The Remains of an Altar

23 Freelancing

Jane, at breakfast, said, ‘I haven’t been trying to avoid you.’

‘Did I say you had?’

‘Lol said you had. Which means the same thing.’

‘Actually,’ Merrily said, ‘I was feeling bad that I hadn’t been, as they say, here for you. Maybe you could take me to see this Coleman’s Meadow? When you get home from school.’

After some sweaty, befuddled dreams that she couldn’t remember but knew were unpleasant, Merrily just wanted to do something normal. She sat and looked at Jane across the refectory table. Wished they could stay here like this all day.

Jane said, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Difficult night.’ Merrily put an extra spoonful of sugar in her tea. ‘After the meeting, Frannie Bliss took me to look at a murder scene.’

‘Scousers really know how to show a woman a good time. Like … why, exactly?’

‘Because the dead man was found with his throat cut on something called the Sacrificial Stone at Herefordshire Beacon and Bliss wanted to eliminate the possibility of it being a ritual midsummer slaughter by pagans.’

‘Wow. For a vicar, you really—’

Merrily watched her daughter, translating every facial twitch: Jane trying not to be impressed while remembering she had guilty secrets and couldn’t afford to be too abrasive over…

‘Pagans doing ritual murder? That is so insulting.’

‘As Bliss pointed out, there are pagans and pagans. Anyway, it was bloody horrible, and I didn’t get back until nearly two a.m. So if you’ve been trying to avoid me, I’ve not been aware of it.’

‘Who was the vic?’

Kid watched too many American crime shows on Channel Five.

‘When I left, he was still unidentified. Jane … do you know anything about a dance venue called Inn Ya Face?’

‘Best thing about that place –’ Jane spread a slab of honey, obscenely, on a crumpet ‘– is its name.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve been, obviously.’

‘When? You never mentioned that.’

‘We didn’t stop long. I mean, it’s a good place to go because there’s masses of parking space, supervised by these hard-looking guys so you don’t get your car nicked, and it’s free. We thought we might go again some time, if there was anybody particularly cool appearing, but we somehow never have.’

‘You and Eirion?’

‘Dr Samedi was supposed to be on – you remember Jeff, from Kidderminster?’

‘Oddly, I was only thinking about Dr Samedi last night. He’s still in business?’

‘Yeah, but we got the wrong night. There was this really poxy band on, thought they were the new Chemical Brothers. Really bad. Not bad as in wicked, bad as in … crap.’

‘Talking of chemicals—’

‘Whoever told you I’m doing drugs is—’

‘I meant the Royal Oak. Inn Ya Face. Could you – if you wanted to – get much there?’

‘Mum, how naive are you? You can get it anywhere. There are like ten-year-old dealers outside playgroups? I mean, all that meet-me-on-the-corner-when-the-lights-are-going-on stuff … that’s costume drama.’

‘That’s an exaggeration, right?’

‘Not much of one. Prices have never been lower in Hereford. So I’m told. Look, Mum … erm…’ Jane’s eyes flickered. ‘You heard from anyone? About … me?’

‘Like who?’

‘I don’t know … Morrell?’

‘The head?’ Merrily drank some hot tea. What was this? ‘Why Morrell, Jane? Does he know about your serial truancy?’

‘Serial—? Mum, that is absolute sh—’

‘How many times?’

Jane picked up a piece of crumpet, put it down again, stared at it and sighed.

‘Two.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I swear. Look, if I’d asked for time off the premises to work on my project I’d’ve got it. I just didn’t want to…’

‘Tell them exactly what the project involved.’

‘Because … All right, because I went round to Councillor Pierce’s place to ask him about this housing plan, and there were all these county council guys there, and one was a woman from the education authority.’

‘Why don’t I like the sound of this?’

‘I mean I wasn’t, you know, rude to them or anything. Just tried to get my point over about Coleman’s Meadow being, essentially, an important ancient monument, and they said that was all crap, and Alfred Watkins was a misguided old man. They called it “acceptable infill”. And Lyndon Pierce said he wanted to build Ledwardine up into a thriving little town with like restaurants and massage parlours?’

‘He said that?’

‘Well, he said restaurants. And a new village hall – leisure centre – that’s already going ahead, apparently.’

‘That’s rubbish. I’d have heard. Been consulted, even.’

‘No, really. They’re getting a Lottery grant.’

‘Seems very unlikely to me. I was at a christening tea in the village hall yesterday. It’s going to be redecorated next month.’

‘It sounded like a seriously done deal to me,’ Jane said.

‘I’ll check it out. What did you say to them?’

‘Nothing. Not really. When this woman started banging on about Morrell, I just got out of there.’ Jane stood up, brushing cat hairs from her skirt. ‘You do look knackered, Mum.’

‘I am knackered – let’s not get sidetracked.’

Merrily inspected Jane in her school uniform, hoping it wasn’t only familiarity that made her daughter look innocent rather than sultry and faintly menacing like some of the other girls you saw waiting for the school bus. Jane going, on her own, to see Pierce … that was kind of admirable, but whether Pierce would regard it as mature and socially aware was a different matter.

‘You haven’t done anything else I should know about, have you?’

Call it intuition.

‘He used to shoot blue tits off nut dispensers,’ Jane said.

‘What?’

‘Lyndon Pierce. When he was a kid. Lucy Devenish tried to stop him and he pointed his airgun at her, and then Gomer—’

‘Gomer told you this?’

‘Gomer took the gun off him and flattened it under his JCB. I bet the bastard didn’t put that in his election leaflets.’

‘Jane—’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and blackmail him or anything.’ Jane shouldered her airline bag. ‘I’m probably not even going to say anything about his old man, Percy Pierce, doing a dirty deal with the disgusting Rod Powell to get this, like, agricultural restriction lifted.’

‘What?’

‘So he could build Lyndon’s revolting Las Vegas-style villa. I’m not going to hang that on him … yet.’

‘Good,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m delighted you’re probably not going to attempt to blackmail the local councillor, because it is, as you know, a serious crime.’

‘Building on Coleman’s Meadow is also a crime,’ Jane said. ‘Well … better get off, I suppose.’

The phone started ringing. Merrily rose.

‘There is something I don’t know, isn’t there?’

‘Well, obviously, there must be lots of things, Mum,’ Jane said. ‘But I can’t imagine anything that would cause you a particular problem.’

‘When did you ever?’

As soon as Merrily heard Spicer’s voice on the phone, flat and neutral as underlay, it came to her how much she didn’t want to go back there.

‘You had a good night, then,’ he said.

‘I had a bloody awful night. But how would you know?’

The time for civility was long gone. It was clear that Wychehill – whatever Wychehill was – needed help, the element of nervous dysfunction quiveringly obvious. And, as Lol had said when she’d rung to tell him about last night, it was surely time that Spicer did something about it, rather than some outsider. Of course, that could just have been Lol not wanting her to go back either.

‘I’m glad you went,’ Spicer said.

‘You were told to call me off, weren’t you?’

‘Yeah, but I couldn’t reach you, could I?’

‘Of course you could.’

‘Sure.’

‘Who told you to call me off?’

‘Preston.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s just a funny bloke. Proprietorial. His family goes back. I mean, really goes back – Norman times. I’m not saying he doesn’t like outsiders, exactly – the guy’s running upmarket holiday accommodation on his farm – but he likes to be in control. And people in Wychehill like him to be in control. They’re all outsiders and they like to buy into the history. Even Holliday.’

‘So Holliday was firing Devereaux’s bullets?’

‘Holliday would’ve run with Elgar’s ghost, all the way to the News of the World, even if he doesn’t believe a word of it. Maybe because he doesn’t believe a word. I can understand Devereaux not wanting that – I wouldn’t want it.’

‘But you weren’t there last night.’

‘No point. It was a stitch-up. But like I say, I’m glad you went. It worked out. A requiem will be spot-on. Everybody happy.’

‘Why do I feel I’ve been stitched up?’

‘Trust me, it’s the best thing. Devereaux respects you now. That counts.’

‘What about Stella Cobham?’

‘Oh, he isn’t gonna forget that, is he? She came close to making a fool of him.’

‘And what’s your feeling now about … what we’re dealing with?’

‘Don’t matter what my feelings are. What are yours?’

‘It’s impressive. But if there’s going to be a requiem, maybe you should do it.’

‘No.’

Startled by the force of Spicer’s response, Merrily said nothing.

‘It’s not my thing. All right? I can get you the names and addresses of the dead kids’ parents. Been in touch with the priest handling the joint funeral in Cookman’s parish. I can make the arrangements – all you have to do is show up.’

‘This coming Sunday? Evening?’

‘Why not? Thank you, Merrily.’ A long expulsion of breath; he was smoking. ‘I hear you were up on the hill last night.’

She was getting used to how long it took him to get around to crucial issues.

‘All it was … a CID man I know was in charge up there. He thought I might be able to help. He was wrong.’

‘Why’d he think that, Merrily?’

‘Because it looked as if there was a ritual element to it.’

‘Nah,’ Spicer said. ‘It’s urban business, innit?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He was a bouncer. At the Oak.’

‘I didn’t know that. Syd…’

‘Yeah?’

‘Are there still serious drugs coming out of there, in quantity?’

‘That what your pal thinks?’

‘Not my place. But I did hear something about Preston Devereaux’s boy. Not Hugo, the other one.’

‘Louis. He’s about twenty-three now. What did you hear?’

‘That he’d gone off the rails after the hunt ban.’

‘Yeah, that’s true. Youngest-ever master of the East Malvern hunt. Lived for it, totally. Ban came in, he had a breakdown, of sorts. Like his life had been cut off at the roots.’

‘But his father … moved on?’

‘As he likes to say. Yeah, he sold the horses. All the other hunts, with the tacit approval of the gutless wankers in the Cabinet, are doing pretend drag hunts where foxes just accidentally get killed. Preston’s too proud.’

‘So when he says, you move on…’

‘He means, you move on, disguising your rage and loathing. Don’t give them the satisfaction.’

‘And does that also explain his attitude to the Royal Oak?’

‘You’re doing very well, Merrily,’ Spicer said. ‘It usually takes outsiders years to acquire that level of local understanding.’

‘I live in a village.’

‘He’s right,’ Bliss said. ‘Roman Wicklow. A hard-boy.’

He wouldn’t talk on the phone, so it was back to that same table in the Cathedral cloisters. Outside, it was an all-too-typical midsummer morning: small, white sun crowded by sour clouds, not very warm.

‘His form includes ABH, malicious wounding and possession of Class A. Bromsgrove’s his old playground, so they’ll be looking there.’

‘They? Not you?’

‘Mr One-night-stand, me.’ No doughnut this time, Bliss was drinking black coffee. ‘Left to meself, I’d be roasting Raji on a slow spit. But when you’re off the case, you’re off the case.’

‘Annie Howe’s taken over?’

‘Since first light. Legitimately. It’s a Worcester thing now, from all angles.’

‘But you’re still interested?’

‘In an academic way.’

‘I bet.’

‘I managed to…’ Bliss sipped his coffee, winced, added sugar. ‘Before they broke the news, we had another word with two of the little scallies who found the remains. Thirteen-year-olds sharing a six-pack of Fosters, so a little mild pressure was permissible. Finally admitted this wasn’t the first time they’d seen Roman up the Beacon.’

‘Birdwatching?’

‘Mr Khan was terribly shocked. Assuring me he’d have fired Roman at once if he’d so much as suspected. And, you know, strange thing, I think he was shocked. Mr Wicklow dealing on the Beacon? Handful of rocks and a few piffling grams?’

‘You think he really didn’t know?’

‘That kind of trade would be far too trivial for Raji, not to mention dangerously close to home. Yeh, I believe him when he says he’d have had Wicklow’s balls if he’d found out. Wicklow was freelancing. Probably made the arrangements in the pubs in Great Malvern, then met the clients in the fresh air, with those wonderful, far-reaching views of anybody approaching and a nice cave to shelter in.’

‘Therefore Khan’s not involved?’

‘Oh, I never said that.’ Bliss looked down into his coffee, lowered his voice. ‘If he’d found out that one of his people was operating on the side and figured it was time an example was made of someone foolish enough to abuse his position … well, that just might explain why the goody bag was left at the scene.’

‘He had Wicklow killed?’

Bliss smiled. ‘Try and prove it.’

Merrily leaned back. A stray blade of wan sunlight tinted an edge of the Bishop’s lawn. Another world.

‘So ritual murder’s definitely ruled out?’

‘It was never really ruled in. Also, Doc McEwen’s knocked down his own theory that it would’ve taken several people. Wound on the back of the head now suggests that Wicklow was clobbered first and then dragged to the stone before his throat was cut. Assuming an element of surprise, one person could have done that.’

‘And it wouldn’t have taken long, I suppose?’

‘By comparison, no time at all.’ Bliss looked at her, his eyes slitted. ‘Still funny it should happen when you’re around, though.’

‘You’re considering the possibility that I did it?’

‘Can you think of a better way of little Francis becoming Annie Howe’s favourite detective in the whole world? Instead of off the flaming case.’

Merrily hadn’t yet been to the office, slightly worried about facing Sophie, whose reasoning, on the issue of Wychehill and Syd Spicer, had been, as it had turned out, flawless.

Sophie wasn’t in, however – probably over at the Palace, dealing with the Bishop’s mail. The computer was switched off, but four messages were on the answering machine, one of them non-routine and left less than four minutes ago.

‘Mrs Watkins, this is Winchester Sparke.’

Winchester?

Sophie came in with a cardboard file under her arm, sat down opposite Merrily and began to unpack it, assembling a small pile of letters on the desk.

‘I need to speak with you.’ Winnie Sparke’s voice was harsh and frayed. Please call me back. I— The cops have taken Tim. Came pounding on his door … took him away.’

24 Lord of Dread

Merrily rang Bliss on his mobile.

‘Hold on a mo.’ She heard the sound of feet on stairs and then an outside acoustic, city traffic. ‘Yeh, I’ve just heard. It was a surprise to me, too. You know anything about this feller?’

‘He’s a composer. A music teacher. What’s the basis for it?’

‘I don’t know, Merrily, it’s not my case.’

‘Can’t you find out?’

‘If I make a nuisance of meself. Hate to use a hackneyed old phrase, but what’s in it for me? And I don’t want a mention in your prayers; you’re a Protestant.’ He sniffed. ‘All right, here’s my inspired guess: an outrage crime.’

‘Is an outrage crime what I’m thinking it is?’

‘Way I’m looking at it is, we’ve got two local dealers taken out within a fortnight, both in rural areas. I told you about the guy in Pershore?’

‘But didn’t you say he was shot in his car? Modus operandi doesn’t exactly tally, does it?’

‘Modus schmodus, Pershore’s still only half an hour’s drive from Wychehill. But is Annie Howe looking at it from that perspective? Oh no, too small-time and messy. Annie wants an outrage crime. By which I mean where some normally law-abiding person or persons is pushed well beyond the limits of socially acceptable behaviour by the perceived collapse of everything he or she holds dear.’

‘That’s vigilantism, Frannie. That’s Death Wish 2. I’ve never met Tim Loste and I don’t know that much about him. But a musician and choirmaster, however troubled, doesn’t really strike me as the most obvious serial killer of drug dealers.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Annie wants Loste because he’s white and middle-class. I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you.’

Merrily held the phone to her ear long after the click, watching Sophie sorting the Bishop’s correspondence, recalling her reaction to the Royal Oak becoming Inn Ya Face.

One day, I think, we may be pushed too far.

‘You were off sick on Monday,’ Robert Morrell said.

Sick was a dirty word to Morrell. He worked out three nights a week in the school gym, did the London Marathon, and his skin was lightly tanned all year round. You had to be suspicious of a head teacher with a sunlamp.

Jane nodded. ‘It was a migraine. I get them sometimes in summer.’

‘And it persisted through yesterday.’

‘Well, I was going to come in yesterday, and I went out to wait for the bus and it … it just came on again.’

‘You been to the doctor, Jane?’

‘Well, no … I know what it is. It’s a migraine. I’ve had it before. It’s like … it’s horrible. First of all, you see these big black spots in front of your eyes, and then it…’

‘Comes and goes, I imagine.’

‘Yes, it does. That’s what it does. Comes and … goes.’

‘And this … conveniently capricious migraine was presumably in remission on Monday night when you paid a surprise visit to Councillor Pierce at his home.’

Oh God. Any vague hope that Jane had had that this was not why Morrell had sent for her hit the deck like a bag of flour. It was going to take a lot of sweeping up.

‘I … erm, the migraine seemed to be easing off by the evening, so I went for a walk in the cool air to clear my head … and I just happened to be passing that way and … you know … got chatting to these people. Not knowing who they were, at first. Only, the thing is, I’m using aspects of local history for my art project, and I was thinking that now I was feeling better I could at least do some work on the, erm, project, and so … I’m sorry, Rob, this probably sounds…’

‘Yes, it does, Jane.’

‘I didn’t … I mean…’

Jane’s resolve collapsed. She really didn’t like this new policy of Morrell’s where, when you reached the sixth form, you were permitted to call him Rob. Like you were all mates. So that when you did something wrong, it was like you’d let down your mate. Which was totally ridiculous because there was no way Jane would ever get close to having a mate like Morrell, with his tracksuits, his sunlamp, his neatly shaven head, his minimalist office, his Tony Blair smile…

He did it now, that ghastly smile, and then he leaned back in his executive chair and spoke with the kind of horrible lazy fluency that must have persuaded the thick bastards on the education authority that he was smooth enough to do this job.

‘Jane, tell me … which particular part of your project involves haranguing elected members and officers of the Herefordshire Council for performing their democratic duty in opening the way for the kind of much-needed rural housing that may enable you and your fellow students to remain in this area when you leave the education system, rather than becoming economic migrants?’

By the time Jane had worked this out, it was too late for any kind of smart response. Morrell’s smile vanished, like that of the tiger deciding it was time to stop playing with his prey and get down to the meal.

‘Perhaps I need to make it clear to you, Ms Watkins, that, as a sixth-former, you are an ambassador for this school in the greater community. Do you understand what I mean?’

Jane just nodded; couldn’t even manage a respectable display of dumb insolence.

‘All right. On this occasion, to save further embarrassment, and to protect our exemplary record on truancy, I informed Councillor Mrs Bird – the vice-chairman of Education and one of our governors, as I’d have thought you would remember – that on this occasion you’d been given time off to work on your project.’

‘Thank you,’ Jane said feebly.

‘And I’ll thank you –’ Morrell’s palm slammed down on his desktop ‘ – not to drag the name of this school into disrepute in future, with your lies and your childish fantasies. Do you understand what I’m saying? Far from covering up for you, next time…’

Jane nodded.

‘Good,’ Morrell said lightly. ‘Off you go.’

Bending his shaven head over some report, he highlighted a line of type with a yellow marker pen. In the doorway, ashamed of her craven attitude, Jane turned round.

‘It’s not low-cost housing, you know. It’s luxury, executive—’

‘Geddout, Jane,’ Morrell murmured. ‘You’re beginning to bore me.’

Jane just like fell out into the corridor, knowing her face would be red and scrunched up. Feeling the heat of tears and weight of the Establishment. It was like … Stalinist: the Council, intent on crushing all opposition, putting the word out to the chief of police to warn her off.

She stumbled into the toilet to wash her face and then went into one of the cubicles and fumbled out her mobile to leave a message on Eirion’s phone, see if he could pick her up after school. Needing someone to howl to.

Soon as she switched on, the voicemail signal buzzed, and she clapped both hands around the phone because Morrell was strict on the use of mobiles during class-time – confiscation had been known, for as long as a week, and in this case would be guaranteed, and then the secret police would have all her private contacts.

You have one message. To access your messages, press one.

Probably be Eirion, saying he was going to be tied up tonight. Jane pressed one.

‘Hello, Ms Watkins.’ This strange, cheerful man’s voice. ‘My name is Jerry Isles, and I work for the Guardian newspaper. I’d like to discuss your campaign on behalf of the, um, Ledwardine ley? Could you please call me back?’

Jane stood there, with her back to the cubicle door, staring into the toilet, the mobile feeling like a stick of dynamite with a fizzing fuse. When she and Eirion had done the document for the Net, she’d put her mobile in as the contact number, mainly because she didn’t want anybody ringing the vicarage. Expecting maybe a couple of concerned ley-hunters who might be prepared to send letters of protest to the council.

The Guardian? Jeez.

‘And what do you know about this man Loste?’ Sophie asked.

‘Nothing.’ Merrily spread her hands. ‘Hearsay. I’ve never met him. I’ve never even seen him.’

She’d just called Winnie Sparke. The call had lasted around half a minute, Sparke insisting that she didn’t like to speak on the phone and could they meet this afternoon, somewhere other than Wychehill? Great Malvern would be appropriate. She knew a place they could be private.

‘You’re going?’ Sophie said.

‘What can I do?’

‘This man has been taken in for questioning about a peculiarly savage and revolting murder and you propose to meet his girlfriend somewhere private.’

‘I’m not sure she’s his girlfriend.’

‘Do you even know anything about her?’

‘There are only twenty-four short hours in a day, Sophie.’ Merrily slumped back in her chair, leaning it against the wall. ‘And I’m already working most of them.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can find out.’

‘I’m sure you’ve a stack of letters to do for the Bishop—’

‘Shush,’ Sophie said, as the phone rang. ‘Gatehouse. Yes, she is.’ Sighing. ‘One moment, Inspector.’

Merrily sat up, groping for the phone.

‘Mr Loste, Merrily.’ Bliss coming at her like a fast train hissing from a tunnel. ‘If you wanna know, in absolute, pain-of-death confidence, why they’ve brought him in, listen up, because I don’t have much time. You got shorthand?’

‘Sophie’s is better.’

‘Then put me back to Sophie. And this really doesn’t go any further than the two of you, understand, or I’ll be in more shite than you could ever imagine.’

‘Sure.’

‘What I’m giving you is a text message received by Raji Khan last night, transmitted from Wicklow’s mobile. Read and destroy, then call me back and tell me what you think.’

‘Texted by Wicklow?’

‘Texted, almost certainly, after Wicklow’s death by Wicklow’s killer or an accomplice and passed on to Howe by Khan in his capacity as an upright citizen. You’ll find it fairly unbelievable. Gimme Sophie.’

Merrily handed over the phone and played nervously with her Zippo, watching Sophie reaching for a notepad and pen, beginning to write.

‘Sign? Oh, thine. I’m sorry … continue.’

Arcane Pitman loops and whorls and dots. Everything suddenly moving unintelligibly fast.

‘Yes … yes…’ Sophie’s eyebrows raised. ‘My God, yes … so it is. No, I won’t do that. Thank you, Inspector.’ She hung up, tore off the top page of her notebook and sat down to transcribe. ‘I recognized it at once.’

‘Recognized what?’

‘Let me finish.’

Sophie reversed the shorthand notebook, pushed it across the desk to Merrily. She’d hand-printed the transcription. ‘I was instructed not to put it into the computer.’

Lord of dread and lord of power

This is thine, the fateful hour.

When beneath the sacred oak

Thrice the sacred charm is spoke,

Thrice the sacrificial knife

Reddens with a victim’s life,

Thrice the mystic dance is led

Round the altar where they bled.

‘What is it?’ Merrily looked up. ‘Black Sabbath?’

‘It’s…’ Sophie frowned ‘… Elgar, I’m afraid. His librettist, anyway. It’s an extract from the cantata we discussed.’

‘The Dream of—? It can’t be.’

‘Gerontius is an oratorio,’ Sophie said with no sarcasm. ‘Of a kind. The cantata is Caractacus.’

‘Oh. The one set on…’

‘Herefordshire Beacon. British Camp.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Literally. The passage relates to where Caractacus, facing his final confrontation with the Romans, is directed by various prophecies from what you might call Druids of the old school. The libretto … particularly on paper, it lacks a certain subtlety of expression. Elgar wasn’t famous then. It was written by a neighbour, a Mr Acworth. A retired civil servant, as I recall.’

‘And this bollocks was texted to Khan?’

… the sacrificial knife

Reddens with a victim’s life

Merrily stood up and turned to the window: Broad Street traffic, T-shirts, summer frocks.

Inn Ya Face.

The phone went again and Sophie took it, her reading glasses dropping down on their chain. She wasn’t on long.

‘I’ll tell her,’ she said. ‘If I see her. Thank you.’ When she looked up at Merrily, her face was creasing with an unexpected, almost motherly concern. ‘You can’t react to everything.’

‘Just tell me.’

‘Detective Chief Inspector Howe’s office. She would like to meet you in Wychehill later this afternoon.’

‘Howe wants to see me?’

‘The sergeant said she very much hopes it will be convenient.’

‘Which means if I don’t show there’ll be a police car outside the vicarage at some ungodly hour.’

‘I’m sorry, Merrily.’

What the hell was this about? Merrily sat down, laid her palms on the desk, took two long breaths and called Bliss back.

‘No idea,’ Bliss said. ‘But whatever the bitch wants, you keep me well out of it. What do you reckon about the text?’

‘If it wasn’t so bad it’d be creepy. How many people would recognize the words of an Elgar cantata?’

‘In the Malverns,’ Sophie murmured, ‘about four thousand.’

‘Not a great many rival dealers,’ Bliss said. ‘That’s for sure. We must be looking at one of the principal reasons for them picking up Mr Loste.’

‘Maybe he’s just advising them, as an exper— No. Sorry, I’m overtired. It was texted to Raji Khan personally?’

‘To the Royal Oak landline.’

‘Would that work?’

‘You can text a landline and the message gets read out over the phone.’

‘Loste has an oak,’ Merrily said.

‘Sorry?’

‘I just thought. Loste has an oak planted in his front garden.’

‘That’s uncommon?’

‘It is when your garden’s barely big enough for a dwarf apple-tree. A lot of oaks here, that’s all I was thinking. Sacrificial oak. Royal Oak…’

‘And the oak was the sacred tree of the Druids. Even I know that. What does it tell us?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe Annie Howe does?’

‘You know,’ Bliss said, ‘if it turns out Annie’s pulled the right man within just a few hours … I’d really hate that.’

When Merrily got back from the health-food shop with some hard-looking bean and chick-pea pasties, Sophie was printing out a document.

‘Didn’t take long to find her.’

It was from Amazon.

Most popular results for Dr C. Winchester Sparke

Homing (trade paperback, March 2004)

A Healer’s Diary (with Declan Flynn, hardback, October 2001)

Life-defining: a self-help tutor (paperback, June 2000)

Legacy of the Golden Dawn (paperback, reissued 2002)

‘A writer,’ Merrily said. ‘It makes sense. I wondered what an American woman was doing living in the Malverns on her own. Kept meaning to ask people, but it never … A writer can live anywhere.’

‘All her books appear to fall under the general heading of Mind, Body and Spirit,’ Sophie said, with faint distaste, ‘so I’m not sure how seriously we can take the Doctor.’

‘New Age. She comes over as very … almost archetypally New Age.’

‘Be careful,’ Sophie said.

25 Village Idiot

Winnie Sparke cupped her hands, drank from the holy spring and then looked up at Merrily, holy water rippling down her face, hands pushing her wet curls back over both ears.

For a moment she looked stricken and feral, like some captured wood nymph.

‘You have to help me. He’ll die in there, I’m not kidding.’

Inside the nineteenth-century gabled building which enclosed the Holy Well, the once-sacred healing water ran from a thin plastic pipe into a stone sink. On the floor, a red cross was marked out in tiles. On the wall above the pipe someone had scrawled, in black, The Goddess For Ever.

Neo-pagan graffiti. Up in the wooded hills on the outskirts of town, it all seemed a little sad, a New Age fringe thing, no longer part of mainstream Malvern.

‘You have contacts in the police, I know you do,’ Winnie Sparke said. ‘You have to get it over to them that Tim didn’t do this thing.’

Like Wychehill on a grand scale, Great Malvern clung to the sides of hills, its houses and shops and public buildings like the seats in a long stadium with the vast Severn Plain as its arena. The difference being that the real action had been up here, where a village had grown into a fashionable resort town founded on a Victorian faith in the curative powers of spring water.

Now all that was long over, and Great Malvern was just a busy town with heavy scenery. Steep streets, an historic priory church built of exotically coloured stones, a good theatre and most of the wells and springs hidden away. Nowadays, if you wanted to drink the pure, healing water you were advised by the health police to boil it first, C. Winchester Sparke had said in disgust.

‘Like, nobody understands any more. Nobody gets it about the energy of springs. The water’s gushing and gurgling all through these rocks, like a blood supply, and nobody’s revelling in it any more. It’s become repressed, stifled … like the long-forgotten Wychehill well.’

‘There was a well at Wychehill?’ Merrily said.

‘According to legend. Hell, more than that – according to history. There was this holy well at Wychehill that was supposed to have stopped flowing and nobody knows where it is. My theory is that it was blocked during the damn quarrying. Explains a lot about Wychehill.’

Winnie Sparke had said they had to meet here because Wychehill had too many furtive, prying eyes. Including Annie Howe’s this afternoon, Merrily thought, so it wasn’t a bad idea. They were lone pilgrims at the Holy Well. She’d found Winnie sitting on its steps, wearing a white summer dress and a cardigan decorated with ancient Egyptian figures making camp hand gestures.

‘Why would they think he killed this man, Dr Sparke?’

Merrily stood in the doorway arch, looking down at the trees softening the vast green vista of the plain. Obviously, she couldn’t tell Winnie Sparke about the text.

‘Please don’t call me Dr Sparke. People over here, an American called Dr Something, they think you purchased it off the web for like thirty dollars?’ Winnie smiled wanly through the water-glaze. ‘There’s a public bridle-way across there.’

‘With a park bench,’ Merrily said. ‘Do you mind if we sit on the bench? I didn’t get to bed until first light.’

‘OK, we’ll sit on the bench. Whatever. It’s just I’m feeling like I need to move, make things take off … This is a very stressful time.’

In full daylight, Winnie looked older. A woman well into middle age but with good skin and good hair. They walked down from the Holy Well, across a small parking area and on to the bridleway, which sloped scenically away into the trees. They sat on the bench.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t really know … you and Tim Loste?’

‘Friends. And fellow searchers. Tim came to Wychehill for a purpose. He had an inheritance which allowed him to throw up his teaching job and pursue his … calling.’

Merrily waited. The sun, hidden for most of the day, was now warm on her face.

‘Elgar. People keep calling it an obsession – I hate that word, it implies a sickness rather than a penetrating, inspirational, creative focus. Is it so bad to be driven?’

‘Depends what you’re driven towards, I suppose.’

‘Towards what drove Elgar. What made him into the greatest composer these islands ever had.’

‘And does Tim Loste know what that was?’

‘Oh, sure. I believe we’ve gotten close to that. The results will be Tim’s own piece for orchestra and choir, with a divine theme, involving Elgar himself as a character. A major work about the stress and agony leading up to the realization of a great and beautiful mystery.’

‘And your part is … ?

‘I get to write the words, the libretto.’

Winnie looked away, at the view.

‘And what is the mystery?’

‘It’s a mystery,’ Winnie said. ‘Hell, if we were in Wychehill, I wouldn’t even be telling you this much. But, believe me, it’s an awesome thing.’

‘You don’t like Wychehill?’

‘I like my cottage. I like my views, I love the Malverns. No, I don’t like Wychehill the way it is right now. I bought in a hurry after my divorce, and at some stage I’m gonna move on. I’m being frank with you. See, in Wychehill, they regard Tim not as a precious, fragile talent but as some kind of village idiot, a liability. You ask people there, like that asshole Holliday, if they think he killed the guy on the hill, they’ll go, sure, why not … look at the history.’

‘I heard he … smashed a window at the Royal Oak?’

‘Oh wow, a window, yeah.’ Winnie sighed. ‘Sure, he did that. And got himself caught and beat up on by the muscle there. Who told you about that? Syd?’

A worrying idea settled on Merrily like cold air around her shoulders.

‘Who exactly … who was it beat him up, do you know?’

‘The muscle! They have these doormen who— Oh.’ Winnie’s head began to nod like a dog ornament on a car’s rear-window shelf. ‘OK, right, now I see where you’re coming from. You think this guy, Roland…’

‘Roman.’

‘OK. Look, maybe it was him, maybe it wasn’t, I wouldn’t know. Only the cops could think that was significant. Truth of it is, Tim wouldn’t even remember who it was beat up on him. The night it happened – two, three months ago? – he was up on the Beacon trying to puzzle something out in his work, and the wind was in the wrong direction, blew it up the hill, this techno, hiphop shit – barbaric, he called it, like an invasion. He couldn’t shut it out. It was filling up his head and he went a little crazy.’

‘He’d been drinking?’

‘I’m working on that.’ Winnie Sparke looked down. ‘I’m trying to clean it out of him with meditation.’

‘What happened next?’ Merrily said.

‘He coulda just walked away. He can walk seven, eight miles up there on a clear night, I’ve known him do that. But … he stormed off down to the Royal Oak, took a rock out the wall, and he hurled it through a window. And then he like … he just stood there on the parking lot, screaming like a mad person. Like, if it was me, I’d’ve put the damn rock through the glass, run like hell. He just stood there screaming. Like he wanted them to come out for him. I guess he has a certain masochistic streak. And they obliged, my God, did they oblige…’

‘He was badly hurt?’

‘Those guys don’t pull punches and they hit where it doesn’t show. It was lucky Helen – the roving nurse? – was passing in her car, and she went to fetch Syd and they pulled him out, took him home. Didn’t leave the house for five days. I wanted to have a doctor check him over, but he said … he refused. I guess the main damage was emotional. Spiritual. He became depressed, couldn’t work for maybe two weeks. But hey, nobody could think he’d take such an extreme…’

Winnie’s dark eyes were shining hot and bruised under the heavy curls.

‘I checked you out. On the Church of England Deliverance website. Also, some news stories. A lot happened to you, very quickly. Guess that was to do with being a woman in this job. Not too many women exorcists?’

‘Not many, no.’ Merrily anticipated the way this might be going. ‘Maybe I’ll write a book about it. In about thirty years.’

Winnie smiled ruefully in the shadows of her hair.

‘Wicklow…’ Merrily groped for a way of putting this without mentioning the text message. ‘Roman Wicklow’s body was found on what’s called the Sacrificial Stone. Nobody seems to be sure whether it ever was that, but it’s … obviously in a place immortalized in Elgar’s Caractacus, as the site of Druidic blood rituals. It wouldn’t be too hard for the police to see connections. I mean, the music Tim Loste puts on with his choir in the church. Obviously Elgar, but … ?’

‘They did Caractacus once.’ Winnie Sparke looked down at her hands, still wet, in her lap. ‘OK. Tim is director of an amateur choir made up of men and women from all over the three counties. They did Caractacus, with incomplete instrumentation, and in spite of all of that it was pretty awesome. Tim wanted to stage it, open-air, on the Beacon, tap into that original energy, but the expense ruled it out. And the logistics. Getting an orchestra up there? And if it rained? And, worse than that, what if there was some rave thing on at the Oak, at the same time? Some nights, the amplified sound carries miles, drowns the valley.’

‘I imagine it must’ve become the bane of his life, that pub?’

Winnie Sparke gave Merrily a hard look, like she was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t talking to the wrong person.

‘I’m just trying to look at it from the police’s point of view,’ Merrily said.

‘That an artistic guy like Tim Loste could overpower some professional thug and then take out his throat?’

‘I don’t know … anything about him. I don’t know how big he is or how old…’

‘He’s a creative person who hates violence, is all.’

They stopped talking while two women on horses clopped past.

‘And he wasn’t at the meeting at the church last night,’ Merrily said. ‘I would’ve expected him to be there.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Winnie shook her curls. ‘I wouldn’t let him near the church last night. I came on his behalf. See, when he heard about that meeting, he was scared you were gonna try to work some kind of exorcism … to dispel the spirit of Elgar? Me, too. I was just so mad at Syd for bringing in an exorcist, I wanted you to realize the hugeness of this thing you were being asked to do. Like if you’d jumped the wrong way in the church, I was ready to take it to the media – hey, here’s the Church of England gonna drive the spirit of Elgar out of his beloved hills?’

‘Nobody would dare consider anything like that. There’d be a national outcry.’

‘Yeah, you say that now. But if you saw Tim, the state he was in, believe me, you might’ve been ready to look at something drastic. He needed … he needed to calm down some.’

‘So you told him to stay away.’

‘I was scared he’d start yelling, say something stupid.’

‘Where did you find him, in the end?’

‘The place I left him. The one place I could be sure … and I’m not gonna tell you, OK? You don’t need to know that.’

‘The police might need to. If you can prove he couldn’t have been anywhere near the Beacon when—’

‘I can’t prove it, I wasn’t with him, OK?’ Winnie looked away. ‘I can’t talk to cops, their minds run on narrow rails.’ She stood up. ‘I’m sorry, I need to walk.’

Merrily followed her along the bridleway, thinking that the Malverns weren’t exactly wild any more; few areas of this long, bumpy spine were unreachable by well-used footpaths.

‘The gentle heart of England,’ Winnie Sparke said. ‘Miles of fertile, tranquil lowland … and then, suddenly, you have these volcanic rocks. Like a long altar rising from the plain of the Severn. And, you see, that … is precisely what it was – a place of spiritual significance since the Stone Age. To the early Christians, a dark place.’

‘You mean a stronghold of pagan worship?’

‘Still rich in stories of curses and the devil. So I guess what you had was a wilderness place for early Christian hermits to test their faith. A retreat for hermits and seers and prophets, riddled with springs – life-force. And I guess what you have now, Merrily – battered, hacked-at and under-esteemed – is the remains of an altar.’

‘An altar to Elgar?’

‘Sure, for some people. Hell, for a lot of people. But where was Elgar’s altar?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘He pulled music from out the air. He used to say that.’

‘And he listened to the trees.’

‘He had a thing going with trees,’ Winnie said. ‘This is true. I’ll explain all this to you one day, but not right now. I…’ She took Merrily’s arm. ‘You’re a spiritual person. Syd, too, but Syd was a soldier and he doesn’t talk about it.’

‘He’s a priest. He has to talk about it.’

‘He doesn’t talk about himself. You don’t know how he’s reacting. Sure, he’s helped Tim, but that doesn’t mean he understands.’

‘And you’re a writer.’

‘It’s a living,’ Winnie said. ‘Just about. Listen, I … Thank you for hearing me out. We can be friends, right?’

‘I hope so.’

‘I don’t have too many friends in Wychehill. It’s like I said about the rocks. Wychehill’s built on a place hacked out from the rocks. A great open wound, prone to infection. Part of what Tim’s doing at the church, with the music … it’s about that.’

‘Healing the rocks?’

‘As a priest, you should maybe think about that. Meantime, you remember what I said about Tim. And you tell … whoever … that wherever they’re holding him they should look out for him, you know what I’m saying? Day and night.’

Merrily had just a few minutes to get back to Wychehill to meet Annie Howe, for whatever reason. Only about three miles, so no problem. She drove past the British Camp car park at the foot of the Beacon, where two marked police cars were on display. Also, outside the hotel across the road, a bill for the Worcester Evening News which read: HUNT ON FOR MALVERN RITUAL KILLER.

Maybe the holding of Tim Loste was not yet official. But he looked far more guilty to Merrily now than he had before she’d spoken to Winnie Sparke.

26 Weight of the Ancestors

On the computer in the scullery, Jane tapped in the URL that Eirion had dictated. She found, with an unexpected sense of shock and dismay, the picture of herself looking what he’d described as pissed-off but sexy. Behind her, Cole Hill was serene and enigmatic in its morning gauze of bright mist.

Oh God, why had she let him talk her into this? Probably all that stuff about the firm young breasts inside the school blouse. Underneath, she was just a whore.

‘Yeah, got it,’ she said into the mobile. ‘What site is this?’

‘EMA,’ Eirion said. ‘Earth Mysteries Affiliates. It’s a campaigning outfit – kind of a mystical Greenpeace. Didn’t waste any time, did they? But then it’s probably the best story they’ve had all year.’

Under the picture, it said: Jane Watkins – fighting for Alfred’s ley. Below that, the hand-drawn map that she and Eirion had scanned, showing all the points on the Cole Hill line.

‘But it’s only been up a few hours. How could the Guardian have got on to it so soon?’

‘They wouldn’t have. What’s obviously happened is that one of the guys who runs the EMA site saw there was a potential news story here and scored himself a tip-off fee. I mean, I could’ve tried that, but the papers are never as interested if it comes from the people involved – just looks like you’re desperate for publicity.’

Eirion was at home in Abergavenny. He’d left school early; you could apparently do that on the smallest excuse when your final days as a schoolkid were ebbing away.

‘I’m not sure I am now,’ Jane said.

‘Not sure you’re what?’

‘Desperate for publicity.’

Feeling a little intimidated, to be honest. She told him about Morrell.

‘Jane, you can’t have it both ways. You started this. When are you going to call him back?’

‘The Guardian guy? Don’t know whether I am. I mean, the national press? Like, I thought it was OK pissing off the council, but that bitch can really damage me. And Mum, probably.’

‘I doubt it,’ Eirion said. ‘She’s only a councillor, isn’t she? A servant of democracy.’

‘She doesn’t think she’s a servant. Vice-chair of Education? She thinks that’s serious power. It’s obvious she went straight to Morrell and told him that one of his students was making trouble for her mates.’

‘It’s the way they work. He’s their employee. But she couldn’t really threaten him. Least, I don’t think she could.’

‘Irene, Morrell is, like, insanely ambitious, and he’s quite young. Moorfield’s just a stepping stone. He’s not going to offend a powerful councillor for the sake of one student … who he hates and would really like to get rid of anyway.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘You’ve never seen him! All right … what should I do?’

There was a silence.

Come on, there shouldn’t be a silence! Eirion’s dad was a BBC governor in Wales and he had a cousin who was news editor on the Western Mail in Cardiff. Eirion was, like, totally steeped in the media.

‘I don’t know,’ Eirion said.

‘Thanks.’

‘Let me think about it. I’ll call you back.’

‘Soon?’

‘Soon. I’m sorry, Jane.’

‘It’s OK.’

She sat staring at the screen, feeling terminally forlorn.

Jane Watkins – fighting for Alfred’s ley. As Lol had pointed out, there was no proof that it was Alfred’s ley. Alfred might not even have known about it. Or, worse, he might have discounted it. There could be some element here that totally disqualified Coleman’s Meadow. Just because it looked right…

Could be she’d stitched herself up.

Jane couldn’t face looking at that smug pout any more and switched off the computer. Just sat there waiting, dolefully stroking Ethel who was sitting in the in-tray. Best thing would be to leave it for a day or two, give the dust time to settle.

On the other hand, the planning committee would be meeting next week to make a decision on Coleman’s Meadow.

Sure, she could leave it. She could walk away and spend the rest of her life regretting it, despising her own cowardice.

Or she could take some more time off school, in open defiance of her head teacher, and follow it through, because…

… Forget earth-energy, forget spirit paths; at the very least, whether Alfred Watkins had known about it or not, this was a rare alignment of ancient sacred sites which had somehow survived for maybe…

… Four thousand years?

Four thousand years of mystical tradition against one more year of schooling for somebody who wasn’t sure whether she even wanted to go to university at the end of it.

Jane felt the weight of the ancestors on her shoulders.

This was probably one of those situations where Mum would go to the church and pray for guidance – Jane thinking that if she did that, after all she’d said over the years, it would at least give God the best laugh he’d had since he hit the Egyptians with a plague of locusts.

The scullery phone rang.

‘Look, Irene,’ Jane said, ‘I’ve been thinking—’

‘Jane, I’m really sorry…’

‘Oh. Mum.’

‘I’m also sorry for not being Eirion. Listen, flower, you can probably guess what’s coming.’

‘You have to go back to Malvern. Don’t call me flower.’

‘Right. I’m sorry. I’m there now, and I have someone else to meet. Will you be OK?’

‘Sure. I’ve already fed Ethel. I’ll get something for me later.’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine.’

‘I won’t be late. I promise I won’t be late this time.’

‘Honestly, take as long as you like,’ Jane said.

She hung up and felt tearful. Felt like a stupid, ineffectual kid who got caught up in fads and crazes and thought she was so smart and spiritually developed but, faced with a crunch situation, didn’t basically have the nerve to follow through.

27 Bugger-All

Tim Loste’s house. The heart of the enigma.

A flat, grey Victorian or Edwardian town house that just happened to have been built in the country. A tiny front garden held in by iron railings. An oak tree that shouldn’t be here.

Merrily stepped into the house called Caractacus with some trepidation and an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Well, not quite, because she knew where this feeling was coming from, remembering when Bliss had invited her to the home of a suspected serial murderer obsessed with the Cromwell Street killings. All black sheets and pin-up pictures of dead celebrities.

‘Stay with me,’ Annie Howe said, ‘and don’t touch anything. We’ve been over it forensically, but— What?’

‘Nothing,’ Merrily said.

In the dim, narrow, camphor-smelling hallway, she’d come face to face with a dead celebrity.

He was life-size, in bowler hat and hacking jacket. Standing there behind his black, yard-brush moustache and the high handlebars of Mr Phoebus, as if he was about to wheel the bicycle out of the shadows towards the front door.

‘Yes, rather startling at first, isn’t it?’ Howe said.

The black and white photograph, massively blown-up, had been fixed to a wooden frame and propped up against the end wall of the passage so that it filled almost the full width, and when you came in by the front door you were looking directly into the grainy eyes.

Of all the pictures of Elgar, why this one? Merrily had the feeling that the huge, stately Mr Phoebus, important to Elgar, was also very important to Tim Loste: a bike that meant business, could take Elgar anywhere, a symbol of the mobility of the spirit.

It still didn’t have a lamp.

‘What are you thinking?’ Annie Howe said.

‘Just wondering what I’m doing here.’

Howe said, ‘My understanding is that you’ve been here two or three times in the past few days.’

‘I’ve never been here before.’

‘In the village, then. Before and possibly even during the murder of Roman Wicklow. So I thought I’d like to hear about the purpose of your visits.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Well, frankly, the version of it that one of my officers was told seemed too ridiculous.’

‘Even for me, huh?’

Merrily had come directly to Loste’s cottage because this was where the police car was parked, along with a silver BMW, presumably Howe’s. There had been a uniformed constable at the gate and Howe, in a mid-grey cotton suit, had been in the front garden, examining the oak sapling. Her fine, light hair was clipped close to her skull, her make-up minimal. Jane had once said she looked like a Nazi dentist. Unfair. Sort of.

Howe opened a panelled door to the right, stepping back.

‘Living room. If you take a careful look around, perhaps you could tell me if there’s anything there that strikes as much of a chord for you as the Elgar blow-up evidently did.’

An atmosphere like a faded sepia photograph and more old photographs hanging from a wooden picture rail all around the mustard-coloured walls. Some of them were portraits of Elgar, some landscapes – Merrily recognized Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor, but the rest were less easy: unknown hill scenery, might be Malverns, might not. Also churches, none of them obvious, no Hereford or Worcester cathedral, no Malvern Priory.

Over the tiled fireplace was a large framed photo of an obvious oak tree, a huge and ancient one, bulging black against the light. It was the only one in colour, but all the colour was in the sky. On the mantelpiece below it was a scattering of acorns and a bottle of whisky, half empty.

Howe looked at Merrily.

When beneath the sacred oak. Obvious where Howe was coming from. But what could Merrily add to it? Nothing. She was mystified.

‘Well, he … clearly has a fascination with oak trees, Annie. But I expect your well-honed deductive skills had told you that already.’

On the way in, she’d spotted a line of what she’d thought were potted plants until she’d noticed the leaves. Somehow, she felt this was Winnie Sparke’s doing, filling the place – filling Tim’s life – with oak trees. Why? Druidry, Caractacus? What was this about?

‘Maybe he can get some kind of weird buzz by smoking acorns or something,’ Merrily said and then regretted it. Howe was in there.

‘So what exactly have you heard about Mr Loste and illegal drugs?’

‘Nothing … I was being…’ Merrily sighed. ‘Facetious. Something about you brings out the child in me.’

She looked around. There was a long writing desk with a musical score on it and an empty whisky bottle in the footwell. A bookcase, a CD cabinet. Two leather easy chairs but no television or radio.

‘I mean … what do you want me to say? He has a thing about oaks. How that ties in with the Royal Oak I have no idea. Is that one of the reasons you’ve nicked him?’

Howe said, ‘Do you know of a connection between oaks and Elgar?’

‘No, do you?’

Howe took down a book with pages marked by luminous Post-it stickers. It was a biography of Elgar, whose name, as far as Merrily could see, occurred on the spine of virtually every volume in the bookcase. Howe opened it out on the writing desk. A paragraph was marked by a pencil line.

In July 1918, about two months after the Elgars had moved to Brinkwells, they were visited by their friend Algernon Blackwood, writer of ghost stories. Elgar took Blackwood to see a copse of, according to Alice Elgar, ‘sinister’ trees which were said – although Blackwood may have invented this – to have once been Spanish monks punished for practising black magic. Elgar found them fascinating.

Merrily looked up. ‘Doesn’t say they were oak trees. Where’s Brinkwells?’

‘Sussex.’

‘Sussex?’

‘Elgar lived there for a while before returning to Worcestershire.’

‘So what does that tell us? Anything at all?’

‘Evidently not.’ Howe shut the book. ‘But it was the only marked page in any of the books that wasn’t self-explanatory.’

‘I don’t get it. What are you looking for, exactly?’

‘Part of your … curious job, as I understand it, Ms Watkins, is to monitor the activities of religious cults.’

‘Wouldn’t put it that strongly.’

‘Are there practising Druids in the area that you’re aware of?’

‘There are Druids everywhere. It’s a popular form of paganism. No strict rules, no dogma, dress optional.’

‘And the veneration of oak trees.’

‘That’s traditional. And still valid, sure. But if you want me to look around here and tell you that Tim Loste is an obvious Druid, I’d say it was far from obvious … and even unlikely, unless you’ve found robes and pentacles and stuff in his wardrobe.’

Howe said nothing. Merrily was reminded of those infamous satanic child-abuse investigations of the 1980s and 1990s when McCarthyite social workers would seize, as damning evidence, any fragment of conceivably occult paraphernalia, like a broomstick in the broom cupboard or a video of Rosemary’s Baby.

‘Also, modern Druids don’t practise human sacrifice. They tend towards vegetarianism.’

‘Not historically, however.’

Evidently still trying to stitch something onto that texted quote from the choral work after which this house was named.

‘Have you asked him where this sudden interest in oaks comes from? Well, of course you have, but what did he say?’

‘He said nothing. He froze up on me. Why do you think I’m here asking you?’

‘I dunno.’ Merrily shook her head. ‘You’ve got bugger-all, really, haven’t you, Annie? You’re holding this guy on a few tenuous threads.’

‘Let’s go outside,’ Howe said.

DCI Annie Howe: always a problem here. Howe was an ironclad atheist, therefore suspicious of the clergy and now clearly appalled that modern womanhood should also have descended, at this stage of human evolution, to medieval dressing-up games.

As for Deliverance…

There had been one surreal happening, in the heat of midday in a hop yard in the Frome Valley, when the reinforced walls of Howe’s scepticism might have been badly breached … if she’d allowed it. If her reaction had not been flat denial, the whole incident apparently edited from her conscious memory.

Merrily followed her into the overgrown pocket garden, with its centrepiece oak sapling, thinking there was no real reason for Howe to have brought her here. It was as though she had to seize on any opportunity to look Merrily in the face and repeat, wordlessly, Nothing has ever happened to dent my belief that you are wasting your intelligence on fairy tales.

They walked to the rear of the house under the galvanized metal car port. Still no car in it. Presumably Loste hadn’t got it back yet, after his crash. A small square yard ended at an iron gate opening to a well-trodden mud path leading directly on to the hill – the hill far closer here than in the Rectory garden.

‘This is how Loste gets to the Herefordshire Beacon, or indeed into the whole network of Malvern footpaths,’ Howe said. ‘He spends whole days walking up there, and – I’m told – whole nights sometimes.’

‘I think if I had to live in this house I might do that, too,’ Merrily said.

‘Never locks his back door. Seems to feel a certain … ownership.’ Howe opened the gate and went through. ‘His hills.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Merrily shook her head. ‘Elgar’s.’

‘Elgar’s dead,’ Howe said.

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘The music lives on, I suppose. Loste sometimes takes the music with him. He has an MP3 player containing, I’d guess, everything Elgar ever wrote, some of it repeated with different orchestras, soloists, et cetera.’

‘And that could be a bit mind-blowing, you think?’ Merrily stepped onto the path. ‘Up on the Beacon, head full of Caractacus, Druids chanting about human sacrifice? Something explodes in his brain and he goes for the nearest drug dealer with a knife he just happens to have on him?’

‘You know Caractacus, Ms Watkins?’

‘Sophie knows it. Sophie in the office.’

Howe deliberated for a moment.

‘We have – and this is confidential – another link to Loste, relating directly to the concept of Druidic sacrifice as described in Caractacus.’

‘What kind of link?’

Howe didn’t reply.

‘I suppose a lot of people around here are likely to know all the gory bits,’ Merrily said.

‘Not all of these people are as vocal in their opposition to the Royal Oak as Timothy Loste, or as … demonstrative.’

‘As in throwing a stone through a window?’

‘An act of wilful damage as a result of which several people suffered minor injuries. He would, if we’d known about it at the time, have faced charges.’

‘If he hadn’t been severely beaten up by the injured parties, making them less inclined to press charges.’

‘One of the men forced to restrain him,’ Howe said, ‘was Roman Wicklow.’

‘You know that for certain now?’

‘We’ve spoken to both of the other doormen, who’ve signed statements to that effect, also providing us with a full and graphic description of Loste’s behaviour that night and some of the threats issued by him during the struggle.’

‘Oh.’

‘So you see we don’t quite have bugger-all.’

‘No.’

Merrily looked away, up the steep path into the hills, soon barricaded by hard blue sky. It didn’t look that good for Tim Loste, did it? No longer seemed like a case of Howe’s people going for the easy option first, to save laboriously unravelling strands of rivalry in the West Midland drug community. She wondered how she was going to bring up the suggestion that the police should keep a serious eye on Loste for as long as he was in their care because of the risk of suicide or self-harming.

‘What about blood on his clothes? Forensic evidence … DNA?’

‘We should have some results tomorrow morning,’ Howe said. ‘I think it likely that they’ll enable us to move on to the next stage.’

She stepped onto a small tump by a gorse bush, looked down to the road where another police car was pulling in. Looked down at Merrily.

‘Right. I’ve been as open as I possibly can with you, Ms Watkins. I’ve put my cards on the table. I’d now like you to reciprocate. I’d like you to tell me – off the record for the present – exactly why you were called to Wychehill and what you know about the night Timothy Loste crashed his car into a telegraph pole.’

‘I wasn’t there.’

‘I don’t care if you were there or not – I’m looking for background information, not a witness statement. Gossip, if you like. I’m trying to get a picture of his mental condition, and my information is that he’s so obsessed with the late Edward Elgar that he’s seeing the man’s ghost around every corner.’

‘I’d say that’s an exaggeration. And, as far as that particular ghost story goes, he’s not the only one. At least, that’s the basis on which I was asked to look into it.’

‘Yes,’ Howe said, ‘we do know about the other one.’

‘Also, you and I … we wouldn’t necessarily agree on what claiming to have seen a ghost says about someone’s state of mind.’

‘I can think of very little that we’d agree on,’ Howe said.

‘And apart from anything, we’re talking about an artist, a professional dreamer. Which, in his line of work, is not necessarily a pejorative term. Elgar was a dreamer, Loste is supposed to be writing a musical work about Elgar.’

‘You know what? I’m getting bloody sick of this.’ Annie Howe came down from the mound, her scrubbed face actually colouring. ‘As if all so-called artists were wispy little tree-huggers. Have you ever seen Timothy Loste?’

‘I’ve tried, Annie. God knows I’ve tried.’

‘Then I’ll describe him for you. Loste is forty years old and, despite his alcohol problem, extremely fit. Has been known to walk virtually the length of the Malverns and back within a day by a different route. Knows those hills like the back of his hand, every rock and cave and crevice.’

‘Yes, but that hardly—’

‘At the Royal Oak that night, as I may have implied, it took three experienced doormen to subdue him … as he’s also about half a head taller than Wicklow was. And built, Ms Watkins, like the side of a house. Oh, and the rock he put through that window was, at a rough estimate, the size of a small television set and maybe twice as heavy.’

‘Oh.’

‘Now tell me again that we’re talking about a harmless, inoffensive little dreamer with a natural abhorrence of violence.’

A buzzard passed silently overhead. A uniformed policeman appeared in the garden.

‘They’ve been trying to get you, ma’am.’

Howe lifted her head. ‘Thanks, Robert. I’m coming now.’

If she was going to be head of CID for the proposed new Midlands mega-force before turning forty she didn’t have any time to waste.

Watching Howe talking tersely into her mobile, listening and nodding, functioning, Merrily felt useless, irrelevant. Chasing shadows, chasing lights. Sometimes it seemed that deliverance amounted to little more than this.

People nudging one another. Who’s that? What does she do? Oh, you’re kidding … Her role nebulous, her focus blurred. Why was she here? Who, in the end, would be healed?

What was clear, however, was that nobody else would try too hard to make sense of Loste, his obsession with Elgar, his oak-tree fetish.

Oaks. Sacred oaks. The Royal Oak. Too many oaks. Did any of this link into the history or even the folklore of the area? It wasn’t as if there was some ancient resident whose memory she could tap into. Nobody had lived here longer than a quarter of a century.

Well … except for one person.

Not someone she particularly wanted to approach, but…

Merrily slipped away, knowing that Annie Howe, having failed to get anything useful out of her, would have forgotten by now that she’d even been here.

28 Curse Came Down

The name on the gate was Old Wychehill Farm, suggesting that perhaps this was what remained of the original hamlet, while the present village was just fragments of a repair job for a quarry-ravaged hill.

In fact, Old Wychehill Farm was big enough to have been a hamlet in itself. Sunk into its own valley, half-circled by mature broadleaf trees with the swizzle-stick profiles of pines and monkey puzzles poking out of the mix.

The farmhouse, at the end of nearly half a mile of private drive, turned out to be the turreted house in the valley which Merrily had noticed that first morning – the turret crowning a Victorian Gothic wing added to a much older dwelling with timbers like age-browned bones.

She parked in the farmyard – courtyard, really. No animals in view, no free-range chickens. The three-storey house was enclosed by outbuildings of the same grey-brown stone. Some of the more distant buildings had curtains at their diamond-paned windows.

My lovely holiday lets.

A black pick-up truck eased in behind her. A stylish truck with chrome side-rails and silver flashes on its flanks. Two men getting out, squinting into the sun, one of them strolling across.

‘Help you?’

‘Looking for Mr Devereaux.’

‘Which one?’

‘Preston Devereaux?’

The man stood looking her up and down, pinching his unshaven chin.

‘Shame about that.’

Apart from golden highlights and a sharper jawline, he looked a lot like Preston Devereaux. Same narrow features, same loose, unhurried gait as he’d wandered over. Except this guy was over thirty years younger and the other one was the younger son, Hugo.

‘Louis, this is Mrs Watkins,’ Hugo said.

‘Merrily.’ The face of Louis Devereaux, former huntsman, alleged former substance-abuser, split into this voracious and undeniably attractive grin. ‘And we’re stuck with Spicer. The injustice of it.’ Louis turned to his brother. ‘You better go and find the old man. No hurry. Want to come with me, Merrily?’

‘Is it safe?’

‘I’m a country gentleman,’ Louis said, ‘from a long, long line of country gentlemen. Of course it isn’t safe.’

He strode past her across the yard, turning the handle on a plain door. It didn’t open; it was jammed at the bottom. He gave it a kick.

‘Whole place is seizing up.’

His accent was posher than his father’s. Probably been away to public school. She looked up at him as he held open the door.

‘I really won’t keep him long.’

‘He might want to keep you, though,’ Louis said. ‘I would. End of the passage, look.’ He bent down, put an arm around her shoulders, pointing. ‘The Beacon Room.’

Following her into the passage. There was an old manure smell, as if this entrance had been used for the changing of generations of farm boots. It was a rear hallway, low, earth-coloured, windowless, the only light funnelled down the well of some narrow back stairs to her left … until she pushed open the door at the end into lavish sunshine from a long window framing a wow-gasp view of the great tiered wedding-cake of Herefordshire Beacon.

The Beacon Room. Obviously built into the Victorian wing to accommodate this view. The hill was a couple of miles away, as if it had been aligned for maximum impact.

‘Quite impressive, isn’t it?’ Louis said. ‘As crime scenes go. Lit up like a housing estate last night. Cops swarming all over it.’

‘Exciting?’

‘Yeah, I guess it was. I suppose when it’s somebody you don’t know … Well, I’ve probably seen him, if he’s the one I think he is. At the Oak.’

‘You go there?’

‘Now and then. Not as often as I used to. Quite good for … you know … girls.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘And, of course, for pissing off Len Holliday and the Wychehill Residents’ Action Group,’ Louis said. ‘One tries to sympathize, but that guy…’

‘Don’t suppose you’re really aware of the Royal Oak down here. Or the road.’

‘Don’t suppose we are, particularly,’ Louis said.

She looked around the room. Lofty, wood-panelled, definitely a man’s room, even a young man’s room – minimal furniture apart from stereo speakers the size of small wardrobes. Racks of CDs and vinyl and potentially interesting framed photographs. Over the baronial fire-place was a period poster behind glass advertising Pink Floyd and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown at the Roundhouse in London. The names were wreathed in coloured smoke from a pipe smoked by a reclining naked man like some stoned 1960s version of Michelangelo’s Adam.

I was a wild boy, too. Drove too fast, inhaled my share of blow.

On the panelled wall over a writing desk with a worn leather top there was a framed black and white photo of a bunch of young long-haired men, one of whom was … Eric Clapton? The lean, grinning guy on the end was also unmistakable. He looked like Louis Devereaux with longer hair and lush sideburns.

‘Blimey,’ Merrily said. ‘Is that—?’

‘Dad was very well connected. Once upon a time.’

‘Images of a misspent youth, Mrs Watkins.’

Merrily jumped. Preston Devereaux was standing in the doorway, an older, duller figure than she remembered from the other night, a working man wearing a farmer’s green nylon overalls and a nylon cap.

‘Didn’t know him well,’ he said. ‘But you don’t throw away a picture like that, do you?’

‘Were you in a band?’

‘Never had the talent. Managed a couple, when I was up at Oxford in the late 1960s. Which meant carrying the amps, back then, and inventing light shows. I was good at that.’

‘Oh Gawd, Memory Lane time,’ Louis said. ‘I’m out of here.’

He bowed to Merrily, made an exaggerated exit.

‘Twenty-four next week,’ Devereaux said. ‘Going on ten.’

‘If ten means pre-pubertal, I’m not sure I’d agree. What were you doing at Oxford?’

‘Physics.’

‘So … what happened? I mean…’

‘What happened?’ Devereaux walked over to the Beacon window. ‘That happened. History. Roots. No escape. You think there is, but there en’t. Anyway…’

He stood in front of Merrily, hands behind his back.

‘No escape for me either, Mr Devereaux. What you said the other night about dealing with something in a discreet and dignified fashion…’

‘Have you?’

Merrily shook her head.

‘Become too complicated. When you’ve had a man murdered, and when the local man under suspicion of having killed him—’

‘Local man?’ Preston Devereaux almost left the ground. ‘There are no local men up there, Mrs Watkins. Why I was forced to come back.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, I’m sorry. Continue.’

‘I was just going to say that the man suspected of murder is also the man I most needed to talk to about … the cyclist.’

‘You can say Elgar in here, Merrily.’

‘Thank you. Anyway, it means I haven’t been able to get to Loste. And in the meantime, other questions have opened up.’

‘Like?’

‘He was the first to identify the image in the road as Elgar. He’s obsessed with Elgar. He apparently hates what the Royal Oak has become.’

‘So I understand, yes.’

‘If his hatred of the Royal Oak has now led to a murder, I don’t … well, I don’t know how relevant that makes my idea of a requiem for two road-accident victims. And I do appreciate that one woman agonizing over the technicalities of a church service must seem entirely trivial to you…’

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘You’re … as you’ve just implied, you’re the only person whose experience of this area goes back longer than about twenty years. I’d just like to get your opinion on a few things. Memory Lane, I’m afraid.’

‘Memory Lane. With all its potholes and its road kill.’

Preston Devereaux went back and shut the door. Above it were three wooden shields, one bearing a coat of arms and a motto in Latin. Each of the others, on either side, displayed a fox’s head, neither of them moth-eaten the way foxes’ heads usually were in these displays. Mementoes, perhaps, of Louis’s carefree youth.

Devereaux strode back to the Beacon window, pulling off his cap.

‘Must be the most spectacular view in the Malverns,’ Merrily said.

‘Hated it, Merrily. With a vengeance. A forsaken stronghold, symbol of defeat. Turned my back on it and everything that the Malverns’d come to stand for, all the starchy gentility of it. And then my father died.’

‘When was that?’

‘Back end of ’85. You learn that a farm that’s been in your family since the Conquest, that’s a family curse you can’t lose. And periodically the curse strikes, giving you a little reminder that it is a curse. Like in the 1980s, when you had new patterns in farm subsidy, new regulations, the EC. Getting so a farmer didn’t feel he owned his own land. My old man could see that was only the beginning. Which partly explains why he strung himself up in the tower.’

‘Oh…’ Merrily’s gaze went instinctively to the ceiling. ‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’

‘Which effectively did for my glittering future as a career scientist. Doing research at the time, bit of teaching. Having a good time. Had a smart city woman and a kid, and when I came home to bury the old man, everything in me was screaming, don’t look, don’t look. Don’t look at the state of the place, just get it on the damned market. And then I found out, as I say, that there was not a single local family left in Wychehill. And the curse came down.’

‘Your mother was still alive?’

‘Moved my ma down to Ledbury – she wouldn’t live here after that. Told her I’d take a couple of years off to pull it all together, before resuming the glittering career. Then we had Hugo. More roots.’

‘What … happened to the boys’ mother?’

‘Left a long time ago. Wilful London girl, didn’t get on with the country. Bit like Syd Spicer’s missus. We weren’t married, so no complications in those days. She went abroad, I got the boys. And we turned it around, by God we did, in spite of the shiny-arsed civil servants and the scum from Brussels. Diversification.’

‘I remember that as a buzz word put around by the Min of Ag.’

‘The pragmatic farmer’s way out of the agricultural crisis. Thatcher’s message. And, fair play, it worked for some of us. You felt a bit sick about it, but it worked. My case, luxury self-catering holidays. Not that they self-cater, they all eat out. But it works, and it provides employment locally. All nicely old-fashioned, and folks come back year after year, all the sad townies, and we charge ’em more every time and they still come.’

Preston Devereaux slumped into a wing-backed chair next to the big dead fireplace, smoke-blackened and flaked with log ash. He waved Merrily to a faded chaise longue.

‘All the antique furniture from the house we put in the units – what do we need with antiques, me and the boys? Install a Queen Anne writing desk in your stone holiday chalet, that’s worth an extra two hundred a week on the bill. You see the buildings out there?’

‘Very classy.’

‘Turned over all the old stone barns and stables and chicken houses to holiday units, added a few new ones in the same style. Put the farm, what’s left of it, into new galvanized sheds painted dark green and nicely screened off. And the farm life, what’s left of that, goes on around the townies. Give them an illusion of what it’s like, let them into what country pursuits we’re allowed to practise now – shooting parties and the like, hunting, before it was banned. Joining what they think of as the Old Squirearchy for a fortnight.’

‘So the boys are part of that? Plenty for them to do. Don’t want to move away like you did?’

‘They won’t leave. All changed since my day, look. It was either/or back then. Now you can take what you want from the city and come back next day. And growing up in the country hardens you. We can deal with the towns better than the townies can deal with us.’

‘Only I heard that Louis…’

Merrily looked up at the foxes’ heads above the door – the way their mouths were always forced open around their pointed canines, to make them look like savage beasts gloriously killed.

‘Heard Louis what?’ His voice spiking.

‘Had some kind of breakdown? After hunting was banned?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Can’t be sure.’

‘Selective memory you got there, Mrs Watkins.’ Preston Devereaux, relaxed again. ‘Aye, he loved his hunting. We ran the Countryside Alliance campaign in this area. Fight the Ban posters everywhere. Boy lost his rag at a demo, belted a copper guarding some Blairite toady. Weekend in custody. That’s the state we’re in – fight for our traditions, we’re branded criminals. This government’s scum. Anti-English. Don’t get me started. We lost. You move on. You ask me a question? I can’t remember.’

Merrily was confused by all the contradictions here. Trying to understand a man who, having been determined to escape his roots, came back to be driven by a born-again fervour fuelled by bitterness.

‘Oak trees,’ she said. ‘Tim Loste has a lot of oak trees. Which, for a man with a tiny garden…’

‘Does he?’

‘Elgar and oak trees. Is there some connection I might not have heard about?’

‘No idea. The only oak I know’s the Royal Oak. Which is a pretty common name for a pub, relating, surely, to the tree where Charles II hid from his enemies.’

‘No local legends about oaks?’

‘Not that I know of. Can I get you a drink? Some coffee?’

‘Thanks, but I’ll have to be off in a few minutes. I shouldn’t have come, anyway, without ringing.’

‘Drop in anytime, we’ve nothing to hide.’

‘Is there any kind of mystery … legend … rumour, connecting Elgar with Wychehill?’

‘Only the church. Longworth and his so-called visionary experience.’

‘What was that?’

‘They say it’s what he has on his tomb.’

‘The angel?’

‘Gruesome bloody thing, ennit? Not my idea of an angel. Story I was told as a child is that it appeared to the mad old bugger up on the hill, in a blaze of light, and drove him in a state of blind fear to religion.’

‘And to Elgar.’

‘Same thing. Elgar’s become a religion now. I’m not a fan, Merrily, as you may have gathered. If he hadn’t encouraged Longworth to build that bloody church there’d’ve been no Upper Wychehill for the townies to colonize. And what did Elgar ever do for the Malverns, anyway?’

‘Massive tourism?’

Devereaux snorted.

‘We’ve always had that. We got the scenery, don’t need the bloody incidental music. Bugger always claimed he got his inspiration here but he cleared off soon enough when he was famous. And when he came back, as an old man, he came back as an incomer, that’s what gets to me.’

‘I don’t understand. If he—’

‘He’d changed. Starts out as a country boy, I’m not disputing that, even went foxhunting, according to some accounts. But then, soon as he makes it big, he’s off … big house in Hereford, then London, mixing with the nobs and the arty-farty veggies, George Bernard Shaw and the like. And when he finally returns, as this distinguished old man, he’s turned into one of them – having places laid at the table for his bloody dogs. Likely, he thought the hills’d give him his inspiration back, but it never happened, did it? Closed door this time. Given up his soul to mix with the great and the good and – excuse my terminology – lost his balls. Never wrote another thing that was worthwhile. No wonder he’s an unhappy bloody spirit. You believe that?’

‘That he’s unhappy, or that he’s…’

Devereaux leaned his head into a wing of his chair and looked at Merrily sideways through a bloodshot eye.

‘That dead Elgar still bikes the hills.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Ha!’

‘Sorry. I’m not usually so … no, I suppose I am. I suspect there’s something happening … in the atmosphere. I’m just not sure it’s anything to do with Elgar.’

‘Well…’ Preston Devereaux smiled. ‘If you ever decide it is and you want to exorcize the old bastard … you can go ahead, far as I’m concerned. By all means. Wipe whatever’s left of him off the hills for good and all. Just keep quiet about it.’

29 Stoolie

Thursday began badly and got worse. Just as Merrily was about to corner Jane on the Coleman’s Meadow issue, Winnie Sparke was on the phone.

‘Merrily, you talked to the cops?’

‘Well, I have, but—’

‘Only I’ve heard nothing. Last night I barely slept. See, the one time Tim called me, Iwantedtofixhim a lawyer, he kept saying there was no need. He said it was crazy they could think he did it. He said they’d know that soon enough.’

‘Well, Winnie.’ Merrily sat down at the desk in the scullery. ‘Erm … I think there might be a need for a lawyer now.’

‘I have to know. I have to call his parents in France—What did you just say?’

‘Just that I think he may well need a lawyer. I’ve been trying to confirm the situation since last night but I’m not getting anywhere.’

She’d phoned Bliss, who’d come back to her late last night to say that Worcester were still holding Loste and studying lab reports, and that was all he could find out at this hour without inviting awkward questions.

‘So, like, how long can they hold a guy without a charge?’

‘No, look, Winnie, what I’m trying to say is—’

Merrily waved to Jane, hovering in the scullery doorway with her airline bag, meaning hang on. Jane raised a hand, smiled a worryingly wan kind of smile and was gone. Bugger.

‘—What I’m trying to say is I don’t know that there hasn’t been a charge, in the light of new forensic evidence. I—This is confidential?’

‘OK.’

‘I talked at some length to the officer heading the inquiry, and frankly, after what she told me, even I’d have pulled Tim in for questioning. Even if it was only to have a look around inside his house. He comes across as a very strange person, Winnie, and he’s clammed up on them and that makes it look worse.’

‘And strange equals psychotic, right?’

‘No, but—’

‘Did you say you went into his house?’

‘With the police. I was asked to take a look at … some things.’

‘What things?’

‘Photographs, books…’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’re trying to get a handle on him, find out exactly where he’s coming from.’

‘They had no goddamn right. You had no right.’

‘I tried to explain a couple of points, as best I could. I don’t think I was very successful. There was just too much I didn’t know. For instance, his background. I mean, how long have you actually known him?’

‘Background? Background could not be more respectable. Parents are both professional classical musicians. He was a music teacher at private schools, ending up at Malvern College. Played rugby for a local team. How respectable do you want?

‘This project of his,’ Merrily said. ‘The oratorio or whatever…’

‘OK.’

‘He was working on that when you met him? Or was that your idea?’

‘What’s that matter?’

‘We didn’t go into this yesterday, but when he saw what he … when he saw the figure he identified as Elgar, on his bike … I’m just thinking of the big picture in the hallway … Very much a presence in the house, you’ll agree.’

‘He’s a presence in Tim’s life.’

‘And obviously a presence, on some level, in Wychehill.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘It’s just that this seems to be the image of Elgar that Tim’s … carrying around with him. And it corresponds with the … with the apparition that people – Tim included – appear to have been seeing.’

‘What’s that have to do with getting him out of gaol?’

‘And you’re a writer, specializing in books on mysticism, psychic studies, healing … the occult? You said you were helping him with meditation exercises. To deal with his drinking and … maybe to reach Elgar’s level of creative inspiration. A man whose previous output, I understand, has been … fairly ordinary. So he’s living with Elgar’s music, images of Elgar, in a place steeped in Elgar. He’s immersing himself on a very intense level…’

‘You don’t even wanna get him out, do you? All you want is to cover your own ass with the cops for whatever reason—’

‘This has nothing to do with the cops.’ Merrily felt a headache coming on. ‘But if you want to deal with that first … oak trees? Acorns? Little oaks in pots, the sapling that’s going to be bigger than his house?’

‘A symbol.’

‘Of what?’

‘A symbol from the natural world that he could use for meditation. He was drinking too much, I was trying to use meditation to give him a focus. And also to make him more … receptive. Why are you asking me this stuff?’

‘Because the police are linking oaks to Druidism and Druidism to blood sacrifice and … you know?’

‘Oh, Jesus God…’ Winnie’s voice was suddenly perforated with panic. ‘This is shit! This is so wrong.’

‘Is it?’

‘What?’

‘I mean, why is it wrong? Elgar wrote Caractacus about Herefordshire Beacon. Full of Druidism and magic and prophecy and people’s throats being cut on sacrificial stones.’

There was a gap before Winnie’s voice came back, the fissures hardening up.

‘What are you, Merrily? Some kinda fucking stoolie for the cops? Like I need to waste my time with a police snitch? I don’t think so, lady. I think I told you far too much already, and all you did was you gave it to the cops.’

‘That’s not—’

‘So from now on you can get off of my case, OK?’

‘Look, I’m just trying to—’

‘I’m gonna have a good lawyer I can’t truly afford go see Tim right now, and I don’t wanna hear from you again, so … like when we get him outta there you just stay the hell away from the both of us.’

‘Winnie, if you could just let me—’

‘Goddamn fucking stoolie bitch.’

The phone went down hard.

At the start of mid-morning break, the sixth-form common room was like a call centre, a whole bunch of them switching on their mobiles to, like, maintain the temperature of their love lives.

When Jane switched on hers, just to be sociable, not expecting anything from Eirion this morning, it went directly into its tune. And, not recognising the number, it was like…

‘Jane Watkins?’

‘Erm…’

‘Hi, Jane, this is Jerry Isles from the Guardian. I tried to leave a message on your voicemail yesterday – maybe you didn’t get it?’

‘Oh … did you?’

‘Never mind. Jane, I have to say it all sounds hugely fascinating. I used to be quite into leys a few years ago – we used to stay with friends in Cornwall, where you’re practically tripping over megalithic sites, so I’ve read Watkins, obviously, and this really brought it all back. Are you running the campaign on your own?’

‘Well … you know … me and a few friends, but—’

‘But it was your idea.’

‘Yes, only I’m not sure—’

‘You seem to be wearing school uniform on the picture. How old are you, do you mind?’

‘S—Eighteen.’

‘Good. And your parents know about it?’

‘My mother knows. I don’t have a father any more. She, erm … My mum’s cool with it.’

‘Well … I took the liberty of checking your map with the Ordnance Survey, and the line certainly seems to work. Who did the pictures?’

‘My … boyfriend.’

‘They’re good pix, on the whole. However, I think we’d like to do some of our own. We have a regular freelance photographer in your area, and the picture editor would like to send her along, if that’s all right with you. How about … are you free this afternoon?’

Through the plate-glass window beyond the tabletennis table, Jane could see Morrell in his shirt sleeves jogging across the quad towards the car park.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I mean this is really good of you, but I’m not sure I want to go through with it now.’

‘Oh? That mean you’re no longer convinced?’

‘Oh, no, it’s true, it’s all true. Even though when I went to see the local councillor, there were all these council officials there, and they were all, like, Oh, it’s all nonsense and Alfred Watkins was a misguided old man. And the councillor was suggesting I was trying to mess up his plans for turning Ledwardine into some kind of town, which would be really crap. And I was warned that I should be careful what I said. I mean, I’m not worried about me that much, but my mum’s the vicar there, you know?’

The line went quiet. If they’d lost it, Jane decided she wasn’t going to call him back, at least not until tonight when she’d had time to think of a way he could maybe do the story but keep her out of it…

‘The vicar,’ Jerry Isles said. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

Oh hell. Why, in this so-called secular age, were newspapers so fond of vicars?

Jerry said, ‘Tell me again, Jane, what these people from the council said to you … ?’

‘I don’t think I told you the first time, did I?’

‘About the councillor wanting to turn your village into a small town? That’s what I’ve got.’

‘You’re writing this down?’

Morrell jogged back and went into the main building, his car keys swinging from a finger.

Jane began to sweat.

Merrily sat in the scullery, watching the play of morning light on the vicarage lawn, the clusters of yellow wild flowers in the churchyard drystone wall that bordered it. A whole ecosystem, that wall.

What are you, some kinda stoolie for the cops?

Going back over it, she could pinpoint the exact moment when Winnie Sparke’s attitude had altered. It was when Merrily had revealed that she’d been inside Loste’s house. Winnie had been afraid of what Merrily – not the police – might have seen in the house and been able to interpret for Howe.

Which meant there was something she should have spotted in there and hadn’t.

She called Syd Spicer, not expecting him to be in. But he picked up on the second ring.

‘You’ve offended Sparke, Merrily. Easily done.’

‘She told you?’

‘She’s walking round wailing and gnashing her teeth. A woman who likes to be in control. And she can hardly control poor Tim at the moment, can she?’

‘You think he did it, Syd?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so, but time will tell.’

‘I like an interventionist priest.’

‘Yeah, well, I don’t scale walls with pockets full of smoke bombs any more.’

It was the first reference that he’d made to his past, but this probably wasn’t the time to follow it up.

‘Loste and Winnie, Syd. What’s that actually about? This musical work, this search for Elgar’s source of inspiration. I mean, is there anything you haven’t told me that might relate to that?’

‘Lots, I imagine. I wouldn’t know what was relevant. Equally, I can’t betray a parishioner’s trust. I can point you in a certain direction, which I’ve done, but I can’t pass on what I’ve been told in confidence, can I? Would you? Maybe you would. Maybe you did.’

‘Because I’m a police informer?’

‘When Winnie Sparke takes offence, she doesn’t hold back.’

‘Why is Loste collecting oak trees?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘OK, Joseph Longworth’s vision. That sounds like a modern-day version of one of those old legends often connected to the foundation of churches. A vision indicating where to build.’

‘There are some documents relating to that. It’s in the parish records. Letters. Winnie has copies.’

‘Could I have copies?’

‘No reason why not, I suppose.’

‘Could you send them? Email anything?’

Spicer sighed. Merrily persevered.

‘Do you have any idea what Winnie Sparke might have meant when she talked about a great and beautiful secret?’

‘No,’ he said.

Merrily called the home of the dead girl, Sonia Maloney, in Droitwich. No answer. The Cookman number Syd Spicer had passed on turned out to be a spare line, which meant he hadn’t even tried it.

She came to the third on the list.

‘Who?’ Stella Cobham said.

‘Merrily Watkins. The Deliverance woman?’

‘Oh, yeah. Look, Merrily, I was just on my way out. Perhaps I could call you back.’

‘Won’t keep you a minute, Mrs Cobham. I just wanted – before I make any specific arrangements – to find out if next Sunday would be suitable for you.’

‘I’m sorry. What for?’

‘We were discussing the idea of a Requiem Eucharist for Lincoln Cookman and Sonia Maloney?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘It seemed to answer everybody’s … you know?’

‘Yeah, well, look. I don’t think we’ll be coming.’

‘But Mrs Cobham, it was your—’

‘Things have changed. Change of plan. Change of future.’ Brittle laugh. ‘We’re putting the barn on the market. I’m just off to the agent’s in Ledbury now, actually.’

‘Just like that?’

‘It was a wrong move. Nothing’s been right since we came here. We’re probably going to America. Paul knows this guy in Naples, Florida. Anyway, all I’m trying to say is … it really doesn’t concern us any more. Look, I’ve got to go, all right?’

Click.

Merrily threw the phone book at the wall.

30 In Their Proper Place

It had been Merrily’s plan to go into her own church before lunch, when it was quietest. Find a cool place in the chancel and lay all this out, the whole Wychehill mess. To ask the question, Is it time to leave this alone, walk away? An in-depth exchange with the Management on this issue was long, long overdue.

So what was she doing in Lol’s bed?

‘Oh hell…’ She gazed into his unshaven face. ‘This is a bit like adultery.’

‘In what way, exactly?’

Lol rolled off her. He looked almost hurt.

‘No, I…’ She trapped one of his legs between hers. ‘I just meant … cheating on the Church. The parish. Sorry. All I need is to offend you, and that’s virtually nobody left still speaking to me.’

He smiled. Maybe he hadn’t looked hurt a moment ago. Maybe she’d conjured that out of her own hurt.

Lol’s bedroom had a three-quarter bed in it. That was all. It was a very small room with no space for a wardrobe. He said he needed to sleep here because it had a view across Church Street to the vicarage – they could see each other’s lights at bedtime. Which was nice. But she’d sometimes wondered if he wasn’t just a little timid about using the bigger bedroom where Lucy Devenish had slept.

Whatever, this room was bare without being stark, a sanctuary, a space out of time. One day, perhaps, she might even get to spend a whole night here.

‘Then, at the same time,’ she said, ‘I get the feeling that I’m neglecting you.’

‘Some feelings you should listen to,’ Lol said. ‘This could be God telling you that you’re neglecting me.’

‘Dangerous to blaspheme in front of a vicar.’ Her fingers paddling over his thigh. ‘Especially when naked.’

He gripped her hand. They laughed, and when they stopped laughing she told him everything. About Winnie Sparke and Tim Loste and their beautiful secret and her own dismal morning.

‘I’m tired. I can’t get a handle on it any more. People’s attitudes change overnight. They want me to do something, then they don’t. They want to talk to me and then … Winnie Sparke, particularly. It was as if she’d picked a fight just to wind up the conversation because I was asking the wrong questions. Like mentioning the blow-up photo of Elgar.’

‘Let me get this right. Who’s seen Elgar, other than Loste?’

‘Stella Cobham. Who no longer wants to have anything to do with it because they’ve suddenly decided to move. Well, nobody just decides overnight to emigrate. Must’ve been very much on the cards when she came to the meeting in the church and poured it all out, thus burning her boats with Preston Devereaux who, according to Spicer, nobody likes to offend because he’s Old Wychehill…’

Lol sat up against the pillow, retrieved his little brass-rimmed glasses from the floorboards, and put them on.

‘But for a couple of things,’ he said, ‘I’d be suggesting that Elgar might be a psychological projection by Tim Loste.’

‘Well, me, too. Although, if we step over the threshold … sometimes, if the personality behind it is strong enough, a psychological projection may be perceptible to a third party.’

‘Musicians can be obsessive.’

‘No kidding.’

‘Um…’ Lol hesitated.

‘What?’

‘Anything I can do about this?’

‘I don’t like to interrupt your work.’

Lol laughed.

‘What it comes down to,’ Merrily said, ‘is the only person I haven’t spoken to, can’t get at and may never get at.’

‘Loste.’

‘Who now seems to be the key to both mysteries, that is, the Elgar thing and the killing on the Beacon, whether he did that or not – and the circumstantial evidence is impressive. But the key to Tim Loste is Winnie Sparke, who isn’t talking. I don’t think she ever planned to say much, and yet she wanted to check me out. Why? I still don’t really know these people or what they’re doing.’

‘There must be other ways in,’ Lol said. ‘For instance … a lot of singers in a choir.’

‘You know any? I don’t.’

‘Not yet. But musicians can be obsessive. Leave this with me.’

‘Thank you, Lol. And thanks for keeping an eye on Jane, which I … I’m not getting anything right, am I? I’m a lousy mother, a lousy girlfriend, an inept exorcist and an incompetent parish priest.’

‘But at least you don’t suffer from low self-esteem,’ Lol said.

They went downstairs and shared half a loaf, a pot of hummus and a box of cress, and Merrily resolved to spend the rest of the day in penance, dusting and polishing the church furniture, finding sick parishioners to visit before…

… A last assault, tomorrow, on Wychehill. Or, more specifically, on Winnie Sparke.

‘And I want to look at Coleman’s Meadow.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Why does Jane think Lyndon Pierce has some secret scheme to expand the village?’

‘Probably because he has. Don’t worry. Gomer’s looking into it.’

‘That’s reassuring.’ Merrily sat on the sofa and smoked half a cigarette. ‘Or maybe not. Pierce used to shoot blue tits, apparently. Nothing he could do for Jane to acquit himself after that. What if Sparke’s right and Loste didn’t kill that guy?’

‘Then Annie Howe will find out for herself. She’s not an incompetent detective, she just doesn’t like you. And your mind’s gone like a TV remote control switching from one channel to another.’

‘Too many channels nowadays,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s the problem.’

The grave was marked by a low wedge of sandstone and overhung by an apple tree from the old orchard over the wall. It was arguably the smallest, least ostentatious memorial in the churchyard.

Jane could have found it blindfolded.

Lucy Devenish.

The lettering tiny, and no dates. Lucy’s will had requested no dates, and somehow Mum had been able to comply, probably against all the regulations. And if this wasn’t a sign that Lucy had believed herself to be an eternal presence in Ledwardine, no date for her arrival, no date for her passing…

This always made Jane shiver, but with a kind of delight.

Underneath the name were the lines Lucy had chosen from Thomas Traherne (his dates were given: 1637–74), Herefordshire’s greatest, most mysterious poet.

No more shall clouds eclipse my treasures

Nor viler shades obscure my highest pleasures.

All things in their proper place

My Soul doth best embrace.

All things in their proper place. That spelled it out, really, didn’t it?

Jane placed her hands on the top of the stone for a moment. It always, even in winter, felt warm.

She stood up and looked back towards the church. Lucy’s grave was at the very end of the churchyard, right beside the path which led, through a small wooden gate, to the orchard, which had once virtually surrounded the village. Ledwardine – The Village in the Orchard – some guidebooks still called it that. And this was the coffin track. No doubt about it.

Way back, corpses would have been carried in, ceremonially, through the orchard. There was a long, flat, backless bench, probably the successor to generations of wooden benches on which the bearers had rested the coffins. The lych-gate at the front of the church had been a comparatively modern addition.

Jane looked towards the steeple and imagined what Lucy might have seen – might be seeing now: the churchyard like a circular clearing in the orchard. Perhaps there’d once been a circle of stones around where the steeple now soared.

Jane remembered the day Lucy had cut an apple in half and showed her the five-pointed star, the pentagram at the heart of every apple. An indestructible symbol of the paganism at the heart of Ledwardine. In those days – the days when she’d painted the Mondrian walls – Jane had seen paganism as the real religion, Christianity as a pointless distraction from the Middle East, Mum as misguided.

It didn’t seem as simple now. The church steeple was a powerful symbol and far more effective than a stone circle at indicating, from long distances, the alignment with Cole Hill. Now Jane felt – and arrangements like this underlined it – that paganism and Christianity had often walked together on the same straight path. She was sure that this was what Alfred Watkins had instinctively felt when archaeologists were slagging him off for including medieval churches in the otherwise Neolithic ley system.

Have I done the right thing? She still didn’t know.

Jane walked through the churchyard, past the south door and out through the lych-gate into the market place. Perhaps an old cross or an outlying marker stone might have stood here.

Across into the alley, through the broken gate and into the derelict orchard behind Church Street, past the hump of the burial mound, if that was what it was. And so to Coleman’s Meadow – the meadow of the earth-shaman – to Cole Hill, the sacred hill, the mother hill.

She felt choked up with emotion now, remembering the night she’d got drunk on cider with poor Colette and had started hallucinating in the orchard. Cider’s the blood of the orchard, Lucy had said later, and Jane could still hear her sharp headmistressy voice. It’s in your blood now. I felt at once that it had to be one or both of you … you and Merrily.

This had to be the right path.

Jane began to drift and, as on the night of Colette and the cider, could hardly feel the grass beneath her feet. When she stepped onto the ley it was as if she was floating on sunlit air-currents, and she saw Lucy waiting for her as she began to walk towards the steeple and the holy hill beyond.

‘Hi,’ Lucy said. ‘Are you Jane?’

Jane stood there, blinking. The woman wore not a poncho but a kind of denim smock with lots of pockets, and there was a square metal case at her feet.

‘Sally Ferriman. For the Guardian?’

‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Hi.’

‘You ready, Jane?’

Jane looked at Sally Ferriman, then up at Cole Hill, discovering that she had one of her own hands pressing down on top of her head as if she was trying to stop some part of it floating away.

‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘I think so.’

Merrily reached the church door and then turned back.

She wasn’t ready. She went back to the vicarage and sat in front of the list of people whom she needed to tell about the idea for a requiem on Sunday. Crosses against Mrs Cookman and Stella Cobham. She tried the number for Sonia Maloney’s parents: still no answer.

One more name on the list. She’d agonized about this one, had wondered whether to consult Syd Spicer – or even Bliss – about it first.

She rang Bliss’s mobile. Switched off, but he rang back within a minute from outside the building.

‘They’ve still got Loste, and they may make an application to hold on to him, but there’s been no charge. They may still be waiting for forensics. However … it doesn’t look good from his point of view. They now have a witness who’s identified Loste as someone seen conducting what may have been a transaction on the side of the Beacon with a black man in a woolly hat.’

‘Loste bought drugs from Wicklow?’

‘That’s what it looks like. Usual rules, of course, Merrily.’

‘Not a word to anyone.’

‘So,’ Bliss said, ‘what do you have for me?’

‘Erm … another question?’

‘Jesus, Merrily, I can’t believe how one-sided this relationship’s become.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. This probably isn’t something you can answer, anyway.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll see you around, then—’

‘It’s probably a Traffic matter.’

‘In that case, all the abuse I’ve thrown at Traffic over the years, no chance.’

‘It’s my Wychehill road accidents. I just – this is stupid – just want to be sure they actually happened as they were described to me. Or indeed happened at all. Loste had a crash that wasn’t reported to the police, so I can’t do anything about that. But there was a lorry driver supposed to have gone into the church wall.’

‘Name?’

‘No idea.’

‘Date?’

‘Can’t give you an exact … Never mind, it was just a thought.’

‘Merrily, even a brilliant investigator like myself…’

‘The only one where I do have a name, although I gather there was no charge in the end, so it may not be instantly accessible either … Stella Cobham? And it was early this month. Could you possibly get anything from that … ?’

She heard the sound of grinding traffic and the gasp of air brakes.

‘Frannie?’

‘The doughnuts are on you, Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘Probably for the rest of your life.’

And she’d forgotten to ask him about the final name on the requiem list.

But then, why should she ask him? Or Spicer. Spicer had unequivocally opted out of the requiem, and she wasn’t a goddamn stoolie for the cops. Not officially, anyway.

Merrily switched on the computer to check the emails and, while it was booting up, stared at the phone. Should she?

Sod it. What was there to lose? She went into Yellow Pages for the number and then rang the Royal Oak at Wychehill and asked to speak to Mr Rajab Ali Khan.

Some guy said he wasn’t there, mostly he worked out of his offices in Worcester and Kidderminster, and what did she want and could he take a message?

Merrily said yes, he probably could. No hurry. She merely wanted to invite Mr Khan to a church service.

The emails came up. Piece of spam offering her guaranteed penis enlargement and – wow – one from Wychehill Rectory.

Dear Merrily

IN CONFIDENCE – you might find something here. Couldn’t scan it – too faded – so I’ve copied it, for speed. It’s in the parish records, a letter, dating back to 1926, apparently forwarded to Longworth, who seems to have preserved it as some kind of corroboration of his choice of site for Wychehill Church. I don’t know who it’s from or who he’s talking about – in fact, for all I know, it could be a forgery – but Winnie was certainly impressed, so I’m guessing one of them’s Elgar. Also note that Winnie changed the name of her house to Starlight Cottage.

Spicer hadn’t even signed the email. But then, what had she expected – love, Syd?

Merrily scrolled up the letter. It was something that he’d taken the trouble to send it.

My dear Sirius

How are you? We seem hardly to have spoken since the utterly devastating loss of poor Electra, and so I was delighted to receive your letter … and further delighted to confirm that your Hereford friend is absolutely right as regards the significance of the Wyche Hill site. My researches tell me this would be a most propitious place to build a church or temple. As we once discussed, there is a tradition of worship in the Malvern Hills long predating Christianity yet absorbed by the early Church, and also, as recorded in the Triads of Wales, a most inspiring, long-lost tradition of sacred music-making. It is my belief – and wonderful to think it could be so – that there may be no area of southern Britain more conducive to the creation and performance of music of the most exalted power than this. Your own work is surely ample testament to its extraordinary influence.

Please tell me if I can be of any further assistance to any of you, and I look forward to experiencing the church if ever it is built. But we must get together before that.

With every good wish,

Starlight

PS Some of my old, as Electra would say, ‘out of the world’ associates are inclined to think your friend’s interpretations of his remarkable discovery tend toward the prosaic, but I suppose his provincial background is a bit of a constraint!

That night, Jane went out with Eirion and Merrily went over to Lol’s. They set off to walk to Coleman’s Meadow, and she showed him the email.

‘If one of them’s Elgar, it’s probably going to be Sirius.’

It was a warm night, the northern sky still a shimmering electric blue. Lol said that the weather forecast had suggested tomorrow would be the hottest day of the year so far.

‘So Electra … ?’

‘Would be Alice, who’d died some years earlier.’

‘Music of the most exalted power,’ Merrily said. ‘What does that say to you?’

‘I think it says, even with a Boswell guitar don’t get any ideas.’

Coleman’s Meadow was empty. Lol said there’d been Hereford cattle last time he was here, but now only a few rabbits bobbed around on the eastern fringe, by the thorn hedge.

The path through the middle of the meadow was strikingly evident, even among the shadows. Even when it disappeared through the gate and into the undergrowth, you could feel it burrowing like a live cable to light up the summit of Cole Hill, which, at nearly ten p.m., was ambered by an almost unearthly sunset afterglow.

‘What do you think?’ Lol said. ‘Worth saving?’