Before Lockley could reply, Howe said quickly that nothing had been ruled out, and Byron appraised her, thoughtful.
‘You think somebody might have killed him, Chief Inspector?’
‘We’re still examining the evidence.’
‘Or did he kill himself?’
Merrily said, ‘If he had killed himself, would that be a surprise to you, Mr Jones?’
Byron looked at her properly for the first time, and she felt able to study him. Older than she’d imagined. Older than Syd, although Syd had been the first to retire so he actually might be a little younger. He looked like… maybe like a cathedral canon, ascetically lean, with thick white hair. He looked… above all, he looked calm and distinguished.
‘Suicide’s hardly unprecedented among men who served in my former regiment,’ Byron said. ‘Post-traumatic stress disorder is far from fully understood.’
His teeth, unexpectedly, were jagged, with thin black lines down the front ones as if they’d been scored by a pencil. It made him look as if he had more teeth, as if he was smiling when he wasn’t. It made Merrily think of SAS men who were caught and tortured. Teeth and pliers.
She said, ‘Can you think of any good reason why Syd would be particularly stressed?’
‘How long you got?’
‘I was thinking, since leaving the army.’
‘We didn’t see much of one another.’
‘Any particular reason for that?’
‘Mrs… I’m sorry…?’
‘Watkins.’
‘I may be wrong here,’ Byron said, ‘but I think when a clergyman rejoins the army he’s no longer under the authority of the Diocese.’
‘He was a mate, Byron,’ Merrily said.
He turned his blue eyes on her again – an emptiness – a hole where love and humanity should be – and she fought against a blink. Instinctively putting a hand to her chest, where a pectoral cross would lie. Nothing; she’d left the vicarage too quickly this morning. She heard Annie Howe’s voice, flat and formal.
‘Mr Jones, perhaps you could tell us how you came to develop what we can only call a pagan sect inside the Special Air Service.’
63
Byron scowled.
‘Then how would you describe it?’ Annie Howe said.
‘I would call it,’ Byron said, ‘a discipline.’
Of course he would. Merrily was feeling hollow with fatigue, yet nursing a need to smoke this man out.
‘A discipline based on worship of a Roman god?’ she said.
‘I dislike the word worship,’ Byron said. ‘In the army we did not worship our officers.’
Merrily recalled that in the SAS only senior officers were addressed as sir. No lack of respect. The Regiment was informal; it was about mutual trust and reliance, practicalities.
‘You saw Mithras as your mate?’
If Byron was surprised that she knew about Mithras, he wasn’t showing it.
‘I would call him a device.’
‘Is it possible you could explain that for us?’
Byron said nothing. William Lockley pushed his chair back.
‘Not as if paganism’s against the law, Byron. We’ve moved on since witch-burning.’
‘In that case, why’s the Hereford Diocese here?’
Neat.
‘She’s here because neither Annie nor I would know what the hell you were talking about, Byron,’ Lockley said.
‘Oh, I think you would, William. I think you’d have a better idea, to be honest. This is my business. My living. I’m hardly the first veteran to use what he learned in the Regiment as the basis for a new career. But carry on, Mrs Watson.’
‘Erm… all this started back at the old Stirling Lines in Hereford, I think. When some Roman remains were discovered within the precincts?’
‘Coins, pottery. Not much.’
‘But enough to get you thinking.’
‘A few of us had an interest in military history. We’d be spotting things when we were out and about. Roman roads, Celtic forts. Having a bit of Welsh in the background, I thought I identified with the Celts. But the Celts were a bunch of drunken hooligans compared with the Romans. The Romans had a commitment which even today is unequalled.’
‘Except possibly by you,’ Merrily said. ‘By the Regiment.’
‘If you like.’
‘The last all-male corner of the army.’
Byron leaned back, stretching his legs under the table so that Merrily instinctively moved hers out of the way.
‘You know much about Mithraism, Mrs Watson? Or maybe think you do. Maybe you’re someone who’s looked at it from the Christian perspective, thinks she knows what it represents and misses the whole point.’
‘Mithraism was a soldiers’ religion. You could see parallels.’
‘For a start, I dislike the word religion. But yeah, we were young men. Full of energy. You’d have to be dull not to recognize some of it.’
‘You mean like initiation rites. Out of darkness into light. Through barriers. Skirting the boundaries of death.’
‘Mind games. William knows.’
Lockley said, ‘If I’m getting this right, I suppose the best and most widely known example would be the one where the chaps are taken up in a helicopter, blindfolded and ordered to jump out without a parachute. Not realizing the chopper’s only a few metres above the ground. Is that what you mean?’
‘Mind games. The Romans didn’t have that kind of terminology, but they understood.’
‘The twelve tortures?’ Merrily said.
‘Yeah, we found good parallels there. In physical and mental endurance of hardship. I could give you names of historians and psychologists that we consulted. The aim being to develop a progression of exercises, linked to the Mithraic grades, that would lead to a level of… resilience. Courage, essentially. Attributes of manhood which some people think have been allowed to lapse.’
Lockley was nodding, encouragingly.
‘My students come out of this fundamentally altered,’ Byron said. ‘Better men. More successful men, in every respect. If they’ve got the balls to see it through.’
‘And the money,’ Lockley said. ‘Presumably.’
‘We’re not a charity, William. It costs. A lot. But you ask the guys we’ve trained if they think it was worth it.’
‘We? That’s you and Mostyn?’
‘He mainly provides and maintains the hardware.’
‘And has he been initiated?’ Merrily asked.
‘Not one of my words. We don’t even use the term Mithraism to the students. Not until they’re able to understand what it means.’
‘But Mr Mostyn would’ve been your first civilian… whatever the word is – neophyte?’
Byron winced.
‘I’d also like to stress that the students choose how far to take it. Some will drop out. Most of them will drop out at some stage. But a small number will cross a threshold and begin to revel in it.’
‘An elite.’
‘I’ve no quarrel with that word. We encourage levels of excellence.’ Byron looked up, narrowing his eyes. ‘Do we need all these lights? It’s not very green, is it? Also a bit like an interrogation. That what this is, William? An interrogation?’
An edge of impatience, now. William Lockley looked at Annie Howe. She stood up, went to the switches on the wall and killed all the lights except for two at the top of the room. The reflections of the conference table vanished from the window and the early glow of the city came up under the long beach of the evening sky.
‘Thank you,’ Byron said. ‘I find light pollution offensive.’
Annie Howe sat down again, next to Merrily.
‘You seem to be saying this is all pure psychology rather than religion.’
‘Finally sinking in, is it?’ Byron looked pained. ‘I mean, do I look like a fantasist? We analysed Mithraism, took it apart, found out how it worked, then reconstructed it for our purposes. The Romans weren’t hippy-dippy spiritual types. They were practical and pragmatic. This is a system for self-development. The only one of us who ever talked about religion was Syd Spicer.’
Merrily said, ‘For confirmation, Syd was a member of the original history club?’