All of a Winter's Night

by Phil Rickman

  They were standing between the Yeti and a florist’s van. Annie’s face made him think of one of the marble effigies he’d seen on tombs somewhere. She’d be treated like a suspect now – she’d be a suspect – her flat visited, her phone stripped down to the last chip. Sympathy would be restrained and formal. This was what happened when a senior cop was close to a big killing, especially a man like Charlie. She had few friends in the building behind them, and until she was proved to have had nothing to do with it, she’d be in solitary.

  Just before four a.m., Jack Kenny from Warwickshire and an FLO she didn’t know had taken her to identify the body. Yeh, even Annie qualified for family liaison. Her only advantage was that at least she knew the FLOs had a dual role.

  ‘Both of them watching me looking at him. Wondering if I’d do something out of character.’

  Like sob?

  Jack Kenny had been whizzed over from Warwickshire to head up the inquiry. No time wasted there, they must’ve dragged him out of bed within minutes of having the mind-boggling name. Car and a maniac driver outside Kenny’s door, then foot down all the way to Hereford by way of Ledwardine. The MIR for this one would be sealed off like a quarantine ward.

  ‘He’s straight, apparently,’ Bliss said. ‘Hard bastard but straight.’

  ‘Of course he’s straight. You think they’d send anyone to investigate Charlie’s murder who’d even had a parking ticket cancelled?’

  ‘Who’s taking over on Julie?’

  ‘Brent.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘You get to keep Jag for the time being, but Kenny’s going to be on your back now it’s looking like the same gun. Listen, I need to get back, they’re virtually accompanying me to the toilet.’

  He hadn’t asked how she was feeling and he wasn’t going to. She probably hadn’t even worked it out yet. Could be weeks, months before she managed to separate some distant, smiling, soft-hearted daddy from way, way back from the hard-eyed, suntanned psycho who used to like WPCs a lot.

  ‘When they put me under the lights,’ Annie said, ‘I’m not going to be able to lie.’

  ‘At all?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I’m gonna tell them everything I’d put in a report. Beginning with Darth at Hewell. I’ll admit to deciding not to feed that into the system until I’d checked Charlie’s story. I’ll tell them quite openly that I didn’t trust him. I’ll say I believed there were senior fellers here who might still be too close to him. I’ll give them chapter and friggin’ vairse, if necessary. I could even tell them the whole truth right up to…’

  ‘Friday night?’

  ‘Yeh. Up to then. That’s where the screw tightens. They’re gonna ask you when you last saw him. They’re gonna ask his neighbours if they’ve seen anybody visiting him or watching him or walking slowly past his friggin door or—’

  ‘You think I don’t know everything they’re going to ask? You think I don’t know that sooner or later they’re going to find out about us? Finishing both of us for this division and putting us bang in the frame for anything anyone wants to hang on us?’

  ‘No. I don’t think that.’

  No way at all around this one. Clear enough to everybody here that, in the normal way of things, the last person Bliss would go to with suspicions about Charlie would be Charlie’s daughter. With whom he’d been seen outside Charlie’s front door. Or was it some other bloke in a beanie driving an old Honda CRV?

  Funny, really, in the darkest possible way. You never imagined there could be anything worse than Charlie getting elected to the big one. But Charlie dead… Charlie dead would be ticking all the way to the crem.

  There was, for a start, the matter of historic corruption. Old coppers who’d been shit-scared of Charlie would start finding their voices any day now. However much or how little came out, Annie would be under pressure to leave the division, or even – if the brass were feeling generous – the service itself, for some well-paid if anonymous ancillary office job. Meanwhile…

  ‘Compassionate leave, is it?’

  ‘When they’ve finished their… their strip search.’ Annie blinked a snowflake away. ‘And if I don’t take compassionate leave, how would that look? What are they going to find for me to do?’

  He’d heard they were trying to stop Sacha talking to the media. Misguided, in Bliss’s view. They’d be better letting her pay her tearful tribute because, bearing in mind what might come out within days, no copper would be wanting to stand in front of a camera and rabbit on about Charlie’s exemplary record as a thief-taker of the old school.

  Win-win, for Sasha, if she only knew. He would’ve dumped her within days of cracking the election.

  They stood looking at one another, him and Annie, for a few silent seconds. Between the Yeti and the florist’s van, the tips of their cold fingers touched once and parted.

  ‘Charlie was right,’ Bliss said bitterly. ‘The best is yet to come.’

  At this stage, there was very little black humour in Gaol Street, but give it time.

  He managed a more relaxed chat with Vaynor, not long back from Ledwardine, while Jack Kenny and his inner cabinet were setting up their MIR. He’d been invited to Kenny’s first big production, but not with a speaking part. Waiting to be summoned, he’d beckoned Darth into his office for a quick coffee.

  ‘The boyfriend,’ Vaynor said, ‘has journalistic ambitions. I leaned on him as hard as I could, given the circumstances, and I think he’ll sit on it, but I thought you ought to know.’

  ‘I’d be more afraid of the girl,’ Bliss said. ‘Knowing her as I do, through her mam.’

  ‘The girl was actually quite shattered, boss. Even though she didn’t seem over-fond of Councillor Pierce.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Thinks he was bent.’

  ‘And, in spite of that, a mate of Charlie’s?’

  He’d had to fill in a form detailing his various points of contact with the victim before he could even be admitted to the MIR. He’d kept it tight but expected a personal summons at some point, to be grilled in depth by Jack Kenny, who he didn’t know very well, with someone he didn’t know at all sitting in.

  ‘It was all a bit coincidental,’ Vaynor said, ‘but it’s a village, with nothing very far from anywhere else. Jane Watkins and… how do you pronounce this boy’s name?’

  ‘Like Irene, only a bit longer. I’ve met him once. His dad runs Wales Gas, or some such.’

  ‘Jane and Irene were in that same pub, and Pierce and Howe were still there when they left to… have a private conversation that wouldn’t wait. Jane says that seeing Pierce there reminded her of a secluded parking spot just off the lane where he lived. So that’s where they went.’

  ‘That is coincidental.’ Bliss rubbed his bristly jaw. ‘But that’s the way Jane Watkins thinks. Kid has a perverse streak.’

  ‘Another coincidence,’ Vaynor said, ‘is that Jane Watkins also fielded a call for her mother from the Reverend Julie, the night she was killed.’

  ‘I do know that. And, yeh, you can have one too many small-county situations. Perhaps I should get word to the MIR that, given her mother’s sideline, this is no time for overreaction.’

  ‘It’s fairly clear it was purely a coincidence, boss. I listened to the recording of her 999 call. They didn’t know about Pierce, and she seemed to think he might’ve done it because they were together in the pub. They were back in the car with the doors locked. Irene said he didn’t want to move and dislodge part of Charlie from the bumper.’

  Bliss had happened to see some of the video: Pierce’s body hanging half out of the passenger seat of Charlie’s car outside his house. Two in the head, a bit like Jag.

  A lot like Jag.

  ‘What was Pierce doing in Charlie’s car?’

  ‘The Ox isn’t too far from Pierce’s place and he’d walked down, but when they came out it was snowing, according to witnesses at the pub, so it looks like Charlie offered him a lift home.’

&nb
sp; ‘They’ll need a list of everybody in that pub last night.’

  ‘They’re getting one.’

  ‘And anyone who might normally have been in and wasn’t.’

  Vaynor nodded.

  ‘What’s your feeling boss?’

  ‘Now the Makarov’s confirmed? I think there’s so much information now that if it’s not cracked by Wednesday we’ll be looking like muppets.’

  ‘I meant Charlie.’

  Bliss leaned his chair back against the window recess.

  ‘Still doesn’t feel real, Darth. All the times I’ve wanted to do him.’

  ‘Had your moments, boss, you and Charlie.’

  ‘Not last night. Only kid in our street who didn’t want an airgun. Not even to shoot bent councillors.’

  ‘Independent councillors. Allegedly. Both of them.’

  ‘Norra hit squad from It’s Our County, then. They’d go for the official Tories.’ Bliss brought his chair legs down. ‘Somebody waiting for them. Somebody who’d seen them in the pub. If it’s not whoever did Jag, then somebody’s been flogging Maks for longer than we know. Pierce got it first?’

  ‘That’s the most likely sequence. Pierce first, just as Charlie was letting him out at the entrance to his drive. Charlie having reversed in, to turn round and get on the bypass.’

  ‘So the passenger door’s open, Pierce get popped and he’s either hanging out or pulled out of the way to leave the shooter a clear shot at Charlie in the driving seat. Which is when Charlie makes a run for it. I think there are some cottages in that lane, but not too close to the Pierce house, so he makes for the wood. Lorra trees to hide behind.’

  ‘Is it possible the shooter was only after Pierce?’

  ‘And ended up doing Charlie as well?’

  ‘Couldn’t’ve known Pierce would be in Charlie’s car, boss. And if Charlie hadn’t been dropping Pierce off…’

  ‘It’s a point that I’m sure Jack Kenny’s team will’ve worked out hours ago. So… in the wood Charlie spots a car. No lights, windows all steamed up. Could be he didn’t see the car till he virtually walked into it.’

  ‘And then he’s shot from behind. Jane Watkins – fortunately, or unfortunately for her – actually saw him taking the bullet. Which would’ve been the second bullet? He already had one in the back.’

  You know what this looks like?’ Bliss said. ‘Looks like only one shooter. If there’d been two of them, the other would’ve gone round to the driver, make sure Charlie didn’t get out.’

  ‘Your phone, boss.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your mobile’s flashing.’

  ‘Oh yeh.’ He’d muted it. Picked it up from the desk, checked out the number and took the call. ‘I’d’ve rung you later, Merrily. We could probably use a chat, but not right now, and definitely not in Ledwardine.’

  65

  Evening work

  MAYBE SHE WASN’T telling it too well.

  He’d rung her from his car, on the mobile. She was in the scullery with Lol. She’d sent Jane and Eirion to the Crown in Dilwyn, a few miles away. The police had offered them counselling. They didn’t need counselling, in Merrily’s view, they needed one another. Only not in the Swan. Not today. Maybe not for the rest of the week.

  She was still confused, upset, so maybe she wasn’t telling it too well.

  ‘It could be interesting, Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘However, it’s my duty to refer you to the SIO, Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Kenny. Which means one of his team. And they will want to talk to you, but… it won’t be quick.’

  ‘Because they don’t know me. They don’t know me from some psychotic sensation-seeking—’

  ‘It won’t be that bad.’

  ‘And I’ve an important service to do tonight.’

  Bliss sighed.

  ‘Merrily, no church service not involving the reigning monarch can ever be described as remotely important during a murder inquiry. And murder inquiries rarely get bigger than this one.’

  ‘Sure. I do understand that as a former senior copper—’

  ‘You don’t understand. Charlie’s lurid past could start to surface at any moment. Alive, he’s always been bulletproof. Dead, it’s open season, and the brass are shitting breeze blocks. And I didn’t say any of that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘OK, well… forget I called. I’ll talk to somebody tomorrow, when I’ve got time.’

  Silence. She could hear him thinking.

  ‘I’ll call you back. You at home?’

  ‘Frannie, nobody can get out of Ledwardine today without having to bribe the police.’

  They watched the one o’clock TV news. An assistant chief constable of West Mercia, a severe-looking woman who had to be close to retirement, said that Charles Howe had led several major inquiries and was known for getting remarkable results. Restrained.

  ‘I remember the first time I met him,’ Merrily said, ‘it was with Morrell, Jane’s headmaster, a fairly aggressive atheist. Charlie was vice-chairman of the county education committee at the time. We were discussing the seances some of the kids were holding in the lunch hour, and Morrell was being typically scornful. But Charlie supported me all the way. Talking about the murderers he’d known who believed they’d been instructed to kill by voices – he’d worked on the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. I remember him saying I had a thankless job.’

  ‘He knew how to make friends,’ Lol said.

  ‘When I subsequently found out what he’d done, what he’d covered up, I was quite sad.’

  ‘It didn’t stop him, though, did it, people knowing what he’d done. And if you happened to get in his way…’

  ‘I don’t think he – this is going to sound awful – but if you’d told him he was going to die with Lyndon Pierce, who… Oh God, shut me up, I’ll probably have to do Lyndon’s funeral. Say good things about him.’

  ‘Lyndon have a wife, partner? Can’t remember.’

  ‘He split with his wife. His partner, fortunately for her, perhaps, was at a leaving party in Hereford. Jim Prosser told me that. She works for social services. He also has a business partner, in Hereford, who I’d guess will now be under pressure to suggest what Lyndon and Charlie might’ve been meeting about. In the Ox, rather than the Swan.’

  ‘It won’t come out.’

  ‘Or not for years.’ She sniffed. ‘I’m becoming a cynical bitch.’

  ’‘Go on like this, you’ll be bishop material. Listen…’ His hand on her arm. ‘… it wouldn’t’ve made any difference. If you’d rung Bliss on Friday night.’

  ‘You know everything I’m thinking.’

  ‘No evidence, not even circumstantial.’

  ‘It was you who suggested I should tell him.’

  ‘For your own peace of mind. Not because I thought he’d be able to do anything about it. Not quickly, anyway. And it wouldn’t have saved Charlie. He wouldn’t have gone out of his way to help Bliss.’

  ‘But worse still… what if Jane and Eirion…?’

  ‘Merrily, stop it, please, you can’t keep—’

  The phone rang.

  The Three Horseshoes was just off the Abergavenny road, ten minutes or so from Kilpeck. It had just started snowing again when the CRV pulled in and Bliss climbed into the Freelander, his navy-blue beanie glittering with flecks of snow.

  ‘How come you’re doing this service for Mrs Duxbury?’

  ‘Who told you about that?’

  ‘We know everything Julie-linked. As for Julie and Charlie-linked… Charlie wanting an audience. What might he have said?’

  ‘I’d have to think about that.’

  ‘All right, never mind. Tell me about Lyndon Pierce. Aside from the fact that Pierce represented Ledwardine on the Herefordshire Council and little Jane hates him, nobody at the nick knows as much about him as I’d thought they might.’

  ‘Probably because you’ve never had him in custody.’

  ‘We missed out there?’


  ‘Pierce is… was… an accountant and prominent member of the county planning committee. Believed to provide extra services for clients who happen to be builders. For a consideration. It’s said.’

  ‘Said?’

  ‘Even I’ve said it. There are tentative plans for a much bigger Ledwardine – high-density housing, supermarket complex, all sugared with a fancy leisure centre. Jane’s furious because it would be all over what remains of the original orchard – Ledwardine, the Village in the Orchard?’

  ‘Yeh, yeh.’

  ‘She’s convinced – well, she hopes – that the roughly circular orchard actually marks the site of a Bronze Age henge, which would be the biggest prehistoric site in the county. She might be wrong, but…’

  ‘Lorra money for a few lucky people, if this development goes through, you reckon?’

  ‘Including a substantial wad under the table for Lyndon Pierce for escorting it through the planning process. I didn’t say that. Oh hell, I did. I said it. I said everything.’

  ‘Who are the builders?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but there are a couple of firms famous for this sort of thing, as I’m sure you know. Nothing out of the ordinary, goes on all the time.’

  ‘Could Charlie’ve been involved?’

  ‘I can’t really see how, and I couldn’t see him getting involved in anything iffy while campaigning to be in charge of West Mercia policing, can you?’

  ‘Could he have been just socializing with Pierce?’

  ‘In the Ox?’

  ‘OK. Liam Hurst. Would Pierce know him?’

  ‘Possibly. Or his stepfather. Pierce handled a lot of farmers’ accounts.It’s conceivable that Iestyn Lloyd was his client. I expect you could find that out easily enough.’

  ‘In a murder investigation, Merrily, we can find out anything. Would this proposed expansion of Ledwardine intrude on Iestyn’s spread?’

  She nodded.

  ‘He recently bought quite a large field connecting his farm to the churchyard – which would be almost surrounded if the plan goes ahead. But Iestyn wouldn’t be open to a deal. Farmer through and through. He acquires land, he doesn’t sell it. Against his fundamental principles. He makes it work, in the old sense.’