To Dream of the Dead

Lol said. ‘He’s got to be a plant.’

As all the lights came up and the first few people began to leave, collecting umbrellas from the rail by the main door, Merrily saw the man in the three-piece suit.

A young man in a three-piece suit. One of the first out. Black umbrella.

‘Nobody here with a Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society placard,’ Lol was saying. ‘No Save the Stones sweatshirts.’

‘Perhaps that’s no bad thing,’ Merrily said. ‘Some of them might well have pentacles tattooed on their foreheads. Lol, you see that guy who just went out?’

‘Bloke helping Alice Meek?’

‘No, on his own. Suit with a waistcoat. You once saw Jonathan Long, didn’t you?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘No.’ She thought about it. ‘Maybe you didn’t. He came to the vic, just once, with Frannie Bliss.’

‘A cop?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Probably wasn’t him at all.’

Although it was.

‘Um…’ Lol looked at her closely. ‘You did have something to eat before you came out?’

‘I… Yes, I did. Swear to God.’

Merrily stood up, shook out her coat. Yes, she was trying to get regular meals. Yes, she was trying to pull herself together, not get run down again, cut down on the cigs, have reflexology every couple of weeks from, God help her, Mrs Morningwood of Garway Hill. Yes, yes, yes.

‘Ah, vicar…’ James Bull-Davies was stooping between her and Lol, like some long-billed wading bird. ‘Wasn’t really the time, seemed to me, for clerical intervention. West woman’s unlikely to attract much support for Pierce. Unhinged, basically.’

‘In which case, you don’t think it’s worth me putting a bit of distance between us? Pointing out that the Church of England itself doesn’t actually have a problem with megalithic remains, which, of course, it doesn’t… And you’re looking unconvinced.’

‘Might be as well not to appear compromised by your daughter’s demonstrable enthusiasm, if that’s the best word…?’

‘She’s excited. It’s like they’re her stones, and it’s given her a direction at just the right time. James… is there anything in your family records about standing stones in Coleman’s Meadow?’

‘Should there be?’

‘If we could find out why they were buried, just to keep Shirley quiet?’

‘If it was done in secret, wouldn’t be any record. Look, if this site’s as significant as your daughter and her friends appear to think then English Heritage will step in to conserve it and neither that woman nor Pierce will be able to do a bloody thing about it.’

‘He won’t give up. Development of Coleman’s Meadow opens the way for a whole swathe of housing and before you know it… Ledwardine New Town? That’s not conspiracy-theorist talk, James, any more than Lyndon’s plans for this site…’

‘What’ve you heard?’

Merrily said nothing. What she’d heard was that Stu Twigg, another of Pierce’s clients, owned the ground that the village hall was built on. Ground now being eyed by an unnamed supermarket company. So that if the population of Ledwardine grew to a level which made a superstore not only viable but desirable, and the hall was to be replaced by a new leisure centre on a greenfield site elsewhere, the client — and, arguably, his accountant — would be quids in.

‘Forgot you were a close friend of Gomer Parry,’ James said. ‘Man with little understanding of the word slander.’

‘No, you didn’t. Look, nobody’s averse to immigration, all populations change… but surely, in a village, it should be a trickle. And it should be balanced. Right now, virtually the only people who can afford to move in here are the well-off who want to get out of London. So Pierce and his mates build hundreds of executive homes and an army of the retired rich move in, and the local kids have to move out to the cities, and Ledwardine starts to lose its identity… doesn’t even look like a village any more, just a chunk of suburbia with an open-air museum in the centre. I… Sorry.’ She fanned the air with her gloves. ‘Don’t usually go off like that.’

‘Look.’ James smiled thinly. ‘Let’s see how things progress. If English Heritage finds some value in the archaeology, then it’s all academic. If you have something to say, save it for the sermon. Or, on second thoughts, don’t. Night, vicar, Robinson. Ah—’ He looked at Lol. ‘Believe you’ve been asked to give us a bit of a concert?’

Lol didn’t say anything.

‘At the Swan?’ James said. ‘Christmas Eve?’

‘Not sure about it yet,’ Lol said.

Over a year after beating his fear of audiences, he still hadn’t played Ledwardine. No big deal… and yet it was.

‘Shame if you couldn’t,’ James said.

They watched him leave, plucking his umbrella from the rack. The chances of James ever having heard one of Lol’s songs were slight.

‘That mean he’s on our side?’ Lol said.

‘Best not to rely on it.’ Merrily struggled with the zip of her coat, then let it go. ‘Lol, I don’t look ill or anything, do I? I mean, the way you…’

‘No.’ Lol smiled at her. ‘In fact, much as I hate to paraphrase Clapton, you look—’

‘Oh, please. Come on, let’s go and put the kettle on.’

‘Would that be a euphemism?’

‘No! I actually need a cup of tea. And an earlyish night — Tom Parson’s funeral tomorrow at Hereford Crem.’

Lol nodded.

‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘if it wasn’t time for us to…’

She looked up from the bottom of the zip.

‘To what?’

He didn’t reply and Merrily saw, for a moment, the former Lol — detached, uncertain, wearing his past like a stained old overcoat. She thought of the way he’d faced up to the man responsible for smashing his beloved Boswell guitar. Making him pay for it in full but then, instead of replacing the Boswell, giving the money away, splitting it anonymously between three local charities. Tainted, Lol had said.

Last week he’d been to London to record his first-ever TV appearance, but he was still scared to play Ledwardine. Scared of what it might be telling him if he bombed.

They were almost alone now, under the cold strip lights. She worried about him. And worried about him worrying about her. God.

‘Time for us to what?’ Merrily said.

Rain blasted into one of the windows and the glass rattled in its metal frame. Lol drew Merrily towards him and did up the zip for her.

‘Doesn’t matter.’

7 Thing with the Eyes

A big killing carried its own light. The wild electricity of it had brought the place alive, and Bliss could almost see it connecting across the shining rooftops of this low-slung brick and timbered city, magnesium-white sparks hissing in the brimming gutters.

And there was nobody in the Job in Hereford tonight who wouldn’t get a charge out of it.