Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  Siân was silent.

  Lol cleaned out the stove, pulled the Hereford Times apart and crumpled it, page by page, into the firebox, adding kindling but not setting light to it. It still wasn’t that cold.

  He sat on the sofa with his mobile, flicked to his contacts list, which actually wasn’t all that long. He still didn’t have many friends. Or enemies, come to that, give or take the odd psychiatrist.

  The phone asked, Do you want to call this number?

  He hesitated. This really wasn’t his business. Jane might well have told her mother all about it, whatever it was.

  But, on balance, probably not, and if he didn’t do it now he might regret it later. He called the number, and the call was answered very quickly.

  ‘Lol?’

  ‘Sorry, who’s—? Oh God, Eirion. Must’ve put your number in by mistake.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well. That… happens. So, um, you OK, Lol?’

  ‘Bit out of it, you know. Most of the summer went on the kind of tour I never thought I’d have the balls to do again. But… it’s been an experience. And the way we have to go these days when everybody thinks recorded music should be free.’

  ‘Yes. Well. Good for you, man. You OK, otherwise? Mrs Watkins… Jane?’

  ‘We just had a drink. In the Swan.’

  ‘You and…?’

  ‘Jane.’

  ?.wenk I thguoht I enaJ eht ton s?tI .enaJ ton s?ti ?em gnipmud fo yaw a si siht fI? ?.esimorp I .lliw I? .dias loL ?,eruS? ??ot no gnignah m?I meetse-fles fo tib revetahw fo tuo parc eht hsams ot gniog s?ti neve ?gnihtyna tuo dnif uoy fi ?tsuj ,taht rewsna neve t?nod ,netsiL ?I ma ,lla ta laiceps gnikcuf ton m?I .ton m?I ,ylnO? .ffo ekorb eH ??dna gnizama erew thguoht evah ecno thgim uoy nemow fo sdaol teem uoy egelloc tA ?tub ,sgniws doom eseht sah ehs ,nosrep xelpmoc a etiuq s?ehs ,ysae ton s?ehs ,naem I? .ti no gnizies noiriE ??ehs t?nsi ,laiceps si ehS? ?.laiceps gnihtemos yawa evag uoy ezilaer dna retal sraey ytnewt ,net kcab kool neht dna sdneirflrig fo gnirts a evah dna yawa og nac uoY .efil ruoy ni egats yna ,emit yna ta eno thgir eht dnif nac uoy ?nac uoy ,kooL .taht ekil setam dah lla eW? .dias loL ?,haeY? ??ohw loohcs ta setam dah I .sneet ruoy fo tuo er?uoy erofeb elpuoc deirram dlo na er?uoy ekiL ?no seirrac ?tsuj taht ecnamor lrigloohcs eht ,syad eseht ,ti si ,doog ton s?tahT .su fo htob roF ?wonk uoy ,emit tsrif eht ekil saw ti ?tsrif ew nehW? .yas ot tahw wonk t?ndid loL ??txet enerI raeD gib ehT ?llaw eht no gnitirw eht daer ot ehT .pots lluf kcab s?ehS? ??dnekeew eht rof kcab emac ehS? gniliaf ,ekil ,I mA .od ot tahw wonk t?nod I ,loL ,tihS ??kniht uoy oD .ereht revo emac I esoppuS? ?.krow rof gnikool ,dlrow gib eht ni tuo flesreh gnidnif eb tsuj thgim taht tuB .lausu naht suoires erom ylniatrec s?ehS .si ti tahw wonk t?nod I tub ,thgir ton ylbissop s?gnihtemoS .yltsenoH .t?nod I? ?.gnihtemos wonk tsum uoy ,loL ,no emoC? .deliaf eciov s?noiriE ??I ,t?nsaw I tuB ?eseht lla htiw ereht reh gnivael ,ffidraC ot kcab gnimoc tuoba deirrow neeb ev?thgim I ,naem I .enaJ sdrawot evitcetorp etiuq erew syug ehT .ees dluoc I taht taht fo enon saw ereht tub ,stsefgahs ,ekil ,erew sgid lacigoloeahcra eseht taht draeh htob d?ew ?gniht rehto eht dnA? ?.thgiR? ?.doog saw taht oS .reh ekil thguoht ohw maet eht no elpoep rehto yllautca erew ereht dna ,erom meht ot gniklat neeb d?ehS .enif saw ti yas ot retal syad fo elpuoc a dellac ehs tub ,reh gnivael tuoba deirrow tib a saw I .reh htiw gnola og ot tseb syawla s?ti tub ,syug VT eht htiw ecneirepxe gnitailimuh taht retfa ,suoituacrevo gnieb saw ehs thguoht I? ?.nwod ti gniyalp saw ehs tahT .oot ,em ot taht dias s?ehS? ?.ffuts yppih dlo gnissarrabme taht lla dna senil yel dna seiretsym-htrae hguorht ti ni detseretni emoceb ylno d?ehs taht esolcsid ,wonk uoy ,ot ton luferac gnieb saw ehS .stsigoloeahcra ,hcnub thgit ytterp a er?yehT .ni gnittif ton tuoba deirrow neeb dah enaJ .tsrif ta ykcor tiB .tsew tuo ,doog ytterp saw tI .t?ndid ydoolb ew ,oN .oN? ??wor a evah uoy diD? .eniF ?.enif saw gnihtyreve tahT .KO saw ehs taht noitamrofni eht gniyevnoc tsuJ .stxet trohs fo elpuoc a s?dah ev?I llA .sllac ruoy nruter ton t?nseod ehs tub ,snoitanimircer fo lufrae na teg thgim uoY .sllac ruoy rewsna ton t?nseod ehs wor a dah ev?uoy fi neve ,enaJ wonk uoY? ??wor a dah uoY? ??gnihtyna ?dias s?ehs esoppus t?noD .sllac ym gnirewsna neeb t?nsah ehs ,tsenoh eb ot ?ehS .gid eht tfel I ecnis toN .elihw a ni reh nees t?nevah I? .dias noiriE ?,oN? .evots nepo eht ni gnilknircnu ylbidua saw semiT drofereH ehT .esuaP ??wonk t?ndid uoY .pu dnuow gid

  She’d very deliberately not left the Freelander on the Bishop’s Palace car park, not wanting to drive out of there aware of doing it for the last time.

  Not that it was going to be. Not quite yet. This was more complicated than a simple dismissal. Closer to assisted suicide.

  With the day fading fast, she hurried down to the bottom of the car park by the swimming pool, racing the long-threatened rain, but not quite making it. She slammed herself into the driving seat, big drops hitting the windscreen and splattering on impact like hollowpoint bullets from heaven.

  She called Huw.

  ‘Subtle,’ he said. ‘I underestimated him.’

  From the bottom corner of the car park she could see lights coming on downstairs in the Bishop’s Palace across the river, the sky behind it a smudge of charcoal.

  ‘He’s rewarding me,’ Merrily said. ‘For having done a good job. Enduring for so long something I hadn’t wanted in the first place.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Sophie. Afterwards.’

  Afterwards, Sophie had told her about a new procedure Innes had mentioned almost in passing. In future, all requests for deliverance advice received by Sophie, from the diocesan clergy or the general public, should be referred to the Bishop who would decide whether it was a valid deliverance issue or something that could be referred elsewhere.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Huw said.

  ‘I feel sorry for Sophie, stuck between two…’

  ‘She’ll survive. But this is a bit more serious than I thought.’

  ‘Please keep it to yourself. She’s not supposed to have told me.’

  ‘So he’s rewarding you…’

  ‘For services rendered. And discreetly offering to relieve me of my burden.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Wished this on myself, Huw. All that crap about deliverance having become a touchstone.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody superstitious. This word “burden”, that’s his word? You’ve never used it, to Sophie or anybody?’

  ‘Not that I recall.’

  ‘He’s stitching you up. Just like every rural dean in the country’s been stitched up. Your honourable friend, did she tell you how, every time some priest can’t take it any more and buggers off back to the city, you’ve got to make sure his services get covered till he’s replaced? Then you get to arrange the installation of the next sucker. That’s when you’re not talking some other poor isolated bastard down off his church tower. It’s a job as gets more depressing every year.’

  ‘Somebody has to do it.’

  ‘Innes is killing two birds wi’ one brick, lass. And he can’t even say it to your face.’

  ‘He delegates.’

  ‘He goes behind your back! He’s shutting the door on you.’

  ‘There’s no licence for deliverance. It only exists in the shadows. He could just tell me to go.’

  ‘No he can’t, and he won’t. Not without good reason. You’ve been conspicuously successful, right from the start. Wasn’t for you they’d never’ve found out about Hunter and the mad, apocalyptic delusions that put him in purple.’

  ‘I’ve been lucky… and not that conspicuous. And Hunter, that was you more than me.’

  ‘Within the Church you’ve been talked about. At all levels. Happen your card’s been marked, I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Listen. Do nowt. Keep your nose clean. Let me think about this. Don’t talk to anybugger till I come back to you tonight.’

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  She blew her nose.

  She wasn’t crying. She sat and gazed into the blur of the lights across the river. Rural dean. Why not? Helping new priests fit into the countryside… she
could even be good at that. It wasn’t that she couldn’t use the extra money, especially if Jane went to university next year. Couldn’t begin to see it as a step up. Hell, she was never likely to want to replace Siân as Archdeacon. Not her thing, management. No touchstones there.

  It was nearly dark. She watched the strange white vapour from the e-cig, like the ectoplasm in old spiritualist photos. She started to laugh, unhealthily, as the phone chimed – damn, damn, damn, change it.

  ‘It’s Casey. Killow. Mirrily, I’m thinking we never made a firm date. For you to come back.’

  ‘Sorry, I thought I said I’d call you. If I didn’t…’

  ‘Can you come tomorrow? When we’re all here? Just turn up. I won’t tell anybody you’re coming.’

  ‘Thing is, Casey, it’s the one day of the week when an entire congregation would notice I was missing.’

  All seventeen of them, on a good week.

  ‘Oh. Yeah. You’re a vicar. Jeez, this place plays tricks with you. Things you’d dismiss as the sheerest lunacy, they come and live with you. Y’know what they used to say about strokes?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ The lights in the palace were smeared across the windscreen. The rain began sluicing the Freelander like a water cannon. Merrily cut the speaker, put the phone to an ear. ‘In what context?’

  ‘No, you probably don’t. Words become so familiar, people nivver wonder about them. Where they came from. When it happened to Dinnis, I looked up everything I could find in books, the Net… I couldn’t sleep afterwards, just lay there looking at bloody Dinnis. Nivver told him. He’d laugh. He always laughs. Listen, ignore me, I’m an hysterical woman, just come soon’s you can.’

  ‘It would have to be tomorrow afternoon, I’ve services in the morning, and I’d need to be back for seven. We do an evening meditation in the church.’

  ‘No, listen, it doesn’t matter. I just thought…’

  ‘Is two o’clock OK?’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘I tell you, Mirrily,’ Casey said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. I think we invinted them to explain rational fears we can’t deal with – sickness, loneliness, disorientation, what have you. And then they become so real in our heads the bastards might just as well exist. What’s the difference?’

  ‘It’s a moot point.’

  ‘I didn’t ring you, OK? I don’t know you’re coming.’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ Merrily said.

  When she drove away, Huw’s voice was crackling in her head like the start of a fire. Do nowt. Keep your nose clean.

  Yeah, right. Like she could, when there were people in this much mental chaos.

  26

  Good-looking kid situation

  IT HAD A name now: Operation Digger. Not particularly clever, but the operational names came down from headquarters, along with a bunch of boffins setting up shop in the major incident room, three floors up.

  When Bliss had got home to his semi in Marden on the Hereford plain, the lamps were on, curtains drawn tight, Annie’s car parked, as usual, in the next street. Could be that, by now, somebody on the housing estate had twigged that they had more than a professional relationship, but Bliss couldn’t imagine anybody grassing him up. Like the woman next door had said once, he was a useful neighbour to have.

  When Karen Dowell buzzed Bliss’s mobile, the TV was on with the sound down, coming up to the local news. He’d been interviewed about the Greenaway killing by Mandy Patel from local BBC. They were almost mates now, him and Patel.

  ‘We’ve got them, boss,’ Karen said. ‘Thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘The parents? Hold on a sec.’

  He put the phone on speaker so Annie could hear, laid it on the long coffee table in front of the sofa they were sharing. As DCI, Annie wasn’t directly involved in the inquiry, but she’d read all the reports. She’d pick up on the reference points.

  ‘Hotel in Cornwall,’ Karen said. ‘Late autumn weekend break. They’re on the way home now.’

  ‘But you’ve talked to them?’

  ‘Mainly the dad, Derek Greenaway. Gays are usually closest to their mums, but not in this case, it seems. Mrs Greenaway was too upset to talk but not as upset, apparently, as when Tris came out. Didn’t want anything to do with him for a few years. They’d not long been back on speaking terms. His dad said she was convinced he’d come round sooner or later.’

  ‘What, find a nice girl and raise a family?’

  ‘Be funny if it wasn’t so sad.’

  ‘Only child, is he?’

  ‘No, there’s a married sister, also living in Evesham, which is why Mum and Dad moved over there when he took early retirement from the council. New grandchildren, far more acceptable. Anyway, about half an hour after I’d spoken to him, Derek Greenaway rang back. On his own, from a corner of the hotel bar.’

  ‘Good of him.’

  ‘I think it helped him unload stuff he couldn’t talk about with his wife. He’s a former environment health officer with Herefordshire Council, but I don’t remember him myself. Anyway, we had quite a long and productive chat, and that’s why I’m calling you. He was concerned to know what line of inquiry we were following. His wife – once the shock had worn off, she was worried there might be something, you know, sordid?’

  ‘Perish the thought, Karen.’

  ‘You do have to be of a certain generation for that word to be appropriate any more. Mr Greenaway says that, whatever comes out, he doesn’t want his son portrayed as some promiscuous good-time boy, because it isn’t that simple.’

  ‘Like he’d know.’

  ‘He described Tristram as being a disappointment to himself? Always disappointed that his life wasn’t delivering what it should. It’s like a good-looking kid situation?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ Bliss flashed a glance at Annie, grinned. ‘I was always a weird-looking kid.’

  ‘I had a cousin like that,’ Karen said. ‘Beautiful kids, people fawn over them, and by the time they’re sixteen or so they think that’s all you need. That and being good at sport, which Greenaway was as well, according to his dad. My cousin, the rest of us just got consolation prizes for not being him. He went from job to job, married three times. Where is he now? I don’t know. Anyway, I digress. Sorry.’

  Annie was shaking her head, maybe a little sadly. She was the ice queen of Gaol Street, nobody rambled on to her like that. Nobody ever felt sorry for Annie, Bliss thought. Maybe they would if they knew.

  Karen was saying that Tristram Greenaway seemed to have grown up with not so much ambition as expectation, leaving university with an undistinguished archaeology degree, but what did that matter if you had the looks?

  ‘It really never occurred to him he wasn’t going to be a star like one of these guys on Time Team and Trench One and write bestselling books that were like mainly pictures of him looking devastatingly handsome in a hole in the ground.’

  ‘Ugly as sin, some of those Time Team fellers, Karen. Part of their appeal.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you know what I’m saying.’

  Greenaway had had some good jobs, Karen said, but never seemed to keep them. It was always going to be the next big thing. He was once employed on something screened on the History Channel, with a hint that he might wind up presenting. Bought a house at the top of the market, only to have it repossessed when the show got taken off after one season.

  Bottom line: his dad had been secretly bailing him out for a couple of years, and always looking out for him. When the job came up in Hereford. Derek Greenaway heard about it from one of his old mates on the council.

  ‘You’re saying his old man got him that job?’

  ‘I don’t know. Might just have been a question of Tris having local knowledge from growing up in the area. But he got it and he came back to Hereford, the old hometown. But then… it turned out to be another one like the TV job that didn’t pan out as expected. Boss, I’m thinking there are some things N
eil Cooper didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Greenaway took the temp post with every reason to believe he’d get Cooper’s present job when Cooper was promoted after…’ Sound of Karen leafing through notes ‘… Des—?’

  ‘Des Walters. Expected to get an early-retirement deal.’

  ‘That’s the guy. OK. The last time Tristram Greenaway talked to his dad, right? On the phone. Couple of nights before he died. Obviously been drinking and he’s terribly upset. Get this…’

  Bliss and Annie instinctively closing in on the phone to hear how Greenaway had told Derek what a mistake it had been coming back to Hereford, a town of losers. Telling his dad he was getting out forever this time, because he’d been double-crossed. Been assured that Des Walters was already history, so when Cooper told him Walters was coming back after all…’

  ‘He sounds a bloody sight more upset than he apparently sounded when he talked to Jane Watkins. I reckon he’s telling his dad what he thinks he wants to hear, don’t you? His old man got him the job with the council, but he still wants to be on TV. Bit of a performer, Tris, don’t you think? Still, let’s talk to Cooper again, see what else we can uncover. Sit tight, Karen, you’re playing a blinder on this one, and I’m gonna make sure the right people know about it.’

  ‘Who, Annie Howe?’ Karen’s laughter distorting in the phone. ‘You think Annie Howe will help reboot my career?’

  ‘Hang on, I think that’s me doorbell, I’d better…’ Bliss didn’t look at Annie. ‘Thank you, Karen. Ta very much. We’ll discuss the implications at length first thing tomorrow.’

  Ending the call and switching off the phone, just to be sure.

  ‘You mean bastard,’ Annie said. ‘How many opportunities does anyone get to listen to somebody diminishing them behind their back?’

  ‘Didn’t want you to get big-headed, Annie. You’ve always been an icon to that girl. Admires you as a police officer…’ Bliss dodging the flying cushion. ‘… and as a woman. Now just let me think about this.’

  They caught the local TV piece on the Greenaway murder. It didn’t delay them long.