Authors: Phil Rickman
Part Four
… artists, poets and visionaries
have found this place a place
where ‘Prayer is valid’… where
the veil between the visible
world and the invisible has worn
diaphanously thin.
Fr. RICHARD WILLIAMS,
Parish priest, Hay-on-Wye
on Capel-y-ffin
33
The N-word
M
ERRILY WAS THINKING
that if she hadn’t been expecting Martin Longbeach, she wouldn’t have recognized him, when he arrived around eight a.m.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I’m fine, I really am.’ He handed her an oil bill and a subscription copy of
Private Eye
. ‘Postwoman gave me your mail at the gate. Saw the dog collar, I suppose. Safe pair of hands.’
His laugh was like a knife scraping a plate.
‘Of course they are,’ Merrily said at the vicarage door.
Hoping the unease didn’t show. Even his hands looked pale. She remembered when he was tubby and camp in an innocent comedy-vicar way, screening shrewdness. He must have lost two stones, maybe more. His monkish face had acquired lines, his eyes looked like bruises as she led him into the vicarage kitchen, Ethel watching from her spare basket.
‘Not allergic to cats are you, Martin? She’ll be wandering over here when I’m out. Likes to hang out with people.’
Martin Longbeach shook his head, bent to scratch Ethel under the jaw. Ethel craned her neck into his finger.
‘If you think this is not going to work,’ Martin said to the cat, not looking up, ‘I’ll go quietly. I really don’t deserve friends like you.’
‘Now don’t start that,’ Merrily said. ‘Please.’
Well, they weren’t exactly friends. Met him perhaps four times, knew more about what he’d done since his breakdown than anything from his earlier life.
‘Took a holiday last week,’ Martin said. ‘Except it wasn’t.’
‘I know quite a bit about holidays that aren’t. Still, not been great weather, has it?’
‘Perfect for my needs. I took a cottage for a week, in Mid Wales. A mile from Pennant Melangell, the shrine of St Melangell. Every day, I walked to the church.’
‘Always useful, remote churches,’ Merrily said, remembering. ‘That primitive, Celtic… thing.’
‘Barefoot.’
‘Oh.’
‘Every day.’ The scrapy laugh again. ‘Fasted for five of them. Nothing except spring water.’
God
…
‘Do you think that was, erm, a good thing, Martin, on your own? That is, presumably…’
‘Oh, quite alone, yes. That was the idea. Giving Him an opportunity to make away with me. See? In the end, I was forced to realize it was all self-pity, Merrily.’
‘Were you?’
‘The great revelation, by the grace of God and a dozen big bottles of Aqua Pura. You can’t die of self-pity, I don’t think. Rage is something different, but equally despicable.’
Don’t. Just
don’t
, Martin.
‘Why don’t I show you your room?’ Merrily said.
She’d prepared one on the western side, from which the church was not visible, only the bottom end of Church Street where it sloped to the river bridge. A small room. Jane had painted the walls pale blue, the ceiling midnight blue. A copper oil lamp, electrified, stood on an upturned painted chest by the bedside, and the wardrobe was light pine.
‘Calms the fevered brow just to be here, Merrily.’
‘Bathroom next door. I’ll show you how things work in the kitchen later. And there’s an iMac in the scullery. You’re OK with that?’
‘Perfectly.’ He looked down at the duvet cover, an old one, much-washed, but the only alternative was pink. ‘We didn’t even live together, you know.’
‘Look, Martin, you don’t—’
‘It was a celibate relationship.
Technically
celibate. Not so much because Daniel had HIV, but because the spiritual side of it had become more important for both of us. Or so I told myself. We prayed together every day. And because it’s no longer an automatic death sentence, his death was… it knocked me bloody sideways, Merrily. I felt we’d been unjustly punished…
for trying
. You know? Trying to be good Christians – in everyone’s eyes. This is quite a conservative area in some ways. Well… most ways, really.’
‘Where are you from originally, Martin?’
‘Me? Cardiff.’ Pronouncing it like a native,
Cairdiff
. ‘So, thinking you’re doing your best to be virtuous, trying to be a good Christian – sin of pride, do you think?’
‘Not necessarily, no.’
‘When Daniel died… I just gave in to an all-consuming rage. You’ll’ve heard some of it, anyway. I think you need to hear it all from me, really, before you—’
‘No!’
Didn’t need to, didn’t want to. Was that wrong, unfeeling?
‘Martin,’ she said desperately, ‘can I ask your advice? Not being patronizing or anything, I do actually need help. This…’ She took from her jeans the postcard of Hereford Cathedral from Sylvia Merchant. ‘This is something that also relates to bereavement. In, perhaps, a potentially… quite negative way.’
She read the message on the card, explained its background. Standing in the window, from which you could see Lol’s cottage.
‘These women,’ he said. ‘I’m assuming a long-term relationship?’
‘Though I don’t think they lived together until she retired. And there’s no certainty that it was anything more than companionship. But… that’s not my business.’
‘Boss and secretary,’ Martin said.
‘A long, working relationship. I was thinking two desks in the same office, twin beds. Continuity.’
‘In Victorian times,’ Martin said, ‘some wealthy women – and some not so wealthy – would have a personal maid. To cater for
all
their needs.’
‘So I gather.’
‘But what did she want from you?’
‘I don’t know. Thought I did. She went directly to Sophie, saying that she’d been seeing her companion after death. I thought she wanted some reassurance there was nothing unhealthy or worrying about that. And that Ms Nott, having provided evidence of an element of survival, could now go on to find… you know, eternal rest? Not quite the case. Apparently.’
‘Did she ask you to try and stop it happening?’
‘Thinking back, she didn’t ask me anything. She just reported it. She apparently wanted advice. I played it by ear. As you do.’
‘And when she says
we
…’ Martin waved the card ‘… I presume she means the two of them.’
‘She’s either… well, there are several possibilities. She’s deluded… she’s pretending, she wants
me
to think Ms Nott might still be around, or…’
‘Or Ms Nott
is
around,’ Martin said.
‘Yes.’
‘Or the other possibility, Merrily, is that she
wants
Ms Nott with her, and by visualizing her there…’
‘There’s a word for that. I think it’s the N-word.’
‘I believe it is, yes.’
‘But… even if we’re prepared to believe that a retired businesswoman is ready to give in to what she may not realize are necromantic urges to keep a dead person on a lead…’
‘She’s a regular churchgoer, you say?’
‘A cathedral-goer.’
‘Yes.’ Martin nodded. ‘I suppose the worst this reveals is a lamentable ignorance of the rules of exorcism and deliverance.’
‘I think…’ Merrily put a finger over her lips then took it away ‘… a deliberate misinterpretation.’
‘Which prayers did you use?’
‘Well… nothing that might sound ritualistic. I busked it. As cosy as I could make it, without insulting her intelligence. Ms Merchant is not a particularly cosy person.’
Martin lowered himself to a corner of the bed.
‘I don’t know what to say. I mean, are you consulting me as a recently bereaved person… or as a homosexual?’
‘As a priest, of course, with a knowledge of exorcism.’
Martin smiled. He’d done the course with Huw, even if he’d probably never been called on to do the business.
‘There’s always been gay clergy,’ Merrily said. ‘Did anybody make a thing of it? It’s a point Huw Owen makes. As soon as you turn something into an Issue, everyone starts to overreact. The Church never handles Issues very well.’
‘Men like me,’ Martin said, ‘we don’t help. I’m a stupid, emotional person, Merrily, which I hope is nothing to do with being gay. Rendered temporarily insane by grief and rage, I… got drunk.’
Merrily nodded, resigned to it now.
‘On wine. On communion wine – quite deliberately – in the vestry. Helplessly, mindlessly, angrily drunk.’
‘I didn’t know that bit.’
‘Only the next bit, eh? In the chancel.’
‘Only, as you say, the, er… next bit. Some of it. Possibly.’ She looked beyond him out of the window, down the street in search of inspiration. ‘What can I say? We’ve all screamed at God, in the night. And I think… I suspect… I know… priests scream louder.’
‘Bit more than a scream, Merrily.’
Could be the hardest shrug she’d ever forced. She heard the phone ringing, the extension in her bedroom two doors away.
‘Get that… please,’ Martin said.
She shook her head. Let the machine pick it up. No more excuses for avoiding this.
‘A priest having a breakdown,’ she said, ‘losing his faith, it’s never pretty, is it? You didn’t make a secret of it. You confessed all to Canon Jeffrey Alexander, the diocesan school-sneak. I’m tempted to think that was entirely deliberate. You sought him out, the way, erm, Christ sought out, erm, Judas Iscariot. Not that I’m…’
‘No more lives left, Merrily. That’s the bottom line.’
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘The other reason I’m telling you about Ms Merchant and Ms Nott is that, as that card warns, she’s planning to come back.’
‘And not, I imagine, on her own.’
‘And you’ll be here.’
‘Well,’ Martin said. ‘There’s challenging, isn’t it? You want to be involved?’
‘If I happen to be around.’
‘Take them on together, is it?’
‘Won’t feel outnumbered, will she?’
Both of them giggling creepily, like maladjusted kids in front of a juvenile panel.
‘I’ll bring my cases up, then.’ Martin Longbeach opened the bedroom door, then stopped. ‘You know that feeling of being on the brink of madness you get sometimes in this job?’
‘All too well.’
‘I used almost to like that,’ Martin said. ‘Once. Now go and check your answering machine. It’s not going to be for me.’
It was Huw Owen, who’d tried to reach her at Lol’s, left a message on both machines.
‘Two of the trainees had to leave early, so we wound up the course last night. Don’t suppose you can do Capel this morning, by any chance? Around eleven at the little church? Feller I’d like you to meet. All a bit heavier than I’d figured, lass. Let me know, anyroad.’
Couldn’t see why not. She called him back. He wasn’t there. She left a confirming message on his machine.
So. That was it, then. She’d be out of here sooner than she’d figured. By the time she was back from Capel-y-ffin, Martin Longbeach would be the Vicar of Ledwardine.
Loose ends? She switched on the computer to check if there were any files she needed to email to the laptop, noting that the latest bookmarked reference was the most recent website for OSIS – the Order of the Sun in Shadow.
The site was called Dark Orb. She’d scanned it once and found it all so lurid and extreme –
a new aeon dawns in a sky of glistening blood –
that she’d wondered if it wasn’t all an elaborate joke.
Anyway… not the best night-time reading for a paranoid priest.
She wiped it.
34
Niceties
A
CTING
-DCI B
RENT
said, ‘You don’t look well, Francis.’
The Renault Clio was at the bottom end of the car park where the spaces were marked out for coaches. The Clio was old and scratched and forlorn. Bliss felt as close to tears as when his Irish gran died.
‘Long night,’ he said.
He coughed, turning away, looking blankly across the car park to the recycling bins. The sky was mercilessly white. He’d snatched just two hours’ sleep in his car and by the time he was back,
this
had happened, changing everything.
Hardening it up. No longer the possibility of a night with a boyfriend nobody had known about.
‘Her phone was in the side pocket,’ Brent said. ‘Dowell’s got it. Not revealing much, last I heard. When she’s finished, she can go to Cusop with you. As you seem to know your way around.’
Bliss said nothing.
Iain Brent, PhD.
Ph frigging D.
Smooth-skinned, light-haired, gym-toned. Five or six years younger than Bliss, probably younger than Annie Howe. Brent thought he was clever, on account of all the certificates saying he was. Pretty soon it would be like the army, highly educated twenty-two-year-olds from some cop-Sandhurst starting out with the rank of inspector. That would be the day he quit.
‘Some issues we’ll need to discuss, Francis,’ Brent said. ‘But not now. We still need to find out exactly where Winterson’s
been, who she’s spoken to in the last couple of days. Can’t afford to skimp on the basics.’
The basics. Yeh, you could probably trust Bliss with the basics.
‘If you think it’ll help attending the briefing, you can do that first,’ Brent said.
Twat.
Hay police station was small and grey and stuffed down a back street, no more than a couple of minutes’ walk from England. Too small and not enough parking space for an operation on this scale, so Dyfed-Powys had fixed it for them to use the Hay Community Centre, also grey and even closer to England. Bigger, though, with chairs and tables for the incident room and a field alongside.
DCI Brent would be based here. Just in case this turned into a murder inquiry. Just in case, with the car being found in Hay, the Dyfed-Powys cops from Brecon tried to muscle in, grab too much of the action.
‘We need to talk to all known friends and relatives of Tamsin,’ Brent said to the assembly. ‘In this case, unusually, we don’t have far to look. Who were her best friends in the police? And, before that, at college. I’m sure some of you will have ideas. The situation may change but, for the present, Inspector Ford’s our office manager. So let’s keep him, and his assistant, Alison, very busy.’
Extra computers were being carried in. The bar was opened for coffee. Outside, the troops were gathering. No smiles, no black humour.
‘Next briefing at twelve,’ Brent said. ‘Unless there’s a development that alters things.’
Bliss was hovering outside, waiting for Karen Dowell, when the first TV people arrived, the reporter and cameraman in separate cars. The reporter came over.
‘Excuse me, are you with…?’
‘Liverpool Daily Post
,’ Bliss said.
Brent came out of the community centre with DI Watts, from Dyfed-Powys, who were being friendly, under the terms of the cross-border crime initiative. Happy to let them use Hay as an operational base, but Brent wouldn’t be happy until it was clear that he’d be SIO, no matter how far into Wales this went.
Watts was older and balder and heavier than Brent. The TV cameraman shot them, as Karen Dowell wandered over to Bliss.
‘DCI’s on unfamiliar ground, boss. I was convinced he was going to ask about a translator.’
‘Into what?’
‘If there was the slightest possibility that some Welsh people, even though they all speak English, might prefer to communicate in their own language…’
‘In
Hay
?’
‘He likes to observe the political niceties,’ Karen said, ‘as you know.’
‘Yeh, I could almost believe that. Nothing from Tamsin’s phone?’
‘Nothing obvious. They’re ringing all the stored numbers now, but, essentially, no business on that phone since she talked to Kelly James. The phone was in the car, and the car could have been here all night.’ Karen took in a long breath. ‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’
‘That car needs a good going-over. Did she drive into Hay and park it, or did somebody else?’
‘Couple of locals say there was an old blue Nissan truck parked a couple of spaces away. May have been there for most of last night, but gone by the time we got here.’
‘Basically,’ Bliss said, ‘there’s no evidence that Tamsin even left Dorstone. Last people to actually see her were her own family at about two p.m., after lunch. She hadn’t said where she was going or what she planned to do. But apparently it wouldn’t be the first time she’d taken work home, if you see what I mean.’
‘Would that necessarily be your drowning? Could she have been working on something else?’
‘Worth considering. I think we can take it she didn’t cross paths with Claudia Cornwell, so it could be that she didn’t even go to Cusop. Still, let’s do it thoroughly, like the man says. If I’ve missed anything, I don’t want anybody else finding it.’
At least he could still talk like this in front of Karen. A mate. Either Brent didn’t know this or he did know it and didn’t want any mate of Bliss’s too close to him, reporting back.
They walked up the hill towards the car park, a long traffic queue forming because the cops were restricting access to the car park and also questioning people, in search of anybody who might have parked there yesterday.
Karen pulled out her car keys.
‘Go in mine?’
‘I look that bad?’
‘We all know you’re not out of the woods yet, boss.’
‘
All?’
He was still wearing the baseball sweater with the big numbers, was unshaven, and his left eye kept half closing. Not comfortable, but not life-threatening.
‘No,’ Karen said, ‘not all, just a few of us. I can see why you decided it was better to get back in the saddle, I’d probably be the same, especially with
him
around. Just don’t tire yourself out too much, is all I’m saying, because he’ll pounce on anything.’
‘Yeh.’
‘And I don’t care what anybody says, we’d be better off if Annie Howe hadn’t gone to Worcester. Could be a cold bitch, but you knew where you were with her.’
Bliss said nothing. The big car park was just round the corner and up the hill from the community centre. Karen was parked near the top, the little Renault Clio cordoned off at the bottom. Karen pointed beyond it towards the foothills of the Black Mountains.
‘That’s Cusop, just there, see. Those big houses in the trees? Easy walking distance through the fields.’
Shielding his eyes, Bliss saw movement across there. Bunch of uniforms already doing the walk, like soldier ants. Dogs and sticks. And after that, it was big country time, chopper terrain. In case she’d been injured or collapsed on a run up there. The last hope had been that Tamsin would arrive for work as normal this morning, having spent the night with some bloke.
‘Karen, what’s she done? Farm girl. Knows her way around. What can she possibly have
done
?’
He kept getting images of her in her perfectly pressed, spotless uniform, the thin red hair, the freckles, the solemn expression. Call me boss, he’d said, as if she already had a foot inside the CID room.
Didn’t usually get emotionally involved. It didn’t help.
Maybe he
wasn’t
out of the woods.