To Dream of the Dead

‘We got you an early Christmas present,’ Mumford said.

Bliss sat up. The bedroom was cold enough to preserve a corpse for a fortnight. Still hadn’t worked out the heating cycle; had had to use the immersion heater when he’d squelched in last night to raise enough hot water for a shower — buggered if he was going to make Charlie Howe’s Christmas by contracting pneumonia.

‘Done a bit of a dawn raid, we have,’ Mumford said. ‘Just like old times, though not for Jumbo, obviously, as he en’t never actually been in the job.’

‘Where the hell are you?’

‘Think of your favourite housing project.’

‘Andy, please tell me you haven’t done anything… stupid.’

‘Got a friend with us. I think he’d like a word. Hang on.’

Bliss heard a slurred voice saying something unintelligible but strongly suggestive of split lip. He swung his bare legs out of bed, sat on the side of the mattress in his underpants, shivering. Still aching, but that might be deeply internal.

‘Got his own place, now en’t you, boy?’ Mumford said. ‘Girlfriend and a youngster on the way and, like he says, not a good time to go away. Reason he wouldn’t mind a word with you, boss, you get my drift.’

‘Jesus, Andy, what’ve you done?’

The phone went dead for a few seconds, then this other voice came on, barking like an old Merthyr mountain ewe in the night.

‘Andy’ve had to walk him round the block, Mr B. Get the circulation back into the boy’s cold feet, kind of thing.’

Jumbo Humphries’s wheezy laugh.

This was all he needed. Bliss scrabbled in the pile for something that felt halfway dry, his head full of images of ex-Detective Sergeant Andy Mumford beating up some low-life tearaway behind a garage block on the Plascarreg.

‘Truth of it is, see, Mr B, he rung me last night, said he couldn’t get you out of his head. He haven’t heard you talk like that, never. Greatly worried about your state of mind. Figured we oughter do what we could, like.’

‘Jumbo… listen to me… who’ve you got with you?’

‘You still there, man? Bloody battery’s on the blink, it is.’

‘Who, Jumbo?’

‘You ever see that ole film, early days of special effects, all these skeletons with swords?’

Bliss sighed. Jason and the Argonauts.

‘We’ll be on the spare ground, end of the first row of garages on the left,’ Jumbo Humphries said. ‘Blue Land Rover, long wheelbase, no side windows. Need to come in from the city. Belmont’s still submerged, see. The real thing, this is, Mr B. You won’t regret it, man, I’m telling you.’

Bliss threw a stiffened sock at the wall. Somebody save him from middle-aged cowboys looking for kicks.

‘Best to come in civvies, mind,’ Jumbo said.

Bliss thought about it all the time he was in the bathroom. He went downstairs, stood by the sad unplugged Christmas tree in the hall, picked up the phone, stood with it in his hand until the computer voice reminded him it was off the hook. Then he stabbed the button to get the line back and called in sick.

Jane wore a grey fleece over a pink T-shirt. She looked fresher but pale. They sat on opposite sides of the refectory table with a pot of tea. It was just after eight a.m., Eirion not yet up, a rare chance to talk, just the two of them.

Merrily poured the tea. Apple, mango and cinnamon, Jane’s current favourite. They were trying not to talk about the bridge and living on an island.

‘Eirion was telling me what Neil Cooper said. About the possibility of more extensive archaeology in Coleman’s Meadow.’

‘Or beyond,’ Jane said.

‘Yes.’

‘And this is where you say, Don’t get carried away about it. Don’t get carried away like you did before, and look what happened.’ Jane gazed down, addressing the table, speaking very slowly and softly. ‘I know what happened. I got humiliated. And now half the nation’s going to see it happen. And all the kids at school. And Morrell. And the heads of every university department of archaeology in the UK, they will all see me getting humiliated. Maybe it’ll even be released on DVD so people who really don’t like me can watch me getting humiliated over and over again.’

‘It’s not been televised yet.’

‘Oh… no.’ Jane’s head came up. ‘You don’t go near him. This is not your problem, Mum. And, like, don’t give me the old your-problems-are-my-problems line, because that doesn’t apply. I’m eighteen, I’m an adult, I need to learn to deal with it. I will deal with it.’

‘All right,’ Merrily said. ‘Help me with my problem, then.’

She put her cigarettes and the Zippo on the table. Told Jane about the Stookes, the various anomalies, proven and alleged, at Cole Barn.

It was legitimate to share this stuff; Jane had been part of it from the start. She only wished it sounded more convincing in the cold, damp morning. Pre-Blore, Jane would’ve become excited, full of the implications of this for Coleman’s Meadow, the energy line, the spirit path.

She just drank some tea, sighed.

‘Well… couldn’t make that up, could you. Mum?’

Ethel pattered across the stone flags to her dish of dried food, began crunching.

‘I couldn’t,’ Merrily said. ‘But could they?’

Jane nodded, already resigned.

‘Was there anything on your website about, say, site-guardian legends?’

‘Mmm. Possibly.’

‘And you had an email from a man who said Coleman’s Meadow had one.’

‘It was the dowser from Malvern who had the argument with Blore in the meadow before he started on me. Lensi was there, doing pictures. She might’ve talked to him.’

Merrily lit a cigarette, noticed there were only three left in the packet. She missed the rumble of the old Aga, a victim of its oil consumption.

‘He seemed a decent bloke,’ Jane said. ‘I haven’t spoken to him about it. If you want, I can email him now.’

‘No, it wouldn’t prove anything. Let’s shelve any discussion about what a guardian is and whether there could be one in the meadow. Let’s deal with the prosaic facts. Go back to your meeting with Leonora at Lucy’s grave — presumably you’d had the email by then?’

‘Weeks before.’

‘Did you mention anything to Leonora to suggest there might be any kind of psychic disturbance in Coleman’s Meadow?’

‘I just told her about the spirit path and the need to maintain a link with the ancestors.’

‘You didn’t suggest to her that there might be something weird about Cole Farm?’

‘I didn’t know there was anything weird about it. What are you suggesting? They might’ve put all this together from bits they picked up from people like me?’

‘Just eliminating various possibilities. Stooke’s looking for material for another book and he’s shown a slightly more than cursory interest in me… and you, of course.’

‘So the bottom line…?’

‘The bottom line might be me telling them their house may have a problem, and they go, well, if you say so, vicar, but what can you do about it? And then I go in and do the business and perhaps they video the whole process from some hidden camera, stupid little priest furthering the spread of primitive superstition… and suppose, instead of being the intelligent, sophisticated types they are, they’d been some poor old couple, et cetera, et cetera. I’m reading it already.’

‘That just… stinks.’

‘They haven’t done anything yet, just told me the kind of stuff that people usually hand me along with a plea