‘Not to me.’
‘They’ll want to keep that out of the inquest. Brush it under the carpet. It’ll be natural causes or accidental death or, at worst, Spicer taking his own life while the balance of his mind were disturbed. Drawing a line we don’t have to draw. And happen won’t.’
‘Because we failed him?’
‘Talk about it tomorrow, eh?’ Huw said.
Silence, except for the answering machine, bleeping away like a life-support system.
Merrily’s bag was hanging over the back of the chair. She pulled out the three paperback books, laid them out on the desk, one by one: Deliverance – new edition, scuffed and tatty, well-thumbed, pages turned down but nothing underlined, no margin notes. Only the Ledwardine Vicarage number.
And then there was Wordsworth’s Britain: a little itinerary. This one was also quite tatty, dark green, far from new. Merrily flipped through it. Nothing was marked.
The third book was a larger paperback. On the cover, a Roman soldier had his short sword raised over a cowering man in rags against a background of fire. Fiction. It had a blurb.
They came, they saw, they slaughtered…
It was called Caradog and it was by someone called Byron Jones.
Merrily turned it over. The price was $10.50. A US edition. The lurid cover, the language and the print size all suggested this was a book for children. Well, older children or young adults – although it had probably been published before that term was in use.
Caradog? Another name for Caractacus, the British leader who held out against the Romans and whose last stand was once supposed, probably wrongly, to have been on Herefordshire Beacon, overlooking Syd’s last parish in the Malverns.
So no big mystery there. Caradog carried a very brief biographical note on the author.
Byron Jones was a Special Forces soldier in the British Army. He is now an expert on Roman and Ancient British warfare.
Ex-SAS, then. A book written by a former comrade? If there’d been time to examine Syd’s bookshelves at length, Merrily might well have found Andy McNab, Chris Ryan, all the others.
She flipped through the pages to be absolutely sure that none of them had been marked, then gathered the books into a neat pile, leaned across the scullery desk and pressed the green piano key on the answering machine.
Fiona Spicer’s voice. Very dry, very firm.
‘ Merrily, I’m sorry, could I-Could you do something for me? I’m not sure about the army protocol here. But could you bury him? ’
She pushed her chair back, sat with space all around her.
A sign like a pointing finger from the clouds. The ultimate responsibility.
27
The cock was a tumble of feathers, his neck coppery and gold in the late sunlight.
‘En’t a fox done this, neither,’ Gomer said. ‘Fox goes for the neck, and he don’t leave much behind.’
‘Maybe he was disturbed.’
Jane stepped back from the garden table as Gomer lifted up the bird’s head. She wasn’t squeamish, but an image from last night had stayed with her from when she’d first opened the sack under one of the lamps on the square: the ruined eye peeping up. The body was battered, feathers broken, maybe from the kicking Cornel had given the bin sack.
‘See the blood on his beak? That’s the real giveaway, ennit?’ Gomer turned to her. ‘You all right there, Janey?’
‘He’s beautiful, Gomer. That golden… like a lion’s mane.’
‘His hackle. Aye, nice bird, he is. You don’t see the ole breeds too often n’more.’
‘I mean, I don’t know much about chickens and things, but it didn’t seem like his neck had been wrung or anything. And the way they were talking about shooting anything in front of their guns…’
Gomer struck a match, ignited his roll-up.
‘Janey, I’d ’ave to say no man done this. Goin’ by the injuries. And the breed.’
‘I’m not following you.’
Gomer took a drag on his ciggy.
‘Gamecock, he is.’
‘Game-’ Jane sprang back from the table like it was electrified. ‘But that’s-’
‘Died in the ring, sure to.’
‘A cockfight? But that… It’s like bear-baiting and stuff. History. Illegal.’
‘Been illegal for over a century. But that don’t mean it don’t go on, see, on the quiet.’
‘Where?’
‘Few farmyards, gypsy camps.’
Jane stared at the dead cock, her fists and chest tightening.
‘Big money in it, see,’ Gomer said. ‘Betting. Lot of it about when I was a boy. Some folks then, they couldn’t figure why it was banned. Cocks fight – what they does.’
‘But they don’t kill-’
‘I’m just tellin’ you what the cockers say. All about mating. Like stags. Sure, once they seed the other cock off, it’s over. But you puts the buggers in a pit what they can’t get out of… the losin’ cock, he en’t got nowhere to go, do he? Far’s the other bird’s concerned, he’s still a contender. So it don’t stop. Specially with all the money ridin’ on it, and…’
Gomer looked uncertain.
‘Go on…’ Jane said.
‘Well, they got these… spurs, ennit? Metal spikes, couple inches long on their legs. See where this leg yere’s-’
‘That makes it more fun, does it?’ Jane took one look, jerked herself away. ‘More blood, more feathers ripped out?’
‘Most of ’em dies from head wounds… or eyes. Like this boy, I reckon.’
‘I just don’t believe this, Gomer. When’s the last you heard of it?’
‘By yere? Thirty year ago, sure t’be. Used to be a reg’lar cocking fraternity, kind o’ thing. Don’t mean it en’t been goin’ on ever since, on and off. Just means it’s more underground, kind o’ thing. Under cover of gamefowl breeders’ clubs.’ Gomer nodded at the dead bird. ‘Weren’t so terrible bright o’ that feller, just dumpin’ him in a bin.’
‘He offered him to Barry. For the kitchen.’
‘That weren’t bright.’
‘He was drunk.’
Jane turned away from the table, her eyes filling up. She heard Gomer putting the cock back into the bin liner, and felt suddenly heartsick.
‘You seem to know… like… a lot about it, Gomer.’ She turned back as he tied up the sack. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Uncle,’ Gomer said. ‘When I was a boy, I had this uncle bred gamecocks. He’d’ve died when I was mabbe eight or nine. I remember goin’ with my ma to clean out his house, and we finds all these photies. One’s the ole feller with his prize bird and another cock, dead, what the prize cock killed. And here’s my Uncle Gwyn, great big beam all over his face.’
Gomer shrugged.
‘Thing is, he never seen it as cruel, do he? Gamecocks, they had a real good life, long as it lasted. Spoonful of porridge, spoonful of treacle… eggs, barley… nothin’ but the best ’fore a big fight. And when you thinks of all these poor bloody battery chickens, fattened on drugs, never loosed out in the fresh air and then they dies on a conveyor belt…’
‘Yeah, that totally stinks, but it doesn’t…’
‘No,’ Gomer said. ‘It don’t. A cock don’t even have to die in the ring, see, but it’s like with them ole… what you calls them ole Roman fellers?’
‘Gladiators?’
‘One o’ them, he gets the thumbs-down – curtains, ennit? Specially if he en’t put up much of a fight. En’t the same for the crowd, see, if both of ’em struts out at the end.’
‘It’s sick.’
Gomer puffed awhile, watching the sun.
‘This that Savitch?’
‘Cornel was one of his clients… guests. I mean it’s bad enough they think they can go round just shooting anything, but… You think Savitch is actually staging cockfights?’
Gomer lowered the sack to the grass.
‘He can’t be that daft, can he? What you wanner do with this ole boy?’
‘Isn’t it evidence?’
‘You gonner be a witness, girl?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘In court? Against the kind o’ lawyer this banker feller’s gonner hire? That’s even if it went that far. One dead cock is all you got. We don’t really know where he died or how. En’t nothin’ there for certain to say he went in the ring. Hell, Janey, I might be wrong…’