The Secrets of Pain mw-11

by Phil Rickman

  While she had been faffing about in a churchyard, cutting up a communion wafer with nail scissors, trying to alter the spiritual balance. Just one slippage of a gear, one shift in the pattern of events, one stalling of momentum in that hellhole last night, and she could be burying Jane, raking out the last cold ash in Lol’s wood stove. She was worthless, a sham. Failing to see what she should have seen. Being someone who people didn’t want to worry because she was too busy unscrambling the thought processes of a man who was dead and hadn’t wanted her to know about it anyway. She wanted a cigarette.

  ‘He kept asking me to come out,’ Jane said.

  ‘Mostyn?’

  ‘He said it was OK, Cornel had just tripped and fallen and hurt his head and they needed to call an ambulance.’

  ‘And what did you say?’ Annie asked.

  ‘I didn’t say anything. I knew he was just trying to find out where I was. I went down on hands and knees again. I thought, even if he finds out where I am he can’t come in after me, it’s too narrow, but he can… he can climb up and look down on me and just… shoot me. I was just lying on the floor and covering my head with my hands. For all the use that would’ve been.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘There was this… you know, the noise of a big engine outside the doors? Like a JCB?’

  ‘That was what you actually thought?’

  ‘I know what a JCB sounds like. And then both doors just came in with this massive crash and that’s when I stood up, and I saw Gomer straight away. And Lol and…’ Jane smiled feebly. ‘It was like the best moment of my entire life. For about two seconds.’ The smile turning wintry. ‘Before it was the worst.’

  ‘When did you first see Mr Bloom?’

  ‘Barry – I heard him first. He was calling to everybody, telling them to keep down. And then I saw Lol. I was, like… going insane because Kenny Mostyn… I saw him standing up with the gun levelled and I could see he was pointing the gun at Lol, and I just… lost it. I started climbing over the top of the concrete bench, and the next thing I saw was Barry, just falling back, and half his face was…’

  ‘All right. In your first statement, you said you saw another man where Lol Robinson had been standing. Had he been there all the time?’

  ‘I don’t know. Lol was, like, standing on one of the doors that Gomer had smashed in, and this guy just… he just came out of nowhere and rammed Lol out of the way. All in dark clothes and this balaclava with just a slit for the eyes?’

  ‘What did Mostyn do?’

  ‘I’ve told you all this once…’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘Nothing. He did nothing. He had the gun by his side. Just standing with his legs apart, kind of… relaxed. And the gun by his side.’

  ‘As if he knew the man? Saw him as an ally rather than an adversary?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Merrily could see it all in her head. The balaclava to hide the giveaway white hair and the cold intent in his blue eyes.

  How sure were they that this was Byron Jones?

  Annie sipped her tea, casual, unofficial.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I didn’t see exactly… I was looking for Lol. The next thing I saw, Kenny didn’t have the gun any more, the other guy did. I’d been looking straight into the JCB lights, so when I turned round I couldn’t see properly.’

  No one else had seen it, Merrily knew that. Not Lol, nor Gomer, nor Danny. Barry had told them all to get down, before…

  Annie said, ‘You’re sure there wasn’t more than one gun?’

  ‘Pretty sure.’

  ‘What happened next, Jane… is something we need to be absolutely sure about because only you-’

  ‘Every time I close my eyes I’m still seeing it. He was standing behind Kenny, then it was like pieces of Kenny’s head came flying out. And his knees were, like, buckled and he just… you know like they say someone was dead before he hit the ground. That’s how it was.’

  ‘How many shots?’

  ‘Two. And then this other guy slipped the gun in his jacket pocket and walked out. He stopped for a moment and bent over Barry, and then he turned away and he was… gone. He was just, like… no fuss, you know? He just did what he did and walked out. Like, the way I’m telling it, it must sound like it took ages, but it was just… barely seconds. He was so sure of what he was doing. Like he didn’t have to think?’

  ‘No struggle for the gun or anything like that? I’m sorry to keep going over these points, but it’s impor-’

  ‘I keep telling you,’ Jane said, eyes wide. ‘Kenny Mostyn wasn’t expecting it. There was no struggle. It was like an execution?’

  They left Jane in the kitchen. Annie Howe stood at the door in the hall, next to Holman Hunt’s Light of the World.

  ‘They, ah… they’re still trying to save Barry Bloom’s right eye. They’re not hopeful. Made a mess of one side of his face but the bullet didn’t enter his brain. At that range he was, I suppose, very lucky.’

  ‘Lucky,’ Merrily said dully.

  The worst could have happened, and it hadn’t. Not quite.

  ‘I…’ Annie took her hand off the doorknob. ‘I’m not sure why Jane feels in some way responsible. I don’t know her particularly well, but it seems… slightly odd. We can still arrange some professional counselling. Sometimes it helps to unload it all on a stranger.’

  ‘I’ll ask her again, but I’m not optimistic.’

  ‘But then again,’ Annie said, ‘I suspect you might have an idea why she blames herself. Is there something I should know?’

  ‘If I tell you, you’ll wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘I’ll chance it.’

  ‘She seems to feel she was the instrument which brought all this together. If she hadn’t become obsessed with tying Savitch into cockfighting. Which led-’

  ‘Ah, yes…’ Annie Howe raised a hand. ‘Just so you know. In a storeroom behind one of Mostyn’s shops we found a consignment of what you might call cockfight gift-sets – leather cases containing a selection of polished spurs. Brand new. Originally prized, apparently, by cockers in the travelling community. Now finding a new market, it seems.’

  ‘So that links Mostyn to it.’

  ‘There’s also the established fact that Victoria Buckland, the woman charged in connection with the Marinescu murders, used to work for Mostyn when he was running canoeing and mountaineering courses for young people. Buckland’s believed to have been organizing periodic cockfights at the Plascarreg Hilton for a couple of years. It’ll all come out at some stage.’

  ‘And Savitch?’

  ‘Savitch is now attached like a Siamese twin to his London solicitor. He denies all knowledge of Mithraism, cockfighting, badger-baiting or any other illegal country pursuits. Appalled to discover the truth about Mostyn, who was contracted purely as an instructor and a supplier of equipment. Horrified that some of his own clients were into these foul practices.’

  ‘Hanging it on the dead.’

  ‘Don’t they always. So Jane…?’

  ‘Jane thinks that if she hadn’t pursued Cornel with a view to nailing Savitch they would never have wound up in the mithraeum.’

  ‘And yet Cornel went tooled up. He’d lost his job, he’d been humiliated, he was at the end of his rope. He went prepared to kill somebody, and Mostyn’s the most likely candidate. From Jane’s version of what was said, it seems likely that Cornel was hoping Mostyn would appear. He certainly seems to have believed he’d get away with it.’

  ‘Yes, but what about Jane? Jane would’ve seen everything.’

  ‘You might want to think, in retrospect,’ Annie said, ‘that the heavy object Jane threw down might, in the end, have saved her life. Now, what were you going to tell me?’

  Jane had said that instinctively she hadn’t liked the face. She hadn’t even known then whose face it was supposed to represent. She’d said that raising up the rounded shard of concrete, she must have had her fingers in its supercilious eyes,
below the remains of its cap. Jane had picked up an image of Mithras and taken him with her, away from Cornel. The kind of stupid detail that lodged in your mind and inflated itself into a crazy significance.

  ‘Annie, maybe you could tell me something first. Why were you asking Jane if there was a struggle for the gun between Mostyn and the man you think was Byron? Why didn’t you want it to be… an execution?’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’ Annie thought for a few moments. ‘All right. But not here.’

  80

  Slasher

  She climbed into Annie’s Audi on the edge of the square. The shops had opened into gold bars of welcome sunlight and – even more welcome – Easter tourists.

  Lol was walking up Church Street from the river, with Jane and Eirion, Merrily felt momentarily disconnected, as if this might be a mercy-dream softening the truth: dead Lol lying across from dead Barry on a mortuary trolley. Jane awakening, stiff and raw, to the memory of a night in the rape suite. Athena White was right. It must not go on much longer, do you hear me?

  Annie parked the Audi at the bottom of Old Barn Lane, half on the grass verge. Her mood was hard to read.

  ‘So you’re saying Savitch is in the clear?’ Merrily said.

  ‘You studied law. Tell me what he’s done wrong.’

  ‘What about Sollers Bull?’

  Annie Howe stared uninterested at conical Cole Hill, straight ahead and looking almost volcanic, wreathed in smoke-ring clouds.

  ‘The last thing certain prominent people want is for Sollers to go down. I’d have to number my father amongst them.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with Charlie?’

  ‘Rang this morning, confiding that Lord Walford, that respected ex-chairman of the Police Authority, was concerned about my “astonishing behaviour” towards his son-in-law. Never mind that Sollers is notoriously unfaithful to Walford’s daughter, he’s one of us. “I really can’t see what your problem is, Anne,” my father says. “It’s open and shut.” With the emphasis on shut.’

  ‘Shut as in-’ Merrily twisted in her seat. ‘Annie, this is the murder of Mansel Bull. Who also, surely, was very much “one of us”. It’s shut? As in case closed?’

  ‘As good as. Remember hanging it on the dead? Two knife killings – two slasher killings within a few rural miles – how could there not be a connection? Mostyn’s an SAS-fantasist who runs hardcore adventure courses for men who want more risk in their lives, has obscure religious beliefs and likes to hang out with he-man celebs like Smiffy Gill. His love of violence is implicit. Walking time-bomb.’

  Annie Howe glared angrily at the dash.

  ‘What if he has an alibi?’ Merrily said. ‘What if there’s someone who knows he couldn’t have been at Oldcastle at the time?’

  ‘He was with Jones. Who told us that? Jones did. Jones who shot Mostyn dead and is still out there – somewhere. We even have a possible motive. Seems Mansel Bull persistently refused to allow Mostyn and his clients to use his land for rough shooting, prompting a number of angry exchanges. Mostyn seemed very frustrated about that.’

  ‘Where did that one come from?’

  ‘Sollers Bull.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Who phoned someone… over my head… to remind them. Why didn’t he mention it to Bliss? Well, of course he mentioned it – doesn’t Bliss remember? You see? Are we looking for anyone else? Why would we?’

  ‘What about the London clients?’

  ‘I told you how long it would take to track them down. How costly. And why would we need to? London bankers and financiers worshipping some ancient Roman god of war? Oh please.’

  ‘This is-’

  ‘I know what it is. I’m sorry – I really am no fun, am I? Famous for it. Severe, po-faced, strait-laced, entirely without imagination and destined to walk on eggshells for the rest of my indifferent career because… because of my father.’

  Merrily couldn’t summon any kind of smile.

  ‘So Mostyn killed Mansel Bull?’

  ‘Mostyn killed everybody except himself. Mostyn is Derek Bird and Raoul Moat and the Hungerford man and the Dunblane man… and just as dead as all of them.’

  ‘But Byron knows the truth. Wherever he is.’

  ‘His bungalow’s empty. He hasn’t been officially seen since he walked out of Gaol Street. We’re searching.’

  ‘What are your feelings… about this whole mess?’

  ‘What would you imagine?’ Annie Howe said. ‘Sick to my stomach and determined to preserve my increasingly contemptible career for as long as it takes to nail Sollers Bull. And I was never here, and we never had this conversation.’

  Christ always died on the cross at three p.m., British Summer Time. Just over an hour to set things up for the Julian meditation.

  The Rev. Martin Longbeach, who’d been hauled in to take over the routine services, had left around noon, refusing lunch at the vicarage. Not the time, he’d said, patting Merrily on the arm. Then they closed the gift shop in the vestry and pulled the moveable pews into a circle below the rood screen for however many other parishioners had decided to tough it out with Mother Julian.

  The beeswax candle on the altar flared under the Zippo, and Merrily felt its heat and that gentle sense of handmaiden.

  She knelt for a moment. Last night she’d felt, on two occasions, that another woman was with her in Brinsop churchyard, stepping lightly between the gravestones. But for the horror of what had followed, those memories of Brinsop might have retained a slightly baffling glow.

  And a smudge of guilt.

  It had seemed a bit silly at first, using Lol’s map – which he’d left in the car – and the compass to determine the rough positions of the four most convincing leys passing through the church, but once you identified them you could almost see them unravelling across the moon-creamed fields.

  Channels for prayer.

  Pagan prayer, doubtless, when – if – the leys had been created, back in the Bronze Age or earlier. And yet Merrily had felt that Mother Julian would have approved. Things were different in the Middle Ages; the Christian Church had no problems with magic.

  She’d heard Jane’s voice. You’re playing with the Big Forces here .

  Quartering the communion wafer with her nail scissors, she’d placed a segment on what she’d perceived as each of the leys, around the edge of the churchyard.

  The prayers had been for… serenity, Merrily supposed, restoration of balance, and the God had been Julian’s God, without whose warmth and gentility the human race would never have survived. Mother God.

  And the energy had come, unequivocally, from the full moon.

  Mother Goddess.

  A female thing.

  Up yours, Mithras.

  She’d walked away feeling the terrifying rightness of it, thinking that when things were calmer she’d have to tell Jane what she’d done.

  Felt obliged.

  And there was something else for Jane. When she’d rung Neil Cooper, as promised, to tell him about the possibility of Mithraic remains at Brinsop, he already knew. The police had asked for someone to come along when they excavated the temple and surrounds to see what was there.

  Merrily had also told Neil about Jane and university. Why Jane was reluctant to go and thereby miss the excavation of Coleman’s Meadow. Neil said he’d talk to the guys hired for the dig to see if they could use somebody to make the tea and stuff. Probably not a gap year but maybe a gap six months, on peanuts pay.

  Earlier today, Jane had been palely determined: I will go to university. I’ll work like hell, get the grades and go as far away from here as I can. I’m no good for this place, I’m a bloody liability .

  Like that. She’d come round.

  Resurrection of Christ. Resurrection of Ledwardine. Resurrection of Jane.

  At key moments in the Julian meditation, Merrily would hold in her head an image of the crucifixion stain on the wall of Brinsop Church.

  If it all fell flat – and s
he’d know – then last night had been the first signs of a dangerous eccentricity, and it might be time to think about getting out of the job.

  The vestry door was ajar, the way it was never left any more. The smell of mud and sweat came to her. Merrily froze. The voice at her shoulder was not a voice you wanted to hear, alone, in the dimness.

  ‘A few minutes of your time, please, Mrs Watson.’

  81

  The Toxic Dilemma

  The energy-saving bulbs in the vestry sputtered in nervous dawn-like tints as he shut the door.

  ‘Lock it,’ he said.

  He wore a black woollen hat, hiking gear, a pack too lightweight to be a Bergen. Just another long-distance walker, although the sweat suggested he’d been running and the mud spatters suggested it hadn’t been along established footpaths.

  Across the room, from which there was no easy escape, Merrily didn’t move. On one side of her a table with prayer books, on the other a carousel of ‘Beautiful Ledwardine’ postcards. Above her, a window that didn’t open.

  He said, ‘Just do it, please.’

  ‘Byron…’ Keeping her eyes on him, her voice low. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d really rather not be in a locked room with you.’

  He smiled, revealing all the black lines in his teeth.

  ‘Want your help, that’s all.’

  ‘I really don’t think so.’

  Perhaps she should have been afraid, but she was just annoyed. About everything. He didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Do you know what Power of Attorney means?’

  ‘I do, actually. Studied law for a year, before… life took over.’

  He reached into an inside pocket, lifting out a long buff envelope.

  ‘I want to give you Power of Attorney.’

  ‘Over what?’

  ‘Disposal of my property. Which is not inconsiderable these days. All the land, all the buildings, the bungalow, all paid for. Also a small apartment in Hereford. Surprising how much money you can make in a short time, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, I’m a vicar.’