To Dream of the Dead

‘Remind me.’

‘Can I have a cigarette?’

‘It’s a police vehicle.’ Bliss let go the wheel, sagged in his seat. ‘Yeh, go on. But open your window a bit.’

Pulling out the Silk Cut and the Zippo, Merrily wondered how Jane would explain this. Think it out.

‘OK, sometimes… when there’s an accident black spot — the kind where there’s no obvious cause, no blind bends, whatever — some people may suggest drivers’ concentration could be impaired, or their perceptions altered, because the road is aligned with — or crosses—’

‘A ley line?’

‘Let’s call it a line of energy. Which our remote ancestors apparently knew about but we, with our dulled senses, can no longer perceive.’

‘Yeh, I know all that. But — pardon me if I’m stating the obvious here — the so-called serpent is not a line, is it? It’s a…’ Bliss did the gestures ‘… wavy thing.’

‘Still some kind of energy path. According to Jane, it’s possibly connecting the River Wye with the earthworks on Dinedor Hill and reflecting the curves of the river. I’m just trying to give you an idea of how they might see it.’

‘Reflecting the curves?’

‘Literally, perhaps, because of the pieces of quartz which would reflect moonlight.’

‘So the new road cutting through all this…’

‘Would be seen as breaking an ancient spiritual link. The secular world, with its noise and its exhaust fumes bursting through the coils of the serpent.’

‘Which our friend insists is writhing under the hill.’ Bliss sighed. ‘I can’t believe we’re discussing this.’

‘Isn’t this what you wanted? How whoever made that call might be thinking? But the person who made the call… how likely is that, really, to be Ayling’s killer? As Jane’s always saying, these are people who abhor violence.’

‘Go on, all the same. Finish it.’

‘Well… the theory might be that you’ve got all this rogue energy misdirected now, affecting the attention of drivers, if only for a second. So whenever there’s an accident on that road…’

‘Certain people will be nodding their little heads knowingly. Which people?’

‘Frannie—’

‘Members of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society, for instance?’

‘Look… I just can’t. I can’t give you a list, OK?’

‘It might…’ Bliss looked at her steadily, finger-drumming the vinyl in the centre of the wheel. ‘It might be the soft-option, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘It’s ridiculous. These people—’

‘Merrily, eight of them were arrested for refusing to leave the council offices when the cabinet was meeting to discuss the new road. That shows a certain… determination.’

‘Frannie…’ Merrily heard the echo of Jane: We live in a police state! Nobody’s allowed to object any more ‘It’s bollocks. I doubt any of the eight people arrested were even pagans, practising or otherwise. Just ordinary people with an interest in their heritage who didn’t think the democratic process was being followed. You really have no solid connection between the Dinedor Serpent and the murder of Clement Ayling.’

‘Wanna bet?’

She turned to face him, her back against the door, smoke from the cigarette wisping out of the open window, stray raindrops spraying in. She said nothing.

‘What I’m about to tell you, Merrily… there’s always something we like to keep in our back pocket, right? Something known only to the investigating team and the killer?’

She kind of nodded, not entirely sure she wanted to become the third party.

‘So you know what that means,’ Bliss said. ‘It means not a word, Reverend. Not to Lol, not to Jane… especially not to Jane.’

Merrily saw the water whirlpooling around the arch of the bridge. One of those moments where you backed away from the edge or you got pulled in.

‘Look, whatever it is, you really don’t have to tell me. You know how I hate to feel compromised.’

‘Yeh, well, on past experience,’ Bliss said, ‘I prefer to have you compromised.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And it’s been a crap day.’

‘So you want to ruin someone else’s?’

‘His eyes were gone,’ Bliss said.

Merrily swallowed some smoke, coughed. An empty stock lorry came rattling over the bridge, headlights full on, yellow smears on Bliss’s blotched windscreen.

‘Ayling’s eyes had been gouged out and pebbles placed in the sockets. Bits of gravel, it looked like.’

‘Gravel?’

No…

‘Which turned out, on examination last night, to include fragments of quartz.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Almost certainly originating in the so-called Dinedor Serpent. Somebody’d carefully jammed bits of the serpent into Clem Ayling’s eye sockets.’

Merrily squeezed out the cigarette, burned her thumb.

‘Being a cynical, case-hardened detective, I never let on, but I’ll admit it spooked even me at first.’

‘As it was… meant to?’

‘Yeh. Me or somebody. Torchlight, see. Councillor Ayling’s severed head, with the eyes lit up like little bulbs on a Christmas tree. Not something you easily forget, Merrily, to be honest.’

22 Watery Lane

IT SHOULDN’T BOTHER her, of course. With less than ten per cent of the population of Ledwardine ever showing up at a service, there had to be scores of atheists in this village.

On the other hand, the others simply didn’t show up. Said the occasional good morning to the vicar, ignored the church. Entirely inoffensive, your atheists, as a rule. Didn’t make a thing out of it. Except for fundamentalists like the celebrated geneticist Richard Dawkins, who had opened his book The God Delusion by hailing the bravery and the splendour of atheism. And Mathew Stooke, who’d taken it a little further. Who, according to his website, was demanding — how seriously wasn’t made clear — an official bank holiday, some kind of Atheism Pride Day. People parading with blank banners, singing ‘Glad to be Godless’?

Merrily lit a cigarette, studying Stooke’s face on his website, like there was the smallest chance of him being the first to blink.

Not an edifying image. Black hair, black beard — touch of the Charles Manson, even — but better than imagining the heavy head of big, smiley Clem Ayling with eyes of shining quartz.

No matter how much he’d changed, she thought she’d recognise Stooke’s eyes. Quiet eyes that were looking past you towards a finite horizon. No visible rage.

For ten years, Mathew Elliot Stooke was a Religious Affairs correspondent for the Guardian and then the Independent newspapers. He travelled all over the world, meeting and interviewing religious leaders — archbishops, cardinals, ayatollahs, the Dalai Lama, and various powerful evangelists in the US. And then, one day, I had what the religious would call a religious experience.