‘… you little fucking…’
‘No!’
Lol flinging himself between them, hands out.
Saw it coming, twisted sideways but still caught the fist on the top of the shoulder, which really hurt, then saw Cornel’s colleagues closing around him, with a sickly wafting of wine-breath.
‘Now, hold up…’
James Bull-Davies wading in. Stooping a bit these days, though it might have been the weight of whatever he kept in the fraying pockets of his tweed jacket.
‘Might one suggest you chaps cool off outside?’
‘… fuck’s this?’
‘Ladies present,’ James said briskly.
‘ That bitch?’ Cornel’s face thrust into James’s. ‘You saw what she did?’ Close to screeching, losing it. ‘ Saw that, did you? Did you?’
Lol saw an extensive dark stain on the front of Cornel’s jeans.
‘Shouldn’t render you impotent for long,’ James said mildly. ‘Big man, little girl, be disinclined to make a fuss, myself.’
Somebody laughed. The inglenook was oozing smoke like some ancient railway tunnel.
‘All right. Enough now, lads.’ Barry was here, in his quiet suit, his slim bow tie. ‘Accidents happen in the dark. If you’d like to leave your trousers at reception, sir, we can get them cleaned for you.’
Cornel was looking at Jane, his eyes sunk below the bony ridge of his sweating brow.
‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said, ‘girlie.’
Lol felt Jane shaking and put an arm around her and steered her back to the table by the fire. She smiled slackly.
‘Cocked that up.’ Lifting up her hands, all wet. ‘More on me than him.’
‘What did you say to him, Jane?’
‘I was just, you know, so pissed off at the idea of them coming in all droit de seigneur kind of thing – and he was obviously legless. So I thought I’ll get him talking, see what I can get out of him?’
‘That’s why you wanted to go and buy the drinks?’
‘Oh, Lol, it was an impulse thing!’ Her face shone. ‘Like, it’s important to know, don’t you think, what Savitch is letting them get away with? Like, if we’re going to get the bastard closed down before he turns the village into the blood-sport capital of the New Cotswolds-’
‘Jane, he’s investment. A lot of people love him.’
‘ Nobody loves him! And we don’t want that kind of investment. We’ve got archaeological remains, we’ve got the strong possibility of a Bronze Age henge with actual stones. We could have loads of tourism – worthwhile tourism, not these… scum.’
‘All right, they love his money,’ Lol said sadly.
‘They just think they might need his money, so they don’t like to tell the bastard where to stick it.’ Jane glowered for a moment, then looked up, wary. ‘You’re not going to tell Mum about this, are you?’
Lol sighed.
‘So what did he tell you, Jane?’
‘Actually, it’s not funny. I was, like, what do you do at The Court, and he’s going, Shoot things, of course, and I’m like, Things? Go on. And he thought… I mean, I could see he thought I was…’
‘What?’
‘Like turned on by it? The way some women are. The hunt-ball floozies? He said they’d shoot anything that got in the way. Deer… pussycats, he said.’
‘Probably exaggerating to try and sound hard.’
‘I could tell he was waiting for me to go, Oh, I’d love to come and watch you wielding your weapon. Lol, they’re-Oh shit, look at him now…’
Lol half-turned, pain spinning into his shoulder where he’d caught Cornel’s fist. Cornel was standing next to the door to the stairs. His eyes seemed to be physically retracting under the shelf of his brow as he looked around the room in the half-light, plucking at the damp patch on his trousers.
‘Wherever you are, you little bitch,’ he said mildly, ‘I just want you to know this isn’t over.’
Lol looked around. Maybe only he and Jane had heard Cornel, because there’d been a sudden scraping of chairs, exclamations and then a hollow near-silence in the bar as a small circle formed around Barry in the centre of the room.
‘ Where was this?’ James Bull-Davies snapped. ‘Say again.’
‘Oldcastle?’ Barry said. ‘Have I got that right? Beyond Credenhill, but before you get to the Wye. Don’t know any details. Mate of mine with an apple farm was just passing it on in case we saw any police action. Cops are all over there, apparently.’
‘Yes, but who-?’
‘Oh, Mansel…?’ Barry stepped back. ‘Gawd, James. That mean he’s a relation?’
‘Cousin. Of sorts.’ James straightened up, bit his lower lip. ‘Hell’s bells.’
A flaking log rolled out of the fire up against the mesh of the fireguard. Danny Thomas came back and sat down, pushing fingers through his beard.
‘Barry just had a call from a mate. Feller been found dead. Farmer.’
Lol said. ‘What… storm-related?’
‘Sounds like way too many coppers for that,’ Danny said.
5
Up against the brick wall under a bleary bulkhead lamp, Bliss was struggling into his Durex suit. Big, wide puddles in the yard, four of them rippling like something tidal in the lights and the remains of the gale. The fifth puddle much smaller, not rippling at all, the colour and consistency of bramble jelly.
Farmers. Never felt comfortable around farmers, not even dead farmers.
‘Boss…’
Terry Stagg came lumbering out of a litter of uniforms and techies shielding the body from the wind, Bliss looking up from the flapping plastic.
‘DCI know about this, Terry?’
Realizing this was the very last question he’d normally ask. This was getting ridiculous. He peered at Terry Stagg’s eyes in the lamplight. Terry was working on a beard to cover up his second chin. His eyes looked tired. And faintly puzzled?
Shit.
‘Boss, it was actually the DCI who said to get you out. Be more convenient for DI Bliss were her actual-’
‘Bitch.’
Stagg said nothing. Bliss turned away, nerves burning like a skin rash. Probably digging himself an even bigger pit.
‘My impression was that the DCI won’t be coming out tonight at all,’ Stagg said. ‘Which is unusual, given the social status of the deceased.’
‘Don’t question it.’ Bliss zipped the Durex suit from groin to throat. ‘Give thanks.’
He plucked the elasticated sleeve away from his watch: just gone nine. Taken him the best part of half an hour to get here from home. Blown-off branches all over the roads, one lacerating the flank of his car as he squirmed past on the grass verge.
‘So this is…?’
‘Mr Mansel Bull, boss. Fifty-seven. Farmer, as you know. Old family.’
‘Double-page spread in the Hereford Times kind of old?’
‘Maybe special supplement,’ Terry Stagg said.
‘Not short of a few quid, Tez. Lorra leckie going to waste, or is that you?’
The yard was ablaze with lights on sensors, like a factory, and alive with bellowing creaks, the smashing of blown-open doors, the restive moaning of the cattle in the sheds – Bliss thinking all this was like the sounds of his own nerves amplified.
‘Billy Grace?’
‘On his way,’ Terry said. ‘Allegedly. But we do have time-of-death to within half an hour or so. Mr Bull’d gone to a parish-council meeting arranged for seven, but called off due to the conditions. Sounds like he came directly back. Walking into… something.’
A council meeting explained the suit and tie, what you could see of it under a glistening beard of blood. Hard to say if his head was still even attached. Was that bone? Was that an actual split skull? Bliss stepped back. You never quite got used to this.
‘Who found him?’
‘Brother. Heard the cattle moaning in the shed, so he had a walk up. With his shotgun.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘Not loaded, he claims. Lives in the big bungalow down towards the river. Mr Bull lived here, on his own.’
‘On his own – in that? ’
Security lights on the barn opposite flushed out mellow old brick and about fifteen dark windows on three storeys. Oldcastle Farm. The house and buildings wedged into a jagged promontory above the Wye, embedded like a fort. Georgian or Queen Anne or whatever, had to be big enough for a family of twelve, plus servants.