Friends of the Dusk (40 page)

And now the black clouds were well overhead, the bitter wind was blowing and Lol had arrived, laptop under his arm, to tell her that if –
when
– the worst happened, they would be
all right.

All right for money.

Because
money mattered.

‘You’re not that crass, Robinson.’

Muttering as she drove across Bredwardine Bridge, noting how the Wye had already drowned its little beach. Taking a left by the modest war memorial, and then dropping down a couple of gears for the twisting climb up Dorstone Hill.

It could be a wasted trip, but at least there might be a chance to ask Nadya why, the other afternoon, she’d said,
We might use the word djinn.

The entity of
smokeless fire.
Jane had found that reference, but also some correspondences that hadn’t occurred to Merrily. Jane had divided a page into two columns, one headed
djinn,
the other
faerie –
Jane always used that spelling, less Christmas-tree. The fairies of Celtic folklore tended not to have flimsy gossamer wings.

It was, Jane had discovered, another Jane – Lady Jane Wilde, nineteenth-century Irish poet and connoisseur of fairy tales – who had suggested the word originated not in medieval England but in Persia. The inference was that faerie folk had a lot in common with the djinn. Jane’s two columns were filled with cross-references, some underlined, like the fact they both preferred to be
left alone
, had extremely long lives but were not immortal. That both could grant wishes – note the genie of Aladdin’s lamp and Cinderella’s fairy godmother – but both could be
malevolent
and also
inflict terrible harm
on intruders on their territory.

There were no actual references to strokes or paralysis, but the thought was there, thank you, flower.

Had Nadya been remotely serious, or just showing off her knowledge of Islamic folklore? OK, more than that; there were no fairies in the Bible but to a Muslim, the djinn, whilst unholy, did have its place in theology. No pick’n’mix in Islam.

Approaching the top of Dorstone Hill, with the wipers whipping at the slanting rain, she had one of those flashes of amazement at the insanity of it all: fairies and djinns, a grown-up woman in the twenty-first century theorizing about fairies and djinns and vampires and the fairytale summoner in the Nightlands.

Words. Made-up words in a children’s novel. Words for persisting, irritating anomalies which the greater world could
safely ignore, because the Church, itself in rapid decline, continued to appoint a handful of eccentric priests to keep them under the table.

And yet… why not?

You accepted it would never be more than a small, obscure, thankless task, but you didn’t just walk away from it because of one man, no matter what political engine was powering him. You didn’t hobble away to save your bit of credibility, because credibility was the last thing this job was about.

And you acquired responsibilities, more and more of them. Working deliverance, you built up a list of clients. Some of them, you didn’t even know they
were
clients until they got back in touch, these people you’d helped or tried to help when they were faced with something that
could not be happening.
And they’d still be there, these ex-clients, until they or you died. So when they came back, saying,
It isn’t over
, would you then reply,
I’m sorry, I don’t do that any more and it was bloody silly anyway…?

The phone barked on the passenger seat. Jane? Lol? Merrily reversed a long way, with restricted visibility, into a lay-by big enough to accommodate a tractor and trailer, a naked sapling bending forward to guide her in and slash the car’s flank.

One-bar signal, not great.

‘Thought maybe you’d dumped us, Mirrily. Couldn’t’ve blamed you.’

‘I’m sorry, the phones were off and the power, and I just didn’t get your message until this—’

‘Anyway, it’s all too late now.’

‘Wh—?’

‘You were right. —malfunctioning household, wrong for each other and in the wrong place. And, Jesus, is this— wrong.’

‘You’re cracking up.’

‘In more ways than I can start to tell ya.’

‘Give me a minute.’ Merrily getting out of the car, having to fight the wind for the driver’s door. She found her way up a track into a small wood, holding the phone tight to her ear
under the hood of her waxed coat. ‘Any better? This is about as high as I can—’

‘You’re outside?’

‘Yeah, I’m—’

‘If you thought we were crazy, it’s got a whole lot worse. Adam’s taking Aisha to stay with his parents. Nic—
Nadya
agrees it’s the best thing. They want her to have medical tests. Me, I wanted you to see the kid, what’s happening to her, I said that was what the imam would want, I said call
up
the flaming imam, ask
him.
Adam said finally, yeah, we should wait for Mirrily, but that was last night, and now he’s taking her to work with him and Grandpa Malik’s gonna pick her up in Hereford and Nadya’s gonna follow later with her things.’

‘Why?’

‘Because something –
no, the hell with what you think, Nicole, I’m gonna talk about this
– something came to a head.’

‘There’s something wrong with her? She’s ill?’

‘I don’t know. She’s sullen and she’s hostile and she screams at you to keep out of her private life. Raji was here again last night. He talked to you?’

‘No.’

‘He talked to Adam. Adam’s—’

‘Casey, are they still there?’

‘It’s too late. They’ll be leaving in a couple of—’

Listen, if this is any help I’m at the top of Dorstone Hill which is – what? – five, ten minutes away?’

There was silence in the phone, as if the signal had finally gone. Then Casey said,

‘Yeah. I’m sorry, too, Mirrily. If only you weren’t so far away.’

It meant Nadya was still within earshot.

It meant get here fast.

She drove down the wooded hill until it came out on a crazy bend. Clear, and she was across and down towards the village of Dorstone with its squat church, turning left into a lane that she
immediately thought might be the wrong lane, realizing that she’d only travelled
from
Cwmarrow to Dorstone and in better weather than this.

The countryside rumbled around her, alive with storm debris, the Golden Valley not so golden, roughened fields the colours of mould. The temptation was to race under avenues of big trees, get them behind you, but that could be crazy. The signs gave out wrong messages: Peterchurch, Michaelchurch, Urishay. Cwmarrow was too small for signs until you were very close, nobody getting beckoned into the valley of the dead – was that right? Was that
really
right, the valley of the—?

No, wrong. Wrong way.

She backed into a field entrance, turned round in spurts of mud, went back to the last crossroads, tried another lane, this one falling away, sharply downhill – promising, please God, let this be right. The swinging trees were gathering and forming a tunnel – yes – and she saw ahead of her, like a rock formation, the ruin of the castle on its jutting hill. And then…

How quickly these things happened, as if a savage wind could speed up time itself. As she rounded a tight left-hand bend, the castle vanished along with a slab of sky and, when she saw why, she thought there was no way that she wasn’t going to die.

‘
Oh f—
’

Words torn out of her, not the ones you’d choose as your last, Merrily sitting up hard, both feet down, throwing both hands over her head and face, as the early morning sky turned back into night and the noise was like a cliff-fall and under it Lol’s voice, softly:
Remember this one, the day is dwindling.

Part Five

In each of us is a Hell of serpents. If you make yourself secure against these unclean creatures you may remain tranquil; if not they will sting you even in the dust of the tomb until the day of reckoning.

Farid ud-Din Attar,
The Conference of the Birds
(trans. C.S. Nott, 1954)

54

A peg

I
N HIS LAID
-
BACK
, academic way, Vaynor was looking excited. He had a nifty piece of kit to connect a phone to his own digital voice-recorder, and when he played it back for Bliss, in Bliss’s office, at just gone eight a.m., the quality was surprisingly good. But then a call to the USA usually sounded better than a call to the other side of Hereford.

‘I thought Turner was English,’ Bliss said.

‘Doesn’t take them long to become naturalized. Odd, really, boss, Americans are supposed to love an English accent and when we get out there we just want to sound like them’

‘Why is that necessary?’
Turner said when Vaynor told him he’d like to record their conversation.

‘It’s so I can share the information with my colleagues, Mr Turner, and they’ll know I’m not misrepresenting you.’

‘It’s not going to be played in court, or anything?’

‘I can assure you it isn’t. Although I’m wondering why you’d think it might. Wind up in court, that is.’

‘I live in a litigious country, Detective Vaynor, where the police…’

‘Sorry, Mr Turner?’

‘Doesn’t matter. What can I tell you?’

‘I’m rather hoping you can tell me about Tristram Greenaway.’

‘Who?’

‘An archaeologist.’

‘Oh… wait. Yeah, OK. I remember him. He did go on to be an archaeologist, then? That’s good to hear. How is he?’

‘Dead, Mr Turner.’

‘OK.’

In the short silence, Bliss looked at his Google image of Turner with a videocam on his shoulder, his close-mown beard a grey smudge. There was a white high-rise building behind his head.

‘He was murdered,’
Vaynor said. ‘
It’s why I’m ringing. I believe he used to work for you.’

‘I didn’t hear about that. That he was dead.’

‘I don’t suppose you would in America. Unless you and he were still in touch.’

‘You said murdered?’

‘I did.’

‘OK…’

‘He did work for you?’

‘Well, not… That is, he wasn’t on the payroll as such. It was just a sporadic holiday job. Used to get a whole bunch of kids who wanted to work in my business in whatever capacity.’

‘This was in Hereford?’

‘I was living near Hereford, and yeah, for a short time, we had an office in town. Didn’t turn out to be a great idea. TV production, you’re much safer in London, less of a novelty. We’d have a steady stream of young people – students and out-of-work kids – looking for a future in the glamorous world of television. And Greenaway, he was one of them.’

‘But you remember him, particularly.’

‘Did I say that? No, look, OK, he was that kind of guy. That is, he made sure you remembered.’

Vaynor kept quiet.

‘He was everywhere,’
Turner said.
‘Keen to learn. Keen to… be remembered.’

‘What kind of work did he do for you?’

‘Research, I guess. Finding people we could talk to. Finding out what they’d be able to tell us, what they’d say in an interview. This wasn’t major interviews, only voxpop stuff. Wasn’t
a permanent job, but he’d been accepted for some university anyway. I recall letting him do a couple interviews, ask the questions, get people talking. We didn’t use the questions, just the answers. You don’t see him, you don’t hear him. He was… disappointed about that.’

‘Thought he’d be a star?’

‘Thought he’d be on camera. Wanted to be a presenter. I said, kid, you go ahead with your degree course. TV presenters have a limited life expectancy. Get yourself something to fall back on. You’re saying somebody killed him?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Where?’

‘At his home, in Hereford. He was working for the county archaeologist’s department on a temporary basis. So he thought he had what it took to become a TV presenter?’

‘He was a kid. He thought that what it took was just a nice, white smile, backed up by an engaging personality. I guess he grew up.’

‘Mr Turner, we don’t think it was a random killing or robbery,’
Vaynor said.
‘So we’re trying to piece together his past. Presumably, you knew he was gay.’

‘That still matters in the UK? He didn’t make a thing of it. He was whatever you wanted him to be.’

‘In what way?’

‘He was – OK, I don’t like to use this word, but I can’t think of another – a flirt. Not just in a sexual way, though I don’t doubt the kid would’ve made his body widely available in the cause of career development. That’s unfair, he’s dead, I’m sorry. It just got to be annoying, the way he’d keep hitting on you with ideas. You know how many shows come out of ideas from the public? I don’t either, but it has to be negligible.’

Vaynor asked a few questions regarding relationships formed by Greenaway. Turner said he wasn’t aware of any.

‘My information,’
Vaynor said,
‘is that you and he were both members of a secret society called Friends of the Dusk.’

Turner laughed, a bit nervously, Bliss figured, but that might be wishful thinking.

‘You make it sound like the Masons. It wasn’t a
secret
society.’

‘How would you describe it, sir?’

‘It was just… like a way of sharing information about something we were interested in at the time.’

‘Vampirism?’

‘Oh… look, don’t go thinking of guys walking around in capes with their teeth sharpened. This was a special-interest group, kind of academic, and the special interest was finding the origins of vampire lore… specifically in the UK.’

‘As distinct from Transylvania.’

‘You got it. There was a man called Selwyn Kindley-Pryce, a one-time university professor over here. A Brit, but spent some years here, at colleges. He specialized in the area where history and folklore crossed over.’