To Dream of the Dead

they’d covered that up, as parents are inclined to, telling the hospital she’d done it herself. Slicing an onion while sitting down or something.’

‘As you do.’

‘Anyway, he wasn’t our guy, as it turned out. We got someone else within a couple of days, DNA and all. But what Buckland’s sister had to say was fairly alarming. Things like he’d ask for books on anatomy for his birthday?’

‘Don’t tell me — the parents thought he wanted to be a hospital consultant when he grew up.’

‘You know more about parenting than I do.’ Howe coughed. ‘Sorry.’

‘You kept an eye on him, then.’

‘Oh, sure, we had a round-the-clock obbo on his flat.’

‘Yeh, yeh, insufficient manpower and no brownie points for prevention. How you can be mates with that frigging dim—’

‘Leave it out, Francis. We’ll talk about the Home Secretary when we’ve nothing more urgent — Oh shit…’

Some kid had backed into their table. Howe mopped up spilled coffee with a paper napkin.

‘Where’s Buckland now?’ Bliss said.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Yeh, that’s helpful.’

‘He’s entirely respectable. Twenty-seven years old, probably looks younger. No form.’

‘At all?’

‘No record except as a victim. He was badly beaten up in a pub when he was seventeen.’ Annie released a brittle laugh. ‘Main guy responsible was found stabbed to death in a car park. Killer never found.’

‘Presumably CID talked to him about that?’

‘It was four and a half years after the pub incident. And several years before we learned about Glyn’s lifelong fascination with blades. And no DNA traces, no basis for reopening the inquiry.’

‘Dish best served cold?’

‘Cold’s the word. In the current moral climate, you no longer have to be a psycho to kill without remorse. When did you last encounter a knifeboy with a conscience?’

‘Or even one who could spell it.’

‘Conscience?’

‘I was thinking knife.’

Howe laughed.

‘Actually, Buckland’s intelligent enough. And in full-time employment. Self-employment. Moves around, which is why he’s difficult to track. Also been known to use different names — for security reasons, allegedly. He’s in the security business.’

‘What kind?’

‘Any kind. Driving factory wages to advising on burglar alarms. My guess is that’s how he meets people who are feeling threatened enough to want to take extreme measures. Just… another kind of security.’

‘How sure are you that he did the Lasky job?’

‘Circumstantial, but good circumstantial. He worked for Lasky fairly regularly. Lasky recommended him to his clients. Just not quite enough to bring him in for a chat. But I’d be reluctant to, anyway.’

‘Because he doesn’t know about the sister coming to you. He has no reason to think you’re onto him.’

‘That’s the situation. Leave him alone until we’re sure of him.’

‘All right,’ Bliss said. ‘If we’re looking at a Hereforward subcommittee, does that include Bill Blore, maybe Lyndon Pierce in a consultative capacity?’

‘Anyone else?’

‘You’re wondering about Charlie?’

‘If I have to, I have to.’

Her narrow face was flushed, her hair flung over to one side of it in white waves. There was a little coffee stain, like a birthmark, on the side of her mouth. She didn’t look like Charlie.

Bliss said, ‘I think Charlie was fixed up with totty to keep him sweet, and maybe that’s where it ends. I think we’re looking at Ledwardine here, but I’m buggered if I know why.’

‘It’s not a big place.’

‘Not yet, no. But unless Traffic knows otherwise, it’s not a place you can get a car into tonight. It’s got a moat round it.’

‘Blore’s there?’

‘I’m sure Pierce is. How do we play it?’

Howe tapped the table slowly with a sugar spoon.

‘This feller…’ Bliss said. ‘You’ve gorra have a fairly low moral threshold to whack a bloke to get a bunch of paedos off the hook.’

‘He’s a child of the new void,’ Annie Howe said.

Still tapping.

61 See You Shine

Merrily watched Stooke throw open the front door of the Swan and walk out into the rain. She stood for a moment, undecided, looking behind her. Nobody had followed her out of the lounge bar.

Lol was beginning a song she hadn’t heard before, Lucy rearing over him like a guardian bird of prey.

Guardian?

Oh God, it was late. It had been a long, long day. The church had been desecrated. She was full of the jitters of nicotine-deprivation. She stood looking down at her hands. It was pixels. Pixels right?

Behind her, behind two oak doors, Lol sang softly,

‘… and then you feel your heart can’t let it go

Miss Devenish would ever wish it so…’

Sod it.

She straightened up and walked out into the night.

Jane sat hunched for a long time, elbows on her knees, head in her hands. Was this it? Was this the final severance? Could she even bear to go on living here? Perhaps she’d form a mild attachment to whichever college town she ended up in. Maybe Cardiff, to be near Eirion, if he still wanted a manic-depressive. Somewhere too big and chaotic to feel a responsibility for.

Mum would be left on her own, of course. No good. She should marry Lol and move away. A perfect time now Lol was on a roll. Only she’d feel she had to stay out of some misplaced, masochistic sense of mission. Nothing left here, though, nobody worth saving… well, except Gomer, Jim at the shop, a few other people.

And Lucy. Lucy would always be here, a forlorn, broken ghost around her besmirched grave.

God, God, God. Jane stood up, furious. No justice, anywhere. Scum rises, bastards rule. She unlocked the cubicle door and walked out to the wash basins. Didn’t look in the mirror; perhaps people would think she’d been moved to tears by Lol’s songs. Only hoped that Blore had gone back to his caravan to bed one of his students, because if she saw him again tonight, doing his booming laugh, she’d smash his beer glass into his…

At the door of the Ladies, she stopped, the water gargling in the pipes, and someone…

… someone sobbing in one of the cubicles?

Merrily found Mathew Elliot Stooke alone between the two oak pillars at the end of the market hall, looking down Church Street to the end of the world.

‘You’re not wearing a coat,’ he said.

The rain was slower now, but the water was deep enough on the cobbles to reflect the inner globes of the fake gaslamps. You were walking on light.