Blinking back tears, she turned away. This was Jane’s place. Jane did the dead. Jane, who felt herself so far from death as to be able to deal with it almost lovingly. Merrily walked away, following the route Jane had identified as a coffin path, a spirit road, into the lower orchard where Edgar Powell had died.
Haunted or not, the orchard in winter was a reminder of loss. The village had once been encircled by a density of cider-apple trees, nurtured, it was said, by the fairies whose lights could be seen glimmering at twilight among the branches.
If there were lights now, they were corpse candles. The trees were slowly dying off, gradually getting cremated on cosmetic open fires in the Black Swan.
A village of smoke and ghosts. The recently dead and the long, long dead.
Curiously, she was feeling calmer now. Standing on the path inside a rough circle of spidery, winter-bare apple trees, thinking about Lol who would sometimes play Nick Drake’s tragically prescient song ‘Fruit Tree’ which suggested that, for some people — for Nick, certainly — nothing would flourish before death.
Merrily looked up. With the trees gradually getting turned into scented ashes, the only active life forms here were the unearthly balls of mistletoe, suspended like alien craft high among the scabbed and blackened branches, always just out of reach.
Kisses for Christmas, out of reach. She walked on, knowing exactly what she was doing now, where she was going.
When you left behind what remained of the orchard, the fields opened up below you. One was Coleman’s Meadow with a temporary barbed-wire fence around it, a parking area marked out with orange tape, and something like a fairground on it now: a dark green tent, like an army canteen, two caravans, two Land Rovers and one of those cranes that they used for a cherry-picker TV camera. About a dozen people in waterproofs around a mini-JCB, laughter rising frailly through the rain. Cole Farm itself, served by a narrow lane, was wedged into a clearing in the trees ascending Cole Hill. But Cole Barn was exposed on the edge of a small field adjoining the meadow, with a pool of flood water in front, beginning to encroach on a tarmac parking area.
Well, it was
From which a woman emerged. Turquoise waterproof, coppery hair. She came out quickly and ran through the squally rain to a new-looking black Mercedes 4?4 parked in a turning circle. Merrily stood on the edge of the dripping orchard, as the engine growled and the 4?4 spun, skidding and squirting gravel, into a dirt track full of puddles that led into the lane.
It was, she guessed, quite an angry exit. She herself could now make a discreet one, turning away and melting back among the geriatric apple trees.
Or she could go down, knock on the door and, if anyone was in, do the bumbling-vicar bit. Welcome to the parish, Mr Winterson.
Before she could reconsider, she’d scrambled down to open up the field gate, and then she was crossing the strip of rough grass spiked with the skeletons of last year’s docks, to the front door of Cole Barn.
…
25
Outside the Box
‘Basically,’ Steve Furneaux said, ‘I liked Clem. He was like an old bulldog. Barked at you from a distance and then he’d gradually come sniffing around, always suspicious, until you threw him a biscuit or two.’
Gilbies was in an alley behind High Town, the tower and spire of St Peter’s church pushing up suddenly behind it like a rocket on a pad. A bar, for the upwardly mobile. By the time Bliss had got there Steve had eaten; Bliss had bought coffees.
‘We coped with him,’ Steve said. ‘You couldn’t actually heave him out of the way, but, like I say, you found ways of getting round him.’
Bliss figured Steve Furneaux was about his own age, but with better hair. A middle-ranking official in the planning department at Herefordshire Council. Londoner. Crisp, dapper, sandy-looking feller. No shit on
‘Because we’re all quite excited about Hereforward, Francis. It’s a new concept, experimental, and we don’t want it to crash.’
‘Well, I’m just a thick copper. Perhaps you could you explain it to me very simply. As to a child with learning difficulties?’
‘I’ll explain it as I would to a new councillor,’ Steve said. ‘Which is pretty much the same thing.’
He paused to check out Bliss’s reaction. Bliss put on a smile. Harmless Terry Stagg had already talked to the chairman of Hereforward, assembling the nuts and bolts of Ayling’s last meeting. When Bliss had suggested it might be worth looking at some of the issues Hereforward was involved in, Howe could hardly say no at a briefing. Only privately pulling the rug when she had Bliss over a barrel. Bliss had picked out Steve, looking for an official, an employee, rather than a slippery councillor. It was proving a good choice. Steve was slippery, too, but in a different way, and he oozed personal ambition. Therefore no loyalty to Hereford or its councillors.
‘This is how it came about,’ Steve said. ‘There was some new funding available for a number of local joint committees to be set up to consider the long-term economic prospects and cultural directioning of particular areas of the West Midlands.’
‘Cultural conditioning,’ Bliss said. ‘Right.’
So this would be a clutch of councillors, council officials, sharks, leeches, token ethnics and tame gays tolerating each other over a free lunch. Not a new concept at all, then.
‘Hereford was encouraged to go for it, as we’re out on a limb,’ Steve said. ‘Geographically more Wales than West Midlands — but of course Wales is a different country now with its own government.’
‘And this would be another way for us to get quietly reined into the Midlands, would it?’
Steve laughed, glancing across at the bar-huggers. Wiped his nose with a red-spotted handkerchief and lowered his voice.
‘Think of it as a much-needed shot of adrenalin. We get to think outside the box. We were almost certainly the first to float the idea of a University of Hereford, which is now on the wider agenda.’
‘Blue-sky think-tank, in other words.’
‘Exactly. Look, Francis… sorry, is it Frank?’
‘It’s not Frank,’ Bliss said.
Through his teeth.
‘I mean, you’re obviously an outsider, too,’ Steve said.
‘I just talk like this to sound cool. Go on. You want to educate the hicks.’
‘The point is, there hasn’t been enough
‘I see.’ A fait-accompli machine, in other words. ‘And Clement Ayling…’
‘… was initially suspicious of us, as he always was of anything new. But he had a lot of influence and got himself co-opted onto Hereforward. More to keep an eye on us than anything. I think he saw us as some sort of central-government infiltration.’
‘Perish the thought,’ Bliss said. ‘So… what global concepts were you discussing at the meeting on Wednesday, Steve?’
Steve looked doubtful about being able to answer this one, maybe on the grounds that a report had not yet gone to the cabinet, or some bullshit.
‘All right,’ Bliss said, ‘answer me this. Was Councillor Ayling in any kind of, shall we say
