The Secrets of Pain

80

She climbed into Annie’s Audi on the edge of the square. The shops had opened into gold bars of welcome sunlight and – even more welcome – Easter tourists.

Lol was walking up Church Street from the river, with Jane and Eirion, Merrily felt momentarily disconnected, as if this might be a mercy-dream softening the truth: dead Lol lying across from dead Barry on a mortuary trolley. Jane awakening, stiff and raw, to the memory of a night in the rape suite. Athena White was right. It must not go on much longer, do you hear me?

Annie parked the Audi at the bottom of Old Barn Lane, half on the grass verge. Her mood was hard to read.

‘So you’re saying Savitch is in the clear?’ Merrily said.

‘You studied law. Tell me what he’s done wrong.’

‘What about Sollers Bull?’

Annie Howe stared uninterested at conical Cole Hill, straight ahead and looking almost volcanic, wreathed in smoke-ring clouds.

‘The last thing certain prominent people want is for Sollers to go down. I’d have to number my father amongst them.’

‘What’s it got to do with Charlie?’

‘Rang this morning, confiding that Lord Walford, that respected ex-chairman of the Police Authority, was concerned about my “astonishing behaviour” towards his son-in-law. Never mind that Sollers is notoriously unfaithful to Walford’s daughter, he’s one of us. “I really can’t see what your problem is, Anne,” my father says. “It’s open and shut.” With the emphasis on shut.’

‘Shut as in-’ Merrily twisted in her seat. ‘Annie, this is the murder of Mansel Bull. Who also, surely, was very much “one of us”. It’s shut? As in case closed?’

‘As good as. Remember hanging it on the dead? Two knife killings – two slasher killings within a few rural miles – how could there not be a connection? Mostyn’s an SAS-fantasist who runs hardcore adventure courses for men who want more risk in their lives, has obscure religious beliefs and likes to hang out with he-man celebs like Smiffy Gill. His love of violence is implicit. Walking time-bomb.’

Annie Howe glared angrily at the dash.

‘What if he has an alibi?’ Merrily said. ‘What if there’s someone who knows he couldn’t have been at Oldcastle at the time?’

‘He was with Jones. Who told us that? Jones did. Jones who shot Mostyn dead and is still out there – somewhere. We even have a possible motive. Seems Mansel Bull persistently refused to allow Mostyn and his clients to use his land for rough shooting, prompting a number of angry exchanges. Mostyn seemed very frustrated about that.’

‘Where did that one come from?’

‘Sollers Bull.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘Who phoned someone… over my head… to remind them. Why didn’t he mention it to Bliss? Well, of course he mentioned it – doesn’t Bliss remember? You see? Are we looking for anyone else? Why would we?’

‘What about the London clients?’

‘I told you how long it would take to track them down. How costly. And why would we need to? London bankers and financiers worshipping some ancient Roman god of war? Oh please.’

‘This is-’

‘I know what it is. I’m sorry – I really am no fun, am I? Famous for it. Severe, po-faced, strait-laced, entirely without imagination and destined to walk on eggshells for the rest of my indifferent career because… because of my father.’

Merrily couldn’t summon any kind of smile.

‘So Mostyn killed Mansel Bull?’

‘Mostyn killed everybody except himself. Mostyn is Derek Bird and Raoul Moat and the Hungerford man and the Dunblane man… and just as dead as all of them.’

‘But Byron knows the truth. Wherever he is.’

‘His bungalow’s empty. He hasn’t been officially seen since he walked out of Gaol Street. We’re searching.’

‘What are your feelings… about this whole mess?’

‘What would you imagine?’ Annie Howe said. ‘Sick to my stomach and determined to preserve my increasingly contemptible career for as long as it takes to nail Sollers Bull. And I was never here, and we never had this conversation.’

Christ always died on the cross at three p.m., British Summer Time. Just over an hour to set things up for the Julian meditation.

The Rev. Martin Longbeach, who’d been hauled in to take over the routine services, had left around noon, refusing lunch at the vicarage. Not the time, he’d said, patting Merrily on the arm. Then they closed the gift shop in the vestry and pulled the moveable pews into a circle below the rood screen for however many other parishioners had decided to tough it out with Mother Julian.

The beeswax candle on the altar flared under the Zippo, and Merrily felt its heat and that gentle sense of handmaiden.

She knelt for a moment. Last night she’d felt, on two occasions, that another woman was with her in Brinsop churchyard, stepping lightly between the gravestones. But for the horror of what had followed, those memories of Brinsop might have retained a slightly baffling glow.

And a smudge of guilt.

It had seemed a bit silly at first, using Lol’s map – which he’d left in the car – and the compass to determine the rough positions of the four most convincing leys passing through the church, but once you identified them you could almost see them unravelling across the moon-creamed fields.

Channels for prayer.

Pagan prayer, doubtless, when – if – the leys had been created, back in the Bronze Age or earlier. And yet Merrily had felt that Mother Julian would have approved. Things were different in the Middle Ages; the Christian Church had no problems with magic.

She’d heard Jane’s voice. You’re playing with the Big Forces here .

Quartering the communion wafer with her nail scissors, she’d placed a segment on what she’d perceived as each of the leys, around the edge of the churchyard.

The prayers had been for… serenity, Merrily supposed, restoration of balance, and the God had been Julian’s God, without whose warmth and gentility the human race would never have survived. Mother God.

And the energy had come, unequivocally, from the full moon.

Mother Goddess.

A female thing.

Up yours, Mithras.

She’d walked away feeling the terrifying rightness of it, thinking that when things were calmer she’d have to tell Jane what she’d done.

Felt obliged.

And there was something else for Jane. When she’d rung Neil Cooper, as promised, to tell him about the possibility of Mithraic remains at Brinsop, he already knew. The police had asked for someone to come along when they excavated the temple and surrounds to see what was there.

Merrily had also told Neil about Jane and university. Why Jane was reluctant to go and thereby miss the excavation of Coleman’s Meadow. Neil said he’d talk to the guys hired for the dig to see if they could use somebody to make the tea and stuff. Probably not a gap year but maybe a gap six months, on peanuts pay.

Earlier today, Jane had been palely determined: I will go to university. I’ll work like hell, get the grades and go as far away from here as I can. I’m no good for this place, I’m a bloody liability .

Like that. She’d come round.

Resurrection of Christ. Resurrection of Ledwardine. Resurrection of Jane.

At key moments in the Julian meditation, Merrily would hold in her head an image of the crucifixion stain on the wall of Brinsop Church.

If it all fell flat – and she’d know – then last night had been the first signs of a dangerous eccentricity, and it might be time to think about getting out of the job.

The vestry door was ajar, the way it was never left any more. The smell of mud and sweat came to her. Merrily froze. The voice at her shoulder was not a voice you wanted to hear, alone, in the dimness.

‘A few minutes of your time, please, Mrs Watson.’