Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  ‘There.’ Karen Dowell touched the screen with a fingernail. ‘That’s Greenaway, isn’t it?’

  Karen had organized a small TV and DVD player and Bliss had pushed the desk up against the door to stop anyone he didn’t trust getting in. Although Annie Howe was already here.

  ‘He looks about twelve,’ Bliss said.

  Tristram Greenaway, fresh-faced and winsome, was in a dark silk shirt and tight jeans. He was serving drinks. Someone had evidently pinched his bottom. He spun round, still holding his tray, and then grinned. David Vaynor calculated he’d be about seventeen and still at school.

  ‘Anybody else we know?’ Bliss said.

  Two people mentioned Hector Pryce. He had more hair then and a well-trimmed beard. He seemed to know a lot of people and drink a lot of wine. Merrily thought she recognized a former canon from the Cathedral, pink-cheeked and excited, and quite ill now, so she said nothing.

  ‘I presume we’ve all noticed the obvious?’ Bliss said.

  Murmurs.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘They’re everywhere.’

  The video switched to a sequence showing Selwyn Kindley-Pryce sitting in a straight-backed rustic chair with a large book open on his knees. He looked, Merrily thought, like an actor. A handsome, mature, distinguished actor with an actor’s tan. People, mainly young women, were sitting around him on and between bales of straw in what she thought was now the Maliks’ lofty sitting room.

  ‘Who,’ Vaynor asked, ‘is that?’

  A woman was standing between two stacks of bales, an elbow resting on one. She wore a long, sleeveless black dress. Her hair was swung over one shoulder, and you couldn’t see where it ended.

  ‘That’s what you call timeless beauty,’ Vaynor said. ‘If you saw her in a painting from two hundred years ago…’

  ‘Steady, Darth,’ Bliss said.

  The video froze on her. Caroline Goddard, Merrily thought, looking across at Bliss. When she’d gone into the vicarage alone, Jane had told her about a call from a woman identifying herself as Caroline. The same reclusive Caroline whose publishers had claimed she didn’t want to talk to a vicar on the Welsh border? Merrily had passed this on, in confidence, to Bliss. Caroline was important now. She would have answers.

  ‘And that’s it,’ Karen Dowell said. ‘That’s the lot. We should have some more by tonight, but apparently it won’t be that much different.’

  ‘There’s a word for what I think we’ve just seen,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Probably wasn’t a decade ago, Francis,’ Annie Howe said.

  She wasn’t a timeless beauty, Annie, but she didn’t set your teeth on edge any more. Something in her life had altered, Merrily thought, not for the first time this year. Didn’t seem to bother her that it wasn’t as obvious as it would once have been that she was the senior officer here.

  Vaynor said, ‘Do you want to see it again, boss? Ma’am? Or do you want me to get the retired blokes in?’

  ‘The gerries,’ Bliss said. ‘Yeh, let’s move the desk and wheel the gerries in. But first, let me just tell you about a minor breakthrough. An expert has confirmed what we thought about Greenaway’s attempts to market Steve. Let me just…’ He leaned into his laptop. ‘In case anybody’s forgotten…’

  He brought up an email, ending with

  You might not recognize him but

  you all doubtless remember who

  he is. If you want to know where

  he was found I can Draw you a Map.

  ‘We didn’t spend too much time trying to work out what Greenaway meant by drawing a map, but it looks like we should’ve done. The clue is the use of the capitals.’

  Bliss told them in some detail what he’d learned from Jane about Walter Map, suggesting Greenaway had also typed the word ‘draw’ with a capital D to muddy the water.

  ‘So what’s that tell us, Darth?’

  ‘Tells us Greenaway’s convinced he’s found the final burial place of the allegedly undead medieval evildoer. He’s probably hoping it’ll be seen by Jim Turner or by someone who can pass it on to Turner.’

  ‘Because Trissie has just learned he has no future with the Herefordshire county archaeologist’s department. He’s ready to strike a deal. Or maybe even desperate to strike a deal, depending on his financial situation.’ Bliss looked around the room. ‘Anybody see any flaws in that?’

  ‘But he’s nicked it,’ Karen Dowell said. ‘It’s a stolen skull. How’s he going to explain that away?’

  ‘He’s not gonna be too worried about that,’ Bliss said. ‘Let Turner deal with it. We’ve gorra look at this from Trissie’s position. It’s the biggest thing that ever happened to him. The realization of a dream.’

  ‘He’s up there with the gods of archaeology,’ Vaynor said.

  ‘And therefore less cautious than he might normally be,’ Annie Howe murmured. ‘Consequently, more vulnerable.’

  ‘Annie’s right,’ Bliss said. ‘He—’

  Annie? Merrily saw Karen Dowell throw a glance at Bliss, who looked down at his keyboard.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘They’d be giving the skull back to Cooper at some point. Having paid for whatever tests’ve been done on it. Win-win, all round.’

  ‘In fact when you think about it…’ Vaynor was on the edge of his chair. ‘There could even be a facial reconstruction. Imagine that. The face of a medieval vampire.’

  ‘Alleged.’

  ‘Walter Map’s black magician – alleged,’ Vaynor said. ‘I bet Turner’s wondering even now if it couldn’t work for him. With the additional frisson of a double murder. What’s the betting?’

  ‘Depends what he got up to at Cwmarrow Court, in between filming,’ Bliss said. ‘Doesn’t it? Let’s get one of the techies to go through this again, see how many faces we can bring out of the shadows. Let’s get stills of everybody. Everybody. And then let’s talk to Turner again.’

  The streets were drying off. The wind had retreated into the hills. Merrily had been offered transport home, but said she needed to do some shopping first, if that was OK. She needed to rest, separate herself. Recover. Think.

  She’d told Bliss there were no faces she recognized in Turner’s film, apart from Hector Pryce, who’d declared disinterest in his father’s pursuits. Bloody mad, people who get obsessed with the past. The past is worthless, messes you up.

  It was only a few minutes’ walk from Gaol Street, across St Peter’s Square to the complex of short, narrow streets leading to Castle Green.

  She felt she needed to see it, the last resting place of the maleficus – allegedly. Jane had told her roughly where it was in relation to the remains of the castle moat and the tall monument commemorating Lord Nelson.

  Merrily sat down on a bench. The green enclosure, the river on one side, the Cathedral on another, was all about defence, physical and spiritual. She tried to relax into it.

  Gave up and rang Jane.

  ‘Caroline called again.’

  ‘Oh. How did she sound?’

  ‘I said I hadn’t heard from you since you’d left for Cwmarrow, and it was like she didn’t know what to say next. I said could I get you to ring her when I heard from you? No, she didn’t want that. So I gave her your mobile number. However—’

  ‘She hasn’t called.’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t matter. After the second call, I thought, I wonder if she’s forgotten to conceal her number this time. And sure enough, the old 1471…’

  ‘Flower, you’re uncanny.’

  ‘I’ve put it in an email. And yes, it is a local number. Let me know if it hasn’t come through.’

  ‘I will. Thank you. I don’t know what I’d—’

  ‘Oh God, don’t go down that road,’ Jane said. ‘Just keep me in the picture. And get back ASAP. You need to sleep. Recover.’

  ‘No call from either of the Kellows?’

  She’d rung twice. No answer.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jane said. ‘But stay in touch.’

  She still sounded animated, i
nvolved. Something really had lifted.

  ‘Jane… Lol. Does Lol know about the accident?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him. Do you want me to go round?’

  ‘No. If he doesn’t know, let’s not worry him needlessly.’

  ‘Don’t switch your mobile off,’ Jane said

  Merrily sat with the phone in her hands, realizing she’d been gazing all through that conversation at a patch of ground where new sods had been laid.

  She walked over. The bank of the River Wye was ahead of her, the Cathedral to the right. A vampire’s grave underfoot. Allegedly.

  No mention of fangs and blood, but that was all nineteenth-century veiled eroticism. The methods used by the revenant maleficus to drain the life from his victims had not, unless they’d been lost in translation, been specified. It had been perceptive of Jane to underline the theory put forward by the bishop, Gilbert Foliot: Peradventure the Lord has given power to the evil angel of that lost soul to move about in the dead corpse.

  She was still walking around the grave, trying to make some metaphysical sense of the term evil angel, when the phone barked.

  She took a breath.

  ‘Merrily Watkins.’

  ‘Are you really all right, Merrily?’

  Sophie.

  ‘Yes. Thank you. I’m really all right.’

  ‘The hospital said your injuries were superficial.’

  ‘You rang the hospital?’

  ‘What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘You were supposed not to have known.’

  ‘Everybody knows. It’s a small city.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘I thought you were perhaps avoiding me.’

  ‘Sophie, I left a message thanking you for… for what you did. I didn’t like to go into details on an answering machine. But I am so very grateful.’

  ‘So grateful you’re keeping things from me.’

  ‘I just didn’t want to compromise you. And I still don’t.’

  Sophie said quickly, ‘The Bishop would like to see you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘He hasn’t told me.’

  ‘He knows about the accident? That I was there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Right.’ Merrily stared across at the top of the Cathedral tower pushing at the blank sky. ‘Well, if he’s not prepared to say what it’s about, you’d better tell him I’m busy right now and I’ll be in touch. Sometime.’

  In the hush, she felt her heart leap like a frightened deer. Sophie’s voice remained steady, its tone unaltered.

  ‘It’s the Bishop, Merrily.’

  ‘Yes. You said.’

  ‘And you want me to tell him you’re busy? Without further explanation.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You do know what that’s going to sound like?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  59

  Pulse

  THE OTHER OLDIES had gone back to the MIR, leaving Bliss and a man called Bryan Fry. A detective sergeant, retired about a year before Bliss came. Always meant to have a chat with him sometime. Fellow northerner and all.

  He was about seventy, bristly white hair and a moustache. Bliss asked him where he was from.

  ‘Southport.’

  ‘Posh,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Posher than Birkenhead. Time for a pint, lad?’

  ‘Don’t drink much any more, Bryan. Since me head injury.’

  ‘I heard about that.’

  ‘Alcohol – bad news now. Half a pint, I’m legless. Well… head aches, you know. It’s improving slowly. But I’ll buy you one.’

  ‘Not round here,’ Bryan Fry said. ‘Let’s not advertise this, in case it comes to bugger all. I’ve still got mates from the old days.’

  This sounded worthwhile. Bliss always liked it when they didn’t want to talk in front of anyone else. They went to the Spread Eagle, a cavernous old pub, top of King Street, not far from the Cathedral. Bliss bought Bryan Fry a pint and got himself a Pepsi. They sat near the door, on their own.

  ‘It’s all bloody different, now,’ Fry said. ‘Everything’s different, and it’s changed so bloody fast. Folks talk about the eighties like it was the Dark Ages. I wouldn’t last two weeks these days, me. I’d come out with summat I didn’t realize was racist or sexist and that’d be it. Can’t even call a bloke a fat bastard these days.’

  Bliss nodded.

  ‘Obesism. Frowned on.’

  ‘Them girls,’ Bryan Fry said, ‘in your video. Not what you’d call paedophilia, is it? Just a bit of young fluff.’

  ‘Young fluff,’ Bliss said. ‘Long time since I heard that.’

  ‘Historic sex abuse. No such thing then. Little girls lined up outside rock stars’ hotel rooms. Grooming was about horses.’

  ‘Those were the days, eh?’ Bliss said, encouragingly.

  ‘Hey, now I’m not saying that, lad. I didn’t play around. Family man, me, and grabbing all the overtime I could get. But it went on. It went on bloody everywhere. When it was on offer it didn’t get turned down much, you know what I mean? And you know the only time it ever became a police investigation?’

  ‘When one of them got murdered?’

  ‘You’re not as young as you look, are you? Aye. When one got murdered. And if it was a murder in what we now call an ethnic community, well it wasn’t a real murder, was it? Didn’t make much in the papers either. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that was right, I’m just saying that was how it was. Seems a long time ago now.’

  He sank a portion of his pint.

  ‘Well, sure, you’d get a bit of a flap every now and again. Remember satanic child abuse? So-called. Little kids and people in devil masks burning black candles? How long ago was that, now – end of the eighties, beginning of the nineties? All balls. Hysterical social workers. Discredited. Waste of police time.’

  Bliss wasn’t sure it had been a total waste of police time, it just hadn’t led to convictions. But he said nothing, let Bryan Fry get on with it.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Francis. Woman came into… I can’t honestly remember which station it was, but this’d be ten, fifteen years ago. From London. Eastender type. Bit loud, bit common, as they used to say. Had a feller with her, but he didn’t say much. Reckoned her daughter had been kidnapped by vampires. Well…’

  ‘Yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘I can imagine that starting a major inquiry. How old was the daughter?’

  ‘Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, I forget. I wasn’t involved, but I remember it. Johnny Flynn had a look at it – he left the force years ago, no idea where he is now. The woman said her daughter and a bunch of other kids had been into these vampire books – kids’ books, that’s all. And they were going to get together and go and meet this lad who was supposed to be a vampire. And the other kids backed out, and she’s ended up going on her own, not telling her mam, and she hasn’t come back. Georgia Welsh, her name, I remember that.’

  ‘And the lad who was a vampire?’

  ‘He’d written to her. That’s what her mother said. He’d written to her and of course they had to destroy the letter. The mother said it was after they wrote to the writer of this book, who turned out to be two people, living in a spooky old house in the wilds. Young woman, old feller, neither with fangs, I remember Johnny Flynn saying that. He’d gone for a chat. Oh, they said, they got hundreds of letters all the time. Sent stock replies. No, they didn’t remember any Georgia Welsh, why should they?’

  ‘And that was that?’

  ‘That was that, Francis. The old feller was well connected. And his son was Hector Pryce, new on the Bench, drank with senior police. Johnny Flynn wasn’t happy, I do remember that. He thought it was a funny set-up, these two. Just a feeling, you know? But this was then, and it turned out Georgia Welsh’s mother was on the game and had form for robbing a regular client while he was sleeping it off, so Johnny just got told to forget it, and I don’t think we ever heard from her again.�
�

  ‘You don’t know if the girl turned up?’

  ‘I don’t, lad. There was never much of a hunt, I know that.’

  ‘And this was definitely Kindley-Pryce’s books they were reading? Foxy Rowlestone?’

  ‘Just come out, I think. My kids were a bit too old by then so I wouldn’t know. See, I didn’t know until today that old Pryce was linked to this, but when I saw the video, all these young girls… well… made me think, that’s all. Made me remember. That’s what we’re here for i’n’t it? To remember.’

  ‘Well, thanks, Bryan.’

  ‘Not crime, though, was it, Francis? We’ve only quite recently started seeing crime there. That’s the thing. If nobody died, it wasn’t bloody crime.’

  He finished his beer, declined another.

  Bliss said, ‘Charlie Howe – was he still in charge?’

  ‘Bit of an elder statesman by then, but still going strong.’

  ‘I didn’t miss him on that video, did I?’

  ‘No, lad.’

  ‘But it would be him who called Johnny Flynn off.’

  ‘Probably would.’

  Back at Gaol Street, he went straight up to find Annie.

  Her office was a lot bigger than his but with fluorescent lights and no proper window. His head throbbed lightly in anticipation of worse to come, Annie hissing at him before he’d got the punchline out.

  ‘Francis, no. No, no, no.’

  Bliss shut the door, put his back against it.

  ‘We need to at least ask.’

  ‘He hates you.’

  ‘Then let’s not destroy anyone else’s professional relationship with the bugger.’

  ‘You do remember what happened last time, I take it.’

  ‘He humiliated me. And then I came to talk to you, and you were wearing the stripy sweater—’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘—and in the end it turned out to be the best Christmas in a long time. For me, anyway. And I would like there to be another. After we sort this.’

  ‘You’ll get nothing out of Charlie,’ Annie said. ‘Charlie is a clever man. Even cleverer than you, not being weighed down with lapsed Catholic guilt. He certainly has more in his personal history to protect. And more to gain.’

  ‘He thinks the further he rises, the further out of reach he’s gonna be. Not any more, Annie.’