To Dream of the Dead (MW10)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘She didn’t. Annie Howe doesn’t know I’ve been anywhere near Ayling’s parlour.’

  Merrily explained. Giving him the edited version, Sophie’s role minimised. Telling him what little she’d heard from behind the drawing-room door.

  ‘Played the dad card, Frannie.’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Bloody Charlie Howe. West Mercia’s finest, as was. Still walks around Gaol Street in his capacity as a member of the Police Authority. Always your mate. Leave it with me, brother, I’m on your side. Tapping his nose. Bent old twat.’

  Merrily said nothing. Ex-Chief Superintendent Charlie Howe. Had he helped cover up a murder many, many years ago? Never proven, never would be, and now Charlie was this ever-popular senior councillor with a daughter doing awfully well in the police service, and not a mark on her.

  ‘Does it still count for much round here, do you think?’ Bliss said. ‘Ancestry? Roots? I’m standing in the middle of town last night with Kirsty and the progeny, and I’m looking round and I’m thinking, what the fuck am I doing here? I don’t fit in. But, then . . . I might still feel like that if I had roots and saw what was happening to Hereford under Charlie and his mates. I remember what happened to Liverpool.’

  ‘It’s still not a bad place, Frannie. And you’ve had your moments. More than Annie Howe.’

  ‘Yeh, and which of us is the frigging acting superintendent? Look, you wanna bun or something? Jammy doughnut?’

  ‘Yes.’ Merrily slid down from her stool. ‘I’ll get them.’

  Waiting at the counter, she exhaled, closing her eyes. Christmas. The wonderful, life-affirming festive season. Joy to the world.

  The doughnut energising him, Bliss said that if Howe hadn’t taken over he might well have had Helen Ayling brought in this morning for some serious Q and A.

  ‘A bit too quiet, that woman. Not many tears.’

  ‘She was a secretary. Discreet. And maybe it wasn’t exactly a love match.’

  ‘That was your impression, was it?’

  ‘Frannie, I’m just a priest.’

  Bliss wrinkled his nose. Like much of Merseyside, he’d been raised a Roman Catholic. His idea of a priest didn’t include Anglicans, never mind women.

  ‘An old-fashioned man, Merrily. That was what she said about him. Well, we knew that – old-fashioned in the sense of insular, pigheaded, bigoted . . . And the wife would be property, like a car, best kind being cheap to run and not too much engine noise.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So Helen . . . Think about it. She’s been brought into a strange city. She’s isolated, unhappy, and it gets no better. Trapped with Mr Hereford in a five-bedroom mausoleum, last decorated in 1973. And then old Clem does or says something that finally flips her big red switch, she pulls a kitchen knife off the rack and . . . sometimes it’s quite easily done, Merrily. You’d be surprised.’

  ‘And then?’ She looked around; a few other people in the cafe, none of them close enough to hear. ‘And then this quiet, discreet, middle-aged secretary gets a hacksaw from the tool shed and saws him up? You really think that?’

  ‘Actually, we borrowed the hacksaw, and it’s clean. They’re almost 100 per cent on a chainie now, which would mean lots of blood spatter and there were no immediate signs of that. But some ladies are a whizz with a mop and a bucket of Flash.’

  ‘Frannie—’

  ‘Merrily, it happens. Most killers never meant to be killers, and they panic. And then they either become very calm and sensible and give themselves up or they get increasingly wild and irrational.’

  ‘All right – what about the rest of him?’

  ‘Yeh, he was a big man. To move him far she might need help, I’d concede that, unless—’

  ‘Maybe a bunch of burly Liberal Democrats?’

  ‘—Unless he was reduced to manageable pieces. But chop-up jobs, butchery, it’s usually men. Takes a strong stomach and a fair bit of strength unless you’ve a lorra time to play with.’ Bliss looked down at his second doughnut for a few seconds, then back at Merrily. ‘No, all right, for what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s her.’

  ‘Then why the hell have we spent the last ten minutes—?’

  ‘Because I think that’s what Howe was hoping. That she could hang it on Mrs A. Because . . . what’s the alternative?’

  ‘Ayling’s council work?’

  ‘Which is sensitive. Which is why Annie’s here.’

  ‘Because of Charlie?’

  ‘Now wouldn’t it be lovely . . .’ Bliss beamed ‘. . . if Clement Ayling was killed by Charlie Howe?’

  ‘You jest, right?’

  ‘Regrettably, I probably do, but Charlie’s always gorra lot to hide, and Annie knows that. And if we start poking into council business, who knows what might else be uncovered? If Charlie goes down for any small indiscretion, where does that leave Annie’s glittering career?’

  ‘And, as Annie probably knows, that wouldn’t totally break your heart, would it, Frannie?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing until my lawyer gets here,’ Bliss said.

  ‘So you think Annie Howe’s stepped in – taken over – to steer the investigation away from anything close to Charlie? I mean . . . how close is it to Charlie?’

  ‘All right, here’s the scenario,’ Bliss said. ‘Ayling leaves a meeting of this think-tank committee, Hereforward, held at the Green Dragon at around three-thirty p.m., just before it starts to go dark. Home is a five-minute walk across the Cathedral Green. He never makes it.’

  ‘So he was killed soon after leaving the meeting?’

  ‘Or taken, anyway. Somebody – perhaps, considering the size of him, more than one person – got to him between the Green Dragon and Castle Street. Maybe he got into a car. Maybe he had something to follow up from the meeting, went off with somebody.’

  ‘Is Charlie Howe—?’

  ‘Yeh, Charlie’s on that committee. In fact, I’ve just fixed up to meet one of the Hereforward officials tomorrow, find out what they were discussing. Ayling might’ve made himself unpopular over some issue – you never know, do you?’

  ‘So Ayling could’ve actually been attacked on the Cathedral Green itself?’

  ‘Possible,’ Bliss said. ‘But unlikely. Too many people about. But he must’ve been taken somewhere, that’s the point. Somewhere . . . his head is removed, the body disposed of.’

  ‘But why was the head then taken to Blackfriars?’

  ‘You tell me. I gather you know a bit about religion.’

  ‘Bit before my time, pre-Reformation monasteries.’

  ‘It’s a public place,’ Bliss said. ‘But not so public that installing a favourite councillor’s head would attract a cheering crowd. Even in the daytime, people don’t go in that garden. It doesn’t lead anywhere – there’s a great tall fence round it. It’s not like the Cathedral Green, a short cut to all kinds of places. Blackfriars, after dark, you could position your trophy without being disturbed.’

  ‘Trophy?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘The way medieval heads were displayed? Traitors and turncoats?’

  ‘Making a point,’ Bliss said.

  ‘And that point is . . .?’

  Bliss shrugged.

  ‘It’s an age of extremes. Lorra anger in this county at the moment, Merrily. Anger at a Government that doesn’t give a shit for rural areas. Anger at the council because it gets squeezed by the Government and pushes council tax through the roof, goes for easy cash cuts.’

  ‘Wholesale school closures?’

  ‘All carried out, of course, on the advice of senior officials. Career rats, with no attachment to the area, and most councillors don’t have the brains to argue. But they’re the ones who take the shite. Frustration boiling over into rage across the city and the fields and orchards of this once-glorious county. Or hasn’t it penetrated to leafy Ledwardine?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  Bliss was right. If rage was smoke,
this inherently laid-back county would have suffocated. But it was a big step from cursing the local authority in the pub to hunting down and killing a senior member, decapitating him, putting his head up like a trophy.

  ‘Or maybe some individual has had a particularly bad time because of some aspect of council policy. Social-services issue, maybe. A feller can go crazy if his family’s lost their home or they’ve had a kiddie taken away by social workers.’

  ‘Ayling was on the social-services committee?’

  ‘At one time or another, Ayling was on everything, Merrily. He had more fingers than they had pies. And he was vocal. Big noisy feller. Never kept his opinions to himself. Not the way it’s done these days. You filter it through the Press Office first.’ Bliss ripped off a corner of his doughnut. ‘I actually came up with something fairly interesting by the simple expedient of Googling Clement Ayling.’

  ‘Not relating to his council work?’

  ‘Well, yeh, but not in quite the same way.’ Bliss looked at the segment of doughnut, then put it back on his plate as dark jam seeped down his fingers. ‘In my desperation to remain at the forefront of the investigation, I’ve floated it to Howe. We’re waiting for a forensic report that might confirm it. In fact I may get back to you, Merrily, if it comes up positive.’

  ‘Me? Why?’

  ‘Talk about it then, if we need to. Don’t want to complicate your life unnecessarily. You’re not going away anywhere for the festive season, I take it?’

  ‘I work, Frannie. Night shift on Christmas Eve. We’re having a meditation into Christmas morning.’

  ‘What happened to Midnight Mass?’

  ‘That will follow. Quietly. But maybe no raucous carols until the morning.’

  ‘You little radical, Merrily. That’s not gonna please the drunks. Part of Christmas, staggering into church at five to twelve, belting out, “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” to the tune of “Silent Night”.’

  ‘Before throwing up their curry and chips over somebody’s headstone. We don’t have that kind of person in the New Cotswolds, Francis.’

  ‘Oh, yeh . . .’ Bliss fingered up some jam ‘. . . I was gonna tell you . . . Our friend Mr Jonathan Long of the Overpaid Public School Twats Division. Why he might’ve been in Ledwardine?’

  ‘Blimey, I’d almost forgotten. What a difference a day makes.’

  ‘Yeh, well, forget about it again. I was gonna tell you, but now I can’t. I’d suggested it might help if you were aware of a particular situation, but . . . apparently it wouldn’t. So that’s that.’

  ‘You’ve brought me here to tell me you can’t tell me?’

  ‘All I can say is, it’s a temporary thing and it’s something you’ll probably be glad you didn’t know about at the time.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Odd, though.’ Bliss licked raspberry jam from his fingers. ‘All the picturesque backwaters in all the world . . . and they have to pick on yours.’

  He laughed.

  When Merrily got in, there was a heap of Christmas cards on the mat, the post getting later and later and bigger and bigger. She sorted out the brown envelopes from the white. Only two, thank God, but one looked like the big one, the one you opened now with trembling fingers. The heating-oil bill. Couldn’t face it tonight; she put it on the hall table.

  The other brown envelope, local postmark, contained a white card on which two severe-looking angels formed an archway to a tunnel. At the end of it was a glowing circle, in mauve.

  THE CHURCH OF THE LORD OF THE LIGHT

  We are praying that at this holy time you will

  turn away from the old darkness and open

  your heart to the TRUE LIGHT.

  The underlining of TRUE LIGHT had been done in ink. Underneath, someone had scrawled:

  Before it is too late for you

  A poison-pen Christmas card. Unsigned, but the name of the church was familiar.

  Merrily put the card back in the envelope and the envelope on the table, underneath the oil bill.

  ‘Thank you, Shirley.’

  15

  The Badge

  ‘JANE . . .’ MERRILY HESITATED ‘. . . don’t think I’m being old-fashioned, prudish, illiberal and all that stuff, but—’

  ‘Yeah, I do know what you’re going to say.’

  Jane finished wiping down the refectory table, tossing the cloth from hand to hand. This kid who was a kid no longer. Who was, in fact, less than two years from the age Merrily had been when the pregnancy test came up positive. How terrifying was that?

  ‘Separate rooms,’ Jane said. ‘That would be part of the deal.’

  ‘It would?’

  The issue had been raised after they’d eaten, washed the dishes and made some tea.

  ‘OK, let me be totally frank and upfront.’ Jane pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down, arms folded. ‘Adult to adult.’

  ‘I hate it when you say that. Can’t help feeling you’ve not been one long enough to qualify for the badge.’

  ‘The point about Eirion,’ Jane said, ‘is I do need to know where we stand. I’ve hardly seen him since he went to university. I mean, people change, don’t they?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘When they’re mixing in like a different milieu.’

  ‘Erm . . . good word.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say, is that if he thinks he’s coming here to start where we left off.’

  ‘Left off,’ Merrily said. ‘Mmm.’

  This was adult to adult, was it? She knew, of course, that Jane and Eirion’s relationship had long been consummated. In fact she knew precisely when – Eirion, in an honest, innocent and rather touching moment, having told her himself, the morning after. A summer morning, here in the vicarage kitchen, sitting at this same refectory table. Seemed a lifetime ago. It was, what – eighteen months?

  Hell of a long time for teenagers, though.

  ‘So I said I’d ask you,’ Jane said. ‘And I have. And it’s your decision, Mum, and if it’s inconvenient or you say no for any other reason, I’m not going to take it any further. I am not going to argue.’

  ‘In other words, you’re saying you want me to make the decision for you.’

  ‘’Course n— Well, I mean your advice would obviously—’

  ‘Do you want to see him?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘Well . . . yeah, I do. But I just . . . I just feel it may not be right. That I might be looking back on it in years to come and thinking, that was when it all went wrong, that Christmas. Because Christmas is an intense kind of time, isn’t it?’

  ‘It can bring things to a head.’

  ‘Like in Hereford last night.’ Jane raised an eyebrow. ‘Head? Never mind.’ She twitched her nose. ‘Bad taste.’

  ‘You heard about that, then.’

  ‘All over the school by lunchtime. Lots of sick jokes. You know what kids are like.’

  ‘Erm . . . yeah.’

  ‘So what I’m really thinking is, like, are we too young to have been together for so long? That’s it, really.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s the dilemma.’ Jane’s mind was like a pinball machine. ‘Also, I’m thinking . . . you and Dad?’

  ‘That was entirely different.’

  ‘How was it different?’

  ‘Because we . . . because we’d known each other for a lot shorter time than you and Eirion and there were a lot of things about him I didn’t know, and . . . are you trying to embarrass me?’

  Jane grinned.

  ‘And because you and Eirion will not, unless you’re incredibly stupid or incredibly drunk, have to get married. So unless, at some stage, you . . .’ Merrily slumped at the table. ‘Sorry, flower, been a difficult day. Has there been anyone else in the interim I don’t know about?’

  ‘He says not.’

  ‘No . . . I meant you.’

  ‘Me?’ Jane’s eyes widened. ‘Listen, I don’t do that any more – I
mean go behind your back. And if you were thinking Neil Cooper, I quite fancied Coops. Especially when I— All right, maybe we shouldn’t be talking like this.’

  ‘Especially when you what?’

  ‘When I . . . found out he was married, I had a weird little fantasy about being the Other Woman. But I didn’t do anything, Mum, I didn’t make any approach and neither did he, and I’ve got past it now.’

  ‘Erm . . . good.’

  ‘Have I shocked you? Anyway . . .’ Jane sprang to her feet. ‘Let’s bring it in, shall we?’

  Meaning the too-big Christmas tree that Merrily had called for at a farm shop outside the village. She’d forgotten. She prised herself to her feet as Jane went out to untie the tree from the roof-rack of the car.

  ‘Jane . . .?’ Merrily thought for a moment and then called after her. ‘OK, tell Eirion I’d be happy for him to come.’

  It was a time for commitment.

  She watched Jane turn and bow – ‘Thank you, single parent’ – as the phone starting ringing in the scullery.

  ‘Always liked Eirion. Just didn’t like to say it too often.’ Going back into the house, alone, murmuring, ‘In case it put you off him.’

  ‘Four television crews!’ Sophie said with distaste. ‘Marching up and down, filming the house from various angles. Reporters knocking on doors, reporters under lights, talking to the cameras. Satellite dishes! It’s quite unbearable.’

  The rain chattered inanely on the window pane. Merrily shifted the Bakelite phone from one ear to the other, switching on the Anglepoise at the same time.

  ‘So when did they reveal his name?’

  ‘I don’t know. Early this evening, I think. How long will this go on, Merrily?’

  ‘It’ll seem like for ever, I’m afraid. But I suppose tomorrow will be the worst day. Surely they have police with Helen Ayling now?’

  ‘No, Merrily, she’s here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Helen’s staying with us. It was, in the end, the obvious solution. The press have been encouraged to think she’s left the area, with unnamed relatives.’