Merrily switched off the radio. Getting repetitive, the litany of recrimination. She followed a silver container lorry at 25 m.p.h. all the way to Leominster. The town centre was clear, its lights dulled, its swilled streets empty. She drove up the hill towards the roundabout beyond Morrisons supermarket. There was little traffic. She thought she saw Frannie Bliss’s yellow Honda Civic, same blue sticker in the rear window, parked at the side of the road, but it couldn’t have been.
Back into the countryside. Only ten minutes from home now, in normal conditions. Water was pumping out of the fields into the basin of the road, and the rain ricocheted from the tarmac like a thousand plucked stitches in the headlights.
On the passenger seat the mobile chimed.
Merrily drove up onto the grass verge, kept the engine running, watching the silver container lorry disappearing between dirty curtains of rain.
‘Go on then,’ Huw Owen said. ‘Let’s hear it. What happened at Stooke’s place?’
All the way to Knights Frome and all the way back she’d been blanking this out. It needed a cool head.
‘I was going to call you when I got a bit nearer home. I can’t park here, Huw, I’ll have to—’
‘Christ, you’re not bloody well out in this, are you? It’s just I rang your landline but t’machine were on.’
‘I had to go and see someone. I’ll find somewhere and call you back.’
‘Just get home.’
‘No, we do need to talk about this. Give me two minutes.’
44
Nightwatchman
Bliss watched him walking stiffly down the pavement, leaning only slightly on his aluminium crutch. Once, he stopped and lifted it up to point at something. Only Charlie Howe could make a lightweight crutch look like a twelve-bore.
Bliss was relieved to see him. At least somebody was coming home tonight.
Charlie was under a big black umbrella held by a woman with big blonde hair. Not
As well as the brolly, the woman was carrying a plastic carrier bag with what looked like bottles in it. Bliss guessed they’d been to Morrisons. Maybe Charlie had even met her there; supermarkets were good for pick- ups.
Whoever she was, she’d need to be persuaded to leave them alone for an hour. Bliss got out of the car as they went in through Charlie’s gate, up the short path to the front door, where Charlie started fumbling in his pocket for his keys.
Bliss trotted up behind.
‘Hold your crutch, Charlie?’
The woman spun, but Charlie turned slowly, water crashing down on the umbrella, the downpour swollen by overflow from the guttering.
‘Least I can do,’ Bliss said, ‘after all you’ve done for me.’
Charlie leaned his crutch against the door frame, to show he could manage without it, peered out from under the brolly. He looked like he always had: ski-resort suntan, white hair in a crewcut out of vintage movies with Elvis in them.
‘Brother Bliss, would that be?’
‘Just happened to be passing, Charlie. Thought I’d see how you were getting on with the new plazzie hip.’
Charlie said nothing.
‘Lucky to get it done before the festive season. I heard they’d been suspended, all the hip ops. Virus? Ward closures?’
‘Wasn’t affected,’ Charlie said. ‘Got in just in time. What do you want, Brother Bliss?’
Bliss stood there. He was soaked through already. He could feel the damp on his chest and the weight of dark shoulder pads of saturation. It didn’t look as though Charlie was going to introduce his friend.
‘We have a chat, Charlie?’
‘Certainly. Ring my secretary. Make an appointment.’
‘I was thinking now.’
‘Not convenient, I’m afraid.’
‘Do a good job, then, did he?’ Bliss said. ‘Bit of a whizz with hips, what I hear, Mr Shah.’
‘I’m told it all went very smoothly,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re getting wet.’
‘Nice feller, too, everybody says that,’ Bliss said.
‘A gentleman.’
‘Pity about his kid.’
Bliss stared at Charlie, blinking the rain out of his eyes. In truth, he couldn’t even see Charlie any more, only a black mist. He just sensed a thin smile.
‘What are you doing, Brother Bliss?’
Drowning, Bliss thought.
The Zippo sputtered and sparked before finding a flame. Merrily lit up. She’d pulled into a long lay-by behind a tump of gravel, where the Leominster road let you into the bypass. She was two miles from home and about half a mile from the bridge at Caple End, where she’d sat in Bliss’s car and he’d told her about the pieces of quartz shining in Clem Ayling’s eye sockets.
‘Now
Didn’t think she’d forgotten anything: fluctuating temperature, bulbs popping, smoke alarms whining in the night, car failing to start, and that staggering electricity bill.
’Something taking the energy,’ Huw said. ‘There were a fairly well-documented case over at Brecon some years ago, before your time.’
‘I’ve heard about it.’
‘Lot of others I’ve heard about where all that occurs alongside a volatile.’
‘If they need the heating on at that level because, if they turn it down, it’s suddenly colder than the grave… OK, you could say that’s a case of soft city folk. But
‘What was the attitude when they were telling you all this?’
‘Annoyed. Annoyed at the level of workmanship, annoyed at the electricity company, the owners, the owners’ agents…’
‘Nowt more than annoyed?’
‘Like it wouldn’t even cross their minds, either of them. But, then, they have an image to support. How could they not be in total, one hundred per cent denial?’
‘It’s a bugger, lass.’
‘Don’t keep just saying that, Huw. What do I do about it? I get called in all the time on stories far less convincing than this. First rule of deliverance?’
Huw laughed. Both of them remembering their first encounter on Huw’s deliverance course in his parish deep in the heart of SAS training country.
First rule of deliverance: always carry plenty of fuse wire.
Second rule: never leave the premises without at least a prayer.
As if…
‘Of course,’ Huw said, ‘as you say, it might be a scam.’
‘Might very well be. She’s told me about his need for new material. How book two might have to be just a diary of his adventures since the publication of
