Midwinter of the Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  ‘No need to read the lot. It’s mainly waffle. His relatives aren’t going to talk, and we ourselves have been rather economical with any information given out to the press.’

  ‘Aren’t you always.’

  ‘Need to Know, Ms Watkins,’ Howe said, ‘Need to Know. Let me tell you what we do know about Sayer.’

  She brought out a folder containing photographs. Sophie, fetching in coffee for them on a tray, spotted one of them and made a choking noise.

  ‘Would you mind?’ Howe stood up and shut the door on both Sophie and the coffee.

  ‘I believe it’s known as the Goat of Mendes,’ Merrily said.

  A colour photograph of what seemed to be a poster. Luridly demonic: like the cover of a dinosaur heavy-metal album from the eighties.

  ‘We’ll return to that,’ Howe said. ‘But this is a photograph of Paul Sayer. He may, for all we know, have been around the city for several days before he was killed.’

  He had a fox-like face, the lower half almost a triangle. No smile. Hair lank, looked as if it would be greasy. Though his eyes were lifeless, he was not dead in this picture.

  ‘Passport photo.’ Annie Howe unbelted her raincoat. ‘Does look like him, though. Recognize him?’

  Merrily shook her head. Howe looked openly around the office. Merrily wished the D on the door was removable for occasions like this. She felt self-conscious, felt like a fraud.

  Howe smiled blandly, her contact-lensed eyes conveying an extremely subtle sneer. ‘You’re like a little watchdog at the gate up here, Ms Watkins.’

  ‘Look, if you’re not here specifically to arrest me, how about you call me Merrily?’

  ‘Actually, the people I call by their first names tend to be the ones I’ve already arrested. Standard interview-room technique.’

  ‘But the suspects don’t get to call you Annie.’

  You might wonder if anyone did, under the rank of superintendent, she had such glacial dignity. She was only thirty-two, Merrily estimated, the same age as the man pulled out of the Wye – Paul Sayer whose photo lay on the desk.

  ‘I expect you’ll get round to explaining what this poor guy has to do with the Goat and me.’

  ‘ “This poor guy”?’ said Annie Howe. ‘Why do I suspect your sympathy may be short-lived?’

  ‘He had, er, form?’

  ‘None at all. He was, according to his surviving family, a quiet, decent, clean-living man who worked as a bank clerk in Chepstow and lived in a terraced house on the edge of the town, which was immaculately maintained. He was unmarried, but once engaged for three years to a young woman from Stroud who’s since emigrated to Australia. I’ll be talking to her tonight, but one can guess why the relationship foundered.’

  Merrily took out a cigarette. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘It’s your office.’

  ‘I’ll open the window. Why did the engagement fall through?’

  ‘Don’t bother with the window, Ms Watkins. I’m paid to take risks. Well I suppose she must have seen his cellar.’

  Cellar?

  ‘Oh, my God, not a Fred West situation?’

  ‘Let’s not get too carried away. This is it.’

  Six more photographs, all eight by ten. All in colour, although there wasn’t much colour in that cellar.

  ‘Christ,’ Merrily said.

  ‘So now you understand why I’m here.’ Howe turned one of the pictures around, a wide-angle taken from the top of the cellar steps. ‘Is this your standard satanic temple, then, would you say?’

  ‘I’ve never actually been in one, but it looks… well, it looks like something inspired by old Dracula films and Dennis Wheatley novels, to be honest.’

  ‘The altar,’ Howe said, ‘appears to have been put together from components acquired at garden centres in the vicinity – reconstituted stone. The wall poster’s of American origin, probably obtained by mail-order – we found some glossy magazines full of this stuff.’

  ‘Sad.’

  ‘Yes, I admit I have a problem understanding the millions of people who seem to worship your own God, but this… How real are these people? How genuine?’

  ‘I don’t know… I’d be inclined to think the guy who built this temple is – I may be wrong – what my daughter would call a sad tosser.’

  ‘But a dead tosser,’ Howe said. ‘And we have to consider that his death could be linked to his… faith.’

  Merrily examined a close-up of the altar. ‘What’s the stain?’

  ‘We wondered that – but it’s only wine.’

  ‘So, no signs of…?’

  ‘Blood sacrifice? We haven’t finished there yet, but no.’

  ‘How did you find this set-up?’

  ‘We had to break through a very thick door with a very big lock. The local boys were quite intrigued. Not that he appears to have broken any laws. It’s all perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the law, as you know.’

  ‘Makes you wonder why there are any laws left,’ Merrily said. ‘I’ve always thought Christianity would become fashionable overnight if they started persecuting us again.’

  ‘So,’ Howe gathered up the photos, ‘you aren’t very impressed by Mr Sayer’s evident commitment to His Satanic Majesty.’

  ‘No more than I was by the sick bastards who spread a crow over a lovely little old church, but…’

  ‘Yes, that’s the point. In your opinion, if we were to devote more person-hours than we might normally do to catching the insects who dirtied this church – which amounts to no more than wilful damage and possible cruelty to a wild bird, which is unprovable – might they be able to throw some light on the religious activities of Mr Sayer?’

  ‘You’re asking if there’s a network in this area?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. It is our intention to build up a file or database, but I’m only just getting my feet under the table, and nothing like that seems to exist at present. My… predecessor—’

  ‘Is not going to be saying an awful lot to anyone for quite a while, from what I hear. If ever.’

  ‘I’m sorry about this.’ Merrily was desperate for another cigarette, but unwilling to display weakness in front of Howe – who leaned back and looked pensive.

  ‘Ms Watkins, what’s your gut feeling?’

  ‘My gut feeling… is that… although there’s no obvious pattern, there’s something a bit odd going on. I mean, I was on a course for Deliverance priests. All of us were vicars, rectors… Nobody does this full-time, that’s the point. We were told a diocesan exorcist might receive four, five assignments in a year.’

  ‘While you…?’

  ‘You want to see my appointments diary already – plus two satanic links within a week. Yes, you might find it worth following through on the Stretford case. I wonder if they ever return to the scene of the crime.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m going back tonight to do what we call a minor exorcism.’

  ‘Interesting. If they’re local, they might not be able to resist turning up.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Thank you, Ms Watkins, we’ll be represented.’ Annie Howe snapped her briefcase shut.

  ‘Just one thing.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Could you make them Christians?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The coppers.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Two reasons,’ Merrily said. ‘One is that, if they’re not, I can’t let them in. Two, a few extra devout bodies at an exorcism can only help – I understand.’

  ‘You understand.’

  ‘I’ve never done one before, have I?’

  26

  Family Heirloom

  LOL SAT IN the flat above Church Street – Moon’s ‘Capuchin Lane’. He was waiting for Denny.

  He’d been waiting for Denny for several hours. It was going dark again. The shop below, called John Barleycorn, had been closed all day. Denny had not yet said he was coming, but
Lol knew that sooner or later he would have to.

  It was Anna Purefoy who had found the photocopy, about the same time that Lol left the bathroom and Denny went in and they heard him roar, in his agony and outrage, like a maddened bull. It was Mrs Purefoy, Lol thought, who – in the choking aftermath of a tragedy that was all the more horrifying because it wasn’t a surprise – was the calmest of them.

  ‘Is Katherine dead?’

  Lol had nodded, still carrying an image of the encrusted overflow grille. Like the mouth of a vortex, Moon’s life sucked into it.

  ‘Tim,’ Mrs Purefoy had said then, ‘I think you should telephone the police from our house. I don’t think we should touch anything here.’

  And when Tim had gone, she’d led Lol to the telephone table by the side of the stairs. ‘I was about to phone for them myself, and then I saw this.’ Her red parka creaked as she bent over the table. ‘Did you know about this, Mr Robinson?’

  It was a copy of a cutting from the Hereford Times, dated November 1984. It took Lol less than half a minute to make horrifying sense of it. He was stunned.

  ‘Did you know about it?’

  A mad question maybe. Would anybody knowing about this have bought the old house?

  By then, Denny had emerged from the bathroom, and was standing, head bowed, on the other side of the stairs. After a moment he looked up, wiped the back of a hand across his lips and shook his head savagely, his earring jangling. He didn’t look at Lol or Mrs Purefoy as he strode through the room and out of the barn, the door swinging behind him. You could hear his feet grinding snow to slush as he paced outside.

  Mrs Purefoy said, ‘Did you know her very well, Mr Robinson?’

  ‘Not well enough, obviously,’ Lol said. ‘No… no I didn’t know her well.’

  And then the police had arrived – two constables. After his first brief interview, not much more than personal details, Lol had gone out on the hill while they were talking to Denny and the Purefoys. He ascended the soggy earth-steps to the car, freezing up with delayed horror, a clogging of sorrow and shame backed up against a hundred questions.

  He’d waited by the barn with Denny until they brought the body out. Hearing the splash and slap and gurgle and other sounds from the bathroom. Watching the utility coffin borne away to the postmortem. And then he and Denny had gone to Hereford police headquarters, where they were questioned separately by a uniformed sergeant and a detective constable. Statements were made and signed, Lol feeling numbed throughout.

  He and Denny had had no opportunity to talk in any kind of privacy.

  The police had shown Lol the old cutting from the Hereford Times and asked him if he’d seen it before, or if he was aware of the events decribed in the story.

  Lol had told them he knew it had happened, but not like this. He’d always understood it had been a shotgun in the woods, but he didn’t remember how he had come to know that.

  Later, the police let him read the item again. In the absence of a suicide note, they were obviously glad to have it. It made their job so much easier.

  ANCIENT SWORD USED BY SUICIDE FARMER

  Hereford farmer Harry Moon killed himself with a twothousand-year-old family heirloom, an inquest was told this week.

  Mr Moon, who had been forced to sell Dyn Farm on Dinedor Hill because of a failed business venture, told his family he was going to take a last look around the farm before they moved out.

  He was later found by his young son in a barn near the house, lying in a stone cattle trough with both wrists cut. Dennis Moon told Hereford Deputy Coroner Colin Hurley how he found a ten-inch long sword, an Iron Age relic, lying on his father’s chest.

  ‘The sword had hung in the hall for as long as I can remember,’ he said. ‘It was supposed to have been handed down from generation to generation.’

  A verdict of suicide while the balance of mind was disturbed was recorded on 43-year-old Mr Moon, who…

  ‘And when you left her at the door on Saturday evening,’ the sergeant said, ‘how would you describe Miss Moon’s state of mind?’

  ‘Kind of… intense,’ Lol had said honestly.

  ‘Intense, how?’

  ‘She was researching a book about her family. I had the impression she couldn’t wait to get back to it.’

  The sergeant had shaken his head – not quite what he’d expected to hear.

  Lol sat now in Ethel’s old chair, shadows gathering around him.

  Sometime tonight he’d have to ring Dick Lyden – most famous quote: I realize you’re a sensitive soul. But you don’t particularly need to think about psychology when you’re shagging someone, do you? He couldn’t face it.

  Just before four-thirty p.m., he heard a key in the lock, and then Denny’s footsteps on the stairs.

  It had been Merrily’s plan to spend an hour meditating in Ledwardine Church before driving nearly twenty miles to meet Huw at the church of St Cosmas and St Damien, but she’d been waylaid in the porch by Uncle Ted in heavy churchwarden mode.

  ‘Where on earth have you been? I tried to ring your socalled office – engaged, engaged, engaged. It’s not good enough, Merrily.’

  ‘Ted, I’ve just spent nearly two hours trying to put together a small congregation that absolutely nobody wants to join. I have one hour to get myself together and then I’ve got to go out again.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Merrily, but if you haven’t got time for your own church, then—’

  ‘Ted,’ she backed away from him, ‘I really don’t want to go into this now, whatever it is. OK? Can we talk in the morning?’

  It was not too dark to see his plump, smooth, retired face changing colour. ‘Were you here this morning? Someone thought they saw you.’

  ‘Early, yes.’ God, was that only today?

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I don’t know… sevenish maybe. What—?’

  ‘Did you notice anything amiss?’

  ‘I just went up to the chancel to pray. Don’t say—’

  ‘Yes, someone broke in. Someone broke into your church last night.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She thought at once of a dead crow and a smell of piss. ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Smashed a window.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Come and look.’

  She followed him into the church, where the lights were on and they turned left into the vestry, where she saw that the bulb had been smashed in its shade and a big piece of hardboard covered the window facing the orchard.

  The vestry. Thank God for that. No stained glass there.

  ‘Did they take anything?’

  ‘No, but that’s not the point, is it?’

  No blood, no entrails, no urine. Merrily took the opportunity to fumble her way to the wardrobe and pull out her vestments on their hangers. She’d have to change at home now.

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘Of course we did – not that they took much interest.’

  ‘I suppose if nothing was taken… Look, I’m sorry, Ted. I’ll have to take a proper look round tomorrow. I have to tell Jane where I’m going.’

  ‘And where are you going?’

  ‘I have to conduct a service over at Stretford. Near Dilwyn.’

  ‘This damned Deliverance twaddle again, I suppose,’ he said contemptuously. ‘You’re on a damned slippery slope, Merrily.’

  Denny’s speech, his whole manner, had slowed down – like somebody had unplugged him, Lol thought, or stopped his medication. Denny seemed ten years older. His oversized earring now looked absurd.

  ‘You see, Dad – he’d bought this house for us to move to when he sold the farm. At Tupsley, right on the edge of the city.’

  Denny had the chair, Lol was on the floor by the bricked-up fireplace. A parchment-shaded reading lamp was on.

  ‘Far too bloody close, that house,’ Denny said. ‘Christ. I used to wonder, didn’t he ever think about that? How Mum was gonna be able to handle living around here with his suicide hanging over us? The whole fa
mily tainted with it? Everybody talking about us? The selfish bastard!’

  Lol thought of that smiling man with the Land Rover who threw a shadow twenty-five years long. Denny lit up a Silk Cut from a full packet Merrily had left behind.

  ‘So after he… died, we flogged the Tupsley house sharpish, and moved over to the first place we could find in Gloucester. We had relatives there, see, and nobody there to blab to little Kathy about what had happened, like kids would’ve done if we’d still been in town – whispers in the schoolyard. Jesus, we never talked about it. It never got mentioned in our house – let alone how it happened. If some bloody old auntie ever let it slip, Ma would go loopy for days after. And me… she’s watching me all the time in case I’m developing the symptoms.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Schizophrenia.’

  Lol sensed Denny Moon’s personal fears of inheriting some fatal family flaw, some sick gene – Denny keeping the anxiety well flattened under years of bluster, laughter and general loudness.

  ‘So we… when Kathy’s five or six and starting to ask questions like how come she didn’t have an old man, we told her it was an accident. His gun went off in the woods. No big deal – she never remembered him anyway. When she was older, twelve maybe, I broke it to her that he topped himself, and why. But I stuck with the gun. You know why? Cause I knew she’d make me tell her what it was like, finding him. What he looked like in that trough – like one of them stone coffins you find around old churches.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lol found himself nodding, remembering the photo of Moon in the Cathedral Close charnel pit, gleefully holding up two ruined medieval skulls like she’d been reunited with old friends. So happy, so at home with images of death – reaching out to the image of her dead father, feverish eyes under the flat cap she thought he might have been wearing when he shot himself.

  Sick!

  Denny threw him a grateful glance. ‘I was fifteen. All you can do with a memory like that is burn it out of your mind – like they used to do with the stump when you lost an arm in some battle. So she leaves school, goes off to university in Bristol. I get the first shop – inherited, Mum’s side. I come back to Hereford. I meet Maggie. You know the rest.’