Merrily righted her cup, pulled out a tissue to mop up the coffee. Bloody hell.
‘And Kirsty’s family also know,’ Sollers said, relaxed again now. ‘And approve. Everyone who needs to know knows… except, presumably, for Bliss.’
Annie Howe said nothing, but something in her face quite visibly flinched.
‘Too busy hiding his own indiscretions,’ Sollers said.
Annie Howe had started to say something. It appeared to catch in her throat. For a moment she looked almost nauseous, and maybe Sollers glimpsed that, too; he slid lithely away from the stove, switched on more lights.
‘My information is that a physical relationship between serving police officers in the same division is normally frowned upon to the extent that, should it become known about, one of the officers is immediately put on the transfer list. Who would you rather left Hereford, Annie: Bliss, or-’
‘I think you should consider…’ Annie Howe’s voice cold, even for her ‘… very carefully before you continue.’
The lights were unhealthily bright, halogen hell. Sollers dragged out a chair and sat down directly opposite them.
‘Bliss?’ he said. ‘Or Sergeant Dowell?’
Annie Howe was motionless.
‘Pot… kettle… black,’ Sollers said.
‘You have any proof of this, Mr Bull?’
‘Mrs Bliss has been aware of it for quite some time. And she should know, don’t you think?’
Annie was silent for a couple of seconds.
‘Yes,’ she said quite slowly. ‘She should know.’
‘And all this,’ Sollers said, ‘relates to the murder of my brother how?’
‘Did your brother know?’
No hesitation from Annie. In the pink light, Sollers Bull’s face froze for just an instant.
‘Your brother,’ Annie said. ‘Did he know about the resumption of your friendship with Mrs Bliss?’
‘My brother and I didn’t discuss social life. We moved in different circles. And you know what, Annie? I’m not putting up with this any longer. I’m going to ask you to leave.’
‘ Did your brother know?’
‘Get out,’ Sollers said.
Annie Howe drove the Audi back up the track with the headlights on full beam, took the left at a fork, let the car crawl up to the stone gateposts and a cracked sandstone sign.
OLDCASTLE
The metal gate to the drive was closed, no lights. Rearing beyond it, the house looked to Merrily like a derelict nursing home: three storeys, a flat sheen of moonlight like tin plate on its highest windows.
Annie Howe flashed the Audi’s headlights at the gates and waited, lowering her window as a uniformed policeman emerged from a smaller gate to the side of the main entrance.
‘Don’t bother with the big gates, George, I’ll leave the car out here.’
‘Ma’am, you do know they’re looking for you?’
‘I can imagine. I’m not here.’
‘Bad night, Ma’am.’
‘Yes.’
‘I never trust a full moon,’ George said.
‘Nonsense.’ Howe turned to Merrily. ‘You spare me another hour?’
‘You had a phone call. Before you started talking to Sollers Bull.’
Annie Howe pushed her hair back.
‘Yes. I had a phone call.’ She parked to the left of the gates, leaving the engine running. ‘The woman Bliss was looking for, the prime suspect in the Marinescu case… he found her.’
‘Oh.’
‘She was attending – if not running – an illegal cockfight in the cellar of a well-known flophouse and brothel on the Plascarreg. The woman is a large, violent sociopath, and the cellar was also full of men who have no reason to love the police. For reasons known only to himself, Bliss went down there. On his own.’
‘Oh God…’
‘At 19.20, a 999 call was made by the elderly woman who owns the place. Uniform turned out in force, blocked all the entrances to the Plascarreg, caught the suspect trying to smash someone else’s car through a security fence. Five other arrests. Males.’
‘And…?’
‘Bliss was found in the ring. He was taken to Hereford and then transferred to the ICU.’ Annie Howe’s face was tinted in the bitter-orange haze of the dashboard lights as the engine died. ‘They say he’s in what, in a few hours, will probably qualify as a coma.’
Shouldering open the car door, ejecting herself into the night.
71
It was cold now; there might even have been a frost. A stray cloud was draped like a washed-out rag over the bowl of the moon, the only lamp was in the farmyard at Oldcastle.
‘You haven’t got a coat?’ Annie Howe said.
‘It was actually quite springlike earlier on. I just jumped in the car.’
‘I’ve got a spare one in the boot, if you…’
‘Listen,’ Merrily said, ‘shouldn’t you be back in Hereford?’
‘I’m not a doctor.’
Annie Howe walked away into the centre of the yard. She had a flashlight but hadn’t switched it on. The mobile incident room was parked at the top of the drive, the bulk of it concealed by an extended barn.
The yard was far too quiet for a farm.
‘We had to get the livestock moved,’ Annie Howe said, ‘so forensic could spend some time in the sheds and barns. Not that they turned up anything useful.’
The flagstones were slick underfoot as if the blood was still here, still wet. Merrily thought about those apocryphal stories where the blood from a murder never dried.
‘Are they going to call you, if… if there’s any change?’
‘Dowell’s at the hospital.’
‘You do know there’s no truth in what he said about Bliss and Karen Dowell?’
Yet was it so unlikely that Frannie Bliss, in the long nights of the coldest winter for many years, would seek refuge with someone who spoke his language? Maybe why he’d been so remote lately?
‘Dowell has more sense,’ Annie Howe said. ‘Either Bull’s lying, or Kirsty’s got the wrong end of the stick. Not that… there necessarily is a stick.’
The edge had gone from her voice. Drained of attitude, she looked waiflike in the moonlight. The long coat was buttoned around her throat; she sank both hands into its pockets, staring at the ground.
‘Jesus Christ, I thought he knew Sollers was sleeping with his wife.’
‘How could you know and he didn’t?’
‘It emerged during routine inquiries. Stagg found out. Couldn’t wait to tell me. I couldn’t imagine how Francis could fail to know about his wife’s former relationship, but you forget how secretive rural families can be. I realise now that if he had known he would’ve been very polite and distant with Sollers and unloaded the investigation on someone else long before he was ordered to.’
‘To give himself some space to stitch Sollers up from behind?’
‘You really do know him, don’t you?
‘I’d probably have been more help in there if I’d known what you were looking for,’ Merrily said.
‘I’ve never known anyone break down and confess to a serious crime. You know you’re actually getting somewhere when they start to say no comment, meaning yes, I did it, now prove it.’
‘Did he say no comment?’
‘He told us to get out. If he was entirely innocent he’d be determined to carry on talking until he’d convinced us of it. “Get out” means “I need time to think.”’
Annie Howe gazed at the moon’s bevelled reflection in one of Oldcastle’s attic windows. Merrily was thinking that if this was anyone else she’d be asking if they could pray together for Frannie. Most of them would humour her.
‘Nobody’s allowed in to see him,’ Annie said. ‘When they are, I’ll be there.’
‘Good.’
Merrily looked up at the cold-haloed moon, recalling the first time she’d met Bliss. The spiritual cleansing of a country church which had been desecrated: a crow’s entrails spread over the altar, a stench of urine. Early days for her, then, in deliverance; she’d asked if they could send a cop who might believe that what she was doing wasn’t a joke. Bliss had been a detective sergeant then, with a fullish head of ginger hair. I’m a Catholic. That all right for you?