by Phil Rickman
‘People are making wind-it-up gestures to me right now, Francis.’
‘Tell ’em to piss off a minute. This might be relevant. I’m assuming you now know from Ma’am about the burning clown and the late-night call to Julie, from Jag.’
‘Couldn’t make it up, could you?’
‘Somebody’s been up there, I hope.’
‘Oh, aye. It’ll all be coming through any minute, I’ll copy you in. But basically, yes, burn marks and a hole in the ground below Kilpeck Castle.’
‘And that’s the lot?’
‘As it’s unlikely everything was burnt to a crisp, it begins to look as if somebody quietly cleaned it all up. Even the burn marks weren’t obvious at first. If they hadn’t known what they were looking for they might well not’ve noticed. Which I find interesting.’
‘I see.’
‘Anyway, I really will have to go, Francis. Anything occurs to me, I’ll come back to you.’
Bliss got Terry Stagg in. Been working with a terp in the Polish community for the past couple of days and not coming up with much.
‘Can we have another go at Jag’s mechanics, Tel?’
Staggie frowned; for some reason, he disliked being called Tel.
‘They never came out of the garage, boss. He worked them hard, and he didn’t tell them much.’
‘Maybe not, but they were probably there when some of the farm kit was arriving. They’d know who brought it in, and then we follow it back.’
With an eye to the gun angle, they’d been soft-pedalling on the theft and fencing side. Rarely good to have people feeling threatened when you were after information about something more serious.
‘All right,’ Staggie said wearily – terp work could get wearing. ‘What are we looking for in particular?’
Bliss told him about the man who’d done favours for Jaglowski.
‘I know it seems unlikely, Jag having a strong contact in the sticks. Be interesting to know how that came about. See what you can get, anyway. Bearing in mind that Jag appears to’ve been shit-scared of this feller.’
‘You talked to Karen? Good rural stock.’
‘Yeh, that’s why she’s been sent out to Ewyas Harold again. Good point, though. Nobody knows more nasty countryfolk than Karen.’
‘Even been out with a few,’ Stagg said. ‘So I’m told.’
It was the afternoon before he managed a decent chat with Karen, who at least picked up where he was coming from.
‘Most of the links between migrant workers and farmers come through fruit picking, as you know, boss. The pickers, in general, tend to be loyal to particular farmers, go back year after year. They don’t abuse the situation. I don’t think Jag was ever a picker. He’s urban.’
‘Exactly. Urban criminals aren’t comfortable in the country. Either that or they’re a bit contemptuous of the hicks. What I’m thinking, Karen, after what we learned from Danni, is it starts with this feller tipping Jag off on where he can pick up bits of kit without too much difficulty. Jag thinks it’s easy money and he’s happy to repay small favours. Then the favours get bigger. Takes him a while to realize what kind of bloke he’s dealing with – this is all pure conjecture, me flying friggin’ kites again.’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll continue, however. By then Jag’s in too deep. Then he gets invited to take somebody out.’
‘Aidan Lloyd? Why?’
‘No idea. But he subcontracts the job to Lukas Babekis who – conjecture again – is known to have done this kind of thing before. Either under his real name or another alias, this lad’s wanted for something nasty. Either in his own country or another country.’
‘Babekis is an international contract-killer? Boss, this is getting a bit—’
‘That’s far too glamorous terminology. I prefer to think of him as a little toe rag known to be up for anything at the right price. Still a bit of a performer, mind. “Oh God, I’m so sorry, I’m just an ignorant foreigner who doesn’t know the roads. Never gonna be able to live with meself for this.”’
He heard Karen sigh.
‘This is really not going to be easy to stand up, boss. It largely depends on spending money and manpower to track down a foreigner who was likely to have got off a charge of – what? – causing death by dangerous driving, at the most? For more than that we’d have to explain exactly how he calculated when to lie in wait for Lloyd to knock him over as he came out of a particular gate. Did he always come out of the same gate?’
‘Apparently, he did, but it may not be as calculated as you’re suggesting. If Babekis was hired to dispose of Lloyd, in whatever way he sees fit, knowing that Jag’s going to deny all knowledge of it if he screws up, he might just’ve seen his target coming out of the field from quite a long distance… and then, instead of just gently slowing to give the lad a chance to get across, he decides it’s his birthday and it’s foot-down. I don’t know. We may never know. Right now, that doesn’t matter.’
‘All right. I’ll try and find somebody reliable who knows the Lloyd family, if that’s what you’re after.’
‘And bear in mind – while working your little socks off on what’s now become a far more significant murder – the burning incident. What Julie might’ve done when she came out that night to get her killed.’
‘Days later? Could be we’re getting a bit too excited, boss. Might just be another one of those small-county situations.’
‘It might.’
Bliss’s brain was starting to hurt. He wished he was out there hunting the killer of somebody he could care about instead of bloody Jag.
But, then, it wasn’t just about Jag.
He was going to have to talk to Annie again tonight.
Seriously.
55
Awakening
THE SITE WAS called ANNALS OF THE DANCE, its home page decorated with line drawings of men in tights with feathers in their hats. One had a side drum, another played a flute. Merrie England type men, and women frolicking behind them in a circle.
All the fun was in the illustrations. Otherwise, it was all dense, tightly printed webpages which Merrily had landed on purely by Googling
SIR HENRY DARVILL, MORRIS DANCING
Sooner rather than later, she’d have to talk to somebody, probably the police, but she’d need to know exactly what she was talking about.
So little time, now. Yes, the Archdeacon had said firmly on the phone. Yes, if it gets this eccentric man off your back, please do it. We’ll be having a Julie-tribute at the Cathedral but not yet. Something local, meanwhile, would be not inappropriate, and I’m not aware that the Church has ever persecuted morris dancers.
No, it didn’t seem to have. Even in times when elderly herbalists and their black cats had been treated with ferocious barbarism, morris men had danced unchallenged.
Thursday morning. The weather forecasts had mentioned the possibility of snow. She’d taken a paracetamol for the headache and sat down here in the scullery with a pot of tea. Willing the phone to stay out of it, she’d written down on the sermon pad everything she could remember of what Gareth Brewer had told her in the church the night before last. Writing things down, by hand, with an old fountain pen, took time but it positioned your thoughts, allowing the memories to fall through.
Sir Henry Darvill and his severe depressions. On medication – against his religion, we thought, all that stuff.
What was his religion? What had he bequeathed to his son?
Sir Henry was on this specialist site purely because of his role in the development of morris dancing which, it seemed, he’d given tutorials on rather than written about. There was a picture of him sitting on a wall. Shoulder-length hair and a droopy moustache.
Darvill’s interest in the morris was first awakened at the College for Perpetual Learning, near Pershore in Worcestershire, an institution at which he studied for two years while also supporting it financially. The college had adopted a morris tradition which had begun in the 1970s at the former Ac
ademy for Continuous Education at Sherborne, Dorset, as a relaxing sideline to its major work on realizing human potential.
Intriguing connections had been found between the morris and dervish dances – part of the Sufi traditions studied at both these centres. This was around the time when the idea of the word ‘morris’ deriving from Moorish (referring to the medieval Islamic inhabitants of North Africa) had begun to be discredited. Henry Darvill, however, found the Moorish connection not only acceptable but necessary as a doorway for anyone wishing to penetrate the secrets of the dance as he was beginning to understand them.
Merrily Googled the College for Perpetual Learning, Pershore, and found very little of use. But the Academy for Continuous Education, Sherborne, was more illuminating. There was a photograph of some huge mansion with the suggestion that whatever had taken place there had ceased in 1974.
Continuous Education – it didn’t sound very sexy. It didn’t sound like a cult, but when she went into the pages of photographs she found men and women dressed in white judo-type kit engaged in what looked like formation dances, described only as movements. She saw people with their arms outstretched as if in praise, a man with one hand placed on his chest, the other arm making a right angle.
There were mentions of the study of the teachings of Gurdjieff. You didn’t go through even theological college these days without picking up odd references to the Armenian spiritual teacher – bald head, big moustache – who set up study groups in western Europe over the first half of the twentieth century. Like most twentieth-century mystics, he’d explored the wisdom of the ancient worlds, in his case mainly Sufism, the esoteric side of Islam.
Gurdjieff’s main premise: we exist in a state of sleep. Awakening was far from easy and required a lot of diligent work and some ‘conscious suffering’.
Awakening meant existing on a higher level of consciousness than our normal somnambulistic state.
If only…
The movements? She looked up dervishes, whirling themselves into ecstatic trance-states to find illumination, reach God. No obvious whirling in morris. Perhaps it was linked more to the earth.
She’d heard there was a Gurdjieff group in Hereford, but making meaningful contact with these people could take time, and she didn’t have that.
But she did know a Sufi.
Oh God…
Above the churchyard wall the sun was already giving up its token resistance to the tightening day. She had to keep going. Nobody else would investigate this. Nobody would see anything here worth investigating.
The shadows spread. Ethel appeared in the darkening doorway, just sat there and mewed. This would be about food, rather than a reminder of the Sufi fondness for cats.
Oh well…
Merrily picked up the phone. Raji Khan’s secretary said he was in a meeting and took a message. What kind of meetings did nightclub owners and suspected drug dealers attend in the middle of the morning? Never mind, move on.
She rang Churchwood Farm to talk about the need to switch the venue for Aidan’s memorial service, to include Julie, and got a woman who said that Mr Lloyd was unavailable. She pushed.
‘Is Mr Lloyd unwell?’
‘Absolutely not,’ the woman said sharply. ‘Someone will get back to you.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Wasn’t as if they’d agreed a date for an Aidan service. She’d try an approach from the other side.
The clouds glowered, then an irritable rain spattered the scullery window. She pulled open the bottom desk drawer, uncovering a stack of funeral leaflets. Aidan Lloyd’s Order of Service was on the top. Brief details inside: parents Iestyn Lloyd and Sarah… Baxter. She pulled out the local phone book, working her way through the Baxters. Is Sarah there? Could I speak to Sarah? And then…
‘Is that Sarah?’
‘Yes, it is. Who’s that?’
‘Sarah… formerly Sarah Lloyd?’
‘Who is that?’
‘Erm, my name’s Merrily Watkins. I conducted Aidan’s funeral. At Ledwardine.’
‘Yes. You did.’
Despite what they said, there actually was such a thing as a cold, clipped Hereford accent.
‘Wasn’t proud of it, Mrs Baxter.’
‘I shouldn’t have imagined pride comes into it for a minister conducting a funeral.’
‘Well… I thought it was a bit perfunctory and didn’t do what a funeral is supposed to do. Which is why—’
‘It got him buried.’
And that was enough? What kind of family was this?
Ex-family, now. She remembered Sarah in church, bareheaded, severe, on the opposite side of the aisle to Iestyn Lloyd.
‘Your son… Liam… on behalf of your ex-husband… has asked me to hold a memorial service to perhaps say some of the things that… perhaps ought to have been said at the funeral.’
‘And did he say what things?’
‘Liam didn’t tell you about this?’
‘I haven’t seen him this week. Anyway, you’ve told me now, and I won’t be coming. I’ve seen enough of Ledwardine.’
‘Erm… It now looks like it may not be held at Ledwardine. We’re thinking Kilpeck.’
A pause.
‘Iestyn wants you to do it there?’
‘Well, it was to have been conducted by the rector of Ewyas Harold who… died yesterday. Kilpeck was one of her churches and I believe it was her idea. Not sure if she spoke to you about it, but I believe she did try to see Aidan’s father.’
‘And he agreed to that?’
‘I don’t know, Mrs Baxter, I haven’t been able to speak to him.’
‘I very much doubt he did, Mrs Watkins.’
‘I did try to speak to him, and I’ll continue to try. I’d like this to be a proper tribute to Aidan.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Mrs Baxter said. ‘If it’s at Kilpeck, I may well be there.’
‘Oh.’
‘When will it be?’
‘Probably on Monday.’
‘So soon?’
‘If it’s to be done before Christmas. As you probably know, a memorial service is more than a funeral, so I’ll be expected to say quite a lot about Aidan. Various people have told me different things.’
‘I’m sure they have.’
‘Don’t want to put my foot in it. Easily done.’
‘Yes, and if you want to know the truth about my boy, then I’ll tell you. But not over the phone.’
According to the phone book, she lived in suburban Kingsacre, out on the road pointing at Wales. And Ledwardine, for that matter.
‘I can be there in under half an hour. If the traffic’s kind.’
‘No… come tomorrow,’ Mrs Baxter said. ‘I’ll call you. I need time to control my anger.’
Blimey.
With the black Bakelite phone back at rest, Merrily sat looking across the room through the window at the glistening lichened wall between the vicarage and the churchyard where Aidan Lloyd lay when he wasn’t being exhumed. She shuddered, picking up the phone to call Lol and ask him to turn his computer on so she could send him ANNALS OF THE DANCE, and almost cried out when the shudder seemed to transfer itself to the phone and she found she was connected before it could ring.
‘Mrs Watkins.’
‘Mr Khan.’ She found her breath. ‘Erm… some things I wanted to consult you about, if you had time.’
‘I’m quite busy today,’ Raji Khan said, ‘but it’s always delightful to talk to you and I could call you back later. Perhaps you could convey in a few words the nature of your enquiry..?’
‘I’ll try. Sufism… Gurdjieff… morris-dancing…’
‘Interesting.’
‘And the Darvills of Kilpeck.’
‘I can be with you in approximately thirty-five minutes,’ Mr Khan said.
56
Intentional suffering
OF ALL THE seriously iffy characters she’d encountered in Hereford, he remained, strangely, the most civilized. Barely twenty-
five minutes had passed before he was at the front door, in his grey, faux-Edwardian overcoat with the vicuna collar. She hung it carefully in the hall, wondering if he realized that, in winter at least, he resembled everyone’s idea of an old-fashioned drug baron.
‘When the radio news headlines included something about the murder of a woman parish priest in Herefordshire,’ he said, ‘my heart almost stopped. So you see you already were very much in my thoughts today.’
The kettle was already nearing the boil. She made a pot of Earl Grey, sat it on the refectory table between them.
‘But to address your original questions…’ Raji Khan stretching his elegant feline frame into the cane chair. ‘Yes, I have indeed heard of Sir Henry Darvill and the College for Perpetual Learning. Indeed, if I’d known of it while it still existed, I might even have been amongst its alumni. Where, after all, are any of us if we lose touch with education?’
‘The college,’ Merrily said. ‘I mean, it wasn’t woodwork lessons, was it?’
‘Nothing so intellectually stimulating.’ Mr Khan, Cambridge educated, looked amused. ‘At Gurdjieff’s schools, the wealthy, the famous and the high-born might be instructed to clean the toilets, dig trenches, saw logs, whatever… and do it consciously. “Stop!” the dear old fellow would roar, and the pupils would freeze in mid-task and… remember themselves. Moments of consciousness.’
‘Before the age of the bandsaw, then.’
‘Oh, I doubt the odd severed thumb would have altered his methodology.’ Mr Khan beamed. ‘Gurdjieff was virtually unique in his translation of various Eastern and Middle-Eastern methods of self-development into a language accessible to the Western world… to those willing to work hard and make personal sacrifices. A path to higher levels of being in the context of everyday, seemingly mundane life, through conscious labour and intentional suffering. No one said it was going to be fun.’
‘And this kind of thing went on at Pershore?’
‘For some years. A spin-off from the former Academy for Continuous Education founded by Gurdjieff’s disciple, the late J.G. Bennett, in Sherborne. Where morris dancing was first adopted as a kind of recreational light relief – until a few people realized they’d stumbled on something quite significant.’
