by Phil Rickman
‘That’s not quite how you put it before.’ Julie sounding quite irritated. ‘When I arrived at your house.’
‘You caught me at a bad time.’
‘Washing the bedding, yes. You were conspicuously upset.’
‘It was the… Oh God…’
‘The smell,’ Julie said. ‘I know. You said you were washing them a second time. The sheet, the duvet cover…’
Insistent now, stern. You could tell why Julie had been given these venerable parishes in the last days of Bernie Dunmore. Lara’s voice came out wearied.
‘Yeah, OK, I thought I could still smell it. Imagination. Paranoia. Julie, I never said he was possessed by evil or anything. I don’t even believe in all that. I’m sorry, Mrs Watkins, I think Julie may have misunderstood.’
‘Lara…’ Julie was furious now. ‘You’re backing away from it.’
‘Exorcism? Well, yeah, maybe I am. I’m not sure I even believe in God in the old sense. I mean, Christian principles, that’s different. Being kind to people. Morality. But all this demonic possession—’
‘All I do,’ Merrily said, ‘most of the time, is try and help people whose lives have been disrupted by something they can’t easily explain. No black bag.’
‘My parents were churchgoers, still are. All that worries me is the blurring of boundaries between what’s good and what’s— As for Gareth… I don’t really know what he believes. Doesn’t talk about it. If I’m making him sound like some taciturn yokel, he isn’t. He just doesn’t like to talk about what he doesn’t fully understand.’
Merrily said, ‘Do you know what they did on the night of the funeral?’
‘Got drunk?’
‘And when the pub closed? Do you know where they went when the pub closed?’
A silence. Lara swallowed.
‘All I know is what happened after he came home.’
‘Thank you,’ Julie said firmly. ‘Let’s talk about that.’
If you learned one thing from funerals, it was that under the shadows left by death people behaved irrationally. Especially in the countryside where problems were shouldered rather than shared.
‘What time was that?’ Merrily asked. ‘When he came home.’
‘Not sure. When I came down next morning he was in the kitchen, drinking coffee. He said he had an early appointment at a trekking centre over in Wales. I asked him if he was fit to drive, he said he was fine. Didn’t see him again until he came home that night, saying he was very tired. He went to bed early. When I went up, around eleven p.m., he was asleep, so it must’ve been about half past one in the morning when I awoke to hear him— I still don’t know how to—’
‘You don’t have to interpret it,’ Julie said, almost harshly. ‘Just describe it.’
‘I— I just know that he gave the impression of being somewhere else. Somewhere he didn’t want to be. And he was terrified. It was dark, the bedroom curtains were drawn, I couldn’t see anything, but he evidently could. It was— Oh this is ridiculous, how can I—?’
‘Go on.’
‘It was like he’d come from somewhere. And something had come back with him. And it was cold. Do you know what I mean? The cold we can feel now, that’s just… cold. You know you can wear a coat to keep it out. This was… you could wear your thickest coat and a load of scarves and you wouldn’t keep it out because it’s already inside. Under your skin. Around your bones. Do you know what I’m saying?’
‘I think so,’ Merrily said.
‘He was convulsing. I felt his body go rigid, as if he was having a fit? I switched on the light. His face was… I mean, he wasn’t actually asleep but he wasn’t awake either. I started shaking him. I must’ve been shouting because the children came rushing in. One’s four, one’s six. He was sitting up by then. I told them Daddy had been having a nightmare, and he was coughing and nodding.’
‘A nightmare,’ Merrily said.
‘He went off to work the next day and came home looking a lot older than thirty-six. I persuaded him to go to bed early again. Took a while for me to get to sleep because I knew he was awake. Not moving, but you always know when they’re feigning sleep, the breathing’s different. I awoke around three a.m. and he wasn’t there. Found him in the kitchen, drinking coffee, staring into space.’
‘Afraid to go to sleep, you think?’
‘He has this very physical, tiring job. Travels long distances in a van with a portable forge in the back. What if he falls asleep at the wheel? What if he isn’t concentrating while he’s working and some enormous stallion kicks his head in?’
A white tissue came up. Lara blew her nose.
‘The next day was Sunday. He went to church. He goes occasionally. I mean, there isn’t a service every week, anyway, Julie has so many parishes to look after.’
‘He was sitting alone, in the gallery,’ Julie said. ‘I didn’t think anything of it. People want different things out of a service, as you know. Some like to be sociable, some like to be alone with God or just their thoughts.’
‘Or to get away from their thoughts,’ Merrily said.
‘He didn’t want much lunch,’ Lara said, ‘and then he said he wanted some fresh air. I said me and the kids would go with him, but he said he had some jobs to do at the forge. I think he actually went to Maryfields to talk to Lionel. He… came back from Maryfields still looking like a ghost. Ate a meal he probably didn’t even taste and then fell asleep in front of the TV, and I woke him up in time to make another attempt at going to bed. I was only sleeping in fits, as you can imagine. I just— It doesn’t seem real. If Julie hadn’t arrived when she did I’d probably be living with it for another week before attempting to do… I don’t know what I’d do.’
‘What happened?’
‘He went to sleep. I lay awake. Waiting for it. About half one, I felt a pull on the duvet. His body had gone rigid. Put on the light, started to shake him. Didn’t know whether I was doing the right thing. He started to breathe through his mouth, in great gulps, as if he’d been underwater, no air, you know? And the cold. And the smell…’
‘Which you thought was in the sheets…’
‘It was the kind of smell that comes up sometimes when you sink a spade into wet earth. Humus or something. Soil and a faint smell of… decay. Greasy, rotting. Seemed to fill the bedroom.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance at all that he’ll talk to me?’
‘Talk?’ Julie Duxbury said. ‘Needs more than that, doesn’t it?’
Merrily was aware of nodding, an inescapable commitment, iron manacles closing with a dull clang.
‘Maybe.’
33
Nice suit
VAYNOR WAS ON the phone from his car outside Hewell Prison in north Worcestershire. Bliss had been there a couple of times: Gothic mansion with red-brick extensions, often condemned as grossly overcrowded, famous for multiple suicides and a murder. Mixed bunch in there, from the newly remanded to the well-convicted, and Vaynor had expected problems.
Not the case, however. He’d got there before dark for his interview with Lech Jaglowski and he hadn’t been kept waiting.
‘Never what you expect, is it, boss?’ he told Bliss on the phone.
‘Darth…’ Bliss leaning his office chair back against the window sill. ‘… I gave up expecting things long ago.’
‘Good English, Lech,’ Vaynor said. ‘Well educated.’
‘PhD, is he? You’d gerron with him, then.’
‘Well, I did. It’s easy to understand why they come here. Apart from the wage levels, they relate to us, the Poles.’
‘Since World War Two.’
Vaynor hadn’t taken a terp, which could’ve been dicey if Lech was being interviewed more formally, with a view to a charge. Defence counsel were notoriously good at proving clients didn’t have the vocabulary to understand what they were being accused of, never mind cough to it.
But this was just a chat. Darth and Lech had talked for just short of a couple of hours in a p
rivate room. Before he left, they’d shaken hands. At one stage, he told Bliss, Lech had wept.
‘You can call me a softy, boss,’ Vaynor said, ‘but I’d stake my pension on him not having done it.’
Bliss was unimpressed. At Vaynor’s age, retirement was so far into the future you’d stake your pension on the Green Party winning a majority on Hereford Council if the odds were right.
‘Due to being banged up at the time,’ Bliss said, ‘yeh, but—’
‘Or got anybody else to do it for him. Not, frankly, that you could’ve blamed him. They let me talk to a couple of screws, and Lech doesn’t appear to have formed any particular friendships inside.’
‘Not even with the baccy barons? If they have them any more.’
‘Spends most of his time reading to improve his command of English. The cigarette smuggling – he tells me that got well out of hand because of some mates of Jag who he didn’t like to offend. He knew what he was doing, he was just afraid not to.’
‘Heard that before, too.’
‘Jag, undoubtedly, was a villain. The parents, back in Poland, according to Lech they could never see it. They thought Wictor, through no fault of his own, had got into bad company in Krakow, and he’d come to England to make a new start, clean up his act. Wrong, wrong, wrong, Lech says. He’d come to England to rob people.’
‘My old ma thinks I have a nice job with the NatWest bank. But then, I suppose…’
‘Lech, however… I asked him about the rape allegation. He said, You talk to police in Krakow, you find they never heard of me. Only Wictor. They knew Wictor all too well.’
‘Go on, then,’ Bliss said. ‘Bugger up the rest of me day.’
It was true that Lech liked Danni. A lot. Knew Jag had been lying to her.
Jag had filled Danni up with all this crap about loving Herefordshire and wanting to spend the rest of his life here, but that wasn’t true. ‘Economic migrant’ didn’t come close to describing Jag. The garage was rented, so was the flat. No ties. Everything short-term. Including Danni. Lech, well meaning, had tried to get this over to her. Danni had told Jag. Hence the discord.
‘Does he think Jag had him grassed up for the cigs to get him off his back?’
‘That’s open to dispute. It was an anonymous tip-off. I’m inclined to think – and this is a bit of a gobsmacker, boss, so let me just tell you what he said.’
Lech blamed himself. His own weakness. His naivety. He’d come to England with Jag, not realizing what that might involve. He had some money which he used to set up a Polish shop in which Jag was not involved. But friends of Jag had come after him for favours. It was difficult. More dangerous to refuse.
He’d told Vaynor he’d loved his brother but hadn’t admired him – yes, his English was good enough for subtleties. When he came out, in just a few weeks’ time, he was going back to Poland. He’d already offloaded the shop.
‘He’s scared,’ Vaynor said. ‘He says he never wanted to work with Jag at the garage, didn’t like some of the guys Jag was doing business with. The caravan park down by Bromyard? People-trafficking. Slavery?’
The caravan park had been temporary accommodation for a string of Lithuanians who, having put the last of their new Euros into the hands of individuals assuring them they had guaranteed jobs waiting for them in Hereford, had ended up in forced labour, unpaid except for basic meals. Part of a much bigger operation, according to Lech.
‘And Jag’s role in that was what?’ Bliss asked.
‘He’d find work for some of the illegals. Apparently straight work in return for IDs put together in Birmingham. Quickly turning into criminal work. In which context, I’m thinking of the van-man who ran into the farmer. Can’t remember his name.’
‘Lukas Babekis. Who Rich Ford reckoned was sent out into the sticks to nick stuff for Jag.’
‘There you go. Some of these people are very poor. Take anything they’re offered.’
‘You actually ask him if he’d had Jag killed?’
‘I said a few people were saying that. That was when he started getting emotional. “Why these people want hang me?” All this.’
‘Who does he think killed Jag, then?’
‘He doesn’t know. He was kind of fatalistic about it. Like he’d felt it coming. The final confirmation that he needs to go home.’
‘Could’ve gone home anytime, surely?’
‘That’s what I said. He said he couldn’t go home because Jag wouldn’t let him. Jag was making his life intolerable.’
‘Did he realize this sounded like a valid motive for removing his brother?’
‘Has DS Stagg come up with a name for whoever fingered Lech for the cigs?’
‘What’s that gorra—?’
‘If it emerged that it was Lech himself who alerted us to the cigs in his basement, which obviously it won’t, I wouldn’t keel over with shock. He wasn’t telling me everything, but I’d guess farm theft and allied crime was the tip of the iceberg. He was storing the cigs for Jag, that’s where he wanted it to end.’
‘You’re saying Lech would rather put himself inside with a criminal record than get dragged into it? Come on…’
‘He got extremely worried when I asked him if Jag traded in firearms. “No, no, never, never.” Though earlier he’d said his brother prided himself on being able to get anything for anybody.’
‘You think Jag wanted Lech to store the guns?’
‘And a refusal often offends. I think he just panicked, boss. Get me out of this. He said he was very appreciative of the way he’d been treated. Like a holiday.’
‘In Hewell?’
‘By the police, everybody.’ Vaynor paused. ‘He was especially pleased to see me, and he asked me if I’d been sent by the chief.’
‘Which chief?’
‘Ah…’ Another pause. ‘Prepare yourself, boss. He’d had a personal visit from a very distinguished man.’
‘In Hewell?’
‘Very friendly man. Of mature years. Nice suit. Paternal – he actually said that. “Like my father.” Not quite tearful, but you get the idea. Lech wasn’t sure what this nice man’s actual position was at the minute, but he did assure him that in a few months he’d be the big chief. He expressed himself sympathetic to migrants who, through no fault of their own, had fallen foul of British restrictions. He said he was talking to a wide range of people, collecting information about the situation. And then he asked him some other things you’ll be quite interested to know about.’
Bliss looked up at an eruption of rain on the window.
‘This a joke, DC Vaynor?’
34
Concrete
HUW OWEN HAD always laid it down that you didn’t just leave without doing something. Prayer, blessing, something. You didn’t just walk or drive away saying you’d sleep on it, maybe come back tomorrow, because tomorrow might be too late. Huw would talk about suicides he’d known caused by delays and hesitation and simple scepticism.
Merrily watched Lara Brewer walking slowly away, head bowed, towards the pub and the sporadic lights of the newer Kilpeck.
Call me, she’d said to Lara. Call me anytime. Day or night. I’ll come out.
OK, people lied to you sometimes. Although experience told you that mostly they didn’t. Occasionally they were deluded but, more often than not, whatever had happened to them would have been far enough out of the box to shock them into complete openness.
Still, what could she have done? This was all second-hand. She needed Lara to persuade Gareth Brewer to make himself available. And it needed thinking about, too, because its origins might lie in the churchyard at Ledwardine.
Lights had come on in the farmhouse, distant lights in the hills beyond the church. Julie Duxbury was unlocking her old Renault Clio.
‘Her father was a psychiatrist at the Stonebow unit in Hereford, her mother was a teacher. As was Lara until she had the kids. Her parents’ house was near a riding stables and she used to help out there during her summer holiday
s from college. Gareth Brewer was in and out over the summer months, doing what farriers do, which was how they met.’ Julie looked up from the car door. ‘Can you take it from here?’
‘If I’m allowed to.’
‘Is it always this difficult?’
Where did you start? There would always be somebody on the fringe of a situation who would think you yourself were dangerously deluded and shouldn’t be allowed near normal people. Partly why, in these litigious times, there was often a deliverance panel and exorcists went out in pairs, like cops at night.
‘I’m prepared to help,’ Julie said. ‘I do realize there’s something here that needs resolving, and I’m working on it. But that shouldn’t affect you.’ She turned, tossing her keys from one hand to the other. ‘Don’t you get tired, as a woman in the ministry, of being treated like some mumsy figure? Soppy?’
‘Male clergy get that, too.’
‘I know, I married one. But I’m not soppy, you see, and I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that we’re the only people left who can take some things on. In the old days, people used to listen to the parish priest, whatever their social position. Don’t any more, but that’s no reason for us to keep our noses out.’
‘Did you know Aidan Lloyd?’
‘He didn’t live here.’
‘What did she mean by the Man of Leaves? And the mask.’
‘She meant the green man.’
‘Like on the church?’
‘I find it all rather juvenile. Nor do I like the black faces.’
‘I wonder what Lara thinks about that.’
‘Doesn’t seem to bother her. Bothers me. Wishy-washy, guilt-ridden liberal.’ Julie was half into the driving seat. ‘I shall have to go. Parish council in just over an hour. Please let me know if this goes any further. I—’ She came out of the car again. ‘Look, it’s difficult. He helps us.’
‘Sir Lionel Darvill?’
‘With the church. I’m not even sure of the figures involved. The money would normally go through the parish accounts, but it seems to be paid directly to the diocese. A national treasure. I’d rather have a big congregation worshipping in precast concrete, but there we are.’
