I didn’t know whether it wanted me out or it wanted me dead, Merrily.
A train in the distance, rattling through the night. The coffee going cold in front of her while the horror came out in short, sick spurts.
‘On the southern line. The London train, via Newport.’ Jonathan Long’s voice light and casual, as if he was reading from a passenger timetable. ‘Just under half a kilometre from what I understand is known as the Tram Inn level crossing.’
‘Past the big feed place with the silos,’ Bliss said.
The full significance of it crashed in on Merrily like a rock through a windscreen. She pushed her chair back, a raking screech on the stone flags.
‘She laid her head …?’
‘On the line,’ Bliss said. ‘I don’t know how people can do that, meself. They just think of the train roaring unstoppably out of the night. Never a thought for the poor bastard driving it.’
Watch over her, in the name of all the angels and saints in heaven. Keep guard over her soul day and night.
‘You knew last night, didn’t you?’ Merrily stared at him. ‘You knew when we were at the caravan.’
This word ‘whimsical’ … Would that translate, for the rest of us, as three sheets to the wind?
‘Don’t look at me like that, Merrily. We knew a woman had been hit by a train, that was all. What do you know about her?’
‘Not much. But then, in some ways there isn’t much that anyone knows.’
‘We have names of adoptive parents, but we haven’t spoken to them yet.’
‘You even found them?’
‘I’m— We have someone working on it.’
Merrily told them about Fuchsia’s mother, Tepee City.
‘How did you get an ID, Frannie?’
‘Car keys in her pocket. A van parked near the Tram Inn, registered to Felix Barlow.’
‘Tepee City,’ Long said. ‘That’s well into Wales, isn’t it, Mrs Watkins? A Welsh-speaking area.’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘A significant amount of old-fashioned Welsh nationalism in that area, I think.’
‘Not much in Tepee City itself, I’d’ve thought. Alternative communities are usually immigrants. What’s your point?’
Like he was going to tell her, this smooth git with his secret agenda. Merrily just wanted to throw him out, throw both of them out and take herself down to the church to scream abuse at God.
‘This house,’ Long said. ‘The Master House. Fuchsia was instrumental in getting Felix Barlow to pull out of the contract?’
‘She was the reason he pulled out.’
‘Because she thought it was haunted.’
‘Because she said she’d sensed a … an evil there,’ Merrily said, reluctantly.
Long smiled the kind of smile where you couldn’t have slid a butter knife between his lips.
‘From your conversations with her, can you think of any other reason why she – or anyone else, for that matter – might not have wanted that house redeveloped?’
‘You mean a sane reason? No. I can’t.’
Wasn’t God’s fault. Merrily gripped her knees under the table. She was incompetent. Smug, self-satisfied, lazy. She’d spotted the unconvincing elements, the lines from M. R. James, and missed all the danger signs.
When he came home it was like it was all over him. I made him shower and then I burned all the clothes he’d been wearing. Just out there, Merrily. I poured petrol on them.
‘So what did you …?’ Long was steepling his fingers. ‘Francis has tried to explain your role in the, ah, Diocese, but what precisely did you do with this woman?’
‘Are you actually leading the inquiry, Mr Long?’
‘Mr Bliss is leading the murder inquiry, I’m dealing with a side issue which may or may not be connected.’
‘Do you want to explain that?’
Jonathan Long said nothing. Merrily played with a teaspoon, let the silence drift for a few seconds, looked at him.
‘So would that … would that be one of those we ask the questions kind of silences?’
‘I did try to tell you on the way here, mate,’ Bliss said. ‘This is a woman who isn’t invariably attracted to the enigmatic type.’
Long’s gaze settled for a moment on Bliss, and then he turned back to Merrily.
‘You performed an exorcism? Or whatever you prefer to call it.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake—’ Merrily dropped the teaspoon into her mug. ‘We have an escalating series of responses, and exorcism is so far up the ladder we usually get vertigo before we … She had a blessing. In a church. That’s it.’
And it shouldn’t have been. There should’ve been follow-up. Aftercare.
‘What was your opinion of her, Mrs Watkins?’
‘What?’
‘Give me a picture.’
‘She was intelligent, in her way. Intense. Seemed certain about what she’d experienced, but I was … keeping an open mind.’
‘You thought she might be delusional.’
‘Or making it up. Some people do.’
‘But you went ahead, all the same.’
‘At the blessing stage, we can afford to be … a bit uncertain. For the heavier stuff, you need permission from the bishop. It’s also likely to involve a psychiatric assessment.’
‘And do you think psychiatry might have been appropriate in the case of Fuchsia Mary Linden?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Any suggestion of previous violence? On either side.’
‘Her and Felix? No. I mean, are you sure she did this?’
‘Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘As I’m apparently leading the inquiry, I’ll make an executive decision to spell it out for you. We’re waiting for forensic. Even the dental stuff isn’t straightforward. When a train’s – I’m sorry – when a train’s run over someone’s head, it’s like collecting beads from a broken necklace. No, we don’t know she killed him and there’s a possibility we never will, for sure. We haven’t found a weapon. But it’s one of those situations where the press statement is likely to say that we’re not looking for anybody else. That any clearer?’
‘Thanks. No … I can’t see any reason she’d want to kill Felix. My impression was that she very much needed him in her life. Her rock, if you like. An old family friend, a link going … way back. She’d gone in search of him. She seems to have wanted security, a proper home.’
Didn’t want to mention either umbilical cords or paying for art college. Might tell Bliss later, but not in front of Jonathan Long.
Not for her to pass on Mrs Morningwood’s stories, either. Not to this guy.
Long nodded. ‘Right then.’ He stood up. ‘That’s probably all for the present … unless …’
He glanced at Bliss, who came more slowly to his feet.
‘If you think of anything else that might be relevant, Merrily, you know where I am.’ Bliss smiled. ‘Jonathan … well, nobody really knows where Jonathan is.’
When they’d gone, Merrily poured Long’s coffee, untouched, down the sink and rang Huw Owen in the Brecon Beacons. No answer. She called Sophie at the gatehouse. Engaged.
She wasn’t ready to go to the church.
She ought to sit down and think about it, sensibly.
She didn’t feel sensible. There was a possibility – no getting round it – that she could, in some way, have prevented this. All of it. If she hadn’t been so blasé, so easily deflected. She fumbled a cigarette out of the packet, started to light it and couldn’t get a proper grip on the Zippo. No use saying it had all been out of her hands; she’d let it slip through them, fall to the flags, smash.