by Phil Rickman
‘Two, actually. One’s a Purdey. You need another drink.’
‘So, like, what do you shoot?’
‘Things.’
‘ Things? What, like bottles off walls and stuff?’ Jane could see Cornel trying to not to snigger. ‘Well, what?’
The wind came in again. Lights flickered.
‘Darling,’ Cornel said. ‘We get to shoot pretty much anything that comes within range… pheasants, rabbits, those little deer… pussycats…’
Below bar-level, Jane felt the fingers of her right hand bunching into a tight little fist. There’d been talk in the village of cats going missing.
‘Wow,’ she said.
‘What happens at The Court is anything you want… basically. ’Cause you’re paying for it. Or, rather, the bank is.’
‘Oh.’ Jane did the vacant look. ‘Which bank you with? Is it…’ Putting a finger up to her lower lip. ‘Is it the NatWest? Or like that one with all the little puppet people and the tinkly music?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Cornel smiled, shaking his head. ‘Landesman’s. New kids on the block, very progressive.’
‘You do credit cards and stuff?’
Cornel sighed.
‘And what do you do, girlie?’
‘Hairdresser,’ Jane said. ‘Well, trainee. But one day I’ll be doing it big time in Hereford. Or London, mabbe.’
‘Hmm.’ Cornel was swaying a bit and wrinkling his nose like he was figuring something out. ‘Don’t know anybody in Hereford, but I did once handle some finance for a chain of salons in London… and Paris? Paris any good to you?’
‘Paris?’
Jane blinking, like she didn’t dare believe he was serious.
‘And Milan, now, I think,’ Cornel said. ‘You look like you need a drink. A big one.’
‘Had too much already,’ Jane said.
‘Maybe you’d rather have one somewhere else?’
‘Dunno really.’
‘Where we can talk about Paris.’
Jane’s left hand was on the damp mat on the bar top, and Cornel’s much bigger hand was over it and squeezing gently. She pulled, not hard, but the hand was trapped.
She looked up at Cornel and giggled. His eyes were well glazed. It was unlikely that she’d get any more out of him. Probably time to end this.
The odd times when it was needed in an establishment as relatively sedate as the Black Swan, Barry was known for acting with speed and economy and a glimmer of steel. But Barry was on the phone. Lol tensed. The inglenook coughed out smoke and soot.
‘You seen him before?’ Danny said. ‘Do we know if he’s got a room yere?’
Lol shook his head.
Telling himself it would be OK. That this was Jane. Jane who’d once expressed the hope that some myopic Japanese stockbroker would accidentally blow off Ward Savitch’s head.
‘Hell’s bells!’ The main door had sprung open, the wind pushing in James Bull-Davies. Last squire of Ledwardine, partner of Alison Kinnersley, Lol’s ex from what now seemed like another, distant lifetime. ‘Bloody night.’
James thrust the door shut against the gale, shaking drips from his sparse hair, as Lol heard Jane’s unmistakably dangerous laughter, like pills in a jar. Cornel was grinning and Jane’s expression was kind of, Oh you… Almost affectionate, like they’d known one another a long time or she was as pissed as he was.
Lol looked at Danny. Danny sighed.
‘All right, then, boy, we’ll both go.’
He was halfway out of his chair when the weather took over. A wall of wind hit the Swan, the candle-bulbs shivering against the oak panelling. Lol saw Jane’s free hand reaching out to grasp the end of Cornel’s leather belt.
‘Bastard’s bloody pulled,’ one of his mates said.
‘George, she’s pulling him. Doesn’t that give us a get-out?’
Both of these guys smiling now, as Cornel let Jane tow him along the bar towards the door to the stairs, looking into her eyes with what Lol interpreted as a kind of grateful disbelief as he and Danny moved in. Then the whole bar was doused in sepia.
Power drop-out. Somewhere in the room, a woman did a theatrical scream, and Lol froze. All he could make out was a shadow-Jane trying to stand a beer glass on the bar. Then a roar.
‘ Shit! ’
As the lights came flickering back, he saw Cornel jerking up and away, movements fractured like an early movie.
Jane’s smile was wide and wild, but her voice was shaky.
‘… from the pussycats.’
Her face pale and strained, and she was breathing hard but clearly determined not to run, as Cornel came at her, his head like a red pepper, big lips twisted.
‘… you little fucking…’
‘No!’
Lol flinging himself between them, hands out.
Saw it coming, twisted sideways but still caught the fist on the top of the shoulder, which really hurt, then saw Cornel’s colleagues closing around him, with a sickly wafting of wine-breath.
‘Now, hold up…’
James Bull-Davies wading in. Stooping a bit these days, though it might have been the weight of whatever he kept in the fraying pockets of his tweed jacket.
‘Might one suggest you chaps cool off outside?’
‘… fuck’s this?’
‘Ladies present,’ James said briskly.
‘ That bitch?’ Cornel’s face thrust into James’s. ‘You saw what she did?’ Close to screeching, losing it. ‘ Saw that, did you? Did you?’
Lol saw an extensive dark stain on the front of Cornel’s jeans.
‘Shouldn’t render you impotent for long,’ James said mildly. ‘Big man, little girl, be disinclined to make a fuss, myself.’
Somebody laughed. The inglenook was oozing smoke like some ancient railway tunnel.
‘All right. Enough now, lads.’ Barry was here, in his quiet suit, his slim bow tie. ‘Accidents happen in the dark. If you’d like to leave your trousers at reception, sir, we can get them cleaned for you.’
Cornel was looking at Jane, his eyes sunk below the bony ridge of his sweating brow.
‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said, ‘girlie.’
Lol felt Jane shaking and put an arm around her and steered her back to the table by the fire. She smiled slackly.
‘Cocked that up.’ Lifting up her hands, all wet. ‘More on me than him.’
‘What did you say to him, Jane?’
‘I was just, you know, so pissed off at the idea of them coming in all droit de seigneur kind of thing – and he was obviously legless. So I thought I’ll get him talking, see what I can get out of him?’
‘That’s why you wanted to go and buy the drinks?’
‘Oh, Lol, it was an impulse thing!’ Her face shone. ‘Like, it’s important to know, don’t you think, what Savitch is letting them get away with? Like, if we’re going to get the bastard closed down before he turns the village into the blood-sport capital of the New Cotswolds-’
‘Jane, he’s investment. A lot of people love him.’
‘ Nobody loves him! And we don’t want that kind of investment. We’ve got archaeological remains, we’ve got the strong possibility of a Bronze Age henge with actual stones. We could have loads of tourism – worthwhile tourism, not these… scum.’
‘All right, they love his money,’ Lol said sadly.
‘They just think they might need his money, so they don’t like to tell the bastard where to stick it.’ Jane glowered for a moment, then looked up, wary. ‘You’re not going to tell Mum about this, are you?’
Lol sighed.
‘So what did he tell you, Jane?’
‘Actually, it’s not funny. I was, like, what do you do at The Court, and he’s going, Shoot things, of course, and I’m like, Things? Go on. And he thought… I mean, I could see he thought I was…’
‘What?’
‘Like turned on by it? The way some women are. The hunt-ball floozies? He said they’d shoot anything that got in the way. Deer… pussycats,
he said.’
‘Probably exaggerating to try and sound hard.’
‘I could tell he was waiting for me to go, Oh, I’d love to come and watch you wielding your weapon. Lol, they’re-Oh shit, look at him now…’
Lol half-turned, pain spinning into his shoulder where he’d caught Cornel’s fist. Cornel was standing next to the door to the stairs. His eyes seemed to be physically retracting under the shelf of his brow as he looked around the room in the half-light, plucking at the damp patch on his trousers.
‘Wherever you are, you little bitch,’ he said mildly, ‘I just want you to know this isn’t over.’
Lol looked around. Maybe only he and Jane had heard Cornel, because there’d been a sudden scraping of chairs, exclamations and then a hollow near-silence in the bar as a small circle formed around Barry in the centre of the room.
‘ Where was this?’ James Bull-Davies snapped. ‘Say again.’
‘Oldcastle?’ Barry said. ‘Have I got that right? Beyond Credenhill, but before you get to the Wye. Don’t know any details. Mate of mine with an apple farm was just passing it on in case we saw any police action. Cops are all over there, apparently.’
‘Yes, but who-?’
‘Oh, Mansel…?’ Barry stepped back. ‘Gawd, James. That mean he’s a relation?’
‘Cousin. Of sorts.’ James straightened up, bit his lower lip. ‘Hell’s bells.’
A flaking log rolled out of the fire up against the mesh of the fireguard. Danny Thomas came back and sat down, pushing fingers through his beard.
‘Barry just had a call from a mate. Feller been found dead. Farmer.’
Lol said. ‘What… storm-related?’
‘Sounds like way too many coppers for that,’ Danny said.
5
Gangland
Up against the brick wall under a bleary bulkhead lamp, Bliss was struggling into his Durex suit. Big, wide puddles in the yard, four of them rippling like something tidal in the lights and the remains of the gale. The fifth puddle much smaller, not rippling at all, the colour and consistency of bramble jelly.
Farmers. Never felt comfortable around farmers, not even dead farmers.
‘Boss…’
Terry Stagg came lumbering out of a litter of uniforms and techies shielding the body from the wind, Bliss looking up from the flapping plastic.
‘DCI know about this, Terry?’
Realizing this was the very last question he’d normally ask. This was getting ridiculous. He peered at Terry Stagg’s eyes in the lamplight. Terry was working on a beard to cover up his second chin. His eyes looked tired. And faintly puzzled?
Shit.
‘Boss, it was actually the DCI who said to get you out. Be more convenient for DI Bliss were her actual-’
‘Bitch.’
Stagg said nothing. Bliss turned away, nerves burning like a skin rash. Probably digging himself an even bigger pit.
‘My impression was that the DCI won’t be coming out tonight at all,’ Stagg said. ‘Which is unusual, given the social status of the deceased.’
‘Don’t question it.’ Bliss zipped the Durex suit from groin to throat. ‘Give thanks.’
He plucked the elasticated sleeve away from his watch: just gone nine. Taken him the best part of half an hour to get here from home. Blown-off branches all over the roads, one lacerating the flank of his car as he squirmed past on the grass verge.
‘So this is…?’
‘Mr Mansel Bull, boss. Fifty-seven. Farmer, as you know. Old family.’
‘Double-page spread in the Hereford Times kind of old?’
‘Maybe special supplement,’ Terry Stagg said.
‘Not short of a few quid, Tez. Lorra leckie going to waste, or is that you?’
The yard was ablaze with lights on sensors, like a factory, and alive with bellowing creaks, the smashing of blown-open doors, the restive moaning of the cattle in the sheds – Bliss thinking all this was like the sounds of his own nerves amplified.
‘Billy Grace?’
‘On his way,’ Terry said. ‘Allegedly. But we do have time-of-death to within half an hour or so. Mr Bull’d gone to a parish-council meeting arranged for seven, but called off due to the conditions. Sounds like he came directly back. Walking into… something.’
A council meeting explained the suit and tie, what you could see of it under a glistening beard of blood. Hard to say if his head was still even attached. Was that bone? Was that an actual split skull? Bliss stepped back. You never quite got used to this.
‘Who found him?’
‘Brother. Heard the cattle moaning in the shed, so he had a walk up. With his shotgun.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘Not loaded, he claims. Lives in the big bungalow down towards the river. Mr Bull lived here, on his own.’
‘On his own – in that? ’
Security lights on the barn opposite flushed out mellow old brick and about fifteen dark windows on three storeys. Oldcastle Farm. The house and buildings wedged into a jagged promontory above the Wye, embedded like a fort. Georgian or Queen Anne or whatever, had to be big enough for a family of twelve, plus servants.
‘Divorced. For the second time, apparently.’
Terry looking sideways at Bliss. Mr Bull was face-up to the lights, eyes wide open in his big, bald, dented head, like he couldn’t believe the way death had come racing at him out of the wind and the night.
‘Where’s the brother?’
‘In the house. Waiting for you.’
‘He see anything?’
Terry Stagg shook his head.
‘All right.’ Bliss hunched his shoulders against the wind. ‘So where we up to, Tezza?’
‘Covering the lanes, pubs, for what that’s worth now. They’ll be well away.’
‘They?’
‘Mr Sollers Bull thinks a gang. He’ll explain.’
‘Where’s Karen?’
‘House-to-house. Well… farm-to-farm. In the four-by-four. With a couple of uniforms, just in case.’
‘Good, good.’
Karen was connected: farming family. Where Bliss came from, a farmer was a bloke with a shared allotment and a chicken.
‘Obviously you’ve searched the buildings.’
‘With Mr Sollers Bull. And the house. Did I…?’ Terry Stagg coughed. ‘Did I say Mr Sollers Bull was not very happy?’
‘ No. You amaze me, Terence.’
Terry said, ‘In the sense that… he reckons he and his brother both reported intruders.’
‘When?’
‘Two occasions in the past month. He says we laughed.’
‘ We laughed?’
‘The police.’
‘The police laughed. Fuck me. Excellent.’
‘I mean, that’s what he says.’
‘Might this explain the DCI’s generosity in letting the underling take charge, d’you think?’
Thinking, nice one, well-timed, Francis, as a vehicle came coughing and grumbling up the tarmac drive. Dr Grace’s Land Rover Defender.
‘Also,’ Terry Stagg said, ‘when I told him you’d be in to talk to him later on, Mr Sollers Bull said… He seems to know who you are.’
The vehicle’s engine had been switched off but was clinging to life. In the instant of its last shudder, the wind died and it was like they were standing in the vacuum of quiet at the eye of the storm.
‘Fame at last. I’m made up.’ Bliss’s own voice came bouncing back at him from across the yard. He lowered it. ‘What are you saying?’
‘He knows your father-in-law.’
‘Oh.’
Billy Grace was hauling his kit up the drive. Bliss went to meet him.
Shit. The downside of having a complicated private life in a small county.
Every other Saturday, work permitting, he’d collect his kids from the in-laws’ farm. Trying to time it so he’d be bringing them back just before Kirsty got in from shopping or wherever. In the hope that he could leave them with his mother-in-law, a woman he co
uld handle, more or less.
Unfortunately, he’d pulled this one too many times. Last Saturday, the door had been ajar at the farm holiday cottage where Kirsty was living, and the kids had gone running inside. He’d considered just buggering off, but in the end he’d gone in to find the stove lit, all very cosy, smell of quality coffee – sour reminders of his own kitchen with all its comforts now plundered.
And here was the plunderer in person: Mrs Bliss. Only, this was the Mrs Bliss of ten years ago – the future Mrs Bliss reborn. All made up, short black skirt well up the thigh. See what you threw away.
‘You had another hour, at least,’ Kirsty said, when the kids were out of the room. ‘But then you always did get bored with them quite rapidly… what with an eight-year-old’s lack of interest in the vagaries of the Crown Prosecution Service.’
Vagaries? She’d been rehearsing, evidently.
‘Kairs-’
‘Or do you have a date tonight?’
Date. Not a word they’d ever used between themselves. That little tweak of petty triumph on Kirsty’s lovely pulpy lips.
She knew something. She bloody knew something.
‘Gorra be off, Kairsty,’ Bliss said. ‘Be the Easter holidays next time I come, so we can make it a different day if you want. I could maybe take them over to Aberystwyth or somewhere.’
‘You never did put yourself out much, did you, Frank?’
Finding his arms folded – classic defence stance – Bliss let them drop.
‘It’s not that frigging convenient. Couple of hours each way, and with Easter traffic-’
‘I think,’ Kirsty said, ‘that you know what I’m talking about.’
‘I’ve gorra go.’
‘The thing is…’ she stood up slowly ‘… isn’t it against the rules? I mean, when it all comes out, won’t one of you have to move to another division? Isn’t that how it works?’
Bliss had felt the blood draining out of his face so fast that his cheeks actually felt cold.
‘Now, look… I don’t where you think you’re going with this, but-’
‘Oh, you do, Frank.’
Bliss’s mind was going like a washing machine: oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. Where had she got this from? Which one of his beloved colleagues had sniffed it out? How was this even possible?