Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain

by Phil Rickman

  ‘And what was he like at school?’

  ‘Head boy.’

  ‘Figures. See, I’m guessing Mansel would realize Sollers wouldn’t be too keen on him flogging that ground to the fruit farm. So why’d Mansel do it? Bit of pique, maybe?’

  ‘No, no, that wasn’t it at all, he…’

  Jeremy sounded uncertain again, like he was worried about breaking a confidence.

  ‘He’s dead, Jeremy. He was killed. It was mairder. Remember?’

  ‘Wasn’t going well, that’s all. The dogs. Mansel thought mabbe he was losin’ it.’

  ‘What, his marbles?’

  ‘His skill. Had three shelves full of awards. Come close to winning One Man and His Dog on the box, once. Then it wasn’t workin’ n’more. Used to train his dogs down by the river, but Sollers wanted more ground for his cattle, and he had to move up to the top field. Not used much for stock, usually they just had the hay off it. And it wasn’t the same. Seemed obvious to me it wasn’t the dogs, but he was losin’ heart. Mansel, either he was on top or he didn’t wanner know – got that much in common with Sollers, at least.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re saying, Jeremy.’

  ‘Couldn’t hack it. Dogs was all over the place some days. He’d give a command, dog’d go for it real slow. Or run off, back down to the river. Couldn’t count on ’em. He was gettin’ real depressed. Thought it was his age. Got so he didn’t wanner take the dogs out n’more.’

  ‘So you got all these valuable dogs for nothing from a man who’s known for being tight as a duck’s arse?’

  ‘Too many dogs is more of a burden than anything, Mr Bliss. We agreed mabbe he’d have ’em back one day. I told him I reckoned it wasn’t about him and it wasn’t about his dogs. They works fine yere. Poetry.’

  ‘I’m not getting this.’

  ‘You’re a copper, Mr Bliss. Nobody ’spects you to get it. Had to be a reason them top fields wasn’t used much – and that was how it was for years. Generations, mabbe. I had a walk over it when I went to fetch the dogs. Some places, the air feels loaded. A place looks quiet, but it en’t. A lot of ravens, too, for some reason.’

  ‘Ravens.’ Bliss thought about this, and it was Vasile Bocean all over again. ‘You know what, Jeremy?’ he said. ‘I’m tired.’

  He sat at his desk for several minutes. All right, raised a Catholic and, whatever anybody said, you never lost that and all the baggage. And what Jeremy had been hinting at – feelings, atmosphere – he wouldn’t entirely rubbish any of it. Privately. In the midnight hour. It was just nothing to do with police work. It didn’t help.

  He got up and stood by his window. The sky was like the inside of an orange peel. The light nights were coming. Didn’t like them any more, dark was best, watching the lights going out across the road, on the hill above Great Malvern.

  Colleagues only. The way those words had been pinballing round his head all day. Telling himself she didn’t mean it, she’d come round. He’d find some way of bringing her round. Have to. Couldn’t lose this. Couldn’t let it just come apart like a cheap supermarket bag.

  Somehow, he had to get Kirsty to refute any suggestion that he’d ever abused her physically. She could call him any kind of shit as long as she told the truth about that, sent it back up the line.

  Bliss pulled out his iPhone, checked his incomings. No e-mails of any consequence, just the one phone message.

  Annie Howe. Thank Christ. Bliss clicked on it. Annie’s voice was very low, but not so low the words weren’t metallically distinct.

  ‘Didn’t think I could be surprised any more at the level of your blind stupidity.’

  Bliss clapped the phone tight to his ear, both hands around it in case anybody came in.

  ‘Don’t know how you could have thought for one minute that I wouldn’t find out. Your wife. Your own bloody wife.’

  Deadness for several seconds.

  ‘Anyway,’ Annie said, ‘That’s it.’

  End of message.

  Bliss wrenched the phone away from his ear, stabbed at the screen to call her back. All right, no, he couldn’t explain why he hadn’t told her about Kirsty’s suspicions, except to say that he hadn’t believed the bitch, couldn’t imagine how she could possibly know about Annie. Still didn’t know.

  Annie’s phone was switched off.

  Bliss stared at the iPhone, all the little symbols, the ten thousand useless friggin’ apps. Rubbed the cold sweat from his forehead.

  So who had the bitch told?

  He strode out of the office, through the CID room without speaking to anybody, down the stairs and out of the building, his face and the back of his neck feeling like they were badly sunburned.

  38

  The Energy of Sorrow

  LOL WATCHED MERRILY collapse back into his sofa. Late sun honeying the room, red veins pulsing among the ashes at the bottom of the woodstove. As so often these days, Merrily looked vacant, wiped-out.

  ‘So where do I go from here?’

  Lol was thinking maybe a new career. It was a crap job, the clergy, and no indication it would ever get better. So much open contempt now. The Church, God, the afterlife – all delusion. Thinking it and getting a buzz out of saying it, loudly, in public, on TV, and the only people who shouted back were the crazy fundamentalists like his late parents who’d cut him out of their lives.

  Merrily had come home this afternoon to find the answering machine going, Uncle Ted, the churchwarden, trying to lean on her, before tonight’s parish meeting, about his plans to turn the church into a greasy spoon. It was about paying bills.

  The bleeping of the answering machine had chased her out of the house and across the road in search of sanctuary. I think I need help, she’d said, and they’d talked for an hour, sharing an omelette and toast. She’d told him about last night’s visit from James Bull-Davies and everything she’d learned about a man called Byron Jones. From Barry, from Jones’s ex-wife and, finally, Syd’s wife, Fiona.

  ‘You believe this man raped her?’

  ‘You think it’s something she’d invent?’

  ‘But she didn’t go to the police. Or to anyone.’

  ‘Syd would’ve killed him.’

  ‘And now he’s dead, does Mrs Spicer want you to do something about this?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Lol sat down next to Merrily.

  ‘How would she feel about you simply dumping it all on Bull-Davies? Who asked you to share.’

  ‘She wouldn’t like that. I’m only telling you because I know it won’t go out of this house. I mean, who is William Lockley? Why does he want the information? Does he want to use it or suppress it? Who am I working for?’

  ‘So tell Bull-Davies what you’ve heard about Jones without naming names. And then back off.’

  ‘Can’t now. Not with Syd’s funeral.’

  ‘That,’ Lol said, ‘was a mistake.’

  He slid off the sofa, gathered up two logs from the hearth, opened the stove and put them in. Watching the fire seizing one, thinking of the insatiable furnace in a crematorium, where quickie funerals were conducted by a duty vicar who’d never met the customer.

  And this… this was the summation of a life, Merrily would protest. Where was the electricity, the surge of transition, the smoothing of the final earthly path by the subtle energy of sorrow? No wonder some of them didn’t rest. She didn’t do quickies. A properly conducted funeral needed the history. Bottom line: if she’d felt an obligation to Syd before, now it was cast in bronze.

  ‘What was I supposed to say? No, thanks, best to find somebody who doesn’t give a toss? Lol, it’s like he’s haunting me. The way he showed up at the chapel. I keep hearing that flat voice in my head when I’m not expecting it. “Samuel Dennis Spicer, Church of England”. Smell his cigarette smoke in church.’

  ‘Isn’t there a term for that?’

  ‘Psychological projection?’

  ‘Arising from guilt. Self-recrimination,’ Lol said. ‘Mispl
aced.’

  ‘No, this is something else.’ Merrily stood up, walked to the window, looked across the cobbles at the vicarage. ‘He was taking steps to protect himself against something he considered evil. He goes out on Credenhill with a Bergen full of Bible, as if he knows he isn’t coming back. And he leaves these books behind like clues to something. One pointing directly at a man who went from good friend to bitter enemy.’

  ‘Just do a meaningful funeral. Pray for both their souls or something.’

  ‘Sure.’ She smiled. ‘Walk away. Credenhill’s twenty minutes down the road.’

  ‘And always go the other way to Hereford.’

  Lol had planned to tell her, finally, about Jane and Cornel and the cockfighting, but that would be too much for her to handle. Needed to deal with that himself. At least with Danny and Gomer on the case he felt better about it. Get the evidence, share it with Jane, then take it to the RSPCA and the police. Let Jane take the credit if it worked out; shield her from repercussions if it didn’t.

  He sat down on the hearthrug, looking up at Merrily on the sofa. She looked small, vulnerable, and there must be something he could do.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we try and work this out?’

  ‘Don’t have much time. Parish meeting at seven. Maundy service tomorrow. Chrism mass at the Cathedral – I’m not going to make that this year. Why does Easter always come at the wrong time?’

  ‘Does Barry know anything about this?’

  ‘I don’t think Barry’s told me everything he knows. I don’t think he knows about the rape, but he does think Byron’s a dangerous man. Warned me not to try and talk to him.’

  ‘But you still went to find him.’

  ‘No… I just went to the church because there was clearly something there that fascinated him. He must’ve spent virtually everything he had buying that land.’

  ‘Where he now stages war games behind barbed wire?’ Lol leaned back against an inglenook wall. ‘The rift between him and Syd – what was that about?’

  ‘All we know for sure is that he hated Syd becoming an ordained priest. Byron’s own religious beliefs, if he had any, appear to have been pagan. Saw himself as a Celt, like his hero Caradog. Locked away in his tower room, turning himself into Caradog. Leaving Caradog’s… ambience.’

  ‘If I’ve got this right,’ Lol said, ‘Caradog held out against the Romans until he was betrayed and captured and taken to Rome. Where his oratory made him a celeb. A hero.’

  ‘But Byron’s fictional story seems to deviate. He’s not interested in oratory. His Caradog has to impress the Romans with his military skills. Which are obviously akin to SAS methods. I called in at the bookshop to see what the chances were of getting his other books, but Amanda says they’re out of print.’

  ‘And Caradog was a druid?’

  ‘He worked with druids. According to the stories.’

  ‘What might Jones have been doing, then, in that tower room?’

  ‘Maybe meditation, visualization. To focus his mind for the writing.’

  ‘And the smell?’

  ‘I don’t even want to think about the smell.’

  ‘Did Syd know Byron was at Brinsop, when he took on the job?’

  ‘That’s the interesting question. I’d say he did. My feeling is that he always knew where Byron was, at any given time. When Byron was at Allensmore, Syd went to see him, maybe to try and sort something out… but maybe not. “They’re all dead,” he’s saying. “All dead now.” Who did he mean?’

  Merrily spread her hands in defeat.

  Lol said, ‘Would Syd have known, do you think, the reason Byron wanted to live at Brinsop? Or at least have an idea?’

  ‘Let’s assume he did. Let’s also assume there a connection with this very unusual church, which Byron kept photographing from the air.’

  ‘How would he do that?’

  ‘Not a problem in this area. He’d know people with private planes. Helicopters. A lot of the SAS had contacts with Shobdon airfield. Recreational. Parachute clubs, all this.’

  ‘It’s just that aerial photography might suggest the site of the church is more important than the church itself,’ Lol said.

  ‘And lines. He’d drawn lines across the aerial photos.’

  ‘Woooh… leys?’

  ‘Possibly. Not saying a word to Jane. I don’t want her within five miles of Byron Jones.’

  ‘Leys, if they exist, are pre-Celtic,’ Lol said. ‘Bronze Age or earlier.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what Liz said.’

  ‘I’d quite like to look at Byron’s book sometime.’

  ‘It’s in my bag.’ Merrily gathered it up from the floor and stood. ‘In fact, they’re all here. I’ll leave you the Wordsworth, too. Any perceptions, flashes of inspiration… would be very welcome.’

  ‘Merrily…’ Just inside the door, he grabbed hold of her, hugged her, hard. ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘What for, exactly?’

  She kissed him and he felt a quiver in her.

  ‘Been letting things slide,’ he murmured. ‘When something’s finally paying the mortgage, you tend to go at it round the clock in case it doesn’t last. And you forget what’s really important.’

  ‘At least you don’t have God on your back. Swan later?’

  Lol opened the front door. Up the street, at the Eight Till Late, Jim Prosser was taking in his paper rack. A news bill said: HEREFORD HORROR.

  Lol watched Merrily walking back to the vicarage. The voice in his head sang, Do something. But he didn’t know where to start.

  39

  Seer Takes Fire

  THE BLOOD ON the book cover was embossed, glossy-bubbled against the background’s matt black and greys and the white title.

  CARADOG

  They came, they saw…

  Lol took it over to the desk in the window, flipping through for any local place names. Nothing he recognized immediately, but it was, after all, fiction.

  He took the legionnaire from behind. A thrust to the spine and then, as the man fell back, moved around and hacked off his head from the front, a practised upward stroke. They were easy meat, most of them, mercenaries who’d never seen Rome. They obeyed orders and understood discipline – he’d give them that. But they lacked the ability to think for themselves or operate in small units. And, as lowly foot soldiers, they were not attuned to the higher energies known to the elite and now, at last, known to Caradog, who felt them rising like fire from the pit of his gut. A fire kindled from the sun itself.

  Cartoon violence. Kids loved this stuff, but they’d probably turn off at the first mention of higher energies. Lol scanned several chapters, finding two more references to Caradog drawing energy from the sun, at one stage holding up his sword to catch the light before going calmly into battle and efficiently slaying a large number of Romans.

  Druids worshipped the sun.

  It was a start. Lol opened up his laptop, put Google on the case. There was modern druidry, the religious arm of Greenpeace, and there was the kind the Romans had known, altogether darker, with animal and possibly human sacrifice. But the Roman accounts might have been propaganda.

  He Googled Wordsworth and Brinsop. Quite a lot. Wordsworth had been Poet Laureate when he was holidaying at Brinsop Court.

  And then the Net, as occasionally happened, threw up an unexpected link – not to Brinsop but somewhere not far away – which sent Lol back to the small green book: Wordsworth’s Britain: a little itinerary.

  He found it tucked in after ‘Tintern Abbey’. A poem commemorating:

  ROMAN ANTIQUITIES DISCOVERED

  AT BISHOPSTONE, HEREFORDSHIRE

  WHILE poring Antiquarians search the ground

  Upturned with curious pains, the Bard, a Seer,

  Takes fire:—The men that have been reappear;

  Romans for travel girt, for business gowned;

  And some recline on couches, myrtle-crowned,

  In festal glee: why not…

&nb
sp; The poem was dated 1835 and carried a note from Wordsworth describing its inspiration: a Roman pavement discovered only yards from the front door of Bishopstone parsonage:

  in full view of several hills upon which there had formerly been Roman encampments

  Doubtless including Credenhill, with its Iron Age fort. In Wordsworth’s day, any kind of camp might be considered Roman.

  Lol put a block of ash on the stove and dug into the shelves for an OS map: Hereford, Leominster and surrounding area. Cleared his desk and opened out the map to the area west of Hereford.

  It brought an invisible landscape into existence in various archaic fonts and symbols.

  ROMAN ROAD (course of)

  Again and again: Roman roads either side of the Wye. One skirting Credenhill. Under the hill was Brinsop, the church marked only by a small + but earthworks and moat nearby signifying an area of extreme antiquity.

  Bishopstone, a hamlet with a church, was no distance from Brinsop. Directly east of it, two more Roman roads made a kind of V-formation into the point of which was tucked something identified on the map as RAF Hereford. Which could only be the SAS camp. Just before the Roman roads converged on

  MAGNIS (ROMAN TOWN)

  the ruins of which, according to several Internet sites, had still been visible in recorded memory. Much of the masonry had gone into the foundations of Hereford. By 1772, the antiquarian William Stukely was discussing a fine mosaic floor unearthed at Kenchester and the remains of a temple, and also noting that one Colonel Dantsey had paved his cellar with Roman bricks.

  Around the original Roman army camp there had been evidence of streets and shops. The remains of a shrine had been uncovered near the Wye, part of a villa found in the river itself.

  Lol went through to his kitchen for a glass of water, digesting the key point: the SAS, quite recently, had moved its headquarters from Hereford itself to a former RAF base at the convergence of two Roman roads serving a Roman military base.