Friends of the Dusk (43 page)

‘Mrs Watkins is outside. She’s not looking for you, is she?’

Bliss was on his feet.

‘She’s looked better,’ Vaynor said. ‘Quite a big dressing on her face.’

‘You’re saying she’s hurt?’

‘May be wrong, but I think she was involved in that accident on the Cwmarrow road. The fatal?’

Bliss moved past him, rapidly down the stairs and out into the weather, looking round urgently. Finally locating Merrily Watkins with Mills and Calder from Traffic, up against their blue and yellow car. Mother of God, if he hadn’t been told he might not have recognized her. Forget the facial dressing and the ripped Barbour, she looked bloody rough.

‘Oh, Merrily, Merrily.’ Strolling over, dead casual. ‘Just look at the state of you.’

Calder looked at him, with suspicion.

‘This incident at Cwmarrow?’ Bliss said.

He waited. Come on… a place he’d never heard of and it had come up twice? Darryl Mills shook his big head.

‘Nothing for you, boss.’

As a former detective and not a bad one, he’d know.

Patti Calder said. ‘Mrs Watkins came into town with us, Frannie, to make a statement, and she’s without transport. We’re giving her a lift home.’

‘Patti,’ Bliss said. ‘There’s a lorra mad bastards out there, driving without due care and attention in seriously
advairse
conditions. Why don’t you and Darryl go and pull a few over.
I’ll
give Mrs Watkins a lift home.’

Merrily looked at him then down at her shoes, nodding. He waited while she shook hands with Patti and Darryl, thanked them and then she followed him to the Honda. By the time they were halfway to Ledwardine, it was easy to understand why she was having new doubts about the existence of a benevolent supreme being.

He, on the other hand…

57

A fence

‘I’
M NOT MAKING
too much of this, Merrily. Not even calling it coincidence. It’s just nice to discover we’re on parallel lines here.’

‘We are?’

All the lines she could see stretching out ahead of her were buckled and twisted.

Bliss had pulled into a lay-by that had become a picnic place because of its view of Cole Hill, behind which Ledwardine was sunk. It had stopped raining; the wind was still irritable but no longer worth a warning on the radio news.

‘I don’t question it any more,’ Bliss said. ‘That’s your territory, and sometimes I’m glad there’s a fence. Considering the subject matter I was gonna have a word couple of days ago. Would’ve tried harder if I’d known there was common ground.’

‘I don’t know that there is. You’re investigating the murders of two people I’d never heard of until they were murdered. Jane talked to one for about twenty minutes but hadn’t met him before. That doesn’t make it common ground either.’

‘The shared focus, Merrily, is a place called Cwmarrow. In a context in which you tend to see things I don’t.’

‘You have more confidence in me than I do. It’s not that I don’t
want
to help… I’m just not in the best of places right now.’

She felt uncomfortable, restricted, caged. The dressing over her right cheek felt like a huge swelling caused by toothache. It didn’t hurt that much, there’d been no glass in the cut. The paramedics had applied the dressing at Cwmarrow after she’d
refused to go to A and E. She’d left soon afterwards in the police car without seeing anyone from Cwmarrow Court. Which was probably sensible but felt like cowardice and left a raw ache stronger and more insistent than shock.

‘Well, yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘I do realize that almost gerrin’ killed…’

‘Well, I wasn’t. It wasn’t pleasant, my car could be a write-off, but compared with what happened on the other side of the tree…’

She shook.

‘It was an act of God, Merrily.’

‘Why do people keep—?’ She rocked back into the headrest, letting her eyes close. ‘Never my favourite phrase. It’s washing our hands and backing off.’

‘You knew him. Feller who died. The doctor.’

‘I was on my way to see him. And his daughter. Particularly his daughter.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m sorry, Frannie, but you don’t need to know that.’

‘All right. You went to see an elderly feller called Selwyn Kindley-Pryce yesterday. Is that correct?’

She opened her eyes and turned her head towards him. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Presumably some management person at the home where he lives, when one of my team rang to ask if he was up to being interviewed. Seems he isn’t. Seems he’s been three sheets in the wind for years.’

‘Why would you want to interview him?’

‘Friends of the Dusk,’ Bliss said. ‘Heard of them?’

‘Who are they?’

‘It was a group of people interested in the British vampire. Or, more specifically, the Hereford vampire. Make any sense?’

‘It… Oh God, it may be. Never heard of the Friends of the Dusk, though. Sounds vaguely Masonic.’

‘You know anything about the gatherings that Kindley-Pryce had at his place?’

‘I know he needed money for restoration, so he hosted festivals involving music and poetry and discussions about local folklore. For which people presumably paid.’

‘I should tell you that Victim One, Tristram Greenaway, was connected with the group. As was Victim Two, Jeremy Soffley, though to a lesser extent.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘So why
did
you go to visit the old feller?’

‘Because, it had been suggested that— See, this is going to sound like complete crap to you—’

‘Merrily, how long’ve we known each other?’

‘All right. People ask me to “exorcize” places. They have no idea what it means, but it sounds final. Like I can just go in and say the magic words and everything’s back to normal?’

‘Whereas you need to know what you’re dealing with.’

‘In order to condition the response, yes. OK. In confidence…’

‘Yeh, yeh.’

‘A guy there, at Cwmarrow, his wife believes that whatever they’re sharing the house with may have caused him to have a stroke. Kindley-Pryce left the old house because he’d – perhaps quite quickly – developed dementia. Places, in my experiences, can damage people.’

‘True enough. Radon gas. Proximity of pylons…’

‘Not a huge step to toxic history. I just needed to be sure there was nothing Kindley-Pryce could tell me. In one way or another.’

‘And was there?’

‘I… If it doesn’t make sense to me, it wouldn’t make sense to you. Not going to burden with you with something I’m not sure about. Especially as it doesn’t relate to either of your victims or… the Friends of the Dusk. Who I knew nothing about.’

Bliss thought about this, gazing out at conical Cole Hill across the flurrying fields.

‘What are you doing this afternoon?’

‘Feeling sick.’

‘I’ve some video coming over from the States, shot by a man called Jim Turner who—’

‘He was going to buy Cwmarrow Court from Kindley-Pryce.’

‘Aha. Yes.’

‘Pulled out and went to America?’

‘Very quickly, it seems. We were wondering why the appeal of the house seemed to have waned for him.’

‘You’ve spoken to him?’

‘We have. He was going to make a documentary about the hunt for the old feller’s Hereford vampire.’

‘
Was
there a—?’

‘We’ll get to that. He’d already shot some film, video, at one or more of these weekend festivals, which we’ve asked him to send us electronically. If you feel you’re up to it, I’d like you to come in and view it, probably this afternoon. Because, as I keep saying, you’re quite likely to spot something – or somebody – that I’d miss the significance of.’

‘Ah.’

‘What?’

‘It’s not about whether I feel up to it. Just that if you want to do this officially, you’ll need to make an approach to Sophie in the Gatehouse. Sophie then consults the Bishop, and the Bishop – I’m just guessing here, Frannie – tells you, via Sophie, to sod off. Only in more civilized, episcopal terminology.’

‘Yeh, I’d heard he was a bit of a twat. What’s his problem?’

‘Take too long to explain. Suffice to say he strongly disapproves of exorcism in the Church. And seems to want me out.’

‘Out?’

‘Out of the job, possibly out of his diocese. This is absolutely not me being paranoid.’

‘That’s ridiculous, Merrily. It’s the fuckin’
Chairch
!’

‘Don’t get me started.’

‘Mother of God.’ Bliss gripped the steering wheel, both hands. ‘All right, one thing, then I’ll leave yer alone. Simple question. Deviant burials. What do you know about them?’

‘I know what they
are
. To an extent. Why?’

‘When the tree blew down on Castle Green the other week, some bones were found underneath. Basically, a skeleton with his head between his legs and a stone in his gob.’

‘I didn’t know about this.’

‘You’re not supposed to,’ Bliss said. ‘In fact I haven’t told you.’

‘A stone?’

‘Between his teeth. To stop him chewing up his shroud, apparently. I call him Steve, though we’ve not actually met yet.’

‘Or to stop him speaking.’

‘Yeh, that would work. If he could speak.’

Merrily sat up.

Bliss said, ‘What?’

‘Stop him summoning.’

‘Just tell me in baby talk what that means.’

‘You need to talk to someone who’s more of an expert than me. And who doesn’t need permission from the Bishop and would react very badly if she thought she did.’

‘You very nearly smiled then, Merrily. Yeh, that would be all right. As long as it’s not Jane.’

‘You just have to be honest and upfront with her.’

‘As distinct from me normal furtive, lying self?’

‘If we go back to the vicarage now and you give me five minutes to go in and explain why I look like I’ve just been discharged from a women’s refuge… I’ll let you in. Back way. Park on the square.’

58

Timeless beauty

M
ERRILY WATCHED
B
LISS
assembling a handful of people he called trusties in his office. She was sitting at the back under the window, wearing jeans and a dark green hoodie, no dog collar, no visible cross. She’d removed the dressing and replaced it with a single pink plaster over the deepest cut. She watched and said nothing.

‘I’ve gorra warn you,’ Bliss said to everybody. ‘It’s arty stuff.’

He meant shot from oblique angles, sometimes against jagged spears of light from window slits or sconces on the stone walls or feeble flames from what DC Vaynor said were rush-lights. He meant that faces were shadowed and unclear and you didn’t hear any voices because Jim Turner had applied a music track at some later date: pipe organ, Vaynor said. Occasionally you’d get a glimpse of people playing instruments that looked like plumbing debris.

‘There.’ Karen Dowell touched the screen with a fingernail. ‘That’s Greenaway, isn’t it?’

Karen had organized a small TV and DVD player and Bliss had pushed the desk up against the door to stop anyone he didn’t trust getting in. Although Annie Howe was already here.

‘He looks about twelve,’ Bliss said.

Tristram Greenaway, fresh-faced and winsome, was in a dark silk shirt and tight jeans. He was serving drinks. Someone had evidently pinched his bottom. He spun round, still holding his tray, and then grinned. David Vaynor calculated he’d be about seventeen and still at school.

‘Anybody else we know?’ Bliss said.

Two people mentioned Hector Pryce. He had more hair then and a well-trimmed beard. He seemed to know a lot of people and drink a lot of wine. Merrily thought she recognized a former canon from the Cathedral, pink-cheeked and excited, and quite ill now, so she said nothing.

‘I presume we’ve all noticed the obvious?’ Bliss said.

Murmurs.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘They’re everywhere.’

The video switched to a sequence showing Selwyn Kindley-Pryce sitting in a straight-backed rustic chair with a large book open on his knees. He looked, Merrily thought, like an actor. A handsome, mature, distinguished actor with an actor’s tan. People, mainly young women, were sitting around him on and between bales of straw in what she thought was now the Maliks’ lofty sitting room.

‘Who,’ Vaynor asked, ‘is
that
?’

A woman was standing between two stacks of bales, an elbow resting on one. She wore a long, sleeveless black dress. Her hair was swung over one shoulder, and you couldn’t see where it ended.

‘That’s what you call timeless beauty,’ Vaynor said. ‘If you saw her in a painting from two hundred years ago…’

‘Steady, Darth,’ Bliss said.

The video froze on her. Caroline Goddard, Merrily thought, looking across at Bliss. When she’d gone into the vicarage alone, Jane had told her about a call from a woman identifying herself as Caroline. The same reclusive Caroline whose publishers had claimed she didn’t want to talk to a vicar on the Welsh border? Merrily had passed this on, in confidence, to Bliss. Caroline was important now. She would have answers.

‘And that’s it,’ Karen Dowell said. ‘That’s the lot. We should have some more by tonight, but apparently it won’t be that much different.’

‘There’s a word for what I think we’ve just seen,’ Bliss said.

‘Probably wasn’t a decade ago, Francis,’ Annie Howe said.

She wasn’t a timeless beauty, Annie, but she didn’t set your teeth on edge any more. Something in her life had altered, Merrily thought, not for the first time this year. Didn’t seem to bother her that it wasn’t as obvious as it would once have been that she was the senior officer here.

Vaynor said, ‘Do you want to see it again, boss? Ma’am? Or do you want me to get the retired blokes in?’

‘The gerries,’ Bliss said. ‘Yeh, let’s move the desk and wheel the gerries in. But first, let me just tell you about a minor breakthrough. An expert has confirmed what we thought about Greenaway’s attempts to market Steve. Let me just…’ He leaned into his laptop. ‘In case anybody’s forgotten…’

He brought up an email, ending with