‘Ah… Jesus.’ Over the sounds of phones and fractured laughter in the Hereford CID room, she heard the side of his fist bump the desk. ‘I’m not thinking, am I? I’m sorry. I was gonna ring him, Merrily, it’s just…’
‘Difficult?’
‘Yeah. Strangers, I can handle the sorry-for-your-loss routine, and when it’s a working copper, you all go out and get drunk together. But a retired DS who never wanted to go. Never even got pissed when he left – you know that? We’re in the pub for his presentation, and he’s shuffling about a bit, trying to pretend he can’t wait to see the back of us. And then I look around and he’s like… just not there any more. Gone. Evaporated. Always that bit of distance, mind: him local, me incomer.’
‘Been trying for two years to get him to stop calling me “Mrs Watkins”.’
‘No chance,’ Bliss said. ‘So… Andy’s slumped in his garden, like a bloody old smouldering bonfire, thinking the Shropshire cops are sitting on information that could reveal the truth about his nephew’s death, right?’
‘And there’s also the question of his mother. And now…’
‘The girl. Listen, I’ve gorra say at the outset, this is not really my case. True, both kids came from this division, but it’s Ludlow’s headache, for which we’re frankly quite glad. I mean is it a case? I don’t know. Has it been a case for you, as it were?’
‘I’ve never yet had anything so clean-cut as “a case”, you know that.’
‘Go on, then,’ Bliss said, resigned. ‘Tell me why you’re interested.’
So Merrily told him about Mrs Mumford and the bereavement apparition/delusion/hallucination. Well, he knew what she was about. He was a Liverpool Catholic, tended not to laugh at her. Not often, anyway.
‘Funny, I remember me ma, when me uncle got killed on the railway, she swore she’d seen him walking up our front path. Didn’t know he was dead, then. Opens the front door, nobody there. Family’s a funny thing, Merrily. What did you do?’
‘Nothing. I had a psychiatrist with me. Not an entirely happy situation, but I won’t go into it now. Bottom line is, what she subsequently said, in front of Andy and me, was that a woman had taken Robbie. Later, she appeared to be suggesting that a woman had pushed him off the tower.’
‘How did she know that?’
Merrily sighed. ‘He’d told her.’
‘Ah,’ Bliss said. ‘The old phantom-witness scenario.’
‘I knew you’d be impressed.’
‘Don’t get me wrong—’
‘I’d have been dubious, too, Frannie, except we talked to someone who’d seen the boy with a particular woman on two occasions. Once in the grounds of Ludlow Castle.’
‘And?’
‘What do you top detectives call it these days when you’ve got a feeling?’
‘We call it time to keep very quiet, Merrily. Because, in the modern, computerized, CCTV, DNA, CPS-conscious, politically correct, focus-group fuckin’ police service, we do not do individual feelings any more.’
‘And there was me thinking you were the last maverick cop under forty. Man who needed to live life on the edge.’
‘That was before I was back with Kirsty. Now I’m a husband and father again, with a mortgage and a career path.’
‘I see,’ Merrily said. ‘Well, then… thanks very much, Frannie. Erm… have a nice life.’
The rest of the morning, she didn’t think about any of it. She had parish matters to deal with, not least the fortnightly Ledwardine magazine which, in recognition of the need to sell a few hundred copies to people who didn’t go to church, had become a general community newsletter. Edited in this parish, inevitably, and somewhat crudely, by the vicar.
It usually carried a few paragraphs on newcomers to the village, and Jane had left a piece on Lol in the file, which Merrily got around to just before noon.
We are delighted to welcome to the select end of Church Street Mr Robinson, who many of you will no doubt remember as the young, good-looking and talented one in the almost-famous 1980s folk-rock band, Hazey Jane. Mr Robinson, who spends some of his spare time with the vicar, has recently relaunched his musical career after a difficult period in his life, but wants it to be known – although far too shy to say so himself – that he will not be available for the Ledwardine Summer Festival or any other piece of crap planned by his fellow incomers to ‘put the village on the map’.
Also in the file was a copy of a letter from an outfit calling itself Parish Pump which had apparently gone to every community in the diocese.
Do YOU want to make your parish magazine into a genuine going-concern – a professional publication that every parishioner will want to buy? If so, we can help you. We can show you how to turn your parish notes into something lively, gossipy and compulsively readable. We can even DO THE WHOLE THING FOR YOU! And if you aren’t satisfied with the increase in income, we’ll refund your fees. Parish Pump guarantees to pump up your income. Contact us NOW.
You had to hand it to them for enterprise, but the idea of turning the Ledwardine Community News into something resembling Hello! magazine somehow didn’t appeal. Still, she put it back in the file; perhaps she’d show it to the parish council. Jane’s contribution, however… she cremated that slowly over the ashtray, with the Zippo. Because the magazine was usually laid out and printed in a hurry, you could never be too careful; it just might get in.
The phone rang. She burned her thumb reaching for it.
‘This woman,’ Mumford said. ‘Sorry – you got time?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Ludlow. On the mobile, in a lay-by. Edge of the town centre, below the castle. Looking at a pair of locked gates. Mrs Pepper’s house, what you can see of it behind all the trees.’
‘I can imagine she wouldn’t want to be too public,’ Merrily said. ‘Some of her old fans could well be slightly disturbed people.’
‘That’s what the feller does the ghost-walk said.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Ludlow Ghost-tours.’
‘Ah. Right.’
‘Don’t stop her roaming the street in the early hours, mind. Sometimes on her own, sometimes with her followers. From out of town, mostly. Weird clothes. Like Dracula.’
‘I saw them, Andy, down by the river.’
‘Been street fights between local boys and these creeps, did you know that?’ Mumford said. ‘A stabbing one time.’
‘In Ludlow?’
‘Like anywhere else at closing time. Local yobs don’t work for the tourist office.’
‘This is what the ghost-walk guy said?’
‘Eventually. Took some time to get anything from anybody. Most folk won’t hear a word against her. I asked around in shops… cafés… the tourist information office. Helpful at first, then they clammed up. Without exception. Either they din’t know or they said it was rubbish, telling you to take no notice of any malicious gossip you gets told, it’s all lies. Woman lives quietly, does nobody any harm. Bit eccentric, that’s her business. What d’you make of that?’
‘That it’s a nice town, where people don’t like malicious gossip?’
‘Shops, Mrs Watkins, businesses. Good customer, mabbe? Rich woman, big spender?’
‘Or maybe they thought you were a reporter.’
‘No,’ Mumford said, ‘they didn’t think that. So, finally, I’m in this café, and an elderly woman having a cup of tea overhears me talkin’ to the proprietor, leaves the money on the table, follows me out.’
Mumford paused; Merrily heard faint voices in the background, passers-by. When it was quiet again, he came back, his voice tight to the phone.
‘Whispers to me, do I mean the woman who walks the back streets, the alleys, very late at night, early morning?’