by Phil Rickman
He shook his head, which could mean anything.
‘You can still back out, Gareth, I’m not going to twist your arm. Though I do feel obliged to tell you that, even if you walk away now, I’ll be going ahead with the Requiem – hopefully – because there’s someone else on her way.’
He looked up in alarm.
‘She won’t know about you, you won’t know about her. That all right?’
‘Her?’
She nodded and shed the cape. He stood up and took off his patched jacket, as if, she thought, for the sacred ritual of shoeing a horse.
It began, at its own pace.
We have come here tonight to remember, before God, our brother Aidan and to give thanks for his life.
Keeping it simple, using lines that Gareth might remember from the Sunday Eucharist.
Dying, you destroyed our death
Rising, you restored our life
Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
She’d done this many times, no two Requiems the same except for that sense of tremulous anticipation. The candles flickered occasionally, as if from some spear of draught out of the Bull Chapel behind the organ pipes.
When it came to responses, Gareth remembered. What you dreaded most was a situation where the words wouldn’t come, leaving a hollow silence that someone had once told her was apt to fill with a distant malevolent chattering in the back of your head.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Merrily’s mobile was propped up against a prayer book on the altar, the picture of Aidan dulled. Jane would approve of the picture. Sympathetic magic. Merrily no longer had qualms; the foundations were universal.
She was aware of her own breathing, amplified, as if the walls were breathing around her. As she’d placed the phone there, inclined her head and then moved away from the altar, Gareth Brewer had spontaneously talked about the worst feelings of all, as he’d fought to awaken in the bedroom. Always been claustrophobic – couldn’t work in the van without all the doors wide open. Certain now that he’d had the unbearable sensation of Aidan and him changing places in the smothering dark.
Suffocation. Asthma.
At this point, Rachel Peel had entered silently and Merrily had trotted down and locked the church door with the big key and switched off the lights. Then they’d walked back up the aisle and she’d performed very brief instructions and hands had been shaken. No discussion necessary, no happy-clappy hugs; they didn’t know one another, never need meet again.
let us not run from the love which you offer,
but hold us safe from the forces of evil.
On each of our dyings shed your light
As she lifted the chalice, she had one of those devilish panic images: Gareth choking on the wine, the wafer turning to clay in his throat.
She ignored it.
Earlier, she’d said he might feel the need to make a kind of sacrifice. To shed something. Give up the morris, he’d said. I know. And get out of the village. And lose significant clients – he hadn’t said that. She’d told him he might want to give up the morris just for a while. See how he felt.
Merrily let the candles burn and the shadows absorb her, the air carpeted by Rachel’s soft sobbing.
Gareth didn’t choke.
Rachel’s presence… God, how could she have lived with herself if she’d gone through with this without even offering her the opportunity to be here?
The shaded Aidan had vanished from the phone.
After it was over, Gareth walked down the aisle, shaking his head as if he’d given up trying to make sense of it. She was unlocking the door for them, asking if they’d like to come back to the vicarage for a coffee, but she was only half there and glad when they both thanked her and declined.
She threw open the double doors to a sky swimming with starlight, letting it in.
‘Have a walk around before you get into the car. And drive carefully.’
Gareth nodded.
‘This over?’
‘I hope so.’
Rachel was still breathing hard. She put her arms around Merrily. Over her black-coated shoulder the stars were chips of ice in a frozen firmament.
‘I’m so glad you rang,’ Rachel said.
And that was what mattered, what all this was about, a degree of customer satisfaction.
And nobody mentioned the alien smell that had come down from the rafters and settled in the air around them. After they’d gone, Merrily went back to extinguish the candles, drink the rest of the wine and put everything away, and the smell seemed stronger than ever, forcing her to her knees at the altar as a weight of exhaustion came down.
When she stepped out under the loaded sky, pulling on her waxed coat, Lol was there.
She smiled.
‘I thought I told you not to come into this place again in the hours of darkness. Not ever.’
‘You look shell-shocked.’
‘Just a bit dizzy.’ She turned to lock the church door. ‘It’s never what you expect. Which I suppose is how it should be. Otherwise, be routine, wouldn’t it?’
So glad it was Lol, that he was here. So grateful, wanting to hold him close, to love without complications.
‘Jane told you?’
‘She’s having an early night.’
‘Good.’
As they stepped away from the porch, pocketing the big keys, the ground was noisy in her head, as if some of the stars had drifted down and were getting crunched under her boots. She was grateful for his arm around her. Wanted so much to reassure him when he asked if this was over.
‘I’d like to think so.’
But she didn’t. For Gareth maybe and a turning point for Rachel, but it wasn’t over.
She glanced briefly towards Aidan’s tump as they walked towards the lychgate under the vast, unexpected planetarium of the Ledwardine night.
‘From a practical point of view,’ she said, ‘if Iestyn Lloyd wants to install some immovable granite monolith over his son’s grave, with bars all round, there won’t be any objections from me.’
She thought one of them might smile, guessed that neither did. The stone archway shielded her from the stars’ assault, but she still felt feather-headed and put both hands on the cold stone.
‘Haven’t missed anything, have I? Nobody called?’
‘Nobody important,’ Lol said, and she knew he was lying.
The stars were swarming like bleached insects around the church steeple. On the other side of the lychgate, the muted, mullioned lights of the Black Swan were less threatening, but the cold gnawed at Merrily’s hands and, for an instant, she was back in the church with its guttering candles and the pervading sweet, somnolent scent of marijuana.
Part Five
The Morris is a religious dance concerned with energies. It is something of a miracle that it survived until modern times, especially when we realise how effective the Church was in eradicating nearly all traces of earlier beliefs.
A.G.E. Blake
Article in The Enneagram (1975)
39
Tent over the sundial
NOT THE BEST time of year for this. Bliss, still in his coverall, was hunched under a trellis supporting roses, a couple still in flower. His beanie was pulled down over his ears and the phone. The rest of him was freezing. He was thinking it was about time some bugger invented a thermal Durex suit.
He looked back at the square stone house.
‘Car in the drive. Keys found on the edge of the lawn, car keys and house keys on the same ring.’
‘So we’re looking at a disturbed burglary?’ Annie said, from the warmth of Gaol Street.
‘What it looks like to me, but early days, obviously. Norra difficult house to burgle – they may’ve tried to get into another not too far away but buggered off when the alarm went off. In this case, no alarm. Pane of glass at the back smashed for entry, then they just open the front door. An
d they’re still here when the occupant gets home.’
‘Why didn’t they just leg it?’
‘A question I’ve asked meself, Annie.’
You’d think they might’ve heard the car pulling in and buggered off the back way, but so many of them nowadays weren’t like that. Being disturbed, that was an irritation, an injustice. Well hacked off at not being allowed to get on with their job, and if you insisted on getting in the way, it was your own friggin’ fault for being a property owner. That was the way in the cities, all too often. That sense of entitlement. But out here?
Bliss peered through a hole in the trellis at lumpy countryside of small hills and woodland. The sky was unfriendly, clouds like the old, greying knots of wool you found on the barbed wire around a field of sheep. And such a lovely clear sky last night, if cold as hell.
‘I think I should come out,’ Annie said. ‘In fact, I think I should tentatively take this one off your hands. Before it’s taken off both of us.’
He was in no position to argue. Should’ve been on his way to Hewell by now, with Vaynor. Been driving into the city through mean, sleety rain when Terry Stagg had come through on the mobile, telling him Karen Dowell and a posse were already there, and he’d turned the car round immediately, headed south-west.
Karen was coming out of the cottage, from the back entrance. Carefully. Unzipping her suit when she reached the end of the path, raising a hand to Bliss, leaving it raised to convey she needed to talk. The small front lawn had been taped off. There was a tent over the sundial.
‘Country cottages?’ Bliss said. ‘Hardly worth it, surely? Some of them around here are just holiday homes. Nothing of value inside. Not much to be had at all apart from marginally antique furniture, for which you’d need a bloody big van, and where do you put a big van on a lane this narrow?’
‘You can’t give antiques away any more. What’s it look like?’
‘A full-time home, but quite modest. A working home. Old computer and a lorra bookshelves. Cupboards and drawers ripped open, dresser pulled over. Routine ransacking.’
‘Let’s not waste time,’ Annie said. ‘We need to swamp that area. I’ll chuck it upstairs, though local knowledge is going to be paramount. We need to involve the village from the off. I’ll get an incident room organized. Shit, Francis, we don’t need this right now.’
‘We don’t need this ever,’ Bliss said.
Having seen the victim. The face in ruins from being smashed repeatedly into a concrete sundial. The face framed by bloodied white hair, above the reddened dog collar.
‘This is how it looks,’ Karen said. ‘The car’s in the drive, locked – OK? So she’s come home, locked the car and she’s walking to the house. Not realizing she’s left her sidelights on – which is how she was found. Still on just before dawn when this fitness freak from the village comes jogging past—’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘Probably in counselling. We can get him back anytime. So… he sees the car lights just about still on, wonders if he should wake her up before the battery goes flat. Finds the front door slightly ajar.’
‘Which also explains the patch of vomit outside the gate?’
‘It does.’
‘So, to go back to last night, or whenever she’s walking to the house…’
‘Has the keys in her hand. Drops them when she’s hit? Could be she saw some movement inside, and she’s backing off, as anyone would, and that’s when she’s attacked. And it doesn’t stop. I mean, this isn’t just to disable her so someone can get away, this is someone who really doesn’t care.’
‘Yeh.’
Karen led him to the low hedge separating the short drive from the lawn. Pointed at the tent over the sundial.
‘Concrete, hexagonal, sharp corners. But it looks like she was hit with something first. We’re thinking the spade. No blood on that. She goes down. Someone picks her up by the hair and starts slamming her head and face into the sundial. You saw the left eye.’
‘Yeh.’
Where the left eye had been.
‘That thing that used to stick out of the middle, to throw a shadow. Can’t remember what it’s called.’
‘Something like gnome,’ Bliss said. ‘That did her eye?’
‘All this to be confirmed by Slim Fiddler and Dr Grace, but it was probably broken off in the process. Also a crack in the concrete table-thing. That shows you the sheer force. And then they dragged the body back into the house, shut the door on her.’
‘Like you say, they wanted closure. Place like this, they could’ve got away easy. So it could be she saw one of them. If there were lights on in the house.’
‘Somebody she knew?’
‘I was about to say that. They get around, these vicars, multiple parishes. Somebody’s son? What about the neighbour who reported the attempted break-in? That match up?’
‘Dunno about a neighbour, boss, it’s nearly half a mile away. But, yeah, broken window in the front door, inside a porch.’
‘When?’
‘Last night. Alarm went out at eleven-fifteen. Occupants were on their way back from the Temple Bar – pub in the village – but saw nothing. Uniform called in on them last night, wasn’t much they could do.’
‘Didn’t check if the neighbours saw anything?’
‘They checked with the nearest neighbours but they’re on the other side, nearer the village. You can’t even see this place from there even in the daytime. Anyway, we’re down there now, looking at it again.’
‘So they just move on to the next house, and Mrs Duxbury gets in the way?’
‘Too coincidental to ignore.’
‘Yeh.’ Bliss turned away from the garden. ‘So where did they come from? Down from the Midlands, up from Newport?’
‘Not if she recognized one, boss.’
They’d closed the road at both ends, only two other homes affected by this, and the folks there were probably used to disturbance – the SAS base at Pontrilas was only a few fields away, lot of helicopter traffic. This was the Sass’s less public base, where they set up siege-and-rescue situations, where elite soldiers came to learn how to dispose of people with minimum fuss. No access to it from this lane.
‘May not be my problem for much longer,’ Bliss said. ‘Ma’am may be taking over. Calls for rank, this one.’
Karen was nodding.
‘A priest? If her head had been cut off, you wouldn’t be able to move for anti-terrorist guys.’
‘And they’d throw open the gates at the SAS,’ Bliss said.
The friggin’ sleet was coming back, along with the old numbness over his left eye, residue of a beating in a cellar under the Plascarreg. It wasn’t even ten a.m., and they hadn’t brought the body out yet.
Karen patted him, with affection, on the arm.
‘I know exactly how you must be feeling, boss. Really, really want these bastards for yourself, and you’re stuck with Jag.’
40
This side of the Second Coming
A DARK MORNING, but the gatehouse office was unlit. It looked almost derelict, like one of the shut-down shops in the old city awaiting a new charity and another consignment of secondhand clothes.
Merrily stopped on the edge of the green and gazed up in disbelief. All the ominous clarity of last night had been fuzzed by the cloud and the rain and the confusing messages passed on by Jane who, when she’d staggered downstairs, had already been in the kitchen, fully dressed, kettle on, cat fed.
They’d talked for nearly an hour, nothing hidden, but not much of it making sense. She’d rung Abbie Folley to say thanks for last night. No answer; she’d left a message.
Sophie? No, she wouldn’t ring Sophie back, she’d see her at the gatehouse. She wanted all this logged. She wanted it official. She’d left the Freelander on the Gaol Street car park, walking rapidly up through the city centre, already crowding-up for Christmas, and following narrow Capuchin Way to the Cathedral.
The door to the gatehouse stairs w
as locked.
She’d never known this before. She pulled out her mobile and rang Sophie at home, leaning up against the sandstone wall under the office. Across the yard, the Bishop’s Palace was dimly lit like a posh department store.
‘Jane told me you were coming,’ Sophie said.
‘But you’re not here.’
‘Merrily, don’t do – or say – anything rash.’
‘What?’
‘I won’t be in the office today, but the Archdeacon’s coming to talk to you.’
‘About Darvill? Listen, I’d very much like to talk to her about Darvill, but not now. Not till I know what’s behind it. Not going in cold. Sophie, I’ve had it with these people and their backalley politics and their… sense of privilege.’
Shouting into the phone because she was frightened. ‘You’ll find Siân is not unsympathetic,’ Sophie said. ‘She’s just stepping carefully around the Bishop. As, indeed, are all of us. Not that, in my case, this will be as difficult as it was.’
‘Sophie?’
She heard the gatehouse door opening, turned to see Siân Callaghan-Clarke, standing there with no lights behind her.
‘I’m so sorry, Merrily, really don’t have long. Apparently the police are coming to talk to me. Don’t know what it’s about. Very annoying.’ Siân admitting Merrily to the main office, then locking the door. ‘Wouldn’t take off your coat. Economy heating only today, to stop the pipes from freezing.’
The Archdeacon wore a dark woollen suit over a grey shirt. Grey eyes, grey hair cut short. She still made grey look vital.
‘Now don’t look at me like that.’ Palms of her hands coming up as she sat down behind Sophie’s desk. ‘Sophie works directly for the Bishop’s office. Nothing to do with me.’
No signs of Sophie in the office. No spare reading glasses, no packet of tea, no winter cardigan on a hanger. Siân didn’t put on any lights.
‘Never seen you as naive, and I’m not going to talk down to you. It’s a time of upheaval. The diocese – we’re hardly going to recover, financially, are we, this side of the Second Coming?’
‘I don’t understand. You’re talking about money?’ Merrily sat down in her old chair and loosened her red scarf. ‘You’ll be all right for a while, though, surely. Just flog off another greenfield site for executive housing.’
