by Phil Rickman
‘Prefer me own wheels, sweetheart,’ Gregory said. ‘Anyway, I don’t live in Hereford. Not enough happening for me. Figured in the end might as well stay here as go there.’
‘You went to Lol’s gig?’
‘Who?’
‘Lol Robinson? The gig at the Swan?’
‘Didn’t you see me?’
‘I didn’t get to see much of it in the end.’
‘It was good,’ Gregory said.
The night was lighter now. Not much, but enough to make out his thin features. He looked starved. He was wearing a short leather jacket and tight black trousers that looked like they were fused to his legs.
‘You’re soaked.’
Really soaked. He even smelled wet. ‘Where’s your bloke, Jane?’
‘He’s . . . gone to help bring some people from Caple End.’
‘Coppers?’
‘Maybe.’
‘They’ve even closed the footbridge now. Nobody can get across the river without having to walk about ten miles to the next bridge. That’s what people’s saying. What’s that about?’
‘Somebody got drowned.’
‘That a fact.’
‘Guy who lived near your site, actually. Cole Barn?’
‘Don’t know it.’
‘You never walked over there?’
‘What for?’
‘Just . . . a walk.’
‘A walk,’ Gregory said. ‘You people kill me.’
‘What people?’
‘People who can live in a shithole like this and go for . . . walks.’
‘Hey, it’s not my fault you got wet.’
‘Never said it was.’ He seemed on edge. Angry. ‘Not seen Blore, have you?’
‘Not for a while.’
‘He’s got the keys to my bleedin’ caravan. Give him the keys when I thought I was leaving.’
‘If I see him, I’ll . . . get somebody to tell him you’re looking for him.’
‘Thanks.’
Jane said, ‘Gregory . . . you know all that stuff you were giving us about Blore having sex with his students?’
‘So?’’
‘Anybody special?’
‘When?’
‘Currently?’
‘Nah. He don’t separate them out much when he’s pissed. It’s all fires and mantelpieces with Blore.’ Gregory nodded at the people filing into church. ‘Wass all this?’
‘Midnight service . . . delayed. They’re waiting for my mum. She’s the vicar.’
‘Must be popular, night like this.’
‘I think people are a bit . . . spooked. The flood. The drowning. Want a bit of reassurance. And – I keep forgetting – it’s Christmas. Come in if you want.’
‘What happens?’
‘Well, it won’t be an ordinary midnight mass. In view of everything, I think she’ll be playing it by ear.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to one. I mean . . . you know . . .’ Gregory shrugged awkwardly ‘. . . why?’
‘You don’t believe in anything?’
‘Never thought about it. Wassa point? It don’t get you anywhere, do it?’
‘You don’t think it’s, like . . . interesting to think there might be something, somewhere, bigger than all this?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like, you know, a life beyond this life? Somewhere you go after you die?’
‘Best thing is not to die. Let other people do it.’
‘Huh?’
‘The dying,’ Gregory said roughly. ‘The trick is to let other people do the dying.’
CHRISTMAS DAY
Shall dumpish melancholy spoil my joys . . .
Thomas Traherne
‘On Christmas Day’
64
Sickness
‘WE HAVE TO try and hold this together,’ Merrily said.
Standing on the chancel steps, in jeans, a black woollen top, her heaviest pectoral cross.
No mass, no meditation, but the church was full. It was almost eerily full, as if there’d been a timeslip back to medieval days, when the timbers of Ledwardine were young. When life was simpler and faith, out of a kind of necessity, was strong.
And when, as each new comet was sighted, they’d still talked about the Endtime.
She saw Jim Prosser and Brenda sitting with Brian Clee. In the Bull pew, James Bull-Davies with Alison. Maybe fifty local people and as many strangers. She saw the man with the ruby earring. She saw the witch from Dinedor who’d had visions of the Druids along the Serpent.
Something was holding them together.
Edna Huws was at the organ. A good thing for her, perhaps, and for all of them. There would be carols. There would have to be carols, voices raised against the dark.
There was no sign of Shirley West.
‘No point in dressing this up,’ Merrily said. ‘A man’s been found drowned at the bottom of the pitch in Old Barn Lane. A man I’d got to know . . . if not well.’
Or not well enough soon enough.
‘The police are on their way. And, erm . . . they may need to come in here. Which limits us a bit.’
Murmurs. Merrily looked down and saw she was still wearing wellies. She wanted to get them to pray in silence for what remained of the spirit of Christmas, some small, still light, to come into this place. But there wasn’t much silence in her head.
She’d called Bliss back on her mobile. Listening, while walking over to the church with Lol, to his theory that Clem Ayling had been murdered by contract. A connection with the non-democratic focus group Hereforward, to which Ayling had been co-opted by the county council. Ayling discovering that his colleagues on Hereforward had been indulging themselves, on weekends away, with cocaine supplied by a man called Steven Furneaux.
It’s about control, Bliss had said. About binding people together. If they’ve been mutually involved in one level of criminal activity they’ll keep quiet about others.
Merrily hadn’t needed reminding why Ayling would have found the drug element particularly repugnant. Unfortunately, he’d thought he could deal with it himself, underestimating what other interests were at stake.
A little coterie of unscrupulous bastards, operating under and around the democratic process . . . and making themselves a lot of money on the side.
Sensing a connection, she’d told him about Blore’s report on the stones.
If Bliss was right, Ayling’s death was not directly connected with the Dinedor Serpent but meant to deflect the investigation in that direction. Discrediting opponents of the development of Dinedor and Rotherwas, as well, presumably, as the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society. Making it look like Herefordshire was home to some obsessive semi-pagan underculture.
Well represented, it seemed, in this congregation.
‘This was going to be a meditation,’ Merrily said. ‘That was when I was only expecting about a third as many people and no police. We were going to sit around in a circle and think about what it means – Christmas. Birth and rebirth. The coming of the light.’
Aware of the green curtain behind her, which had been hung over the smashed area of the rood screen, and the roughly sawn square of hardboard fitted into the stonework over the bottom quarter of the broken stained-glass window.
It was making her think about Clem Ayling’s head, the pieces of quartz, the body in the Wye.
‘I’ve been realising that sometimes we have to fight for the light. Whether it’s the midsummer sun rising over Cole Hill or the moonlight shining in the Dinedor Serpent.’
Somebody cheered and got shushed. Merrily smiled.
‘And it’s not paganism in the heathen sense, it’s paganism in the original sense. Ruralism. It’s an understanding that people living here thousands of years ago had different ways of perceiving God, but it always came back to light. We have the advantage because, thanks to what happened on this day over two thousand years ago, we also know about the higher levels of love.’
She looked up, heard the latch
lifting on the church doors and saw five people heading towards the vestry. All of them, except Bliss, were women. One was Jane, who’d been waiting in the porch, one a uniformed policewoman. The third woman was Leonora Stooke and the fourth – oh hell – Annie Howe? The Ice Maiden?
They stood either side of the vestry door, waiting.
They didn’t have the key.
‘I’d like us to pray for that light and that love. And then – with the help of the unstoppable, heroic Miss Edna Huws, whose home, as most of you know, was flooded tonight, we’ll have some carols. During which I may have to pop out.’
It was a difficult situation. She couldn’t prolong the agony for Leonora Stooke, waiting to identify her drowned husband.
She abbreviated the prayer, busking it. Leaving fifteen seconds of silence before giving Edna the nod.
The vestry was sometimes a gift shop now. Money-raising scheme of Uncle Ted’s. Displays of postcards and booklets, notelets and framed prints had been pushed back against the walls. Elliot Stooke’s body lay on the trestle table under the dark, leaded window. It was still covered with the blue plastic, a big, shiny cocoon. The room smelled dank and sour.
Annie Howe was wearing a long off-white mac and a scarf. She’d nodded briefly at Merrily.
‘Take your time, Mrs Stooke. Tell me when you’re ready.’
Leonora was wearing her turquoise Gore Tex jacket. She was pale and somehow beautiful in her distress.
‘I can’t. I just—’ She looked across at Merrily, her red hair tumbled, her eyes glassy. ‘Why can’t you? You know him. I don’t want to remember him like this. Why should I have to?’
‘Mrs Stooke,’ Howe said. ‘I know how terribly hard this is, but it’s something we have to . . .’
‘I can’t believe it. I cannot believe how this could happen. How it could be allowed to happen.’
Merrily saw Jane in the doorway. Signalled with her eyes for her to go back into the nave. Couldn’t believe Jane would want to see this. But Jane wasn’t looking at the body, and she didn’t move.
Merrily saw Leonora nod.
The policewoman went over to the table and peeled back the blue plastic. Leonora looked once and jerked back, as if a bolt of electricity was going through her, shut her eyes, nodding hard.
Shuddering. Howe steadying her, guiding her out. The police-woman drew the plastic back over Elliot Stooke’s face. They came back out into the nave, and Merrily closed the vestry door. Some people in the pews glanced over their shoulders, still only halfway through ‘Once in Royal David’s City’.
As quick as that. Bliss followed them into the porch, where Lol was standing, with Eirion, and Merrily finally got to speak to Leonora.
‘Look . . . you’re not going to want to go back to the barn tonight. Why don’t you stay with Jane and me?’
‘I’m staying at the Swan.’ Leonora looked away, as if Merrily had let her down badly by refusing to identify her husband’s body. ‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow anyway.’
Merrily nodded.
‘And he shouldn’t have been brought here. It’s a fucking gratuitous insult.’ Merrily collecting a hard glance. ‘I suppose that was you.’
Merrily said nothing. Leonora turned her back on her.
‘There’s an underlying sickness in this place,’ she said to Annie Howe. ‘We were both aware of it.’
‘Mrs Stooke, if there’s anything you want to tell me, perhaps we should go somewhere else.’
‘There’s nothing I really want to say to anyone.’ Leonora’s fists tightening inside leather gloves which squeaked. ‘Mrs Watkins invited us tonight to meet some local people, but the local people ignored us and the others – it was like it was calculated to offend, the shit they were coming out with. Elliot just . . . I don’t suppose he even knew where he was going or cared, as long as it was away from them. All that on top of the religious mania. Said he just wanted some fresh air.’ She looked down at the flags. ‘I should’ve gone with him. Let him down.’
‘All the way,’ Jane murmured.
She was standing with her back to the double doors into the church, pale yellow light in the crack. Merrily looked at her, appalled. Jane had her hands rammed down into the pockets of her parka, held her shoulders rigid.
‘By my reckoning . . .’ She looked up slowly. ‘And I’m, like, I’m only guessing here . . . but I reckon that when Mr Stooke was dying in the flood, that would probably be around the time Lensi was in a cubicle in the Ladies’ at the Swan.’ Stared defiantly at Leonora. ‘Shagging Bill Blore.’
65
Off the Wall
THEY WENT THROUGH the inevitable. The whole lying little bitch routine, Lensi’s face full of twisting shadows, before Merrily was pulling Jane back into the church, steering her into the corner behind the font.
Jane’s face was flushed, and she was panting.
Bliss had followed them, standing with his back to the doors.
‘Yes,’ he was saying almost lightly. ‘That’s it.’
The organ pipes were sounding the exultant opening chords of ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. The congregation, perhaps excited now, sensing something happening, staying with it. Behind the font, Merrily held Jane by both shoulders.
‘I hope to God you’re—’
‘I was trying to tell you!’
‘Tell me, Jane,’ Bliss said.
‘I was in the toilet at the other end. After I talked to Coops.’
‘After he told you about Blore?’
‘I’ve told Frannie about that,’ Merrily said to Jane. ‘And the significance.’
Bliss had his hands together, like in prayer, the tips of the fingers tentatively tapping together.
‘You are absolutely sure about this, aren’t you, Jane? Because if there’s any doubt at all, you need to tell me now.’
Jane looked at the doors. Bliss went and pulled them open. Merrily heard Lol telling him that Howe had taken Leonora back to the Swan.
‘For a long and meaningful discussion, I hope,’ Bliss said. ‘All right, let’s all go back out where we don’t have to whisper.’
‘I thought she was sobbing.’ Jane said. ‘At first.’
‘Sobbing,’ Bliss said.
‘It’s . . . quite a similar sound, when you think about it. See, I’d just been sitting there on the loo. For a long time. Not ready to face anybody, you know? And like the toilets, they’re all refurbished now, padded walls, very plush. They obviously didn’t know I was there, they were at the other end. I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there. I couldn’t identify her voice, but there was, like, no mistaking his. He was going, Better, now? That better? With every . . . thrust. Like a dad talking to a little girl. Which was so sick. And then she started to, like, giggle, in this slightly hysterical way? I just felt . . . yuk.’
‘But not yuk enough to walk away, I hope,’ Bliss said.
‘Hung around outside . . . well, just inside reception, at the end of the passage. And then he came out. He didn’t see me. Just went through to the public bar. And then, a few minutes later, she came out – obviously taken some time to, like, clean herself up? And she did see me. And I go, “Hello, Lensi,” and she just smiles at me, briefly, like to somebody she just vaguely knew, and didn’t say anything, and went through into the passage.’
‘So now she knows,’ Bliss said. ‘She knows you know. Let’s hope Annie’s doing the right thing here.’
‘What’s the right thing?’ Merrily asked him.
‘I don’t really know. I don’t know whether I want her to let this woman go off so she can rush back to Blore, or take her away and talk to her, so I can have Blore to meself. I don’t know if this is something new – Mrs Stooke and Bill Blore – or if they’ve been an item for a while. Any thoughts?’
‘She wanted to come here,’ Merrily said. ‘She wanted to rent that house, and for no obvious reason. Elliot didn’t. He didn’t like it here.’
‘Maybe knowing Blore had his eye on Coleman’s Meadow? T
hat he’d be here? But that would pre-suppose Blore had known about it for quite a while. And that he’d get the contract. Which is interesting in itself. It seem like a happy marriage to you, Merrily?’
‘It seemed like a slightly tense marriage, but I put that down to living with death threats and getting this abusive mail from . . . God, you see, nobody knew they were here, except for me. And Shirley.’
‘I’ve got people out looking for Shirley,’ Bliss said, ‘as we speak.’
‘And Shirley only knew because Leonora went into the post office and wrote out a cheque for an electricity bill, with the name Stooke on it. Very apologetic about that. Stupid mistake.’
‘Except it wasn’t?’
‘She’s not a stupid woman. And then they – allegedly – get all the hate mail from Shirley’s church. Which didn’t surprise me because I know the provenance of this church, and it’s not healthy. And I think that was genuine, the mail – they showed me an example. I mean the odd thing is that she came to tell me about it, ask if I could do anything about Shirley. Which struck me as strange because she didn’t know then that I knew they were the Stookes, not the Wintersons.’
‘Looks like she wanted you to know, Merrily. Know who they were and know about the threats. No better witness than the vicar, if anything was to happen to Stooke.’
‘You actually . . .’ Merrily pressing one hand over the other to stop both of them shaking. ‘You think that’s why they came here? For Stooke to be killed?’
‘I don’t know. We may never know, unless one of them talks. Whether it was long-term planning or whether she just wanted to come here to snatch some precious moments with the current love of her life . . .’
Jane said, ‘Blore has a caravan on the site. Gregory told us about all the students he—’
‘That’s another thing,’ Merrily said. ‘He still has a room at the Swan, doesn’t he? Why didn’t they just go up there if they couldn’t wait? One flight of stairs? I mean, the ladies loo?’
