by Phil Rickman
A sore point in Hereford, the diocese’s land deals. Siân’s smile was a slit.
‘Property transactions are not within my remit either, so I won’t take that personally. Now I realize you’re upset about Sophie, but—’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh.’
Siân didn’t blink. Before being called to the altar, she’d been called to the bar; useful training for the modern C of E.
‘Upset?’
‘She hasn’t told you yet, then. I’m afraid she only learned yesterday afternoon. Perhaps you’ve been busy.’
‘What hasn’t she told me?’
‘Sophie’s job – and this is said to be entirely an economic decision – has been reduced to a two-day week.’
‘What?’
‘As from today.’
‘He can’t just—’
Merrily half out of her chair.
‘I didn’t say who’d taken the decision.’
‘You mean it was you?’
‘No, of— I’m not Sophie’s boss, you know that. Oh, this is one of those weeks when, if I could desert this post… Look. Bernard Dunmore preferred to work closely with his lay secretary, as did his… his predecessor. New bishops don’t always adapt.’
‘That woman’s more important to the Cathedral than bishops.’
‘Merrily…’ Siân’s palms were up. ‘You don’t have to spell anything out to me.’
‘Including that the drastic reduction of Sophie’s working week may not be entirely unconnected with a winding-down of deliverance?’
‘Again, as the deliverance ministry reports directly to the Bishop, it’s not my—’
‘Now that’s a bloody joke, isn’t it? I’ve never spoken in any depth to that bastard since they put him in purple.’
‘A degree of paranoia is entirely excusable.’
‘Paranoia in the sense of being convinced someone’s out to get you? When in fact they have your best interests at heart?’
Dangerous ground; she didn’t care. The traffic on Broad Street had its lights on which made the gatehouse office feel like a bomb shelter.
‘I’d like to deal with this Kilpeck issue,’ the Archdeacon said.
‘I hope we’re going to come back to Sophie.’
Siân’s expression said this would be pointless.
‘Sir Lionel Darvill and his obsession with Kilpeck Church. I do know about that. He’s hardly alone, although he may be alone in claiming it was built by his ancestors. For which, as far as I can see, there’s not a shred of proof as his family only seems to have been in the area for a couple of hundred years. However—’
‘If it ensures regular donations…’
‘Regular donors do tend to be humoured, yes. And I think, with his handicap and his refusal to let it limit his activities, he’s to be admired. All the same, there are aspects of this that I’m not over happy about.’
‘Like that he seems to have tried to get in the way of me carrying out a fairly routine deliverance procedure?’
‘That’s not how he put it, obviously.’
‘For the record, Siân, it was textbook. I’d been asked for advice by the parish priest on behalf of one of her parishioners and concluded that what it called for was a comparatively routine Requiem.’
‘Which you agreed with the family.’
‘Erm…’
‘Merrily! Textbook?’
‘Oh, Siân, come on, when is this job ever straightforward? I had a guy in mental and spiritual turmoil, and I had to make a fast decision. No, I didn’t talk to the subject’s divorced parents, but it was done in the presence of someone closer to him than either of them. As for Darvill, he’s no relation at all, so it’s not his place to make any demands. Did you talk to him?’
‘No.’
‘So who did?’
‘I believe someone will be going to talk to him. If he hasn’t already been.’
‘Sorry… who are we talking about?’
Silence. Siân looked around the fast-dimming room, appeared to be listening, then shook her head as if trying to clear it. Then she sat up behind folded arms.
‘I won’t be putting any lights on, Merrily. As we’re not here.’
‘We’re not?’
‘This is very difficult for me. Quite a lot has become difficult since—’ Siân’s gaze had come to rest on Merrily’s bag, on the floor next to her chair. ‘I’m assuming you don’t have an active iPhone in there.’
‘What?’
‘An iPhone. Switched on.’
Merrily reached down into her bag, brought out her elderly phone and opened it up on the desk. Siân went through the procedure for switching it off.
‘Forgive my paranoia, but it’s a rather formidable device, isn’t it? Good at multitasking. Seems to have the facility to record voices in full broadcast quality.’
‘So I’m told.’
‘Essentially, my job is head of human resources in the parishes. Carried out more efficiently if people trust me. So let me say that, while it’s hardly in my interests to fall out with the Bishop, I certainly have no wish to be part of a clandestine campaign to reduce what he likes to call “relics of medievalism” in the diocese.’
Siân folded her arms, the dimness settling around her like smoke.
‘I say clandestine…’ In the poor light, her grey eyes had become grey patches. ‘… though it won’t be for long, originating, as it does, at a rather more senior level than Craig Innes.’
‘I think we all have ideas about who at the top of the Church—’
‘And keep those ideas to ourselves.’ A glimpse of Siân’s teeth. ‘Bishop Craig is seen as… as a cleansing agent, if you like. Quietly removing stains.’
‘I’m a stain now?’
‘It was a metaphor.’
‘He thinks I was sleeping with Mick Hunter.’
‘Merrily, he probably doesn’t. He’s been assured enough times that you certainly were not. But the very fact that you’re followed by rumour, no matter how tenuous, and that you’re doing a secretive job for which he nurtures a distaste… Need I go on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. You should know – bearing in mind that we are not here – that this particular— I’m going to have to call it an inquiry —has been arranged with the full cooperation of Paul Crowden’s Bishop.’
‘You know about Crowden?’
‘Crowden is the nearest you’ll get to the public face of deliverance scepticism. He has approval for an independent study of exorcism practices. Nothing to do with the House of Bishops or the Archbishop’s Council. Nothing, in other words, to do with Craig Innes. Ostensibly, it’s something he feels strongly about, and he feels he represents a body of opinion within the Church.’
‘Blimey, anyone who thought ecclesiastical espionage had eased since the years after the Reformation—’
‘Now I don’t know Crowden at all, but he’s certainly all over you, Merrily, and it shouldn’t tax your skills too much to be aware of when and where he’s poking around.’
‘So when Darvill contacted the Bishop, the Bishop alerted Crowden?’
‘Let’s say someone did. Which I know because he was copied into a memo that the Bishop’s clerical secretary innocently copied to me. Sophie, less innocently, had also asked me about Crowden, so that trail inevitably led back to you. So, basically, Mrs Watkins, watch your step. Jump at shadows. Expect anything which might be regarded as unorthodox to go into Crowden’s notebook. Which may, if politically expedient, even become an official report one day.’
‘Siân, this is—’
The phone rang, Siân reached for it.
‘This is as far as I’m going. And I’ve told you nothing. Yes…’ Into the phone. ‘All right, thank you.’ She replaced the phone, pushed her chair back. ‘For some reason, the police are on their way to see me. Please cover yourself on the way out – scarf, hood, anything.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘Just a w
eather warning.’ Siân standing up, peering out of the window. ‘The sleet’s back. And I’m always serious.’
41
In memory of me
SHE DIDN’T GET further than the edge of Cathedral Green before they’d eyeballed her, the very tall young detective she recognized as DC Vaynor and his boss, Annie Howe, who raised a hand. The ice-maiden in her cream trench coat, a retro cop cliché that wouldn’t have occurred to her. Merrily raised a hand back and kept on walking until she saw that Howe had stopped and Vaynor was loping towards her through the slanting downpour.
‘We’ve been trying to call you, Ms Watkins. Your mobile appears to be switched off.’
Merrily pulled the scarf away from her mouth but left her hood up.
‘Battery must be low. Good morning, Annie. Erm… Darth.’
No smiles. Merrily nodded towards the gatehouse.
‘I think the Archdeacon knows you’re coming.’
‘As we’ll need to talk to you as well,’ Annie Howe said, ‘perhaps you can show us the way.’
‘Has something happened?’
Uneasy, inevitably. Talking with Annie Howe always felt like a prelude to arrest, and she wasn’t in the mood. One anxious night they’d come close to communicating as human beings. Just that one night.
‘If you don’t mind, Ms Watkins,’ Howe said.
And she knew the way, of course she did.
Barry was waiting for them in the gallery. Lol doubted Jane had been in here since Lucy Devenish died. He certainly hadn’t. Now the jungle of colour that had been Ledwardine Lore was long gone, whited-out.
‘What do you think?’ Barry said.
Lol looked around.
‘Looks so much bigger.’
‘After its soulectomy,’ Jane said.
The building was sixteenth century, possibly earlier. You couldn’t take that away. Jane walked to the centre of the room, hands sunk into the side pockets of her parka, inspecting the ceiling beams which now carried spotlights for the remaining few pale paintings, none involving apples.
Lucy had accumulated all things apple: ornaments and mugs, books and greetings cards. A small cider press, an orchard ladder. Lol remembered an old display of reduced-scale replicas of the Original Sin window in the church in which Eve was holding an apple thought to represent Ledwardine’s own Pharisees Red. Lucy Devenish had believed Pharisees to be a corruption of farises, the old local word for fairies. Little crystal farises had dangled on threads from the beams and the rungs of the orchard ladders.
‘We wouldn’t be able pay you much, Jane,’ Barry said from the doorway. ‘But there might be side benefits.’
Jane didn’t react to this. It wouldn’t matter, Lol thought. Whether she could still feel the spirit of Lucy here, that would matter.
This might not be a good day to have brought her here, but he hadn’t had a choice. Barry had reached a tentative agreement with the owners and needed an answer before deciding whether to take it further. Lol had called Jane, confessing his doubts as they were walking across the square in a gathering east wind.
‘Like I might think I’m too clever to be a shop assistant?’ The wind dragging Jane’s hair into her eyes and she’d fingered it away. ‘What’s Mum say?’
‘Haven’t asked her.’
She’d stopped and turned to look at him.
‘You’re an adult,’ Lol said. ‘If you don’t like the idea, we just won’t mention it again. Not as if she doesn’t have enough to deal with right now.’
‘She thinks I still have an unhealthy attachment to Lucy.’
We all still have that, Lol had thought.
‘Could we call it Ledwardine Lore?’ Jane said now.
Barry shrugged.
‘Why not. Part of local history. Scatter a few appley things around – it is the Village in the Orchard after all. Just don’t, you know, overdo it. We all remember Lucy’s shop. Leave a bit of space for the booking office and the CDs.’
‘She told me there was no way she’d be selling mine,’ Lol said. ‘Described it as misery from Off.’
He remembered there used to be a long curtain screening off a black-painted wrought iron spiral staircase to the windowless loft where he’d hidden himself away the day he’d first met Jane. The curtain was gone and the spiral was an ethereal white, like a stairway to heaven. He wished he could say he’d changed as much as this shop.
‘What’s upstairs now, Barry?’
‘Ha.’ The gleam in Barry’s remaining eye emphasized by the patch over the other. ‘Proper room now. Torch no longer needed. They put a small dormer in.’
‘You have to haggle?’
‘Nah, that would’ve been vulgar. They’re not the kind of people who’d want you to know they were ready to snatch your hand off but that was the feeling I got, so I just said the rent might be a bit stiff for us, and they said they’d think about it. This was last night. Half an hour later we had a deal.’
‘How long would we have it for?’
‘Year. Option on longer if the festival works. They seemed happy with that.’
It occurred to Lol that the people who ran Ledwardine Fine Arts never seemed to be referred to by name. They lived in a big house somewhere in the country beyond the village, and slipped in and out, as minimal as their stock.
‘You’ll like this,’ Barry said. ‘Before I left, one of them said, almost in passing, laughing it off, the way they do, Oh, apparently it’s haunted. A couple of the people who’d minded the gallery for them had heard bumps and things from upstairs. Nothing ever damaged, I was assured.’
Lol thought Jane looked a little pale, a goose-over-the-grave moment. Then she laughed.
Barry gave her the hard stare.
‘Well?’
‘Yeah, I’d love to do it. Really.’
‘Good girl.’ Barry tossed the shop keys from hand to hand. ‘We better get out of here before some tourist tries to buy a picture off us.’ He smiled wryly, then his face dropped suddenly. ‘Bloody awful about that woman vicar, innit? Expect Merrily knew her.’
Lol stared at him.
‘Give me just five minutes in a dark room with that kind of scum.’ Barry locked the gallery door. ‘Nah, make it one minute.’
Merrily saw the Archdeacon’s face stiffening to parchment.
‘When was this?’
The gatehouse seemed overcrowded, like a bus shelter in a sudden storm. Siân and Howe and the high-rise Vaynor and a disclosure that was itself like a dark, winged presence.
‘We’re not sure,’ Howe said. ‘She was found early this morning. If Mrs Watkins confirms speaking to her mid-evening, that would narrow it down further.’
‘It was my daughter. She spoke to Jane.’
‘We’ll need to talk to Jane, then.’
‘I also had a text from Julie. Later, I think. That might’ve been her last… last anything.’
Last anything. Merrily’s half-whispered words were circling like grey moths in the air. She was aware of Annie Howe peering at her through the gloom and the silence, then Howe was on her feet asking if there was something wrong with the lights in here.
‘Put them on, Merrily,’ Siân said, ‘you know where everything is.’
Merrily went over to the door, threw on all the office lights and when she turned back into the room they were all looking at her: Annie Howe in the window chair with its back to Broad Street, Vaynor standing by the smaller window overlooking the narrow slope of Gwynne Street, Siân still behind Sophie’s desk.
Merrily felt suddenly suffocated, wanting to stumble down the stairs and out into the cold and the wet.
‘Are you all right, Ms Watkins?’
‘Yeah, just…’
‘How well did you know the Reverend Duxbury?’
‘Not well at all. I mean I only met her yesterday.’
‘Unless there’s another phone we haven’t found,’ Annie Howe said, ‘her text to you was indeed her last message to anyone. Would you like to tell us what it said?’
As if she didn’t know. As if DS Karen Dowell, the IT specialist, hadn’t stripped everything from the phone.
‘It said…’ Merrily’s voice giving way. ‘“Do this”.’
‘That was it?’
‘More or less.’
‘Do what?’
‘A priest,’ Siân said, ‘would see it as a reference to the Mass or Eucharist. Do this in memory of me.’ She looked at Merrily. ‘She texted that?’
‘I’m not sure she meant it that way. It was just an expression of encouragement.’
She folded her arms. Julie Duxbury hadn’t known she was about to conduct a Requiem. Nobody had. Death imposed significance where there was none.
‘Are we the last to know about this?’ Siân said.
‘It’s been on the radio,’ Vaynor said. ‘And the Internet, of course. We were forced to put out a press release naming the victim earlier than we might normally have done. Someone getting murdered in a country village, it’s not the same as a city or a suburb. Especially the vicar. Everybody knows soon enough.’
‘Rector,’ Siân said.
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Tends to be a matter of local tradition nowadays. Nothing you need worry about.’
‘Canon Clarke,’ Howe said, ‘we’ll need to know everything about the Reverend Duxbury’s work schedule, who else she might have met yesterday. That’s why we’re coming directly to you as her… manager? I’m not sure of the—’
‘Manager will do. I’ll assist any way I can. Surely you don’t think—’
‘It looks, on the surface, like a burglary gone wrong, a random attack. But the extreme violence… is inescapable.’
‘So you’re not thinking of… religious extremism. Terrorism.’
‘We have no reason to think along those lines. It’s more likely that she knew her assailant or assailants. Therefore not unlikely that the killer is still in the area. So we need to move quickly.’
Merrily gazed past Howe, out along Broad Street with its blur of dipped headlights and its bundles of pedestrians. Imagined Julie Duxbury gliding through the grey weather in her shapeless bomber jacket. Mature, brisk, purposeful. After the shattering news, she caught an unexpected arrow of grief. Julie Duxbury would be walking along every street today, and always walking out of the picture.
