Remains of an Altar

‘Yes, we had a practice, in the three churches. Would have been wonderful to have the three cathedrals, hundreds of choristers, but even Winnie’s energy doesn’t extend that far.’

‘And did you come here – to Whiteleafed Oak – when the choirs were in the three churches?’

‘No, I was at Wychehill, then drove to Little Malvern. It was a run-through. Only a run-through.’

‘Did Winnie think it was going to be just a run-through?’

‘Dan, I was scared. Quite often scared. Gerontius has always scared me. You think it’s easy to live with something so … cosmically huge? Day in, day out? And the nights. Tried to psych myself up, on the quiet. Booze wasn’t doing it. I even went up the hill one night, scored a few – not my thing at all, normally – few grams of coke off— They said I’d killed him, did you know that?’

Lol nodded.

‘I was scared, Dan. This hallowed place. I don’t know. Is it hallowed? Are we fed – still – by the old choirs? Help me.’

‘Would be good to think so.’

And Lol saw it all now. The psychology of it. She said the journey could be accomplished in this life through the use of symbolism. With great art as a by-product.

All it needed was for Tim to believe in it strongly enough, through months of meditation, visualization, conditioning, and the magic would happen.

‘Are you frightened?’ Lol said.

Tim covered his face with his hands for a moment and then tore them away and looked all around at the strange, blanched landscape, a winter landscape in the heat of June. Looked up into the northern sky where the white, gaseous clouds hung like smothered lamps over the southern Malverns.

‘A great orchestral slash of light, Dan. His one shattering glimpse of God. And Gerontius sings … worshipful submission as a kind of triumph…’

Tim stepping away from the tree, raising his arms, releasing this vast torn and piercing tenor.

‘Take me awayyyyyyyyyy!’

Tim sank to his knees, kept his eyes down.

‘Think it’s time for you to bugger off, Dan.’

‘You need to be alone for this?’

‘Otherwise there’s no courage required,’ Tim said. ‘Is there?’

‘Suppose not.

‘What are you going to do?’

Tim placed a hand on his chest, over the stained singlet.

‘All happens in here.’

‘Right.’ Lol turned and walked away from the oak. ‘Just … be careful.’

Tim grinned.

After a few paces, Lol looked over his shoulder to see what he knew he was going to see: what the combination of the moon and those northern clouds had done to the leaves of the oak.

59

Life-Force

A painfully slow and twisting half-mile short of Whiteleafed Oak, Syd Spicer asked Merrily to feel under her seat for a small leather case.

‘Night glasses. High-tech.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We all loved our gadgets, the Hereford boys.’

‘The Hereford boys.’ She found the case. ‘Look, there’s something I should’ve mentioned, but with Winnie —’

Merrily gripped the sides of her seat. Every time she thought of the name, she saw the breathless mouth, the unseeing eyes. The body ripped up like old clothes. A woman who was sometimes a life-force and sometimes a vampire.

‘We can see this place from some distance, right?’

‘Reasonably well. But there’s lots of cover when you get there. Dells, copses.’

Within a minute, a small green area came up in the headlights. A display case for local notices.

‘This the village?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the five-barred gate?’

‘End of that little lane, but you can’t get … I mean you’ll just block the track.’

‘I’ll pull in here, then. Close your door quietly when you get out.’

At the five-barred gate, Spicer pointed ahead of them. He was still wearing his thin black gloves.

‘Know what that is?’

‘Shiny white clouds. Weird.’

‘Noctilucent clouds. Quite rare. Sometimes caused by chemicals, sometimes natural. Second night this week we’ve had them. Maybe a good thing, maybe not, but something to be aware of. What were you going to tell me back there?’

‘When you mentioned the Hereford boys … I don’t know whether you heard this on the news. A former SAS man’s been shot. In Hereford.’

Spicer kept on looking over the gate, but he’d gone still.

‘A security consultant,’ Merrily said.

‘Do you know his name?’

‘Malcolm France.’

He went on watching the bright clouds.

‘Bliss – the detective I know – called me about it. His records had been stolen, but they found out from the bank that he’d once been paid two hundred and fifty pounds. By Winnie Sparke. Syd…’

He was standing so still you’d swear he wasn’t breathing.

‘Just tell me,’ Merrily said.

‘My mate. We were working together. Until a few seconds ago, I thought we still were.’

‘Oh God, I’m—’

Syd Spicer held up his palms for silence. ‘

I’ll give you the basics. Winnie’s convinced she’s going to be the next Mrs Devereaux and all her money problems are over. When he dumps her, she starts obsessing over whether there’s someone else. Kind of woman she is. Life on the scrap heap, not for Winnie. Comes to bits on my kitchen table. I tell her there’s this mate of mine could check him out. She doesn’t have much money to spare, and there’re things I want to know, too. It was expedient. I put up some of the fee. On the side. Cash in hand.’

‘I should’ve told you about him ages ago, but it … circumstances intervened.’

‘How were you to know?’

‘I did know. I knew Winnie had been his client.’

‘Yeah, well, another thing you should know,’ Syd said. ‘He was the guy I rang. Back at Wychehill, soon as I saw the body. I left a half-coded message. I told him to go to the police with everything he knew. Mal always checked his messages very assiduously every hour. I was about to call him back, bring him up to date. He has … had police contacts and credibility.’

Merrily felt light-headed. Now nobody in the police could know they were here. She watched Syd Spicer opening the gate.

‘He was a bloody good guy. Went through the first Gulf War. Did Bosnia.’

Syd kicked the five-barred gate, hard, once, until it jammed against the long grass and quivered.

‘We’re on our own,’ he said.

‘And your training says go back, phone for help.’

‘Except your bloke’s…’

‘Yes, he is.’

Lol didn’t go far. How could he? Where was he supposed to go?

Was he going to leave a damaged man to wait, like some half-demented hermit in the rocks, for God?

Elgar had been right, it was a kind of blasphemy, or at least arrogance. Not really Tim Loste’s arrogance; he