by Phil Rickman
Gwenda sipped from her champagne flute. It wasn’t wine, smelled like whisky.
‘Old Gwyn. The King of Hay’s Chief of Police. Unpaid snooper. He wouldn’t be missed. Pest. He say you were a priest or something?’
‘He may have.’
‘You’re too pretty to be a priest. And probably not even a lesbian.’
‘Well, you know—’
‘Don’t contradict me. Not the night for it. So tired of people stopping me all the time. Oh, Gwenda, have you heard? What a terrible thing! How will the town ever be the same again? What sanctimonious drivel. As if it affects any of them. Why I came down here.’
She turned away and walked down on to the beach of sharp brown stones. Lush too-black hair swept back as she walked. Merrily watched her and thought of Mephista watching Jerrold Adrian Brace carving a swastika into the exposed skull of Cherry Banks, very nearly dead, but not dead or there wouldn’t be blood. Had she taken that picture, too? Viewing it through a camera lens – did that separate you from the act, turning it into just a lurid movie?
No, it didn’t. Try and imagine Jane doing that.
It made you a monster.
‘We used to walk here often, very late at night,’ Gwenda said. ‘Sex on the bank. Good in the rain.’
She stood at the water’s edge, black boots, black leggings, tossing her head back, bleach-white teeth reflecting the lesser white of the moon.
It was like all the nerves in Bliss’s head were dying. He wanted to lay it down on the desk and sleep. Just five minutes’ sleep would do it.
Well, no, it wouldn’t.
‘Should look after yourself better, Inspector,’ Gore Turrell said mildly.
Bliss held on to his temper. Quelled his dismay. Tried to rise above the numbness.
‘How well did you get to know Tamsin?’
‘Pretty well.’
‘You went running together?’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘Where? Where did you go?’
‘Several places. Along the Cat’s Back and down to Craswall. Over the Bluff and up to Capel. Down to Llanthony once.’
‘When did this start?’
‘About a year ago.’
‘You’re not lying to me, are you, George?’
‘Why would I lie?’
‘Because little Tamsin’s dead and there’s nobody left to disprove it?’
Just as no one could disprove it if he’d said he’d never met Tamsin Winterson in his life. Which would have been the sensible line to take.
‘You ever meet off the hills?’
‘Yes.’
‘On a social basis?’
‘Yes.’ Turrell took a long breath, looking into the corner beyond Bliss, where a pair of wellingtons stood. ‘And, later, more than that.’
Mother of God. Bliss saw Vaynor blink.
‘Did Gwenda know about this?’
No answer. Bliss rewound Gwyn Arthur in his head.
… recreational running… not in an ostentatious way… turning out before dawn… marathons he never seems to win… Nothing to draw attention.
Tamsin: no boyfriend her family knew about. Dedicated to her job. Staying fit for the Job. Little Tamsin.
‘George, are you telling me you were Tamsin’s boyfriend?’
Gore shrugged.
‘Why didn’t you come forward this morning when we were appealing for anyone who knew her or had seen her in recent days to contact us?’
No reply.
‘George… Gore… I want you to think very carefully before you answer this question. Have you ever been to Peter Rector’s house, Bryn-y-Castell, at Cusop?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
Mother of God, so many questions, so little time. Going well and yet going badly. What had Gwyn Jones got wrong?
‘Did Tamsin know who your father was?’
‘Hardly likely.’
‘Why?’
‘As even I don’t know who my father was. Only who I was told my father was.’
‘People don’t seem to know much about your personal history. Where were you before you came to Hay? Do you want to say something about that?’
‘Only that I fail to see what it has to do with a short fracas in an alleyway.’
A tapping on the door. Bliss ignored it.
‘But you know who your mother is, don’t you?’
Silence.
‘Gore, you’ve been very cooperative. But I’ve been noticing that this is a particular subject you seem reluctant to discuss. Are you refusing to answer questions relating to your mother?’
‘Yes,’ Gore said. ‘I’m afraid I am.’
‘Tamsin’s death, Gore. Let’s talk about that. Did you kill Tamsin?’
‘No.’
‘When did you find out she was dead?’
‘No comment. Isn’t that what they say?’
‘Did you make a phone call earlier tonight to tell the police where to find her body?’
‘No comment.’
‘Do you know who killed Tamsin?’
‘No comment.’
‘Are you angry that she’s dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Gore, out of interest did Tamsin know about your political views?’
‘I don’t particularly have any political views. My… apparent grandfather had political views.’
‘What about your friend Seymour Loftus?’
‘He’s not exactly a friend.’
Bugger. He wasn’t even denying he knew Loftus.
‘He’s a member of the Green Party,’ Gore said. ‘He stands up for the preservation of the British countryside. Against overcrowding, wholesale building and subsequent sharp increases in the crime rate. You mean you don’t?’
God, it was a fine line, wasn’t it?
‘And he follows old religious practices linked to the land,’ Gore added. ‘Similar to the ones adopted by Robin Thorogood and exalted by his shop. You have a problem with that, too?’
‘DI Bliss.’ Iain Brent’s voice from the other side of the door. ‘I’d like a word. Now.’
The door shook. Darth Vaynor held it shut with his chair, but he looked very uncomfortable.
‘What are you doing here?’
Brent had him in a corner. Actually had him in a corner.
‘Talking to a suspect, Iain. It’s one of me functions.’
Brent went through all that about him being the SIO, how everything had to go through him. Everything. Bliss asking him, amiably enough, if this extended to a simple assault where he and Vaynor had just happened to be on the spot
‘And I had no reason to think you were even here,’ Bliss said. ‘Seeing you seem to have alerted everyone to the discovery of Tamsin’s body except me.’
Taking a chance here. If someone had seen him at Cusop.
But then, if that had been the case, when he’d walked in an hour or so ago, in search of someone reliable, Vaynor would’ve casually asked him to stay in the building, instead of following him out.
‘I didn’t have you called because,’ Brent said, ‘I need fit men. And you’re a sick man, Francis. On more than one level, I suspect. Who’s this suspect supposed to have assaulted?’
‘A bookseller. Robin Thorogood.’
‘You’re adding insult to injury, Bliss.’
‘You gorra suspect yet? For Tamsin?’
‘Get this man bailed and go home. I’ll talk to you later.’
‘Might help you,’ Bliss said reluctantly, ‘if you talked to me now.’
Brent just turned away. Rich Ford had come in, was activating computers and his small staff, soon to be expanded.
‘Conference in half an hour,’ Brent told Rich.
‘You know what, Iain,’ Bliss said conversationally, so Rich could hear and Darth Vaynor and a couple of Dyfed-Powys fellers. ‘You’re a really shite detective. Did I ever tell you that?’
Brent didn’t turn round but yo
u could see some action in his shoulders.
Shoot out. Sunday morning now. By the end of the week, one of them wouldn’t be working here any more.
‘Oh, and a twat,’ Bliss said. ‘But that goes without saying.’
67
Crystal tulip
A VEHICLE TURNED into the track leading to the river, and then there were shouts.
Police. Had to be. And they were coming down.
And she hadn’t even started praying yet.
Gwenda was saying, ‘What’ve you got under there, darling?’
With the moon-white, self-assured, patronizing smile that said I know everything, I hear everything, I’ve done everything.
Then a door slammed and the voices stopped, and a vehicle accelerated away, and, at the same time, Merrily heard the whine of the vehicle reversing out of the track.
Two different vehicles and the one coming down here had obviously taken a wrong turning, and all the voices had been from the top road
No police. How deceptive sounds could be, especially in darkness, when vision was restricted.
Merrily said, ‘What do you think I’ve got here?’
Sweating again. Always a giveaway, and you couldn’t hold it back.
They were standing facing one another, just above the river’s beach. Merrily began edging up the grass to where Mrs Villiers sat in shadow, up on the bank of the Dulas Brook.
Gwenda pointed at Merrily’s chest.
‘Unzip.’
‘What?’
‘When I say I know everything, I mean I like to know everything. And I don’t know what that is.’
‘Oh…’
Warm night. Merrily pulled down the zip of the black hoodie and took it off, hanging it over her right arm. Exposing to the moonlight her white T-shirt and the cross. Compliance.
Gwenda bent and fingered the cross.
‘You really are a priest?’ She stood back, hands on ample hips. ‘What the fuck is a priest doing here following bloody Gwyn around? You do know he’s completely addled?’
‘Is he?’
‘Something this town does to people, I’m afraid.’
‘Erm… how’s it do that to people?’
‘When you get a large number of mad people in one place…’ Gwenda doing it in baby-talk ‘… it inevitably affects the rest.’
She laughed. They were right about the laugh. It really hadn’t changed very much. It was a laugh that squeezed itself out of captivity and then bounded away, taking you with it, making you want to rather like her.
‘And you’re too inquisitive,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Always difficult to put on an act when you were facing a direct confrontation. Even from someone you knew was covering up something abhorrent, something hideous.
So don’t put on an act.
‘OK,’ Merrily said. ‘There’s a shop. In Back Fold. The Thorogoods’ shop?’
‘Where they found that swastika, yes.’
‘Betty Thorogood, I’ve known her for some time.’
‘You’re wearing a cross. She’s a pagan.’
‘I don’t have too much of a problem with that.’
Gwenda did a sneery little hiss.
‘The touchy-feely Christian Church. Only Islam has any balls these days. What’s bothering Betty?’
‘Bad atmosphere.’
‘A bad atmosphere. Oh. We believe in all that, do we? Bad vibes? Evil spirits? Call out demons, do we?’ Gwenda took a sip from the champagne flute and walked up the bank. Sat down just below the concrete car park, patted the grass beside her. ‘Tell me.’
‘Never actually exorcized a demon.’ Merrily sat down, leaving a space between them not quite wide enough to suggest fear. ‘Not much call for it. Well… plenty of call, but you usually find it’s not justified.’
‘So what did you do for the lovely Betty?’
‘Nothing yet. We thought it was all about Jerry Brace, but it evidently wasn’t.’
‘This is the neo-Nazi Connie shagged? Once. She claims.’
‘You don’t think she did?’
‘Not if he was as good-looking as she insisted he was. Anyway, it’s all balls, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t believe in these things?’
‘Belief ’s pointless. Faith’s babyish. I grew up among believers. Parents were cranks. Mustn’t do this, mustn’t do that, this is right, love is all you need, this is wrong, bad karma. Thought they were free, but they were just in a different prison. Couldn’t stand them once I learned to think for myself. Once you realize that nothing’s wrong and nothing’s right unless it works, your life’s transformed. That’s when you become free.’
‘You learned that… from an early age, then?’
‘I’ll try anything once and if I like it I’ll try it twice.’
The smile said, I’ve gone through life breaking taboos like dead twigs.
Merrily holding herself steady, hands on the grass either side, ready to move. Seeing Cherry Banks, mutilated in the smudgy photocopy, and the degradation of the charmingly artless Tamsin Winterson to a limp-haired, blood-caked heap.
And hearing an echo of the car in the track and the car on the top road and the voices that could have come from either.
Gwenda looked at her, a finger alongside her nose, as if puzzled.
‘Why haven’t you exorcized Jerry Brace?’
‘Well… you don’t exorcize dead people. Unless you have reason to think there’s more to it. I mean, his beliefs were very dark, but Jerry himself… he wasn’t up to much, was he? Not by himself. Seems to have idolized Peter Rector, but Rector had changed. Maybe he couldn’t adjust to that.’
‘Fancy,’ Gwenda said. ‘One would almost think you’d known the man.’
Merrily followed the moonlight into the pale eyes, trying to find Mephista there. She saw Mephista sitting in an old ambulance on cold, rainy Hay Bluff, watching her dad making notes for his stillborn book on New Age travellers. Making her own plans for the grooming of Jerry Brace, putting him into a situation which, if he went through with it, would put his whole future into her hands. And he had gone through with it, he’d killed and mutilated and dissected, Mephista standing behind the camera, urging him on.
say it, say it, say it…
I sacrifice you in the name of my father.
Replaying this alongside the sounds of the car on the top road, the car in the track and the voices. And the voices on the tape. You thought you knew where the voices on the tape came from.
say it, say it…
Came from behind the camera.
I sacrifice you
Came from the figure in black plastic.
Didn’t it?
‘Did you see the video, Mrs Protheroe?’
‘Which video?’
‘The one Robin brought into the bar.’
‘We didn’t have time.’
‘So you don’t know what’s on it.’
‘Do you?’
‘Well, yes. A few of us saw it earlier tonight.’
‘I thought Robin hadn’t got a player.’
‘They wanted everyone to see it,’ Merrily said. ‘To see if anyone could throw any light on what was happening on there. We all knew what it looked like. It looked like a murder. A kind of ritual murder. Of a young woman. In that shop.’
‘You’re serious? Has it been shown to the police?’
‘Probably. By now.’
Gwenda looked up and all round. It was very quiet now. Merrily kept her eyes on her.
‘Why did you follow me, darling?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You just happened to arrive here? And on your own. How odd. But then you’re a priest. You’ve got your god with you.’
Gwenda laughed.
Laughed the laugh.
Merrily sprang up, but Gwenda was already on her feet. A well-built mature woman with long legs, muscular legs. She might not go hill running with Gore, but there was all that fitness equipment that Gwyn had be
en told about, in the apartment. The apartment with no books.
Gwenda gripped the champagne flute. Did something so efficiently she’d obviously done it before. Raised the hand and brought the flute down on the edge of the concrete, very swiftly, at an angle.
‘Tell me,’ Gwenda said.
‘Tell you what?’
‘What you think I did.’
The gleaming at the end of Gwenda’s right hand was not a knife. The champagne flute was half smashed, Gwenda’s fist tight around the stem up against a jagged open tulip of good crystal.
Merrily stumbled over a lump in the grass, nearly went down. Gwenda came another step closer. Lifted the arm with its crystal prongs.
‘All right.’ Merrily scrambling up, backing off. ‘That… that’s what I think you did.’
‘Say it!’
‘Yeah, right, exactly… Say it… yes. That’s what you said. Say it, you were hissing, say it… And because he was bloody terrified of you by then, he said it. He said, I sacrifice you in the name of my father. And that was… that was all you needed. All you needed was his voice, saying the words. His voice, your blade, and that was all he had to do. That and hold the camera while you stood there. Killing Cherry Banks. The detritus. That’s what I think, Gwenda. That’s how I think it went.’
Limping away, gasping. Her left foot had found a hollow in the grass and, stepping out of it, she’d twisted an ankle.
Oh God, don’t let her see you limp. Divert her… anything…
‘Was Cherry your first? Easy… easy to get her down from the Bluff?’
‘Told her there was a wealthy guy in Hay who was into trashy girls. Dirty girls. You didn’t have to tell her twice.’
‘Jerry say she could use his place?’
Gwenda seemed to relax.
‘We took her to Jerry’s place, and the wealthy chap obviously didn’t turn up, so Jerry fucked her himself, then we had a threesome, and gave her some sleepy pills. Just another homeless scrubber tagging along with the Convoy. She told us this would’ve been her last time anyway as she’d seen the Holy Mother… in the air at Capel-y-ffin. Well, that fucking did it, far as I was concerned.’