To Dream of the Dead

As if, having been the first in the new millennium to identify something odd about Coleman’s Meadow, she was now feeling personally responsible for it.

Was obsession too strong a word for this? Lucy Devenish, Thomas Traherne, Alfred Watkins, Nick Drake… a pale company of dead people with whom Jane felt—

‘Christ!’

The old Volvo was suddenly bucking against a wall of water, as the tractor and trailer up ahead plunged into a flooded dip in the lane where the ditch had overflowed. Merrily frantically wrestling for control as the black tide rose around the car, and the force of it, the weight of it, was unexpectedly frightening.

Then she was through.

But, hell, you could see how easy it would be to get trapped — tonight’s TV news screening a video clip, shot on somebody’s mobile phone, of a woman in a cassock being pulled by firefighters out of a side window of her drowning car.

She was testing her brakes, letting out her breath, as Colin on the radio suggested that, with Bishop’s Meadow already annexed by the swollen Wye, Hereford’s crucial Belmont roundabout would be closed before the evening rush hour. Colin sounding quite excited. However, as flood-relief seldom involved detectives, it seemed unlikely this was what Frannie Bliss had meant when he’d suggested that Merrily kept the radio on.

She’d called him on his mobile after Jane had caught the bus.

‘Norra good time, madam,’ Bliss said.

Not referring to her by name a signal that he was in the CID room. Understandably, Bliss had never liked to advertise a working relationship with the diocesan exorcist.

‘Any chance you could call me back, Frannie? Only wanted to ask one question.’

‘Yeh, I’ve heard that before.’

‘What would your Special Branch colleague be doing in Ledwardine?’

‘When?’

‘Last night.’ No use pretending she might’ve been mistaken; it was him. ‘At a parish meeting about the Coleman’s Meadow stones. He’d obviously come in after everybody else, sitting near the door, first one out.’

‘No idea, Merrily, I’m not one of his confidants. Maybe he’s bought himself a holiday cottage in Ledwardine. They’re on good money, the funny boys. Fringe benefits.’

‘I didn’t even know he was still around. Thought he’d gone back to the Met or wherever they hang out.’

‘Look,’ Bliss said, ‘I’ve gorra go. I’ll get back to you when I can, all right?’

‘Has something happened?’

‘Put your radio on,’ Bliss had said. ‘And keep it on.’

The travel update warned of serious flooding around Bromyard in the east, which could be a problem; she’d need to get over there within the next few days to pick up Lol’s Christmas present. Couldn’t leave it much longer — too much to do around the big day, and there was the delicate issue of introducing the midnight meditation on Christmas Eve.

Always a problem to alter anything in a village.

‘And if you’re having problems in your particular part of the two counties,’ Colin said, ‘ring in and tell us… our lines are open all day, every day right through Christmas.’

Christmas. Why did the glow always seem to fade, the closer you came to it? Why was there always some damn crisis? Peace on earth, goodwill to all—

‘—However, as you may have heard on the news, the floods aren’t the only problem in Hereford. Police have sealed off part of the city centre in the wake of last night’s—’

Ah…

‘—shocking discovery of a human head in the ruined Blackfriars Monastery in the Widemarsh Street area. Our reporter Arabella Finch is at the scene. Bella, what’s happening now?’

Merrily slowed, crawling into tree-fringed King’s Acre in the city’s western suburbs. The female voice came back in low quality, probably from a radio car.

‘Colin, I’m talking to you from one of the back streets between Widemarsh Street and Commercial Road from where it’s usually possible to see the ruins of the medieval Blackfriars Monastery. But not this morning. The whole area’s been completely screened off by the police who’ve set up an incident room at the Cantilupe School next door to the monastery. I’ve been told a press conference has been scheduled for twelve noon, when obviously we hope to learn more. But I can tell you that the head was found last night by a member of the public on or near the medieval preaching cross in the rose garden at the front of the monastery ruins.’

‘Bit of a shock for someone, Bella. And of course, this all happened when the city was absolutely packed with Christmas shoppers, in town for the traditional Wednesday evening late opening.’

‘There probably weren’t as many shoppers as usual, Colin, because of the floods, but obviously it’s made the police investigation a lot more difficult. With so many extra people about, it would be far easier for whoever left the head to come and go unnoticed.’

‘Now it’s a… it’s the head of a man, is that correct? ’

‘That’s what we understand, Colin.’

‘And is this someone who was actually, you know, beheaded?’

‘My information is that it was done after death.’

‘Do they know who it is yet?’

‘Well, personally, I think they do, and there’s quite a buzz about it. I can’t see that they won’t be revealing a name in the course of the day, but relatives will have to be told first, of course. There has, obviously, been an extensive search for the rest of the body, but no suggestion that anything’s been found yet.’

‘And what about local people, Bella? The people living and working in a very built-up part of the city. How are they reacting?’

‘Well, as you can imagine nobody here can quite believe that something so, you know, horrific and barbaric should have come to Hereford. Earlier this morning, I talked to people living in the streets behind Blackfriars Monastery, as well as some coming to work in shops and offices around lower Widemarsh Street—’

Merrily switched off the litany of shock and disbelief and what’s the world coming to?

A black Christmas for somebody. No surprise that Bliss didn’t have time to speculate about what Jonathan Long might have been doing in Ledwardine.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all men.

Yeah, right.

Under a sky the colour of wet mortar, she came off the White Cross roundabout at the fourth exit, for the crematorium.

11 A Sense of Eternity

Quite a turnout for Tom Parson, and Merrily had known him well enough to make it meaningful — as much as you ever could with another funeral party waiting outside, stamping its feet and rubbing its hands.

Tom had been Old Ledwardine — at least, that was what she’d thought until she’d talked to the family.

‘Tom was… a character,’ she said in the chapel at the crem. ‘Someone of whom, now he’s gone, we say, We won’t see his kind again. Someone who was part of the fabric of the village. Old Ledwardine. I’m… not exactly Old Ledwardine, and I just assumed Tom’s family had been around the village for generations.’