‘The Royal Oak,’ Sophie said, as she reached the Volvo. ‘Some things you might want to know.’
‘Go on.’
‘I have some information from the Internet which I can send to you at home, if you aren’t coming back to Hereford. However, I ran into Inspector Bliss and took the liberty of mentioning it. He said he’d be most interested to talk to you.’
‘About the Royal Oak?’
‘Discreetly,’ Sophie said.
It was probably worth going back. Merrily had a christening in Ledwardine tomorrow afternoon; if she dealt with parish business in the morning she could probably come back here on Wednesday and talk to Tim Loste and Preston Devereaux before the public meeting.
Feeling tired now. Up before six a.m. and two trips to Wychehill, and she hadn’t eaten yet.
Still … She smoked half a cigarette, then turned the car around and drove down past Ledbury … Trumpet … Stoke Edith. Midsummer in a couple of days, the first hard little apples like green nuts on the twisty trees and the hops on the wires. A potent landscape of cider and beer.
She felt light-headed. It was humbling and slightly shocking when, amongst all the self-delusion and the wishful thinking and the mind games, you encountered someone as guilelessly direct as Hannah Bradley.
Sophie said, ‘My attempts to log on to the Royal Oak’s actual website were frustrated by the inadequacy of our software. Apparently, the Diocese has failed to provide us with something called Flash Seven.’
‘Anything to save a few quid.’
‘From what I’ve been reading about the Royal Oak elsewhere, I’m quite grateful we don’t have it. There you are. You may understand some of this.’
Merrily went round the desk to peer at the screen over Sophie’s shoulder.
HIP-HOP … RAGGA … GARAGE … HOUSE…
DRUM’N’BASS … BHANGRA…
… IN THE MALVERNS?
Believe it!!! A big old country pub – used to
be all darts matches and Rotary Club –
has mutated…
‘My first experience of nightclub websites, I confess.’ Sophie said.
‘You surprise me.’
‘To save you some time, this establishment is just across the boundary into Worcestershire – and out of the diocese. Another good reason not to get involved.’
Sophie scrolled up to uncover a picture of a bejewelled black man called DJ Xex. Instantly dismissing him with a contemptuous flick of the mouse.
‘It appears that the Royal Oak is now owned by a Mr Khan – apparently quite a well-known entrepreneur in the West Midlands?’
Sophie glanced at Merrily, who shook her head. Never heard of him.
‘Quite a number of local press reports about local people calling on the appropriate authority to have Mr Khan’s licence withdrawn. I’ve printed them out for you.’
‘But you didn’t print the picture of DJ Xex for the noticeboard?’
‘This would be less amusing to you, Merrily,’ Sophie said, ‘if you had to live with it.’
Possibly true. All the innocent fun of inner-city club-land in the romantic Malverns: punters swarming in every weekend from the teenage wastelands, cars screaming through the village at one a.m., windows open, boom, boom, boom. Kids stopping to throw up in front gardens, relieve themselves in the churchyard. Have sex on graves … allegedly. And now a fatal road accident of the kind that people always insisted had been waiting to happen.
‘Sounds as if the victims of Saturday’s crash had spent the evening at the Royal Oak.’ Merrily gathered up the on-line news stories Sophie had printed. ‘Colliding with the chairman of the parish council, returning from a wedding.’
Sophie winced.
The stories were mainly from the Malvern Gazette: petitions to Hereford and Worcester councils, letters to MPs. Counter-allegations of NIMBYism and racism by the leader of a youth project who thought the restyled Royal Oak was the best thing to happen in the Malverns this century.
‘What did Frannie Bliss say?’
‘We didn’t have much time to talk. He asked how you were, and I explained that you were looking into an alleged occurrence at the eastern end of the diocese and then simply asked if he knew anything about the Royal Oak.’
‘Or, as it’s now apparently called…’
‘Don’t.’
Merrily smiled at Sophie.
‘Inn Ya Face? That’s quite good, really.’
‘In Elgar’s hills.’ Sophie’s lower body trembled slightly as if the ground beneath her feet had shifted. ‘One day, Merrily, I think we may be pushed just slightly too far.’
‘I wonder…’ Merrily tapped her lower lip with a pen ‘… if that’s why Syd Spicer’s a little sceptical. I wonder if he thinks that the ghost of a traditional cyclist – an image symbolic of gentler times – is someone’s idea for stirring the pot.’
Sophie raised an eyebrow.
‘It happens. Just occasionally. But then Syd doesn’t seem to know about Hannah Bradley.’
‘You found that convincing?’
‘It’s about as convincing as it gets.’
‘The girl thinks she’s been sexually assaulted by … ?’
‘I wouldn’t put it that strongly, and neither does she. Quite a healthy attitude towards it, really. That’s one of the things that makes it so credible.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Collate all the reports. Try and find out if anybody’s ever been killed on that road on a bike. If I can tie it down to an individual, the obvious answer would be a straightforward Requiem Eucharist in the church, with as many of the witnesses as we could get. Plus the Rector, of course.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Sophie picked up a notepad. ‘The Rector.’
‘You checked him out.’
‘Ordained eight years ago.’ Sophie raised her glasses on their chain to read her shorthand notes. ‘Installed as Rector of Wychehill, with two other neighbouring parishes, in autumn 2003. Renowned, apparently, for his strenuous youth-work – previously, he ran a shop in Eign Street specializing in Outward Bound-type pursuits. Mountaineering, geology. And before that, his career, as you say, was with the Army. The file doesn’t mention which regiment, but then, if he served in Hereford, it hardly needs to.’
‘No.’
Merrily was thinking of Spicer’s distinctly unemotional response to the carnage at Wychehill, the minimalism of his kitchen, his total self-reliance. I’m very capable.
‘My experience of the Special Air Service, Merrily, is that they tend to dispense information on a need-to-know basis.’
‘If at all,’ Merrily said.
Remembering a story someone had told her about a Hereford dentist with a serving-SAS patient who’d dropped in for a heavy-duty root-canal filling and – by way of an exercise – had declined the anaesthetic.
Might have been apocryphal, probably not.
10
Firewall
Mentioning the Royal Oak to Frannie Bliss … this had been like opening the door of the CID room and rolling a grenade through the gap.
They were in the café in the Cathedral cloisters, with a Gothic-framed view of the Bishop’s garden. Bliss was doing his eager-fox smile, raspberry jam from his doughnut oozing between his fingers.
‘Clever little bastard, though, Merrily. His old feller’s some kind of professor of Islamic Studies in Wolver-hampton. Also, a consultant to the Home Office.’
He evidently thought she knew more than she actually did.