To Dream of the Dead (56 page)

Bliss said, ‘Tell me why you think he’s been killed.’

‘I . . . I just think it can’t be ruled out, that’s all.’

Signalling to Jane to put the clothes on the sofa, telling Bliss quickly about Shirley West, the Church of the Lord of the Light, the damage, the graffiti. He didn’t say anything. He got her to go over a couple of points again. He asked her if Stooke had had any other obvious injuries. Twice he said
drowned isn’t right
. Clearly he was not impressed.

‘Is there . . .’ shaking now ‘. . . something I don’t know?’

‘A lot. Listen, gorra get things organised this end, then I’ll call you back from the car. We’re coming over. Only problem is how we get into the village.’

‘You’ll have to leave your vehicles the other side of the footbridge at Caple End, and I’ll have to persuade people to pick you up. How many?’

‘Say half a dozen, initially. More later if we agree with you. Or if . . .’

‘What?’

‘Keep your mobile on, I’ll see you at Caple End.’

‘It won’t be me. I have a service to do.’

‘Oh, Merrily!’

‘It’s Christmas Eve. It’s what I
do
. How long before you get here?’

‘Thirty, forty minutes. I can call you back in five from the car.’

‘All right, I’ll wait.’

Despite dry clothes and the electric fire, she was still shivering. The rain was no more than a peppering now and, through the scullery window, you could see the grey-blue froth of night clouds.

Gomer was going to Caple End with his big Jeep, Jane and Eirion to the church to tell people the service would be a little delayed. But first . . .

Jane came into the scullery alone, shut the door behind her.

‘It won’t wait, will it?’ Merrily said. ‘Only—’

‘No,’ Jane said, ‘I don’t think it will.’

Jane told her about Professor Blore’s private report to the Council. His alleged discovery of comparatively modern masonry and artefacts under one of the stones.

‘What does Neil Cooper say?’

‘He thinks Blore’s lying. Really he’s scared to say
what
he thinks. Scared of losing his job. Looks like Blore could’ve been got at by . . . I don’t know.’

‘A combination, probably. Landowner, developers . . . maybe several of them already getting in line for a stake in Ledwardine New Town.’ Merrily instinctively reaching for a cigarette, letting her hand fall empty to the desk. ‘Would take a lot, mind, to make it worthwhile for Blore to virtually destroy everything. The henge? How sure
are
you and Neil about the henge?’

‘It’s got to be more than wishful thinking. It’s just—’

A tapping on the window. Lol’s face. Thank God.

‘I’ll let him in,’ Jane said.

‘No, I’ll do it. You go to the church with Eirion. Tell whoever’s there, if anybody, that I’m sorry and I’ll be with them in ten minutes, soon as I’ve spoken to Bliss again.’

‘Mum, you don’t have to do this. We’re in the middle of a crisis here. Even the church has been—’

‘That’s
why
I have to do it.’

‘And I haven’t finished,’ Jane said.

But Merrily was already into the passage, and the phone was ringing behind her.

You could only see the ghost of the last word now.
Witch
.

James Bull-Davies had been as good as his word.
The Bull
, Lucy used to call him, always having difficulty separating him from his more unsavoury ancestors. Maybe she would now, having seen him scrubbing at her gravestone.

He was in the church, making sure nobody went near the vestry. His old car wouldn’t start, and Eirion had gone in his place to Caple End to ferry cops to Ledwardine. Jane put her hands on the shoulders of Lucy’s stone. It was becoming a natural thing to do, made her feel stronger and less confused. In theory.

‘That your gran, is it?’

She looked up, mildly startled; hadn’t noticed him coming over.

‘What are
you
doing here? I thought you’d gone home for Christmas. Thought you’d be legless in High Town by now.’

‘Bleeding bridge. Should’ve left earlier. The fucking sticks, eh?’

‘You could’ve gone on one of the coaches.’

‘Prefer me own wheels, sweetheart,’ Gregory said. ‘Anyway, I don’t live in Hereford. Not enough happening for me. Figured in the end might as well stay here as go there.’

‘You went to Lol’s gig?’

‘Who?’

‘Lol Robinson? The gig at the Swan?’

‘Didn’t you see me?’

‘I didn’t get to see much of it in the end.’

‘It was good,’ Gregory said.

The night was lighter now. Not much, but enough to make out his thin features. He looked starved. He was wearing a short leather jacket and tight black trousers that looked like they were fused to his legs.

‘You’re soaked.’

Really
soaked. He even smelled wet. ‘Where’s your bloke, Jane?’

‘He’s . . . gone to help bring some people from Caple End.’

‘Coppers?’

‘Maybe.’

‘They’ve even closed the footbridge now. Nobody can get across the river without having to walk about ten miles to the next bridge. That’s what people’s saying. What’s that about?’

‘Somebody got drowned.’

‘That a fact.’

‘Guy who lived near your site, actually. Cole Barn?’

‘Don’t know it.’

‘You never walked over there?’

‘What for?’

‘Just . . . a walk.’

‘A
walk
,’ Gregory said. ‘You people kill me.’

‘What people?’

‘People who can live in a shithole like this and go for . . . walks.’

‘Hey, it’s not my fault you got wet.’

‘Never said it was.’ He seemed on edge. Angry. ‘Not seen Blore, have you?’

‘Not for a while.’

‘He’s got the keys to my bleedin’ caravan. Give him the keys when I thought I was leaving.’

‘If I see him, I’ll . . . get somebody to tell him you’re looking for him.’

‘Thanks.’

Jane said, ‘Gregory . . . you know all that stuff you were giving us about Blore having sex with his students?’

‘So?’’

‘Anybody special?’

‘When?’

‘Currently?’

‘Nah. He don’t separate them out much when he’s pissed. It’s all fires and mantelpieces with Blore.’ Gregory nodded at the people filing into church. ‘Wass all this?’

‘Midnight service . . . delayed. They’re waiting for my mum. She’s the vicar.’

‘Must be popular, night like this.’

‘I think people are a bit . . . spooked. The flood. The drowning. Want a bit of reassurance. And – I keep forgetting – it’s Christmas. Come in if you want.’

‘What happens?’

‘Well, it won’t be an ordinary midnight mass. In view of everything, I think she’ll be playing it by ear.’

‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to one. I mean . . . you know . . .’ Gregory shrugged awkwardly ‘. . . why?’

‘You don’t believe in anything?’

‘Never thought about it. Wassa point? It don’t get you anywhere, do it?’

‘You don’t think it’s, like . . . interesting to think there might be something, somewhere, bigger than all this?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like, you know, a life beyond this life? Somewhere you go after you die?’

‘Best thing is not to die. Let other people do it.’

‘Huh?’

‘The dying,’ Gregory said roughly. ‘The trick is to let other people do the dying.’

Shall dumpish melancholy spoil my joys
. . .

Thomas Traherne
‘On Christmas Day’

‘W
E HAVE TO
try and hold this together,’ Merrily said.

Standing on the chancel steps, in jeans, a black woollen top, her heaviest pectoral cross.

No mass, no meditation, but the church was full. It was almost eerily full, as if there’d been a timeslip back to medieval days, when the timbers of Ledwardine were young. When life was simpler and faith, out of a kind of necessity, was strong.

And when, as each new comet was sighted, they’d still talked about the Endtime.

She saw Jim Prosser and Brenda sitting with Brian Clee. In the Bull pew, James Bull-Davies with Alison. Maybe fifty local people and as many strangers. She saw the man with the ruby earring. She saw the witch from Dinedor who’d had visions of the Druids along the Serpent.

Something
was holding them together.

Edna Huws was at the organ. A good thing for her, perhaps, and for all of them. There would be carols. There would have to be carols, voices raised against the dark.

There was no sign of Shirley West.

‘No point in dressing this up,’ Merrily said. ‘A man’s been found drowned at the bottom of the pitch in Old Barn Lane. A man I’d got to know . . . if not well.’

Or not well enough soon enough.

‘The police are on their way. And, erm . . . they may need to come in here. Which limits us a bit.’

Murmurs. Merrily looked down and saw she was still wearing wellies. She wanted to get them to pray in silence for what remained of the spirit of Christmas, some small, still light, to come into this place. But there wasn’t much silence in her head.

She’d called Bliss back on her mobile. Listening, while walking over to the church with Lol, to his theory that Clem Ayling had been murdered by contract. A connection with the non-democratic focus group Hereforward, to which Ayling had been co-opted by the county council. Ayling discovering that his colleagues on Hereforward had been indulging themselves, on weekends away, with cocaine supplied by a man called Steven Furneaux.

It’s about control
, Bliss had said.
About binding people together. If they’ve been mutually involved in one level of criminal activity they’ll keep quiet about others
.

Merrily hadn’t needed reminding why Ayling would have found the drug element particularly repugnant. Unfortunately, he’d thought he could deal with it himself, underestimating what other interests were at stake.

A little coterie of unscrupulous bastards, operating under and around the democratic process . . . and making themselves a lot of money on the side
.

Sensing a connection, she’d told him about Blore’s report on the stones.

If Bliss was right, Ayling’s death was not directly connected with the Dinedor Serpent but meant to deflect the investigation in that direction. Discrediting opponents of the development of Dinedor and Rotherwas, as well, presumably, as the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society. Making it look like Herefordshire was home to some obsessive semi-pagan underculture.

Well represented, it seemed, in this congregation.

‘This was going to be a meditation,’ Merrily said. ‘That was when I was only expecting about a third as many people and no police. We were going to sit around in a circle and think about what it means – Christmas. Birth and rebirth. The coming of the light.’

Aware of the green curtain behind her, which had been hung over the smashed area of the rood screen, and the roughly sawn square of hardboard fitted into the stonework over the bottom quarter of the broken stained-glass window.

It was making her think about Clem Ayling’s head, the pieces of quartz, the body in the Wye.

‘I’ve been realising that sometimes we have to fight for the light. Whether it’s the midsummer sun rising over Cole Hill or the moonlight shining in the Dinedor Serpent.’

Somebody cheered and got shushed. Merrily smiled.

‘And it’s not paganism in the heathen sense, it’s paganism in the original sense. Ruralism. It’s an understanding that people living here thousands of years ago had different ways of perceiving God, but it always came back to light. We have the advantage because, thanks to what happened on this day over two thousand years ago, we also know about the higher levels of love.’

She looked up, heard the latch lifting on the church doors and saw five people heading towards the vestry. All of them, except Bliss, were women. One was Jane, who’d been waiting in the porch, one a uniformed policewoman. The third woman was Leonora Stooke and the fourth – oh hell – Annie Howe? The Ice Maiden?

They stood either side of the vestry door, waiting.

They didn’t have the key.

‘I’d like us to pray for that light and that love. And then – with the help of the unstoppable, heroic Miss Edna Huws, whose home, as most of you know, was flooded tonight, we’ll have some carols. During which I may have to pop out.’

It was a difficult situation. She couldn’t prolong the agony for Leonora Stooke, waiting to identify her drowned husband.

She abbreviated the prayer, busking it. Leaving fifteen seconds of silence before giving Edna the nod.

The vestry was sometimes a gift shop now. Money-raising scheme of Uncle Ted’s. Displays of postcards and booklets, notelets and framed prints had been pushed back against the walls. Elliot Stooke’s body lay on the trestle table under the dark, leaded window. It was still covered with the blue plastic, a big, shiny cocoon. The room smelled dank and sour.