by Phil Rickman
Bliss shrugged.
‘Thank you, lad.’ Huw went to stand at the lectern. ‘Nobody likes to think of anybody, especially a woman, becoming so corrupted inside as to find inspiration and energy in a situation as foul as that. But we have to face it. Just as we had to face the fact that the number of lives destroyed by twenty years of carnage in Cromwell Street far exceeded the number of lives lost. Which itself may be a lot bigger than the list read out at the trial of Rosemary West.’
‘I’m sorry…’ Fergus Young looked like a man who’d been containing himself for as long as he reasonably could. ‘I don’t see the relevance of this. It’s frankly obscene. There’s no proven link between Underhowle and anything connected with West, and I really don’t think we should manufacture one. Lodge and Davies are both dead… gone… finished.’
‘No, lad. Nowt’s finished. If you don’t see the living darkness at the heart of this—’
‘Living darkness!’ Fergus stood up, his hair springing. ‘That is such nonsense! That’s defamatory nonsense.’
Huw held tight to the wings of the brass eagle. ‘See, I don’t usually talk like this to lay folk. It doesn’t help. But I’m looking at a woman who was drawing energy from a black hole, a place from which all kindness, tenderness, pity and moral awareness had been sucked out. Drawing energy from that. Can you understand?’
Merrily said softly, ‘I think we should look at what she was creating. With Melanie out of the way, she’d begun to reorganize Roddy’s life. Perhaps starting with something fairly innocent like setting up his sitting room as Roddy’s Bar – like the one at Cromwell Street. And then redecorating his bedroom.’
Cherry Lodge whispered, ‘Yes.’
‘There were two bedrooms in that bungalow – the one Roddy set up for himself, which was a bit old-fashioned. And the one I think Lynsey created for him, with black sheets and eroticized pictures of beautiful women who also happened to be dead. Reflecting the connection he was perhaps already making between sex and death, but… brutalizing it, I suppose. Like she was trying to turn him into… somebody else.’
Fergus said, ‘Somebody else?’
‘Work it out, lad,’ Huw Owen told him.
‘It’s preposterous!’
‘She also revamped his social calendar,’ Merrily said. ‘Poor Jerome Banks thinks he was the one who encouraged Roddy to go out and find some real girls. In fact, Lynsey was building up his confidence… and also turning him into a predator. Like people train hawks.’
She looked up at the sound of Piers Connor-Crewe edging out of his pew, making for the door. ‘I’ve heard enough.’
Bliss stood in his path. ‘I don’t think so, Piers.’
‘Are you actually attempting to detain me?’
I have some questions.’
‘Up your arse with them, inspector. I’ve had quite enough of you for one day.’
‘It’s just that I’ve been wondering: if Lynsey – or somebody else, other than Lodge – killed Melanie Pullman, who buried her? I’ve just recalled you saying this morning that Roddy lent you his digger, to put in some trenches near the chapel. Only, I was watching my good friend Mr Parry today. You could take a digger – as I presume Roddy often did – from his garage to this churchyard, along the path through the fields, in… what? Ten minutes? Bit longer at night?’
‘You’re insane.’
‘It’s just a thought, Piers. Neither you nor Lynsey would want Melanie buried near the Baptist chapel, if there was ever any chance of a real archaeological dig. Nowhere safer for a body than a graveyard. And who’d be next in there – Tony Lodge? Well, not in the near future, we all trust and hope. And anyway, as soon as they saw bone down there, it’d be, whoops… that’s another one slid down the hill, better move on a couple of yards.’
‘Unless they found this.’ Merrily held up the angel. ‘Bit of a give away. Was to us, anyway.’
The angel shone with a coppery light, brighter somehow than the lighting globes.
‘Yeh, that’s odd,’ Bliss said. ‘I can’t explain why they didn’t take that off her, dispose of it.’
A discreet cough from Gomer. ‘Likely di’n’t see him, ennit? If her weared him under her clothes, next to the skin, like, mabbe he wouldn’t be visible. At night, if they was in a hurry. But then the clothes starts to rot… up he comes.’
Thank you, Gomer.
He knew as well as she did that it couldn’t have happened like that, because the fabric of the clothes had not rotted. The angel shone from Merrily’s hand and burned with a soft heat. A witness. Perhaps it had found its own way to the surface.
‘What do you think, Piers?’ Bliss asked.
‘What should I think? I have no proof you’ve found anything at all.’
Bliss said steadily, ‘You planted her, pal. Let’s start with that, see where it gets us.’
‘You dare to accuse me of that – in front of all these witnesses?’
‘I’m feeling lucky.’ Bliss opened the door into the porch. ‘Go on, if you want. You go home and have a couple of glasses of your favourite fifteen-year-old malt and a good night’s sleep. Or maybe you’d prefer to lie awake all night and think about it, work out your story.’
Bliss was winging it, Merrily thought. He wouldn’t even have seen what was in the grave.
‘Or perhaps, if you want to be less public about it, you could drop in at police Headquarters tomorrow.’ Bliss held open the door and froze. He took a cautious step back, then relaxed, smiling thinly. ‘Ah, Mr Laurence Robinson, as I live and breathe.’
Merrily almost ran down the aisle. Lol stood in the doorway, smiled bashfully at her, the way he always did when she was in uniform. But the slanting alien eyes were watching sardonically from the region of his chest. Merrily stopped.
‘If you’ve come to collect the little woman, she may be a while yet.’ Bliss let Lol in and closed the door.
‘Who the hell’s this?’ Connor-Crewe was looking limp with unease now.
Lol said nothing. He went to stand with Gomer in a shadowed spot under a stone plaque commemorating Ald. Joseph Albert Persham: 1894–1966.
‘If you drop in at Headquarters,’ Bliss said to Connor-Crewe, ‘we can fingerprint you, take a little DNA swab… and that should put you in the clear.’
‘You don’t frighten me in the least,’ Connor-Crewe said. ‘You’re an ambitious little bastard, but of limited intelligence.’
‘He don’t need intelligence.’ Chris Cody was leaning wearily against a pew-end, rubbing his face and then looking over his fingers at Connor-Crewe. ‘And for what it’s worth, he frightens me. You got no idea, have you, Piers? You don’t know what these animals are like, mate.’
Merrily’s hand closed around the angel. She was staring, like everyone else, at this slightly built man in an oversized overcoat, who could buy and sell all of them and the church around them. Cody shook his head like he was sick of the whole thing.
‘It’s a murder inquiry now. They lose all sense of proportion on a murder, ’specially if it’s a woman or a kid. They’ll lie, they’ll plant evidence, they’ll have you on a fucking sandwich, mate. You’re this upper-class bastard who’s been to fucking Oxford. They love nailing a nob.’
‘Chris, what on earth are you…?’ Connor-Crewe was sweating.
‘You go out there,’ Cody said, ‘you’ll find another twenty coppers lined up like bleeding dominoes. I’m telling you, soon as I knew they had the body, I’m like, you know, this is it, we been set up. We walked into it.’
Merrily exchanged glances with Frannie Bliss. The tip of an angel wing was piercing her palm and she felt almost faint. But Bliss was deadpan, entirely relaxed, as if he’d been expecting this and wondered why it had taken them so long. But he hadn’t; inside, he’d be as shaken as she was. She looked around for Huw and found him sitting on the chancel step, leaning forward with his hands in prayer position between his knees, not looking at anyone, listening.
Bliss said, ‘Who killed Melanie
, Mr Cody?’
Cody looked at Piers Connor-Crewe and shrugged.
‘Lynsey, of course,’ he said. ‘Oh yeah – and Fred West.’
Moira Cairns drove quite slowly out of Hereford, her face lightly tanned by the dashlight. Hands low down on the wheel, relaxed. Like they had been all night. Like she was totally unaware of the tension in Jane.
‘He was awfully good.’
‘Yes.’
‘Like, I was scared out ma mind when he first went out there but, Jesus, once he was into it, it was like this was the second week of his long-awaited world tour. And I guess the reason for that was he had something bigger on his mind.’
‘Mmm.’
A long pause as Cairns let this huge lorry come growling past. For Christ’s sake.
‘And you’re thinking Lol and I are making out, yeah?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, I’m sorry, too, if that’s way off,’ Cairns said, ‘but I couldnae think of a better reason for you behaving the whole time like a wee pain in the arse, you know?’
‘It’s the way I am,’ Jane said. ‘I am a pain in the arse.’ And then, as Cairns slowed right down for the Whitecross roundabout, she said, ‘Are you?’
‘Er… no. We’re not.’
‘Oh.’
‘Where’s Eirion, Jane?’
‘Dumped me.’
‘For being a pain in the arse?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Uh huh.’ Moira Cairns drove in silence for maybe half a mile. The road was quiet, too. Then she said, ‘But when life’s such a bitch, and the world’s this big kidney stone floating in a universe of liquid manure, where’s the point in not being a pain in the arse?’
Jane turned her head and looked directly at Cairns. Neither of them was smiling.
Jane moistened her lips. ‘Have you been speaking to Eirion?’
‘Not since the night the both of you were there, at Prof’s. And Eirion was doing most of the talking then. Why?’
‘Just… wondered.’
They hit the countryside, and she turned away to look out at the empty fields opening up on the left, all the way to the Black Mountains.
‘Tell me something, Jane. Does it make it worse when your mother’s a priest of God?’
How do you mean?’
‘Well, she’s up in the pulpit, telling a dwindling audience about the Kingdom of Heaven, and you’re thinking, what’s this shite?’
‘I wouldn’t say that to her.’
‘Or at least no more than twice a week.’
‘That’s not exactly—’
‘But, hell, if it’s what you think… ?’
Jane said, anguished, ‘It’s not what I used to think.’
‘But in those days you’d had no real experience of life, right?’
Jane slumped. It was like all her thoughts and fears had been laid out in this smorgasbord situation, and the Cairns woman was collecting a slice of this, a segment of that on a plate, and poking them with her fork, but not actually eating anything.
‘Next right,’ she said. And as they made the turn, at the sign pointing to Weobley, she rallied, hit back with the big one. ‘Do you believe in God?’
They must have driven for nearly a mile before the reply came. They were passing through a wooded stretch, no visible sky, the headlights on full.
‘Doesnae mean I have to like the bastard.’
‘What?’
‘God – whatever he/she is – if it thinks you can take it, it’s likely to give you a hard time. You want a nice life, the best way is to turn up for the weddings and funerals and don’t even think about any of it the rest of the time.’
‘But that—’
‘Or, of course, the other way is, whenever some shit comes at you, you say, Ah, well, it’s the Will of God. That works. That saves a lot of heartache.’
‘So your philosophy is what?’
‘You just heard it.’
‘I don’t think I believe you.’
‘But once in a while I forget, and I stick my head out the trench, then slam… two black eyes, chipped teeth, nosebleed.’
‘And when people say you’re psychic… ?’
‘Aw now, Jane, you know what a pile of crap that is.’
Jane said, ‘Can’t you go any faster?’
‘Probably. Would there be a good reason to?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jane said.
‘You could try telling me.’
Chris Cody looked over at Connor-Crewe. ‘There’s no point now, mate.’ He folded his arms, his back braced against the pew- end, and addressed Bliss. ‘One night, Piers asked me round, and there was four of us, Piers and me and Lynsey and this woman who worked for Piers down the shop, and – after some stuff – Lynsey says, “What would you like most in the world? Apart from this?” And she pulls up her… Anyway, that’s how it started.’
‘The magic.’ Bliss smiled.
‘I dunno what I was expecting – black robes and upside- down crosses, maybe, but it was nothing like that. Well, candles… bit of atmosphere. And a circle. Bit of mumbo-jumbo, but nuffing you couldn’t live with. The others had done it before, but Lynsey said that wasn’t a problem. She said outsiders could bring in new energy.’
‘Lynsey was in charge.’
‘Oh yeah. Piers was – I’m sorry, mate – like a bloody schoolgirl when Lynsey was there. Sometimes you felt she’d got more testosterone than any of us. Anyway, we were pretty small-time at the factory then – struggling, you know? And there was this contract I was after, to run a system for this new stationery manufacturer over at Tewkesbury, and Lynsey asks me to describe the place and talk about it, and then refine what I want into this like single image.’
‘Image?’ Huw said from the chancel steps.
‘I’m not telling you what it was, ’cause I’m superstitious. Wasn’t then, but I am now. The four of us had to fink about the image and then we sat in a circle, naked, almost touching, but not quite, and then—’
‘For God’s sake,’ Connor-Crewe snapped, ‘they can imagine the rest.’
‘And you got the contract,’ Merrily said.
Oh yeah. First of many that year. Before I went home, Lynsey told me some fings I could like… practise. Fings I could do…’ He grinned uncomfortably. ‘You know, on me own. To build up… the visualization skills in connection wiv… Anyway, the next time I went – no, the time after that – Roddy Lodge was there. I didn’t know who he was, but there was a hell of a… I mean it was incredible. Powerful, you know? It was like you’d taken somefing. Acid or somefing. At one stage, I could’ve sworn there was other people wiv us. Big black figures. Weird.’
‘This was still at The Old Rectory?’
‘Nah, this was in the chapel. The old Baptist chapel. I didn’t like it at first in there, it was a bit cold. I’m like, what’s the point of this? Then I found out.’ Chris Cody shook his head. ‘Roddy and that chapel – crazy. Energy, you know? You come out, you felt you could do anyfing.’
‘Was Roddy on his own?’ Bliss asked. ‘No Melanie?’
‘Nah. I didn’t know about Melanie then, but a few months later we goes along to the chapel – I mean, I’m well into it by then. I had a few qualms now and then, but bloody hell… Anyway, I get there, and Roddy’s on his way over, and there’s this girl like clinging to his legs and that, screaming at him – like does he want to destroy himself, don’t he realize what he’s getting into? And she’s crying and screaming and he’s trying to ignore it and he’s pulling away, but in the end she’s making so much of a scene he has to go back wiv her, and he don’t come in that night at all. And you could really tell the difference wivout him there. Somefing missing, you know? I can’t put this into words, but… somefing definitely missing.’
Merrily glanced at the coffin and caught Ingrid Sollars’s look. Ingrid was sitting straight-backed on the edge of her pew, as if she was on horseback.
‘There was a couple of other times Roddy didn’t show
,’ Chris Cody said, ‘and we knew she was getting to him, wearing him down. One night we couldn’t get in – she’d been up and locked the chapel. Which was becoming our place by then – essential. We all knew it was moving now, like big time, and we was ‘scared of losing the momentum. One day, Piers says why don’t we buy it off of him?’
‘With your money, of course,’ Bliss said.
‘Yeah, well, I’d got a bit by then. And this was important. Like, it was all tied in – wivout what we had going there wouldn’t be no money. The energy we was generating, you know? I mean, I know what it must sound like coming out wiv all this in church and everything, but… it didn’t feel bad. It didn’t feel bad. Not then.’
Bliss said, ‘And you thought it might be better, given his domestic problems, if the chapel wasn’t owned by Roddy Lodge.’
‘Wasn’t as if it was worth much, and I felt it was putting something back. So we got Nye to arrange it. And the Development Committee was up and running, and we put in for grants, turn it into a museum. Course we’d still use it. Lynsey said that’d be cool, surrounded by all these ancient ritual artefacts and that.’
Bliss looked across at Ingrid Sollars. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘No, she didn’t,’ Cody said. ‘Nor did Fergus. And I bloody wish I never had, now.’
‘Why?’ Bliss asked innocently. ‘You were doing all right.’
‘Look, I’d probably still’ve been doing all right. I realize that now, but Lynsey was charismatic. She could make you believe anyfing, especially when it was all so… intoxicating. Like, it was around this time that Roddy gets the contract with Efflapure. Never looked back. Lynsey magicked it. Truth was, Lynsey knew this guy who was a director of Efflapure, and she rigged it – probably blackmailing the guy over something, knowing Lynsey. I found out later, but Roddy never knew. He fought she’d magicked it for him. Magicked it. Bleedin’ hell.’
‘Aye,’ Huw said. ‘That’s how it works. They operate outside the rules. All the rules. Sex, drugs, blackmail. You can never work out where it begins. Or quite where the evil seeps in.’
‘So you fixed up to buy the chapel,’ Bliss said.
‘Yeah. I’d just do fings on a whim then. I was flying, man.’