To Dream of the Dead

old?’

‘It was a single stab wound,’ Karen said. ‘Not much of a wound, not much blood. In fact, they were still a bit iffy about it till the PM showed what it did to the aorta. Ayling would probably’ve been dead within minutes.’

‘And Willy would’ve known exactly where to stick it, would he?’

‘Could’ve been luck. On the other hand, he was in the Army, way back. Paras. Commando training?’

‘But look at him now, Karen!’

‘Yeah, well, they think he may’ve had a partner. They’re going through Jane Watkins’s database, name by name. Paying visits.’

‘Witch-hunt?’

‘Yeah, funny you should say that. One situation — listen to this — Terry was telling me these witches up towards Ross, friends of Willy’s, they thought it was carol singers from the church and wouldn’t open the door? And Brent… he had it smashed in? Smashed in. All right, maybe there was a bit more to it, and they found some cannabis, but it’s still bloody madness, Frannie.’

Bliss thought about his own dawn raid on Gyles.

‘Just be glad you’re not part of it,’ Karen said.

‘Yeh.’

Not part of anything. Not even part of a family any more.

‘Mind you,’ Karen said, ‘don’t forget it was you who first pointed them at Dinedor.’

‘Yeh, but that—’

‘Goodnight, boss.’

Bliss sat there, shaking his head.

Well, sure, Dinedor needed checking out. But only in tandem with the possibility that somebody wanted them to think it was all about Dinedor. An investigation this size was more like snooker than frigging rugby — a lot of balls on the table and you didn’t just pick one up and run with it.

Unless, of course, you thought your old man might get potted along the way.

Bliss laughed, starting to despise himself. He could stay here all night waiting for Furneaux, and wake up at first light, wheels firmly embedded in the shite, and have to ask Gyles to give him a push, and look like a dick.

When what he was really avoiding…

He leaned back, took a long breath. Well, why not?

Why the fuck not?

He wrenched the car out of the mud at the fourth attempt and put on his lights. He didn’t know if this was going to be right, but knew he wouldn’t sleep now if he didn’t go for it, and the thought of dragging himself back to the empty house at Marden, back to the pile of Chrissie cards on the mat, the spread of white envelopes with a few red ones, like blood in the snow…

On the way to Leominster, he crawled through five pools of flash-flood in the road. He passed twenty-seven houses and bungalows with Christmas lights all over their walls and wrapped around trees and chimneys. Didn’t know why he counted them.

Once, disgracefully, he pulled in to the side of the road and wept and almost turned back.

In Leominster, there was no flooding, and no lights at all in or outside the Victorian three-storey terraced house where Charlie Howe lived.

43 Lute of the Frome

There was, inevitably, an element of ceremonial. Merrily had slipped out of her wet shoes in the stone and panelled hall, and that seemed symbolic now, as Al Boswell laid the wooden case on the long oak table below a big copper lantern.

Al must know there was no time to waste. Although the River Frome seemed to be staying within its banks, the duck pond in front of the Hop Museum was brimming, the green and gold gypsy caravan up to its axles in water darker than beer.

‘We didn’t think you’d come,’ Sally Boswell said. ‘Nobody should be out on a night like this.’

Sally’s long white hair was down. Al was spindly and ageless, like some woodland sprite, Sally the lovely mortal he’d abducted by means of Romani magic.

‘The drukerimaskri?’ Al said. ‘Of course we knew she would come.’

He’d had the guitar ready for her. She’d expected him to take her down to his workshop, through the exhibition of hop-growing memorabilia, old pictures of the Romani who had travelled to the Frome Valley for the annual hop harvest. But Al had known there wasn’t time.

When he opened the case, the strings of the lute-shaped dark-wood guitar shivered in a draught from somewhere.

‘God, Al, it’s so…’

Merrily leaned over the case but didn’t touch. The air felt fresh after the stifling Cole Barn, and the night felt unreal, as if she’d become part of some mythic saga involving the lost lyre of Orpheus or something.

‘It’s too dim in here,’ Al said, ‘but if you look into the soundhole when you get it home, you will see, in the wood below it, a quite perfectly proportioned cross.’

‘You did that?’

‘No, no.’ Al laughed lightly. ‘The cross was naturally in the grain, and I placed it under the soundhole. In your honour. Would you like to bless the instrument before you take it away? Drukerimaskri?’

Romani for a woman priest.

Al bowed and straightened up, spreading his arms, revealing the golden lettering on his black sweatshirt:

Boswell Guitars. The Lute of the Frome.

‘I think,’ Sally said briskly, ‘that we can consider the instrument to be blessed already and not delay Merrily any longer. It’s a terribly cruel night. I heard on the radio that all the bed-and-breakfast places in Hereford were full because of people trapped in the city. How will they get home for Christmas? How will you get home, Merrily?’

‘I don’t need to go through Hereford.’

‘You should have waited until tomorrow.’

‘Couldn’t. I’ve too much on and, besides… he’s doing a concert at the Swan in Ledwardine tomorrow night. His first. He’s a bit worried about it, playing on his own doorstep and I thought… Well, I was going to give this to him on Christmas Day, but…’

‘You’ve driven across the hell that is Herefordshire on the worst night of the year.’ Al’s eyes lit up and his face split like a polished wooden puppet’s into a crooked but radiant smile. ‘This is love, I think.’

‘Yes. I—’

‘But you’re worried.’

‘This and that.’

She’d put Cole Barn on hold to concentrate on the road, getting the guitar back home.

Al studied her.

‘Tell me… where does Nick Drake come into this?’

‘I don’t know.’ Merrily felt a small seepage of alarm in her stomach. ‘I mean, apart from him being Lol’s original inspiration. But you knew that, didn’t you?’

‘Of course he knew that,’ Sally said. ‘Al’s anything but psychic.’