‘Christ,’ Merrily said.
Long shot of the tower. The reporter saying, ‘And that’s the terrible question that just about everyone here is asking tonight…’
The camera finding the reporter – evidently live, picking up off the back of his taped report – standing outside the castle, on a walkway halfway down the banks above the river, his spread arms conveying universal incomprehension.
‘… Did the girl come here to kill herself in a macabre imitation of the death of Robbie Walsh? There was nothing to suggest that Robbie’s death was anything other than an accident. But two identical accidents at the same castle? As the Mayor said, the implications of this are, to say the least, disturbing.’
In the studio, the presenter, a blonde young enough to be the reporter’s daughter, said, ‘Paul, do we know yet where exactly the girl had come from – how far she’d travelled?’
‘Tammy, my information is that the police do have a name, and the parents of a fifteen-year-old girl are, at this moment, being brought to Ludlow in the hope of a formal identification. But it could be several hours before that name is formally released.’
‘Is there any connection with Robbie Walsh?’
‘It’s a question that’s been asked, but there’s no reason to suppose there was any connection between them at all – except, of course, the circumstances of their deaths.’
‘And what does that say about Robbie’s death, Paul?’
‘Well, there’s no particular suggestion that it throws a different light on Robbie’s death. There’ll always be an element of mystery about that. What I’d guess police and townsfolk are asking is: was this girl, in some awful way, inspired by… by the way he died and, of course, the dramatic location?’
‘Obviously, Paul, this is something nobody could have predicted. But how could it possibly have been prevented?’
‘Tammy, it’s an impossible situation. This is a major tourist attraction that gets hundreds of visitors every day, many drawn in by its dramatic location, at the highest point of the town, with these high walls, these ruined but still very tall towers and this steep drop almost to the river. Yes, of course it’s dangerous, but so are hundreds of beauty spots all over the country and what’s being said is, well, if someone’s determined to die, there’s no shortage of places to go.’
‘But two teenagers – both at Ludlow Castle?’
‘Why here, particularly? Yes, that’s a question a lot of people are now trying to answer. Children do have to be accompanied by an adult and, with the number of tourists increasing daily as we move towards the main holiday season, there’s no doubt at all that attendants here are going to be exercising considerable extra vigilance.’
‘Paul, thank you,’ Tammy said. Turned back to camera. ‘And if the girl’s name is released, we’ll update you on our late-night bulletin.’
Merrily switched off the set. The phone had stopped ringing, and Sophie brought it out of the drawer.
‘A girl,’ Merrily said. ‘A fifteen-year-old girl. What’s it mean? Another one.’
‘Children are impressionable,’ Sophie said.
She used to teach.
Merrily reached for the phone. ‘I’ll ring Andy. He mustn’t’ve known anything about it, either, until he switched the news on.’
Mumford’s line was engaged.
‘Probably ringing the sergeant he knows at Ludlow. Poor guy must feel right out of the loop when something like this happens and he finds out from the news like the rest of us. Especially when it’s going to add a lot of fuel to his own suspicions.’
‘Merrily, as the reporter said, there’s no reason to think Robbie Walsh’s death was anything other than accidental. Children have always been impressionable. Now they’ve become horribly… extreme. They want extreme experiences, extreme sports, sensations…’
‘Death?’
‘They see death on TV, and it’s usually rather exciting.’
Merrily pulled the Silk Cut from her bag. ‘Bloody hell, Sophie.’
Sophie frowned at the cigarettes.
‘When I was a child, the country had just come through a world war, and people were simply grateful to have survived, and we children were aware of that. Today… some of them seem to treat life almost like an unwanted present that they might as well take back. I’m sorry, Merrily, if I seem to be losing my Christian compassion. I’m sure there’ll be a thoroughly heartbreaking story behind it.’
The phone rang. Merrily grabbed it.
‘Andy?’
‘Ah, you are still there,’ the Bishop said. ‘I suppose you’ve heard the news from Ludlow.’
‘Just caught the last part of the TV piece.’
‘Tragic,’ the Bishop said. ‘Awful… wasteful. Three deaths, three… and in fact it’s more than tragic, it’s nightmarish, now, in ways I…’
‘We don’t know where she’s from?’
‘Other side of Herefordshire. Ledbury, I think. That is, George— I rang an old friend in Ludlow, George Lackland, the Mayor – you saw him on the TV thing. Used to be my senior churchwarden. George says the police are saying she seems to have hitch-hiked across.’
‘Thirty-odd miles? Forty?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Do they know why?’
‘Will they ever?’
‘Witnesses?’
‘Someone on the bowling green below The Linney appears to have seen her fall. No one inside the castle was aware of it, although it must have happened while the place was open to visitors. So easily done, you see. You can’t follow everybody around. She apparently paid to go in and just… never came out. Nightmarish.’
‘Was she dead when they found her?’
‘I’m not sure. George thinks there may have been complications. But if she was alive when they found her she didn’t survive long.’
Outside, the rain had started, like nails on the window.
‘Bernie… erm, should we be… involved in any way?’
Merrily heard his breath, slowly expelled.
‘I don’t know. Something did strike me when I saw the TV pictures. Actually, I feel rather foolish and trivial even mentioning it at a time like this, but you just know that some people in the town are going to be talking about it. This sort of gossip… one can’t do anything to stop it. You, ah… Marion. You remember Marion.’
‘I think I can just about remember Marion, yes.’
‘And we were all thinking, yes, but… wrong tower.’
‘The keep, as distinct from the Hanging Tower.’
‘Precisely. Well, you wouldn’t know the layout of the castle, but I do. And there it was, on the news.’
‘Sophie and I missed the beginning of the report,’ Merrily said cautiously.
‘Well, they didn’t make a point of it, but they wouldn’t know either. However…’ The Bishop coughed. ‘They showed it from the outside. Unmistakable. This time, it was the Hanging Tower.’
14
Black Poppies
THAT NIGHT, LOL boiled some water for tea, using a Primus stove in his kitchen, leaving Merrily to finish dressing by firelight. He had something to tell her, but it could wait.
When he came back into the living room with the tray, she was sitting on the end of the sofa, small and demure, with – unless he was deluding himself – the same glow on her face that he’d once seen by the light of altar candles, and her hair tied back with a rubber band. But, too soon, the glow was fading.
‘OK?’
‘I’ll go up to the bathroom later, with a torch and a mirror, to check the fine details.’
‘That’s not exactly what I meant,’ Lol said.
As so often, it had been a touch furtive. Curtains surreptitiously drawn. Cushions from the sofa, this time, on top of freshly washed paint cloths on the flagstones. Like teenagers, when the parents might come in… only the parents were the parish.