To Dream of the Dead

discloses to Mebus that a man is going to be topped and an example has to be made of him. Now… if we assume Dinedor is just being used to lay a false trail, who wants Ayling dead? And why?’

‘Not a clue, boss.’

‘OK… Let’s think out of the box, as Steve would say. Ayling, Furneaux and Charlie Howe — all members of the same quango. One of these outfits nobody knows what the hell it does but it’s obviously above the rules of democracy and public scrutiny.’

‘Sounds like Charlie’s kind of thing.’

‘Yeh. Who’s gonna tell us more about Hereforward?’

‘Journalists?’

‘That’s a thought. You know anybody?’

‘Bloke at Three Counties News Service? Freelances are always a better bet, my experience.’

‘Could you give him a call?’

‘I’ll try and find him.’

‘Thanks, pal.’

Silence. Bliss heard a preliminary patter of rain on the wind-screen; probably bring Jumbo back in a minute. It occurred to him he needed to go into Hereford this afternoon, buy some presents for the kids, try and get Karen to wrap them properly ready for the ordeal of taking them over to the in-laws’ farm tomorrow. What a bloody desert his life was. He closed his eyes for a moment, shuffled the cards in his head.

‘All right,’ he said to Mumford. ‘Let’s cut to the heart of it. What do we know about the killer?’

‘Good with a knife?’

‘Either good or lucky. Let’s assume good. And that in itself… if we assume he’s an outsider, brought in to do a quick job, how common is that? Your hit man, almost by definition, uses a firearm. But… there’s no basic reason why not a knife. Knife crime’s breaking records all over the country.’

‘And it’s as old as them fellers in skins who built the ole fort on top of Dinedor,’ Mumford said.

‘Yeh, but the method of dispatch was clearly more scientific than your average slasher, which is why Annie and Brent got a bit excited when they discovered poor old Willy Hawkes might’ve had commando training.’

‘Contract killing en’t what it used to be. Any hard kid in need of a few quid… frightening, really.’

‘It’s what I said to—Shit.’

‘Wassat, boss?’

Bliss thought, Sharpest knife in the drawer.

‘It was Annie I said it to. I was trying to wind her up about leaving this Worcester paedophile witness-killing to take command of the Ayling murder, and I made that same point about kids going into the homicide business.’

‘That’s contract?’

‘And a stabbing. This feller who was gonna give evidence against his brother-in-law, knifed to death in his garage.’

‘Two contract knife-jobs? How often’s that happen? You got the PM report on that one? Where the blade went in?’

‘Well, I haven’t, obviously, but it shouldn’t be difficult to get me hands on it.’

‘Karen?’

Bliss nodded.

‘A good girl. And at least she won’t have to talk to Howe, who—bugger me, Andy!’ Bliss threw his beanie at the roof and caught it on the return. ‘Listen to this… I said to Annie something like, must be a bit of a problem, you know who ordered the hit but you don’t know who actually did it, and she— frigging hell…’

The voice like an ice pick in his head: Actually, it’s the other way round, we’re fairly sure we know who did it, but we don’t know who ordered it.

‘They know him, Andy. They’ve gorra name for this bastard.’

50 The Heart

As the community was splitting up, there was a feeling of its coming together. The people, locals and incomers, relying on one another and knowing that they could.

In the chilly, damp air on Christmas Eve.

Merrily and Jane had spent the morning with James Bull-Davies’s party of volunteers, helping people on the riverside estate to move furniture upstairs: chairs and TV sets and stereos and computers and phones. Carpets and rugs were rolled up, some of them left on the stairs or on the tops of tables. Items that were too heavy to move or plumbed-in — cookers, washing machines — were covered with plastic sheets or polythene feed sacks cut open.

At the split-level home of one retired couple, thousands of books were packed into boxes to be stored on the upper floor. People who lived on the higher ground were accommodating lawnmowers and bikes and, in one case, tropical fish.

Like the Blitz, someone said, and Merrily supposed comparisons weren’t all that misplaced. There had been a sense of that old British wartime spirit, which was heartening.

Some families who’d believed it could never happen had been shaken by breakfast-TV pictures of flooded homes in villages no more than a few miles away, like Eardisland and Pembridge. Even though levels in Ledwardine were conspicuously higher than last night, some people only ever believed what they saw on TV.

And on TV they also saw the bridge. Pictures from last night, all blue and orange lights and the floodlit, whitened river blasting between the exploded arches.

Calls were made, families arranging to be picked up by friends and relatives on the other side of Ward Savitch’s footbridge. Some of the weekenders, fighting to save Christmas, had grabbed what rooms were available in hotels around Hereford and Leominster.

Merrily borrowed Gomer’s jeep to drive over to Savitch’s farm in the late morning, following a family of five, off to spend Christmas at the grandparents’ farm near Hay, the jeep packed with presents the parents didn’t want the kids to see. Helping to carry the stuff across the footbridge to where the grandad was waiting with his 4?4 and a small galvanised livestock trailer.

This strange parade of refugees tramping across the field with their cases. There must’ve been sixty cars behind council and police barriers on the Ledwardine side of the footbridge and several coaches and vans in the free world across the river. And a burger van and a fish-and-chip van, naturally. Lyndon Pierce was there, getting hassled by a guy called Derry Bateman, self-employed electrical contractor.

‘You and your bloody bypass. When was that bridge last examined, eh?’

‘These en’t normal conditions, Derry.’

‘And you en’t gonner give me a proper answer, are you? You know how many jobs this is gonner cost me? How’m I supposed to get my fucking gear out, Lyndon?’

‘Couldn’t you hire a van the other side? Carry it across?’

‘And leave it overnight in some bloody field to get broke into?’

‘We’re doing all we can,’ Pierce said, Derry Bateman turning away in disgust.

‘Tosser.’

Peace on earth: always too good to last. Back on the village square, the Christmas tree was lit up; around it, a cobbled-together choir sang carols from the Christmas service books Merrily had brought from the church and handed round. People making wartime-style jokes as they clustered behind their synthesised smiles.

‘Only difference, in wartime, folks was evacuated to the countryside,’ Jim Prosser said in the shop. ‘Have to impose bloody rationing soon.’

Merrily said. ‘You’re absolutely sure you’ve got no cigarettes?’

Sounding, she was afraid, almost shrill. Jim leaned across the counter, lowering his voice, confidential.

‘I’d put sixty Silk Cut away for you, see. Only somebody found them, din’t they?