Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain

by Phil Rickman

  ‘You’ll also get some extra bodies from Worcester and two translators, that’s been agreed.’

  Translators. Wonderful. Bliss could foresee long hours of watching people’s eyes for traces of guilt while listening to the soundtrack of a foreign film without the subtitles.

  ‘And you can have Karen Dowell.’ Annie Howe went on looking out of the windscreen down the length of East Street. ‘Look, I’m adapting to instructions, Francis. It’s what I do. Adapt. Known for it. Off you go. Get the bastards before they can leave the country. Oh—There are two Lithuanian nationals in the cells, apparently, brought in pre-dawn, drunk and incapable. That’ll be a start for you.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll eat them later.’ Bliss shouldered open the passenger door. ‘Just remember what I said, Annie.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You know what.’

  Bliss stepped out, looked up into the sheeny sky, scraped with brown clouds like the chickenshit on a new-laid egg.

  ‘Annie… check him out, yeh? Just… check him out.’

  20

  Who We Are

  DESPITE THE METROPOLITAN fantasies of a few power-crazed councillors, Hereford was still a big village. When a very bad thing happened, Merrily was thinking, ordinary life didn’t yet accelerate around it. Something lurched, shifted down a gear.

  With East Street sealed off, traffic concertinaed, it had taken her ten minutes to get from the top of Broad Street to the Cathedral Gatehouse. You could walk it in two. She’d left the old Volvo in the Bishop’s Palace yard, meeting one of the canons, Jim Waite, who explained what had happened.

  Slaughter was the word he’d used.

  He hadn’t said, Where the hell is God in this?

  Up in the gatehouse office, Sophie was at the window, gazing down into Broad Street, then across the Cathedral Green towards Church Street. Both of them linked into the – hitherto more obscure East Street.

  The killings must have happened close to the centre of Hereford’s medieval triangle of big churches: All Saints, St Peter’s, the Cathedral. An alleyway linked East Street directly to the Cathedral Close, winding past the house once occupied by Alfred Watkins, the antiquarian.

  And where the hell was God? A question that the previous owner had pencilled into the margin of her second-hand copy of Frank Collins’s Baptism of Fire, the book she’d been reading till after one a.m.

  ‘It’ll become commonplace here sooner than we know, Merrily.’ Sophie turned sharply away from the window, her glasses swinging on their chain. ‘Like Birmingham and Manchester. Society’s losing all cohesion.’

  She went to sit down at her desk. She’d had her hair cut shorter for spring – too soon, as it had turned out. She was still wearing the winter cardie long after its time. She looked – unusual for Sophie – lost.

  ‘One only has to look into the hopeless faces of the drunks in Bishop’s Meadow. Lost souls in a purgatory of disillusion and charity shops.’ Both Sophie’s hands were placed flat on the desk, as if for stability. ‘I have no doubt that the vast majority are decent people, trying to earn an honest living. But they’re not the ones who create the need for a policeman almost full-time on the door at Tesco.’ She looked down at herself. ‘Dear God, stop me, Merrily.’

  ‘Questioning the impact of social change isn’t quite the same as joining the British National Party,’ Merrily said.

  Sophie winced.

  ‘And we don’t know what’s happened, yet, do we?’ Merrily said. ‘We don’t know if it’s a sexual thing or a robbery or a… private matter.’

  ‘A private matter. That’s just it, isn’t it?’ Sophie said. ‘We don’t know what they’ve brought with them. We don’t understand what kind of demons drive them. And we do need to, because we’re not London, we’re a country town. We know who we are. Or we always used to. Now, one can feel a… a weight of silent resentment. And an apprehension.’

  ‘But that…’

  Merrily had been about to say that it wasn’t exactly new. In the Middle Ages there’d been resentment in the city about the increasing Jewish community, even the revered bishop Thomas Cantilupe railing against them.

  No, forget it. She wandered over to the window, looked down at the Cathedral Green. Seasons slowly shifting out there, winter retiring into the mist, spring blinking warily in the tepid sunshine. Then the clouds took it away, and she saw a lone daffodil, still in bud, flattened by someone’s shoe.

  ‘The Bishop’s been quiet lately.’

  ‘He’s increasingly tired. I think he’ll probably hang on until the autumn, then we’ll hear something.’ Sophie stood up. ‘I’ll make some tea. I’ve itemized your calls, in terms of apparent priority. Three inquiries in the past week, none of which I felt you needed to be alerted about. One’s that rather querulous person who seems to think you can get her grandson off heroin by… exorcizing his inner junkie. I’ve taken the precaution of quietly alerting her parish priest and suggesting she talks it over with him.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Merrily sat down. ‘Nothing from the Holmer?’

  A fortnight ago she’d been called out to a single space in a factory parking area where a manager, newly divorced, had – like poor Frank Collins – asphyxiated himself in his car. Several workers had claimed that they’d felt him sitting next to them in their own cars if they parked there. The local vicar had dismissed it as hysteria.

  ‘Nothing.’ Sophie shook her head, filling the kettle. ‘In fact, you really didn’t need to come in.’

  ‘Well, I came in because… I need to make a possibly tricky phone call.’

  For some reason, it was easier from here. Like you had the weight of the Cathedral around you. And Sophie to consult. Pretty much the same thing.

  ‘It’s Syd Spicer. Now at Credenhill?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Sophie said.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Since the Bishop approved it. It’s been announced now, has it?’

  You were inclined to forget that her principal role was as the Bishop’s lay secretary, guardian of episcopal secrets.

  ‘I’ve been a bit naive about all this, Sophie. Until a few days ago, it didn’t strike me that to become a chaplain you had to actually join the army. Or rejoin.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a requirement.’

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Well… I suppose I can tell you. We were in two minds about his suitability. Since leaving the city for Credenhill, the Regiment does seem to have become more remote from us. Not even in the same parliamentary constituency. So Hereford, technically, is no longer a garrison town.’

  ‘Appointing one of their own as chaplain makes them more remote?’

  Sophie said nothing. Merrily looked at the phone. Much of the incentive had gone. She looked up at Sophie.

  ‘OK, can I tell you about this?’

  Lol had had to force himself to go back to work this morning. Couldn’t bear to finish the one about the village musician who found recovery in the back of a JCB. When the knock came on the front door, he was messing with the lyrics for ‘The Simple Trackway Man’, one he was trying to persuade Danny to sing. A homage to Alfred Watkins, the Hereford man who discovered ley lines.

  I am a simple trackway man Who

  walks the lanes by ancient plan

  Leading the people from beacon to steeple

  And steeple to stone

  And all the way home.

  Back in the 1920s, Mr Watkins, controversially, had traced possible cross-country tracks connecting prehistoric ritual sites – stones and circles and burial mounds – and the medieval churches built on ancient sacred enclosures. Most of his research had been done in his home county and Danny’s native Radnorshire. Unlocking the British countryside for future generations who wanted to connect again with the land. Jane’s hero.

  Lol’s song had been written carefully in the vernacular, borrowing material from Watkins’s classic work, The Old Straight Track. He was quite proud of it. A song that should’ve been writ
ten decades ago, to be sung in folk clubs and on village greens at Whitsuntide. Or by chains of walkers stepping out to refresh themselves and the countryside at Easter. Mr Watkins as some unassuming, low-key pied piper of the border hills.

  Sitting on his sofa, with the Boswell across his knees, Lol sang ‘Trackway Man’ to the wood stove glowing ashy pink against the morning sunlight.

  Across the fields where gates align

  Ole scarecrow gives us all a sign

  Where stand of pine marks sacred shrine

  And secret dell hides holy well.

  He saw the man in the cap walk past the front window, didn’t take much notice, and it was about half a minute before the knock came, as if the man had walked past the door towards the village square and then either had remembered something or had second thoughts and turned back.

  Answering the front door, Lol didn’t recognize him at first. He wore a rust-coloured gilet and a leather cap. Incomer wear, nothing unusual. He had his chin up and his hands behind his back. He had a quick, efficient smile.

  ‘Lol Robinson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My partner introduced me t’your music.’

  ‘Oh… right…’

  The hand came out, a leather glove removed.

  ‘Ward Savitch. Is this convenient?’

  ‘Too much reticence can be counterproductive,’ Sophie said. ‘You deserve at least an explanation.’

  They were looking at the SAS base on Google Earth. Half surprised to find it there, this unexpectedly large network of utility buildings, parked vehicles. A community probably bigger, if more compact, than the village of Credenhill. You pulled back, and the wide view was all open countryside, apart from the wooded slopes of the hill itself, close enough to overlook the base.

  ‘You feel like you’re breaking the Official Secrets Act just doing this, Sophie. Like they’re going to know, and the door will fly open and men will be there with automatic rifles.’

  Sophie looked severe.

  ‘When they were at the old Stirling Lines, they were part of the city. Part of the community. Mrs Thatcher liked to call them her boys. But, essentially, they were our boys. Part of Hereford since the Regiment was formed in 1941. That’s a long time.’

  ‘But the glamour years only began in the 1980s.’

  After the SAS had travelled from Hereford to rescue hostages in the Iranian Embassy in London, abseiling down the walls from the roof live on TV.

  ‘And we were always discreet, Merrily. When a new recruit came off the train and asked for directions to the army base, he wasn’t told.’

  ‘I’ve heard that.’

  ‘We all knew where it was, but we didn’t tell just anyone. The Regiment was inside the city itself, but it was anonymous. And yet a presence.’

  ‘Like the Cathedral?’

  ‘Call Spicer,’ Sophie said abruptly. ‘He used you. I’m tired of seeing people used.’

  Merrily looked at her, curious. Was she thinking that nobody had been murdered on the streets of Hereford when the SAS was still in town?

  She picked up the phone, put in the number Huw had given her. And was almost grateful when there was no answer, no machine, no voice-mail.

  Last night, she’d told Lol about Syd at the chapel. Lol had met him once, at the end of a very dark night in the Malverns, when Syd had been very much in denial. Merrily had said, You really don’t see anything bordering on the paranormal? and Syd had said, You mean you do?’

  She let his phone ring for half a minute before hanging up. Tried twice more before lunch and also called home to see if there were any messages on the machine. Sometimes, if she’d had to leave early, Jane would leave one for her. Jane, whose mood last night, when Merrily had got in from the Swan, had been changing like traffic lights, flickering erratically, red-amber-red-amber. Like she’d wanted to talk about something, but couldn’t. Said nothing this morning, either, and you wondered if it would be better or worse when she went to university.

  Not that Merrily had wanted to talk last night. Better not to mention Savitch’s bid to buy the Swan until it actually happened. With the vague hope that it wouldn’t.

  ‘Sophie… in Canon Dobbs’s day – was there ever any involvement with the SAS, back then?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just wondering if there’s any precedent.’

  ‘I can check the records.’

  ‘Perhaps it wouldn’t be there. If there was anybody less forthcoming than the SAS, it was Dobbs, so the combination of the two…’

  Sophie’s smile was transient, and it probably wasn’t nostalgia.

  At twelve, they switched on the radio for the national news headlines and, for the first time since New Year, Merrily heard the nasal tones of Frannie Bliss.

  ‘… horrific crime, and we wanna talk to anybody who was in or near the centre of the city last night between the hours of eleven and one a.m. Doesn’t matter whether or not they think they’ve seen anything significant, they may still have information that could be useful to us.’

  Frannie – how was he doing? Merrily had invited him round for a meal a couple of times since his marriage had finally collapsed. Both times he’d said he was busy.

  The phone rang and Sophie turned the radio off.

  ‘Gatehouse.’ A pause. ‘The Cathedral Gatehouse. In Hereford. Who is this?’ Sophie listened. An eyebrow rose fractionally.

  ‘Ah… one moment.’

  She put the call on hold.

  Merrily said, ‘Me?’

  ‘Picked you up on 1471. From Credenhill.’

  ‘Syd?’

  ‘His wife,’ Sophie said. ‘Mrs Spicer, I’m putting you through to Mrs Watkins.’

  What did she know about Fiona Spicer? Very little. Except that SAS wives who survived the course were rarely insubstantial women.

  ‘I think we almost met once in the Malverns. My name’s—’

  ‘Yes, I realize who you are now.’

  Voice low and steady and not exactly friendly. Neutral southern-English accent. Merrily pulled the Silk Cut packet from her bag, stood it on the desk in front of her. Sophie frowned.

  ‘I ran into Syd a few days ago. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were… back with him.’

  Christ, what did this sound like? Merrily stared at the packet, extracting a spiritual cigarette.

  ‘I’m not back with him, Mrs Watkins. This is a visit.’

  ‘Is, erm… is Syd there?’

  ‘No.’

  Merrily waited. After a couple of seconds, the silence suggested that Mrs Spicer had gone.

  No – a mobile. She’d picked up the number from the house phone, but she was calling back on a mobile. Merrily looked at Sophie, back behind her desk, making no pretence of doing anything but listening.

  ‘Mrs Spicer, it’s the first time I’ve used the Credenhill number. I got it from Huw Owen, my spiritual director. Syd consulted him and – indirectly – me, about something, and I just wanted to follow up on it.’

  ‘Did you?’

  Something wrong here. Merrily lit the spiritual cigarette. Sometimes it worked.

  ‘Do you, erm, know where he is, Mrs Spicer?’

  ‘He can’t be far away. His car’s here.’

  ‘You are at the house?’

  ‘I’m at the house, yes. The army house. He’ll be across the road. Attending to his flock. Fortunately, he’s not very SAS when it comes to hiding spare keys, so I was able to go in and take a look around.’

  ‘First time you’ve been?’

  ‘To this house, yes. I’m in the garage now.’

  ‘Syd said you’d be moving in soon.’

  No response.

  ‘Mrs Spicer—’

  ‘My husband worked with you once before,’ Mrs Spicer said. ‘Your name and number are written inside a book entitled Deliverance. A book much thumbed. Pages folded over.’

  ‘That would make sense.’

  ‘But you haven’t spoken to him today.�
�

  ‘No.’

  A silence, then…

  ‘Mrs Watkins, something’s disturbing me. Would it be possible for us to meet?’

  ‘Of course. Should I come over?’

  ‘Perhaps I should come to you. I’m staying in Hereford, at a B and B. You’re at the Cathedral, are you?’

  ‘In the gatehouse. Above the entrance to the Bishop’s Palace.’

  ‘I’d rather come to the Cathedral itself. Where’s quiet?’

  ‘Do you know the Lady Chapel?’

  ‘I can be there in about half an hour.’

  The dead line was for real this time. Sophie was sitting on the edge of the desk, pale and watchful as a barn owl on a branch. Merrily handed her the phone to hang up.

  21

  Liberal of the Old School

  WHEN DC DAVID Vaynor came in, all seven feet of him if you included the big hair, Bliss was waiting for the pictures of the dead to come up on his laptop. Cleaned-up pictures of the cleaned-up dead, done before the PM, before the craniums came off. Pictures you could show to people with no loss of breakfast.

  ‘We might’ve got them, boss,’ DC Vaynor said.

  ‘Shut the door, son.’

  Bliss closed his lappie, Vaynor ducking into the office. Despite being a Cambridge honours graduate, or some such, and wearing a tweedy sports jacket, he wasn’t a bad lad. Locally born, working class, good contacts – where they counted. Maybe these sloppy old sports jackets were all he could get to fit him.

  ‘Right, then. Go on.’

  ‘Goldie Andrews, boss? On the Plascarreg?’

  ‘Couldn’t be that easy, Darth. Could it?’

  ‘Goldie’s been scuttling around the estate asking if anyone’s seen her lodgers.’

  ‘Female lodgers.’

  ‘Sisters.’

  ‘Where’d this come from?’

  ‘The new launderette at the front of the Plas? My cousin’s wife, it is, runs that.’

  ‘Good boy. Names?’

  ‘Marinescu. Maria and Ileana.’