Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Here? No. The last chaplain had his own house nearby. I believe this was a sergeant, with a wife and a son. They were here, I’d guess, about seven years, until he retired. What exactly were you expecting?’

  ‘Still, erm, alive?’

  ‘And kicking. All over the world. He landed something of a plum job with a film production company, as a stunt adviser of some kind.’

  ‘Oh. Well… thank you.’

  Merrily had wondered if he’d mention the drawers pulled out, the mirror covered, the salt around the bed. He didn’t, but she was convinced he now knew about her peculiar role in the diocese. Might even have rung James Bull-Davies while he and Stagg were upstairs. But he couldn’t be sure if she knew what was behind the bedroom door.

  ‘Why might Syd have a big heavy Bible with him, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘I’ll need to think about it.’

  ‘That’s what you advised Syd to do, right? The drawers, the salt.’

  ‘I told him what you did,’ Huw said. ‘Told him what you’d done in circumstances that might’ve been different. Giving him another opportunity to tell me exactly what was bothering him.’

  Merrily sighed. Open the cupboard doors, take out the drawers, expose all dark places, leave nowhere for evil to hide. Maybe all symbolic, hooks for the mind, and maybe Syd had thought it was all crap, but he’d done it just the same. And then died.

  ‘You think it’s possible he killed himself?’ Huw said. ‘High suicide rate among ex-SAS men. They come out, can’t adjust to normal life, and depression sets in.’

  But Syd had come through. Like he said, things were looking up. Daughter getting married, grandchild on the way. Yet Merrily was remembering the sense of an optimism as synthetic as air-freshener.

  ‘Why the procedure with the kit, though?’ Huw said. ‘His Bergen – part of his old identity, as a serving SAS man. And his Bible. His big Bible, representing the other half of him, but also, from what you say, a bit of a talisman. And he goes up the hill, carrying his whole identity, his memories, the weight of his religion. What’s the significance of the hill? Would he have done exercises up there, when he was in the SAS?’

  ‘They weren’t based at Credenhill then. It’s just a good place to run.’

  ‘He was running away? Getting away from a house he thought might be contaminated? Not a word from this feller about his bedroom?’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘They’ll want to keep that out of the inquest. Brush it under the carpet. It’ll be natural causes or accidental death or, at worst, Spicer taking his own life while the balance of his mind were disturbed. Drawing a line we don’t have to draw. And happen won’t.’

  ‘Because we failed him?’

  ‘Talk about it tomorrow, eh?’ Huw said.

  Silence, except for the answering machine, bleeping away like a life-support system.

  Merrily’s bag was hanging over the back of the chair. She pulled out the three paperback books, laid them out on the desk, one by one: Deliverance – new edition, scuffed and tatty, well-thumbed, pages turned down but nothing underlined, no margin notes. Only the Ledwardine Vicarage number.

  And then there was Wordsworth’s Britain: a little itinerary. This one was also quite tatty, dark green, far from new. Merrily flipped through it. Nothing was marked.

  The third book was a larger paperback. On the cover, a Roman soldier had his short sword raised over a cowering man in rags against a background of fire. Fiction. It had a blurb.

  They came, they saw, they slaughtered…

  It was called Caradog and it was by someone called Byron Jones.

  Merrily turned it over. The price was $10.50. A US edition. The lurid cover, the language and the print size all suggested this was a book for children. Well, older children or young adults – although it had probably been published before that term was in use.

  Caradog? Another name for Caractacus, the British leader who held out against the Romans and whose last stand was once supposed, probably wrongly, to have been on Herefordshire Beacon, overlooking Syd’s last parish in the Malverns.

  So no big mystery there. Caradog carried a very brief biographical note on the author.

  Byron Jones was a Special Forces soldier in the British Army. He is now an expert on Roman and Ancient British warfare.

  Ex-SAS, then. A book written by a former comrade? If there’d been time to examine Syd’s bookshelves at length, Merrily might well have found Andy McNab, Chris Ryan, all the others.

  She flipped through the pages to be absolutely sure that none of them had been marked, then gathered the books into a neat pile, leaned across the scullery desk and pressed the green piano key on the answering machine.

  Fiona Spicer’s voice. Very dry, very firm.

  ‘Merrily, I’m sorry, could I—Could you do something for me? I’m not sure about the army protocol here. But could you bury him?’

  She pushed her chair back, sat with space all around her.

  A sign like a pointing finger from the clouds. The ultimate responsibility.

  27

  The Loser

  THE COCK was a tumble of feathers, his neck coppery and gold in the late sunlight.

  ‘En’t a fox done this, neither,’ Gomer said. ‘Fox goes for the neck, and he don’t leave much behind.’

  ‘Maybe he was disturbed.’

  Jane stepped back from the garden table as Gomer lifted up the bird’s head. She wasn’t squeamish, but an image from last night had stayed with her from when she’d first opened the sack under one of the lamps on the square: the ruined eye peeping up. The body was battered, feathers broken, maybe from the kicking Cornel had given the bin sack.

  ‘See the blood on his beak? That’s the real giveaway, ennit?’ Gomer turned to her. ‘You all right there, Janey?’

  ‘He’s beautiful, Gomer. That golden… like a lion’s mane.’

  ‘His hackle. Aye, nice bird, he is. You don’t see the ole breeds too often n’more.’

  ‘I mean, I don’t know much about chickens and things, but it didn’t seem like his neck had been wrung or anything. And the way they were talking about shooting anything in front of their guns…’

  Gomer struck a match, ignited his roll-up.

  ‘Janey, I’d ’ave to say no man done this. Goin’ by the injuries. And the breed.’

  ‘I’m not following you.’

  Gomer took a drag on his ciggy.

  ‘Gamecock, he is.’

  ‘Game—’ Jane sprang back from the table like it was electrified. ‘But that’s—’

  ‘Died in the ring, sure to.’

  ‘A cockfight? But that… It’s like bear-baiting and stuff. History. Illegal.’

  ‘Been illegal for over a century. But that don’t mean it don’t go on, see, on the quiet.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Few farmyards, gypsy camps.’

  Jane stared at the dead cock, her fists and chest tightening.

  ‘Big money in it, see,’ Gomer said. ‘Betting. Lot of it about when I was a boy. Some folks then, they couldn’t figure why it was banned. Cocks fight – what they does.’

  ‘But they don’t kill—’

  ‘I’m just tellin’ you what the cockers say. All about mating. Like stags. Sure, once they seed the other cock off, it’s over. But you puts the buggers in a pit what they can’t get out of… the losin’ cock, he en’t got nowhere to go, do he? Far’s the other bird’s concerned, he’s still a contender. So it don’t stop. Specially with all the money ridin’ on it, and…’

  Gomer looked uncertain.

  ‘Go on…’ Jane said.

  ‘Well, they got these… spurs, ennit? Metal spikes, couple inches long on their legs. See where this leg yere’s—’

  ‘That makes it more fun, does it?’ Jane took one look, jerked herself away. ‘More blood, more feathers ripped out?’

  ‘Most of ’em dies from head wounds… or eyes. Like this boy, I reckon.’

  ‘I just don’t believe this, Gome
r. When’s the last you heard of it?’

  ‘By yere? Thirty year ago, sure t’be. Used to be a reg’lar cocking fraternity, kind o’ thing. Don’t mean it en’t been goin’ on ever since, on and off. Just means it’s more underground, kind o’ thing. Under cover of gamefowl breeders’ clubs.’ Gomer nodded at the dead bird. ‘Weren’t so terrible bright o’ that feller, just dumpin’ him in a bin.’

  ‘He offered him to Barry. For the kitchen.’

  ‘That weren’t bright.’

  ‘He was drunk.’

  Jane turned away from the table, her eyes filling up. She heard Gomer putting the cock back into the bin liner, and felt suddenly heartsick.

  ‘You seem to know… like… a lot about it, Gomer.’ She turned back as he tied up the sack. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Uncle,’ Gomer said. ‘When I was a boy, I had this uncle bred gamecocks. He’d’ve died when I was mabbe eight or nine. I remember goin’ with my ma to clean out his house, and we finds all these photies. One’s the ole feller with his prize bird and another cock, dead, what the prize cock killed. And here’s my Uncle Gwyn, great big beam all over his face.’

  Gomer shrugged.

  ‘Thing is, he never seen it as cruel, do he? Gamecocks, they had a real good life, long as it lasted. Spoonful of porridge, spoonful of treacle… eggs, barley… nothin’ but the best ’fore a big fight. And when you thinks of all these poor bloody battery chickens, fattened on drugs, never loosed out in the fresh air and then they dies on a conveyor belt…’

  ‘Yeah, that totally stinks, but it doesn’t…’

  ‘No,’ Gomer said. ‘It don’t. A cock don’t even have to die in the ring, see, but it’s like with them ole… what you calls them ole Roman fellers?’

  ‘Gladiators?’

  ‘One o’ them, he gets the thumbs-down – curtains, ennit? Specially if he en’t put up much of a fight. En’t the same for the crowd, see, if both of ’em struts out at the end.’

  ‘It’s sick.’

  Gomer puffed awhile, watching the sun.

  ‘This that Savitch?’

  ‘Cornel was one of his clients… guests. I mean it’s bad enough they think they can go round just shooting anything, but… You think Savitch is actually staging cockfights?’

  Gomer lowered the sack to the grass.

  ‘He can’t be that daft, can he? What you wanner do with this ole boy?’

  ‘Isn’t it evidence?’

  ‘You gonner be a witness, girl?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘In court? Against the kind o’ lawyer this banker feller’s gonner hire? That’s even if it went that far. One dead cock is all you got. We don’t really know where he died or how. En’t nothin’ there for certain to say he went in the ring. Hell, Janey, I might be wrong…’

  ‘You wouldn’t’ve told me if you thought for one minute you were wrong. What about Barry? He saw it.’

  ‘All he seen was a dead fowl in a bin bag. He’s been around, that boy, but it don’t mean he’s ever seen a cockfight.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jane shook her head gloomily. ‘And like is he going to want to tear up his meal ticket? And the cops couldn’t give a toss about rural petty crime. Apparently.’ She looked up. ‘There just has to be a connection with Savitch. It’s the kind of thing he’d do, give the city guys a little extra thrill. Show them how hard people are in the sticks.’

  ‘This banker feller… don’t seem likely he owned the cock, do it?’

  ‘He said it was rubbish.’

  ‘Mabbe he had money on it.’

  ‘Brought him back… the loser… to eat? Because it had let him down?’

  ‘This other feller…’

  Twin brownish suns in Gomer’s bottle glasses. Pretty savvy for an old guy who, Mum reckoned, had rarely been north of Leominster or south of Ross the whole of his life.

  ‘I didn’t really see him and I didn’t recognize his voice.’

  ‘You figure they was both at the cockfight, Janey?’

  ‘Sounded like it. He was sneering at Cornel. This was before he hit him. He said it was about manhood. He said Cornel wasn’t ready. I have no idea what he meant. What do we do, Gomer? How about the RSPCA, the League Against Cruel Sports?’

  ‘Mabbe I’ll talk to a few folks,’ Gomer said. ‘See what I can find out.’

  ‘You know people who might be involved?’

  ‘Gotter get their fowls from somewhere. Mating season now, ennit? Cocks is well up for a fight.’

  Gomer tapped the sack with the edge of his trainer, looked at Jane.

  ‘Bury him, proper?’

  Jane nodded. The sun had sunk terminally into cloud, and the air smelled sour. She watched Gomer pick up the black bin sack with its sad bundle of feathers. Her fingers were curling tight.

  28

  Like the Poet

  WITH JANE, IT was always more than body language. She could give off fury like smoke.

  When Merrily ran into her, where Church Street met the square, she was still in the school clothes she normally couldn’t wait to shed, and she looked starkly monochrome against the vivid pink sky.

  Or maybe everyone would look like that tonight. Merrily shook herself.

  ‘Sorry, flower, had to go to Jim’s. We were clean out of bread. You weren’t looking for me, were you?’

  ‘No, I… yeah.’

  No, there was something wrong. But Jane turned it around.

  ‘What’s happened? You OK?’

  ‘Bit of a shock, that’s all. Syd Spicer, who was vicar of Wychehill, in the Malverns?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘He’s dead. He was found this afternoon on the side of Credenhill. Where the earth-steps are. Where we walked that time. Apparently he’d gone for a run on the hill. Might’ve fallen, hit his head. I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That’s awful. Was he still a mate?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  They walked out onto the square under a brushing of rain.

  ‘Life’s very often crap,’ Jane said. ‘Have you noticed?’

  And she might well have gone on to explain if Barry, in his black suit, with his polished shoes, hadn’t come briskly down the steps of the Swan, striding across the cobbles, asking Merrily if she could spare him a minute.

  If you could call that asking.

  Barry’s office was behind the reception desk, a small, woody, windowless space with nothing at all to say about the Swan’s Jacobean origins. It had a strip light that turned Barry’s face blue-white.

  ‘Now I’m nervous.’ He shut the door, pointed Merrily to his leather chair. ‘You come in here last night, asking me what might frighten a man trained not to be frightened of anything, and next day he’s bleedin’ topped himself.’

  ‘Barry, nobody’s saying that. Probably natural causes, maybe an accident.’

  ‘Accidents like that don’t happen to men like Syd. Besides, that would hardly’ve caused what you might call a small tremor in the ranks.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  Merrily instinctively pulled the cigarettes from her bag, then shoved the packet back. Barry waved a hand.

  ‘Nah, light one, you want. This ain’t public space.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ She closed her bag. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘These things get round. You were with Fiona?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One in a million, that woman. She understands. Better than both mine did, anyway.’

  He stood over her, waiting. Merrily lowered her bag to the floor.

  ‘All right, what happened, I was asked to talk to a group of clergy on a deliverance training course last Friday night, and Syd turned up, with something on his mind. Which he wouldn’t talk about. Not to us, so we assumed it was SAS-related.’

  ‘Who’s us?’

  ‘Huw Owen. My spiritual director.’ Looking steadily up at him. ‘You knew Syd well, didn’t you? Well enough to know his wife, obviously.’

  ‘I served with him.’

&nbs
p; ‘He was a friend?’

  ‘For a time, yeah.’

  ‘For a time?’

  ‘We didn’t fall out or nothing. I saw him a couple of years ago. He seemed OK. You can usually tell when they’re not. I heard he was in full kit when they found him.’

  ‘He had a Bergen, that’s all. A lot of weight in there, including a very big family Bible. This… has kind of knocked me sideways, Barry.’

  Merrily’s right hand was shaking and she placed her left hand over it. Barry pulled out the other chair, sat down opposite her.

  ‘I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to sound like I was interrogating you.’

  ‘Huw was convinced Syd needed help.’

  ‘Kind of help?’

  ‘He didn’t tell us, did he? Some people are embarrassed by the… anomalous. Especially the clergy. He sat in the shadows and he listened to what we had to say in the chapel. Like he had to deal with it himself, get it out of the way.’

  ‘You had dealings with him before though.’

  ‘Yeah. He consulted me about something he either didn’t believe or wanted nothing to do with. He told me, more than once, that he didn’t like that kind of thing. He wanted me to deal with it. This time… I can only assume this was something he did believe in, however reluctantly. Or that it was personal.’

  Even in here, you could hear the plink, plink of the pool table in the public bar. No voices, no laughter, just cue on ball. It sounded random, directionless. Lonely, somehow.

  ‘Frank Collins,’ Barry said, ‘not long before he died, he became chaplain to twenty-three SAS – the reservists. So not as close as Syd. Only, when his book came out, it hadn’t been cleared by the MoD, and he had to resign. Got very depressed about that. Looking at it from the other side, maybe it was the Church what done for Frank Collins.’

  ‘It’s true that when things get difficult you don’t always get the support you might expect from the Church. The Church can be… strangely cold.’

  ‘Could be none of this applies. Regiment suicides are mainly blokes who only ever went inside a church for a mate’s funeral. Some of it’s post-traumatic stress, some of it’s because you get altered, and normal life don’t seem like life at all and ain’t worth holding on to.’