To Dream of the Dead

heating down! Must’ve stayed up half the night working out the details in this state of cold rage she can keep up for hours. So…’ Bliss leaned back on his stainless steel stool ‘… there goes another happy family Christmas exchanging presents round the tree, watching Harry Potter with the kids…’

Merrily said nothing. Never met Kirsty, but she could only ever imagine Bliss half- watching Harry Potter with his kids and hoping the phone would ring before the Quidditch game was into injury time.

‘I mean, you were right,’ he said. ‘Howe — goes without saying — would also love to be attending me farewell piss-up. Not happy that she wasn’t informed as soon as it was found.’

‘So why wasn’t she informed?’

‘Because somebody said, you know, let’s not bother her, it’s Christmas…’

‘Frannie.’

Nobody could say Bliss allowed other people to dig his grave. ‘Under normal circs, I’d be number two on this, but she’s brought her own feller over from Worcester. DI Brent, PhD. A Ph frigging D! What’s happening, Merrily? All these higher-educated, fast-track police persons together… in a school.’

‘The incident room?’

‘Taken over the school next door. Packed the kids off home. So we’ve got Howe as headmistress, Brent as deputy. Kevin Snape as school secretary, fortunately.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘Office manager — that’s the bloke responsible for organising the show. Kevin’s a mate, so I get to keep tabs.’ Bliss poured himself more coffee. ‘Quite like to have seen Annie’s face when she found you and Sophie in Ayling’s back parlour.’

‘She didn’t. Annie Howe doesn’t know I’ve been anywhere near Ayling’s parlour.’

Merrily explained. Giving him the edited version, Sophie’s role minimised. Telling him what little she’d heard from behind the drawing-room door.

‘Played the dad card, Frannie.’

‘Charlie?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Bloody Charlie Howe. West Mercia’s finest, as was. Still walks around Gaol Street in his capacity as a member of the Police Authority. Always your mate. Leave it with me, brother, I’m on your side. Tapping his nose. Bent old twat.’

Merrily said nothing. Ex-Chief Superintendent Charlie Howe. Had he helped cover up a murder many, many years ago? Never proven, never would be, and now Charlie was this ever-popular senior councillor with a daughter doing awfully well in the police service, and not a mark on her.

‘Does it still count for much round here, do you think?’ Bliss said. ‘Ancestry? Roots? I’m standing in the middle of town last night with Kirsty and the progeny, and I’m looking round and I’m thinking, what the fuck am I doing here? I don’t fit in. But, then… I might still feel like that if I had roots and saw what was happening to Hereford under Charlie and his mates. I remember what happened to Liverpool.’

‘It’s still not a bad place, Frannie. And you’ve had your moments. More than Annie Howe.’

‘Yeh, and which of us is the frigging acting superintendent? Look, you wanna bun or something? Jammy doughnut?’

‘Yes.’ Merrily slid down from her stool. ‘I’ll get them.’

Waiting at the counter, she exhaled, closing her eyes. Christmas. The wonderful, life-affirming festive season. Joy to the world.

The doughnut energising him, Bliss said that if Howe hadn’t taken over he might well have had Helen Ayling brought in this morning for some serious Q and A.

‘A bit too quiet, that woman. Not many tears.’

‘She was a secretary. Discreet. And maybe it wasn’t exactly a love match.’

‘That was your impression, was it?’

‘Frannie, I’m just a priest.’

Bliss wrinkled his nose. Like much of Merseyside, he’d been raised a Roman Catholic. His idea of a priest didn’t include Anglicans, never mind women.

‘An old-fashioned man, Merrily. That was what she said about him. Well, we knew that — old-fashioned in the sense of insular, pigheaded, bigoted… And the wife would be property, like a car, best kind being cheap to run and not too much engine noise.’

‘Maybe.’

‘So Helen… Think about it. She’s been brought into a strange city. She’s isolated, unhappy, and it gets no better. Trapped with Mr Hereford in a five-bedroom mausoleum, last decorated in 1973. And then old Clem does or says something that finally flips her big red switch, she pulls a kitchen knife off the rack and… sometimes it’s quite easily done, Merrily. You’d be surprised.’

‘And then?’ She looked around; a few other people in the cafe, none of them close enough to hear. ‘And then this quiet, discreet, middle-aged secretary gets a hacksaw from the tool shed and saws him up? You really think that?’

‘Actually, we borrowed the hacksaw, and it’s clean. They’re almost 100 per cent on a chainie now, which would mean lots of blood spatter and there were no immediate signs of that. But some ladies are a whizz with a mop and a bucket of Flash.’

‘Frannie—’

‘Merrily, it happens. Most killers never meant to be killers, and they panic. And then they either become very calm and sensible and give themselves up or they get increasingly wild and irrational.’

‘All right — what about the rest of him?’

‘Yeh, he was a big man. To move him far she might need help, I’d concede that, unless—’

‘Maybe a bunch of burly Liberal Democrats?’

‘—Unless he was reduced to manageable pieces. But chop-up jobs, butchery, it’s usually men. Takes a strong stomach and a fair bit of strength unless you’ve a lorra time to play with.’ Bliss looked down at his second doughnut for a few seconds, then back at Merrily. ‘No, all right, for what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s her.’

‘Then why the hell have we spent the last ten minutes—?’

‘Because I think that’s what Howe was hoping. That she could hang it on Mrs A. Because… what’s the alternative?’

‘Ayling’s council work?’

‘Which is sensitive. Which is why Annie’s here.’

‘Because of Charlie?’

‘Now wouldn’t it be lovely…’ Bliss beamed ‘… if Clement Ayling was killed by Charlie Howe?’

‘You jest, right?’

‘Regrettably, I probably do, but Charlie’s always gorra lot to hide, and Annie knows that. And if we start poking into council business, who knows what might else be uncovered? If Charlie goes down for any small indiscretion, where does that leave Annie’s glittering career?’

‘And, as Annie probably knows, that wouldn’t totally break your heart, would it, Frannie?’

‘I’m saying nothing until my lawyer gets here,’ Bliss said.

‘So you think Annie Howe’s stepped in — taken over — to steer the investigation away from anything close to Charlie? I mean… how close is it to Charlie?’

‘All right, here’s the scenario,’ Bliss said. ‘Ayling leaves a meeting of this think-tank committee, Hereforward, held at the Green Dragon at around three-thirty p.m., just before it starts to go dark. Home is a five-minute walk across the Cathedral Green. He never makes it.’

‘So he was killed soon after leaving the meeting?’

‘Or taken, anyway. Somebody — perhaps, considering the size of him, more than one person — got to him between the Green Dragon and Castle Street. Maybe he got into a car. Maybe he had something to follow up from the meeting, went off with somebody.’