To Dream of the Dead

‘Madonna?’

Merrily dragged the robe around her shoulders as Jane came into the bedroom, pushed the door to behind her and sat down at the bottom of the bed.

‘She says people call her Lensi, right?’

‘You said that. And why am I interested?’

‘That’s what I said to her.’

‘What?’

‘I’m like, why are you interested? This was when she started asking questions like, what sort of pagan are you, Jane?’

‘Oh God.’

‘I didn’t tell her. Not that I’m any kind of pagan, anyway. It’s just like an ethos, isn’t it? But it came up, because she’d been asking about the stones and Lucy Devenish. And then you, a bit.’

‘Me?’

‘She obviously knew who you were. And, like, Eirion always says if you avoid answering journalists’ questions it’ll only make them think you’re covering something up and they won’t let it go.’

‘Jane—’

‘Anyway, Eirion knows this guy who’s like Wales correspondent for the Indy? And he knows this woman photographer who calls herself Lensi. Like, nobody else calls her that… it’s about giving herself this kind of professional-photographer image? They used to laugh at her, didn’t take her seriously because she was posh. Rich family in the country. Finishing school, that kind of thing.’

‘And what exactly was the posh photographer doing poking around the churchyard?’

‘She lives here. This is the point. She’s renting Cole Barn. With her husband.’

‘Well, yeah, I heard that had been let, but—’

‘They’ve been here several weeks. Eirion says her real name’s Leonora Phelan. But it’s her husband you’re more likely to have heard of. Mathew Stooke?’

Merrily sat up. The strip of yellow light from the landing was like a knife blade.

‘Yes, that Mathew Stooke,’ Jane said. ‘We’re pretty sure.’

FRIDAY

‘This is an exciting find, not just for Herefordshire and the UK, but apparently, so far, it is unique in Europe. It has international significance.’

Dr Keith Ray, Herefordshire County Archaeologist Today, BBC Radio 4

There has been some misapprehension that the whole monument is affected by the road scheme course, and that the intention is to destroy the monument. Neither of these is true.

Herefordshire Council website

18 Working Relationship

Through his mucky windscreen, Bliss watched Annie Howe powering out of her car in the schoolyard, aiming an unfolding umbrella like a harpoon gun into the rain. Stepping between police vehicles, in her white trench coat — well, not exactly a trench coat and not exactly white, but you got the idea.

Kevin Snape, the office manager, had served the summons last night, leaving the message on Bliss’s mobile: ‘Ma’am wants to see you first thing, Francis. Eight a.m. sharp. At the school.’

That would be before morning assembly. Before the main team got in. Suggesting Annie wanted to tap him on some background angle, something she didn’t want to share with the whole class. Probably just with DI Iain Twatface Brent, PhD, after Bliss had gone.

He waited until she was in the building, then got out of his car, got wet — never been an umbrella kind of person. Inside the schoolhall-turned-incident-room he shook himself, looked around. Kevin Snape at a computer, Terry Stagg on the phone.

Seeing all the kiddie things pushed into corners reminded him that sometime over the weekend he was going to have to tell his folks up in Knowsley that Kirsty had left him and taken the beloved grandchildren.

This jagged tear in life’s fabric. Hadn’t been able to face going home last night. Cod and chips in the car at ten p.m., not getting back to the house until he was too knackered to do anything but crunch through the Christmas cards on the doormat and crawl upstairs. What he needed was for the Ayling case to roll on through Christmas, turning all the festive shite into a merciful blur.

‘Francis — in here, please.’

The SIO had bagged a classroom for her office. Bliss went meekly in. How come, when Annie Howe was younger than him, she still made him feel like a spotty kid?

‘Sit down, Francis.’

Ma’am at the teacher’s desk, kiddie chairs stacked against the walls. Bliss thought of detaching one and squatting in it, looking up respectfully at the Head, but there was already a teacher-sized chair waiting.

He sat down. Ice-blonde Annie was dressed for the day’s press conferences in a dark green suit with deep lapels, dazzling white shirt, no jewellery. Morning papers in front of her, the Western Daily Press on top.

BEHEADED:

Massive hunt for

city chief’s killer

‘So what’s the state of play with your Worcester witness murder, ma’am?’ Bliss said. ‘Still thinking contract killing, are we? Knowing who ordered it but not who actually did the deed.’

Howe looked up slowly. Clearly aware that what he was really asking her was what the hell she was doing over here, with the Lasky case still live.

‘Actually, it’s the other way round: we’re fairly sure we know who did it, but we don’t know who ordered it. We’re looking at a ring. Two more in Droitwich, another in Evesham. Plus Lasky in Worcester. And the father.’

‘Scumbag.’

The father was the worst of them, in Bliss’s view. Selling sex with his kids? If it hadn’t been for his brother- in-law going to the cops, it might’ve gone on for years.

Now the brother-in-law was dead. They’d found the poor sod knifed in his own garage, two weeks before he was due to testify against the father and the family’s paedophile solicitor, Adrian Lasky. Annie Howe never thinking the man might need protection — all paedophiles being cowering wimps who couldn’t deal with adults.

‘Under the circumstances, however, it seems unlikely that Lasky directly commissioned it,’ Howe said. ‘However… my boss is handling it and, as I take it you’re not in a position to assist us, let’s move on.’

‘Contract boys.’ Bliss shook his head. ‘Even ten years ago, a rarity. Now you’ve got kids who’ll do it for a few hundred, knowing the worst that can happen is six years and they come out with a degree in sociology, courtesy of