The Secrets of Pain

46

Merrily went directly round to Lol’s, but the lights were out. She fumbled in her bag for the key, went inside. The door to the living room hung open, the Boswell guitar on its stand, the draught sending shivers through the strings. If Lol had gone over to Kinnerton to rehearse with Danny, wouldn’t he have taken the Boswell?

She would have called him on his mobile but – this happened all too often – there it was on the table under the window.

Bugger. She came out into the usual sensation of being watched – neighbours at their windows just happening to notice the vicar slipping round to her boyfriend’s cottage, her boyfriend’s bed, under cover of darkness. She felt a rush of angry despair, wishing, hardly for the first time, that she was living here with Lol. Wishing she was normal. Thinking about what she might do if she left the Church to choke to death on its own tangled politics.

Walking across the corner of the square to the vicarage, Merrily wondered what she actually could do?

Sod all. There was nothing else here for her, just as there’d be nothing for Lol – nothing he could live with – if Savitch was in virtual control of a bijou tourist village. What if they were both to get out? Would he want her to go with him?

Leaving Jane, who wanted to go nowhere else.

When she got home, Jane had gone bed. She evidently did not want to talk any more. Merrily fed Ethel, then went into the scullery and sat down under the anglepoise lamp and switched on the laptop.

Dead. All dead now.

Barry could remember three of the other members of the history club. Merrily pulled over the sermon pad and wrote down the names before she forgot them. Mostly nicknames.

Jocko: killed in a car crash near Bristol. He’d been drunk.

Greg: kicked to death in a fight outside a bar in Madrid. He’d been on holiday.

The third one, known as Nasal, Merrily easily found on the Net by Googling Nasal, SAS, murder.

Sunday Times, April 11, 2004.

A former SAS man serving a life sentence for the murder of his girlfriend has been found hanged in his prison cell. Rhys Harran, 43, was said by friends yesterday to have been unable to cope with incarceration. He had been involved in several fights with other inmates of London’s Pentonville prison. Harran, known as ‘Nasal’ because of a sinus abnormality, was jailed two years ago, after being convicted of strangling his long-term girlfriend Cassie Welsh at their home in Fulham. The court heard he had been suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome after service in Western Iraq and had failed to adjust to civilian life. Harran, who left the SAS in 2002, was described by a former colleague last night as ‘a real tiger of a bloke’. His army career included operations in the Falklands, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

Abruptly, Merrily switched off the computer and rang Big Liz at Allensmore.

Liz said. ‘I went into the tower room tonight. Alone. In the dark.’

‘Was that a good idea?’

‘I don’t know. In some ways, Colin feels closer now than he did before you came, but perhaps that’s because I was forced to go over old ground. I’m starting to see the bad things I’d turned a blind eye to. Just, you know, small things, intimate things that I didn’t realize weren’t… I was a virgin, you see. I didn’t know… some things.’

‘Where’s your husband?’

‘Paul? I haven’t told him. He doesn’t even know you’ve been.’

‘I think you should tell him everything,’ Merrily said. ‘You’ve kept it to yourself too long. And, Liz, when you next go into the tower room – humour me – say the Lord’s Prayer, if you can remember it. And discuss it with your husband. All of it. Tell him I’m a crank. Listen, could I check something? When Syd came to see Byron, what year was that?’

‘Oh… dear. I’m not good on…’

‘Same year as the first publication of Caradog? That would be 2004?’

‘I expect. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. Liz, one more thing. You remember you told me about Byron’s publisher coming on the phone once? A woman? Do you remember her name?’

‘Ah. I do know this one. Alexandra… Alexandra… Bell. I remember it put me in mind of Alexander Graham Bell.’

‘Same publisher still?’

‘I’m not sure. You want to speak to her? I’ll try and find the number, if you can hang on…’

‘It’ll do tomorrow. But if I could mention your name to her that would be useful.’

‘She might not even remember me.’

‘I suspect she will, Liz.’

All one-time members of Syd’s team, his gang. Working together in Bosnia and operations during the Colombian cocaine war, over twenty years ago. Then the history club.

Barry had said stubbornly, Car crash, bar-fight, hanged in prison. There’s no connection. It don’t mean anything. Three ex-Regiment dead, not of natural causes. All their deaths are different. It means nothing. How could it?

He was right, of course. These were men for whom violence had been a way of life, who found it hard to adjust when they came out of the army, who were often emotionally damaged. It was no big deal, except that they were all mates.

Syd’s mates. Assume that his visit to Byron at Allensmore had coincided with Nasal’s death. Maybe he’d even read this same account in the Sunday Times. Gone to tell Byron that another member of the club was history.

Merrily began to make notes on the sermon pad, under the anglepoise, but she was too tired to construct a logical framework. And, anyway, there was something missing. Something which almost certainly related to Byron’s reasons for coming to Brinsop, where the church, with its celebration of necessary violence, was a kind of spiritual crucible.

She sprinkled some dried cat-food in Ethel’s bowl, put out the lights and crawled off to bed, pausing to look out from the landing window where she could see, across Church Street through the wintry trees, Lol’s house, still in darkness.

She awoke at two. Back to the landing window. Still dark at Lol’s, but perhaps he’d come in, gone to bed. A vehicle crossed the square, but it was a light-coloured van. She’d rung Lol’s landline twice, finally leaving a message, just asking him to ring her back, whatever time he got in. Now she wanted to ring Danny, but it was far too late; Greta at least would be in bed, and Greta had to work in the morning and…

…oh God, the Maundy service.

The next time she awoke she was in a corridor.

Sporadically lit, lumpy with pipes and the smell was of antiseptic and bleach, and there were double doors and an old leathered bench, and the need for a cigarette.

I’m afraid you can’t smoke in here.

Breathing. The uneven respiration of the chronically sick. A dim and wobbly light. Grey-white sleepers.

We’ve always had him in a side ward.

An iron bed. Tubes.

Brace yourself…

Lowering herself into a clammy vinyl-covered bedside chair, summoning reserves of compassion as she peered below the hair dyed black, into the reptilian eye-slits. Green tubes curling up either side of the nose like a smile. Hands out of the sheets, rubbery snaking hands, and the smell…

Don’t wake up, don’t wake up, see it through, don’t wake up, and Jesus, don’t let him touch Jane with his…

Curling nail on yellowed finger. Scritch, scratch…

The air rushed through the corridor like a hollow scream, trailing an awakening into half-light and… exhaust.

Merrily sat up to find the dawn gleaming like raw meat in the bedroom window.

Part Five

…they’re all mad in one way or another. There’s Kev, who knows he’s a reincarnated Viking. There’s Si, who only reads books about the paranormal… Only a few of the boys are normal, but they’re so normal that they’re weird. What a bunch of crazies we are. And we go out with our lethal weapons every day.

Frank Collins

Baptism of Fire (1997)