by Phil Rickman
Merrily thought for a moment, listening to the pool game.
‘Barry, can I hang a name on you?’ And then, before he could reply, she came out with it. ‘Byron Jones?’
His eyes went blank.
‘Like the poet,’ he said.
Merrily had quickly Googled Byron Jones before she came out. Not much at all, really. He was certainly an author, but not exactly a best-seller. Or not any more – the most recent reference was 2007.
‘Actually,’ Barry said, ‘he was a poet.’
He sat waiting for a reason to continue.
‘Syd had one of his books on the shelf,’ Merrily said. ‘Caradog, a novel for older kids about the Roman invasion of Britain.’
‘Yeah. I did hear he was writing books. A number of them have a go at that, as you may’ve noticed. But there was only one Bravo Two Zero. Not many millionaires among the rest.’
‘You ever read anything by Byron Jones, Barry?’
‘Lost interest when I heard they weren’t about the Regiment. Anything about the Regiment we tend to collect, for various reasons. It was for kids, anyway.’
‘Most of them are written under pseudonyms… Andy McNab, et cetera. Is he…?’
‘His name is Jones. Byron – I was actually there the night he got that. We were due to fly out to… somewhere or other. About a dozen of us in the Paludrin.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The social club at the camp. Valentine’s Day coming up and one of the boys, he’s got a card for his girlfriend what he’s leaving for a mate to post, and he’s trying to compose a verse to write in it. We’re all helping. As you do. He’s sitting there, this boy, with his notepad, getting nowhere – specially with our suggestions. “Some men sniff their armpits, others tubes of glue”… I won’t go on, but you get the level. Then this person we’re discussing…’
‘Byron.’
‘He looks up from his Sun, and he goes – never forgotten this, it was so unexpected. He looks up, very slowly, and he goes, in this dreamy sort of voice, “Some men win at snooker and some at poker, too… but only one who dares can really win a girl like you”.’
Merrily smiled.
‘Get it?’ Barry said. ‘Who Dares Wins? Big cheer goes up, and somebody goes, This lad’s a regular Byron. And so, for ever after… He still didn’t look the type, but how many of us did?’
‘What type was he?’
‘Spare one for me?’ Barry nodding at Merrily’s bag. ‘Fag?’
She pulled the bag onto her knees, found the packet and the Zippo. Barry extracted a Silk Cut and lit up.
‘So Syd was back in touch with Byron, was he?’
‘I don’t know. I’m just telling you his book was on the shelf.’
‘And you just happened to notice it.’
She said nothing.
‘Byron Jones.’ Barry blew out smoke, thoughtful. ‘I dunno about this, Merrily.’
‘Is he a real writer? I mean, some of these guys, they have somebody to do it for them. But I suppose he’d need to be famous for that.’
‘He’s not famous.’
‘And the poetry…’
‘Like I said, that was a joke.’
‘I mean was he interested in poetry? Or was Syd? Wordsworth, that kind of thing? Byron Jones’s book was next to a book of Wordsworth’s poetry.’
‘Not that I know of. Byron was into history. He joined a local history club, and they’d do these field trips.’
‘What… with local people?’
‘Maybe. I dunno.’
‘What did they do?’
‘You know, just… poking round. Looking for bits of history. Archaeological remains. In the countryside. Around Stirling Lines back then, in Hereford.’
‘Was Syd in this history club?’
‘Probably.’
‘So he and Byron were mates.’
‘Mates…’ Barry’s smile was tight ‘… I have to say is not a word you’d readily apply to Byron.’
‘He wasn’t friendly?’
‘Not being funny…’ Barry straightened his black tie, folded his arms. ‘Look, I never knew him well enough to say too much. He was very single-minded. On exercises, very competitive. I put this down to him being a bit nearer the end of his army career than the rest of us and no promotion. Like he had something to prove. I… I really don’t know about this.’
‘Not going to be filing a report on it, Barry. It’s just I can’t help feeling I let Syd down. Even though he didn’t want to talk to me.’
Barry inspected his cigarette like he couldn’t believe he’d already smoked half of it.
‘Byron was… I mean, ruthless was not a word we used, seeing as how we all needed to live there sometimes. But Byron was less inclined to take prisoners, you know what I mean? You’re aware that I’m telling you this…’
‘In total confidence.’
‘And if there are defence issues?’
‘Doesn’t worry me a lot.’
‘Blimey.’
‘You think, if I get too close to something embarrassing, I might get waterboarded?’
‘I think you should not take the piss out of these people, frankly. And you didn’t just see Byron’s book on the shelf, did you?’
‘It… was pointed out to me. But no explanation was given. I didn’t know anything about Byron Jones until now. Is he still around? I mean here?’
‘He was. I know where he was, ’cause his wife’s there. Ex-wife. Ran into her on a tourist-board beano last year. She’s doing B and B in the Golden Valley.’
‘Another failed marriage, then.’
‘Actually, the marriage survived quite a long time. Mostly through absence, I suspect. Yeah, OK, that’s not a bad idea. If you want to know about Byron, you should to talk to Liz. Big Liz. I expect there’s things she could tell you. If she was minded to. And I never said that.’
‘Why wouldn’t I just talk to Byron himself?’
‘Not advisable.’
Merrily raised her eyebrows. Barry leaned back.
‘I could give her a call, if you like, tell her you’re all right.’
‘That sounds like you want me to talk to her.’
‘I don’t want you to talk to anybody, but if you’re determined to open this can of worms…’
‘I’m trying to work this out. You think there’s something I should know, but you don’t think you should be the one to tell me? Or you can’t tell me?’
Barry looked worried. He didn’t often look worried.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to toss Byron Jones into the mix. If you get an approach from anybody, we haven’t had this chat and it wasn’t me put you on to Liz. All right?’
‘Sure.’
‘And Byron, I might’ve made him sound funny – the poetry and everything. He wasn’t, do you know what I mean? He isn’t.’
Merrily searched for anything in Barry’s eyes, but it was like they’d been switched off, and she wondered if the evil from Syd’s past finally had a name.
29
Impaler
THERE WERE SECURITY lights on stockade poles at either side of the entrance. The sign had a Roman helmet on it.
Karen Dowell was sitting in the passenger seat, arms folded over her seat belt. Apprehensive.
‘You haven’t told her, have you?’
‘No reason to,’ Bliss said. ‘This is my inquiry.’
‘Which just happens to overlap her inquiry.’
‘Norra problem.’
Occasionally, he wished he could come clean to Karen about him and Annie. She’d be shocked rigid, but no way would she blab. And if she ever found out some other way she’d never trust him again, and that would be very bad. But he couldn’t. There wasn’t anybody in or outside of Gaol Street he could tell, and it was hard to imagine a situation where there ever would be.
‘Was there really a Roman town here, Karen?’
‘I think the actual site’s about half a mile away. I remember we had this school outing there once. O
f course, absolutely nothing to see but empty fields. One kid burst into tears. He was expecting something like the Colosseum. Always remember that.’
Bliss drove between the lights. Almost immediately, you could see newly covered polytunnels, like big white worms. Nobody about at all. In summer the tunnels would be like wasp nests.
‘I’m not even on overtime for this, am I?’ Karen said.
‘I’ll make it up to you, kid. One day.’
Needed her local knowledge, this was what it came down to. There were details he might miss on his own. He parked near the top of a low hill, in front of a long shed with a poorly lit glass porch.
‘We should really be in town,’ Karen said. ‘If even Rich Ford is predicting trouble…’
‘Rich Ford’s an old woman.’
‘Been around a long time, boss, and he’s got a nose for under-currents. If there’s some underlying migrant issue here we know nothing about… I think he could be right – spot the retaliation and you’re there.’
‘Yeh, well, this won’t take long.’
The manager, Roger Hitchin, was waiting for them. A vague-looking feller who said straight off that he was no use to them. Didn’t deal much with the migrant workers, not being much of a linguist, just a man who knew about the business of growing strawberries. Which was why he wanted to introduce them to the firm’s Personnel Liaison Officer.
Vasile Bocean. A Romanian whose halfway-good English had apparently lifted him out of the ranks, putting him into a permanent caravan with electricity. Vasile told them that, proud of his caravan. Couldn’t be more than twenty-four. Spiky hair with gold highlights.
Hitchin left them alone with Vasile and they talked outside the office, under a metal awning. Vasile seemed to be a permanent resident now, going out with a local girl and, yes, he certainly remembered the Marinescu sisters.
He beamed.
‘From village near Sighioara.’
Bliss nodded. He knew that much. Confirmation had come in late this afternoon from the Romanian police. The parents already contacted, photos exchanged, talk of family members coming over to take the girls’ bodies home. Elly Clatter had finally put out the sisters’ names in time for the six o’clock news.
‘Sighioara!’ A short laugh from Vasile Bocean. ‘Is very famous town. Very small but very famous.’
Vasile was grinning, as though Bliss and Karen ought to recognize the significance. ‘Sighioara, Transylvania? Famous tourist place. Old-fashioned buildings, like Middle Ages. But most famous…’ Vasile raising his hands, making his fingers into claws ‘… as birthplace of Mr Dracula.’
‘Really.’
‘Vlad Tepes. Impaler.’
Bliss let Vasile enjoy himself explaining how this English writer had borrowed this notorious serial killer’s name and his castle and his reputation, turning the already uncuddly Vlad into an eternal emblem of the Undead.
‘These were country girls, then,’ Bliss said when it was over. ‘Unsophisticated.’
‘Huh?’
‘Simple. Simple girls.’
‘People there is all very weird, detective. Everything, they believe. Curses. Evil… omens? Spirits of the dead? Mr Dracula! Woowoo!’
‘I’m sure.’
‘These girls… full of all that.’ Vasile waggling his fingers. ‘Spooky stuff.’
Bliss exchanged glances with Karen, bulky in a blue fleece, looking like she wanted to be anywhere but here.
‘Simple country girls, Vasile… can get preyed on. Like Dracula preyed on girls?’
Karen gave him a look. Bliss heard the rattling of a breeze on polythene, glanced down the valley, where no lights were visible, probably because of dense woodland.
‘Who preyed on the Marinescu sisters, Vasile? You know, don’t you?’
Karen barely spoke to him until they were back on the outskirts of the city. It had started to rain.
‘I had to push him,’ Bliss said. ‘His English wasn’t that good. He needed direction.’
‘He was upset,’ Karen said. ‘He was shocked. His grasp of English wasn’t great. He was very distressed when you told him what was done to them. And you capitalized on that. He didn’t know… He didn’t even know they were dead.’
‘Yeh, it occurred to me, when he was having a laugh about Dracula, that Hitchin hadn’t bothered to tell him about the girls. The firm’s way of distancing itself. Saying, we just employ them, whatever they get up to in their own time… nothing to do with us.’
Bliss wondered what Vasile was paid as personnel liaison officer. He figured about fifty pence an hour more than the pickers.
‘At least we’ve planted the idea, Karen. He’ll be thinking about it. And then we go back and talk to him again.’
Sex, Vasile. I’m talking about sex. Don’t tell me it doesn’t go on – and not necessarily always with consent. Women get raped on these farms, Vasile, you know that. It’s just that they don’t come and tell us about it, because of the possible repercussions.
Vasile had said, Cushions?
Because they’re afraid of it coming back on them. People get beaten up on farms like this, too. Injured. Hurt. Isn’t that right, Vasile?
I never!
Our information, Vasile, is that these girls, they were having a bit of trouble while they were here. No, no, I’m not saying it was anything to do with you, but if you don’t tell us what you know, there might be repercussions when we eventually find out. You know what I’m saying?
Cushions?
Cushions, yeh.
‘It’s not as if he’d ever make a witness,’ Karen said as they came up to the Westgate traffic island. ‘Is it?’
‘I don’t expect that to be necessary, Karen.’
Listen to me, Vasile. Suppose the Marinescu sisters had been the victims of sexual harassment – men asking for sex in return for favours, easier work?
That never happen here! Vasile backing off, shaking his head, hands going like windscreen wipers on fast mode. I swear to you—
Vasile, a few people are known to have taken their own lives because of intimidation, bullying. Not here, maybe, but other farms. We know what goes on, and maybe we haven’t asked as many questions as we ought to have. But murder, this is very, very different. Two young women beaten to death in the city, right under our noses? Anybody who withholds information about that, doesn’t tell us what they know, we’re gonna take a very dim view of it. Maybe they’ll go to prison, these people who conceal information, maybe they’ll get deported?
Listen, detective, please, I tell you everything I know. These girls, all they talk about… is about how this place is bad.
In what way, Vasile?
With ghostmen! Mr Dracula!
Ghostmen.
Come in the night… I dunno…
Of course you dunno, because…
I’m telling you—
Because what came in the night, Vasile, was ordinary men. No, listen to what I’m saying. I’m talking about men from outside. You understand? I’m not trying to blame your people – your workers – for things they didn’t do. Which happens sometimes, doesn’t it? Sometimes they get the blame for bad things done by local men. Bosses. I know there was a boss who was very interested in some of the girls. And somehow… I think you know that, too.
‘The name Bull,’ Karen said. ‘All the name Bull meant to that boy was the murdered man on the farm. Who he felt he had to keep saying he didn’t know in case you were trying to hang that one on him as well.’
‘He knows more than he’s saying. He thinks he’s gorra good job, with prospects, and the future’s rosy, and no way he’s going to jeopardize that by grassing up somebody important. You notice how his English seemed to get gradually worse the more we pressed him?’
Bliss felt Karen’s wobble of rage.
‘We? We pressed him? This blind obsession with nailing Sollers Bull to the wall, it’s turning you into a—’
‘What?’
‘Something I never thought you were.
’
‘Mother of God, this is nothing to do with what Sollers thinks about me, or how well he knows me father-in-law. Sollers finds a source of uncomplicated sex with women he doesn’t even have to talk to. Vasile is the… intermediary, shall we say?’
‘Pimp.’
‘Whatever. All this spooky girls, Transylvania shit – he thinks we’re that thick? This is an old-fashioned gut feeling, Karen. Remember them?’
‘Sure, and you’re an old-fashioned detective, Frannie. Which is no longer a compliment.’
‘The blokes those kids saw in the pub,’ Bliss said. ‘Who’s to say they weren’t paid to do it? One job, big money. They’re probably on their way home now.’
‘Pulling two murders together – one knife, one blunt-force – because they both have connections to a man you don’t like?’
‘It was you who—’
‘Yeah, and I said tell the DCI. Leave it to a senior officer who hasn’t got a very visible axe to grind.’
Bliss drove slowly down towards the turn-off for Gaol Street. Traffic was light. The higher than usual percentage of police cars was very evident. He wasn’t expecting to see Annie tonight, though a late-night phone call couldn’t be ruled out.
Karen was right. It was best.
He needed Annie to get Sollers. Needed Annie to want to get Sollers.
30
Share
BACK HOME, MERRILY went directly through to the scullery, called Fiona’s mobile.
Answering service. She thought of leaving a message, wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. She sat looking at the American paperback, with the Roman soldier and the fire. They came, they saw…
The book fell open at page 35.
Caradog was a warrior, born to it. From childhood he had been taught that fighting was something to be relished and, when necessary, he killed without much thought. But he was learning that there was something different about the way the Romans fought and killed. He wanted to know what it was. What had made them the finest fighting force in the world… so that he might use it against them.
Who was he really? Where was he? Barry had avoided telling her Byron’s real first name. There were ten million Joneses in the phone book.