by Phil Rickman
‘Boyfriends?’
‘No.’
‘Attractive girls, Goldie.’
‘No boyfriend I knows of. They went around together. They looked out for each other.’
‘All right.’ Bliss stood up. ‘Let’s see their rooms.’
‘Room. They had one room between them.’
He followed her into the hallway. Two neighbouring hallways once, the dividing wall turned into an archway. A reception desk in one corner had a steel grille to the ceiling – well, this was the Plascarreg. One staircase had been taken out, so the other was isolated in the middle, Hollywood baronial.
‘Anybody else in residence just now, Goldie?’
‘It’s quiet, it is. We got a few comin’ in for Easter.’
‘Anybody staying here in the past week?’
‘Occasional one-nighter.’
‘And the odd one-hourer?’
Goldie was like she hadn’t heard. The bedroom doors had big plastic numbers. They went from Room Three to Room Five, Bliss noticed. Room Four was where they’d had to scrape teenage brain cells off the ceiling. Superstitious old girl, Goldie.
She led him along a corridor with three different carpets, stopped at Room Seven, unlocked the door with her master. Bliss put out an arm.
‘We’re gonna stay in the doorway, Goldie. Nobody goes in till crime-scene gets here.’
‘This en’t no crime scene, Mr Francis! I objects to that!’
‘It’s just that we’ll need to examine all their things very carefully. Yeh, it’s likely whoever attacked them it was a random thing, but it may not be. We also need the passports, papers, all that sort of stuff. We need to find the relatives.’
The room had dingy yellow walls, two beds, two single wardrobes. But it was tidy. There were two holdalls with shoulder straps under the window, Bliss keen to get inside them, but he didn’t move. A wardrobe door was open. The clothes he could see looked clean, new even.
‘What sort of girls were they, Goldie? All right, good girls, but…’
‘Polite. Tidy.’
‘You can do better that that. You have long chats with your guests. Old-fashioned nights with the tarot.’
‘I’m a people person. It’s why I opens my house.’
‘If they had worries, they’d confide in you.’
‘I likes to think.’
‘So…?’
‘Course they had worries. They worried about their family back home. They was expected to send money back, but there was never enough. Not what they expected. I done readin’s, set their minds at rest.’
On the window sill was a small framed picture of a couple on a sofa, smiling. The window overlooked a playground, a swing with the chains cut off near the top so it looked like a gallows.
‘You know what I’m after, Goldie.’
‘They didn’t have no enemies, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at. How could girls like that have- Was they messed with? You can tell me that.’
Good question.
‘I can’t, actually,’ Bliss said. ‘Not yet. But we do think there might be more to it. You said they worked on a strawberry farm. Which one?’
‘Couple, I think. One out near Ledbury, but they left because of the… you know, gettin’ pushed around and messed about.’
‘Messed about how?’
‘You know what conditions is like in these places. Next thing to slave labour. They was passing out, and if they asked for water they got it in an ole petrol can. Disgustin’. ’
‘They’re supposed to’ve cleaned up their act,’ Bliss said, cautious. ‘The worst ones.’
‘You believe that, you’ll believe anythin’. Maria, she told me one of the other farms there was a woman raped by two of the foremen. Took in a shed and raped.’
‘But nobody reported it.’
‘ Course nobody reported it. They knows their place. They got no status. Young fellers, they din’t do what they was told they got the shit beat out of them, and the women was raped. ’Less they gived it up willin’. Them as gived it up willin’ got the easier work. You must’ve heard what goes on.’
Everybody had heard the stories. Karen Dowell had come close once to getting a Polish girl to give evidence against this Albanian minibus driver who was demanding a weekly blow job for getting her to work on time. Then she’d disappeared. They could disappear very easily.
Bliss said, ‘So the girls got out.’
‘They moved to that place out on the Brecon Road. Magnum?’
‘Magnis.’
A complex chime went off downstairs. Bliss thought it was one of the clocks.
‘Doorbell,’ Goldie said.
‘Could be my lads. So they moved to Magnis.’
‘To be near Hereford.’
Coincidence was a lovely thing, but maybe this wasn’t much of one: it was a small county and Magnis was close to the city.
‘When was this, Goldie?’
‘Last summer.’
‘They stay the course this time?’
The bell went again. ‘I better let your men in,’ Goldie said.
‘They’ll wait.’
‘They left there, too,’ Goldie said. ‘The sisters.’
‘Something happen to them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Were they staying here when they worked at Magnis, or did they live at the camp?’
‘At the camp. They come yere when they left.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘I felt sorry for them, I did. They wanted to go home. They was thinking how to raise enough cash to go home. I’ll go down, let your mates in.’
Bliss waited at the top of the stairs, looking at the holdalls, one pink, one tartan. Never had liked strawberries.
22
Ground To Air
The Lady Chapel was a serene shrine to motherhood, recently renovated in quiet golds, muted tints, the gilded panels of its altar screen illustrating the domestic life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Merrily was alone. Someone had left a newspaper on a chair: today’s Telegraph folded at ‘The Killing Fields of Middle England’. She picked it up, sat down next to a Madonna and Child panel where the infant Jesus had the face and the haircut of a middle-aged estate agent. Did one killing make them killing fields? And when did the Welsh Border become Middle England?
The paper had been left here as if it was part of the Countryside Defiance campaign. Fortress Hereford, all farm doors locked at nightfall, and don’t expect any help from the police.
Something not right about this. Why were people erecting fences, spreading panic?
Answer: they weren’t local people. Local people were cautious, but they didn’t panic.
There was a colour picture of Mansel Bull’s brother, Sollers, in hunting pink and then, downpage, a small shot of Frannie Bliss caught side-on getting out of his car, the now-trademark dark blue beanie covering his close-mown thinning hair. At the foot of the story it said, DI Bliss, who came to Hereford from Merseyside, could not be contacted last night, but a spokeswoman…
West Mercia’s brief quote in support of its officer was lukewarm, a formality. Bastards. Merrily tossed the paper back onto the chair.
Maybe the woman in green Gore-Tex had seen the annoyance on her face; she’d stopped a few paces away. Merrily stood up.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you coming.’
Shoulder-length straight dark hair under a black woolly hat. Cursory make-up. She lowered a leather shoulder bag to the flags, turned candid brown eyes on Merrily.
‘You’re angry.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Yeah, well, me too,’ Fiona Spicer said.
It was about surviving marriage to a man who would vanish overnight, usually for weeks at a time, and sometimes she didn’t know where in the world he was, or why, or when she’d see him again, or if.
‘Exciting boyfriends, for a while.’ Fiona Spicer’s voice was thoughtful and seldom lifted. ‘But, as husbands… problematical.’
Most people, this might’ve been small talk
, ice-breaking stuff: the partner’s little quirks, how Fiona had known Syd before he joined the army. How they’d met on holiday, a teenage seaside romance, exchanging letters for a couple of years before they even saw each other again. And it got no better.
‘For more than half my marriage, my husband’s keeping secrets from me – me and the rest of the country. Where he’s going, what he’s doing there.’ They’d moved to the corner near the votive stand where three candles were alight. ‘I thought all that was over, when he left the Army. But part of them doesn’t leave, ever. He’d keep going to the window, as if he was looking for a reason to walk out. Sometimes I’d wake up in the night, and he’d be at the window in the dark.’
‘They come out of the Regiment at forty, is that right?’
‘At Sam’s level. You get a hazy kind of honeymoon period before they start wondering what they’re for. If their life has meaning any more.’
Fiona took off her wool hat, laid it on her knees.
‘I suppose I was luckier than most. Just a few months of agonizing before he hit God like a ground-to-air missile.’
‘ Syd?’
‘God’s warrior. All gunfire and smoke. As if saving a soul was the same as rescuing a civilian from terrorists. He did settle down, eventually. Probably as a result of Emily going off the rails.’
‘You must be relieved all that’s over.’
‘One problem ends, another opens up. Suddenly… it’s like the old days again: secrecy, lies, obfuscation.’
‘Because he’s back in Credenhill?’
‘He was never at Credenhill. But, yes. Back to the Regiment. Assuring me it was going to be entirely different this time. First and foremost, he’d be a priest. And that would be different. I almost believed the bastard. Then the curtain came down again. The vagueness, the false optimism. Everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be all right. And you know he means afterwards.’
‘After what?’
‘You tell me, Mrs Watkins. Sam kept your number in his car.’
‘ Sam? Oh…’
Samuel Dennis Spicer. SD. Thus, Syd.
Fiona was gazing up at the sanctuary, the Virgin at home. Two elderly couples filed through an oak door in the richly panelled screen to the right. The Audley chantry – the Thomas Traherne chapel now, recreated to honour, in new stained glass, the seventeenth-century poet and celebrant of the mystical Welsh Border countryside. Who had also, as it happened, been vicar of Credenhill.
‘Did he know you were coming here?’ Merrily said. ‘To Credenhill?’
‘I rang last weekend, suggesting I might come over, get things organized… and there was immediate resistance. Oh, there were things he needed to do to it, it was still in a mess. Well, I like a mess, gives me a sense of purpose. Hell, I’m supposed to be living there in a few weeks. No… he didn’t know I was coming. Compliance is an essential virtue for a Regiment wife, but I’m fifty-one, for Christ’s sake. I’ve been through that phase.’
‘So you went to see Syd, without giving any indication that you were coming.’
‘It was easier in the old days, when they were in Hereford. All that high fencing, like a prison, but it was still in the city. Credenhill, you feel more exposed. Still, I found the house easily enough, end of the row, near a little wood.’
Fiona had parked the car, gone up and knocked on the door. Ready for Syd saying this really wasn’t convenient and maybe she could come back in a couple of hours. But there was no answer.
Fiona had her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Like Sophie, she was overdressed for the weather – even a scarf, as if she’d learned from experience that you couldn’t trust signs of warmth.
‘So you let yourself in,’ Merrily said.
‘I know where he hides things like spare keys. Not under the step. And I didn’t do anything furtive, which always gets noticed.’
The two couples came out of the Audley chantry and Canon Jim Waite appeared, said ‘Hi, Merrily,’ and then guided the visitors into the Lady Chapel. Merrily nodded at the chantry door.
‘Why don’t we go in there? I’ll tell you what I know.’
She talked about Syd at the Brecon chapel, sitting in the shadows, asking no questions. And afterwards at Huw’s rectory, that unconvincing airy optimism. It’s going to be all right. It’s working out. How they’d decided, she and Huw, that there was probably a security aspect to whatever was troubling Syd.
‘Always a good get-out,’ Fiona said. ‘And that’s it, is it?’
‘There’s a bit more. He phoned Huw yesterday to inquire about certain deliverance procedures.’
They were on separate wooden benches, Merrily by the windows, Fiona by the door, staring bleakly into a stained-glass starburst Godface of blinding white.
‘Let me get this right. Deliverance is exorcism?’
‘Yes.’
‘To get rid of spiritual evil.’
‘Sometimes. Syd suggested to Huw that an old evil had come back to haunt him. Would you have any idea what that might be?’
‘There was a book dealing with it. Deliverance. It was with two other books on the back seat of his car, in the garage. The car wasn’t locked, which is how I got your number.’
Fiona hadn’t answered the question; Merrily didn’t push it. Fiona said Syd had told her the Credenhill house was a mess, but it had actually been very tidy. Everything in its place. Not the places Fiona would have put things, but all very neat.
He’d lied, to keep her away. Why?
‘Not another woman. He’d’ve told me.’
Her face was flushed, but only by the sun through the firework blaze of extreme stained glass. The new Thomas Traherne windows, four of them, were small and ferocious, with individual dominant colours: the almighty white, the crucifixion red, the pagan green. You never enjoy the world aright, Traherne had written…till you are clothed in the heavens and crowned with the stars.
You had the impression that it had been a long time since Fiona had found anything in the world to enjoy.
‘I made myself some tea,’ she said. ‘Sat down in the living room for a while, thinking he’d be back. When he didn’t come back, I started to look around. Some of it… You could come back to the house and take a look if you wanted to. If you have the time.’
‘If he’s back, he won’t be overjoyed to see me there.’
‘If he’s back, he can bloody well live with it.’
No raising of the voice, just a hoarse, fur-tongued undertow, thick with history. Fiona was looking into the second window, which had an ephemeral Christ figure in a shaft of light, arms wide, head bowed, crucified without a cross.
‘Do you know anything about the house?’ Merrily asked. ‘Who lived there before? I mean, they’re not old houses, are they?’
‘It’s army housing, end of a row, detached. You think there’s something wrong with the house?’
‘It might be one explanation. If it was a house where… perhaps people couldn’t settle, where successive occupants felt unhappy, had marital problems, sickness… then new people living there might well get a sense of that.’
‘You’re so matter-of-fact about all this, aren’t you?’
Fiona shook her head slowly, as if her senses were adjusting to the atmosphere of another planet.
‘I’m familiar with it, that’s all,’ Merrily said. ‘But Syd didn’t have much patience with any of it. Out of his comfort zone.’
‘They don’t do comfort,’ Fiona said. ‘Neither do I. But – I’m sorry – this is beyond reason. This is mad.’
‘What did you find?’
Fiona unwound her scarf as if it was choking her. The green glow of the end window lit the side of her face, making her look faintly sick.
‘I went upstairs. If it was going to be my home, I had every right. Have to work out where to put the furniture, much of which is still in store.’
‘Sure.’
‘The house has three bedrooms. Two were full of boxes of stuff, waiting to be un
packed. The master bedroom… well, it was empty. As if it had been burgled or something. No clothes in the wardrobe. And the dressing table… all the drawers had been pulled out, as far as they’d go. All empty.’
‘I see.’
In the green window, a figure – possibly the poet, Traherne himself – was running along a path towards a conical wooded hill. Fiona was slowly winding the ends of her scarf around her hands, pulling it tight.
‘That means something to you?’
‘It might. Go on.’
‘The mirror had a dust cloth draped over it, although there was no visible dust. The whole room was extremely clean and bare. The bed had been pulled away from the wall, almost into the middle of the floor, the bedclothes pulled back but not removed. Oh-and there was no carpet. It had been rolled up and put into one of the other bedrooms. And… there was a trail of white, making a circle around the bed.’
‘Salt.’
‘A lot of salt. How did you know?’
‘Salt’s part of the mix for holy water, sprinkled during a clearance. An exorcism, if you like. But it can also be used on its own.’
‘Christ.’
‘Anything else?’
‘And on the wall, opposite the window, there was a large wooden cross I’d never seen before.’
Probably to catch the first rays of the morning sun.
‘Sam’s never done much of that – crosses and pictures. Nothing ostentatious. He says you should hold whatever you have in your… your heart. The only thing he used to keep in the bedroom was his Bible. Not a Gideon-type Bible in the bedside cabinet, this was a massive old family Bible, half the size of a paving slab.’
‘An heirloom?’
‘No. He bought it. Just before he was ordained. Symbolic, I suppose. Something big and heavy that you couldn’t just slip into your pocket. A necessary burden. I…’ Fiona spread her hands. ‘I don’t know. With Sam, there were always things you didn’t ask. It had brass bindings and a lock, and he used to keep it on top of the wardrobe and get it down to dust it every Sunday. The odd thing is that it wasn’t there. There was nothing on top of the wardrobe. Not even dust.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I got out of there. I felt… quite cold.’