Friends of the Dusk (48 page)

‘In fact, we agreed to meet here. He wasn’t due at the hospital until mid-morning. I was a little late. Not that it would have made any difference. I suppose he was already dead by then.’

‘But why did he…?’

‘To ask your advice. About what he’d glimpsed, on… it must have been Sunday. After you’d left. The bulbs had blown on the landing. Dennis had given him two bulbs to replace them and he went through to the stairs – the wooden stairs, not very old, that go up from the Maliks’ side of the house. He had a flashlight. It wouldn’t work. He told me he looked up and, where the newel post was, at the top, saw a very faint shape. Not bright, but quite distinct. Pointing. At, ah… him.’

Raji Khan pushed the fingertips of both hands into his forehead again. He hadn’t touched his tea.

Think. Was he making this up?

Why would he?

She was wide awake now after the meal, two mugs of tea, the vape stick.

‘I gather you’ve been assisting the police,’ he said, ‘in connection with the two Hereford murders.’

As if he’d felt the need to allow this madness to assimilate, Raji Khan had simply changed the subject.

‘Who told you that?’

‘I tend to gather information on my travels.’

‘Mr Khan, I’ve had enough evasion for one day. Who told you?’

Khan blinked.

‘I serve on committees, dealing with youth, diversity and other boring but worthy issues. The police are often involved, I know some of them quite well. Others I avoid. In Hereford, mainly.’

It was a source of some annoyance to Frannie Bliss that Khan seemed to be protected at some exalted, probably headquarters level, perhaps as an informant. Which wouldn’t be linked to the drug trade. In fact, the nearer you got to Birmingham, the closer it might be to intelligence about terrorist activity.

‘There are, I regret to say,’ he said, ‘two sides to many of us. If you’d told me at university that I’d become a, shall we say, entrepreneur, I should have been insulted. It began, I suppose, when, as a student, I worked at weekends, for Hector Pryce.’

‘You worked for
him
?’

‘I organised music events at Hector’s pubs. Always that joy in music. Even the kind of junk Hector wanted was better than not working with music at all.’

And so it came out. How he’d known about Cwmarrow
before
Adam Malik went to live there, intrigued because it appeared so alien to Hector’s world of transport, catering, downmarket entertainment and… other less visible enterprises.

‘When Hector married Lynne Hamer after her husband was killed in his plane, he acquired two restaurants,’ Khan said. ‘Neither doing well. Lynne hoped he’d bring them round. Instead, he sold them and quietly put the money into an escort agency and a massage parlour in outer Birmingham. Both of which quickly made money, which he used, gradually, to buy another restaurant and two pubs. So he was respectable and Lynne was happy.’

‘I didn’t know any of that.’

‘Of course you didn’t. Had it been known about, would Hector have become a magistrate? It’s my understanding that he quietly retained interests around Birmingham. Useful for entertaining wealthy friends. But then… I, too, have mixed, on occasion, in disreputable company. Two sides, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Why are you telling me all this, Mr Khan?’

He sat back, at the shadowed end of the refectory table.

‘As I said, there’s a side of me that mixes happily with the most senior police. But if I went to the police at any level it would have to be passed back to Hereford and those I tend to avoid.’

‘Bliss?’

‘You, however, are in a safer position, not least because of your profession.’

Huh
.

‘You’re saying you want to use me to pass some information to Bliss?’

‘I’m a Sufi. We look within ourselves and act accordingly. The path we’re offered can be circuitous. I think the police should be investigating the possibility that Hector Pryce might have knowledge of these two murders.’

‘Wh —?’

‘Soffley – I knew him. Once worked in Hector’s shadow business. His own, in Organ Yard, was overlooked by Hector’s pub, the Old Coaching House. With his shop on its last legs, Soffley, I suspect, would not have been above asking for financial assistance. In return for continued silence.’

‘You think he was blackmailing Hector Pryce? Over the massage—?’

‘No, no, no. That’s nothing. No, no. I think, over the killing of Tristram Greenaway.’

Merrily took a hit on the e-cig, watched him through the white vapour. Knowing Jane would be outside the door, listening.

‘Mr Khan… cards on the table time. Tristram Greenaway was employed – whether he was actually paid or not I don’t know – by Selwyn Kindley-Pryce to represent the hero of Kindley-Price’s vampire novels. To set young girls’ hearts aflutter.’

Khan smiled.

‘Young girls. And older men.’

‘Oh.’

Caroline:
Hector never came near me. He didn’t really like women.

‘Two sides to everyone,’ Khan said.

‘You
knew
this?’

‘I don’t think Hector knew it himself – or admitted it – until he encountered Greenaway. A young man on the make. You don’t seem surprised.’

‘Like you, I get around. Was Hector’s… ambivalence… widely known about?’

‘
Heavens,
no. His wife wouldn’t have known. I only know myself because I was the recipient of a tentative overture… immediately withdrawn when there was no reciprocity. This was after Greenaway had left Hereford, leaving Hector in… there was an element of denial. When I mentioned Greenaway once, Hector’s reaction conveyed… oh, perhaps even hatred. For corrupting him, leading him from the straight and narrow. I often wondered what would happen if Greenaway were ever to return. And when I learned about the damage inflicted on a once pretty face…’

‘You think he was capable of that?’

‘There’s always been a burning resentment inside Hector. A sense of repressed violence. But that’s only my opinion.’

She was silent, would not tell him what might well have brought Pryce and Greenaway face to face: the dark grail of the Friends of the Dusk.

Steve Skull.

Some minutes later, Jane returned from her apartment. Raji Khan greeted her with a smile.

‘And have you given Mr Walls his envelope yet?’

‘I’m saving it,’ Jane said. ‘I want to be able to enjoy the moment.’

‘Of course,’ Mr Khan said. ‘Enjoyment is important.’

When he’d gone, Merrily phoned Bliss on his mobile from the scullery. He was at home. He sounded frayed.

‘No name?’ he said. ‘You’re giving me this with
no name attached
?’

‘Think of it as one of those Crimestoppers calls where you can leave information anonymously. But you’re getting it from me, so at least you know I’m not, as the Book says, bearing false witness.’

‘Oh, Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘And me thinking I might gerra night’s sleep.’

64

The Second Death

I
T AWOKE HER
twice in the hours before daylight, the way a moaning wind does, or heavy rain. But there was neither wind nor rain and no birdsong, although this was what it most resembled, maybe the hollow, repetitive dawnsong of the wood pigeon.

Merr-il-y… Come along.

Again and again until her eyes opened, and she saw a long hand, made of light, patting the bed, close to her left thigh.

She didn’t scream or whimper or squirm away because it was a dream and your own screams always awoke you. Instead, in the dream, because she’d been here before, she didn’t move but instinctively whispered the Lord’s prayer, with the old-fashioned, not-mates words. Soon afterwards, she awoke, cold and numb, to find the duvet pulled to the other side of the bed so that her legs were uncovered.

Not good.

She sat on the side of the bed in cold air that made her face ache and could only mean a heavy frost, and said the Lord’s Prayer again, then went to the window and said it again and again and again until the words had become a moving belt passing through her body from her solar plexus, through her breast and over her head and down her spine, between her legs and back again, and she went back to bed and slept until Jane came in with tea.

‘You OK?’

The sky in the window behind her was a flawless, shocking blue.

‘Thank you, flower.’ She sat up. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

Merr-il-y… Come along.

Her elbows went back, hard, into the headboard. Jane’s head spun, as if something had flitted past her.

‘I… was going to give you until midday. Huw’s on his way.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Coming up to half-eleven?’

‘Oh my God.’ Pushing the duvet away. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘You were knackered.’

A bunch of calls on the machine about parish business, including a baptism next Saturday. She dealt with them on autopilot.
Yes… I think so… Sure, no problem… I’ll check… Is it OK if I get back to you?
Then Sophie called, toneless.

‘It’s not good news, Merrily.’

‘No. I don’t suppose it is.’

‘The Bishop wants to see you. Formally. At ten tomorrow morning.’

‘Where?’

‘Here.’

‘Be nice to see the old place again.’

‘Yes, it’s changed quite a bit.’

‘Chair gone?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘My pens and notebooks and stuff?’

‘There’ll be a bag waiting for you. I also have to tell you that, as you failed to reply to it, the offer of the post of Rural Dean has been withdrawn.’

‘So it’s not all bad news, then.’

‘I shall see you tomorrow. That’s assuming…’

‘Oh, yes. I’ll be there. Be cowardice not to turn up. Sophie—’

‘I have to go.’

Not alone, then.

It was no place to work any more, was it? A reason to tell yourself not to be upset.

Huw tossed his canvas shoulder bag into a corner of the hall, followed Merrily into the kitchen, pulled one of the cane dining chairs over to the wood-stove.

‘Colder.’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s not dress this up, lass. We need to talk about a word I’d normally avoid like a Wetherspoon’s pub.’

She didn’t say the word either.

‘Big subject, Huw.’

‘Not when you get rid of the shit. And there is some.’

She stayed on her feet. Didn’t even remember what she’d said to him last night. She’d rung him after Bliss and another failed attempt to get an answer at Cwmarrow Court. She’d called him from the middle of a thickening mental mist.

‘Thank you, by the way,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming. I don’t say that often enough.’

He ignored it.

‘It’s not what you think. And yet, in a way it is.’

‘Vampirism. There. Said it. Did you say you might be bringing someone with you?’

‘I said I were working wi’ somebody. Someone who knows more than me about these things.’

‘Not sure who that was.’

‘I didn’t say. But it’s a friend of yours who you seem reluctant to regard as a friend on account everything in your theological training argues against it. But that’s the Church for you. Self-protection. Let’s keep the industry to ourselves.’

‘Oh God, you can’t mean— You don’t
know
her.’

‘
Didn’t
know her. Been an illuminating couple of days, Merrily.’

‘I bet.’

‘Woman who runs that home dines out on Anthea White stories. And now a Hereford canon as her son-in-law, “Oh,
you must know Merrily Watkins, Graeme, comes here now and again. And always to see Miss White.” And then here’s Graeme Spring in person, amiable clergyman, chatting to the residents… with the exception of one, who’s clearly the subject of some of these chats. How long you reckon before Anthea started to smell a whole bag of rats?’

‘She worked in Intelligence during the Cold War, so probably not that long.’ Merrily stood at the window, looking out across the grass at the lichen on the churchyard wall, myriad in the sunshine. ‘I think, in her provocative way, she was trying to get me to talk about Innes. Couple of weeks ago. I didn’t know what she was on about. And how the hell do
you
know all this?’

‘Let me go back to the beginning. She called me. She wanted to talk about you.’

Merrily spun round.

‘
She
called
you
?’

‘Not much she doesn’t know about you, lass. Or me, come to that. Long days to fill in an old folks’ home.’

‘Were you in touch with her when I played you Sophie’s recording?’

‘Couldn’t say owt. Couldn’t trust you to leave the ole girl alone.’

‘To do what, for heaven’s sake?’

She’d begun to feel surrounded from above, prodded like a specimen on a lab mat.

‘Might be pushing it a bit to say she’s fond of you. Then again, happen it wouldn’t. Nowt she could do about Innes, except menace her fellow inmates into silence, but she saw into the dark heart of this Cwmarrow business straight off. Anyroad…’ Huw slipped out of his boots, stretched out his hiking socks to the stove. ‘I drove over to see her. Walked in, dog collar and all.’

‘That would’ve got straight back to Innes. Mad bastard from Brecon sniffing around.’

‘I do like Anthea. Morally flexible, like everybody who ever worked for the government, but it’s her immortal soul on the line, not mine.’

Merrily gave up, sat down.

‘We talked at length about vampirism,’ Huw said. ‘I hadn’t known about Walter Map and
De Nugis Curialium
. She did. Had it on the shelf in the original medieval Latin. Could even translate some of it. An eye-opener. Summat there, you know. All folk tales, Merrily, there’s
summat there.
’

In the Walter Map story, there was a crucial line, Huw said.

Jane, of course, was already on to it. Jane had committed it to memory.

‘“Peradventure the Lord has given power to the evil angel of that lost soul to move about in the dead corpse.”’

‘Lass is right,’ Huw said. ‘That’s the essence of it. Somebody here knew what he were talking about. Might’ve been Map himself, but I do like to think it were Bishop Foliot. Good to think bishops in them days had their fingers on the spiritual pulse rather than the illuminated spreadsheet. You thought about what it means?’