‘I see. That negative.’
‘Cry for help, Merrily.’
‘If that’s a cry for help, it’s pitched too high for my hearing. Look…’ She pulled the last cigarette out of the packet. ‘I was new to it then. I was very scared. I’d listened to an old wives’ tale from an old woman who’d dabbled in areas I was supposed to abhor, and…’
‘And it worked.’
‘Something worked. Well… so far.’
‘It worked because you did it in the right spirit.’
‘You could argue…’ Merrily stared at the church wall, with all its lichens and life forms ‘… that the right spirit would be not to have done it at all. The purer soul does it with considered prayer. This was… something else.’
The cold finger was on Merrily’s spine. Up sprang the spidery figure of a creepy old woman in a care home whose name was Anthea but who only answered to Athena.
‘And you told him, did you?’
‘What I knew of it. Threw in a couple of defensive penta-grams, point up. See what reaction I got to that. He said nowt, seemed to be writing it down.’
Merrily remembered discussing Athena’s advice with Huw afterwards. How it bordered on what Jane would call magical ritual, and Huw had asked her if she realized how many so-called magical rituals had come out of the medieval Catholic Church.
She wondered if Syd had noted what she’d told Huw’s students about not necessarily analysing everything in depth.
That’s why we have the rituals and the liturgy… just do it.
Still not sure how true that was.
‘How does this feel to you?’ Merrily asked.
‘Feels wobbly. Temporary. I don’t like it, but if the bugger won’t come clean…’
‘It’s personal, isn’t it? It’s him.’
‘Or connected to him.’
‘Is he going to come back to you afterwards? Tell you – man to man – if it worked? Because he isn’t going to come to me, is he?’
‘Happen you should smother your pride and give him a call.’
‘I haven’t got his new number.’
‘I have it here,’ Huw said. ‘Give him a day or so, then call him. I think it were bloody hard for him to give away much as he did. I reckon he’s in a bad way.’
‘Thanks,’ Merrily said.
13
The core squad, in the CID room in front of the box. All the blinds up on a heavyweight early-evening sky. A gathering dismay in the room. Bliss howling.
‘What are these bastards trying to do? It’s like it’s been orchestrated.’
He’d come in halfway through the replay of the national news. He sat down, shaken.
‘How far it was planned is of no great importance at the present time,’ Annie Howe said. ‘It’s happening, and we need to respond to it.’
Annie had returned in a rare sparkling mood, the Worcester jury having come back unexpectedly with a nice result: two out of three guilty on the stabbing. The DCI’s fizz had survived the national TV news, but the extended version on Midlands Today was something else.
‘… poisoned our towns.’
On the screen, some fat bastard bulging out of his tweeds. ‘… and now it’s overflowing into rural areas. All the time, we see strangers in old vans, clearly up to no good, but we know we’re wasting our time reporting it, because it’ll be ignored… simply ignored.’
Cut to camel-coat-and-headscarf woman by a five-barred gate.
‘ Obvious why they don’t care. Coming out here’s jolly time-consuming, and everybody knows they can meet their arrest and conviction targets far quicker and more cheaply in the towns.’
‘Trouble is, she’s not far wrong there, is she?’ Bliss said.
‘Though we won’t be expressing those sentiments outside of this room, will we, Francis?’ Annie Howe said quietly, not looking at him. ‘Karen, run the item again from the beginning, would you, please? We need to know who they all are.’
Karen Dowell played about with the remote, brought up the current Midlands Today Barbie-and-Ken presentation team.
Man: ‘ With the hunt for the brutal killer of a Herefordshire farmer in its third day, a rural pressure group has been accusing police of failing the countryside.’
Woman: ‘ And, as Mandy Patel reports, the attack’s been spear-headed by the brother of the murdered man, who says West Mercia Police repeatedly ignored reports of intruders on their land.’
Familiar shots of the middle Wye Valley looking bare and wind-scoured. Patel’s voice describing how the mood in Herefordshire had swung from horror to rage, as the vision cut to an obvious protest meeting. Bunch of people at a raised table, draped in banners. Apart from Sollers Bull, Bliss recognized nobody.
Annie said to Karen, ‘Who’s the man in the red waistcoat?’
‘Can’t remember his name, ma’am, but I’m pretty sure he’s the county chairman-elect of the NFU. And the guy next to him…’
‘Is Lord Walford?’
Karen nodded.
Bliss said, ‘Who the fuck’s Lord Walford?’
‘Old Tory peer, boss. And Sollers Bull’s father-in-law.’
‘Also a former member of the police authority,’ Annie said, ‘Where’s this happening, exactly?’
Walls of light wood, spotlights from exposed rafters. Pine tables.
‘The restaurant at Sollers Bull’s farm shop,’ Karen said. ‘Out on the Leominster Road. My mum works there, part-time. Got to say I’ve been around here all my life, ma’am, but there’s quite a few people I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.’
‘Yes, well, me neither,’ Annie Howe said. ‘Which possibly lends credence to their claim that it’s a national movement.’
‘Freeze it,’ Bliss said. ‘ There – isn’t that one of those ageing boy racers from The Octane Show?’
‘Smiffy Gill,’ Terry Stagg said. ‘Lives just over in Wales.’
‘Just the kind of flash twat who’d throw his driving gloves into the ring for this shite,’ Bliss said.
Above the panel of nobs at the raised table, a sign, green on white, covered half the wall.
COUNTRYSIDE DEFIANCE
The camera pulling back from the sign, the reporter saying, in voice-over, ‘ The organizers insist this is not a spin-off from the Countryside Alliance but a new response to what they say is an urgent situation.’
‘Hold it there,’ Annie Howe said. ‘Man at the back, black hair, receding jawline. Tim… Tim somebody. Member of the police committee.’
‘Who’s he supporting?’ Bliss said.
‘Who indeed? Sorry, let it run, Karen.’
New voice, a woman, not local.
‘ This is not political, but it’s certainly a matter of…’
Now you saw her. Fortyish, short red hair, tailored suit.
‘… pride and tradition. This county, like every county in Britain, has its roots in agriculture, but in Herefordshire the roots are still close to the surface, not yet buried under tons of concrete .’
The caption said:
Rachel Wiseman-France.
Coordinator, Countryside Defiance.
Bliss made a note of it as the woman said: ‘ With the hunting ban and four-by-fours road-taxed to the hilt, people who live and work in the countryside already felt they were being systematically penalized. Now they not only fear for their livelihoods, but their very lives.’
The reporter’s voice came back: ‘ The brother of murdered farmer Mansel Bull is also talking of a climate of fear in the Welsh Border hills and is accusing West Mercia Police of turning a blind eye to rural crime.’
Sollers Bull was standing outside his restaurant between two flags, a Welsh dragon and a cross of St George.
‘ My brother’s death left us shattered. Not only the family, but the whole county. I’ve had dozens of phone calls, letters, emails from farmers and country dwellers, and most of them are saying the same thing.’
Sollers wore a dark suit, black tie. Spoke quietly, even hesitantly, letting a local accent leak through and stumbling over the odd word. No hint of the aggression he’d displayed to Bliss. No ear stud today.