All of a Winter's Night

by Phil Rickman

  ‘If I knew that I’d sort it for you. Me and my mate, God. Look… it could be something stupid. Could be something we’ll be laughing about. But equally…’

  ‘You’re avoiding the issue.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe I am. I’m sorry. It’s my place, too.’

  ‘If I could walk,’ Jane said, ‘I’d be up in the East Wing, now, and looking out of the window? Now we know what we’ve seen, it might just… I don’t know.’

  Why not? A small reprieve.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Leave the torch, so I know you won’t go sneaking out.’

  ‘Oh, Jane…’

  She put the torch on the dresser and went out through the hall to the stairs, leaving the lights off. As soon as she was in darkness, the images came back, jittering about to the fractured rhythm of their struggle home. The images were with her as she ran up the stairs, and down the landing, past closed door after closed door, then two steps down into the short landing with one door at its end.

  She stumbled into the East Wing and leaned on the metal window frame until it scraped open with a thin screech and she was hanging out into the grey-green night, opening her eyes to shadows intermingling in the fog beyond the garden wall.

  The pictures came up in her head again like some scratched old black and white movie: surreal light and shadow, men like predatory birds and the face that she hoped had not been a face.

  She looked down.

  Bare old apple trees, that was all.

  No lamp. No visible light.

  Nothing.

  Dear God, maybe she could just wake up. She hung out there in space, staring into the dense night, contempt for herself dampening the residual fear.

  She should have asked Aidan Lloyd’s father what he’d meant, standing on the graveside green baize in his long overcoat, looking down. That harsh whisper. The words she still didn’t quite believe he’d said.

  Devil took him.

  The air thickening around Iestyn Lloyd, a narrow man with a grey moustache and a felt hat, the sun shrinking behind him until it looked like a blood blister.

  Part Two

  The sheer otherness of the display entranced him – it seemed to appear from the darkest, least conspicuous corners of English provincial life, and to be innately understood by the people who practised it.

  Rob Young

  Electric Eden (Faber, 2010)

  5

  No justice

  FROM HIS OFFICE window, Bliss shared his breakfast with Sonia the seagull and watched the city manifesting out of the fog, nothing high-rise to hide the hills, the only visible towers attached to churches, still misty-pale.

  Almost serene, like the council hadn’t been developing Hereford, hadn’t taken the cattle market out of town, replacing it with a concrete canyon accommodating chain stores and a cinema. A big cinema with drab grey walls like the Bastille, brutalizing the entrance to the city centre. Apparently, this was where the new police HQ would be, when they eventually left Gaol Street, somewhere behind the Bastille.

  Somewhere Rich Ford, the uniformed inspector, would never work.

  ‘Been thinking where we could move to, me and the wife, when I’m out of here,’ Rich said. ‘Little barn conversion maybe, over towards the Black Mountains, from where all you ever need see of the city is the distant fireworks on New Year’s Eve.’

  He’d be gone soon after new year. Couldn’t come soon enough, he kept saying that.

  ‘Actually, I hear parts of Eastern Europe are very desirable now,’ Bliss said. ‘Lovely scenery. Clean, unspoiled towns with terrific cathedrals. Friendly people. Very little crime.’

  ‘Yes, very amusing, Francis.’

  Bliss yawned.

  ‘You said something about quad bikes?’

  ‘Easy to move around, easy to dispose of. Always a ready market for quad bikes.’

  ‘You know what, Rich?’ Bliss said. ‘I’m bored already.’

  Seemed a couple of uniforms had found a selection of these farmers’ toys in the back of a vehicle-repairer and dealer’s premises out on the Rotherwas industrial estate. Jag’s Motors, owned by one Wictor Jaglowski, about whom there’d been rumours. His brother, who had a half share in a Polish deli, was doing time for big-time ciggie-smuggling.

  ‘It gets more interesting, Francis,’ Rich said. ‘Least, that’s what my instincts are telling me. Actually, quad bikes come into the story again. Or one, anyway. Not that you’d get much for that, except from a scrapyard.’

  Bliss stared at him, putting it together.

  ‘This is the one on which the farm guy died?’

  ‘That’s why we went down the Rotherwas. The feller who ran into him worked for Jaglowski. Sort of.’

  Bliss sat down behind his desk. ‘Take me through it again, Rich.’

  He always felt bad about it, but links with a death, even accidental, added a certain texture to a case.

  A lot of new drivers on the roads of Herefordshire, and not all of them had a British licence. Including Lukas Babekis – and that probably wasn’t his real name either.

  Lukas was twenty years old and Lithuanian. He’d been people-smuggled, one of a bunch of Lithies secretly accommodated on a caravan site over towards the border with Worcestershire. All young lads, working their passage. Euphemism for slavery.

  ‘He got lost while making a delivery for one of those cut-price couriers that employ freelance drivers with their own vehicles,’ Rich said. ‘Jaglowski was one of their operatives – fingers in more pies than the Pukka production line. He’d sub contracted Lukas, providing the van. Well, I say sub contracted…’

  ‘He wasn’t paying him.’

  ‘I think he got free sarnies from Morrisons. Anyway… country lane, part of that network south of Leominster connecting villages nobody ever goes to. Very few signposts. So Lukas has lost his way in this maze of little lanes. No other vehicles in the vicinity, no witnesses.’

  ‘Remind me about the victim.’

  ‘Farm bloke. Farmer’s son. Coming out of field gate on his quad bike. Off-white van comes whizzing round the corner, smack. His face was mush.’

  Bliss winced.

  ‘Not much chance on a quad bike, have you?’

  ‘One reason we don’t like them on the Queen’s highways.’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure of the rules, Rich. Are they ever allowed on a public road?’

  ‘Only if taxed, insured and registered with the DVLA, number plates front and rear. Mr Lloyd’s vehicle met none of these requirements. All right, he was only crossing from a field on one side to a field on the other, probably done it thousands of times. He bears a percentage of the blame. Or would if he was still with us.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Lukas was obviously travelling too fast for a single track road he admitted he’d never been on before. Being as how he was not long over from Lithuania. Admitted going too fast for the conditions – two other deliveries and he was late. Kept bursting into tears. Said it was all his fault and he never wanted to drive again. Clearly unaware that unregistered, uninsured quad bikes are not supposed to be on the road. The duty solicitor, however, was.’

  ‘Would’ve got him off, you reckon?’

  ‘Not impossible, though he was obviously scared he might be looking at a gaol sentence.’

  ‘Vanished?’

  ‘Probably back with his mum in Lithuania by now. Until then, we didn’t know he was an illegal. Jaglowski says he’s furious. But the boy had papers! Who can you trust these days?’

  ‘So Mr Jag, it was his van, right?’

  ‘Jag has three or four, available for hire or his own contract work. We’d finished with the van that killed the farmer, and when he didn’t show up to collect it, it seemed like a good excuse for an unscheduled visit. Jag was out, only a boy in charge. Opportunity for a little wander around in the back of the garage, where we clocked a variety of agricultural implements – three quads, collection of chainsaws, heavy duty hedge-trimmers, brush-cutters and the like.
’

  ‘Jag’s fencing stolen kit.’

  ‘Well, yeah, but I’m thinking more than that. You know how many farm thefts there’ve been in the county this year?’

  ‘I know how many the bloody farmers say there’ve been.’

  Big issue again this year. Another useful campaign for Countryside Defiance, the pro-hunting pressure group posing as a general rural-interests lobby.

  ‘You know what I’m thinking, Francis? Wictor Jaglowski with his little fleet of vans?’

  ‘Let me process it.’ Bliss leaning his chair back against the window. Sonia had left the building. ‘Fellers like this Lukas, out ostensibly on courier work, in plain vans, happening to get themselves lost…’

  ‘I reckon Jag’s sending blokes out into the sticks to have a discreet poke around, try a few shed doors, unlocked trucks, Land Rovers. Anything not padlocked to the wall goes into the back of the off-white van. And then he comes back for the Land Rovers.’

  Bliss nodded. Made sense.

  ‘Or even the odd sheep,’ Rich said.

  ‘Anything found in the back of the van after the fatality?’

  ‘Nothing. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t get rid when he knew he was in trouble.’

  ‘We know any more drivers going out in Jag’s vans?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to find them. Think of the brownie points with the farmers.’

  ‘We never get brownie points from farmers, Rich, nobody does. Still… thanks for this. I’ll ask Ma’am if we can extend to an obbo. See how far up it goes. And then, if Jag’s part of something more extensive, we can offload it on the NCA.’

  Might be another layer of cop-bureaucracy, but the one good thing about the National Crime Agency was the way it saved you having to deal with foreign police and spend money on interpreters.

  Rich nodded.

  ‘Am I right in thinking you and the DCI are getting on better these days, Francis?’

  ‘Well, you know, Rich…’ Bliss carried on making a note on his pad. ‘I find sleeping together a couple of nights a week makes for a much easier working relationship.’

  Pause for laughter. They both knew that at least half of Gaol Street was convinced Annie was gay.

  ‘Anyway,’ Rich said, ‘she en’t gonner be around for much longer if her old man gets the big one next year.’

  Bliss said nothing. Still hoping Charlie Howe would see the madness here and pull out of the contest for Police and Crime Commissioner. Or the government would have a rethink, scrap the commissioners and bring back the old police authorities which hadn’t been up to much but at least there’d been a semblance of democracy.

  ‘Somebody was saying,’ Rich said, ‘that his early manifesto’s in today’s Hereford Times.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘He don’t let the grass grow, Charlie. And he’ll win. He always does. I’ve sent out for a copy.’

  ‘He’s bent, Rich. He was a bent copper, a bent councillor and the chances of him not being a bent police commissioner…’

  Rich smiled down at his boots.

  ‘Must’ve known four or five bent coppers in my time. I mean real bent, not just mavericks, real corrupt, free holidays at some old scrote’s villa on the Costa-whatever. And you know one thing they all had in common, Francis? They were popular. In the job and out of it. Every bloody one of them.’

  Bliss sighed.

  ‘Jack the lad.’

  ‘Whereas Annie Howe… dead straight. Painfully straight. In that way, at least.’

  ‘And nobody likes her.’

  ‘No justice, Francis,’ Rich said.

  6

  Many of us

  NOT QUITE TEN a.m., but it could have been dusk. It was faintly raining, but the village was still wearing the thinning fog like a dirty mac when Merrily came hurrying out of the churchyard, under the lychgate and on to the square.

  Much relieved to spot the Animal, Lol’s blue truck, at the end of the cobbles – no sign of it when she’d gone down to the churchyard – but there was no time to knock on his door or even run back to the vicarage to see Jane. The lanterns were on either side of the Swan’s main door and there was Clive Wells at the top of the steps, at least half an hour early.

  Languid Clive, old money and increasingly High Church – an incense swinger, in the face of what he saw as a corporate Canterbury cosying up to the secular society. Looking much the same as he had when they’d first met at Huw Owen’s chapel in the Beacons to be initiated into the dark arts.

  They hugged but then he held her at arm’s length, peering at her, curious. Clearly, she didn’t look so good, with the cursory make-up, hair a mess.

  ‘Jane,’ she said. ‘Twisted an ankle. I’ve been… rushing around a bit.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘No, no, she’s…’

  Much better, actually. Tentatively walking around the kitchen, saying, I’m fine, go, go, check it out or you won’t have time.

  Clive Wells followed her into the Swan, past the main bar to the polished oak door of the Jacobean lounge with a little sign on it that said tamely,

  ANGLICAN ADVISORY GROUP

  ‘You wimped out, then,’ Clive said.

  ‘Too right, I did.’

  Officially they didn’t even have a name. The Legion – that was someone’s idea of a black joke. My name is Legion – there are so many of us, the demon tells Jesus through the possessed man in Mark, chapter 5. Merrily blaming herself for being dumb enough to ask if anyone knew the collective noun for a group of exorcists.

  Not that there were so many of them around the Welsh border, which was why they’d extended the catchment area. It had been generally agreed that meeting twice a year was not a bad idea in these difficult times. Swap stories, discuss methods, slag off bishops. The first meeting had been up in Wrexham, this was the second.

  Merrily and Clive went through into the long room with the dark oak panelling and wrought-iron hanging lights and a conference table with twenty chairs.

  ‘Business brisk?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Strains credibility sometimes, I’m afraid. Or I’m entering my midlife crisis. Had a black-eyed kids situation a few weeks ago. People read about them in the tabloids and before you know it…’

  Sometimes you thought you were losing touch with reality when it was just a question of allowing reality to expand, but black-eyed kids were outside the most flexible parameters. Merrily remembered the front-page splash Jane had spotted on Jim Prosser’s newspaper rack. It had seemed less like evidence of a thinning of the veil between worlds as a narrowing of the gap between the Daily Star and the Daily Sport.

  ‘First heard of, apparently, in the 1990s,’ Clive said. ‘Began in America. Combination of spectral dwarf and the traditional Roswell alien, with those large black eyes. People were claiming to have had encounters with what looked at first like ordinary children in hoodies. Except that witnesses spoke of feeling an inexplicable terror before even noticing that the kid’s eyes were like chips of coal. Quite often, after an encounter, bad luck would befall the victim.’

  ‘You had one in Gloucester?’

  ‘Two. Knocking on doors. They’d have their backs to the door when the people answered the bells and then they’d turn around slowly. Bleeeargh!’

  ‘They disappear, or just run off giggling?’

  ‘In both cases, the householders were so horrified they just slammed their doors and didn’t open them again.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Blessed the doorsteps, sprinkle of holy water. Far from satisfied that these weren’t real kids who’d read the tabloids, but what can you do? Who else but us would do anything?’

  How much earth did a coffin displace? The refitted turf on Aidan Lloyd’s grave was substantially higher than the grass around it. It would sink eventually. Might be months before a memorial stone was in place. Jane moved carefully around the grave in the cold-steam air, and then as far as she could go on the other side before the burial area
met the bare, bony, apple trees. Rain was gradually drowning the fog, but her mouth was dry, as she bent to examine the ground on the dark side of the grave, and…

  … nothing. No obvious footprints on any side. It was like nothing had happened here since Gomer Parry had filled in the grave after the mourners had left.

  This wasn’t possible. Had Mum seen this? Jane straightened up unsteadily, flinging back the hood of her parka, tilting her head to let the rain sting her face. Wake me up, for God’s sake. A blurring of her senses, like something was in the process of erasing last night, turfing over the memories.

  She recalled being helped up to bed, her ankle splattered by Mum with analgesic gel and bound up in a support bandage. Expecting nightmares, pathetically wishing Eirion were there with her. Eirion who, unsurprisingly, had stopped phoning. Maybe he knew something. Maybe somebody had told him about Sam.

  No memory of dreaming at all. In the morning light, she’d edged slowly down the stairs to find Mum on the phone to Barry at the Swan, checking the arrangements for today. Examining Jane’s ankle before swallowing tea and dashing out, dragging her coat and bag behind her. Jane, look, I need to check the churchyard. I’ll call you. Don’t do anything, OK? Don’t speak to anybody about what happened. Toaster’s on.

  Jane had had honey and toast and rubbed more gel into her ankle, moving round and round the kitchen until she could walk with both feet. It was OK, more or less, just a question of taking your time. Mum had duly called from her mobile to say there was nothing to see in the churchyard. Really, nothing.

  They had to have missed something.

  Jane turned slowly at the sound of a cracking twig, drew a tight breath. There’d been nothing behind her but fog; now there was the huge, numinous imprint of the church emerging, with shimmering grandeur, from the thinning curtain. As if it was advancing on her. She felt momentarily afraid. Vulnerable. A sensation she didn’t remember at all from being a kid. Not even when Dad was killed. Another aspect of becoming adult: learning to embrace fear because there was nowhere to run. No one to save you from yourself and your wrong decisions. Decisions made too fast because you thought you had to.