by Phil Rickman
‘You…’ Levelling a forefinger. ‘Why’ve you come? Stand up a minute, lad.’
The guy into the second row was about forty, had narrow glasses and a voice that was just as soft and reasonable as you’d expect.
‘Peter Barber. Luton. Urban parish, obviously, high percentage of foreign nationals. The demand was there. I was invited by my bishop to consider the extent to which we should address it.’
‘And how much of it do you accept as valid, Peter? When a Somali woman says she thinks the Devil might be arsing about with her daughter, what’s your instinct?’
‘Huw, we discussed this. I have a respect for everyone’s belief system.’
‘Course you do, lad.’
Huw glanced at Merrily, his lips moving slightly. They might have formed the words Fucking hell. The wind went on bulging the glass and swelling the joints of the chapel.
‘How many of you are here because you’ve had what could be called a psychic or paranormal experience?’
Silence.
‘Nobody?’
Someone coughed, smothered it. Merrily felt Huw wanting to smash all the lights. Then the woman who’d been a prison governor stood up. She wore a black suit over her clerical shirt. Her lapel badge said Shona. Her accent was lowland Scottish.
‘I’ve been close to situations which were difficult to accommodate. We had a disturbed girl with a pentagram tattooed on the side of her neck, who we found was organizing Ouija-board sessions. Something not exactly unknown in women’s prisons and not invariably stamped upon.’
‘Because at least it keeps them quiet,’ Huw said.
‘Not in this case. We had disturbances bordering on hysteria, which spread with alarming speed. Girls claiming there were entities in their cells. The equilibrium of the whole establishment seemed to have been tipped. The prison psychologist was confident of being able to deal with it but eventually our chaplain asked me if he could bring in a colleague. From the deliverance ministry.’
‘When was this?’
‘Five or six years ago. I’d been reluctant at first, expecting him to… I don’t know, subject the girls to some crude casting-out thing. But he just talked to them, and it gradually became quieter. No magic solution, and it took a number of visits by this man, but it was resolved.’
‘Never an exact science, lass.’
‘I was impressed. Wanting to know how it had been achieved. When I took early retirement a couple of years later and sought ordination, that incident kept coming back to me. So here I am. A volunteer.’
Huw nodded and didn’t look at Merrily. If the first guy had seemed unlikely to go the distance, it would be hard to fault this woman on either background or motivation. Merrily watched Huw bend and lift the carafe with both hands and tip a little water into his glass.
‘So in other words,’ he said, ‘you’re a set of dull buggers.’
Outside somewhere, a branch snapped. Huw took an unhurried drink.
‘Men and women of common sense and discretion. Selected for their stability. Safe pairs of hands. Individuals who won’t embarrass the essentially secular element inside the modern Church. No mystics, no evangelicals, no charismatics.’
Merrily stared at Huw. That was a bad thing? He shrugged lightly.
‘Well, aye, we don’t want crackpots. We don’t want exorcisms prescribed like antibiotics, to cure shoplifting and alcohol abuse. Ideally, we don’t want them, in the fullest sense, at all. But let’s not dress this up…’
Merrily watched his fingers flexing on the mahogany tabletop then taking his weight as he leaned forward.
‘This is no job for a digital priest. At some stage, if you decide to go ahead with this particular ministry, you’ll be pulled into areas you never wanted to go. You’ll be affected short-term and long-term, mentally and emotionally and spiritually. Every one of you’s guaranteed to encounter summat that’ll ruin your sleep. I don’t want any bugger leaving here thinking that’s not going to happen.’
She was aware of him glancing into the bottom left-hand corner of the chapel, where the shadows were deepest and you couldn’t make out the faces.
‘Which is why I asked this friend of mine to come over. Through the rain and the gales.’ Turning to look at Merrily, who couldn’t kill the blush and frowned. ‘This is Mrs Watkins, deliverance consultant for the Diocese of Hereford. Successor to one of the most experienced exorcists in the country. Quite a responsibility. So… we have to ask, how did a young lass get a job like that? Safe pair of hands? I don’t think so, though she is now. No, she were hand-picked by the Bishop of Hereford at the time, because…’
Huw. Glaring up at him, not moving her lips. For God’s sake…
‘Because he fancied her,’ Huw said. ‘It were a glamour thing.’
Merrily had come in jeans and a cowl-neck black sweater with her smallest pectoral cross. Nowt formal, Huw had said on the phone. She sighed.
‘Runner-up in the Church Times Wet-Cassock competition. Never going to live that down.’
‘Runner-up.’ Huw sniffed. ‘That were a travesty.’
Only half of them laughed. You could almost see the disdain like a faint cloud in the air around the posh girl who was probably planning a paper on how the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection were part of the same complex metaphor.
‘With Merrily, you can’t see the damage, but it’s there.’
Huw wasn’t smiling now. She noticed that his face was thinner, the lines like cracks in tree bark.
‘Tell them about Mr Joy, Merrily. Tell the boys and girls what Mr Joy did to you.’
And then he turned away so he wouldn’t see her eyes saying no.
4
Talk About Paris
CORNEL – WAS THAT his first name or what? Cornel. You had to try and laugh. He didn’t even need to open that wide, loose, red mouth to be screaming, Look at me, I’m from Off. That too-perfect combination of plaid workshirt and Timberland-type boots… and the Rolex. Or whatever it was. Some flash old-fashioned status watch, anyway, and he’d be thinking all the country girlies would be like, Take me, Cornel… take me away in the Boxter and show me the penthouse.
Well, not quite all of them.
‘I’ve never been up there myself,’ Jane said. ‘The Court… it’s like real mysterious to us.’
The localish accent rolling out nicely, not too pronounced. If this wasn’t so serious it could almost be fun.
‘Mysterious,’ Cornel said.
Did he actually say myshterioush? Was he really that pissed?
Probably. Jane looked up at him, hands on her hips.
‘So go on…’
‘What?’
‘Like what happens?’
‘What do you think happens?’ Cornel said.
‘I don’t like to think.’
Cornel grinned down at her. There was that sour, too-much-wine smell on his breath. More unpleasant, somehow, than beer or whisky. Kind of decadent and louche.
‘You’re really tall,’ Jane said stupidly. ‘You know that?’
‘I was breast-fed. For months and months.’ He looked up from her chest. ‘So my mother tells me.’
‘You got a gun, Cornel? Of your own?’
‘Two, actually. One’s a Purdey. You need another drink.’
‘So, like, what do you shoot?’
‘Things.’
‘Things? What, like bottles off walls and stuff?’ Jane could see Cornel trying to not to snigger. ‘Well, what?’
The wind came in again. Lights flickered.
‘Darling,’ Cornel said. ‘We get to shoot pretty much anything that comes within range… pheasants, rabbits, those little deer… pussycats…’
Below bar-level, Jane felt the fingers of her right hand bunching into a tight little fist. There’d been talk in the village of cats going missing.
‘Wow,’ she said.
‘What happens at The Court is anything you want… basically. ’Cause you’re paying for it. Or, rather, the bank is.’
<
br /> ‘Oh.’ Jane did the vacant look. ‘Which bank you with? Is it…’ Putting a finger up to her lower lip. ‘Is it the NatWest? Or like that one with all the little puppet people and the tinkly music?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Cornel smiled, shaking his head. ‘Landesman’s. New kids on the block, very progressive.’
‘You do credit cards and stuff?’
Cornel sighed.
‘And what do you do, girlie?’
‘Hairdresser,’ Jane said. ‘Well, trainee. But one day I’ll be doing it big time in Hereford. Or London, mabbe.’
‘Hmm.’ Cornel was swaying a bit and wrinkling his nose like he was figuring something out. ‘Don’t know anybody in Hereford, but I did once handle some finance for a chain of salons in London… and Paris? Paris any good to you?’
‘Paris?’
Jane blinking, like she didn’t dare believe he was serious.
‘And Milan, now, I think,’ Cornel said. ‘You look like you need a drink. A big one.’
‘Had too much already,’ Jane said.
‘Maybe you’d rather have one somewhere else?’
‘Dunno really.’
‘Where we can talk about Paris.’
Jane’s left hand was on the damp mat on the bar top, and Cornel’s much bigger hand was over it and squeezing gently. She pulled, not hard, but the hand was trapped.
She looked up at Cornel and giggled. His eyes were well glazed. It was unlikely that she’d get any more out of him. Probably time to end this.
The odd times when it was needed in an establishment as relatively sedate as the Black Swan, Barry was known for acting with speed and economy and a glimmer of steel. But Barry was on the phone. Lol tensed. The inglenook coughed out smoke and soot.
‘You seen him before?’ Danny said. ‘Do we know if he’s got a room yere?’
Lol shook his head.
Telling himself it would be OK. That this was Jane. Jane who’d once expressed the hope that some myopic Japanese stockbroker would accidentally blow off Ward Savitch’s head.
‘Hell’s bells!’ The main door had sprung open, the wind pushing in James Bull-Davies. Last squire of Ledwardine, partner of Alison Kinnersley, Lol’s ex from what now seemed like another, distant lifetime. ‘Bloody night.’
James thrust the door shut against the gale, shaking drips from his sparse hair, as Lol heard Jane’s unmistakably dangerous laughter, like pills in a jar. Cornel was grinning and Jane’s expression was kind of, Oh you… Almost affectionate, like they’d known one another a long time or she was as pissed as he was.
Lol looked at Danny. Danny sighed.
‘All right, then, boy, we’ll both go.’
He was halfway out of his chair when the weather took over. A wall of wind hit the Swan, the candle-bulbs shivering against the oak panelling. Lol saw Jane’s free hand reaching out to grasp the end of Cornel’s leather belt.
‘Bastard’s bloody pulled,’ one of his mates said.
‘George, she’s pulling him. Doesn’t that give us a get-out?’
Both of these guys smiling now, as Cornel let Jane tow him along the bar towards the door to the stairs, looking into her eyes with what Lol interpreted as a kind of grateful disbelief as he and Danny moved in. Then the whole bar was doused in sepia.
Power drop-out. Somewhere in the room, a woman did a theatrical scream, and Lol froze. All he could make out was a shadow-Jane trying to stand a beer glass on the bar. Then a roar.
‘Shit!’
As the lights came flickering back, he saw Cornel jerking up and away, movements fractured like an early movie.
Jane’s smile was wide and wild, but her voice was shaky.
‘… from the pussycats.’
Her face pale and strained, and she was breathing hard but clearly determined not to run, as Cornel came at her, his head like a red pepper, big lips twisted.
‘… you little fucking…’
‘No!’
Lol flinging himself between them, hands out.
Saw it coming, twisted sideways but still caught the fist on the top of the shoulder, which really hurt, then saw Cornel’s colleagues closing around him, with a sickly wafting of wine-breath.
‘Now, hold up…’
James Bull-Davies wading in. Stooping a bit these days, though it might have been the weight of whatever he kept in the fraying pockets of his tweed jacket.
‘Might one suggest you chaps cool off outside?’
‘… fuck’s this?’
‘Ladies present,’ James said briskly.
‘That bitch?’ Cornel’s face thrust into James’s. ‘You saw what she did?’ Close to screeching, losing it. ‘Saw that, did you? Did you?’
Lol saw an extensive dark stain on the front of Cornel’s jeans.
‘Shouldn’t render you impotent for long,’ James said mildly. ‘Big man, little girl, be disinclined to make a fuss, myself.’
Somebody laughed. The inglenook was oozing smoke like some ancient railway tunnel.
‘All right. Enough now, lads.’ Barry was here, in his quiet suit, his slim bow tie. ‘Accidents happen in the dark. If you’d like to leave your trousers at reception, sir, we can get them cleaned for you.’
Cornel was looking at Jane, his eyes sunk below the bony ridge of his sweating brow.
‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said, ‘girlie.’
Lol felt Jane shaking and put an arm around her and steered her back to the table by the fire. She smiled slackly.
‘Cocked that up.’ Lifting up her hands, all wet. ‘More on me than him.’
‘What did you say to him, Jane?’
‘I was just, you know, so pissed off at the idea of them coming in all droit de seigneur kind of thing – and he was obviously legless. So I thought I’ll get him talking, see what I can get out of him?’
‘That’s why you wanted to go and buy the drinks?’
‘Oh, Lol, it was an impulse thing!’ Her face shone. ‘Like, it’s important to know, don’t you think, what Savitch is letting them get away with? Like, if we’re going to get the bastard closed down before he turns the village into the blood-sport capital of the New Cotswolds—’
‘Jane, he’s investment. A lot of people love him.’
‘Nobody loves him! And we don’t want that kind of investment. We’ve got archaeological remains, we’ve got the strong possibility of a Bronze Age henge with actual stones. We could have loads of tourism – worthwhile tourism, not these… scum.’
‘All right, they love his money,’ Lol said sadly.
‘They just think they might need his money, so they don’t like to tell the bastard where to stick it.’ Jane glowered for a moment, then looked up, wary. ‘You’re not going to tell Mum about this, are you?’
Lol sighed.
‘So what did he tell you, Jane?’
‘Actually, it’s not funny. I was, like, what do you do at The Court, and he’s going, Shoot things, of course, and I’m like, Things? Go on. And he thought… I mean, I could see he thought I was…’
‘What?’
‘Like turned on by it? The way some women are. The hunt-ball floozies? He said they’d shoot anything that got in the way. Deer… pussycats, he said.’
‘Probably exaggerating to try and sound hard.’
‘I could tell he was waiting for me to go, Oh, I’d love to come and watch you wielding your weapon. Lol, they’re—Oh shit, look at him now…’
Lol half-turned, pain spinning into his shoulder where he’d caught Cornel’s fist. Cornel was standing next to the door to the stairs. His eyes seemed to be physically retracting under the shelf of his brow as he looked around the room in the half-light, plucking at the damp patch on his trousers.
‘Wherever you are, you little bitch,’ he said mildly, ‘I just want you to know this isn’t over.’
Lol looked around. Maybe only he and Jane had heard Cornel, because there’d been a sudden scraping of chairs, exclamations and then a hollow near-silence in the bar as a small circle
formed around Barry in the centre of the room.
‘Where was this?’ James Bull-Davies snapped. ‘Say again.’
‘Oldcastle?’ Barry said. ‘Have I got that right? Beyond Credenhill, but before you get to the Wye. Don’t know any details. Mate of mine with an apple farm was just passing it on in case we saw any police action. Cops are all over there, apparently.’
‘Yes, but who—?’
‘Oh, Mansel…?’ Barry stepped back. ‘Gawd, James. That mean he’s a relation?’
‘Cousin. Of sorts.’ James straightened up, bit his lower lip. ‘Hell’s bells.’
A flaking log rolled out of the fire up against the mesh of the fireguard. Danny Thomas came back and sat down, pushing fingers through his beard.
‘Barry just had a call from a mate. Feller been found dead. Farmer.’
Lol said. ‘What… storm-related?’
‘Sounds like way too many coppers for that,’ Danny said.
5
Gangland
UP AGAINST THE brick wall under a bleary bulkhead lamp, Bliss was struggling into his Durex suit. Big, wide puddles in the yard, four of them rippling like something tidal in the lights and the remains of the gale. The fifth puddle much smaller, not rippling at all, the colour and consistency of bramble jelly.
Farmers. Never felt comfortable around farmers, not even dead farmers.
‘Boss…’
Terry Stagg came lumbering out of a litter of uniforms and techies shielding the body from the wind, Bliss looking up from the flapping plastic.
‘DCI know about this, Terry?’
Realizing this was the very last question he’d normally ask. This was getting ridiculous. He peered at Terry Stagg’s eyes in the lamplight. Terry was working on a beard to cover up his second chin. His eyes looked tired. And faintly puzzled?
Shit.
‘Boss, it was actually the DCI who said to get you out. Be more convenient for DI Bliss were her actual—’
‘Bitch.’
Stagg said nothing. Bliss turned away, nerves burning like a skin rash. Probably digging himself an even bigger pit.
‘My impression was that the DCI won’t be coming out tonight at all,’ Stagg said. ‘Which is unusual, given the social status of the deceased.’
