Remains of an Altar mw-8

by Phil Rickman

  Mrs Kingsley stood on the top step, holding the card. The ambering sunlight flashed from windows all over the estate and boiled in Gomer’s bottle glasses.

  ‘Brung Janie over on account o’ the importance o’ this, see. Good girl, means well, but her gets a bit … emotional. Takes things to heart.’ Gomer took off his cap. ‘Got herself in a real state over this argy-bargy, missus, as you can likely see.’

  Mrs Kingsley looked at the card, said faintly, ‘Plant hire?’

  Gomer looked solemn. It was touching, really. The words plant hire, for Gomer, represented some old and honourable tradition of saving the countryside from flood and famine, bringing mighty machinery to the aid of the needy. A plant-hire code of decency was implied and it shone out of Gomer’s glasses.

  ‘You see much of your cousin Gerry?’ Gomer said. ‘Gerry Murray, Lyonshall?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ar,’ Gomer said. ‘What I’d yeard.’

  Jane looked at him, curious. He’d had very little to say in the jeep on the way here. But Gomer knew about the local network, its grudges and its feuds, and what he didn’t know he’d find out.

  ‘You know him?’ Mrs Kingsley said.

  ‘No. But I knows of him. If you see what I mean.’

  Standing there with his hands behind his back, not pushing it. Little and lean, the cords in his neck like plaited bailer twine.

  ‘Gerry … knows what he wants and makes sure he gets it,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘One way or another.’

  ‘Yeard that, too. And your Auntie Maggie … seems to me her was a bit like Janie, yere – worried too much about what was right and what was wrong, kind o’ thing.’

  Mrs Kingsley looked down, brushing her apron. It was beige, with black cats on it.

  ‘My aunt did talk about you once or twice, Mr Parry,’ she said. ‘You’re making this very difficult for me.’

  ‘Ar?’

  ‘I have some letters … and photographs.’

  ‘What Mrs Pole left you.’

  ‘You obviously know about them.’

  ‘Mabbe.’

  ‘I was going to offer them to the Hereford Museum. Or perhaps the Woolhope Club.’

  Gomer looked blank.

  ‘The naturalist and local history club that Alfred Watkins belonged to,’ Jane said. ‘It still exists.’

  ‘Mr Watkins was a member, yes. Among other important people. The photographs belonged to my grandmother, Hazel Probert. I think it’s what she would have wanted, after all this time.’

  Mrs Kingsley looked out over the housing estate. You could hear lawn-mowers and strimmers and a few children shouting. Across the estate and another estate, on higher ground, you could see the top of Dinedor, Hereford’s own holy hill.

  Jane found she was holding her breath.

  ‘After the TV item, I brought them down,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘On television, it didn’t look like the same place – all that fencing and the signs.’

  ‘That’s nothing to what it’ll look like when it’s covered with executive homes,’ Jane said.

  ‘Well,’ Mrs Kingsley said, ‘I can’t let you take the photographs. But I can let you see them. I suppose they explain why my grandmother might not have wanted someone like Gerry Murray to have the meadow.’

  45

  Of Great Renown

  Merrily got in, and there was nobody there except Ethel. Forking out a tray of Felix, drifting through to the scullery, it felt like weeks since she’d last been in here, doing ordinary things. The answering machine was overfed, no longer accepting messages. The air was stale and stuffy, and there was the rattle and hum of a bluebottle in the window.

  She opened the window, sat down at the desk with a bag of crisps and rang Lol: no answer. Rang his mobile: engaged.

  She needed advice, wanted to pray but wasn’t sure what she’d be asking for. She’d never felt so confused. Laying her head on the sermon pad, she closed her eyes. Forget the answers, some coherent questions would help.

  Despite the open window, the bluebottle wouldn’t go out, as though it was determined to tell her something. All the buzzing things that wouldn’t go away.

  Merrily jerked upright. The phone was ringing right next to her ear. Last birthday, Jane had bought her another old-fashioned black bakelite phone with a real ring, loud and warm and thrilling, like the church bells which had once pealed across the land from steeple to steeple to warn of impending invasion. She grabbed the phone in a panic, something quaking in her chest.

  ‘Merrily?’

  ‘Frannie?’

  ‘You all right?’

  She shook herself, blinking, rubbing at her eyes.

  ‘Sorry, I was…’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m calling you, really,’ Bliss said. ‘I didn’t plan to. I was just tearing through the CID room with no time at all to spare – not now, no bloody way – but a little voice is going, ring Merrily.’

  ‘You’re not a man who responds to little voices.’

  ‘Nah, you’re right. You been listening to the local radio at all today, Merrily?’

  ‘Haven’t even had it on in the car. Probably afraid of hearing people talking about Jane. Just tell me this isn’t about Jane.’

  ‘Not unless she’s shot somebody.’

  ‘The problem was my grandfather,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘It seems Mr Watkins turned up at the door this day – quiet sort of chap, my grandma always said, according to my mother. Very polite, and could he have a look at their bottom meadow?’

  Jane clung to an arm of the sofa. He came? He knew? He really knew about the Ledwardine ley?

  ‘My grandma was all of a flutter, of course, that such a man as Mr Watkins should be calling on the likes of them. She was quite young at the time, not so very long married. They’d all heard of Mr Watkins, quite a public figure by then, though not because of ley lines.’

  ‘This was … when, exactly?’ Jane asked.

  ‘About 1924, I would guess. The Old Straight Track hadn’t been published, I’m fairly sure of that, so not many people knew what it was all about. To be told you had an ancient trackway across your land which had been used by Stone Age people … well, it didn’t mean anything. Certainly not to my grandfather.’

  Gomer said, ‘He’d’ve likely been in the First World War, then, your ole grandad?’

  ‘Yes, he was, Mr Parry. And came back a different man. Not the man Grandma married, my mother used to tell me. He just wanted a quiet life surrounded by his own land. Positively antisocial. It wasn’t a very big farm, even if you included the orchard, and he was determined to hold on to it. My grandma liked to go to concerts and the plays, but he would have none of it. Wouldn’t take a holiday. And was suspicious of anyone who appeared on his land. Particularly someone with strange equipment, like Mr Watkins. I expect you can guess what that was, Jane.’

  ‘Didn’t he sometimes use, like, surveying tools?’

  ‘Surveying tools?’ Mrs Kingsley laughed. ‘Good heavens, he wouldn’t have got as far as the gate. No, his camera … that was enough. Aunt Margaret, who would have been a very small child at the time, thought she remembered some of this, but I suppose the details were filled in for her later. As she described it, Mr Watkins stood for a while at the field gate then walked the length of the meadow to the other gate, near the foot of Cole Hill, and then he came back, and he said, “Mr Probert, would you permit me to take some photographs?”’

  ‘I suppose his camera was … pretty big.’

  ‘And on a tripod. In those days, there weren’t that many cameras in Herefordshire. Having your photo taken was a big occasion. Almost ceremonial. It was a matter of taking your place in history and you had to look your very best. And, of course, that field didn’t. Despite all Grandad’s efforts, it was still poorly drained and there’d been floods, and so Grandad says “No, absolutely not.” Because it would be a permanent reflection on him, you see, the state of that field, and he was a very proud man.’

  Mrs Kingsley held out a faded
sepia photograph of a couple standing in front of a fairly run-down-looking cottage. The man wore a tie and a waistcoat and a bowler hat, and he wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Well, Mr Watkins tried his best to explain that the field was very important, archaeologically, and he wanted to include it in a book … and of course this made things worse. A book! The state of that field preserved for all eternity, to be sniggered over by farmers all over the county. My grandad took what he believed to be the only reasonable action open to him and respectfully ordered Mr Watkins to leave his property at once. Mr Watkins appealed to him to think again and said he would call the next time he was passing. And he did call again, but in the meantime my grandad had been talking to some other councillor who told him not to worry as Mr Watkins’s ideas were nonsense.’

  ‘Nothing changes, does it?’ Jane said bitterly.

  ‘Mr Watkins said please could he just take some photographs if he promised they wouldn’t be used in his book or published in any way at all. Just as evidence of what was. But Farmer Probert, I’m afraid, refused to believe him. He couldn’t get his head round the idea of just taking a photograph and not doing anything with it. He didn’t think Mr Watkins would be so wasteful of an expensive plate, and he turned the poor man away again. Of course, my grandma was deeply embarassed by now. She was, as I say, quite a refined lady, with her books and her wind-up gramophone.’

  ‘Not many folks yereabouts had a wind-up gramophone back then,’ Gomer said.

  ‘Definitely not, Mr Parry. And, do you know, I think it was that gramophone that saved the day.’

  Mrs Kingsley rose and went over to a sideboard under a framed colour photo of some children and a horse.

  ‘I’ve done quite a lot of research on all this since it came into my possession. As you’ll see, it’s our family’s claim to fame. Our small place in history.’

  Gomer looked at her shrewdly.

  ‘Wouldn’t reckon Gerry Murray be all that interested in hist’ry?’

  ‘Nor as hard-up as he led my Aunt Margaret to believe.’ Mrs Kingsley snorted. ‘Bringing his accountant to convince her of the parlous state of his finances.’

  Jane looked at Gomer.

  ‘Brung his accountant, did he, missus?’ Gomer said.

  Mrs Kingsley didn’t reply. She unlocked the top section of the sideboard and took out a stiff parchment envelope.

  ‘Mr Watkins was always very polite but he was … canny, I think the word would be. The next time he came back, it was market day, when he knew my grandad would be in town and my grandma would be on her own. And this time … he had a friend with him.’

  She brought the envelope back to the sofa where Jane and Gomer sat. It had a wing-clip which she undid.

  ‘A titled gentleman,’ she said, ‘of great renown. Great renown, and not only in Hereford. I should imagine my grandma was practically on her knees, when she saw who it was.’

  Jane said, ‘The Prince of Wales?’

  ‘I’ll show you in a minute. But first I’ll tell you the result of it. Mr Watkins offered her a deal. If my grandfather let him take pictures of the meadow, for the record, he’d take some other pictures – of Grandma and the distinguished gentleman, together. And he would give her the pictures to keep.’

  Cool, Jane thought. The man was a true Watkins.

  ‘Well, there was absolutely no way that Hazel Probert was going to turn Mr Watkins away. Certainly not with his distinguished companion, and the promise of the souvenir of a lifetime. And so the photos were taken that very day, while Grandad was at the market.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Jane said.

  ‘And – do you know? – I don’t think they were ever shown to him or even mentioned from that day until the day he died. She kept them secret for the whole of her life. You can imagine her hiding them away in her bottom drawer and only bringing them out when her husband was at market. Sharing her pride with no one.’

  ‘Then how—?’

  ‘And they were only entrusted before she died – the week before she died – to Aunt Margaret, the eldest daughter. Her mother thinking she was the only one who would understand.’

  Mrs Kingsley handed the opened envelope to Jane. Jane looked at her hands to make sure that they were clean.

  ‘Don’t worry, I checked when you came in,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘We’ll have a cup of tea when they’re safely away again.’

  Aware that her breathing had become shallow, Jane carefully slid out the pictures. There were four of them, in cardboard frames, each one protected by tissue paper. She was going to be the first outsider to see original and almost certainly historic photos taken by Alfred Watkins himself. She could almost feel him bending over her, with his pointed beard and his glasses on the end of his nose. She shivered slightly.

  ‘Go on,’ Mrs Kingsley said.

  The first one was a bit faded but, like all Watkins pictures, nice and sharp. Jane saw a woman she guessed to be in early middle age, but could have been younger – hard to tell, the severe way they had their hair in those days. She was dressed in a long skirt and she had a little handbag and a bashful smile. And she was standing…

  … On the ley…

  … The trackway even clearer then than it was now. And this…

  … This was just everything Jane could have wanted: incontestable proof that the great Alfred Watkins had photographed Coleman’s Meadow.

  The picture had been taken from the Cole Hill side, with the steeple of Ledwardine Church soaring above the woman’s head and the head of the man who Jane hadn’t really noticed at first. Quite an ordinary-looking elderly guy. Serious-looking, with a big white moustache, a hairy jacket and a trilby hat.

  Jane thought she might’ve seen him somewhere before but … well, she hadn’t really expected to recognize him, anyway. There were two other pictures of the couple and a third taken from the other side, the old guy on his own pointing towards Cole Hill and he was kind of smiling, and he…

  Hang on…

  ‘Gomer … ?’

  Jane showed the photo to Gomer.

  He scrutinized the picture very carefully, holding it up to his glasses.

  Then he lowered it slowly.

  ‘Bugger me, Janie … that’s ole wassisname, ennit?’

  46

  Black Vapour Trails

  Bliss said it was nothing fancy, this one. Not some ritual-looking killing in a beauty spot that Annie Howe would take away from him for the headlines.

  ‘This is an old-fashioned, down-home, nasty, sordid, backstreet— I woke you up, didn’t I?’

  ‘I’m not in bed,’ Merrily said. ‘I just … go on.’

  ‘Malcolm France. Forty-six years old. Independent security adviser. Know what that means, do we?’

  ‘Minder?’

  ‘Partly. Also a private inquiry agent. Which wasn’t attracting enough business for a full-time occupation, so Mal did everything from following wives, to recommending burglar alarms on commission and guarding the rich or the famous when necessary. It was a living. It’s where a lot of us go when they kick us out.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Frannie. I hadn’t realized he was an ex-colleague. What happened?’

  ‘Not a colleague, no. I knew him, but not well – all that animosity between cops and private eyes, that’s for the story books. We keep in with them now, with an eye to the future. He was found early this afternoon, back of St Owen’s Street. Broad daylight, Merrily. Not a robbery. I hate that kind of thing. Makes me angry. A crime committed with never a thought that they aren’t going to get away with it. We think they were even on view. Two men in white coveralls – familiar sight nowadays, with all the health-and-safety regulations – were seen by a number of witnesses to walk into the building carrying a paint spray. Nobody saw them come out, which suggests that the coveralls were packed away in a case, and the fellers who came out were wearing nice suits.’

  ‘In Hereford?’

  ‘That didn’t use to happen in Hereford, did it?’ Bliss said.

  Me
rrily heard a car pulling into the vicarage drive. The bluebottle was still making hysterical circuits of the window, or maybe it was another bluebottle. She was very tired of people buzzing her and then flying out of range.

  A key turned in the front door. Thank God.

  ‘And did you … explain why you’re ringing me?’

  ‘I said it wasn’t robbery, but we think his laptop had been taken and some disks. No sign of case notes or files lying around the office, anyway. So we got permission from his family to check out his bank accounts. Discovering that, among recent payments, was one from a Ms C.W. Sparke, of Wychehill, Malvern.’

  Merrily’s body jerked; the chair legs scraped the thinning carpet.

  ‘That’s a surprise, then, is it?’ Bliss said.

  ‘What was he doing for her?’

  ‘I don’t know. All we have is a receipt for £250, including exes.’

  ‘Winnie Sparke paid this man £250?’

  ‘Peanuts, Merrily. He’d get more than that for finding a lost dog. Most clients, it runs into thousands. Anyway, there it is. She’s among a dozen or so of his customers we’re checking out. Although it may have nothing do with his current business. However, what do you know about her?’

  ‘She’s a writer. From California, but she’s lived here quite a few years. Divorced.’

  ‘I was thinking more about her links to our friend Mr Loste, actually. She paid for his lawyer and she collected him from Worcester nick. It might be just a coincidence, but it’s interesting.’

  ‘She’s working on a book with Loste. He’s probably very important to her career at this stage.’

  ‘Any indication she might not trust him, might want him checked out?’

  ‘It’s possible, but unlikely. She told me stuff about his origins that she might not have … I don’t know, Frannie, that’s the truth. I mean … Loste? Even you’re thinking Loste? Knifes a man on the Beacon and then … You did say this was a shooting?’

  ‘Head and chest. Pistol. Looks like the gun got completely emptied into him – more enthusiastic than efficient.’

  ‘I saw Loste go into the church, late morning. That rule him out?’