To Dream of the Dead (11 page)

Merrily sat back. Her stomach felt like an empty fridge. She wanted to pray, preferably over a cigarette.

Sophie said, ‘If Inspector Bliss thinks—’

‘Sophie . . . whatever Bliss thinks doesn’t matter any more. It’s what . . .’ Merrily nodded at the door. ‘It’s what
she
thinks.’

‘We should go.’

Sophie was on her feet, carrying the crockery to the sink, numbly turning on taps. Merrily found a tea towel, and they performed, in silence, a domestic ritual which might never seem as comfortingly familiar again.

They left by the back door, not speaking until they were in the alley. The rain had thinned; the sun was a voyeur behind dirty curtains of cloud.

Merrily was thinking that Howe and whoever was carrying her bag might be closeted with Helen until dark.

‘I’ll come back later,’ Sophie said. ‘When they’ve gone.’

‘Be slightly careful, Sophie.’

‘I shall sit and listen. Without questioning.’ Sophie had put up the golf umbrella, a garish blossom in the drizzle on Castle Street. ‘Do you want to come back for something to eat, Merrily? It really won’t take me—’

‘No . . . thank you. Really, I need to get back. Get out of these clothes.’

Merrily saw that there was still a car across the street, parked on the double yellow lines. Sophie turned to walk home, looking back over her shoulder.

‘I’ll call you tonight. After I’ve talked to Helen.’

‘I’d be glad if you would.’

Walking back to the Volvo, Merrily felt choked up with doubt and uncertainty about something that was not her business. And apprehension about Sophie, about whom she harboured no doubts, no uncertainties.

As she reached the unmarked police car, another car pulled in behind it, a window gliding down.

‘You got time for a coffee, Reverend?’ Frannie Bliss said.

I
N A CHROMIUM
cafe on Broad Street, Bliss was taking his filter coffee black, to match his mood. His face was sallow with freckles, his hair had been eroded beyond comb-over to the shaven stage, never totally convincing in December.

Not yet forty, looked older.

‘She wants me out,’ he said.

At barely four p.m., the day was signing off. The winter-holiday lights over the street were ice blue and sea green. No angels, no Santas, no reindeer.

‘Hang on in there, Frannie,’ Merrily said. ‘She might be up for a transfer to the Met or something.’

Bliss looked up over his bitter coffee with a bitter little smile. ‘Merrily, I meant Kirsty.’

‘Oh God.’ Merrily lowering her mug. ‘I thought you’d managed to . . . deal with things.’

‘You can only paper over the cracks so many times before the paste stops sticking and the frigging paper falls off.’

‘What about the kids? It’s . . . Christmas.’

‘Oh, Christmas
helps
. We always went to the in-laws’ farm for Christmas. Gorra lot more going for it, for kids, than a semi in Marden.’

‘That’s where they’ve gone?’

‘The farm, yeh. Only this time they won’t be coming back on Boxing Day. The house . . . the house we can flog, for less than we paid last year, or I can buy Kirsty’s half – the options were efficiently outlined for me in an email waiting on me lappie. By
wanting me out
, I meant out of her life, not necessarily off the premises, if I can buy her out. Lucky me.’

‘God, I’m so sorry, Frannie. Look, if there’s any—’

‘Got in, in good time for breakfast, she’s already buggered off. Even turned the heating off. Shut the frigging heating down! Must’ve stayed up half the night working out the details in this state of cold rage she can keep up for hours. So . . .’ Bliss leaned back on his stainless steel stool ‘. . . there goes another happy family Christmas exchanging presents round the tree, watching
Harry Potter
with the kids . . .’

Merrily said nothing. Never met Kirsty, but she could only ever imagine Bliss
half
-watching
Harry Potter
with his kids and hoping the phone would ring before the Quidditch game was into injury time.

‘I mean, you
were
right,’ he said. ‘Howe – goes without saying – would also love to be attending me farewell piss-up. Not happy that she wasn’t informed as soon as it was found.’

‘So why wasn’t she informed?’

‘Because somebody said, you know, let’s not bother her, it’s Christmas . . .’

‘
Frannie
.’

Nobody could say Bliss allowed other people to dig his grave. ‘Under normal circs, I’d be number two on this, but she’s brought her own feller over from Worcester. DI Brent, PhD. A Ph frigging
D
! What’s happening, Merrily? All these higher-educated, fast-track police persons together . . . in a school.’

‘The incident room?’

‘Taken over the school next door. Packed the kids off home. So we’ve got Howe as headmistress, Brent as deputy. Kevin Snape as school secretary, fortunately.’

‘What
are
you on about?’

‘Office manager – that’s the bloke responsible for organising the show. Kevin’s a mate, so I get to keep tabs.’ Bliss poured himself more coffee. ‘Quite like to have seen Annie’s face when she found you and Sophie in Ayling’s back parlour.’

‘She didn’t. Annie Howe doesn’t know I’ve been anywhere near Ayling’s parlour.’

Merrily explained. Giving him the edited version, Sophie’s role minimised. Telling him what little she’d heard from behind the drawing-room door.

‘Played the dad card, Frannie.’

‘Charlie?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Bloody Charlie Howe. West Mercia’s finest, as was. Still walks around Gaol Street in his capacity as a member of the Police Authority. Always your mate.
Leave it with me, brother, I’m on your side
. Tapping his nose. Bent old twat.’

Merrily said nothing. Ex-Chief Superintendent Charlie Howe. Had he helped cover up a murder many, many years ago? Never proven, never would be, and now Charlie was this ever-popular senior councillor with a daughter doing awfully well in the police service, and not a mark on her.

‘Does it still count for much round here, do you think?’ Bliss said. ‘Ancestry? Roots? I’m standing in the middle of town last night with Kirsty and the progeny, and I’m looking round and I’m thinking, what the
fuck
am
I
doing here?
I
don’t fit in. But, then . . . I might still feel like that if I
had
roots and saw what was happening to Hereford under Charlie and his mates. I remember what happened to Liverpool.’

‘It’s still not a bad place, Frannie. And you’ve had your moments. More than Annie Howe.’

‘Yeh, and which of us is the frigging acting superintendent? Look, you wanna bun or something? Jammy doughnut?’

‘Yes.’ Merrily slid down from her stool. ‘I’ll get them.’

Waiting at the counter, she exhaled, closing her eyes.
Christmas
. The wonderful, life-affirming festive season. Joy to the world.

The doughnut energising him, Bliss said that if Howe hadn’t taken over he might well have had Helen Ayling brought in this morning for some serious Q and A.

‘A bit too quiet, that woman. Not many tears.’

‘She was a secretary. Discreet. And maybe it wasn’t exactly a love match.’

‘That was your impression, was it?’

‘Frannie, I’m just a priest.’

Bliss wrinkled his nose. Like much of Merseyside, he’d been raised a Roman Catholic. His idea of a priest didn’t include Anglicans, never mind women.

‘
An old-fashioned man
, Merrily. That was what she said about him. Well, we knew that – old-fashioned in the sense of insular, pigheaded, bigoted . . . And the wife would be property, like a car, best kind being cheap to run and not too much engine noise.’

‘Maybe.’

‘So Helen . . . Think about it. She’s been brought into a strange city. She’s isolated, unhappy, and it gets no better. Trapped with Mr Hereford in a five-bedroom mausoleum, last decorated in 1973. And then old Clem does or says something that finally flips her big red switch, she pulls a kitchen knife off the rack and . . . sometimes it’s quite easily done, Merrily. You’d be surprised.’

‘And then?’ She looked around; a few other people in the cafe, none of them close enough to hear. ‘And then this quiet, discreet, middle-aged secretary gets a hacksaw from the tool shed and saws him up? You really think that?’

‘Actually, we borrowed the hacksaw, and it’s clean. They’re almost 100 per cent on a chainie now, which would mean lots of blood spatter and there were no immediate signs of that. But some ladies are a whizz with a mop and a bucket of Flash.’

‘Frannie—’

‘Merrily, it
happens
. Most killers never meant to be killers, and they panic. And then they either become very calm and sensible and give themselves up or they get increasingly wild and irrational.’

‘All right – what about the rest of him?’

‘Yeh, he was a big man. To move him far she might need help, I’d concede that, unless—’

‘Maybe a bunch of burly Liberal Democrats?’

‘—Unless he was reduced to manageable pieces. But chop-up jobs, butchery, it’s usually men. Takes a strong stomach and a fair bit of strength unless you’ve a lorra time to play with.’ Bliss looked down at his second doughnut for a few seconds, then back at Merrily. ‘No, all right, for what it’s worth,
I
don’t think it’s her.’

‘Then why the hell have we spent the last ten minutes—?’

‘Because I think that’s what Howe was hoping. That she could hang it on Mrs A. Because . . . what’s the alternative?’

‘Ayling’s council work?’

‘Which is sensitive. Which is why Annie’s here.’

‘Because of Charlie?’

‘Now wouldn’t it be lovely . . .’ Bliss beamed ‘. . . if Clement Ayling was killed by Charlie Howe?’

‘You jest, right?’

‘Regrettably, I probably do, but Charlie’s always gorra lot to hide, and Annie knows that. And if we start poking into council business, who knows what might else be uncovered? If Charlie goes down for
any
small indiscretion, where does that leave Annie’s glittering career?’

‘And, as Annie probably knows, that wouldn’t totally break your heart, would it, Frannie?’

‘I’m saying nothing until my lawyer gets here,’ Bliss said.

‘So you think Annie Howe’s stepped in – taken over – to steer the investigation away from anything close to Charlie? I mean . . . how close
is
it to Charlie?’

‘All right, here’s the scenario,’ Bliss said. ‘Ayling leaves a meeting of this think-tank committee, Hereforward, held at the Green Dragon at around three-thirty p.m., just before it starts to go dark. Home is a five-minute walk across the Cathedral Green. He never makes it.’

‘So he was killed soon after leaving the meeting?’

‘Or taken, anyway. Somebody – perhaps, considering the size of him, more than one person – got to him between the Green Dragon and Castle Street. Maybe he got into a car. Maybe he had something to follow up from the meeting, went off with somebody.’

‘Is Charlie Howe—?’

‘Yeh, Charlie’s on that committee. In fact, I’ve just fixed up to meet one of the Hereforward officials tomorrow, find out what they were discussing. Ayling might’ve made himself unpopular over some issue – you never know, do you?’

‘So Ayling could’ve actually been attacked on the Cathedral Green itself?’

‘Possible,’ Bliss said. ‘But unlikely. Too many people about. But he must’ve been
taken
somewhere, that’s the point. Somewhere . . . his head is removed, the body disposed of.’

‘But why was the head then taken to Blackfriars?’

‘You tell me. I gather you know a bit about religion.’

‘Bit before my time, pre-Reformation monasteries.’

‘It’s a public place,’ Bliss said. ‘But not so public that installing a favourite councillor’s head would attract a cheering crowd. Even in the daytime, people don’t go in that garden. It doesn’t lead anywhere – there’s a great tall fence round it. It’s not like the Cathedral Green, a short cut to all kinds of places. Blackfriars, after dark, you could position your trophy without being disturbed.’

‘Trophy?’

‘I think so.’

‘The way medieval heads were displayed? Traitors and turncoats?’

‘Making a point,’ Bliss said.

‘And that point
is
. . .?’

Bliss shrugged.

‘It’s an age of extremes. Lorra anger in this county at the moment, Merrily. Anger at a Government that doesn’t give a shit for rural areas. Anger at the council because it gets squeezed by the Government and pushes council tax through the roof, goes for easy cash cuts.’

‘Wholesale school closures?’

‘All carried out, of course, on the advice of senior officials. Career rats, with no attachment to the area, and most councillors don’t have the brains to argue. But they’re the ones who take the shite. Frustration boiling over into rage across the city and the fields and orchards of this once-glorious county. Or hasn’t it penetrated to leafy Ledwardine?’

‘Are you kidding?’

Bliss was right. If rage was smoke, this inherently laid-back county would have suffocated. But it was a big step from cursing the local authority in the pub to hunting down and killing a senior member, decapitating him, putting his head up like a trophy.

‘Or maybe some individual has had a particularly bad time because of some aspect of council policy. Social-services issue, maybe. A feller can go crazy if his family’s lost their home or they’ve had a kiddie taken away by social workers.’

‘Ayling was on the social-services committee?’

‘At one time or another, Ayling was on
everything
, Merrily. He had more fingers than they had pies. And he was vocal. Big noisy feller. Never kept his opinions to himself. Not the way it’s done
these days. You filter it through the Press Office first.’ Bliss ripped off a corner of his doughnut. ‘I actually came up with something fairly interesting by the simple expedient of Googling Clement Ayling.’

‘
Not
relating to his council work?’