‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Just that there seems to have been quite a concerted effort to discredit him over this. Sollers Bull and Countryside Defiance? Whoever they are.’
‘Most of the time,’ Howe said quietly, ‘Francis Bliss is his own worst enemy.’
‘He’s had a bad few months. Domestically.’
‘So I understand.’
The Audi was alone now on the Brecon road, where it sliced through invisible Magnis. Night clouds were gliding like flatfish in the aquarium of a big pale sky. The Easter full moon was up there somewhere. Merrily was remembering her first meeting with Annie Howe. The clinical interrogation of Jane in the search for a missing girl. A bad start, getting no better, as she’d conspicuously sided with Bliss through the years of attrition.
Howe took a left towards the Wye. One of those lanes that you never had cause to go down because it didn’t lead anywhere apart from farms. Howe slowed, keeping the headlights dipped. Merrily dragged herself out of drowsiness, peering through the windscreen, following the headlights as they opened up the road, bleaching the grass at the verges. Annie Howe was talking again.
‘… under no obligation to cover up what Jones and Mostyn have been doing, but I intend to take it slowly. If you see any indication that Sollers knows more than he should about unconventional religious practices, I’d be grateful if you kept it to yourself until we’re out of there. And, yes, I am aware that you don’t work for the police.’
‘God tends to take a dim view of murder,’ Merrily said.
If only to see Annie Howe wince. The car slowed. A private-looking sign on a right-hand bend said: Oldcastle.
‘ Was it a castle at one time?’
‘No idea,’ Howe said. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Just wondered how long-established the family was.’
‘Long enough. Even for this area.’
Merrily checked her mobile. She’d left messages for Lol and Jane. Lol said he’d be in the Swan. Jane, presumably, was out with Eirion.
Near the top of a wooded rise, the full moon sprang out between the tall chimneys of the lightless farmhouse. It looked like a shell. A dead house. Merrily thought, who could live, unconcerned, overlooking the yard where a previous owner had been slashed and hacked to death? How long before the stain faded into a historical talking point, a footnote in a tourist guide?
Annie Howe drove down beyond the house, between well-grown oaks.
‘Sollers lives in a converted coach house.’
‘But he inherits Oldcastle?’
‘Seems likely. Doubt he’ll live there, but nobody can see him selling it. More likely turn it into a hotel or some sort of conference centre. Maybe even the official citadel for the increasingly wealthy Countryside Defiance. Their website carries a photograph of him in hunting pink with all the trimmings. And handcuffs.’
‘Huh?’
‘The countryside in manacles – the foxhunting ban and other issues. Sollers Bull lives to hunt.’
A caged bulkhead light came on over the porch as Annie Howe parked in front of a metal gate next to a small car. By the time they got the gate open and reached the porch door, a woman was coming out, wearing a calf- length sheepskin coat, its collar held together over her chin and mouth. Annie Howe stood in silence and watched her.
‘Thank you, Mr Bull,’ the woman said, her back to them now, ‘and I’m sorry to have bothered you. Goodnight.’
As the woman got into the small car and its engine started up, a man appeared in the doorway.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Annie.’
‘I tried to call, Mr Bull,’ Howe said. ‘But you were engaged.’
‘Bewildering times, Annie. The phone only ever stops when I unplug it.’ His voice was pitched up higher than you expected; you could hear it lofted across the fields, over the melee of a hunt. ‘You got something to tell me?’
‘To ask you. If you can spare the time.’
‘Of course. Coffee?’
‘No, thank you, Mr Bull. I suspect we’ve had rather too much of that today.’
The overhead light made a twinkling star in an ear stud as Sollers Bull turned to examine Merrily. She saw a man of a little over medium height. A keenly pointed face, with deep bevelled cheeks. He was wearing tight black jeans and a red T-shirt with a message on it in black: Not a fox-hugger. The small car pulled away, headlights on full beam. Maybe the woman was a journalist.
‘This is Merrily Watkins,’ Annie Howe said.
Didn’t explain further. She had her mobile out; it had evidently been on vibrate.
‘Excuse me.’ She took a step back on to the path, speaking into the phone. ‘DCI Howe.’ And then, after a silence, her voice low and deliberate, ‘When was this, Karen?’ before moving further away.
‘Erm…’ Merrily looked up at Sollers Bull. She was cold. ‘Would you mind if I had a coffee?’
‘I’ll put some on.’
She followed him into a very classy designer kitchen.
‘This an old house, Mr Bull?’
‘Not particularly. Nineteenth-century and fortunately not listed so I’ve been able to do what I like with it.’
‘The farmhouse must be listed, though.’
‘Grade Two. Starred.’
‘ Was it a castle?’
‘No. Older than that. The site was known as Oldcastle because of what was there before. Don’t know what it was, but the stones are probably in the foundations. ’
‘I see.’
Through a window, Merrily saw Annie Howe, in the light grey trench coat, up against a ranch-style fence, listening to the phone. When she came back, her face was paler than the coat, but no less grey.
‘Meant to ask you, how’s Charlie these days?’ Sollers said.
Sitting with his back to the red Aga, stretched out almost diagonally, feet under the hardwood table, hands behind his head. Charlie? This would explain him addressing Howe as Annie. It very much figured that the Oldcastle Bulls would be familiar with her dad.
‘I’ll come straight to the point, Mr Bull. Colin Jones – how well do you know him?’
Sollers looked blank. Genuinely so, Merrily thought, studying him: younger than he looked in the papers and not so distinguished: too flash for that.
‘ Byron Jones?’ Merrily said.
‘Oh, well, I know him,’ Sollers said. ‘Though not particularly well.’
‘Have you ever done business with him?’ Howe asked.
‘Kind of business?’
‘Cattle, for example. Ever sold any cattle to Mr Jones?’
‘I wasn’t aware that Mr Jones was even in the livestock business. Or the meat trade, come to that.’
‘That’s not quite answering the question, is it, sir?’
Annie Howe began unbuckling the belt of her coat, unhurried, like she was prepared to stay until she got what she’d come for. Only Merrily, sitting next to her, opposite Sollers, saw that her fingers were unsteady, fumbling it.
Sollers straightened up in his chair. His sleek, pointy face looked… foxy.
‘No, I’ve never sold any beasts to Mr Jones.’
‘Or maybe given him one?’
‘Do you know what Hereford cattle are worth?’ Sollers glanced from Howe to Merrily and back to Howe. ‘What exactly is this about?’
‘Just so that we have this clear, Mr Bull,’ Howe said, ‘you’re saying that, as far as you’re aware, no animal
