by Phil Rickman
Waiting. Mobiles these days, all this techno, they took for ever to boot up. In the living room there was a gap at the top of the drawn curtain which lit a triangle of blue-white across the room, like a flickering sail on dark water, and then it vanished. She took out the phone again, pressed the nine key three times, didn’t send it. Not yet.
The darkness pulsed and jittered. Someone was fumbling about in there. Merrily was feeling around for a light switch when something fell over with a bong, and then a sharp, tight shattering of glass jerked her back into the doorway.
Halfway down the wall, her hand found the metal nipple of the switch, and she flipped it down.
‘Come any closer …’ a voice high and cracked ‘… and I shall take out your—’
The light flickered on, a frosted bowl, flat to the ceiling, exposing a woman crouching in a corner.
Merrily said, ‘Oh dear God.’
‘—Take your throat out.’
Mrs Morningwood was a cramped detail from an engraving of hell, her hair crimson-rinsed, thick ribbons of dark red unrolling from her scalp, collecting in her eye sockets, blotching on her bared teeth.
Both her hands were bleeding freely around a shivering tube of jagged glass.
‘Mrs—’
‘Get back!’
The glass shuddered in her hand, and Merrily saw that it was the smashed chimney from the green-shaded oil lamp, its tip serrated but the whole thing cracked, cutting into the hands that gripped it.
She saw the brass body of the lamp on the carpet at the end of its flex. The darkwood piano stool on its side, blood-flecked. The log basket overturned, leaving the rug cobbled with logs. The bentwood rocking chair still in motion, as if someone had just stood up.
Mrs Morningwood was wearing a pale blue nightdress. She was squinting through the blood, trying to divert a river away from an eye and making a red delta across a cheek and over her chin, spatters sporadically blossoming, like wild roses, on the blue nightdress.
It seemed likely that she couldn’t see who was with her in the room because her eyes were full of blood.
‘It’s me,’ Merrily said. ‘Merrily Watkins.’
Mrs Morningwood held on to the lamp-glass.
‘He’s gone,’ Merrily said.
She crossed the room, watching the jagged lamp-funnel — now in Mrs Morningwood’s right hand.
‘I saw him running into the trees. I think he had a hood … black bag over his head, with eye holes. Just let me—’
‘No. Don’t touch me.’
Merrily said, ‘I’m getting an ambulance … all right?’ She opened up the phone. ‘Just …’
‘No!’ Mrs Morningwood edging crablike around the wall. ‘Go away. Forget you ever came here.’
‘Who was he?’
‘There was nobody.’
‘Mrs Morningwood, I saw him. I saw him running towards the barn.’
‘Forget it. What are you doing here, anyway?’
Reaching the chaise longue, Mrs Morningwood tried to heave herself up. Sudden, frightened pain came out in a compressed mouse-squeak from the back of her throat.
Dragging a handful of tissues from a Kleenex box on the desk, Merrily moved across, kneeling down beside her. Mrs Morningwood turned sharply away with a snort, tossing her head like a horse, blood bubbling in her nose and on her exposed and blueing throat you could also see red indents, which …
‘Jesus Christ, you’ve been—’
Mrs Morningwood felt at her throat and winced.
‘Did most of this myself.’
And she probably had, with her nails.
Trying to prise his fingers away.
‘Put that fucking thing—’ Bloodied hands clawing out; the phone dropped to the carpet. ‘Leave it!’
‘We need the police, Mrs Morningwood.’
‘Shush! Was that …?’
‘It’s all right, he’s gone.’
But suppose he hadn’t?
They waited, listening. Merrily was aware of the clock ticking in another room. Out in the car, Roscoe barked once. Mrs Morningwood’s head jerked up.
‘The dog …’
‘In the car.’
‘Dog’s all right? I thought—’
‘He’s fine. I picked him up in the lane.’
‘Thank you.’ Mrs Morningwood’s bloodied head fell back into the pillows on the chaise. Big bruises on her thin arms were almost golden in the light. ‘Thank you, Watkins. Owe you … a whole course of bloody treatment.’
She started to laugh and sat up and went into a spasm of coughing and had to spit out some blood into the wad of tissues. Merrily pulled out some more from the box.
Could be internal bleeding.
‘You have got to let me get you some help.’
‘Help myself, darling. What I do. Get me a cigarette, would you? Mantelpiece.’
‘Just—’
‘Wouldn’t give the bloody doctors the satisfaction. One other thing you might do …’
‘Just listen. Please. We can’t put this off, he’s going to be miles away if we don’t—’
‘Lock the back door.’
‘All right, but—’
‘And then go into the bathroom and turn on the shower for me, would you?’
‘It’s a crime scene, Mrs Morningwood. You’ve been subjected to a … a savage bloody … We need an ambulance and we need the police. There’s no way you—’
‘You’re wasting your breath, darling. Not as if they’re ever likely to get the bastard. Take you in, strip you down, probe your bits, accuse you of lying …’
‘There’ll be DNA.’
‘He was masked. Wore surgical gloves and a fucking condom, he—’
Silence.
Merrily gasped. Mrs Morningwood began to laugh again, with no humour, the blood already drying in the deep lines in her face.
PART FOUR
There are many symbols that are not
individual but collective in their nature
and origin. These are chiefly religious
images, their origin so far buried in the
past that they seem to have no human
source.
Carl Jung
I don’t think a man who has watched
the sun going down could walk away
and commit a murder.
Laurens van der Post
37
Threadbare
Siân said, ‘You’ll need to explain this again.’
‘Can’t. Sorry. Not my decision. Look — sorry — the signal’s not great. I’m sorry.’
‘You’re in the car?’
‘I’m coming back.’ Keep it short; less chance of voice-shake. ‘Bishop’s decision. I think he should be the one to explain. I’m baffled, frankly, Siân, but he makes the rules.’
If Merrily was quieter inside now, it was the result of an hour’s violent scrubbing of the floor, the walls and the legs of furniture. The painstaking removal of sticky blood from the fabric of the chaise longue. The careful and complete incineration of a blue nightdress in the range. A full hour of scrubbing and squeezing until her hands hurt and her knees were abraded from the flags.
So calming, these domestic chores.
The car was at the side of the track, engine running. Merrily sitting, quite numb, looking directly in front of her at the rain-greyed hills and thanking Siân for looking after things, saying how very grateful she was.
Playing a part.
Now would be the time for Siân to point out that she was still, if only nominally, the deliverance coordinator for this diocese and therefore entitled to the facts. But Siân said nothing for several seconds.
‘So you want me to leave, Merrily.’
‘Obviously, had we known it was only going to be a couple of days, there wouldn’t have been any need to bother you. Or anybody. I’m really sorry.’
Siân was smart, would pick up any stray nuance, any hint of the spiralling descent into madness represented by the woman sitting
stiffly beside Merrily.
Like a badly wrapped parcel: outsize sunglasses, the scarf around her discoloured, swollen face, the cracked Barbour storm-flapped over the pink silk scarf covering the lesions on her throat.
‘Ah … there will probably be issues for us to discuss,’ Siân said, ‘after you talk to Jane.’
‘Oh.’ Merrily laughed lightly. ‘I won’t ask.’
The other, still-visible damage: two black eyes from the fists, two deep cuts just above the hairline from falling against the piano stool, a split lip, a broken tooth. It was what they did: first, they beat you into semi-consciousness. It was about violence, more than sex, most experts agreed on that.
Siân said, ‘If you’d like to talk about the Bishop’s attitude, I can wait.’
‘I am so pissed off about this,’ Merrily said, ‘I don’t think I want to talk to anybody for quite a long time.’
She’d phoned The Ridge, not tarting it up for them either. The best lies were always the bald truth: the Bishop had told her to come back at once. She was bewildered and resentful and trying to conceal it. She’d have to return sometime for her things. Sorry, sorry, sorry. And Teddy was like, I really don’t think I could cope with your job, Merrily.
‘So Garway … that’s over,’ Siân said.
‘Yes, it’s over.’
‘Against your advice.’
‘I wasn’t asked for my advice.’
‘All right,’ Siân said. ‘I think I’m getting the message. I shall leave.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Merrily released the clutch and nosed the Volvo slowly out into the road which led past the area known as The Turning, above the church. Beside her, Mrs Morningwood mumbled something.
‘Mmm?’
‘Over. You said it was over.’
‘Yes, well, the lies have been coming so much easier since I was ordained.’
Which was cynical and untrue and she didn’t know why she’d said it. A sidelong glance showed her Mrs Morningwood trying to release a laugh through lips liked diced tomato. It seemed to be getting harder for her to speak.
‘Stronger woman than you look, Watkins.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Have I thanked you?’
‘What for?’
Mrs Morningwood laughed. The fear and the pain glittering in her eyes. along with the fury. Fury, almost certainly, at herself, for letting someone do this to her, Merrily feeling much the same.
‘Just don’t …’ Squeezing the wheel. ‘I must’ve been temporarily insane to go along with this, and it’s done now. But there is no way I’m going to forget that you have been—’
‘In a car accident,’ Mrs Morningwood said.
She’d shut herself in the downstairs bathroom, showering in water so hot that Merrily, scrubbing the floor, had heard her screams, all the rage that would find no other form of expression.
‘How long do you intend to keep this up?’
‘You want to hear me sob? You think there’s something wrong with me, something unnatural, that I’m not sobbing my heart out? You think I’m … unwomanly?’
On the back seat, the wolfhound whimpered. He’d been kicked, Mrs Morningwood said. Trapped in the door and then kicked. They’d examined him between them. No bleeding, nothing broken.
Merrily said, ‘I don’t understand you, that’s all. There’s something about you I don’t understand.’
‘And have no need to,’ Mrs Morningwood said.
Before the shower, before the scrubbing and the burning, she’d said, ‘If you report this I shall deny it.’
‘Oh sure.’ Merrily starting to lose it too, by then. ‘That’ll work. People just won’t look at you. They’re tactful like that, especially in the country. Pride themselves on minding their own business. Are you crazy?’
‘I shall simply go out and run the Jeep off the road and leave it sticking out of the hedge with my blood on the seat and the steering wheel. No-one will dispute it, and they won’t get close enough to be able to.’
‘Insane.’
‘I’ve done it before. Crashed the car, that is. Police find out, they’ll just think I was drunk. Police always like to think you were drunk.’
‘Why? Why are you doing this?
‘You have no need to know.’
‘I have an increasingly urgent need to know. In fact, seems to me that the only reason you could have for covering this up is because you recognized the man who attacked you and you don’t want him arrested, because … I don’t know. But you do.’
Rape, violence, it was usually the husband or partner. All those times when the police knew about it, urged the conspicuously injured party to give evidence, and the victim refused. It seemed unlikely that Mrs Morningwood had ever before been a victim.
She said, ‘You’re wrong. I do not know who it was.’
‘But you don’t think it was just a random thing, either, do you? Have you been followed? Stalked? Seen anybody hanging around the house?’
‘No.’
‘What are you not telling me?’
No reply.
‘What if I tell the police what I found?’
‘You wouldn’t do that. You’re implicated now. Cleaned up his mess.’
‘What if he does it to somebody else?’
‘He won’t.’
‘This man you don’t know. What if he comes back?’
Silence.
‘Either you tell me exactly what happened,’ Merrily had said, ‘or I ring my friend in the police, who knows me well enough by now to—’
‘All right. But you’ll be the first and last to hear this.’
Muriel Morningwood got up at first light, as usual, letting Roscoe and then the chickens out into the mist.
Her attacker had simply followed her back into the house, trapping the dog with the door, kicking him back out, slamming the door.
He wore camouflage clothing, no skin exposed, and what had been most frightening about him was not the hood with the eyeholes, but the flesh-coloured surgical gloves, one of them coming at her face as she turned and then there was an explosion in her left eye and she’d been thrown into the living room, punched repeatedly in the mouth, stomach, mouth again. Slammed to the floor, her scalp raked on a corner of the piano stool, hair filling up with blood, as he knelt astride her and put on the condom.
She was a strong woman, very fit. Self-sufficient. Prided herself on it, always thought she’d be able to defend herself. What you never accounted for was the effect of shock — the way the body, untrained, was shocked into a kind of inner collapse by sustained, unrelenting, extreme violence.
The sound of the car had stopped it. He’d lifted himself, listening and she’d managed to scream. He’d been kneeling over her, holding her down with both hands and when she opened her mouth, he’d slammed a hand across it, freeing one of her arms, and she’d punched him as hard as she could in the balls, and he’d uncoiled in agony, clutching himself with both hands, and she’d squirmed away, blinded by the blood, just as the footsteps had sounded on the path.
She’d thought he looked at her once, through his eyeholes, and then he wasn’t there, only the smell of his sweat, his fluids, her own blood.
It had been obvious to Merrily that if she hadn’t shown up when she did, Mrs Morningwood would, by now, have been waiting for Dr Grace, the pathologist. And something else was also clear.
‘You can’t stay here.’
‘Where would I go?’
‘I live in a big house.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘There’s no alternative, Mrs Morningwood.’
‘There’ll be other people.’
‘Only Jane. And, at the moment, a woman priest who’s standing in. I’ll need to tell her to go. Is there anyone who can look after things here?’
There was a couple, graphic artists from the village, reflexology patients who’d helped out once before when Mrs Morningwood had had to go away. She’d got Merrily to phone them, explain that
she had to travel to see a patient urgently, in Devon. No problem, they’d come and look after the chickens and anything else, morning and night, until further notice.
When Mrs Morningwood had brought down an old brown case, Merrily had one last try.
‘I know a good copper. A decent guy.’
Mrs Morningwood had held out her cigarette to Merrily’s lighter, both hands trembling.
‘Wasting your breath, darling.’
‘He was on foot,’ Merrily said. ‘Where could he have been going when I saw him?’
‘Anywhere.’ Watery blood soaking into the wobbling cigarette from lips failing to grip. ‘Over the hill and far away.’
38
Doormat
On the way here, Lol had glimpsed a signpost and braked. At the next junction, he’d turned round and gone back. Sat in the cab of the truck, gazing at the three words on the sign. A name with only one meaning. A place of sorrowful pilgrimage.
He hadn’t realized that he was going to be so close. No time now, but there would be no excuse on the way back. He’d turned round again and driven on into the Warwickshire countryside, and now the Animal was in an off-road parking area a short way from the castle lodge.
A burger van was opening up at the far end. The big man in the long tan leather coat evidently knew the burger guy because he walked past him without a glance, directly to Lol’s truck, and Lol lowered his window.
Five times he’d attempted to call Merrily on her mobile. It was always switched off. He’d left two messages, the first one explaining he had a chance to talk to Lord Stourport and how far did she want him to go? The second one saying that if she didn’t call back within twenty minutes he was going to be late.
‘Yow got business here, pal?’ the man in the leather coat said.
Lol told him he had an appointment with Lord Stourport in — he looked at the dashboard clock — twelve minutes?
The man, who had gelled hair and chewed gum, asked for his name and Lol told him, and the man nodded and went back to the lodge. Lol sat back and waited and kept seeing the signpost in his mind’s eye.