Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘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.’

‘The media have indeed been told we’re not looking for a third party,’ Bliss said. ‘And, frankly, if it was so much as suggested that the third party might turn out to be the kind of third party I suspect you ’re looking at then I think we’ve made a sound decision.’

‘Assuming the forensics support the obvious conclusion that Fuchsia killed Felix and then herself … how important is it to you to find a motive?’

‘It’s obviously tidier , for us, Merrily, if we can find evidence of domestic strife and/or mental imbalance.’

‘You tried to find the mother, by any chance? Mary Linden.’

‘We’ve got the birth certificate, and the name tallies. As does Tepee Valley. But the mother’s name is less poetic than “Linden”. Mary Roberts.’

‘What about the adoptive parents?’

‘Moved on, some years ago. We’re trying to pin them down, but bloody hippies, they could be anywhere. We’re continuing inquiries, but we don’t have the manpower to make too much of it.’