by Phil Rickman
‘You didn’t tell me Syd Spicer was on the course.’
After the session was over, she hadn’t gone looking for the man with teddy-bear eyes, she’d waited for him to approach her. But he never had. She hadn’t seen him leave. Old skills.
‘He rang me up. Asking if he could sit in for one day.’
Merrily looked down at him from the top of the stile.
‘When was this?’
‘At the weekend.’
‘He say why?’
‘Not in any detail.’
‘Would I be right in thinking…’ Merrily climbed over and sat down on the step of the stile ‘… that Syd no more expected to see me here than I expected to see him?’
Huw stood gazing out, beyond the rectory, to where the moon had pewtered the hills.
‘I didn’t tell him I’d asked you to come, no. I figured… since you worked with him last year, I figured he’d trust what you had to say.’
‘In relation to what?’
‘Whatever problem he’s got.’
‘Which is…?’
The step was soaked through; Merrily pulled her coat under her bum. This was obviously going to take a while. Across in the rectory, a light blinked on.
‘That’ll be Spicer now,’ Huw said.
‘He’s in your bloody rectory?’
‘He were stopping t’night here anyroad.’
Two lights were on now in the rectory. Merrily folded her arms.
‘You see, what strikes me as odd is that when I was invited down to Syd’s parish in the Malverns, it was because he, basically, did not do this stuff. Had no time for any of it.’
There are leaps I can’t make, he’d said to her.
And Merrily had said, You’re worried by the non-physical.
And he’d said, Samuel Dennis Spicer, Church of England.
Name, rank and number. You could pull out all his teeth and that was the most you’d get from the Rev. Syd Spicer, former sergeant with 22 SAS, the Special Air Service, Hereford’s finest.
The UK’s finest, come to that. Some said the world’s.
Huw sat down at the other end of the step.
‘Remind me about the time you worked with him. Briefly.’
‘Series of road accidents in the Malverns, near his rectory. All in more or less the same place. Survivors saying they’d swerved to avoid a man on a bike.’
‘Who wasn’t there. And Spicer didn’t believe that.’
‘Kept saying he had a problem with paranormal phenomena,’ Merrily said. ‘He wanted me to look into it, do the roadside blessing bit and reassure local people that it was sorted. Which led to-’
‘I know what it led to. Did he believe at the end? When it was over?’
‘Probably not. So if you’re asking whether I’m surprised to see him on a deliverance course, yes, I am.’
Huw said, ‘I were also wondering why he hadn’t gone to you in the first place.’
‘Over what? What did he tell you?’
‘He said – and I quote – an old evil had come back into his life. And he needed to deal with it.’
‘Exhaust. That’s why you set me up to talk about Denzil Joy?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, lass, I think it were a useful exercise for all of ’em. It’s the most explicit case of possible demonic possession I’ve heard of in a while, and I thought you’d tell it well, and you did. None of them buggers is going to forget about Denzil. But whatever it is it’s likely in your manor, and I thought you should know about it. And I thought he should be reminded about you.’
‘Syd isn’t expecting to see me again tonight, is he?’
‘Aye, well… he’ll think you’ve gone. He won’t know your car’s trapped behind a tree.’
‘Huw, you’re a-’
‘Bastard, aye.’
Even the weather played into Huw’s hands.
‘I take it, Merrily, that when that business were on in the Malverns, Spicer wasn’t frightened.’
‘No, he wasn’t.’
‘He is now.’
‘You reckon?’
‘A man who’s served in likely the hardest regiment in the entire history of the British Army.’ Huw stretched out his legs into the dark, greasy grass. ‘Now then, lass, what could possibly scare the shit out of him?’
8
Neglect
Bliss had come alone, parking outside a metal gate at the top of the drive, eventually having to climb over because he couldn’t work the bolt in the dark. A spotlight speared him as he hung astride the shivering tubular bar. At the top of the drive, a door had opened. A man stood there. Green gilet, high boots.
‘Police,’ Bliss said.
Feeling like a twat as he came down from the gate, stumbling to his knees. The countryside could always bugger you up when it felt like it. He stumbled towards the bungalow, built of old brick like the big house – an outbuilding, possibly a converted coach house.
‘Mr Bull?’
A nod, maybe.
‘Francis Bliss, Mr Bull. West Mercia CID.’
Bliss pulled off his beanie, held up his ID. The guy in the doorway didn’t look at it.
‘You’re the man who married Chris Symonds’s daughter.’
‘I am, yes.’
Bliss sighed. Maybe they’d met at one of the agonizing county functions Kirsty had dragged him to, some creaking conveyor belt of dinner jackets.
‘Chris is a friend,’ Mr Bull said. ‘I see him often.’
Well, that could hardly be more explicit. A blast of wind caught Bliss as he stowed away his ID. Loose bits of his life getting blown in his face.
‘Mr Bull, can I say that I’m very sorry-’
‘For my loss?’
Bliss said nothing.
‘You can take your routine commiserations, Inspector Bliss, and insert them into your rectum,’ Mr Bull said.
Bliss nodded wearily and followed him into the house.
Grief took many forms, aggression one of the commonest.
Low-energy bulbs laid a mauve wash on the kitchen. It had costly customized fittings and strong new beams of green oak. When a phone started ringing, Sollers Bull unplugged the lead from the wall.
‘Everybody who needs to know knows.’
‘Next few days will be difficult,’ Bliss said.
‘ Days? ’
Sollers Bull stood gazing into wide windows that looked to be triple-glazed. Nothing much to see but the reflection of himself and Bliss and a double-oven Aga in tomato red. Sollers had told Stagg he’d spent the early evening at a staff meeting at his farm shop. It checked out.
‘Chris says you consistently neglected your wife, Inspector,’ Sollers Bull told Bliss’s reflection. ‘Neglect seems to be your force’s forte.’
‘Where’s your wife, Mr Bull?’
‘Not your concern.’
‘Well, you know, actually it is,’ Bliss said quietly. ‘With an extremely violent killer on the loose.’
‘Then why aren’t you out there looking for him?
Mr Bull turned at last to Bliss. A wedge of stiff dark hair was razored clear of his ears, a tiny diamond stud winking out of one of them – the one that TV cameras always caught when, with his handsome head held high, Sollers was striding in and out of court.
Bliss said, ‘Your brother reported intruders on his land.’
‘We both did. On separate occasions. Did you know that?’
‘I… no.’
‘Doesn’t particularly surprise me, Inspector Bliss, because preventing crime-’
‘Look…’ Bliss held up both hands. ‘I understand your distress and your anger, but alleged trespass isn’t necessarily police business at all, let alone CID business. For a start, it has to be trespass with intent -’
‘And preventing crime is low-priority stuff nowadays, isn’t it? Counts for nothing in the target culture. Nil points.’
You got this every day now, every little twat nicked for a minor offence accusing you of using him to make the figur
es tally.
‘Mr Bull, we don’t like the target culture any more than you, and I try not to let it get in the way of being a good copper. I’m not saying if I’d heard about your intruders we’d’ve come rushing over with a chopper and an armed response unit, because our resources are limited at the best of times but…’ Bliss drew out a chair from under the kitchen table but didn’t sit down ‘…I think I need to know about it now, sir. Don’t you?’
Sollers Bull crossed the room, switched off the main bulbs, as if to dim his anger. The moon was in and out, now that the storm was over. Through the window you could see poplars waving blackly, like they were fanning away shreds of cloud.
Mr Bull, sharp face scarred with shadows, told Bliss he’d seen two of them, around the end of last week, Thursday, perhaps. Two men and a vehicle. ‘Wasn’t quite dark. I could quite easily have shot one.’
‘Probably as well you didn’t, though,’ Bliss said patiently. ‘You don’t know this was down to the people you saw. Whom I’m presuming you didn’t recognize… or did you?’
‘I don’t know who they are, but I know what they are.’
‘Who did you speak to, Mr Bull, when you rang the police?’
‘Rang what I thought was Hereford police and it turned out to be some anonymous call centre… might as well have been in fucking Delhi, like the rest of them. Sometime later, I actually received a call back to ask if the intruders were still in the vicinity because the police were rather busy…’
‘Yeh, well,’ Bliss said. ‘We both know that’s not satisfactory, and if I was Chief Constable I might well talk to the Home Office about things being done a bit differently. But I’m just a lowly foot soldier. What exactly did your brother see?’
‘Is he still there? Still lying out there in his yard?’
‘When I left, but probably not now. There’ll be a post-mortem in the morning.’
There was a bottle of single malt on the table. Sollers Bull pushed it at Bliss. Bliss shook his head. Not falling into that trap.
‘Tell me about the vehicle.’
‘Pickup truck. White or light blue. Mansel saw it on the track two nights together. Raced away when they saw him. I’ve told all this to your sergeant-’
‘Which is why the whole area’s taped off. In case there are tyre tracks and footprints.’
‘We’ve both been over it several times since then. And delivery vehicles.’
‘We can eliminate them. It’s still worth it.’
Sollers Bull eyed him over his glass.
‘Wasn’t worth it when we had a quad bike stolen last year, was it? Or when Gerry Morgan’s chain-harrow took a walk the week after Christmas. I bet you don’t even know what a chain-harrow is, do you, Inspector?’
Bliss moved on. Might know what it was, but he was buggered if he knew what it looked like.
‘Mr Bull, you said you didn’t know who they were but you knew what they were…’
‘Did I?’ Sollers poured himself a drink. ‘Probably because I’d been reading in the local rag how the Hereford murder rate’s doubled the past year or so.’
‘Still means a lot less in Hereford than it does in New York. Or Birmingham, even. And if you’re pointing out that the last two killers were East European… well, so were the victims. And both were urban. Aren’t even any migrants round here, yet. Are there?’
It had been too dark on the way here to see the fruit fields, the frames for the polytunnels where the seasonal workers were employed, the caravans and dorm blocks where they lived. But they wouldn’t even have started planting yet.
‘A percentage of migrants are career criminals, we all know that,’ Sollers Bull said. ‘Easy pickings over here. Organized credit-card theft, fiddling cash machines. Driving through a farm and lifting anything not nailed down.’
‘Did you see any signs of a break-in?’
‘Inspector Bliss…’ Sollers Bull regarding him with scorn. ‘We en’t yet been able to count the livestock.’
Bliss was silent. Sollers sipped his whisky.
‘Don’t the police have two men of East European origin awaiting trial for rustling?’
‘Yeh, but I think that’s in Evesham, Mr Bull.’
‘Not all that far away.’
‘It’s a fair way from small-time rustling to taking a man’s life.’
Bliss was recalling another case, unsolved, where sheep had been slaughtered in a field and then butchered on the spot. Somebody’s idea of a takeaway. Bliss thought of butcher’s knives. Check it out.
He said, ‘You think your brother came back earlier than expected after his council meeting was abandoned… and walked in on a robbery in progress?’
‘Nothing else makes sense to me.’
‘Seems odd he should be all alone in that big house.’
‘His marriage ended.’
‘No kids?’
‘No children from either of his marriages.’
‘Housekeeper… cleaner?’
‘A local woman comes in most days. I’ve given your sergeant her details.’
Bliss said, ‘We do need to know if he had enemies.’
‘He was well liked and well respected by everyone who knew him. A traditional farmer. An old-fashioned farmer. A man of the land – this land. Bred to it.’ Sollers looked down at the tabletop as if the contours of the land were marked out on its surface. ‘We both were.’
‘Bridge Sollers,’ Bliss said.
At least he knew his place names.
‘And Mansel Lacey,’ Sollers said.
Both villages – hamlets – within a few miles of here.
‘Something to live up to, Mr Bull.’
‘That sarcasm?’
‘No,’ Bliss said, surprised. ‘No, it wasn’t.’
Sollers Bull lowered his head to his hands, massaging the edge of his eyes with the knuckles of his thumbs.
‘Let’s talk again tomorrow, shall we?’ Bliss said.
He drove up to the fork, parked with his engine running, headlights on dipped, and got out his mobile. Signal was a bit wonky.
‘Mansel Bull,’ he said. ‘Farmer. Machete job, Billy Grace reckons.’
‘I know,’ the DCI said. ‘I’ve just talked at length to Stagg.’
Addressing his superior, Bliss felt acutely strange. Up to a few months ago, he was routinely editing his thoughts before opening his mouth.
‘Sollers Bull,’ Annie Howe said. ‘That would be…?’
‘Gobby hunt supporter nicked by the Met for pouring red paint on John Prescott’s second-best Jag.’
‘Fighting for his heritage. A hero.’
‘Malicious damage is malicious damage, Annie. And still a cocky twat. Who, as you can imagine, doesn’t like the police much. Especially me.’
‘Stagg said.’
They’d been in the remains of Bliss’s sitting room when the first call came through. Kirsty’s old man had been in with Kirsty’s key while Bliss was at work and had nicked the flame-effect fire. Bliss had been filling a paraffin stove when Terry Stagg had come through on Annie’s mobile.
Be more convenient for DI Bliss.
True enough, in that Bliss was nearer the door. Whenever Annie came round she’d arrive just after dusk, leaving her car in a cul-de-sac two streets away. Strategic. Kirsty was right. If it came out, one of them could end up behind a desk in Carlisle.
No guesses which.
‘We need to watch Stagg,’ Bliss said. ‘Ma’am.’
Hadn’t yet said a word to her about Kirsty’s suspicions. Best to keep quiet until he knew for sure that the bitch wasn’t flying a kite.
‘What else did Sollers Bull say, Francis?’
‘Reckons it was a robbery gone wrong. All but accusing migrant workers from the fruit farm across the road.’
Figuring this might rattle Annie’s PC cage a little.
‘That would be Magnis Berries?’
‘That what it’s called?’
‘Named after what was a Roman town,’ Annie sa
id, ‘which used to stand somewhere round there. How close is it to Oldcastle?’
‘Half a mile? I doubt there are many people employed there now. Probably not even got the polytunnels up yet. You think we should go in, see what vehicles they’ve got?’
‘Check it out discreetly tomorrow. Maybe find out if anyone’s in charge. During the season, it could be the biggest centre of population between there and Leominster.’
‘Yeh, OK.’ Bliss sat watching the bare brown hedge, like a complex circuit board in his headlights. ‘What time will you get back tomorrow?’
She was in court at Worcester: three brothers accused over the near-fatal stabbing of a father-in-law.
‘Verdict early next week. I might look in on you tomorrow, but no point in me getting involved if I’m back in court on Monday. You pleased?’
‘Made-up, Annie. Where are you now?’
‘Home. Thought it was best.’
‘What about tomorrow night?’ he said.
‘I’m not sure.’
See, that was what he was scared of, too. The idea that something which neither of them had expected to last… really wouldn’t last.
‘Didn’t catch that, Annie,’ Bliss said. ‘I keep losing the signal.’
9
Towards the Flames
Syd S Picer had the fire going nicely in the parlour.
‘This looks like sycamore,’ he said to Huw. ‘Good burner, easy ignition. And a bit of oak to keep it going all night. Well-dry, too.’
‘Stored for three years, the oak,’ Huw said with disinterest.
Merrily was observing Syd. Hyper. Striding around Huw’s Victorian parlour then diving at the fireplace and rearranging a log to funnel the flames. The pensive figure in the darkest part of the chapel – that had been the Syd Spicer she knew: this was not. Same voice, though, flat as old lino.
She looked at Huw in his leaking armchair, his face mapped by shadows. The parlour was still in winter mode, with two baskets of logs and a heavy curtain drawn across the main door. Whitewashed walls ochred with smoke.
