by Phil Rickman
‘She said she’d seen the Lady of Llanthony? When did she tell you that? Before she was drugged? Before she was part of a threesome?’
‘Don’t remember, darling. Except that it was like a sign. Prostitute discovers faith. How lovely.’
‘And what did it feel like afterwards? After you’d done it. An explosion of consciousness? Halfway to the astral plane, was it, Gwenda?’
Gwenda took a step up the bank, the crystal flute swinging at her side.
‘Or was it just about initiation? Your initiation… Jerry’s initiation… whose was it? Never going to be able to prove it wasn’t him, so that… gave you a hold on him. The ultimate hold. You and Jerry going all the way together. How… how touching.’
‘Thank you,’ Gwenda said, ‘that makes it a lot easier.’
Swinging her arm like a pendulum, a keening whisper in the air and Merrily’s left arm was ripped from wrist to elbow.
Oh.
The temperature dropped.
‘How can you—?’
She was trembling now, in severe shock.
‘How can you do this? How can you go on doing it?’ How can—’
Pop.
Was it extreme fear that did this? The inner camera pulling back, the blur of images, the vivid sense of yourself under a milky moon, not quite full, an arm banded with bright blood.
Your fresh blood. Cherry’s black blood. Tamsin’s dried, waxwork blood.
‘Tamsin? Was that you, too? Was it?’
… and the blood matted on Tamsin’s chest and the blood that flowed back into Cherry’s throat in the rewinding video. Outside of all this, you saw the actual hatred burning inside you like a blue light, like a gas jet turned up full.
You saw Mephista lunging with the glass at your face and losing her footing in a patch of mud and starting to slide down the bank, unbalanced.
And you might not be able to walk, but you could throw yourself down the bank, giddy with rage, breath pumping, until you had a hand under her jaw and the other groping for the eyes.
Seeing it happening, as if from somewhere else, higher up.
As if through the round eyes of Mrs Villiers, sitting directly above where you were pushing Mephista’s head under the water, where the Dulas Brook emptied itself into the Wye.
The old woman’s eyes reduced to smudges of shadows, her jaw fallen.
Her whistling in your head.
68
Martyr
FIRST FLUFFS OF white in the sky, blue and orange beacons on the ground, radio crackle. The futile scurryings of baffled cops. Bliss’s Honda parked at the edge of the market square, under the castle.
Merrily in the passenger seat, still unable to keep a limb still, a white bandage on one arm, to the elbow.
‘Tried to kill herself,’ Bliss said. ‘Ostensibly. She threw herself into the river, and she let herself float out on her back, and there she is like the Lady of friggin Shallot, screaming at them not to try and reach her. I’d got there by then. You know what I did, Merrily? Stood there and had a bit of a laugh.’
‘As you do.’
‘As you do when you know she’s just furious at being upstaged by a little vicar.’ He turned on her. ‘Merrily, why? Why did you run it so close to the wire? Why didn’t you just run the other bloody way? In that situation, on me own, even I’d’ve run the other way.’
‘What, like you did with a cellar full of the cockfighting fraternity?’
‘Why?’ Bliss said again.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it.’
Well, she did. And that was the blackest joke of all.
‘We’re gonna tell Gore later,’ Bliss said. ‘Tell him what happened down by the river. To see whether he laughs as well. So to speak. It’s interesting that he’ll talk, in his faintly refined way, about everything. Everything but his family. Everything but his upbringing. Everything but his mother.’
‘It’s a very peculiar relationship.’
‘Did she do it all? From the beginning?’
‘I think you’ll find she did. A psychotic teenager exposed to – whether it was happening or not – black magic and a celebration of violence by educated, persuasive people who claim that doing bad things is not only excusable, it’s important for the future of the planet…’
‘Did you see the devil in her, the yellow satanic eyes? I’m not being fatuous.’
‘No. I wanted to, but it’s like she’s got past that stage. She’s a mature woman now, it’s become habitual. Smashed all the barriers. Sold her soul a long time ago. What’s left looks like… nothing. Something dead. What scares me most was that it’s like there was some kind of transference. Something happening inside me. For just a second or so, on the riverbank, I just wanted to… Frannie, I’m a bloody vicar…’
‘Yeh, well, you didn’t.’
‘What if they hadn’t come when they did?’
‘No illusions, kid, she’d’ve had you. You’d be a friggin’ C of E martyr. Saint Merrily.’
She watched the pink entering the clouds, like a little blood soaking through the bandage on her arm.
‘Who told them, anyway?’
‘Somebody in one of the houses, complaining about the disturbance. They thought you were both pissed.’
She started to laugh.
‘Why was she there anyway? Why did she really go there?’
‘That little beach? There’s talk of a boat being seen on the river, in the vicinity. What if somebody was waiting to pick her up? Both of them, or just her. Get them quietly away down the Wye? How traditional is that?’
‘What kind of boat? Whose?’
‘Interesting, isn’t it? All the rich and influential, deeply rightwing people with land near the Wye. Downriver and into oblivion. But I fantasize… We’re never gonna know, are we?’
They were silent for a few seconds. From inside the ambulance, she’d heard them bringing Gwenda out of the river, Gwenda – typically – threatening to bring charges. Merrily getting out of the ambulance very rapidly in case Gwenda was coming in.
‘When I first met her down there,’ she said at last, ‘she was rambling on about Gore leaving her for another woman. I thought it was all just bullshit, off the top of her head. But it does begin to look like something happened between them. Something conclusive.’
‘She’s possessive, to put it mildly. Her son and her lover – can you imagine that? Finding the son and lover is two-timing her?’
‘Are you going to be able to prove that Gwenda – for whatever motive – killed Tamsin?’
‘Lorra work to do there. Had she been watching Tamsin? Had something alerted her when Tamsin went to the bar to ask questions?’
‘Some visible chemistry between Tamsin and Gore? Where’s Gore now?’
‘Out there somewhere. Charged with assault and bailed. It’d make it a lot easier for everybody if he buggered off. I wonder if he will.’
‘You’re not watching him?’
‘Dyfed-Powys’s baby now, and Brent will’ve explained about my condition. If Gore sticks around, we’ll need to work on him. He may’ve killed nobody and might well walk. A man raised by Nazis.’
‘Where’s Tamsin on this? Did she know about that? Or was he just some uncomplicated, quiet fell runner?’
‘It’s conceivable that Gore was finally starting to react against his own upbringing. Although, to be honest, I wouldn’t trust him at all. Thorogood told me a silly little tale about Gore helping him to put up his shop sign and nearly taking Kapoor’s head off with a big slab of oak. Like something was bred into him – if you gerra chance to kill or main an ethnic… Yeah, right.’ Bliss shook his head. ‘I don’t know where this starts, Merrily, but I’ve a good idea, with the state of the West Mercia Police budget, where it’s likely to end.’
‘Yes.’ Merrily watched the dawn. It didn’t seem like a dawn. ‘Mrs Villiers… do they know what happened to her?’
‘You gonna tell me about that?’
But she couldn’t.
/> ‘Well,’ Bliss said. ‘Only time and Billy Grace will tell. Gorra be off, Merrily. Thought we should touch base for a few minutes, but I’ve gorra big day ahead. Trying to pull something together. Avoid gerrin Brent’s knife in me back.’
‘You need rest, Frannie. You know you do.’
Bliss grinned.
‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time.’
69
Spirit rising
WINDOWS WOUND DOWN for the birdsong, cow parsley waist-high on the verge of an empty road, she steered stiffly into the driveway at The Glades at not long after six-thirty. Because of the horse-chestnut trees on either side, a dull lantern was still ambering the Victorian dressed-stone of the porch when Mrs Cardelow let her in.
‘She’ll refuse to come down, Mrs Watkins. Far too early.’
‘Mrs Cardelow, I saw her curtain twitch as I drove up.’ She hadn’t, but it was worth a try. ‘Could you tell her I have just one question. Which is, who killed—?’
‘Cardelow – out!’
Miss White was standing at the top of the stairs in a long, tubular quilted dressing gown that made her look like a carnivorous caterpillar.
‘Clearly, I was wrong,’ Mrs Cardelow said. ‘Would you like tea or coffee with your copy of the Official Secrets Act?’
‘My room,’ Miss White said.
As usual, no books were on show but the floor-to-ceiling cupboards spoke for themselves. An occult library in every sense.
Merrily was allowed to sit on the bottom of the bed, twisting to face Miss White who was lodged in what looked like a reconditioned barber’s chair, the Zimmer within reach.
‘I had several phone calls either side of midnight, Watkins. Was able to make a useful response to virtually none of them. For which I blame you.’
‘I’ve never seen you without make-up before,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m shocked. Close up, you look almost innocent.’
‘What happened to your arm?’
‘Glassed. By a woman who then used it on herself to avoid answering questions about some deaths, one of them a young policewoman.’
‘You seem unusually bitter,’ Miss White said.
‘I’ve been trying to work out whether that’s a sin. Also…’ Merrily leaned forward ‘… how much lower the casualty count would be… if you’d told me the truth.’
Miss White sniffed.
‘I did tell you the truth. Just not all of it. Couldn’t, anyway. Be in breach of the terms of the bequest. These deaths – are we still talking about neo-Nazis?’
Merrily sighed, starting to feel very tired.
‘You know what, Athena? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know where the fantasy starts or where it ends. There’s a man called Seymour Loftus – don’t even know whether that’s his real name.’
‘It is. And he’s a practising magician of some long standing.’
‘You know him?’
‘I don’t know him. Know very few people now.’
‘What about Sir Charles Brace?’
Miss White made a sound like dirty water in a blocked drain. ‘Oh dear, oh lord, yes. We all knew him.’
‘We?’
‘The people I don’t talk about. Brace was a foolish blimp of a man. Always planning some military coup with a bunch of gammy-legged old colonels. Lived in a dreadful fake castle with an alleged pair of Himmler’s specs in a showcase. Became more or less insane in his later years.’
‘What about his children?’
‘Disowned most of them for lack of backbone. Despaired of finding a suitably cranky heir and was forced to skip a whole generation after one of them made away with himself.’
‘Jerrold Brace?’
‘The names escape me.’
‘What about his grandchildren? One called George. Known as Gore. The son – and partner – of the woman who did this?’ Merrily lifted the bandaged arm. ‘Brought up – allegedly – at Sir Charles’s expense, in some kind of right-wing survivalist commune in Mid Wales. Your colleagues investigate any of those?’
‘They may have existed. And Loftus may have served as an instructor, if you like, at one or more. Loftus is an unimpressive man, but he knows his stuff. They were taking existing magical systems and modifying them to serve their political and philosophical ambitions. Which are mostly doomed in the short term, but they seldom think short term. They think in terms of aeons. Imagining they’ll still be around, in some etheric sense, to watch the cosmic revolution. Could never be arsed with people like that.’
‘They still out there?’
‘Oh, they’re still there, but in what form? I don’t know. These training camps – it’s a possibility, but if you were to raid one all you’d find would be a smallholding with a rather eccentric library. To go back to old Brace and his grandson – I can tell you something. Usual rules.’
‘Of course.’
‘This might be urban mythology. Only the lawyers know the truth but, given the transparent lunacy of it and Charles Brace’s obsession with breeding suitably Aryan descendants… there was talk of a Secret Trust. Do you know what that is?’
‘No. Don’t make me ask Uncle Ted.’
‘Let’s say that Brace leaves a sum of money – say a few million – to a particular person, who is then trusted to turn most of the money over to the grandson when the grandson meets certain conditions. In this case, it might be – I’m speaking hypothetically here – the production of a properly Aryan child. Boy serves up a sprog who looks like bloody Boris Johnson and he’s quidsin. Once the child’s been verified as his, of course, and the mother’s credentials have been approved.’
‘Who’s the trustee?’
‘I don’t know, it’s a bloody secret, isn’t it? But you can imagine the appalling George perpetually on the lookout for a suitable carrier for his sperm. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing, I—’
So when a lovely young woman arrives in the very shop, at the foot of the castle where Gore’s parents had performed their seminal sacrifice…
Look at me, de Braose. I’m a blonde from the north, my ancestors were probably Vikings.
A young woman who’d thought she was under observation, whose image had been captured in front of the castle.
This was, of course, insane. So much here that would never be understood, and some of it had only ever existed in people’s skewed minds.
‘And the mother’s alive?’ Miss White said.
‘They pulled her out of the Wye. She’s in hospital, under guard. Refusing to say anything. Told me a few things, one to one, but… her word against mine.’
‘Don’t be naive, Watkins. You’re a minister of the Church. She left you with a serious wound.’
‘You know too much, Athena.’
‘Or she might do away with herself while on remand. You can but hope.’
Merrily said nothing. Only one issue remained.
‘Who killed Peter Rector?’ Miss White’s face was serious and, without the Alice Cooper eye make-up, appeared guileless. ‘Did you ask Claudia Cornwell, whom I gather you encountered?’
‘May have. In a roundabout way.’
‘She tell you nobody killed him? That they simply… attended his demise, if you like.’
‘You going to explain that, Athena?’
‘Oh, Athena, is it?’
‘Whatever you want.’
‘I want somebody to relieve me of the responsibility of finding someone to accept his legacy. All right… I surmise – and will go no further than that – that Peter Rector was worried on a number of fronts. One, that he might be losing his faculties. Not so much his mind as his capacity for… using it… and other functions… for a particular purpose.’
‘The last redemptive project.’
‘If you like. He could always detect shadows. A few of which we’ve just discussed. He thought – I surmise – that it was time to go. For… some of him to go. In a purposeful way.’
Maybe she didn’t need to know
this.
‘You’ve doubtless read of the elderly male witch who volunteered for a sacrificial death by hypothermia on a beach on the south coast during the war. Part of a ritual to prevent a German invasion. The psychic Home Guard. You have read about that, I suppose?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Peter loved that story.’
‘I don’t think I like where this is going.’
‘Where do you see it going?’
‘He wants to make himself part of the… the project?’
‘He can only do this for a time. When the physical body dies, the astral body may remain extant for some time. Longer, if sustained by… shall we say the energies of others. And, when necessary, it may be able to function… through… living persons. Requires someone… receptive. You should be able to work this out for yourself, so I’ll say no more. But it might be seen to be assisted by a ceremonial departure.’
‘I see,’ Merrily said. At last, she felt a kind of smile coming. ‘Tell me when I go wrong.’
She sat, straight-backed, on the bottom corner of the bed, placing her hands in her lap and closing her eyes.
‘OK. I can visualize the temple under the barn made active. I can visualize people stationed at significant intervals along the Dulas Brook, from close to the source, up in the mountains… perhaps close to the stone circle on the Bluff or even the place where the Virgin was made manifest. People in deep meditation, all the way to the access points, in Hay… down by the sewage works… or even below St Mary’s Church… both linked by the wonderful River Wye, anyway. Which is hidden from the everyday business of the town… like the chancel from the nave.’
‘Not bad,’ Miss White said softly.
‘And, at the appointed time, when he feels himself psychically supported, I can visualize Mr Rector throwing his hat, symbolically, in the pool and… following it. His spirit rising to follow the brook’s energy down to the sacred Wye. And as it rises…’ Dear God… ‘as it rises, a strange light is cast over Cusop around the castle hill and Bryn-y-Castell farm so that the land itself becomes translucent. God, Athena, I think I’m going to cry…’
‘Don’t be disrespectful,’ Miss White said. ‘Now get out.’
