‘I was responsible. You accept that, then you take action. Mithras doesn’t forgive. Couldn’t exactly fire Mostyn when he owned half the company. Better there was an accident. Not here. Somewhere remote. Beacons, maybe. Just biding my time. Another mistake. Unless you take immediate action…’
He pushed the form towards her. His fingers touched hers, briefly; she looked up into his lined face. Part of him was watching her, impassive, beyond stimulation. She felt that another part of him was already going away, something receding.
‘I still don’t understand why me.’
‘Don’t have many choices. I believe you won’t double-deal. And you know the people concerned.’
‘It needs another signature. A witness.’
‘Someone here you can trust? Preferably not your boyfriend.’
Whose life he might have saved. He just might.
‘Byron, there are several people I can trust. None of whom I’m prepared to expose to a man who I have every reason to think may have a gun with him.’
He grinned, turned his back on her. When he turned around again, it lay across the palm of his big, leathery hand.
‘The Glock.’ He placed it carefully on the table, pushed it towards Merrily. ‘I may ask for it back before I leave.’
She didn’t touch it. They both knew she could pick it up, point it at him and call the police. Always assuming it was loaded, and somehow, she thought, it would be.
Byron placed the pistol in the centre of the table, took a stack of prayer books from the pile and arranged them around the Glock on four sides, finally placing one on top.
‘You got a phone on you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Phone for a witness.’
Merrily pulled her mobile from her jeans then put it down on the table.
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Long as you’re not playing for time so your congregation turns up.’
‘I wouldn’t expose a congregation to this. We have about forty minutes.’
‘Go on.’
‘When you tried to pass your religion off as just a series of exercises, a discipline – was that just for Lockley and Howe, or do you believe that?’
‘You’ve just reminded me why I found you so annoying.’ He stood up. ‘It’s a secular age. It doesn’t matter what you believe, it’s how you sell it. You have to use acceptable terminology. Nobody likes a crank, certainly not the men I deal with.’
‘I don’t think you’re that cynical.’
‘Who’s your proposed witness?’
‘Gomer Parry.’
‘Sensible choice. Could’ve wrecked my digger last night, but he didn’t.’
‘He would never wreck a digger. You know him?’
‘ Of him. Make your call. Keep it casual, and he comes alone. If an armed response unit arrives, I’ll just bite the barrel. You don’t want that in here.’
God.
‘And there’ll be no money for Fiona.’
She stared at him.
‘Fiona Spicer?’
‘Make your call. And I’ll be listening for nuances.’
Merrily put in the number and waited. It was surreal. Be easier if she could feel an accessible evil: the night stench in the tower room, the squirming male miasma assailing Jane in the mithraeum, which Jane had talked about only once when they were alone, staring blankly into the fireplace, disconnected, as if she was repeating someone else’s story. Jane, whose knowledge of Mithraism had been virtually non-existent then.
‘ Gomer Parry Plant Hire.’
‘Oh. Sorry. Gomer, it’s me. You… got a few minutes to spare? Over at the church.’
‘Sure to, vicar.’
‘Thank you. I’ll be in the vestry.’
Simple as that. When the line cleared, Byron was nodding. Merrily put the phone on the table next to the stack of prayer books.
‘You really think Fiona’s going to accept anything from you?’
He blinked just once.
‘She can give it to her daughter, or a charity of her choosing. I liked Syd. You could only quarrel – on that level of intensity – with someone who was a brother.’
‘And Fiona? What was your quarrel with her?’
He looked at Merrily for a long time, his face blank. Then he transferred his gaze to the wall behind her. She tensed in horror. Mithras always looks away.
But then he turned back to her, his blue eyes steady.
‘I take full responsibility for everything I’ve done. No papering over cracks. No sentiment here. No apology. I don’t do that.’
‘Was that why you left Liz? Because you realized the elements you were dealing with…’
‘… were unsuited to a domestic situation. I’ll confirm that much. I had respect for my wife.’
That’s why you were so very publicly screwing your way around Hereford?
‘And when Mostyn killed the banker, Cornel, did he do that on his own? You know what I’m asking, don’t you? I understand he turned his head away when he did it. Do you think he was entirely responsible then for his own-?’
‘You’re back to the same question.’
‘I’m not a cop. These things matter to me.’
Confronting the impossibility of her own job. The toxic dilemma she’d tried to evoke for the students in the chapel. To what extent you want to demonize this is up to you.
Byron shook his head.
‘Nah.’
‘No, he wasn’t entirely responsible? No, he’d surrendered his-?’
‘How’s Barry?’
‘He’ll lose an eye. They think.’
‘But he’ll live. That’s what it said on the radio.’
‘So I believe.’
‘That was regrettable.’ Byron looked mildly affected. ‘He was a good soldier. Shot, unarmed, by a man who wasn’t fit to clean his boots. I’m taking responsibility. He’ll be the second beneficiary. Fiona, Barry. See to that, would you? Might be enough for a down payment on a big old pub. If there happened to be one on the market.’
‘You’ve thought it all out, haven’t you?’
‘No sentiment, no apology. We take action, then we walk away.’
‘How will you live?’
‘That’s my business.’
‘All right.’ Merrily shook herself. ‘Tell me one more thing. When Syd died on Credenhill… you were there, weren’t you?’
He thought for just a moment.
‘Yes.’
‘What was that about?’
‘No comment.’
‘You must’ve been worried when you heard he was coming back, as chaplain.’
‘I never worry.’
She heard the squeak of the church doors. There was no time. There had to be time.
