by Phil Rickman
‘Against Liz?’
‘Against life. Anyway… as I said, I really wasn’t feeling terribly well that night. Eventually I excused myself and went to the loo and then went out for a breath of air. In the grounds, which were extensive, though not remote like you get round here. You could always hear traffic. And he was there.’
‘Where?’
‘Emerging from the bushes, as though he was on an exercise. The exercise being… I was the exercise, I-God, I can’t believe I’m telling somebody about this with Sam lying in a mortuary. It makes me feel sick. I feel sick now, and I felt sick then.’
‘He was drunk?’
‘No, I don’t actually think he was. I don’t think he needed to be. I wish I could explain what I mean by that. It was as though the… the night had released something in him. Sorry, that sounds stupid.’
‘Not to me. Go on.’
‘When I said I wasn’t feeling well, he put an arm around me and said some air might help, and he walked me away from the terrace. Down across the lawns, away from the floodlit area. What could I do? He’d been a friend. He said he wanted to talk to me. Seriously. Very focused. He told me Sam was making a terrible mistake in going into the church, that he was throwing away his life and damaging his country, and if I didn’t want a life of misery I should stop him. Or leave him.’
‘Bloody hell, Fiona…’
‘He said Sam was an idiot who didn’t deserve me. And a coward. He actually said Sam was a coward. And when I opened my mouth to protest, he… his lips were there. And he started to touch me. Fondle me. As if it was the most natural thing in the world? And I’m going, No, thank you, Byron, let’s go back now. I was pretty terrified, naturally. Also terrified that Sam would find us.’
A pause. Merrily moved back towards the car.
‘That’s not… how it seems,’ Fiona said. ‘I knew that if Sam had found us, what would’ve happened… it would’ve ended in some appalling violence.’
‘But Sam was becoming a priest…’
‘He was trying to become a priest. He’d had long talks with other priests. Used to say there were aspects of himself he’d have to… alter if it was going to work. There’d’ve been no turning of cheeks here, would there?’
‘What did you-?’
‘I mean, it wouldn’t’ve mattered who came to the rescue, would it? The result would be the same. Do you know what I mean? Sooner or later it would involve Sam in violence. These guys, that was the only way it could ever be resolved. I’m not saying it’s the only language they understand, or that they’re stupid and mindless, but Byron…’
Fiona broke off, as if she was trying to rethink this, to see if there was any other way it might be viewed.
‘Byron, the way he was that night… it seemed to me, in those moments, that that was what he wanted. He wanted Sam to come for him. He wanted an excuse to release some kind of animalistic rage.’
‘You mean at Syd, or just…?’
‘I mean that he wasn’t attracted to me, as such… it was because I was Sam’s wife.’
‘Jesus.’
‘There was a real kind of… a real evil about it, I suppose. That is, an emptiness – a hole where love and humanity should be? Is that evil?’
‘Oh, yes.’
The clouds had gulped up the sun. Merrily, starting to shiver, walked down through the little gate and stepped down towards the car. The fields looked raw and winter-stripped.
‘So… what happened?’
Convinced that Fiona, unprompted, would simply not have finished the story.
‘I didn’t resist him. He had me against the side of a garage block, and I didn’t resist.’
‘He raped you.’
‘It was over very quickly. It was, for him, I think, not so much the doing it as the having done it. What I remember most was the sound of his breath. A hollow sound. As though he was drawing breath from somewhere else. Afterwards, he just said goodnight. I don’t think he even remembered my name.’
‘You’ve never told anyone?’
‘You’re the first.’
One in a million.
Barry had said that.
Merrily smoked half a cigarette, put on her coat and went back into the church.
Byron’s church.
Up to the glittery chancel, but it didn’t feel right. She walked back down the nave and across to the Romanesque stone tympanum. St George spearing a snake-like dragon. An untypical St George in a kind of pleated skirt. Essential violence.
Fiona had said she’d gone back into the hotel through another door. Gone upstairs to their room and locked herself in and showered for a long time and put on fresh make-up and a different dress. Syd had been looking for her. She told him she hadn’t been well. She said she’d been sick and had had to change.
All that night, her skin had felt greasy and she’d had a filthy taste at the back of her throat.
Merrily thought about Denzil Joy, found she was breathing far too fast and became aware that on the wall opposite her, above the church door, another act of violence was evoked in smoke.
She stood staring at it, uncomprehending for a few moments, taking several long breaths before approaching it across the space at the back of the nave.
It was not smoke. Nor was it imagination. She stopped, flipping feverishly through the leaflet.
The 13th century wall painting above the door is of The Crucifixion.
Like most wall paintings, there wasn’t much left. Could have been a dampness stain, like the grey monk in Huw’s chapel.
Two pains… the first wrought to the drying while his body was moist, and that other slow, with blowing of wind from without…
All the colours gone. The cross gone. He was a corpse or very nearly, drained of all resistance. His head, dead weight, had collapsed into an elbow. His body was brittle as a chrysalis, flaking into the wall.
37
Loaded
Four-thirty. Too quiet in the CID room. An air of getting nowhere.
‘Boss, you’re dead on your feet,’ Karen said. ‘Go home, eh?’
‘I’m all right. Just sick of drawing blanks. Not even as if it’s a wall of silence.’
Bliss quite liked a wall of silence. Justified the use of a wrecking ball. Problem here was that once you were over the language barriers the Bulgarians, Romanians, Lithuanians, Poles would tell you anything you wanted. All of them shattered by the East Street atrocity. Not an enemy in the world, these girls. Clean-living, religious. Just wanted to make some money to send home.
Men? Of course not. They were inseparable, anyway. The prevailing opinion now was that they’d somehow, perhaps innocently, offended one of the criminal gangs. That the men seen by Carly and Joss in the Monk’s Head were hard-core. Following the sisters out, pretending to fancy them, that was just an act.
‘Something will give,’ Karen said. ‘On the third day, something always gives. Now, please, will you go home? Me and Darth can hold it together till the morning. Have a big glass of whisky and go to bed. Anything breaks, we’ll send a car for you?’
‘Yeah,’ Bliss said.
‘Now, boss? Straight home?’
‘I’m gonna make a call first. I’ll be in my office.’
In the office he didn’t quite shut the door and stood by the gap, out of sight, listening. But nobody seemed to be talking about the DI beating up his wife and nobody’s expression changed when he walked back in, claiming he’d left his chewy behind.
Bliss sat down and put in a call to Jeremy Berrows, who farmed beyond Kington, where Herefordshire met the paler hills of Radnorshire. Jeremy lived with a lot of sheep and a lot of sheep-dogs. Also with a beautiful woman called Natalie, who was known to the police from way, way back, but it was all right now.
‘You sounds a bit on edge, Mr Bliss,’ Jeremy said.
He was what people called an old-fashioned kind of farmer, open to superstitions and signs and portents. A haloed moon, three magpies, the ash out before the oak, all that. Jer
emy thought his land confided in him.
Bliss said, ‘You’ve got Mansel Bull’s dogs, I believe. All of them.’
‘They’re a gang. He didn’t wanner split them up. Problem with that?’
‘We’re talking to everybody who’d had dealings with Mansel.’
‘Wasn’t exactly a deal. Bit of an agreement, that’s all, between two blokes as knew a bit about dogs and sheep. Not everybody got along with Mansel, but he looked after his dogs.’
‘And you came and took them after he died.’
‘Before. Just as well. His brother woulder stopped it. Trained dog’s worth money. Or mabbe he’d’ve had the whole bunch shot.’
‘What?’
‘Mabbe that’s unfair,’ Jeremy said.
‘See, apart from the inhumanity of that, Jeremy, it would indicate a fairly strong element of not exactly honouring his brother’s memory.’
Jeremy didn’t reply. Bliss liked the sound of the silence. He’d once listened to the lovely Natalie at the right time, and whilst Jeremy didn’t exactly owe him…
‘Word is,’ Bliss said, ‘that Sollers wasn’t too pleased when Mansel sold that ground. Any whispers about that?’
‘Don’t go much on whispers. Too many of ’em round yere’s been about me and Nat. As you know.’
‘How is she?’
‘Good.’
How many local people knew about Natalie’s time in detention was debatable. The probability was that the gossip was just about how a little woolly-haired farmer held on to a serious beauty from Off. But it was unlikely either of them would ever be able to relax.
‘Jeremy, you’re a straight sort of bloke, as farmers go, so I’ll be straight with you. I think there’s quite a lot Sollers Bull hasn’t told us. I accept you don’t listen much to gossip, but how did you feel things were between Mansel and Sollers?’
‘Different generations, different attitudes. Mansel was a businessman in the ole sense. Tight as a duck’s arse, but you knowed where you was. Sollers is all for the image. Puttin’ hisself around. Prize cattle at the Royal Welsh, diversifyin’, farm shops and cafes. Huntin’. I was at school with him for a few years. Lady Hawkins.’
‘And what was he like at school?’
‘Head boy.’
‘Figures. See, I’m guessing Mansel would realize Sollers wouldn’t be too keen on him flogging that ground to the fruit farm. So why’d Mansel do it? Bit of pique, maybe?’
‘No, no, that wasn’t it at all, he…’
Jeremy sounded uncertain again, like he was worried about breaking a confidence.
‘He’s dead, Jeremy. He was killed. It was mairder. Remember?’
‘Wasn’t going well, that’s all. The dogs. Mansel thought mabbe he was losin’ it.’
‘What, his marbles?’
‘His skill. Had three shelves full of awards. Come close to winning One Man and His Dog on the box, once. Then it wasn’t workin’ n’more. Used to train his dogs down by the river, but Sollers wanted more ground for his cattle, and he had to move up to the top field. Not used much for stock, usually they just had the hay off it. And it wasn’t the same. Seemed obvious to me it wasn’t the dogs, but he was losin’ heart. Mansel, either he was on top or he didn’t wanner know – got that much in common with Sollers, at least.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re saying, Jeremy.’
‘Couldn’t hack it. Dogs was all over the place some days. He’d give a command, dog’d go for it real slow. Or run off, back down to the river. Couldn’t count on ’em. He was gettin’ real depressed. Thought it was his age. Got so he didn’t wanner take the dogs out n’more.’
‘So you got all these valuable dogs for nothing from a man who’s known for being tight as a duck’s arse?’
‘Too many dogs is more of a burden than anything, Mr Bliss. We agreed mabbe he’d have ’em back one day. I told him I reckoned it wasn’t about him and it wasn’t about his dogs. They works fine yere. Poetry.’
‘I’m not getting this.’
‘You’re a copper, Mr Bliss. Nobody ’spects you to get it. Had to be a reason them top fields wasn’t used much – and that was how it was for years. Generations, mabbe. I had a walk over it when I went to fetch the dogs. Some places, the air feels loaded. A place looks quiet, but it en’t. A lot of ravens, too, for some reason.’
‘Ravens.’ Bliss thought about this, and it was Vasile Bocean all over again. ‘You know what, Jeremy?’ he said. ‘I’m tired.’
He sat at his desk for several minutes. All right, raised a Catholic and, whatever anybody said, you never lost that and all the baggage. And what Jeremy had been hinting at – feelings, atmosphere – he wouldn’t entirely rubbish any of it. Privately. In the midnight hour. It was just nothing to do with police work. It didn’t help.
He got up and stood by his window. The sky was like the inside of an orange peel. The light nights were coming. Didn’t like them any more, dark was best, watching the lights going out across the road, on the hill above Great Malvern.
Colleagues only. The way those words had been pinballing round his head all day. Telling himself she didn’t mean it, she’d come round. He’d find some way of bringing her round. Have to. Couldn’t lose this. Couldn’t let it just come apart like a cheap supermarket bag.
Somehow, he had to get Kirsty to refute any suggestion that he’d ever abused her physically. She could call him any kind of shit as long as she told the truth about that, sent it back up the line.
Bliss pulled out his iPhone, checked his incomings. No e-mails of any consequence, just the one phone message.
Annie Howe. Thank Christ. Bliss clicked on it. Annie’s voice was very low, but not so low the words weren’t metallically distinct.
‘ Didn’t think I could be surprised any more at the level of your blind stupidity.’
Bliss clapped the phone tight to his ear, both hands around it in case anybody came in.
‘ Don’t know how you could have thought for one minute that I wouldn’t find out. Your wife. Your own bloody wife.’
Deadness for several seconds.
‘ Anyway,’ Annie said, ‘ That’s it.’
End of message.
Bliss wrenched the phone away from his ear, stabbed at the screen to call her back. All right, no, he couldn’t explain why he hadn’t told her about Kirsty’s suspicions, except to say that he hadn’t believed the bitch, couldn’t imagine how she could possibly know about Annie. Still didn’t know.
Annie’s phone was switched off.
Bliss stared at the iPhone, all the little symbols, the ten thousand useless friggin’ apps. Rubbed the cold sweat from his forehead.
So who had the bitch told?
He strode out of the office, through the CID room without speaking to anybody, down the stairs and out of the building, his face and the back of his neck feeling like they were badly sunburned.
38
The Energy of Sorrow
Lol watched Merrily collapse back into his sofa. Late sun honeying the room, red veins pulsing among the ashes at the bottom of the woodstove. As so often these days, Merrily looked vacant, wiped-out.
‘So where do I go from here?’
Lol was thinking maybe a new career. It was a crap job, the clergy, and no indication it would ever get better. So much open contempt now. The Church, God, the afterlife – all delusion. Thinking it and getting a buzz out of saying it, loudly, in public, on TV, and the only people who shouted back were the crazy fundamentalists like his late parents who’d cut him out of their lives.
Merrily had come home this afternoon to find the answering machine going, Uncle Ted, the churchwarden, trying to lean on her, before tonight’s parish meeting, about his plans to turn the church into a greasy spoon. It was about paying bills.
The bleeping of the answering machine had chased her out of the house and across the road in search of sanctuary. I think I need help , she’d said, and they’d talked for an hour, sharing an omelette and toast. She’d told him abo
ut last night’s visit from James Bull-Davies and everything she’d learned about a man called Byron Jones. From Barry, from Jones’s ex-wife and, finally, Syd’s wife, Fiona.
‘You believe this man raped her?’
‘You think it’s something she’d invent?’
‘But she didn’t go to the police. Or to anyone.’
‘Syd would’ve killed him.’
‘And now he’s dead, does Mrs Spicer want you to do something about this?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Lol sat down next to Merrily.
‘How would she feel about you simply dumping it all on Bull-Davies? Who asked you to share.’
‘She wouldn’t like that. I’m only telling you because I know it won’t go out of this house. I mean, who is William Lockley? Why does he want the information? Does he want to use it or suppress it? Who am I working for?’
‘So tell Bull-Davies what you’ve heard about Jones without naming names. And then back off.’
‘Can’t now. Not with Syd’s funeral.’
‘That,’ Lol said, ‘was a mistake.’
He slid off the sofa, gathered up two logs from the hearth, opened the stove and put them in. Watching the fire seizing one, thinking of the insatiable furnace in a crematorium, where quickie funerals were conducted by a duty vicar who’d never met the customer.
And this… this was the summation of a life, Merrily would protest. Where was the electricity, the surge of transition, the smoothing of the final earthly path by the subtle energy of sorrow? No wonder some of them didn’t rest. She didn’t do quickies. A properly conducted funeral needed the history. Bottom line: if she’d felt an obligation to Syd before, now it was cast in bronze.
‘What was I supposed to say? No, thanks, best to find somebody who doesn’t give a toss? Lol, it’s like he’s haunting me. The way he showed up at the chapel. I keep hearing that flat voice in my head when I’m not expecting it. “Samuel Dennis Spicer, Church of England”. Smell his cigarette smoke in church.’