To Dream of the Dead

Deadwood

Annie Howe had noticed the parcels in the back of Bliss’s car.

‘Your kids?’

‘Yeh.’

‘How long were you…?’

‘Nine years.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Sorry? Jesus, last week it had been, I don’t know what your problem is… my information is that it’s personal and domestic. But you’d better either keep it under control or seek counselling.

Could be she was a night person, and when the sun came up the frost would form again.

Bliss drove down into the centre of Malvern. They were going in the one car to discuss strategy. He’d have cleaned the Honda up inside if he’d known she’d be wearing the near-white mac.

‘But I still think you could’ve told me,’ he said.

Even ordering him to forget the original Furneaux interview. Like, what if he’d actually done as he was told? He gave her a sideways glance. She’d had a psychological profile done on him, or what?

‘What difference would that have made?’ she said. ‘And no, I couldn’t.’

‘Or got Brent to look into it.’

‘I wanted a result, not a massage.’

‘What if I hadn’t come looking for you tonight?’

‘You had till Boxing Day.’

Bliss finally smiled, waiting for a bunch of kids firing party poppers at one another on a zebra crossing. She was right, of course. If she’d come clean he wouldn’t have believed her, he’d’ve thought it was something she and Charlie had cooked up between them. And no way would he have gone near Andy Mumford.

‘But if we don’t get Furneaux tonight,’ Annie said, ‘your arrangement with Mebus —’

‘Uh-huh. No way, Annie. I’m not saying we shouldn’t make every effort to snatch the twat for something else, but I’m not breaking Mumford’s word. And, with respect, ma— With respect, you also need not to offend Andy Mumford, because if anybody knows the truth about your old man and what happened in the Frome Valley all those years ago… yeh?’

No reply; she was looking out of the side window at the statue of Elgar and the fountain all lit up in the centre of Malvern. Bliss thought Malvern looked good. The floodlit priory and the old hotel in the dip, all mellow. Closest he’d felt to Christmas spirit in… a long time.

Still hadn’t got a name out of her, though, for the lad who’d turned his white van over to the Mebus brothers and gone to retrieve his motor bike from the forest. He needed to give her Furneaux.

Giving him this uncertain Do I know you? look under the bulkhead light on the wall over his front door. It had a Christmas wreath on it, this door. Buy one, get one free at Sainsburys.

Bliss pulled off his beanie.

‘DI Bliss, Mr Furneaux. This is Detective Superintendent Howe.’

‘Francis… I’m so sorry. How nice to see you again.’

‘All right if we come in, Steve?’

‘Well, sure, but—’

‘Ta. This won’t take long.’

Steve’s sitting room had a look of second home and IKEA summer sale. Two airport-looking yellow sofas, a fitted TV. Also a surprisingly attractive Asian girl who didn’t look at all surprised at strangers walking in on Christmas Eve.

‘Get you a drink, Francis and… Anne, isn’t it? Think I know your father.’

‘Lorra driving to do, thanks, Steve,’ Bliss said. Howe just shook her head and Steve glanced at the girl.

‘Yasmin likes early nights, so if…?’

‘We certainly do not expect Yasmin to entertain us, Steve,’ Bliss said. ‘This is strictly about you, cocaine, Clem Ayling, cocaine, Hereforward, cocaine… Oh, and did I mention cocaine?’

At one stage, Steve actually said it.

At first, he just looked slightly huffed, a touch put-out, saying to Annie, ‘I hope you realise, Superintendent, that I’m merely on the edge of this committee. Purely an adviser.’

And then a bit later, so far up against the wall that he just had to come out with it.

‘Inevitably, if I go down, a number of people go with me. Including, of course, your father, Anne. An elected representative, a decision-maker. While I… am a mere adviser.’

Adviser. This was the key word. Consultant. The government spent millions every year on fellers like Steve. Well, maybe not quite like Steve, although many of them would look not unlike him tonight, in his violet silk shirt and his Italian jeans.

Bliss turned to Annie, next to him on the flatter of the two sofas.

‘I said you’d like him, didn’t I, ma’am?’

He’d told Steve that they would, if necessary, search the premises and himself and Yasmin. Pointing out that, from his landing window, he might be able to make out the roof of a police car containing DC Terrence Stagg and two uniforms, one of them female. And the duty spaniel was on call. Even if he’d got rid of all the stuff, the dog would pinpoint where he used to stash it. Steve wasn’t daft. He knew that one white millicrumb was enough to have him banged up for Christmas and no Waitrose pudding with extra cognac.

‘It’s good here, though, isn’t it, Steve?’ Bliss said. ‘Some areas of Britain, local government tends to be under less scrutiny than others, and Herefordshire’s one of them. Right on the edge of Wales, no daily paper, hardly any local news coverage on the box. And only a bunch of sheep-shaggers to take for a ride. Perfect, eh?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. And I think you’re being rather insulting to a very beautiful part of the country and its people.’

‘I’m one of its people, Mr Furneaux,’ Annie Howe said. ‘And what I take offence at is patronising bureaucrats who think we’re simple country folk on whom democracy is wasted, so, hey, why bother with it?’

‘Ms Howe—’

‘Clement Ayling,’ Anne Howe said. ‘Although I didn’t actually know him on a personal level, I do know his type. Not averse to short cuts in the interests of putting one over on the opposition or central government. Not incapable of deceit in defence of his local authority or his party. But essentially, not the sort to have his drive tarmacked by the highways department. Old school. Rather straitlaced. Especially where… drugs are concerned.’

Annie looked at Bliss, who picked up the story.

‘And not just a generation thing, Steve. You ever hear about Clem’s daughter, Nerys? Not many people know this — he hated to talk about it. Anybody asked why Nerys didn’t take over the electrical shop — used to work there, apparently, ran it very well, for a while — oh, she’d left the area. Difficult to run a business from a psychiatric hospital.’

Bliss looked at Steve. Steve didn’t react.

‘Been in hossie for many years now, Steve. Quite advanced schizophrenia. Never mentioned it, did he?’

‘No.’

‘Or that it seems to have begun with what we now know as cannabis psychosis. Tragic.’

‘Of course Ayling knew that cocaine wasn’t the same as cannabis,’ Annie Howe said. ‘It being a Class A drug, compared with Class C.’

‘A downgrading which left Clem appalled and disgusted, naturally,’ Bliss said. ‘But he wasn’t a man to go into battle without full ammunition. He did some research on the Internet about the very real perils of cocaine. Or rather, not being too adept with the old dot coms, he got his computer-literate wife Helen to check it out. This would’ve been some time after the near-fatality during a Hereforward Blue-Sky Thinking Weekend near Stowe-on- theWold.’

‘Knowing — as I do — Ayling’s type,’ Annie said, ‘the very last thing he would do would be to make something like this public by raising it at a