Remains of an Altar mw-8

by Phil Rickman

  ‘What about Raji Khan?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Still a bit of a mystery there,’ Syd said. ‘He’s not clean, obviously. But he must be a very small player by comparison. Can’t be involved, or he’d never have been allowed to move in so close. What was that like, Preston, Raji moving in? You must’ve been awful nervy. Did he know, or didn’t he? If he ever found out, that could be tricky – and always a possibility with ambitious little men like Wicklow around. And do you officially support the opposition? Leonard Holliday and WRAG? Difficult one.’

  ‘Especially if it attracted too much publicity,’ Merrily said. ‘Thus engaging the attention of hundreds of thousands of Elgar enthusiasts, all over the world. You really had to curb Mr Holliday, didn’t you?’

  ‘And maybe do something about Tim Loste,’ Syd said. ‘Very much a wild card. And supported –more than supported – by your former good friend but not any more, Winnie Sparke. I tried to warn her, best I could. She wouldn’t buy it. Syd, she said,this is England.’

  * * *

  Lol didn’t do drugs. The only reason he had to be grateful to his psychiatric hospital: a sojourn in Medication City and you never wanted to swallow so much as an aspirin ever again.

  The white in the sky had dulled, the oak was going grey. A great and beautiful mystery had shrunk to something squalid. Lol sat down next to Tim, whispered to him.

  ‘How much did you drink from the hip flask?’

  ‘Chap offers you a swig, not the thing to decline, Dan.’

  ‘Depends who’s offering.’

  ‘Raised it to my lips. Faked it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘If he brought it back now, I’d drink the lot. Elgar was right, old cock. God’s against art.’

  ‘May just be,’ Lol said, ‘that artists don’t have mystical experiences. Artists are a medium. Think of it as an internal process you’re not aware of. You don’t have to see blinding light and the heavenly host. You might sit down tomorrow and it’ll all come out in the music.’

  ‘You’re full of bullshit, Dan. Anyone ever tell you that?’

  ‘Never,’ Lol said honestly. ‘I’m normally a low-key sort of bloke. But it did seem to me as if the leaves had turned white. Don’t give up. Give it a try.’

  ‘For Winnie?’ Tim said.

  ‘Tim—’

  ‘Thought it was a dream. Thought it was a fucking dream.’

  ‘I didn’t know, either. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Blocked it out. Why didn’t I stop them? Why couldn’t—?’

  ‘Because, somehow, you were drugged. Sedated. I’ve been there. Seen it happen. I can tell you for certain there was nothing you could’ve done.’

  ‘It’s a sick fucking joke, Dan. I’ve been sitting here all this time, waiting for—’

  Tim’s hands squeezing the roots either side of him.

  ‘As a gentleman, I’m listening to you,’ Devereaux said. ‘Just not talking to you.’

  ‘A gentleman?’ Merrily sat up. ‘A gentleman who kills kids? Teenagers with infected syringes? Teenagers who murder old ladies in their own homes to steal enough to keep them going for another week?’

  Preston Devereaux stared into the shadows below his feet.

  ‘The cities are a lost cause, Mrs Watkins. Reinfecting themselves on their own sewage. Nothing to be done about that. The road to ruin. No doubt the two of you can find Biblical parallels.’

  ‘And out of the ruins will rise … what?’

  ‘Better government,’ Devereaux said.

  At first Merrily thought he was coughing over his cigarette. But he was laughing. She looked at Syd Spicer. Where was he going with this? Did he have some plan that she couldn’t see? Why hadn’t he just let Devereaux walk away? Why did he have to throw out that remark about the Gullet?

  ‘Why did you kill Winnie Sparke?’ Syd asked.

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Whoever murdered France took his files,’ Merrily said, just wanting to end this. ‘Presumably that’s where they found Winnie’s name. Who would recognize that but you?’

  ‘Winnie’s name’s on Mal’s books,’ Syd said, ‘so it must be Winnie who’s paying him to look into the drug operation. And Winnie being Winnie, a loose cannon— My fault. Should’ve been my name.’

  ‘Syd, this is not something you could ever have predicted.’

  ‘Who rumbled Mal?’ Syd said. ‘I’d like to know that, Preston.’

  Devereaux tossed his cigarette end into the pit.

  ‘Who told you about the Gullet?’ he said.

  ‘You were going to take Tim back that way, right? You waited for … Mr Robinson to leave, and then you were in with the spiked Scotch and time to go home, Tim. How desperate was that?’

  ‘Who told you about the Gullet?’

  ‘Hugo, actually.’

  ‘Hugo?’ Devereaux looking at him at last.

  ‘We have to get our information where we can.’

  ‘Where is he? Syd, he’s a boy.’

  ‘He’s no more a boy than half the drug barons in Birmingham. And if you tell me he hasn’t killed anybody, I wouldn’t be sure and neither could you. Can’t control these boys like you used to, can you? Let them go too far down the road. Maybe that’s another reason Old Wychehill’s been fallow for a bit, you trying to rein Louis in before it’s too late. Tell me who rumbled Mal.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or tell the police when they get here, I don’t mind. It’ll add to what they’ll have learned from Hugo, already naming names faster than they can write them down.’

  ‘Hugo doesn’t know any names.’

  ‘Boy goes around with his eyes shut, does he? It’s over, Preston, it’s disintegrating as we speak. That’s what I’m trying to get across to you.’

  ‘You’ve told me some far-fetched theories, that’s—’

  ‘That’s because I’m not trying to trick you, mate. And because I’ve been trying, maybe not too successfully, to be a priest. Sometimes, especially lately, I have to keep reminding myself that that’s what I am now. I can look at this situation and see clearly what would be the best way of dealing with it if I was still in the Army.’

  ‘The situation being?’

  ‘The situation being a dangerous young man out there, and probably more dangerous because he’s frightened and not really, with his background, the big gangster he thinks he is. He’s clever, but clever’s not the same as smart. Police see what Louis did, it’s an Armed Response Unit. Marksmen all over the hills. The soldier in me would take him out ASAP. Expedience. But the priest doesn’t want another death. Not even Louis’s.’

  ‘And how would the priest avoid that?’

  ‘I think … by letting you walk away like you did a short time ago. You presumably know where he is, so you can explain to him what I’ve just explained to you, and then the two of you can walk into a police station of your choice.’

  ‘Or leave the country.’

  ‘Leaving young Hugo to take all the weight? Nah. You’ve got some honour left. It’s the best thing you can do as a father and a clever man. Exercise some control over your boy. Tell him it’s pointless.’

  Preston Devereaux straightened his back, hands on his knees. There was a glaze of sweat on his forehead under the line of his cap.

  ‘Where’s the point in that, Syd, when you’ve already told him?’

  Perhaps Louis Devereaux had been there the whole time. Plenty of cover. Coppices and dells.

  Perhaps Syd had known this. He half-turned and looked up at Louis with no surprise.

  Merrily was on her feet, backing away, instinctively looking for Lol, but seeing only Louis Devereaux, a half-silhouette in the grey light, as still, for a moment, as any of the oaks, arms extended, rigid as dead branches, both hands clasped around the pistol.

  ‘Where’d you buy that, Louis?’ Syd said mildly. ‘Very professional. They say you can get them in Hereford these days. Glock?’

  The gun twitched.

  ‘Move away from my fat
her, Rector.’

  ‘What for? Which one of us you planning to shoot to prove your old man isn’t in control any more?’

  ‘And shut up.’

  ‘Shouldn’t that be shut the fuck up? Got to get the tone right, the correct phraseology.’

  ‘Shut the—’ Louis’s hands jerking around the pistol. ‘I could kill you now.’

  ‘Or blow me away, even. Blow all of us away. That’d simplify things a lot. Like that feller in Hungerford in the 1980s. You probably don’t remember that, you’d’ve been just a kid, but he shot himself in the end. Like the bloke at Dunblane. It always ends where they shoot themselves.’

  Merrily couldn’t move. Louis was panting with rage and frustration and probably fear. On a hot night, it was the most unstable combination imaginable. And all Syd had was…

  ‘The other ending is death by Armed Response Unit. Like I’ve already told your father, lots of police marks-men all over the hills. Automatic rifles. Night sights. Make that thing look like a spud gun and you like the crass amateur you undoubtedly are.’

  ‘You make one more … remark like that and then—’

  ‘And for a while you get to learn what it was like for all the foxes you used to hunt. Only with not even the faintest possibility of an earth to escape to. No escape at all from those boys. Terrorism-trained, now, and they don’t take any chances. At some stage one of them gets you in the cross-hairs and takes you out. You don’t even see him taking aim. Like a wasp doesn’t see the rolled-up newspaper.’

  Syd standing there with his arms by his sides, an unmoving target. Merrily’s heart going, Please God, please God, please God.

  ‘We can get away,’ Louis said. ‘Any time we want. Just a question of whether—’

  ‘Nah. It doesn’t happen, son, not at this level.’

  ‘—Whether we leave you fucking dead when we go.’

  ‘You don’t understand. You graduated to a new level of achievement tonight, mate,’ Syd said. ‘In the big school now. Where they spend millions hunting you down.’

  Preston Devereaux stood up.

  ‘Can I talk to my son?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, Preston – he’s got the weapon.’

  ‘What do I do?’ Louis’s whole body bending backwards like a water-skier, tensed around the swivelling pistol. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘You probably give the gun to me,’ Preston said.

  ‘We can still get out of this. He’s got to be lying about armed police. We could—’

  Louis turned, the pistol pointing directly at Merrily. She felt a spasm below her heart like a long needle going in.

  ‘—Take Mrs Watkins with us?’

  ‘And then what, Louis?’ Syd said. ‘Demand a helicopter? Grow up, son.’

  ‘Stay fuck—’ Louis spun but not at Syd. ‘Stay fucking there!’

  Merrily, heart jumping, heard a cry from Lol.

  ‘… Tim!’

  Tim Loste was lumbering out from the tree. In his stained singlet, he looked like an old-fashioned butcher, arms sleeved in sweat, finger out, pointing at Louis.

  ‘You were wearing a … a balaclava.’

  ‘Don’t come any closer,’ Louis said, ‘you wanker.’

  ‘Recognize your voice. Wearing a balaclava with eyeholes.’

  ‘Louis,’ Preston Devereaux said, ‘it’s not necessary.’

  ‘Big knife. You had this big— She was screaming at you to stop, screaming and screaming and … and crying and you just … you bloody bastard—’

  Tim tumbled, sobbing, into Louis and Louis shot him twice.

  62

  Seventeen

  ‘I went to sleep,’ Tim said. ‘Now I’m refreshed.’

  He tried to laugh. A dry, skittering noise came out.

  Merrily vaguely recognized the first words sung by the soul, after death, in The Dream of Gerontius.

  ‘Feel so much lighter,’ he said. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s very good.’ Time seemed to have slowed. The white clouds had diminished and so had the humidity. A small night breeze rattled among the boughs.

  Tim said, ‘You’re jolly pretty. I didn’t … didn’t realize you’d be so young. Way Winnie talked, it was as if you were some old…’ He stopped for a breath. It was a terrifying noise, like a small breeze in a mound of dead leaves. ‘Doesn’t matter what Winnie said, does it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  She’d rung for an ambulance, said she’d found a man badly injured, didn’t know how. Syd’s advice. What they didn’t need was an Armed Response Unit. She’d given them directions from the hamlet of Whiteleafed Oak, her name and her mobile number, telling them they could probably get an ambulance across the common without any difficulty if they took it slowly.

  Lol had brought half a bale of straw up from the barn, and they put some of it under Tim, raising his legs. Syd’s advice.

  He walked over.

  ‘Both gone?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Nothing I could do. Not without more of this. Maybe they’ll get to a vehicle in time. Maybe they have arrangements in hand. Maybe they’ll be on a boat out of Fishguard by morning. Can’t see that he wouldn’t’ve made provision: bolt-holes, foreign bank accounts.’

  Syd had phoned West Mercia Police on the general number, someone from Worcester coming back to him. Merrily didn’t know what had been said, but Spicer’d had the impression that they already knew some of what he was telling them and they’d confirmed this by asking if he was the man who’d left a message on Malcolm France’s mobile.

  Some explaining, then, for Syd. Later.

  She whispered to him, ‘There’s hardly any blood.’

  ‘Internal, then. Keep him warm. Don’t move him.’ Merrily’s head was filled with a prayer that she couldn’t articulate. She felt as if she was hovering over the entire scene, the wooded arena with its hints of neolithic mounds, its ghost of a processional way and the sacred, magisterial oak stuffed with twinkling symbols of vain hopes and dreams and, at its splayed feet, a man whose plea to be taken away had been answered in a blinding flash.

  Tim Loste looked up at her from his bed of straw, his face creamed in sweat.

  ‘Hannah’s pretty.’

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘Used to watch out for her when she came past. On her bike. Wished I had a bike. Follow her down. Two of us, whizzing down the hill. Super.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘All I ever wanted, really. Thought I might buy a bike, but … Winnie said it would be the wrong kind.’

  ‘Not like Mr Phoebus.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you rode Mr Phoebus sometimes. In your … daydreams?’

  With Hannah.

  Tim’s eyes filled up with tiny pools of moonlight.

  ‘Know what I don’t want?’

  Merrily bent close to him now. His sweat smelled sour.

  ‘You know what I … really don’t want? Where’s Dan?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  Lol was kneeling on the other side.

  ‘Dan knows.’

  ‘Remind me?’ Lol said.

  It was possible to speak with normal voices now, but they were whispering because Tim Loste was whispering. Tim smiled under his Edward Elgar yardbrush moustache, through his sweat.

  ‘Don’t want the Angel of the blasted Agony.’

  ‘Would anybody?’ Lol said.

  Tim looked at Merrily and started to say something. But he was suddenly fighting for breath. She beckoned Syd, urgently, and he pushed more straw under Tim’s legs.

  ‘Lessens strain on the heart. Don’t move him, and don’t let him get too hot.’

  Syd being the soldier again – as if too many priests would spoil the prayer. From quite a distance away, Merrily heard a single gunshot. Not uncommon, except this wasn’t, she was sure, a shotgun. She exchanged a glance with Syd. He went still.

  Tim was mumbling something to Lol, who was shaking his head.

  ‘No, no …
you haven’t failed. Winnie failed, that’s all. It couldn’t work for someone like Winnie. You must’ve known that.’

  Of course it couldn’t. Winnie and her academic magic, her hit-and-miss, mix ’n’ match spirituality. Try this, try that. Merrily suddenly saw the callousness of it. Whatever happened to Tim, Winnie would have had a book out of it. She could almost see the hovering spirit, outlined in the acid colours of the moon’s halo, making notes. An even better book if Tim was dead.

  ‘You just need to change the end,’ Lol said. ‘It’s easy.’

  ‘Seven,’ Tim said.

  ‘Seven?’

  Lol turned to Merrily as Tim said something else. She shook her head.

  ‘Was that … seventeen?’

  Lol thought for a moment and then he smiled.

  Tim’s eyes lit up, a quiet glow appearing on the edges of the pupils. Faraway, unknowing eyes, like the light through clouds.

  Merrily took in a rapid breath just before the second shot came out of the forestry.

  She heard the night-shredding squawks of emergency vehicles and took Tim Loste’s hand and began to pray.

  63

  A List

  ‘Merrily,’ Bliss said quietly on the mobile. ‘Before you say anything, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. Not tonight, anyway.’

  ‘Frannie,’ she said wearily, ‘where the hell have you been?’

  They were in Syd Spicer’s kitchen, her and Lol. It was nearly two a.m.

  ‘I just called to leave a message. Never imagined you’d still be up.’ He sounded knackered, his accent thickening. ‘Just gorrin from Shrewsbury. Went up to talk to a guy my victim Malcolm France was working for. Bloke with serious form, and it looked promising, but it wasn’t what we thought and I’m pig-sick, and I know it’s your daughter and I know that Parry’s a family friend, but this time—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know I’ve always liked Gomer, pairsonally, but some things…’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  Bliss paused. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m— Tell me what you were talking about, first.’