Friends of the Dusk (6 page)

‘So… what exactly are we looking at? And please don’t go all elliptical on me.’

‘I think you should hear it from the people concerned.’

She folded her arms on the tabletop.

‘There are going to be formalities. I’ve never dealt with an inter-faith situation before, so I’ll have to get some kind of clearance from—’

‘No, no.’ He sat up. ‘I don’t think so.’

She stared at him.

‘I don’t know what level of bureaucracy you have in the Anglican Church pertaining to this kind of situation, but we’d feel better if you were… shall we say operating below its threshold.’

‘
What?
’

‘Adam Malik is a quiet man, a good man in a very public occupation. His daughter’s settling in at a local secondary school. He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself or his family, doesn’t want talk around the hospital. Or amongst his new neighbours – not that there are many of those.’

‘There’s always a strong element of privacy in deliverance. Everything kept mainly between me, my bishop and our mutual secretary.’

‘Mrs Watkins, with all respect, I doubt you have any control at all over your bishop and who
he
consults. He might, for example, want to discuss it with a senior Muslim cleric. He might even want to make a “thing” of it. Publicity.’

‘He wouldn’t.’

‘Islam itself has no great foundation in Hereford. There’s a meeting room and embryonic plans for a mosque. It’s at a delicate stage. No one wants controversy of any kind.’

‘This is already getting too complicated for me.’

‘No, no.’ Khan was shaking his head. ‘It’s not complicated at all. We’re simply asking for a modicum of discretion.’

Merrily poured herself some more of the awful Earl Grey.

‘It might take a while. It’s never a quick fix. It can involve several visits.’

‘I realize that.’ Khan’s fingertips tapping softly on the table. ‘Look, if you were to say now, go away, Khan, leave me alone,
this is not
my
problem… well then, I should do that. Walk away and that would be an end to it.’

‘Except it wouldn’t be, would it?’

He thought for a few moments, fingers steepled.

‘I’ll tell you one aspect of this. Which you can accept or reject, according to your beliefs. The situation had been escalating, from minor what you would call poltergeist phenomena… to more extensive damage and disruption. And then… an apparition. And Kellow’s stroke.’

‘They think there’s a connection?’

‘You ask Adam Malik if he thinks there’s evil here,’ Khan said, ‘and he’ll become subdued, reticent, embarrassed even. He’s a doctor, a scientist.’

‘But he sees a link between paranormal activity in this house and his father-in-law’s illness?’

‘He agreed to discuss it with the imam. I offered to make an approach to someone who I thought would handle it all with discretion. His wife Nadya was, I have to say, averse to having a Christian priest in the house.’

‘This is Dennis Kellow’s daughter…’

‘Converts,’ Khan said, ‘can sometimes be more… extreme than most people born into a faith.’

That was true enough. Born-again Christians could be hard going. She drew slowly on the e-cig. Health issues were a minefield. Faith issues a wasps’ nest.

‘I’m assuming,’ Khan said, ‘that the disturbances have resumed. To what extent I don’t know. I had another call this morning, and this time it was from Dennis Kellow. I do know him, he did some work for me at Wychehill. He asked me if I was still in touch with the priest. Used to be a jolly, exuberant man. A man who loved his job. Hardly recognized his voice.’

Oh God.

‘I can’t— I mean, it would be difficult tomorrow. Meeting with the new Bishop in the afternoon, and I don’t really like going at night, in the first instance.’

‘The following day would be fine,’ Mr Khan said. ‘That will be Saturday. I’ll provide you with the address and directions.’

She saw he was eyeing the vial between her fingers, the light brown fluid in it.

‘I see nicotine remains your drug of choice,’ he said. ‘Splendid.’

8

Lawful and justified

A
T
L
UNCHTIME
, A
NNIE
H
OWE
was waiting for Bliss in the Gaol Street car park, wearing her buttermilk trench coat, a red woollen scarf and a scowl.

‘Francis, I really don’t have too much time…’

‘I’m coming now,’ Bliss said. ‘
Ma-am
.’

Making a show of muttering as he pulled on his beanie in the CID doorway, aware of plump, smirking Terry Stagg watching him. Holding the smirk on his way into CID.
Giving the DI a hard time again. Poor bastard can’t put a foot right with Howe. Taken him off for another private policy-briefing – translate as bollocking.

Staggie playing his usual double-game. He’d slag off Howe in front of Bliss, who knew he was secretly on her side, for obvious reasons – principally the question of succession if Bliss were to crack and leave town. What was funniest, if he ever told Terry Stagg the absolute truth about him and Annie, Stagg would think he was taking the piss.

This had been amusing Bliss for months, but not today.

Outside, he pulled out his car fob.

‘Mine?’

Annie nodding, tightening her scarf. Colder this morning, the sky sepia over Hereford, as if it had sucked all the autumn colours out of the leaves. They climbed into Bliss’s Honda, didn’t say much until they were out of the city on the Brecon road, coming up to White Cross, Bliss slowing for the zebra.

‘What did you tell Stagg, about why you were looking for me?’

‘I didn’t,’ Annie said. ‘Just made sure I didn’t appear happy.’

‘Yeh, that usually works.’

‘Wasn’t hard,’ Annie said. ‘Today.’

Bliss put on a sigh.

‘Tell me.’

He drove slowly along suburban Kingsacre, many of its trees prematurely stripped by the gales, fields exposed behind the houses. Pretty obvious what was coming.

‘Charlie rang me about an hour ago.’

‘So it’s official, is it?’ Bliss kept an even speed. No surprise to him, but still a gut-punch to hear it confirmed. ‘Tossed his name into the hat.’

‘Not yet, but he’s decided to. Just wanted to sound me out the other night. See how I felt about it.’

‘And you really think that would influence him one way or another?’

‘Look,’ Annie said wearily. ‘Do you think I
like
this?’

Bliss said nothing. Annie was back in Hereford full-time, heading up CID, Iain Twatface Brent having returned to Worcester to stab a few backs at headquarters. And get promoted for it. Unbelievable.

‘I checked the regulations again last night,’ Annie said. ‘Thinking there might just be a chance Charlie would be too old.’

‘I’d guess not.’

‘Far as I can make out, the only rule is that a candidate needs to be over eighteen. No seniority limit. He’s eminently qualified. Ex senior police officer, county councillor, served for years on the police authority. He’s also fairly fit, after his hip replacement. And he doesn’t, of course, look his age.’

‘One of the benefits of having no conscience,’ Bliss said.

He didn’t think Annie smiled. Well, who would? The thought of this man returning to policing, in his dotage, to become their ultimate boss because the blindingly stupid fucking government had altered a system that didn’t need altering…

‘He has to obtain supportive signatures from a hundred citizens registered to vote,’ Annie said. ‘I didn’t ask him if he’d done that yet.’

‘Bastard could collect them in one morning, Annie, door to door. “
How’re you, my dear. You remember me. Local boy?
”’

He’d perfected the accent long ago, Charlie’s oily, popular-market-trader jollity riff. Once rang Annie as Charlie and it worked for nearly a minute.

On election day, the bastard would pick up votes because he was local and he had a friendly smile on a recognizable face. That was one of the big jokes in replacing the old local police committees with a single, elected Police and Crime Commissioner. People – the few who bothered – would vote local and they’d vote friendly smile: all it took to replace a wonky kind of democracy with a dangerous autocracy. At least the old police committees, made up mainly of councillors, generally recognized they weren’t much more than a formality and had very little impact on actual policing.

‘How long’s he there for, if he gets elected?’

‘Four years.’

‘Mother of God, you imagine the damage Charlie could do in four years?’

‘To you, you mean?’

‘That, too.’

The housing thinned, and Bliss turned right into the Wyevale Garden Centre, driving straight through to the field behind that was used for overflow parking. It wasn’t summer and it wasn’t Christmas, so they were alone here, behind the hedge, looking out to the hills. He stopped the car, brought out his phone, scrolled down to the oath that the Police and Crime Commissioner would have to swear, which included…

Handed it to Annie and watched her face tighten, registering for the first time that, in the couple of days since he’d seen her last, she’d had her pale hair cut shorter. Her make-up was minimal, her skin almost translucent. She looked five years younger and innocent, as if she’d been scrubbing away at an ancestral skin rash.

‘Strictly speaking,’ Annie said, ‘this is less about what he might have done in the past than what he agrees
not
to do in the future.’

‘Annie, he took bribes to suppress evidence. When he was a young DC, he covered up a major landowner’s…
involvement
in a murder. By the time he was running CID, it was second friggin’ nature. The way things were done. Cheaper, more expedient. He was saving the country time and money.’

‘But none of it was
proved
,’ Annie said very quietly. ‘He’s never even been publicly—’

‘Because he’s clever. And he’s local. And he’s been in the Masons and every other friggin’—’

‘All
right
.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’m not disagreeing with you, Francis, I’m telling you that yes, I think he did these things … of which he hasn’t been accused.’

‘
I’ve
accused him.’

Tried to, anyway. Bliss couldn’t even think about Charlie without feeling again the pissing rain on the night in Christmas week when he’d confronted the bastard on his doorstep in Leominster, Charlie entirely unintimidated.
You en’t going no higher and you know it.
Bliss reduced to screaming through the downpour as the door slammed in his face. Forced to accept he really didn’t have what it took to bring down somebody as practised in bare-faced deceit as Charlie Howe.

But then… the unimaginable happened. A night of sublime irony just before Christmas, which had ended with the woman they called the Ice Maiden defrosting in Bliss’s bed.

Till that night, it had never occurred to him that he might actually fancy her.
Metal coat-hanger with tits
, Terry Stagg would say, knowing he was on safe ground with Bliss, who, everybody agreed, was never going to be Annie Howe’s kind of copper, not in any sense.

The strangest, most gratifying part had been how it had happened. The catalyst: working together, out of hours, at the sharp end for the first time, to craft an exceptional result. Feeding the mutual craving for a collar. Finding one another professionally.

They’d still lie in bed talking Job, and all this had made him so insanely happy. And he understood, now, why she played everything by the book, by a whole fusty library. Why she was so tight and proper, so politically correct, cold and humourless in the workplace, diligent to a fault. Why she was such a pain in the arse.

You couldn’t hope to understand Annie, or even like her a bit, until you knew where she’d come from, and where she’d come from was Charlie Howe, a man so bent for so long that the sinister kinks in his history were invisible to him now.

Bliss had sometimes wondered what it would do to Charlie, if he ever discovered who his daughter was spending quality time with. Sometimes he thought of how good it would be to arrange for Charlie to find out accidentally. Then he’d start wondering what Charlie might do to smash them apart, and it really hadn’t been worth the risk.

Only now… now it looked like Charlie was about to achieve that anyway without even knowing. Charlie who hated Bliss because he’d been developing an interest in history.
Bitter, twisted, sick little man. I know about you, Brother Bliss.

Bliss picked up Annie’s right hand, and it felt cold and rigid.

9

Overpowering

B
ISHOPS CAME AND
bishops went; Sophie Hill, like the Cathedral, remained. Same pearls, same crisp white hair, same silver chain on the half-glasses. Same watchful expression, an emotional temperature control set to frost.

‘So how long have you been doing
that
?’

Nodding at the black leatherette case Jane had brought back from Pembrokeshire. Merrily had boldly placed it in the centre of her desk by the window overlooking Broad Street. Start out how you meant to go on.

‘Just over a day.’ She lifted the little glass tube up to the light. ‘Still looks slightly sinister to me, compared to tobacco and paper. Every time I bring it out, it reminds me I’m feeding an addiction.’

‘And does it?’

‘Does, actually. Surprisingly. Didn’t think it was going to work. And I can do it in here and it causes no more pollution than the kettle. That
is
OK, isn’t it Sophie?’

‘I suppose.’

Sophie looked unconvinced. Merrily expelled vapour, very close to telling her about Raji Khan and his cousin. All deliverance cases had been filed by Sophie from the start: each visit, the measures taken, the aftercare. Keeping this one to herself felt like a step into the worst kind of dark.

But she’d given her word. As a Christian. To a Muslim. She’d actually wound up doing that, with a certain formality, after Khan confided that Dennis Kellow’s wife had been reluctant to
approach their local parish priest because the woman was too helpful and effusive. Which meant nosy, Raji Khan had said, not having met her. Helpful to the point of intrusive.