‘Oh... right.’
Clancy was at the bottom of the room with Brigid and Jeremy, Bliss and Alma a few yards away, giving them some space.
Merrily shook her head as the old concertina radiator began gonging dolefully behind her, squeezing a little heat back into Stanner Hall.
‘What happened to your wrist?’ Merrily said as they filed out into the lobby, she and Brigid side by side with Bliss in front, Alma close behind.
Brigid said nothing.
‘Happened on the rocks, didn’t it? Last night.’
Brigid shrugged and it turned into a shiver. Brigid was very pale now, pale enough to faint. They moved towards the reception desk, Mumford standing there, his face grey with stubble and no sleep. In the half-light, the lobby looked as dismal as an old hospital waiting room.
‘Brigid,’ Merrily said. ‘Tell me...’
‘All right, it happened on the rocks.’ Brigid turned to her, still walking. ‘Look, I just want to say, you know... thanks. I don’t know what you did, but maybe... maybe something happened. Even I think that. And I’m not impressionable. Not for a long time.’
‘Something probably did happen,’ Merrily said.
‘And I wanted to say... if you could maybe stay in touch with Jeremy, because he...’
‘I know.’
‘It could have happened for us. We were so close to it.’
‘I believe you were.’
On the reception desk, the phone was ringing. Mumford picked up.
‘I wish I’d known earlier,’ Merrily said. ‘I wish somebody had felt able to say something.’
She looked at Jeremy, who must have said more in the past few hours than in his entire adult life.
‘And Clancy...’ Brigid said.
‘Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not going to cry,’ Brigid said. ‘It’s not what killers do.’
Mumford said to Bliss, ‘It’s the DCI, boss.’
‘Tell her we’ve had word that the snowploughs’ve been through and we’re on our way.
‘Boss—’
‘Tell her we’ve gone.’
Merrily said, ‘That was Annie Howe, the head of Hereford CID. If you don’t make a full statement she’s going to give you a very hard time.’
‘That’ll be something to look forward to.’
Merrily said, ‘You see, the point is, that wrist injury – I saw it on Largo’s video.’
Brigid stopped. Alma said, ‘Keep moving, please, Brigid, directly to the porch.’
Then Clancy Craven was there, dragging on Alma’s arm, face all twisted up.
‘You’re not taking her! You’re not! You can’t take her away!’
Clancy started to scream. Merrily saw Jane behind her, looking upset, unsure how to respond. Jeremy watching her too, with an expression that, if you didn’t know him, you might interpret as anger. Jeremy turned and walked away towards the entrance as Brigid pushed in front of Alma, hugging Clancy. ‘Clan... it’ll be OK. It... Everything’s taken care of.’ Over Clancy’s shoulder, she said to Merrily, ‘Where did you see that video?’
‘Ben has it. Ben thinks it was shot a couple of days ago.’
Bliss was listening now.
‘But the fresh blood shows it had to have been between whatever happened on the rocks and you being brought in, right?’ Merrily said. ‘Did you get it when you beat Sebbie to death at the foot of the r—?’
‘Merrily!’ Bliss snarled.
Brigid said, ‘What?’
‘For fuck’s sake—’ Bliss spun round, ran to the door to Ben’s office behind reception, flung it open. ‘In! In there now!’
54
Reichenbach
WHEN BLISS SAID, ‘Clancy, would you and Jane like to fetch us all some of Mrs Foley’s incredible coffee?’ Clancy looked at her mother like this was some cheap trick and when she returned with the coffee all the police cars would have gone from the forecourt.
‘I promise you, Clancy,’ Bliss said, ‘we won’t leave the premises without you get another chance to see your mum, yeh?’
Clancy wouldn’t look at him but she went off with Jane. She hadn’t looked at Merrily either since the water had dried on her forehead. This could take months – years – of aftercare. It wasn’t magic.
Merrily put a new cigarette packet, open, on the desk, with the Zippo. On the front of the packet it said Smokers Die Young. Alma brought in a third chair and an ashtray, and Merrily sat facing Brigid, watching her smoke with a cautious relish, as if she was already banged-up.
‘Right.’ Bliss sat next to Merrily. ‘Where’s this video?’
‘You don’t need to see it now, Francis. Its existence is enough.’
‘Men just bloody lie to you all the time,’ Brigid said.
‘Meaning Largo?’
‘Some of us, on the other hand,’ Bliss said, ‘though we may seem like crass twats only looking for a result, have a profoundly spiritual core. Some of us might even be deeply shocked to think that a woman who’s just left a feller horribly unfaced should allow herself to be whisked away to be interviewed about it for the box. Something doesn’t ring true, in other words, Brigid.’
‘Could I talk to Merrily on her own?’
‘No, but you can talk to DCI Howe, who is also a woman – so I’ve been told. Can we cut the crap? I sometimes feel that a service like the one we’ve just attended can blow away the need for an awful lot of unnecessary evasion. Which goes for you, too, Reverend. In fact, you can start us off.’
‘OK.’ Merrily took a cigarette.
‘And make it quick while I can still breathe in here.’
‘Well, essentially, Antony Largo has been after Brigid – in at least one sense, maybe more – since he was a young researcher with the BBC. Antony Largo likes – sorry, Brigid – vicious women. He made a well-known documentary called Women of the Midnight, which—’
Bliss leaned into the smoke. ‘He made that?’
‘While still in his twenties, apparently. And never looked back.’
‘As I recall, Merrily, that programme caused a flap by being a bit... well, it looked closely at the sexual side of things, didn’t it? We heard from past lovers, in considerable detail.’
‘And you can apparently get the rest of the detail on video through the Internet, as long as you claim to be over twenty-one.’
‘Well, well,’ Bliss said. ‘So you knew Mr Largo then, Brigid.’
‘No, I didn’t, actually. I didn’t even remember his name. Only anoraks know the names of TV producers. Didn’t recognize him, either, when Ben brought him in, though I’d apparently met him at Ellie Maylord’s, when these guys were after me for Panorama. As he reminded me the other week.’
‘In what circumstances did he remind you?’
‘After he was here with Ben that first time, he didn’t go back to London. He booked into the Green Dragon at Hereford, and he phoned me.’
‘Must’ve been a shock, Brigid.’
‘Yeah, it was. He said could I meet him. He said as soon as he saw me he was thinking, like, what if Ben finds out?’
‘You’d appreciate talking to someone who really cared.’
‘You wouldn’t believe some of the men I’ve met who really cared,’ Brigid said.
‘I may even have arrested a couple. So, you met Mr Largo?’
‘I met him in the camper van.’
‘Aha.’
‘Was a refuge for me, that van.’
‘I thought you’d sold it to the nature lads.’
‘Lent it. Said I might need it back at some stage.’
‘Oh?’
‘In my situation, the kind of refuge you can drive away is sometimes useful. It’s also better if you don’t keep it at home. That way, visiting reporters, or other people you don’t want to get involved with, don’t get to see it in advance. I have bad memories of driving out of Looe at the head of a cavalcade.’