Fabric of Sin (21 page)

‘Sinistral, as it were. The left-hand path. Hah! Now
I
’m getting carried away. And my coffee will be completely cold.’ Robbie rose from his chair. ‘I do so hate cold coffee.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Williams. But you’ve been really helpful …’

‘I suppose I really ought to have asked you why you’re so interested in all this.’

‘Maybe I’ll tell you sometime.’

‘Might, on the other hand, be better if I never knew, Jane.’

She watched him plodding across to the door, his battered briefcase under an arm, and couldn’t believe how, after rubbishing all her other ideas and dismissing the Templars as some kind of thick thugs, he’d suddenly come out with something as weird and disturbing as this. She came to her feet.

‘
Oh
…’

Robbie stopped, neck hunched into his shoulders as if she’d thrown something at him.

‘Just one more thing, Mr Williams. Have you ever heard of a green man or a bearded head or whatever … that
wasn’t
in a church? Say, in a public building. Or a house?’

‘Can’t say I have. And, unless it was in a chapel, that would strike me as unlikely.’ He turned and looked at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘Why? Have
you
seen one somewhere else?’

‘No, no.’ Jane slid her chair back under one of the desks. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’

This time, the phone was picked up at once.

‘Gatehouse.’

‘Sophie, it’s me. Look, I’m sorry about this, but—‘

‘I know. It’s been on the radio. No more brutal form of suicide, in my opinion, than to lay one’s head in the path of a train. The engine driver is usually traumatized. I did try to ring you. I don’t think the Bishop knows yet.’

‘It brings up the question of going back to Garway.’

‘Oh,’ Sophie said. ‘I doubt he’d want that now.’

‘I think
I
want it.’

‘Merrily, some people appear to be locked into a tragic cycle, and whatever we—’

‘A cycle I just might have broken if I’d known more.’

‘Yes, you would think that.’

‘I need to understand, as far as I can, what happened.’

‘That’s surely for the police to establish. Or the coroner.’

‘Superficially.’

‘And you think this would need a full week?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve had another message I can’t really ignore. I’ll explain when I know a bit more.’

‘You want me to tell the Bishop?’

‘Please.’

‘I’ll see if Ruth Wisdom’s still available … Merrily?’

‘Mmm?’

‘I think you need to be very careful,’ Sophie said. ‘This may go deeper than either of us had imagined.’

Merrily made some tea and took it into the scullery. Lit a cigarette and stared unhappily at the answering machine for a minute or so before rewinding the last message. The one waiting for her when she’d come in from the churchyard.

‘
Mrs Watkins. Morningwood. Come and see me, will you, darling?
’

A pause, then

‘
Someone didn’t do a terribly good job, did they? Was it you or was it me? Or is something dreadfully amiss?
’

‘B
ACK OFF
, M
ERRILY
,’ Huw said. ‘You’re not thinking, you’re reacting.’

She said nothing. Over by the door to the hall stood two overnight bags, packed. She didn’t have a respectable suitcase.

‘Let it lie, lass. Attend to your parish, go into the church morning and evening for three days. Contemplate. Let things settle. And
then
look at it again.’

‘I’ve just been to the church. It wasn’t a great success. I was probably too emotional.’

‘My point exactly.’

‘Anyway,’ Merrily said, ‘it was already too late.’

She was on the mobile in the kitchen. Using the mobile too much, thanks to Bliss and his paranoia.

‘So you think you had a bit of a psychic experience, do you? That’s what this is all about.’

‘No, what it’s about is that two people are dead. For reasons it seems unlikely anybody will ever be able to explain. Except possibly me. After a fashion. And too late. Because I was putting my home life and my parish and my personal comforts before the job I agreed to take on. Because I was being lax and lazy.’

‘Wrong attitude, lass.’

‘Mopping up, Huw. It’s just mopping up. And a miserable attempt at penance. I won’t exactly enjoy it, but I don’t think I really deserve to.’

‘Mopping up?’ Huw’s voice rose, uncharacteristically. ‘It’s
digging
up. It’s disturbing the ground, it’s exposing live wires. A little woman with a bucket and spade?’

Spade. Wires. Mrs Morningwood talking about the sometimes-dormant
feud between the Gwilyms and the Newtons/Grays:
Like a live electric wire under the ground, and periodically someone would strike it with a spade
.

‘I’ve told you what to do,’ Huw said. ‘Talk to the vicar of Monkland or whoever’s attending to the funerals, and the bloke standing in at Garway. You then have a Requiem at Garway Church, followed by a blessing – or something a bit heavier, but don’t overdo it – at the house. Two priests, plus interested parties. Bang, bang … out.’

‘And if it goes on?’

‘What … deaths?’

‘I don’t know. They bring in another builder, who happens to have a heart attack, whatever. I need to find out what’s there.’

‘Merrily, there’s
masses
there. It’s
always
going to be there. Garway’s layered with it, that whole area. Tantalizing little mysteries. Codes nobody’s going to crack and symbols and forgotten secrets. And occasionally summat flares. So you tamp it down and you walk away and, with any luck, it won’t flare again in your lifetime.’

‘You’re saying it’s too big to deal with?’

‘Too big, too deep. It’s Knights bloody Templar. Folks’ve been obsessing over the buggers for centuries. You don’t need it.’

‘One week.’ Merrily looked across at the overnight bag. ‘I’m giving it one week, max.’

She’d phoned Teddy Murray. ‘Oh dear,’ he’d said, all vagueness, the kind of minister who held garden fêtes and came to tea. ‘I was told it was all off. Never mind, I’m sure we can organize a room. Do everything we can to ensure your stay is as painless as possible – think of it as an autumn break in God’s weekend retreat.’

He clearly hadn’t known about Felix and Fuchsia.

‘All right.’ Huw did one of his slow, meditative sighs; she thought of him pushing weary fingers through hair like waste silage. ‘Tell me again. Tell me what happened to
you
.’

‘I’m
not
going into it again because it sounds stupid and if anyone told it to me I’d react the way you’re reacting.’

‘Oh, for— Listen. Don’t get me wrong, Merrily. I accept that summat happened. You’ve been doing this long enough to know the difference
and it’d be patronizing of me to suggest otherwise. Give me the physical symptoms.’

‘I don’t—’

‘You bloody
do
.’

‘All right, couldn’t breathe, heart going like an old washing machine.’

‘And?’

‘And the feeling of being … I was transfixed. It was like I’d invaded his space and had to take the consequences.’

‘It felt evil?’

‘It was … without heart. I thought it had some kind of worm coming out of its mouth, but it was rope or something fibrous. There was a sense of naked contempt. And a sense that it was …’

‘Alive?’

‘I was trying to pray. As you do. The Breastplate. Second nature. And I couldn’t get the words out. Couldn’t, you know,
form
the words. Jane was calling to me from across the room, and she might as well’ve been miles away. There was just me and him. I’d invaded his space, he … invaded mine.’

‘How’d he do that?’

‘It was just an instant, a microsecond of insidious cold, a … a penetrating cold.’

‘Sexual?’

‘Jesus, Huw!’

‘Was it?’

‘The so-called green man …’ Merrily stifled the shudder, leaning back hard ‘… carries a lot of associations, some of them fertilityoriented, therefore—’

‘Therefore it’s all subjective. Jesus wept! You go in with that kind of namby-pamby academic attitude, you’re stuffed before you start. You’re a priest. You either treat it as a level of reality, or you back off. Which is what, as your spiritual director, I’m formally suggesting that you do.’

‘You’re spending too much time in your hellfire chapel, Huw.’

She listened to him breathing. Shut her eyes, bit her lip.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Let’s lay it out,’ Huw said. ‘A woman kills her lover and then tops
herself, and you’re worried it’s because of something she picked up at this house. That correct?’

‘I think … that it’s a question that needs an answer. And a question that neither the police nor the coroner are ever likely to ask.’

‘Even though the only experience in that farmhouse she told you about was a not-even-thinly-disguised scene from a famous ghost story by Monty James?’

‘I can’t explain that. Doesn’t help, either, that the story predates James’s visit to Garway by about fifteen years.’

‘And bears no relation to your own perceived experience.’

‘No.’

Frannie Bliss’s face had appeared at the kitchen window, peering in, hands binoculared against the glass. Merrily pointed in the direction of the door, making turning motions to indicate that it was open.

‘Ever think summat’s playing with you?’ Huw said. ‘The way a cat plays with a bird?’

‘You trying to scare me or something?’

She’d noticed he’d said bird. Unlike mice sometimes, she thought, birds don’t escape.

Bliss said, ‘I’m not here, all right?’

‘You’re asking me to lie for you again?’

Merrily filled the kettle. Bliss sat down and stretched out his legs under the table, hands behind his head.

‘He really bothers me, that bastard. They all do.’

‘Jonathan?’

‘If that’s his name.’

‘I thought you knew him.’ Merrily sat down. ‘I thought he worked out of a little office at headquarters.’

‘No, Merrily, that’s Bill Boyd. We’ve learned to put up with Bill. Jonathan came up from the capital last week, apparently to look into a certain issue. One of the less-publicized aspects of nine-eleven and seven-seven and the rest is that we get to see a lot more of his sort. Lofty, superior gits in expensive suits.’

‘
What
issue?’

‘You’re not the first to ask.’

‘You’re expected to work with him, and you don’t know what he’s investigating?’

Bliss glanced at Merrily, an eyebrow raised.

‘I didn’t like to ask him directly, Frannie, if he was Special Branch, in case he realized we’d been discussing it.’

‘I’m grateful, Merrily.’

‘So …’ She half-extracted a cigarette and then pushed it back. ‘
He
’s not investigating a haunting, is he?’

‘I think it’s reasonable to assume,’ Bliss said, ‘that he’s looking into a perceived threat against the Heir to the Throne.’

‘I don’t think I understand.’

‘Applying my renowned deductive skills, I’m working on the assumption that they – the Duchy of Cornwall – have received certain communications. Could be anonymous letters, untraceable emails, text messages – lot of options in the technological age.’

‘Locally?’

‘Or at their head office, wherever that is. But
relating
to here, that’s clear enough.’

‘Posing a direct threat to the Man?’

‘Maybe suggesting – if I’m reading between the right lines – that the Duchy is acquiring too much property in this part of the world.’

‘But who would that be likely to bother? And what can they do about it anyway? It’s probably just a crank.’

‘Merrily, Al-Qaeda might just be five towel-heads in a cave with a computer, a video camera and a mobile phone.’

‘It’s crazy.’

‘It’s the world we’re trying to go on living in.’

‘All right …’ Merrily let her chin sink into her cupped hands. ‘Long did ask a particularly odd question, didn’t he, when we were talking about Fuchsia and Tepee City? He said isn’t that a Welsh-speaking area full of Welsh nationalists?’

‘
Old-fashioned
Welsh nationalists, was the term he actually used.’

‘Why would he think Welsh nationalists are concerned about the Prince of Wales buying property in Herefordshire,
England
?’

‘Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it, Merrily?’

‘And anyway, the days of Welsh nationalist terrorism, such as it was, are
long
over.’

‘If he really thought there was anything in it, he certainly wouldn’t’ve mentioned it in front of you. Oh, Merrily …’ Bliss bounced his heels alternately off the stone flags, like a kid ‘… you don’t know how much it pisses me off when there’s something high-level going down in my manor that I don’t know about.’

‘You think I can help, or you’re just here for sympathy?’

Bliss smiled. Merrily leaned back, folding her arms, thinking it out.

‘OK … if someone is suggesting that the Master House – for reasons we can’t fathom – is one acquisition too many, was this before or after Felix Barlow told Adam Eastgate that this was a house that didn’t want to be restored?’

‘After would be my guess.’ Bliss nodded at the overnight bag in the corner. ‘What’s with the luggage?’

‘Going to Garway.’

‘Why?’

‘Need to.’

Merrily pulled over the padded folder containing Adam Eastgate’s plans for the Master House. When she upended it, a plastic bag fell out, resealed like a police evidence bag. She pulled it open and shook out the key onto the table.

‘You don’t find too many like this nowadays, do you, outside of churches?’

‘And prisons,’ Bliss said. ‘You’re not staying
there
, are you?’

‘Too scary. And the central heating’s not working.’

‘Come on, Merrily, the truth.’

‘Why I’m going back? Apart from, every time I close my eyes, seeing Fuchsia Mary Linden swimming towards me, asking to be blessed in the old-fashioned way?’

‘That’s it?’

‘And all the things we might have found out if I hadn’t been so smug and sceptical. Things that would never come out at an inquest. I’m assuming an inquest is going to be where this ends.’