by Phil Rickman
‘What is it?’
‘Big boys’ playground.’
Jane gave up. The way his mood had altered, she could only think he’d taken something. Maybe when he went off, apparently for a pee in the woods and she hadn’t heard anything. Snorting coke from a folded tenner.
‘Training centre,’ Cornel said. ‘Assault course, big pond they cross on ropes, professional shooting range… and all the things they daren’t do at The Court because it’s too close to the village.’
‘And cockfights?’
‘Cockfights, yeah, yeah, sure.’
‘So this is connected with The Court?’
‘Court’s just paintballing, clay-shooting, a few pheasant shoots and all that regular shit. And then you’re asked discreetly if you’d like to do some real shooting. Not for the wimps and the veggies. And that’s when you meet Kenny for rough shoots in the woods, back of The Court and then maybe this other guy, ex-SAS, leads a weekend in the Black Mountains or the Beacons, which is a lot tougher, and the hunting’s on a whole different level – you don’t kill, you don’t eat. And that’s where you start paying for yourself.’
‘You did that?’
‘Sure, sure, sure, but all the time – this is what pissed me off – you’re aware of other guys getting handpicked for really heavy shit. I wanted that – more than any of them.’
Cornel had his wire-cutters around a strand of barbed wire where a hole had been cut in the fence. Kept leaning on the handles, snipping bits off the wire. ‘When I was at the LSE, used to read all these SAS books. I identified with that. Different jungle, that’s all. And these other guys are going off at midnight in a Land Rover, and I go to Kenny – what about me? And he’s going, We don’t think you’re quite ready, Cornel, and I’m like, What exactly do you want me to prove? Name it.’
Jane was trying to ease her hand away, without making it seem like a snub, but Cornel kept squeezing it, words spurting out of him.
‘’Cause I thought he was like my mate. He’d start taking me on one side, whispering the kind of thing you appreciate knowing when you’re on a shooting trip and the others are all upper-class bastards who’ve been handling shotguns since they could walk. Thought it was him and me. One time I saw what I thought was this fox in the woods, about to pop it when I realized it was a dog. And that night, in the pub, when I was alone with Kenny, he said, why didn’t you just shoot it?’
‘Shoot a dog?’
Jane’s fingers stiffened.
‘“Lost a few points there, Cornel,” he said. And after that I was always aware he was watching me, making these little remarks, asking could I hold my drink, stuff like that. Like testing my resolve, how determined I was to move on. So I’m drinking more and I’m blasting off at anything that moves. Mostly missed, but not always. Getting better. Bought my own shotgun. Getting there. And he kept asking for more money, and I kept giving it to him. It’s a rite of passage, he’d say. Cost me over a grand for the cockfight, and that was before the betting started. That was him in the yard at the Swan. That was Kenny. My mate.’
His mate? Telling him his balls had fallen off and to go back and cry himself to sleep? Come and see me again when you’re grown up.
There was something horribly wrong about all this. Cornel’s fingers were easing Jane’s apart, pushing between them. Didn’t like that; made her think of sex. Jane let the hand he was holding go limp, thinking to slide it out of his grip and get the hell out. Her ankle wasn’t broken, only twisted. She could do this. Best to run into the conifers. He was fit and had long legs and he could get to her easily if he could see her. The trees were her only chance. Be like midnight in there.
Cornel said, ‘You ever meet Kenny?’
‘I’ve never even been in one of his shops. Look, Cornel, I didn’t lie. That night at the Swan, I didn’t actually see anything. It was too dark. I just heard some of it. From the bottom of the yard. And, like, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want it to sound like I was trying to humiliate you or anything, OK?’
‘Absolutely fine. Fine, fine, fine.’
‘It’s actually not fine, is it?’
‘It’s answered a few questions.’
‘Like I keep telling you, I just want to see Savitch brought down.’
‘Sure you do.’
‘I do.’
Cornel stood in the space where the wire had been cut, looking down into the clearing as if he was trying to think what had happened next. Jane could see his jaw working in the moonlight, hear his teeth grinding.
‘So it was Kenny took me to the cockfight. Bunch of us were supposed to be going, but in the end it was just him and me, and a bunch of gyppos and local trash. Some experience, though. Booze and coke everywhere. Crazy. Like something from another century. And you get drawn in – it wakes you up, the excitement. Incredible violence. Real energy. Came over with the Romans, cocking, did you know that?’
‘They seem to have got off on cruelty,’ Jane said. ‘The Romans.’
She could feel the sweat forming between their fingers.
‘I was drinking pretty heavily,’ Cornel said. ‘Had a few hundred on this cock and the bastard lost. Felt pretty pissed off, and Kenny says, put it in a sack. Get Barry at the Swan to cook it for you. Losers get eaten. Law of the hunt. Makes perfect sense.’ Cornel looked around. ‘Right. It’s clear. Come on.’
Finally letting go of her hand, but before she could move away and maybe start running, his big hand was around her left buttock, steering her, his fingers lingering on the wet seat of her jeans.
‘Round there. The door’s in front of you.’
A big padlock was hanging loose.
‘Ha… good. Didn’t think they’d have time to fix it.’
Cornel pulled off the lock, tossed it over his shoulder. Jane looked up. It was just a big shed with a convex roof and heavy doors set into a wall of concrete blocks.
‘Are you sure—?’
‘This is it. Go on… push.’
He prodded Jane with his torch and she went up against the doors, which immediately opened a body’s width, and she went stumbling through, down some steps he hadn’t warned her about. Pain jabbed into her ankle. She sank to her knees holding on to the step above her.
Heard the doors close behind her. Didn’t move.
‘Go on,’ Cornel said. ‘Go down.’
‘The dead bird in the sack,’ Barry said, ‘I just thought, get this bastard out of my bar. I’d had a bellyful of Cornel. Never once thought of cockfighting. Gomer sure about this?’
‘Doesn’t usually make mistakes,’ Lol said. ‘Not where Jane’s involved.’
‘Would Savitch do that on his own doorstep? I’d like to think it was him, and, yeah, if Cornel was involved… He’s not exactly compos mentis is he, Cornel? That makes sense – always needs somebody to blame. Fighting cock lets him down, he wants it cooked for his dinner. Juvenile. Well, worse than juvenile. I tell you what happened after that incident with Jane?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Lol felt the pull of the stitches in his wrist, remembering Cornel peering into the bar. Wherever you are, you little bitch, I just want you to know it doesn’t end here.
‘This is while everybody’s talking about Mansel Bull,’ Barry said. ‘Cornel – very drunk, if you recall – goes into the Gents’, presumably in search of paper towels. When he only finds a hot-air hand-dryer, he forces the lock on the cleaner’s room and then he smashes his way into a couple of cupboards to locate the necessary, which he leaves scattered all over the floor. Then he strips off his wet jeans and his underpants and marches upstairs to his room, naked from the waist down. Not long afterwards, a guest opens the door of her room to see a half-naked man pissing down the stairwell.’
Lol winced.
‘What did you do?’
‘I know what I wanted to bleedin’ do, but I’m a genteel hotel manager now. I did a mop-and-bucket job and then I rang the guy at the bank who booked Cornel’s room and said perhap
s they should think twice about the kind of people they send on these courses. And he puts me on to another guy, and I tell him what happened, and he apologizes and says, in this meaningful way, to leave it with him. Obviously, I never heard from him again, and Cornel left the next night. At least I thought he’d left. Until he shows up with the bird in the bag.’ Barry finished his beer. ‘Odd that Danny hasn’t told you what they found at The Court.’
‘To be honest, so much has happened since that until you mentioned Danny I’d kind of forgotten about it.’
‘If you’ve got Danny’s mobile, give him a call.’
‘I’ll do it now.’
But when Lol brought out his phone it was playing the riff from ‘Sunny Days’.
‘Lol? That you, man?’
‘Eirion?’
‘I’ve been everywhere,’ Eirion said. ‘Left messages. She doesn’t do this. I mean, you never know which way she’s going to jump, but she doesn’t stand you up. You know?’
‘Jane?’
70
Pot… Kettle… Black
ANNIE HOWE – YOU thought you knew how she was wired, but now it was as if something in the system had gone awry. This normally emotionless woman pinched and twisted by some painful, insistent electricity. She’d had a shock and she was still getting aftershocks. Her questions were fluid and focused but some of them seemed disconnected and illogical, and somehow not…
… not police questions.
Merrily drank a second cup of coffee – too much, but she needed to be on top of this.
‘I can’t quite believe what you’re implying,’ Sollers Bull said. ‘You really think I’ve been serving up pedigree livestock for some kind of ritual slaughter?’
‘Somebody has, Mr Bull.’
‘We’re not talking about halal?’
‘We’re not talking about halal.’
‘Then perhaps you should be looking at rustlers rather than poor bloody farmers. That hidden heap of uninvestigated crimes in the countryside.’
Sollers was on his feet, leaning back against the Aga’s chromium bar. Annie Howe sitting next to Merrily at the table, the long coat hanging open.
‘Do you know Kenny Mostyn, Mr Bull?’
‘I’ve bought items from his shops.’
‘What kind of items?’
‘Guns. A shotgun for me, an airgun for my son.’
‘How old’s your son?’
‘Were you thinking you might want to arrest him, Annie?’
Annie. That was it. That small county thing again. Howe and Sollers Bull knew each other socially, but how well? Had it ever been more? They were around the same age.
Howe looked down at the table, her white-blonde hair turning rose-gold in the kitchen light. Then she looked up slowly.
‘The woman who was leaving as we arrived…’
‘A neighbour. Collecting for a local charity.’
‘So soon after your brother’s murder? She must’ve been keen.’ Annie pushing a straying strand of hair behind an ear. ‘Mr Jones’s peculiar religion… did you know about that, Mr Bull?’
‘No.’
‘Does it surprise you?’
‘Nothing like that surprises me. Country areas are full of eccentrics who think they can get away with whatever they’re doing more easily out here.’
‘How did you feel when your brother sold the top field to Magnis Berries?’
Sollers blinked, then expelled an impatient breath, shaking his head as if he found the question meaningless. Annie Howe didn’t move.
‘You don’t have to answer any of my questions, Mr Bull, but—’
‘But it might look suspicious if I don’t? For God’s sake, Annie, I’ve cooperated fully from day one. I’ve given you a DNA swab for elimination purposes, I’ve explained exactly where I was when my brother was killed and who was with me…’ Sollers upturned his head, bit his lip, sniffed, looked back at Howe. ‘All right, I don’t like selling ground, and I did not understand why my brother had done so.’
‘You took it up with him.’
‘Of course I did. He was my brother.’
‘And?’
‘He glossed over it. He’d actually bought that land some twenty years ago from a neighbour, and he said he’d never really felt it was part of the farm, so when he was offered a good price he chose to get rid of it.’
‘And that satisfied you?’
‘Look, my brother and I were different people. His kind of farming was more of its time… instinctive…’
Merrily said, ‘What does that mean, Mr Bull?’
‘He’d often follow his feelings rather than agricultural economics. Farming was in his blood. He used to laugh at my business degree – in a good-natured way, I should add.’
‘Was he superstitious?’
‘What a ridiculous question.’
Annie Howe said, ‘Is it possible that your brother supplied bulls to Mr Jones?’
‘As for that suggestion—’
‘But he did keep Herefords.’
‘You know he did. What are you doing, Chief Inspector – trying to prove in front of your subordinate that us being old friends in no way prejudices your inquiries?’
‘We were friends of friends,’ Annie Howe said. ‘That was all.’
Subordinate. Merrily smiled. At least it showed that Sollers had no idea who she was. She turned the smile on him.
‘The boss doesn’t have anything to prove to me, Mr Bull.’
A faintly amused twitch at the corner of Annie’s mouth, but it didn’t last.
‘You feel happier now about your neighbours, Mr Bull? Magnis Berries?’
‘And I certainly don’t see how that—’
‘I’m told you’ve been a regular visitor. In a manner of speaking.’
‘I like to keep an open mind about these things,’ Sollers said.
‘What things?’
‘Polytunnels. Much condemned.’
Howe nodded.
‘And the migrant workers? You suggested to my colleague, DI Bliss, that migrant workers might be at least partly responsible for the increase in rural crime.’
‘I was saying all kind of things that night. I’d just seen my brother’s butchered body. And I’m sure your colleague exaggerated my comments.’
‘We’ll come back to that, if you don’t mind. How well do you know Ward Savitch?’
‘We’re acquainted.’
‘What do you think of him?’
Another odd question.
‘I’m just interested,’ Annie Howe said.
‘He’s just a rich man in search of an identity. Wants to recreate the countryside as somewhere that makes him feel welcome. Lots of them around, in the so-called New Cotswolds, some of them TV celebs, like Smiffy Gill. And now they have an official voice.’
‘Countryside Defiance.’
‘Ostensibly the voice of the local people. In fact financed and run by incomers for incomers. I believe it began as a kind of business-class social networking site on the Internet. Then various resources got pooled, and they were away. Good luck to them.’
‘But you’re their figurehead, and you’re not an incomer.’
Sollers bent forward, ear stud winking.
‘I’m their much-prized well-known local person, who can get them into both grass-roots farming circles and hunt balls.’
‘And what’s in it for you?’
‘I don’t like being treated like a suspect, Annie.’
‘This is really not how I talk to a suspect, Mr Bull, but if that’s how you want to—’
‘Some of us need incomers. They buy meat from my farm shop, they eat in my restaurant…’
‘And I suppose it means you get to dictate some of Countryside Defiance’s policies?’
‘Don’t like the word dictate. They listen to me.’
‘Influence, then. The campaign against rural policing, for example?’
‘The campaign for rural policing.’
‘Which particularly tar
gets DI Bliss.’
Sollers snorted.
‘Man’s a liability, as I’m sure your masters are beginning to realize. A crass little man, who was particularly insensitive on the night my brother died.’
‘Why do you think that was?’
‘Because he’s in the wrong place. Because he has no sympathy with country people.’
‘Especially,’ Annie Howe said, ‘when they’re shagging his wife.’
Merrily knocked her cup over.
Annie Howe said, ‘That was Mrs Bliss, wasn’t it, on her way out as we arrived? The woman you identified as a neighbour. Not exactly a close neighbour. Well, in a manner of—’
‘Don’t you fucking sneer at me, Annie. Kirsty and I… we’ve known each other many years, long before her marriage to that…’
‘Oik?’
‘… which had turned sour long before she and I got together again.’
‘And your wife…?’
‘My wife knows. We’ve had separate lives for some time, but we’re being responsible about it. We’ll stay married until the children leave home.’
Merrily righted her cup, pulled out a tissue to mop up the coffee. Bloody hell.
‘And Kirsty’s family also know,’ Sollers said, relaxed again now. ‘And approve. Everyone who needs to know knows… except, presumably, for Bliss.’
Annie Howe said nothing, but something in her face quite visibly flinched.
‘Too busy hiding his own indiscretions,’ Sollers said.
Annie Howe had started to say something. It appeared to catch in her throat. For a moment she looked almost nauseous, and maybe Sollers glimpsed that, too; he slid lithely away from the stove, switched on more lights.
‘My information is that a physical relationship between serving police officers in the same division is normally frowned upon to the extent that, should it become known about, one of the officers is immediately put on the transfer list. Who would you rather left Hereford, Annie: Bliss, or—’
‘I think you should consider…’ Annie Howe’s voice cold, even for her ‘… very carefully before you continue.’
