To Dream of the Dead

‘That far?’

‘It’s not very far. The river’s down there, behind those industrial buildings. This is about the hill, the river and the moon.’

Harri told him the theory about this sinuous spectral form winding its moonlit way to the top of the hill.

‘Prehistoric son et lumiere?’ Bliss said.

‘The sound would be chanting. A sacred hill, see. A lot of hills were sacred. And the river. Water was always very significant, and the Wye’s a magnificent river so it would be venerated above all others in the west. Therefore, if we imagine…’

Harri walked to the top of the mound and started weaving his arms about, the way blokes used to air-sketch a voluptuous woman.

‘… If we imagine something mystically — and very visibly — connecting the hugely powerful River Wye with the highest hill in these parts. Something suggestive of a coming-together, a confluence, of these great power symbols, the hill, the river and the moon.’

‘Now about to be trashed by a new road slicing through the middle, courtesy of the Hereford Council,’ Bliss said. ‘Would that be a fair assessment?’

‘Hey…’ Harri Tomlin put up his hands. ‘Wasn’t me done him, guv.’

‘So much for a quick result. Where do you lads go from here, Harri?’

‘Probably try to extend the excavation in the direction of the river, see how far the Serpent goes. Which means digging on private land, so may take a while to organise.’

‘And when you say these places are sacred, what’s the significance of that, in terms of what they were doing here back then?’

‘Ritual.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Search me. That word covers up a lot of ignorance. We don’t know what rituals were involved, of course we don’t.’

‘Human sacrifice, maybe?’

‘Ah, see, people like to think there was human sacrifice all over the place, but it probably wasn’t all that widespread. It’s common to think of Bronze Age people as primitive savages, but they must’ve been quite sophisticated.’

‘Savagery itself, Harri,’ Bliss said quietly, ‘can sometimes be quite sophisticated.’

Harri Tomlin looked across at the stripped ground and the slaughtered trees, his legs apart, his fluorescent yellow jacket gleaming with rain. Then he looked at Bliss.

‘What are you after? You really think somebody killed Ayling because he was being so negative about this discovery? I mean, you actually think that’s a possibility?’

‘It’s a possibility, Harri.’

‘Can you tell me why you’ve made this connection, because from my point of view—’

‘Nothing personal, Harri, but it’s not my decision how much we reveal and when. I can tell you there was a ritualistic element. And the connection with this site… that’s beyond argument.’

‘Which is why you borrowed some quartz chippings from us yesterday?’

‘And if you can think of anything else that might help us, I hope you won’t hold back.’

Bliss let the silence dangle, looking at Harri Tomlin through half-closed eyes.

‘Look,’ Harri said. ‘You want me to get fanciful here, is it? I mean, I’m not going to have to repeat all this in court at some stage?’

‘I’m not writing it down, Harri, and I’m not wired. Be as fanciful as you like.’

‘All right, then,’ Harri said. ‘Heads.’

‘Heads, plural?’

‘I’m not so much thinking of the guys who laid out the Serpent, I’m thinking the people who built the camp or fort on Dinedor Hill. The Iron Age Celts, who came over here from Europe, two or three thousand years ago. They were very into heads. They believed that the seat of consciousness — the soul, if you like — was located in the head. So the Celts tended to take off the heads of their enemies.’

‘That a fact.’

‘After death, this is. And, from your point of view, it possibly gets better. A contemporary Roman account tells how they’d preserve the head of a distinguished enemy in cedar oil and keep it in a chest for display. Or they might offer it up to the gods. Skulls have also been found, in quite large numbers, at shrines and other sacred places.’

‘Like the old Blackfriars Monastery?’

‘No, no, Mr Bliss — medieval, that is.’

‘Couldn’t be a Celtic site or something underneath?’

‘If there is, we haven’t found it yet. Sorry.’

‘So, let’s look at this a minute, Harri. We’ve gorra mixture of historical periods. But wouldn’t this serpent… wouldn’t that still have been around in Celtic times?’

‘We think not. A Roman ditch cuts across it, so it was certainly silted over by then. However, the hill itself would still have been venerated and perhaps a memory of the Serpent remained. Perhaps it still… For instance, while I’ve been working here, people have told me how families used to follow a path to the top of Dinedor on special days, like a pilgrimage?’

‘To this day?’

‘Near enough,’ Harri Tomlin said. ‘That’s a ritual, too, in its way, isn’t it? Beliefs and customs often last longer than physical remains. There’s also — I don’t suppose this helps you, particularly, but there’s a link between heads and water — specifically wells and rivers. Skulls have been found in rivers.’

Bliss was gazing up at Dinedor Hill, trying to stitch all this together. The important thing was that Harri Tomlin was strongly supporting the ritual element in the killing.

‘You get many… I dunno, modern pagan-types coming to see the site, Harri?’

‘Oh, some days…’ Harri was smiling ‘… you’d look up from your trench and they’d be coming out of the woods like the Celts of old. Home-made, multicoloured sweaters and dowsing rods. Harmless enough. Quite respectful, in general. You tell them not to walk across the site, they won’t. Very respectful. Give me pagans any day, rather than bored kids.’

‘You get to know any of them?’

‘Not by name. One weird beardie is much like another, I find. We don’t get them now, mind — had to be a lot more strict about sightseers since the accident.’

Bliss blinked at him.

‘Two of the boys cutting down trees. If it’s a big one, one of them goes some distance away to get the wider view and then gives a whistle when he can see it’s clear. Boy with the chainsaw, he swore he’d heard the whistle, see…’

Harri put a hand behind an ear by way of illustration. Bliss waited.

‘Well, the other fellow never whistled because he wasn’t out of the way himself. Tree comes down, wheeeeeee.’ Harri lowered his arm, slowly. ‘Fractured skull, smashed shoulder. Two operations on that shoulder.’

‘You were here at the time?’

‘Worn my hard hat religiously ever since, Mr Bliss.’

Bliss handed his back. Five past one. Time to leave, if he was going to make Gilbies by half past.

‘All the way to the ambulance, he was swearing he hadn’t whistled,’ Harri said, like Bliss might want to make something of it. ‘Funny how your senses can play tricks in a big open space like this.’

24 Poisoning the Apple