‘You going to tell me what this is all about, Inspector?’
‘Of course. We’re investigating the death of Mathew Elliot Stooke. You did
‘You mean Winterson? Thought the poor guy was drowned. Why’s that need further investigation, including a search of my fucking caravan?’
‘Because we think he was murdered.’
‘Homicide by drowning?’ Blore shrugged, let out a small burp, pushed stubby fingers through his dense hair. ‘Suppose these things happen, don’t they? Western world’s reverting to some kind of neoneolithic barbarity, Inspector. Suicide bombers, kids shooting other kids on the streets, torturing old ladies…’
‘Godless,’ Bliss said.
Part of him wanting to hang that toilet scene on the bastard, but without a signed statement yet from Jane it was unsafe. At the door, as Terry Stagg was stepping down into the mud, Bliss turned quickly.
‘Oh — We were only talking about you earlier on. With Steve Furneaux?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Blore squinted at him. ‘Oh… yeah,
‘That’s right. He
‘Drink-driving?’
Bliss smiled.
‘God, Mr Blore… You’re a clever twat, aren’t you?’
‘I like to think so,’ Blore said.
Merrily drove out on to the square. With Old Barn Lane blocked, the only way now was up past the church. Past the entrance to Blackberry Lane, a circuitous route bordering the orchard and eventually coming out, through the new housing, to the bypass.
There was a single-track road from here, leading directly to Coleman’s Meadow.
‘Jane’s right,’ Lol said. ‘You don’t get out. If we don’t see Bliss we blow the horn.’
‘Right.’
‘We don’t tempt fate,’ Lol said.
‘No.’
They emerged on to the bypass near the place where Lucy Devenish had died next to her moped. Merrily could tell Lol was thinking about it too. You just did, whenever you passed this way.
‘So
‘The Endtime.’ Merrily brought the Volvo down to second gear in the mud-track to Coleman’s Meadow. ‘The flood, the Antichrist. The whole madness of it. The insane idea that Elliot Stooke and I were working together towards the birth of the Antichrist on Christmas Eve. Leonora could’ve put all that together from the Lord of the Light website. All the crap you find on the Net. They had this Gregory on the payroll. Told him exactly what to do.’
The damage reinforcing the idea of a dangerously unbalanced fundamentalist with a fear and hatred of Stooke. If Stooke’s drowning was, in the end, not considered accidental, the police would have had Shirley in the frame, and Shirley’s attitude would have convinced them they were on the money.
‘She’d probably have been judged unfit to plead,’ Lol said. ‘Case closed.’
Merrily reached out for his hand, knowing he was thinking of his own case, the tunnel-vision of policemen chasing a result.
‘Only, the poor woman was mad enough to be in the church,’ she said. ‘Maybe hiding — we’ll never know, will we, how she and this psycho came face to face.’
‘She’d been stabbed?’
‘Yes.’ The car bucked and shuddered over a deep rut in the track. ‘Lol, I… I bloody demonised her. As soon as I heard Nick Ellis might have some connection with the Church of the Lord of the Light, that was enough. We don’t
The hedges rose up in the headlights, yellow and dripping on either side.
‘You did your best,’ Lol said. ‘You always do your best.’
She tried to smile. It would mend, the church. It would cost, but it would mend. It always had, always would, even if it ended up as a local museum in a secular state where Christianity was just a vaguely tolerated eccentricity.
When they reached the parking area short of the meadow, the clouds had cleared from round the moon. A soiled potato of a moon. You could see Cole Hill, like something dumped on the horizon.
And Gomer’s jeep.
Gomer leaning on it, still in his overalls, smoking a ciggy, blinking through his bottle glasses at their headlights. Then he raised a hand and ambled over, grinning his old familiar grin, and Merrily quickly opened one of the back doors for him, and he got in.
‘Merry Christmas, vicar. Lol, boy.’
‘Gomer…’ Merrily switched off the engine. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this sort of—’ She gave up. Pointless. ‘Where’s Bliss?’
‘Went through the gate, him and the other coppers. He’ll be all right. This boy en’t gonner pick a fight with the whole bunch of ’em, is he?’
Gomer stretched his legs out behind Merrily’s seat, ciggy in his mouth, hands across his stomach.
‘Been a funny ole couple days, ennit, vicar?’
‘Could put it that way,’ Lol said.
Merrily thought about a cigarette and something else. Denied herself the cig and leaned over the back of her seat.
‘Gomer, you know you said they were using Gerry Murray’s JCB on the site — the excavation?’
‘Ar.’
‘What was Gerry Murray actually doing?’
‘Strip the grass off, kind o’ thing. I dunno. Bit of a bent deal how he got hisself hired, sure to be.’
‘Mmm.’ Merrily turned to Lol. ‘Would explain how Blore managed to plant modern masonry under one of the stones, wouldn’t it? Who could you trust to do it and keep quiet more than the landowner?’
‘Blore directing him,’ Lol said. ‘Then the earth goes back. And all the rain… all the mud. Couldn’t have better conditions. And who’s going to challenge his findings? One of the students?’
‘We need to make sure Bliss deals with this as well. If we can get it out in court, that’s going to turn it all around, and maybe Jane gets her henge. We can win this yet.’
Gomer sat up, listening. A car door slamming. Gomer furiously leaning on the door handle.
‘That’s my jeep, vicar! Some bugger’s in my bloody jeep!’
Hit the door, lurched out of the car and he was off into the dark, like a young, angry man, Merrily crying out,
‘
Turning, in fear, to Lol, but Lol had already gone after Gomer.
She fumbled at the key, started the car, threw on the headlights. Saw the figure coming out of the jeep, one arm raised up. A glinting.
Saw them all for an unending moment in the whitewashed night.
All four of them, three in motion, one still.
CHRISTMAS NIGHT
