‘These ole sayings, they comes at the truth sideways, kind of thing.’
‘Right,’ Jane said.
It seemed to have gone darker. The clouds had closed down the moon, and the village lights shone brighter as if in a kind of panic. New rain slanted into Jane’s cheeks, sudden, sharp and arrogant, and she thought about her own troubled nights, worrying about the dig, the future, her own future, Eirion…
‘So, like, what’s supposed to happen,’ she said, ‘if you dream about the rain?’
3
See the Rabbit
One of Hereford’s little secrets, this ruin. In daylight, at the bottom of a secret garden surrounded by depots, offices and a school, you could easily miss it; most people, tourists and locals, didn’t even know it existed.
But with night screening the surroundings, Bliss thought, it was a sawn-off Castle Dracula.
‘So where is it?’
Looking around in case he’d been scammed; wouldn’t be the first time these bastards had done it to him, especially around Christmas, but he wouldn’t have expected it of Karen Dowell.
‘The body, Karen?’
Bending his head on the edge of the blurry lamplight to peer into her fresh, farmer’s-wife face.
‘The body… we don’t exactly know, boss,’ Karen said.
‘What?’
Had to be eight of them in the rose garden in front of the monastery. Bliss had registered DC Terry Stagg, several uniforms and two techies, clammy ghosts in their Durex suits.
On balance, too many for a scam. And there was this little trickle of unholy excitement, which would often accompany shared knowledge of something exquisitely repellent.
Bliss looked around, recalling being here once before. One of the kids had been involved in some choir thing at the Coningsby Hospital which fronted the site on lower Widemarsh Street. Coningsby was only a hospital in some old-time sense of the word, more of a medieval chapel with almshouses and an alleyway leading to the rose garden, where there was also a stone cross set into a little tower with steps up to it.
‘’Scuse, please, Francis. Let the dog see the rabbit.’
Crime-scene veteran Slim Fiddler, seventeen stone plus, squelching across the grass, messing with his Nikon. A strong wire-mesh fence separated the ruins from the St Thomas Cantilupe primary school next door. Slim Fiddler stopped a bit short of it, turned round, and the other techie, Joanna Priddy, moved aside as his flash went off.
Which was when Bliss also saw, momentarily, the rabbit.
Saw why Karen had chucked her supper.
The body… we don’t exactly know, boss.
The cross… its base seemed to be hexagonal. About four steps went up to the next tier, which was like a squat church tower with Gothic window holes, stone balcony rails above them, and the actual cross sprouting from a spire rising out of the centre.
Thought it was a gargoyle, at first. When the flash faded, it had this stone look, the channels of blood like black mould.
‘Fuck me,’ Bliss said quietly.
The face was looking out from one of the Gothic windows.
‘If you’re going up there, best to get kitted up, Mr Bliss.’
Joanna Priddy handed him a Durex suit and Bliss clutched it numbly, as the rain blew in from Wales.
‘Who found it?’
‘Bloke came in for a smoke,’ Karen said. ‘Nobody knows where it’s legal to light up, any more, do they?’
‘Like we’re supposed to care.’
‘Comes round the back of the cross to get out of the wind, flicks his lighter and…’
‘Swallows his cig?’ Bliss said. ‘We looking at gangland here, Karen, or what?’
‘I’d like to think we could rule out a domestic, boss.’
Bliss thought for a moment about two baddish faces he’d eyeballed walking over from High Town. After dark, away from the city centre, the people you passed became predominantly male and increasingly iffy. The whole atmosphere of this Division had changed a good deal in the past few years.
‘Just the head, Karen? No other bits?’
‘Not that we’ve found. There’s a brick behind it, stood on end to prop it up. And a piece of tinsel — you can’t see it now from the ground. It was round the neck, but it’s slipped down.’
‘Like people put round the turkey on the dish?’
‘Probably.’
‘Very festive,’ Bliss said. ‘I presume someone’s checked it’s, you know, real?’
‘Why do you think I threw up? Not much, mind, but it was the shock, you know? Not like anything I’ve…’
Bliss nodded. In no great hurry, frankly, to put on the Durex suit and take a closer look. He clapped his hands together.
‘Right, then. Let us summon foot soldiers. If the rest of this feller’s bits are anywhere in the vicinity, I want them found before morning. I want this whole compound sealed and that school closed tomorrow. Where’s Billy Grace?’
‘Might not actually be Dr Grace,’ Karen said. ‘Somebody’s on the way.’
‘This cross — it’s got a name?’
‘I’m not sure, boss. There’s some kind of information board at the back.’
Karen led Bliss towards the wire fence, the school building on the other side. She held up a torch; Bliss scanned the sign.
Built in the 14th century and considerably restored in the 19th century, this is the only surviving example in the county of a preaching cross…
… built in conjunction with the Blackfriar Monastery…
… given the order by Sir John Daniel…
… beheaded for interference in baronial wars in the reign of Edward III
‘And when they’d topped him, did they by any chance display this Sir John’s head on his own cross?’
‘I wouldn’t know, boss.’
‘I mean, it’s not some old Hereford tradition?’
‘Not in my time,’ Karen said.
‘Somebody’s looking for maximum impact here, Karen. Kind of Look what I’ve done.’
‘Maybe more impact than you actually… Here.’ Karen handing him the rubber-covered torch. ‘Might not’ve shown up with the flash. Try that. From where you are.’
Bliss switched on the flashlight, tracked the beam up from the base of the cross. The light finding what remained of the neck, black blood, gristle.
‘Boss…’
‘What?’
‘Back off. Move the light up a bit.’
Karen came alongside him and lifted his arm slightly, steadying it when the beam found the…
‘Bugger me,’ Bliss said.
‘Yeah, if you back right off it’s all you can see at first.’
Bliss switched off the torch, took a few steps back, snapped it on again.
‘What’ve they done? It’s like it’s…’
‘Still alive,’ Karen said. ‘Sorry about the smell of sick.’
‘You’re excused,’ Bliss said.
The black hole behind the spinning lights.
How black did you want?
4
Or Die
It was a question of which century you wanted to live in, sleek, thirtyish Lyndon Pierce was telling them. Which millennium, even.
‘Comes down to that, people. All comes down to that.’
Punching the table. People? Pierce had been watching American politicians on TV?
There was silence.
Pierce stopped talking and Merrily noticed the way he patted his gelled black hair, his eyes swivelling around the 1960s pink-brick community hall, as if suddenly unsure of his ground. She leaned over, whispering in Lol’s ear.
‘Misjudged his audience, do you think?’