by Phil Rickman
‘Jane…’
‘Getting pulled in by the—’ Jane gripped the edge of the table. ‘By the cops. Maybe old people again, taken down the cells and… I dunno… beaten up…’
‘All right.’ Merrily stood up. ‘I’m going to ring Bliss.’
At just after seven, its cobbles glazed with rain and milky light from the Christmas tree, the square looked like an ice tableau. Certainly felt cold enough, and looking at Bliss made Merrily feel colder. Off duty now, he wore jeans and an old Stone Roses T-shirt under a thin jacket. She guessed he didn’t want to go home to an empty house, but he wouldn’t come into hers either. Probably didn’t want to face Jane. Even case-hardened cops had a cut-off point.
‘I didn’t know about it,’ he said. ‘I’d’ve told you. Maybe Karen didn’t get a chance to call me.’
He’d parked next to the market hall, and they were standing under it, alone on the square. It wasn’t raining; an intermission, that was all. But it was coming back; it always came back.
‘Actually, I thought if they ever went that far they’d send me,’ he said. ‘I was prepared for that. I’m sorry. I really am sorry, but…’
‘I suppose it was finding Ayling’s body in the river.’
‘They told you about that?’
‘Karen Dowell told me when we were alone in the scullery for about thirty seconds, while Brent had a snoop. And it’s since been on the radio.’
‘I met this archaeologist at Rotherwas. He made the connection with the river, I put in a report. And that…’ Bliss leaned into the car, hands on the edge of the roof like he was about to start a sequence of push-ups ‘… that was the grand finale of my contribution to the Ayling inquiry.’
‘Frannie?’
‘I’ve been returned to what are laughingly described as “normal duties”.’ He straightened up. ‘More specifically, this petty suburban coke dealership we’ve been eyeing up for a few weeks. Chickenshit, basically. Nobody who’s running away.’
‘So why—?’
‘Why now, you ask, three days before Christmas when we’re already stretched to buggery?’
‘You’re still thinking Charlie Howe?’
‘I went too near him once before. He doesn’t forget. Charlie spots large dollops of the brown stuff floating inexorably towards the Xpelair, he calls his only daughter.’
Bliss leaned back against the wet car and told Merrily about getting carpeted by Howe this morning for failing to report a face-off with three drunken teenagers, one of them a hospital consultant’s son now claiming he’d been threatened with violence by a foulmouthed cop. He didn’t need to explain how the Ice Maiden was manipulating the situation.
Merrily dug her hands down into her coat pocket, recalling how Bliss had once helped Lol put the screws on Charlie, to get Annie Howe off her back. Maybe that was when his name had been added to Charlie’s blacklist.
‘You think she really knows what Charlie got up to in his police days? Because whatever else you think about Annie Howe…’
‘He’s her dad, Merrily. Any shit coming off Charlie makes the greasy pole Annie’s squirming up even greasier. Whether she’s bent or straight doesn’t come into it.’
A white car pulled into the square, an elderly couple getting out, along with handbag, gloves. Dinner at the Swan.
‘Come over to the vic, Frannie. Have something to eat. Jane’s not going to scream at you.’
He shook his head.
‘I’m not that crap a cook, am I?’
‘You’re fairly crap,’ Bliss said.
‘You look tired.’
‘I’ve always looked tired, Merrily. Me ma used to say I looked like a little old man at three.’
‘No word from Kirsty?’
‘I’m guessing I’ll be hearing from her solicitor first.’
‘And is that what you want?’
‘Is that what I want?’
‘Sorry,’ Merrily said. ‘I just had a feeling you—’
‘We never should’ve patched it up. Maybe I realised that, some part of me. The part that kept shaking the cage.’
‘You were deliberately shaking the cage?’
‘Possibly.’ He started pushing at the car again. ‘Thing is, you can keep walking the tightrope, carrying this fragile thing in both hands, keeping it dead steady, one foot in front of the other, not daring to blink… and then one day you think, Shit, is this a life?’
‘It is for some couples. I suppose.’
‘Sad cases, Merrily.’
He talked about coppers who started out all bright-eyed and let’s nail the bad guys. All the boyish enthusiasm getting rapidly suffocated by paperwork, regulations, baseless complaints, time wasted enforcing crap new laws.
‘And when it’s going right, when you’ve had a result and you come home full of it, and you wanna talk about it to somebody…’ He shook his head. ‘She just didn’t get it, Merrily.’
‘Kirsty?’
‘Never got it.’
‘And… I mean… were you getting what she wanted from life? Sorry, Frannie, I don’t mean to…’
‘Doesn’t know what she wants. Only what she doesn’t want.’
‘You still love her?’
‘I need an early night.’ Bliss beeped open the car door. ‘I have to orchestrate a dawn raid. How’m I gonna cope with the excitement?’
‘Frannie…’
‘What?’
‘I don’t want Jane’s name…’
‘I’ve tried to explain, Merrily, I’ve no influence any more. All I can do is ask Karen to keep me in the loop.’
‘Then you keep me in the loop?’
He nodded.
‘Just so you know,’ Merrily said, ‘I went through some of the Coleman’s Meadow petition emails. Not thoroughly, but I didn’t see any mention of the Children of the Serpent. And Jane says she hasn’t heard of them, and I believe her.’
‘Good.’
‘Although there was somebody in Chichester claiming to have cursed Hereford Council.’
‘Yeh, well, we’ve all been down that road.’ Bliss slid into the car, started the engine, ran the window down and leaned out. ‘Maybe I’ll jack it in. Join Andy Mumford, go and work as a private eye for Jumbo Humphries, videoing straying husbands. What do you reckon?’
‘I reckon you’re overtired.’
Merrily walked into the Eight Till Late for cigarettes. Now Jim Prosser had told her they were planning to leave next year, the atmosphere in here, the whole feel of the place, seemed dimmer and more melancholy, like low-energy bulbs when you first switched them on. Or perhaps it had been gradually changing since the coming of Shirley West, caged at the bottom of the store.
Jim was on his own at the top till.
‘Hell, Merrily, you’re looking…’
‘Knackered?’
‘Let’s say careworn,’ Jim said.
‘Been a wearing sort of day.’
‘You too? Brenda’s been in bed all afternoon, she has. Touch of migraine.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
Jim sighed, rueful smile.
‘Kind of migraine brought on by proximity to certain folks.’
‘Oh.’
Jim looked from side to side, as if someone might be hovering, and then along the single aisle towards the post office, with its blind down, its big CLOSED sign, its… was that a metal cross on the wall?
‘Truth of it is,’ Jim said, ‘that’s another reason Brenda reckons she can’t stick it n’ more. One hand, it’s a good thing having the post office here. Good for business, passing trade. Other hand…’
‘Shirley.’
‘When that office shuts, it’s like a bloody weight’s been lifted. I got nothing against religion, as you know, but nine hours a day?’ Jim looked uncertainly at Merrily. She put down a ten-pound note, pointed at the cigarette shelves.
‘This church she goes to, in Leominster… she mention that much?’
‘She do, but I don’t listen.’ He picked up the te
nner. ‘Wanted me to put a poster up for it. I said, no, we got a good church yere, and a good vicar.’
‘Thank you. How did she react?’
‘Scowled. I said, why’d you wanner go to two churches?’
‘She explain? Sorry, Jim, it’s just I had a strange kind of card from this church. Maybe I should ask her. Try and have a talk.’
Jim laid a packet of Silk Cut on the counter, with Merrily’s change. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Let her be for a while, I would.’
‘You have a particular reason for saying that?’
‘Well, it…’ Jim started fiddling with the biros in his top pocket. ‘It’s clear she’s keepin’ an eye on you. I don’t suppose I’m saying anything you don’t…’
‘Priests shouldn’t smoke or have boyfriends? Or enter church when not suitably attired?’
‘Or spurn the meat the Lord has provided,’ Jim said.
‘What?’
‘She was asking me why you never bought meat from us — I don’t know what that’s about. She watches, see. All the time she bloody watches. Main thing now is the, er… the blasphemous book.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake… how does she even know about that?’
‘Running a post office, you learns everything sooner or later, I reckon. Like a confessional, it is, behind that bulletproof screen. Learns more than’s good for her.’
Well, thank you Amanda, of Ledwardine Livres.
‘That book,’ Jim said. ‘Hole in the front of it?’
‘There is, yes.’
‘All the way down to hell,’ Jim said. ‘Apparently.’
‘And that’s where I’m going, is it?’
‘I’d been thinking I’d be broken up to leave this place,’ Jim said. ‘But mabbe not.’
SATURDAY
… a Bible which is presented
to be without error or contradiction
is a dangerous and possibly
harmful weapon in the hands of
fallible and corruptible human beings.
Stephen Parsons Ungodly Fear
29
Nutters
Dirty pink light had fallen on Jane’s face in the bathroom mirror. A drawn and worried face. A face reflecting the awareness that today could actually be more life-and-death crucial than she’d figured.
She’d awoken long before daylight, heartsick about selling out the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society — turned against her own people by the disgusting police state. Yet there was a painful logic in Mum’s argument about possibly sheltering someone who thought barbaric violence could further the cause. In the pre-dawn sludge, the slaughter of an old man and the taking of his head was real and frightening, and when she tried to summon the startling excitement of yesterday — the epiphany — something else came bobbing up like a cork in a toilet. Something Coops had said, in Coleman’s Meadow last night, about Bill Blore and Trench One.
… got it scheduled for early in the next series — and that starts in the New Year.
As she rolled out of bed, the implications came crunching into place. She had two university interviews set up for late January. If Bill Blore’s programme on Ledwardine was near the start of the new Trench One series, then the university guys doing the interviews would almost certainly have seen it.
Seen and heard Jane Watkins talking about Coleman’s Meadow. And they’d remember. As soon as they met her they’d remember. So this just had to be good. Didn’t it? However bad everything else was, she had to make this interview work for her.
By six-thirty, she was dressed and out there. When the dawn came, the signs were not too scary: a salmony sheen on the horizon, no menacing cloudplay. Certainly better than last night’s TV forecast had implied. Jane went to see the river and found him still dangerously high, brown and racing, clearly recalling what it was like to be young and hungry, and she reminded him that he was part of this, that he’d been around in the Bronze Age when the stones had been erected and Ledwardine had come into being.
She stood on the bridge… could lean over the wall and almost touch the rushing water. She needed some of that — his energy. Needed to sound enthusiastic and driven. But in an authoritative way. Not just some kid who’d accidentally stumbled on something of major importance that she didn’t really understand. Because she did understand, that was the whole point. She understood what the stones had meant. And what they meant now.
‘You OK?’ Mum said over breakfast.
‘Yeah. Fine.’
‘Hmm.’
Mum was in Saturday civvies, jeans with a hole in one knee and an old Gomer Parry Plant Hire sweatshirt.
‘No, really,’ Jane said. ‘I have to go for this, don’t I? The words bastards and don’t let them grind you down occur.’
‘Erm… my advice — not that I’ve ever exactly distinguished myself on TV, as you know, so maybe you can learn from my mistakes — is not to actually think about it too much beforehand. Know more or less what you want to say but don’t rehearse how you’re going to say it.’
‘No, I wouldn’t do that,’ Jane said.
Having just spent twenty minutes mouthing at herself in the mirror. Bill, I have to say I couldn’t believe it at first. It seemed just too perfect. But over the next couple of days I checked out all the points on the line, and it became clear to me that Coleman’s Meadow must’ve been a very significant location. So when the stones were actually found… no, I wasn’t too surprised, actually.
Wondering what the chances were of getting in a mention of Lucy Devenish, as the person who’d awakened in her this heightened awareness of the underlying landscape. Maybe Bill Blore’s crew could get a shot of Lucy’s grave.
‘And don’t arrive too early,’ Mum said, ‘or you’ll just be hanging about in the cold, getting more and more on edge.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Jane said. ‘Look, I never got around to asking, with one thing and another, but were you able to check out Mathew Stooke? Like, apart from buying his book?’
‘Who told you about that?’
‘Mum, it’s on the desk. He’s a tosser, isn’t he? Next time I see that bloody Lensi—’
‘No! Don’t mention it. Don’t indicate you know who they are. It’s better if we don’t at this stage.’
‘Why?’
‘Because… I don’t know, really, something’s not right. Call it a feeling.’ Mum was admitting to feelings now? Be the full Traherne in no time at all. For some reason, Jane felt a little lighter.
‘We seem to be talking all round something here, don’t we?’ And Jane would have pushed harder, but time was short, and she needed to go up to the apartment and figure out what to wear that was casual but authoritative.
‘Go on,’ Mum said. ‘Make yourself look wonderful for the telly.’
In the end, Jane dressed down. Jeans and a big dark sweater. A smudge of make-up. Too glam, too sexy would give the wrong impression. Well, sexy was all right, in a cerebral way; when Bill Blore interviewed her, there should be a little chemistry. Bill liked women, was renowned for it.
Jane was cool with that.
She drank a mug of tea with extra sugar and Mum told her to break a leg. As she walked across the square, she felt destiny nudging her, the sensation of standing on the cusp of something. The red earth giving up its long-buried secrets, the Dinedor Serpent and the Old Stones of Ledwardine linked by ancient electricity and connecting with Jane’s own nervous system.
In the churchyard, she didn’t spend too long with Lucy, who would surely understand. Pausing only to give the shoulders of the gravestone one squeeze, for luck, before proceeding directly into the dank and dripping orchard.
She imagined a short, lyrical video-sequence of her and Bill following the ley, with music playing underneath — maybe Nick Drake’s ‘Hazey Jane 2’.
The oldest part of the orchard, gnarled and primeval-looking, was loaded with big balls of white-berried mistletoe. Perhaps she’d come back here bef
ore nightfall, with secateurs, and try to reach some. After all, Eirion would be here on Sunday. Feeling kind of turned on now, Jane spun towards the pale light at the end of the orchard, and…
Wow. If she’d thought it was crowded last night…
Standing under the exposed waxy sky, she was looking down at something like a reduced rock festival. More tents, an extra caravan, a camper van, the big crane… cars parked at all angles, including a police car. Big clusters of people turning Coleman’s Meadow into another village. A separate community had mushroomed overnight.
Jane counted three separate TV units, guys shouldering cameras, and a bunch of other men and women were hanging around the new galvanised gate by a smaller green caravan.
Adrenalin spurting, she ran down to where Neil Cooper was standing, on his own. Fair-haired, wafery Coops, jeans and a canvas shoulder bag — his day off, too, but who’d miss this?
‘Bloody hell, Coops, I had no idea there’d be all this…’
‘Jane.’ Coops taking Jane’s arm, drawing her away and saying nothing until they were behind the bloated bole of an old oak tree. ‘It’s not quite what you think.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘The media circus. Nothing to do with the excavation.’ Coops shedding his shoulder bag and undoing it. ‘It’s about this.’
Handing her a folded paper.
Jane opened it up. The Daily Star was unlikely to be Coops’s usual choice.
But then, it wouldn’t usually carry a picture on its front page of someone as old and boring as the late Clement Ayling under…
HEADHUNTERS!
Town hall boss
topped by
pagan nutters
It was as though a fist had come through the paper, smacked her full in the face. Jane stepped back into a puddle.
‘It was the only one left on the rack at your local shop,’ Coops said. ‘But I gather the others are similar.’
She read the whole story, which wasn’t long. The police were quoted as saying that fragments of stone found ‘with the head’ had been confirmed as coming from the Dinedor Serpent, ‘an ancient path which local pagans say is sacred’. But which Clem Ayling, whose body had now been found in the River Wye, had dismissed as ‘patio gravel’. As a result of which, he and his council had been attacked by ‘pagan groups’ and ‘top TV archaeologist Bill Blore’.