by Phil Rickman
‘You didn’t go shopping, did you?’
‘Ended up meeting Caroline Goddard. Though I didn’t know that was going to happen when I left here. If there’d been anybody with me, Annie, it’s unlikely she’d have said a word. She’s… eccentric. Lives in town but won’t say where. I don’t think she’s using her own name, and she looks nothing like the woman in the video.’
‘You’re sure it was Caroline Goddard?’
‘Without taking a DNA swab, yes, I’m sure.’
‘All right.’ Howe pulled out a chair for Merrily and sat on the edge of Bliss’s desk, an open notepad in front of her. ‘What can you tell me?’
‘Well, I’m not sure how much you—’
‘I’m the SIO, Merrily. I know everything. And while I’m not a lapsed Catholic and have never worked in Liverpool – or indeed been to Liverpool – I think I can have a vague stab at grasping whatever you’re trying to say.’
‘OK.’ Merrily shrugged. ‘Tell me when I reach the elements you don’t want to go near.’
‘Anything non-corporeal I simply tune out.’
Better, perhaps, not even to go into any of that. She talked about Caroline’s relationship with Kindley-Pryce, how they’d slept together on an irregular basis, but not cohabited. How Caroline was dominated and not – if you believed her – given partner status, on any level.
‘Now why do we think that was?’ Howe said. ‘Given that, at his age, you’d imagine that a bit of local arm-candy with waist-length hair would be quite a flattering addition to his… ménage. Also, as they were working together, quite intensively…’
‘I think she did most of her writing at her own cottage. As for him, although the age gap is about thirty years, perhaps – and this can be surmised from the video – perhaps he’d been given access to even… fresher fruit.’
‘Yes, we did see the tree on the DVD.’
‘It was the time, wasn’t it? Thousands of teenage girls either side of the Atlantic drawn towards the… the apocryphal world of the undead. Buffy, Twilight – had Twilight started then?’
‘I’ve no idea. Perhaps I need to look all this up. In the meantime…’
Extending an open hand. Merrily nodded.
‘OK… part of my job is to monitor semi-spiritual social patterns. I remember reading about million-copy print-runs of romantic vampire novels aimed at young adults. Teen hysteria. This is some years after it started, so I’m not saying the Foxy Rowlestones were doing that kind of business – I didn’t actually know about them – but if the series had carried on they might well have done. I was given the impression the series stopped because Kindley-Pryce’s mind was going and Caroline hadn’t the heart to carry on.’
‘What is Ms Goddard actually saying?’
‘She was walking all around the subject. Trying to be helpful but obviously anxious not to bring anything down on herself. Truly, I think there’s a lot she didn’t know. A lot she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to be exposed to. And Kindley-Pryce wouldn’t want to scare her off.’
‘What did scare her off, if not his dementia?’ Annie said. ‘I mean, I doubt that would make him easy or at all pleasant to work with. What kind of dementia does he have? All we tend to hear about is Alzheimer’s disease.’
‘I don’t know. There must be medical records. The doctors who look after Lyme Farm would know.’
‘Hmm.’ Howe made a note on her pad. ‘Was all this pre-Internet?’
‘No, but not a great deal was happening social-media wise when it started, I’d imagine.’
‘So if we’re looking at – let’s not dress this up – abuse of readers, young fans, it’s the books themselves that were doing the grooming?’
‘In a way, yes. Not a word that was in use in a sexual context, when this started. But, yeah, there was no need for grooming, the magnetism was there – the glamour, the romance, the mystery. And this sense of the clandestine, the cloaked.’
‘You do seem very informed about all this.’
‘Because I’ve been there. Well, not there, but… for a short time – though not as short as I’ve assured my daughter – I was a bit of a teenage goth. Black T-shirt, black nails, black lipstick, spooky music, Anne Rice novels… I’m not sure there was any young-adult gothic romance back then but if I’d read The Summoner at fifteen I might well have fantasized about baring my throat for Geraint, the blacksmith, under a full moon. There. Said it. Caution me.’
Annie stared at her.
‘And I was supposed to be quite intelligent,’ Merrily said. ‘Hormones can take you to some dark places. And nowhere darker – perhaps – than Cwmarrow. It seemed significant to me that Caroline was urged by Kindley-Pryce to make Geraint, the male lead, the heart-throb, increasingly appealing in a sexual way. Which had to be done subtly to get published – the vampire in the Twilight series is a vegetarian, for heaven’s sake.’
‘So if the Friends of the Dusk were preying on young readers, fans… how does this work?’
‘I don’t know. But I can tell you about the bait. Jane did just a cursory search of the Net – the Foxy Rowlestone Appreciation Society – still active – and something called the Fang Forum, ostensibly for adults. She found members claiming they’d been to the Nightlands, as it’s called in the books. And others saying they’d actually seen Geraint.’
‘How would they know where to go?’
‘Some came in on the train and Hector Pryce coaches would ferry them to Cwmarrow.’
‘Interesting.’
Caroline says that people who wrote to Foxy Rowlestone – or certain people who wrote – would receive a circular or an email package which might include a photograph of Geraint, half in shadow but every bit as good-looking as they could wish for.’
‘You’re saying…’ Annie screwing up her eyes. ‘… that this Geraint, on some level, existed?
‘Geraint on no level existed. And yet… Oh God, I need to think about this.’
‘Just tell me what you know of the facts.’
‘The only fact I have is that the shadowy Geraint in the picture was Tristram Greenaway.’
‘Goddard told you this? Kids who wrote in were all receiving pictures of Greenaway?’
‘That was the nature of his employment, while still at school, by Kindley-Pryce. He was also in charge of sending the fan pictures off. Nice Saturday job if you can get it. Whether he’d be instantly recognizable is debatable…’
‘Was that it? Or is it possible he was involved… further?’
‘If he was gay, he couldn’t have been all that involved.’
‘Unless there were a few boys writing in. Can’t be ruled out, Merrily.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘But I can see what you mean about all this being confusing. It wouldn’t, of course, necessarily be criminal behaviour unless the girls were under-age. The ones on Turner’s film could all be over sixteen. What happened after the photographs of the… the shadow-Greenaway were sent off or emailed? What happened next?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
‘Well, I think I can speculate,’ Annie said. ‘I think the correspondence would move to a different level. Less public. Perhaps using the Neogoth network, if Bliss has mentioned that to you. They don’t want to ask for trouble, so they would prune the list to isolate the most enthusiastic… or fanatical, or… needy…? Still strikes me as astonishing that this could go on in the Herefordshire countryside, for so long with so little leakage. But then, if we consider the industrial scale of sexual abuse of girls by Asian gangs in the north and even Oxford, over years, with no action by the police…’
‘I think,’ Merrily said, ‘that you’re looking at something much smaller, if more intense and more… well, more occult. Do you see what I’m—?’
‘And that in itself is another can of worms. I imagine police and social services were still nursing their wounds over the satanic child-abuse fiasco.’
‘The girls involved… I’d suggest that they don’t
see themselves as having been sexually exploited as much as… initiated. If finding the Nightlands wasn’t made easy for them, that would only add to the excitement… and the commitment, the need – the desire – to maintain secrecy. They’d be feeling like the chosen ones. And once they got there… a place that’s remote, deeply atmospheric and just sufficiently forbidding, in an enticing way… to somehow bridge the gap between Tristram Greenaway, who doesn’t, with girls, and Selwyn Kindley-Pryce who—’
Merrily’s shudder made the chair move.
‘There could have been use of drugs,’ Annie said soberly. ‘To make it all more… almost hallucinatory. Very easily administered.’ She levered herself from the desk. ‘Where’s Goddard now?’
‘In the city, somewhere. Wouldn’t give me her address. I don’t honestly think she’d make a great interviewee. Not for the police. She’s all over the place.’
‘That would be for us to decide.’
‘Sure.’
It was a police matter now. Whoever killed Tristram Greenaway and the other guys, that was no business of hers.
‘All right.’ Annie Howe opened the door, held it back. ‘Why don’t you go home and get some sleep? I’ll organize a car. I think I need to get hold of Bliss. ASAP.’
Waiting outside, she felt cold and lost. An unmarked car drew up next to her, to take her home. The driver was nobody she recognized.
62
A flogging
CHARLIE HOWE WAS so very friendly that, but for the call from Annie, Bliss might well have cut his losses and walked out.
‘Only just talking about you, boy.’
‘Who to?’
Charlie tapped his nose.
‘Take a seat, Brother Bliss.’
Bliss hesitated. Last time, he hadn’t even got out of the rain outside Charlie’s tall, brick home on the main road out of Leominster. Now he’d been ushered into the home office: two desks, filing cabinets, dense black carpet and matching soft leather chairs. Bliss chose the one that didn’t swivel.
‘Just surprised you took so long, boy.’
Charlie sat in the swivel chair next to the roll-top desk. He never changed: the short, stiff white hair over an indestructible leathery face that just got more lived-in and comfortable, like an old biker jacket. He wore a waistcoat and had an old-fashioned pin through his shirt collar.
‘To congratulate you, right?’ Bliss said. ‘On your candidature for Police and Crime Commissioner.’
Charlie beamed.
‘Oh, that can wait till I’m elected. No point in wasting it till you can’t afford to offend me any more.’
‘Actually, Charlie,’ Bliss said, ‘it wasn’t about that at all. OK if I offend you about something else?’
Charlie reached across the desk and snapped on the brass desk lamp, aimed the tubular shade at Bliss.
‘This better not be a waste of my valuable time, boy.’
‘In that case, I’ll get straight to it. Let’s look back towards the end of your era as head of CID. A new millennium soon to be dawning, all fresh and free of graft and backhanders, brown envelopes, all the stuff that gave the twentieth century such a bad reputation.’
Charlie said nothing. Bliss talked about historical sexual abuse, how the term had taken off after revelations about Jimmy Savile, the BBC TV personality who helped out in hospitals and helped himself to the patients and anybody else unlikely to complain about being groped by famous hands. Charlie looked irritated.
‘And?’ Charlie said. ‘And?’
‘Georgia Welsh,’ Bliss said.
‘Not a name I know, boy.’
‘Mother arrived from London saying she’d been abducted.’
‘By aliens?’
‘Vampires, actually. A DC called Johnny Flynn was asked to look into it.’
‘Flynn. Aye, I remember Flynn. Wasn’t Irish. And, oh, yes, now it does come back to me. A woman with form for robbing a punter. A drunk, a fantasist. Fully investigated. Entirely baseless.’
‘You ever heard of Friends of the Dusk?’
‘Punk rock band?’ Charlie swivelled lightly. ‘See, I don’t get where you’re coming from at all. I had nothing to do with any of this ole shit. That girl, it was run past me as a formality, look. Like dozens of others every week. And, as I recall, she was over sixteen and so able to leave home. And, if my memory don’t fail me – and it don’t, Brother Bliss – she turned up.’
Bugger.
‘And you didn’t think to talk to her?’
Charlie put a hand behind an ear.
‘Do I hear the sound of a very thin straw getting clutched?’
‘Here’s another name,’ Bliss said quickly. ‘Hector Pryce.’
‘In what connection?’
‘Mate of yours?’
‘He was a smart young magistrate. A mate of all of us.’
‘You still see him?’
‘Now and then.’
‘You know about Hector’s old man entertaining young ladies – very young ladies – at his secluded home in the western hills? Readers of his kids’ books. Like Georgia Welsh.’
‘Selwyn? The distinguished, retired academic, now in a nursing home?’
‘Now in Hector’s nursing home.’
‘So?’
‘Charlie, in connection with the murder inquiry you’ve doubtless heard about, we – that’s your daughter, who’s heading up the inquiry – and me are looking at serious evidence of historical abuse of women and children, ten or more years ago, at Selwyn’s rural retreat, Cwmarrow Court. One of those things that just emerge when you’re investigating something else. We think young fans of the books were being invited to linked events at Cwmarrow Court and the ones who were most keen would be invited back to more exclusive functions.’
‘Well, good luck with that inquiry.’
‘Could be big, Charlie, could be wide-ranging. Could be that nobody who had a toe in the pool will walk away. They go on and on, these inquiries and allegations keep coming out of the woodwork for years and years.’
‘And? Scuse me if I missed it, Brother Bliss…’ Charlie folding his arms. ‘… but you don’t yet seem to have pointed a stubby little finger in my direction.’
‘It was your era, Charlie.’
‘End of.’
‘And not a whisper? Word is Johnny Flynn would like to have carried on with that investigation.’
‘What, even though the girl’d turned up?’
‘Lot of other teenage girls passing through the Cwmarrow Valley. Didn’t you think to talk to any?’
You could almost hear the small creak in Charlie’s leathery face.
‘You know what, boy? I should throw you out and lodge a complaint. But I’d hate to think there was anything personal that might damage our relations in the future. Or cause you to become obstructive during my election campaign.’
Charlie was entirely relaxed now, came languidly to his feet and strolled over to one of his filing cabinets.
‘See, when I got a whisper of this, I didn’t believe it. Could’ve decked the bloke who told me, even though he was an old friend. You know what it’s like when you learn something that disgusts you.’
Charlie took out a laminate file, tossed it on his desk.
‘Go on, Brother Bliss. Open it.’
Bliss didn’t touch the file.
Charlie laughed and went back to his swivel chair.
‘I’ll do it for you, then.’
There were half a dozen photographs in the file. Big ones, blow-ups. Charlie took one out, held it up. Bliss saw a woman in a cream trench-coat and hat, getting out of a car in a parking bay, a shop front lit up in the background. Charlie took it away and put it face down on the desk, revealing the second photo in the pile: same woman, face visible, on a doorstep.
A sequence. The sixth picture had been taken from across the road, through the big front window. It showed the woman in the trench coat standing with her arms around a man who looked just slightly shorter. His face wasn’t visible
, but that wouldn’t be important.
Charlie made a little amused noise.
‘I gather you’ve started drawing your curtains sooner now. Well, too late, boy. Too late.’
‘Charlie, this is—’
‘See, I knew there was somebody. I started dropping hints. Anne was given every opportunity to tell me who she was seeing. Not a word.’
‘Like it’s any of your business.’
‘I didn’t like that. I thought it might be worth hiring a private inquiry agent.’
‘You wouldn’t do that, Charlie. You’d look up a discreet ex-copper who owed you one.’
Charlie didn’t smile.
‘It was sheer disbelief when I first saw these. Sheer disbelief. I had to confirm it. Driving past Anne’s block and saw your car. That bad night. Hurricane Lorna. Parked up a short distance away, rang her up and said I’d be calling in. Sure enough, out you come within minutes, scurrying into the storm. I remember thinking, terrible driving conditions. Good night to get himself killed. But we can’t have everything, can we?’
Bliss said nothing. Sat and took it like a flogging. Thinking hard and coming up with more of nothing. Watching Charlie’s mouth turn down in distaste.
‘I won’t need to tell you how very disappointed I was in Anne. Even after I thought, how far would this little man sink to get at me? I knew you were hurting, look, after our last chat. So… love, is it?’
‘Don’t use words you don’t understand.’
‘And you, boy…’ Charlie’s finger came up. ‘… will see just how much that word means to Anne when one of you’s invited to go on the transfer list. Not just out of the division, out of West Mercia. Hereford’s two most senior detectives in and out of one another’s beds and keeping it secret? I don’t think so, Brother Bliss. Mabbe one of you gets out of the Service, and I think that’d be you. Annie wouldn’t go. Her life now, the Job. Something to prove.’
‘She’s still your daughter, Charlie. Remember?’
‘Only nominally now, Brother Bliss, since her descent to a ratty little Mersey mongrel. But…’ Charlie’s mouth smiled. ‘… it don’t need to come to that, do it? We can all be friends. Distant friends, but friends nonetheless.’
