‘How?’
A man who, in the course of his career, might have lost his life in a dozen different countries, and he’d gone out on a muddy hillside less than a mile from his kitchen, his kettle.
‘We don’t really know,’ the man called William had said. ‘He might have fallen and hit his head, he might have had a heart attack. Mrs Spicer, do you know if he had any health problems? Chest pains? Tightness of breath?’
‘He had a medical before his appointment, didn’t he?’
A silence, and then William had asked Fiona if she knew why the bedroom door was locked.
‘Is it?’ she’d said vaguely.
Putting her tea on one side, her expression saying it was too sweet. Merrily had gone into the kitchen to pour another. Feeling inadequate here. As a parish priest, you spent long hours in houses of bereavement, but not often surrounded by men whose experiences of death would always outweigh yours.
By the time she came back, William and the detective, Terry Stagg, had gone upstairs, the other two men outside to a police car.
Merrily had said to Fiona, ‘Do you want to come back with me?’
‘Where?’
‘I’ve got spare rooms at the vicarage. Nobody should be alone at a time like this.’
‘We don’t really know each other, do we?’ Fiona said.
They were alone in the living room. It had magnolia walls, a sofa, a small TV and a white melamine bookcase with a couple of dozen books in it. Merrily recognized the spines of the deliverance handbook and A Time to Heal, with its narrow black cross against sunburst red.
Fiona stood up and went to the window, where the view was over the camp, over the fields, over the River Wye to the Black Mountains and Wales.
‘I don’t particularly like the country,’ Fiona said. ‘I’ll stay in Hereford tonight, then go home till… till I have to come back.’
‘What about your daughter?’
‘I’ll phone her, when these people have finished with me.’
‘Is there anybody I can phone?’
Fiona shook her head.
‘Something kept telling me that the only way we’d stayed the course so far was by having long separations. Now we’ve got the big one.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘I don’t like the country. It was no good for him.’
She’d turned away from the window, as if she never wanted to see that view again.
‘She must have pre-lived Syd’s death dozens of times. She starting doing practical things. Very methodical. She gave me her phone numbers.’
And the three books she’d found in Syd’s car. Telling Merrily to put them in her bag before the men came back.
Merrily didn’t tell Huw about the books, hadn’t looked at them yet.
‘Then they came back downstairs, this William and the CID man. And then some uniformed policemen came in, and a woman – I don’t know if she was army or police family-liaison, but she was there for Fiona. While this guy, William, took the opportunity to get what he could out of me.’
‘MoD?’
‘You don’t ask, do you?’
William had followed Merrily out into the front garden.
His heavy moustache was old-fashioned, a Lord Kitchener job. Authoritative back then, today it looked faintly comical, mock-solemn. William was stocky, built like a pit bull.
‘Where’ve you come from, Mrs Watkins?’
‘Ledwardine. That’s a village, few miles over-’
‘Yes, I know where it is. In fact, I’ve an old army friend living there. James Bull-Davies?’
‘I know James.’
Knew him well enough to be sure he’d never been in the Special Air Service.
‘I meant where’ve you come from… just now?’ William said.
‘From Hereford. Fiona’s staying there. We… met at the Cathedral. Where I work, sometimes.’
‘How well did you know Syd, Mrs Watkins?’
‘We were… better than acquaintances. Worked together once.’
The motion of an eyebrow suggested that William had an idea what she was talking about, but he didn’t follow it up. He’d gone to stand on the edge of the lawn, hands behind his back.
‘Neighbour saw him leave here yesterday evening, Bergen on his back, as he apparently did most evenings. He was found lying by the side of his Bergen. He’d taken it off, as if to sit down for a rest. More or less full kit inside, and mint cake, water bottles. Over sixty pounds. Made weightier by a rather hefty and cumbersome addition. Not the apocryphal bricks.’
‘Would it be a family Bible?’
William’s eyes had widened fractionally.
‘Fiona said he always kept a big family Bible in his bedroom,’ Merrily said. ‘On top of the wardrobe. She said it wasn’t there any more.’
‘I see. Yes, you’re quite right. A Bible.’
Merrily followed William onto the front lawn, where the grass was still slippery from the winter. He jerked a gloved thumb back towards the long hump of Credenhill, the remains of its fort camouflaged in forestry.
‘If he was running up that hill with a Bergen containing that kind of weight… we have youngsters, trained soldiers who think they’re tough enough for the Regiment, collapse after a few miles carrying less than that. How old was Syd – fifty-two, fifty-three?’
‘I don’t know.’
Merrily had been thinking of the vivid green window in the Traherne chantry. The figure of the poet – or somebody – running along a path towards a wooded hill that was probably Credenhill.
‘You all right, Mrs Watkins?’
‘Sorry. Goose over my grave. Could I ask you something? Who lived here before Syd?’
William had looked at her sternly.
‘There a reason for that question?’
‘You’d probably think it was a fairly stupid one. Not another chaplain?’
‘Here? No. The last chaplain had his own house nearby. I believe this was a sergeant, with a wife and a son. They were here, I’d guess, about seven years, until he retired. What exactly were you expecting?’
‘Still, erm, alive?’
‘And kicking. All over the world. He landed something of a plum job with a film production company, as a stunt adviser of some kind.’
‘Oh. Well… thank you.’
Merrily had wondered if he’d mention the drawers pulled out, the mirror covered, the salt around the bed. He didn’t, but she was convinced he now knew about her peculiar role in the diocese. Might even have rung James Bull-Davies while he and Stagg were upstairs. But he couldn’t be sure if she knew what was behind the bedroom door.
‘Why might Syd have a big heavy Bible with him, Mrs Watkins?’
‘I’ll need to think about it.’
‘That’s what you advised Syd to do, right? The drawers, the salt.’
‘I told him what you did,’ Huw said. ‘Told him what you’d done in circumstances that might’ve been different. Giving him another opportunity to tell me exactly what was bothering him.’
Merrily sighed. Open the cupboard doors, take out the drawers, expose all dark places, leave nowhere for evil to hide. Maybe all symbolic, hooks for the mind, and maybe Syd had thought it was all crap, but he’d done it just the same. And then died.
‘You think it’s possible he killed himself?’ Huw said. ‘High suicide rate among ex-SAS men. They come out, can’t adjust to normal life, and depression sets in.’
But Syd had come through. Like he said, things were looking up. Daughter getting married, grandchild on the way. Yet Merrily was remembering the sense of an optimism as synthetic as air-freshener.
‘Why the procedure with the kit, though?’ Huw said. ‘His Bergen – part of his old identity, as a serving SAS man. And his Bible. His big Bible, representing the other half of him, but also, from what you say, a bit of a talisman. And he goes up the hill, carrying his whole identity, his memories, the weight of his religion. What’s the significance of the hill? Would he have done exercises up there, when he was in the SAS?’
‘They weren’t based at Credenhill then. It’s just a good place to run.’
‘He was running away? Getting away from a house he thought might be contaminated? Not a word from this feller about his bedroom?’