44
No more than a third of the tables in the lounge bar were taken. Merrily had followed Jane to the one under the smallest leaded window, its old glass thick and fogged like frogspawn.
‘Cider?’
‘Please.’ Jane slid into the short bench under the window. Merrily bought two medium-sweet ciders from Barry, looking around for Lol. No sign. Barry gave her a mildly inquiring look; she leaned across the bar, voice lowered.
‘Liz was quite forthcoming, in the end. Though why I should tell you any of it, considering how much you didn ’ t tell me…’
One side of Barry’s mouth twitched. Merrily carried the ciders back to the table. Shadows hung shiftily either side of the mullion.
‘So archaeology is, erm, history.’
Jane didn’t smile.
‘It’s a joke, anyway. Archaeologists can’t get to grips with anything much any more, unless the council wants to do something crass with the land. And whatever they find, it still gets built over. I’d just keep getting annoyed.’
‘You’ll still keep getting annoyed if you don’t have any qualifications. The only difference is, you’ll be regarded as an annoying crank. No one will have to listen to you.’
Jane shrugged. Merrily sipped cautiously at her cider.
‘Or maybe you’re worried that the world of archaeology isn’t yet sufficiently attuned to the concepts of Bronze Age geomancy and earth energies.’
‘ You accept all that.’
‘Some of it. But I’m not an academic, just a jobbing C of E shaman in the ruins of Christianity.’
‘And you don’t believe that for one-’
‘Still wake up in the night in a cold sweat, watching a ghostly Dawkins coming through the wall.’
Jane’s smile was a long way behind.
‘You won’t have to keep me. I’ll get some kind of job.’
‘Yes. I’m sure you will.’ Merrily thinking, don’t push it. Don’t get into an argument. Plenty of time yet. Well, there wasn’t, but… ‘Actually, I was going to ask you something. As you know more about the ancient world than I do. Though maybe Roman archaeology is not your thing.’
‘Prehistory, my thing. We know too much about the Romans. Anyway, Coops is your man, he’s well into the Romans. What were you going to ask me?’
‘Credenhill?’
‘Not Roman.’
‘No, but there was a Roman town below it.’
‘Magnis.’
‘All under farmland now, right?’
‘Yeah, but probably more extensive than they imagined. Credenhill? Is this something to do with Syd Spicer?’
‘Possibly.’
Merrily gazed into the inglenook, where the fire was in, just, the logs smoky grey and not apple. OK, here they were, mother and daughter, in the pub. Adults. Not much, if anything, she couldn’t discuss with Jane any more.
‘Syd was at Huw’s chapel last week, genning himself up on aspects of deliverance. We never found out what he was looking for. I need to find out whether that had any relevance to his death.’
‘Need to?’
‘Don’t ask.’
Jane shook her head.
‘You lead a very weird life, Mum.’
‘I know.’
‘What’s up with Barry? Why’s he keep looking at you?’
‘I think he wants to talk.’
‘But not with me here, right?’
‘He can wait.’
‘No, it’s OK.’ Jane sank the last of her cider, slid to the end of the bench. ‘I need to call Eirion again. He’s coming over at the weekend. Staying tonight with his dad and his step-mum and then coming over to Hereford to see some mates from school, and then…’
‘He wants to stay with us?’
‘If that’s OK. I said I’d meet him in Hereford tomorrow afternoon.’
‘It’s always OK. But are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK. I’m glad we…’
‘Always remember we’re on the same side,’ Merrily said. ‘You know that.’
‘Yeah. I do. Thanks for the drink, Mum. And like… thanks for… you know… not biting my head off.’
And she was gone, leaving Merrily deeply unsettled. Thanks for not biting my head off? Had she really said that? Jane?
A new glass and a bottle of Brecon spring water arrived on the table. Barry slipped into Jane’s seat.
‘Didn’t think you’d want another cider, but I can go back.’
‘No, that’s fine. Thank you. How much do I-?’
‘On the house.’ Barry nodded towards the fire door, through which Jane had left. ‘Problems there?’
‘Jane’s a bit… overwrought about proposals for the village. Can’t help thinking she’s heard something about Savitch and the Swan. Not from me.’
‘Nice when a kid bothers about heritage.’
‘Yes. I suppose it is. Never felt part of anywhere before, and so if she thinks anyone’s trying to damage it…’ Merrily poured out some water. ‘I suppose you want to know how I got on with Liz. Put it this way, I’ve learned more than enough in the course of the day to support your opinion that Byron Jones is a man to be avoided if at all possible.’
‘Good.’
‘Unfortunately, it may not be possible, so I’d quite like you to tell me everything you were keeping quiet about last night. “They’re dead,” Barry. “All dead now.” What’s that mean?’
Barry wasn’t drinking tonight. He glanced over his shoulder.
‘Could mean a lot of things.’
‘I could go and ask James Bull-Davies, and he’d ask William Lockley, and Lockley would feed it back up the line.’
‘And five weeks later James would come back and tell you your question was inappropriate.’ Barry looked down into his cupped hands on the tabletop. ‘Remind me which of us started all this, Merrily, and then tell me how necessary it is to go on with it.’
Merrily moistened her lips with spring water.
‘Can we go back to when you said Byron had changed. Last night, you suggested he’d become abnormally ruthless. When did that happen?’
Barry looked around again. Nobody was close.
‘I’d say there was a change in him after the Iranian Embassy operation.’
‘But I thought he wasn’t-’
‘I know he wasn’t. But he thought he should ’ve been. Missed out on all the acclaim. No kiss from Maggie Thatcher.’ Barry shrugged. ‘Luck of the draw, but he didn’t see it that way.’
Merrily remembered watching it live on TV. A sunny early evening in London, a very public operation. Normal TV programmes cancelled for the final act of the big news story of the week. Half the nation gathered round the box as cameras tracked the masked men abseiling down from the roof, into the embassy where six terrorists were holding twenty-six hostages. Smoke bombs going off. All but one of the hostages rescued, all but one of the terrorists killed. Shot dead, with practised efficiency, by the boys from Hereford, some of whom, even now, were only ever filmed in silhouette. James Bond for real, and it had turned soldiers into superstars.
‘When you say the luck of the draw…?’
‘They just pulled the boys from the Killing House. It’s all in the public domain now. There’s this training building they call the Killing House, where we practised how not to shoot the good guys by mistake. Word comes through there’s a job in London, they pick the boys who’ve just completed that aspect of their counter-terrorism training. Driven out of Hereford, down to London in the white Range Rovers.’
‘Frank Collins was one, wasn’t he?’
‘Did the smoke bombs.’
‘Why did Byron think he’d been passed over?’
‘Because maybe he was. I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t there, but he might’ve made some small error of judgement in the Killing House or elsewhere. Situation like that, you can’t afford the smallest mistake. A guy who was closer to him than me, he reckoned Byron was convinced he’d been dropped because they thought he didn’t have the bottle for it. That was how he seemed to have translated it.’
‘I thought you weren’t even selected for the SAS unless your courage-’
‘He’s the kind of guy gets fixations. Even the Regiment can’t alter your personality. Something drove him further into himself and into his training. Personal training. He never stopped. No more social life for Byron. When he got married, we’re thinking, where’d she come from?’