Huw Owen’s primary rules: never leave the premises without dropping a blessing, or a prayer. Never leave anyone agitated or stressed. Never leave a vacuum.
Liz looked as if she didn’t quite understand and perhaps didn’t want to.
‘Yes, all right,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
33
Karen Dowell was on the phone when Bliss got into Gaol Street, just after half-nine, but still managed to flick him a warning look, glancing at his office door. Which was shut. Someone sitting in there.
Bliss decided that if, by some serendipitous anomaly, it was the Chief Constable, he’d smash the bastard before he could get up. Partly because the Chief was bigger than him and partly because he felt like shit this morning – shivery and light-headed, like when some hovering virus was figuring out if you were worth taking down. And partly because it might just be the finest thing he’d ever do in his life.
He nodded to Karen, opened the office door, walked in with his aching head held high, and it was Annie Howe.
The old Annie. The dark trouser suit, the ice-maiden white shirt. The no make-up, the no jewellery. Sitting behind his desk, marking the homework.
Bliss shut the door behind him.
Might have slept last night, but he didn’t think so. He remembered the sun coming up before his wide-open eyes, before the clouds had smothered it. He’d got up, drunk a whole pot of tea, hoping that Annie might call him from Malvern before either of them left for work. Nothing.
‘If you’ve gorra screwdriver on you, Annie, I’ll take me name off the door.’
‘I’m meeting a witness at ten.’ Annie stacked the reports, looked up at him. ‘Why I’m here rather than Oldcastle. I thought you might like to sit in.’
‘Witness to what?’
‘A man in a field? Covered in blood?’
‘Oh.’
‘Agreed to meet in town, if we can protect his identity. Actually, it was the girlfriend who rang in, from a mobile. I’m meeting them at Gilbey’s. Told her I might be accompanied, but that wouldn’t change anything.’
They walked up towards High Town, well apart on the pavement. Annie was wearing a grey double-breasted jacket, a long white woollen scarf.
‘I do hope the Chief realizes this won’t be bloodless,’ Bliss said.
‘Don’t do anything stupid. There may be room for manoeuvre.’
‘Rather be out than have this shite. Chuck in me papers.’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’ Annie quickened her pace. ‘Nobody wants you out of the job. Might even simply be a case of staying in West Mercia, just leaving the division?’
‘No. No, no, no.’ Rage ripping into Bliss as he caught her up on the corner, near the zebra crossing. ‘You don’t understand, do you? I’ve only gorra close me eyes and I can see them… Kairsty and her old man… Sollers Bull and his friggin’ father-in-law from the House of friggin’ Lords. All the foreign hunters behind Countryside Defiance and the tweedy twats who like to think they still control this county, and-’
‘The Chief’s just watching his back. It’s how they survive.’
‘-and right there in the middle… your old man. Charlie Howe with one hand held out for the money and the other making some Masonic sign. Corruption’s embedded in this county, Annie, like… like the blue bits in Danish friggin’ Blue. Try and cut yourself a slice that isn’t riddled with it.’
‘You could say that of just about anywhere.’
‘Yeh, well, I don’t live just about anywhere. And one thing I’ve noticed is that when they go down, the bad guys… when they go down in Hereford, it’s always the outsiders.’
They turned along the narrow passage leading to Gilbey’s bar, where the city’s movers and shakers occasionally moved and shook. In its own secluded little space up against the back of St Peter’s Church.
‘We have to sit outside.’ Annie headed for the farthest table, under a tree and in the shadow of the steeple. ‘You go and order some coffee. I’ll wait here, in case he’s early.’
‘Do we need pink carnations?’
Inside, Bliss scanned the clientele. A few faces that he vaguely recognized. Fortunately, nobody he actually knew. He’d thought maybe Annie had asked him along because she had something encouraging to say to him about how they’d fight this thing together, but that evidently was not going to happen.
When he came out, there was a woman sitting with Annie. Mid-thirties, pale-skinned, wind-straggled blonde hair tucked into the collar of her red leather jacket.
‘This is my colleague, Francis Bliss,’ Annie said. ‘Francis, this is… Janette.’
‘Jan,’ the woman said.
Bliss sat down the other side of Jan.
‘And when will your friend be joining us?’
‘She won’t,’ Jan said.
Bliss looked at Annie, who smiled colourlessly.
‘Jan is our witness, Francis.’
It took a moment.
‘Ah,’ Bliss said.
Jan told them she was taking up an appointment after Easter, as head teacher at a local primary school.
Bliss said, ‘You mean, out there, in the sticks?’
‘Out there, yes.’
Jan said the person she’d been with in the car on the night of Mansel Bull’s murder was married, but wouldn’t be for long. They’d been at college together, found one another again after fifteen years. She was the reason Jan had come looking for work in the Hereford area.
‘There might not be complications with either parents or governors, but there just might. It’s necessary to be discreet and take things slowly. This is, after all, a rural area.’
‘You’re quite right there, Jan,’ Bliss said. ‘It very much is.’
He wondered if her girlfriend was fairly well known in the area. And if the husband had any inkling. Jan still looked nervous.
‘You won’t get me to give evidence in court. You do accept that?’
Annie said, ‘We can talk about that later.’
‘There won’t be a later if I don’t get an assurance.’
Annie Howe nodded.
At least they got an accurate location, a good half-mile from where they’d stopped searching for blood traces in the fields. Covered some ground, this guy. The access involved several unmarked single-track lanes. There was a derelict barn you couldn’t miss, Jan said, and the ungated field entrance was about fifty yards after that.
Bliss made notes. Asked her if she’d seen any other vehicles on the way there, and Jan shook her head, said nobody lived up there any more.
‘I’ve walked that whole area. I’m staying in a guest house at Tillington, about three miles away, looking for a cottage, so I’ve done a lot of exploring around. Essential preparation for taking over a local school. Kids can be evil wee sods if they think you’re an innocent abroad.’
‘And your friend? She’s local?’
‘Do we have to go into that?’
Bliss shrugged.
‘Credenhill,’ Jan said. ‘Though not originally.’
Bliss didn’t react. Was it possible that Jan was snuggling up to some SAS man’s missus while he was in foreign parts? That’d make anybody nervous.
‘In your letter,’ Annie said, ‘you called Mansel “Farmer Bull”. Was that how your girlfriend knew him?’
‘It’s what they called him in the local shop.’
Bliss said, ‘When you saw this man in the field, did you also see any sign of a vehicle? Off-road, perhaps? Or any other people?’
‘We didn’t hang around, if I’m honest. Out there in the middle of nowhere, it was pretty frightening. We’d only just arrived, so we still had the engine running and the headlights on when he came rushing out of the dark. As if he’d been blown out by the wind.’
‘You say you couldn’t see his face – what about his hair?’
‘I think he had hair… I mean, I don’t recall him as bald or anything, but… it could’ve been slicked back with the… with the blood. I don’t know.’
‘Tall, short, thin, fat?’
‘He certainly seemed tall. And well-built, I suppose. And quite fit, I’d imagine, the way he was moving. I go to the gym twice a week, but you wouldn’t get me out running in those conditions.’