‘Which our friend insists is writhing under the hill.’ Bliss sighed. ‘I can’t believe we’re discussing this.’
‘Isn’t this what you wanted? How whoever made that call might be thinking? But the person who made the call… how likely is that, really, to be Ayling’s killer? As Jane’s always saying, these are people who abhor violence.’
‘Go on, all the same. Finish it.’
‘Well… the theory might be that you’ve got all this rogue energy misdirected now, affecting the attention of drivers, if only for a second. So whenever there’s an accident on that road…’
‘Certain people will be nodding their little heads knowingly. Which people?’
‘Frannie—’
‘Members of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society, for instance?’
‘Look… I just can’t. I can’t give you a list, OK?’
‘It might…’ Bliss looked at her steadily, finger-drumming the vinyl in the centre of the wheel. ‘It might be the soft-option, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘It’s ridiculous. These people—’
‘Merrily, eight of them were arrested for refusing to leave the council offices when the cabinet was meeting to discuss the new road. That shows a certain… determination.’
‘Frannie…’ Merrily heard the echo of Jane: We live in a police state! Nobody’s allowed to object any more ‘It’s bollocks. I doubt any of the eight people arrested were even pagans, practising or otherwise. Just ordinary people with an interest in their heritage who didn’t think the democratic process was being followed. You really have no solid connection between the Dinedor Serpent and the murder of Clement Ayling.’
‘Wanna bet?’
She turned to face him, her back against the door, smoke from the cigarette wisping out of the open window, stray raindrops spraying in. She said nothing.
‘What I’m about to tell you, Merrily… there’s always something we like to keep in our back pocket, right? Something known only to the investigating team and the killer?’
She kind of nodded, not entirely sure she wanted to become the third party.
‘So you know what that means,’ Bliss said. ‘It means not a word, Reverend. Not to Lol, not to Jane… especially not to Jane.’
Merrily saw the water whirlpooling around the arch of the bridge. One of those moments where you backed away from the edge or you got pulled in.
‘Look, whatever it is, you really don’t have to tell me. You know how I hate to feel compromised.’
‘Yeh, well, on past experience,’ Bliss said, ‘I prefer to have you compromised.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And it’s been a crap day.’
‘So you want to ruin someone else’s?’
‘His eyes were gone,’ Bliss said.
Merrily swallowed some smoke, coughed. An empty stock lorry came rattling over the bridge, headlights full on, yellow smears on Bliss’s blotched windscreen.
‘Ayling’s eyes had been gouged out and pebbles placed in the sockets. Bits of gravel, it looked like.’
‘Gravel?’
No…
‘Which turned out, on examination last night, to include fragments of quartz.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Almost certainly originating in the so-called Dinedor Serpent. Somebody’d carefully jammed bits of the serpent into Clem Ayling’s eye sockets.’
Merrily squeezed out the cigarette, burned her thumb.
‘Being a cynical, case-hardened detective, I never let on, but I’ll admit it spooked even me at first.’
‘As it was… meant to?’
‘Yeh. Me or somebody. Torchlight, see. Councillor Ayling’s severed head, with the eyes lit up like little bulbs on a Christmas tree. Not something you easily forget, Merrily, to be honest.’
22
Watery Lane
IT SHOULDN’T BOTHER her, of course. With less than ten per cent of the population of Ledwardine ever showing up at a service, there had to be scores of atheists in this village.
On the other hand, the others simply didn’t show up. Said the occasional good morning to the vicar, ignored the church. Entirely inoffensive, your atheists, as a rule. Didn’t make a thing out of it. Except for fundamentalists like the celebrated geneticist Richard Dawkins, who had opened his book The God Delusion by hailing the bravery and the splendour of atheism. And Mathew Stooke, who’d taken it a little further. Who, according to his website, was demanding — how seriously wasn’t made clear — an official bank holiday, some kind of Atheism Pride Day. People parading with blank banners, singing ‘Glad to be Godless’?
Merrily lit a cigarette, studying Stooke’s face on his website, like there was the smallest chance of him being the first to blink.
Not an edifying image. Black hair, black beard — touch of the Charles Manson, even — but better than imagining the heavy head of big, smiley Clem Ayling with eyes of shining quartz.
No matter how much he’d changed, she thought she’d recognise Stooke’s eyes. Quiet eyes that were looking past you towards a finite horizon. No visible rage.
For ten years, Mathew Elliot Stooke was a Religious Affairs correspondent for the Guardian and then the Independent newspapers. He travelled all over the world, meeting and interviewing religious leaders — archbishops, cardinals, ayatollahs, the Dalai Lama, and various powerful evangelists in the US. And then, one day, I had what the religious would call a religious experience.
Most people lose their faith as a result of personal tragedy — for example, the failure of prayer to alleviate the suffering of a loved one. In my case, I simply awoke, as if from a ridiculous dream and realised in a single moment of revelation — a word much inflated by the Christian church — that it was all a despicable fabrication.
Immediately, a great weight dropped away from me and for a few moments I had never felt as free or as happy in my life.
This, of course, was before the anger set in.
Not even a physicist or a geneticist. Just a journalist.
The Independent had kept him on as Religious Affairs correspondent after he’d come out as an atheist. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Merrily sat in the computer-lit scullery, remembering, from her childhood, the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Catholic against Protestant, religion synonymous with hatred and violent death.
Around the same time, John Lennon had been imagining wistfully that there was no heaven. Easy if you tried, and she had tried but never found it that easy. Nothing colder than an empty sky: clean, pure, bleak, pointless.
Like the scores of Islamic suicide bombers who’d given their lives to promote the cause of secularism in the West. Blow yourself up with a few dozen innocent infidels and there’s a queue of virgins waiting for you in paradise.
World Cup tickets for all martyrs.
Insane.
All religion, therefore, was insane.
Mathew Stooke continued in his job with the Independent for another year. During this time, viewing the world of religion through new and penetrating eyes, he wrote the remarkable series of articles which would become the basis of the international bestseller The Hole in the Sky.
Merrily cross-reffed to Stooke’s Amazon listing, found The Hole in the Sky ranking number 34 in the Hot One Hundred. Which, since it had been around for more than a year, was disturbingly impressive. Whatever it was costing to rent Cole Barn would be small change, these days, for Mr Winterson.