by Phil Rickman
‘You mean Credenhill and Brinsop Church.’ Merrily sat down. ‘And the alignments with other churches and ancient monuments.’
‘You have been doing your homework, Mrs Watson. I’m impressed. It’s not a Roman ritual landscape, we’re probably talking Neolithic. The Romans fitted in. In the way Christian churches would be built on Neolithic ritual sites. Pragmatic.’
‘So where is this mithraeum?’
Byron tapped his nose.
‘Need to know,’ he said. ‘You don’t.’
‘Was there much left?’
‘Some reconstruction was required. Another good reason to keep quiet about it.’
Merrily glanced at Howe, who nodded.
‘Is this where the bulls are sacrificed, then?’ Merrily asked.
Byron laughed. Leaning back from the table, his jacket open. Merrily thinking that, however old he was, he was still very fit, no paunch under the leather belt. And relaxed. Too relaxed for this situation.
‘Popular farmer murdered by former trooper off his trolley?’ Byron said. ‘How can we ever trust them again?’
‘Excuse me,’ Annie Howe said. ‘Am I missing something here?’
‘Byron’s been putting two and two together,’ Lockley said. ‘And making seven.’
‘That’s your big inquiry, isn’t it? Doesn’t take a genius.’
‘Perhaps,’ Howe said, ‘you could tell us about the bulls you took.’
‘Rustling, too, eh?’ Byron said. ‘Is there no depth to which this scum won’t sink? Tell me, do you have any evidence of that?’
‘Do you deny ever taking a bull?’
‘Absolutely. It’s ridiculous.’
‘But central to the practice of Mithraism,’ Merrily said. ‘Surely.’
‘It was, two thousand years ago. In the days before the slaughter of livestock was subject to regulations. Even then, there’d have to be a compromise as, according to the legend, Mithras personally hauls the bull to his cave.’
‘And how do you get over that problem?’
‘Meditative visualization. Do I need to explain that? All right, I will. The candidate is summoned to the mithraeum. He travels from wherever he lives, books into humble accommodation – or brings a tent – and spends a day in contemplation of his role, during which he’s permitted to drink water but must eat nothing. He bathes in a river, usually the Wye. He’s brought, blindfolded, to the mithraeum, where his comrades are gathered. The ritual begins.’
‘His comrades.’ William flipping him a glance. ‘Just so we know, anyone from the Lines involved in this?’
‘Not any more. Like I said when these ladies were powdering their noses, none of this need concern you, William. It started in the Regiment, just a few of us, now it’s moved on. I’m not saying it won’t come back one day, as long as the camp sits on Magnis.’
Lockley glanced towards the window. He seemed unsettled, as though the world had skidded out of his mental grasp.
‘What does that mean?’ Merrily said. ‘“As long as the camp sits on Magnis”? When you were talking about a ritual landscape… with its own god. The god of the Regiment?’
‘By your rules, I’m an atheist.’
For a few seconds, nobody spoke. Down in the city, a car horn blared.
‘It’s about mindset,’ Byron said. ‘You don’t know what I mean, do you? None of you. Not even you, William. Communism in your day, and the IRA. Now it’s men driven by religion, who don’t care what happens to them in this life or how they leave it. We could lose it this time, because we ain’t got the mindset.’
‘Byron,’ Lockley said, ‘we don’t do holy wars any more.’
‘You think the Crusades were holy, William? The Crusades served man’s need for extreme warfare.’
‘Mithras coming through,’ Merrily said.
‘Call it what you want.’
Merrily put her head on one side, holding Byron’s electric blue gaze, hands clasped under the table.
‘Do you ever think you might be dealing here with something so powerful that while experienced soldiers like you might be able to handle it, civilians-’
‘Mrs Watson, you’re in no position to make any kind of qualified assessment.’
‘-might just become a little crazy?’
‘Come back to me when you’re better informed.’
‘Can I just ask… when did you last see Syd? Did you see him again after he came to Credenhill as chaplain?’
No reply. Merrily thought she glimpsed a flaring rage in his eyes, blue lights in a ravaged landscape.
‘I’ve been wondering if you were the main reason why Syd felt he had to come back. Mithras and you, the demons from his past that he had to deal with.’ Merrily glanced at Howe. ‘Maybe he thought something still lived in him. Something repugnant that was buried so deep inside himself that he couldn’t reach it. Something he had to come back and deal with.’
Winging it now. She felt quite dizzy, the room tilting, a throbbing in her chest. Byron was still looking at her, his hands either side of the chair ready to launch himself out of it. And in his eyes…
He can enter you without moving, that man, one of the nurses had said.
And then it was gone.
Byron didn’t move.
‘Chief Inspector, why don’t I just give you a DNA swab, so you can compare it with whatever you found in Mansel’s yard?’
‘I still haven’t mentioned Mansel Bull,’ Annie Howe said.
‘Don’t treat me like a clown.’
‘You knew Mr Bull well?’
‘I was acquainted with Mansel and his… family.’ Byron blinked. ‘ Mansel Bull. You’re making something out of it because his name’s Bull. That’s all this is. Am I right?’
Howe said, ‘Do you know who killed Mansel Bull?’
‘How would I?’
‘Am I right in thinking that in this… virtual ceremony of the slaughter of the bull, it’s considered important that the candidate imagines himself covered in its blood?’
‘You can find all this in books and on the Net. But if you really think I’d go out and carve up a neighbour-’
‘Let’s end it there.’ Annie Howe began packing her laptop into her case. ‘I’m glad you felt able to open up to us, Mr Jones.’
Byron didn’t look at her, or at Merrily. At the door, he glanced back.
‘I once thought of asking you to join us, William. When they package you off, maybe you should think about it. Bring you alive when you’re least expecting it. Unimaginable, mate.’
‘But purely a psychological thing,’ Merrily said. ‘Just a discipline.’
William Lockley rose to his feet, flexing his shoulders.
‘Is there an offence of desecrating an historical monument, Annie? Because, as I see it, that’s all you’ve got.’
‘May not even be an ancient monument,’ Howe said.
‘He’s not your killer. That’s my opinion.’
‘You’re probably right.’
‘It’s an oddball thing, but if he’s used it to turn around his fortunes, good luck to him. Though if he thinks it’ll ever be embraced by the Credenhill boys…’ At the door, Lockley turned, smiled. ‘Worthwhile exercise, ladies, and I may be in touch to clarify a few points. Anything you want from me, you know where I am.’
Annie Howe strode across the room and shut the door firmly, stood with her back against it, her angular face unusually flushed.
‘What would Spicer’s reaction have been, do you think, on learning about the murder of Mansel Bull?’
‘I doubt it would’ve helped him sleep.’
‘All right, I’ll tell you something else. We have a witness who saw a man in a field, on the night of the killing, drenched in blood and apparently high on the experience.’
‘ High?’
‘Well, in a state of some apparent euphoria, according to our witness.’
‘Oh.’ Merrily stood up. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Jo
nes said he knew Mansel Bull and his… at which point he hesitated and then said family.’
‘I remember that, too.’
‘Mansel Bull didn’t have a family, as such,’ Howe said. ‘He had two ex-wives.’
‘So I gather.’
‘And a brother.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you met Sollers Bull?’
‘Never.’
‘He’s an ambitious man. Someone I suppose you’d call a member of the new countryside elite.’
‘Elite.’
Annie Howe thought for moment.
‘Would you mind coming to meet him, if he’s available?’
‘Well, I… ’
‘Give me half an hour,’ Howe said. ‘Get yourself a cup of tea and a sandwich.’
Merrily wound up crossing the street to the pizza place, grabbing a salad with hummus and couscous and a coffee. Sitting in the window with her phone, on which Neil Cooper had left a message with his home number.
‘Sorry, Neil, I was going to call you back, wasn’t I?’
‘If you remember, we got as far as Mithras. Magnis is very much my ongoing project, but I’ve been wondering all day if it’s conceivable that you know something I don’t.’
‘You can relax, I don’t really know anything. I would have asked you if there were any Mithraic remains in this area.’
‘Not… as far as we know. The fact is, although signs of Mithraic worship are common enough in Germany and Italy, evidence in the UK is rather sparser. You’re looking at four suggested centres of worship – London, York, Chester and Caerleon. Now, as it happens, the principal Roman road linking Caerleon, in South Wales, and Chester, on the northern border, passes through Credenhill.’
‘So it would’ve been used by soldiers travelling between two significant Mithraic centres. Through some fairly hostile country, I would have thought.’
‘And as they built a base here which became – as we’re gradually finding out – quite a substantial community, surviving into the fifth century… well, I’ve often wondered.’
‘Why did they build a base here?’
‘All to do with the Wye,’ Neil said. ‘They were probably using the ford at Hereford to get across. You see the reason I wondered if you might have heard something is that there’s a rumour been going round for a while about something of this nature being found in Herefordshire.’
‘Rumour?’
‘Within archaeological circles. Stories of aerial photographs showing interesting linear patterns. I’ve never met anyone who’s seen one, but we’ve been monitoring aerial surveys. Nothing found, so I was thinking it might be apocryphal. Unless you – or someone – know otherwise?’
‘You checked, erm, the Brinsop area.’
‘Actually, we have. Nothing obvious there that we didn’t already know about.’
‘I suppose if somebody wanted to keep quiet about it, they could just cover it up. With a temporary building or something.’
‘It is a thought,’ Neil Cooper said.
Part Six
Throughout the vision, I thought I was being obliged to recognise that we are sinners who commit many evil things that ought not to be done and who omit many good deeds that ought to be done. We deserve to suffer pain…
Julian of Norwich
Revelations of Divine Love
66
Anything You Want
The evening sky was blotched with small clouds, like a field of late mushrooms, brown and rotting. Jane stood on the grass bank, watching Cornel taking the leather bag from the back of the van.
A mile or so out of Credenhill, he’d swung the van between some overhanging bushes, branches ripping at the side windows. When he’d hit the brakes, Jane had been thrown forward, the rotting seat belt snapping, her head bumping painfully into the windscreen as the mobile started vibrating in her hip pocket.
She slid it out now and checked it while Cornel was messing with his tool bag. All she could see were small fields keeping wedges of woodland apart and, ahead of them, a conifer screen at the top of a rise. The eastern horizon was formed by the great wooded bank of Credenhill itself, like a crouching bear.
A new text from Eirion – J… whr t L r u?
What she wouldn’t give to be able to return the call. To be with Irene with his reticent smile and his solid body, just slightly overweight.
Other people would surely be missing her by now. OK, Mum would think she was with Eirion, but if Eirion rang Mum…
‘Cornel,’ Jane said, ‘if you’re worried about going to this place, maybe we could do it some other time?’
He’d become morose, his mood turning like the sky. It was getting cold, too, and the van’s heater didn’t work. This whole thing with the van… it showed a calculating side of Cornel, a secretive side.
A jangle of tools. What did he need tools for?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but wasn’t it you that wanted to go?’
‘Not in the dark.’
Jane glared up into the fungal sky, wondering now if she really had persuaded him, if it wasn’t the other way round. He’d been all too ready for this, with the van and whatever was in the rucksack and the leather bag.
‘It’s always in the dark,’ Cornel said.
And Jane imagined some squalid gathering in an underground chamber. It was going to be horrible, gruelling – she wasn’t sure she could even watch.
‘How far do we have to go?’
‘Mile or so?’
‘A mile? But it’s all muddy!’ She felt it was important to retain something of girlie. ‘This is my best jacket. We’re not all loaded like you.’
It seemed to disarm him.
‘If you get messed up I’ll buy you a new outfit.’
‘What’ve you got in the bag?’
‘Wire-cutters. Stuff like that.’
‘You mean we’re going in like… undercover or something?’
‘It might help if you didn’t ask too many questions.’
‘Help who? Where are we going? Is it a farm?’
‘Give me a minute.’
Cornel went crunching off into the woods. Gone to relieve himself. Jane gave him time to, like, get started and then pulled out her phone to send Eirion a text.
But Cornel was back before she could get more than a few words down. She stashed the phone. He seemed happier, a big, wide, sloppy grin across his face. He was breathing hard and fast.
‘OK, let’s do it.’
Jane followed him, his long legs spidering across the darkening grass and the nettles, until they came to a barbed-wire fence. Cornel unslung the bag, and then the wire-cutters were in his hands. They didn’t look that big, but they went through the barbed wire like it was bailer twine, the ends springing away from the fence, Cornel still grinning like, for him, this was what the countryside was about.
What happens is anything you want…
Barry said, ‘Got a job interview next week, Lol, did I say?’
Business in the Black Swan was slow. Barry had brought some drinks, pulled out a chair and sat down with Lol who’d been trying, not too successfully, to lay down some lyrics between pacing the square, waiting for Merrily to call, Danny to come in, anything.
‘Where?’
‘Wiltshire.’
‘Oh.’
Lol didn’t remember a Ledwardine without Barry. Originally the manager at the Cassidys’ restaurant, then seamlessly taking over at the Swan. Wry, unflappable, trained killer in a black tie, balancing a loaded tray while helping old ladies with their cases.
‘My second wife, she lives down near Swindon, and we’re, you know, talking again. I had it in mind she’d come back up here, but maybe this is best.’
‘Can’t believe you’re letting Savitch drive you out of the area.’
‘Clean break, new start. Done it before, I can do it again. You can’t live with resentment, Laurence.’
‘No.’
‘Mind you, it gets hard sometimes,’ Barry said. ‘Remem
ber how you were accusing me of telling Savitch about the open-air concert thing?’
‘Wasn’t accusing you exactly-’
‘It was my fault. Should’ve found it. Marion, it was, found it this morning. Women and dusters always get into places men don’t even see. Anyway, there it was, nicely concealed in a picturesque crack… in that beam?’
‘What are we talking about?’
‘I just ripped it out. Before I’d really thought about it, I’d ripped it out and stamped on it, how bleedin’ stupid was that? Little microphone and transmitter, Laurence. Size of your thumbnail. Maybe wouldn’t work too well when the bar was crowded, but on a quiet day, just a few of us there…’
‘A bug?’
‘You stand and you think, who’d do a thing like that?’
‘Savitch… planted a bug?’
‘Don’t know it was him. But… find out who you can win round, who you can buy, who’s best avoided…’
Lol shut his lyrics pad, thinking of everything that had been said about Savitch in the Swan. Speculation about some corrupt alliance with Councillor Pierce. Barry remarking that if Savitch bought the Swan there was no way he’d be sticking around.
Now there was no way he could.
‘Who do you think actually planted it?’
‘He’s got half a dozen staff at The Court. I know Hardkit used to market listening devices and spy-video toys, from their website. Could actually be Mostyn himself – he’s been in a few times with his clients. Kind of thing he’d do for the sake of it. James Bond.’
‘Barry, what is happening to this place?’
‘I should’ve left it in place, fed him disinformation, but I just… lost it. Knee-jerk. Getting old and crusty.’ Barry looked steadily at Lol. ‘What you waiting for?’
It seemed like a good time to tell him some things.
They seemed to have been walking for ever, getting nowhere, when Jane tripped over something hard, twisting, and went down.