Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain (5 page)

‘So what
did
he tell you, Jane?’

‘Actually, it’s not funny.
I
was, like, what do you do at The Court, and he’s going, Shoot things, of course, and I’m like,
Things? Go on
. And he thought… I mean, I could see he thought I was…’

‘What?’

‘Like turned on by it? The way some women are. The hunt-ball floozies? He said they’d shoot anything that got in the way. Deer… pussycats, he said.’

‘Probably exaggerating to try and sound hard.’

‘I could tell he was waiting for me to go, Oh, I’d love to come and watch you wielding your weapon. Lol, they’re—Oh shit, look at him now…’

Lol half-turned, pain spinning into his shoulder where he’d caught Cornel’s fist. Cornel was standing next to the door to the stairs. His eyes seemed to be physically retracting under the shelf of his brow as he looked around the room in the half-light, plucking at the damp patch on his trousers.

‘Wherever you are, you little bitch,’ he said mildly, ‘I just want you to know this isn’t over.’

Lol looked around. Maybe only he and Jane had heard Cornel, because there’d been a sudden scraping of chairs, exclamations and then a hollow near-silence in the bar as a small circle formed around Barry in the centre of the room.

‘
Where
was this?’ James Bull-Davies snapped. ‘Say again.’

‘Oldcastle?’ Barry said. ‘Have I got that right? Beyond Credenhill, but before you get to the Wye. Don’t know any details. Mate of mine with an apple farm was just passing it on in case we saw any police action. Cops are all over there, apparently.’

‘Yes, but who—?’

‘Oh, Mansel…?’ Barry stepped back. ‘Gawd, James. That mean he’s a relation?’

‘Cousin. Of sorts.’ James straightened up, bit his lower lip. ‘Hell’s bells.’

A flaking log rolled out of the fire up against the mesh of the fireguard. Danny Thomas came back and sat down, pushing fingers through his beard.

‘Barry just had a call from a mate. Feller been found dead. Farmer.’

Lol said. ‘What… storm-related?’

‘Sounds like way too many coppers for that,’ Danny said.

U
P AGAINST THE
brick wall under a bleary bulkhead lamp, Bliss was struggling into his Durex suit. Big, wide puddles in the yard, four of them rippling like something tidal in the lights and the remains of the gale. The fifth puddle much smaller, not rippling at all, the colour and consistency of bramble jelly.

Farmers. Never felt comfortable around farmers, not even dead farmers.

‘Boss…’

Terry Stagg came lumbering out of a litter of uniforms and techies shielding the body from the wind, Bliss looking up from the flapping plastic.

‘DCI know about this, Terry?’

Realizing this was the very last question he’d normally ask. This was getting ridiculous. He peered at Terry Stagg’s eyes in the lamplight. Terry was working on a beard to cover up his second chin. His eyes looked tired. And faintly puzzled?

Shit
.

‘Boss, it was actually the DCI who said to get you out. Be more convenient for DI Bliss were her actual—’

‘Bitch.’

Stagg said nothing. Bliss turned away, nerves burning like a skin rash. Probably digging himself an even bigger pit.

‘My impression was that the DCI won’t be coming out tonight at all,’ Stagg said. ‘Which is unusual, given the social status of the deceased.’

‘Don’t question it.’ Bliss zipped the Durex suit from groin to throat. ‘Give thanks.’

He plucked the elasticated sleeve away from his watch: just gone nine. Taken him the best part of half an hour to get here from home. Blown-off branches all over the roads, one lacerating the flank of his car as he squirmed past on the grass verge.

‘So this is…?’

‘Mr Mansel Bull, boss. Fifty-seven. Farmer, as you know. Old family.’

‘Double-page spread in the
Hereford Times
kind of old?’

‘Maybe special supplement,’ Terry Stagg said.

‘Not short of a few quid, Tez. Lorra leckie going to waste, or is that you?’

The yard was ablaze with lights on sensors, like a factory, and alive with bellowing creaks, the smashing of blown-open doors, the restive moaning of the cattle in the sheds – Bliss thinking all this was like the sounds of his own nerves amplified.

‘Billy Grace?’

‘On his way,’ Terry said. ‘Allegedly. But we do have time-of-death to within half an hour or so. Mr Bull’d gone to a parish-council meeting arranged for seven, but called off due to the conditions. Sounds like he came directly back. Walking into… something.’

A council meeting explained the suit and tie, what you could see of it under a glistening beard of blood. Hard to say if his head was still even attached. Was that bone? Was that an actual split skull? Bliss stepped back. You never quite got used to this.

‘Who found him?’

‘Brother. Heard the cattle moaning in the shed, so he had a walk up. With his shotgun.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘Not loaded, he
claims
. Lives in the big bungalow down towards the river. Mr Bull lived here, on his own.’

‘On his
own
– in
that?
’

Security lights on the barn opposite flushed out mellow old brick and about fifteen dark windows on three storeys. Oldcastle
Farm. The house and buildings wedged into a jagged promontory above the Wye, embedded like a fort. Georgian or Queen Anne or whatever, had to be big enough for a family of twelve, plus servants.

‘Divorced. For the second time, apparently.’

Terry looking sideways at Bliss. Mr Bull was face-up to the lights, eyes wide open in his big, bald, dented head, like he couldn’t believe the way death had come racing at him out of the wind and the night.

‘Where’s the brother?’

‘In the house. Waiting for you.’

‘He see anything?’

Terry Stagg shook his head.

‘All right.’ Bliss hunched his shoulders against the wind. ‘So where we up to, Tezza?’

‘Covering the lanes, pubs, for what that’s worth now. They’ll be well away.’

‘They?’

‘Mr Sollers Bull thinks a gang. He’ll explain.’

‘Where’s Karen?’

‘House-to-house. Well… farm-to-farm. In the four-by-four. With a couple of uniforms, just in case.’

‘Good, good.’

Karen was connected: farming family. Where Bliss came from, a farmer was a bloke with a shared allotment and a chicken.

‘Obviously you’ve searched the buildings.’

‘With Mr Sollers Bull. And the house. Did I…?’ Terry Stagg coughed. ‘Did I say Mr Sollers Bull was not very happy?’

‘
No
. You amaze me, Terence.’

Terry said, ‘In the sense that… he reckons he and his brother both reported intruders.’

‘When?’

‘Two occasions in the past month. He says we laughed.’

‘
We
laughed?’

‘The police.’

‘The police laughed. Fuck me. Excellent.’

‘I mean, that’s what he says.’

‘Might this explain the DCI’s generosity in letting the underling take charge, d’you think?’

Thinking,
nice one, well-timed, Francis
, as a vehicle came coughing and grumbling up the tarmac drive. Dr Grace’s Land Rover Defender.

‘Also,’ Terry Stagg said, ‘when I told him you’d be in to talk to him later on, Mr Sollers Bull said… He seems to know who you are.’

The vehicle’s engine had been switched off but was clinging to life. In the instant of its last shudder, the wind died and it was like they were standing in the vacuum of quiet at the eye of the storm.

‘Fame at last. I’m made up.’ Bliss’s own voice came bouncing back at him from across the yard. He lowered it. ‘What are you saying?’

‘He knows your father-in-law.’

‘Oh.’

Billy Grace was hauling his kit up the drive. Bliss went to meet him.

Shit
. The downside of having a complicated private life in a small county.

Every other Saturday, work permitting, he’d collect his kids from the in-laws’ farm. Trying to time it so he’d be bringing them back just before Kirsty got in from shopping or wherever. In the hope that he could leave them with his mother-in-law, a woman he could handle, more or less.

Unfortunately, he’d pulled this one too many times. Last Saturday, the door had been ajar at the farm holiday cottage where Kirsty was living, and the kids had gone running inside. He’d considered just buggering off, but in the end he’d gone in to find the stove lit, all very cosy, smell of quality coffee – sour reminders of his own kitchen with all its comforts now plundered.

And here was the plunderer in person: Mrs Bliss. Only, this was the Mrs Bliss of ten years ago – the
future
Mrs Bliss reborn. All made up, short black skirt well up the thigh.
See what you threw away
.

‘You had another hour, at least,’ Kirsty said, when the kids were out of the room. ‘But then you always did get bored with them quite rapidly… what with an eight-year-old’s lack of interest in the vagaries of the Crown Prosecution Service.’

Vagaries?
She’d been rehearsing, evidently.

‘Kairs—’

‘Or do you have a
date
tonight?’

Date
. Not a word they’d ever used between themselves. That little tweak of petty triumph on Kirsty’s lovely pulpy lips.

She knew something. She bloody
knew something
.

‘Gorra be off, Kairsty,’ Bliss said. ‘Be the Easter holidays next time I come, so we can make it a different day if you want. I could maybe take them over to Aberystwyth or somewhere.’

‘You never did put yourself out much, did you, Frank?’

Finding his arms folded – classic defence stance – Bliss let them drop.

‘It’s not
that
frigging convenient. Couple of hours each way, and with Easter traffic—’

‘I think,’ Kirsty said, ‘that you know what I’m talking about.’

‘I’ve gorra go.’

‘The thing is…’ she stood up slowly ‘… isn’t it against the rules? I mean, when it all comes out, won’t one of you have to move to another division? Isn’t that how it works?’

Bliss had felt the blood draining out of his face so fast that his cheeks actually felt cold.

‘Now, look… I don’t where you think you’re going with this, but—’

‘Oh, you do, Frank.’

Bliss’s mind was going like a washing machine: oh shit.
Shit, shit, shit
. Where had she got this from? Which one of his beloved colleagues had sniffed it out? How was this even
possible
?

‘You’re mental, Kairsty, you know that?’

Safest to go on the offensive. An advantage of being separated was the way you could bring a row directly to the boil, knowing you could slip away, with nothing lost, before the first plate hit the wall.

‘I don’t think so.’ Her eyes cold as quartz. ‘I mean, I could almost feel insulted if that cow’s as far as your ambition goes, but being I know what a sad little sod you’ve become, it doesn’t surprise me a great deal, Frank, to be honest.’

‘I’m going.’

Bliss’s palms starting to sweat.

‘Calling the shots now, is she, on your private life?’

‘Think whatever you want.’

‘As I understand it, with a male officer and a woman, it’s always the man has to move, isn’t it? Or have I got that wrong?’

‘What exactly do you want off me?’

And she’d smiled. Generously.

‘Just want you to own
up
to it, Frank, that’s all.’ Oh, the satisfaction in her eyes. ‘Dad’s solicitor says that makes it a lot easier. Play your cards right, it
might
not come out in public’

Oh sure
.

‘Just makes it easier, that’s all,’ Kirsty said.

‘And costlier. For me, anyway.’

Kirsty had shrugged, Bliss feeling like his insides had been flushed out with cold water. Kirsty blamed the police for everything that had gone wrong between them. She was wrong about that, and she probably knew she was wrong, but this was convenient, and she’d use it.

‘Close friend, Billy?’

Dr Grace, who was
very
well-connected, glanced over his shoulder at Bliss. ‘Not particularly a friend at all, Francis, but everybody’s at least acquainted in this county. Except, possibly, for uncouth incoming Scousers like yourself.’

‘You mean a Masonic thing?’ Bliss said.

Dr Grace declined to reply, turning back to his work, lifting a
distended flap of skin like he was opening a Jiffy bag full of blood, and Bliss turned away.

‘Big family, mind, Billy. Branches everywhere. The Bulls, Bull-Morrises, Bull-Davieses…’

‘Small county.’

‘And a big house for one man.’

‘Two marriages, Francis. Both childless.
Not
what a farmer wants. Well, now, I’d say that was pointing at him as culprit, but not the kind of man to have his sperm tested. Almost certainly would’ve been a third wife. Never a man to look back, Mansel.’

‘He didn’t see this coming,’ Bliss said.

‘Ah now…’ Billy Grace turned, beaming, a loose, shambling man with big white teeth, a wild, neon smile. ‘Actually, he
did
. He must’ve been facing directly into it.’

‘What you offering?’

‘Not a penknife, Francis. Machete, more like.’

‘That’s urban, Billy.’ Bliss took a step back. ‘That’s frigging gangland.’
Mr Sollers Bull thinks a gang
. ‘Go on then, doc. Give me the guesswork.’

Billy Grace lurched to his feet. Thimbles of blood on the fingers of his surgical gloves.

‘The neck – one blow, looks like. A single slash. I’m guessing that came first, while he was still on his feet. The blows to the top of the head would’ve put him straight down.’

Billy took a couple of long strides into the middle of the farmyard, all the uniforms and techies moving away as his right arm went back for role-play.

‘If you imagine he’s standing here when the blade makes contact,
slamming
into the windpipe. Not exactly what you’d call a butcher’s strike, but the sheer impact of it would leave the poor bastard reeling, spouting blood and tissue everywhere. A great dollop… as you see.’