All of a Winter's Night

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Too big. And all that oilseed rape. I used to think it was pretty, but now it just looks alien. And all the pesticides he must be putting on the fields, killing all the bees.’

  ‘He got focus, Janey. Goes quietly on. Buying up any fields as comes up for sale. Three times the size of what it was when he took it over, and that can’t be more’n fifteen years back.’

  ‘Oh. So the Lloyds are from Off? Hadn’t realized that.’

  ‘Well, not Off Off. Down south of the county. Kilpeck. You know Kilpeck? Inherited Churchwood Farm from his uncle, Eddie Lloyd. Not much more’n a holding, them days. Eddie, he just kept a few sheep, sold the rest off. Iestyn starts buyin’ it back, bit by bit.’

  They were right on the edge of the new grave now.

  ‘Mum said it wasn’t a very happy funeral. If you see what I mean.’

  Well, he’d been there. The gravedigger was always discreetly waiting in the churchyard to fill in the hole as soon as the mourners were gone.

  ‘Sarah Lloyd as was,’ Gomer said. ‘Boy’s mother, her looked like thunder. See, you ask some folks, they’ll say her went off with another feller, but that en’t true. Her just went off. Went to live with her ole mam up in town. Six years, sure t’be, before her got wed again. But her’d done her bit. Give Iestyn a son. Farmer allus gotter have a son.’

  Gomer said Sarah had been Iestyn’s secretary and already had a baby from another relationship when he married her, Iestyn bringing up the boy as his own. Then Aidan came along, his future ordained before he could walk.

  ‘No picnic being Iestyn’s son, mind. Other boy come off best, his ma reckoned.’

  Jane stopped walking. The sun was pushing damply against low cloud like a mint in a handkerchief.

  ‘What was happening here, Gomer?’

  He peered at her, clearly happy to help, but she wasn’t sure what she was asking for. Anything that might explain something that had even frightened Mum; but there was no way she could talk about last night.

  Gomer activated his e-cig.

  ‘I had some nice dry soil set aside.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For the nearest and dearest to toss on the box. Nobody wanted it, see. Just get him bedded in.’

  They were standing very close to the raised turf of the Lloyd grave. Through Jane’s half-closed eyes, its image darkened and blurred into memories of shuffling, feathered figures, and she was aware of her own heart beating harder, its pounding becoming the lumpen thudding of feet around a lamp on the ground. Really wanted to tell him, but it should come, if at all, from Mum.

  Where the lamp might have been, she saw Gomer bend slowly, his fingers moving over the grass. Like an osteopath, Jane thought, exploring someone’s back.

  ‘Gomer…’ Moving forward, she felt a slithery sense of foreboding. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Sure t’be.’ He came very slowly upright, rubbing soil from his hands. ‘I better be off, then, Janey. I forgot, feller up at Bearswood needs a hestimate for a new soakaway.’

  She walked back with him, out through the lychgate, and did not ask what was on his mind. Something he wasn’t sure about so wasn’t ready to tell her. It was like the Lloyd funeral had created a cloud of secrecy that fed on the fog which still hung around the square, mingling promiscuously with the apple-wood chimney-smoke.

  As they walked down Church Street she saw Dean Wall shambling ahead of them towards Ledwardine’s second pub, the Ox, no longer the loutish kid she’d been at school with. They’d all grown up.

  Gomer’s cap was tilting in Dean’s direction.

  ‘Got hisself in the Hereford Times, then.’

  ‘Must’ve been relieved it was only a suspended sentence.’

  ‘Wassat mean exac’ly, Janey?’

  ‘Means if he gets caught dealing drugs again – or anything, really, he’s straight in the slammer. Still…’ Thoughtful, now. ‘… that doesn’t mean he can’t talk about it.’

  Gomer gave her a sternish kind of look.

  ‘You wanner be a bit careful, Janey. Dean Wall en’t a boy n’more.’

  8

  Zapping the cat

  IN THE ROSY light of the Ladies’, Abbie Folley pushed her dripping hands into one of those air-blade driers.

  ‘Dunno if it’s just me, Merrily…’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Is there something almost sexual about these devices?’

  Merrily blinked.

  ‘Probably is me.’ Abbie was looking around at the dark-pink walls, the gilt-edged period basins fitted between pillars of sinewy old oak. ‘Lovely, all this, though, isn’t it? Tidy.’

  ‘Barry’s done a nice job.’ Merrily examined her face in the mirror. ‘Especially with the lighting. Takes ten years off your reflection.’

  Abbie grinned, withdrawing her dried hands with all their rings: left hand rubies or similar, right hand emeralds or similar.

  ‘He’s Sass, this Barry, that right?’

  ‘Was. Wouldn’t kill a woman, though.’

  ‘Love the eye patch.’

  Abbie rolled a sleeve down over her fish tattoo which ran wrist to elbow. How old was she – twenty-eight, thirty? Merrily nodded at the hand-drier.

  ‘Wash them again if you like.’

  ‘No, no, have to ration it.’ Abbie looked at her, dark-eyed and thoughtful. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I look ill?’

  ‘Bit fragile, to be honest.’

  ‘Tired. Didn’t get much sleep last night, for one reason or another. No, not that. He was away. Working.’

  ‘On tour?’

  ‘Been producing an album for Belladonna. If you remember her.’

  ‘Oh, now, there’s attitude.’ Abbie hunching into the mirror, applying cerise lipstick. ‘You ever met her?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have.’

  ‘Excitin’. What an exotic life you have in the New Cotswolds.’

  She dropped the lipstick in her bag, and Merrily held open the door for her, but Abbie didn’t move.

  ‘Merrily…’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Paul Crowden? You met him before?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Remind you of anyone, does he?’

  Merrily let the door close, put her back against it.

  ‘Actually, he does. In a way.’

  Abbie dumped her bag on the wooden ledge between the basins.

  ‘Thought he might, the bastard.’

  Abbie Folley was part of a deliverance panel in an area still stalked by industrial demons. It might or might not have been true that she’d wound up at theological college as a small act of rebellion against her parents, good old Valleys commies. Going to call her Karl, they were, if she’d been a boy. Or so she said.

  Abbie also said she didn’t envy Merrily. None of them did.

  Merrily glanced nervously at the door.

  ‘Relax,’ Abbie said. ‘Men expect women to spend an hour in the lav. Tell me about your bishop.’

  ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘Or, better still, I’ll tell you. Craig Innes, I was a curate in his parish. Temporary assistant junior curate for maybe two months before he left on his journey skyward. Fair play, he was nice enough to me, in his bluff, rugby-boy way.’

  ‘This would be when he was down near Newport?’

  Abbie nodding.

  ‘He’d done a deliverance training course with Huw Owen, by then. I only realized later that was in a know-thine-enemy kind of way. What could I have said anyway? My first job, it was. Too timid in those days to paint my nails.’

  Abbie turned on two taps, full gush.

  ‘Saw this in a spy film. Merrily, look, you don’t have to tell me or anything, all right? But the word is Craig’s been sent in to sprinkle disinfectant around Hereford.’

  ‘To get rid of the Hunter stains.’

  ‘The hunk who hired you, right?’

  ‘Mick Hunter. Scion of an influential ecclesiastical family with strong political connections. Classic candidate for the f
ast-track.’

  ‘And was he really… you know?’

  ‘Working the night shift? As Huw Owen would put it. Did put it, in fact. Well, you know, it wasn’t that simple, really. Leave the theology out of it, and you might just be looking at an atheist and a sex addict. Hung out in dark alleyways in his youth, thus exposing himself to blackmail later.’

  ‘Not good for a bishop, mind.’

  ‘Hardly the first to abuse his position. They’re appointed for their managerial skills, not their spirituality. Admittedly, it was more spectacular than most. But… they put the lid on it quickly enough by appointing Bernie Dunmore. A nice man but essentially a time-server. Bernie just picked up the crozier and carried on as if nothing had happened. But, yeah, even though it never quite came out, it embarrasses some people to this day. Hence Innes.’

  She didn’t look at Abbie, knew she was underplaying it. But Abbie had picked it up anyway. She turned off the taps, serious now.

  ‘So Craig’s specific mission, Merrily, is to get rid of anything that smells of Hunter.’

  ‘And, yes, to some people in the general vicinity of Canterbury I stink of Hunter. Christ, wrong words.’ Throwing up both hands. ‘No, I bloody didn’t sleep with him, why does everybody—? All right, he probably wanted to, if only to make sure of me. Youngish woman given a significant job she was far from qualified for, by a famous lech in purple, how could it not have gone that way? That’s more or less what Innes said in a discussion with the Archdeacon, secretly recorded by … a friend.’

  ‘Look, I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Huw Owen,’ Merrily said. ‘Huw confronted Innes and, I think, reminded him about one of his early successes. A woman who believed she was being haunted. Who he’d sent to a psychiatrist and who went on to take her own life.’

  ‘Jenny Roberts.’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Everybody down there knows about Jenny, but only people in the Job know about Craig Innes virtually telling her she was mentally ill.’ Abbie pulled her bag over, drew out a packet of cigarettes. ‘You want one?’

  ‘I’m vaping now. But… No, all right, go on.’ Accepting a cig. ‘Got to be an extractor fan in here somewhere.’

  ‘Well…’ Abbie lit up. ‘… thank you so much for telling me all this, Merrily. I just didn’t want to drop anybody in it without a good reason. Even Crowden, who probably has his problems.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘He won’t remember me.’ Abbie put away her lighter. ‘We only met the once, very briefly. In my nervous, no make-up, sleeves-rolled-down days, this was. Craig had an old friend to stay for a weekend. Introduced as a man he played rugby with at college.’

  ‘I had him down as a wrestler.’

  ‘Scrum-half, I think. Put a bit of weight on since then.’

  Merrily stared up at the sunken lights in the false ceiling.

  ‘You were right. It… it could almost’ve been him talking in there. Innes. Keep it simple. Throw the good book at it or leave it to the shrinks.’

  ‘Soulmates, Merrily. If that’s the word. This is all about fitting the Church into the real world. Saving it from itself. First, lose your loonies – that’s us.’

  ‘And you learned about the mission to adjust Hereford history… how?’

  ‘I think you’ll find they all know out there.’ Abbie waving her cig at the door. ‘One or two had calls from Paul, asking about you. His first meeting of the Legion, first time in Ledwardine, didn’t want to put his foot in it – that’s what he was saying. It was clear he wanted to know what people thought about you. Did they like you? The way you worked.’

  ‘What?’

  Merrily watched her illicit smoke rising to the ceiling lights. She felt like a lab rat enclosed in glass. Maybe there was a CCTV pinhole camera fitted into the Tampax machine.

  ‘Paul’s not the subtlest of implements, is he?’ Abbie said, ‘so maybe Craig wants you to know.’

  ‘He wants me to quit, Abbie. This confrontation between Innes and Huw Owen. I wasn’t there, but Huw threw Jenny Roberts at him and as good as told him to get off my back. And then it got… Anyway, since then, no contact between Innes and me. Not that there was much before. He works through other people.’

  ‘That’ll make it worse,’ Abbie said. ‘He didn’t like Huw to start off with.’

  ‘Like Huw gives a toss.’

  ‘Not the point, Merrily, you’re in the middle. Never mind the Hunter legacy, the last thing he’ll want is a good mate of Huw’s in your position. I get it now.’

  Merrily took a pull on the cigarette. Getting rid of a vicar, as they both knew, was not easy. Not without evidence of serious malpractice, robbing the parish, messing with the choir…

  ‘And Crowden turning up here today as… what? Some kind of agent provocateur? Warn us all off?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s about all of us,’ Abbie said. ‘Not yet, anyway. He’s made a start and when we go back in there, or maybe after lunch, he’ll be going to work on you proper. Now… you’re obviously knackered. Go back in there, you’ll say the wrong things. He’ll make you say the wrong things. He’s a bully. You’ll get home and realize what you should’ve said, only it’ll be too late.’

  ‘It’s a private meeting.’

  ‘If you think that…’

  ‘He’s not being very discreet, is he? If he’s out there blatantly singing from the Innes hymn sheet and noting the reactions to feed back to his mate, he must know I’m going to put it together at some stage.’

  ‘But if it adds to your paranoia and you leave under your own steam… Result.’ Abbie caught cigarette ash in her left hand. ‘Pat on the back for Craig. Job done. Now go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bugger off. I’ll tell them you were called away. Dying parishioner, I’ll think of something.’

  ‘Abbie, I’m supposed to be hosting the entire—’

  ‘You probably know the back entrance better than I do.’

  Abbie shouldered her bag, swung back the toilet door, exposing the short, deserted passage.

  ‘Zapping the cat,’ she said. ‘How bloody heartless is that, Merrily?’

  9

  No mates

  AT ONE TIME he would’ve been jeering, watching for boobswing as she took off her parka. Never the subtlest kid on the school bus.

  And never a mate. Not at all. Not since that night, a few years ago, which had looked like it was going to end in something close to rape. Which, given the company he was keeping at the time…

  On his own, mind, Dean Wall had never been a threat. He looked wary, almost worried, when she pulled out a chair at his table in the Ox, with its brown paintwork, its varnish and its coloured bulbs. Ledwardine’s number two pub, kept drab and utility; serious drinkers liked that.

  ‘How’re you, Jane? Get you one?’

  If he’d noticed she was limping, he hadn’t commented. He’d had the table to himself, between the bar and the broken jukebox where he’d usually be found at lunchtime. Since the last time she’d seen him, he’d shaved off his beard, which couldn’t have taken long. He must be twenty, now, maybe twenty-one. A year ahead of her at school, but without the beard he looked like a big kid again.

  ‘I’ll get them.’ She hung her parka on the back of the chair, nodded at his pint cider glass. ‘Same again?’

  ‘Er… yeah. All right. Ta, Jane.’

  Now he did look worried. You had to laugh. The four months suspended was for possession with intent, but she really couldn’t see him as a career criminal. With Dean, it would’ve been all about image. Proudly collecting his gear in a plastic carrier bag from a maisonette with a steel-reinforced front door on the Plascarreg estate in Hereford. Would never have occurred to him that he might actually get nicked for it. Not out here in the sticks.

  He’d be walking on eggshells now, stepping over pavement cracks. Accepting he just wasn’t destined to reach the same plateau as the Hereford club owner Rajab Ali Khan, whose expensive car had recently
been stupidly vandalized by his younger brother, Jude Wall, while parked outside Ledwardine vicarage. Mr Khan, who would probably never have a criminal record or place an elegant shoe on the Plascarreg, believed he owed Mum for spiritual assistance – Jane happy to capitalize on this for as long as it lasted, Dean Wall being shit-scared of Mr Khan.

  She came back from the bar, put down his cider and a half for herself.

  ‘Just looking for a bit of information, Dean. In confidence.’

  He didn’t reply. Jane sat down and swallowed some cider: too dry, too rough, the kind that gave her heartburn. Never mind.

  ‘Aidan Lloyd,’ she said.

  He didn’t look at her.

  ‘He’s dead, Jane.’

  ‘Yeah, well I know that.’

  About all she did know, except that he’d had the ability to dowse water without implements, which was interesting. She put down her glass and leaned back.

  ‘He get his dope from you, Dean?’

  ‘Aw shit!’

  Wall sat up hard, scraping his chair, spilling his cider.

  About a dozen people in the bar, mostly men; none of them had been looking at Wall, but now they were. Jane smiled and then felt a little sad, remembering being in here with Colette Cassidy, years ago, both of them underage drinkers, wondering aloud if Dean Wall, aged about sixteen at the time, actually shagged sheep.

  ‘Somebody tell you to ask me that, Jane?’

  Wall’s eyes had narrowed. She remembered thinking that night that if they were much further apart he’d actually look like a sheep. What patronizing little bitches they’d been.

  ‘Nobody told me to ask you anything,’ Jane said. ‘Until ten minutes ago, I didn’t know we’d be having this discussion.’

  ‘Just I’m fed up of this, Jane. Like it’s me who fuckin’ killed him?’

  ‘So he did get his—’

  ‘No! The answer’s no, all right? He din’t get nothin’ off me. Didn’t hardly know him. Nobody did. All I knows about Lloyd is some migrant van driver flattened him on the back road. Buggers shouldn’t be let in. None of ’em can drive for shit.’

  ‘So where did Aidan get his weed?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Listen…’ Wall leaning across the table. ‘I wound up doin’ the trade in the ole black and white villages for… just mates, it was, at first, and then it’s mates of mates. And then it gets outer hand and some of the posh bastards from Off comes sniffin’ round. The kind as likes a couple of spliffs after their dinner parties?’