by Phil Rickman
A treasure house. Out here in the deep sticks it was all so entirely unexpected as to be approaching the surreal. Merrily picked up a leaflet from the pile and took a seat at the back. Chairs, light-coloured wood, not pews. A lot of money had been spent since medieval times, enhancing what was here. The angels were confidently balanced on the top edge of the chancel screen, guarding a Christ on the cross. A chess-piece kingly Christ in a golden crown. Not suffering, but proud and triumphant. In control.
And when you looked more carefully, you began to see all the dragons. Merrily came back to her feet.
Everywhere, dragons were dying.
There he was, red-crossed, in a window. And here he was again, more modern and explicit, on a pedestal, in full armour with his foot on the dragon’s neck, his spear down its throat.
Merrily opened the leaflet. St George. Brinsop Church was dedicated to the dragon-slaying patron saint of England. The leaflet said the church had been saved from ‘certain ruin’ in the mid-nineteenth century, old windows rediscovered and restored. It had never looked back since, acquiring much sympathetic embellishment by Sir Ninian Comper, ecclesiastical architect and Gothic revivalist, in the early twentieth century. His work included the angels on the wooden screen. And yet, for all Comper’s bling, it still felt like a country church, small enough to be welcoming. Some bright, modern stained glass: a St Francis window with birds. A First World War window with crucifixion symbolism. And one…
In memory of Wm Wordsworth, poet laureate.
A frequent sojourner in this parish.
Back to the leaflet. Wordsworth’s wife, Mary, had been a sister of Thomas Hutchinson, who was leasing the twelfth-century Brinsop Court, the poet often spending holidays here, with his wife and his sister, Dorothy.
Merrily stood up, feeling ignorant… parochial. Why hadn’t she known about this? The next church to Traherne’s, at Credenhill. Traherne and Wordsworth… separated by more than a century, but two poets with a lot in common. Lovers of landscape, solitude. Nature mystics.
Odd. Was it odd? She walked into the chancel, looked back to where the far window was halved by the bar of the screen, split by the shaft of the cross. This was very much a theme church, St George the principal one. Why did you always feel sorry for the dragon, instantly disliking the smug bastard with the spear? The charitable view was that – lance, deep throat – it was a piece of early sexual symbolism.
She padded across the nave. As usual, alone in a church, Merrily didn’t feel alone, but this time it wasn’t just about God. That little green book of Wordsworth poems suggested that Syd Spicer had been here.
Byron and Syd? Byron who despised Christianity… not a man’s religion, not a soldier’s religion. She felt Syd pondering this, lighting up. He’d want to smoke in here. Too rich for Syd, this place. Wouldn’t have liked the golden angels. Phoney High Church iconography, he’d said of what had been inflicted on his own church at Wychehill. Grotesque.
Syd, you just knew, preferred drab, damp and frugal.
Merrily moved on to a small lady chapel with more Wordsworth memorials. A medieval stone coffin lid in the floor reminded her of the Knights Templar church at Garway. Stories everywhere, written in glass and stone, many of them modern and literal but no less effective for that.
And then she came to what, unmistakably, was the real thing. Out of place, isolated, but probably pre-dating the wall into which it was set.
A stone slab. Carved images. St George again, an early depiction. George in dragon-slaying mode, but on a horse this time. She consulted the leaflet: originally a tympanum, a piece of ornate masonry between the top of a door and the arch. Herefordshire Romanesque. She knew a bit about that – early medieval. The leaflet said that a stone in an adjacent field was believed to mark the actual spot where St George had killed the dragon.
Sure. The St George who apparently was Turkish, the dragon whose legend was set in the Middle East. Merrily imagined Syd tapping his ash on the saint’s helmet, knowing he could’ve taken George, unarmed, any day of the week.
Never quite understood how saints like George fitted into the fabric of Christianity. A medieval thing, probably, an excuse for crusades, brutality masquerading as valour… a frenzy of pure excitement.
There was a whiff of cigarette smoke. Syd Spicer was back.
The Syd of an overheated confessional afternoon in the church at Wychehill, when he’d used those exact words, recalling the lethal focus you acquired in the Regiment.
…a frenzy of pure excitement… I understand the rush you get when you convince yourself that, in the great scheme of things, it’s not only justified but necessary. When you know that a difficult situation can only be resolved by an act of swift, efficient, intense and quite colossal violence.
God…
Merrily was jerked back against the stone by a shuddering in a pocket of her jeans. She fumbled out the mobile.
There was no sound for a couple of seconds, wonky signal, then Fiona’s voice.
‘You’re there, aren’t you?’
‘Brinsop. At the church.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d better tell you,’ Fiona said.
36
The Having Done It
MERRILY TOOK THE phone outside and stood by the grave of the Wordsworths’ faithful servant Jane Winder. Looking across to the possible moat, the clutch of trees on what might be an island, the viridian march of conifers up the flank of Credenhill.
‘There was a party,’ Fiona said. ‘A publication party. Not for Byron: one of the other better-known SAS authors, a friend of Sam’s, so although he didn’t like parties much he thought we should go. And there were a lot of people there that Sam hadn’t seen in years, so he was doing a fair bit of catching up. Are you still there?’
‘I’ll try and improve the signal.’
Merrily moved up to the high ground behind the church, overlooking lumped and tiered fields where a village might once have stood. The signal had moved up to two stars.
‘When was this?’
‘About a month after the book was burned. I hadn’t been feeling well that night, and Sam was talking to his old mates, so I slid away and sat down at a table on my own. And then Byron was there. Not Liz, just Byron. Sam was conspicuously avoiding him, but he came up to me. Very charming and attentive. Very smooth and elegant in his Heathcliff way. Got me a brandy and sat down. Said he didn’t know what he was doing here, he’d never particularly liked… the author we were supposed to be celebrating, and his book was rubbish.’
‘This was in London?’
‘No, it was a country-house hotel, in Buckinghamshire. We’d decided to stay there, so Sam could have a few drinks. All free – the publishers were spending a lot of money on this guy at the time. A lot more than had ever been spent on Byron, anyway, and he seemed to be taking it as a personal slight. But he was very nice to me. Coming out with all sorts of bullshit. How he wished he had a wife like me, who understood.’
‘Understood what?’
‘Oh, you know, what it was like leaving the Regiment. Having to slow down your metabolism… all this. His metabolism didn’t seem to have slowed at all. He was very intense, whatever he was talking about, very concentrated. Much, I suppose, as you’d imagine he’d be on some operation behind enemy lines. In fact, I remember thinking perhaps that was how he saw this party. Someone else’s wealthy publisher, someone else’s inferior book. As though he was at war with other writers who’d been in the Regiment. The underdog, because his was a kids’ book.’
‘This was before Harry Potter, I presume.’
‘Probably. There was a tremendous… frustration there. Pretty soon, he’s pouring out his troubles, and I’m trying to be sympathetic.’
‘Wife didn’t understand him?’
‘Wife didn’t understand anything. Wife was completely bovine. After a while, I was starting to find it repellent. Self-pity I can handle – it was the venom I didn’t like.’
‘Against Liz?’
‘Against life. Anyway… as I said, I really wasn’t feeling terribly well that night. Eventually I excused myself and went to the loo and then went out for a breath of air. In the grounds, which were extensive, though not remote like you get round here. You could always hear traffic. And he was there.’
‘Where?’
‘Emerging from the bushes, as though he was on an exercise. The exercise being… I was the exercise, I—God, I can’t believe I’m telling somebody about this with Sam lying in a mortuary. It makes me feel sick. I feel sick now, and I felt sick then.’
‘He was drunk?’
‘No, I don’t actually think he was. I don’t think he needed to be. I wish I could explain what I mean by that. It was as though the… the night had released something in him. Sorry, that sounds stupid.’
‘Not to me. Go on.’
‘When I said I wasn’t feeling well, he put an arm around me and said some air might help, and he walked me away from the terrace. Down across the lawns, away from the floodlit area. What could I do? He’d been a friend. He said he wanted to talk to me. Seriously. Very focused. He told me Sam was making a terrible mistake in going into the church, that he was throwing away his life and damaging his country, and if I didn’t want a life of misery I should stop him. Or leave him.’
‘Bloody hell, Fiona…’
‘He said Sam was an idiot who didn’t deserve me. And a coward. He actually said Sam was a coward. And when I opened my mouth to protest, he… his lips were there. And he started to touch me. Fondle me. As if it was the most natural thing in the world? And I’m going, No, thank you, Byron, let’s go back now. I was pretty terrified, naturally. Also terrified that Sam would find us.’
A pause. Merrily moved back towards the car.
‘That’s not… how it seems,’ Fiona said. ‘I knew that if Sam had found us, what would’ve happened… it would’ve ended in some appalling violence.’
‘But Sam was becoming a priest…’
‘He was trying to become a priest. He’d had long talks with other priests. Used to say there were aspects of himself he’d have to… alter if it was going to work. There’d’ve been no turning of cheeks here, would there?’
‘What did you—?’
‘I mean, it wouldn’t’ve mattered who came to the rescue, would it? The result would be the same. Do you know what I mean? Sooner or later it would involve Sam in violence. These guys, that was the only way it could ever be resolved. I’m not saying it’s the only language they understand, or that they’re stupid and mindless, but Byron…’
Fiona broke off, as if she was trying to rethink this, to see if there was any other way it might be viewed.
‘Byron, the way he was that night… it seemed to me, in those moments, that that was what he wanted. He wanted Sam to come for him. He wanted an excuse to release some kind of animalistic rage.’
‘You mean at Syd, or just…?’
‘I mean that he wasn’t attracted to me, as such… it was because I was Sam’s wife.’
‘Jesus.’
‘There was a real kind of… a real evil about it, I suppose. That is, an emptiness – a hole where love and humanity should be? Is that evil?’
‘Oh, yes.’
The clouds had gulped up the sun. Merrily, starting to shiver, walked down through the little gate and stepped down towards the car. The fields looked raw and winter-stripped.
‘So… what happened?’
Convinced that Fiona, unprompted, would simply not have finished the story.
‘I didn’t resist him. He had me against the side of a garage block, and I didn’t resist.’
‘He raped you.’
‘It was over very quickly. It was, for him, I think, not so much the doing it as the having done it. What I remember most was the sound of his breath. A hollow sound. As though he was drawing breath from somewhere else. Afterwards, he just said goodnight. I don’t think he even remembered my name.’
‘You’ve never told anyone?’
‘You’re the first.’
One in a million.
Barry had said that.
Merrily smoked half a cigarette, put on her coat and went back into the church.
Byron’s church.
Up to the glittery chancel, but it didn’t feel right. She walked back down the nave and across to the Romanesque stone tympanum. St George spearing a snake-like dragon. An untypical St George in a kind of pleated skirt. Essential violence.
Fiona had said she’d gone back into the hotel through another door. Gone upstairs to their room and locked herself in and showered for a long time and put on fresh make-up and a different dress. Syd had been looking for her. She told him she hadn’t been well. She said she’d been sick and had had to change.
All that night, her skin had felt greasy and she’d had a filthy taste at the back of her throat.
Merrily thought about Denzil Joy, found she was breathing far too fast and became aware that on the wall opposite her, above the church door, another act of violence was evoked in smoke.
She stood staring at it, uncomprehending for a few moments, taking several long breaths before approaching it across the space at the back of the nave.
It was not smoke. Nor was it imagination. She stopped, flipping feverishly through the leaflet.
The 13th century wall painting above the door is of The Crucifixion.
Like most wall paintings, there wasn’t much left. Could have been a dampness stain, like the grey monk in Huw’s chapel.
Two pains… the first wrought to the drying while his body was moist, and that other slow, with blowing of wind from without…
All the colours gone. The cross gone. He was a corpse or very nearly, drained of all resistance. His head, dead weight, had collapsed into an elbow. His body was brittle as a chrysalis, flaking into the wall.
37
Loaded
FOUR-THIRTY. TOO QUIET in the CID room. An air of getting nowhere.
‘Boss, you’re dead on your feet,’ Karen said. ‘Go home, eh?’
‘I’m all right. Just sick of drawing blanks. Not even as if it’s a wall of silence.’
Bliss quite liked a wall of silence. Justified the use of a wrecking ball. Problem here was that once you were over the language barriers the Bulgarians, Romanians, Lithuanians, Poles would tell you anything you wanted. All of them shattered by the East Street atrocity. Not an enemy in the world, these girls. Clean-living, religious. Just wanted to make some money to send home.
Men? Of course not. They were inseparable, anyway. The prevailing opinion now was that they’d somehow, perhaps innocently, offended one of the criminal gangs. That the men seen by Carly and Joss in the Monk’s Head were hard-core. Following the sisters out, pretending to fancy them, that was just an act.
‘Something will give,’ Karen said. ‘On the third day, something always gives. Now, please, will you go home? Me and Darth can hold it together till the morning. Have a big glass of whisky and go to bed. Anything breaks, we’ll send a car for you?’
‘Yeah,’ Bliss said.
‘Now, boss? Straight home?’
‘I’m gonna make a call first. I’ll be in my office.’
In the office he didn’t quite shut the door and stood by the gap, out of sight, listening. But nobody seemed to be talking about the DI beating up his wife and nobody’s expression changed when he walked back in, claiming he’d left his chewy behind.
Bliss sat down and put in a call to Jeremy Berrows, who farmed beyond Kington, where Herefordshire met the paler hills of Radnorshire. Jeremy lived with a lot of sheep and a lot of sheep-dogs. Also with a beautiful woman called Natalie, who was known to the police from way, way back, but it was all right now.
‘You sounds a bit on edge, Mr Bliss,’ Jeremy said.
He was what people called an old-fashioned kind of farmer, open to superstitions and signs and portents. A haloed moon, three magpies, the ash out before the oak, all that. Jerem
y thought his land confided in him.
Bliss said, ‘You’ve got Mansel Bull’s dogs, I believe. All of them.’
‘They’re a gang. He didn’t wanner split them up. Problem with that?’
‘We’re talking to everybody who’d had dealings with Mansel.’
‘Wasn’t exactly a deal. Bit of an agreement, that’s all, between two blokes as knew a bit about dogs and sheep. Not everybody got along with Mansel, but he looked after his dogs.’
‘And you came and took them after he died.’
‘Before. Just as well. His brother woulder stopped it. Trained dog’s worth money. Or mabbe he’d’ve had the whole bunch shot.’
‘What?’
‘Mabbe that’s unfair,’ Jeremy said.
‘See, apart from the inhumanity of that, Jeremy, it would indicate a fairly strong element of not exactly honouring his brother’s memory.’
Jeremy didn’t reply. Bliss liked the sound of the silence. He’d once listened to the lovely Natalie at the right time, and whilst Jeremy didn’t exactly owe him…
‘Word is,’ Bliss said, ‘that Sollers wasn’t too pleased when Mansel sold that ground. Any whispers about that?’
‘Don’t go much on whispers. Too many of ’em round yere’s been about me and Nat. As you know.’
‘How is she?’
‘Good.’
How many local people knew about Natalie’s time in detention was debatable. The probability was that the gossip was just about how a little woolly-haired farmer held on to a serious beauty from Off. But it was unlikely either of them would ever be able to relax.
‘Jeremy, you’re a straight sort of bloke, as farmers go, so I’ll be straight with you. I think there’s quite a lot Sollers Bull hasn’t told us. I accept you don’t listen much to gossip, but how did you feel things were between Mansel and Sollers?’
‘Different generations, different attitudes. Mansel was a businessman in the ole sense. Tight as a duck’s arse, but you knowed where you was. Sollers is all for the image. Puttin’ hisself around. Prize cattle at the Royal Welsh, diversifyin’, farm shops and cafés. Huntin’. I was at school with him for a few years. Lady Hawkins.’
