Friends of the Dusk (2 page)

‘What?’

Maybe too much to hope that a ten-ton oak had come down on Charlie Howe’s car with Charlie inside.

Darryl bent to Bliss’s window.

‘We almost got excited, boss, but it was nothing.’

‘No, go on,’ Bliss said. ‘What?’

When he left his car on a double yellow in East Street, the rain had stopped and the wind was dying back. Not yet seven p.m., and Hurricane Lorna was already over the hill, an old prozzie parading what was left of her in the brick alleyways accessing Castle Green and the River Wye.

Driving into the city, it had looked surreal, out of time: hardly anybody on the streets, whole areas blacked out except for the lonely flickering of candles and lamps behind fogged glass. The Cathedral tower was a grey smudge in the gaps between buildings.

Bliss was in jeans and beanie and a fleece he didn’t need – under the wind, it was weirdly warm for the time of year. When he saw lights up ahead, they were actually on Castle Green, lights in a huddle, like a small camp or a party for the homeless. He felt his way along the rails by the long duck pond that used to be part of the castle moat in the days when there was a castle on the Green. Just a spread of parkland, now, with a Nelson’s column in the middle, and then the River Wye.

Bliss paused on the path above the Green, dead leaves spinning around him like moths on steroids. It was hardly unusual for a body to be uncovered here. This being an historical site, it was almost certainly going to be an historic body, nothing in this for him. But still he kept on walking towards the lights. If he went home he’d just be sitting in the dark, listening to the last of the storm and the slithery sound of shit rising to the surface.

Nothing to say he’ll get it.

Annie’s voice in his head, parched with uncertainty.

Equally, Annie, there’s nothing to say he won’t. I’ve actually met people who love the fucker and not all of them criminals.

They actually liked that about Charlie Howe. Bit of a maverick, law unto himself, Jack the lad. And
a local boy
, see. Always important.

He gets it, I’m out of here
, Bliss had told Annie.
Obviously.

Not thinking, until he’d left, about the weight of what he’d said there and what it would mean to her. One way or another this was going to cause all kinds of—

‘Boss?’

A hand-lamp’s broad beam swung past his face before tilting back to light up DC David Vaynor, striding towards him across the grass, cutting through the wind like a long blade.

‘Didn’t know you were coming out.’ Vaynor shining the light down the Green. ‘Something and nothing, boss. Anywhere else it’d be something, here it’s nothing.’

‘Just passing, Darth,’ Bliss said, and then the beam landed on something massive and unexpected, writhing and clicking in the wind. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘Ripped clean out,’ Vaynor said. ‘Roots and all.’

Behind the roots, a jungle of clashing branches, pale and bloated in the lamplight.

‘Nobody heard it coming down, with the wind,’ Vaynor said. ‘Nobody saw it happening with all the lights out. Heavy enough to flatten a Land Rover. Anybody been walking past at the time… no chance.’

‘Sure there’s nobody underneath, are we?’

‘Only our friend. And he’s well out of it. Assuming it’s a bloke.’

By the time they’d reached the fallen tree, the lamp had found a pick up truck and people erecting an orange barrier fence, plastic mesh, not easy in this wind. Bliss stopped next to a wooden bench.

‘So where is he?’

‘Just there.’

The torch lighting yellow plastic sheeting and disturbed
earth that looked like a plundered badger sett. Vaynor telling Bliss somebody from the Cathedral had come over, spotted bones down there and rung a mate from the county archaeologist’s department. If you lived around Castle Green you could get to know a lot of archaeologists.

‘Neil Cooper,’ Vaynor said. ‘He’s around, somewhere.’

‘Yeh, I know him.’

‘Those are the council blokes, with the fencing. They’ll probably take the opportunity to excavate properly when the tree’s removed. Get him over, shall I?’

‘No, finish the story.’

Darth said Cooper had gone into the hole, confirmed they weren’t animal bones and then followed established procedure, getting word to Gaol Street. Hence Big Patti and Darryl Mills getting diverted to Castle Green at the start of their shift.

‘And they’re definitely old bones?’

‘Looked old to me, boss. And with a tree that big on top? Cooper’s thinking medieval.’

‘So what you doing here then, Darth?’

‘Just a slight complication, boss.’

They had one of these ten zillion candlepower lamps running from the truck. On the edge of its savage beam, Cooper, under his yellow hard hat, looked a bag of nerves. Kept rubbing his jaw, leaving mud-scrapes.

‘Can’t believe this. You turn your back for… five minutes?’

Nice-enough lad, a few years younger than Bliss, youthful-looking, just about, like a member of a boy band, now retired. Cooper had been with the county archaeologist’s department as long as Bliss had been in Hereford and now, apparently, was running the show while the top guy was recovering from some injury.

‘Let me get this right, Neil. This was when you’d come out of the hole to call the police, right? That was when you reckon it happened.’

‘Possibly then, or could’ve been earlier. Very dark and really noisy with the wind in the branches. That’s why I went to make the call from the top of the bank. Couldn’t hear a thing down here.’

No more than half a dozen people around now. Novelty over. Bliss looked down at the plastic sheeting covering the hole, stones weighting it down.

‘How many people would’ve been left around the tree while you were on the phone?’

‘Not sure. More by the time I got back.’

‘Who were they?’

‘Nobody I knew. I imagine word was spreading. Shops not long closed. I was trying to be polite and tell them there was nothing to see, but it was clear it had got out about the bones. People love bones, don’t they?’

‘You reckon?’

Neil Cooper bent, lifted a brick so he could draw back a corner of the plastic sheet, plywood slats underneath. He lifted one, beckoning Vaynor to shine his lamp down. In the earth, Bliss made out what might have been part of a ribcage, flattened like old rubber. Interesting but hard to love.

‘Not exactly the first bones found here, right?’

‘What? Oh no. Good God, no. And the nearer you get to the Cathedral… it’s like one big charnel house under there. Bones upon bones, upon bones. Thousands of skeletons, men, women, children discovered in The Close. And people were buried here – on what became Castle Green – before there
was
a cathedral. Hundreds of bodies found.’

‘So how come they missed this feller?’

‘Just that we don’t make a habit of destroying mature trees to see what might be underneath. But when one happens to blow down…’

‘Was it a full skeleton? When it was first revealed?’

Cooper winced. Behind him, the dying wind was wheezing like an old Hoover.

‘What I’m asking, Neil, is are you absolutely sure it originally
had
a head?’

‘Francis, leaning over the hole I was this….’ Cooper opened his muddied hands to the width of a brick, ‘
this
far away from it. I was staring into its eye-sockets. Amazingly, the roots had not become entangled in the skeleton, or the bones would’ve been dragged up and they’d be all over the place. The roots stopped
just
above the bones, so it was virtually all exposed.’

‘So when did it
not
have a head?’

‘All right.’ Cooper nodding hard, drawing breath. ‘It was still raining so I covered it over lightly with some soil before I went to call the police.’

‘Having already phoned your colleagues to come and assist?’

‘By the time I got back they were here with the truck.’

‘So who was here while you were on the phone?’

‘You’ve asked me that before. I don’t know. It was very dark.’

‘And when the police came… did
they
see the head, the skull?’

Vaynor tapped Bliss’s arm, shaking his head. Figured. On a night like this Mills and Calder would’ve lost interest rapidly when they learned the corpse wasn’t exactly fresh. Called in, cleared off.

‘And you’ve looked all around?’ Bliss said.

‘Best we could, with all this mess. We’re not really going to get anywhere without chainsaws, and that’s not going to happen till tomorrow. Yes, I suppose it’s possible somebody might’ve picked up the skull and then thrown it down somewhere.’

‘Or even in the river.’

‘
Don’t.
’

Cooper turning away.

‘It’s really not your fault, mate,’ Bliss said. ‘Bloody chaos here, these conditions.’

‘Couldn’t just have got mislaid, kicked away, I’m sure of that. Somebody had to have gone down in the hole and lifted it out. Now who would want to do that?’

‘Neil…’ Bliss exchanged a lamplit glance with Darth Vaynor. ‘I’m not saying that’s a naive question exactly, but… Were there any kids here? Teenagers?’

‘Kids?’

The team erecting the head-high protective fence had nearly finished and were waiting, a respectful distance away, with the last section at their feet and a sign saying DANGER.

Neil Cooper sank his hands into his jacket pockets.

‘If it
is
kids, it’ll be in pieces by now.’

‘Maybe not,’ Bliss said. ‘Could be on a shelf in a teenager’s bedroom. A ciggy between its teeth.’

‘Thanks for that, Francis.’

Cooper didn’t look at him. Well, what did he think – that they’d be doing house-to-house, putting out a photofit of some bugger who’d passed on eight centuries ago? Was body-snatching still an offence?
Was
this body-snatching, or just petty theft? And from whom? Who owned rotting old bones?

Police life was too short for this. And yet…

‘Nothing else you want to tell me, is there, Neil? Something that might not be obvious to dumb coppers?’

Lifting an apologetic hand to Vaynor, who had some totally unnecessary posh degree from Oxford.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Cooper said.

‘Well, if you think of anything, Neil,’ Bliss said, ‘you know where I am.’

For a while, anyway.

Till he was forced to leave Hereford due to the resurrection of something old but recent enough to stink.

Bliss turned back into the wind, gritting his teeth, firming up his beanie.

3

Hallowe’en. Normal, irrational anxieties

H
UW
O
WEN
’
S PHONE
voice always brought up the same portrait, in the style of Whistler’s Mother only sloppier. Spiritual director in repose in a severe rectory in the Brecon Beacons. Sitting back, stretching out his legs in frayed jeans, no shoes. Rag-haired Welshman with a Yorkshire accent and holes in his socks.

‘Just my annual Hallowe’en call, lass,’ he said.

Merrily said nothing. She didn’t recall him ever phoning her at Hallowe’en before. More likely, he’d just sat down, examined his mental agenda and noticed the word
Merrily
had found its way to the top.

Sitting at her desk in the old scullery, in a circle of light from the Anglepoise lamp, she sipped tea and winced: too hot, too strong, no sugar.

‘Well, come on,’ Huw said. ‘How’d it go?’

‘How did what go?’

‘Him. Him in the Bishop’s Palace.’

‘I haven’t met him yet.’

‘I thought it were today.’

‘It’s tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’

They’d not spoken for a couple of weeks. Not since she’d run the name of the new Bishop of Hereford past him and his reaction had been fast and… the word was probably
forthright.
And then he’d calmed down, said maybe he’d overreacted,
ignore him, he had a lot of work on. So she’d ignored him, put it out of her head that there might be dark history between Huw Owen and the new Bishop of Hereford, who’d replaced poor old Bernie Dunmore with unusual speed.

It was too warm, the warmest Hallowe’en she could remember. Rain had blown through, leaving the roads faintly steaming. The neck of her clerical shirt was undone, the dog collar on the desk by the phone. The last day of October. It was unnatural.

‘You’ve been quiet,’ Huw said.

‘Well… domestic stuff. Jane came back yesterday. Lol’s coming back tomorrow. Getting organized. All that.’

A silence.

‘That woman sorted? Her in the hairdresser’s house?’

‘Hopefully.’

A few weeks ago she’d expected to be summoned to give evidence at crown court where a woman was being tried for murder. Knowing that, when the case was reported in the media,
she
would be the defendant, forced to explain to a jury exactly what she did, as a so-called exorcist, and why she thought it was necessary and relevant. All the time knowing she’d only been put in the witness box to be taken apart, bit by bit, in front of a roomful of sceptics so that the defence could show how an already disturbed woman had been pushed over the edge by the belief that her home was still occupied by a dead previous occupant.

A belief that the so-called diocesan deliverance minister had done nothing to discourage.

But the woman had pleaded guilty. No trial.

Salvation. For now.

‘Still getting the anxiety dreams, mind,’ Merrily said.

‘Aye.’

More silence, several heartbeats’ worth. Then his voice was louder in the old Bakelite phone.

‘I’m always here, you know. Might be a miserable old bugger, but I’m not going anywhere. Yet.’

‘Good. I’m glad.’

‘What about you?’

‘What?’ She swallowed too much tea and burned her tongue. ‘Why does everybody suddenly think I want out?’

‘Who else thinks you want out?’

‘I dunno, I— You remember Anthea White?’

‘Athena?’

‘As she prefers to be known. Athena, yes.’ She didn’t think Huw had met Miss White. If they ever did, it would be epic, gladiatorial. ‘I dropped in on her, last week.’

‘She’s a witch.’

‘Actually, she despises witches.’