by Phil Rickman
‘Jesus, that sounds right, the escu bit.’ Bliss began tapping lightly on the lid of his lappie. ‘How long they been missing?’
‘Just the one night. Not normally a cause for upset, except they don’t do things like that. Also… it’s rent day and apparently they owe Goldie for two weeks. I just rang her up to confirm, took it straight to Sergeant Wilton, and he said to come in and tell you right away.’
‘Goldie’s lodgers… yes…’ Bliss came to his feet. ‘The bottom line here being that it’s not exactly unusual for Goldie’s lodgers to be on the game, is it?’
‘Unusual for them not to be on the game.’
‘She know they might be dead?’
‘She will by now, it’s all over the radio, TV, Internet…’
‘Right, then.’ Bliss pulled his jacket from the chair. ‘Let’s go and have a chat. They can send the piccies to me phone.’ He beamed. ‘Nice one, Darth. Write yourself out a commen- dation.’
‘Cheers, boss. Do you, um… want me to…?’
‘Yeh, yeh, come along. But I might just go in on me own at first, to chat to Goldie.’ Walking out, almost bumping into Karen Dowell. ‘Thing is, that woman owes me… quite a bit. Karen.’
‘Boss, we have a reliable sighting in the Grapes in Church Street, from half-nine, and then the Monk’s Head, ten-nish.’
‘Lovely. Get Elly to put out an appeal for anybody who saw them in either. Karen, me and Darth’s off to Goldie’s on the Plas. If you could tell Brian Wilton, it looks like we’ll need forensics. And when the pictures come in from the morgue, could you get them sent to me phone?’
Known, inevitably, as the Plascarreg Hilton.
It had once been a row of 1930s brick-built terraced houses, here before there was an estate. Goldie had got the first for peanuts, renting out the bedrooms to working girls, buying out the neighbours one by one as the new estate got developed at the bottom of their backyards and the value of the houses sank. The sign outside said Abbey View, possibly referring to Belmont Abbey, which you were unlikely to see from anywhere on the Plascarreg without a platform crane, although on a clear day you could spot the Tesco tower.
Bliss let Goldie weep for a while. Two weeks’ rent she’d never see, that wasn’t funny. Eventually she looked up, over her lace hanky with the border of red flowers like little blood spots.
‘Shoulda knowed. Soon’s I seen it was you at the door.’
‘Nothing’s set in stone yet, Goldie.’
‘You’s the angel of death, you are, boy.’
Couple of years now since two teenage boys in a stolen Transit had booked in for the night, paying in advance with hot cash from an armed robbery at a petrol station in the Forest of Dean. Two boys, one seventeen, one fifteen, and a bottle of Gordon’s. Oh, and an old .38 revolver with which they’d played Russian roulette and, at just after three in the morning, one had lost.
‘I never said you wasn’t understanding, mind,’ Goldie said.
‘How long the girls been with you, Goldie?’
‘Four, five months.’ Goldie set light to a roll-up. ‘We connected straight off, see… The Roma?’
‘What? Oh, yeh…’
Romany, Romania? Who knew? Goldie’s origins were obscure. She’d come down from a caravan in the Black Mountains. Before that, it was a caravan somewhere in the South Wales valleys. Some element of gypsy back there – you could see it all over the living room, the brass ornaments and the illustrated plates and the gilt pendulum clocks.
‘We had a…’ Goldie mouthed the ciggy, touched forefingers in the air. ‘Like that, we was.’ The cig waggling. ‘Movin’ in yere, it was like comin’ home. Her kept sayin’ that, her did.’
‘Who?’
‘Maria, was it?’ Goldie pulled out the ciggy, ruby and emerald rings winking. Breathed out some suspiciously herbal smoke. ‘She’ve got the best English. She do’s the talking.’
‘So they were here for the winter, yeh?’
In summer Goldie did B & B. Difficult to imagine anybody wanting to spend a holiday on the Plascarreg. But then, there were holidays and holidays. In winter, it was long-stay guests, cheap deals, all meals out.
Bliss watched the skin around Goldie’s eyes crinkling like bits of old bath sponge.
‘Lord above, Mr Francis, this can’t be right. They’s good girls.’
‘Of course.’
A liberal of the old school. All Goldie’s girls were good girls. Bliss’s iPhone was buzzing.
‘Gissa sec, Goldie.’
No message, just the pictures which somehow, when viewed on his phone, made him feel like a sick voyeur. Snuff-porn.
‘Goldie, I’m gonna have to ask you to take a look at a couple of photos.’
‘I en’t their ma.’
‘You’re all right, we’ve had them, you know, prettied up a bit.’
‘Oh, dear Lord.’
Goldie breathed in, slow and phlegmy, then pulled her glasses from their electric-blue plastic case. Bliss flicked from one pic to the other a couple of times and chose the least horrible. Goldie pushed her unlikely blonde ringlets behind her ears, and he handed her the iPhone.
‘Take your time.’
Sitting next to her on the old studio couch, slabs of polished wood, somehow coffin-coloured, set into the armrests. Waiting for her nod and then flicking to the other picture, which was not so nice because of the eye. Given time, they’d’ve found a glass eye.
Bliss counted five clocks ticking before Goldie leaned back and crossed herself.
‘Which is which, Goldie?’
‘The one with the eye… that’s Maria. The one with the English. Lord above, what’s happenin’ to this town?’
‘When d’you last see them?’
‘I’m not sure. Yesterday morning? They left… I dunno, about ten?’
‘To go where? Where’d they go when they left here?’
‘Town. Where’s anybody go?’
‘They say where in town?’
‘Just town. Was they interfered with?’
‘Where would they go at night?’
‘Pubs? Clubs? I don’t know. They only goes out one night a week. Safer yere. We all knows each other on the Plas.’
‘They got any family… anywhere in this country?’
Goldie shook her head.
‘None?’
‘Come over to work on the strawberries, ennit?’
Figured. Thousands of them came across from Eastern Europe to work in the polytunnels.
‘Last year?’
Goldie nodded.
‘And didn’t go back?’
‘A lot don’t.’
‘What did they do after that? Did they get more work?’
‘This and that.’
‘They work for you, Goldie?’
‘Bit of housework.’
‘I mean outside work.’
Goldie’s eyes were narrowing.
‘I’ve always tried to help you, Mr Francis.’
‘And I think it’s been mutual. If not more than mutual. And, in case you forget, this is a mairder investigation.’ Bliss leaning on his accent. ‘We’re nor’all that interested in lifting anybody for minor stuff.’
‘They never done no outside work for me.’
‘Never? Not even when they ran out of cash and couldn’t pay the rent? You never suggested how they might pick up a few quick twenties apiece?’
‘I’m tellin’ you they done cleaning work, an’ that was it.’
‘Where?’
‘Used to be at one of the stores, on the Barnchurch. The factory-outlet place, you know? Wasn’t full-time, and then they got let go.’
‘When was that?’
‘When it closed down.’
‘Yeh, that would figure.When?’
‘’Bout a month ago?’
‘All right, I’ll ask yer again. Any reason to think they might’ve been doing night work, freelance?’
‘They wouldn’t. I’m tellin’ you. They was religious girls.’
‘What about friends? They have friends among other East Europeans?’
‘Not many, far’s I know.’
‘Boyfriends?’
‘No.’
‘Attractive girls, Goldie.’
‘No boyfriend I knows of. They went around together. They looked out for each other.’
‘All right.’ Bliss stood up. ‘Let’s see their rooms.’
‘Room. They had one room between them.’
He followed her into the hallway. Two neighbouring hallways once, the dividing wall turned into an archway. A reception desk in one corner had a steel grille to the ceiling – well, this was the Plascarreg. One staircase had been taken out, so the other was isolated in the middle, Hollywood baronial.
‘Anybody else in residence just now, Goldie?’
‘It’s quiet, it is. We got a few comin’ in for Easter.’
‘Anybody staying here in the past week?’
‘Occasional one-nighter.’
‘And the odd one-hourer?’
Goldie was like she hadn’t heard. The bedroom doors had big plastic numbers. They went from Room Three to Room Five, Bliss noticed. Room Four was where they’d had to scrape teenage brain cells off the ceiling. Superstitious old girl, Goldie.
She led him along a corridor with three different carpets, stopped at Room Seven, unlocked the door with her master. Bliss put out an arm.
‘We’re gonna stay in the doorway, Goldie. Nobody goes in till crime-scene gets here.’
‘This en’t no crime scene, Mr Francis! I objects to that!’
‘It’s just that we’ll need to examine all their things very carefully. Yeh, it’s likely whoever attacked them it was a random thing, but it may not be. We also need the passports, papers, all that sort of stuff. We need to find the relatives.’
The room had dingy yellow walls, two beds, two single wardrobes. But it was tidy. There were two holdalls with shoulder straps under the window, Bliss keen to get inside them, but he didn’t move. A wardrobe door was open. The clothes he could see looked clean, new even.
‘What sort of girls were they, Goldie? All right, good girls, but…’
‘Polite. Tidy.’
‘You can do better that that. You have long chats with your guests. Old-fashioned nights with the tarot.’
‘I’m a people person. It’s why I opens my house.’
‘If they had worries, they’d confide in you.’
‘I likes to think.’
‘So…?’
‘Course they had worries. They worried about their family back home. They was expected to send money back, but there was never enough. Not what they expected. I done readin’s, set their minds at rest.’
On the window sill was a small framed picture of a couple on a sofa, smiling. The window overlooked a playground, a swing with the chains cut off near the top so it looked like a gallows.
‘You know what I’m after, Goldie.’
‘They didn’t have no enemies, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at. How could girls like that have—Was they messed with? You can tell me that.’
Good question.
‘I can’t, actually,’ Bliss said. ‘Not yet. But we do think there might be more to it. You said they worked on a strawberry farm. Which one?’
‘Couple, I think. One out near Ledbury, but they left because of the… you know, gettin’ pushed around and messed about.’
‘Messed about how?’
‘You know what conditions is like in these places. Next thing to slave labour. They was passing out, and if they asked for water they got it in an ole petrol can. Disgustin’. ’
‘They’re supposed to’ve cleaned up their act,’ Bliss said, cautious. ‘The worst ones.’
‘You believe that, you’ll believe anythin’. Maria, she told me one of the other farms there was a woman raped by two of the foremen. Took in a shed and raped.’
‘But nobody reported it.’
‘Course nobody reported it. They knows their place. They got no status. Young fellers, they din’t do what they was told they got the shit beat out of them, and the women was raped. ’Less they gived it up willin’. Them as gived it up willin’ got the easier work. You must’ve heard what goes on.’
Everybody had heard the stories. Karen Dowell had come close once to getting a Polish girl to give evidence against this Albanian minibus driver who was demanding a weekly blow job for getting her to work on time. Then she’d disappeared. They could disappear very easily.
Bliss said, ‘So the girls got out.’
‘They moved to that place out on the Brecon Road. Magnum?’
‘Magnis.’
A complex chime went off downstairs. Bliss thought it was one of the clocks.
‘Doorbell,’ Goldie said.
‘Could be my lads. So they moved to Magnis.’
‘To be near Hereford.’
Coincidence was a lovely thing, but maybe this wasn’t much of one: it was a small county and Magnis was close to the city.
‘When was this, Goldie?’
‘Last summer.’
‘They stay the course this time?’
The bell went again. ‘I better let your men in,’ Goldie said.
‘They’ll wait.’
‘They left there, too,’ Goldie said. ‘The sisters.’
‘Something happen to them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Were they staying here when they worked at Magnis, or did they live at the camp?’
‘At the camp. They come yere when they left.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘I felt sorry for them, I did. They wanted to go home. They was thinking how to raise enough cash to go home. I’ll go down, let your mates in.’
Bliss waited at the top of the stairs, looking at the holdalls, one pink, one tartan. Never had liked strawberries.
22
Ground To Air
THE LADY CHAPEL was a serene shrine to motherhood, recently renovated in quiet golds, muted tints, the gilded panels of its altar screen illustrating the domestic life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Merrily was alone. Someone had left a newspaper on a chair: today’s Telegraph folded at ‘The Killing Fields of Middle England’. She picked it up, sat down next to a Madonna and Child panel where the infant Jesus had the face and the haircut of a middle-aged estate agent. Did one killing make them killing fields? And when did the Welsh Border become Middle England?
The paper had been left here as if it was part of the Countryside Defiance campaign. Fortress Hereford, all farm doors locked at nightfall, and don’t expect any help from the police.
Something not right about this. Why were people erecting fences, spreading panic?
Answer: they weren’t local people. Local people were cautious, but they didn’t panic.
There was a colour picture of Mansel Bull’s brother, Sollers, in hunting pink and then, downpage, a small shot of Frannie Bliss caught side-on getting out of his car, the now-trademark dark blue beanie covering his close-mown thinning hair. At the foot of the story it said, DI Bliss, who came to Hereford from Merseyside, could not be contacted last night, but a spokeswoman…
West Mercia’s brief quote in support of its officer was lukewarm, a formality. Bastards. Merrily tossed the paper back onto the chair.
Maybe the woman in green Gore-Tex had seen the annoyance on her face; she’d stopped a few paces away. Merrily stood up.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you coming.’
Shoulder-length straight dark hair under a black woolly hat. Cursory make-up. She lowered a leather shoulder bag to the flags, turned candid brown eyes on Merrily.
‘You’re angry.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Yeah, well, me too,’ Fiona Spicer said.
It was about surviving marriage to a man who would vanish overnight, usually for weeks at a time, and sometimes she didn’t know where in the world he was, or why, or when she’d see him again, or if.
‘Exciting boyfriends, for a while.’ Fi
ona Spicer’s voice was thoughtful and seldom lifted. ‘But, as husbands… problematical.’
Most people, this might’ve been small talk, ice-breaking stuff: the partner’s little quirks, how Fiona had known Syd before he joined the army. How they’d met on holiday, a teenage seaside romance, exchanging letters for a couple of years before they even saw each other again. And it got no better.
‘For more than half my marriage, my husband’s keeping secrets from me – me and the rest of the country. Where he’s going, what he’s doing there.’ They’d moved to the corner near the votive stand where three candles were alight. ‘I thought all that was over, when he left the Army. But part of them doesn’t leave, ever. He’d keep going to the window, as if he was looking for a reason to walk out. Sometimes I’d wake up in the night, and he’d be at the window in the dark.’
‘They come out of the Regiment at forty, is that right?’
‘At Sam’s level. You get a hazy kind of honeymoon period before they start wondering what they’re for. If their life has meaning any more.’
Fiona took off her wool hat, laid it on her knees.
‘I suppose I was luckier than most. Just a few months of ag- onizing before he hit God like a ground-to-air missile.’
‘Syd?’
‘God’s warrior. All gunfire and smoke. As if saving a soul was the same as rescuing a civilian from terrorists. He did settle down, eventually. Probably as a result of Emily going off the rails.’
‘You must be relieved all that’s over.’
‘One problem ends, another opens up. Suddenly… it’s like the old days again: secrecy, lies, obfuscation.’
‘Because he’s back in Credenhill?’
‘He was never at Credenhill. But, yes. Back to the Regiment. Assuring me it was going to be entirely different this time. First and foremost, he’d be a priest. And that would be different. I almost believed the bastard. Then the curtain came down again. The vagueness, the false optimism. Everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be all right. And you know he means afterwards.’
‘After what?’
‘You tell me, Mrs Watkins. Sam kept your number in his car.’
‘Sam? Oh…’
Samuel Dennis Spicer. SD. Thus, Syd.
Fiona was gazing up at the sanctuary, the Virgin at home. Two elderly couples filed through an oak door in the richly panelled screen to the right. The Audley chantry – the Thomas Traherne chapel now, recreated to honour, in new stained glass, the seventeenth-century poet and celebrant of the mystical Welsh Border countryside. Who had also, as it happened, been vicar of Credenhill.
