‘Simply convenient for them both. Mostyn had a side enterprise running adventure holidays – canoeing, rock climbing – but it didn’t have the glamour that an SAS connection confers. The joint enterprise operates under a rather enticing cloak of secrecy – students brought in at night, sometimes blindfolded, or driven around to disorient them. Quite soon, through word of mouth, it became, you know, the thing to do. If you could afford it.’
‘And perhaps we should also mention Ward Savitch.’
‘Chap running champagne shooting weekends for corporate clients. High-level contacts in the City – venerable financial institutions putting their executives into an intensive course designed to make them leaner and fitter. Especially useful – and this is the ingenious part – after the recession and the huge backlash against the financial sector, particularly banks and bankers. The old killer instinct shrivelling under the public spotlight.’
‘So the idea,’ Howe said, ‘is to get them believing in themselves again.’
‘And not only in themselves.’ Lockley looked at Merrily. ‘Apparently.’
Merrily felt small and unprepared, like when you arrived in an exam room and your mind had been wiped.
Sometimes, when she looked up, the room would blur. Forgotten how tired she was. God knew what she must look like. She fingered the bulge of the cigarette packet through the fabric of her bag.
‘Some of this is going to sound a bit… loony.’
‘I’d expect nothing less from you, Ms Watkins,’ Annie Howe said. Then lifted a placating palm. ‘I apologize. Go on.’
‘Building a case against people… not what I do, obviously. All I can give you is possibly enough background to shape some questions. Essentially, Mr Jones follows a pagan religion adopted by the Roman invaders of Britain two thousand years ago. A soldiers’ religion, which-’
There was a tapping and a very tall young guy put his head around the door to say that, down in the canteen, Mr Jones was getting a little restive, making noises about having to attend a dinner.
‘What do you want me to do, ma’am?’
Annie Howe lifted a finger.
‘Perhaps I should have reminded you both that Colin Jones came in this afternoon in connection with last night’s break-in at his premises. He’s downstairs and apparently happy to answer any questions we might have for him.’
‘Rather interesting in itself, that,’ Lockley said. ‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t normally expect a man who’s had a minor break-in to visit the police station just to say he doesn’t want to press charges.’
‘Well… says he was coming into town anyway, but my guess would be that he was disconcerted to find quite a large police presence in his backyard last night.’ Annie Howe turned to Lockley. ‘Get him up?’
‘He knows what you want to talk to him about.’
‘He knows it’s about Spicer.’ Howe looked at Merrily. ‘Looks like you get to ask the questions yourself, Ms Watkins.’
Were those contact lenses magnifying an old malice, or what?
The mouthy ones like Carly, he could enjoy the scrap, so Bliss had left Joss to Karen and Darth. Never been as good with the deep and the silent. Karen had more patience, and she was local and so was Darth. They’d get there. Good as cracked, really.
Bliss sat on his own in a corner of the CID room. All falling into place, who’d done what: one sister killed accidentally, the second purely to keep the lid on it. In cold blood, pitiless. Head repeatedly banged on the bricks until she died. In Hereford. Made you shiver. Who’d suddenly cranked up the violence level in this county?
The sexual assault? Probably an afterthought, to make it look like a rapist attack, but who could say? Who was the bloke, how much of it was down to him? It would doubtless come out, when they brought Victoria Buckland in. Which, in theory, should not be difficult. But then, in theory, they should’ve had her already.
Bliss stood up and went to the window. The end of the rush hour, brake lights like snail trails under the purple sky. Maundy Thursday was always purple, Good Friday black. No matter how lapsed a Catholic you were, Good Friday would always be black.
A black Easter, too, this year, in both his professional and private lives. He might leave the city, find a copper’s job on the other side of the country, but there would still be loose ends here, one of them forever sticking out like a fuse awaiting a lighted match.
His kids. The worst of all scenarios was his kids being brought up by hunt hero Sollers Bull.
Bliss wanted to smash a metal chair into the toughened glass, shatter the skyline.
And there was Annie. Images of Annie, his mind filling with one every few minutes. Tousled hair and a stripy sweater. A shadowy areola under a white nightdress.
The longer he left it, the harder it would be to tell her that he – a copper – hadn’t known about Kirsty and Sollers Bull. Too late now. Maybe he’d write her a letter one day, from a bedsit in Gloucester or Swindon or wherever he wound up.
Bliss stood at the window, watching homebound traffic. Couldn’t see himself going home tonight, not with Buckland out there.
He was no longer tired, anyway; his body was burning with blood sugar.
Here came the footsteps on the stairs. Light and unhurried.
Here was a man who kept quiet as a comrade plunged to his death in the Brecon Beacons. Here was a man who calmly dismantled his marriage. Here was a man who raped his friend’s wife in the grounds of a hotel in Buckinghamshire and then said goodnight.
‘Mr Jones, ma’am,’ the tall detective said.
William Lockley did the introductions. Knowing him from the old days, brothers in arms, all that.
‘Byron, this is Detective Chief Inspector Howe. Senior Investigating Officer in the Mansel Bull murder case.’
Byron Jones nodded. He wore a dark suit and a mid-blue silk tie to match his eyes. He was guided to the foot of the table, facing the door. The optimum no-threat comfort seat, Merrily thought, as Lockley moved to sit opposite her, next to Byron.
‘And this is Mrs Merrily Watkins,’ Lockley said, ‘whom I think we could describe as an investigator with the Hereford Diocese.’
‘Really.’ Byron turned his bright blue eyes briefly on Merrily. ‘What does the Diocese investigate?’
‘Overdue books from the Chained Library,’ Merrily said. ‘That kind of thing.’
Byron didn’t smile, by then looking away. He was not what she’d expected. But then, what had she expected? Cropped hair, multiple scars?
‘Byron,’ Lockley said, ‘I think I should say at this point that this is just a discussion… a chat. Without prejudice. It will not be recorded, it will not be used in evidence. This began as a routine police inquiry, which seems to have crossed over into our territory, and, frankly, we’re all a bit confused and hoping you can help us.’
Merrily wondered if this sounded as phoney and patronizing to Byron as it did to her. Byron said nothing.
‘As you know,’ Lockley said, ‘the Regiment lost its new chaplain this week. You’ll also know the circumstances. And that it was a bit of a shock for all of us who knew Syd.’
‘Myself included,’ Byron said.
‘Though none of us, I’d guess, knew him quite as well as you did, Byron.’
‘He was a mate.’
‘But not recently.’
‘No. Not recently.’
Another knock on the door. Two uniformed male cops came in, ostensibly with coffee, but possibly, Merrily was thinking, to familiarize themselves with the layout and seating positions of the people in the room. It had been William Lockley’s idea that they should place Byron Jones near the door, where you’d never seat a suspect.
Annie Howe took the chair next to Merrily, opposite the two men. The first lights were coming on in the city below them. You could see the greying steeple of St Peter’s, where the late Frank Collins had been a curate.
Byron shook his head at Annie Howe’s offer of sugar for his coffee, turned to William Lockley.
‘Is there any suggestion that Syd’s death was suspicious?’