Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain

by Phil Rickman

  He wasn’t in uniform. None of them were. Fiona nodded.

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  William was solidly built and had a full grey moustache. He wore walking boots.

  He said, ‘Should we go inside?’

  ‘No,’ Fiona said. ‘I’d rather not.’

  Her face had gone grey, like fresh plaster. Merrily took in three other men, one of whom she recognized: stubble and broken veins. Not military. It was Terry Stagg, detective sergeant.

  William said, ‘Who is this woman, please?’

  Fiona half-turned, as if she’d forgotten Merrily was there.

  ‘She’s a friend of Sam’s. In the Church. A priest.’ She stood before William, her head tilted up to stare him in the eyes. ‘You’d better tell me.’

  ‘Mrs Spicer, I think—’

  ‘Where’s my husband?’

  ‘Mrs Spicer,’ William said, ‘I’m afraid I have some… distressing news. I… very bad news.’

  It was Merrily who nearly cried out. Fiona’s lips were tight. She still hadn’t moved, yet she seemed far away from here, as if replaying a scene which had occurred in her midnight thoughts so many times that emotions could be dispensed with.

  25

  A Lovely Thing

  JANE USED TO know kids who loved messing with dead things, but she’d never been one of them, so she’d been dreading this all day.

  At this stage of your school career, if you didn’t have any particular classes, you had the choice of coming home, to work on revision. Yeah, right.

  When she got off the bus, there was no sign of the Volvo outside the vicarage, so she went directly round the back to the garden shed. At least there’d been no blood on the path this morning.

  Not yet four p.m., the sun still high, but weak. The shed was just a lean-to against the highest part of the wall. Wasn’t kept locked and it had been the only place she could think of last night.

  Needed some help with this, really. Even Mum who, as a kid, had wanted to be a vet and knew a bit about injured pets and livestock. Mum would have an idea how the bird had died.

  Could hardly take it to Mum, though, who knew nothing about the earlier incident with Cornel and the beer. Tangled web. Jane began to part the garden tools, remembering pushing the sack behind them. She threw the door wide, pulled out the spade and the hoe and the rake and the hedge loppers, tossing them onto the lawn behind her, but…

  Oh, God, no…

  This could only be Mum. Now she’d have to explain everything, which would lead to a chain of explanations, and that would get Lol in bother, too, for not disclosing what had happened on the night of the storm. She was in deep trouble and hadn’t even dealt with the no-university situation yet.

  Jane closed the shed door, walked away to the end of the garden, leaned against the churchyard wall, staring over at the old graves. Considering the worst options: could Cornel have pinched it back? Would he have gone to that kind of trouble?

  He couldn’t have seen her last night, could he? Couldn’t, surely, have been in a fit state after the kicking he’d had and throwing up in Barry’s yard. Last night, Jane had awoken twice, with the gritty ghosts of dead flies in her mouth and shuddery memories of the quick, efficient way in which Cornel had been damaged, that almost feminine cry of pain. Big, tall Cornel, breast-fed for months and months. Cornel, the winner who could do anything he wanted because the bank was paying. Cornel had been very afraid, had done as he’d been told, had taken the sack away. Except he’d been told to bury it and he’d only buried it in the bin on the square.

  But what about the other guy? Who had just disappeared. Who hadn’t seemed like the kind of guy who would just disappear.

  Oh Christ. The very worst option: what if he’d seen her?

  Jane began to sweat. Went over the whole garden, frantic now, looking behind all the apple trees, into the long grass under the church wall, leaning over the wall to see into the churchyard. Why the hell had she taken it? What was it supposed to prove?

  She ran back around the vicarage, out of the front gate and down Church Street towards the river, pulling out her phone. She’d call Eirion. Hadn’t called him back last night, just dropped him a quick text promising to explain tomorrow. She’d tell Eirion everything.

  But his damn phone was switched off. Jane leaned over the bridge, watching the slow water making dark, languid circles around the pillars and buttresses. After the psychotic nights around Christmas, the river was back to its old torpid self, and there was no sign of a bin sack down there.

  ‘’Ow’re you, Janey?’

  ‘Oh!’

  He was leaning over the bridge next to her, teeth clamped on an unlit ciggy, pale sunlight swimming in his specs. Hadn’t even heard him approaching. Jane looked down at his feet.

  ‘Gomer… you’re wearing trainers.’

  ‘Hay ’n’ Brecon Farmers. Two for the price o’ one.’

  ‘That’s, erm… normal in footwear, isn’t it?’

  ‘Two pair, girl. Don’t worry, you en’t gonner see me doing no joggying.’

  ‘You don’t fool me, Gomer.’ Jane found a smile. ‘I bet you’ve got a hoodie and a baseball cap in the back of the JCB.’

  ‘En’t even seen the bloody ole thing for nigh on two days. Danny’s got him, workin’ over by Walton, makin’ a pond. Been fillin’ my time with a bit o’ spring maintenance in the churchyard. Found some bloody ole briars muster got missed last autumn, so…’ Gomer eyeing Jane, head on one side ‘… took up the vicar’s offer of borrowin’ the ole loppers.’

  He put the ciggy back in his mouth, stood with his hands behind his back, rocking slightly.

  ‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Erm… from the shed.’

  ‘Exackly. From the ole shed, back o’ the vicarage.’

  ‘Right. Wooh. So, you, erm…’ Jane looked into Gomer’s glasses: opaque white discs, relief enfolding her like an old bath robe. ‘You probably found a black bin sack.’

  ‘Sure t’be.’ Gomer extracted his ciggy. ‘Bit of a story to this, is there, Janey?’

  Jane felt her shoulders slump.

  ‘Got him back at my place. You wanner…?’

  She nodded and followed him, down from the bridge. They walked up to the bungalow with the fading buttermilk walls, where Gomer had lived alone since Minnie’s death.

  Gomer. Sometimes, crap situations just rearranged themselves for the best. With divorce and death and stuff, Jane had never really had a grandad. Her worst recurrent nightmare was probably the one in which Gomer had died.

  Gomer didn’t judge. Well, not Jane, anyway, so she told him virtually everything, in the sure knowledge that it would go no further.

  He leaned against his wall, listening, chewing on his unlit ciggy. When she’d finished, he opened his garden gate.

  ‘Dull buggers, some o’ these fellers,’ he said. ‘For all their college papers.’

  ‘He was really scared, Gomer. And probably shocked. That the guy could, you know, do whatever he did. He obviously knew who it was.’

  ‘You sure it wasn’t Barry?’

  ‘I heard his voice.’

  ‘Only Barry, see, he’s had his times.’

  ‘Oh, I know Barry could have done it, but he didn’t. Definitely not him.’

  Signs of springtime action in Gomer’s garden – a rake and a hoe leaning against the wall, with a stainless steel spade, its blade worn thin and sharp.

  ‘En’t much into gardenin’, see, Janey, ’cept for the ole veg, but Minnie… her always liked her daffs. These is in memory, kind o’ thing.’

  ‘They’re nice, Gomer. Erm…?’

  Gomer nodded towards the garden table. The black bag was underneath it, tied up with orange baler twine. He went over and dragged it out, placed it on the table, undid the twine.

  Jane looked around nervously. The bungalow was raised up behind substantial hedging, tightly cut, obviously. You could see over it back to the river bridge and, in the other direction, the Church Street pitch, all
the way up to the market square. But nobody could see into Gomer’s garden.

  ‘Shot it,’ Jane said quickly. ‘I think they shot it. Cornel, he was going, Oh, I’ll have a blast at anything that moves.’

  ‘Was he now?’

  ‘He said it was all OK, as long as you cleaned up afterwards. Scumbags, Gomer. They went onto someone’s property and shot it. I was going to put it back in the litter bin, but then I thought, no, it’s evidence.’

  ‘Shot, eh? That’s what you reckons?’

  Gomer brought it out and laid it on the iron tabletop. It was pretty battered, but you could tell it had been a lovely thing, with like a lion’s mane, all golden. Jane swallowed. Dismay set in.

  ‘I know this doesn’t really prove anything. They could just say it was an accident. They’re just—’

  ‘Haccident?’ Gomer ran a hand over the feathers. ‘This don’t happen by haccident.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Janey…’ Gomer sighed and brought out his ciggy tin. ‘This boy en’t been shot.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t really look. It was dark and…’

  ‘See that?’

  Jane saw there were spots of blood around the beak. She didn’t understand.

  ‘That en’t good, girl,’ Gomer said.

  26

  Bergen

  ‘IT’S NOT YOUR fault, of course,’ Huw said.

  In the scullery, the red light was still blinking on the answering machine, the air swollen with its bleeps. Merrily sank down at the desk.

  ‘You’re a hypocritical bastard, you know that?’

  Holding the big, Bakelite phone with both hands. Her stomach felt like a crumpled paper bag. About four hours’ sleep last night, and she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Barely remembered driving home, very slowly. Ignoring the answering machine, taking two paracetamols with a glass of water.

  She fingered a cigarette, drew a hard breath.

  ‘You as good as told me something was coming. You were afraid for him.’

  She felt momentarily dizzy.

  ‘Merrily?’

  The old black Bakelite phone, a present from Jane, felt like some kind of barbell in her left hand. Everything was heavy, even the waning sunlight. She slid her dog collar off.

  ‘Sorry…’

  ‘I said. How did he actually die? Where was he found?’

  ‘On the side of the hill. He was in a shallow ditch. A depression near the foot of some steps.’

  ‘You saw his body?’

  ‘No… God, no. I just remembered the spot when they told me. Earthen steps, the soil held in by boards. Walked up there once, Jane and me.’

  ‘And is there any reason to think—?’

  ‘They don’t know. They’re not sure. There’s no suspicion of…’

  Foul play. Why did they always say that? Play. Jesus.

  ‘There’ll be a post-mortem, obviously,’ Huw said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Merrily was unbuttoning the top of her clerical shirt, wiping a hand across her throat. She was cold but sweating.

  ‘They go running up there?’ Huw said. ‘The lads from the camp?’

  ‘Bound to. There seems to be nothing to suggest it isn’t natural causes. As if he’d just collapsed. Gone for a run, just like old times, but he wasn’t up to it any more. Especially with all that weight. The big rucksack still on his back. The Bergen.’

  The word had been used several times after they’d gone into the house. Syd had been found with his Bergen beside him. The big framed rucksack that the SAS carried their kit in. What they carried sometimes weighted with bricks, according to the legend – on exercises.

  ‘Who found him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Walkers. A lot of people go walking up there. There’s a car park and everything. He might’ve been lying there all night, or since early morning.’

  ‘And they let you into the house, with his wife.’

  ‘I think they were grateful to have another woman there.’

  One of them had made tea. They’d sat Fiona down with her sugary brew and asked her some simple questions. When had she last seen Syd? What had been his state of health, state of mind?

  She hadn’t wept. She’d kept on her Gore-Tex jacket and her woollen hat and her scarf. The suppressed grief in the room had been like a still, white steam, Fiona’s first word little more than a breath.

  ‘How?’

  A man who, in the course of his career, might have lost his life in a dozen different countries, and he’d gone out on a muddy hillside less than a mile from his kitchen, his kettle.

  ‘We don’t really know,’ the man called William had said. ‘He might have fallen and hit his head, he might have had a heart attack. Mrs Spicer, do you know if he had any health problems? Chest pains? Tightness of breath?’

  ‘He had a medical before his appointment, didn’t he?’

  A silence, and then William had asked Fiona if she knew why the bedroom door was locked.

  ‘Is it?’ she’d said vaguely.

  Putting her tea on one side, her expression saying it was too sweet. Merrily had gone into the kitchen to pour another. Feeling inadequate here. As a parish priest, you spent long hours in houses of bereavement, but not often surrounded by men whose experiences of death would always outweigh yours.

  By the time she came back, William and the detective, Terry Stagg, had gone upstairs, the other two men outside to a police car.

  Merrily had said to Fiona, ‘Do you want to come back with me?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ve got spare rooms at the vicarage. Nobody should be alone at a time like this.’

  ‘We don’t really know each other, do we?’ Fiona said.

  They were alone in the living room. It had magnolia walls, a sofa, a small TV and a white melamine bookcase with a couple of dozen books in it. Merrily recognized the spines of the deliverance handbook and A Time to Heal, with its narrow black cross against sunburst red.

  Fiona stood up and went to the window, where the view was over the camp, over the fields, over the River Wye to the Black Mountains and Wales.

  ‘I don’t particularly like the country,’ Fiona said. ‘I’ll stay in Hereford tonight, then go home till… till I have to come back.’

  ‘What about your daughter?’

  ‘I’ll phone her, when these people have finished with me.’

  ‘Is there anybody I can phone?’

  Fiona shook her head.

  ‘Something kept telling me that the only way we’d stayed the course so far was by having long separations. Now we’ve got the big one.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘I don’t like the country. It was no good for him.’

  She’d turned away from the window, as if she never wanted to see that view again.

  ‘She must have pre-lived Syd’s death dozens of times. She starting doing practical things. Very methodical. She gave me her phone numbers.’

  And the three books she’d found in Syd’s car. Telling Merrily to put them in her bag before the men came back.

  Merrily didn’t tell Huw about the books, hadn’t looked at them yet.

  ‘Then they came back downstairs, this William and the CID man. And then some uniformed policemen came in, and a woman – I don’t know if she was army or police family-liaison, but she was there for Fiona. While this guy, William, took the opportunity to get what he could out of me.’

  ‘MoD?’

  ‘You don’t ask, do you?’

  William had followed Merrily out into the front garden.

  His heavy moustache was old-fashioned, a Lord Kitchener job. Authoritative back then, today it looked faintly comical, mock-solemn. William was stocky, built like a pit bull.

  ‘Where’ve you come from, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘Ledwardine. That’s a village, few miles over—’

  ‘Yes, I know where it is. In fact, I’ve an old army friend living there. James Bull-Davies?’

  ‘I know James.’

  Knew him well enough to be sure he’d
never been in the Special Air Service.

  ‘I meant where’ve you come from… just now?’ William said.

  ‘From Hereford. Fiona’s staying there. We… met at the Cathedral. Where I work, sometimes.’

  ‘How well did you know Syd, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘We were… better than acquaintances. Worked together once.’

  The motion of an eyebrow suggested that William had an idea what she was talking about, but he didn’t follow it up. He’d gone to stand on the edge of the lawn, hands behind his back.

  ‘Neighbour saw him leave here yesterday evening, Bergen on his back, as he apparently did most evenings. He was found lying by the side of his Bergen. He’d taken it off, as if to sit down for a rest. More or less full kit inside, and mint cake, water bottles. Over sixty pounds. Made weightier by a rather hefty and cumbersome addition. Not the apocryphal bricks.’

  ‘Would it be a family Bible?’

  William’s eyes had widened fractionally.

  ‘Fiona said he always kept a big family Bible in his bedroom,’ Merrily said. ‘On top of the wardrobe. She said it wasn’t there any more.’

  ‘I see. Yes, you’re quite right. A Bible.’

  Merrily followed William onto the front lawn, where the grass was still slippery from the winter. He jerked a gloved thumb back towards the long hump of Credenhill, the remains of its fort camouflaged in forestry.

  ‘If he was running up that hill with a Bergen containing that kind of weight… we have youngsters, trained soldiers who think they’re tough enough for the Regiment, collapse after a few miles carrying less than that. How old was Syd – fifty-two, fifty-three?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Merrily had been thinking of the vivid green window in the Traherne chantry. The figure of the poet – or somebody – running along a path towards a wooded hill that was probably Credenhill.

  ‘You all right, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘Sorry. Goose over my grave. Could I ask you something? Who lived here before Syd?’

  William had looked at her sternly.

  ‘There a reason for that question?’

  ‘You’d probably think it was a fairly stupid one. Not another chaplain?’