‘You’re asking me?’
He looked thrown for a moment. Kind of feller who’d hate ever to be caught without an informed opinion.
‘I was thinking you could give me a blue-sky idea,’ Bliss said. ‘An independent assessment.’
Steve Furneaux actually looked, for a moment, like he was drawing up a shortlist. Or maybe — call this blue-sky thinking — wondering how best he could convince Bliss that Hereforward was a blind alley.
But he never found out who’d be in Steve’s frame; his mobile went off. ‘Excuse me a moment. Yeh.’
‘Boss?’
‘Hello, Sergeant.’
‘Oh.’ Karen Dowell picking up his signal. ‘Right. I’d better keep this short, then.’
Bliss fiddled with his sugar spoon while Karen told him that Howe was calling the class together for 2.30 p.m. On account of they’d found the rest of Ayling.
‘Well… more or less,’ Karen said.
Bliss put the spoon down gently.
‘Where?’
‘In the river. Half in, half out, kind of thing. Up against Bredwardine Bridge. You know where I mean?’
‘So that would be… the big river.’
A magnificent river, Harri Tomlin breathed in Bliss’s head. Venerated above all others.
‘Even bigger at present, as you can imagine,’ Karen Dowell said. ‘Well high, and a lot of debris, fallen trees and stuff washed up against the bridge. The body was apparently somewhere in the middle of all that.’
‘Intact?’
‘Still in the suit.’
Bliss had tuned out the background chat, and his mind was back in the mist with Harri Tomlin.
‘This is getting a bit spooky, Sergeant.’
‘Best if you tell me later, is it, boss?’
‘Karen, when you said more or less…?’
‘In relation to the body? Well, it just leaves the eyes, doesn’t it? The eyes are still missing.’
‘Ah.’
‘Got to go, boss. Sorry.’
‘OK. Thanks, Sergeant.’
‘Developments?’ Steve Furneaux said.
Was that a flicker of relief in Steve’s eyes?
Maybe, maybe not.
‘It’s the old story, Steve. No lunch, as they say, for the wicked.’ Bliss slid down from his stool. ‘Oh… before I go… was Charlie Howe at the meeting?’
‘Yes, I believe… Yes he was. We were surprised to see him because he was only just out of hospital. Ah…’ Steve raised a forefinger. ‘Of course… ex-policeman. Old colleague of yours?’
‘Bit before my time,’ Bliss said. ‘But a mate, you know. A good mate.’
Bliss had left his car at the back of the Gaol Street pay-and-display, away from prying police eyes. He sat in it for a while. One hand was trembling. Maybe the caffeine and no lunch.
Bitch had excluded him again, frozen him out. It had taken Karen to call and tell him that they’d found Ayling’s body. Nothing from Howe, not even via Brent.
This was about more than just the Shah kid. More than just him trying to keep her out of the Ayling case from the start. This was about Charlie, for definite.
Well, sod her, he’d make sure he was there at 2.30. Drop into the school at the last minute, so neither Howe nor Brent could head him off at the pass. Maybe he’d walk there a bit late. Bide his time and then casually explain the possible significance of the bulk of Ayling turning up in the Wye.
Why the body, not the head? Didn’t know, but it didn’t matter, there was something.
As he took his key out of the ignition he saw something sticking out from under the passenger seat. A small, scuffed book.
He bent and retrieved it.
My Little Pony. Naomi’s. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.
What had he done?
Naomi. Seven and a half years old. All her mother’s best qualities, without the difficult bits. Bliss leaned back, holding the book on his knee, eyes squeezed shut. Even trying to focus on Kirsty’s difficult bits, he was reminded of one tender moment somewhere under that white horse in Wiltshire. A feeling of yes, this was right, this was the right thing.
What happened? Where did that go?
He sat up and put the book in the glove box, got out of the car and locked it and walked away, feeling closer to breaking down than at any time since his solo breakfast of burnt toast and brown sauce.
26
Dated Masquerade
As soon as Merrily had rung the bell she pulled back, appalled.
The front door was new. Polished hardwood, expensive. ‘Cole Barn’ carved tastefully into an oak plaque.
She backed away from it, disorientated. Looking around and not recognising anything. As if she’d come here without thinking, taken the wrong turning, walked into the wrong room.
Looking back towards the orchard, you almost could believe there was some primeval energy around that path. Not so much a healing, life-affirming force as something that amplified your anxieties into obsession.
If you were vulnerable. If you’d prayed for advice and received nothing. If you were afraid your daughter was unwittingly linked with someone who had killed and butchered a man. If, wherever you looked, you saw people losing control of their lives and threatening shadows cloaking the same implacable figure: the enemy of faith, the spirit of the secular state. The worm in the apple.
Nobody answered the door.
She breathed out hard, finally turning away. Anticlimax or relief?
Whatever, just get out of here. Walk away. Go home. Consider yourself saved.
All the same, Merrily was reluctant to go back on that same path. Just didn’t want to.
On a ridge at the top of the hedged paddock there was a wooden stile, giving access to Coleman’s Meadow, the platform crane arching over it as if it was offering lifts into the meadow. If she went back that way, at least she’d have something to tell Jane tonight.
The rain was in remission again, the air felt a little fresher. Walking up the sodden field, she became aware of the bell-shaped Cole Hill rising on the other side of the meadow.
So perfect from this angle. Robed in cloud, somehow lighter than the sky. She was aware, for the first time, just how breathtaking it would be, viewed between standing stones.
And stopped, strangely moved, touched by a connection. Was this how Jane felt all the time? Was this what Jane would interpret as pagan consciousness? It didn’t matter. All she knew was that the destruction of this view by Lyndon Pierce’s upmarket estate of fake Tudor executive homes with double and triple garages would be the worst kind of insult both to the living and the long, long dead.
This wasn’t myth. It was the only certainty she’d felt all day.
She felt lighter stepping down from the stile alongside the platform crane, its great arm half raised from the back of a black and yellow truck marked access hire.
Behind it, two men were arguing, blocking the path, one scowling from under a green waterproof hat, the other wearing a red hiking jacket and an expression somewhere between pained and placating.
‘True,’ the hat guy was saying. ‘We did know about it, we knew it was happening, but we were definitely not told it was going to be televised, with all the crap that involves. And I’m not trying to be awkward, but I came here for a bit of peace. To work, you know?’
‘Which I fully — I do understand your situation, and I’m sorry. But with this weather we’ve got way, way, way behind schedule, and we just can’t afford to delay it any longer. I mean, have you any idea—’ the man in the red jacket indicated the crane ‘—what that costs to rent?’