To Dream of the Dead (MW10)

by Phil Rickman

  Jane was cool with that.

  She drank a mug of tea with extra sugar and Mum told her to break a leg. As she walked across the square, she felt destiny nudging her, the sensation of standing on the cusp of something. The red earth giving up its long-buried secrets, the Dinedor Serpent and the Old Stones of Ledwardine linked by ancient electricity and connecting with Jane’s own nervous system.

  In the churchyard, she didn’t spend too long with Lucy, who would surely understand. Pausing only to give the shoulders of the gravestone one squeeze, for luck, before proceeding directly into the dank and dripping orchard.

  She imagined a short, lyrical video-sequence of her and Bill following the ley, with music playing underneath – maybe Nick Drake’s ‘Hazey Jane 2’.

  The oldest part of the orchard, gnarled and primeval-looking, was loaded with big balls of white-berried mistletoe. Perhaps she’d come back here before nightfall, with secateurs, and try to reach some. After all, Eirion would be here on Sunday. Feeling kind of turned on now, Jane spun towards the pale light at the end of the orchard, and . . .

  Wow. If she’d thought it was crowded last night . . .

  Standing under the exposed waxy sky, she was looking down at something like a reduced rock festival. More tents, an extra caravan, a camper van, the big crane . . . cars parked at all angles, including a police car. Big clusters of people turning Coleman’s Meadow into another village. A separate community had mushroomed overnight.

  Jane counted three separate TV units, guys shouldering cameras, and a bunch of other men and women were hanging around the new galvanised gate by a smaller green caravan.

  Adrenalin spurting, she ran down to where Neil Cooper was standing, on his own. Fair-haired, wafery Coops, jeans and a canvas shoulder bag – his day off, too, but who’d miss this?

  ‘Bloody hell, Coops, I had no idea there’d be all this . . .’

  ‘Jane.’ Coops taking Jane’s arm, drawing her away and saying nothing until they were behind the bloated bole of an old oak tree. ‘It’s not quite what you think.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘The media circus. Nothing to do with the excavation.’ Coops shedding his shoulder bag and undoing it. ‘It’s about this.’

  Handing her a folded paper.

  Jane opened it up. The Daily Star was unlikely to be Coops’s usual choice.

  But then, it wouldn’t usually carry a picture on its front page of someone as old and boring as the late Clement Ayling under . . .

  HEADHUNTERS!

  Town hall boss

  topped by

  pagan nutters

  It was as though a fist had come through the paper, smacked her full in the face. Jane stepped back into a puddle.

  ‘It was the only one left on the rack at your local shop,’ Coops said. ‘But I gather the others are similar.’

  She read the whole story, which wasn’t long. The police were quoted as saying that fragments of stone found ‘with the head’ had been confirmed as coming from the Dinedor Serpent, ‘an ancient path which local pagans say is sacred’. But which Clem Ayling, whose body had now been found in the River Wye, had dismissed as ‘patio gravel’. As a result of which, he and his council had been attacked by ‘pagan groups’ and ‘top TV archaeologist Bill Blore’.

  ‘Oh.’ Jane stepped out of the puddle and handed the paper back to Coops. ‘So now they all want him.’

  For one agonising moment she’d thought the headline meant the cops had been acting on stuff from the Coleman’s Meadow database. But, of course, it would’ve been impossible for any of that to make this morning’s papers.

  ‘Fame rules,’ Coops said.

  ‘Did you know about these fragments of stone, Coops?’

  ‘Not a thing. If the police consulted my boss, he hasn’t told me about it.’

  ‘But like, even if it’s true, how can the cops just say it’s down to pagans? I mean, how dare they—?’

  ‘They probably didn’t. They just let the press run with it. Most of the others seem to have been a bit more restrained than the Star.’

  ‘Where’s Bill Blore now?’

  ‘Somewhere wishing he’d kept his famous gob shut.’ Coops didn’t look entirely displeased about Blore being caught on the back foot. ‘Shut himself in the site caravan to phone a friend. Always assuming he has one left.’

  Jane pondered the implications, looking at her watch. Six minutes to ten.

  ‘Coops, is this going to affect my interview?’

  ‘He’s pretty pissed off, Jane. Been here since before eight. Wanted to make a good start while the rain was holding off, and now he can’t. He’s actually—’

  Jane heard a few ragged cheers. Coops moved around the oak tree, went to peer over what was left of Lyndon Pierce’s barbed-wire fence. Came back yawning.

  ‘Looks like he’s coming out. Like some bloody racing driver with his support crew.’

  ‘Can we watch?’

  ‘If we must. But look, Jane, when he gets rid of this lot I’d keep away from him for a while if I were you. Don’t push. Let him decide when to remember you.’

  ‘By which time it’ll be raining again.’

  ‘Yeah, probably.’

  ‘And I’ll look like shit.’

  Jane looked around for something to kick.

  Bill Blore didn’t actually come off the site, went no further than the gate. Leaning over its top rail, wide shoulders hunched under a scratched leather bomber jacket. His thick hair was bound back by some kind of bandanna, his eyes still and steely like ball-bearings, his voice . . . big.

  ‘All right, you bastards.’

  When he raised a hand it was clenched around a flat-bladed trowel, edged with red mud, like he’d been interrupted in the middle of his work.

  Laughter from the hacks, and the stills photographers began taking pictures. The security guy, Gregory, and an older guy with the same armband were standing at either end of the metal gate. Jane was with Coops, hanging back, well out of shot as a rising wind rattled the gate and Bill Blore tapped the top rail with the handle of the trowel.

  ‘OK, hacks, here’s the situation. I’m happy to talk to you, but I really don’t have time for individual interviews, or we’ll be here all fucking day. So you’re just going to have to . . . you know . . . gather round, throw the shit at me and I’ll bat it back. Five minutes max, OK?’

  ‘Some of us’ve come a long way, Bill,’ someone moaned, but Bill Blore wiped it away with both hands and his big voice.

  ‘Not trying to be difficult, whoever you are, but I’ve got a job to do and it’s rather more important to me than whichever fucking lunatics took an axe to some poor old bugger from the local authority.’ Pointing with the trowel at a raised hand. ‘OK, go . . .’

  ‘Susannah Gilmore, Sky News. Presumably you’ve seen today’s papers, Bill?’

  ‘Gave up reading comics when I turned ten, Susannah, but I’ve been given a digest, yeah, so I can just about put together a reason for you vultures swooping.’

  ‘Can we get directly to the point, then?’ one of the other TV guys said, and Blore bowed and spread his hands. ‘Professor Blore, first of all, if you can give us your reaction to the suggestion that County Councillor Ayling was actually murdered because of his negative attitude towards the so-called Dinedor Serpent.’

  ‘Well, that’s not my . . .’ Bill Blore looked down at the trowel, puffed out his lips, looked up again. ‘All right. Here we go.’

  A few seconds of silence. All you could hear was the slap of one of the nylon tent flaps and some cameras going off. Two uniformed cops looked at people’s faces.

  Bill Blore took a breath.

  ‘Archaeology’s my life. But I couldn’t say it’s worth the loss of someone else’s.’ He paused. ‘So if you’re saying did I do it . . .?’ Bill Blore looked down at the media, the wind lifting his hair. Photographers were snapping him from below and Jane saw that one of them was Lensi, her red hair glowing against the grey sky.

&
nbsp; The TV guy said, ‘So who would you—?’

  ‘Oh, come on, what am I supposed to say to that? Kind of people who’d do this? Not the foggiest. If you’re asking me about pagans, yeah, I’ve met plenty of them. Always find them hanging around prehistoric sites. Ask me a couple of days ago, I’d’ve said they were just bloody comics. Harmless. Didn’t think they also included total bloody maniacs. Shows how wrong you can be. Next.’

  Two questions collided.

  ‘When you say you’ve met plenty—’

  ‘—Yourself had some pretty hard things to say about the Herefordshire Council—’

  ‘True. And I don’t take any of it back. I do think local authorities should be better informed about the dangers of destroying our heritage with hastily planned developments. I do indeed wish that bloody road was going somewhere else. And if the late Councillor Ayling had kept quiet about the Dinedor Serpent then so would I. But . . . we all have a right to free speech. Without, I might add, facing summary execution.’

  The Sky News woman said, ‘Bill, you said a moment ago that you’d met plenty of the sort of people who you think might be responsible for the murder of Councillor Ayling. Would you care to—?’

  ‘I did not say that, you . . . I said that I’d encountered some people I thought were comics . . . rather than killers. But this – as all of you guys should know – is a rapidly changing world. World that’s daily becoming more brutalised. Suicide bombers, children shooting other children on the streets, torturing old ladies . . . Is it any great surprise to me when some second-generation neo-hippies out of their heads on methamphetamine start chopping people’s heads off because they think their noble Neolithic ancestors have been disrespected? I mean, do I really have to answer that?’

  ‘Professor Blore, to what extent do you think that inflammatory statements made by . . . iconic figures like yourself can inspire extreme behaviour in . . . shall we say people who might already be a bit unstable?’

  ‘Oh, for . . .’

  For a moment, Bill Blore seemed to bulge through the gate, and you thought its bars might actually bend, like in an animation movie, as his patience snapped.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve said all I want to say about this issue, so why don’t you all just piss off now, eh?’

  Then he turned and strode back through the cold red mud towards the tents, leaving the security guy, Gregory, to mind the gate, and Jane going, like, Wow.

  Impressed as hell, but maybe just a little bit scared of him now.

  30

  A Cold Heart

  SITTING ON A corner of his desk, Bliss jabbed a copy of The Times.

  ‘What is this? I mean why? What’s she hoping to achieve, letting this stuff out, a frigging witch-hunt?’

  It wasn’t the lead story, like in the redtops, but prominent enough down the side of the front page and in more detail.

  ‘I think it’s already started.’ Karen Dowell quietly shut Bliss’s office door, came and sat down. After a long night on computer duty, Karen had the rest of the day off. ‘Tried to get you last night, boss. Two things. A – Ayling’s body had stab wounds, B – they were bringing someone in.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Half-eleven?’

  Bliss came off the desk. Nobody had told him. Nobody downstairs had even hinted. But perhaps they didn’t know either, the way Howe had walled herself up in the Blackfriars school with this little coterie of cronies, safe from prying eyes and the Gaol Street telegraph.

  ‘Your phone was switched off.’

  Yeh, it had been. He’d gone to bed, slept like the dead. If anybody called him, well, tough; DI Bliss was in recovery.

  ‘We were systematically working through the names on the Watkins computer,’ Karen said, ‘and we found a handful they thought were worth looking at who were, you know, within easy pulling distance. This particular guy – great excitement. Terry Stagg phoned him. Bingo.’

  ‘Same voice?’

  ‘He’s even admitted it.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Wilford Hawkes,’ Karen said. ‘Real old hippie. Has a small-holding with his wife and two other women – gay partners, looks like – up beyond Dinedor village. They plant stuff in accordance with the phases of the moon.’

  ‘That makes them Serpent-worshippers?’

  ‘Well . . . pentagram weather vane on the roof, that kind of thing. But I reckon the real issue is that when the road’s built, they’ll have heavy-goods traffic about twenty metres from their hedge.’

  ‘And he’s put his hand up?’

  ‘To the call. Nothing else so far.’

  ‘No charge?’

  Hoping there wasn’t. Wanting these twats to struggle all the way – at least, all the time he wasn’t part of it.

  ‘Not when I left,’ Karen said. ‘But who knows?’

  Bliss pictured Howe and Brent patting themselves on the back, toasting each other in decaff.

  ‘Why did they put this out about the quartz?’

  ‘They didn’t mention quartz, boss. Just stones. Didn’t mention the eyes, either. Just said “stones found with the head”. It went out late afternoon – press statement issued before the body was found in the river. And then we brought the computer in and it all took off,’ Karen said.

  ‘What about the wife and the other women?’

  ‘Interviewed but not brought in. Ma’am’s still keen on Wilford.’

  ‘You seen him?’

  ‘I’ve seen the first interview.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Hard to say. You’re better at this than me, boss. Look, I’d better be off, it’s my boyfriend’s birthday.’

  ‘Yeh. OK. Have a good one,’ Bliss said. ‘Thanks, Karen.’

  She was a good girl. When she’d gone Bliss pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, sat down. On his desk, an early Christmas present from Howe, was the thin file containing copies of computer-printed letters purporting to come from anonymous residents of the same Hereford suburb and identifying a cocaine dealer in their midst. Normally, given the location, it would have been quite interesting. With the Ayling case on it was a job for a DS, at most. At the top of the first letter, Howe had written, Francis – we should go for this one ASAP.

  Bitch.

  Bliss picked up the top letter.

  We have decided that we can no longer put up with this filthy trade in a decent area. Some of us have teenage children or younger and we do not want them to grow up thinking this is how all adults behave.

  Two anonymous letters saying much the same, arriving at Gaol Street in the same post, naming the same man, Gyles Banks-Jones. Gyles ran a jewellery business, sometimes marketing his designer products at home gatherings, like the old Tupperware parties Bliss’s mum used to host. Other products as well, allegedly.

  We understand he keeps the drugs at his home and can be expected to have plentiful supplies for Christmas. We urge you to take action.

  Some quite detailed information about specific parties held in this particular area of the city where Banks-Jones lived. So many that the residents must be dripping with designer bling. The letters, Bliss decided, were a committee job. Sounded like residents must be seriously split on the question of whether Mr Banks-Jones was a good or a bad thing.

  Wearily, Bliss unwrapped a packet of chewing gum. This complaint had probably been lying around for weeks. Recreational drugs . . . it was going on everywhere, and you could waste manpower for months watching a guy like this: no form, a clean-skin, cleaner than clean. And anonymous letters were bugger-all use; you needed names, serviceable witnesses. Punters never seemed to be aware of the requirements of the CPS.

  Then, a couple of days ago, the third letter had arrived.

  It had gone directly to Headquarters.

  And it was signed. It came from Alan Sandison, a recent arrival in the area, who had attended a party with his wife at which Mr Banks-Jones had brought out his glittering wares along with a number of small packages which had
been eagerly opened in the kitchen and widely snorted.

  The neighbours who had invited the Sandisons to their party had failed to realise – probably too stoned to work out why he wasn’t down the pub on a Sunday lunchtime – that Alan Sandison was a Baptist minister.

  Sometimes you had to laugh.

  Mr Sandison stated that he was prepared to give evidence in court against Gyles Banks-Jones but not against his immediate neighbours who, he believed, had been led astray, poor lambs.

  Well. Bliss mouthed a shaft of chewie. Not a brilliant time of year for a dawn raid. Would cost a fair bit in overtime. But when the Ice Maiden requested action, whatever her private reasons might be for diverting your attention, you acted.

  Tomorrow morning, Sunday? Have to be, wouldn’t it? Monday was Christmas Eve. Besides . . . get the frigging thing out the way. Gathering the papers together and picking up the phone to call Mr Sandison, Bliss noticed a cardboard carton containing an unlabelled DVD.

  Karen must’ve slipped it under the file. Karen, the computer whizz. Bliss put down the phone, scraped together a smile and slid the DVD down his inside pocket.

  She was a good girl.

  Like Sophie, Amanda Rubens wore her glasses on a chain. Unlike Sophie she had a lot of other chains and long beads, like some 1920s flapper, over her black polo-neck woollen frock.

  ‘Yes, all right, I’m sorry, it was out before I realised what I was saying. Could’ve bitten my tongue off, but that bloody woman . . . “You besmirch our village with this vileness?” Can you believe someone would say that . . . in a bookshop?’

  The interior of Ledwardine Livres was full of Christmas lights, twinkling between displays of mainly children’s books. No book-shop in Hereford or Leominster would rely on atmosphere lighting; either Amanda Rubens was seriously naive or shoplifting in Ledwardine was still confined to the Eight Till Late.

  ‘It was my last copy. Seemed to be going rather well, so I immediately ordered another half-dozen and they were here in the afternoon. Put three at the front of the window, which I suppose was what caught the attention of the postmistress. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to me that some people might find it tasteless at Christmas. And that was why I said what I said when she came in and began to remonstrate with me. It . . . it simply came out. I simply . . . I said, For heaven’s sake, the vicar’s just bought a copy!’