘Listen, pal, I do know a bit about what happened to you way back, and I accept you may’ve had a bad time with coppers in the past… but I do like Merrily and I fully understand the problem she’d got with this guy. And I know it’s her job, and I realize that after that stuff in the papers there was no way she could duck out of it.’
‘No.’
‘So, you’ve gorra believe me when I say I’m not trying to stitch her up, I’m not trying to stitch either of yer up – it’s just we’ve got a feller down the cells putting up both hands to the big one and, before we start talking seriously to him, we want as much background as we can get. Make sense to you?’
Lol nodded. He decided that, for Merrily’s sake more than his own, maybe he should open up a little to this cop. To a point… a point stopping well short of the Lady of the Bines.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just—’
‘You’re all right, pal. Take your time.’
‘Truth is, I was on edge from the minute we went in there. I mean, I didn’t think – not in a million years – that the guy was going to do anything like…’
‘Goes without saying.’
‘But everybody who’d had anything to do with Stock was on about what a conman he was, and a manipulator, and how he’d drop you in it without a second thought. Also, I’d seen him in the village pub a couple of times when he was well pissed. Had a big chip on his shoulder about this bloke Ad
am Lake – virtually suggesting he was behind Stewart Ash’s murder, rather than the two lads who went down for it.’
‘Let’s not open that can of worms for the time being, eh, Lol?’
‘I was just worried he might try and involve Merrily in that.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, but she doesn’t like to turn away from anyone.’
‘So what was he like when you and Merrily went along today?’
‘Not himself. I mean, he couldn’t’ve been nicer.’
‘Why was that, you reckon?’
‘Well, it might have been genuine. Maybe he was serious about needing an exorcism, and he didn’t want to put her off or make her suspicious. That was what I started to think, but now… I suppose that’d be for the tape, wouldn’t it? Like, if he was videoing the thing, he’d want to appear on it as a sincere and honest man, genuinely concerned about what was happening in his house.’
‘That’s a good point, Lol.’ Bliss thought about it. ‘Mind, he wasn’t being very appreciative at the end, was he, when he threw yer out?’
‘But he’d got it all in the camera by then, hadn’t he? Everything that counted. The Deliverance stuff. He could just have wiped the end of the tape afterwards.’
‘True. Why’d he turn nasty, you reckon? Apart from his wife’s attitude.’
‘I don’t think there was anything apart from that. Stephanie started taking the piss, so Stock took it out on Merrily.’
Bliss nodded. ‘Certainly the times you see him looking at her you can tell he’s trying to keep his temper – or something. But then, she was a lot younger than him. And clearly not too worried at being in a haunted house. Or was that bravado?’
‘She was a Catholic, like you. Protected. She said earlier – maybe before we went into the kitchen – that she didn’t think Uncle Stewart would do her any harm.’
‘Oh, we’re not scared of ghosts, us Catholics?’ Bliss blew out his lips. ‘News to me. How did Merrily react to the wife?’
‘Tried to ignore it. Just carried on.’
‘A true professional.’
‘A good person,’ Lol said. ‘Doing the best she could.’