by Phil Rickman
Sitting, almost tearful, in the damp grass, rubbing at her ankle and then angrily picking the thing up, whatever it was. Cold, wet metal. She held it up to the emerging moon as Cornel kept on walking up the rise, following his jaw, the way he did, before tossing what Jane took to be a grudging glance over his shoulder.
‘Come on, come on, come on, it’s just an old CCTV camera. Put it down.’
Jane looked up and saw a wooden pole in the trees with a boxy shape on top, wires spraying from it. Her ankle twinged. She tried to stand, and then went down again.
‘Get up, Jane, you’re not hurt,’ Cornel said breezily. ‘Hadda be done, hadda be done.’
‘ You did it?’ Her bum felt damp, her new jacket was ripped. ‘You broke somebody’s security camera? Jesus, Cornel-’
‘Bit of payback. Now will you-?’
‘What’s that mean?’
Jane squirmed to her knees, still holding the remains of the camera. CCTV? What kind of place was this? Cornel waited for her to reach him, then he grabbed the camera out of her hands, half-turned, drew back his arm and hurled it deep into the wood.
‘Payback for what?’ Jane said.
‘Lower your voice, eh, Jane?’
‘I’m not going any further till you explain.’
‘What you gonna do then, girlie? Limp all the way home?’
He turned away. She hissed at his back.
‘Payback to who?’ And then, absurdly, ‘Whom.’
He just kept on walking. Anger spurted inside Jane like a blowlamp, and it just came out.
‘The bloke who filled you in at the back of the Swan?’
Cornel stopped.
Oh hell… mistake.
Jane slid back down, both hands grasping wet grass. She felt the tearing of a fingernail. Story of her life. Never thought things out.
‘Cornel, look-’
He’d come shambling back, and now he was hanging over her, loose and lopsided like a hastily assembled scarecrow, black against the cobalt night sky.
‘You slippery, slippery little bitch.’ Yet he sounded… pleased? His jaw was rolling, like he was gnawing something. Which was not right, was it?
67
Savage Ballet
Bliss’s second raid on the Plascarreg Hilton was, of necessity, low-key. He parked in front of the shops, got himself a bag of chips from the chippy. Went on foot through the estate, listening to kids’ voices bouncing off the flat-pack walls, the urban birdsong of the night.
First thing he noticed was all the vehicles parked at the far end, on the derelict land separating the Plas from the Barnchurch trading estate. Cars and vans and four-by-fours. Fifteen, twenty of them.
Like there was a party at the Hilton, but there obviously wasn’t. Few lights on in there, and only a couple of cars on the forecourt, where a young lad was sitting on the wall smoking. Tossing Bliss a glance.
‘What you want, pal?’
‘Come to see Goldie. You gorra problem with that?’
‘She’s not in.’
‘You obviously don’t know her very well, son.’ Bliss offered the kid a chip. ‘She’s always in.’
‘She’s resting.’
The kid took a hot chip, bit nervously at the end.
‘Goldie rests like an owl rests, till it eyeballs a mouse,’ Bliss said. ‘I know these things on account of I’m her nephew. From the north. You go and ask her. Tell her it’s her nephew Francis.’
The kid slouched away, leaving Bliss counting the cars. Minute or so later he was back, shrugging, and Bliss went in to find Goldie in the chintzy, brassy lounge watching TV. EastEnders, or some similar shite, in fifty-inch plasma. She sat up when Bliss came in but never took her eyes off the screen. The remote was on the chair arm, but she made no move to turn down the sound. She wore a black silk robe and had a steaming mug that smelled of chocolate and alcohol.
‘Why you keep pestering me?’
‘I’m an auxiliary with Help the Aged.’ Bliss crumpled up his chip paper. ‘Where do I put this?’
‘Stink the bloody place out. En’t good for you, all that vinegar.’ Goldie pointed at a velvety basket. ‘I gived you what you wanted, din’ I?’
‘Almost, Goldie. Almost.’
On the TV, a squat, bald twat was threatening somebody. Whenever you accidentally switched on EastEnders there was always this same squat, bald twat threatening somebody.
‘Turn it down, Goldie.’
‘Leave it.’
Bliss pulled up a cream leather chair next to Goldie’s, sat himself down.
‘Victoria Buckland, Goldie. How long you known her?’
Goldie kept on watching TV.
‘Since her was smaller than me.’
‘That’d be before she started school, then. Now, you’ve been known to have a… what we might call a wairking relationship with Victoria, haven’t you, Goldie?’
Goldie mumbled something that Bliss couldn’t hear for the noise of the squat, bald twat knocking over furniture.
‘Sorry, Goldie?’
‘I said I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘As I understand it, she’s occasionally been useful when your guests neglect to pay their bills or complain about the standard of service.’
Goldie sipped from the mug, like a crow at a birdbath.
‘See, the situation is,’ Bliss said, ‘that we now know for sure that Victoria and an associate had gone to administer retribution to the Marinescu sisters. For the personal reasons you’ll know about.’
Goldie said nothing. On the box, the squat, bald twat said, ‘ Cause you’ve always been a bleedin’ slag, is why.’
‘Now, I really don’t believe that Victoria intended it to end the way it did, Goldie, if one of the sisters hadn’t been discourteous enough to die on them. Leaving poor Victoria with no option – as she saw it – but to ensure the other one was too dead to make a capable witness.’
Goldie spun round at him, chocolate-mouthed.
‘And, y’know, Goldie, I can’t help remembering what you said the first time we discussed it. You said they were good girls who only went out on the town one night a week. Now, obviously Victoria knew which night that was. Who told her that, Goldie? Who told her which particular pubs they went to?’
Nothing.
‘I’m willing to accept,’ Bliss said, ‘that all Victoria said to you was that she wanted to punish the girls. Maybe a broken arm, flattened nose? On previous evidence, Victoria doesn’t do knives, so nothing life-threatening… which obviously you wouldn’t’ve gone along with anyway, seeing corpses don’t require accommodation and how useful those girls were to you for errands and stuff. And anyway, you could come over all mumsie when they got back… bathing the wounds, applying some of your old herbal remedies – think the world of you after that.’
‘You en’t getting me on this.’
Goldie was up in a corner of her chair, her eyes blacker than the bald twat’s on the box. Bliss smiled.
‘When d’you last see her? And don’t say you can’t remember, Goldie, because selective memory syndrome, we’ve gorra treatment room for that at Gaol Street. You want to get dressed, apply a smudge of lippie, or go as you are?’
Goldie didn’t move.
‘Cured already, then,’ Bliss said.
‘I gived you a name. Thass all I knows.’
‘Not interested in what you know, I’m open for conjecture, rumour, gossip. That’s why I’m on me own. What’s the latest word on Victoria, Goldie?’
‘New boyfriend.’
‘I heard that, too.’
‘Big Pole.’
‘Yeh, he’d need one. He also got a name?’
‘They’ve gone. Left the country.’
That was a jolt.
‘Where’ve they gone, then?’
‘Dunno.’ Goldie shrinking back. ‘Dear Lord, I don’t know. I ever finds out, I’ll tell you.’
‘Tell me now, Goldie.’ Bliss stood up, snatched the remote and snapped off the sound. ‘Wher
e you do think they might’ve gone?’
Tossing the remote from his left hand to his right, Goldie leaping up.
‘Geddout! Juss geddouter my hotel!’ And then – Mother of God – she was ripping open her robe. ‘You don’t get out, look, I’ll say you was messing with me!’
‘Aw, Goldie -’
‘Should’ve brought a woman copper with you, ennit? Wasn’t smart enough, was you? Now get out!’
Making a lunge for the remote, Bliss holding it over her head. Never seen her like this before. Victoria must really’ve put the shits up her this time. Bliss jumped back and…
‘Hello…’
He stepped behind the sofa, switched the set off completely this time, and the noise didn’t stop, a party buzz. Under his feet. Under the white carpet. A party under the carpet.
Bliss smiled.
‘And you never invited me, Goldie.’
‘All right…’ Goldie pulled her robe across her chest. ‘They’s taken a car across to France.’
‘Kind of car?’
‘A red one.’
Bliss felt a tingle in both hands.
‘Where’s the door to the cellar, Goldie?’
‘ No! ’
‘All right, do it the long way, I’m not fussed. Gwenllian Cecilia Andrews, I’m arresting you on suspicion of-’
Goldie marched across to the TV, switched it on, prodded around till the sound went up, way higher than it was before.
‘They just rented it off me, thass all!’
‘The cellar?’
‘I don’t ask no questions. Nobody can afford to ask too many questions these days.’
‘Where is it, Goldie? Where’s the door?’
‘They made me, ennit?’ She was up close and her voice had gone small and tight. ‘Threatened me, see. Threatened to torch me out if I didn’t let ’em ’ave the cellar, again and again, so I just sits tight and turns up the telly till they’ve-’
‘ Where? ’
‘In the yard. Steps down, for the coal.’
‘Ta.’
‘But I’m tellin’ you… you go down there on your own, Mr Frannie, you’re fuckin’ dead, you are.’
‘I’m not planning to go down there, Goldie. That would alert your little friend outside. I’m assuming there’s a more discreet way in, from the house. Maybe more than one – must’ve been three cellars at one time.’
‘Please… go away…’
But were her eyes saying, don’t go away?
Well, well. Bliss folded his arms.
‘Tell you what, let’s both go down.’
‘Like fuck I will. You should’ve had her by now. Useless, the cops.’
Bliss followed Goldie into the kitchen, with its big shiny chip fryer and globe lights that made your head ache, then through into a utility room with two washing machines and three steps down to a door at one end.
‘That’s it?’
Goldie staying well back. Bliss sensed she wasn’t unhappy now. If anybody was listening they’d reckon she’d done everything she could to get rid of him, all the same knowing – as she would – that the harder she tried to get him out the more he wouldn’t want to go.
The noise was like what you could hear coming out of Edgar Street when Hereford United were actually winning. Maybe more like Anfield, really. Anfield underground.
‘Put the lights out,’ Bliss said.
‘You don’t wanner do this. Not on your own.’
It made sense. He stood watching his iPhone, waiting for Karen to call him back, or Darth Vaynor. Left messages for both. The bloating noise was making him physically irritated, like a rash, his palms hot but dry as dust, his head fizzing with static. A roar of what sounded like approval made the door shake and Bliss’s guts jitter.
Goldie said, ‘You go back. Leave me your number. I’ll call when they’s leaving.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Bliss smiled. ‘Just so nobody gets nicked on your premises.’
‘Least you can do.’
‘Piss off, Goldie.’
Bliss pocketed his phone, turned the key, eased the door open a crack, then slid out onto the top step where the fetid atmosphere picked him up like oven gloves.
Five steps down there was a concrete platform, a bloke on it, hunched over a substantial videocam on a tripod, pointed down into the circle of light made by big lamps, like in a dope factory.
Which it wasn’t. Nobody wanted to watch grass grow. This would be the kind of video you only found on the Internet, and maybe some gutter cable channel.
Bliss flattened himself against a wet brick wall and saw that it was an actual circle down there, inside a metal barrier, waist-high, like a giant sawn-off-drum. Maybe sixty people around the metal ring. All men, as far as Bliss could see, except he could hear a woman’s voice, high and whiny, like a bandsaw when it first touched the wood.
‘ Finish ’im, boy! Get fuckin’ stuck in, you bastard, we en’t got all night! ’
Now he saw her, taller than many of the men. Saw her black-gloss lips working.
‘ Go for the eyes, go for the eyes, that’s it! ’
Was it his birthday?
Bliss started to laugh, and then he was coughing on the smoke and the fumes of booze and sweat and nasty, twisted excitement at what was going on under the hot lights: the flapping and the stabbing, the spinning and circling, the darting head-to-head, peck-and-thrust, like some savage ballet in sandy dust and scattered twigs and roars and little jewels of flying blood. One of the cocks had the other one against the barrier, stabbing with its reddened beak. In his rattling beanbag head, Bliss heard that voice again.
That’s a bugger, we’re… gonner have to do the other one now.
The cameraman must’ve heard him coughing and turned, and Bliss raised a hand – ‘You’re all right, pal’ – and the man turned back to his camera, and it was all like slow-mo after that.
Some bloke catching the movement from the floor and looking up and nudging his mate, and he was looking up, too, but that was all right, Bliss didn’t think he’d ever nicked either of them. Smiling kindly at them, wondering how he was going to stop this and contain them. Contain her. Probably needing to get back-up, get on his phone.
It was only when more eyes were raised that it occurred to Bliss that, not only was he the only feller here in a suit and tie, he’d been doing – in this same suit and tie – a fair bit of telly these past couple of days. His was a face they all realized they knew from somewhere. So when the cameraman turned for a quick second glance, something inside Bliss snapped like old rotted elastic, and he pushed himself back against the wall, brought up his left knee and slammed the sole and heel of his shoe into the cameraman’s back.
Watched the guy go skidding down the steps, the camera flying up and then toppling into the ring where he saw both cocks going for it.
Couldn’t contain a big caffeine beam as he was pulled to the floor. He rolled away, his back finding the wall.
‘Bliss.’
‘How’s it going, Victoria?’
She came towards him through the crush.
‘On your own, is it?’
‘Do I look thick, Vickie? Wall of coppers halfway to Tesco.’
Victoria sniffed.
‘He’s on his own.’
She turned away, borrowing someone’s cigarette, and then they were on him, half the scum in the cellar, the first boot arriving like a log-splitter in his spine before they started on his face.
Victoria going, ‘Don’t arse about, boys. You don’t wanner get nicked. Just do what you gotter and clean it up.’
68
Punching at Smoke
The inside of Annie Howe’s Audi was more chaotic than you might have imagined – maps and papers down the side of the passenger seat, a plastic sandwich wrapper on the floor. Merrily watched her driving quite aggressively through the diminishing evening traffic. Perhaps the only detective she’d ever seen in a trench coat, light grey, belted, the collar pulled up against the pale hair.
‘How do you know he’s going to be there?’
‘I had someone ring him, number withheld,’ Howe said, ‘and ask for Julie or somebody – wrong number. Fate’s on my side for once. I thought Mr Bull might have been at Savitch’s dinner, where he would have encountered Mr Jones, and I want to get at him first.’
Sollers Bull, brother of Mansel. Both men born to the county in the fullest sense, Merrily was thinking. Names swelling and flexing with the muscle and sinew of the land.
‘So he’s either on his own or with his girlfriend,’ Howe said.
‘Girlfriend?’
‘The official story is that his wife, Catriona, has picked up the two boys from their boarding school and they’ve all gone to stay with her parents. To keep the kids out of the glare of publicity. But she’s spent an implausible amount of time away lately. It’s either a marriage in meltdown or they’ve come to an understanding.’
Howe’s Audi had left the suburbs behind, and the night-time countryside was gathering them in. The amorphous vastness where the street lights ended. You could go in with a flashlight, but you’d better have a stack of batteries.
‘Sollers Bull,’ Howe said, ‘is not a man who likes to pass up on the fringe benefits of fame.’
‘How does he connect with Jones?’
‘For a start…’ Annie Howe played the washers over the blotched windscreen, applied the wipers. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this at all. As DCI, I’m an executive, an administrator. But tonight there aren’t many detectives unoccupied. Nobody I could trust with this, anyway.’
‘This, presumably, is to do with the murder of his brother.’
‘Oh, yes. I think we’re more or less convinced he didn’t kill his brother. He has a convincing alibi and there’s no DNA match at the crime scene. But… I’ll admit I’m punching at smoke, but there are some questions I’d like to ask him, and I’d like you to hear the answers. You did rather well, in the end, with Jones.’
‘Not from where I was sitting.’
‘You think against the grain,’ Howe said. ‘My grain, anyway.’
‘That sounds like a subtle way of saying I’m a licensed crank.’
Annie Howe didn’t deny it.
