by Phil Rickman
Still…
‘Could be time we made finding out what Charlie’s up to more of a priority.’
‘You want to put that into the system?’
‘I most certainly do not. I’m thinking a private chat might be in order?’
‘With Charlie? You’ve tried that before. He hates you.’
‘Annie, that’ll be right at the top of me application form for a place in heaven. But what I was thinking—’
‘And he has a record of taking you apart.’
‘I was thinking not just me.’
‘Oh no.’ She was out of his chair. ‘No, no, no…’
‘You’re only putting it off.’
‘In the middle of all this?’
‘I’m thinking out of working hours?’
‘Forget it,’ Annie said. ‘Don’t mention it again.’
52
Turning over the death card
THEY GOT INTO the cab of the Animal, and Lol switched on the engine and the headlamps, which part-floodlit the church. It looked compact, sealed off, separate, like a landed spacecraft.
Or a time capsule. Jane had pulled out her phone.
‘Don’t go yet. We need to ring Mum.’
‘Just don’t tell her what Darvill wants.’
Jane looked up.
‘Why not?’
‘I mean not yet. We can’t just tell her like that. I know you think it’s a nice idea.’
‘I think it’s a beautiful idea. Like a meeting of old ways. And Lucy’s night. Lucy’s night. Jesus Christ, Lol…’
‘Saint Lucy’s night.’
Jane still talked as if the spirit of Lucy Devenish was embedded in the landscape. In some ways, Lucy dead was more of an influence than she’d been alive. Jane could turn dead Lucy into anything she wanted.
She powered up the phone.
‘Well, she’s Saint Lucy to me. Anyway, it’s not my decision.
How about I just say we’re on our way and we’ll explain when we get home?’
‘Fine.’
The phone cheeped and glowed. He noticed she’d had a text and wondered what had happened with Dr Samantha Burnage. Jane ignored the text and called home.
‘Engaged.’
‘We’d better just get back.’ Lol started the engine, backed the truck towards the church wall. ‘I’ll go slowly so you can try again in a few minutes.’
‘Lol…’
‘Mmm?’
He turned the car back into the lane. He’d be glad to get home.
‘You haven’t said anything about the Man of Leaves. The Green Man.’
‘Yeah, well, that was…’ He drove off. ‘… unexpected.’
‘You were still thinking about that corbel, round the back of the church. The man with his face scraped off.’
‘Possibly.’
‘Must’ve been like turning over the death card in the tarot.’
‘It was the only thing tonight that wasn’t set up. The rest of it was all so… theatrical. Choreographed. Nora setting it up for Darvill, letting him check us out, then he’s taking us on his little quasi-pagan pilgrimage. We started as the audience and now we’re part of the play.’
‘It has immaculate symmetry.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You and Mum.’
‘Standing in for two dead people, Jane. Talk about turning over the death card…’
Jane sank back into the headrest.
‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘What is he? What’s he about? Why can’t he just get on with his organic farming?’
‘Because, for him, it’s all connected. Organic. The land, the church, the morris, the green man… He’s inspired. And… he’s inspiring. I love the idea that Kilpeck Church is a picture book, a tarot, an oracle. That it can speak to anybody, at any time. I love what Darvill said about the hound and the rabbit – eight hundred years old and they’re Disney, they’re now. I like the corbel with the two gay guys. I like the musician who looks not unlike a Roswell alien—’
‘Maybe I’ll just be him instead,’ Lol said.
‘He doesn’t need a musician. He needs a Man of Leaves.’
‘A name Darvill also invented. Or his dad did.’
‘All the names are invented! It wasn’t even known as the Green Man till 1939.’
‘So becoming the Man of Leaves is a step into the unknown.’
‘Are you OK, Lol?’
‘Been a bit tired, that’s all. Not sleeping too well since… what we did.’
‘You did what you had to do. You couldn’t really have got out of it. And it’s over now.’
Jane looked back at the church as if one of its windows might offer a flicker of illumination. But the only light was in her phone.
‘Oh my God,’ she said.
Lara Brewer said, ‘After the police had left, I just went out and walked. Up past the castle, around the footpaths. Felt like I was walking on another planet. I just didn’t want to believe it. Still don’t. Don’t want to believe we’re in some way responsible. That it’s something we did. That it’s all part of the same horror.’
Her voice was getting higher and faster. It had taken Merrily four attempts to get her on the phone.
‘Burglary?’ Lara said. ‘I’m just not buying that. Something’s happening here.’
‘You said that to the police?’
‘No. No, of course not. And I didn’t mention you. Or Gareth. Certainly nothing about last night.’
‘I’m afraid I had to,’ Merrily said, ‘or it would’ve looked suspicious. They were interviewing me with the Archdeacon there. They didn’t get any names, but they know roughly what I was doing in the church, and they know it was at Julie’s behest.’
‘Are we all part of this?’ Lara said. ‘Are any of us safe?’
‘If you’d feel safer if we told them more…’
‘No!’ Then she calmed down. ‘No. I’m being silly. When you have young kids…’
‘What did the police ask you?’
They asked why Julie rang me, I said she often rang. I said we were friends. Were we? I don’t know. She was the rector. Everybody’s friend. Clearly not everybody’s.’
‘How is Gareth? Really.’
‘Bit disconnected. Merrily, look… this… I really would be glad if you could keep it to yourself. If it’s brought Gareth some sleep, then I’m relieved. I just don’t want to have to—’ A sharp, snatched silence. ‘Shit, what am I saying? It’s your job.’
‘You think I don’t sometimes wonder if it’s bollocks? We’re only human. Crises of faith? I think my record is five in one day. And if you include the nights…’
‘Oh, look, stop. I really did not mean to start this.’
‘You tell yourself moments of doubt are important. Moments when you wonder if it isn’t all psychological. Do ancient rituals in an old church make us feel spiritually secure for reasons entirely unconnected with religion? Or does that explain religion for the twenty-first century?’
‘That’s what you think?’
‘No, that’s stupid. If you ever reach the stage where you think you know what you’re doing, you’re probably on the cusp of screwing up. You have to feel – know – that you’re not in control but you still have to give everything to it. That’s faith, I suppose. Something like that.’ Merrily sighed, head aching. ‘See how eloquent I am?’
‘You sound knackered.’
‘Listen… I’m sorry if I seem to be suggesting that things don’t happen. They do. You just stop questioning it after a while. Something happened to me in the church. Or I thought it did. Either way, I think I need to ask you about Aidan and cannabis. The guy you said you’d never seen with a spliff. How much dope was there really in his life?’
‘Lol.’ Jane’s silhouette shook. ‘I seem to have received a text.’ She gazed at the lit screen for some time then snapped the phone shut. ‘Eirion.’
‘Really?’
‘He’s coming over to Hereford at the weekend. To see an ol
d mate he was at the Cathedral School with. Do I want to meet for a drink at the Swan. Sunday.’
‘Do you?’
She turned to Lol.
‘Just assure me this is nothing to do with you. You haven’t been talking to him?’
‘No.’
He hadn’t. If he was sounding defensive it was because he’d meant to call Eirion, suggest he get in touch with Jane. But he hadn’t. He drove towards the sporadic lights of the modern village, Jane clutching his arm.
‘What do I do?’
‘You meet him. Don’t you?’
‘Not in the Swan. Too many people know me. A few of them even know him. You know what they’re like. Some guys’ll be like, wooooooh. I couldn’t stand that.’
‘So go somewhere else.’
‘What if he brings his girlfriend?’
‘Oh, Jane…’
‘It’s not exactly a love letter. Look…’
She reopened the phone, held up the lit screen. He sighed and pulled the truck into the side of the lane opposite the pub and read it.
No, it wasn’t exactly a love letter.
‘Jane, what do you expect? He’s uncertain. He’s sounding you out.’
He’d been her first. That was the problem, perhaps for both of them. They’d been kids. What if there was so much more they’d never know if they stayed together?
‘It’s not what I need right now.’
‘Might be exactly what you need.’
‘You don’t really think that,’ Jane said.
53
Tingle
THEY DIDN’T MAKE it to the Swan. Clive’s pies and mixed salad at the vicarage, in the end. Afterwards, left alone in the kitchen to wash the dishes – she usually found it relaxing – Merrily ended up searching the dresser drawers for the last packet of Silk Cut, dragging one out and lighting it.
Think…
Try to.
If you learned one thing from the night job, it was that spotting signposts, omens, portents – was rarely rewarding. There’d be times when everything appeared to be converging, when you could throw up your hands, say OK, this is what’s required of me. This is meant.
And then you were proved wrong. Time and again, circumstance lied. Occasionally there would be genuinely startling coincidences, but what were they beyond tantalizing hints of some grand design that, if it existed at all, was grandly designed to be ineffable?
Maybe only blank atheism didn’t give you sleepless nights.
She leaned back against the dresser, considered the options.
Two suggestions that she should lead a memorial service for Aidan Lloyd, coming almost simultaneously from two villages claiming parts of him. One was relatively straight-forward, the other more complicated. One was about closure, the other…
She looked down at the smoking cigarette. It was Jane who’d once pointed out that experts reckoned cigarette addiction was harder to break than heroin. Trying to make her feel like a junkie.
Well, maybe. She took two puffs and then stubbed it out in disgust. She needed help. She picked up the vape stick and went back to the front parlour, where Lol was building a fire in the dog-grate. He’d brought in a basket of fuel from the log shelter: softwood kindling, small apple logs and a slab of oak for later. Taking his time, grounding himself. Lol didn’t smoke, he built log fires.
He put a match to the newspaper bed in the grate and stood up, looking at Merrily then at Jane, down on the hearthrug with her laptop and Ethel. When Jane looked up, her eyes were sparkly.
‘Got it.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s so obvious when you know. Listen to this, Mum…’ She took a long breath. ‘Tetra…hydro… cannabinol. Did I get that right?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
Merrily came into the room and shut the door. Switched off the lamps so the only light was from the new flames in the hearth and sat down in the middle of the sofa.
‘THC, right?’ Jane said. ‘One of the principal constituents of marijuana. THC has some of the same properties as the chemicals used in inhalers. Asthma causes airways to narrow, sometimes with fatal consequences. Cannabis contains THC which is known to open up the airways.’
‘Even smoking it?’
‘May not work for everybody, and doctors are reluctant to publicize it because of the obvious side effects – and the fact that it tends to involve smoking. Sooner or later it’s going to have to be widely available on prescription.’
I know he’s dead, Lara had said eventually, but we were all asked to say nothing and none of us has. But if you think medicinal, it’s all on the Net.
‘You’re saying cannabis cured Aidan’s asthma?’
‘Maybe he’d’ve grown out of it anyway, but it does look like dope came at the right time.’
‘And he was introduced to it by…?’
‘Darvill,’ Lol said. ‘Darvill and weed make perfect sense, before and after his accident. Pain relief? And his dad, of course. Henry, who was at school with Nick Drake, sharing a spliff under the big stones at Avebury.’
Merrily lay back into the cushions and closed her eyes. Thought of Gareth Brewer walking out of Ledwardine Church into the star-spattery night. Out of the choking grave and into starlight, out of asthma into…
‘So much makes sense,’ Jane said. ‘Aidan Lloyd was never a big user. Even an ex-asthmatic wouldn’t push his luck. But cannabis was important in his life. Cannabis and Darvill. Darvill, the weed and the morris. And Kilpeck Church. And the Man of Leaves. It’s making me tingle.’
More likely the source of the tingle was the text from Eirion, the nervous tension that would go on building until Sunday night. Please God, not an anticlimax.
Merrily opened her eyes.
‘Why were so many people in the village saying he was a serious dopehead?’
‘It’s like somebody put that round,’ Jane said. ‘Why?’
‘Aidan Lloyd. The ghost still hovering over us all. Can we think about this? This vague, undemonstrative guy, such a big presence now. So important that two families want church services held in his honour. What do they really want? Iestyn Lloyd wanted a quiet funeral and got one. What’s changed?’
‘Julie Duxbury,’ Lol said, ‘looks like the catalyst.’
‘I’m ashamed. Julie took the trouble to pursue Iestyn. Did she get him? Did she invite him to Kilpeck? Would he want to go? No.’
Lol nodded.
‘So with Julie gone he sees his chance to turn that around. Sends his long-suffering stepson to set up a service in Ledwardine. Draw a line under it. His line.’
‘Yes. That would fit. I didn’t make any waves last time, did I? And Charlie Howe, perhaps soon to be the face of law and order in these parts, wants to do a eulogy, probably suggesting poor Aidan was a victim of inadequate policing in the sticks – you saw his campaigning stuff in the Hereford Times?’
‘Maybe he won’t want to come to Kilpeck,’ Jane said, ‘so that lets you off.’
‘Oh, I think he will – if we do Kilpeck. And as you bring that up…’ Merrily hunched forward, hands held out to the fire. ‘Darvill. What’s that about?’
‘It’s also about Julie Duxbury,’ Lol said. ‘She’d taken on the task of dealing with a long-standing situation which she felt was harmful. Get Lionel and Iestyn into a church together, let God take care of the rest.’
‘But what does Darvill want?’
‘He wants his Old Solstice ritual,’ Jane said. ‘In the magic church. It’s important to him. The turning point of the year. And it’s not been a good year. He lost his Man of Leaves. The guy whose asthma he seems to have cured. Aidan was important to him. Lol heard what he said at the church. Aidan told him what the Man of Leaves was.’
‘And what was the Man of Leaves?’
‘He wouldn’t say. Yeah, I know… But it’s clear that Aidan was very important to Darvill.’
‘Is he pagan?’
‘I think it’s bigger than that,’ Jane said. ‘Kilpeck church is
bigger than that. Am I wrong?’
‘He’s disabled,’ Lol said. ‘Half of him doesn’t work. He doesn’t have the same… distractions. Everything he cares about is there, and it’s become – understandably – an obsession. I don’t think it’s about any particular religion, Jane’s right about that. But there’s a kind of spirituality at the core of it. And I think that comes out of whatever his dad was into. And the outward aspect of that is the morris.’
Jane said, ‘I suppose…’
Merrily sighed.
‘… doing the service at Kilpeck would also be a memorial for Julie,’ Jane said. ‘Wouldn’t it? Finishing something she started.’
‘And died for? Sorry.’ Merrily shook her head. ‘I’m tired. I’ll be better tomorrow.’
54
Small favours
SO THEY WERE back at the start. Rich Ford coming into Bliss’s office telling him about these iffy quad bikes noticed at Jag’s Motors. Bliss had done a lot of overnight thinking about this, trying out ideas on Annie. Could use another word with Rich but he was out at Ewyas Harold, office-managing for the Julie inquiry.
Bliss rang him anyway, soon as he was behind his desk at Gaol Street, Thursday morning.
‘Always a lot of farm thefts,’ Rich said. ‘And the kit rarely gets recovered. As you know, all the ID on those quad bikes in the garage…’
‘Seemed to have worn off, yeh.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re after here, Francis.’
‘I’m looking for Jag’s rural contact. A criminal. I’m not really thinking travellers, they’ve got their own networks. I’m thinking a thief who actually lives in the sticks. Maybe somebody doing contract work – felling trees, cutting hedges, mowing hay. Jobs that take him round the area.’
‘Right. Got you. Somebody who knows where the nickable stuff is. Where the sheds get left open. Which farmers never miss a market day even when they’re not doing business.’
‘Where all you’ve gorra do is load your van.’
‘How would one of them’ve got to know Jaglowski?’
‘Wondered if you might have some ideas. And we’re talking about a heavy-duty nasty person here – which Jag might not’ve realized at first. I realize office manager’s not the best job for gerrin thinking time.’
