Remains of an Altar mw-8

by Phil Rickman

  ‘But you’re still interested?’

  ‘In an academic way.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘I managed to…’ Bliss sipped his coffee, winced, added sugar. ‘Before they broke the news, we had another word with two of the little scallies who found the remains. Thirteen-year-olds sharing a six-pack of Fosters, so a little mild pressure was permissible. Finally admitted this wasn’t the first time they’d seen Roman up the Beacon.’

  ‘Birdwatching?’

  ‘Mr Khan was terribly shocked. Assuring me he’d have fired Roman at once if he’d so much as suspected. And, you know, strange thing, I think he was shocked. Mr Wicklow dealing on the Beacon? Handful of rocks and a few piffling grams?’

  ‘You think he really didn’t know?’

  ‘That kind of trade would be far too trivial for Raji, not to mention dangerously close to home. Yeh, I believe him when he says he’d have had Wicklow’s balls if he’d found out. Wicklow was freelancing. Probably made the arrangements in the pubs in Great Malvern, then met the clients in the fresh air, with those wonderful, far-reaching views of anybody approaching and a nice cave to shelter in.’

  ‘Therefore Khan’s not involved?’

  ‘Oh, I never said that.’ Bliss looked down into his coffee, lowered his voice. ‘If he’d found out that one of his people was operating on the side and figured it was time an example was made of someone foolish enough to abuse his position … well, that just might explain why the goody bag was left at the scene.’

  ‘He had Wicklow killed?’

  Bliss smiled. ‘Try and prove it.’

  Merrily leaned back. A stray blade of wan sunlight tinted an edge of the Bishop’s lawn. Another world.

  ‘So ritual murder’s definitely ruled out?’

  ‘It was never really ruled in. Also, Doc McEwen’s knocked down his own theory that it would’ve taken several people. Wound on the back of the head now suggests that Wicklow was clobbered first and then dragged to the stone before his throat was cut. Assuming an element of surprise, one person could have done that.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t have taken long, I suppose?’

  ‘By comparison, no time at all.’ Bliss looked at her, his eyes slitted. ‘Still funny it should happen when you’re around, though.’

  ‘You’re considering the possibility that I did it?’

  ‘Can you think of a better way of little Francis becoming Annie Howe’s favourite detective in the whole world? Instead of off the flaming case.’

  Merrily hadn’t yet been to the office, slightly worried about facing Sophie, whose reasoning, on the issue of Wychehill and Syd Spicer, had been, as it had turned out, flawless.

  Sophie wasn’t in, however – probably over at the Palace, dealing with the Bishop’s mail. The computer was switched off, but four messages were on the answering machine, one of them non-routine and left less than four minutes ago.

  ‘Mrs Watkins, this is Winchester Sparke.’

  Winchester?

  Sophie came in with a cardboard file under her arm, sat down opposite Merrily and began to unpack it, assembling a small pile of letters on the desk.

  ‘I need to speak with you.’ Winnie Sparke’s voice was harsh and frayed. Please call me back. I— The cops have taken Tim. Came pounding on his door … took him away.’

  24

  Lord of Dread

  Merrily rang Bliss on his mobile.

  ‘Hold on a mo.’ She heard the sound of feet on stairs and then an outside acoustic, city traffic. ‘Yeh, I’ve just heard. It was a surprise to me, too. You know anything about this feller?’

  ‘He’s a composer. A music teacher. What’s the basis for it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Merrily, it’s not my case.’

  ‘Can’t you find out?’

  ‘If I make a nuisance of meself. Hate to use a hackneyed old phrase, but what’s in it for me? And I don’t want a mention in your prayers; you’re a Protestant.’ He sniffed. ‘All right, here’s my inspired guess: an outrage crime.’

  ‘Is an outrage crime what I’m thinking it is?’

  ‘Way I’m looking at it is, we’ve got two local dealers taken out within a fortnight, both in rural areas. I told you about the guy in Pershore?’

  ‘But didn’t you say he was shot in his car? Modus operandi doesn’t exactly tally, does it?’

  ‘Modus schmodus, Pershore’s still only half an hour’s drive from Wychehill. But is Annie Howe looking at it from that perspective? Oh no, too small-time and messy. Annie wants an outrage crime. By which I mean where some normally law-abiding person or persons is pushed well beyond the limits of socially acceptable behaviour by the perceived collapse of everything he or she holds dear.’

  ‘That’s vigilantism, Frannie. That’s Death Wish 2. I’ve never met Tim Loste and I don’t know that much about him. But a musician and choirmaster, however troubled, doesn’t really strike me as the most obvious serial killer of drug dealers.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Annie wants Loste because he’s white and middle-class. I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you.’

  Merrily held the phone to her ear long after the click, watching Sophie sorting the Bishop’s correspondence, recalling her reaction to the Royal Oak becoming Inn Ya Face.

  One day, I think, we may be pushed too far.

  ‘You were off sick on Monday,’ Robert Morrell said.

  Sick was a dirty word to Morrell. He worked out three nights a week in the school gym, did the London Marathon, and his skin was lightly tanned all year round. You had to be suspicious of a head teacher with a sunlamp.

  Jane nodded. ‘It was a migraine. I get them sometimes in summer.’

  ‘And it persisted through yesterday.’

  ‘Well, I was going to come in yesterday, and I went out to wait for the bus and it … it just came on again.’

  ‘You been to the doctor, Jane?’

  ‘Well, no … I know what it is. It’s a migraine. I’ve had it before. It’s like … it’s horrible. First of all, you see these big black spots in front of your eyes, and then it…’

  ‘Comes and goes, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes, it does. That’s what it does. Comes and … goes.’

  ‘And this … conveniently capricious migraine was presumably in remission on Monday night when you paid a surprise visit to Councillor Pierce at his home.’

  Oh God. Any vague hope that Jane had had that this was not why Morrell had sent for her hit the deck like a bag of flour. It was going to take a lot of sweeping up.

  ‘I … erm, the migraine seemed to be easing off by the evening, so I went for a walk in the cool air to clear my head … and I just happened to be passing that way and … you know … got chatting to these people. Not knowing who they were, at first. Only, the thing is, I’m using aspects of local history for my art project, and I was thinking that now I was feeling better I could at least do some work on the, erm, project, and so … I’m sorry, Rob, this probably sounds…’

  ‘Yes, it does, Jane.’

  ‘I didn’t … I mean…’

  Jane’s resolve collapsed. She really didn’t like this new policy of Morrell’s where, when you reached the sixth form, you were permitted to call him Rob. Like you were all mates. So that when you did something wrong, it was like you’d let down your mate. Which was totally ridiculous because there was no way Jane would ever get close to having a mate like Morrell, with his tracksuits, his sunlamp, his neatly shaven head, his minimalist office, his Tony Blair smile…

  He did it now, that ghastly smile, and then he leaned back in his executive chair and spoke with the kind of horrible lazy fluency that must have persuaded the thick bastards on the education authority that he was smooth enough to do this job.

  ‘Jane, tell me … which particular part of your project involves haranguing elected members and officers of the Herefordshire Council for performing their democratic duty in opening the way for the kind of much-needed rural housing that may enable you and your fello
w students to remain in this area when you leave the education system, rather than becoming economic migrants?’

  By the time Jane had worked this out, it was too late for any kind of smart response. Morrell’s smile vanished, like that of the tiger deciding it was time to stop playing with his prey and get down to the meal.

  ‘Perhaps I need to make it clear to you, Ms Watkins, that, as a sixth-former, you are an ambassador for this school in the greater community. Do you understand what I mean?’

  Jane just nodded; couldn’t even manage a respectable display of dumb insolence.

  ‘All right. On this occasion, to save further embarrassment, and to protect our exemplary record on truancy, I informed Councillor Mrs Bird – the vice-chairman of Education and one of our governors, as I’d have thought you would remember – that on this occasion you’d been given time off to work on your project.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jane said feebly.

  ‘And I’ll thank you –’ Morrell’s palm slammed down on his desktop ‘ – not to drag the name of this school into disrepute in future, with your lies and your childish fantasies. Do you understand what I’m saying? Far from covering up for you, next time…’

  Jane nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Morrell said lightly. ‘Off you go.’

  Bending his shaven head over some report, he highlighted a line of type with a yellow marker pen. In the doorway, ashamed of her craven attitude, Jane turned round.

  ‘It’s not low-cost housing, you know. It’s luxury, executive—’

  ‘Geddout, Jane,’ Morrell murmured. ‘You’re beginning to bore me.’

  Jane just like fell out into the corridor, knowing her face would be red and scrunched up. Feeling the heat of tears and weight of the Establishment. It was like … Stalinist: the Council, intent on crushing all opposition, putting the word out to the chief of police to warn her off.

  She stumbled into the toilet to wash her face and then went into one of the cubicles and fumbled out her mobile to leave a message on Eirion’s phone, see if he could pick her up after school. Needing someone to howl to.

  Soon as she switched on, the voicemail signal buzzed, and she clapped both hands around the phone because Morrell was strict on the use of mobiles during class-time – confiscation had been known, for as long as a week, and in this case would be guaranteed, and then the secret police would have all her private contacts.

  You have one message. To access your messages, press one.

  Probably be Eirion, saying he was going to be tied up tonight. Jane pressed one.

  ‘Hello, Ms Watkins.’ This strange, cheerful man’s voice. ‘My name is Jerry Isles, and I work for the Guardian newspaper. I’d like to discuss your campaign on behalf of the, um, Ledwardine ley? Could you please call me back?’

  Jane stood there, with her back to the cubicle door, staring into the toilet, the mobile feeling like a stick of dynamite with a fizzing fuse. When she and Eirion had done the document for the Net, she’d put her mobile in as the contact number, mainly because she didn’t want anybody ringing the vicarage. Expecting maybe a couple of concerned ley-hunters who might be prepared to send letters of protest to the council.

  The Guardian? Jeez.

  * * *

  ‘And what do you know about this man Loste?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ Merrily spread her hands. ‘Hearsay. I’ve never met him. I’ve never even seen him.’

  She’d just called Winnie Sparke. The call had lasted around half a minute, Sparke insisting that she didn’t like to speak on the phone and could they meet this afternoon, somewhere other than Wychehill? Great Malvern would be appropriate. She knew a place they could be private.

  ‘You’re going?’ Sophie said.

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘This man has been taken in for questioning about a peculiarly savage and revolting murder and you propose to meet his girlfriend somewhere private.’

  ‘I’m not sure she’s his girlfriend.’

  ‘Do you even know anything about her?’

  ‘There are only twenty-four short hours in a day, Sophie.’ Merrily slumped back in her chair, leaning it against the wall. ‘And I’m already working most of them.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can find out.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve a stack of letters to do for the Bishop—’

  ‘Shush,’ Sophie said, as the phone rang. ‘Gatehouse. Yes, she is.’ Sighing. ‘One moment, Inspector.’

  Merrily sat up, groping for the phone.

  ‘Mr Loste, Merrily.’ Bliss coming at her like a fast train hissing from a tunnel. ‘If you wanna know, in absolute, pain-of-death confidence, why they’ve brought him in, listen up, because I don’t have much time. You got shorthand?’

  ‘Sophie’s is better.’

  ‘Then put me back to Sophie. And this really doesn’t go any further than the two of you, understand, or I’ll be in more shite than you could ever imagine.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What I’m giving you is a text message received by Raji Khan last night, transmitted from Wicklow’s mobile. Read and destroy, then call me back and tell me what you think.’

  ‘Texted by Wicklow?’

  ‘Texted, almost certainly, after Wicklow’s death by Wicklow’s killer or an accomplice and passed on to Howe by Khan in his capacity as an upright citizen. You’ll find it fairly unbelievable. Gimme Sophie.’

  Merrily handed over the phone and played nervously with her Zippo, watching Sophie reaching for a notepad and pen, beginning to write.

  ‘Sign? Oh, thine. I’m sorry … continue.’

  Arcane Pitman loops and whorls and dots. Everything suddenly moving unintelligibly fast.

  ‘Yes … yes…’ Sophie’s eyebrows raised. ‘My God, yes … so it is. No, I won’t do that. Thank you, Inspector.’ She hung up, tore off the top page of her notebook and sat down to transcribe. ‘I recognized it at once.’

  ‘Recognized what?’

  ‘Let me finish.’

  Sophie reversed the shorthand notebook, pushed it across the desk to Merrily. She’d hand-printed the transcription. ‘I was instructed not to put it into the computer.’

  Lord of dread and lord of power

  This is thine, the fateful hour.

  When beneath the sacred oak

  Thrice the sacred charm is spoke,

  Thrice the sacrificial knife

  Reddens with a victim’s life,

  Thrice the mystic dance is led

  Round the altar where they bled.

  ‘What is it?’ Merrily looked up. ‘Black Sabbath?’

  ‘It’s…’ Sophie frowned ‘… Elgar, I’m afraid. His librettist, anyway. It’s an extract from the cantata we discussed.’

  ‘The Dream of—? It can’t be.’

  ‘Gerontius is an oratorio,’ Sophie said with no sarcasm. ‘Of a kind. The cantata is Caractacus.’

  ‘Oh. The one set on…’

  ‘Herefordshire Beacon. British Camp.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Literally. The passage relates to where Caractacus, facing his final confrontation with the Romans, is directed by various prophecies from what you might call Druids of the old school. The libretto … particularly on paper, it lacks a certain subtlety of expression. Elgar wasn’t famous then. It was written by a neighbour, a Mr Acworth. A retired civil servant, as I recall.’

  ‘And this bollocks was texted to Khan?’

  … the sacrificial knife

  Reddens with a victim’s life

  Merrily stood up and turned to the window: Broad Street traffic, T-shirts, summer frocks.

  Inn Ya Face.

  The phone went again and Sophie took it, her reading glasses dropping down on their chain. She wasn’t on long.

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ she said. ‘If I see her. Thank you.’ When she looked up at Merrily, her face was creasing with an unexpected, almost motherly concern. ‘You can’t react to everything.’

  ‘Just tell me.’<
br />
  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Howe’s office. She would like to meet you in Wychehill later this afternoon.’

  ‘Howe wants to see me?’

  ‘The sergeant said she very much hopes it will be convenient.’

  ‘Which means if I don’t show there’ll be a police car outside the vicarage at some ungodly hour.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Merrily.’

  What the hell was this about? Merrily sat down, laid her palms on the desk, took two long breaths and called Bliss back.

  ‘No idea,’ Bliss said. ‘But whatever the bitch wants, you keep me well out of it. What do you reckon about the text?’

  ‘If it wasn’t so bad it’d be creepy. How many people would recognize the words of an Elgar cantata?’

  ‘In the Malverns,’ Sophie murmured, ‘about four thousand.’

  ‘Not a great many rival dealers,’ Bliss said. ‘That’s for sure. We must be looking at one of the principal reasons for them picking up Mr Loste.’

  ‘Maybe he’s just advising them, as an exper— No. Sorry, I’m overtired. It was texted to Raji Khan personally?’

  ‘To the Royal Oak landline.’

  ‘Would that work?’

  ‘You can text a landline and the message gets read out over the phone.’

  ‘Loste has an oak,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I just thought. Loste has an oak planted in his front garden.’

  ‘That’s uncommon?’

  ‘It is when your garden’s barely big enough for a dwarf apple-tree. A lot of oaks here, that’s all I was thinking. Sacrificial oak. Royal Oak…’

  ‘And the oak was the sacred tree of the Druids. Even I know that. What does it tell us?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe Annie Howe does?’

  ‘You know,’ Bliss said, ‘if it turns out Annie’s pulled the right man within just a few hours … I’d really hate that.’

  When Merrily got back from the health-food shop with some hard-looking bean and chick-pea pasties, Sophie was printing out a document.

  ‘Didn’t take long to find her.’