To Dream of the Dead (2 page)

‘Yeah.’

‘You all right, Karen?’

Something in her voice he hadn’t heard before. Other people’s, yes, coppers’ even, but not hers.

‘Yeah, it’s just . . . I mean, you think you’ve seen it all, don’t you?’

‘Doc ’n’ soc on the way?’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t bother coming home tonight, Frank.’ Kirsty ripping the bunch of keys from Bliss’s fingers, the two kids looking pitiful. ‘You can go home with
Karen
. Spend the other five per cent of your time with the bitch.’

Bliss covered the bottom of the phone, the plastics looking on; how embarrassing was this?

Karen said, ‘Before somebody else tells you, boss, I’ve contaminated the crime scene. Threw up. Only a bit. I’m sorry.’

‘It happens, Karen.’

Not to her, though. Bliss was remembering how once, end of a long, long night, he’d watched Karen Dowell eat a whole bag of chips in the mortuary. With a kebab? Yeh, it
was
a kebab.

Kirsty was walking away, holding Naomi’s hand in one of hers, Naomi holding one of Daniel’s. Of course, the kids were both a bit too old for that; Kirsty was blatantly making a point, the kids playing along, the way kids did.

It was six days from Christmas.

And yeh, he felt like a complete shit.

But not really
lonely
any more. What could that mean?

‘So don’t say I never warned you, Frannie,’ Karen Dowell said.

C
OMING UP TO
seven p.m., it stopped raining and Jane went to get some sense out of the river.

Slopping in her red wellies across the square, where the electric gaslamps were pooled in mist, and down to the bottom of Church Street, glossy and slippery. On the bridge, she looked over the peeling parapet, watching him licking his lips.

‘You’re not actually going to
do
this . . .?’

Zipping up her parka to seal in a serious shiver, because she didn’t recognise him any more. In this county, the Wye was always the big hitter, lesser rivers staying out of the action. In old pictures of the village, this one was barely visible, a bit-player not often even named. Slow and sullen, this guy, and – yeah – probably resentful.

Tonight, though, for the first time Jane could remember, he was roaring and spitting and slavering at his banks. All those centuries of low-level brooding, and then . . . hey, climate change,
now
who’s a loser?

‘Only, I thought we had an understanding,’ Jane said, desolate.

Because if this guy came out, there was no way the dig would start before Christmas.

Wasn’t fair. All the times she’d leaned over here, talking to him – influenced, naturally, by Nick Drake’s mysterious song, where the singer goes to tell the riverman all he can about some kind of plan. Nobody would ever know what the plan was because, within a short time, Nick Drake was dead from an overdose of antidepressants, long years before Jane was born, with only Lol left to carry his lamp.

Above a flank of Cole Hill, the moon was floating in a pale lagoon inside a reef of rain clouds. Jane’s hands and face felt cold. She
looked away, up towards the haloed village centre and the grey finger of the church steeple. She’d seen the news pictures of Tewkesbury and Upton: canoes on the lanes, homes evacuated. It had never happened here to that extent,
never
– people kept insisting that.

But these were, like, strange days.

The main roads around Letton – always the first place north of Hereford to go – had been closed just after lunch, due to flash floods, and the school buses had been sent for early. Nobody wanted to spend a night in the school, least of all the teaching staff, and there was nothing lost, anyway, in the last week before Christmas.

Fitting each hand inside the opposite cuff, Jane hugged her arms together, leaning over the stonework, sensing the extreme violence down there, everything swollen and turbulent.

Across the bridge, a puddle the size of a duck pond had appeared in the village-hall car park, reflecting strips of flickering mauve light from the low-energy tubes inside. The lights were on for tonight’s public meeting – which wasn’t going to be as well attended as it ought to be. It had somehow coincided with late-night Christmas shopping in Hereford. No accident, Mum thought, and she was probably right. A devious bastard, Councillor Pierce.

‘Janey?’

Lamplight came zigzagging up the bank, bouncing off familiar bottle glasses, and Jane dredged up a grin.

‘You been snorkelling or something, Gomer?’

Up he came from the riverside footpath, over the broken-down wooden stile, the old lambing-light swinging from a hand in a sawn-off mitten. Patting at his chest for his ciggy tin. Still quite nimble for his age, which was reassuring.

‘What do you reckon, then?’ Jane said. ‘Seriously.’

‘Oh, he’ll be out, Janey, sure to.’

‘Really?’

‘Count on him.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight, mabbe tomorrow.’

Gomer set the lamp on the wall, its beam pointing down at the water.

His specs were speckled with spray and his white hair looked like broken glass.

‘You mean if it rains again?’ Jane said.

‘No ifs about it, girl.’ Gomer mouthed a roll-up. ‘Ole moon sat up in his chair, see?’

‘Chair?’

Jane peered at him. This was a new one. Gomer brought out his matches.

‘Ole moon’s on his back, he’ll collect the water. Moon’s sat up, it d’ run off him, see, and down on us. You never yeard that?’

‘Erm . . . no.’

‘Yeard it first from my ole mam, sixty year ago, sure t’ be. Weather don’t change, see.’

‘It does, Gomer.’

She must’ve sounded unusually sober against the snarling of the water because he tilted his head under the flat cap, peering at her.

‘Global warmin’? Load of ole wallop, Janey. Anythin’ to put the wind up ordinary folk.’

‘You seen those pictures of the big ice-cliffs cracking up in the Antarctic?’

Gomer’s match went out and he struck another.

‘All I’m sayin’, girl, science, he en’t got all the answers, do he?’

‘Yeah, but
something
has to be going on, because this hasn’t happened before, has it?’ Jane feeling her voice going shrill; it wasn’t a joke any more – up in the Midlands people had
died
. ‘I mean, have
you
seen this before? Like, here? We ever come this close to a real flood?’

‘Not in my time, ’cept for the lanes getting blocked, but what’s that in the life of a river?’ Gomer looked up towards the square, where the Christmas tree was lit up like a shaky beacon of hope. ‘You’ll be all right, Janey. En’t gonner reach the ole vicarage in a good while.’

‘What about your bungalow?’

She didn’t think Gomer’s bungalow was on the flood plain, but it had to be close. Always said it wasn’t where he’d’ve chosen to live but Minnie had liked the views.

Gomer said he’d brought one of his diggers down. Took real deep water to stop a JCB getting through.

‘En’t sure about them poor buggers on the hestate, mind.’

Nodding across the bridge at the new houses, one defiantly done out with flashing festive bling – Santa’s sleigh, orange and white, in
perpetual, rippling motion. The estate had been built a couple of years ago, and most of it was definitely on the flood plain – which, of course, nobody could remember ever being actually flooded, although that wouldn’t matter a toss anyway, when the council needed to sanction more houses. Government targets to meet, boxes to tick.

This was possibly the most terrifying thing about growing up: you could no longer rely on adults in authority operating from any foundation of common sense. They just played it for short-term gain, lining their nests and covering their backs. How long, if Gomer was right, before the Christmas Bling house became like some kind of garish riverboat?

‘What about Coleman’s Meadow, Gomer? If the river comes out, could the flood water get that far?’

Twice they’d abandoned the dig – Jane really losing hope, now, that anything significant would be uncovered before the end of the school holidays, never mind the start.

‘Could it, Gomer?’

‘You still plannin’ to be a harchaeologist, Janey?’

‘Absolutely. Two university interviews in the New Year. Fingers crossed.’

Be fantastic if she could someday work around here. The Ledwardine stones could all be in place again by the summer, but there were probably years of excavation to come on the Dinedor Serpent, the other side of Hereford, and who knew what else was waiting to be found? Suddenly, this county had become a hot spot for prehistoric archaeology – two really major discoveries within a year. As though the landscape itself was throwing off centuries like superfluous bedclothes, an old light pulsing to the surface, and Jane could feel the urgency of it in her spine.

‘Gomer,
is
the meadow likely to get flooded?’

‘Mabbe.’ Gomer took out his ciggy, fingers sprouting from the woollen mittens. ‘Lowish ground, ennit?’

‘The thing is, if they think it could ruin the excavation, they might not even start it till there’s no danger of it all getting drowned.’

Meanwhile, Councillor sodding Pierce, who didn’t give a toss what lay under Coleman’s Meadow, would keep on trying to screw
it, like his council had done with the Serpent. Playing for time, and Jane would be back at school before they got to sink the first trowel.

‘You going to the parish meeting, Gomer?’

‘Mabbe look in, mabbe not. Nobody gonner listen to an ole gravedigger. You still banned, is it, Janey?’

‘Well, not
banned
exactly. Mum’s just . . .’

. . . politely requested that she stay away.

It’s not going to help, flower. It’s reached the stage where we need a degree of subtlety, or they’re going to win
.

Mum thinking the mad kid wouldn’t be able to hold back, would make a scene, heckling Pierce, making the good guys look like loonies.

The brown water flung itself at the old sandstone bridge, and Jane, officially adult now and able to vote against the bastard, bit her lip and felt helpless. Even the riverman was on the point of betraying her.

‘Dreamed about my Min last night,’ Gomer said.

Jane looked at him. His ciggy drooped and his glasses were as grey as stone.

‘Dreamed her was still alive. Us sittin’ together, by the light o’ the fire. Pot of tea on the hob.’

‘But you—’

‘En’t got no hob n’ more. True enough. That was how I knowed it was a dream.’ Gomer steadied his roll-up. ‘Was a good dream, mind. En’t often you gets a good dream, is it?’

Nearly a couple of years now since Minnie’s death. Close to the actual anniversary. Gomer had put new batteries in both their watches and buried them in the churchyard with Minnie. Maybe – Jane shivered lightly – one of the watches had finally stopped and something inside him had felt that sudden empty stillness, the final parting.

‘You know what they says, Janey.’

‘Who?’

‘Sign of rain,’ Gomer said.

‘Sorry?’

‘What they used to say. My ole mam and her sisters.
To dream of the dead
. . .’

‘What?’

‘
To dream of the dead is a sign of rain
.’

‘That’s . . .’ She stared hard at him. ‘What kind of sense does that make?’

‘Don’t gotter make no partic’lar
sense
,’ Gomer said. ‘Not direc’ly, like, do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘These ole sayings, they comes at the truth sideways, kind of thing.’

‘Right,’ Jane said.

It seemed to have gone darker. The clouds had closed down the moon, and the village lights shone brighter as if in a kind of panic. New rain slanted into Jane’s cheeks, sudden, sharp and arrogant, and she thought about her own troubled nights, worrying about the dig, the future, her own future, Eirion . . .

‘So, like, what’s supposed to happen,’ she said, ‘if you dream about the rain?’

O
NE OF
H
EREFORD’S
little secrets, this ruin. In daylight, at the bottom of a secret garden surrounded by depots, offices and a school, you could easily miss it; most people, tourists and locals, didn’t even know it existed.

But with night screening the surroundings, Bliss thought, it was a sawn-off Castle Dracula.

‘So where is it?’

Looking around in case he’d been scammed; wouldn’t be the first time these bastards had done it to him, especially around Christmas, but he wouldn’t have expected it of Karen Dowell.

‘The
body
, Karen?’

Bending his head on the edge of the blurry lamplight to peer into her fresh, farmer’s-wife face.

‘The body . . . we don’t exactly know, boss,’ Karen said.

‘
What?
’

Had to be eight of them in the rose garden in front of the monastery. Bliss had registered DC Terry Stagg, several uniforms and two techies, clammy ghosts in their Durex suits.

On balance, too many for a scam. And there was this little trickle of unholy excitement, which would often accompany shared knowledge of something exquisitely repellent.

Bliss looked around, recalling being here once before. One of the kids had been involved in some choir thing at the Coningsby Hospital which fronted the site on lower Widemarsh Street. Coningsby was only a hospital in some old-time sense of the word, more of a medieval chapel with almshouses and an alleyway leading to the rose garden, where there was also a stone cross set into a little tower with steps up to it.

‘’Scuse, please, Francis. Let the dog see the rabbit.’

Crime-scene veteran Slim Fiddler, seventeen stone plus, squelching across the grass, messing with his Nikon. A strong wire-mesh fence separated the ruins from the St Thomas Cantilupe primary school next door. Slim Fiddler stopped a bit short of it, turned round, and the other techie, Joanna Priddy, moved aside as his flash went off.

Which was when Bliss also saw, momentarily, the rabbit.

Saw why Karen had chucked her supper.

The body . . . we don’t exactly know, boss
.