To Dream of the Dead

A man’s voice, falsetto with shock. He came stumbling out of the water, shaven head, earring like a coiled spring. Derry Bateman, the electrician.

‘Anybody know about artificial respiration?’

‘A bit…’

Mum started limping over to the crowd making a semicircle on the edge of the flood.

‘I thought it was a sandbag, I did.’ Derry Bateman looking shattered. ‘Oh, bloody hell. Everybody get back, this en’t good.’

‘I think it’s too late, anyway,’ a woman said.

The water almost thigh-high on two men dragging a body. Torchbeams converging.

A woman screaming, ‘Please God, no.’

‘Here…’ Derry guiding Mum to the waterside. Jane didn’t even know she could do artificial respiration. ‘Turn him over.’

The woman said, ‘I think he’s dead.’

Someone else howling, ‘Who is it? Who is it?’

I’m telling you…’ A quavery, elderly voice. ‘Someone was sitting—’

‘I don’t know him,’ Derry shouted. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

‘You don’t know what you saw, Reg.’

‘I tell you I saw someone… I thought they was sitting on a sack, but they was sitting on him…’

‘Who was?’

‘He went that way. All in black, look. I en’t making this up.’

‘Everybody looks black in this—’

Jane ran down after Mum, but Eirion was holding on to her arm.

‘You don’t know artificial respiration, do you Jane?’

‘Well, no, but—’

‘I saw a boy once who’d drowned,’ Eirion said. ‘Believe me, you don’t want to see this.’

Derry Bateman and a couple of neighbours had carried him out of the flood and laid him in the back of Derry’s van, surrounded by compartments of tools and electrical supplies. Nobody could think of anywhere better. Nobody was volunteering to accommodate a drowned man in a sitting room all decked out for Christmas.

Derry had covered him with blue plastic sheeting, like the stuff draped over cookers and washing machines on the riverside estate.

Merrily was wiping her dripping hands on her sodden skirt. She felt heartsick.

‘You say you know who he is, vicar?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Derry said. ‘There really was nothing we could do.’

‘Nobody see what happened?’

‘Nobody seen a thing, else we’d’ve gone to help him. I still don’t see how he could’ve gone in that far, less he was drunk.’

‘Derry, who’s Reg?’

‘Reg Sutton? David Sutton’s old man. I think he’s Reg, en’t he, Peter? He only come to live yere a couple of weeks ago. He’s pretty old, you can’t really rely on too much he says.’

‘Where’s he live?’

‘He’s… one, two… five houses down, end of the terrace. White gate.’

‘Thanks.’

Derry nodded uncomfortably at the body.

‘Who is he, vicar?’

‘He’s the guy who rents Cole Barn.’

She could still hear him, the exasperated voice of reason: anomalies… blips… means nothing. Saw his fluorescent white smile.

Merrily flattened her back against a gatepost, gazed up at the moon, coddled in smoky cloud.

Above all, it in no way suggests a god. Above all, it does not imply that.

And now he knew. Or not. She looked down at the plastic bundle, fogged and glistening and it was very hard to believe in a life after that. And, oh, this was not right. There was nothing right about this, and certainly nothing to be salvaged from the Book of bloody Daniel.

‘What’s he doing down yere then, vicar?’

‘I don’t know.’

Maybe somebody had called out to him. Maybe there were too many lights at the bottom of Church Street. Christ.

‘We better call the police,’ Derry said. ‘Though how they’re gonner get here tonight, less they can get a helicopter.’

‘I’ll call them,’ Merrily said.

‘Only, if there’s any way of… I mean, I don’t really want…’

‘No, you’re right. He can’t stay here. Why don’t you drive him up to the church? We’ve got a long table in the vestry. Do you mind carrying him again?’

‘En’t got no choice, do we?’

‘I need to find his wife.’

And the old man had said: I saw someone… thought they was sitting on a sack.

Someone. Man or a woman?

She saw Jane and Eirion standing near the top of the lane, hand in hand, like children. All she could think of, as she walked up towards them, was Shirley West. She hadn’t seen Shirley anywhere tonight, only the marks of her madness.

63 Do the Dying

When she called Bliss on his mobile, from the vicarage, he answered in seconds, sounding wide-awake, focused. Excited, even.

‘Merrily, touch nothing.’

‘Too late. They had to bring him out of the water, he might’ve been alive. And we couldn’t leave him in the van.’

‘So where is he?’

‘In the church. Vestry.’

She’d managed to find James Bull-Davies, give him the keys and he was over there supervising it. Well, where else could Stooke’s body have gone, where else?

Bliss sighed.

‘So what are you saying, Frannie, I should’ve got out one of my many rolls of police tape? Cordoned off the area?’

‘Well, don’t let anybody in the frigging vestry.’

‘Damn,’ she said bitterly, ‘and I was planning to charge admission.’

‘You all right, Merrily? You don’t sound well.’

‘I’m fine.’

Could hardly keep her voice steady. Jane was standing in the doorway with arms full of a bath towel and dry clothes. She’d plugged in the electric fire, all three bars.

Bliss said, ‘Tell me why you think he’s been killed.’

‘I… I just think it can’t be ruled out, that’s all.’