by Phil Rickman
‘When you mentioned the Hereford boys … I don’t know whether you heard this on the news. A former SAS man’s been shot. In Hereford.’
Spicer kept on looking over the gate, but he’d gone still.
‘A security consultant,’ Merrily said.
‘Do you know his name?’
‘Malcolm France.’
He went on watching the bright clouds.
‘Bliss – the detective I know – called me about it. His records had been stolen, but they found out from the bank that he’d once been paid two hundred and fifty pounds. By Winnie Sparke. Syd…’
He was standing so still you’d swear he wasn’t breathing.
‘Just tell me,’ Merrily said.
‘My mate. We were working together. Until a few seconds ago, I thought we still were.’
‘Oh God, I’m—’
Syd Spicer held up his palms for silence. ‘
I’ll give you the basics. Winnie’s convinced she’s going to be the next Mrs Devereaux and all her money problems are over. When he dumps her, she starts obsessing over whether there’s someone else. Kind of woman she is. Life on the scrap heap, not for Winnie. Comes to bits on my kitchen table. I tell her there’s this mate of mine could check him out. She doesn’t have much money to spare, and there’re things I want to know, too. It was expedient. I put up some of the fee. On the side. Cash in hand.’
‘I should’ve told you about him ages ago, but it … circumstances intervened.’
‘How were you to know?’
‘I did know. I knew Winnie had been his client.’
‘Yeah, well, another thing you should know,’ Syd said. ‘He was the guy I rang. Back at Wychehill, soon as I saw the body. I left a half-coded message. I told him to go to the police with everything he knew. Mal always checked his messages very assiduously every hour. I was about to call him back, bring him up to date. He has … had police contacts and credibility.’
Merrily felt light-headed. Now nobody in the police could know they were here. She watched Syd Spicer opening the gate.
‘He was a bloody good guy. Went through the first Gulf War. Did Bosnia.’
Syd kicked the five-barred gate, hard, once, until it jammed against the long grass and quivered.
‘We’re on our own,’ he said.
‘And your training says go back, phone for help.’
‘Except your bloke’s…’
‘Yes, he is.’
Lol didn’t go far. How could he? Where was he supposed to go?
Was he going to leave a damaged man to wait, like some half-demented hermit in the rocks, for God?
Elgar had been right, it was a kind of blasphemy, or at least arrogance. Not really Tim Loste’s arrogance; he was the tool of someone’s else’s ambition.
All he was going to face tonight was the cold, unredemptive shining of his own madness. His own induced madness.
And yet…
Lol walked away over the rise and followed a slow arc back towards the open barn, went down on his knees as he approached it, patting the grass in search of his phone.
And yet he understood. He understood the desperation of Elgar who had done it before, made art, and was afraid – as you always were, every time – that you were never going to be able to do it again, that your best had gone.
And he knew that what Elgar was drawing from the landscape was not – like his contemporary, Vaughan Williams – inspiration from an English rural tradition, because Elgar’s style was influenced more by German music … Wagner.
No, this was about pure, electrical energy. Energy was what Elgar, with his daily walking and his fifty-mile bike rides, was all about. What he was tapping from the countryside was its life-force.
The trees are singing my music or am I singing theirs?
What happened when the trees stopped singing? Or, in Loste’s case, never had sung much. How far would you go?
Lol looked into the sky where strange white lights were kindling pale sparks in the springing antennae of the ancient oak. He imagined Tim Loste huddled like a goblin into its bole.
The difference was that Elgar had been a natural. He didn’t need photo blow-ups or three choirs singing Praise to the Holiest at the stroke of midnight or whatever kind of Golden Dawn ceremonial magic they were planning. He didn’t need a structure.
This was wrong. Lol, on all fours, felt his heart beating and discovered one hand was embedded in a patch of nettles.
It came out stinging like hell and holding the mobile phone.
Still switched on, and it still had battery life. Lol let out a long breath, stumbled to his feet and took it into the barn. Crouching in the hay, he found three messages, the last of which ended, ‘… Winnie murdered. Keep away from it. I love you.’
He’d started to call her back when he heard a voice.
Tim’s voice, conversational. If he was talking to God, it hadn’t taken long to break the ice.
Lol moved out of the barn, up the rise. He saw Tim, with roots humped around him like serpents and, across his knees, the leather-bound book open to the score of Mr Phoebus and the Whiteleafed Oak.
The man sitting next to him handed him a hip flask and Tim drank.
60
Into the Pit
Merrily watched Preston Devereaux screw the top back on his hip flask and stow it inside his dark green overalls. She slipped back behind Syd Spicer, with no idea how to play this.
Looking at Lol coming up the rise and willing him not to move, not to speak. Looking across at Syd and realizing he had no idea how to react either.
Seeing Preston Devereaux coming slowly to his feet among the roots of the sacred oak. Tim Loste huddling into the tree.
Nobody spoke. Syd was watching Devereaux. The vapour trail of a plane you couldn’t hear was like a chalk scribble on the shiny sky.
It struck Merrily the chances were that none of them could be entirely sure what the others were doing here or how much each of them knew.
In which case, go for it.
She walked up to the base of the tree, put out a hand.
‘Mr Loste? My name’s Merrily. I’ve been trying to talk to you for days.’
Relief was amazing. At first it weakened you, and then it flung you back into life with an unexpected strength and a vividly heightened sense of reality. Suddenly, there was nothing you couldn’t handle.
Which was probably dangerous, but what the hell?
Tim Loste was on his feet now, his back to the bole of the oak. His hand felt like soft cheese.
Merrily glanced at Lol, gave him a half-smile, her eyebrows slightly raised, and then turned back to Tim.
He had Winnie’s blood all over him. She wondered if he’d even noticed it. Without Syd, the chances of him talking his way out of this one would have been remote. Annie Howe would have him charged by daybreak and a press release put out.
Merrily wondered how long the effects of Rohypnol lasted.
Wondered what was in Preston Devereaux’s hip flask.
How much of it Tim had drunk.
‘I’m sorry we had to meet like this, Mr Loste, but we heard you were coming to Whiteleafed Oak and Syd very kindly offered to show me the way.’ She looked up at Devereaux. ‘Of course, we didn’t expect…’
‘I like to walk,’ Devereaux said slowly, ‘when the tourists have gone home. Don’t get many nights like this, where you can see for miles.’
‘Syd said it’s … what did you call it?’
‘Noctilucence,’ Syd said. ‘Happens more often in … other countries I’ve spent time in.’
‘Quite an intimate place, really, the Malverns.’ Merrily looked at Lol. ‘I’d imagine it’s hard to go anywhere without running into people you know. Sorry, you are … ?’
‘Dan,’ Lol said. ‘I’m in Tim’s choir.’
Merrily nodded, chanced her arm again.
‘We thought Winnie might be here. Didn’t meet her on the way.’
‘We haven’t seen her,’ Lol said
.
‘On your own, Preston?’ Syd walked across and stood with his back to the tree. ‘Only thought I saw one of the boys. Possibly Louis.’
He hadn’t, had he?
‘Yes, I’m on my own tonight, Syd. Nice to get away for a while.’
Merrily’s relief twisted into tension as she moved close to Lol.
‘Well,’ Devereaux said. ‘If you’ve come all this way to talk to Tim, Merrily, I should leave you to it. I don’t know what the subject of your discussion’s going to be, but if it’s what I think it is … well, you know my views. I’ll say goodnight to you.’
He walked away, Merrily whispering to Lol, ‘Did you get my—?’
‘Just.’
‘Does Loste know about Winnie?’
‘No.’
‘What’s he doing here on his own?’
‘Long story. Basically, he’s come to expose himself to the blinding light of God. Like Gerontius. Take me away.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, ’night, Preston,’ Syd called out. ‘Careful of the Gullet.’
Preston Devereaux walked no more than forty paces before he stopped and shrugged and turned back.
Four of them sitting on the ridged and knobbly earth at the edge of the sacrificial pit, like some surreal midnight picnic party. Tim Loste hadn’t moved from the oak. Syd Spicer was hunched between Devereaux and Merrily, his legs overhanging the hollow as if he was conducting a confirmation class at the front of his church.
Careful of the Gullet.
He’d wanted this confrontation. Some payback for all those weeks without his family. Or something. Merrily was furious and anxious. If this was an example of the benefits of training, the bastard hadn’t left the Regiment a day too soon.
‘I suppose we’re people who know each other, mostly,’ Syd said. ‘And what we are.’
Preston Devereaux had his cap tilted over his eyes. Reluctant returned exile, begetter of murderers.
‘You, for instance, are such a clever man, Preston. With such stupid sons.’
Devereaux didn’t look at him.
‘Should’ve stopped when you were ahead. All you needed was to sit tight and do nothing.’
Devereaux slipped him a look.
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ Syd said. ‘That’s exactly what you were doing. Nothing been shifted through Old Wychehill for quite a while, or Mal would’ve known. You should’ve ignored Wicklow, too. Somebody else would’ve had him sooner or later. Maybe you were ignoring him. But not Louis … Louis’s a real hard man. Louis has to act.’
Merrily sat with goose bumps forming on her folded arms, unsure of the sense of this. Fears over Lol had blocked all meaningful consideration of what might be happening, the phrase outrage crime covering all.
‘Family. You always reckoned it was a curse.’ Syd turned to Merrily. ‘The boy Louis likes to show off. Show how inventive he is. For a long time, I was thinking, I wonder if Preston knows. Do I have a word? But sometimes God saves us from ourselves. You noticed that?’
Preston Devereaux said, irritably, ‘All the conversations we’ve had, Syd, you never brought God into it, not once. This is not a good time to start.’
‘Fair enough. To answer your earlier question, Merrily, Winnie gave Mal two hundred and fifty quid, up front, to find out if Preston was seeing another woman – Winnie, against everything she stood for, being crazy about Preston. On a whim, I bunged Mal a quiet grand to extend the inquiry.’
‘Into—?’
‘Not that he wouldn’t’ve done it anyway, purely out of interest. Maybe a bit bored with the work he was getting. This was the real thing again. We sat up late one night at the rectory and planned it like an operation – the Hereford boys ride again. Winnie was Mal’s cover story, if they rumbled him. He liked that. We both liked it, I’m afraid.’
‘Am I supposed to know who you’re talking about?’ Devereaux sounding bored.
‘Oh, I’m very upset about Mal, Preston, and – God help me – very angry. My guess is it was someone came in from Wales rather than Louis, but that changes nothing. It still all comes back to Old Wychehill.’
Merrily coughed. ‘I’m not…’ Badly wanting a cigarette. ‘Not really getting this.’
‘Diversification, Merrily. Preston decided to follow the government’s advice to the letter. Government helps destroy the basis of traditional agriculture, farmers complain, government says, Use your heads, be adventurous … diversify. Preston Devereaux, a deeply embittered man, full of hatred – some of it justified, fair play – says, Thank you for the advice, I’ll do just that.’
‘Putting words into my mouth, Syd.’
Merrily realizing, even as Devereaux spoke, that there was no need to.
And we turned it around, by God we did, in spite of the shiny-arsed civil servants and the scum from Brussels.
She gazed into the pit. Dear God.
61
Trying to be a Priest
‘Mal tailed Preston day after day,’ Syd Spicer said. ‘Into Worcester, Gloucester and Cheltenham, parts of Birmingham. Finally, down towards Tregaron, near where the old acid factory was, back in the 1970s. The only deals Preston cuts in Wychehill at the moment are with people who come to stay in his holiday apartments, but I’m guessing that in the early days it was buzzing.’
Preston Devereaux slid his hand into a pocket of his overall. Syd moved closer to him. Devereaux brought out a packet of cigarettes, held it up. Syd nodded.
‘But Preston’s still got to be directing the business, else why would he be making the visits? Sometimes, he goes alone to Worcester or Cheltenham, sometimes it’s him and Louis. Mal had to lie a bit to Winnie, because occasionally they’d drop into clubs and massage parlours as well – sampling the pleasures of the cities they were poisoning. But mostly it was private houses, or the offices of an independent cattle-feed dealer, or a couple of family-owned abattoirs. The service industries.’
‘Victims of Blair’s slow demolition of England’s oldest industry,’ Devereaux said.
Merrily shifted on the baked earth, still resisting the urge to smoke.
‘How long since Mal France told you all this, Syd?’
‘Over a period. Up to last night, on his way back from the West Wales coast. Had to leave in a hurry to lose someone on a motorbike. Seems to be a string across the border counties and down through Mid-Wales. Couple of coastal landowners. Some of it, mainly smack, comes in that way, all courtesy of selected tight-lipped farmers. And no profession has tighter lips than farming. Inbred silence, inbred resentment. Watertight. Supplemented, in this case, by people who lost jobs after the hunting ban. A feudal thing, really. Old feudal instincts. Almost – God forbid – a crusade.’
Devereaux lit a cigarette. Syd moved away from the smoke.
‘Not quite sure how long it’s been going on, maybe two years, maybe four. It only starts to make serious sense when you look back to Preston’s formative years. His university years.’
‘Oxford?’ Merrily said. ‘Balliol?’
‘In the 1960s. Wasn’t that guy, the Welsh guy, Mr Nice … ?’
‘Howard Marks?’
‘That’s him. World-class dope dealer. Living legend in his field. And, as it happens, a student at Balliol College in the 1960s. You knew him, Preston?’
‘Before my time.’
‘Not that much before, by my reckoning. Maybe you just had some of the same contacts – I’m guessing here, you understand, I’m just a simple cleric. But where Mr Marks stuck with dope – marijuana-based goods…’
‘Evangelical, with him,’ Merrily remembered.
‘Yeah, a real calling. So he’s always maintained. The fact that he also made a few fortunes before he was nicked and banged up in the States … Preston, it’s different. Different background altogether. And different attitude. Fuelled by this self-righteous, blind resentment. Powerful. It’s in his Norman blood. Blood of the Vikings.’
Devereaux smiled. Merrily saw Lol stand up and wa
nder over to the oak tree.
‘Mal reckoned it probably wasn’t as difficult as you might think,’ Syd said. ‘Just a question of renewing old student contacts and making connections with new ones. Cultures have changed, of course. Would’ve taken patience at first, convincing the sources. But when they know you’re a safe pair of hands, and that you mean it – that’s the important thing. Showing them that just because you come from money, that doesn’t mean you’re soft.’
Merrily said, ‘Wicklow … ?’
‘Would reverberate nicely. But the way it was done … stupid. Attention-grabbing. But, like I say, Louis’s immature. He thinks it’s hugely clever. The sacrificial stone.’
‘He sent a text about human sacrifice to Raji Khan. From Elgar’s Caractacus. Whether that was intended to point to Tim…’
‘Whatever, it came off. When you’re arrogant and cocksure and on a high, things often do come off. For a while. But it’s clever-clever and so immature. Preston knows that. Anybody in their right mind, if it was really necessary to get rid of Wicklow, they’d do it the way someone got rid of that guy in Pershore … forget his name…’
‘Chris Smith. Which the police think was Wicklow. Smith worked in an abattoir.’
‘Ah. One of your boys, Preston?’
Devereaux said nothing. Not once had he admitted to anything specific.
‘Farms, abattoirs, feed merchants. Little crack labs, some of them. The stuff moved in cattle transporters, feed trucks. The kind of country-road vehicles the police were never going to search in a million years. Shambolic but also very neat. I believe we might also be looking at secret compartments in the SUVs and people-carriers of the holidaymakers coming to stay in Preston’s luxury units. Bet you’d find some of those holidaymakers had only just been on holiday. Some to Spain, some to less-favoured resorts like … which is it these days, Rotterdam?’
‘Be more than happy,’ Devereaux said, ‘for the police to search all my buildings. I’d challenge them to find a trace of anything.’
‘Lying fallow at the moment, are we, Preston? Movable feast, innit? What – a dozen farms? More? Whichever way you look at it, this has to be the most successful farmers’ cooperative since the first Iron Age village.’
