‘You really think he was?’ Hadn’t seemed like a murderer to Merrily. Not even a murderer by proxy. He’s… driven. A lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm… likeable. ‘Rather than just a victim of rumours?’
‘He was…’ Bell came to her feet and teetered forward as though she was on stage, a little stoned and about to grasp a mike stand. ‘He was a despicable murderer. He destroyed the most important thing in my life.’
Lol didn’t move. Bell’s voice dropped to a hiss.
‘That boy wouldn’t fall off the Keep. He knew every stone of that castle. He was as sure-footed as a goat. And the suicide theory – that he was afraid to go back to the bullies in Hereford – that’s shit, too. His mother must have told him about our arrangement. His mistake was to tell Jonathan.’
Bell plunged her hands into the pockets of her long coat and wafted it tightly across her, turning away and making the candle flames shiver as if the tower itself was shaking.
Lol thought of what he’d learned from Merrily and what he’d read. It made sense: Jonathan Scole watching Bell form an increasingly intimate relationship with the history boy – whom he had introduced to her, whom he’d made a part of his ghost-walk just to get close to the mother who’d rejected him. Rejected him twice, and now…
… Now the final insult: the adoption of a son.
Lol thought about Andy Mumford and his Plascarreg theories. If this was true, then Mumford was sailing dangerously close to the wrong wind.
‘Bell…’
She turned towards him, strands of white-gold hair across one cheek.
‘When exactly did you come to this conclusion?’ Lol asked.
‘I don’t know. Been staring me in the face for… It came to a head last night. I fell. I was walking… in the churchyard, among the yews, and I fell. Hit my head on a root. I was half stunned and suddenly bitterly angry. Everything was falling apart, on this night of all— I decided on impulse to go to his flat and confront him and… and he was drunk. I told him I’d been attacked in the street. He thought… the crass bastard thought I wanted to sleep with him – so like his miserable father. He said he was going to phone your… Mary. So I walked out.’
‘And then Merrily came.’
‘Found me singing under the castle. It’s the only way I stay sane on nights like this. Singing to Marion. Singing “Wee Willie Winkie” to… Anyway, he must have followed us back. He saw me put the… the mandolin case in the yew tree. And then he came back with a crowbar or something and he forced his way in and he took it.’
She bent down and moved the tray of candles to one side. Not much left of some of them now, flames shrinking down into half an inch of hollowing wax. And Lol saw that the tray had not been on the floor itself but on a small black musical-instrument case, which she lifted now and cradled in her arms.
The mandolin case.
She took it to the battlements. It was almost dark now.
‘You’ll have to go soon,’ Bell said. ‘I can’t let the candles burn away.’
‘Bell… it makes no sense.’
‘It’s all the sense there’s ever been,’ she said. ‘I’ve always had what I regarded as a temporary life. All I’m looking for in death is a kind of permanence.’
She was on her feet, the heavy coat hanging open to reveal a long, cream-coloured dress, soiled now with large, conspicuous stains, their colours indeterminate in the candlelight. Standing close to the wall and hugging the mandolin case to her breast, she began singing, in a tremulous little-girl voice.
Wee Willie Winkie
Running through the town
Upstairs, downstairs in his nightgown
Rapping at the windows
Crying through the lock
Are all the children in their beds?
It’s past eight o’clock.
Sandy Gee was up against the wall of the fat round tower in the Inner Bailey. She had a rubber-covered torch, kept nervously testing its beam on the stonework, having sent one of the uniforms off with a plastic Pepsi bottle, to find a tap.
‘And salt,’ Merrily said.
‘Salt?’
‘Holy water involves salt.’
‘Maybe we should hold it in one of the bloody restaurants,’ Sandy Gee said.
‘I wish we could hold it in there.’ Merrily nodded at the round tower. ‘Plenty of room, and apparently it used to be the medieval chapel of St Mary Magdalene. Not an option, however.’
‘It certainly isn’t. We need to do it now, in that dirty little tower.’
‘Erm, a warning,’ Merrily said. ‘The aim of this is to bring release and create calm. But we don’t know what we’re dealing with. And if there’s any kind of… if you want to call it energy… in there, and the kid’s in a position where she’s very close to a long drop…’
Sandy shone the torch beam into her face. ‘I hope to God you’re not suggesting this might actually have the reverse effect? Longbeach said you knew what you were doing.’
Siân Callaghan-Clarke cleared her throat. ‘Inspector, I think what my colleague is saying is that this is not an exact science.’
‘Or a science at all,’ Merrily said. ‘Perhaps, under cover of the service, you or one of your officers should move closer so that, in the event of any unexpected reaction…’
‘You often get unexpected reactions?’
‘There is no expected reaction,’ Siân said. ‘It’s about faith.’
‘Christ,’ Sandy said.
48
Running Through the Town
SAM SAID, ‘WAS that you in the paper?’
‘It’s a lousy picture, isn’t it?’
Merrily was standing in the beam of Sandy’s torch. All she could see of the girl was a silhouette against the opening in the wall. It was cold and damp in here, colder than outside, a rank and clingy cold.
‘Why aren’t you wearing… you know?’
‘I—’
‘Sam, it’s like the police,’ Siân said. ‘Inspector Gee isn’t in uniform either. Inspector Gee and Mrs Watkins… When you reach their level, you don’t have to wear the uniform.’
Merrily glanced at Siân, stone-faced on the fringe of the torch beam.
Wow.
‘How do I…?’ Sam inched back, towards the window. ‘How do I know it’s not a scam? Why you doing it now?’
‘It’s taken a lot of preparation,’ Merrily said. ‘We don’t take it lightly. We’ve had holy water and things to prepare. And I have to walk all around the area, sealing off points of access. We don’t want to let bad things seep through.’
There was silence – and then Sam said, ‘I’m the bad thing.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘She won’t let me sleep,’ Sam said.
‘Who are we talking about, Sam?’
Siân whispered to Merrily, ‘Give me a moment?’
‘OK. Two minutes, Sam? Some final things to organize.’
Around the corner, in the one-time great hall, Siân said, ‘I don’t know if what Nigel managed to elicit from her might help?’
‘Anything might help. I don’t see this as a cosmetic exercise any more.’
‘In which case… Nigel, I think, also became aware that we might be dealing with something unexpected, to which counselling might not provide a complete solution.’
‘He admitted that?’
‘I said, I think he became aware of it.’
‘Ah. Go on.’
‘The Pegler girl was a bully. It’s hardly unknown for someone who is herself subject to emotional bullying to find someone else on whom she can inflict stress. Pegler was taunted by her peers – boys, mostly, I would guess – for being overweight and unattractive. She initially sought solace with Samantha – a slightly younger and somewhat malleable neighbour. But Jemima was a very angry, rather vindictive person, and soon began to control Samantha, making her do things she would not normally have considered at all appropriate behaviour – like experiments with pills and shoplifting. And then, seeing how far she could push it, Jemima lured away Samantha’s boyfriend, with sexual favours, thus enhancing her own power and her superiority.’