by Phil Rickman
66
Endtime
The smaller caravan was all black, but in the windows of the big one there was a steamy grey-white glow, weaker than the muffled moon.
Terry Stagg held up the open padlock, the metal gate already hanging loose. Bliss nodded, went through the opening into Coleman’s Meadow. The night was still and cold and unfriendly as an unlit cellar.
Three uniforms behind them. They’d all come in Gomer Parry’s jeep, the old bugger still at the wheel, having refused to hand over the keys on the grounds none of them was insured. All too often this job was close to dark comedy.
‘We’ll knock, I think,’ Bliss whispered.
It wasn’t necessary. The metal door was hanging open, a big man standing at the top of the two steps, with the mean light behind him. He was wearing a rugby shirt and he had a beer bottle in his right hand. He took in Bliss from boots to beanie.
‘The fuck are you? Know what time this is?’
‘It’s almost one a.m., Mr Blore.’ Bliss could no more call him Professor than he could call Iain Brent Doctor. He flashed his ID. ‘And I’m here to wish you a very merry Christmas on behalf of West Mercia CID. Just something we like to do periodically.’
Felt his blood racing. Hadn’t expected this. Not Blore himself, forsaking his nice comfy room back at the Swan for a wet Christmas dawn in Coleman’s Meadow. Only one possible reason for this. He was either not alone or not expecting to be alone for long.
‘If you’re here about the flooding,’ Blore said, ‘we’ve been spared. Which is just as well ’cause I’m back on the job on Boxing Day.’
Bliss beamed.
‘My information is you were on the job this very evening, sir.’
‘Well, your information is wrong.’
Blore didn’t get it. Perhaps just as well. Bliss jerked a thumb at his companion with the ancient anorak and the greying moustache.
‘My colleague DC Stagg. Have you seen your security officer tonight, sir?’
‘No. But then I wouldn’t expect to. He’s gone home for Christmas.’
‘You don’t need security over Christmas?’
‘Why I’m here… Inspector, was it?’
‘That not a bit of a risk, personal-safety wise, Mr Blore?’
‘Self-employed,’ Blore said. ‘Means I can give the nanny state the finger.’
‘Sure about that, are we, Mr Blore?’ Bliss hated cops who called people we; hoped Blore did, too. ‘Sure we haven’t seen Glyn?’
‘Who’s Glyn?’
‘Did I say Glyn? I meant Gregory.’
‘No.’
‘It’s not a nice night, Mr Blore. Would you mind if we came in?’
‘Yes, I would, actually. You arrive at my excavation in the early hours of Christmas morning, you ask me inane questions without giving me a good reason and now you want to invade my limited fucking space.’
‘Mr Blore…’ Bliss sighed. ‘I won’t pretend I’ve gorra warrant, but if you don’t invite me in, my lads will just camp outside until I get one brought to Caple End, by which time I’ll’ve become horribly suspicious and just a mite less friendly than I’ve been so far.’
Blore sniffed and stood to one side.
‘Be my guest, then.’
When the church was empty, Merrily unplugged the Christmas tree, switched out the lights and stood alone, watching deep Gothic windows coming silently to a grey and ghostly half life.
At the door, she said a prayer for Shirley’s soul, followed by the Lord’s Prayer and a precautionary St Patrick’s Breastplate. Then she grabbed her coat from the peg over the prayer book rack, went out and locked up, and in the porch her breath came out very like a long-suppressed sob.
She’d made herself stand there in the pulpit, her foot inside a wellington touching one of dead Shirley’s hands. Standing there, slowly becoming aware of the smell, very calmly apologising to the bemused, restive, overtired and disappointed congregation, explaining that the village was now at the centre of a murder investigation and that nobody was being allowed to leave for the present. Suggesting that those who couldn’t go home should go across to the Swan for the time being.
And that those villagers who could go home should not go alone.
She hadn’t told Uncle Ted what was inside the pulpit, certainly not Edna Huws. Outside, she found Lol and Jane and Eirion waiting under the lych-gate, like some kind of dysfunctional family.
‘Home?’ Jane said.
‘Swan, I’m afraid, flower.’
At the Black Swan, Barry took them in his office, explained that Superintendent Howe and the other policewoman had borrowed his car to take Mrs Winterson to Caple End.
Sounded like Leonora had been arrested, was going to be handed over at the bridge to cops from Hereford.
‘Howe’ll be back?’
‘That’s what she said.’ Barry spread his hands, someone outside shouting for him. ‘You’ll have to excuse me—’
‘Sure… OK.’ Merrily handed the bunch of church keys on a rusting ring, like gaoler’s keys, to Eirion. ‘Could you give those to Annie Howe when she gets back? Needs to be Eirion,’ she said to Jane. ‘You and Howe have too much history.’
‘Mum…?’
‘OK…’
Merrily told them and watched Jane go instantly pale. Throwing an arm around the kid in a way she hadn’t done for years. Not since Jane had become that little taller than her mother.
Both of them aware, at this moment, of how close…
‘Don’t give the keys to anyone else. Don’t, of course, go in. Under any circumstances.’
‘He killed her. Gregory?’
‘It’s… likely.’
A puncture in the coat, a little blood like a cluster of holly berries. Maybe Shirley disturbed him smashing the stained-glass window or the rood screen, scattering the chairs. Him smashing things? That way round?
Jane said distantly, ‘He said the trick was to let other people do the dying.’ She looked up at Merrily. ‘Why are you leaving the keys with—? Where are you going?’
‘We have to go and find Bliss. We have to tell him about this.’
‘We?’
‘Me and Lol, I think.’
‘But, like… why don’t you just ring him on his mobile?’
‘Because I’ve tried, and Coleman’s Meadow seems to be one of those blank spots. If he’s talking to Blore, he needs this.’
‘We’ll all go,’ Jane said.
‘No, we won’t.’
The caravan had three rooms and Gregory wasn’t in any of them.
On a table in the very plush living room, heated by Calor gas, there were two beer bottles, but that didn’t mean anything.
What had probably happened, Bliss figured, was that they’d heard the jeep approaching and Blore had simply opened the door and let him out and stayed in the doorway drinking his beer. Arrogant twat.
‘Well, thank you, Mr Blore. Everything seems in order.’
‘You going to tell me what this is all about, Inspector?’
‘Of course. We’re investigating the death of Mathew Elliot Stooke. You did know about that?’
‘You mean Winterson? Thought the poor guy was drowned. Why’s that need further investigation, including a search of my fucking caravan?’
‘Because we think he was murdered.’
‘Homicide by drowning?’ Blore shrugged, let out a small burp, pushed stubby fingers through his dense hair. ‘Suppose these things happen, don’t they? Western world’s reverting to some kind of neoneolithic barbarity, Inspector. Suicide bombers, kids shooting other kids on the streets, torturing old ladies…’
‘Godless,’ Bliss said.
Part of him wanting to hang that toilet scene on the bastard, but without a signed statement yet from Jane it was unsafe. At the door, as Terry Stagg was stepping down into the mud, Bliss turned quickly.
‘Oh — We were only talking about you earlier on. With Steve Furneaux?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Blore squi
nted at him. ‘Oh… yeah, I know who you mean. Guy from the Council. Smooth sort of bastard.’
‘That’s right. He was smooth. He’s spending the night with us.’
‘Drink-driving?’
Bliss smiled.
‘God, Mr Blore… You’re a clever twat, aren’t you?’
‘I like to think so,’ Blore said.
Merrily drove out on to the square. With Old Barn Lane blocked, the only way now was up past the church. Past the entrance to Blackberry Lane, a circuitous route bordering the orchard and eventually coming out, through the new housing, to the bypass.
There was a single-track road from here, leading directly to Coleman’s Meadow.
‘Jane’s right,’ Lol said. ‘You don’t get out. If we don’t see Bliss we blow the horn.’
‘Right.’
‘We don’t tempt fate,’ Lol said.
‘No.’
They emerged on to the bypass near the place where Lucy Devenish had died next to her moped. Merrily could tell Lol was thinking about it too. You just did, whenever you passed this way.
‘So he wrecked the church,’ Lol said. ‘This guy.’
‘The Endtime.’ Merrily brought the Volvo down to second gear in the mud-track to Coleman’s Meadow. ‘The flood, the Antichrist. The whole madness of it. The insane idea that Elliot Stooke and I were working together towards the birth of the Antichrist on Christmas Eve. Leonora could’ve put all that together from the Lord of the Light website. All the crap you find on the Net. They had this Gregory on the payroll. Told him exactly what to do.’
The damage reinforcing the idea of a dangerously unbalanced fundamentalist with a fear and hatred of Stooke. If Stooke’s drowning was, in the end, not considered accidental, the police would have had Shirley in the frame, and Shirley’s attitude would have convinced them they were on the money.
‘She’d probably have been judged unfit to plead,’ Lol said. ‘Case closed.’
Merrily reached out for his hand, knowing he was thinking of his own case, the tunnel-vision of policemen chasing a result.
‘Only, the poor woman was mad enough to be in the church,’ she said. ‘Maybe hiding — we’ll never know, will we, how she and this psycho came face to face.’
‘She’d been stabbed?’
‘Yes.’ The car bucked and shuddered over a deep rut in the track. ‘Lol, I… I bloody demonised her. As soon as I heard Nick Ellis might have some connection with the Church of the Lord of the Light, that was enough. We don’t know if Ellis poisoned Shirley’s mind from wherever he is, and it doesn’t matter really. I should’ve tried to get through to her. I should’ve tried. I demonised her just as much as she demonised me.’
The hedges rose up in the headlights, yellow and dripping on either side.
‘You did your best,’ Lol said. ‘You always do your best.’
She tried to smile. It would mend, the church. It would cost, but it would mend. It always had, always would, even if it ended up as a local museum in a secular state where Christianity was just a vaguely tolerated eccentricity.
When they reached the parking area short of the meadow, the clouds had cleared from round the moon. A soiled potato of a moon. You could see Cole Hill, like something dumped on the horizon.
And Gomer’s jeep.
Gomer leaning on it, still in his overalls, smoking a ciggy, blinking through his bottle glasses at their headlights. Then he raised a hand and ambled over, grinning his old familiar grin, and Merrily quickly opened one of the back doors for him, and he got in.
‘Merry Christmas, vicar. Lol, boy.’
‘Gomer…’ Merrily switched off the engine. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this sort of—’ She gave up. Pointless. ‘Where’s Bliss?’
‘Went through the gate, him and the other coppers. He’ll be all right. This boy en’t gonner pick a fight with the whole bunch of ’em, is he?’
Gomer stretched his legs out behind Merrily’s seat, ciggy in his mouth, hands across his stomach.
‘Been a funny ole couple days, ennit, vicar?’
‘Could put it that way,’ Lol said.
Merrily thought about a cigarette and something else. Denied herself the cig and leaned over the back of her seat.
‘Gomer, you know you said they were using Gerry Murray’s JCB on the site — the excavation?’
‘Ar.’
‘What was Gerry Murray actually doing?’
‘Strip the grass off, kind o’ thing. I dunno. Bit of a bent deal how he got hisself hired, sure to be.’
‘Mmm.’ Merrily turned to Lol. ‘Would explain how Blore managed to plant modern masonry under one of the stones, wouldn’t it? Who could you trust to do it and keep quiet more than the landowner?’
‘Blore directing him,’ Lol said. ‘Then the earth goes back. And all the rain… all the mud. Couldn’t have better conditions. And who’s going to challenge his findings? One of the students?’
‘We need to make sure Bliss deals with this as well. If we can get it out in court, that’s going to turn it all around, and maybe Jane gets her henge. We can win this yet.’
Gomer sat up, listening. A car door slamming. Gomer furiously leaning on the door handle.
‘That’s my jeep, vicar! Some bugger’s in my bloody jeep!’
Hit the door, lurched out of the car and he was off into the dark, like a young, angry man, Merrily crying out,
‘No…’
Turning, in fear, to Lol, but Lol had already gone after Gomer.
God, God, God, God, God…
She fumbled at the key, started the car, threw on the headlights. Saw the figure coming out of the jeep, one arm raised up. A glinting.
Saw them all for an unending moment in the whitewashed night.
All four of them, three in motion, one still.
CHRISTMAS NIGHT
’Twas strange that people there should walk
And yet I could not hear them talk.
Thomas Traherne ‘Shadows in the Water’
‘No such thing,’ Bliss said. ‘Not yet.’
‘No?’
‘Well, all right, we’re getting killers who are close to inhuman. When they become totally inhuman, detectives will be redundant. Nothing to go on. Nothing to get hold of. I don’t wanna be doing this job when that happens.’
Seven o’clock Christmas night.
‘It wasn’t even rage that did for him,’ Bliss said. ‘Nothing so over-the-top. It was much smaller, a much more human thing — he was aggrieved. He’d been taken advantage of. Exploited. Even wairse…’ Bliss could feel his accent dipping into the Mersey. ‘He’d been asked to do something beneath him. He’d been dissed. He was being treated like the odd job man — oh, and on your way, Gregory, if you could just pop into the church. And buy a spray can, would you, there’s a good boy.’
‘Spends years refining a technique,’ Annie Howe said. ‘Has this image of himself as a well-oiled killing machine. And he’s made a lot of money — an increasing amount of money. And he’s realised that the further up-market his clients are — like Lasky — the less chance he has of being nicked.’
‘Yeh, but what he may’ve taken a while to realise is that his clients don’t see him as a fellow businessman. They don’t respect him — not like he, in some way, respects them — you heard the way he talked about Blore. Admiring. This big, confident git with a professorship and a world-class reputation and his own TV show. But when you hear Blore talk about Glyn…’
‘Not that he has yet,’ Annie said.
‘He will. Sooner or later, he will. He won’t be able to hold it in. Not with Glyn running off at the mouth. Some of what Glyn’s been saying — when we tell him — will offend Blore deeply. Hit him right in the intellect.’
‘All right,’ Annie said. ‘So they used him to mess up the church.’
‘Daft idea. Overkill. They always went that bit too far, like with Ayling. Glyn’s feeling put-on, demeaned, and when this mad woman comes out of the shadows, calling him satan
ic, demonic, screaming the place down… what’s he gonna do? What can he do?’
‘Stooke was to have been knifed, too, I take it?’ Annie said. ‘Until someone thought, why not take advantage of the conditions? Blore, I’d guess?’
‘Merrily tells me there’s a quote from the Bible about the Antichrist being drowned before the Endtime… it’s not perfect but it’ll do. But Glyn’s a knifie. He doesn’t like this idea. But because of his respect for Blore, a famous man who still likes a beer with the lads, he’ll do it. Waiting out there. Gives Stooke a shout. Here, mate, giss a hand. But although he’s stronger and fitter it’s bloody hard work. Put the blade in, the target’s disabled immediately. This way, the target’s fighting back, fighting for his life, and you get pissed wet through. Plus, you’ve gorra hit him and stuff. I’ll be interested to see the PM report, what other damage has been done.’
‘The worst aspect of this,’ Annie said, ‘is that Glyn is not, by any normal definition, a psycho. He is — and, ironically, Frederick West was another example — a man doing a job, to the best of his fairly considerable abilities.’
‘We’re having to move the goalposts,’ Bliss said. ‘In the old days no remorse was the primary symptom of a psychopath. Nowadays, it’s almost the norm in the criminal classes. Conscience is an anachronism. Now whether you could put that down to… what Merrily Watkins, say, would put it down to… I don’t know.’
‘I’m not sure what I know any more.’
Annie rolled over on to her back. Her breasts were quite a bit smaller than Kirsty’s and her body was more angular. Her face — most of the time — was more than a touch severe. You could see her bones. Feel her bones. Bliss put a hand on Annie’s bare stomach. He could feel the gym in her.
Well, that was OK. It was all OK, really.
And what he really loved — hold on, back off, Frannie — what he was loving was the cop pillow talk. You got home after a result, you were high on it, and Kirsty never wanted to know. You did not bring felons into the bedroom.
