To Dream of the Dead

18 Working Relationship

Through his mucky windscreen, Bliss watched Annie Howe powering out of her car in the schoolyard, aiming an unfolding umbrella like a harpoon gun into the rain. Stepping between police vehicles, in her white trench coat — well, not exactly a trench coat and not exactly white, but you got the idea.

Kevin Snape, the office manager, had served the summons last night, leaving the message on Bliss’s mobile: ‘Ma’am wants to see you first thing, Francis. Eight a.m. sharp. At the school.’

That would be before morning assembly. Before the main team got in. Suggesting Annie wanted to tap him on some background angle, something she didn’t want to share with the whole class. Probably just with DI Iain Twatface Brent, PhD, after Bliss had gone.

He waited until she was in the building, then got out of his car, got wet — never been an umbrella kind of person. Inside the schoolhall-turned-incident-room he shook himself, looked around. Kevin Snape at a computer, Terry Stagg on the phone.

Seeing all the kiddie things pushed into corners reminded him that sometime over the weekend he was going to have to tell his folks up in Knowsley that Kirsty had left him and taken the beloved grandchildren.

This jagged tear in life’s fabric. Hadn’t been able to face going home last night. Cod and chips in the car at ten p.m., not getting back to the house until he was too knackered to do anything but crunch through the Christmas cards on the doormat and crawl upstairs. What he needed was for the Ayling case to roll on through Christmas, turning all the festive shite into a merciful blur.

‘Francis — in here, please.’

The SIO had bagged a classroom for her office. Bliss went meekly in. How come, when Annie Howe was younger than him, she still made him feel like a spotty kid?

‘Sit down, Francis.’

Ma’am at the teacher’s desk, kiddie chairs stacked against the walls. Bliss thought of detaching one and squatting in it, looking up respectfully at the Head, but there was already a teacher-sized chair waiting.

He sat down. Ice-blonde Annie was dressed for the day’s press conferences in a dark green suit with deep lapels, dazzling white shirt, no jewellery. Morning papers in front of her, the Western Daily Press on top.

‘So what’s the state of play with your Worcester witness murder, ma’am?’ Bliss said. ‘Still thinking contract killing, are we? Knowing who ordered it but not who actually did the deed.’

Howe looked up slowly. Clearly aware that what he was really asking her was what the hell she was doing over here, with the Lasky case still live.

‘Actually, it’s the other way round: we’re fairly sure we know who did it, but we don’t know who ordered it. We’re looking at a ring. Two more in Droitwich, another in Evesham. Plus Lasky in Worcester. And the father.’

‘Scumbag.’

The father was the worst of them, in Bliss’s view. Selling sex with his kids? If it hadn’t been for his brother-in-law going to the cops, it might’ve gone on for years.

Now the brother-in-law was dead. They’d found the poor sod knifed in his own garage, two weeks before he was due to testify against the father and the family’s paedophile solicitor, Adrian Lasky. Annie Howe never thinking the man might need protection — all paedophiles being cowering wimps who couldn’t deal with adults.

‘Under the circumstances, however, it seems unlikely that Lasky directly commissioned it,’ Howe said. ‘However… my boss is handling it and, as I take it you’re not in a position to assist us, let’s move on.’

‘Contract boys.’ Bliss shook his head. ‘Even ten years ago, a rarity. Now you’ve got kids who’ll do it for a few hundred, knowing the worst that can happen is six years and they come out with a degree in sociology, courtesy of the prison—’

He stopped, Annie giving him the cold stare.

‘Kids,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to return to the subject of kids. Remind me.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Meanwhile…’ adjusting her cuffs now ‘… you’ll be interested to know that we were right about the connection with the archaeology at Rotherwas and Dinedor. Proven.’

‘Wooh!’ This was too good. ‘Samples matched up?’

Unbelievable, though, this woman. We were right. Not you were right. No Well done, Francis, nicely put together.

‘So we now have confirmatory reports from forensics and from the archaeologist in charge of the project.’

‘Good,’ Bliss said. ‘Excellent.’

‘On which basis, you’ll need to follow it through. I’m having copies of both reports run off for you now, and Iain Brent’s arranged for the archaeologist to be on site at eleven-thirty. Iain will give you the details when he comes in.’

‘You want me to talk to this boffin?’

‘What we need from the guy is a list of people who’d be au fait with the latest findings at Dinedor. We also need to know who’s had permission to visit the site and who’s expressed a more than superficial interest. We need — Is this a problem?’

‘It’s just…’ That it was a job for a frigging DC. ‘If you remember, I’d arranged to see the feller from this Hereforward committee — Ayling’s last meeting?’

‘You can leave that for now.’

‘Leave it?’

Leave the meeting relating to the quango of which Clement Ayling had been a member and Charlie Howe still was.

‘It’s not of immediate importance, is it?’ Howe said. ‘I want this thing wrapped, Francis. Obviously, I’m refocusing. I’m looking, as you yourself suggested, for environmental extremists. I’m looking for pagan-oriented fanatics—’

‘What, like the residents who were banged up for aggravated trespass for refusing to leave council premises?’

‘We…’ Howe shrugged. ‘We may talk to them, but mostly they’re a little too old for the profile, wouldn’t you say?’

Bliss eyed her.

‘You’ve got something else, haven’t you?’

Howe’s expression, if you could call it that, didn’t change. She’d finally lost the Gestapo-issue rimless glasses — contact lenses now — but she still hadn’t learned how to smile without using her fingers to prise up the corners of her mouth.

‘Ayling… had received a number of threatening phone calls. In relation to his support for the relief road and his derisive remarks about the Serpent.’

‘How threatening?’

‘Sufficiently. We have a tape, from his answering machine, so that gives us a voice. Male.’

‘You got this from Helen Ayling?’

‘Something jogged her memory.’

Bliss struggled for control. So this had turned up last night? And Howe hadn’t even told him. Seeing Dinedor had been his idea, any other SIO he’d worked with on a case this big would have called personally to fill him in, no matter how late. When your wild card came up, it was acknowledged.

It was called a working relationship.

A knock on the door and Howe said, ‘Come.’

Come. She probably said that, in the same detached tone, in bed, if you could imagine that. Word was that one of the desk boys in Worcester had run a book on which team Annie played for and had to give back all the money because nobody had ever managed to find out. Figured. Even Bliss wasn’t sure, but he was horribly afraid she might actually, in theory, be straight.

Kevin Snape came in with some papers. Howe nodded towards Bliss, and Kevin put them down in front of him, winked and buggered off. Copies of the forensic and archaeological reports. Bliss didn’t touch them.

‘And of course you might like to consider,’ Howe said, ‘if you know anyone else with a knowledge of religious fanatics in this area and the borderline insane.’

Uh oh.

‘Yeh, I’ll have a think,’ Bliss said, cautious.

‘I’d make an approach myself but the person I’m thinking of is clearly not comfortable with educated women.’

Bliss didn’t laugh.

‘There’s also the daughter. The daughter, as you know, is… maladjusted and seems to have contact with many of the crank elements in this area. I’m interested in who she might know.’

‘You want me to—’

‘Get what you can, but be careful how much you disclose. Nothing, obviously, from those particular reports. Not that I need to—’

‘No, you don’t.’

Bliss stood up, needing to get out before he said anything he’d regret.

‘Sit down, Francis,’ Howe said. ‘I haven’t finished with you.’

Haven’t finished with you?

Mother of God, you could only take so much of this shite. Bliss put his hands on Howe’s desk, took a breath.

‘Look…’ close enough now to notice she wasn’t wearing perfume ‘… whatever’s on your mind, why don’t you just frigging come out with it, Annie? Because I’m getting a bit pissed off with—’

‘Sit down, Bliss.’

Howe hadn’t moved. Bliss sat down. The next ten minutes brought him closer to throwing in his warrant card than at any other time in his nineteen years as a cop.

19 Hole

Picking up some cigs in Big Jim Prosser’s Eight Till Late, Merrily saw that Hereford had exploded, debris all over the morning papers.

The Birmingham Post had Clem Ayling pictured last summer at the opening of a new woodland craft centre. Wearing a yellow hard hat, symbolically holding an axe, lavishly smiling. A grinning death mask now, glaringly surreal.

‘I met him just the once.’ Jim stacked up more papers near his checkout, stooping over them. Last of the old-fashioned shopkeepers, four pens in his top pocket. ‘Odd, really. You couldn’t dislike the feller, whatever you think of his council. An ole rogue, but you expect that.’

‘Don’t expect this, though, Jim. Not here.’

‘Aye. Lyndon Pierce was in earlier. Never seen him look as shattered. Like it might be him next. No such bloody luck.’ Jim smiled. ‘Sorry, Merrily.’

‘You can’t be totally against the village doubling in size.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘They’d all want papers.’

‘Aye…’ Jim dropped the papers; a nerve had been exposed. ‘From some bloody supermarket where the village hall is, when Pierce swings his lottery grant for a new leisure centre. It stinks, Merrily. It’s not the place we moved to.’

‘It hasn’t happened yet, Jim, we can still ob—’

‘I meant the whole county. Nobody’s ever gonner forget it was Ayling who stuck to it as half the secondary schools would be gone within five years because of the council getting squeezed. But that en’t how I see it. If they can afford new shopping centres, they can afford to keep the schools open. We got more bloody supermarkets in Hereford than any city of its size in the country — did you know that? All the time, they’re expanding on what we don’t need and cutting back on what we do, and it… it’s bloody wrong.’

Merrily nodded. What could you say?

‘No,’ Jim said, ‘I never thought anything like this would ever happen yere, but then I never thought to see so many strangers in the city — criminals, a lot of’em — only gotter read the court cases in the Hereford Times. It’s out of control, it is. We’re all rushing to the edge of the bloody cliff. I dunno how you do your job — trying to find the good in people.’

‘Jim, if we—’

‘Brenda wants to sell up,’ Jim said.

‘The shop?’ Merrily looked up at him, one hand in her wallet. ‘Leave the shop?’

‘Gonner be sixty-six next time. Old enough to remember how, when you caught a youngster nicking sweets, you clipped him round the yearole and told his dad, and his dad’d give him a good hiding on top. Nowadays you just gotter raise your voice, bloody dad’s in threatening to take you apart.’

Merrily sighed.

‘You know what done it for Brenda? That armed robbery up in Shropshire — you see that on the local news? Country village, shop just like this, with a post office at the back. Brenda says, that’s it, time to get rid.’

Merrily glanced up to the top of the store, where Shirley West hunched behind reinforced glass. It was widely known that Brenda Prosser had never wanted to take on the post office, for this very reason: all that money on the premises. But with the Post Office flogging off most of its premises, it was the back of the Eight Till Late or nothing.

Neither Jim nor Brenda was qualified to run a post office, but if they’d refused it wouldn’t have gone down at all well in Ledwardine. Fortunately, Shirley West, having left the bank in Leominster for reasons undisclosed, had been looking for a job. And Shirley had once worked in a post office.

‘I don’t know what to say, Jim. It just wouldn’t be the same.’

‘It already isn’t the same,’ Jim said. ‘Anything else I can get you?’

‘No, I don’t — Yes. Well, just information. The people at Cole Barn…?’

‘The Wintersons? If you’re thinking of trying to get them into church I wouldn’t bother, they’re only renting. Nobody was gonner buy at the kind of price that French outfit were asking. Not now.’

‘No.’

Cole Barn had been acquired, derelict, for conversion by a subsidiary of the company which now owned the Black Swan. Speculators, in other words, and nobody was too upset when it backfired. Executive homes or standing stones, neither would be good news for the privacy of Cole Barn, still on the market after over a year.

‘Yere today, gone tomorrow, these folks,’ Jim said. ‘Not worth the bother.’

‘I’m not allowed to say that. What are they like?’

‘They’re… from the Home Counties somewhere. Woman’s friendly enough in an eyes-everywhere kind of way — I’ll have one of these, some of that… Bit hyper. The husband I’ve never seen. Something you’ve heard, Merrily?’

‘Me? When do I ever hear anything?’ Merrily picked up her cigarettes. ‘You’re not really thinking of going, are you?’

‘Likely next spring. Look at it this way… what’s this shop gonner be worth with a Tesco or a Co-op down the bottom of Church Street? Bugger-all.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Say nothing yet, eh?’ Jim said. ‘We don’t want talk.’

Merrily nodded, zipping up her coat. It had held off raining for all of half an hour but as she left the Eight Till Late it was starting again, like some automated cyclical sprinkler. She moved along the side of the square and under the market hall, walking to the end where, between the oak pillars, you could see into the window of the new bijou bookshop called — God forbid — Ledwardine Livres. Nine thirty, and it was opening a good hour earlier than usual — Christmas market. The blind went up to reveal a narrow window with a display including, she noticed, Richard Dawkins, Ian McEwan and Philip Pullman. Healthy balance towards atheism, then. Or was this paranoia? Maybe not. Above Dawkins’s The God Delusion was a book with a silver-blue cover. The Hole in the Sky.

The O in Hole actually had a hole in it. Merrily went in, collecting a wry smile from the proprietor, Amanda Rubens, late of Stoke Newington, when she laid a copy on the counter.

‘Know thine enemy, vicar?’

‘Something like that,’ Merrily said.

She hadn’t noticed any books in here about local folklore, mysticism, earth mysteries. How things had changed since the shop had been Ledwardine Lore, run by the late Lucy Devenish.

The car was still stinking of last night’s chips. Bliss sat in the parking lot, behind Gaol Street, the session with Annie Howe replaying itself in his head like one of those sick-making seasonal supermarket tape loops of Slade and Roy Wood wishing it could be frigging Christmas every frigging day. Bliss wanting to beat his head on the dash to dislodge Howe’s final ringing dismissal.

‘Go!’

Turning away, like she couldn’t bear to look at him. Like he was some kind of old shit the police service needed to scrape off its new boots. Unbelievable. The Senior Investigating Officer in the crucial early stages of the biggest murder case in Hereford since Roddy Lodge, making time in her schedule to tell him—

Bliss let the window down.

— about one of the consultant orthopaedic surgeons at the County Hospital preparing to file a complaint regarding the treatment of his son by a plain-clothes officer of this division in an incident which had occurred—

Bliss turned his face into the rain.

— two nights ago, during the extended opening period for Christmas shopping in High Town.

‘Mr Shah…’ Howe fingering a report on her desk ‘… alleges that the boy and two friends were being harassed by an over-zealous community support officer who had wrongly accused them of dropping litter.’

‘Wrongly accused them?’

‘When they began to protest their innocence, a man identifying himself as a police officer intervened, threatening to throw Mr Shah’s child into a cell and, I quote, beat the shit out of him.’

Bliss sitting there, staring at Howe. The other side of the glass door, the hall was filling up with cops.

‘The officer did not give his name but, when he began to scream obscenities at the boys—’

‘Scream ob—?’

‘—They noticed he had what was described as a distinctive northern accent. Similar, according to one of the boys, to the comedian Paul O’Grady.’

‘How much flattery can a man take?’

‘You’re not denying you were the officer concerned.’

‘Annie, what I am denying—’

‘Even though, for some reason, DI Bliss, we can’t seem to put our hands on your report of the incident.’

‘That is ridiculous. It wasn’t an incident, by any stretch of the—How old d’you say the kid was?’

‘Thirteen. And why do we have incident reports? Remind me?’

‘This thirteen-year-old was drinking Stella. Not exactly the weakest of lagers.’

‘Orange squash—’

‘Balls.’

‘—According to Mr Shah.’

‘Mr Shah. Right. OK. Let’s deal with that aspect first, in case you’re about to — It was night and half the shops were shut. I did not even notice what colour the kid was. I assure you — and community support will corroborate it — that this kid was chugging full-strength lager and appeared intoxicated. And he did throw it down in the street, after spraying lager at this long-suffering anti-drink campaigner in a monkey suit. As for the obscene language… I told them to piss off. That was it.’

‘You told a thirteen-year-old boy to piss off.’

‘You should’ve heard him!’

‘And did you also call him a twat?’

‘Aw, Jesus, I call everybody a twat! It’s hardly…’ Bliss shut his eyes. After all his efforts to tone down his language, successfully reducing fucking to frigging, for the sake of his kids, he just wasn’t having this. ‘And — you can confirm this with the plastic plods — I never laid a hand on any of those kids, nor did I threaten to. I most certainly did not threaten to beat the shit out of him. Come on… in the centre of town? In public?’

‘It seems you expressed a preference for somewhere less public. Like a cell stinking of vomit?’

‘Jesus, it’s what you do, isn’t it? You give the little — You give them a bit of a scare and send them on their way. It saves a lorra…’ Paperwork. Bliss shut up. Howe’s entire career had been fabricated out of paper.

Silence. Even the frigging rain holding off.

‘No.’ Annie Howe’s voice like ice splitting on a January pond. ‘It isn’t what you do. It’s what some stupid, crass policemen used to do. In the bad old days.’

And then she’d filled in the background for him — why this was not something he could just walk away from, with two fingers in the air. Seemed that most of what happened had been witnessed by a neighbour of Shah’s from Lyde, north of the city. Thought next day that he ought to tell Shah that his son had been involved in what appeared to be a binge-drinking incident in the centre of Hereford. The little twat had obviously lied through his teeth about what had happened to avoid a backlash at home.

A public incident; now this Mr Shah wanted a public apology.

‘In that case,’ Bliss had told Howe, ‘I will personally pay a visit to Mr Shah and put him fully in the pic—’

‘You will not go near Mr Shah.’

‘Jes—’ Bliss gripping his knees. ‘All right, what about the plastic plods? You’ve presumably got their statements?’

‘We have.’

‘And?’

‘The community support officers say that while the accusation of littering was legitimate—’

‘Exactly.’

‘—Both agree that what happened was an entirely manageable situation and they had not — nor would have — requested any assistance.’

‘Aw, come on, there was no way—’

‘They say, in fact, that the situation was undoubtedly inflamed by your uncalled-for and unnecessary—’

‘The lying shites!’

‘Bliss…’ Howe finally rising up. ‘I don’t care which of you is lying. What I do care about is having a senior officer implicated in a trivial but potentially damaging and highly public incident while the rest of us are working flat-out on what’s turning out to be the most—’ Howe waving the Daily Press in Bliss’s face ‘—high-profile homicide investigation in the history of this city. Now, I don’t know what your problem is… my information is that it’s personal and domestic. But you’d better either keep it under control or seek counselling… and meanwhile give some serious thought to drafting a suitably arse-licking apology to this bloody man before he takes it any further.’

‘Ma’am, I think you ought to—’

‘Don’t say anything else. Get out of here. Talk to the people we discussed and give me a report. You know what I’m looking for.’ And, as he was leaving, she’d told him explicitly where he stood, looking down at the papers on her desk, making the odd note, delivering the message as a partly absent afterthought.

‘If anybody can get you out of this,’ Annie Howe had said, ‘it will probably have to be me.’

She hadn’t looked up. No need to.

Bliss laid his head on the steering wheel, forehead against the fuzzy tiger-striped cover the kids had bought him last Father’s Day. Remembering the hollow quiet in the incident room, half-full by then, when he went back that way, looking for Karen Dowell.

Aware also that, having been briefed by Howe and sent out on his own by nine a.m., he’d effectively been excluded from Morning Assembly and was in no position to complain.

Lol ran downstairs and flung open the front door. The rain washed Merrily inside. Lol was exasperated.

‘You’ve got a key…’

Why did she never seem to use her key, like she might be some kind of intrusion into his space?

‘Yeah, I know.’ Slipping out of her coat, hanging it over the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, where Lucy Devenish used to hang her poncho. ‘I forgot it. I just… walked out. Needed to talk to somebody.’

‘Somebody?’

‘Sorry.’ She put her arms around him. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘What is?’

‘This.’

Merrily went back to her coat, pulled a brown paper bag from a pocket, handed it to him. Lol shook out the paperback book, recognised it at once, from hoardings in London and the sides of bus shelters.

It was the hole that did it. It wasn’t a black hole, just grey. A grey hole in a shiny, silver-blue sky, and when you opened the cover it exposed not a title page but a blank page, all grey, at the bottom of which it said:

‘I don’t get it,’ Lol said. ‘You bought this?’

‘Just now.’

‘You bought Mathew Stooke’s best-selling guide to living—’ he read from the back cover ‘—a balanced, guiltless life without the pointless tedium of God…?’

‘Begrudging every penny,’ Merrily said. ‘But I suppose we ought to support our neighbours.’

20 Government Health Warning

The wood-burning stove wasn’t very big, but was more than enough for this room. One of the newer ones with glass that didn’t fog, two reddening logs melting into one another, the whole chamber flushed pink and orange, a beacon in the greyness of the day.

Sinking into the sofa under the giant Mars Bar beam, legs extended into the heat, Merrily almost fell asleep. Damn it, so much cosier here than the big, draughty vicarage.

Marry me, Lol. Take me away.

She blinked, shocked at herself, sat up. Lol was coming in from the kitchen with mugs of tea. She put out a hand, looked up into the eyes behind his round brass-rimmed glasses.

‘Where am I? How did I get here?’

‘I don’t know.’ He bent, kissed her hand before placing a mug in it. ‘But you’re rather attractive, so hang around if you want.’

‘Yeah, OK.’

She sipped her tea. Lol had been working. Scrawled lyrics on paper upon paper on the desk under the window, his acoustic guitar leaning next to it. This was the Takamine, plugged into the old wooden-cased Guild amplifier that looked like a big valve radio set from the 1950s or something, its red power light aglow.

This was where the Boswell used to sit. Lol never mentioned the Boswell. She hoped she was doing the right thing; it was going to be an awful lot of money, more than she’d ever spent on anything — even a car, come to think of it.

‘Does anybody else know this Stooke’s living here?’

Lol was leaning over the back of the sofa, arms either side of her, his mug of tea in one hand. Merrily shook her head.

‘I’m guessing not. He’s here under a false name, anyway.’

‘He’s not exactly inconspicuous, is he?’

Lol opened The Hole in the Sky to the inside back cover: full-page photo of a man with shoulder-hugging black, curly hair, a full dark beard.

‘And I believe he weighs in at about eighteen stone,’ Merrily said.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Got it off the Internet. I couldn’t actually get back to sleep after Jane broke the news. Sitting in front of the computer at half past two, frantically Googling Mathew Stooke.’

‘Of course that might not even be him,’ Lol said. ‘Maybe they borrowed the reserve bass-player from Iron Maiden.’

‘To disguise his identity in the wake of all the threats to his life?’ Merrily shut the book. One of the reviews on the back said, In the current climate, Stooke must be seen as almost insanely brave. ‘You see, that’s completely wrong for a start,’ Merrily said. ‘In the current climate, Stooke’s right in the vanguard. The current climate is aggressively secular.’

‘It means Islam, doesn’t it? The fact that Christians hate him… with all respect, no big problem. Not in this country, anyway. But when you offend the Muslims…’

‘To my knowledge, they haven’t stuck a fatwa on a writer since Rushdie. And fundamentalist Islam… terrorism — that’s the main reason for the growth of the secular state. Secularism’s become a kind of refuge. A political safe haven.’ Merrily put the book on an arm of the sofa. ‘That’s what’s so depressing about it. Nobody’ll admit it, but it’s all about fear.’

‘God gets a government health warning?’

‘That’s next.’ Merrily sank back wearily into the sofa. ‘Still, at least this resolves one issue.’

Reminding Lol about the guy in the three-piece suit she’d spotted after the parish meeting. Jonathan Long. Special Branch. Telling him what she’d learned — or hadn’t learned — from Bliss.

‘So it is political,’ Lol said. ‘Or it’d be the ordinary cops. It’s national security.’

‘All these guys get death-threats. The publishers are probably disappointed if they don’t get death threats.’

‘So this Long would’ve been organising some protection for him?’

‘Possibly. I don’t know. It doesn’t entirely make sense. I mean, he’s not exactly in deep cover if Jane’s rumbled him inside a day. And why here, Lol? What’s he doing here? And why — this is the real issue — why’s his wife cosying up to my daughter?’

‘Well, if she’s a journalist…’ Lol finished his tea, put the mug on the floor. ‘They’re living on the edge of Coleman’s Meadow. Coleman’s Meadow’s a story. Or it will be.’

‘What do you think I should do about it?’

Lol lay back, stretching his legs towards the stove.

‘Out him, maybe?’

‘Does that really sound like the kind of thing I’d do?’

‘Or you could go round, see if he’s interested in attending church.’

‘I did think of that, yes.’

‘Merrily…’ Lol turned to her. ‘Have you read what he thinks about the clergy?’

‘It was a joke. But no, I haven’t read anything he’s written. But I will have by tonight.’

She stared into the stove, where two logs were making a molten Gothic arch, like the gateway to hell.

All the picturesque backwaters in all the world…

In the silence, Lol said, ‘Did I tell you they want me to tour America?’

Merrily sat up, hard.

Of course he hadn’t told her. He knew he hadn’t told her.

‘Who?’

‘Guy called Jeff Caldwell. A promoter I met at the BBC. Prof Levin knows him.’

‘And?’

‘Prof says he’s on the level.’

‘Well…’ Ice sliding into Merrily’s stomach. ‘That’s fantastic, Lol. That’s… you know… Erm, when?’

‘I don’t know. Early next year. Someone backed out. It’s colleges, mainly, but…’

‘Well… congratulations. You… you’ve made it.’

‘You think?’ Lol sat down next to her. ‘People who’ve done it say it’s all motel rooms and… other motel rooms.’

‘Exciting. Wish I was coming.’

The rain was heavier now, the slow, sinister beat of individual drops on the glass giving way to a gusting, shuffling rhythm like a whole drum kit out there.

‘Well…’ Lol said. ‘I had wondered about that. If there’d be any possibility?’

‘Of what?’

‘Going to America. I mean you.’

‘Me? Who’d pay?’

‘Me.’

‘No, that’s not — How long for?’

‘Five weeks, apparently.’

Merrily said nothing. They both knew how impossible that would be for her, for too many reasons to list. Inside the stove the gates of hell had collapsed in an orange starburst.

‘OK, I’ll ring the guy this afternoon,’ Lol said. ‘I mean, it’s not really what I—’

‘Lol.’

‘What?’

‘You have to do it.’

‘I like it here too much,’ Lol said. ‘And it’s too late.’

‘No! Listen. It was like when you didn’t want to play in front of an audience. When you thought you were incapable of doing it. And then you were forced to. And you didn’t look back, and now you’re so much more comfortable with yourself. You… function better.’

‘Um, thanks. But I don’t think it is that important. What’s more important… is what happens on Christmas Eve. At the Swan.’

She sat looking at him, saying nothing.

Christmas Eve… she’d made a point of not trying to influence him one way or another. He had a few friends — good friends — in Ledwardine, but she wasn’t sure if he had fans. A gig at the Black Swan could be a triumph; it could also be a disaster, especially on Christmas Eve. And he didn’t need it. He’d done Jools Holland, he’d been asked to do America. He’d seen Michael Stipe singing along with ‘The Baker’s Lament’. If he passed on the Swan, what was lost?

‘I’ve… said OK.’

‘Oh.’

‘Pushed it to the wire and then rang Barry and… he’s having posters done.’

‘What, erm… what decided it?’

‘Well, it…’ Lol looked uncomfortable. ‘I suppose it was Lucy.’

‘Oh God. Not you as well.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Talking to Lucy. Like Jane?’

‘Not quite,’ Lol said. ‘It was strange.’

Merrily said nothing; anything to do with Lucy Devenish usually was. Lol managing to acquire Lucy’s house — this house, his house now, for God’s sake — had meant, for him, a responsibility. The need to keep Lucy’s spirit sweet.

‘The lines of a song came to me. I’ve got a bunch of songs now — I’ve been putting them together for the second album.’

‘The risky second album.’

He rarely played his songs to her — and never, she suspected, to anyone else — until he thought they were as good as he could make them, and even then they were usually on tape.

‘Same theme as “Baker’s”,’ Lol said. ‘Rural change, rural decay. And other stuff with relevance to what’s happening here. I’ve also adapted three of Traherne’s poems.’

‘That’s a brilliant idea. Was it hard?’

‘Not as hard as I thought it would be. And then I was just sitting around, playing with ideas when these lines kind of came out of nowhere.’

He didn’t sing them, only spoke them in a whisper.

‘Miss Devenish… Would ever wish it so…’

There was silence. Almost immediately, Merrily heard the words again, in her head.

‘God, Lol. Lucy in a song? You’re actually writing a song about Lucy Devenish?’

The only song he’d ever written, specifically naming a real person, was ‘Heavy Medication Day’, the one about Dr Gascoigne, the psychiatrist big on sedation, who’d caused him problems in the psychiatric hospital. And look at the trouble that had caused.

‘It’s halfway there,’ Lol said.

‘You’ve got a song about Lucy Devenish, and you’re planning to play it for the first time at the Black Swan, in front of people who knew her?’

‘No, the first time, I’m going to play it here, in her house. And if I feel she doesn’t like it…’

‘You know she’ll like it,’ Merrily sighed. ‘Because, however it turns out, you’ll think she gave it to you.’

A chiming, tiny but strident, came out of the hall. Merrily jumped. It was her mobile, in a pocket of the waxed coat hanging where Lucy used to drape her poncho.

‘Won’t you?’ she said.

‘You’d better get that.’

She stood up and went out into the tiny hall. The rain was a muffled roar, like a big audience, as she fumbled out the phone.

‘Reverend.’

‘Oh.’

‘Where are you?’ Bliss said.

‘Does it matter? Where are you?’

‘I’m in the car. Outside your vicarage.’

‘Ah.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

Merrily went back into the living room, where Lol sat, looking down at his hands clasped together below his knees.

He looked up and smiled, but she sensed a thick wedge of anxiety behind it.

She bent and hugged him, the phone still at her ear.

‘I’ll come over,’ she said to Bliss.

21 Pebbles

There was a crack in the cast-iron guttering over Lol’s front door, and a cold stream of water sluiced into Merrily’s hair as she stumbled into the street, pulling on her coat. All down Church Street she saw gutters spouting and drains gulping vainly at the muscular coils of water pumping between the cobbles.

Bliss had seen her, his Honda pulling into the kerb, headlights on, the passenger door already swinging open. She grabbed it, slotting herself in, and he was off like a getaway driver.

‘God’s sake—’

‘Remarkable,’ Bliss said. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever known a woman get dressed that quick. I do hope Robinson appreciates what he’s got.’

‘What do you want, Frannie?’

‘Long term, a whole new life would be nice.’ He drove down Church Street towards the river bridge, waited there for a van to come across. ‘Meanwhile, have a listen to this.’

An MP3 player was wedged behind the gear lever and plugged into the sound system. They were halfway across the bridge, Merrily connecting her seat belt, when the man’s voice came through the speakers. A phone voice, close-up, muffled but precise.

‘You are a disgrace, Ayling. Like the rest of your stinking council, you are a disgrace to Hereford.’

‘Oh.’ She let the seat belt come apart. ‘This is Ayling’s answering machine?’

‘You have betrayed your heritage. You have tried to smother the Serpent, in the cause of naked, corporate greed…’

Bliss reached out a hand, put the player on pause.

‘You recognise the voice, Merrily?’

‘It’s local.’

‘Local varies.’

‘Hereford, rather than real border.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Sounds like he’s reading it. Like an agreed statement.’

‘Through a handful of Kleenex.’

Bliss drove slowly past the village hall, where the puddles on the car park were starting to join together, forming a moat which continued, deepening, when Church Street became a country lane.

‘I’d turn round when you can, Frannie. Only the four-by-fours are risking it down here.’

‘Always defer to local knowledge.’ Bliss pulled into a passing place, began a three-point turn, the wipers on high speed. ‘And you’ve not answered me question yet.’

‘If it wasn’t for the bypass we’d be almost an island by now. Why are you asking me?’

‘I’ll give you the honest answer, Merrily. Your name was mentioned as someone whose work sometimes brings her into contact with religious eccentrics.’

‘Mentioned by…?’

‘The headmistress.’

‘Just that religious eccentrics didn’t sound like her kind of term.’

‘It wasn’t, I just didn’t want to offend you. In truth, her experience of you — can’t for the life of me think why — seems to be as someone who is generally hostile and unhelpful.’

‘That is so hurtful.’

‘Yet seems to have the impression that you and I have a certain rapport. Me being raised a lapsed papist and all.’

‘She instructed you to sound me out?’

‘In her way.’ Bliss put out a hand to the player. ‘Let me give you the rest.’

‘… But the Serpent is not dead. Your storm troopers cannot trample the Serpent underfoot. Under tarmac. The Serpent will not sleep, but will writhe in anger under the hill and grow a new skin. Do not imagine it’s over, Ayling. When your road is open and strewn with wreckage and blood… you will remember the Serpent. You will remember what you did.’

Pause.

‘We are the Children of the Serpent.’

Click.

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’ Bliss switched off the player. ‘You heard of them?’

‘The Children of the Serpent? Can’t say I have.’

‘You quite sure?’

‘Frannie, what is this?’

‘Do you recognise the voice?’

‘No.’

‘That was a frigging long time coming.’ Bliss leaned back, his hands slackening on the wheel. ‘You know it’s important we eliminate people. You do realise why? Otherwise a lot of innocent loonies are gonna get harassed.’

They were back in Church Street. Before the square, Bliss turned left into Old Barn Lane, accelerated towards the bypass. Evidently determined not to take her home. Wanting her in his car, next best thing to an interview room. She’d never known him like this.

‘Are you OK, Frannie?’

‘This tape, by the way — you haven’t heard it. I’m not supposed to take it out. Got it from Karen, who gets trusted with copying stuff onto hard disk and MP3.’ Bliss slowed. ‘And you’re not surprised, are you? You knew about it. What happened — Helen Ayling told Sophie and Sophie…?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I don’t know why I bother. You wanna hear it again?’

‘Frannie, I really don’t know the voice.’

‘Maybe Jane?’

‘Can we leave Jane out of it? She’s—’

‘An adult — correct? I’m gonna leave you the player. Let her hear it. You’ll know if she recognises the voice, won’t you?’

‘What, so you and Annie Howe can bring her in and shine a bright light in her face until she fingers somebody?’

‘Now let’s be sensible.’

‘All right then, let’s talk about Mathew Stooke.’

Bliss braked, his hands squeezing the wheel.

‘You little sod, Merrily.’

‘Calm down, I didn’t make any inquiries. It just… reached me. From another source.’

‘What… God?’

‘And nobody knows, as far as I’m aware, outside my… immediate family.’

‘You’ve seen Stooke?’

‘No, I… If Long’s involved, does that mean Cole Barn is some kind of safe house? I mean, there’ve been threats, right?’

‘My, we are au fait with the spook terminology. Safe house. I ask you. Nothing so melodramatic, Merrily. Yeh, there’ve been threats, but it’s considered low-risk.’

‘Islamic, though?’

‘Just threats. It’s even been in the papers. He made a statement through his publishers. Said, if you remember, that he stood by everything he’d written and he wasn’t gonna hide from religious maniacs.’

‘When was this?’

‘When the book came out in paperback. Two months ago? Bit of a coincidence, some people thought.’

‘What are you saying? He was claiming he’d had death threats to get publicity for the paperback?’

‘Always a first thought. Especially as publicity, in this case, had been subcontracted by the publisher to an outside PR company. Naturally, they denied it.’

‘How were the threats made?’

‘Anonymous letters. I think there were three or four of them within about a fortnight.’

‘Long told you this?’

‘Merrily, it was in the frigging papers. Don’t you read the papers?’

‘Well, it’s been a bit… So what’s he doing here?’

‘Keeping a low profile. He wants a bit of privacy to finish his next… whatever shite he’s working on now. And his wife wanted to live in the country. She likes to walk. Apparently.’

‘Actually,’ Merrily said, ‘a village is not a bad solution. You get gossip within a village, but it very rarely transfers to the outside world. So Jonathan Long…’

‘A formality. I gather Mr Winterson, as I believe he’s known, has been left with a phone number, for if he spots anything suspicious.’

‘Like a woman in a dog collar?’

‘Merrily, he eats vicars for breakfast. He’d destroy you with his withering logic.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You just want to see if he’s got little horns, don’t you?’

‘Well, that too.’

‘I gather you wouldn’t recognise him. He’s lost a lot of weight. Anyway, avoid. Don’t betray my trust.’

‘It didn’t come from you. No trust involved. Where are we going?’

‘God knows,’ Bliss said. ‘It’s been a crap day.’

‘You want to talk about it?’

‘Not really. Howe’s under pressure to wrap this up quickly. Probably political, and naturally we’re all getting the heat.’

‘Political pressure?’

‘Killing a senior councillor is tantamount to sedition.’

‘Only if it was done for political reasons. You surely can’t be letting your whole inquiry be dominated by one message on an answering machine. Does nobody remember the Yorkshire Ripper hoax tape? I’m Jack? Put the whole investigation back months, and he was still… ripping. And all the cops charging down the wrong alley.’

‘This is different.’

‘Really?’

They were on the bypass now. Not the costliest of bypasses, less than a mile of it before it joined the original Leominster road near a nineteenth-century bridge across the river at a spot known as Caple End. But maybe this was the best kind: not really a bypass at all, when you thought about it, just a more direct way in and out of Ledwardine. Bliss pulled into a long lay-by the other side of Caple End bridge. It was wider than the village bridge, a place where summer tourists would stop to picnic by the river.

‘Gorra feller coming over from Worcester in about an hour. Archaeologist in charge of the excavation of the Dinedor Serpent. I’ve been directed by the headmistress to meet him on the site.’

‘You going to play him the message?’

‘Word is some of the archaeologists aren’t too pleased at being told to wrap up their dig and bugger off so the new road can go in. So… no.’

‘You think the Children of the Serpent could be disgruntled archaeologists?’

Bliss wrinkled his nose.

Merrily said, wanting to help him, ‘Wreckage and blood? You know what that might be implying, do you?’

‘Remind me.’

‘Can I have a cigarette?’

‘It’s a police vehicle.’ Bliss let go the wheel, sagged in his seat. ‘Yeh, go on. But open your window a bit.’

Pulling out the Silk Cut and the Zippo, Merrily wondered how Jane would explain this. Think it out.

‘OK, sometimes… when there’s an accident black spot — the kind where there’s no obvious cause, no blind bends, whatever — some people may suggest drivers’ concentration could be impaired, or their perceptions altered, because the road is aligned with — or crosses—’

‘A ley line?’

‘Let’s call it a line of energy. Which our remote ancestors apparently knew about but we, with our dulled senses, can no longer perceive.’

‘Yeh, I know all that. But — pardon me if I’m stating the obvious here — the so-called serpent is not a line, is it? It’s a…’ Bliss did the gestures ‘… wavy thing.’

‘Still some kind of energy path. According to Jane, it’s possibly connecting the River Wye with the earthworks on Dinedor Hill and reflecting the curves of the river. I’m just trying to give you an idea of how they might see it.’

‘Reflecting the curves?’

‘Literally, perhaps, because of the pieces of quartz which would reflect moonlight.’

‘So the new road cutting through all this…’

‘Would be seen as breaking an ancient spiritual link. The secular world, with its noise and its exhaust fumes bursting through the coils of the serpent.’

‘Which our friend insists is writhing under the hill.’ Bliss sighed. ‘I can’t believe we’re discussing this.’

‘Isn’t this what you wanted? How whoever made that call might be thinking? But the person who made the call… how likely is that, really, to be Ayling’s killer? As Jane’s always saying, these are people who abhor violence.’

‘Go on, all the same. Finish it.’

‘Well… the theory might be that you’ve got all this rogue energy misdirected now, affecting the attention of drivers, if only for a second. So whenever there’s an accident on that road…’

‘Certain people will be nodding their little heads knowingly. Which people?’

‘Frannie—’

‘Members of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society, for instance?’

‘Look… I just can’t. I can’t give you a list, OK?’

‘It might…’ Bliss looked at her steadily, finger-drumming the vinyl in the centre of the wheel. ‘It might be the soft-option, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘It’s ridiculous. These people—’

‘Merrily, eight of them were arrested for refusing to leave the council offices when the cabinet was meeting to discuss the new road. That shows a certain… determination.’

‘Frannie…’ Merrily heard the echo of Jane: We live in a police state! Nobody’s allowed to object any more ‘It’s bollocks. I doubt any of the eight people arrested were even pagans, practising or otherwise. Just ordinary people with an interest in their heritage who didn’t think the democratic process was being followed. You really have no solid connection between the Dinedor Serpent and the murder of Clement Ayling.’

‘Wanna bet?’

She turned to face him, her back against the door, smoke from the cigarette wisping out of the open window, stray raindrops spraying in. She said nothing.

‘What I’m about to tell you, Merrily… there’s always something we like to keep in our back pocket, right? Something known only to the investigating team and the killer?’

She kind of nodded, not entirely sure she wanted to become the third party.

‘So you know what that means,’ Bliss said. ‘It means not a word, Reverend. Not to Lol, not to Jane… especially not to Jane.’

Merrily saw the water whirlpooling around the arch of the bridge. One of those moments where you backed away from the edge or you got pulled in.

‘Look, whatever it is, you really don’t have to tell me. You know how I hate to feel compromised.’

‘Yeh, well, on past experience,’ Bliss said, ‘I prefer to have you compromised.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And it’s been a crap day.’

‘So you want to ruin someone else’s?’

‘His eyes were gone,’ Bliss said.

Merrily swallowed some smoke, coughed. An empty stock lorry came rattling over the bridge, headlights full on, yellow smears on Bliss’s blotched windscreen.

‘Ayling’s eyes had been gouged out and pebbles placed in the sockets. Bits of gravel, it looked like.’

‘Gravel?’

No…

‘Which turned out, on examination last night, to include fragments of quartz.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Almost certainly originating in the so-called Dinedor Serpent. Somebody’d carefully jammed bits of the serpent into Clem Ayling’s eye sockets.’

Merrily squeezed out the cigarette, burned her thumb.

‘Being a cynical, case-hardened detective, I never let on, but I’ll admit it spooked even me at first.’

‘As it was… meant to?’

‘Yeh. Me or somebody. Torchlight, see. Councillor Ayling’s severed head, with the eyes lit up like little bulbs on a Christmas tree. Not something you easily forget, Merrily, to be honest.’

22 Watery Lane

IT SHOULDN’T BOTHER her, of course. With less than ten per cent of the population of Ledwardine ever showing up at a service, there had to be scores of atheists in this village.

On the other hand, the others simply didn’t show up. Said the occasional good morning to the vicar, ignored the church. Entirely inoffensive, your atheists, as a rule. Didn’t make a thing out of it. Except for fundamentalists like the celebrated geneticist Richard Dawkins, who had opened his book The God Delusion by hailing the bravery and the splendour of atheism. And Mathew Stooke, who’d taken it a little further. Who, according to his website, was demanding — how seriously wasn’t made clear — an official bank holiday, some kind of Atheism Pride Day. People parading with blank banners, singing ‘Glad to be Godless’?

Merrily lit a cigarette, studying Stooke’s face on his website, like there was the smallest chance of him being the first to blink.

Not an edifying image. Black hair, black beard — touch of the Charles Manson, even — but better than imagining the heavy head of big, smiley Clem Ayling with eyes of shining quartz.

No matter how much he’d changed, she thought she’d recognise Stooke’s eyes. Quiet eyes that were looking past you towards a finite horizon. No visible rage.

Not even a physicist or a geneticist. Just a journalist.

The Independent had kept him on as Religious Affairs correspondent after he’d come out as an atheist. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Merrily sat in the computer-lit scullery, remembering, from her childhood, the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Catholic against Protestant, religion synonymous with hatred and violent death.

Around the same time, John Lennon had been imagining wistfully that there was no heaven. Easy if you tried, and she had tried but never found it that easy. Nothing colder than an empty sky: clean, pure, bleak, pointless.

Like the scores of Islamic suicide bombers who’d given their lives to promote the cause of secularism in the West. Blow yourself up with a few dozen innocent infidels and there’s a queue of virgins waiting for you in paradise.

World Cup tickets for all martyrs.

Insane.

All religion, therefore, was insane.

Merrily cross-reffed to Stooke’s Amazon listing, found The Hole in the Sky ranking number 34 in the Hot One Hundred. Which, since it had been around for more than a year, was disturbingly impressive. Whatever it was costing to rent Cole Barn would be small change, these days, for Mr Winterson.

Yeah, right. She scrolled into the Amazon reader reviews.

Merrily watched the cigarette browning in the ashtray. So what did you get for Christmas, Merrily? Apart from Britain’s premier evangelical atheist as a parishioner.

She picked up the cigarette and tamped it out in the ashtray. She had a parish to work, the open desk diary reminding her to drop in this afternoon on Sarah Clee, who provided summer flowers for the church from her garden in Blackberry Lane, and should be back home after a hip replacement.

Real life. She spooned out some lunch for Ethel, scrambled herself an egg and carried it, with a slice of toast, back to the computer. On the desktop was an icon marked Sacred.

Cole Hill Preservation Society. The membership database. Jane had all the names on her laptop but, for safety’s sake, she’d copied the file onto the scullery computer.

All the names of all the decent citizens concerned about their heritage. All the gentle pacifist pagans. And maybe one or two loonies. No worries about her mum prying, because of the new trust between them now.

Merrily’s hand hovered over the mouse. The paperback copy of The Hole in the Sky lay at the edge of the desk like a time bomb.

Bliss stopped the car on a forecourt in front of some shops on the edge of the Rotherwas Industrial Estate, got out his mobile and checked in with the incident room.

‘Hold on a moment, Francis.’ And then — a knowing, calculated insult — Iain Brent, PhD, didn’t even bother to cover the phone. ‘Don’t need Bliss for anything, do you, ma’am?’

Bliss didn’t hear a reply.

‘No, Francis,’ Brent said. ‘Unless you have anything for us?’

Twat.

Bliss spent a couple of minutes staring through the dirty windscreen at the dirty sky, trying to lose the tightness in his chest.

On the way out, after his dismissal by Howe, Kevin Snape had called him back.

‘Nice one, Francis. The Dinedor connection — staring us all in the face, but nobody else spotted it.’

‘Deductive flair, Kev. Sadly out of fashion nowadays.’

‘No, come on, what put you on to it?’

Just a hunch, Bliss had said. And contacts. Like he was going to tell them the truth — that all he’d done, because he knew bugger-all about local councillors, was Google Clement Ayling, Hereford and then watch two full pages of links to the Dinedor Serpent come bouncing up at him. And then Google the Serpent.

Bliss started the car, looking for Watery Lane which apparently gave access to the new road site. His mobile went off. He pulled in again. ‘Yeh.’

‘Inspector Bliss? It’s Steve Furneaux, Planning Department, Herefordshire Council. You wanted to talk to me, I think, about Hereforward. And then my secretary said you’d rung an hour or so ago — she wasn’t sure whether it was to cancel or postpone.’

Bliss thought about it quickly. Yeh, he’d done that. He’d called to cancel. Just like he’d been ordered to by his superior officer — daughter of the ex-copper, bent, who was also a member of Hereforward. Not of immediate importance, is it? Annie had said.

Right, then.

‘No worries, Steve,’ Bliss said. ‘All it was… small problem about me getting to your office before lunchtime. Where is it you actually go for lunch?’

‘Oh, various pubs. And Gilbies bar.’

‘Gilbies would be fine,’ Bliss said. ‘Shall we say half-one?’

When he turned along Watery Lane it was rising to its name, the ditch on the left overflowing, half the road swamped.

Bliss drove through regardless.

Over seven thousand people worldwide had signed Jane’s online petition, calling for the preservation of Coleman’s Meadow as sacred space. Merrily hadn’t realised there were so many. Easy to underestimate the Web’s ability to draw together threads of dissent.

Several like this. She kept on scrolling down, looking for a specific reference to the Dinedor Serpent. Although there seemed to be a direct parallel here, if on a far smaller scale, to what was happening at the hill of Tara, the various Irish protesters didn’t seem to have been aware of the Serpent.

A hard copy of Jane’s petition had already gone to Herefordshire Council, although Merrily guessed that some of the messages accompanying the names and addresses of supporters had been edited out first.

These are gentle people. Well-meaning, Jane had said.

From Helios, Chichester:

Merrily found several like this, also, some of them far more local and even more weird.

One, from a man in Malvern, said:

Merrily closed the database, switched off the computer. Sometimes logging on to the Net was like turning over an old log in the woods, a whole unexpected ecosystem under there.

Gentle people. Well-meaning.

Yes. Most of them.

23 The Hill, the River and the Moon

‘It’s not gone,’ the archaeologist said. ‘Just gone back underground, it has. Like a big earthworm.’

His name was Harri Tomlin, from the South Wales Valleys, now based in Worcester with the team in charge of the Dinedor/Rotherwas excavation. Young guy. Blond curls fringing his orange hard hat. Bliss had been given one too, before he’d been allowed on the site. Health and Safety. At least it kept the rain out.

‘When I say worm,’ Harri said, ‘that’s not much more than conjecture at this stage. Worm, dragon, serpent… we have nothing to measure it against, see, that’s the problem. There’s nothing quite like it anywhere.’

They were standing on a bulldozed mound of clay. Caterpillar tracks below it had filled up with cloudy water. A bunch of trees had been sawn down, their trunks lying around like dead soldiers on a battlefield. Behind the site was the sprawl of the Rotherwas Industrial Estate and the civic waste tip — on the edge of that, unexpectedly, the Rotherwas Chapel, medieval and Tudor, an historical gem.

Mass of contradictions, this part of town. Directly ahead was Dinedor Hill, wooded and misted, towards which the Serpent apparently coiled.

‘So let me get this right,’ Bliss said wearily to Harri Tomlin. ‘You’re saying it definitely wasn’t an ancient road.’

‘We very quickly ruled out an actual road, Mr Bliss, because it doesn’t have any substructure, see. It’s also built on undulating ground, rather than having the ground flattened as you’d do for a road. So it has this kind of flow.’

He’d talked about fire-cracked stones, sourced nearby. The Bronze Age guys would heat up big stones, then drop them into cold water which would break them up into the kind of small pieces they could use.

‘And it contains a lot of quartz?’ Bliss said.

‘Fair amount.’

‘And it was exposed for a while after you found it.’

‘For too long. Even after a few weeks, there was some erosion. We were actually glad to get it covered over again.’

‘Weeks,’ Bliss said. ‘So in that time anybody could’ve nipped up here, under the fence, and pinched a handful.’

‘Or a bucketful. That’s what worried us. Sightseers often like to go home with a souvenir.’

‘So people were actually nicking stones?’

‘It’s ten metres wide. How could we tell? Why do you want to know if some were missing, Mr Bliss? If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘How long is it?’ Bliss said.

‘How long’s a piece of string? We cleared sixty metres, but that might be just a small segment. May go all the way up the hill, to the Iron Age camp on the top, behind those trees. The Serpent is pre- Iron Age, obviously, but then there could’ve been something interesting up there before the camp.’

‘I’m not really getting an image, Harri.’

Bliss was cold and his hands were going numb and whatever the Serpent had been they’d reburied it, so the council could put their road across it. Just another construction site now.

‘Ever seen the Uffington White Horse in Berkshire, Mr Bliss?’

Bliss shook his head. Didn’t recall ever being in Berkshire. He did remember a white horse in Wiltshire, in the context of a miserable camping holiday with Kirsty before they were married. Kirsty whingeing the whole week.

‘May have seen one on the Wiltshire Downs. Chalk?’

‘That’ll do. Now, forget the chalk and instead of a horse think of a snake. Or, if you like, think of a river. Think of the Wye. Could our structure have been designed to replicate the actual course of the Wye, winding from the top of the hill to the banks of the river itself?’

‘That far?’

‘It’s not very far. The river’s down there, behind those industrial buildings. This is about the hill, the river and the moon.’

Harri told him the theory about this sinuous spectral form winding its moonlit way to the top of the hill.

‘Prehistoric son et lumière?’ Bliss said.

‘The sound would be chanting. A sacred hill, see. A lot of hills were sacred. And the river. Water was always very significant, and the Wye’s a magnificent river so it would be venerated above all others in the west. Therefore, if we imagine…’

Harri walked to the top of the mound and started weaving his arms about, the way blokes used to air-sketch a voluptuous woman.

‘… If we imagine something mystically — and very visibly — connecting the hugely powerful River Wye with the highest hill in these parts. Something suggestive of a coming-together, a confluence, of these great power symbols, the hill, the river and the moon.’

‘Now about to be trashed by a new road slicing through the middle, courtesy of the Hereford Council,’ Bliss said. ‘Would that be a fair assessment?’

‘Hey…’ Harri Tomlin put up his hands. ‘Wasn’t me done him, guv.’

‘So much for a quick result. Where do you lads go from here, Harri?’

‘Probably try to extend the excavation in the direction of the river, see how far the Serpent goes. Which means digging on private land, so may take a while to organise.’

‘And when you say these places are sacred, what’s the significance of that, in terms of what they were doing here back then?’

‘Ritual.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Search me. That word covers up a lot of ignorance. We don’t know what rituals were involved, of course we don’t.’

‘Human sacrifice, maybe?’

‘Ah, see, people like to think there was human sacrifice all over the place, but it probably wasn’t all that widespread. It’s common to think of Bronze Age people as primitive savages, but they must’ve been quite sophisticated.’

‘Savagery itself, Harri,’ Bliss said quietly, ‘can sometimes be quite sophisticated.’

Harri Tomlin looked across at the stripped ground and the slaughtered trees, his legs apart, his fluorescent yellow jacket gleaming with rain. Then he looked at Bliss.

‘What are you after? You really think somebody killed Ayling because he was being so negative about this discovery? I mean, you actually think that’s a possibility?’

‘It’s a possibility, Harri.’

‘Can you tell me why you’ve made this connection, because from my point of view—’

‘Nothing personal, Harri, but it’s not my decision how much we reveal and when. I can tell you there was a ritualistic element. And the connection with this site… that’s beyond argument.’

‘Which is why you borrowed some quartz chippings from us yesterday?’

‘And if you can think of anything else that might help us, I hope you won’t hold back.’

Bliss let the silence dangle, looking at Harri Tomlin through half-closed eyes.

‘Look,’ Harri said. ‘You want me to get fanciful here, is it? I mean, I’m not going to have to repeat all this in court at some stage?’

‘I’m not writing it down, Harri, and I’m not wired. Be as fanciful as you like.’

‘All right, then,’ Harri said. ‘Heads.’

‘Heads, plural?’

‘I’m not so much thinking of the guys who laid out the Serpent, I’m thinking the people who built the camp or fort on Dinedor Hill. The Iron Age Celts, who came over here from Europe, two or three thousand years ago. They were very into heads. They believed that the seat of consciousness — the soul, if you like — was located in the head. So the Celts tended to take off the heads of their enemies.’

‘That a fact.’

‘After death, this is. And, from your point of view, it possibly gets better. A contemporary Roman account tells how they’d preserve the head of a distinguished enemy in cedar oil and keep it in a chest for display. Or they might offer it up to the gods. Skulls have also been found, in quite large numbers, at shrines and other sacred places.’

‘Like the old Blackfriars Monastery?’

‘No, no, Mr Bliss — medieval, that is.’

‘Couldn’t be a Celtic site or something underneath?’

‘If there is, we haven’t found it yet. Sorry.’

‘So, let’s look at this a minute, Harri. We’ve gorra mixture of historical periods. But wouldn’t this serpent… wouldn’t that still have been around in Celtic times?’

‘We think not. A Roman ditch cuts across it, so it was certainly silted over by then. However, the hill itself would still have been venerated and perhaps a memory of the Serpent remained. Perhaps it still… For instance, while I’ve been working here, people have told me how families used to follow a path to the top of Dinedor on special days, like a pilgrimage?’

‘To this day?’

‘Near enough,’ Harri Tomlin said. ‘That’s a ritual, too, in its way, isn’t it? Beliefs and customs often last longer than physical remains. There’s also — I don’t suppose this helps you, particularly, but there’s a link between heads and water — specifically wells and rivers. Skulls have been found in rivers.’

Bliss was gazing up at Dinedor Hill, trying to stitch all this together. The important thing was that Harri Tomlin was strongly supporting the ritual element in the killing.

‘You get many… I dunno, modern pagan-types coming to see the site, Harri?’

‘Oh, some days…’ Harri was smiling ‘… you’d look up from your trench and they’d be coming out of the woods like the Celts of old. Home-made, multicoloured sweaters and dowsing rods. Harmless enough. Quite respectful, in general. You tell them not to walk across the site, they won’t. Very respectful. Give me pagans any day, rather than bored kids.’

‘You get to know any of them?’

‘Not by name. One weird beardie is much like another, I find. We don’t get them now, mind — had to be a lot more strict about sightseers since the accident.’

Bliss blinked at him.

‘Two of the boys cutting down trees. If it’s a big one, one of them goes some distance away to get the wider view and then gives a whistle when he can see it’s clear. Boy with the chainsaw, he swore he’d heard the whistle, see…’

Harri put a hand behind an ear by way of illustration. Bliss waited.

‘Well, the other fellow never whistled because he wasn’t out of the way himself. Tree comes down, wheeeeeee.’ Harri lowered his arm, slowly. ‘Fractured skull, smashed shoulder. Two operations on that shoulder.’

‘You were here at the time?’

‘Worn my hard hat religiously ever since, Mr Bliss.’

Bliss handed his back. Five past one. Time to leave, if he was going to make Gilbies by half past.

‘All the way to the ambulance, he was swearing he hadn’t whistled,’ Harri said, like Bliss might want to make something of it. ‘Funny how your senses can play tricks in a big open space like this.’

24 Poisoning the Apple

Merrily went into the church, up into the chancel, to meditate… pray.

Taking off Jane’s red wellies and sitting, thick-socked, in the old choirmaster’s chair. Hands palms-down on her knees, eyes almost closed, breathing regulated. This was how she went about it now, when she was on her own. Less liturgical, more meditative. Feeling for answers… truth.

Feeling for anything, actually, today, as the rain tumbled on the roof, rushed into the guttering, roared inside her head — a punishing noise. Her reward, probably, for opening The Hole in the Sky at random.

She’d put the book down. Not thrown it down, just laid it next to the sermon pad.

It was not the issue. It was meaningless, like the arrival in Ledwardine of Mathew Stooke. No significant coincidence here — all the picturesque backwaters, forget it, the guy had to live somewhere.

This was not the reason she needed to go into the church.

Merrily had spent about twenty minutes mentally laying out the real issue, walking all around the house and ending up in Jane’s attic apartment where there were stacks of old magazines: back copies of Pagan Dawn, Pentacle, White Dragon, other homespun journals representing Wicca, Druidry and all pagan points in between. Bought and absorbed by thousands of people far too shy to dance naked around a woodland fire.

And people who weren’t. And people who did.

A long-established subculture was renewing itself, Jane would insist, while Christianity withered, in these days of industrial abuse, greed, neglect and consequent climate change. As the Earth bled, paganism was the only practical belief system and if the Church wanted to survive it needed to alter its remit accordingly.

Jane’s view of it was rose-tinted, of course — paganism just this all-embracing term for Earth-related green spirituality, a striving for oneness with the elements, sometimes personified as gods and goddesses, the male and female energies in nature. Pagans were more aware of their immediate environment, more connected to the land — this land, these hills, these fields. And when the land was raped and its ancient shrines desecrated by secular governments, pagans felt the pain, almost physically. Felt the violence. A spear into our spiritual heart, as the Irishman, Padraig Neal, had put it.

But this wasn’t some enlightened, half-faerie super-race. Pagans and green activists were just more flawed human beings, prone to anger, frustration, irrational hatreds, mental imbalance… and firing off inflammatory emails.

Emails were not like letters. Emails were shot from the hip and, by the time you’d realised you’d gone too far, it was too late, you’d sent it. Sure, there was a lot of anger about, but there was a big difference between sending a knee-jerk email and going out there with a knife or a machete.

And yet…

What was she supposed to do about this?

Perhaps sit down tonight with Jane and have a long discussion in the hope of convincing her that they should go through the entire correspondence of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society, compiling a list of possibly dangerous extremists. Which would take most of the night.

And then what?

What?

What if there was another killing?

At lunchtime, when she got the call on her mobile, Jane was still smouldering.

Last day of term, and in morning assembly they’d all had to stand up and do a minute’s silence for Councillor Clement Ayling, who had apparently been Chairman of Education. Morrell paying a sincere tribute to Ayling’s vision and all that crap. Meaningless to the little kids at the front of the hall. Jane, at the back, glowering down at her shoes, thinking, What a total hypocritical scumball.

Another Catcher in the Rye moment. Been getting them a lot lately. This was the situation: Morrell — who insisted his job title was School Director — was the worst kind of New Labour, and Ayling had been this lifelong worst kind of Old Tory. Not only that but he was one of the guys behind the plan to close down a whole bunch of Herefordshire schools, primary and secondary.

Well, not close them down, merge them — that was the get-out term. What you did was to put two fairly successful small secondary schools under one big roof.

Thus creating a massive new sink school where nobody learned anything except where to get good crack, and they had to lower the academic goalposts and fiddle the results and the cops spent so much time on the premises you might as well set up a permanent incident room on the playing field.

And why was Morrell quietly supporting this? Why had Morrell — whose party claimed to stand for education, education, education — been up Ayling’s bum? Simple. This school had a lot of land, and fields all around, perfect for expansion. So, if Ayling’s scheme went through, while some other bastard might be out of a job, Morrell could find himself director of an operation twice the size, with a much bigger salary.

That was how much of a socialist Morrell was. Right now, curled up on the rescued sofa in a corner of the sixth-form leisure suite, Jane just couldn’t wait to leave this lousy place for good.

‘You thinking about sex again, Jane?’

Sweaty Rees Crawford chalking his snooker cue, getting in some final practise for this afternoon’s Big Match, the final of the Sixth Form Championship in which he was playing Jordan Hare — Ethan Williams taking bets on the outcome. Jane couldn’t decide.

‘Look,’ she snarled, as her mobile went off inside her airline bag. ‘Don’t you go projecting your sad fantasies on me, Crawford. You screw that thing around much faster, there won’t be any chalk left. Who’s this?’ Snapping into the phone.

‘You don’t sound too happy, Jane.’

‘Coops?’

‘Oh, Coops,’ Rees Crawford said, leering at her, and Jane gave him the finger.

‘It is OK to call you now, is it?’ Neil Cooper said. ‘Your lunch break, right?’

‘Sure.’ Not like it would matter anyway, the way she was feeling. ‘It’s fine.’

‘Only I said I’d keep you up to speed. It’s starting tomorrow.’

‘The dig?’ Jane gripping the phone tight. ‘The dig’s happening?’

‘Officially starting tomorrow.’

‘So Bill Blore…’

‘He’s here. Don’t say wow. Please do not say wow.’

‘He’s in the village?’

‘He’s actually been over a few times, doing geophysics, making sure we haven’t got it all wrong and what’s under there are concrete lamp-posts or something. You, er… want to meet him?’

‘Me?’ Jane lowered her feet to the floor. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Actually,’ Coops said, ‘he wants to meet you.’

‘Stop taking the piss. I’m not in the mood.’

‘No, really. He’s meeting all the people involved with Coleman’s Meadow from the outset. You were the outset. What time’s your school bus get in — half-four? Should still be some light. So if you want to come over to the site when you get home?’

‘Wow, you are serious.’

‘All I’d say, Jane,’ Coops said, ‘is, don’t get carried away. Whatever he tells you, don’t get carried away.’

‘You know me, Coops,’ Jane said, tingling. ‘Ms Cool.’

On a good day, Merrily would have been leaving the church nursing some new and unforeseen possibility, the softly gleaming ingot of an idea. Saved again.

Or at least not feeling sick with dread.

When she walked out, in Jane’s red wellies, under the dripping lych-gate, it was like Ledwardine was drifting away from her. All its colours washing out, daytime lights in the shops burning wanly behind the sepia screen of slanting rain. Gutted by the feeling that the village was getting bigger and, at the same time, more amorphous, more remote.

Like God?

All she’d seen, in meditation, were the small crises she’d failed to react to, the issues she’d back-burnered. All coming together like coalescing clouds, making darkness.

Crossing to the Eight Till Late, she saw a pale orange poster in one of the mullioned windows of the pub on the edge of the square.

God, Barry hadn’t wasted any time, had he? All welcome. Would that work? Already she could hear the background noise from the bars, people talking and laughing while Lol, bent over his guitar, murmured his tribute to Lucy Devenish whom most of the Swan’s clientele had either never known or considered mad.

From Brenda Prosser at the shop, she bought a box of All Gold for Sarah Clee.

‘They must be mad.’ Brenda apparently continuing a conversation she’d been having with the previous customer who’d already left the store. ‘Merrily — pardon me for being nosy, but do you get properly recompensed? I mean for all these flowers and fruit and chocolates you keep buying for sick parishioners?’

‘Erm… no. Who must be mad?’

‘Those archaeologists. All turning up this morning in their Land Rovers. And a TV camera team, too — what’s that programme…?

‘Trench One? They’ve arrived? I didn’t know that.’

‘And a big tall crane. We didn’t know there was going to be TV. What can they hope to do in this weather?’

‘I actually think they like it, in a way,’ Merrily said. ‘Makes it look more dramatic on TV if they’re fighting the elements and they’re all covered in mud. Makes archaeology look like… trench warfare?’

‘Rather them than me.’ Brenda shivered. ‘All the farmers have moved their sheep from within about half a mile of the river, did you know?’

‘Doesn’t surprise me.’

‘Give Sarah my love, will you?’ Brenda said.

Not possible, as it turned out. The rain had slowed, but there was no promise of brightness in the swollen sky when Merrily reached the age-warped cottage in Blackberry Lane, with its window boxes of yellow and purple winter pansies. Brian Clee, retired postman, had the front door open before she was through the garden gate.

‘I’m sorry, Merrily, should’ve rung you.’ He looked worn out, frazzled ‘She was only took in this morning, see. Another ward closure — some infection. Half the hip ops postponed.’

‘That means she’ll be in over Christmas?’

Merrily followed Brian Clee into the house, his white head bent under the bowed beams in the hall. She left Jane’s red wellies on the doormat, took off her coat and stayed for a cup of tea, listening to Brian’s opinion of the county hospital, its unfriendly, automated rip-off, too-small car park, its smoking ban in the grounds so you couldn’t even have a fag to calm your nerves.

‘She’ll be fine, Brian. We prayed for her last weekend, and we’ll do it again on Sunday.’

‘Thank you, Merrily.’

Brian nodding as she left him with the chocolates. Not displaying much conviction, though, that virulent hospital infections could be neutralised by prayer.

‘Sod off, Stooke!’

Merrily stopped in the lane. Had she actually said that out loud? She was furious at herself for letting this get to her. There was no earthly reason…

And yet there was. She kept forgetting this — Stooke’s wife coming on to Jane like that, asking too many questions. That was a reason. She’d even Googled Leonora Winterson, finding next to nothing. No picture, anyway; Lensi took pictures rather than appeared in them — and certainly not with her husband. In fact, Google Images had only one shot of him — the ubiquitous Charles Manson pose. His website said he didn’t do TV, and cameras were banned from his bookshop signings.

Couldn’t get rid of him. Like he was her nemesis or something. Merrily splashed angrily through a chain of puddles into the churchyard, arriving at the modest grave of Lucy Devenish.

It had come to this.

‘I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, Lucy. I’m supposed to minister to the living.’

Standing in the grey-brown rain with her bare hands on the rounded stone, remembering the first time she’d encountered the indomitable Miss Devenish, on an ill-fated night of wassailing in the orchard. Lucy with her hooked Red Indian’s nose, wearing her trademark poncho and a sense of unease.

Amply justified that night. During the traditional loosing of shotguns through the branches, to promote a good year of apples, old Edgar Powell had blown his own head off. They used to say — kids, mainly — that Edgar haunted the orchard, and if you looked up into the branches of the Apple Tree Man, the oldest tree, you might see him. The tree had been chopped down. A mistake, Jane had said; old Edgar could appear anywhere in the orchard now, smiling through the branches and the blood. It didn’t scare pagan Jane.

You know what, Lucy? Merrily’s grip tightening on the head-stone. I think I’m losing it. Thought it was going all right. The regular congregations weren’t exactly huge, but the Sunday-evening meditation… word was spreading and we were getting people actually interested in searching for something inside themselves. I was finally beginning to see what you meant by the orb.

Orb was a word Lucy had borrowed from Traherne, the 17th-century poet, drunk on Herefordshire. Lucy using it to describe the ambience of Ledwardine, the confluence of tradition, custom, history and spirit. The orb was an apple, shiny and wholesome.

Who’s poisoning the apple, Lucy?

Blinking back tears, she turned away. This was Jane’s place. Jane did the dead. Jane, who felt herself so far from death as to be able to deal with it almost lovingly. Merrily walked away, following the route Jane had identified as a coffin path, a spirit road, into the lower orchard where Edgar Powell had died.

Haunted or not, the orchard in winter was a reminder of loss. The village had once been encircled by a density of cider-apple trees, nurtured, it was said, by the fairies whose lights could be seen glimmering at twilight among the branches.

If there were lights now, they were corpse candles. The trees were slowly dying off, gradually getting cremated on cosmetic open fires in the Black Swan.

A village of smoke and ghosts. The recently dead and the long, long dead.

Curiously, she was feeling calmer now. Standing on the path inside a rough circle of spidery, winter-bare apple trees, thinking about Lol who would sometimes play Nick Drake’s tragically prescient song ‘Fruit Tree’ which suggested that, for some people — for Nick, certainly — nothing would flourish before death.

Merrily looked up. With the trees gradually getting turned into scented ashes, the only active life forms here were the unearthly balls of mistletoe, suspended like alien craft high among the scabbed and blackened branches, always just out of reach.

Kisses for Christmas, out of reach. She walked on, knowing exactly what she was doing now, where she was going.

When you left behind what remained of the orchard, the fields opened up below you. One was Coleman’s Meadow with a temporary barbed-wire fence around it, a parking area marked out with orange tape, and something like a fairground on it now: a dark green tent, like an army canteen, two caravans, two Land Rovers and one of those cranes that they used for a cherry-picker TV camera. About a dozen people in waterproofs around a mini-JCB, laughter rising frailly through the rain. Cole Farm itself, served by a narrow lane, was wedged into a clearing in the trees ascending Cole Hill. But Cole Barn was exposed on the edge of a small field adjoining the meadow, with a pool of flood water in front, beginning to encroach on a tarmac parking area.

Well, it was called Cole Barn, but it had never been an actual barn, according to Gomer Parry, just an old tractor shed. So there was no glazed-over bay, like you usually found with barn conversions, just an ordinary front door, probably not very old.

From which a woman emerged. Turquoise waterproof, coppery hair. She came out quickly and ran through the squally rain to a new-looking black Mercedes 4×4 parked in a turning circle. Merrily stood on the edge of the dripping orchard, as the engine growled and the 4×4 spun, skidding and squirting gravel, into a dirt track full of puddles that led into the lane.

It was, she guessed, quite an angry exit. She herself could now make a discreet one, turning away and melting back among the geriatric apple trees.

Or she could go down, knock on the door and, if anyone was in, do the bumbling-vicar bit. Welcome to the parish, Mr Winterson.

You just wanner…

Before she could reconsider, she’d scrambled down to open up the field gate, and then she was crossing the strip of rough grass spiked with the skeletons of last year’s docks, to the front door of Cole Barn.

… See if he’s got little horns.

25 Outside the Box

‘Basically,’ Steve Furneaux said, ‘I liked Clem. He was like an old bulldog. Barked at you from a distance and then he’d gradually come sniffing around, always suspicious, until you threw him a biscuit or two.’

Gilbies was in an alley behind High Town, the tower and spire of St Peter’s church pushing up suddenly behind it like a rocket on a pad. A bar, for the upwardly mobile. By the time Bliss had got there Steve had eaten; Bliss had bought coffees.

‘We coped with him,’ Steve said. ‘You couldn’t actually heave him out of the way, but, like I say, you found ways of getting round him.’

Bliss figured Steve Furneaux was about his own age, but with better hair. A middle-ranking official in the planning department at Herefordshire Council. Londoner. Crisp, dapper, sandy-looking feller. No shit on his shoes.

‘Because we’re all quite excited about Hereforward, Francis. It’s a new concept, experimental, and we don’t want it to crash.’

‘Well, I’m just a thick copper. Perhaps you could you explain it to me very simply. As to a child with learning difficulties?’

‘I’ll explain it as I would to a new councillor,’ Steve said. ‘Which is pretty much the same thing.’

He paused to check out Bliss’s reaction. Bliss put on a smile. Harmless Terry Stagg had already talked to the chairman of Hereforward, assembling the nuts and bolts of Ayling’s last meeting. When Bliss had suggested it might be worth looking at some of the issues Hereforward was involved in, Howe could hardly say no at a briefing. Only privately pulling the rug when she had Bliss over a barrel. Bliss had picked out Steve, looking for an official, an employee, rather than a slippery councillor. It was proving a good choice. Steve was slippery, too, but in a different way, and he oozed personal ambition. Therefore no loyalty to Hereford or its councillors.

‘This is how it came about,’ Steve said. ‘There was some new funding available for a number of local joint committees to be set up to consider the long-term economic prospects and cultural directioning of particular areas of the West Midlands.’

‘Cultural conditioning,’ Bliss said. ‘Right.’

So this would be a clutch of councillors, council officials, sharks, leeches, token ethnics and tame gays tolerating each other over a free lunch. Not a new concept at all, then.

‘Hereford was encouraged to go for it, as we’re out on a limb,’ Steve said. ‘Geographically more Wales than West Midlands — but of course Wales is a different country now with its own government.’

‘And this would be another way for us to get quietly reined into the Midlands, would it?’

Steve laughed, glancing across at the bar-huggers. Wiped his nose with a red-spotted handkerchief and lowered his voice.

‘Think of it as a much-needed shot of adrenalin. We get to think outside the box. We were almost certainly the first to float the idea of a University of Hereford, which is now on the wider agenda.’

‘Blue-sky think-tank, in other words.’

‘Exactly. Look, Francis… sorry, is it Frank?’

‘It’s not Frank,’ Bliss said.

Through his teeth.

‘I mean, you’re obviously an outsider, too,’ Steve said.

‘I just talk like this to sound cool. Go on. You want to educate the hicks.’

‘The point is, there hasn’t been enough overview. Local government gets lost in details and, inevitably, parochialism — individual councillors nursing their pet projects and nothing getting done. Our brief is to come up with radical, global ideas which we feed directly to the cabinet, so that they’ve been fully shaped before they’re put before the authority en masse.’

‘I see.’ A fait-accompli machine, in other words. ‘And Clement Ayling…’

‘… was initially suspicious of us, as he always was of anything new. But he had a lot of influence and got himself co-opted onto Hereforward. More to keep an eye on us than anything. I think he saw us as some sort of central-government infiltration.’

‘Perish the thought,’ Bliss said. ‘So… what global concepts were you discussing at the meeting on Wednesday, Steve?’

Steve looked doubtful about being able to answer this one, maybe on the grounds that a report had not yet gone to the cabinet, or some bullshit.

‘All right,’ Bliss said, ‘answer me this. Was Councillor Ayling in any kind of, shall we say heated discussion during the meeting?’

‘Not that I recall, Francis, no. He seemed to spend most of it sitting there with his chin sunk into his chest, conveying a certain boredom with the proceedings.’

‘He leave with anybody?’

Terry Stagg had spoken to the Hereforward committee secretary, confirming times and stuff, but going over the same ground would often throw up an anomaly.

‘He left with me, actually,’ Steve said. ‘As I told your colleague.’

‘And what did you talk about?’

‘Oh… trivia. Date of the next planning meeting, that sort of—’

‘Did Hereforward have a view on the Dinedor Serpent?’

‘Ah,’ Steve said.

‘Because Clem Ayling had very definite views, didn’t he?’

‘Ah, well, you see, Clem…’ Steve leaned back on his stool. ‘I’m afraid poor old Clem couldn’t see the romance in it. Old-fashioned Herefordian, wanted the city to expand and prosper, offer more jobs and, yes, have its own university, he was with us on that…’

‘But couldn’t get excited about a trickle of gravel.’

‘No, I — Francis, where’s this going?’

‘You tell me, Steve.’

‘Well, we…’ Steve picking up his coffee for support. ‘We had quite a debate about the Serpent some months ago. Yes, the tourist potential of a world-famous prehistoric monument… if that’s what it is, we can’t easily ignore it.’

‘So, in saying it was worthless, Ayling was at odds with the rest of the committee?’

‘Ahm…’ Steve putting down his coffee. ‘Essentially, no. This was one of the few issues where Clem and the rest of us were broadly in agreement, although most of us were more tactful about how we phrased it.’

‘I see,’ Bliss said.

‘Obviously, if we’d been talking about something on the scale of Stonehenge… but, as you said yourself, this is a trickle of gravel. The tourism potential is always going to be minimal. That was how we saw it. And we certainly need that relief road — Hereford being the only substantial centre in the country without a bypass. This is a move in the right direction. Vital, really.’

‘Had to go through…’

‘Had to go through.’

‘So Hereforward didn’t manage to come up with a brilliant compromise solution.’

‘We’re working on it. We’ve asked to be kept informed of developments. If the Serpent does turn out to be something unique, then it’s our job to capitalise on it. But the council would need some convincing, and the more they get slagged off from outside the more they’ll resist.’

‘Who’s been slagging them off? In particular.’

‘The archaeologist, Blore, didn’t help an awful lot did he? Considering we were paying him…’

‘Who were?’

‘Hereforward used him as a consultant on the Serpent.’

‘Must’ve been costly.’

‘Not particularly, and we wanted an educated viewpoint.’

Big name, more like, Bliss thought.

‘And then he shoots his mouth off to the media. My colleagues weren’t pleased.’

‘Why? Blore’s a notorious loose cannon. They’d been thinking they could buy his opinion?’

Steve shrugged, wiping his nose.

‘I hear he’s in charge of this other local dig now,’ Bliss said. ‘Ledwardine?’

‘Got in by the back door. Not our problem, that, thank God — strictly a local issue. Local councillor wanted us to intervene, but a bunch of upmarket houses is not the same as a road and I suppose big stones would have more tourist appeal than pebbles.’ Steve looked at his watch — wafer-thin, and an extra dial, probably for New York time. ‘I’m afraid I’ve a meeting at three at Ross and Belmont’s close to impassable, so if you have any major questions…’

‘Would hate to hold you up, Steve. You look like a man in a hurry.’

‘Always,’ Steve said. ‘Surprised I haven’t seen you around, Francis. Which gym do you use?’

Bliss stared at him. This was a man who would get on well with Annie Howe. Christ, this man might even be able to seduce Annie Howe. Bliss kept on staring, but Steve Furneaux seemed quite relaxed in the company of a fellow incomer, an ally against the hicks and the rednecks.

‘Out of interest,’ Bliss said. ‘You being a blue-sky thinker, Steve… a radical thinker—’

‘I’m a planning officer. But, you’re right, Hereforward lets us off the mental leash.’

‘So who did it, Steve? Who killed Clement Ayling?’

‘You’re asking me?’

He looked thrown for a moment. Kind of feller who’d hate ever to be caught without an informed opinion.

‘I was thinking you could give me a blue-sky idea,’ Bliss said. ‘An independent assessment.’

Steve Furneaux actually looked, for a moment, like he was drawing up a shortlist. Or maybe — call this blue-sky thinking — wondering how best he could convince Bliss that Hereforward was a blind alley.

But he never found out who’d be in Steve’s frame; his mobile went off. ‘Excuse me a moment. Yeh.’

‘Boss?’

‘Hello, Sergeant.’

‘Oh.’ Karen Dowell picking up his signal. ‘Right. I’d better keep this short, then.’

Bliss fiddled with his sugar spoon while Karen told him that Howe was calling the class together for 2.30 p.m. On account of they’d found the rest of Ayling.

‘Well… more or less,’ Karen said.

Bliss put the spoon down gently.

‘Where?’

‘In the river. Half in, half out, kind of thing. Up against Bredwardine Bridge. You know where I mean?’

‘So that would be… the big river.’

A magnificent river, Harri Tomlin breathed in Bliss’s head. Venerated above all others.

‘Even bigger at present, as you can imagine,’ Karen Dowell said. ‘Well high, and a lot of debris, fallen trees and stuff washed up against the bridge. The body was apparently somewhere in the middle of all that.’

‘Intact?’

‘Still in the suit.’

Bliss had tuned out the background chat, and his mind was back in the mist with Harri Tomlin.

‘This is getting a bit spooky, Sergeant.’

‘Best if you tell me later, is it, boss?’

‘Karen, when you said more or less…?’

‘In relation to the body? Well, it just leaves the eyes, doesn’t it? The eyes are still missing.’

‘Ah.’

‘Got to go, boss. Sorry.’

‘OK. Thanks, Sergeant.’

‘Developments?’ Steve Furneaux said.

Was that a flicker of relief in Steve’s eyes?

Maybe, maybe not.

‘It’s the old story, Steve. No lunch, as they say, for the wicked.’ Bliss slid down from his stool. ‘Oh… before I go… was Charlie Howe at the meeting?’

‘Yes, I believe… Yes he was. We were surprised to see him because he was only just out of hospital. Ah…’ Steve raised a forefinger. ‘Of course… ex-policeman. Old colleague of yours?’

‘Bit before my time,’ Bliss said. ‘But a mate, you know. A good mate.’

Bliss had left his car at the back of the Gaol Street pay-and-display, away from prying police eyes. He sat in it for a while. One hand was trembling. Maybe the caffeine and no lunch.

Bitch had excluded him again, frozen him out. It had taken Karen to call and tell him that they’d found Ayling’s body. Nothing from Howe, not even via Brent.

This was about more than just the Shah kid. More than just him trying to keep her out of the Ayling case from the start. This was about Charlie, for definite.

Well, sod her, he’d make sure he was there at 2.30. Drop into the school at the last minute, so neither Howe nor Brent could head him off at the pass. Maybe he’d walk there a bit late. Bide his time and then casually explain the possible significance of the bulk of Ayling turning up in the Wye.

Why the body, not the head? Didn’t know, but it didn’t matter, there was something.

As he took his key out of the ignition he saw something sticking out from under the passenger seat. A small, scuffed book.

He bent and retrieved it.

My Little Pony. Naomi’s. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

What had he done?

Naomi. Seven and a half years old. All her mother’s best qualities, without the difficult bits. Bliss leaned back, holding the book on his knee, eyes squeezed shut. Even trying to focus on Kirsty’s difficult bits, he was reminded of one tender moment somewhere under that white horse in Wiltshire. A feeling of yes, this was right, this was the right thing.

What happened? Where did that go?

He sat up and put the book in the glove box, got out of the car and locked it and walked away, feeling closer to breaking down than at any time since his solo breakfast of burnt toast and brown sauce.

26 Dated Masquerade

As soon as Merrily had rung the bell she pulled back, appalled.

The front door was new. Polished hardwood, expensive. ‘Cole Barn’ carved tastefully into an oak plaque.

She backed away from it, disorientated. Looking around and not recognising anything. As if she’d come here without thinking, taken the wrong turning, walked into the wrong room.

Looking back towards the orchard, you almost could believe there was some primeval energy around that path. Not so much a healing, life-affirming force as something that amplified your anxieties into obsession.

If you were vulnerable. If you’d prayed for advice and received nothing. If you were afraid your daughter was unwittingly linked with someone who had killed and butchered a man. If, wherever you looked, you saw people losing control of their lives and threatening shadows cloaking the same implacable figure: the enemy of faith, the spirit of the secular state. The worm in the apple.

Nobody answered the door.

She breathed out hard, finally turning away. Anticlimax or relief?

Whatever, just get out of here. Walk away. Go home. Consider yourself saved.

All the same, Merrily was reluctant to go back on that same path. Just didn’t want to.

On a ridge at the top of the hedged paddock there was a wooden stile, giving access to Coleman’s Meadow, the platform crane arching over it as if it was offering lifts into the meadow. If she went back that way, at least she’d have something to tell Jane tonight.

The rain was in remission again, the air felt a little fresher. Walking up the sodden field, she became aware of the bell-shaped Cole Hill rising on the other side of the meadow.

So perfect from this angle. Robed in cloud, somehow lighter than the sky. She was aware, for the first time, just how breathtaking it would be, viewed between standing stones.

And stopped, strangely moved, touched by a connection. Was this how Jane felt all the time? Was this what Jane would interpret as pagan consciousness? It didn’t matter. All she knew was that the destruction of this view by Lyndon Pierce’s upmarket estate of fake Tudor executive homes with double and triple garages would be the worst kind of insult both to the living and the long, long dead.

This wasn’t myth. It was the only certainty she’d felt all day.

She felt lighter stepping down from the stile alongside the platform crane, its great arm half raised from the back of a black and yellow truck marked access hire.

Behind it, two men were arguing, blocking the path, one scowling from under a green waterproof hat, the other wearing a red hiking jacket and an expression somewhere between pained and placating.

‘True,’ the hat guy was saying. ‘We did know about it, we knew it was happening, but we were definitely not told it was going to be televised, with all the crap that involves. And I’m not trying to be awkward, but I came here for a bit of peace. To work, you know?’

‘Which I fully — I do understand your situation, and I’m sorry. But with this weather we’ve got way, way, way behind schedule, and we just can’t afford to delay it any longer. I mean, have you any idea—’ the man in the red jacket indicated the crane ‘—what that costs to rent?’

‘With respect, mate, that’s really not my—’

‘All I’m saying is we absolutely need to get a couple of days in before Christmas. And then — I promise you — most of us will clear off for a week or so and leave you in peace. OK?’

‘Where are you getting your power?’ the man in the hat said. ‘Electricity — for lights and things.’

‘Generators.’

‘All of it?’

‘Of course all of it.’

‘No cables leading out? You’ve got any uncovered cables?’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ The man in the hat abruptly turning away. ‘Oh—’ Nearly walked into Merrily. ‘I’m so sorry…’

‘My fault, I think I crept up on you.’

‘No, no, it was my — Look, I’m sorry, are you local? Can I ask you — do you mind? — did you know about this?’

‘Well, I did know about it,’ Merrily said, ‘but I’ve not heard of an official announcement, and I don’t think there’s been anything in the papers.’

‘We never put anything out to the papers in advance,’ the red-jacket guy said. ‘Simply because we don’t want a huge crowd of spectators. Which I’m sure wouldn’t be in your best interests, either, Mr—’

‘Winterson.’

Merrily took a step back, the red-jacket guy saying, ‘Yes, of course. I was going to come round to see if we could talk to you.’

‘You are talking to me.’

‘I meant on camera. I’m sorry, my name’s Mike Brodrick. I’m not an archaeologist, I’m a director with Trench One. What happens, we usually interview either the owner of the site or the person living closest, to learn something about its recent history. I now realise that, in your case, that—’

‘Look, Mike, just…’ Mr Winterson shaking his open hands, irritated ‘… carry on, yeah? Do what you have to do.’

‘Well… thank you. It won’t be anywhere near as disruptive as you think, I promise.’ Mike Brodrick gratefully walking off, calling back over a shoulder. ‘And we’ll have a security man on duty throughout. Day and night. Meanwhile, you know, stroll around if you’d like to. Check us out.’

‘I’ll do that.’ Mr Winterson moved away from the path, turning to Merrily. ‘Sorry about that. Must’ve sounded like one of these awful city types who move in and then start complaining about the cock crowing and the church bells.’

He took off his hat. He didn’t have a beard and his greying hair was short. He was nowhere near eighteen stone. His smile was rueful. ‘Elliot Winterson.’ He put out his hand. ‘You look absolutely soaked.’

‘I’m getting used to it. Merrily Watkins.’ She shook his hand; it wasn’t limp and it wasn’t cold. ‘TV guys, huh?’

‘Think they walk on water. I was a journalist for years — print journalist, scum of the earth, you know? While the TV boys are personalities. And don’t they know it. I mean, did you hear that? Offer the neighbours a chance to be on the box and watch all their complaints melt away. I’m sure it never bloody fails.’

He looked at her. She found she’d opened her coat, exposing the dog collar, like you brought out the big cross and the sprig of garlic.

‘Ah.’ He didn’t look fazed. ‘Yeah, I thought I’d heard the name. Did I see you at the meeting the other night?’

‘But not in uniform.’

Merrily was trying not to stare at him. Black fleece and grey trousers. His hair looked as if it was growing back after being shaved tight to the skull. The beard stubble was younger, maybe two days’ worth, making a mauvish circle around his entirely friendly white smile.

‘Quite interesting,’ he said, ‘the way people were divided over this dig.’

‘Not so much the dig as what happens afterwards,’ Merrily said. ‘Whether the stones get re-erected in situ.’

‘We certainly felt as if we were intruding on a family dispute.’

‘Pretty dysfunctional family.’

‘All communities are. Who was that woman who thought they represented satanic evil?’

‘Our postmistress.’

‘Member of your church?’

‘She comes to services, but I think she finds me a bit disappointing.’

He laughed. He looked relaxed now — more relaxed than Merrily felt. So much for the reprieve. A van drew into the field from the lane. A white van with a grey cromlech symbol on the side, the word Capstone across its lintel.

‘So you, erm, don’t really like it here, Mr Winterson?’

‘Elliot. No, look, it — the village itself is perfectly pleasant and unexpectedly civilised — nice pub and that bistro place. It’s just — you don’t think they’ll have great big floodlights at night, do you?’

‘Hard to say. I don’t know much about archaeology.’

‘Me neither. Shall we have a walk around? You can spare ten minutes, surely. I feel safer with the vicar.’

Huh? Another line from The Hole in the Sky came back at her, the kind that lingered, smarting, like your arm after an inoculation.

‘Someone local, anyway,’ he said. ‘My wife — have you met my wife?’

‘I think my daughter did.’

‘Ah yeah. Jane? Jane who started all this. Jane who we have to blame.’

Two men were taking something that looked like a complicated Zimmer frame from the back of the van.

‘She’s eighteen,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s hoping to become an archaeologist.’

‘Seems to have made an impressive start. She told my wife about her… visionary experience.’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘She’s…’ he shrugged, the rueful smile again ‘… young.’

‘It did lead, eventually, to the discovery of the buried stones.’

‘Yes.’ His eyes didn’t flicker. ‘My wife’s hoping to shoot a photo-sequence for the Independent when they get going.’ He smiled. ‘I suppose, now I’ve made myself into a possible thorn in their side — a potentially difficult person — these chaps’ll be more inclined to give Lenni access, to keep me happy. Not that that was any kind of strategy, you understand. Can we see any of these famous stones yet?’

‘They had at least one virtually exposed,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m not sure how big it was, but it looks like they’ve covered it over again. Probably because of the weather. There are at least another two, apparently, but I’m not sure where exactly.’

They walked down from the ridge towards the unturfed area, where a young woman was pacing something out between two khaki-coloured tents. You could see where the turf had already been removed in stripes, two orange-coloured mini-JCBs facing one another like adolescent dinosaurs squaring up for a fight.

‘So what do you do, Elliot?’

‘Me?’

‘You told the TV guy you were here to work.’

‘Ah.’ He grinned. ‘Bit of an exaggeration, I’m afraid. I’m on a sort of self-imposed sabbatical. I was working in America when my father died suddenly, leaving—’

‘Oh, I’m—’

‘Leaving me with a lot to sort out.’ Waving away the sympathy. ‘And enough money to buy time to consider exactly where we wanted to be.’ He grimaced. ‘Back in London, frankly, might’ve been quieter, but my wife… perhaps she’ll get the country out of her system. Or perhaps I’ll get used to it. I’m… looking at a few ideas for books. Nothing I feel confident enough to talk about yet. I’m sorry, that sounds a bit…’

‘I wasn’t prying.’

‘No, really, you have every right to pry. It’s not fair arriving somewhere being mysterious. People want to know. People need to know. Mystery wastes everyone’s time.’ He glanced at her, little smile. ‘And, er… I gather from my wife that you’re not just a vicar.’

‘Nobody’s just anything, Mr Winterson.’

‘Suppose you don’t like talking about it. Understandable.’

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘Not at all. It’s usually more a case of people who don’t like asking me about it. Think I must be a bit weird.’

‘Surely not,’ Mathew Stooke said.

She could almost see the hot coals being laid out for her to walk along. There were, of course, ways of explaining Deliverance that even an atheist would buy… almost.

She was thinking about Nigel Saltash, the consultant psychiatrist introduced by Canon Siân Callaghan-Clarke to help modernise Hereford’s deliverance module. Saltash with his trim beard, his sports car and his undisguised disdain for the paranormal, which you could very plausibly translate into terms like mental imbalance and psychological projection and then go on to discuss the many forms of schizophrenia. On the other hand, that was the coward’s way out, and Nigel Saltash hadn’t lasted the course.

‘Well, somebody has to do it,’ Merrily said.

‘Really.’

‘At least one person in every diocese, sometimes a group or a panel. We’re very aware of the need to avoid sensationalism, which is one reason it isn’t talked about much.’

‘People gossip, though. I mean locally.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Perhaps because you’re not exactly the archetypal exorcist, are you?’

‘Big hat and a black bag? That would be the Jesuits. In the movies.’

‘Untypical?’

‘If you start seeing the demonic everywhere, you can very soon lose your balance. Mostly it’s about helping people who feel… threatened by conditions they’re living in.’

‘You make it sound like rising damp.’

Merrily shrugged. Talked about hauntings and perceived hauntings.

‘Meaning it all has a rational explanation?’

‘Sometimes it does. You need to be aware of that. But, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, once you’ve eliminated the rational…’

‘You enjoy it?’

They’d stopped by the galvanised gate, blocking the path which led up Cole Hill. Nobody had ever asked that before.

‘I think it’s worthwhile,’ she said.

‘And when you’re confronted by someone who believes that he or she is afflicted by some… paranormal presence, what exactly do you do? How do you establish if they’re telling the truth? Or at least what they perceive to be the truth.’

‘Depends on the circumstances. I might begin by just praying with them. Which often proves effective without recourse to… further measures. And sometimes indicates to me whether what I’ve been told is the truth.’

And didn’t it sound feeble?

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the power of prayer.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask if you’ll be coming to church.’ Merrily checked herself. Would at least agnosticism be a safe assumption, based on his attitude so far? She could hear the sluggish rumble of a generator, overlaid by laughter from inside one of the tents, squeals, a cry of mock protest. Quite young, some of these archaeologists. Maybe students.

‘You get good congregations, Merrily? Despite church attendance being generally in decline?’

‘Less so in rural areas. Rural people are always closer to… Anyway, I try not to count heads. And just because traditional services are in decline—’

She broke off again, frowning, her memory for some of Stooke’s more cutting put-downs becoming almost photographic.

‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘it isn’t just there for services. Or just for Sunday. Some people prefer to come in on their own, sit and think, walk around. We’ll always need places where people can do that.’

He didn’t reply. She looked up into the spongy sky as plump new raindrops landed on her cheeks.

‘I think I need to get back. It’s starting to…’

Fastening her coat over the dog collar, realising what was happening. Drawing up her hood and pulling it across her face, as if it could conceal her thoughts.

‘Sorry if I’ve delayed you, Merrily.’

‘No, you—’

‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you,’ Mathew Stooke said as the heavens opened. ‘Very much.’

Once Merrily was out of sight of Coleman’s Meadow, she headed directly for the main track and the orthodox route to the village centre, walking faster and then almost running through the sheeting rain, getting rapidly out of breath until, halfway up Old Barn Lane, she had to slow down because the water, in places, was flowing around her in a brown tide, almost ankle deep.

She stood panting on the edge of the pavement. Her hood had been blown back, her hair was soaked and water was dripping into her eyes as she walked miserably into Church Street.

Dawkins, you watched him on TV, you sensed the sneer. Come on, you felt him saying, with a certain embittered weariness, hate me. Hate me because you know I’m right.

But Stooke… Stooke was nothing like his book. Polite, defer-ential, self-deprecating. God, she’d almost liked him. Maybe had liked him.

She walked into the square, by the side of the Christmas tree, not yet lit, although shop lights blazed defiantly. No human life on the cobbles. It was one of those days when you wouldn’t even notice the onset of darkness.

And somehow she’d allowed Mathew Stooke to interview her. Done a few interviews with journalists in the past; there was always curiosity about deliverance. What they’d later written was sometimes cynical but usually fair.

But Stooke didn’t do articles, he did books, and he didn’t do fair. Bliss had said, He wants a bit of privacy to finish his next… whatever shite he’s working on now. Even Lol had warned her to leave him alone. But she couldn’t, could she? She’d taken his presence personally. All the picturesque backwaters. Just had to go and find him, put herself through the test.

And now he’d contrived to interview her. Just like his wife had interviewed Jane.

Merrily hurried into the drive, past a parked car, both its doors opening. When she reached the front door, she half-turned to find her key and found two people behind her in the wet and muddied half-light.

A woman in a bulky blue fleece and a woollen hat. A blond-haired man in his twenties, ready with his ID.

‘Mrs Watkins?’

‘Yes?’

‘DI Brent, West Mercia CID. This is DS Dowell. May we come in?’

Dowell? Karen Dowell? Pushing wet hair out of her eyes, Merrily peered at the woman: stocky, pink-cheeked, thirtyish. Bliss’s bagman, right? Bliss always spoke well of Karen. And yet…

She wasn’t smiling; she looked tense, her face overlaid in Merrily’s thoughts with stark and grainy images from dark dramas and fly-on-the-wall police documentaries.

And one recalled instant of frozen reality. May we come in?

When they said that it was never good news.

27 Epiphany

When Jane got off the bus, the rain was lighter, and she didn’t mess around: throwing her airline bag over her shoulder and hurrying across the square, under the lych-gate and into the churchyard, where she stood for a moment with her hands either side of the curve of Lucy’s gravestone, feeling the energy coursing up both arms.

All things in their proper place, the verse concluded, My soul doth best embrace.

A place of energy, not death. She had a picture of Lucy’s grave up on the Coleman’s Meadow website now, alongside the only picture of Lucy because, whatever was being achieved here, this woman deserved the credit.

‘We’re in this together, right?’

Jane gave the headstone a final squeeze, for luck, and ran off through the churchyard and the wicket gate into the orchard. Leys should be travelled. Every time she came this way, with a purpose, she was reinforcing her links with the ancestors and the life-force of the village. The orchard had been the life-force and the church had been at the centre of the orchard, Lucy telling Jane, Which came first, I wouldn’t like to say, though I suspect the orchard. She’d said that perhaps there’d been a pre-Christian shrine where the church now stood. As if she’d felt it, or perhaps the presence of the buried stones, not so far away in Coleman’s Meadow. The way Jane had surely felt it on a summer night on Cole Hill.

Hurrying now along the slippery path through the ruins of the orchard, the light almost gone, the path obliterated by sodden dead leaves, but her feet knew the way. Her heart, too. When she’d got drunk, one long-ago night, on cider, Lucy had said, The cider’s the blood of the orchard. It’s in your blood now.

And although the orchard was looking derelict and moribund, the blood was pounding by the time Jane reached the edge of Coleman’s Meadow. Well out of breath, but the excitement fizzing up as soon as she saw all the vehicles.

Mainly 4×4s and a van with Capstone on its flank. All parked on the edge of the meadow in an area cordoned off with orange tape. They’d taken away the old stile and ripped down the brutal strands of barbed wire that Pierce had had put up to protect the proposed building site. There was now a less hostile green wire fence with rustic posts and a galvanised farm-gate, and it was open.

Walking through the new entrance, Jane saw that khaki-coloured tents had gone up and two portable lavatories between the two caravans, which had been there for a few days now. About a dozen people were wandering around and looking up at the charcoal sky.

And Jane… standing on the edge of the meadow her gaze inevitably drawn towards Cole Hill’s dark Iron Age ramparts behind naked trees, Jane was bathed in a moment of what James Joyce and those guys had called epiphany.

Like the long, heavy velvet curtains were going back to reveal the next, crucial stage of her life. This sense of pure joy. And she was fully aware of it. How often did that happen?

‘Got a pass, have we, my darling?’

The guy who’d come out of the smaller caravan wasn’t much older than Jane. He was wiry, had gelled hair and wore leather jeans and a security armband. Wandering over, kind of springy and officious, but Jane was too high to be brought down by some jobsworth.

‘Pass? Listen, I live here. What sort of—?’

‘Hey! Whoa! I dunno! They just told me to be sure and keep the riff-raff out.’

‘I look like riff-raff?’

‘I’m not sure. Don’t move.’ He came up close, smelling of something pungent in the way of aftershave. ‘Hmm.’ Putting on a thoughtful look and then breaking out a black-stubbled smile. ‘You could always bribe me. What you got on tonight?’

‘She’s feeding her bloody kids, what do you think?’ a guy in a suit said. ‘Probably doing her homework, Gregory. Back off, you randy oik.’

The security guy stepped back, put on this stiff, solemn face and saluted. ‘Whatever you say, Mr Blore, sir.’

‘Professor Blore, you little fuck!’

The security guy grinned, and Jane jumped back as the man in the suit turned and examined her, and — wow — it was. Hadn’t recognised him, not in the suit and tie, and with his hair brushed. His accent was posher, too, encased in a bigger and deeper voice. Resonant, Jane thought. Out of the earth.

She saw that Coops was with him, looking young, wispy and spare, because Bill Blore really was a big guy. Bigger than on TV. Well, certainly wider, built like Hadrian’s Wall or something. He’d grown his hair — like for the winter? — and it was swept back and tied in a ponytail, and you didn’t see many of those any more.

Coops said, ‘Bill, this is Jane Watkins.’

Maybe she blushed. She certainly felt like blushing. In fact, oh God, she felt like running away.

She didn’t move.

‘Jane.’

His face was just like on the box, good-looking in this kind of swarthy way, his eyes maybe just a bit more bulgy, his smile… fun. She’d seen that smile so many times, usually when he’d proved the geophysics guys wrong, taken a gamble and they’d found some Roman’s thigh bone in Trench One.

‘Hi,’ Jane said.

It came out like the smallest mouse-squeak.

‘Uh, it was Jane who…’ Coops giving Bill Blore an unsure kind of glance ‘… first got the idea there might be something here?’

‘Cooper, I know.’ Bill Blore bent, this big, callused hand coming out. ‘Jane, it’s a privilege to meet you.’ The hand closing around Jane’s like the bucket of a JCB as he turned to Coops. ‘Where’s Declan?’

‘I think he’s putting his gear away.’

‘Why does that bastard always go to earth when it goes dark? I like dark. We do have lights, don’t we?’

‘I think he’s put those away, too.’

‘Arse,’ Bill Blore said. ‘I was rather thinking we might shoot Jane.’

‘I think quite a lot of people would go along with that,’ Coops said.

Jane frowned, but Bill Blore didn’t get it. He looked up at the sky, then back at Jane.

‘All right. Tomorrow, then. What are you doing tomorrow, Jane?’

‘Erm, nothing. That is, like… whatever you want?’

‘What I want is to keep it in sequence.’ Bill Blore turned back to Coops. ‘If it starts with Jane, then that’s where we should start, before the site gets too mucked up.’

‘Right,’ Coops said.

‘How about ten o’clock? Ten a.m., Jane, that OK for you? We’ll shoot you at the top of the hill or something.’

‘You mean…’ The sodden ground below Jane’s muddied school shoes had become suddenly unsteady. ‘For, like… TV? For your programme?’

‘Well, it’s certainly not going to be for young Gregory’s private DVD collection.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said. ‘I mean… sure. I’ll be here. I mean, I didn’t really think you’d want to…’

‘We’ll get you on the hill, and you can take us through the story of how you found the stones, yah?’

‘Well, it wasn’t just me.’

‘Sweetheart…’ Bill Blore put his big hands on her shoulders, looked into her eyes, his own eyes brown as lubricating oil. ‘For the purposes of my film, it was just you.’ He looked up. ‘Look, excuse me, there’s a guy I need to grab…’

Spinning away, raising a hand to somebody, and Jane thought of something important.

‘But I can still help… can’t I?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Neil said I could probably help? With the dig? Like I don’t expect to be allowed a trowel or anything, but I could… you know, carry stuff around, take messages.’

‘Oh… absolutely,’ Bill Blore said. ‘We’re fighting the weather on this dig, so we’ll need all the help we can get. Excuse me, OK?’

As he tramped off, his suit trousers tucked into tan leather boots, Coops came and stood next to Jane.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Jane said. ‘I know, don’t get carried away. He’s a bit of a presence, though, isn’t he?’

Watching Bill Blore striding across the dark meadow, planting a hand on some guy’s shoulder, giving him instructions on something.

‘Yeah,’ Coops said. ‘A presence.’

Jane felt a bit sorry for him, remembering the afternoon last summer when she’d followed him here. When the grass had been all churned up after Lyndon’s Pierce’s bid to destroy the straight track, making the meadow — Pierce thought — unsuitable for anything but building on. Remembering Coops’s excitement as he’d shown her those first partly exposed stones.

Jane had been like, These are real, actual prehistoric standing stones? And Coops — she was always going to remember this — had said, I’d stake my future career on it.

And Jane, beyond euphoric, had, in that moment, fallen just slightly in love with him. Seemed a long time ago now.

‘He’s really ready to go tomorrow?’

‘So he insists, Jane. He seems to’ve got it scheduled for early in the next series of Trench One — and that starts in the New Year.’

‘Wow, that’s tight.’

‘I don’t think the ratings were fantastic for the last series. Too many big digs that yielded a couple of pottery shards and not a lot else. He needs something spectacular, and he’s not going to let the weather or Christmas stop him getting it.’

They watched an orange-coloured digger manoeuvring through the entrance. Shame they couldn’t’ve employed Gomer, but Jane supposed they needed somebody used to archaeological procedure.

‘Tell you one thing, Coops — he’s not going to let Pierce get away with moving the stones, is he? They’ve lost the Serpent, he’s not going to let us lose this.’

‘I never count on anything,’ Coops said.

It started to rain, but not too heavily. Nothing was too heavy tonight.

‘Hey… I’m going to be on Trench One, Coops. He did say that, didn’t he? I mean, I didn’t just dream it?’

‘No.’ Coops let a smile fade through. ‘No, you didn’t dream it. And by early spring I’d guess you’ll be having your picture taken next to the raised stones.’

‘Makes you kind of shiver to think about it,’ Jane said.

Jane walked back on to the square to find it aglow. The fake gaslamps reflected in the swimming cobbles, warm amber light in the mullioned windows of the Black Swan. Plus the Christmas tree’s lights, just white ones this year — more sophisticated, apparently, which was incomer bollocks, but Jane couldn’t be annoyed about anything tonight.

Mum’s car was in the vicarage drive, and there was another one outside. Jane let herself in through the side door, near the back stairs, and slipped into the kitchen just as a man and a woman were going out the other way, through to the hall, watched by Mum, still in her wet coat.

The woman was carrying a computer, its wire wound around an arm. She smiled kind of stiffly.

‘You’ll have it back very soon, I promise. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘I hope so,’ Mum said in this dull, flat voice. ‘Because—’

The man said, ‘Is this your daughter?’

‘Because all the parish stuff is on there as well,’ Mum said.

The woman nodded. The air between Mum and these people was like cling film stretched tight.

28 Shaking the Cage

For confirmation, Merrily had the radio tuned to Hereford and Worcester, the floodline programme with news inserts. The teatime studio presenter was talking to a reporter out on location; you could hear the rain splattering a car roof.

‘… one of those places everyone knows. Almost like a seaside resort in the summer because there’s a kind of pebbly beach, and people go bathing in the river.’

The reporter was on the phone. Bella Finch again, out on location, talking about something they’d found in the Wye.

‘… level’s extremely high, and a lot of debris has been washed downstream, up against the bridge. What looks like a whole tree and lots of branches, and apparently that was where the body was found, entangled in debris. Must have been a terrible shock for somebody.’

‘Do we know who found it?’

‘No, we don’t, and the police have been quite sparing with information. It was only, as you know, after we received a call to the floodline from one of our listeners about police activity around the bridge that we learned about this.’

‘Yes, and please keep those calls coming in, because we’re all aware that the flood situation isn’t getting any better in the two counties. But what are the police saying, Bella?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid, Kate. They won’t even confirm at this stage whether—’

Merrily switched off, watching Jane shrug.

‘They found the rest of him, then. Had to turn up somewhere, sooner or later.’

Jane was sitting at the table, a mug of tea going cold in front of her. Her face smoky and mutinous in the kitchen’s amber lamplight. It was progress. A year ago she’d have been screaming and storming out.

‘Bodies and rivers,’ Merrily said. ‘You know the Celtic stuff.’

‘Heads and rivers,’ Jane snapped. ‘Because the head was the home of the soul and water was the entrance to — Anyway, what would they know about any of it?’

‘They do know about it. They know about the theory that the Serpent connected Dinedor Hill with the Wye. They also have very strong forensic evidence linking Clem Ayling’s murder with the Serpent.’ Merrily sat down. ‘Jane, they’re in a hurry.’

‘So?’

‘It means all I could do was delay them. No way I’d be able to stop them. And any attempts to delay them would just make them more suspicious and more determined.’

‘Who cares? If I’d been here—’

‘If you’d been here and refused to give them your laptop and gone on about living in a police state, that guy Brent might well have formed the wrong opinion. He doesn’t know you, he doesn’t know me—’

‘Where’s bloody Bliss, then?’

‘I don’t know. The woman, Karen, I thought she was Bliss’s regular assistant, Andy Mumford’s replacement. But not today, apparently.’

‘You’re saying they might’ve nicked me?’

‘They’d have made life very difficult. Brent wanted those names and he wanted them tonight. He actually said, for heaven’s sake, he said, Mrs Watkins, there’s an easy way and a hard way…’

‘How did they even know we had the names?’

‘Jane, you were in the papers.’

And Frannie Bliss knew. He’d even laid out a broad hint this morning in the car, suggesting that giving him a list of Coleman’s Meadow activists might be the soft-option. Where was he now? Once or twice, she’d caught Karen Dowell’s eye, and Karen had given her a harassed look that said this is not my fault.

‘I’ve betrayed them,’ Jane said.

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘I’ve betrayed you. But it seemed like the best solution.’

Jane looked at her, still some anger in her eyes but mainly confusion, bewilderment.

‘You’re eighteen,’ Merrily said. ‘I wasn’t in a position to give them your laptop, nor would I have.’

‘So you handed over your computer, with the database on it. Hoping to get it out of the house before I came back.’

‘Basically, yes.’

‘Do not dare say you did that to protect me.’

‘No.’ Merrily ached for a cigarette but didn’t get up. ‘I just didn’t have time to think. You don’t. It’s how they do it. Doorstep you.’

The last time it had happened — serious-faced police at the door, May we come in? — had been when they’d arrived to tell her about Sean.

‘I was tired and wet, and I couldn’t see a way out and I… still can’t. If they’d had to come back with the paperwork…’

She’d looked at DI Brent’s bland, detached, civil-servant face and seen School of Annie Howe. Remembered how Bliss always said that, where the police were concerned, a refusal often offended and offence usually led to a blind determination to nail you to the wall.

‘So what will they do with it?’ Jane said.

‘Copy everything. Then go through the names. They’ll start straight away, probably with the local ones. The local ones who seem most… extreme. Jane, have you… ever heard of a group calling itself the Children of the Serpent?’

‘Who are they?’

‘They haven’t been in contact with you?’

‘No. I’ve never heard of them. You think I wouldn’t remember something like that? Who are they?’

‘There was a threatening message on Clem Ayling’s answering machine from someone claiming to represent the Children of the Serpent.’

Jane looked genuinely blank.

‘Good,’ Merrily said.

‘OK,’ Jane said. ‘What’s to stop me sending out a round-robin email to everybody on the Coleman’s Meadow database saying we’ve been raided by the police and had our computer seized and warning them there’s going to be a witch-hunt.’

‘Nothing.’

‘And what’s to stop me ringing Eirion and getting him to tell his media friends? Getting it out in the papers?’

‘Nothing,’ Merrily said again.

‘But?’

‘But… I suppose, in most other situations it would look like some kind of breach of civil liberties. But this is a high-profile, decidedly horrific murder. It’s on the cards that somebody on that database, if they didn’t do it, at least has links to whoever did. So it’s one thing protecting somebody over a cause you believe in… shielding a murderer is something else. And what if… Let me get you a fresh cup of tea.’

‘What if he does it again, right?’

‘Mmm.’

‘This is a totally, totally shit situation.’ Jane lowered her head into her hands. ‘And things were going so well. I just…’ she looked up ‘… just met Bill Blore.’

‘You did?’

‘At the Meadow. They’re all set up.’

‘Yes, I was going to tell you about that.’

‘I had a call from Coops at school. He said Bill Blore wanted to meet me. And, like… he did. He’s going to interview me tomorrow. On camera.’

‘That’s fantastic.’

‘So I get interviewed for Trench One at the same time as friends of Coleman’s Meadow, people who I got to sign my petition, people who rallied round to help me are—’

‘Jane…’

‘Getting pulled in by the—’ Jane gripped the edge of the table. ‘By the cops. Maybe old people again, taken down the cells and… I dunno… beaten up…’

‘All right.’ Merrily stood up. ‘I’m going to ring Bliss.’

At just after seven, its cobbles glazed with rain and milky light from the Christmas tree, the square looked like an ice tableau. Certainly felt cold enough, and looking at Bliss made Merrily feel colder. Off duty now, he wore jeans and an old Stone Roses T-shirt under a thin jacket. She guessed he didn’t want to go home to an empty house, but he wouldn’t come into hers either. Probably didn’t want to face Jane. Even case-hardened cops had a cut-off point.

‘I didn’t know about it,’ he said. ‘I’d’ve told you. Maybe Karen didn’t get a chance to call me.’

He’d parked next to the market hall, and they were standing under it, alone on the square. It wasn’t raining; an intermission, that was all. But it was coming back; it always came back.

‘Actually, I thought if they ever went that far they’d send me,’ he said. ‘I was prepared for that. I’m sorry. I really am sorry, but…’

‘I suppose it was finding Ayling’s body in the river.’

‘They told you about that?’

‘Karen Dowell told me when we were alone in the scullery for about thirty seconds, while Brent had a snoop. And it’s since been on the radio.’

‘I met this archaeologist at Rotherwas. He made the connection with the river, I put in a report. And that…’ Bliss leaned into the car, hands on the edge of the roof like he was about to start a sequence of push-ups ‘… that was the grand finale of my contribution to the Ayling inquiry.’

‘Frannie?’

‘I’ve been returned to what are laughingly described as “normal duties”.’ He straightened up. ‘More specifically, this petty suburban coke dealership we’ve been eyeing up for a few weeks. Chickenshit, basically. Nobody who’s running away.’

‘So why—?’

‘Why now, you ask, three days before Christmas when we’re already stretched to buggery?’

‘You’re still thinking Charlie Howe?’

‘I went too near him once before. He doesn’t forget. Charlie spots large dollops of the brown stuff floating inexorably towards the Xpelair, he calls his only daughter.’

Bliss leaned back against the wet car and told Merrily about getting carpeted by Howe this morning for failing to report a face-off with three drunken teenagers, one of them a hospital consultant’s son now claiming he’d been threatened with violence by a foulmouthed cop. He didn’t need to explain how the Ice Maiden was manipulating the situation.

Merrily dug her hands down into her coat pocket, recalling how Bliss had once helped Lol put the screws on Charlie, to get Annie Howe off her back. Maybe that was when his name had been added to Charlie’s blacklist.

‘You think she really knows what Charlie got up to in his police days? Because whatever else you think about Annie Howe…’

‘He’s her dad, Merrily. Any shit coming off Charlie makes the greasy pole Annie’s squirming up even greasier. Whether she’s bent or straight doesn’t come into it.’

A white car pulled into the square, an elderly couple getting out, along with handbag, gloves. Dinner at the Swan.

‘Come over to the vic, Frannie. Have something to eat. Jane’s not going to scream at you.’

He shook his head.

‘I’m not that crap a cook, am I?’

‘You’re fairly crap,’ Bliss said.

‘You look tired.’

‘I’ve always looked tired, Merrily. Me ma used to say I looked like a little old man at three.’

‘No word from Kirsty?’

‘I’m guessing I’ll be hearing from her solicitor first.’

‘And is that what you want?’

‘Is that what I want?’

‘Sorry,’ Merrily said. ‘I just had a feeling you—’

‘We never should’ve patched it up. Maybe I realised that, some part of me. The part that kept shaking the cage.’

‘You were deliberately shaking the cage?’

‘Possibly.’ He started pushing at the car again. ‘Thing is, you can keep walking the tightrope, carrying this fragile thing in both hands, keeping it dead steady, one foot in front of the other, not daring to blink… and then one day you think, Shit, is this a life?’

‘It is for some couples. I suppose.’

‘Sad cases, Merrily.’

He talked about coppers who started out all bright-eyed and let’s nail the bad guys. All the boyish enthusiasm getting rapidly suffocated by paperwork, regulations, baseless complaints, time wasted enforcing crap new laws.

‘And when it’s going right, when you’ve had a result and you come home full of it, and you wanna talk about it to somebody…’ He shook his head. ‘She just didn’t get it, Merrily.’

‘Kirsty?’

‘Never got it.’

‘And… I mean… were you getting what she wanted from life? Sorry, Frannie, I don’t mean to…’

‘Doesn’t know what she wants. Only what she doesn’t want.’

‘You still love her?’

‘I need an early night.’ Bliss beeped open the car door. ‘I have to orchestrate a dawn raid. How’m I gonna cope with the excitement?’

‘Frannie…’

‘What?’

‘I don’t want Jane’s name…’

‘I’ve tried to explain, Merrily, I’ve no influence any more. All I can do is ask Karen to keep me in the loop.’

‘Then you keep me in the loop?’

He nodded.

‘Just so you know,’ Merrily said, ‘I went through some of the Coleman’s Meadow petition emails. Not thoroughly, but I didn’t see any mention of the Children of the Serpent. And Jane says she hasn’t heard of them, and I believe her.’

‘Good.’

‘Although there was somebody in Chichester claiming to have cursed Hereford Council.’

‘Yeh, well, we’ve all been down that road.’ Bliss slid into the car, started the engine, ran the window down and leaned out. ‘Maybe I’ll jack it in. Join Andy Mumford, go and work as a private eye for Jumbo Humphries, videoing straying husbands. What do you reckon?’

‘I reckon you’re overtired.’

Merrily walked into the Eight Till Late for cigarettes. Now Jim Prosser had told her they were planning to leave next year, the atmosphere in here, the whole feel of the place, seemed dimmer and more melancholy, like low-energy bulbs when you first switched them on. Or perhaps it had been gradually changing since the coming of Shirley West, caged at the bottom of the store.

Jim was on his own at the top till.

‘Hell, Merrily, you’re looking…’

‘Knackered?’

‘Let’s say careworn,’ Jim said.

‘Been a wearing sort of day.’

‘You too? Brenda’s been in bed all afternoon, she has. Touch of migraine.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

Jim sighed, rueful smile.

‘Kind of migraine brought on by proximity to certain folks.’

‘Oh.’

Jim looked from side to side, as if someone might be hovering, and then along the single aisle towards the post office, with its blind down, its big CLOSED sign, its… was that a metal cross on the wall?

‘Truth of it is,’ Jim said, ‘that’s another reason Brenda reckons she can’t stick it n’ more. One hand, it’s a good thing having the post office here. Good for business, passing trade. Other hand…’

‘Shirley.’

‘When that office shuts, it’s like a bloody weight’s been lifted. I got nothing against religion, as you know, but nine hours a day?’ Jim looked uncertainly at Merrily. She put down a ten-pound note, pointed at the cigarette shelves.

‘This church she goes to, in Leominster… she mention that much?’

‘She do, but I don’t listen.’ He picked up the tenner. ‘Wanted me to put a poster up for it. I said, no, we got a good church yere, and a good vicar.’

‘Thank you. How did she react?’

‘Scowled. I said, why’d you wanner go to two churches?’

‘She explain? Sorry, Jim, it’s just I had a strange kind of card from this church. Maybe I should ask her. Try and have a talk.’

Jim laid a packet of Silk Cut on the counter, with Merrily’s change. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Let her be for a while, I would.’

‘You have a particular reason for saying that?’

‘Well, it…’ Jim started fiddling with the biros in his top pocket. ‘It’s clear she’s keepin’ an eye on you. I don’t suppose I’m saying anything you don’t…’

‘Priests shouldn’t smoke or have boyfriends? Or enter church when not suitably attired?’

‘Or spurn the meat the Lord has provided,’ Jim said.

‘What?’

‘She was asking me why you never bought meat from us — I don’t know what that’s about. She watches, see. All the time she bloody watches. Main thing now is the, er… the blasphemous book.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake… how does she even know about that?’

‘Running a post office, you learns everything sooner or later, I reckon. Like a confessional, it is, behind that bulletproof screen. Learns more than’s good for her.’

Well, thank you Amanda, of Ledwardine Livres.

‘That book,’ Jim said. ‘Hole in the front of it?’

‘There is, yes.’

‘All the way down to hell,’ Jim said. ‘Apparently.’

‘And that’s where I’m going, is it?’

‘I’d been thinking I’d be broken up to leave this place,’ Jim said. ‘But mabbe not.’