by Phil Rickman
‘Yeh, right.’
Bliss’s mouth felt like the bottom of a ditch in July.
‘Meanwhile…’ Charlie brushing the air with a hand. ‘… get out of my house, there’s a good boy.’
Bliss got out.
He was sweating. Sweat was even worse than rain. Driving back to Hereford, he felt too close to crying. What if Charlie was right? What if there was nothing between him and Annie that didn’t depend on them being coppers? Meeting furtively like they were undercover, lying in bed in the early hours, talking about crime, how sick was that?
63
Darker glasses
THE WIND HAD gone. Nothing moved at the top of the vicarage drive except for the night clouds, quite slowly. Merrily thanked the cop and got out and, feeling dizzy, held on to a young sycamore as he drove away.
Images were shuffling like picture cards in her mind: a crushed head and a skull with a stone in its mouth, trees and bone and the ravaging wind. Meaningless, pointless connections, alongside a terrible new thought about how she might have killed Adam Malik.
Jane had the door open, came to take her arm – she looked that bad? She saw big writing on the notepad by the phone in the hall.
‘No.’ Jane putting herself in front of the hall table. ‘Don’t try and call anybody. The insurance guy rang about the car. They’ve taken it to a garage in Hereford. They’ll be in touch on whether it’s a write-off, but its age says yes. Now come and eat. I’m cooking.’
‘You’re my mother now?’
‘Not planning to be anybody’s mother,’ Jane said briskly. ‘Not ever. I thought you’d got that message. Go and sit down. It’ll be crap, but you’ll be too tired to notice.’
She made it through the omelette. Like all Jane’s omelettes, it was the texture of a bathroom mat. She said how good it was. She sat and inhaled vapour and was starting to tell Jane about Caroline Goddard when the doorbell rang.
Jane switched out the lights, went to peer through the hall window and came back whispering.
‘Up the back stairs. Don’t argue. Without a car, he doesn’t know you’re here. I’ll get rid of him. Go!’
‘Never mind.’
Too tired to move, anyway.
Jane didn’t leave the kitchen. She went over and made tea, although he’d shaken his head. He wore a sober suit and a black tie. No velvet, nothing eccentric. He sat down well away from the lamp, telling them he’d had a meeting in Worcester lasting most of the afternoon, so hadn’t heard the news until he came out.
He pushed fingertips into his forehead.
‘I do apologize for burdening you.’
‘Not a burden, Mr Khan.’
‘You may not be saying that when I’ve gone.’
‘Depends how long you’re here,’ Jane said.
‘My daughter’s renowned for her tact.’ Merrily laid down the e-cig. ‘You’ve probably heard I was there. Part of what happened.’
‘I can see you were there. I’m so sorry. I hope you’re not too—’
‘It’s superficial. The pictures in my head are far, far— Look, it’s awful, it’s unbelievably awful. I didn’t get it right. If I’d pushed harder to see Aisha the last time I… but who am I to demand anything?’
‘Easy to play what if, Mrs Watkins.’
‘The worst thing that occurred to me – just now, on the way back – did he see my car ahead and slam the brakes on? Thus arriving directly in the path of the tree when he might have got through before it was down. His car was at an angle. I thought he must’ve swerved to avoid the tree, but you wouldn’t, would you? The tree’s going to cover the entire road and both hedges… But you would swerve, while braking hard, to avoid an oncoming vehicle on a single-track lane.’
‘Mum, for Christ’s sake—’
‘Act of God,’ Khan said, ‘was the phrase used at the hospital.’
‘Act of Allah,’ Jane murmured, quite bitterly, into the kettle hiss. ‘Only fair to share the blame in these situations.’
Khan sighed.
‘In the eyes of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, there’s only one God. Though it appears that some people see him through darker glasses than others. At the moment, I myself might as well be blindfolded.’
‘How’s Aisha?’ Merrily said quickly. ‘Do you know?’
‘They thought at first an arm might be broken, but now they don’t think so. Mrs Watkins, as Jane may have mentioned, I came early this morning, when you were presumably…’
Merrily looked up at Jane, who did a helpless, too-much-happening thing with her hands.
‘I… braved the storm and went over to talk to Adam last night. He was in… turmoil would not be too strong a word. Bothered about things he hadn’t told you. Trying to be cool and sensible and rational, while Nadya…’
He broke off. The sweat-glaze on his forehead was the first sign of distress she’d ever seen him display.
Jane delivered the tea, thankfully not Earl Grey, to the table.
‘Things I need to do,’ she said. Tactfully. ‘Back in a few minutes.’
‘I was at Oxford with women like Nadya,’ Raji Khan said. ‘Radical in every possible way. Supported the Palestinians against the Israelis in any given situation. Saw the honourable side of the Taliban. Nothing so wrong with that, until it becomes a rigid mindset and one loses a sense of balance. She wasn’t popular in the Worcester community. People were suspicious of her. Some of them laughing at the idea of a jihadi seed in an English ornamental garden.’
Merrily could see her now, in the Maliks’ sitting room. The prim blue hijab.
‘My feeling,’ she said, ‘was that Nadya had a problem with religion. Any religion.’
‘You’re right, of course. More conversant with the Koran than Adam ever was, but that doesn’t mean she believes in God. Or… any lower spiritual manifestation.’
‘She introduced the djinn…well, not as something she believed in, but as a superior Islamic answer to primitive Western superstitions about ghosts. Spirits of the dead, pfft…’
‘Yes. Precisely. She believed that what happened to her father was an hysterical product of overwork, obsession and his fear of growing old. He simply didn’t want to admit that the house was too much for him. Nadya wanted to bring in an ordinary building firm to modernize it as much as was permissible under listed building regulations and have done with it.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Another source of tension. Adam was the peacemaker. But when he… when something happened to him…’
Merrily sat up.
‘You’re talking about before the tree—’
‘It’s why he wanted to talk to me last night. He asked me where you lived. It was his intention to try and see you. Today. On his own.’
‘To say… what?’
‘In fact, we agreed to meet here. He wasn’t due at the hospital until mid-morning. I was a little late. Not that it would have made any difference. I suppose he was already dead by then.’
‘But why did he…?’
‘To ask your advice. About what he’d glimpsed, on… it must have been Sunday. After you’d left. The bulbs had blown on the landing. Dennis had given him two bulbs to replace them and he went through to the stairs – the wooden stairs, not very old, that go up from the Maliks’ side of the house. He had a flashlight. It wouldn’t work. He told me he looked up and, where the newel post was, at the top, saw a very faint shape. Not bright, but quite distinct. Pointing. At, ah… him.’
Raji Khan pushed the fingertips of both hands into his forehead again. He hadn’t touched his tea.
Think. Was he making this up?
Why would he?
She was wide awake now after the meal, two mugs of tea, the vape stick.
‘I gather you’ve been assisting the police,’ he said, ‘in connection with the two Hereford murders.’
As if he’d felt the need to allow this madness to assimilate, Raji Khan had simply changed the subject.
‘Who told you t
hat?’
‘I tend to gather information on my travels.’
‘Mr Khan, I’ve had enough evasion for one day. Who told you?’
Khan blinked.
‘I serve on committees, dealing with youth, diversity and other boring but worthy issues. The police are often involved, I know some of them quite well. Others I avoid. In Hereford, mainly.’
It was a source of some annoyance to Frannie Bliss that Khan seemed to be protected at some exalted, probably headquarters level, perhaps as an informant. Which wouldn’t be linked to the drug trade. In fact, the nearer you got to Birmingham, the closer it might be to intelligence about terrorist activity.
‘There are, I regret to say,’ he said, ‘two sides to many of us. If you’d told me at university that I’d become a, shall we say, entrepreneur, I should have been insulted. It began, I suppose, when, as a student, I worked at weekends, for Hector Pryce.’
‘You worked for him?’
‘I organised music events at Hector’s pubs. Always that joy in music. Even the kind of junk Hector wanted was better than not working with music at all.’
And so it came out. How he’d known about Cwmarrow before Adam Malik went to live there, intrigued because it appeared so alien to Hector’s world of transport, catering, downmarket entertainment and… other less visible enterprises.
‘When Hector married Lynne Hamer after her husband was killed in his plane, he acquired two restaurants,’ Khan said. ‘Neither doing well. Lynne hoped he’d bring them round. Instead, he sold them and quietly put the money into an escort agency and a massage parlour in outer Birmingham. Both of which quickly made money, which he used, gradually, to buy another restaurant and two pubs. So he was respectable and Lynne was happy.’
‘I didn’t know any of that.’
‘Of course you didn’t. Had it been known about, would Hector have become a magistrate? It’s my understanding that he quietly retained interests around Birmingham. Useful for entertaining wealthy friends. But then… I, too, have mixed, on occasion, in disreputable company. Two sides, Mrs Watkins.’
‘Why are you telling me all this, Mr Khan?’
He sat back, at the shadowed end of the refectory table.
‘As I said, there’s a side of me that mixes happily with the most senior police. But if I went to the police at any level it would have to be passed back to Hereford and those I tend to avoid.’
‘Bliss?’
‘You, however, are in a safer position, not least because of your profession.’
Huh.
‘You’re saying you want to use me to pass some information to Bliss?’
‘I’m a Sufi. We look within ourselves and act accordingly. The path we’re offered can be circuitous. I think the police should be investigating the possibility that Hector Pryce might have knowledge of these two murders.’
‘Wh —?’
‘Soffley – I knew him. Once worked in Hector’s shadow business. His own, in Organ Yard, was overlooked by Hector’s pub, the Old Coaching House. With his shop on its last legs, Soffley, I suspect, would not have been above asking for financial assistance. In return for continued silence.’
‘You think he was blackmailing Hector Pryce? Over the massage—?’
‘No, no, no. That’s nothing. No, no. I think, over the killing of Tristram Greenaway.’
Merrily took a hit on the e-cig, watched him through the white vapour. Knowing Jane would be outside the door, listening.
‘Mr Khan… cards on the table time. Tristram Greenaway was employed – whether he was actually paid or not I don’t know – by Selwyn Kindley-Pryce to represent the hero of Kindley-Price’s vampire novels. To set young girls’ hearts aflutter.’
Khan smiled.
‘Young girls. And older men.’
‘Oh.’
Caroline: Hector never came near me. He didn’t really like women.
‘Two sides to everyone,’ Khan said.
‘You knew this?’
‘I don’t think Hector knew it himself – or admitted it – until he encountered Greenaway. A young man on the make. You don’t seem surprised.’
‘Like you, I get around. Was Hector’s… ambivalence… widely known about?’
‘Heavens, no. His wife wouldn’t have known. I only know myself because I was the recipient of a tentative overture… immediately withdrawn when there was no reciprocity. This was after Greenaway had left Hereford, leaving Hector in… there was an element of denial. When I mentioned Greenaway once, Hector’s reaction conveyed… oh, perhaps even hatred. For corrupting him, leading him from the straight and narrow. I often wondered what would happen if Greenaway were ever to return. And when I learned about the damage inflicted on a once pretty face…’
‘You think he was capable of that?’
‘There’s always been a burning resentment inside Hector. A sense of repressed violence. But that’s only my opinion.’
She was silent, would not tell him what might well have brought Pryce and Greenaway face to face: the dark grail of the Friends of the Dusk.
Steve Skull.
Some minutes later, Jane returned from her apartment. Raji Khan greeted her with a smile.
‘And have you given Mr Walls his envelope yet?’
‘I’m saving it,’ Jane said. ‘I want to be able to enjoy the moment.’
‘Of course,’ Mr Khan said. ‘Enjoyment is important.’
When he’d gone, Merrily phoned Bliss on his mobile from the scullery. He was at home. He sounded frayed.
‘No name?’ he said. ‘You’re giving me this with no name attached?’
‘Think of it as one of those Crimestoppers calls where you can leave information anonymously. But you’re getting it from me, so at least you know I’m not, as the Book says, bearing false witness.’
‘Oh, Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘And me thinking I might gerra night’s sleep.’
64
The Second Death
IT AWOKE HER twice in the hours before daylight, the way a moaning wind does, or heavy rain. But there was neither wind nor rain and no birdsong, although this was what it most resembled, maybe the hollow, repetitive dawnsong of the wood pigeon.
Merr-il-y… Come along.
Again and again until her eyes opened, and she saw a long hand, made of light, patting the bed, close to her left thigh.
She didn’t scream or whimper or squirm away because it was a dream and your own screams always awoke you. Instead, in the dream, because she’d been here before, she didn’t move but instinctively whispered the Lord’s prayer, with the old-fashioned, not-mates words. Soon afterwards, she awoke, cold and numb, to find the duvet pulled to the other side of the bed so that her legs were uncovered.
Not good.
She sat on the side of the bed in cold air that made her face ache and could only mean a heavy frost, and said the Lord’s Prayer again, then went to the window and said it again and again and again until the words had become a moving belt passing through her body from her solar plexus, through her breast and over her head and down her spine, between her legs and back again, and she went back to bed and slept until Jane came in with tea.
‘You OK?’
The sky in the window behind her was a flawless, shocking blue.
‘Thank you, flower.’ She sat up. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
Merr-il-y… Come along.
Her elbows went back, hard, into the headboard. Jane’s head spun, as if something had flitted past her.
‘I… was going to give you until midday. Huw’s on his way.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Coming up to half-eleven?’
‘Oh my God.’ Pushing the duvet away. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘You were knackered.’
A bunch of calls on the machine about parish business, including a baptism next Saturday. She dealt with them on autopilot. Yes… I think so… Sure, no problem… I’ll check… Is it OK if I get back to you? Then Sophie called, toneless.
/> ‘It’s not good news, Merrily.’
‘No. I don’t suppose it is.’
‘The Bishop wants to see you. Formally. At ten tomorrow morning.’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’
‘Be nice to see the old place again.’
‘Yes, it’s changed quite a bit.’
‘Chair gone?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘My pens and notebooks and stuff?’
‘There’ll be a bag waiting for you. I also have to tell you that, as you failed to reply to it, the offer of the post of Rural Dean has been withdrawn.’
‘So it’s not all bad news, then.’
‘I shall see you tomorrow. That’s assuming…’
‘Oh, yes. I’ll be there. Be cowardice not to turn up. Sophie—’
‘I have to go.’
Not alone, then.
It was no place to work any more, was it? A reason to tell yourself not to be upset.
Huw tossed his canvas shoulder bag into a corner of the hall, followed Merrily into the kitchen, pulled one of the cane dining chairs over to the wood-stove.
‘Colder.’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s not dress this up, lass. We need to talk about a word I’d normally avoid like a Wetherspoon’s pub.’
She didn’t say the word either.
‘Big subject, Huw.’
‘Not when you get rid of the shit. And there is some.’
She stayed on her feet. Didn’t even remember what she’d said to him last night. She’d rung him after Bliss and another failed attempt to get an answer at Cwmarrow Court. She’d called him from the middle of a thickening mental mist.
‘Thank you, by the way,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming. I don’t say that often enough.’
He ignored it.
‘It’s not what you think. And yet, in a way it is.’
‘Vampirism. There. Said it. Did you say you might be bringing someone with you?’
‘I said I were working wi’ somebody. Someone who knows more than me about these things.’
‘Not sure who that was.’
‘I didn’t say. But it’s a friend of yours who you seem reluctant to regard as a friend on account everything in your theological training argues against it. But that’s the Church for you. Self-protection. Let’s keep the industry to ourselves.’
