by Phil Rickman
Merrily nodded.
‘The police said, why didn’t you report him missing? I tried to explain, but they didn’t seem convinced.’ Both hands gripping the cup. ‘Oh, dear God.’
‘When you say the police . . .?’
‘Man with some sort of Northern accent.’
‘Liverpool?’
‘Perhaps.’
The strategic hypocrisy of the cops. As if they’d have reacted at all, the same night, to a report of a man walking out on his wife. Even if it was a face from the Hereford Times.
Helen Ayling sat up, placing the cup and saucer on the table, shaking her head.
‘I still can’t take it in. The sheer horror of it. When did they do it? He was on foot. Were they waiting somewhere here? Did they take him somewhere to—?’
‘Don’t.’
Sophie reaching over, taking Helen’s hands. Sophie’s eyes suddenly blazing with outrage. That it could happen here. In this most protected, select part of town. This conservation area. Under the Cathedral that Sophie served.
‘The police were all over the house,’ Helen said. ‘And the garden. Putting all the lights on. The tool-shed . . .’
Yes, they would have to look in the tool shed.
‘You’ll stay with us tonight, Helen?’
‘Sophie, thank you, but . . . I have to stay here, don’t I? For as long as . . . Have to get used to it.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Mrs Ayling,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to get them all hanging around outside – national press, TV. That’s one reason the police suggest a family liaison officer stays here with you. Protect your privacy when your . . . when they release your husband’s name.’
‘They can’t protect you from your thoughts, though, can they?’
‘With regard to that,’ Sophie said, ‘I thought Merrily could perhaps do something . . . pray with you?’
‘Sophie . . .’ Helen Ayling, perhaps understandably, looking less than eager. ‘I rather think . . .’
‘I understand that at times like this,’ Merrily said, ‘prayer can be difficult, so . . .’
Helen Ayling nodded, her eyes falling shut like an old-fashioned doll’s. ‘It’s not real to me yet. They can’t even—’ Her eyes flicked open, looking into Merrily’s. ‘Your husband . . . was he . . . his body . . . able to be identified . . . by you?’
‘No. His car went into a motorway bridge. At speed.’
Sean’s body pulped and shredded and mingled with the remains of his mistress.
The front-door knocker crashed twice; Helen Ayling and Merrily both flinched.
‘Stay there.’ Sophie came to her feet, moved to the door to the hall. ‘I’ll see who it is.’
Helen nodded wearily, pulling a dark green cardigan around her shoulders. Merrily sat there feeling all wrong in her cassock, like some kind of attendant angel of death. Noting that Helen Ayling’s eyes remained dry, without the hollow shining light that came with real grief. Pain was there and revulsion, but if this had been a marriage made in heaven something in heaven was malfunctioning.
‘The Blackfriars priory,’ Helen said. ‘Monastery. I’ve never even been there. I’m sure my husband never mentioned it. And the . . . the Preaching Cross. Why . . .?’
And then Sophie was back, carrying her grey coat and Merrily’s coat and the wet umbrella.
‘It’s the police again. Not Bliss this time, Merrily. It looks as if he’s been relieved by his superior officer.’
‘Howe?’
Sophie nodded. Merrily stood up at once. If it was Howe, better she wasn’t here.
‘Helen, we can probably both wait in the kitchen,’ Sophie said, ‘if we’re quiet.’
‘Please make yourselves some tea. Anything you want.’ Helen crossing the room, head bowed. ‘I’ll let them in.’
At the door, she turned. She looked small and devastated, like a lost child in a department store.
‘Why do they keep coming here? I’m not part of this. He was a public man. Even in . . . death.’
She went out quickly, almost running, and Merrily followed Sophie into the inner hall leading to the kitchen, the way they’d come in, Merrily looking back once, thinking, yes, in many ways this was the same as her and Sean.
When a man you were supposed to love and didn’t any more came to a sudden and savage end, it messed you up in all kinds of unforeseeable ways.
13
All of Him
OBVIOUSLY ANNIE HOWE would come in for this one. This was high-profile in every respect. This would be national news. And besides . . .
‘My father knew your husband for many years,’ Annie Howe was saying. ‘He’s asked me to express to you his—’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘County Councillor Howe? Charles Howe?’
‘Charlie,’ Helen Ayling said. ‘Yes, of course.’
Yes, there was that very useful connection.
Merrily stood listening in the inner hall, with its stained panels and yellowing mouldings. The door to the drawing room wasn’t quite closed. She’d put on her coat and her gloves, and it was still cold, looked cold in the blue-grey light from a single frosted window at the far end.
There was a radiator, but it was off. Evidently not a man to waste money, Clem Ayling. At least, not his own.
Annie Howe said, ‘I spoke to my father this morning. In confidence – he’s an ex-police officer. He asked me to convey to you his regret at what’s happened to your husband.’
His regret that someone killed your husband and cut off his head? The Charlie that Merrily knew would have said far more but, like New York cops on TV who tossed out a cursory ‘Sorry for your loss’ before cutting to the chase, Annie Howe didn’t do warmth. Or even, come to think of it, fury.
Helen said, ‘Charlie was here . . . I don’t know, some weeks ago.’
‘Mrs Ayling, I’d like to ask you a few more questions relating to your husband’s council work.’
‘I’m afraid he didn’t—’
‘If you could bear with me . . . the last day you were together, that’s the day before yesterday, you told my colleague your husband was out all day, at meetings. Do you remember precisely which meetings?’
‘The morning, I’m not sure, but in the afternoon I know he had a meeting of Hereforward.’
‘Hereforward – could you remind me . . .?’
‘It’s where they discuss radical, long-term ideas for the future of the county, with various appointed consultants. Clem always hated going, but he didn’t like the idea of anything like that even existing, unless he was there to monitor it. Bunch of outsiders, he used to say, who couldn’t care less about Hereford. But then he also used to say that about most of the council officials.’
‘He didn’t get on with certain officials? Can you think of anyone in particular?’
‘Not really, Superintendent. He used to say most of them simply saw Herefordshire as a stepping stone to somewhere more important.’
‘But nobody in particular.’
‘I don’t think he singled out . . . He also thought some of them were giving jobs to their friends who weren’t up to it. As well as having too many parties and drinking sessions. I’m sure Charlie’s told you—’
‘Yes,’ Howe said, ‘but I’d like to hear about it from your husband’s perspective.’
Sophie had appeared in the doorway with a white china cup and saucer, the cup’s contents steaming. Merrily followed her across the passage to the kitchen. All this was no business of hers, but sometimes – and she wasn’t proud of this – it helped to have inside information to trade with Frannie Bliss.
‘God knows, Sophie, I’ve tried to like that woman. Cold, no people skills and she’ll be chief constable before she’s forty – that’s what Bliss says.’ Softly shutting the kitchen door behind her, she unbuttoned her coat, pulled off her gloves. ‘How am I doing for Christian charity so far?’
‘You look starved.’
‘That’s bec
ause I haven’t eaten.’
Aching for a cigarette, Merrily sat down at the round central table. The kitchen was lofty and oppressive, all dark wood and high cupboards. She drank some tea and looked at Sophie, who was standing with her back to the stove – a Rayburn, not an Aga.
‘How long have they lived here?’
‘He lived here for over thirty years,’ Sophie said. ‘They were married . . . ten, twelve years ago?’
‘Not a first marriage, then.’
‘His first wife died. Two grown-up children, both . . . away.’
‘So how much will Helen . . .?’
‘Inherit? I don’t know. If she gets the house, she’ll sell it. It’s entirely impractical, just a symbol of Clement’s status. Bought it when his business was flourishing, in the 1970s.’
‘What was his business?’
‘Electrical goods, small chain of discount shops. Lucrative in their time. Gone before you arrived here, I think. His daughters weren’t interested in taking it on.’
‘You don’t think Helen will stay?’
‘I think she’ll be off as soon as he’s buried.’ Sophie came to sit down. ‘It was a dream gone sour. A rather naive dream. I don’t know what he promised her, but she had this vision of an elegant, graceful life in the Cathedral Close. Civilised dinner parties, receptions, nights at the theatre. This is just . . . just a market town with a cathedral.’
Sophie looked up at the soiled ceiling, wrinkled her nose. ‘All the changes she was going to make to the house and wasn’t allowed to. What’s wrong with it? he used to say, and I think he really didn’t know. Self-made man, you see, his father was a manual worker. Mrs Thatcher – you saw the photo?’
‘Mmm.’
‘His idol. The small-businessman’s daughter. Waste not, want not. He loved it when she was advising us to stock up on tinned food. He’d go to Tesco and come back with nine tins of stewed steak. Also thought – like Mrs T – that the worst thing to happen to the twentieth century was the 1960s.’
Merrily said nothing. If there was a margin between this and Sophie’s own philosophy, it was slender.
‘And she actually didn’t realise any of this before she married him?’
‘He was – I’ve heard this from quite a few people – a very different man when he was away from home. He was always dynamic, in a heavy sort of way, full of a sometimes alarming energy. And away from Hereford he became . . . expansive. Generous, charming. As if he saw himself as an ambassador. Helen was exposed to the full force of it, at a particularly vulnerable time in her life.’
Sophie got up and went to the door to check if the police were still in the house.
‘Familiar story. Still living at home, caring for her disabled father. And then he died, leaving a void she had no idea how to fill. Clement Ayling was rather good at filling voids.’ She came back and sat down. ‘I’d guess it barely survived the wedding. Within two years she was almost suicidal. But wouldn’t leave, you see – couldn’t. She’d made her bed.’
‘So this row they had – what do you think that was about?’
‘She’s not going to tell anyone now, Merrily. To be quite honest, I’d’ve thought a row would have been almost a positive step. Most of the time they hardly communicated any more. Helen said the council was most of what he’d become . . . I’d go further. Since he sold the business, the council was all of him.’
‘So . . .’ No way of edging around this. ‘Frannie Bliss suspects that Helen might have had something to do with Ayling’s death? Is that what you’re thinking?’
Sophie stared at the closed door, her hands around the small brown teapot. A tea-for-two, waste-not-want-not kind of teapot.
Merrily said, ‘That why I’m here, Sophie? Second opinion?’
‘Given—’ Anxiety bloomed in Sophie’s eyes. ‘Given the nature of his death, that seems . . . barely conceivable.’
‘We don’t know the nature of his death. Only what was done to him, presumably afterwards. His whole body could be in . . . portable fragments.’
Sophie was rigid now, palms flat on the table.
‘Oh, look,’ Merrily said, ‘Bliss would just be going through the motions. When there’s a murder, the first person who needs to be eliminated is the partner. Because . . . in most cases, the partner did it. And you just said yourself that she was desperate. Suicidal.’
‘I said almost suicidal. She got used to it, Merrily, as people usually do. As women of my generation almost always did.’
‘No, you’re right,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
Dismissing the image of a wretched, half-demented Helen Ayling carrying her husband’s head through the Christmas crowds in a shopping bag. But it was no surprise that they’d checked out the tool shed.
Merrily sat back. Her stomach felt like an empty fridge. She wanted to pray, preferably over a cigarette.
Sophie said, ‘If Inspector Bliss thinks—’
‘Sophie . . . whatever Bliss thinks doesn’t matter any more. It’s what . . .’ Merrily nodded at the door. ‘It’s what she thinks.’
‘We should go.’
Sophie was on her feet, carrying the crockery to the sink, numbly turning on taps. Merrily found a tea towel, and they performed, in silence, a domestic ritual which might never seem as comfortingly familiar again.
They left by the back door, not speaking until they were in the alley. The rain had thinned; the sun was a voyeur behind dirty curtains of cloud.
Merrily was thinking that Howe and whoever was carrying her bag might be closeted with Helen until dark.
‘I’ll come back later,’ Sophie said. ‘When they’ve gone.’
‘Be slightly careful, Sophie.’
‘I shall sit and listen. Without questioning.’ Sophie had put up the golf umbrella, a garish blossom in the drizzle on Castle Street. ‘Do you want to come back for something to eat, Merrily? It really won’t take me—’
‘No . . . thank you. Really, I need to get back. Get out of these clothes.’
Merrily saw that there was still a car across the street, parked on the double yellow lines. Sophie turned to walk home, looking back over her shoulder.
‘I’ll call you tonight. After I’ve talked to Helen.’
‘I’d be glad if you would.’
Walking back to the Volvo, Merrily felt choked up with doubt and uncertainty about something that was not her business. And apprehension about Sophie, about whom she harboured no doubts, no uncertainties.
As she reached the unmarked police car, another car pulled in behind it, a window gliding down.
‘You got time for a coffee, Reverend?’ Frannie Bliss said.
14
Joy to the World
IN A CHROMIUM cafe on Broad Street, Bliss was taking his filter coffee black, to match his mood. His face was sallow with freckles, his hair had been eroded beyond comb-over to the shaven stage, never totally convincing in December.
Not yet forty, looked older.
‘She wants me out,’ he said.
At barely four p.m., the day was signing off. The winter-holiday lights over the street were ice blue and sea green. No angels, no Santas, no reindeer.
‘Hang on in there, Frannie,’ Merrily said. ‘She might be up for a transfer to the Met or something.’
Bliss looked up over his bitter coffee with a bitter little smile. ‘Merrily, I meant Kirsty.’
‘Oh God.’ Merrily lowering her mug. ‘I thought you’d managed to . . . deal with things.’
‘You can only paper over the cracks so many times before the paste stops sticking and the frigging paper falls off.’
‘What about the kids? It’s . . . Christmas.’
‘Oh, Christmas helps. We always went to the in-laws’ farm for Christmas. Gorra lot more going for it, for kids, than a semi in Marden.’
‘That’s where they’ve gone?’
‘The farm, yeh. Only this time they won’t be coming back on Boxing Day. The house . . . the house we can flog,
for less than we paid last year, or I can buy Kirsty’s half – the options were efficiently outlined for me in an email waiting on me lappie. By wanting me out, I meant out of her life, not necessarily off the premises, if I can buy her out. Lucky me.’
‘God, I’m so sorry, Frannie. Look, if there’s any—’
‘Got in, in good time for breakfast, she’s already buggered off. Even turned the heating off. Shut the frigging heating down! Must’ve stayed up half the night working out the details in this state of cold rage she can keep up for hours. So . . .’ Bliss leaned back on his stainless steel stool ‘. . . there goes another happy family Christmas exchanging presents round the tree, watching Harry Potter with the kids . . .’
Merrily said nothing. Never met Kirsty, but she could only ever imagine Bliss half-watching Harry Potter with his kids and hoping the phone would ring before the Quidditch game was into injury time.
‘I mean, you were right,’ he said. ‘Howe – goes without saying – would also love to be attending me farewell piss-up. Not happy that she wasn’t informed as soon as it was found.’
‘So why wasn’t she informed?’
‘Because somebody said, you know, let’s not bother her, it’s Christmas . . .’
‘Frannie.’
Nobody could say Bliss allowed other people to dig his grave. ‘Under normal circs, I’d be number two on this, but she’s brought her own feller over from Worcester. DI Brent, PhD. A Ph frigging D! What’s happening, Merrily? All these higher-educated, fast-track police persons together . . . in a school.’
‘The incident room?’
‘Taken over the school next door. Packed the kids off home. So we’ve got Howe as headmistress, Brent as deputy. Kevin Snape as school secretary, fortunately.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Office manager – that’s the bloke responsible for organising the show. Kevin’s a mate, so I get to keep tabs.’ Bliss poured himself more coffee. ‘Quite like to have seen Annie’s face when she found you and Sophie in Ayling’s back parlour.’
