by Phil Rickman
‘He had lots of money?’
‘Yeah, he was… generous, obviously. He always carried cash. He wasn’t into cards.’
Bliss smiled.
‘And he always went to church?’ Karen said.
‘He went to mass. Kept going on about thanking God for looking after him.’ Danni’s mouth shrank. ‘Yeah, right. Straight out of church to thank God, and then down the garage and gets himself—’
Her head went theatrically down into her hands on the tabletop. Bliss had listened to the recording of Danni’s 999 call, from her mobile after she’d run outside the garage. Yeah, my boyfriend… he’s really badly hurt… his head’s all… all blood? You’ve got to send somebody, it’s horrible, he won’t move…
Karen found her a tissue, said, ‘Do you know which church?’
Bliss nodded. The priest might be helpful.
‘I’m not too sure,’ Danni said, but I think—’
Then the picture went off. Sometimes Karen could fix it, but mostly not. Bliss turned to Vaynor, who was shaking his head slowly.
‘Not going to be an easy one, this, boss. Whoever did it could be out of the country by now.’
‘Or just in a different city. Might’ve come here specially to do the job. Lorra fellers up for it in Birmingham… Cardiff… Gloucester, even. You think she’s telling us everything she knows?’
‘They never do, do they? But I don’t think she’s covering for anybody. She was just having a good time with a bloke throwing his money about and not thinking too hard about where it came from.’
Bliss thought about it.
‘Might be worth you having a word with the parents. If she spent last night back in her old home being fed hot soup, something might’ve come out that Mum and Dad might feel better if we knew about.’
‘We’ve spoken briefly. They’re, you know, liberal-minded people. They met Jaglowski once or twice. Her mother said he was charming and her dad didn’t want to be suspicious or disapproving, but I reckon he’s having a re-evaluation now. You want me to visit his surgery?’
‘Yeah, nab him in his lunch hour. We don’t want Danni around. Or the mother if she found Jag charming.’
‘Maybe he was. Snapping up a girl like Danni. Good-time girl, along for the ride. A lot to be said for it.’ Vaynor was with a woman he’d known when they were at Oxford together. ‘So I’m told.’
Bliss had been set up to do a short interview for Midlands Today with Amanda Patel who he got on with most of the time. Seasoned veteran now, Mandy, compared to the kids from the other networks. They walked out into the car park, where Bliss spotted ITV and Sky unloading their kit. Gun-crime terror grips peaceful country town.
‘Might be easy to overreact on this one, Mandy. While a shooting in Hereford not involving a twelve-bore is comparatively rare… and we can’t actually say there’s no danger to the public… it’s probably no more than an underworld disagreement.’
‘Have you got an underworld in Hereford?’
‘You’d be surprised. I’m just saying I wouldn’t get overexcited about the idea of a dangerous armed felon on the loose.’
Mandy nodded. They walked down into the public car park opposite the red-brick magistrates’ court.
‘Frannie, what about this connection with the farmer who was killed?’
‘Is there one?’
Bliss gazing out over the car park, keeping his voice loose.
‘Didn’t Jaglowski own the van that killed that guy on a country lane? Driven by a guy who came into the country through the people-smuggling trade and did a spell as a slave to pay for it?’
Bliss didn’t look at her.
‘Where’d you get that, Mandy?’
‘Is it important?’
‘Might be.’
If this interesting if possibly irrelevant connection was in the public domain, the chances were that it had seeped out of Gaol Street.
‘I don’t have to reveal my sources,’ Mandy said, ‘but, seeing it’s you, think of a well-known local councillor running for high office in law enforcement.’
‘And what exactly did he say about it?’
‘Nothing. He just told me. Being friendly.’
‘Yeah, that’s how he is,’ Bliss said, tightening up. ‘Friendly.’
28
Severe stomach wound
MERRILY WAS THINKING that nowhere in Hereford had more of a sense of the living medieval than All Saints Church since they put a restaurant inside, reactivating the church as something noisy, vibrant, relevant and still a church. Wouldn’t work in Ledwardine but here at the bottom of Broad Street, the onetime heart of the city, it was right. And full.
Jane had won £25 on a scratchcard this morning and insisted on paying for lunch. They went upstairs to the gallery, overlooking the top of the nave and the chancel and almost directly underneath the little wooden man flashing his medieval parts.
‘Nobody seems to spot him.’ Jane nodding towards the other diners. ‘He’s got to be miffed. A seven hundred year hard-on and nobody notices? Does he have a name?’
‘Male exhibitionist,’ Merrily said. ‘Prosaic but accurate.’
‘I meant like Sheela-na-gig?’
‘Not that I know of. Although he does have a similar level of disproportion in his bits.’
‘Bits? If he was real he wouldn’t be able to stand up.’ Jane sat down, spreading her few packages. ‘Why did they do this in medieval churches? Think about it. All the porn – churches.’
‘We’re talking Kilpeck, right?’
‘We certainly are.’
Jane had been across to the city library, consulting a whole pile of local books in the search for Kilpeck and the history of Herefordshire morris dancing and finding no obvious connection. So she’d settled on the church, Kilpeck’s one claim to international fame because of its perfectly preserved collection of Norman Romanesque stone carvings, its unique medieval frieze. Also its Sheela-na-gig. The female exhibitionist.
Jane flicked a glance at the corner of the ceiling.
‘Thought to have had one like him as well at one time. Story is, there was this Victorian lady who may have owned the church and threw a wobbly when she realized what he had in his hand.’
‘That would figure.’
‘Had him removed, along with a few other carvings.’ Jane smiled, slightly eerily. ‘You’ll’ve noticed how I very carefully said “removed” rather than “pulled off”.’
‘Didn’t, actually, flower, but thank you. How come she spared the Sheela-na-gig?’
Remembering the Sheela from a visit some years ago. Notorious worldwide for her vacant, slightly orgasmic leer and something resembling the entrance to a railway tunnel between her little legs.
‘I think someone told the woman she was actually a bloke with a severe stomach wound from the war,’ Jane said. ‘Something like that. So naive, these Victorians.’
This frivolity, you could understand it. A determination not to dwell on what she’d seen in the churchyard. Not in public, anyway. Jane could be genuinely impressive sometimes.
The waitress brought up their veggie lasagnes. Jane waited till she’d gone.
‘So you phoned the vicar of Kilpeck?’
‘Rector of Ewyas Harold. Including Kilpeck. Yes, she does know Sir Lionel Darvill.’
‘Tweeds? Rides with the hunt?’
‘Certainly landed gentry. Baronet. Never quite sure what that means, except that he inherited the title. Norman name. Quite a few families of Norman descent along that part of the border.’
‘It’s a classic Norman parish church.’
‘Darvill seems to feel a certain responsibility for it,’ Merrily said. ‘He’s a significant patron. Not what you’d expect, though, according to Julie Duxbury. More old hippy than country squire. Though not old enough to have been an actual hippy.’
‘What’s that make him?’
‘Makes him a hippy’s son. Henry Darvill’s values – the old good-life ethos – got channelled into
something significant. Eventually became one of the biggest organic farmers in the area. Though not without casualties.’
Jane’s knife and fork froze over her plate.
‘Iestyn Lloyd.’
‘Iestyn was appointed farm manager by Sir Lionel’s uncle, Peter – must be over thirty years ago. He came from a farming family with land spreading into Wales, but they’d had to sell up, and Peter gave Iestyn a job running his estate. I mean, really running it. As if it was his own. Made Uncle Peter a lot of money.’
‘Not exactly organic, though.’
‘Practically industrial.’ Merrily looked down at her vegetarian alternative. ‘Much like he is now, maybe more so. Battery chickens, huge pig sheds, clearance of fields for arable crops.’
‘Pesticides?’
‘Obviously. Hugely profitable, anyway. Henry Darvill, fresh from his studies into higher-consciousness, was appalled.’
‘Fires Iestyn…’
‘Not immediately. Henry does seem to have recognized Iestyn’s business skills. Didn’t want to lose that. He was an idealist not a farmer, so he tried to convert Iestyn to organic. Well… that wasn’t going to happen. You can’t just turn a hard-nosed businessman into a green-earth philanthropist. They rubbed along painfully for a while, but in the end, yes, Henry invited Iestyn to accept a substantial pay-off. Iestyn exploded and went down the industrial tribunal route. The eyes of the agricultural world were suddenly focused on Kilpeck, and Henry… according to Julie, Henry couldn’t face that.’
‘Bought him off? That’s what I read.’
‘For an undisclosed amount, far more than he’d imagined. Had to sell land.’
‘And that was how Ledwardine got Iestyn Lloyd?’
‘Well… he already had a share in Churchwood Farm – inherited, with his cousin, from an uncle. What he collected from Henry Darvill was enough to buy his cousin out. Rest is history. But… I didn’t know about the resulting feud between the Lloyds and the Darvills. You might argue that Iestyn’s better off now than when he was just a highly paid employee, but I don’t think that’s how he sees it. Unquenchable hatred – that’s Julie’s phrase. Wars have started over less.’
Merrily ate slowly, thinking about it. She’d had the impression Julie Duxbury was still holding a lot back. Maybe just reluctant to discuss it on the phone. She put down her fork.
‘According to Julie, Maryfields nearly went under. Iestyn wouldn’t have gone out of his way not to leave things in a mess. Also, he was well respected locally and seems to have put the knife in for Henry, whose only mates were other organic farmers, mostly out of county. Establishing an organic farm takes time. Getting rid of the chemicals, attracting the nutrients back into the soil. He got there eventually, but it finished him. Wrecked his marriage, his health. Broke his spirit.’
‘Bugger…’
‘Killed him in the end. He was on medication for depression, died quite suddenly. But… his legacy survives. As does the tradition of morris dancing he began in Kilpeck.’
Jane’s eyes widened.
‘Hey, you got there!’
‘If MI5 employed parish priests, flower…’
‘So the Kilpeck Morris doesn’t go way back?’
‘Sir Henry Darvill formed a morris side with local men, most of them working on his farm. His son continues it. They still perform at certain times around the immediate area. And it goes deeper than entertainment, whatever that means. That’s all I know.’
Jane sugared her tea.
‘So now we have a serious link between the Darvills of Kilpeck and the Lloyds of Ledwardine. And a reason for…’
She looked around. There were people, too close. But, yes, they now had a reason for one family to despoil the grave of the heir to the other’s fortune. Dancing on the grave – you could just about explain that, on a drunken, boorish level, but the rest of it…
‘Sir Lionel Darvill.’ Jane lowering her voice. ‘Would he have been there on the night?’
‘He clearly wasn’t. The idea of Darvill being involved in this is appealing – if that word could be applied to this situation – except for one thing. He doesn’t dance any more. He’s in a wheelchair. Paralysed from the waist down.’
‘Oh.’
‘Nothing’s simple, flower.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He had a fall. Broke his back. They’re clearly not a lucky family, the Darvills.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Going over to see her. Julie Duxbury.’
‘When?’
‘We’ll work something out. She seemed quite glad I’d rung.’
‘What was your excuse for ringing? You didn’t tell her…?’
‘Course not. But I did say it was a deliverance issue, so she wouldn’t expect me to say too much about it. Though I may have to when we actually meet. All I said was that I was chasing a ghost. I gave her the name, Aidan Lloyd.’
‘You mention Lol and the festival?’
‘No chance, even if he was interested. Julie says she made the mistake of confusing the Kilpeck Morris with public entertainment, innocently inviting them to perform at a parish fete last summer. A serious social gaffe. They didn’t do village fetes.’
‘That’s what Darvill told her?’
‘She says she went red, apologized and backed off. When you’re in a new parish, you tend to pussyfoot for quite a while. Always worried about inadvertently tossing a brick into a quiet pool.’
Jane sat up.
‘Fuck that.’
Clapping a hand over her mouth as heads turned.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry… but I hate quiet pools.’
‘Jane…’ Merrily muttering, embarrassed, into her plate. ‘Could be this will turn out to be something… rather less dark than it seems.’
‘You reckon?’ Jane said. ‘You taking bets?’
Merrily glanced up at the little wooden flasher in the corner. You could almost hear him sniggering.
29
Safe ground
TUESDAY MORNING. A white sky. Powdery overnight snow in the cracks between the cobbles on the square, and Lol was at his desk in the window, messing with his wintry song, changing a few words.
The old year turns…
No, hangs was better. There might be a need for turn later in the song, and hanging suggested uncertainty. Hanging, yes…
The old year’s hanging on a rusting hinge
Kids in the city on a drinking binge
And I can hear some ancient engine grinding
Maybe grinding wasn’t right. Would depend on what the ancient engine was actually for. He didn’t know, but the word engine insisted on being there. Hinge, binge, engine – closer to an anagram than a rhyme, as if it had formed out of the other words. It had been in his head when he awoke, along with the rhythm, the heavy clockwork, insistent, thumping, and when he’d rolled out of bed his leg muscles had been aching, as if he’d been walking all night.
He found his head was in his arms on the desktop.
What was the point? He needed to make some money again; ‘Camera Lies’ was no longer going to pay off his mortgage on Lucy’s Cottage. But very few people were making money in this business any more. Kids were no longer obsessed with music, and what music they needed they could get free. The day of the Big Stereo was over. The vinyl revival was a comparatively small, elitist fad. There were no longer songs that everybody knew, with words embedded in the zeitgeist.
As for Merrily… He’d become aware of stories in the papers that at one time would have had no personal significance for him. One had said the Church of England would be moribund long before the end of the twenty-first century. Victim of the forces of economics and entropy. Part of a long-expired England where one son would join the army, the other would remain to run the farm and the third, the loser, would go into the Church.
hinge, binge, engine… who was likely to give a shit?
Lol sat up. It was a job and the only one he had. And it mig
ht need an extra chord change to accommodate engine. He was fumbling the Boswell on to his right knee when the phone rang.
‘Hello.’
Never gave the number any more, not sure why.
‘Robinson?’
‘Um…’
‘Darvill. Kilpeck.’
Shit. Lol stood up, kicking the chair back, stretching the phone wire to lay the Boswell on the sofa. Hadn’t been expecting this. Half expecting something, but not this.
‘You phoned Mrs Brewer.’
‘Yes.’
‘And she told you about me.’
‘She mentioned you.’
An oil delivery tanker had stopped right outside, the driver leaning down to talk to Brenda from the Eight Till Late, probably asking directions to somewhere. The engine noise meant Lol had to strain to hear.
‘—like most of these Nick Drake tributists, you don’t sound an awful lot like him, do you? On your albums.’
Lol sat down at the desk, cupping the phone. Sir Lionel Darvill had listened to his albums?
‘I was in a band that took its name from one of his songs. We were young and we’d discovered him. It was just a mark of respect.’
‘My old man was at school with Drake,’ Darvill said. ‘Marlborough.’
‘Oh?’
It figured. Nick Drake had come from a wealthy family.
‘Used to enjoy telling me,’ Darvill said, ‘how they once shared a spliff in the shadow of one of those enormous prehistoric stones at Avebury.’
‘Those were the days,’ Lol said.
Trying to fit an image to the voice. It had a roll. You’d hear some aristocrat or a minor member of the royal family who’d dragged his cut-glass vowels through Estuary mud; Darvill’s accent had been dipped in cider. Lol couldn’t picture him in a wheelchair.
‘Don’t know if that’s true or not,’ Darvill said. ‘Or it might’ve been some years later.’
‘Unfortunately, Nick Drake didn’t have too many years later.’
