That night, as the squally rain spat at the bedroom window, Merrily lay awake, thinking about the Serpent, the stones of Coleman’s Meadow and several other recent finds suggesting a rich, unsuspected, ancient heritage along the Welsh border. When you considered the emotive and mystical power of this illuminated umbilical cord and the impact of its severance by a road carrying heavy commercial traffic…
Who cared?
Not the council, evidently. Most of them probably hoping the serpent would be washed away by the rain.
‘It’s clear what’s happening, isn’t it?’ Jane had said, when they’d put the lights back on the tree. ‘Hereford’s pagan past is rising again, all around us — and it’s more beautiful and spectacular than anyone ever dreamed. And they hate that.’
‘The Council?’
‘The Council, the secular state. And the Church, what’s left of it.’
Ah, yes, the Church. All this was pre-Christian, not the Church’s problem — official.
And whatever was in Coleman’s Meadow wasn’t a problem for the Vicar of Ledwardine. Yet the beauty and — yes — the sanctity of it all… Jane was right, nothing of spiritual value should be discarded. Whether or not you could understand it, there was something you could feel. Something to seize and lift the spirit.
Archaeology to die for.
But archaeology to kill for?
Merrily rolled over. She’d forgotten her hot-water bottle, was feeling chilled, like the vicarage would always be, and she was resisting the warm fantasy of being across the road in Lol’s little terraced house, in the little cosy bedroom with Lol’s warm—
‘Mum?’
The landing light had come on, and Jane stood in the bedroom doorway, bare-legged, a fleece around her shoulders. Flashback to the days after Sean’s death, when she’d stand, bemused, in another bedroom doorway, hugging her oldest teddy.
‘Mum, I forgot — sorry.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Only about half-twelve.’
‘Oh, only half-twelve and you having to go to school in the morning, even if it is the last day of term—’
‘Mum, I forgot, OK? I was going to tell you about it before you asked me about the Serpent and all this Clem Ayling stuff came up, and it got… pushed out.’
‘Couldn’t it have waited till morning?’
‘We never seem to have time in the morning, and I want to check the river, and—’
‘OK.’ Merrily reached over to the bedside chair for her bathrobe. ‘Tell me. Quickly.’
‘It was this woman I met yesterday morning. In the churchyard?’
‘You’ve never mentioned a woman.’
‘No, it didn’t seem important, and I was late and… Anyway, she called herself Lensi, and she had this posh camera. Said she was a press photographer, freelance, working for… I think it was the Independent? She knew about the stones, and she, like, she wants to take some pictures of me?’
‘Not another one.’
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t encourage her, I’m a low-profile person now.’
‘Can’t actually say I’ve noticed.’
‘Anyway, I asked Eirion if he could check her out with his media friends? And, good as gold, he did, and when I rang to tell him it was OK to come at the weekend he told me who he thought she was.’
‘Madonna?’
Merrily dragged the robe around her shoulders as Jane came into the bedroom, pushed the door to behind her and sat down at the bottom of the bed.
‘She says people call her Lensi, right?’
‘You said that. And why am I interested?’
‘That’s what I said to her.’
‘What?’
‘I’m like, why are you interested? This was when she started asking questions like, what sort of pagan are you, Jane?’
‘Oh God.’
‘I didn’t tell her. Not that I’m any kind of pagan, anyway. It’s just like an ethos, isn’t it? But it came up, because she’d been asking about the stones and Lucy Devenish. And then you, a bit.’
‘Me?’
‘She obviously knew who you were. And, like, Eirion always says if you avoid answering journalists’ questions it’ll only make them think you’re covering something up and they won’t let it go.’
‘Jane—’
‘Anyway, Eirion knows this guy who’s like Wales correspondent for the Indy? And he knows this woman photographer who calls herself Lensi. Like, nobody else calls her that… it’s about giving herself this kind of professional-photographer image? They used to laugh at her, didn’t take her seriously because she was posh. Rich family in the country. Finishing school, that kind of thing.’
‘And what exactly was the posh photographer doing poking around the churchyard?’
‘She lives here. This is the point. She’s renting Cole Barn. With her husband.’
‘Well, yeah, I heard that had been let, but—’
‘They’ve been here several weeks. Eirion says her real name’s Leonora Phelan. But it’s her husband you’re more likely to have heard of. Mathew Stooke?’
Merrily sat up. The strip of yellow light from the landing was like a knife blade.
‘Yes, that Mathew Stooke,’ Jane said. ‘We’re pretty sure.’
FRIDAY
‘This is an exciting find, not just for Herefordshire and the UK, but apparently, so far, it is unique in Europe. It has international significance.’
Dr Keith Ray, Herefordshire County Archaeologist Today, BBC Radio 4
There has been some misapprehension that the whole monument is affected by the road scheme course, and that the intention is to destroy the monument. Neither of these is true.
18
Working Relationship
Through his mucky windscreen, Bliss watched Annie Howe powering out of her car in the schoolyard, aiming an unfolding umbrella like a harpoon gun into the rain. Stepping between police vehicles, in her white trench coat — well, not exactly a trench coat and not exactly white, but you got the idea.
Kevin Snape, the office manager, had served the summons last night, leaving the message on Bliss’s mobile: ‘Ma’am wants to see you first thing, Francis. Eight a.m. sharp. At the school.’
That would be before morning assembly. Before the main team got in. Suggesting Annie wanted to tap him on some background angle, something she didn’t want to share with the whole class. Probably just with DI Iain Twatface Brent, PhD, after Bliss had gone.
He waited until she was in the building, then got out of his car, got wet — never been an umbrella kind of person. Inside the schoolhall-turned-incident-room he shook himself, looked around. Kevin Snape at a computer, Terry Stagg on the phone.
Seeing all the kiddie things pushed into corners reminded him that sometime over the weekend he was going to have to tell his folks up in Knowsley that Kirsty had left him and taken the beloved grandchildren.
This jagged tear in life’s fabric. Hadn’t been able to face going home last night. Cod and chips in the car at ten p.m., not getting back to the house until he was too knackered to do anything but crunch through the Christmas cards on the doormat and crawl upstairs. What he needed was for the Ayling case to roll on through Christmas, turning all the festive shite into a merciful blur.