Half an hour ago, standing at the side of the lane somewhere around Kenchester, Lol had gazed out over the fields which enclosed the ghost of the Roman town. He’d seen isolated farms and, further away, on the higher ground, the frames of this year’s polytunnels spreading like worm-casts.
He’d driven past the SAS camp with its armed guards. A military base built close to, maybe even on top of, the buried remains of another. What could that mean? What could it mean to Byron Jones?
A cyclist was bobbing along the lane, dipping periodically behind the hedge, heading this way. Lol waited. The man wheeled the bike to the dead end of the track. He was thin and bearded, maybe in his early sixties, wearing a scarf and a flat cap.
‘Nice truck,’ he said. ‘Animal or Warrior?’
‘Animal.’
A match flared. The guy applied it to a roll-up.
‘Used to have one meself. Comfy, for a truck.’
He looked like an archetypal peasant, therefore obviously from Off.
‘On your own, mate?’
‘It’s what country churchyards are for,’ Lol said. ‘Being alone.’
‘Not so much these days. One of the finest St George churches in England, this, but who bovvers now?’
The guy checked him out again, then took a step back.
‘Hang about… I fink… stone me! I was at your gig. In the floods? At Ledwardine? Hey… how cool is this?’
Lol smiled, a bit bashful. This never used to happen at all, but it had occurred a dozen or so times since Christmas. Local recognition: a mixed blessing.
‘Forget what I said,’ the guy said. ‘This is exactly the right setting for you, Lol. There should be a soundtrack. Sunny Days?’
The edges of his Londonish accent were rounded off, as if he’d been living here a good while.
‘Well, you know, that was a long time ago,’ Lol said.
‘Well, I had it first time around, I’m proud to say. Hazey Jane. First album I ever bought by a band a good bit younger than me. Big fing, that, when you first accept younger guys can get it right. Seventeen, was you?’
‘Another lifetime,’ Lol said.
The guy put out a hand.
‘Arthur Baxter. Bax. I live a mile or so back there, over the pitch. Still come here most nights, on me bike. Meet the dragon.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You feel his breath?’
‘Like a blow-heater?’
‘Exactly.’ Bax grinned. ‘You know the story?’
‘Um… no. You got time?’
‘Got all night, mate – the missus is rehearsing a community play, down the leisure centre at Credenhill. Dragon’s drinking at the well, right? George comes down off of Credenhill, lookin’ for trouble. Slash, slash, spear downa froat, all over.’ Bax took a meditative drag. ‘You out here looking for inspiration, Lol? If you’re not, don’t spoil it for me. I wanna point to a song one day and go, I was there when he got that one.’ Bax drew deeply on his cigarette, offered it to Lol. ‘Try this? It ain’t bad.’
A certain sweetness drifting up. More than one kind of dragon. Lol smiled, shook his head, nodded at the truck. Bax assured Lol that he’d been biking these lanes, pleasantly stoned, for the best part of two decades, never once been stopped.
‘Tell you how far back this all goes,’ Bax said. ‘If we could get into the church you’d see this old stone slab with a picture carved on it of St George and the dragon. Only George is wearing like a skirt? Which means somebody seen him either as a cross-dresser or a Roman soldier – you know the little whatsits they had, wiv the belt?’
‘St George is portrayed as a Roman?’
‘Well, that’s the answer, innit? That’s what it’s about. It’s the Romans slaughtering the Celts. You really here for inspiration?’
Lol told Bax about ‘The Simple Trackway Man’. Which could use another verse. Bax was delighted, clapped his hands.
‘A lot of Roman stuff around here, too,’ Lol said. ‘Or there used to be. I was reading this poem by Wordsworth. “The men that have been reappear”.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know it. Often wonder… did he see them?’ Bax waved his spliff. ‘Bigger than they know, that Roman town. Me and the missus found maybe a dozen coins down the years.’
‘And the men who reappear?’
Bax shuffled around, prodded a tyre on his bike.
‘I live in hope.’
Lol said, ‘Ever come across a bloke called Byron Jones?’
‘Round here? Should I have?’
‘I think he lives in a caravan. Or he did.’
‘Oh…’ Bax blew out smoke. ‘You mean Colin Jones?’
‘Probably do.’
‘He don’t live in the caravan no more. Got permission for a bungalow on the edge of his land. The Compound. Nice, too. Swimming pool.’
‘Compound?’
‘That’s what it looks like. All that high barbed-wire fencing. Don’t know him, exactly. We are acquainted. He does intensive fitness training. Got a gym in there and an assault course where you swing over a pond on a rope, that kinda caper. You know him?’
‘Know of him.’
‘Ex-Sass. And then he was a minder. Quite well fought of, in these parts.’ Bax sniffed. ‘As they are, the Sass.’
‘People like you… ever go on these courses?’
‘Me? Nah. Wouldn’t be able to afford it. Though occasionally Mr Jones offers a one-day crash-course sort of thing to local boys, for nothing. Excellent for local relations.’ Bax took a long, noisy pull on his spliff, now down to a fragment. ‘Blimey, that din’t last long, did it?’
Lol smiled.
‘I was wondering if that wasn’t the dragon you came here to meet.’
‘The Magic Dragon. Poor ole thing, he ain’t too welcome at home no more, not since the missus joined the WI. When we first come here and she wore cheesecloth, we grew it in the dingle. Gotta pay for it now, in town. But, tell you one thing, Mr Lol… it ain’t slowed my brain enough that I can’t tell you’re fishing for som’ink? Nah, nah…’ Bax held up his hands like saucers. ‘I don’t wanna know, mate. You wanted me to know, you’d tell me, wou’n’cha?’
Lol didn’t know what to say. It was an odd, dreamlike encounter, Brinsop Church snuggling into its shadows behind them, only its bell tower showing like a periscope.
‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. But a new verse for the song would make it worthwhile.’
Bax said, ‘What about the fings what reappear?’
‘I thought you hadn’t seen them.’
‘I know a bloke who has,’ Bax said. ‘You interested?’
41
It was still fully light when Bliss reached the entrance to Chris Symonds’s farm, so he drove past, crawled around the lanes for a while. Needed to be sure the kids were in bed.
He drove out towards Moreton-on-Lugg, through the flat-lands, towards the western horizon.
Saw no way round this any more but to take her on. How the hell she’d found out about Annie he still had no idea, but if she knew, then she knew, and he was tired of playing games. He’d let her know that, yes, he was prepared to leave the division. He’d go on the transfer list directly after Easter. With the single proviso that the shit-stirring stopped.
As from now, as from tonight, any more lies about physical abuse, any whispers about him and Annie Howe… anything… and he’d flog his car and give his last penny to the flashest lawyer he could find to trash her through the courts and anywhere else she showed her devious little face.
Tell her now. On the doorstep. No discussion, no explanations, no attempts at self-justification. Then piss off back home, get the best night’s sleep he could manage and throw himself into nailing the killers of the poor bloody Marinescu Sisters before he left Hereford.
Credenhill, rising like a crusty loaf across the shadowed fields, told him he was only a few miles from Magnis Berries, and he felt a pang of guilt about his behaviour there, the way he’d leaned on Vasile Bocean.
And yet…
Why did they leave, Vasile?
I told you. They always seeing dead men, ghostmen.