To Dream of the Dead

And sold them.’

The post office hadn’t opened, wouldn’t be opening, and Shirley West had gone.

‘Many you got left, Merrily?’

‘Three.’

‘Packs?’

‘No, Jim, three cigarettes.’

‘Oh hell. Best we all keeps away from you, then.’

Jim laughing, but nervously. It was two and half cigs, actually. She’d lit one automatically after breakfast and put it out when she’d realised.

By lunchtime, for any number of reasons, she wanted to kill Shirley West.

By two p.m., there were no more people in obvious need of help. It looked like a vacant film set: no cars, no kids playing, no dogs barking. Jane and Mum went back to the vicarage, where Mum went upstairs to make two bedrooms habitable and Jane threw cheese and pickle sandwiches together, putting some into a basket with some fruit and taking it down to the river to find the guys.

Easier to find Gwyneth, the big yellow JCB. All three of them behind her, having a breather. A few metres in front of them, this wall of hard-packed soil, rock and red clay.

‘En’t much more we can do, Janey.’ Gomer, in dark green overalls, leaning up against Gwyneth, rolling a ciggy. ‘All down to if it rains again tonight and how hard.’

‘And will it?’

Jane looked up into a sky like frogspawn. A holiday caravan was being towed across the field towards higher ground, somebody’s emergency home in waiting.

‘Count on it,’ Gomer said. ‘Trouble is — and you don’t like to tell ’em — but this could be the best part.’

‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’

Gomer mouthed his ciggy, lit up.

‘I done some flood relief once, down South Wales, fifteen, twenny year ago. We come back afterwards, help them clear up. Terrible mess. Get deep water in your house, sometimes it’s buggered for a year or more. Folks comes back to find this thick slime on the floor, whole place stinking to hell. Plaster on the walls all ruined. I seen places had to be stripped back to the breeze-blocks.’

‘Gomer, what about—?’

‘They talks about fire gutting a home, water does it just as well. Sorry, Janey?’

‘I was just going to say, what about your bungalow?’

‘He’ll be all right.’

‘Like you can’t exactly move stuff upstairs, can you? What I was thinking, why don’t we clear out some of your furniture and stuff, store it at the vicarage? We’ve got masses of—’

‘Don’t you get fussed, Janey. I got the important stuff out — Minnie’s things. Put ’em up the roof space.’

‘Yeah, but—’

Minnie had been dead nearly two years.

‘You ask me,’ Gomer said, ‘only place we could have a real problem with — Church Street. En’t no earth we can move there. Only sandbags, and sandbags is a poor substitute for a real barrier.’

‘It’s true,’ Lol said. ‘You’ve already got a lake at the bottom. All it needs is for the water to rise another ten feet up the street and it’ll be into the first black and whites. Maybe for the first time in history.’

‘What about your house, Lol?’

Lol shrugged. There was mud in glistening streaks like snail-trails down the front of his sweatshirt. The square, along with the church, the vicarage, the Black Swan and most of the shops, was at the highest point of the village and therefore considered to be safe, and Lol’s house wasn’t too far down from the square.

‘You’re ready for tonight?’

‘May not be an audience left, way things are going.’

‘You don’t get out of it that easily, Lol. All the people who count are going to be there. You’re coming, aren’t you, Gomer?’

‘Less there’s an emergency, I’ll be there, sure to.’

‘Aw, Gomer, if there’s an emergency, can’t you for once let somebody else—? I mean, you’ve already worked too hard for a—’ Jane broke off, Gomer giving her a hard look ‘—a man who isn’t getting paid.’

That was close. Nearly called him an old guy to his face. Jane felt herself blushing, looked away quickly at the new bank Gomer and Lol and Eirion had made, the way the earth was impacted, the way the structure curved, following the line of the swollen river under the bubblewrap sky. Not exactly like the Dinedor Serpent, more like…

‘Oh my God.’

Eirion lifted himself away from the JCB, watching Jane through narrowing eyes.

‘I’ve got to talk to Coops.’

‘Jane, let the poor guy have a Christmas, huh?’

‘It’s… it’s just so obvious, Irene. It has been staring us in the face.’

Eirion looked doubtful. She knew he believed in her, maybe more than anybody, but he didn’t see the pentagram at the heart of the apple.

‘It’s why it’s special. It’s the whole key to this place. I’m sorry…’ For a moment Jane couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find the breath to say it, totally choked up with emotion. ‘It’s what’s behind the whole thing. The Village in the Orchard.’

51 Manic

‘You don’t ask much, do you, boss?’ Karen Dowell said.

The cusp of lighting-up time. Bliss was back on the fringe of Phase Two. Still no signs of life in Furneaux’s house, but the Christmas tree was twinkling in Gyles Banks-Jones’s front window, shadows moving behind it.

Fearful shadows, with any luck.

‘And what if he checks me out?’ Karen said. ‘How do I explain my interest? And, more to the point, how do I explain why I haven’t just asked Howe?’

Bliss thought about it. Problem was, the DCI babysitting the Lasky case for Howe… he didn’t know this feller at all. Came in from Droitwich a month or two ago. Bliss wasn’t sure he’d even been to Droitwich, and a new DCI with Howe to answer to would be wearing belt, braces and two pairs of underpants.

‘All right, tell him the truth.’

‘Which version of the truth is that?’

‘Tell him it’s a long shot. Tell him that although we’ve gorra man well in the frame for Ayling we’re covering our arses and we’d like to compare wounds just in case. Tell him you’ve been trying to get hold of Annie for the last hour, without success. Come on, Karen, you know what to say. Charm him. And if there’s anything approaching a match on the wounds, take it from there.’

‘What if Howe—?’

‘She won’t. It’s Christmas. The worst she’ll do is make a note to nail you about it when school’s back. Trust me, where Howe’s concerned you have one big thing going for you here, Karen: you are not me.’

Bliss saw a face in Gyles’s window, then another face the other side of the Christmas tree. So they’d spotted him. It didn’t matter; if Furneaux wasn’t available, it would have to be Gyles. Half a story was better than nothing.

‘Gorra go, Karen. Keep me informed.’

‘What if he’s gone home?’

‘So ring him at home.’

‘You sound awful manic, Frannie,’ Karen said.