Hair unbrushed, tied back. She had a deep scratch all down one cheek. At the refectory table, her sugary tea going cold, she described again what had happened when the managing director of Hardkit had cut a young man’s throat.
‘All my fault.’
Jane said that twice.
Gently – for her – Annie Howe said, ‘All you did was throw something which distracted Cornel before he could…’
‘He might not have. Might not have shot Mostyn. I think he just wanted to see him crawl.’
‘Jane, nobody carries a loaded firearm-’
‘You weren’t there,’ Jane said.
Merrily flinched. Because Jane had been there. And Lol had been there, and so had Gomer Parry, wielding a digger like heavy artillery at the age of… whatever age Gomer was.
While she had been faffing about in a churchyard, cutting up a communion wafer with nail scissors, trying to alter the spiritual balance. Just one slippage of a gear, one shift in the pattern of events, one stalling of momentum in that hellhole last night, and she could be burying Jane, raking out the last cold ash in Lol’s wood stove. She was worthless, a sham. Failing to see what she should have seen. Being someone who people didn’t want to worry because she was too busy unscrambling the thought processes of a man who was dead and hadn’t wanted her to know about it anyway. She wanted a cigarette.
‘He kept asking me to come out,’ Jane said.
‘Mostyn?’
‘He said it was OK, Cornel had just tripped and fallen and hurt his head and they needed to call an ambulance.’
‘And what did you say?’ Annie asked.
‘I didn’t say anything. I knew he was just trying to find out where I was. I went down on hands and knees again. I thought, even if he finds out where I am he can’t come in after me, it’s too narrow, but he can… he can climb up and look down on me and just… shoot me. I was just lying on the floor and covering my head with my hands. For all the use that would’ve been.’
‘What happened next?’
‘There was this… you know, the noise of a big engine outside the doors? Like a JCB?’
‘That was what you actually thought?’
‘I know what a JCB sounds like. And then both doors just came in with this massive crash and that’s when I stood up, and I saw Gomer straight away. And Lol and…’ Jane smiled feebly. ‘It was like the best moment of my entire life. For about two seconds.’ The smile turning wintry. ‘Before it was the worst.’
‘When did you first see Mr Bloom?’
‘Barry – I heard him first. He was calling to everybody, telling them to keep down. And then I saw Lol. I was, like… going insane because Kenny Mostyn… I saw him standing up with the gun levelled and I could see he was pointing the gun at Lol, and I just… lost it. I started climbing over the top of the concrete bench, and the next thing I saw was Barry, just falling back, and half his face was…’
‘All right. In your first statement, you said you saw another man where Lol Robinson had been standing. Had he been there all the time?’
‘I don’t know. Lol was, like, standing on one of the doors that Gomer had smashed in, and this guy just… he just came out of nowhere and rammed Lol out of the way. All in dark clothes and this balaclava with just a slit for the eyes?’
‘What did Mostyn do?’
‘I’ve told you all this once…’
‘Tell me again.’
‘Nothing. He did nothing. He had the gun by his side. Just standing with his legs apart, kind of… relaxed. And the gun by his side.’
‘As if he knew the man? Saw him as an ally rather than an adversary?’
‘Yeah.’
Merrily could see it all in her head. The balaclava to hide the giveaway white hair and the cold intent in his blue eyes.
How sure were they that this was Byron Jones?
Annie sipped her tea, casual, unofficial.
‘What happened next?’
‘I didn’t see exactly… I was looking for Lol. The next thing I saw, Kenny didn’t have the gun any more, the other guy did. I’d been looking straight into the JCB lights, so when I turned round I couldn’t see properly.’
No one else had seen it, Merrily knew that. Not Lol, nor Gomer, nor Danny. Barry had told them all to get down, before…
Annie said, ‘You’re sure there wasn’t more than one gun?’
‘Pretty sure.’
‘What happened next, Jane… is something we need to be absolutely sure about because only you-’
‘Every time I close my eyes I’m still seeing it. He was standing behind Kenny, then it was like pieces of Kenny’s head came flying out. And his knees were, like, buckled and he just… you know like they say someone was dead before he hit the ground. That’s how it was.’
‘How many shots?’
‘Two. And then this other guy slipped the gun in his jacket pocket and walked out. He stopped for a moment and bent over Barry, and then he turned away and he was… gone. He was just, like… no fuss, you know? He just did what he did and walked out. Like, the way I’m telling it, it must sound like it took ages, but it was just… barely seconds. He was so sure of what he was doing. Like he didn’t have to think?’
‘No struggle for the gun or anything like that? I’m sorry to keep going over these points, but it’s impor-’
‘I keep telling you,’ Jane said, eyes wide. ‘Kenny Mostyn wasn’t expecting it. There was no struggle. It was like an execution?’
They left Jane in the kitchen. Annie Howe stood at the door in the hall, next to Holman Hunt’s Light of the World.
‘They, ah… they’re still trying to save Barry Bloom’s right eye. They’re not hopeful. Made a mess of one side of his face but the bullet didn’t enter his brain. At that range he was, I suppose, very lucky.’
‘Lucky,’ Merrily said dully.
The worst could have happened, and it hadn’t. Not quite.
‘I…’ Annie took her hand off the doorknob. ‘I’m not sure why Jane feels in some way responsible. I don’t know her particularly well, but it seems… slightly odd. We can still arrange some professional counselling. Sometimes it helps to unload it all on a stranger.’
‘I’ll ask her again, but I’m not optimistic.’
‘But then again,’ Annie said, ‘I suspect you might have an idea why she blames herself. Is there something I should know?’
‘If I tell you, you’ll wish I hadn’t.’
‘I’ll chance it.’
‘She seems to feel she was the instrument which brought all this together. If she hadn’t become obsessed with tying Savitch into cockfighting. Which led-’
‘Ah, yes…’ Annie Howe raised a hand. ‘Just so you know. In a storeroom behind one of Mostyn’s shops we found a consignment of what you might call cockfight gift-sets – leather cases containing a selection of polished spurs. Brand new. Originally prized, apparently, by cockers in the travelling community. Now finding a new market, it seems.’
‘So that links Mostyn to it.’
‘There’s also the established fact that Victoria Buckland, the woman charged in connection with the Marinescu murders, used to work for Mostyn when he was running canoeing and mountaineering courses for young people. Buckland’s believed to have been organizing periodic cockfights at the Plascarreg Hilton for a couple of years. It’ll all come out at some stage.’
‘And Savitch?’
‘Savitch is now attached like a Siamese twin to his London solicitor. He denies all knowledge of Mithraism, cockfighting, badger-baiting or any other illegal country pursuits. Appalled to discover the truth about Mostyn, who was contracted purely as an instructor and a supplier of equipment. Horrified that some of his own clients were into these foul practices.’
‘Hanging it on the dead.’
‘Don’t they always. So Jane…?’
‘Jane thinks that if she hadn’t pursued Cornel with a view to nailing Savitch they would never have wound up in the mithraeum.’