by Phil Rickman
Bliss was thinking of the Marinescus, the way one handbag had been emptied out at the scene, the other and its contents trailed all the way to the river.
‘I think you should get to bed, boss,’ Karen said. ‘An early start might be advisable.’
44
From the Killing House
No more than a third of the tables in the lounge bar were taken. Merrily had followed Jane to the one under the smallest leaded window, its old glass thick and fogged like frogspawn.
‘Cider?’
‘Please.’ Jane slid into the short bench under the window. Merrily bought two medium-sweet ciders from Barry, looking around for Lol. No sign. Barry gave her a mildly inquiring look; she leaned across the bar, voice lowered.
‘Liz was quite forthcoming, in the end. Though why I should tell you any of it, considering how much you didn ’ t tell me…’
One side of Barry’s mouth twitched. Merrily carried the ciders back to the table. Shadows hung shiftily either side of the mullion.
‘So archaeology is, erm, history.’
Jane didn’t smile.
‘It’s a joke, anyway. Archaeologists can’t get to grips with anything much any more, unless the council wants to do something crass with the land. And whatever they find, it still gets built over. I’d just keep getting annoyed.’
‘You’ll still keep getting annoyed if you don’t have any qualifications. The only difference is, you’ll be regarded as an annoying crank. No one will have to listen to you.’
Jane shrugged. Merrily sipped cautiously at her cider.
‘Or maybe you’re worried that the world of archaeology isn’t yet sufficiently attuned to the concepts of Bronze Age geomancy and earth energies.’
‘ You accept all that.’
‘Some of it. But I’m not an academic, just a jobbing C of E shaman in the ruins of Christianity.’
‘And you don’t believe that for one-’
‘Still wake up in the night in a cold sweat, watching a ghostly Dawkins coming through the wall.’
Jane’s smile was a long way behind.
‘You won’t have to keep me. I’ll get some kind of job.’
‘Yes. I’m sure you will.’ Merrily thinking, don’t push it. Don’t get into an argument. Plenty of time yet. Well, there wasn’t, but… ‘Actually, I was going to ask you something. As you know more about the ancient world than I do. Though maybe Roman archaeology is not your thing.’
‘Prehistory, my thing. We know too much about the Romans. Anyway, Coops is your man, he’s well into the Romans. What were you going to ask me?’
‘Credenhill?’
‘Not Roman.’
‘No, but there was a Roman town below it.’
‘Magnis.’
‘All under farmland now, right?’
‘Yeah, but probably more extensive than they imagined. Credenhill? Is this something to do with Syd Spicer?’
‘Possibly.’
Merrily gazed into the inglenook, where the fire was in, just, the logs smoky grey and not apple. OK, here they were, mother and daughter, in the pub. Adults. Not much, if anything, she couldn’t discuss with Jane any more.
‘Syd was at Huw’s chapel last week, genning himself up on aspects of deliverance. We never found out what he was looking for. I need to find out whether that had any relevance to his death.’
‘Need to?’
‘Don’t ask.’
Jane shook her head.
‘You lead a very weird life, Mum.’
‘I know.’
‘What’s up with Barry? Why’s he keep looking at you?’
‘I think he wants to talk.’
‘But not with me here, right?’
‘He can wait.’
‘No, it’s OK.’ Jane sank the last of her cider, slid to the end of the bench. ‘I need to call Eirion again. He’s coming over at the weekend. Staying tonight with his dad and his step-mum and then coming over to Hereford to see some mates from school, and then…’
‘He wants to stay with us?’
‘If that’s OK. I said I’d meet him in Hereford tomorrow afternoon.’
‘It’s always OK. But are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK. I’m glad we…’
‘Always remember we’re on the same side,’ Merrily said. ‘You know that.’
‘Yeah. I do. Thanks for the drink, Mum. And like… thanks for… you know… not biting my head off.’
And she was gone, leaving Merrily deeply unsettled. Thanks for not biting my head off? Had she really said that? Jane?
A new glass and a bottle of Brecon spring water arrived on the table. Barry slipped into Jane’s seat.
‘Didn’t think you’d want another cider, but I can go back.’
‘No, that’s fine. Thank you. How much do I-?’
‘On the house.’ Barry nodded towards the fire door, through which Jane had left. ‘Problems there?’
‘Jane’s a bit… overwrought about proposals for the village. Can’t help thinking she’s heard something about Savitch and the Swan. Not from me.’
‘Nice when a kid bothers about heritage.’
‘Yes. I suppose it is. Never felt part of anywhere before, and so if she thinks anyone’s trying to damage it…’ Merrily poured out some water. ‘I suppose you want to know how I got on with Liz. Put it this way, I’ve learned more than enough in the course of the day to support your opinion that Byron Jones is a man to be avoided if at all possible.’
‘Good.’
‘Unfortunately, it may not be possible, so I’d quite like you to tell me everything you were keeping quiet about last night. “They’re dead,” Barry. “All dead now.” What’s that mean?’
Barry wasn’t drinking tonight. He glanced over his shoulder.
‘Could mean a lot of things.’
‘I could go and ask James Bull-Davies, and he’d ask William Lockley, and Lockley would feed it back up the line.’
‘And five weeks later James would come back and tell you your question was inappropriate.’ Barry looked down into his cupped hands on the tabletop. ‘Remind me which of us started all this, Merrily, and then tell me how necessary it is to go on with it.’
Merrily moistened her lips with spring water.
‘Can we go back to when you said Byron had changed. Last night, you suggested he’d become abnormally ruthless. When did that happen?’
Barry looked around again. Nobody was close.
‘I’d say there was a change in him after the Iranian Embassy operation.’
‘But I thought he wasn’t-’
‘I know he wasn’t. But he thought he should ’ve been. Missed out on all the acclaim. No kiss from Maggie Thatcher.’ Barry shrugged. ‘Luck of the draw, but he didn’t see it that way.’
Merrily remembered watching it live on TV. A sunny early evening in London, a very public operation. Normal TV programmes cancelled for the final act of the big news story of the week. Half the nation gathered round the box as cameras tracked the masked men abseiling down from the roof, into the embassy where six terrorists were holding twenty-six hostages. Smoke bombs going off. All but one of the hostages rescued, all but one of the terrorists killed. Shot dead, with practised efficiency, by the boys from Hereford, some of whom, even now, were only ever filmed in silhouette. James Bond for real, and it had turned soldiers into superstars.
‘When you say the luck of the draw…?’
‘They just pulled the boys from the Killing House. It’s all in the public domain now. There’s this training building they call the Killing House, where we practised how not to shoot the good guys by mistake. Word comes through there’s a job in London, they pick the boys who’ve just completed that aspect of their counter-terrorism training. Driven out of Hereford, down to London in the white Range Rovers.’
‘Frank Collins was one, wasn’t he?’
‘Did the smoke bombs.’
‘Why did Byron think he’d been passed over?’
‘Because m
aybe he was. I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t there, but he might’ve made some small error of judgement in the Killing House or elsewhere. Situation like that, you can’t afford the smallest mistake. A guy who was closer to him than me, he reckoned Byron was convinced he’d been dropped because they thought he didn’t have the bottle for it. That was how he seemed to have translated it.’
‘I thought you weren’t even selected for the SAS unless your courage-’
‘He’s the kind of guy gets fixations. Even the Regiment can’t alter your personality. Something drove him further into himself and into his training. Personal training. He never stopped. No more social life for Byron. When he got married, we’re thinking, where’d she come from?’
‘Syd wasn’t in the embassy operation, was he? Even peripherally?’
‘No, he wasn’t. And, before you ask, most of the embassy boys are still alive.’
‘Can you think why Byron might have wanted to live near Credenhill?’
‘Don’t make much sense to me. He never served there.’
Merrily poured out more spring water.
‘Barry, what are you not telling me?’
‘Blimey, vicar… Look… all right… it would be silly to say no psycho ever got into the Regiment… although selection does weed them out.’
‘You think he’s psychotic?’
‘I’m not qualified to make a mental-health assessment. It’s my understanding – and for Christ’s sake, keep this totally to yourself – he was later seen by army psychiatrists.’
‘You know why?’
‘Um… yeah, I do, more or less. Same rules?’
‘Of course.’
‘I wasn’t there when this happened, either, but it was an exercise in the Beacons, where you’re divided into two opposing sides. It’s about fitness and tactics and ingenuity – thinking on your feet. In reality you’re on the same side. You know where it stops. Or you should do.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Nothing. That was the point. Thick fog. Young guy falls some distance down a slope, bangs his head on a rock, dies a week or so later in hospital. Byron was lying in the bracken, watching, when it happened. It was suggested he could’ve warned the boy he was close to the edge. He didn’t.’
‘They were on opposite sides?’
‘For the day. And it would’ve drawn attention to his position.’
‘Byron didn’t know when to stop?’
‘It was… according to what we heard, it was like he’d forgotten you had to stop. Couldn’t understand why anybody was even questioning his attitude. I believe there were other occasions when his… common humanity was called into question.’
‘How?’
‘Not going any further down that road. The guys on the end of it, they’re mainly still around. And it wasn’t like he was the only one.’
‘Can you explain that a bit more?’
‘I can’t explain it at all, Merrily.’
‘You said before that even the Regiment couldn’t alter a man’s personality. Something did.’
‘Yeah,’ Barry said. ‘Something did. What it meant, of course, was that nobody in his right mind wanted to be in Byron’s gang any more. Which was causing a bit of upset so, in the end, he had to go. He was given an admin post. And then he went.’
‘Where did Syd come into this?’
‘He didn’t. Syd had gone before it got tense.’
‘Because I’m wondering if this could be a reason for the rift between Syd and Byron. Liz and Fiona both think it was something to do with Syd getting ordained, but they could be wrong.’
‘All I can tell you, Merrily, is Byron wasn’t popular, the last years.’
A wary stillness around him now. Merrily had the feeling that while he’d been talking he’d worked something out. Something he was still unsure about. It was becoming clear that anything she pulled from this was going to have to be worked for. She looked around the bar. James Bull-Davies had come in, with Alison. Amanda Rubens and her partner, Gus. Still no sign of Lol.
‘In view of all this,’ she said, ‘it seems more than a bit odd that Byron should want to come back and live near the new camp at Credenhill.’
‘You asking me if he had a grievance to work out? No way. That don’t happen. More likely it’s just business. If he’s running an adventure centre for SAS-fantasists, nowhere better to put it than near the SAS.’
Merrily shook her head, had a drink of water.
‘He seems to have virtually cleaned out his bank account just buying the land.’
‘Well, it’s paid off if he’s bringing in the punters.’
‘Syd was in this history club that Byron started, right?’
‘Was he?’
‘Do you know any of the others – who might be prepared to talk to me?’
‘No.’
Too quick, too casual.
‘But you must know a bit about the history club, Barry, because it was you who first told me about it.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So you know who was in it – at least some of them.’
Barry took a long resigned breath.
‘I knew them, yeah.’
‘ Knew them.’
‘Yeah,’ Barry said. ‘ Knew. You satisfied now?’
45
The Thorny Night
The clouds had sunk to the horizon in layers of brown, like the sediment in cough mixture. An early yellow moon was floating free, very close to full. The night was saying, just do it.
Lol had driven slowly along what the map had identified as a Roman road, right through the centre of Magnis, where you turned right for Kenchester and then back towards Brinsop Common. He’d reversed the truck tight up against a field gate, the kind of place you’d never leave a vehicle in the daytime, but at least it was out of sight.
Bax was right, you couldn’t see the place from the road, only the recently planted woodland, a black cake of conifers at the top of a slow rise, Credenhill hard behind it like a prison wall.
There was an entrance with a cattle grid but no barrier except, about thirty paces in, a galvanized gate, ordinary farm-issue, closed, with a padlock hanging loose. Nothing to suggest private land.
Except the sign. Quite a modest sign, black on white, mud around the edges.
THE COMPOUND TRAINING CENTRE TRESPASSERS UNWELCOME
The night that had said just do it went quiet.
Lol stood and looked around.
He’d put on his walking boots. He had the mini-Maglite in his jeans, but there was still enough light to see where you were going, so he left it there. He didn’t have a jacket. His sweatshirt was worn thin; he had to push up the sleeves because he could feel the cold through a hole in one elbow.
He climbed over the gate, but left the track, stepping into a thicket of low spruce. There was a caravan at the side of the track. Derelict, long abandoned, a coating of mould, rags at the windows. Further along, an old cattle trailer, its tyres long gone, was held up on concrete blocks.
A little scared? Maybe. But fear wasn’t the worst of emotions. Fear could be a stimulant, while shame and regret could destroy you. Letting things slide, forgetting what was important.
Lol walked close to the hedge. Couldn’t see far ahead now, and then something splintered under his boot. He patted his pockets in case he’d dropped the torch, but no, it was there. He turned the top to switch it on, shielding the beam with a hand. Something made of grey metal lay between his boots. He bent down. A grey panel, the words Digital Interface printed along it.
Part of a CCTV camera, smashed. He looked up and saw a pole from which it might have fallen. He picked up the camera. Metal. Sturdy, professional. Industrial-quality. No need to worry about showing up on a monitor in Byron Jones’s study, then. Lol carried on up the side of the track. Wasn’t going to be stupid about this. He’d go as far the wire fence and just…
‘ Uh…! ’
The pain had come from several places almost simultaneously.
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It ripped up through both legs, and Lol stumbled to his knees, then lost his balance, fell over, threw out a hand to push himself up, and it was snatched and stabbed all over.
He tried to roll away, and dragged his hand free and made it to his pocket and the Maglite. Its light showed rusting metal tendrils wound around his lower legs like a manacle of thorns. Oh God, this was the fence.
Had been. He looked up and saw double strands of barbed wire stretched between poles like arched lamp-posts. Between the strands he could see where a hole, man-sized, had been cut. Where he’d walked into the wire cuttings coiled on the ground, brutal metal brambles.
Someone had done this. Someone had been and smashed the CCTV cameras and then taken wire-cutters to the fence. Someone had broken into Jones’s training facility.
Breathing through his teeth, Lol began to unwind the wire, barb by barb, until he could stand up. He stayed there for a while, as though if he moved it would go for him again. Slowly, he pushed his hands down his legs: damp jeans fused to the skin by warm blood and cold dew. His hands hurt: he found three more deep cuts on fingers that wouldn’t be holding down a chord for a while. Danny would be furious.
He found a ragged tear in the wrist. A dark cord of blood unravelling into his palm. As he stepped away from the barbed wire, a severed strand whipped past his eyes and he realised that, without wanting to be, he was now inside Byron Jones’s compound, bleeding all over it.
Lol crouched behind a bush. Everything here seemed to come with spikes and barbs and thorns, and the metal had seemed more alive than the winter-brittle foliage. A filmy moonlight exposed a space surrounded by conifer woodland, like the exercise yard in some old POW camp. Half-cindered, huts around the perimeter, an oil tank on concrete blocks. Close to the centre, a barn-sized building of galvanized metal with no windows. Nearest to him, a Nissen hut, half buried in bushes and brambles.
When a small, tight creak came from the hut, Lol almost threw himself back into the wire.
One of the doors. One of the doors had moved. He sank down again, breath slamming into him like a punch. He waited… must’ve been five minutes. Nothing happened, nobody came out. But he knew the doors were open. Someone had left the doors open.
