Remains of an Altar

Tim Loste looked up at her from his bed of straw, his face creamed in sweat.

‘Hannah’s pretty.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Used to watch out for her when she came past. On her bike. Wished I had a bike. Follow her down. Two of us, whizzing down the hill. Super.’

‘Mmm.’

‘All I ever wanted, really. Thought I might buy a bike, but … Winnie said it would be the wrong kind.’

‘Not like Mr Phoebus.’

‘No.’

‘But you rode Mr Phoebus sometimes. In your … daydreams?’

With Hannah.

Tim’s eyes filled up with tiny pools of moonlight.

‘Know what I don’t want?’

Merrily bent close to him now. His sweat smelled sour.

‘You know what I … really don’t want? Where’s Dan?’

‘I’m here.’

Lol was kneeling on the other side.

‘Dan knows.’

‘Remind me?’ Lol said.

It was possible to speak with normal voices now, but they were whispering because Tim Loste was whispering. Tim smiled under his Edward Elgar yardbrush moustache, through his sweat.

‘Don’t want the Angel of the blasted Agony.’

‘Would anybody?’ Lol said.

Tim looked at Merrily and started to say something. But he was suddenly fighting for breath. She beckoned Syd, urgently, and he pushed more straw under Tim’s legs.

‘Lessens strain on the heart. Don’t move him, and don’t let him get too hot.’

Syd being the soldier again – as if too many priests would spoil the prayer. From quite a distance away, Merrily heard a single gunshot. Not uncommon, except this wasn’t, she was sure, a shotgun. She exchanged a glance with Syd. He went still.

Tim was mumbling something to Lol, who was shaking his head.

‘No, no … you haven’t failed. Winnie failed, that’s all. It couldn’t work for someone like Winnie. You must’ve known that.’

Of course it couldn’t. Winnie and her academic magic, her hit-and-miss, mix ’n’ match spirituality. Try this, try that. Merrily suddenly saw the callousness of it. Whatever happened to Tim, Winnie would have had a book out of it. She could almost see the hovering spirit, outlined in the acid colours of the moon’s halo, making notes. An even better book if Tim was dead.

‘You just need to change the end,’ Lol said. ‘It’s easy.’

‘Seven,’ Tim said.

‘Seven?’

Lol turned to Merrily as Tim said something else. She shook her head.

‘Was that … seventeen?’

Lol thought for a moment and then he smiled.

Tim’s eyes lit up, a quiet glow appearing on the edges of the pupils. Faraway, unknowing eyes, like the light through clouds.

Merrily took in a rapid breath just before the second shot came out of the forestry.

She heard the night-shredding squawks of emergency vehicles and took Tim Loste’s hand and began to pray.

63

A List

‘Merrily,’ Bliss said quietly on the mobile. ‘Before you say anything, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. Not tonight, anyway.’

‘Frannie,’ she said wearily, ‘where the hell have you been?’

They were in Syd Spicer’s kitchen, her and Lol. It was nearly two a.m.

‘I just called to leave a message. Never imagined you’d still be up.’ He sounded knackered, his accent thickening. ‘Just gorrin from Shrewsbury. Went up to talk to a guy my victim Malcolm France was working for. Bloke with serious form, and it looked promising, but it wasn’t what we thought and I’m pig-sick, and I know it’s your daughter and I know that Parry’s a family friend, but this time—’

‘What?’

‘You know I’ve always liked Gomer, pairsonally, but some things…’

‘What are you on about?’

Bliss paused. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m— Tell me what you were talking about, first.’

‘The charges against Gomer Parry? I did pick up your messages, but I was on a major investigation. I might be able to pull the odd string, but not tonight. CID were consulted but it’s a uniform thing now. Out of my hands.’

‘Gomer. Gomer and Jane? What have they done?’

‘Do you know a place called Coleman’s Meadow?’

‘Heard of it. Vaguely.’

‘They’ve trashed it with a JCB. Taken a fence out and destroyed an expensive vehicle.’

‘Are they all right?’

‘Oh they’re all right. For the present. That old man’s a complete maniac, of course, which you know, and Jane … Listen, I can suggest someone you might possibly talk to tomorrow, but I can’t get involved, Merrily, I can’t pull any—’

‘That’s why you didn’t return my calls? You thought I was going to ask you to pull strings on behalf of Jane and Gomer?’

‘I’ve had a bloody long night, Merrily. I’ve gorra mairder inquiry.’

‘Not any more, Frannie,’ Merrily said.

Hadn’t really been his week, had it? Or anyone’s she knew.

She needed to go home, but…

The police had found both bodies in the forestry. No back-road network, farm to farm to Fishguard and the ferry to Ireland.

Louis had been shot in the back of the head, evidently while relieving himself, his dad presumably having offered to hold the gun for him. Preston had been found some distance away. He’d fumbled it, blown a piece of his head away but was not dead. He’d died, like Lincoln Cookman, in the ambulance.

It was numbing.

‘I can’t question it,’ Syd Spicer said. ‘You know what the suicide rate is among ex-SAS? You come out into a shrunken world and it’s like your coffin’s being assembled around you. Every day another little screw going in. The sudden smallness of everything, the petty regulations, the way your hands are tied by the kind of people you just want to smack.’

He talked about that feeling of confinement. How you had to find a way out of that. Preston Devereaux’s answer was to slide out of the system by shedding his humanity like excess weight.

Merrily lit a cigarette.

‘Ironically, dumping your humanity now seems like the best way to survive in farming. A cow’s no longer Daisy, it’s a product with a government bar code.’

‘The State penetrating your life at every level,’ Syd said. ‘Nobody’s more aware of that than the farmer, whose only rulers used to be the elements. State doesn’t like the idea of guys out there being independent. Officials come swarming over your land like maggots, and you’re clawing away to get them off before they start eating into your brain. Maybe Preston felt he was finally reclaiming his Norman heritage as a robber baron. The Normans