Friends of the Dusk (19 page)

‘Somebody has to do it.’

‘Innes is killing two birds wi’ one brick, lass. And he can’t even say it to your face.’

‘He delegates.’

‘He goes behind your back! He’s shutting the door on you.’

‘There’s no
licence
for deliverance. It only exists in the shadows. He could just tell me to go.’

‘No he can’t, and he won’t. Not without good reason. You’ve been conspicuously successful, right from the start. Wasn’t for you they’d never’ve found out about Hunter and the mad, apocalyptic delusions that put him in purple.’

‘I’ve been lucky… and not
that
conspicuous. And Hunter, that was you more than me.’

‘Within the Church you’ve been talked about. At all levels. Happen your card’s been marked, I don’t know, but I’ll find
out. Listen. Do nowt. Keep your nose clean. Let me think about this. Don’t talk to anybugger till I come back to you tonight.’

‘Right,’ she said.

She blew her nose.

She wasn’t crying. She sat and gazed into the blur of the lights across the river. Rural dean. Why not? Helping new priests fit into the countryside… she could even be good at that. It wasn’t that she couldn’t use the extra money, especially if Jane went to university next year. Couldn’t begin to see it as a step up. Hell, she was never likely to want to replace Siân as Archdeacon. Not her thing, management. No touchstones there.

It was nearly dark. She watched the strange white vapour from the e-cig, like the ectoplasm in old spiritualist photos. She started to laugh, unhealthily, as the phone chimed – damn, damn, damn,
change it.

‘It’s Casey. Killow. Mirrily, I’m thinking we never made a firm date. For you to come back.’

‘Sorry, I thought I said I’d call you. If I didn’t…’

‘Can you come tomorrow? When we’re all here? Just turn up. I won’t tell anybody you’re coming.’

‘Thing is, Casey, it’s the one day of the week when an entire congregation would notice I was missing.’

All seventeen of them, on a good week.

‘Oh. Yeah. You’re a vicar. Jeez, this place plays tricks with you. Things you’d dismiss as the sheerest lunacy, they come and live with you. Y’know what they used to say about strokes?’

‘I’m sorry?’ The lights in the palace were smeared across the windscreen. The rain began sluicing the Freelander like a water cannon. Merrily cut the speaker, put the phone to an ear. ‘In what context?’

‘No, you probably don’t. Words become so familiar, people nivver wonder about them. Where they came from. When it happened to Dinnis, I looked up everything I could find in books, the Net… I couldn’t sleep afterwards, just lay there looking at bloody Dinnis. Nivver told him. He’d laugh. He
always laughs. Listen, ignore me, I’m an hysterical woman, just come soon’s you can.’

‘It would have to be tomorrow afternoon, I’ve services in the morning, and I’d need to be back for seven. We do an evening meditation in the church.’

‘No, listen, it doesn’t matter. I just thought…’

‘Is two o’clock OK?’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I tell you, Mirrily,’ Casey said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. I think we invinted them to explain rational fears we can’t deal with – sickness, loneliness, disorientation, what have you. And then they become so real in our heads the bastards might just as well exist. What’s the difference?’

‘It’s a moot point.’

‘I didn’t ring you, OK? I don’t know you’re coming.’

‘Of course you don’t,’ Merrily said.

When she drove away, Huw’s voice was crackling in her head like the start of a fire.
Do nowt. Keep your nose clean.

Yeah, right. Like she could, when there were people in this much mental chaos.

26

Good-looking kid situation

I
T HAD A
name now: Operation Digger. Not particularly clever, but the operational names came down from headquarters, along with a bunch of boffins setting up shop in the major incident room, three floors up.

When Bliss had got home to his semi in Marden on the Hereford plain, the lamps were on, curtains drawn tight, Annie’s car parked, as usual, in the next street. Could be that, by now, somebody on the housing estate had twigged that they had more than a professional relationship, but Bliss couldn’t imagine anybody grassing him up. Like the woman next door had said once, he was a useful neighbour to have.

When Karen Dowell buzzed Bliss’s mobile, the TV was on with the sound down, coming up to the local news. He’d been interviewed about the Greenaway killing by Mandy Patel from local BBC. They were almost mates now, him and Patel.

‘We’ve got them, boss,’ Karen said. ‘Thought you’d want to know.’

‘The parents? Hold on a sec.’

He put the phone on speaker so Annie could hear, laid it on the long coffee table in front of the sofa they were sharing. As DCI, Annie wasn’t directly involved in the inquiry, but she’d read all the reports. She’d pick up on the reference points.

‘Hotel in Cornwall,’ Karen said. ‘Late autumn weekend break. They’re on the way home now.’

‘But you’ve talked to them?’

‘Mainly the dad, Derek Greenaway. Gays are usually closest
to their mums, but not in this case, it seems. Mrs Greenaway was too upset to talk but not as upset, apparently, as when Tris came out. Didn’t want anything to do with him for a few years. They’d not long been back on speaking terms. His dad said she was convinced he’d come round sooner or later.’

‘What, find a nice girl and raise a family?’

‘Be funny if it wasn’t so sad.’

‘Only child, is he?’

‘No, there’s a married sister, also living in Evesham, which is why Mum and Dad moved over there when he took early retirement from the council. New grandchildren, far more acceptable. Anyway, about half an hour after I’d spoken to him, Derek Greenaway rang back. On his own, from a corner of the hotel bar.’

‘Good of him.’

‘I think it helped him unload stuff he couldn’t talk about with his wife. He’s a former environment health officer with Herefordshire Council, but I don’t remember him myself. Anyway, we had quite a long and productive chat, and that’s why I’m calling you. He was concerned to know what line of inquiry we were following. His wife – once the shock had worn off, she was worried there might be something, you know,
sordid
?’

‘Perish the thought, Karen.’

‘You do have to be of a certain generation for that word to be appropriate any more. Mr Greenaway says that, whatever comes out, he doesn’t want his son portrayed as some promiscuous good-time boy, because it isn’t that simple.’

‘Like he’d know.’

‘He described Tristram as being a disappointment to himself? Always disappointed that his life wasn’t delivering what it should. It’s like a good-looking kid situation?’

‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ Bliss flashed a glance at Annie, grinned. ‘I was always a weird-looking kid.’

‘I had a cousin like that,’ Karen said. ‘Beautiful kids, people fawn over them, and by the time they’re sixteen or so they
think that’s all you need. That and being good at sport, which Greenaway was as well, according to his dad. My cousin, the rest of us just got consolation prizes for not being him. He went from job to job, married three times. Where is he now? I don’t know. Anyway, I digress. Sorry.’

Annie was shaking her head, maybe a little sadly. She was the ice queen of Gaol Street, nobody rambled on to her like that. Nobody ever felt sorry for Annie, Bliss thought. Maybe they would if they knew.

Karen was saying that Tristram Greenaway seemed to have grown up with not so much ambition as expectation, leaving university with an undistinguished archaeology degree, but what did that matter if you had the looks?

‘It really never occurred to him he wasn’t going to be a star like one of these guys on
Time Team
and
Trench One
and write bestselling books that were like mainly pictures of him looking devastatingly handsome in a hole in the ground.’

‘Ugly as sin, some of those
Time Team
fellers, Karen. Part of their appeal.’

‘Yeah, well, you know what I’m saying.’

Greenaway had had some good jobs, Karen said, but never seemed to keep them. It was always going to be the next big thing. He was once employed on something screened on the History Channel, with a hint that he might wind up presenting. Bought a house at the top of the market, only to have it repossessed when the show got taken off after one season.

Bottom line: his dad had been secretly bailing him out for a couple of years, and always looking out for him. When the job came up in Hereford. Derek Greenaway heard about it from one of his old mates on the council.

‘You’re saying his old man got him that job?’

‘I don’t know. Might just have been a question of Tris having local knowledge from growing up in the area. But he got it and he came back to Hereford, the old hometown. But then… it turned out to be another one like the TV job that didn’t pan
out as expected. Boss, I’m thinking there are some things Neil Cooper didn’t tell you.’

‘Go on.’

‘Greenaway took the temp post with every reason to believe he’d get Cooper’s present job when Cooper was promoted after…’ Sound of Karen leafing through notes ‘… Des—?’

‘Des Walters. Expected to get an early-retirement deal.’

‘That’s the guy. OK. The last time Tristram Greenaway talked to his dad, right? On the phone. Couple of nights before he died. Obviously been drinking and he’s terribly upset. Get this…’

Bliss and Annie instinctively closing in on the phone to hear how Greenaway had told Derek what a mistake it had been coming back to Hereford, a town of losers. Telling his dad he was getting out forever this time, because he’d been double-crossed. Been assured that Des Walters was already history, so when Cooper told him Walters was coming back after all…’

‘He sounds a bloody sight more upset than he apparently sounded when he talked to Jane Watkins. I reckon he’s telling his dad what he thinks he wants to hear, don’t you? His old man got him the job with the council, but he still wants to be on TV. Bit of a performer, Tris, don’t you think? Still, let’s talk to Cooper again, see what else we can uncover. Sit tight, Karen, you’re playing a blinder on this one, and I’m gonna make sure the right people know about it.’

‘Who, Annie Howe?’ Karen’s laughter distorting in the phone. ‘You think Annie Howe will help reboot my career?’

‘Hang on, I think that’s me doorbell, I’d better…’ Bliss didn’t look at Annie. ‘Thank you, Karen. Ta very much. We’ll discuss the implications at length first thing tomorrow.’

Ending the call and switching off the phone, just to be sure.

‘You mean bastard,’ Annie said. ‘How many opportunities does anyone get to listen to somebody diminishing them behind their back?’

‘Didn’t want you to get big-headed, Annie. You’ve always been an icon to that girl. Admires you as a police officer…’ Bliss
dodging the flying cushion. ‘… and as a woman. Now just let me think about this.’

They caught the local TV piece on the Greenaway murder. It didn’t delay them long.

‘A read,’ Bliss said disgusted, switching off the set. ‘A friggin’
read.
Murder in Birmingham, two minutes plus. Murder in Hereford, fifteen friggin’ seconds over a clip of the Plas.’

‘When Charlie’s Police and Crime Commissioner,’ Annie said quietly, ‘the Hereford profile will rise accordingly. Sorry. Remind me, how does that phone call from Greenaway senior change things?’

‘Well, he’s mad at Cooper. Who he now sees as having led him along, maybe deterring him from applying for other jobs he might even have got. And then shafting him.’

‘Cooper
didn’t
shaft him.’

‘All right then, he’s blaming the messenger. Either way, we now know Greenaway was seriously pissed off, and that gives us a reason for him lifting Cooper’s skull. If only out of pique.
He
gets the elbow and Cooper gets his name in the annals for discovering the first deviant burial in the county.’

‘Deviant burial,’ Annie said. ‘You really like that phrase, don’t you?’

‘Actually, I do. It sounds like an offence against common decency. “You stand accused of deviant burial”.’

‘It’s not a terrific claim to fame, though, is it? Finding an ancient corpse with its head between its legs.’

‘I don’t know. And how rational was Greenaway at the time? Was he actually pissed when Cooper rang him up and asked him to come and help out on Castle Green?’

Annie stood up and went to switch off the standard lamp he’d bought in a junk shop to replace the one Kirsty had come back for within a week of leaving him. Now the room was reduced to soft orange from the small table lamp Annie had brought over from Malvern. She came back to the sofa, the light softening her skin.

‘So – OK – what’s your premise?’

‘OK, here’s the case for Cooper as the killer. He puts two and two together as regards the skull. He’s furious. Goes round to Greenaway’s place, says “gimme…” And one thing leads to another. Possible. Both of them are angry now, and no easy way it’s going to be resolved. Most murders are not premeditated. Lots of them are over something that appears completely trivial.’

‘But when you see the pictures of Greenaway’s face… That’s extreme rage, Francis.’

‘Yeh. That doesn’t fit Cooper at all. How about the weapon? Can we afford to dip into the Wye?’

‘Where? It’s a very long river. OK if he just walked across the road and tossed it in, but…’

‘And a lorra silt down there.’

‘What about the skull itself? I presume we’ve been looking for that?’

‘Could be in the river too, for all we know.’

Annie was nodding at the phone.

‘You realize you’ve disappointed her again.’

‘Karen?’

‘She still fancies you, doesn’t she?’

‘Gerroff.’

‘Ringing at night, thinking you might like to go round to her place and discuss the case. Or invite her here.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Bliss shook his head. ‘Despite being younger, I’ve always thought Karen’s feelings for me were verging on the maternal.’

‘Francis, you don’t understand the first thing about women.’