Remains of an Altar

‘You got him out … You brought him home. Keeping your secrets, playing your cards —Why couldn’t you just talk to me? Talk to anybody?’

She froze. What if he’s still here? What if he’s upstairs? What if he’s halfway down the stairs and listening?

Not likely. Believe it. Seriously not likely. He was long gone. He’d gone lurching out with his whisky, draining the bottle and smashing it against the wall in his agony and self-hatred – please God, let it be self- hatred and repentance, let there be no more of this – and then he’d gone walking out on to the hill.

Why?

‘I mean why, for Christ’s sake, has he done this to you, Winnie? His saviour, his mentor, his—?’

There could be no halfway-rational explanation, not this time, not like the disposal of the drug dealer on the Beacon. This was frenzied. This was full on, the killer looking her in the eyes, as it was being done. This screamed insanity.

Merrily looked into Winnie Sparke’s last frozen cry. Could only see one eye through the blood and the hair. Winnie Sparke’s good hair. And the eye was a dead eye. It had been floating in blood and now the blood had congealed around it like a stiff collar.

‘Why couldn’t you talk about it?’

Letting the sob empty itself out of her, as she did all there was left to do.

Pray.

Her job.

Take her and hold her and calm her. Take her from this place now. Take her into light.

Following this with the Lord’s Prayer, the oldest exorcism.

‘… Power and the glory, for ever and ever, amen.’

Quelling the dread, she opened her eyes.

And was able, for just a moment, to hold herself in and remain calm in the presence of a new shadow in the room.

Winnie Sparke hung there, no less dead. It was not Winnie Sparke who was breathing, who said, ‘Amen,’ softly from the doorway behind her.

54

Snaps Batons

‘Shouldn’t have done that,’ he said sternly. ‘You broke the vibration.’

Looming over Lol, nodding his head as though it was too heavy for him. He wore baggy grey sweatpants and a white singlet with dark stains and smudges on it.

‘Percussive noises…’ Clapping his hands clumsily; sometimes they missed. ‘… Break the connection. Gone.’

He moved in his bent, shuffling way over to a half-collapsed bale of straw, flopping down on it with his legs apart, his hands clasped between them, his body rocking slowly.

‘Take a pew, old cock.’

Lol found another damaged bale to sit on. There was a lamp on the floor between them, one of those battery-powered lanterns with a blue plastic shade, spraying a light like watered milk over the long shed that was either an open-fronted barn or a horse shelter.

Whatever, it was a walk of only a minute or so from the oak, and he’d come wading out of it soon after Lol had started clapping. Staggering behind his lantern, dazed survivor of some Iron Age tribal skirmish. Lol had recognized him at once from Merrily’s brief description and his accent and the way his words came blustering out as if his lungs were organ bellows.

‘Wasn’t working anyway, tell the truth. Ran out of puff. You need to do the whole jolly thing. All the way through until you become—’

He stopped, blinking slowly. Sliding back along his bale, bringing down a straw-storm from another, his mouth slack.

‘Really don’t know … wassa matter with me tonight.’

What was obviously the matter was coming sickly sweet and sour off his breath. Lol didn’t get too close. It was as well to remember this guy was only here because of a shortage of evidence.

His weighty, ragged moustache hung down either side of his mouth, more Mongol warlord than Victorian composer, his stomach overhanging his sweatpants, like a bag of sugar under his singlet.

‘I look all right to you?’

‘I suppose,’ Lol said.

Aware of Tim Loste really looking at him now, trying to focus over the moist pink bags under his eyes.

‘Trying to remember … where exactly are you from?’

‘Me? Led—’ Lol thought about it, changed his mind. ‘Knights Frome.’ He paused. ‘Mate of Dan’s?’

‘Dan?’

‘Dan from Much Cowarne?’

‘Dan! Good Lord, yes.’ Tim made to clap his left knee, missed and clapped the hay, tumbling sideways, kicking over the lantern. Lol caught it. Tim pulled himself upright. ‘Super chap. Just … you know … went into it. Didn’t inter … inter … lectulise…’

‘Finest tenor in Much Cowarne,’ Lol said.

‘Absolutely. Wherever the fuck Much Cowarne is.’

They both laughed. Lol looked out of the open front of the barn across the moonlit landscape. It was like being in a grandstand. The field seemed luminous, and there was another oak tree with two dead branches, bleached like bones.

‘You on your own?’

Tim squinted up at the wooden rafters and the flaking galvanized roof. The light was fanning out from the circular lamp like a merry-go-round with moths riding it.

‘For the moment,’ Tim said.

‘Where is she?’

‘She?’ ‘

Winnie Sparke.’

Tim let his head fall forward into his big hands, began breathing hard into them, like some kind of exercise to head off an asthma attack. Lol saw dark stains between Tim’s fingers.

He said, ‘Are you…’

Tim’s shoulders were heaving.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘I’m…’ Tim peered out through his fingers. ‘I think I’m in a bit of a mess, frankly, old cock.’

‘You walked here?’

‘Don’t remember.’

‘Where’s Winnie?’

Tim looked at him silently through those discoloured fingers.

‘Winnie said you’d meet us here. She talked to my friend. On the phone. She said you’d meet us here.’

‘Winnie? I…’ His voice dropped. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Did she walk over with you? From Wychehill?’

‘No. Just the two of us.’

‘But you’re alone.’

‘I think … think something happened.’

Lol felt a small abdominal chill. His glasses kept misting. He took them off, rubbed them on his sleeve, put them back quickly.

‘On the way here?’

‘Don’t remember,’ Tim said.

‘Look…’ Lol brought out his mobile, flipped it open. ‘I think we could do with some help here.’