by Phil Rickman
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Ted said, ‘because when you add up the cost of extra lighting…’
He dried up, realizing – lips twisted in annoyance – that his niece, the vicar, was taking the piss. His face went a deep and petulant red. ‘I very much hope,’ he said, ‘that you aren’t going to backtrack on this. We do need the income.’
Backtrack? She didn’t recall ever agreeing. ‘Well…’ She carefully re-erected the card table in the middle of the small, drab room and placed the black bin sack on it. ‘Maybe we can now afford to postpone the decision for a while.’
She was still dreading telling him about the money. Obviously, they’d have to put it out that there’d been an anonymous donation, without necessarily revealing how it had arrived. The gossip, anyway, would be considerable.
Ted frowned. ‘I admit the mobile-phone mast would bring in a regular income, but…’
‘You haven’t mentioned that in a while.’
‘No, I… to be honest, I’ve been a trifle perturbed by what I’ve been reading about possible health risks. Particularly to, ah, elderly people, it seems. Nothing proven, but it might be wise to, ah…’
‘I see.’
‘Sorry to toss a spanner in the works.’ He stood with his back to the door, hands across his belly, the last man in Ledwardine habitually to wear a Paisley cravat down the front of his Viyella.
‘No, that’s… very public-spirited of you, Ted,’ Merrily said. ‘Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. Something’s happened.’
He peered at her. ‘Why are you all dressed up?’
‘Because I’m leaving for Barbados tonight,’ Merrily said. ‘I’ve come into money.’
She emptied the contents of the bin liner on to the table.
Ted picked up one of the bundles of notes and then moved rapidly to the door and flung on all the lights.
‘Bloody hell!’ he said.
Lol saw them bringing Lodge out, couldn’t easily miss him. In direct contrast to the dark blue uniforms on either side, he was wearing orange overalls, probably police-issue while they ran tests on his clothes. His head hung, so you couldn’t see his face, and his hands were cuffed in front of him. He let the two coppers move him around in the greying light, like a bendy doll.
A mist-blurred, listless moon was skulking in the trees. The wind brushed fallen leaves into heaps against the closed doors of Roddy’s garage, and the police clustered in front. Nobody was doing much talking, but Lol was aware of an excitement he guessed they wouldn’t want to show – you could hear it in the agitated jostling of the leaves and the tense, metallic thrumming in the overhead power lines.
There were about eight police visible, among them DI Frannie Bliss who Lol had met during the summer – a brief liaison founded on the need to pull Merrily out of a threatening situation. There’d been a degree of self-interest then, but you felt you could trust him, up to a point.
Surprisingly, Bliss came over.
‘Knew the music industry was in a bad way, son, but not this bad.’
Lol nodded gloomily. ‘We’ve got Robbie Williams round the back, unloading the truck.’
‘Yeh, I thought it was.’ Bliss was dressed for action in a nylon hiking jacket, jeans tucked into calf-high cowboy boots.
‘You look happy, though.’ Lol was wary: the police and their prisoner waiting around, the night closing in, and the DI sparing the time to acknowledge the hired labour.
‘Tentatively happy.’ Small teeth flashed briefly. ‘You’re looking a bit knackered yourself, Laurence.’ Bliss pulled leather gloves from his jacket and put them on. ‘I suppose it was the little Reverend got you into this. Relieving Mr Parry’s burden, in his hour of sorrow.’
‘Thought it might help him to have somebody to laugh at.’
‘And how can we ever refuse her, eh? All right, son, listen…’ Bliss led him to the edge of the police tape, voice lowered. ‘Here’s the situation: after what’s been a difficult day, by and large, Mr Lodge has decided to cooperate. But this is’ – he waggled his fingers – ‘funny stuff, you know? Gorra go a bit careful.’ He nodded at the spade. ‘Obviously you’ve mastered the complexities of that, more or less, but what I need to know is, can you, if necessary, operate this little digger of Gomer’s?’
Lol took half a step back, stumbled.
‘Hey, we’re not talking heavy plant,’ Bliss said. ‘This is Tonka toy.’
Lol looked around. He couldn’t see Gomer anywhere, but he could see Roddy Lodge, luminous in his overalls, with a policeman either side and another man, in plain clothes, joining them. A policewoman was handing out plastic cups of tea or coffee from a couple of flasks in the boot of a police car, including one for the prisoner – Roddy clasping the cup like a chalice between his cuffed hands. The reality outside the recording studio – more of it than Lol had counted on.
‘I’m not saying we’re gonna need the digger.’ Bliss tapped the spade. ‘This might well suffice. But if we do need to go a bit deeper, I don’t want Mr Parry within quarrelling distance of Roddy Lodge. Better an inoffensive little artiste than a combustible old bugger with a grudge, this is my view.’
‘And how would you feel,’ Lol said, before he could think, ‘if your nephew’s murder was getting sidelined by a slippery copper on the make?’
Must have been even more tired than he’d figured.
Bliss merely frowned. ‘Suspicious death. His nephew’s suspicious death, Laurence. I apologize for calling you inoffensive.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, that’s over the garden hedge – Dyfed- Powys’s case. I’m not saying there won’t be meaningful discussions with our Welsh colleagues when this present business gets sorted, but right now I want to build on what we know we’ve got. It’s about seizing the moment. Now you run along and ask Mr Parry for the keys of his little digger.’
Lol didn’t move. ‘I thought you’d have real forensic people to do it, now you’ve got something positive.’
‘Never fear – you happen to strike anything softish, I’ll have vanloads of the buggers here before you can scrape the shit off your wellies. I’ve just gorra be quite sure our friend here isn’t being disingenuous.’
‘So where will this be? Where are we going?’
‘Going? We’re not going anywhere.’ Bliss patted Lol on the shoulder and walked with the wind behind him across the crowded forecourt towards the cops guarding the prisoner. ‘Right then, Roddy, my son, let’s be having yer.’
Here? He’d buried one on his own property?
‘DI Bliss!’ The third man with Lodge stepped out, his hands going up protectively as the headlights of one of the police cars sprayed his dark suit. ‘I just want to say, before you—’
Lol saw Bliss quiver. ‘Mr Nye… we’ve had an independent doctor in to check him over, we’ve also had him looked at by an experienced psychiatric nurse, neither of whom thought he was seriously ill or unfit to travel. Now, will you let us get on with our job, please?’
The guy shook his head. He looked young, maybe not too sure of his ground. ‘Inspector, I have to tell you that I’m far from confident that anything Mr Lodge might say under these circumstances can be considered admissible. I think—’
‘I know what you think.’ Bliss stood with his arms by his side, fists tight. ‘And what I think is that Mr Lodge’s mental state has no particular bearing on the situation at this stage. And I’m more interested right now in what he’s got to show us, rather than what he tells us. And if any of this upsets him further, I’m terribly sorry, Mr Nye, but in comparison with the parents of Rochelle Bowen, with whom I spent a very distressing forty-five minutes this afternoon, my sympathies—’
‘Mr Bliss, I repeat that my client is unwell, and I think you could at least – bearing in mind that Mr Lodge hasn’t been charged and he is cooperating fully – remove the handcuffs.’
Bliss threw up his arms. ‘All right, we’ll take off the f— the handcuffs.’ He moved close up to Mr Nye. ‘I should, however, remind your clie
nt that if he at any stage makes a personal decision that his continued presence here is no longer entirely essential, I’ve got police officers posted at the front and the rear and every conceivable exit from these premises. Is that fully understood, Mr Nye?’
‘We wouldn’t expect otherwise, in the circumstances,’ said Mr Nye. ‘Thank you, Inspector.’
Bliss nodded. One of the uniformed policemen bent to remove Lodge’s handcuffs.
‘You believe that?’
Lol turned. Behind him, Gomer was furiously assembling a ciggy, the headlights turning his glasses opaque, like cross-slices of banana.
‘You ask me, en’t nothin’ wrong with that piece of rubbish you couldn’t bloody shake out of him.’ He shoved the new ciggy in his mouth and closed the tin with a snap.
‘Gomer—’
‘You don’t need to explain nothing, boy. Miserable Andy’s spelled it out. Keep Parry out of it. Don’t nobody mention Nev. You go with ’em. I’ll stay yere.’
‘It’s nothing personal,’ Lol said. ‘Just Bliss covering himself against any comebacks in court. If they do find anything and it was you who dug it up, a man with a grudge…’ He sighed; he didn’t want to operate the digger, either, even if he could be sure he knew how to. ‘Nobody’s going anywhere, it seems. Looks like they want to dig here. Maybe we should tell them they can do it themselves.’
‘Not with my bloody gear, they don’t. I’ve lent tools to cops before.’ Gomer pulled a single key on a chain from his overalls. ‘So don’t you let anybody else—’
‘Hang on to it,’ Lol said nervously. ‘It may not come to that.’
They watched Roddy Lodge flexing his arms, rubbing his freed wrists. Lol saw his face properly for the first time, and it was the colour and the texture of paving stone. His eyes seemed sunken, but somehow gleaming back there, like glass, like cat’s eyes in the road.
And then he started slowly shaking his head, a smile forming.
18
Up
JANE SAID, ‘So you’re saying Jenny Driscoll saw an angel.’ She flinched slightly. ‘An actual… with like, wings?’
Merrily stood up, went to switch on the earthenware reading lamp on the wide window sill. It had been clear to her that if she was going to tell the kid about the money then a preliminary account of Mrs Box and the vision of the angel was probably unavoidable.
Besides, this had been, not too long ago, very much Jane’s kind of thing. Up in the apartment, against the Mondrian walls, two bookcases still bulged with pastel-spined paperbacks about contacting nature spirits, working with the elements, finding secret pathways to enlightenment.
Which had bothered Merrily quite a bit at one time; less so now. If, occasionally, it bordered on neo-paganism, it was still spirituality. Better than agnosticism.
Certainly better than the possible onset of atheism.
‘Let’s say a startling brightness formed out of the veins of light on the edge of clouds,’ Merrily said. ‘Resembling in this case, it seems, the Archangel Uriel. This is the lesser-known one usually portrayed with a sword, pointing down. It was very dramatic, Mrs Box says.’
‘And it was pointing at the steeple. Your steeple?’
‘This would be… you remember the huge, spectacular storm one Sunday last spring? Where we were standing here at the window and the whole of the orchard was lit up white, like a snowstorm? Well, Mrs Box parked her car and walked up onto Cole Hill. She was in a… an emotional state.’
‘Evidently,’ Jane said.
Eirion had dropped her off around four before having to go home for his step-grandmother’s eightieth birthday party. Now the day was closing down, the old Aga making its smug Aga noises without putting much heat into the kitchen. Merrily and Jane had mugs of tea for warmth.
The lamp laid a golden mist on the room. The kid had changed into white jeans and a sweater discarded by Merrily as terminally shapeless. It seemed to fit Jane better. She slid forward on her elbows, chin cupped in her hands, gazing into her mother’s eyes, very candid and calmed by something awesome that Merrily was seeing more frequently: a level of understanding that murmured adult.
Merrily’s hand tightened around her mug.
‘OK, just reassure me,’ Jane said, ‘that you don’t believe a word of this bollocks.’
The strengthening night-wind rattled the trees.
‘Bastard!’ Bliss was livid. He stormed over to where Lol and Gomer were standing, out of Lodge’s earshot.
‘Lawyer’s got it right for once, boss.’ Mumford was ambling behind like a pack pony. ‘Bloke’s mental.’
‘Andy, he’s mental when he wants to be.’ Bliss moved up to the barrier tape, clutched it with both hands, failed to snap it. ‘I’m buggered if I’m chauffeuring the crafty bastard back to his cell after this little works’ outing. I’d rather dig the whole site up and make him watch. Put him back in the cuffs.’
‘Look a bit peevish?’ Mumford said.
‘I’m a peevish person.’
‘En’t bein’ helpful n’more, then,’ Gomer said insouciantly through blue smoke.
‘No, he en’t.’ Bliss stared out across the lane into the trees, hands rammed into the pockets of his green and cream hiking jacket. ‘As you may have overheard, Mr Lodge appears to have had a lapse of memory and is now effectively saying he no longer recalls precisely why he brought us here.’
‘Ar.’ Gomer smiled through his ciggy. Relief seeped into Lol’s aching body like warm alcohol. It looked like this could be over before it started.
‘What’s he got here, Andy?’ Bliss said.
‘Boss?’
‘How much ground? Acreage. Roughly. What we looking at?’
‘I’d reckon… say two and a bit acres, all told. That’s including the yard and the bungalow and the triangular piece of land at the bottom with the pylon on it. Oh, and the other side of the main perimeter fence it seems Lodge owns a paddock, and then there’s about one and a half acres surrounding what used to be the Underhowle Baptist chapel. Lodge used to own that, too, but he’s now sold it to the Underhowle Development Committee.’
‘Proper little property speculator,’ Bliss said sourly. ‘We been in there?’
‘The chapel? Empty, boss. The Development Committee’s turning it into a museum for all the Roman finds.’
‘We’ll still put it on the list for the Durex-suits.’
‘He’s just had money to spare and a good accountant,’ Mumford said. ‘Property always makes sense, even derelict property. I bought the field next to us, with an old cowshed.’
‘Yeh, you would.’ Bliss hacked the heel of a cowboy boot into the cinders. ‘Wouldn’t know where to start here on our own, would we? Take days to dig up this lot, and I haven’t got days.’ He turned his back to the tape, looked across at Roddy Lodge standing motionless in his orange overalls. ‘I’m gonna look a right twat when this gets out.’
Lol noticed two kids hanging around at the far end of the tape, one apparently shielding the other who was bending over the tape – probably cutting himself a couple of feet of it as a souvenir.
Gomer cleared his throat, but Frannie Bliss didn’t look at him. A policeman advanced on the two kids, who ran off up the lane towards the village. Then one turned and gave him the finger. It began to rain very lightly.
There was a sigh of resignation from Bliss. ‘Yes, Mr Parry.’
‘Course’ – Gomer spat out the last millimetre of ciggy – ‘if I hadn’t been discharged from my duties, told to take a back seat, like…’
Lol became aware of just how cold it had become, how thin his old army jacket was, and how much night there was stretching ahead.
‘What you got in mind, Gomer?’ Bliss said.
Lol just hoped that whatever it was wouldn’t involve him or his frozen muscles.
Merrily said, ‘So I emptied out the sack, and waited for it to happen. And, sure enough, he metamorphosed before my eyes. Out goes the churchwarden, in comes the lawyer.’
‘Dr Jekyll and Mr—’
‘No, this is Ted,’ Merrily said. ‘Mr Hyde and Mr even-Hyder.’
Jane grinned fractionally. Merrily poured more tea, glad to be off the subject of angels. She was bewildered by Jane’s reaction to the report of a dramatic visionary experience on her own doorstep. Was this not the kid who had entered her middle teens with a fervent belief in fairies and the kind of elemental forces not covered by the Bible? There was a point where New Age philosophy and Christianity crossed over, and angels were it, and you didn’t just abandon all that virtually overnight – not even Jane.
‘So what did he say?’ Jane demanded, clearly far more interested in the manifestation of the money, obviously annoyed that this was the first she’d heard about it, when both Uncle Ted and Jenny Box had been told.
‘Oh… “Lock the church at once, Merrily!” ’ Merrily threw up her arms. ‘Pulls out his mobile, brings up the police number, which he appeared to have in his index. “OK,” I say, “but I’m locking it from the outside, I’ve not got time to sit around here…” “No, no! You can’t leave me on my own with all this money!” I said, “Ted, I’ve just dragged it all the way along the bloody cobbles, from the vicarage, on my own.” ’
‘So where is it now?’
‘Probably in his safe at home. I somehow can’t see him surrendering eighty grand to the police for safe keeping. He’ll give them the minimum legal leeway, just to make sure it doesn’t match up with some robbery.’
‘And assuming it doesn’t?’
Merrily shrugged. ‘Goes into the parish coffers. End of story, everybody happy. We just don’t spend any for a while, to be on the safe side.’
‘It’s a lot of money, Mum,’ Jane said soberly. ‘Take a whole canteen of collection plates to accommodate that lot.’
‘Mmm.’ Merrily was remembering a row she’d had with Uncle Ted when she’d decided to abolish the time-honoured practice of sending round collection plates during the final hymn. Let’s not make an exhibition of it, Ted. They can put something in the box on the way out. Ted had insisted this wouldn’t work; people never shelled out unless they were publicly shamed into it. It even emerged that the old bugger had sometimes taken twenty-pound notes from parish funds, placing one on each plate prior to its circulation, setting an example.
