To Dream of the Dead (36 page)

‘Nothing
contentious
, Merrily.’

‘Your drug thing pan out?’

‘Better than expected, as it happens. Yes, indeed. I just need a bit of information that your friend should be able to provide very quickly.’

‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’

Silence.

‘All right, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll try and get hold of Eileen Cullen, explain what an essentially decent person you are, underneath, and give her your number. That way you can tell her what you want and she can decide if it agrees with her conscience’

Bliss thought about it. Merrily could hear traffic noise.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Do that. Give her the mobile. If I don’t hear from her in an hour, I’ll call you back.’

‘It’s
that
urgent?’

‘My whole life is urgent, Merrily.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In the car. The car’s me office now. A privacy issue.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeh, I’m rediscovering me faith.’

In the pause, she heard an angry car horn.

‘When I was a little lad,’ Bliss said, ‘I had a hard time separating God from Santa Claus. Our priest, Father Flanagan, used to come round on Friday nights with his bets for me dad to put on for him. And this particular Friday – I was a cocky little twat – I said, Father. I’ve decided I’ll not be coming to church on Sunday, and he goes, Why is that, Francis? And I say, Because I’ve just turned nine, Father, and I’m too old to believe in God. And Father Flanagan’s creased up laughing. One day, Francis, he says, when you least expect it, you’ll look up, and there above you you’ll see what is unmistakably His face. And when that happens . . .
when that happens
. . . you’ll remember this moment.’

‘And you were suitably chastened?’

‘No, it was a bit of an anticlimax. I thought he was gonna tell me something interesting.’

‘Are you
drunk
?’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Anyway,’ Bliss said, ‘I looked up, and it wasn’t the big feller, it was a face called Steve Furneaux. But I finally saw what Father Flanagan was on about. There
is
a God.’

‘And is he on your side?’

‘I frigging hope so, Merrily, because no other bastard is.’

A few minutes later Jane and Eirion came back and Merrily cobbled together a seriously late lunch of cheese omelettes and hot mince pies – not good enough, but nobody seemed hungry, the combination of darkness and flood making Ledwardine seem, for the first time, like a perilous place to be. And she kept thinking of Father Ellis and the dark brew of piety and perversity that had poisoned a valley.

Jane was more animated now, but in an agitated way. Her eyes flickering as she ate. There was a thin streak of red mud down her face that looked disturbingly like a knife wound.

They listened to the flood update on Radio H & W. Roads all over the county were being closed, even major roads, east–west routes particularly affected. Merrily had to collect a guitar and was apprehensive. There were few places in the county further east than Knights Frome.

‘We’ll come,’ Jane said. ‘Eirion would love to see Al Boswell’s workshop, wouldn’t you, Irene?’

‘I
would
, Jane, but I told Lol we’d go round to his place tonight, see what he wants us to do for this back-projection at his concert. And the recordings?’

‘I’d forgotten. Mum, listen, it’s not safe out there. Can’t you like go tomorrow?’

‘Christmas Eve? Not a chance.’

‘Or
we
’ll go tomorrow.’

‘No, I need to try. If it looks bad I’ll turn back.’

‘It’s just that if I’m going to be an orphan, I’d prefer it didn’t happen at Christmas. That would be just
so
Dickens. Do I have time for a quick shower? I feel . . .’ Jane flapped her arms ‘. . . yucky.’

‘If there’s enough hot water.’

When she’d gone up, Merrily drew the curtains, and then – superstitiously – drew them back.

‘How is she, Eirion? Really?’

‘We, er . . . we went to Coleman’s Meadow. I persuaded her it was the thing to do.’

‘Good.’

‘Good and . . . not so good. We met Neil Cooper – the archaeologist from the council? Not a happy man.’

Eirion didn’t look too happy either. Since she’d seen him last, he seemed to have grown up, lost the puppy fat, turned the big corner. She listened to his story about Bill Blore’s private memos to the Council – the authority he’d publicly slagged off. It didn’t actually strike her as all that curious.

‘Maybe it’s part of his contract for the excavation. The Council don’t trust Blore, and they got into a potentially difficult situation with the Dinedor Serpent, so everything he finds, every step he takes, he has to report back.’

‘And he’d’ve agreed to that?’

‘What choice would he have? And anyway, in my experience, the high-profile maverick image is usually a façade. You often find that so-called rebels, when you meet them, tend to be disappointingly orthodox.’

Merrily was thinking of Mathew Stooke. Eirion sighed.

‘The older I get, Mrs Watkins, the more disillusioned I become. By the time I’m thirty, the world’s going to look like a grey waste-land full of zombies who believe in nothing. In fact, I can see it already. All these teenage suicides, is that any wonder?’

‘Hey, come on, Eirion, this is how Jane talks when she’s down. I rely on you to lift her out of it.’

‘Sorry.’

Eirion pushed back his chair, went over to the window. It was like looking into an aquarium with no lights.

‘It doesn’t end,’ he said. ‘She’s become obsessed now with finding whatever Blore’s discovered. What it’s done to Cooper, that’s made her angry, but also . . . hopeful, you know? That there’s still some mystery to be uncovered there? And she thinks if she can let it out before Blore does it might somehow clear her name, turn it all around. She . . . doesn’t give up.’

‘You noticed.’

‘Dragging me all round the boundaries of the site and halfway up Cole Hill, trying to make out the alignment through the rain, trying to see something new. It was . . . seemed a bit pointless. Sad.’

‘You know what we need to do?’ Merrily said, as the phone started ringing in the scullery. ‘Somehow we need to persuade Blore either to ditch the interview with Jane or record it again, rather more kindly.’

‘How do you propose to do that?’

‘Haven’t the faintest idea, Eirion.’

Huw’s Yorkshire voice, flat and scuffed as an old rag rug, sometimes reassuring, not always.

‘Never seemed like much to me, Stooke. Doesn’t claim to be a boffin, doesn’t refer constantly to Darwinian theory. Doesn’t seem to specialise in owt.’

‘Except derision,’ Merrily said. ‘He specialises in scorn.’

‘A man of the age,’ Huw said.

There was a pause. Merrily thought she could hear the ubiquitous rain bombarding Huw’s gaunt rectory in the Brecon Beacons, the crackle of his log fire.

‘So Stooke’s missus wants you to get this West woman off their backs.’

‘Essentially, yes.’

‘You told them she’s not a member of your church.’

‘But she is. She comes every week. But she goes to the other place
twice
a week.’

‘A serial worshipper.’

‘She’s quite clever about it. Never really mentions the Church of the Lord of the Light in Ledwardine. No posters in the post office. A devout Anglican of the old school. My church is her church.’

‘But she slags you off. She walked out of your service.’

‘She would see that as defending the village’s religious tradition against a dangerous subversive influence.’

‘Kind of support she got?’

‘Not a lot. Some people think she’s a joke, some feel sorry for her because she’s a lone voice. And, of course, her opposition to the raising of the heathen stones makes her a gift to Lyndon Pierce and the pro-expansion lobby.’

Impregnable, in a way, when you thought about it. Exactly the way she looked behind the big metal cross and the reinforced glass in the post office.

‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘I’m looking at this website, as we speak.
Thelordofthelight.com
. You think this is Ellis again, from the States?’

‘I honestly don’t know, Huw. It carries his mark. It’s not unintelligent,
and it’s plausible enough. And it would explain Shirley’s attitude. Ellis has very good reason to hate me.’

‘
It has been predicted that, close to the Endtime, Satan will incarnate
’, Huw quoted. ‘
He will have neither horns nor tail
.’

‘That’s cows in the clear, then.’

Huw laughed.

‘You read the rest, though,’ Merrily said, ‘what it’s almost saying is that Satan is the secular society. The moral void.’

‘A persuasive argument in many ways. Where do you stand?’

‘Personally, I don’t have that much of a problem with unbelievers, unless they try to bully other people into unbelief. But then, I have the same problem with people who try to bully people into
belief
. Like Ellis.’

‘Can’t bully an atheist into faith any more.’

‘But you
can
make their lives unpleasant. The Stookes are getting what I suppose you’d call
ominous
mail and anonymous letters, arguably from the same source, basically reminding them of the various names of their . . . satanic master.’

‘If Stooke looks different and they’re living under a false name,’ Huw said, ‘how did Shirley find out about them?’

‘She’s the postmistress. They haven’t completely changed their identity – he won’t
do
that. So his real name still appears on official documents . . . and on cheques. Silly mistake by Leonora. They were late paying an electricity bill because they were contesting it, and in the end she took the final demand to pay it at the post office . . . paid with a cheque, with, of course, the name Stooke on it. Not realising at the time what kind of woman was handling the transaction.’

‘Shirley must’ve seen that as a little gift from God.’

‘Oh yes. Leonora remembers her looking up with this awful still smile she has – pious going on sinister.
Thank you
, she says, handing over the receipt,
Mrs Stooke
.’

‘So how did it go from there?’

‘Quite subtly, for Shirley. Or maybe she was being restrained. Say she told someone at the Lord of the Light, and they passed the information up the line to Ellis or whoever – if not Ellis there has to be somebody
like
him – and the word comes back to play it quietly. Not to out him, because then he becomes public property . . . a target for fundamentalists everywhere.’

‘Aye, and they wouldn’t have him to themselves any more. Their private demon for the Endgame. Think they’re the chosen ones.’

‘Hard to credit the mentality.’

‘It’s all too bloody easy. These folk are fantasists of the first order. Owt unexpected happens, it’s the hand of God. That’s all they’ve done so far, is it, threatening letters?’

‘Well . . . seems Shirley quite often takes an evening stroll from the orchard to Coleman’s Meadow. Taking a good look at Cole Barn from the public footpath. They see her holding out her arms, apparently calling on God to . . . who knows? Ties in with what she said at the parish meeting last week – a deep evil in Coleman’s Meadow and evil returns to it.’

‘Still just one woman, Merrily.’

‘Maybe not. They look out of the window around nightfall and quite often there’s a man there, at the top of the field, watching the house. And considering how comparatively remote that place is . . .’

‘Shirley living with anybody?’

‘Don’t know. But it’s only ten minutes to Leominster. Probably some members of the church living even closer than that. When I say watching the house, I don’t mean furtively creeping from tree to tree, which
would
be worrying – I mean standing there in the open, not moving.’

‘I’m wondering why she came to you if they’ve got a Special Branch man on the end of a phone.’

‘That occurred to me, too. She said – as she’d said earlier – that Stooke refuses to be intimidated by religious cranks. And doesn’t trust the security services, which I’d guess is normal enough left-wing journalistic paranoia. And, anyway, what could he do? She’s not a terrorist. Basically . . . I think Leonora just wants to know if Shirley’s mental. I said there was no record of her ever harming anyone. I could’ve said more but Shirley, strictly speaking, is a member of my, erm, flock and the Stookes, well . . .’

‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘I’m going to sit on t’fence here, lass. I’d say talk to them both, but don’t get too involved. If Ellis
is
out there in spiritual cyberspace, he won’t just have the Stookes in his cross-hairs.’

‘Me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Sorry . . . I was just thinking about something Leonora said. I may have to talk to them again, before I talk to Shirley. Which probably means tonight.’

This could be a
long
night.

‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘You’ve consulted me. I’m noting this in my diary on the evening of the 23rd of December at 4.44 p.m. precisely. Consider your compact little bum formally covered.’