by Phil Rickman
‘Well, I wasn’t living here then, but I can imagine what it was like.’
‘Madness. They were like pop stars. It was when young men started pretending they were in the Regiment just to get the girls. Colin, though… I didn’t even find out that he was one of them, not for a while.’
‘He was actually one of the team who got into the embassy?’
‘No, no. Just in the Regiment. Though he never made a thing out of it, never. In fact, not long after we got engaged he said he was thinking of leaving, he’d had enough. But… he didn’t go until he had to. And by then he didn’t want to.’
‘You mentioned something being history. What was that?’
Clouds were lowering like a big gloved hand over the southern Black Mountains and the air was occasionally ripped by the screams of duelling chainsaws from middle-distant woodland.
‘Yes,’ Liz said eventually. ‘The trouble between Colin and Syd. I may have mentioned it to Barry, once.’
‘I’m trying to clear up a few things. Syd and I worked together… in the…’
Merrily lifted a hand to her dog collar. Liz nodded as if she understood, said she thought Colin and Syd had been quite close friends in the Regiment. So she was pleased – at first – when Syd had turned up one afternoon, not long after the publication of the first book.
Just passing through, Syd had said. Colin had been out when he arrived, and he said he’d wait and they had a pot of tea, Syd and Liz, and quite a long chat. Syd had not long been ordained as a minister, and Liz remembered he’d said it was as if his innocence had been restored.
‘I think it was something he’d been building up to. Coming to see Colin. Not just passing at all.’
‘Did they meet in the end?’
‘It was a Sunday. Colin had been out shooting. As soon as he walked in, I sensed… It was like an encounter between two hostile wild animals. Colin still had his shotgun and a bag with what he’d shot – wood pigeons, I think. Standing there with his gun under his arm. I said, Well, I’m sure you two have a lot to catch up on. I was uncomfortable. The whole atmosphere had changed, and I realized there was something badly wrong between them. I don’t think they even noticed me go out.’
‘So you didn’t hear what they talked about.’
‘I didn’t want to.’ Liz looked agitated. ‘I shut myself in the kitchen and put the radio on, loud. Classic FM. If there’d been guests in, I don’t know what I’d’ve done, but it was out of season. I heard Syd shout, in quite an anguished voice, “They’re dead! They’re all dead now!” Didn’t see him leave.’
‘Who might he have meant? All dead.’
Liz looked out of the window. There was a long view over pastureland, channelled by woodland, to the foothills of the Black Mountains and then the smoky shelf of the mountains themselves.
‘I don’t know, my dear. Colin never mentioned it afterwards. I do know that resolving a dispute with Colin was never easy. He didn’t forgive anyone quickly, if at all. And, of course, he always seemed to despise the Church, even though we were married in one. I didn’t like to mention that before, with you being… He once said Christianity was… not a man’s religion. Certainly not a soldier’s religion.’
‘So could the antagonism between Colin and Syd have been anything to do with the fact that Syd had taken up a religion that Colin had no time for?’
Merrily shifted in the squashy chair. For a moment there, she’d felt something of Syd Spicer in the place. The quietness of him, almost an absence, a soul in camouflage.
‘Possibly… I don’t know,’ Liz said. ‘I thought… this sounds silly, but I kept thinking it was something to do with the books.’
The books had started not long before Byron had left the private-security company in Hereford. When the foreign jobs had become fewer. He’d begun talking about all the money that guys like the man known as Andy McNab were making from SAS memoirs and spin-off novels.
Liz took Merrily upstairs, where there were five bedrooms off the landing, the doors of all of them hanging open. A scent of fresh linen and a light musk from a dish of pot-pourri on a window sill.
Five doors open, one closed: narrow, Gothic-shaped, midway along the landing. The tower room, where Byron had written his books.
‘A lot of controversy at the time about SAS memoirs. The Ministry of Defence didn’t like it and Colin thought they were right. When some new regulations were imposed to make it harder for them, he thought that was good. He always said that what he was doing wouldn’t affect national security in the least. Because his books weren’t about the SAS. Well, not directly.’
‘This is the ancient Britons, the Celts against the Romans?’
‘He said all he was doing was using his experience of close combat to show what it was really like. He was going to be the first writer to really get inside the heads of the old warriors. He used to go running up the hill, where there’s a Celtic fort.’
‘Credenhill? But I thought-’
‘No, the other one. Dinedor. The old Stirling Lines was close to it.’
That was interesting. The SAS had moved its headquarters from the shadow of one Iron Age fortified hill to a site directly below another.
‘I think some Roman remains were also found around the camp itself, and he was very interested in that. He joined a local history group. In fact…’ Liz’s forehead furrowed ‘… I’m not sure they didn’t actually form it themselves.’
‘While still in the Regiment?’
‘He’d read a lot of books. By the time he left, he knew all about the Celts and the Romans. And he had this idea about Caractacus, who he called Caradog, the Welsh name. Colin’s family was from Wales, although he was born in London. The later books were written in the first person – as if he was Caradog, you know?’
‘I’ve only seen the first one.’
‘He was furious when publishers kept turning him down. One of them said it had all been done before, and Colin rang the man up and raged at him – no, this has never been done before, you… effing idiot.’
‘Was it always going to be for children?’
‘Oh, no. No, it wasn’t. It made him furious when the only publisher who was interested said it should be written for children. He said he was going to forget the whole thing. Then the publisher came to see him. A woman. I think she’d persuaded him it was going to make a lot of money.’
‘How many has he written?’
‘Five. He’d stopped by the time we parted. He was quite bitter. Used to say they’d led him on with lies about selling the books all over the world. But they only ever sold one – to America, and the Americans demanded all kinds of changes which made him angry. His publishers kept saying it would build a readership when it became a series, but it never really happened. It was always going to be the next one.’
Liz unlocked the door of the tower room, and the pot-pourri scent followed them up four steps from the landing. The room was west-facing, white-painted walls, one small window. No furniture, only cleaning utensils, bathroom sprays and bumper packs of toilet tissue.
‘He’d shut himself in here for whole days… He could go a long time without meals. I was glad at first when the publishers wanted him to go to schools and talk to children, to promote the books. But he hated that. He didn’t particularly like children. Or pets. An encumbrance. He didn’t like encumbrances.’
Liz looked down at the boarded floor. Had she wanted children and Byron hadn’t?
‘Wouldn’t make any concessions in the books, to young people. I tried to read them, but I had to skip some of it. Scenes where people are garrotted and… worse. There was a lot of bad feeling with the publishers, in the end. His editor… she rang one day, when he was out, very upset. He didn’t like having a woman edit his books. She sounded quite frightened, actually. Very shrill. He didn’t write another one after that. Broke his contract, but they didn’t try to stop him or get any money back. I think they were worried about antagonizing him any more.’
&nb
sp; ‘Were you frightened, Liz?’
‘I’d learned to keep out of his way when he was angry. I kept thinking of what my father said. The pressure he must’ve been under, the things he’d had to do. He certainly never touched me… in anger. When things became too much, he’d go out walking a lot. And shooting. Sometimes he’d stay out all night. I got used to it. Well, you have to, don’t you?’
Liz had left the door of the tower room wide open, pushed back against the wall. She was standing against the frame, her hair coming loose.
‘Some nights he wouldn’t come home, and there’d be no explanation. I never once thought about other women. He didn’t like women enough. I knew he went to Hereford, drinking with his mates, and I just assumed he was unfit to drive and sleeping on someone’s sofa. Seems everyone knew except me. But then, I’m not very bright. He used to say that.’
Merrily sighed. Liz tried vainly to pile her hair back.
‘Stella, who helps here, told me in the end. I think she was embarrassed on my behalf. Not like it was just one woman. He was playing the field. As if he was in his twenties again. In the pubs and the clubs. He was… you know, walking out with them. Stella’s brother’s a minicab driver in town, and he picked Colin up twice with different women. Drunk and all over one another in the back. I was sick to my stomach, and it took me a long time to ask him about it. When I did, he admitted it at once. Apologized and offered to find me a good lawyer. All very businesslike.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘We’ve been divorced exactly two and a half years. Married Paul last year – known each other since we were kids. It’s fine. It’s all right. Quieter now. I was glad when Colin took his books away – all the second-hand books he’d bought for research. Not the kind of books you wanted guests to see. Pagan religions and the occult. I was always worried he’d leave this door unlocked and someone would come in and… Don’t like this room.’
You could see the marks where bookshelves had been taken out. Liz’s hair had come free now, like a cloud of white steam. She swivelled her head, looking from wall to wall, as if there might be blood oozing out of the plaster.
‘When he left, I cleaned it out and put a bed in here. A woman came to stay for two nights. An older woman. The outspoken type you could imagine as a magistrate. Miss Pleston. Came down to breakfast next morning, and straight out with it: how often do you clean your rooms? Insisting there was a… a men’s stench. It kept waking her up, and she’d had to open the window.’
‘Oh.’ Merrily had gone still inside. The weird excitement of the unthinkable. ‘And could you smell anything?’
‘I… no. Didn’t charge her for the room. You can’t afford that kind of talk. Perhaps she was making it up, I don’t know.’
Merrily half-turned, had a discreet sniff: only Jeyes Fluid.
‘Where’s he now, Liz?’
‘Brinsop. Near Credenhill. Do you know it?’
‘I know of it.’
Passed the signpost hundreds of times. Never actually been, though the church was apparently worth a visit – couldn’t remember why.
‘He took aerial photos. He’d been on a course in the army so he could take pictures from helicopters for surveill-Should I be talking about this?’
‘What was in the pictures?’
‘Well, there isn’t much there, at Brinsop. Just a few houses and farms and things and an old manor house on the outskirts. And a church, of course. And lines. On the more distant aerial photos he’d drawn lines and marked things with crosses.’
‘Did he explain that?’
‘Kept showing me the pictures and saying what a terrific place it was and how we should live somewhere like that. I didn’t think he was serious. Then suddenly he’d bought some ground. He had a separate bank account for his earnings from the books, and he’d bought this ground before I knew anything about it. About twenty acres, part of a farm where they’d sold the house separately. He said he could get planning permission for a bungalow or something there and convert the outbuildings for accommodation.’
‘He wanted you to move to Brinsop? Sell this house?’
Liz shook her head vaguely, still baffled.
‘My father had died and my mother had gone to live with her sister in Pembrokeshire, and Colin said there was nothing to stay here for now. He said I could still do B and B. Well… I didn’t often say no to him, but this house means a lot to me, and it was in my name!’
‘Was this before he… went off the rails?’
‘About the same time, I suppose. After we separated, he just moved over there. He was in a mobile home, apparently. Like a big caravan.’
‘Do you know why he wanted to live there? To be back near the SAS?’
‘I don’t really understand it. They don’t talk to you after you’ve gone – the ones left in. Well, they do… but they don’t tell you anything. You’re not part of the family any more. He was quite bitter about that, too. Bitter about a lot of things.’
‘What does he do? Farm? Still write?’
‘I think he’s a consultant to one of these firms that runs these survival courses, self-sufficiency and… I don’t really know.’
Merrily nodded. Picked up her bag, then put it down again.
‘Liz… erm… please say no if you think it’s silly or offensive, but would it help at all if I did a little blessing thing… in here?’
Huw Owen’s primary rules: never leave the premises without dropping a blessing, or a prayer. Never leave anyone agitated or stressed. Never leave a vacuum.
Liz looked as if she didn’t quite understand and perhaps didn’t want to.
‘Yes, all right,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
33
Colleagues
Karen Dowell was on the phone when Bliss got into Gaol Street, just after half-nine, but still managed to flick him a warning look, glancing at his office door. Which was shut. Someone sitting in there.
Bliss decided that if, by some serendipitous anomaly, it was the Chief Constable, he’d smash the bastard before he could get up. Partly because the Chief was bigger than him and partly because he felt like shit this morning – shivery and light-headed, like when some hovering virus was figuring out if you were worth taking down. And partly because it might just be the finest thing he’d ever do in his life.
He nodded to Karen, opened the office door, walked in with his aching head held high, and it was Annie Howe.
The old Annie. The dark trouser suit, the ice-maiden white shirt. The no make-up, the no jewellery. Sitting behind his desk, marking the homework.
Bliss shut the door behind him.
Might have slept last night, but he didn’t think so. He remembered the sun coming up before his wide-open eyes, before the clouds had smothered it. He’d got up, drunk a whole pot of tea, hoping that Annie might call him from Malvern before either of them left for work. Nothing.
‘If you’ve gorra screwdriver on you, Annie, I’ll take me name off the door.’
‘I’m meeting a witness at ten.’ Annie stacked the reports, looked up at him. ‘Why I’m here rather than Oldcastle. I thought you might like to sit in.’
‘Witness to what?’
‘A man in a field? Covered in blood?’
‘Oh.’
‘Agreed to meet in town, if we can protect his identity. Actually, it was the girlfriend who rang in, from a mobile. I’m meeting them at Gilbey’s. Told her I might be accompanied, but that wouldn’t change anything.’
They walked up towards High Town, well apart on the pavement. Annie was wearing a grey double-breasted jacket, a long white woollen scarf.
‘I do hope the Chief realizes this won’t be bloodless,’ Bliss said.
‘Don’t do anything stupid. There may be room for manoeuvre.’
‘Rather be out than have this shite. Chuck in me papers.’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’ Annie quickened her pace. ‘Nobody wants you out of the job. Might even simply be a case of staying in West M
ercia, just leaving the division?’
‘No. No, no, no.’ Rage ripping into Bliss as he caught her up on the corner, near the zebra crossing. ‘You don’t understand, do you? I’ve only gorra close me eyes and I can see them… Kairsty and her old man… Sollers Bull and his friggin’ father-in-law from the House of friggin’ Lords. All the foreign hunters behind Countryside Defiance and the tweedy twats who like to think they still control this county, and-’
‘The Chief’s just watching his back. It’s how they survive.’
‘-and right there in the middle… your old man. Charlie Howe with one hand held out for the money and the other making some Masonic sign. Corruption’s embedded in this county, Annie, like… like the blue bits in Danish friggin’ Blue. Try and cut yourself a slice that isn’t riddled with it.’
‘You could say that of just about anywhere.’
‘Yeh, well, I don’t live just about anywhere. And one thing I’ve noticed is that when they go down, the bad guys… when they go down in Hereford, it’s always the outsiders.’
They turned along the narrow passage leading to Gilbey’s bar, where the city’s movers and shakers occasionally moved and shook. In its own secluded little space up against the back of St Peter’s Church.
‘We have to sit outside.’ Annie headed for the farthest table, under a tree and in the shadow of the steeple. ‘You go and order some coffee. I’ll wait here, in case he’s early.’
‘Do we need pink carnations?’
Inside, Bliss scanned the clientele. A few faces that he vaguely recognized. Fortunately, nobody he actually knew. He’d thought maybe Annie had asked him along because she had something encouraging to say to him about how they’d fight this thing together, but that evidently was not going to happen.
When he came out, there was a woman sitting with Annie. Mid-thirties, pale-skinned, wind-straggled blonde hair tucked into the collar of her red leather jacket.
‘This is my colleague, Francis Bliss,’ Annie said. ‘Francis, this is… Janette.’