storeys. Oldcastle Farm. The house and buildings wedged into a jagged promontory above the Wye, embedded like a fort. Georgian or Queen Anne or whatever, had to be big enough for a family of twelve, plus servants.
‘Divorced. For the second time, apparently.’
Terry looking sideways at Bliss. Mr Bull was face-up to the lights, eyes wide open in his big, bald, dented head, like he couldn’t believe the way death had come racing at him out of the wind and the night.
‘Where’s the brother?’
‘In the house. Waiting for you.’
‘He see anything?’
Terry Stagg shook his head.
‘All right.’ Bliss hunched his shoulders against the wind. ‘So where we up to, Tezza?’
‘Covering the lanes, pubs, for what that’s worth now. They’ll be well away.’
‘They?’
‘Mr Sollers Bull thinks a gang. He’ll explain.’
‘Where’s Karen?’
‘House-to-house. Well… farm-to-farm. In the four-by-four. With a couple of uniforms, just in case.’
‘Good, good.’
Karen was connected: farming family. Where Bliss came from, a farmer was a bloke with a shared allotment and a chicken.
‘Obviously you’ve searched the buildings.’
‘With Mr Sollers Bull. And the house. Did I…?’ Terry Stagg coughed. ‘Did I say Mr Sollers Bull was not very happy?’
‘ No. You amaze me, Terence.’
Terry said, ‘In the sense that… he reckons he and his brother both reported intruders.’
‘When?’
‘Two occasions in the past month. He says we laughed.’
‘ We laughed?’
‘The police.’
‘The police laughed. Fuck me. Excellent.’
‘I mean, that’s what he says.’
‘Might this explain the DCI’s generosity in letting the underling take charge, d’you think?’
Thinking, nice one, well-timed, Francis, as a vehicle came coughing and grumbling up the tarmac drive. Dr Grace’s Land Rover Defender.
‘Also,’ Terry Stagg said, ‘when I told him you’d be in to talk to him later on, Mr Sollers Bull said… He seems to know who you are.’
The vehicle’s engine had been switched off but was clinging to life. In the instant of its last shudder, the wind died and it was like they were standing in the vacuum of quiet at the eye of the storm.
‘Fame at last. I’m made up.’ Bliss’s own voice came bouncing back at him from across the yard. He lowered it. ‘What are you saying?’
‘He knows your father-in-law.’
‘Oh.’
Billy Grace was hauling his kit up the drive. Bliss went to meet him.
Shit. The downside of having a complicated private life in a small county.
Every other Saturday, work permitting, he’d collect his kids from the in-laws’ farm. Trying to time it so he’d be bringing them back just before Kirsty got in from shopping or wherever. In the hope that he could leave them with his mother-in-law, a woman he could handle, more or less.
Unfortunately, he’d pulled this one too many times. Last Saturday, the door had been ajar at the farm holiday cottage where Kirsty was living, and the kids had gone running inside. He’d considered just buggering off, but in the end he’d gone in to find the stove lit, all very cosy, smell of quality coffee – sour reminders of his own kitchen with all its comforts now plundered.
And here was the plunderer in person: Mrs Bliss. Only, this was the Mrs Bliss of ten years ago – the future Mrs Bliss reborn. All made up, short black skirt well up the thigh. See what you threw away.
‘You had another hour, at least,’ Kirsty said, when the kids were out of the room. ‘But then you always did get bored with them quite rapidly… what with an eight-year-old’s lack of interest in the vagaries of the Crown Prosecution Service.’
Vagaries? She’d been rehearsing, evidently.
‘Kairs-’
‘Or do you have a date tonight?’
Date. Not a word they’d ever used between themselves. That little tweak of petty triumph on Kirsty’s lovely pulpy lips.
She knew something. She bloody knew something.
‘Gorra be off, Kairsty,’ Bliss said. ‘Be the Easter holidays next time I come, so we can make it a different day if you want. I could maybe take them over to Aberystwyth or somewhere.’
‘You never did put yourself out much, did you, Frank?’
Finding his arms folded – classic defence stance – Bliss let them drop.
‘It’s not that frigging convenient. Couple of hours each way, and with Easter traffic-’
‘I think,’ Kirsty said, ‘that you know what I’m talking about.’
‘I’ve gorra go.’
‘The thing is…’ she stood up slowly ‘… isn’t it against the rules? I mean, when it all comes out, won’t one of you have to move to another division? Isn’t that how it works?’
Bliss had felt the blood draining out of his face so fast that his cheeks actually felt cold.
‘Now, look… I don’t where you think you’re going with this, but-’
‘Oh, you do, Frank.’
Bliss’s mind was going like a washing machine: oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. Where had she got this from? Which one of his beloved colleagues had sniffed it out? How was this even possible?
‘You’re mental, Kairsty, you know that?’
Safest to go on the offensive. An advantage of being separated was the way you could bring a row directly to the boil, knowing you could slip away, with nothing lost, before the first plate hit the wall.
‘I don’t think so.’ Her eyes cold as quartz. ‘I mean, I could almost feel insulted if that cow’s as far as your ambition goes, but being I know what a sad little sod you’ve become, it doesn’t surprise me a great deal, Frank, to be honest.’
‘I’m going.’
Bliss’s palms starting to sweat.
‘Calling the shots now, is she, on your private life?’
‘Think whatever you want.’
‘As I understand it, with a male officer and a woman, it’s always the man has to move, isn’t it? Or have I got that wrong?’
‘What exactly do you want off me?’
And she’d smiled. Generously.
‘Just want you to own up to it, Frank, that’s all.’ Oh, the satisfaction in her eyes. ‘Dad’s solicitor says that makes it a lot easier. Play your cards right, it might not come out in public’
Oh sure.
‘Just makes it easier, that’s all,’ Kirsty said.
‘And costlier. For me, anyway.’
Kirsty had shrugged, Bliss feeling like his insides had been flushed out with cold water. Kirsty blamed the police for everything that had gone wrong between them. She was wrong about that, and she probably knew she was wrong, but this was convenient, and she’d use it.
‘Close friend, Billy?’
Dr Grace, who was very well-connected, glanced over his shoulder at Bliss. ‘Not particularly a friend at all, Francis, but everybody’s at least acquainted in this county. Except, possibly, for uncouth incoming Scousers like
