by Phil Rickman
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can assure you that anything you say to us will be treated with sensitivity and discretion.’
Bliss looked pointedly at the teenagers.
‘Or,’ Fergus Young said, ‘if you’d prefer to talk to just a few of us, in a less public place, I’m sure—’
‘That might be a better idea, sir, yes.’
Young turned to the group to discuss it. Frannie Bliss moved away, hands in his trouser pockets. Merrily murmured, ‘Shall I wait in the car?’
‘Not unless you really want to. I might need back-up, with some of these plummy bastards.’
And so they all wound up walking, almost single file, into the village of Underhowle in the blustery dusk. The lane was slick with wet leaves. Nobody spoke much. Merrily knew that Bliss was working out how to turn this around, milk the villagers while telling them nothing they didn’t already know and making it sound like he was taking them into his confidence. Walking a couple of yards behind the delegation, she had the feeling of being towed into something she was going to regret.
Underhowle: she didn’t know what to expect. The village, though still in Herefordshire and close to the most expensive curves of the Wye Valley, was also on the fringe of the Forest of Dean, the less affluent part of rural Gloucestershire – former mining area, high unemployment, a fair bit of dereliction. It wasn’t only the River Severn that separated the Forest from the Cotswolds, and it probably wasn’t only the Wye separating Underhowle from the posher parts of South Herefordshire.
Bliss dropped back to take a call on his mobile. ‘Yeh.’ Then he listened for a while. ‘So that bears out? Good, good…’
The trees dwindled, lights appeared.
‘Lovely job. Ta very much, George.’
Bliss snapped his phone shut, dropped it into his jacket pocket and quietly punched his left palm with his right fist. Fergus Young glanced back at him sharply. Merrily wondered if Bliss had been given the post-mortem result, but he didn’t enlighten her. She caught up with the others.
‘Never seems to stop raining these days, does it?’ she said to nobody in particular, reaching for her hood.
‘Aspect of global warming,’ a white-bearded man growled. ‘We only have ourselves to blame.’
‘I suppose so.’
There was a solitary street lamp at a staggered crossroads, a signpost pointing through the rain to Ross in the west, Lydbrook in the east. Ahead of them, Merrily saw sporadic cottages and modern houses edging warily up a stubbly hillside with the pylons marching behind. In the dusk, with few lights, it looked stark, like a big, sloping cemetery.
‘We’ll use the village hall, I think,’ Fergus Young said.
Not what Merrily was expecting, given the bleakness of the village. Nor, after the abattoir ambience of Ledwardine parish hall, what she was used to.
It had evidently been a barn, left over from the days when the village centre had formed around old farms. Now it was the classiest kind of barn conversion: chairs with tapestry seats, tables of antique pine. Wall lights shone softly on unplastered rubblestone, open beams and rafters.
A sandstone lintel, above a window in the end wall, had one word carved into it: ARICONIUM.
There was also a coffee bar. A dark, wiry guy with a shaven head went behind it, flicking switches. ‘Gotta be espresso, I’m afraid. That all right for everyone? Inspector?’ London accent.
‘Lovely,’ Frannie Bliss said. Merrily wondered how long before he succumbed to caffeine poisoning. She took a seat near the door, glad she was wearing civvies.
Most of the villagers, including all the kids, had dropped away at the entrance. Now there were only four locals in the hall: the shaven-headed guy, the man with the white beard, a weathered woman in her fifties wearing a tan riding jacket. And Fergus Young, lean and rangy and looking more relaxed in here, briskly unzipping his orange tracksuit top.
‘I’ll introduce everyone very quickly, OK? Ingrid Sollars, who runs our visitor centre; Chris Cody making the coffee – Chris is also on the Development Committee – and, er… Sam Hall.’
‘Not on the Development Committee.’ The bearded man was sitting on the edge of one of the tables. He had thin white hair dragged back into a ponytail, was maybe in his mid-sixties. Merrily had the feeling he’d invited himself to the party.
‘And… I’m sorry.’ Fergus Young turned to Frannie Bliss. ‘Inspector… ?
‘Bliss.’
‘Of course. And your colleague… Sergeant, is it?’
‘One day maybe, if she keeps her nose clean.’ Bliss smiled blandly at Merrily. ‘This is DC Watkins.’
Merrily smiled back fractionally, saying nothing. Yeah, well, it probably made sense; the truth would only provoke questions they could do without right now.
She sat quietly, like a minion. In the civilized warmth, she was aware of her thoughts being sucked back into Roddy Lodge’s necro-erotic grotto. This wasn’t something she felt qualified to analyse; it needed a forensic psychiatrist more than a priest. In fact, specialist advice was essential before Bliss took this any further – although obtaining it would mean alerting his superiors to the possibility of something far more extensive, more labyrinthine, than a one-off domestic killing. Which was why he was counting on her to soften Lodge. And she wasn’t going to be up to that, was she?
‘And what’s the Development Committee, exactly?’ Bliss said.
There was laughter from Chris Cody with the shaven head, the youngest of them – probably mid-to-late twenties. He and Ingrid Sollars were laying out bright red cups and saucers on the bar top.
‘It’s what we’re obliged to call ourselves to attract lots of terribly useful grants from various organizations,’ Fergus Young explained. ‘But it’s all rather more casual than it sounds.’
‘Brings results, however.’ Merrily recognized the voice which had earlier accused Bliss of being patronizing. ‘I was born here,’ Ingrid Sollars said, ‘and I can tell you this community has prospered more in the past five years than in the previous forty. We don’t intend to let it slip back, and that’s why we don’t need any of the more unsavoury kind of publicity.’
‘Man’s only doing his job, Ingrid,’ Sam Hall said mildly.
‘Notoriety we can do without.’
‘Lot of things we can do without.’
‘Let’s stick to the point, shall we?’ Fergus Young glanced at Sam and then at Bliss, smiled and shook his head, as though implying this was a little local conflict, nothing to worry the police. Sam Hall wrapped his arms around his knees and stared at the ceiling. Chris Cody and Ingrid Sollars began to hand out coffees.
‘Ta very much.’ Bliss sipped contentedly, glancing from face to face. ‘So, how well do we all know Mr Lodge?’
Ingrid Sollars frowned. ‘Well enough not to say another word until you tell us what he’s supposed to have done.’ She had grey-brown hair pulled back into a tight bun.
‘All right.’ Bliss sat down and stretched out his legs. ‘I can tell you this much, some of which you’ll know already. We’re investigating the suspicious death of a thirty-nine-year-old woman whose body was found on Mr Lodge’s… property. It’s now been confirmed by a pathologist that this woman was strangled.’
‘Oh, shit.’ Chris Cody sat down.
Sam Hall swung his trainered feet to the floor. ‘You’re saying you’ve charged Roddy with murder?’
‘We’ve not charged him with anything yet.’
‘But you’re going to?’
‘Would you advise me not to, sir?’
There was silence, except for noises from the coffee machine and rain on the window. It was quite dark outside now.
‘Poor Roddy,’ Fergus Young said.
Bliss tilted his head, inviting him to expand.
‘I…’ Young sighed. ‘All right, I’m the local head teacher – at the primary school. If you’d told me that one of the kids had committed a murder, my reaction would be much the same. I’m not saying he’s in any way retarded – wel
l, maybe emotionally, and I’m not qualified to give an opinion on that. But the idea of Roddy Lodge as a murderer… it’s just hard to—’
‘This woman.’ Ingrid Sollars was still on her feet. ‘The dead woman. Who is she?’
‘Sorry. Can’t tell you that until she’s been formally identified.’
‘Is she local?’
‘Depends what you mean by local. I’m sorry.’
‘Because questions were being asked in the village about a woman who… who’s been missing for some time.’
Bliss nodded. Merrily recalled his mention of another missing woman.
‘Inspector Bliss, have you found the body of Melanie Pullman?’ Ingrid Sollars stood in front of him, her back arched. ‘Is Melanie Pullman dead?’
Bliss folded his arms. Merrily tried to catch his gaze; this wasn’t fair.
‘Did you know Miss Pullman?’ Bliss asked.
‘She worked weekends for me when I was running a riding school. Then she started going out with Roddy Lodge and I didn’t see her so often.’
‘Why did she break up with Roddy?’
‘I assume because he took up with another woman.’
‘Which nobody could understand,’ Sam Hall said. ‘Melanie was a nice girl and pretty, whereas the other woman looked, uh…’ He glanced at Ingrid Sollars, smiled and shook his head.
‘What?’ Bliss asked.
‘OK, good-looking, but older and… kind of a hard bitch, you want the truth.’
Sam Hall had a curious hybrid accent: the Gloucester roll you found east of Ross made more fluid by something transatlantic. Ingrid Sollars stared at him like he’d already said far too much.
‘So who’s the other woman?’ Bliss said casually.
‘Aw hell, Ingrid,’ Sam Hall said, ‘this is all gonna come out – why waste time? Name’s Lynsey Davies, Inspector. When she’s not in residence at Roddy’s place, she lives over in Ross, which is where he picked up most of his, uh, companions.’
‘So that’s where we could expect to find Ms Davies at the moment, then, is it, sir?’
‘I guess. Though there is another— OK!’ Sam put up his hands to field Ingrid’s glare. ‘No gossip. I’ll stick with the facts. Yeah, someplace in Ross. Personally, I haven’t noticed her around the last couple weeks.’ He raised an eyebrow at Bliss, then looked away to show he wasn’t going to follow up on this.
Ingrid Sollars moved towards a chair, then turned back to Bliss. ‘When Melanie Pullman disappeared, some of us thought you – the police – ought to have looked harder. But you abandoned her.’
‘I don’t think “abandoned” is quite the right word,’ Bliss said. ‘But, yeh, there are hundreds of adult missing persons, and not that many police. We have to prioritize and, unless we think someone’s in immediate danger, we can’t always devote the resources we’d like to. However… I can say I’d be very surprised if this turned out to be Miss Pullman’s body. And not only because it’s about two years since she disappeared.’
‘Oh.’ Ingrid Sollars sat down, expressionless. ‘Thank you.’ ‘Nonetheless,’ Bliss said thoughtfully, ‘since you mention it, in the light of what’s happened, the circumstances of Melanie’s disappearance might warrant another look, do you think?’
‘Oh, now just a minute.’ Fergus Young sat up. ‘This situation’s fraught enough—’
‘I’m just asking the question, Mr Young. How long after breaking up with Roddy Lodge did Miss Pullman disappear? Is it possible she disappeared before breaking up with Roddy? If you see what I mean.’
Sam Hall said, ‘I’d say not. But around this time Roddy Lodge’s love life would’ve been a little hard to chart. Boy seems to have gone through what you might call a delayed adolescence – like he’d discovered sex for the first time in his thirties. I guess you’d say no woman was safe. Although by safe, that’s not to say…’
Fergus Young nodded regretfully. ‘In a way Sam’s right, I suppose that’s what I meant earlier about Roddy being a big kid. His overtures to women were always so obvious, so unsophisticated – so immature, really – that we perhaps didn’t appreciate how often he… you know.’
‘Stop it!’ Ingrid Sollars shouted. ‘You’ve no grounds, neither of you…’
Fergus looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s true that most of us haven’t been here long enough to give you a reliable opinion.’ He looked at Ms Sollars. ‘You were born here, of course.’
‘And brought up not to gossip, Mr Young.’
‘Well, I was born here, too.’ Sam Hall lowered himself into a chair opposite Bliss. ‘And I think this is a situation where the famous Forest caution can do more harm than good. I know the Lodge family reasonably well. Solid, traditional farmers, made a good living, looked after their money, regulars at the Baptist Church before it closed.’
And Roddy was the baby, right?’ Bliss said.
Sam Hall nodded. Merrily noticed he was drinking not coffee but spring water from a bottle. ‘Mother dead, so it was an all- male household: Harry Lodge and the three sons, of which Roddy was the youngest by almost a quarter-century. Harry never remarried, and whatever happened, he tended to accept it as the will of God. Personally, I don’t know too much about Roddy’s life when he was growing up, being as I was away for some years, but I guess it was kinda… constrained?’
He stopped and glanced at Ingrid, who presumably had been here during those years, but she wouldn’t be drawn and looked away.
‘Don’t give up on us, Mr Hall,’ Bliss said.
Sam shrugged. ‘Well… when I came back from the States, Harry Lodge had just died and left Roddy the money to start a business, give himself a direction in life. To everyone’s surprise – not least Roddy’s, I guess – it took off, and… and so did Roddy. After this confined, God-fearing life on the family farm, where earnings tended to be conserved, were certainly never flaunted, he suddenly had more money than he knew what to do with. I guess it went straight to his head.’
‘There’s this little sports car in the garage, along with the diggers,’ Bliss said.
‘Yeah, a red one. And some pretty expensive weekend wear in his wardrobe, I’d guess. Sure, with his flashy car and a place of his own, he found he’d become suddenly attractive to a certain kind of woman. I guess he was getting to think he could have just about any woman he wanted – or a good proportion, anyway. Lynsey Davies didn’t seem to mind – least, she stuck around. Maybe she liked the sports car.’
‘And were the other women around, too, at the same time?’
‘Not in Underhowle. But I have friends in Ross. In some of the pubs there, Roddy was felt to be a nuisance, always trying to pick up girls.’
‘Sometimes succeeding?’
‘Aw hell, more than sometimes. Rebuffs bounced off him. If ‘there’s such a thing as what the Americans call a retard – only with a mental age of sixteen – then that’s what I guess you’re looking at here.’
‘Nicely put, sir,’ said Frannie Bliss. Merrily expected follow- up questions, tracing the directions Roddy’s new-found liberation might have taken him, but Bliss stood up. ‘Well, thank you all, very much. I think we’ve managed to exchange some useful information there. If you can think of anything else, I’ll leave a couple of cards on the bar here. Ring me.’
Outside, Bliss said to Merrily, ‘Next time I talk to those buggers, it’ll be individually. Like, the woman can obviously tell us a lot more, but she’s not gonna do it in front of the rest of the Underhowle Development Committee.’
‘What’s that about? What are they developing?’
‘Everything. Place has been going down the pan for years. Used to have three pubs, post office, bakery, all that. Used to be plenty of jobs in the Forest of Dean – mining and… forestry, obviously. Now, even farming’s in trouble, and a place this scrappy’s never going to make the tourist trail. All they had left was the school, and they had a hell of a battle to keep that going. That guy Fergus got a big campaign going, now he’s a local hero.’
/> They walked back along the lane. The rain had stopped again, but the wind was up, rattling like a flock of pigeons in the trees on either side.
‘And the other little bloke – Cody – the one who doesn’t say much, he’s the big industrialist. Builds computers.’
‘Here?’
‘Got a little factory. Doing very well, comparatively. Not exactly Bill Gates yet. More of a Bill Catflap – somebody called him that.’
Merrily laughed into the wind. Bliss looked at her. ‘They don’t pay you much, do they, the Church?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The knackered old Volvo. That coat. I always thought maybe you got extra for being an exorcist.’ No, just the privilege of having only one parish, instead of about six, like the bloke who covers this patch.’ Merrily looked down at her coat. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll have saved enough for a new one from the Oxfam shop before winter sets in.’
Bliss smiled, his mind already moving off somewhere else – she could almost see it racing ahead of them down the windy lane, a striker needing a swift score before somebody blew the whistle. She tried to intercept.
‘You learn anything back there, about Roddy Lodge and Lynsey Davies?’
‘Just threw up more questions. If he was suddenly getting his leg over half the girlies in Ross, why the older woman?’
‘Thanks.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘What’s more curious, I would’ve thought,’ Merrily said, ‘is why – if he’s doing so well with real live women – why the wall full of dead pin-ups?’
Ahead of them, she could see lights in the garage complex, where Andy Mumford would be working stolidly on, alone in the bungalow with Roddy’s gallery. She didn’t want to see that again and was worried that Bliss was going to ask her to.
‘And what’s Ariconium, Frannie?’
‘Eh?’
‘The word “Ariconium” was inscribed on a stone in the hall.’ ‘I don’t know. I’ve seen a few mentions of it around the village. Listen, are you up for this now? Roddy? You can ask him about the dead ladies.’