by Phil Rickman
‘Mmm. And Siân Callaghan-Clarke.’
‘Who?’
‘Colleague of mine.’
Callaghan-Clarke on DCI Annie Howe, the night of the Deliverance Panel: I get on very well with her.
‘Why paranoid, Merrily?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You said you were probably being paranoid.’
‘Oh, it… it’s just that Nigel Saltash has been inflicted on me as a psychiatric consultant.’
‘He probably volunteered when he saw your picture.’
‘Do you have a reason to say that, or…?’
‘Hmm.’ Bliss did a wry smile. ‘If he is a mate of the Ice Maiden’s, forget I spoke. Have a look at this one.’
i want to go away. want US to go away where they cant get at us do you know what im saying. im sick of *guys* im sick of *going to london* in nicked cars only it always turns out to be Worcester and im sick of loading the poxy dishwasher. i want to GOOOOOO AWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY FOR GOOD!!!!
Merrily went back to some of the earlier e-mails about Jemima not wanting to go to school any more, but not wanting a job either. Jemima professing to despise girls who stuck with one boy longer than a few weeks — suggesting that boys usually dumped her within that time-span.
‘Doesn’t want to live at home, but she thinks it must be crap to have a place of your own and have to clean it. So… she’s overweight and has a reputation as an easy lay because she must be desperate. Self-esteem at rock bottom. Bored with going out with blokes who nick cars because there’s nowhere worth driving to in them. Was she ever diagnosed as clinically depressed?’
‘Parents say not.’
‘Drugs?’
‘In normal life… possibly. Hard to say. When she died, however— This is well off the record, right?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘The window in the ruins we’re fairly sure she went out of is not actually that high up. Certainly not compared with the top of the tower that Robbie Walsh came off. You can’t get to the top of Jemmie’s tower without a ladder — it’s hollow. So you’re going out of one of the reachable windows — quite a drop the other side, and it could kill you, but it’s not a foregone conclusion. Unless, that is, you’ve already shot yourself full of enough heroin to make Keith Richards play the wrong chords.’
Merrily looked up, blinking.
‘She shot up before she jumped,’ Bliss said. ‘Threw the syringe out the window first, it looks like. SOCO found it underneath a yew tree, with her mobile a few feet away, both some distance from the body. PM this afternoon showed cardiac arrest.’
‘Is that—?’
‘Common enough, with an inexperienced user. More often than you’d think, the first fix is the last. Sometimes they don’t even have time to take the needle out before they’ve gone. Dr Grace thinks she might’ve been dead before she hit the ground, but we’ll never know that.’
‘God.’
‘So for all the drama, it’s a sad little death, Merrily. Mobile shows she tried to call her mate, Sam, before she did it. See, we know she wouldn’t have had any problem at all getting the stuff. A useful by-product of getting into Jemmie’s computer was it led us directly to a dealer we didn’t even know about in Ledbury. She’d had Es and dope from the same guy. So delightfully indiscreet, these kiddies.’
Ledbury: pleasant, picturesque old place at the foot of the Malverns. You didn’t think of it happening there. But then, it happened more or less everywhere now.
‘And some links to bigger players in Hereford,’ Bliss said. ‘For all she never spoke to her parents, she’s chatting away to us, from the other side of the grave. Talking of which…’ Bliss spread out some typescript. ‘Read this.’
with a plastic bag u can tie it round your neck but its not really necessary and it will take u much longer to get it off if u change your mind!!! Wot is good about plastic bags is that u dont look really horrible when they find you like with some methods of suffocation cos your eyes dont come out all bloody.
‘You can also read about the delights of hanging yourself,’ Bliss said.
‘This is an Internet chat-room, right?’
‘A specialist suicide chat-room. Adults advising unhappy kids on how to top themselves. Can’t describe what I’d like to do to these bastards with a few plastic bags, but then a few of us Catholics still think suicide’s a sin.’
‘Did Jemmie Pegler join in the discussions in the suicide chat-rooms?’
‘Just eavesdropped, I think. Lurking, as they say. Been doing it, on and off, for weeks, it looks like. Downloaded quite a lot. So we know she’d been dwelling on the possibility of suicide for quite a while.’
‘But no clues as to why she chose this method, this place? No mention of Robbie Walsh? Or Ludlow Castle?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You see, the point is that Robbie fell from the big tower, the Norman keep. No history to that. But Jemima wasn’t the first to go off the Hanging Tower.’
‘Tell me,’ Bliss said.
Merrily told him about Marion.
‘Long time ago, that.’ Bliss reached down to his briefcase.
‘You’ve already indicated this particular tower isn’t best suited to suicide, yet Jemima was determined to go that way. Did she use all that heroin to give her courage, or was it to make sure she died if the fall wasn’t enough?’
‘Interesting question,’ Bliss said.
‘How about Robbie Walsh — did he have a computer?’
‘Apparently not. Karen checked this afternoon.’
‘You’re having second thoughts about Robbie Walsh because of this?’
‘You got me thinking,’ Bliss said. ‘However, according to his mother, he wasn’t the computer type. An old-fashioned reader. Certainly enough books around the place, according to Karen. History books. No personal CD collection, either. Very old-fashioned little lad. An old-fashioned family, the Mumfords. Well, most of them.’ Bliss laid a folder on the pile in front of Merrily. ‘There you go. All ends tied?’
It contained a colour printout from a website.
LUDLOW GHOSTOURS
‘You knew,’ Merrily said.
‘Just thought I’d see if you did. It’s all there. Marion of the Heath. For a small fee, this feller will even guide you to the spot.’
‘She’d downloaded it.’
‘And more besides. Plan of the castle. She knew exactly where she was going and what she was gonna do when she got there.’
‘Anything else you haven’t told me because you wanted to see if I knew it already?’
Bliss smiled.
Before leaving Hereford, Merrily had called Mumford on his mobile, from the car, sitting in the Gaol Street car park with the rain beginning.
‘Aye,’ Mumford said wearily. ‘I know.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Pointless me asking why you felt you had to pass yourself off as still a copper.’
There was silence. She thought she’d lost the signal. The rain pooled in a dent on the Volvo’s bonnet; when Mumford’s voice came back it sounded dried-up, like a ditch in summer.
‘Can’t talk to people. Simple as that. Never could. Can’t do small talk. Walk into a shop, I can just about ask for what I wanner buy. What do I say? “I’m Robbie Walsh’s uncle and I’m feeling guilty as hell and please can you help me?” Can’t do it. Never could.’
In the same way he could only call her Mrs Watkins. In the same way he’d addressed Gerald Osman as ‘sir’, but not out of politeness. His whole identity had been written on his warrant card.
‘What did Bliss say?’ Mumford asked.
‘He said you should stay out of Ludlow. He was probably hyping it up a little.’
‘Mabbe not.’
Merrily sighed. ‘OK, here’s what else I found out.’
She told him about Jemmie Pegler’s computer and the suicide chat-rooms. Emphasizing that, although his name had appeared briefly on the chat pages, the
re had been no obvious personal connection with Robbie Walsh. Hopefully, this would keep Mumford out of Ledbury.
‘Computer, eh?’ He let out a slow hiss. ‘Never thought. Damn.’
‘Bliss said Robbie didn’t have a computer.’
‘Of course he had a computer. His grandparents bought it for him. Had me collect it from PC World. Packard Bell.’
‘Well, he hadn’t got it any more, Andy.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Mumford said.
Driving home, with the rain starting up, Merrily wondered how much was actually known about Marion de la Bruyère, ‘a lady of the castle’. You thought of flowing robes, one of those funnel-shaped headdresses, with a ribbon.
But Bernie Dunmore had been right. You were probably talking about a child. Those precious teenage years were also very much bypassed in the Middle Ages; by Jane’s age you could be a mother of three. Marion was probably about fifteen herself when she died, or even younger. Young enough, certainly, to be fooled by a smart operator she thought was in love with her.
Jemmie Pegler, staving off chronic emotional starvation, maybe profound loneliness, had been in very much the right mental state to imagine that Marion, disaffected, betrayed — a kindred spirit — would be holding her hand as she jumped.
Merrily said to Jane, ‘What sort of state do you imagine someone would have to be in for the idea of suicide to become appealing… exciting?’
‘Look,’ Jane said. ‘Suicide chat-rooms — my basic feeling is that most people who go into suicide chat-rooms are never going to top themselves. It’s just titillation. Like running across railway lines, bungee-jumping. Real suicide, that’s when you just no longer want to be alive. When it seems like there’s absolutely nothing worth hanging on to. You don’t care how you do it, do you? As long as it works.’
‘Jemmie Pegler went through with it. In a way that suggests she cared very much how it was done.’
‘Yeah, that’s weird. And what about Robbie Walsh?’
‘Possibly killing himself? Mmm. I think we’re all starting to have second thoughts about poor Robbie.’
‘Well, thanks, anyway,’ Jane said.
‘For what?’
‘For not saying, “Look, flower, if there was ever a deep source of depression in your life, I hope you wouldn’t hesitate to—” That’s the phone.’
Merrily pointed a menacing finger. ‘Don’t go away.’
By the time she got to the scullery, the answering machine had caught the call — as was intended, to ambush the people who made a point of phoning at night because it was cheaper, to bend your ear for an hour on some parish issue of awesome triviality.
‘Mrs Watkins, if you’re there—’
She sighed and picked up, switching on the anglepoise lamp.
‘Andy.’
‘I’m at my sister’s. Robbie’s mother?’
‘Andy, do you think maybe you need to relax, just a little?’
‘I got Robbie’s computer.’
‘Oh.’
‘Thought you might wanner know. When my sister told Karen the boy hadn’t got a computer, she lied, nat’rally. Which Karen would’ve guessed, of course, but she was hardly in a situation to push it.’
‘I’m sorry — why would your sister lie?’
‘Two reasons. One, they was worried about what he might have on there that p’raps a good, caring parent ought to have known about. Two, they thought they could sell it for a couple of hundred. Taking it to a car-boot sale, along with the rest of his stuff. ’Course, she also tried to tell me they’d already got rid of it, but I remembered the lock-ups.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Garages — a number of which don’t contain cars but serve as storage for various items that residents of the Plascarreg might not want found inside their houses. Sometimes using each other’s garages — or the garage of some harmless old lady with no car — to confuse the issue.’
‘The Plascarreg. Of course. Are you bringing the computer out?’
There was a pause. ‘I could spell this out, but you’re an intelligent woman. My sister’s here on her own. The boyfriend’s down the pub. I got till he comes back to check this over. Not that he scares me, but if I can get away without a scene, that’s best. So I’m gonner go over the hard disk on site, as it were.’
Merrily looked up at the wall clock: 9.05 p.m. Over the phone, she could hear vehicles revving, the tinny sound of hard rain splattering a car roof.
‘Would it help if I came over?’
‘Couldn’t ask that, Mrs Watkins. Not the Plascarreg.’
‘This is Hereford, Andy, not Brixton. What’s the number of the flat?’
‘One thirty-seven.’
‘OK.’ She wrote it down.
‘I can’t ask you to do this,’ Mumford said. ‘Not at night.’
‘You didn’t ask. I’m electing to come. I’m interested.’
‘You’re stupid,’ Jane said. ‘You can’t see what he’s doing to you.’
Merrily standing in the hall, pulling on her coat, Jane in the kitchen doorway, doing the slow head-shake that conveyed superior knowledge.
‘Make this very quick,’ Merrily said.
‘OK. Lol will doubtless confirm the psychology at a future time, but essentially Mumford is a subordinate, officer, right? He never rose beyond sergeant… because he was totally reliable but never had the spark of inspiration that make guys like Bliss — and don’t you ever dare tell Bliss I said this — into a bit of a star.’
‘No worries there.’ Merrily unbolted the front door. ‘Bliss would not believe you’d ever said that.’
‘And now Mumford’s lost Bliss, right?’ Jane came into the hall. ‘He’s floundering. He’s out of his depth. He can’t make decisions. He can’t function without a governor. And so, like, whether he realizes this or not, he’s put you into that essential role…’
‘Jane, that’s—’
‘It’s spot on, vicar, I’m telling you.’
Merrily stepped outside, then turned back. ‘Would you actually like to help?’
Jane’s eyes half-closed. ‘What?’
‘Go on the Net and see if you can find any links between Ludlow and suicide sites and, erm… anything else.’
Jane looked surprised. ‘Yeah, OK.’
‘Thank you, flower.’
‘Any time. I’ll, er… I’ll see you later, then… guv.’
17
Outcast
In the city the rain had stopped, leaving the roads blurred and gleaming, the white-lit restaurant complex in Left Bank Village like an ice palace beside the River Wye, as Merrily drove across Greyfriars Bridge.
This was tourist Hereford, only seven minutes’ drive away from the Plascarreg Estate, where no tourists went except by mistake.
Plascarreg: Welsh for place of the rocks. If what she’d read some months ago in the Hereford Times was still valid, the only rocks here now were crack-cocaine. Plascarreg was flat-pack brick and concrete housing blocks just off the road between Belmont and the Barnchurch Trading Estate, its windowless backs hunched against the west wind and the city. Half-lit in sour sodium, it looked like a vague idea half-thought-out.
Merrily drove in slowly, on full beam. The derelict land opposite had been scheduled for an extension of the Barnchurch site, suspended through lack of investment or perhaps because someone thought derelict land reflected the Plascarreg ethos better than fields.
The second block was three storeys high: flats behind covered walkways. There was a parking area crammed with vehicles, with just one space free if you put two wheels on the kerb. She reversed in, next to an abandoned van with a stack of crumbling bricks under one rear wheel-arch. It would have been stupid to tell herself she wasn’t feeling vulnerable here, but when you’d started out as a curate in a particular area of Merseyside it wasn’t exactly a fear of the unknown.
Mumford hadn’t said whether his sister’s flat was on the ground floor or if there was a stairwell involved. Nobody liked
stairwells at night. She started walking along the edge of the roadway, looking up at dull lights behind tight-drawn curtains, edging round puddles, hands in the pockets of her waxed jacket that was hanging open. The air was damp and chilled and sharp, and there seemed to be nobody—
‘Mrs Watkins.’
‘Andy…?’
Moving softly in the shadows, and it was all shadows here, Mumford took her elbow.
‘Should’ve told you on the phone, we en’t going to the flat. It’s just over yere.’
He led her to a low concrete block, separate from the flats: garages, with up-and-over metal doors. Stopping outside one with a thin rim of yellow light around it, pulling up the door with a clang that echoed like machinery in a quarry. The light came from a caged circular ceiling lamp, reflected in an oil-pool on the concrete floor where a car would have been.
‘You better make this bloody quick, Andy.’ A woman moved out of the shadows and pushed in front of Mumford. ‘And remember, you don’t take nothing.’
She was about Merrily’s age, maybe a bit older, with Mumford’s small features surrounded by a lot of dark hair. Her red leather coat was open, showing that she was pregnant.
‘My sister, Angela,’ Mumford said. ‘This is Mrs Watkins.’
‘Merrily.’
‘Good job you didn’t come in your dog collar,’ Angela said. ‘They eat priests on this estate.’
‘They wouldn’t enjoy me,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m more chewy than I look.’
Angela gave her a glance, unsmiling. So maybe this wasn’t the time to offer condolences.
‘Remember what I said,’ Angela said to Mumford. ‘You don’t take nothing away.’ She tossed him a key on a chain. ‘You got half an hour, no more. Lock up when you’ve finished, key through the letter box.’
Angela walked out without looking back. Mumford tried to pull down the door from the inside but the handle was missing.
‘I would say she’s changed.’ He left a gap under the door, so they could get out again. ‘But she en’t.’
At the far end of the garage, the computer sat on a workbench, already switched on, casting a somehow baleful blue light over stacks of cardboard boxes. Mumford nodded at the boxes.
