To Dream of the Dead mw-10

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Global warmin’? Load of ole wallop, Janey. Anythin’ to put the wind up ordinary folk.’

  ‘You seen those pictures of the big ice-cliffs cracking up in the Antarctic?’

  Gomer’s match went out and he struck another.

  ‘All I’m sayin’, girl, science, he en’t got all the answers, do he?’

  ‘Yeah, but something has to be going on, because this hasn’t happened before, has it?’ Jane feeling her voice going shrill; it wasn’t a joke any more — up in the Midlands people had died. ‘I mean, have you seen this before? Like, here? We ever come this close to a real flood?’

  ‘Not in my time, ’cept for the lanes getting blocked, but what’s that in the life of a river?’ Gomer looked up towards the square, where the Christmas tree was lit up like a shaky beacon of hope. ‘You’ll be all right, Janey. En’t gonner reach the ole vicarage in a good while.’

  ‘What about your bungalow?’

  She didn’t think Gomer’s bungalow was on the flood plain, but it had to be close. Always said it wasn’t where he’d’ve chosen to live but Minnie had liked the views.

  Gomer said he’d brought one of his diggers down. Took real deep water to stop a JCB getting through.

  ‘En’t sure about them poor buggers on the hestate, mind.’

  Nodding across the bridge at the new houses, one defiantly done out with flashing festive bling — Santa’s sleigh, orange and white, in perpetual, rippling motion. The estate had been built a couple of years ago, and most of it was definitely on the flood plain — which, of course, nobody could remember ever being actually flooded, although that wouldn’t matter a toss anyway, when the council needed to sanction more houses. Government targets to meet, boxes to tick.

  This was possibly the most terrifying thing about growing up: you could no longer rely on adults in authority operating from any foundation of common sense. They just played it for short-term gain, lining their nests and covering their backs. How long, if Gomer was right, before the Christmas Bling house became like some kind of garish riverboat?

  ‘What about Coleman’s Meadow, Gomer? If the river comes out, could the flood water get that far?’

  Twice they’d abandoned the dig — Jane really losing hope, now, that anything significant would be uncovered before the end of the school holidays, never mind the start.

  ‘Could it, Gomer?’

  ‘You still plannin’ to be a harchaeologist, Janey?’

  ‘Absolutely. Two university interviews in the New Year. Fingers crossed.’

  Be fantastic if she could someday work around here. The Ledwardine stones could all be in place again by the summer, but there were probably years of excavation to come on the Dinedor Serpent, the other side of Hereford, and who knew what else was waiting to be found? Suddenly, this county had become a hot spot for prehistoric archaeology — two really major discoveries within a year. As though the landscape itself was throwing off centuries like superfluous bedclothes, an old light pulsing to the surface, and Jane could feel the urgency of it in her spine.

  ‘Gomer, is the meadow likely to get flooded?’

  ‘Mabbe.’ Gomer took out his ciggy, fingers sprouting from the woollen mittens. ‘Lowish ground, ennit?’

  ‘The thing is, if they think it could ruin the excavation, they might not even start it till there’s no danger of it all getting drowned.’

  Meanwhile, Councillor sodding Pierce, who didn’t give a toss what lay under Coleman’s Meadow, would keep on trying to screw it, like his council had done with the Serpent. Playing for time, and Jane would be back at school before they got to sink the first trowel.

  ‘You going to the parish meeting, Gomer?’

  ‘Mabbe look in, mabbe not. Nobody gonner listen to an ole gravedigger. You still banned, is it, Janey?’

  ‘Well, not banned exactly. Mum’s just…’

  … politely requested that she stay away.

  It’s not going to help, flower. It’s reached the stage where we need a degree of subtlety, or they’re going to win.

  Mum thinking the mad kid wouldn’t be able to hold back, would make a scene, heckling Pierce, making the good guys look like loonies.

  The brown water flung itself at the old sandstone bridge, and Jane, officially adult now and able to vote against the bastard, bit her lip and felt helpless. Even the riverman was on the point of betraying her.

  ‘Dreamed about my Min last night,’ Gomer said.

  Jane looked at him. His ciggy drooped and his glasses were as grey as stone.

  ‘Dreamed her was still alive. Us sittin’ together, by the light o’ the fire. Pot of tea on the hob.’

  ‘But you—’

  ‘En’t got no hob n’ more. True enough. That was how I knowed it was a dream.’ Gomer steadied his roll-up. ‘Was a good dream, mind. En’t often you gets a good dream, is it?’

  Nearly a couple of years now since Minnie’s death. Close to the actual anniversary. Gomer had put new batteries in both their watches and buried them in the churchyard with Minnie. Maybe — Jane shivered lightly — one of the watches had finally stopped and something inside him had felt that sudden empty stillness, the final parting.

  ‘You know what they says, Janey.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sign of rain,’ Gomer said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What they used to say. My ole mam and her sisters. To dream of the dead…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To dream of the dead is a sign of rain.’

  ‘That’s…’ She stared hard at him. ‘What kind of sense does that make?’

  ‘Don’t gotter make no partic’lar sense,’ Gomer said. ‘Not direc’ly, like, do it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘These ole sayings, they comes at the truth sideways, kind of thing.’

  ‘Right,’ Jane said.

  It seemed to have gone darker. The clouds had closed down the moon, and the village lights shone brighter as if in a kind of panic. New rain slanted into Jane’s cheeks, sudden, sharp and arrogant, and she thought about her own troubled nights, worrying about the dig, the future, her own future, Eirion…

  ‘So, like, what’s supposed to happen,’ she said, ‘if you dream about the rain?’

  3

  See the Rabbit

  One of Hereford’s little secrets, this ruin. In daylight, at the bottom of a secret garden surrounded by depots, offices and a school, you could easily miss it; most people, tourists and locals, didn’t even know it existed.

  But with night screening the surroundings, Bliss thought, it was a sawn-off Castle Dracula.

  ‘So where is it?’

  Looking around in case he’d been scammed; wouldn’t be the first time these bastards had done it to him, especially around Christmas, but he wouldn’t have expected it of Karen Dowell.

  ‘The body, Karen?’

  Bending his head on the edge of the blurry lamplight to peer into her fresh, farmer’s-wife face.

  ‘The body… we don’t exactly know, boss,’ Karen said.

  ‘What?’

  Had to be eight of them in the rose garden in front of the monastery. Bliss had registered DC Terry Stagg, several uniforms and two techies, clammy ghosts in their Durex suits.

  On balance, too many for a scam. And there was this little trickle of unholy excitement, which would often accompany shared knowledge of something exquisitely repellent.

  Bliss looked around, recalling being here once before. One of the kids had been involved in some choir thing at the Coningsby Hospital which fronted the site on lower Widemarsh Street. Coningsby was only a hospital in some old-time sense of the word, more of a medieval chapel with almshouses and an alleyway leading to the rose garden, where there was also a stone cross set into a little tower with steps up to it.

  ‘’Scuse, please, Francis. Let the dog see the rabbit.’

  Crime-scene veteran Slim Fiddler, seventeen stone plus, squelching across the grass, messing with his Nikon. A strong wire-m
esh fence separated the ruins from the St Thomas Cantilupe primary school next door. Slim Fiddler stopped a bit short of it, turned round, and the other techie, Joanna Priddy, moved aside as his flash went off.

  Which was when Bliss also saw, momentarily, the rabbit.

  Saw why Karen had chucked her supper.

  The body… we don’t exactly know, boss.

  The cross… its base seemed to be hexagonal. About four steps went up to the next tier, which was like a squat church tower with Gothic window holes, stone balcony rails above them, and the actual cross sprouting from a spire rising out of the centre.

  Thought it was a gargoyle, at first. When the flash faded, it had this stone look, the channels of blood like black mould.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Bliss said quietly.

  The face was looking out from one of the Gothic windows.

  ‘If you’re going up there, best to get kitted up, Mr Bliss.’

  Joanna Priddy handed him a Durex suit and Bliss clutched it numbly, as the rain blew in from Wales.

  ‘Who found it?’

  ‘Bloke came in for a smoke,’ Karen said. ‘Nobody knows where it’s legal to light up, any more, do they?’

  ‘Like we’re supposed to care.’

  ‘Comes round the back of the cross to get out of the wind, flicks his lighter and…’

  ‘Swallows his cig?’ Bliss said. ‘We looking at gangland here, Karen, or what?’

  ‘I’d like to think we could rule out a domestic, boss.’

  Bliss thought for a moment about two baddish faces he’d eyeballed walking over from High Town. After dark, away from the city centre, the people you passed became predominantly male and increasingly iffy. The whole atmosphere of this Division had changed a good deal in the past few years.

  ‘Just the head, Karen? No other bits?’

  ‘Not that we’ve found. There’s a brick behind it, stood on end to prop it up. And a piece of tinsel — you can’t see it now from the ground. It was round the neck, but it’s slipped down.’

  ‘Like people put round the turkey on the dish?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Very festive,’ Bliss said. ‘I presume someone’s checked it’s, you know, real?’

  ‘Why do you think I threw up? Not much, mind, but it was the shock, you know? Not like anything I’ve…’

  Bliss nodded. In no great hurry, frankly, to put on the Durex suit and take a closer look. He clapped his hands together.

  ‘Right, then. Let us summon foot soldiers. If the rest of this feller’s bits are anywhere in the vicinity, I want them found before morning. I want this whole compound sealed and that school closed tomorrow. Where’s Billy Grace?’

  ‘Might not actually be Dr Grace,’ Karen said. ‘Somebody’s on the way.’

  ‘This cross — it’s got a name?’

  ‘I’m not sure, boss. There’s some kind of information board at the back.’

  Karen led Bliss towards the wire fence, the school building on the other side. She held up a torch; Bliss scanned the sign.

  Built in the 14th century and considerably restored in the 19th century, this is the only surviving example in the county of a preaching cross…

  … built in conjunction with the Blackfriar Monastery…

  … given the order by Sir John Daniel…

  … beheaded for interference in baronial wars in the reign of Edward III

  ‘And when they’d topped him, did they by any chance display this Sir John’s head on his own cross?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, boss.’

  ‘I mean, it’s not some old Hereford tradition?’

  ‘Not in my time,’ Karen said.

  ‘Somebody’s looking for maximum impact here, Karen. Kind of Look what I’ve done.’

  ‘Maybe more impact than you actually… Here.’ Karen handing him the rubber-covered torch. ‘Might not’ve shown up with the flash. Try that. From where you are.’

  Bliss switched on the flashlight, tracked the beam up from the base of the cross. The light finding what remained of the neck, black blood, gristle.

  ‘Boss…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Back off. Move the light up a bit.’

  Karen came alongside him and lifted his arm slightly, steadying it when the beam found the…

  ‘Bugger me,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Yeah, if you back right off it’s all you can see at first.’

  Bliss switched off the torch, took a few steps back, snapped it on again.

  ‘What’ve they done? It’s like it’s…’

  ‘Still alive,’ Karen said. ‘Sorry about the smell of sick.’

  ‘You’re excused,’ Bliss said.

  The black hole behind the spinning lights.

  How black did you want?

  4

  Or Die

  It was a question of which century you wanted to live in, sleek, thirtyish Lyndon Pierce was telling them. Which millennium, even.

  ‘Comes down to that, people. All comes down to that.’

  Punching the table. People? Pierce had been watching American politicians on TV?

  There was silence.

  Pierce stopped talking and Merrily noticed the way he patted his gelled black hair, his eyes swivelling around the 1960s pink-brick community hall, as if suddenly unsure of his ground. She leaned over, whispering in Lol’s ear.

  ‘Misjudged his audience, do you think?’

  ‘Maybe not quite the audience he was expecting,’ Lol said. ‘Fixing it to coincide with shopping night in Hereford… bad move? Your night shoppers are the local working people. He’s just realising what he’s got here are mainly white settlers.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Merrily guessing that the house lights would come up at the end of the meeting on too many faces she wasn’t going to recognise. At one time, as parish priest, you’d try to connect with all the newcomers. But turning up on doorsteps in a dog collar these days would cause a few to feel pressurised, patronised or — worst of all — evangelised. The incomers from Off, this was. The ones who were not Lyndon Pierce’s people. The ones who really wanted to be living at least a century ago, as long they didn’t have to go to church.

  Almost a majority now in Ledwardine, the weekenders and the white settlers. Many of them coming here to retire, but that didn’t mean what it used to — business people were quitting at forty-five, flogging the London terraced for a million-plus and downsizing to a farmhouse with four acres and outbuildings you could turn into holiday cottages. County Councillor Pierce pressed his palms into the table, leaning forward.

  ‘Even when I was a boy, look, this was a very different place. Rundown, bad roads, no facilities. Not exactly sawdust on the floor of the Black Swan, but you get the idea.’ He straightened up, shaking his gleaming head. ‘Drunkenness? Violence? Goodness me, people, they talk about binge drinking nowadays, but my grandfather could tell you stories would make your hair curl. Stories of hard times, brutal times. Low pay, poverty, disease…’

  Pierce was still shaking his head sadly, Lol shaking his in incredulity, leaning into Merrily.

  ‘He’s talking bollocks, right? Just tell me he’s talking bollocks.’

  ‘He’s talking bollocks,’ Merrily said. ‘But it’s clever bollocks.’

  Well, sure, times had changed for the better, in many ways. But also for the worse. Herefordshire, never a wealthy county — low wages, far more poverty than showed — was becoming increasingly unbalanced. This village wasn’t the best place to live any more if you weren’t loaded. No mains gas out here, only crippling oil bills. Local kids needed a forklift truck to reach the foot of the housing ladder.

  ‘Councillor Pierce.’ James Bull-Davies, chairing the meeting, had been fairly quiet so far; now he leaned forward in his high-backed chair, the caged lights purpling his bald patch. ‘For what it’s worth, my family’s been here since the fifteenth century at least. We all realise how deprived the place was in former times, but frankly… don’t see the relevance.’r />
  Probably knowing he was on shaky ground, all the same. Too many of James’s ancestors had grown fat on the backs of deprived peasantry. Pierce didn’t look at him.

  ‘Give me a moment, Colonel. Even fifteen years ago, this community was dying. Some of you’ll remember how, after a long and bitter fight, we lost our primary school — didn’t have the population to support it.’

  James Bull-Davies glared at Pierce. Colonel never went down well. Forced to leave the Army when his father died, to take over the failing family estate, James had shouldered his fate, stiffened his spine and shut the door on that room of his life. Colonel this, Colonel that… meaningless affectation.

  Merrily saw the way Pierce was ignoring him. He had people out there to reach. His main advantage being that most of them wouldn’t have been here long enough to know about his agenda.

  ‘They say that when a village loses its school, it loses its life-force. But Ledwardine survived. Why? Because we learned our lesson. We learned that survival requires growth. Not standing still. Not preserving what we’ve got, like a museum, but carefully planned, considered expansion. Either you makes progress or you falls behind. You grows or you dies. Am I right?’

  His eyes panning the dim room for support, passing over Merrily, who’d gone new-native tonight in the black velvet skirt, her cashmere sweater, the lovely terracotta silk scarf Lol had brought back from London.

  Pierce had paused. It was clear that he was building up to something. ‘Any second now,’ Lol said, ‘he’s going to call us My Fellow Ledwardinians.’

  Merrily smothered a smile behind her woollen glove. The smell of fresh wax wafted from the glistening coat folded on her knees. Lol had bought her that, too, her first actual non-fake Barbour, reproofed in the bathroom this morning with the rain oozing through the cracked putty around the window. She was wishing she’d kept it on now; the heating was, at best, sporadic in the village hall, circa 1964.

  Was the heating functioning at all, in fact? Or had Pierce contrived to have it turned off to make the place seem even less, as he would put it, fit for purpose? Give him time and he’d be talking about a new leisure centre, part-funded by a National Lottery grant. Squash courts, pool, sunbeds.