To Dream of the Dead

29 Nutters

Dirty pink light had fallen on Jane’s face in the bathroom mirror. A drawn and worried face. A face reflecting the awareness that today could actually be more life-and-death crucial than she’d figured.

She’d awoken long before daylight, heartsick about selling out the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society — turned against her own people by the disgusting police state. Yet there was a painful logic in Mum’s argument about possibly sheltering someone who thought barbaric violence could further the cause. In the pre-dawn sludge, the slaughter of an old man and the taking of his head was real and frightening, and when she tried to summon the startling excitement of yesterday — the epiphany — something else came bobbing up like a cork in a toilet. Something Coops had said, in Coleman’s Meadow last night, about Bill Blore and Trench One.

… got it scheduled for early in the next series — and that starts in the New Year.

As she rolled out of bed, the implications came crunching into place. She had two university interviews set up for late January. If Bill Blore’s programme on Ledwardine was near the start of the new Trench One series, then the university guys doing the interviews would almost certainly have seen it.

Seen and heard Jane Watkins talking about Coleman’s Meadow. And they’d remember. As soon as they met her they’d remember. So this just had to be good. Didn’t it? However bad everything else was, she had to make this interview work for her.

By six-thirty, she was dressed and out there. When the dawn came, the signs were not too scary: a salmony sheen on the horizon, no menacing cloudplay. Certainly better than last night’s TV forecast had implied. Jane went to see the river and found him still dangerously high, brown and racing, clearly recalling what it was like to be young and hungry, and she reminded him that he was part of this, that he’d been around in the Bronze Age when the stones had been erected and Ledwardine had come into being.

She stood on the bridge… could lean over the wall and almost touch the rushing water. She needed some of that — his energy. Needed to sound enthusiastic and driven. But in an authoritative way. Not just some kid who’d accidentally stumbled on something of major importance that she didn’t really understand. Because she did understand, that was the whole point. She understood what the stones had meant. And what they meant now.

‘You OK?’ Mum said over breakfast.

‘Yeah. Fine.’

‘Hmm.’

Mum was in Saturday civvies, jeans with a hole in one knee and an old Gomer Parry Plant Hire sweatshirt.

‘No, really,’ Jane said. ‘I have to go for this, don’t I? The words bastards and don’t let them grind you down occur.’

‘Erm… my advice — not that I’ve ever exactly distinguished myself on TV, as you know, so maybe you can learn from my mistakes — is not to actually think about it too much beforehand. Know more or less what you want to say but don’t rehearse how you’re going to say it.’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that,’ Jane said.

Having just spent twenty minutes mouthing at herself in the mirror. Bill, I have to say I couldn’t believe it at first. It seemed just too perfect. But over the next couple of days I checked out all the points on the line, and it became clear to me that Coleman’s Meadow must’ve been a very significant location. So when the stones were actually found… no, I wasn’t too surprised, actually.

Wondering what the chances were of getting in a mention of Lucy Devenish, as the person who’d awakened in her this heightened awareness of the underlying landscape. Maybe Bill Blore’s crew could get a shot of Lucy’s grave.

‘And don’t arrive too early,’ Mum said, ‘or you’ll just be hanging about in the cold, getting more and more on edge.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ Jane said. ‘Look, I never got around to asking, with one thing and another, but were you able to check out Mathew Stooke? Like, apart from buying his book?’

‘Who told you about that?’

‘Mum, it’s on the desk. He’s a tosser, isn’t he? Next time I see that bloody Lensi—’

‘No! Don’t mention it. Don’t indicate you know who they are. It’s better if we don’t at this stage.’

‘Why?’

‘Because… I don’t know, really, something’s not right. Call it a feeling.’ Mum was admitting to feelings now? Be the full Traherne in no time at all. For some reason, Jane felt a little lighter.

‘We seem to be talking all round something here, don’t we?’ And Jane would have pushed harder, but time was short, and she needed to go up to the apartment and figure out what to wear that was casual but authoritative.

‘Go on,’ Mum said. ‘Make yourself look wonderful for the telly.’

In the end, Jane dressed down. Jeans and a big dark sweater. A smudge of make-up. Too glam, too sexy would give the wrong impression. Well, sexy was all right, in a cerebral way; when Bill Blore interviewed her, there should be a little chemistry. Bill liked women, was renowned for it.

Jane was cool with that.

She drank a mug of tea with extra sugar and Mum told her to break a leg. As she walked across the square, she felt destiny nudging her, the sensation of standing on the cusp of something. The red earth giving up its long-buried secrets, the Dinedor Serpent and the Old Stones of Ledwardine linked by ancient electricity and connecting with Jane’s own nervous system.

In the churchyard, she didn’t spend too long with Lucy, who would surely understand. Pausing only to give the shoulders of the gravestone one squeeze, for luck, before proceeding directly into the dank and dripping orchard.

She imagined a short, lyrical video-sequence of her and Bill following the ley, with music playing underneath — maybe Nick Drake’s ‘Hazey Jane 2’.

The oldest part of the orchard, gnarled and primeval-looking, was loaded with big balls of white-berried mistletoe. Perhaps she’d come back here before nightfall, with secateurs, and try to reach some. After all, Eirion would be here on Sunday. Feeling kind of turned on now, Jane spun towards the pale light at the end of the orchard, and…

Wow. If she’d thought it was crowded last night…

Standing under the exposed waxy sky, she was looking down at something like a reduced rock festival. More tents, an extra caravan, a camper van, the big crane… cars parked at all angles, including a police car. Big clusters of people turning Coleman’s Meadow into another village. A separate community had mushroomed overnight.

Jane counted three separate TV units, guys shouldering cameras, and a bunch of other men and women were hanging around the new galvanised gate by a smaller green caravan.

Adrenalin spurting, she ran down to where Neil Cooper was standing, on his own. Fair-haired, wafery Coops, jeans and a canvas shoulder bag — his day off, too, but who’d miss this?

‘Bloody hell, Coops, I had no idea there’d be all this…’

‘Jane.’ Coops taking Jane’s arm, drawing her away and saying nothing until they were behind the bloated bole of an old oak tree. ‘It’s not quite what you think.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘The media circus. Nothing to do with the excavation.’ Coops shedding his shoulder bag and undoing it. ‘It’s about this.’

Handing her a folded paper.

Jane opened it up. The Daily Star was unlikely to be Coops’s usual choice.

But then, it wouldn’t usually carry a picture on its front page of someone as old and boring as the late Clement Ayling under…

It was as though a fist had come through the paper, smacked her full in the face. Jane stepped back into a puddle.

‘It was the only one left on the rack at your local shop,’ Coops said. ‘But I gather the others are similar.’

She read the whole story, which wasn’t long. The police were quoted as saying that fragments of stone found ‘with the head’ had been confirmed as coming from the Dinedor Serpent, ‘an ancient path which local pagans say is sacred’. But which Clem Ayling, whose body had now been found in the River Wye, had dismissed as ‘patio gravel’. As a result of which, he and his council had been attacked by ‘pagan groups’ and ‘top TV archaeologist Bill Blore’.

‘Oh.’ Jane stepped out of the puddle and handed the paper back to Coops. ‘So now they all want him.’

For one agonising moment she’d thought the headline meant the cops had been acting on stuff from the Coleman’s Meadow database. But, of course, it would’ve been impossible for any of that to make this morning’s papers.

‘Fame rules,’ Coops said.

‘Did you know about these fragments of stone, Coops?’

‘Not a thing. If the police consulted my boss, he hasn’t told me about it.’

‘But like, even if it’s true, how can the cops just say it’s down to pagans? I mean, how dare they—?’

‘They probably didn’t. They just let the press run with it. Most of the others seem to have been a bit more restrained than the Star.’

‘Where’s Bill Blore now?’

‘Somewhere wishing he’d kept his famous gob shut.’ Coops didn’t look entirely displeased about Blore being caught on the back foot. ‘Shut himself in the site caravan to phone a friend. Always assuming he has one left.’

Jane pondered the implications, looking at her watch. Six minutes to ten.

‘Coops, is this going to affect my interview?’

‘He’s pretty pissed off, Jane. Been here since before eight. Wanted to make a good start while the rain was holding off, and now he can’t. He’s actually—’

Jane heard a few ragged cheers. Coops moved around the oak tree, went to peer over what was left of Lyndon Pierce’s barbed-wire fence. Came back yawning.

‘Looks like he’s coming out. Like some bloody racing driver with his support crew.’

‘Can we watch?’

‘If we must. But look, Jane, when he gets rid of this lot I’d keep away from him for a while if I were you. Don’t push. Let him decide when to remember you.’

‘By which time it’ll be raining again.’

‘Yeah, probably.’

‘And I’ll look like shit.’

Jane looked around for something to kick.

Bill Blore didn’t actually come off the site, went no further than the gate. Leaning over its top rail, wide shoulders hunched under a scratched leather bomber jacket. His thick hair was bound back by some kind of bandanna, his eyes still and steely like ball-bearings, his voice… big.

‘All right, you bastards.’

When he raised a hand it was clenched around a flat-bladed trowel, edged with red mud, like he’d been interrupted in the middle of his work.

Laughter from the hacks, and the stills photographers began taking pictures. The security guy, Gregory, and an older guy with the same armband were standing at either end of the metal gate. Jane was with Coops, hanging back, well out of shot as a rising wind rattled the gate and Bill Blore tapped the top rail with the handle of the trowel.

‘OK, hacks, here’s the situation. I’m happy to talk to you, but I really don’t have time for individual interviews, or we’ll be here all fucking day. So you’re just going to have to… you know… gather round, throw the shit at me and I’ll bat it back. Five minutes max, OK?’

‘Some of us’ve come a long way, Bill,’ someone moaned, but Bill Blore wiped it away with both hands and his big voice.

‘Not trying to be difficult, whoever you are, but I’ve got a job to do and it’s rather more important to me than whichever fucking lunatics took an axe to some poor old bugger from the local authority.’ Pointing with the trowel at a raised hand. ‘OK, go…’

‘Susannah Gilmore, Sky News. Presumably you’ve seen today’s papers, Bill?’

‘Gave up reading comics when I turned ten, Susannah, but I’ve been given a digest, yeah, so I can just about put together a reason for you vultures swooping.’

‘Can we get directly to the point, then?’ one of the other TV guys said, and Blore bowed and spread his hands. ‘Professor Blore, first of all, if you can give us your reaction to the suggestion that County Councillor Ayling was actually murdered because of his negative attitude towards the so-called Dinedor Serpent.’

‘Well, that’s not my…’ Bill Blore looked down at the trowel, puffed out his lips, looked up again. ‘All right. Here we go.’

A few seconds of silence. All you could hear was the slap of one of the nylon tent flaps and some cameras going off. Two uniformed cops looked at people’s faces.

Bill Blore took a breath.

‘Archaeology’s my life. But I couldn’t say it’s worth the loss of someone else’s.’ He paused. ‘So if you’re saying did I do it…?’ Bill Blore looked down at the media, the wind lifting his hair. Photographers were snapping him from below and Jane saw that one of them was Lensi, her red hair glowing against the grey sky.

The TV guy said, ‘So who would you—?’

‘Oh, come on, what am I supposed to say to that? Kind of people who’d do this? Not the foggiest. If you’re asking me about pagans, yeah, I’ve met plenty of them. Always find them hanging around prehistoric sites. Ask me a couple of days ago, I’d’ve said they were just bloody comics. Harmless. Didn’t think they also included total bloody maniacs. Shows how wrong you can be. Next.’

Two questions collided.

‘When you say you’ve met plenty—’

‘—Yourself had some pretty hard things to say about the Herefordshire Council—’

‘True. And I don’t take any of it back. I do think local authorities should be better informed about the dangers of destroying our heritage with hastily planned developments. I do indeed wish that bloody road was going somewhere else. And if the late Councillor Ayling had kept quiet about the Dinedor Serpent then so would I. But… we all have a right to free speech. Without, I might add, facing summary execution.’

The Sky News woman said, ‘Bill, you said a moment ago that you’d met plenty of the sort of people who you think might be responsible for the murder of Councillor Ayling. Would you care to—?’

‘I did not say that, you… I said that I’d encountered some people I thought were comics… rather than killers. But this — as all of you guys should know — is a rapidly changing world. World that’s daily becoming more brutalised. Suicide bombers, children shooting other children on the streets, torturing old ladies… Is it any great surprise to me when some second-generation neo-hippies out of their heads on methamphetamine start chopping people’s heads off because they think their noble Neolithic ancestors have been disrespected? I mean, do I really have to answer that?’

‘Professor Blore, to what extent do you think that inflammatory statements made by… iconic figures like yourself can inspire extreme behaviour in… shall we say people who might already be a bit unstable?’

‘Oh, for…’

For a moment, Bill Blore seemed to bulge through the gate, and you thought its bars might actually bend, like in an animation movie, as his patience snapped.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve said all I want to say about this issue, so why don’t you all just piss off now, eh?’

Then he turned and strode back through the cold red mud towards the tents, leaving the security guy, Gregory, to mind the gate, and Jane going, like, Wow.

Impressed as hell, but maybe just a little bit scared of him now.

30 A Cold Heart

Sitting on a corner of his desk, Bliss jabbed a copy of The Times.

‘What is this? I mean why? What’s she hoping to achieve, letting this stuff out, a frigging witch-hunt?’

It wasn’t the lead story, like in the redtops, but prominent enough down the side of the front page and in more detail.

‘I think it’s already started.’ Karen Dowell quietly shut Bliss’s office door, came and sat down. After a long night on computer duty, Karen had the rest of the day off. ‘Tried to get you last night, boss. Two things. A — Ayling’s body had stab wounds, B — they were bringing someone in.’

‘When was this?’

‘Half-eleven?’

Bliss came off the desk. Nobody had told him. Nobody downstairs had even hinted. But perhaps they didn’t know either, the way Howe had walled herself up in the Blackfriars school with this little coterie of cronies, safe from prying eyes and the Gaol Street telegraph.

‘Your phone was switched off.’

Yeh, it had been. He’d gone to bed, slept like the dead. If anybody called him, well, tough; DI Bliss was in recovery.

‘We were systematically working through the names on the Watkins computer,’ Karen said, ‘and we found a handful they thought were worth looking at who were, you know, within easy pulling distance. This particular guy — great excitement. Terry Stagg phoned him. Bingo.’

‘Same voice?’

‘He’s even admitted it.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Wilford Hawkes,’ Karen said. ‘Real old hippie. Has a small-holding with his wife and two other women — gay partners, looks like — up beyond Dinedor village. They plant stuff in accordance with the phases of the moon.’

‘That makes them Serpent-worshippers?’

‘Well… pentagram weather vane on the roof, that kind of thing. But I reckon the real issue is that when the road’s built, they’ll have heavy-goods traffic about twenty metres from their hedge.’

‘And he’s put his hand up?’

‘To the call. Nothing else so far.’

‘No charge?’

Hoping there wasn’t. Wanting these twats to struggle all the way — at least, all the time he wasn’t part of it.

‘Not when I left,’ Karen said. ‘But who knows?’

Bliss pictured Howe and Brent patting themselves on the back, toasting each other in decaff.

‘Why did they put this out about the quartz?’

‘They didn’t mention quartz, boss. Just stones. Didn’t mention the eyes, either. Just said “stones found with the head”. It went out late afternoon — press statement issued before the body was found in the river. And then we brought the computer in and it all took off,’ Karen said.

‘What about the wife and the other women?’

‘Interviewed but not brought in. Ma’am’s still keen on Wilford.’

‘You seen him?’

‘I’ve seen the first interview.’

‘And?’

‘Hard to say. You’re better at this than me, boss. Look, I’d better be off, it’s my boyfriend’s birthday.’

‘Yeh. OK. Have a good one,’ Bliss said. ‘Thanks, Karen.’

She was a good girl. When she’d gone Bliss pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, sat down. On his desk, an early Christmas present from Howe, was the thin file containing copies of computer-printed letters purporting to come from anonymous residents of the same Hereford suburb and identifying a cocaine dealer in their midst. Normally, given the location, it would have been quite interesting. With the Ayling case on it was a job for a DS, at most. At the top of the first letter, Howe had written, Francis — we should go for this one ASAP.

Bitch.

Bliss picked up the top letter.

Two anonymous letters saying much the same, arriving at Gaol Street in the same post, naming the same man, Gyles Banks-Jones. Gyles ran a jewellery business, sometimes marketing his designer products at home gatherings, like the old Tupperware parties Bliss’s mum used to host. Other products as well, allegedly.

Some quite detailed information about specific parties held in this particular area of the city where Banks-Jones lived. So many that the residents must be dripping with designer bling. The letters, Bliss decided, were a committee job. Sounded like residents must be seriously split on the question of whether Mr Banks-Jones was a good or a bad thing.

Wearily, Bliss unwrapped a packet of chewing gum. This complaint had probably been lying around for weeks. Recreational drugs… it was going on everywhere, and you could waste manpower for months watching a guy like this: no form, a clean-skin, cleaner than clean. And anonymous letters were bugger-all use; you needed names, serviceable witnesses. Punters never seemed to be aware of the requirements of the CPS.

Then, a couple of days ago, the third letter had arrived.

It had gone directly to Headquarters.

And it was signed. It came from Alan Sandison, a recent arrival in the area, who had attended a party with his wife at which Mr Banks-Jones had brought out his glittering wares along with a number of small packages which had been eagerly opened in the kitchen and widely snorted.

The neighbours who had invited the Sandisons to their party had failed to realise — probably too stoned to work out why he wasn’t down the pub on a Sunday lunchtime — that Alan Sandison was a Baptist minister.

Sometimes you had to laugh.

Mr Sandison stated that he was prepared to give evidence in court against Gyles Banks-Jones but not against his immediate neighbours who, he believed, had been led astray, poor lambs.

Well. Bliss mouthed a shaft of chewie. Not a brilliant time of year for a dawn raid. Would cost a fair bit in overtime. But when the Ice Maiden requested action, whatever her private reasons might be for diverting your attention, you acted.

Tomorrow morning, Sunday? Have to be, wouldn’t it? Monday was Christmas Eve. Besides… get the frigging thing out the way. Gathering the papers together and picking up the phone to call Mr Sandison, Bliss noticed a cardboard carton containing an unlabelled DVD.

Karen must’ve slipped it under the file. Karen, the computer whizz. Bliss put down the phone, scraped together a smile and slid the DVD down his inside pocket.

She was a good girl.

Like Sophie, Amanda Rubens wore her glasses on a chain. Unlike Sophie she had a lot of other chains and long beads, like some 1920s flapper, over her black polo-neck woollen frock.

‘Yes, all right, I’m sorry, it was out before I realised what I was saying. Could’ve bitten my tongue off, but that bloody woman… “You besmirch our village with this vileness?” Can you believe someone would say that… in a bookshop?’

The interior of Ledwardine Livres was full of Christmas lights, twinkling between displays of mainly children’s books. No book-shop in Hereford or Leominster would rely on atmosphere lighting; either Amanda Rubens was seriously naive or shoplifting in Ledwardine was still confined to the Eight Till Late.

‘It was my last copy. Seemed to be going rather well, so I immediately ordered another half-dozen and they were here in the afternoon. Put three at the front of the window, which I suppose was what caught the attention of the postmistress. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to me that some people might find it tasteless at Christmas. And that was why I said what I said when she came in and began to remonstrate with me. It… it simply came out. I simply… I said, For heaven’s sake, the vicar’s just bought a copy!’

Merrily sighed. Amanda played anxiously with one of her chains. ‘Anyway, surely nobody in this day and age expects the clergy to limit their reading to the New Testament. Look, I’m sorry. I’m not a gossip. I never, as a rule, broadcast what my customers buy for themselves. I suppose this was… self-defence, as much as anything. She’d never been in here before, and she was quite… quite fierce. She rather… filled the shop. I was intimidated.’

Possibly understandable. Amanda was built like a cocktail stick; Shirley could have snapped her.

‘I can only say, Mrs Watkins, that if you can bear to shop with us again, I will never—’

‘What else did she say, Mrs Rubens? You said something about vileness?’

‘You besmirch our village with this vileness. That one’s rather stuck.’

‘Did she go further? It’s just… there are things I need to be aware of.’

‘Oh, well, I suppose this is right up your street… She said the book was part of the Devil’s attempt to take control. In the Final Days. She went on about the Final Days.’

‘Something of a buzz phrase,’ Merrily said, ‘in born-again circles.’

‘A dark doorway to eternal damnation — that’s what she called the book.’

‘Did she say anything about the author?’

‘Spin doctor.’

‘Sorry?’

‘She called him the spin doctor to the Antichrist. She said if I wanted to know the truth about this man I had only to look on the Internet.’

‘And did you?’

‘I’ve been rather busy.’

‘Thank you,’ Merrily said. ‘I suppose I’d better check it out. See if I can save my immortal soul before it’s too late.’

Amanda Rubens smiled nervously, her veneers gleaming evenly in the soft Christmas light.

‘Whole world’s gone mad, Mrs Watkins. You think you can opt out of it, don’t you, by moving to a place like this?’

‘A common misconception, Mrs Rubens.’

‘I never encountered a woman quite like Mrs West in London.’

You found this. For city people, used to mixing in confined circles, the country was often a shock to the system.

‘And now, when they’re saying that Hereford councillor was murdered by some sect…’

‘Sect?’

‘You haven’t seen the papers?’

Amanda opened out the Guardian, under the coloured lights, pointing to a story in the middle of the front page.

Usual picture of Clem Ayling. Pastoral colour picture of Dinedor Hill.

Oh God.

Wilford Hawkes was completely bald, white beard down to his chest, an earring with a red stone in it. Bit of a cliché, really.

‘You don’t understand, do you, my love?’ Off the phone, his accent was more distinct. ‘We don’t need to kill people. We don’t need to do nothing. They’re doing it theirselves. All those JCBs, they’re digging theirselves a great big grave.’

‘Mr Hawkes.’ Annie Howe’s voice. ‘I am not your love.’

Bliss smiled. He had his car shoved under dripping trees in this secluded little car park across the main road from Gaol Street. Karen’s interview-room DVD in the laptop on the passenger seat.

‘All I’m saying,’ Hawkes said, ‘is when you knowingly damage a sacred site, you expect repercussions. I can give you stories of farmers digging up old stones, ploughing burial mounds. Next thing, sudden electric storms, directly overhead, and then their crops fail and their stock dies.’

‘Mr Hawkes—’

‘All I was doing was giving him a friendly warning.’

‘That’s your idea of friendly, is it?’

‘All right, it was a bit beyond, out of order. I wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘You were drunk?’

‘I don’t drink alcohol, my dear. I was, shall we say, in a state of herbally heightened relaxation.’

Mr Hawkes settled back with his hands behind his head, eyes half closed, a faint smile on his lips. The cockiness of a killer? More likely the daft old twat was actually enjoying it. Memories of his lost youth, getting busted by the pigs.

‘Wreckage and blood, Mr Hawkes,’ Howe said. ‘You warned him of wreckage and blood.’

‘I never mentioned his personal blood, did I? We knew we had to lay this on the line, look, in a way the bastards would understand how strongly we feel. They’re pushing the ole city out in all the directions it don’t wanner go, and they’re cutting it off from Dinedor Hill. And then, right on cue, the Serpent shows up after thousands of years just in time to warn us all, and what do they do? They smother it. What they gonner do next, build a supermarket on top? After all, we only got seven already!’

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a solicitor, Mr Hawkes?’

‘Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Mr Hawkes sitting up. ‘They talk your language, those predators. Always been my policy to have nothing to do with the blood-sucking bastards. Possible to go through your whole life without ever meeting a lawyer.’

‘But probably not your life, Mr Hawkes, the way it’s shaping up. The Children of the Serpent — how many of you are there?’

‘How many?’

‘How many children,’ Howe said icily, ‘does the Serpent possess?’

‘None. I made it up.’

‘You made what up, exactly?’

‘The whole thing. Children of the Serpent. I thought it sounded good. You think about it: I ring Ayling up, say this is Willy Hawkes, I’m just calling to give you a gentle warning, what’s that gonner do? He’s gonner laugh down my earole. Children of the Serpent, that’s got a bit of menace. That works.’

‘Mr Hawkes, I shall ask you again, did you kill Clement Ayling?’

‘I cannot believe…’

‘Please answer the question.’

‘No! Did I bloody hell kill Clement Ayling! I wouldn’t’ve gone anywhere near him or any of the shabby bastards on that council.’

‘Do you know who killed Clement Ayling?’

‘I been trying to tell you, I don’t mix with them sort of people.’

A silence. Willy Hawkes’s mouth tight shut behind his beard.

‘You’re a pagan, Mr Hawkes.’

‘I’m British. It’s our own faith. Christianity, Islam… all that was imported for political reasons. Paganism’s from the earth. Roots religion.’

‘The so-called Serpent. That was supposed to connect Dinedor Hill with the River Wye — is that right?’

Bliss sniffed. She knew it was right, she’d got it from his report.

‘I know where you’re going,’ Willy Hawkes said. ‘You found Ayling’s body in the river.’

‘And what does that tell you, Mr Hawkes?’

‘Would’ve made more sense if you’d found the head in the — Aw, I’ve had enough of this, lady! You don’t know nothing about pagans, do you? Throughout the past two millennia we’ve not been killers, we’ve been the victims. Witches hanged and burned for curing sick people, saving the lives of the poor. Hanged and burned, by the likes of you! You got the face of a witch-burner, you have.’

Bliss thumped the steering wheel. He loved this feller.

Hawkes leaned over the table.

‘Do I look like the kind of man who’d behead somebody? Me and my lady and my spiritual sisters, we’re peaceful, pastoral folk. What happened to Ayling… whatever kind of man he was, what you’re looking at there is just plain evil. You’re looking for somebody devoid of all spiritual feeling. You’re looking at a cold heart.’

‘There’s a pagan network in this area, isn’t there?’

‘Nothing so formal. Folks knows each other, but we’re all different — Wiccans, Druids, what-have-you — we all got our own ways. How long you gonna keep this up before I can go home?’

‘Mr Hawkes, you’ve admitted threatening behaviour. You’ve admitted threatening a man who was later murdered. Don’t think you’ll be going home tonight.’

‘That’s outrag—’ Willy Hawkes coming out of his seat, uniformed arms putting him back. He sat there shaking. ‘It’s the Winter Solstice. Do you know how important that is? I need to be on Dinedor Hill! It’s an important time. You can’t keep me yere for the Solstice. God damn you!’

Howe didn’t react. Hawkes sat twisting his head. He straightened his shoulders, looked down into his lap for a few moments. Then he looked up, smoothed out his beard with both hands.

‘I’ll tell you as far as it went. If I tell you as far as it went, will you let me go home?’

‘I don’t make deals,’ Howe said. ‘However, if you’re seen to be cooperating…’

‘There’s a Wiccan group…’

‘A witches’ coven.’

‘If you like. They gathered for a ritual of restraint to bind the Council, tie their hands. They also put a protective spell on the fields below Dinedor Hill. And they done a ritual of invocation.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘To awaken the guardians.’

‘Mr Hawkes—’

‘Every ancient site — well, not every ancient site, but a fair few — they got a guardian, see. A spirit or an elemental force to repel invasive influences. What causes the thunderstorms and what-have-you.’

‘Doesn’t seem to have worked, does it?’

‘They lifted it,’ Hawkes said. ‘Things don’t always work the way you think they’re going to. We’re dealing with forces beyond our comprehension and out of our control, which is why I won’t personally work with spells.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘There was an accident, wasn’t there? During the tree-felling. Bloke was hurt. Well, it wasn’t his fault, was it? He didn’t make the decision, he was just a humble tree-feller. Quite a few people said, no, take it back, get it lifted, bad karma. We can’t play their game, we gotter be above all that.’

‘And that was when they lifted their… spell?’

‘And then Ayling died. Everybody got cold feet then. Me in particular. I’d phoned him. I’d left a bad message on his machine. I’d made the connection.’

‘Who are these witches?’

‘I won’t tell you that. They’ve lifted the spell, that’s all you need to know. They got nothing to do with it now.’

‘I need their names.’

‘Well, you won’t get them from me. Not if you keep me yere all week. I’ll tell you another thing. We met — a bunch of us — for a meditation.’

‘When was this?’

‘After Ayling’s death. ’Cos we never wanted that.’

‘Really.’

‘We didn’t.’

‘Where was this meeting?’

‘Our barn. We had some very psychic people, and they all came up with the same thing… a big darkness, an unquenchable evil.’

‘And were they given a name, Mr Hawkes?’

‘It don’t work that way.’

‘How unfortunate.’

‘But they got a feeling of it. People’ve forgotten how to listen to their feelings. One of the ladies was quite ill afterwards.’

‘I can imagine,’ Annie Howe said.

31 Neither Horns Nor Tail

On Jane’s laptop… a screenful of apocalypse, grey angels straddling an arid land.

‘I’m not sure I can face this,’ Merrily said.

A false light gleamed in the kitchen’s highest window. On the lunchtime radio news, a big voice was battling the wind.

‘—chaeology’s my life, OK? But I couldn’t say… worth the loss of someone else’s.’

‘Classic soundbite,’ Lol said. ‘Do you think he’s done this before?’

‘The archaeologist, Professor William Blore, talking this morning in Herefordshire,’ the newsreader said. ‘In Zimbabwe—’

Merrily switched off, frowning.

‘The archaeologist, Professor William Blore, was supposed to be interviewing Jane on the top of Cole Hill.’

‘Which probably explains why she isn’t back.’

‘She was very excited. Almost took the heat out of having the computer impounded.’ Merrily held the kettle under the cold tap. ‘I shouldn’t imagine they invited Professor Blore to hand over his computer.’

‘You had no choice,’ Lol said. ‘If they’d been forced to come back with a warrant they’d’ve turned the whole place over. Jane’s apartment, anyway. And Jane would’ve gone wild.’

‘Well, that’s what I thought, but…’ Merrily plugged in the kettle. ‘They said I might get it back today. As if.’

Lol had turned the laptop towards him on the kitchen table. He would often come over on Saturday mornings, when Jane was usually out. Quality time. Or something. No time for any something today.

‘Thelordofthelight.com. You heard of this one?’

‘There are scores of them, Lol. Probably hundreds in the US alone. Full of raging paranoia and an unforgiving Christ I have problems with. But have I heard of this one? Oh yes.’

Lol had Googled Mathew Stooke, spin doctor to the Antichrist.

‘It’s the name of Shirley’s church, in Leominster,’ Merrily said. ‘They sent me a lovely Christmas card.’

‘Looks bigger than that to me. Bigger than Leominster, that is.’

‘Maybe the source is in America. Often is. What’s the approach?’

‘It’s an endgame thing,’ Lol said. ‘Not too many laughs. Unless you can spot the hidden jokes in the Book of Revelation. Is this Revelation? In the last days, difficult times will come…’

‘Maybe Paul.’

Merrily came to sit next to Lol. The depressing angels had gone; the screen had faded to the colour of dried blood and stark words in white.

‘All looks worryingly familiar,’ Lol said. ‘How long do you reckon we have left — two weeks, three weeks? Or do we, um, need to go upstairs now?’

With a white screen and normal print, implications of the prophecy were explained in detail for LordoftheLight browsers: veggies were spurning the animals God had given them to tame and slaughter. ‘Now that’s interesting,’ Merrily said. ‘I never quite saw it that way myself, but it explains Shirley’s interest in how much meat I don’t buy.’ While the Green movement, with its worship of Mother Earth, was luring people into pagan ways and modern churches were straying from the laws of God by accepting homosexuality and embracing New Age practices.

‘Like meditation, do you think?’

The dour doctrine of Shirley West was unscrolling before her eyes.

Then came the red silhouette of a naked man.

‘Who do we have here, then?’ Lol wondered. ‘Hawking?’

‘You really see a very seriously disabled man as the Antichrist?’

‘I don’t. They might. Black humour’s a key tool of the prince of darkness. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. What about Dawkins?’

‘Doesn’t have the charisma.’

‘Got him,’ Lol said. ‘It’s that Derren Brown.’

‘You’re bloody well enjoying this, aren’t you?’

‘It’s interesting watching you getting all embarrassed by your own—’

‘This is not my—’ Merrily caught his smile on its way out. ‘Sod.’ Lowered her head wearily to an arm, looking up at him sideways. ‘Lol, what are we doing?’

‘We’re uncovering the motivational psychology of Shirley West. It’s worth knowing. Ah…’

Merrily sat up slowly.

Lol said, ‘It is a bit curious, isn’t it?’

‘It’s crap.’

Merrily abruptly killed the images on the laptop. Stood up and walked over to the window overlooking the garden and the churchyard wall, the rain slanted by a rising wind. She felt twisted up inside. Behind her, Lol’s chair scraped on the flags.

‘Merrily, it’s only a—’

‘I wonder if he knows about this.’

‘Of course he knows,’ Lol said gently. ‘There must be five pages of links to this garbage on Google alone. He’s had threats, hasn’t he? That’s why he’s here.’

‘And I wonder if she knows.’

‘Shirley?’

‘If she knows he’s here. Or at least suspects he might be somewhere in the vicinity.’

‘Why would she?’ Lol’s hands on her shoulders. ‘We don’t know there’s a link between the website and Shirley’s church. And she’d hardly think that because you bought his book…’

‘If I hadn’t bought it, Amanda Rubens wouldn’t’ve reordered so fast. Extra copies? The same day? Which she puts at the front of the window?’

‘Maybe she thought you were going to slag off Stooke in a sermon, thus generating a few extra sales.’

‘Whatever, I wish I’d left it alone. And I wish I’d…’ Merrily stared out over the wall at the dulled sandstone of the church ‘… never met him.’

‘Oh Christ…’ Lol backed off. ‘You didn’t…’

‘Frannie Bliss said much the same as you. Leave well alone. Stooke eats vicars for breakfast.’

‘So naturally you had to rise to the challenge.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Or maybe it was. She turned away from the church and the rain. Everything seemed to be out of control. Everything was futile. Stooke was looming larger in the great scheme of things than he ought to have done. And Bliss saying, All the picturesque villages in all the world and he has to pick yours.

‘No coincidence,’ Lol said. ‘Wherever he ended up, there was always going to be a vicar.’

‘Anyway, we had a talk. Me being careful not to suggest I knew who he was.’

‘Wouldn’t the very fact of you turning up at his house convey that impression?’

‘I didn’t. Or rather I did, but he wasn’t in, and in the end I ran into him in Coleman’s Meadow. Checking out the dig. And got chatting, as you do.’

‘Not me.’

‘Yeah, well, in my profession, you can’t afford to be a recluse. And he was curious about what I did. I mean deliverance. Or rather he knew about it and he wanted to know more, and if I’d shown any reluctance, it would’ve looked…’

‘No, it wouldn’t. It’s the Bishop’s secret service. You keep saying that, and you don’t like giving talks to the WI, so why should you feel obliged to talk about it to a guy you just met in a field?’

‘It was how I felt at the time, because he wasn’t… what I expected. You read his book, you sense this colossal self-righteous rage. I mean, why, for God’s sake? Guy writes an angry book, we think he spends his life smashing things and beating up his wife?’

‘Nice person, then,’ Lol said.

‘Relaxed, balanced… almost charming. Don’t look at me like that, I’m being objective. With hindsight.’

‘You liked him.’

‘I… yeah, I probably did. It was an odd situation. I knew who he was, he didn’t know I knew, but he knew what I did. And then afterwards it’s all turned full circle and I’m annoyed with myself, I’m thinking, you idiot, he’s probably writing his follow-up to The Hole in the Sky. Am I going to be in it now, or what? The loopy exorcist with the pagan daughter?’

‘Bit of a comedown from the Dalai Lama.’

‘Oh God…’ Merrily started to laugh. ‘I could, on the other hand, be going just a little crazy, but it…’

Somewhere beyond the scullery a door banged.

‘… It all fits, doesn’t it? I was expecting anger, I got mildness. I was expecting monstrous ego, I got… almost self-deprecating. If I was Shirley West…’

‘Don’t even imagine what that would be like.’

‘No, listen. The atheist is an angry man, but Satan’s spin doctor is a charmer, who puts you at your ease, allays your susp — What’s the matter with that door?’

Banging again in the wind. It sounded like the side door to the yard, by the back stairs. Like something coming in and slamming it behind… Oh God, never log on to a born-again Christian website.

‘Excuse me a minute.’

Merrily went through into the low passage leading to the back stairs, where she caught the side door about to slam again in the wind. It hadn’t been closed properly. But then it shouldn’t have been open, rarely was these days since Jane had stopped regarding it as the private entrance to her apartment.

Odd.

She shut it firmly, locked it at the catch and stood there for a moment, listening.

‘Jane?’

No reply. Back in the scullery the phone was ringing. She heard Lol going through, picking up.

‘No, I’m sorry, she’s not here at the moment. Could I—? Oh…’

Merrily went quietly up the narrow back stairs to the main landing. No sound up here but the rain. The glass in the window at the top of the main stairs was in freeflow. She went up the second, narrower, stairs to the attic apartment.

Its door was ajar. She stopped outside, thought she could hear a faint snuffling.

‘Jane, is that…?’

Hesitated for just a moment before going in and seeing — heart-lurch — Jane lying face down on the bed. Fully dressed, with a damp pillow bent around her head.

32 In Your Veins

‘Lol,’ Eirion said. ‘Wow. Amazing.’

Standing in the entrance to the vicarage drive, bags either side of him on the wet gravel. His red and white baseball sweater looked too big. He’d lost weight. Less stocky, less archetypal-Welsh.

‘Bad down there?’ Lol said.

‘The Valleys — terrible,’ Eirion said. ‘It’s like somebody’s trying to turn them into reservoirs. I was thinking if I didn’t come today I might not get here at all. Tried to call Jane about six times. What’s the point of having a mobile if you keep it switched off? So I thought I’d better ring Mrs Watkins, make sure it was all right.’

Eirion looked around in the damp air. Lol sensed his nerves about meeting Jane again, more than three months since their lives had divided.

The light was still on in the attic. Not knowing any better, Lol had told Eirion on the phone that Jane was still out at Coleman’s Meadow, but they were expecting her back any minute. Putting the phone down just as Merrily had come briefly downstairs. Jane was up there. Jane had been badly upset. They needed some time.

‘So,’ Eirion said. ‘How are you, man? You’re looking well. Bit tired, maybe.’

‘Late nights.’

‘You’re working on something?’

‘And time’s running out.’ Lol picked up one of Eirion’s bags. Maybe take him in the parlour, get him something to drink. ‘Actually—’

‘So how did it go, Lol? I couldn’t believe it when Jane told me. When’s it on?’

‘When’s what—? Oh, yeah, sorry. New Year’s Eve.’

‘What they need to do is erect a big flat-screen TV…’ Eirion looked back towards the square and all the bulging, crooked black and whites leaning over it. ‘Over there. By the Christmas tree.’

‘Eirion, it’s one song. Might even get cut.’

‘No way.’ Eirion rubbed his hands. ‘Strange, it is, coming back here. I’ve dreamt about it, Lol. Couple of times recently. One of those places that come up in dreams. Perhaps because it never changes.’

‘No.’

‘Anyway, I’m glad I’ve seen you first. Got presents in the car. Nothing much, but I was wondering, would it be OK if I left them at your place?’

Lol looked back at the vicarage. The light in the attic had gone out. ‘No problem at all,’ he said. ‘In fact, why don’t we do that now?’

In the scullery, the rarely used third bar of the electric fire was glowing neon-red and making these little zinging noises, like open nerves. Merrily lit a cigarette and carried her tea to the window overlooking the dank Decembered garden.

‘Have you ever thought of leaving here?’ Jane said.

‘Not really. Well… once or twice. Have you?’

Surely not. Surely never in a million years.

Jane, sitting on the old sofa, expressionless, made no reply. Not since Lucy…

No, that wasn’t the same. When Lucy was killed, Jane had lost control, pulling her hair and screaming abuse at God, even Merrily failing to realise at the time how big a death this was. But Jane had been a kid then and Merrily a nervous, novice parish priest, and their relationship was on a permanent cliff-edge.

‘I… heard Bill Blore on the radio at lunchtime,’ Merrily said. ‘They’d been asking him about Clement Ayling’s murder.’

Jane said nothing. She’d insisted on washing her face before she came down. Washing it over and over, with cold water.

‘It struck me that he might’ve had to delay your interview. Or even call it off?’

She’d been thinking that Lol might be the one to reach Jane. Lol with his sixth sense for humiliation and despair. But when she’d slipped downstairs, Lol had whispered that Eirion was on his way, a day early because of the floods. Everything happened at once in this house. She hadn’t told Jane who, when the front-door bell rang, had still been on the edge of the bed, body language screaming, Leave me alone, like for ever.

‘He didn’t want to talk about it,’ Jane said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Blore. Wanted to get on with his excavation. Naturally, they — the media — didn’t want to talk about anything else.’

‘And that put him in a bad mood? I was thinking maybe he’d kept putting you off and you were hanging around the site getting cold and wet and nothing happening.’

‘If only.’

‘Flower…’ Merrily on her knees by the sofa, picking up Jane’s left hand. ‘Just because Blore didn’t want to talk to you today…’ Watching the nails of Jane’s right hand sinking into the cushion. ‘There’ll be another opportunity. He clearly needs you for his programme, if he’s going to—’

Merrily held Jane’s hand firmly in both of hers. No, of course. It was worse than that, wasn’t it?

‘You don’t understand.’ Jane’s hand was gripping Merrily’s fiercely, tears pooling. ‘You weren’t listening. I’ve been stupid. Unbelievably stupid.’

Eirion had the Takamine on his knee. He’d worked out some chords to Sufjan Stevens’s ‘Chicago’. He seemed to have improved a lot. He looked around at the whitewashed walls, the orange paint that Jane had insisted should be applied between the beams in the ceiling.

‘You’ve got this place fantastic, Lol. Is that your mother?’ Nodding at the picture over the inglenook.

‘It’s Lucy Devenish,’ Lol said. ‘The only known photograph. For which she seems to have been determined not to pose. Hence the blur.’

‘Ah. That’s her, is it? That blur over the face makes her look a bit… unearthly.’

‘Mostly, she was very earthly. I always hear her saying… after Alison had left and before I met Merrily, when I was really low and a bit deranged, she said…’ Lol did the voice ‘“You really are a sick, twisted little person, aren’t you, Laurence?” Never dressed things up.’

Eirion laughed.

‘Then she gave me Thomas Traherne to read to straighten me out. “Have to learn to open up, Laurence. Go into the village on your own and go in smiling. That’s what Traherne did. Discovered felicity.”’

‘Did it work?’

‘Eventually.’ Lol opened a couple of bottles of Westons cider. ‘That and a few other things. Always presuming I am straightened out.’

‘This was her place, wasn’t it?’

‘Still is. Lucy’s house, my mortgage.’

‘Jane talks to her,’ Eirion said. ‘At her grave. Is that healthy, do you think?’

‘I always think graves are for us, not the dead. Lucy’s grave… Jane thinks it’s on an energy line. A spirit path.’

‘Well, that’s Jane, isn’t it?’

‘If it gives her energy…’

‘What about this house?’

‘Who knows? I only got it because the last people moved out after a short time. Claiming it was haunted.’

‘But you…?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Maybe Miss Devenish is happy you’re here.’ Eirion drank some cider. ‘God, listen to me, I’ve not been here half an hour and I’m talking like Jane already.’

‘But I’m always conscious that if I slip back, she’ll bloody well manifest with that hooked nose and the eagle eyes and the poncho flapping…’

‘Steady on, Lol.’ Eirion shuddered, put the bottle down. ‘Slip back how?’

‘Or it’s like I’m only allowed to stay here for some purpose.’ Lol sat down on the hard chair at the desk in the window. ‘Anyway… I’ve been putting these songs together.’

He told Eirion about Christmas Eve at the Black Swan and the suite of songs illustrating elements of what Lucy had called the Ledwardine Orb.

‘Traherne… Wil Williams, the 17th-century vicar here who was accused of witchcraft… Alfred Watkins, who discovered leys… his friend Edward Elgar, the composer who turned the landscape into music… and Lucy, who bound it all together.’

‘How many songs?’

‘Five so far, three more in the works. And a reworking of Nick Drake’s “Fruit Tree”, which seemed appropriate. Apple trees… change and decay. Mortality.’

‘Nearly enough for an album. Hey…’ Eirion’s eyes lighting up. ‘This is actually the second solo album? The sequel to Alien?’

‘Maybe, if I can pull it off, I won’t be an alien any more.’

‘Like you’ll’ve landed?’

Lol shrugged, uncertainly.

‘Sounds a bit pathetic, doesn’t it? As for playing the songs for the first time in public, in the Black Swan on Christmas Eve…’

‘Bollocks!’ Eirion played a ringing C7th. ‘The heart of the village. Couldn’t be better, man. It was meant.’

‘You could almost think that,’ Lol said. ‘I came down this morning and the book of Traherne’s selected poems and prose was lying on the desk. The one Lucy gave me. Lying just there. No memory of getting it down from the shelf. Picked it up and it fell open at You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens…’

‘… and crowned with the stars.’ Eirion looked momentarily embarrassed. ‘Jane used to…’

Quote it when they were in bed, probably, Lol thought. Very Jane.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘if you’re just the bloke with a guitar in the corner on Christmas Eve, nobody listens, and I’ve realised I want them to. Want the incomers to know about this stuff — it’s a bit of a white-settlers’ pub, the Swan. Even if they say This is crap, I want them to listen. So… I was thinking I could use back-projection? They’ve got some kit at the Swan, and Jane has this collection of old photos of Ledwardine — and some new photos of Cole Hill, taken by you, I believe…’

‘I look at them often,’ Eirion said. ‘Too often, really. Especially the one of Jane with her blouse… but, you don’t need to know this.’

‘So would you be able to take care of that aspect? Make sure the right pictures come up on the screen behind me at the right time? Also, with one song, I need to use a recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. I’ll need fingers on mixers.’

‘Hey…’ Eirion put down the guitar. ‘Look no further, Lol. Jane, too? Me and Jane?’

‘Well… hopefully.’

Eirion stiffened. ‘Lol, she is OK, isn’t she? There’s not something about Jane you aren’t telling me?’

Lol went to the window. Dusk was forming. There were no lights upstairs in the vicarage.

‘Oh my God, there’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ Eirion said. ‘I felt it as soon as I walked on to the drive.’

‘Eirion…’ Lol turned round; he wasn’t good at this. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure.’

‘Listen, you might as well tell me.’ Eirion had gone pale. ‘Is it this fucking Neil Cooper?’

An hour or so later, with night wrapping itself around the village like an old grey coat, Jane and Eirion went down to the river with a lamp.

The air seemed to be throbbing with unshed rain. Merrily and Lol went back into the vicarage and sat in the kitchen.

‘I hope he gets more sense out of her than I did,’ Merrily said.

33 A Corridor

The river was in an angry world of his own, heaving himself up against the arch of the bridge. Jane tried to get into his mindset; sometimes anger was a lifeline.

‘You think there’s room for someone like me in journalism?’

They were heading for the riverside footpath which did a half circuit of the village before veering off and ending up, like all the Ledwardine paths did, in one of the old orchards. Despite the growing darkness, Jane was walking fast and hard.

‘Don’t like the sound of that.’ Eirion scrabbling after her, not really dressed for this, looking fairly respectable for Mum. ‘Why would you suddenly want to get into journalism?’

‘Because you get to…’ Jane didn’t stop, climbing over the stile leading to the riverside footpath ‘… shaft people?’

She heard Eirion sigh, glanced quickly back at him. She’d always been on at him to lose weight but now he had, it was wrong. His face was leaner, more streetwise, less vulnerable, less… manageable.

Jane held the lamp and watched him climb over the stile without stumbling. In the old days he’d have stumbled. She turned and started walking away, against the flow of the river. The other side of it, the lights had come on, the big red Santa plumping out like some gross cyst from the wall of a new bungalow on what Gomer Parry called the hestate.

‘See, I used to think that was a pretty shoddy thing to do, but now I realise some people deserve it.’

‘Well, yeah, obviously,’ Eirion said, ‘but—’

‘Really arrogant people? Bastards who destroy other people without a thought?’

The rushing river beside her was brown with churned-up silt and gassy like cheap draught bitter. Eirion stopped.

‘So we’re talking about Professor Blore, are we?’

Jane kept on walking, forcing him to come after her. She wished it would start raining, give her an excuse for looking messed-up. Bloody rain, always there except when you needed some.

‘Blore?’

Eirion shouting like maybe she hadn’t heard. A bit out of breath now, she noticed. So he wasn’t doing gym, just missing meals.

‘Why would it be?’ Jane said.

‘Because when you rang last night to set this up, it was like, Oh Bill Blore’s going to save the Meadow, Bill Blore and me, Bill Blore who’s like totally cool and—’

‘Shut up, you—!’

Jane spun and stumbled, one foot going down the river bank, Eirion trying to grab her but she reeled away, fell on her bum on the soaking grass.

‘Oh, Jane…’

‘I need to rethink my future, OK?’ Jane refusing his hand, refusing to get up, feeling sick and stupid. ‘It’s no big deal. There are loads of other careers. No big deal. The world’s my… hairball.’

Blinking back tears like some little kid, an auto-reaction to the unexpected.

‘It is, Jane.’ Eirion standing with his arms by his sides now, shaking his head. ‘It’s a bloody great mega-deal. You had it all sorted. You knew totally where you were going. You couldn’t understand why you hadn’t spotted the obvious.’

‘I can make a mistake.’

‘Yeah, but you usually can’t bring yourself to admit it, which is why this is so totally… What happened? What did Blore do? Is he still around?’

‘Dunno.’

‘I mean, I can go and ask him. Corner him in the pub. Get him up against a wall, like, what’ve you done to my…?’

Behind Jane, the river surged and frothed, pitiless. But Eirion had dried up. God, he didn’t know what to call her any more: My former girlfriend? My ex?

She was shocked.

Eirion came and sat down next to her on the sodden grass in what was clearly a new jacket — worse, new trousers.

‘Start at the beginning,’ he said.

The hestate behind them now, they were walking more slowly, hand in hand, like thirteen-year-olds on a first date. Or at least like thirteen-year-olds did when Jane was thirteen. Five years ago… hell, that was a long time ago. So much pressure to grow up fast, pressure to put your life into a Jiffy bag, tick the boxes, meet the targets. Pressure, pressure, pressure.

‘He did exactly what he said he was going to do.’ Jane took a steadying breath. ‘Shot me.’

Eirion looked at her, up and down, like for exit wounds.

‘Can’t say I wasn’t warned, Irene. Like, Coops had said he was probably going to be in a crap mood. He said it was best not to approach him afterwards.’

‘Coops.’

‘Neil Cooper. County archaeologist guy?’

‘I know who you mean,’ Eirion said.

‘A friend, Irene. That’s all. Married.’

‘I’m sorry. Go on.’

‘I didn’t approach Blore, I really didn’t. I was just, like, standing around, and I could see him keep looking at me, like he was trying to remember who I was and what I was doing here. So I just kind of smiled and didn’t go over. I mean, it wasn’t just me, everybody was giving him a wide berth. The students, the camera crew…’

‘He’s an archaeologist, Jane, not bloody Brad Pitt.’

‘He’s a distinguished archaeologist. He has an entourage — students and… what’s the word… like fossils?’

‘Acolytes?’

‘Yeah. So then this other guy was there who wasn’t supposed to be. This dowser, with his divining rods?’

A man Jane remembered from a meeting of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society last summer. Schoolteacher-looking guy with grey hair and a white beard. A member of the British Society of Dowsers, who said he’d used his rods and his pendulum to track the ley line — the energy line — from Cole Hill to the church. Telling Jane to point out to Mum that the energy passed directly through the pulpit and if she ever felt in need of spiritual fuel for a sermon she need only become aware of the line and energy would flow through her. And then telling Jane — like he’d once put in an email — that Coleman’s Meadow had a site-guardian attached to it, some kind of elemental force, and anyone who tried to damage it could expect a hard time.

‘I mean, he wasn’t doing anything bad. Just walking round with these copper dowsing rods. He’d been waiting there since first light, apparently. Told Coops he’d been waiting weeks to get into the site, see if the line corresponded to his calculations or whatever.’

‘I had a go at that once,’ Eirion said. ‘Dowsing. Farmer near us hired this bloke to tell him where to sink a borehole. It works, I think, but that was underground water, not… earth energy.’

‘Same thing.’ Jane looked at the river. ‘That’s serious energy. Anyway, Coops said this guy could have ten minutes. Just don’t get in the way and remember that he couldn’t come in after they’d started the dig. He was this really polite, inoffensive guy, you know?’

Eirion nodded.

‘So he must’ve had his ten minutes, and he was just walking back towards the gate, following whatever his rods were picking up, when Bill Blore practically walks into him. He’s just like standing in his path, like looming over him? And he’s, like, what are you doing on my site? And the guy like smiles and starts explaining about the energy line, and then Bill Blore says has he ever calculated how far a dowsing rod would go up his arse before it—’

Eirion winced.

‘And looking like he… like he wanted to actually do it? And then… I was outside the gate with Coops, staying out of the way, so he hadn’t seen me, and he goes, Where’s that fucking girl? Let’s get all the shit out of the way, then we can do some work.’

‘So that’s when you left, is it?’ Eirion said.

‘No,’ Jane said. ‘That’s when I should’ve left.’

It was that feeling of being locked into destiny. That it was all meant. That the secret of Coleman’s Meadow would have remained undiscovered, if she hadn’t come here.

Arrogance. She was just as bad as Bill Blore, who…

‘… said we just hadn’t got time to go to the top of Cole Hill with the crew. Well, I should’ve realised then. How could I explain how I first, like, perceived the line, if I couldn’t stand up there, in the Iron Age ramparts and point to the steeple and the impression of the path across the meadow. You need to see it.’

‘Maybe he was thinking they could get some shots from up there afterwards,’ Eirion said. ‘Or from a helicopter. So they could overlay your description of it with the pictures.’

‘Yeah, that’s what he said. Don’t worry about it, they could overlay it. Whatever, I went along with it and they decided to record it on the edge of the meadow, by the gate, and he’s like, “So tell us how you first became interested in Coleman’s Meadow.” And I’m trying to explain, the best I could with nothing to point to.’

Telling him about discovering Alfred Watkins’s seminal work The Old Straight Track and realising how magically this line fitted Watkins’s concept of ley lines, which actually made a lot more sense than some people wanted to admit.’

Magically. Bill Blore nodding. I see.

Jane telling him that of course she knew how archaeologists had rubbished Watkins and ley lines both, back in the 1920s, and how it was lucky they were so much more open-minded now.

‘And Bill Blore’s like… he’s just standing there with this kind of sardonic smile on his face?’

Occasionally shaking his head, slowly. There were two cameras, one on Jane, one on him. And this director guy, Mike, who was talking more to the camera guys than to Blore, giving them signals and stuff. And, of course, there were all these students gathered round, about six of them.

‘You’ll have seen how he works with students.’

‘Points out how they’ve got it all wrong,’ Eirion said. ‘Throwing away what they thought was rubbish and it’s actually a tiny piece of Roman mosaic.’

‘Like that, yeah.’

Bill Blore had let her ramble on for several minutes about leys and earth mysteries and the incredible moment of illumination she’d experienced on the top of Cole Hill. And then he’d gone, Thanks, Jane, and turned to the students, a camera following him.

Interesting, eh? Blore had said. This, you see, is how myths are created. A youngster comes to the right conclusions… for all the wrong reasons. Ley lines. Gawd help us.

Then turning back to Jane, smiling kindly.

All the same, we’re grateful to you. What are you going to do next? University?

And Jane had gone, Maybe… hopefully, archaeology. Probably blushing a bit.

One of the students had smirked.

Bill, is there a degree course in ley lines now? Which university would that be at?

Jane wanting to deck the bastard, who was only about a year older than her, probably Eirion’s age, and so grateful when Bill Blore immediately turned on him.

George, you are so fucking ignorant!

Bill said fuck a lot on TV, like Gordon Ramsey. Like it was part of his contract to get one in every couple of minutes. But the student still backed off, red-faced, going, Sorry, Bill.

And Blore had gone after him.

So you should be, George. And then, with a barely perceptible snigger clotting in his throat, he said, Have you never heard of the University of Middle Earth?

There was about half a trembling second of hollow silence… before this explosion of laughter, probably shattering enough to distort the soundtrack.

Everyone, including Bill Blore, stepping away. Jane becoming aware that she was on her own, encircled by it. The laughter. Which had been hissing between her ears like some foul tinnitus ever since.

‘The bastard,’ Eirion said.

‘And you know what was worst of all? Because it was him… because it was Bill Blore who’d said it… I was laughing, too.’

Laughing in desperation, through the tears gathering in her eyes, the way they were gathering now.

It hadn’t even ended there. Bill Blore, still on camera, had given the students a short lecture about the danger of damaging the credibility of their profession by allowing the core disciplines of archaeology to be undermined by fashionable fads and the drivel spouted by gullible New Age cranks determined to prove spurious links between ancient civilisations and all kinds of sad psychic shit.

The last thing archaeology needed, Bill Blore said — glancing with this kind of cold affection at Jane — was a following of cranks… however cute they might appear.

Remember that.

All the time, the other camera focusing implacably on Jane, like some gleaming evil eye, and there was nowhere to hide.

When it was over, and the cameras were switched off, Bill Blore had seemed so much more relaxed. Loosened up, smiling at people. Finally, moseying over to Jane, looking down benignly, squeezing her arm. Well done, girlie.

Patting her once on the shoulder before strolling away, followed by his entourage, like some high-powered surgeon in a crap hospital drama who’d just saved somebody’s life against impossible odds.

Wicked stuff, Bill, the director guy had murmured, within Jane’s hearing. And all done in one take.

Jane followed the lamp into the orchard. Still some old frost-rotted apples lying on the ground, winter rations for the blackbirds

‘Girlie?’ Eirion called after her. ‘He called you girlie?’

Coops had been sympathetic, of course. He’d said Blore was a shit anyway, everybody knew that, and when you caught a shit on a bad day you just put it down to experience, wiped it out of your head. Coops just hadn’t realised, and she hadn’t even told him what she was now trying to explain to Eirion.

‘This is going on TV, right?’

‘Well, it… I mean Trench One…’ Eirion shuffling about, trying to make it better. ‘It hasn’t got a really big audience.’

Even he hadn’t quite put it together.

‘But what it has got…’ Jane’s throat was parched ‘… is an audience of archaeologists? Almost certainly including professors of archaeology at, like, universities?’

‘Oh,’ Eirion said.

‘Are they going to forget the gullible, airy-fairy, cranky girl who got lucky against all the rules? Ever?’

‘They’ll probably just… feel sorry for you,’ Eirion said.

‘Yeah, right, you put your finger on it there, Irene. They’ll feel sorry for me.’ Jane rocked back against a rotting stump. ‘Are you kidding? They’ll despise me. Totally. Terminally. I’m finished with archaeology before I even started.’

She was feeling physically sick. The humiliation would go on reverberating down a corridor as long as the rest of her life.