by Phil Rickman
‘So nobody does.’
‘Even up at the castle they’re helpless. The current knight, Sir William, is away at the Crusades, leaving his wife and daughter with his elderly father, Sir Roland. We’re seeing all this through the eyes of Sir William’s daughter, Catherine, who’s sixteen and about to experience the horror first-hand when the Summoner appears on the castle hill. Calling for her mother, who starts to go pale and anaemic. And so it goes on.’
‘What’s the intended age group for this stuff?’
‘Young adult. Twelve-plus?’
‘It’s just I’m wondering if this is a metaphor for the Black Death or something.’
‘Kids hate metaphor. Besides, the rest doesn’t really fit with disease. The Summoner is what’s left of this itinerant magician. He’d slink around the towns and villages of the borderland, passing himself off as a healer but all the time he’d be experimenting on his patients in his search for the secret of immortality. Which he evidently found, in a warped way because, despite being killed by one of Sir Roland’s ancestors, he comes back, every generation or so. He’s older – like, he should’ve been dead perhaps decades ago or even centuries. He comes back to rejuvenate himself by taking other people’s lives.’
‘Which is a vampire thing, isn’t it?’
‘But without the fangs and the puncture marks. He’s just absorbing their life energy. Which, to me, is scarier. Because it makes more sense.’
‘Mmm.’ Mum pushed her plate away, held the e-cig up to the lamp, brown fluid rising. ‘Go on. I’m still listening.’
‘This is the interesting bit. In the past, the Summoner destroyed the village by taking so many people that the others just packed up and buggered off. So the village was left derelict, and it took over fifty years for people to start coming back. And now they’re leaving again.’
‘I get the connection,’ Mum said. ‘What I don’t get is why kids – girls – apparently loved it so much.’
‘I’ll explain. Comes down to Geraint, the blacksmith’s son, who comes up to the castle to chop the wood and refurbish the weaponry. He’s like very strong and handsome, but he’s just a peasant, and Catherine’s been brought up to have nothing to do with him… so you see where this is going. Especially after old Sir Roland, Catherine’s grandad, puts on his rusting armour and goes out to the woods to take on the Summoner and doesn’t come back, and then, next night, the Summoner returns, stronger than ever, and calls out the name of Geraint’s dad, the blacksmith.’
‘No let-up, then.’
‘Oh, you really do feel their desperation, Catherine and the blacksmith’s son, both bereaved. There’s a memorable scene where Geraint forces himself to go into the woods and comes back with Sir Roland’s discarded armour and works into the night at his forge putting together a new suit of armour out of the old one. One that fits him, natch. And then he makes a big sword, and— You keep looking at the clock.’
‘Sorry. It’s just that Huw Owen’s coming… I don’t know when, and I need a shower. I take it Geraint kills the Summoner?’
‘And buries him in the wood. Which you just know is going to turn out to be a mistake. Mainly because you know there’s a second book.’
‘He’s undead, the Summoner. Presumably.’
‘Still undead after two books. Still out there. Mum…?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Remind me who I said lived in Cwmarrow Castle?’
‘Erm… the de Chandos family? And then the… Lowry… no… Loudons? I’ve got it down somewhere. There’s not much. Cwmarrow Castle was built at a time when local history doesn’t seem to have been recorded much outside of the Domesday Book, especially in a place like this, in the border, so we’re reliant on—’ Mum jumped up suddenly. ‘Oh hell, Jane, I forgot – lot on my mind. Gus Staines gave me a book for you last night. I put it… somewhere.’
‘Borderlight?’
‘Sorry. Would’ve given it you last night, but you’d gone up. It’s on the dresser. Jane… is it easy to find someone on Facebook?’
‘Usually. I packed all that in, as you know.’
‘I do know, because of all the times you’ve assured me that it’s now strictly for sad middle-aged people. Except ones like me who wouldn’t have time even if they wanted to go there. But obviously there are a few million kids still doing it. Would it be easy for you to… you know…?’
‘Stalk one for you?’
‘Can you do that without revealing your own identity?’
‘To an extent. It’s not stalking, Mum. Everybody who goes on Facebook is screeching, Look at me, look at me! I had planned to go into Hereford and remind Coops I’m available for work, but he’s probably got enough on his mind. You’ll want me out of the way, right, when Huw’s here?’
‘I never like to inhibit him.’
Jane looked up at the high window where the dawn sky had a flawless, metallic sheen. It looked cold, the day already unrolling emptily.
‘Jane’s Bureau of Investigation,’ she said. ‘We’re good but we’re not cheap.’
‘I’m a priest. We’re always broke.’
‘What’s the name?’
‘Her name’s Aisha,’ Mum said. ‘Malik.’
40
Going out normal
FELT LIKE SMASHING his fist into the old brick. He’d fucked up, misjudged this. Made light of it almost – the chickenshit row involving archaeology, egos and a skull called Steve that somehow escalated into a killing.
The cordon tapes were going up, forensic screening on its way, the alleyway already blocked off by the van that would eventually ferry Jerry Soffley to his undignified appointment with Billy Grace.
The nailed-up doors and the barred and boarded windows of Organ yard mocked Bliss like the dead eyes of a suspect who knew only two words: no comment.
‘Is there no bugger living in any of those buildings, Darth?’
Most of all the brick properties overlooking Organ Yard on three sides were hardly well maintained.
‘Commercial premises, warehouses, garaging,’ Vaynor said. ‘No apartments that I’m aware of – but then we didn’t know Soffley lived over the shop.’
‘What are they? You’re a local lad. Anything that opens daily?’
‘A furniture shop? Back end of a pub.’
‘Pub. That’s better. Which one? You lose your sense of direction this end of town.’
Durex suits had taken over the shop, Bliss and Vaynor, unsuited, relegated to the perimeter. It was a fine, cold morning, but Slim Fiddler said bad weather was on the way, Bliss wondering if they’d bring Soffley out before the rain came and the wind. Before the weather turned Gothic.
Could’ve talked to me, you daft twat, when you had the chance. Some bastards aren’t worth protecting.
Greenaway, that could’ve been rage, this was different. This was much more like hard-man stuff, a cold and intentional killing. This dragged you right back into the Plascarreg Estate. He should have known. He should’ve seen a thin Plas vein running through this from the start.
He pointed up beyond a grey-painted wall with a door in it, probably to a small yard, rusting metal steps rising out of it.
‘What’s that fire escape for, Darth?’
‘Not sure… no, wait, that’ll be the gastro-pub, the Old Coach House? And on the end, that’s a gents’ hairdressers, I think.’
‘Open till late then, the pub.’
‘Yeah, but all the windows are boarded up. This is the problem. Nobody looks down on Organ Yard. It’s not like that little yard’s going to be a beer garden or anything, it’s just to accommodate the fire escape.’
‘Need to go over that yard, anyway, in case anything got conveniently tossed over the wall. Wonder if any of them have CCTV.’
‘Can’t see anything from here. No cameras at all in the immediate vicinity, though we’ll have pictures of anybody entering the vicinity from the front. Not too many to eliminate after closing time on a Sunday.’
‘Including Sof
fley on his way back from delivering his lappie for Karen. ‘Let’s look at the timeline: my little chat with Soffley, Soffley going to pick up his laptop, bringing it into Gaol Street, returning to his shop. Did someone follow him? That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?’
‘Or if he met somebody.’
‘We need to find out who knew him in town, where he drank. Look, this is significant – he normally has stuff out in front of the shop, second-hand pews and things. Nothing here now. It’s all been taken back in, and not put out again. Strongly suggesting this happened after closing time.’
‘Or the killer comes just as Soffley’s ready to shut up shop and put the lights out. Might just have walked in as a customer.’
‘No sign of a break-in, so either Jerry let somebody in or, as you say, somebody followed him in. Sunday teatime, Darth, in Hereford. Nobody to hear you scream. Whoever did Soffley had time. Walk in. Hit him with whatever it was. Door bolted, down with the blinds, finish him off. Wait till dark.’
‘Not long to wait.’
‘Then slip away.’
‘Professional?’
‘Looking that way.’
Vaynor squeezed his second cigarette to death between finger and thumb, pocketed it.
‘I know how it looks, boss, but at the end of the day how sure are we that this is the same one who did Greenaway?’
‘We’re not. Yet. Won’t be the same hammer, might not even be a hammer. And where we were thinking Greenaway was maybe an argument that got out of hand, this is somebody who wanted Soffley dead, came in with that purpose. But if we assume they are linked, this puts the Greenaway killing into a whole new league, doesn’t it?’
‘Doesn’t look like a domestic argument gone wrong any more, I’ll give you that.’
‘Another thing. Whoever did this probably had the time and the privacy and all the props – hangman’s rope in the back room, masks, executioners’ hoods with eyeholes, assorted S and M kit…’
‘Sorry, boss?’
‘To arrange something artistic. But they didn’t. Nothing to suggest they didn’t just leave him where he fell.’
‘It’s not Midsomer Murders, boss.’
‘No, but this… this is almost an insult. Final insult. Bog-standard blunt instrument. Routine. Nothing Gothic. Going out normal. He’d friggin’ hate that, Darth. He’d be… mortified may be an inappropriate word, but…’
The front window of the Darkest Corner was full of invasive white light, Durex suits prowling like aliens inside and out. Bliss was aware of Vaynor looking at him strangely.
‘I’m not being friggin’ whimsical. If it was kids – teenage lads – they wouldn’t be able to resist playing around, dressing him up a bit, all the spooky kit in there.’
He felt mad at himself. Sick at what he might, inadvertently, have set Soffley up for. Sad for a poor bastard he hadn’t liked and who hadn’t liked him either.
Twisted. He felt twisted up inside, uncomfortable. This was going to be a big case now. Extra bodies shipped in from Worcester, probably with a new SIO, maybe Iain Twatface Brent, Worcester-case scenario. Everybody up to the Gaol Street penthouse, computers uncovered, the dogs of war unleashed.
And it was too small for all of that. This was something… not domestic, but certainly prosaic and rational and unworthy of any of the spooky drivel that was going to get sprayed all over the media.
He felt that keenly. He stared around the enclosing buildings, the dumb intimacy of Organ Yard. Glad now that he hadn’t ignored the new Bishop and had a quiet word with Merrily Watkins, because the weird bits were just a distraction, not even window dressing.
41
The Hereford Issue
THE BISHOP WAS saying he’d spent some days walking the city streets alone, a stranger, unrecognized. Listening to people, absorbing their concerns. A new moon in the Hereford firmament.
‘Pretentious, too,’ Huw said. ‘I’d forgotten that.’
He was sitting in Merrily’s scullery, chair pushed back against the wall, his boots off, his feet in hiking socks up on the desk. He’d been here since half-eight, arriving in plain clothes: worn canvas jacket, no dog collar. What was that saying?
‘This was towards the end of September,’ the Bishop said from the computer. ‘I saw some people standing out there looking up at the gatehouse. At this office. Do you know what one of them said?’
No reply from Siân Callaghan-Clarke.
‘It was a woman. She said, You know what that is? Up there? That’s where the exorcist works.’
‘He just made that up,’ Huw said. ‘The bugger.’
‘Medieval,’ Innes said. ‘Over there is the apothecary, next to him the money lender. And, up there, that is the exorcist’s office. You see what I mean? Colourful word, medieval, but hardly a propitious one. Suggestive of something half developed. Often describing societies that torture prisoners, publicly dismember petty criminals and use religion like a blunt instrument.’
‘But not necessarily in our own society, Bishop.’
‘Which…’ Innes carrying on talking as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘… is one reason for my decision to find her somewhere else, less public. I thought the cloisters at first, but there’s an increasing number of tourists trooping around there, and word gets out. And the cloisters are even more medieval. And substantially darker.’
‘You’d like to put her somewhere less visible. Or not visible at all?’
‘Perhaps a corner of the crypt,’ Merrily said.
Huw looked up at her.
‘Going to sit down for this, lass?’
She pulled a stool to the other side of the desk. There was a lot more to go, none of it missed by the iPhone which, if fully-charged and not overloaded with data, could apparently record for hours.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Innes was saying. ‘I do believe we have a part to play in the healing of minds, and that we should not deny that. But it mainly amounts to observation, counselling and, when necessary, referral.’
Pause.
‘Referral?’ Siân said.
‘To an outside agency more qualified to deal with it.’
‘You mean the National Health Service.’
They heard the Bishop’s grunt, the click of a briefcase hasp.
‘I did say when necessary. While accepting that this is not always a judgement call for us…’
The sound of leafing through pages before the Bishop read out a very well-known paragraph from ‘A Time to Heal’, the Church’s millennial report for the House of Bishops on the Ministry of Healing, including deliverance. The report was widely seen to have put deliverance firmly in its place – one short chapter. The paragraph’s punchline, after references to epilepsy and dissociative and catatonic hysteria, was the suggestion that ‘the man with the evil spirits in Acts 19.16’ had been suffering from schizophrenia.
Siân said suddenly, ‘What about Sophie?’
‘Oh, Mrs Hill stays here. Mrs Hill is my secretary.’
‘But Craig, Sophie maintains the deliverance database, deals with aftercare schedules, acts as a sounding board…’
‘Entirely unofficially. And that role will shrink.’
Merrily turned her face away from the computer. Was this the third or fourth time she’d made herself listen to this?
The final time she’d cut it short. Separated something from the end that she wasn’t ready for anyone, not even Huw, to hear.
‘It’s inevitable,’ the Bishop said. ‘Essentially, how I feel about Mrs Watkins is that she was rather forced into this unenviable role – Hunter ostensibly wanting a young, attractive woman to make it all appear less frightening. But, as we know—’
‘Ha!’ Huw swung his feet from the desk. ‘How do I stop it for a minute?’
Merrily leaned over and froze the recording. As expected, Huw had identified the detonator.
Hunter. A name you rarely heard in the vicinity of the cathedral, although he was not long gone. Bishop Mick: young, charming, populist, well con
nected. And possessed of an inner darkness that still remained unapproachable. It would be impossible to believe if you hadn’t been there – that the Church, faced with something so primevally explosive, could be so brilliant at defusing it, erecting a blank wall of unlikely but surprisingly effective, politically correct diffidence. Poor Michael, they’d purred to one another. How could we have missed the signs of such emotional and spiritual instability?
‘Remind me,’ Huw said. ‘Has anybody ever said owt in public about Hunter working the night shift?’
‘You know they haven’t. Except for one downmarket tabloid which the Guardian didn’t even bother to mock. The fact that he was so quickly gone… well, that was all that’s ever seemed to matter. Besides, realistically, we still don’t know how much of it was down to being blackmailed over his… sex addiction. Which, of course, wasn’t talked about either.’
‘Don’t matter, lass. He were playing for the other side. Don’t matter why. Don’t matter what they said or didn’t say, it went deep. Bloody deep.’
‘And was buried even deeper.’
‘Their only consolation was it happened in Hereford. The arse-end of nowhere. And, credit where it’s due, they moved fast to put the diocese into a safe pair of hands.’
Bernie Dunmore, suffragan Bishop of Ludlow. Close enough to know something of the situation, old enough to sit on it.
‘I’m guessing Innes had been in the wings a long time,’ Huw said. ‘Dunmore were never really chief-executive material, and he knew that. He happen also knew who was in line to succeed him and said nowt. These things get settled behind closed doors.’
‘At my level, we don’t even know where the doors are.’
‘Dunmore was about buying time, we knew that,’ Huw said. ‘He hung on longer than expected, but that were no bad thing. Canterbury having quietly set up a working group to deal with what’d become known as The Hereford Issue.’
‘You know that for a fact?’
Huw leaned back into a pool of sunlight.
‘Once talked to a feller – I’m not going to name him, but I were up north, catching up wi’ a few folks. Attending a small dinner party in York, not my scene usually, but I couldn’t get out of it. This feller, he used a word from them daft American ghost shows on the idiot channels. Ah, he says, the Hereford dark portal. Needs to be sealed off once and for all, don’t you think?’
