Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain

by Phil Rickman

  ‘What is this? What’s it about?’

  ‘Clothing and fancy goods, Goldie. We’re collecting for Oxfam.’

  ‘Gotter warrant, have you?’

  ‘Has Stevie Hawking gorra GCSE in physics? Now, back off, you old witch.’

  Within half an hour they had quite a little boutique going in the hallway: designer tops, silk scarves, perfume, odds and ends of jewellery. Much of it still in the wrapping, labels intact: River Island, M & S, Fat Face. Harriet’s, of course, and a couple of quality shoeshops. Bliss was made up, the Mersey going tidal in his vocals.

  ‘Just like me bairthday all over again, Goldie.’

  ‘All paid for, Mr Francis. I got all the receipts. Somewhere.’

  ‘How much did they owe you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The gairls! How many weeks’ rent for that nasty little room?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Yeh.’ Bliss smiling kindly down at the old girl. ‘You’re well known for having no head for business.’

  They were sitting in extravagant peacock wicker chairs in what Goldie called the breakfast room. Just the two of them. Nobody breakfasting yet. It was just gone half-seven. Bliss was due to meet Karen at Gaol Street at nine. He’d had four hours’ intermittent sleep. Flying on blind rage – so much cheaper than crystal meth.

  ‘All right,’ Goldie said, ‘a few weeks, thassall, swearder God, and I never pushed hard for it. Some weeks I let them off it, I did!’

  ‘Yeh, that’s why, the morning they were missing, you were all over the estate after them because it was rent day.’

  ‘I never—’

  ‘Shurrup. You know what I think? I think – and it just kind of came to me in a flash, the way these things do – I think that you told them ways they could pay in kind.’

  ‘If people wants to give me presents…’

  Goldie had shrivelled herself into the wings of her wicker throne, hair like brass curtain-rings escaping from the pink and yellow turban. Bliss shook his head sadly.

  ‘An’ I never had them on no streets!’ Goldie said.

  ‘Only ’cause they wouldn’t bloody do it, as decent icon-carrying Russian Orthodox—Oh, the shame of it, Goldie.’ Bliss leaned towards her, sniffing at the perfume she evidently wore in bed. ‘Oh, the ignominy of one of Hereford’s leading hoteliers nicked for fencing leggings and camisoles.’

  ‘What you want?’

  ‘… and all the extra menial offences which might come to light.’

  ‘What you want off me?’

  ‘All right.’ Bliss lifted a calming hand. ‘Let’s stand back a little from this. Allow me to bring you up to speed on West Mercia’s investigation of the murder of the Marinescu sisters.’

  Leaning back into the silly chair, Bliss talked very simply and with compassion about an old lady whose handbag had been stolen by two young women in a mail-order surplus store and who’d been so upset that she’d subsequently passed away.

  ‘This old lady,’ Bliss said, ‘her name was Cynthia Wise, from Bobblestock. She had five children and, I think, sixteen or seventeen grandchildren?’

  All this background had been waiting for him when he’d arrived at Gaol Street, well before dawn. A little fizz in the air at a normally cheerless hour.

  ‘I never knowed her, Mr Francis. I never goes near Bobblestock.’

  ‘Yeh, but what a tragic story, eh, Goldie? Could be you, couldn’t it? In a year or two. Y’know, if that was my gran, God rest her little old soul, I’d feel more than a bit aggrieved at these people coming from the fringes of the Euro-heap, as good as murdering innocent pensioners for a cheap handbag and a couple of twenties. Cause the death of a decent, much-loved old lady and what happens to them if they get nicked? First offence. Bugger all! What kind of justice is that, Goldie?’

  ‘I still don’t know…’ Goldie’s cold eyes jittering just enough for him to know he was in ‘… what you wants.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t actually made up me mind, yet, but I’m… you know, I’m wairkin’ on it.’

  ‘Always helped you out, Mr Francis, you knows that.’ Goldie folding her arms, hands vanishing into the opposite sleeves. ‘I do’s everythin’ in my powers to help the police.’

  Bliss sniffed.

  ‘Not done much at all, the more I think about it. Nor’enough to melt me stony heart on this one.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about no handbags.’ Goldie so far back in the chair now that you could hear its fibres twisting. ‘You won’t find no handbags yere, thass a damn fact.’

  ‘Well, no, the only place I’d expect to find a stolen handbag is at the bottom of the Wye with a brick inside.’ Oh yes… closing in. ‘I suppose you could try talking to me. Maybe a few anecdotes you’ve heard from your clientele and the gentlefolk around the Plas. Bearing in mind that I don’t care where it comes from if it’s sufficiently entertaining and contains an element of verifiable truth, and… You’ve gone quiet, Goldie.’

  ‘I needs time.’

  ‘No, you don’t, not really. But go on, I’ll give yer five minutes. During which you can tell me why the girls left Magnis Berries. Was one of them raped? Threatened with rape or a beating if they didn’t do what they were told? Or was it simply just an unhappy love affair with a man who wasn’t what he seemed? What did they disclose to you over the cocoa and the tarot?’

  ‘Now listen, Mr Francis, I don’t know about none of that. You gotter believe me.’

  ‘No cocoa?’

  ‘No tarot, neither. I brings out the cards one night, they was near to crossing theirselves. Them ole villages in Romania, it’s like nothin’ changed in centuries. I says, right you are, loveys, I understands. ’

  ‘What we talking about?’

  ‘The dead.’ Goldie looked up, defiant. ‘That’s why they was told to leave.’

  Bliss was silent. Oh fuck, was this contagious?

  ‘Dead people all around in the mornin’ mist. The cold comin’ off of ’em. Dead men. Got so nobody would work with them, so they was told to leave.’

  ‘And that’s it, is it?’

  ‘I knowed you wouldn’t understand.’

  Bliss felt his mood darken.

  ‘Goldie, that earns you no points at all. And you’re out of time, so let’s go back to the old lady. Here’s the bottom line. If the killing of Maria and Ileana Marinescu is linked to what happened to Granny Wise, and the killers were to find out exactly why—’

  ‘You’re bloody mad, you are!’

  ‘… why those girls were forced to target old ladies in a hitherto safe city… if, by some unfortunate leakage of investigative data, they were to find who was running the Marinescus… they – or their mates – might think there was unfinished business, Goldie. You know what I mean?’

  Goldie’s wicker chair creaked in a fragile way.

  ‘You’re an damned evil bastard, you are, Mr Francis.’

  ‘Yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘And the wairst of it is, from your point of view… I might soon be departing this division, so I have absolutely no reason to look after you any more.’

  48

  Aggressor

  THE LIGHT IN the church was dusty brown, a muffled sunglow in the chancel. This early, it always felt like some ornate derelict cinema.

  Merrily had washed and dressed, very basically. A couple of hours before she’d need to get ready for the Maundy service. No sign of Jane yet, so she’d fed Ethel and run across the road to Lol’s house. The early light had hung a grey pall on the empty living room where the wood stove was dead. She’d tried the knocker, pointlessly, and then she was walking back across the empty pink-lit square, panting, dazed and wide-eyed with panic.

  Could she ring Danny at Kinnerton this early? She was not possessive, didn’t pressure, didn’t chase. Not a worrier.

  She sat on the edge of the chancel, the church keys lying on a stone flag at her feet. She’d prayed, then let her fears lie for a while, unexamined, as flesh-coloured light through the high plai
n-glass windows laid a greasy sheen on the pew ends.

  Been letting things slide, Lol had said.

  You and me both. Merrily picked up the keys and stood. She already had her mobile out.

  ‘Not at all, Mrs Watkins!’ Greta Thomas, a woman who’d spent half a lifetime competing with amplifiers. ‘I been up hours.’

  Merrily waited in the dewy churchyard until Danny came on and said no. No, Lol wasn’t there. No, he hadn’t been last night, neither.

  ‘When you seen him last, Merrily?’

  ‘About five-thirty last night. I had a parish council meeting, and I thought we’d arranged to meet in the Swan, but he didn’t show up, and he’s not been home.’

  ‘He don’t go many places, do he? His truck—?’

  ‘It’s not like him, is it? I’d ring the police, but it’s just a few hours and he’s a grown man. They’d probably just laugh at me.’

  ‘You got any idea at all?’

  ‘Only a worst-case scenario.’

  ‘I better come over now,’ Danny said.

  On the refectory table, there was a note written in dying biro.

  Mum… sorry… totally forgot E’s birthday.

  Need to get the early bus into town. I’ll

  call you.

  Love, J

  Jane needed to get a birthday present for Eirion before she met him in Hereford this afternoon. Eirion’s birthday again, so soon? Was he nineteen… twenty even?

  Feeling half-relieved at not having to tell Jane about Lol, Merrily started making tea and toast which she didn’t want, just giving her hands things to do while waiting for the news on Radio Hereford and Worcester. Like if there was nothing on the news, everything would be OK.

  The only local item was Ward Savitch talking about opening up The Court to the public over Easter to thank the delightful people of Ledwardine for being so welcoming.

  When the phone rang in the scullery, Merrily abandoned both the toast and Savitch.

  It should have cleared her head like a bucket of water from a deep, cold well.

  Any other time.

  ‘Liz said a colleague of yours died, leaving unresolved issues relating to a man I had dealings with.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I no longer publish him, of course,’ Alexandra Bell said. ‘Nor, I imagine, does anyone. It was the worst three years of my career, so I feel under no obligation at all to protect whatever remains of his reputation. Heartening to hear that Liz finally got away.’

  A faint Australian accent. An editor of children’s books, you expected circumspection, a touch of the fastidious, but this was a woman who wasn’t holding back, who had clearly waited a long time to let all this out to the right person. Merrily sat down and lit a cigarette. Maybe she was the right person, but this really wasn’t the right time.

  ‘Erm, I didn’t want to… my original intention was to try and find out the substance of the other two books in his Caradog series, which now seem to be out of print.’

  ‘Don’t know how much you know about publishing, Reverend Watkins, but first-novelists are normally easy to work with. You want changes made, they’re so grateful to be getting into print they seldom argue.’

  ‘He argued?’

  ‘He simply ignored all my suggestions and refused to answer my questions. If I asked about the historical basis for something, he wouldn’t tell me. Need to know, was one of his phrases. Have you met him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As a writer, he wasn’t arrogant, he wasn’t boastful, had no pretensions to be any kind of stylist. He simply thought that if he came up with good enough stories – and they were good stories, no question – it didn’t matter where they came from. But children’s fiction requires, if anything, more attention to history. So…’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Merrily watched the sunlight gobbling up the dusty panes in the scullery window, the day racing. ‘Look, if could—’

  ‘So, in the end, I went up there to see him.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’d been before, when we first signed him, to persuade him that Caradog would work better as a children’s book - a boys’ book. He was charming. A very attractive man. I think he thought I was just a girl with a chequebook, I don’t think he realised I’d be his editor. The second time, he was very different.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Probably six months later, around 2003. This was when a number of issues had arisen about his manuscript. Sexism. Extreme violence.’

  ‘A lot of that?’

  ‘Oh, Christ, yes. Lot of kids’ books involve mega-violence, but not – how can I put this? – not delivered with the relish, the exultance, that Byron displayed. I’m no wilting lily, I come from a part of Australia not widely known for being ultra-PC, but to me it was unsuitable for young readers without major surgery. In the end, we got away with reducing it to the bald facts – as in, he cut the man’s head off. He rarely minded us toning down his prose, no prima donna stuff there. What I found most iffy - and I’m not what you’d call a person of faith - was the way the violence was equated with religion.’

  ‘In what way?’ Merrily pulled over the sermon pad and a pen. ‘In the first book, Caradog’s faith doesn’t seem to be defined. We assume he’s a pagan, but what kind?’

  ‘I did some research of my own. There’s a story that Caradog was converted to Christianity while in Rome, after his capture. Now, that might be a myth, but it’s an accepted myth. In Byron’s book, however – in the second book – he’s already been converted, here in Britain.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By himself.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Caradog’s first battles with the Romans are in the east, in Kent, and they’re largely defensive. But at some stage he travels west to attack Roman settlements. And he becomes the aggressor.’

  ‘Would this be at Credenhill?’

  ‘Don’t remember. What I do recall, the reason Caradog is able to inflict such wholesale carnage is that he and his men are beating the Romans at their own game. They’ve studied and adapted and developed the Romans’ own tactics… which are strengthened by certain religious practices.’

  ‘He explain what these were?’

  ‘In gratuitous detail, which was one of the reasons I came to see him. Came down this day on the train, and we went out to lunch. In his Land Rover. It was winter. Really winter. When I asked if we might have the heating on, he said it didn’t work. Plus, the Land Rover was open at the back, and it was absolutely flaming perishing. When we got out at the pub, I could hardly speak for the cold.’

  ‘Didn’t he notice?’

  ‘If he did, he certainly didn’t comment on it. Afterwards… I’d foolishly asked if we could visit some of the locations, not realising I’d be expected to follow him on foot to the top of a very steep hill. Not wearing the most suitable footwear. When I stumbled, he… stepped in to stop me falling’

  ‘Good of him.’

  ‘By seizing my left breast?’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘I was pretty scared. But he didn’t try to kiss me, and he didn’t touch me again. It was as if it had never happened. He pointed out aspects of the view, which I don’t remember at all, and then we went down and he dropped me off at Hereford station, and that was that.’

  Merrily thought, Afterwards, he just said goodnight. I don’t think he even remembered my name.

  ‘He touched you as… ’ She heard a vehicle drawing up in front of the vicarage drive. Please God…‘I’m sorry… are you saying he touched you as he might have touched, say, a man?’

  ‘Oh, no. It was done in an explicitly sexual way, but without… in some way, it was done without emotion. With firmness, rather than… what you might expect. With dispassion. I really don’t think I imagined that.’

  ‘Presumably, Liz doesn’t know about it?’

  ‘God, no. I told her later how difficult he was as an author and if it hadn’t been a three-book deal we’d’ve dumped him. I doubt she p
assed the message on.’

  ‘Did you see him again?’

  ‘I did not. I reverted to emails. The fact that the second book in the series was rejected by his American publisher I think convinced him to soft-pedal. They were far more sensitive about the religious aspects than we were – Bible Belt and all that.’

  ‘I’m still not quite getting this.’

  ‘The books seem to be suggesting a violent, merciless type of Christianity which makes men into pitiless killers. They slaughter everything – women, children – in their path without an atom of remorse. And the training for this militarised savagery is described in exhaustive detail. I’d email you copies of the original manuscripts if I hadn’t binned them years ago. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

  ‘It’s not what anyone wants to hear.’

  ‘I don’t want to know what he’s done but, if you do have to see him, best you don’t go alone.’

  ‘Can I call you back, if…?’

  So many more things she needed to ask, but the possibility that the vehicle outside might be Lol…

  ‘Have to be tomorrow,’ Alexandra Bell said. ‘I have meetings all day. Why I called you so early.’

  ‘It was good of you.’

  ‘Yeah, well, no worries.’

  Only a floating dread. When Merrily made it back into the kitchen, clawing her way through a fog of anxiety, all of it now involving Lol, the sun had come out and the refectory table was lightly dappled. Suddenly, perversely, it was a lovely spring day, the first of the year.

  And it wasn’t Lol at the door, it was Danny Thomas and Gomer Parry.

  Gomer had an unlit roll-up between his teeth. He was wearing one of his own GP Plant Hire sweatshirts under his old tweed jacket.

  ‘We been round the lanes,’ Danny said. ‘Talkin’ to folks we knows. One feller, he seen a truck like Lol’s gettin’ some attention. Then it was took away.’

  ‘I don’t—Where?’

  Merrily looked from one to the other. Gomer with his cap rolled up in both hands like an overstuffed brown baguette. Danny’s pitted, bearded face expressionless, his mobile in one hand.

  Danny said, ‘And then I just had a call… Merrily, this en’t good.’