Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘Are these wounds consistent with that knife?’

‘Back of the head, though, that looks more like your blunt instrument. I haven’t seen the knife – you got it there?’

‘Bagged up,’ Bliss said. ‘Kitchen knife, eight-inch blade. Found in the grass not far from his right hand.’

‘Assume he didn’t do it to himself. And I’d guess you’re looking for more than one person, Francis. Probably more than two. If it happened here, which is how it looks by the blood-spatter, then … a muscular young feller like this, he’d take some holding down, wouldn’t he?’

‘Maybe somebody else holding his head back by the hair over the top of the stone to expose his throat for the knife. Henry, what did you say about this stone?’

‘Known locally as the Sacrificial Stone, boss. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘There you go, Merrily. Can’t say fairer than that.’ Bliss took her arm and led her away, back up towards the cave. ‘And this is Midsummer’s Eve, right? Talk me through this.’

‘Through what?’

‘Ritual sacrifice. Just to get me started.’

‘ That ’s why you wanted me to come up with you?’

‘No doubt we’ll find a proper expert tomorrow, if we need one. But as you’re here … fair to say your personal experience extends to aspects of pagan worship?’

Merrily glanced back at the stone, a steep wedge in the hillside, the dead man, with his black bib of gore, arching back over it like he’d been been using it for working out, about to perform some dynamic form of sit-up.

‘Frannie…’ She dug both hands hard into her jacket pockets, turned away to where the path wound around to the earthen ramparts of the Iron Age fort. ‘It doesn’t happen, does it?’

‘What doesn’t?’

‘Ritual sacrifice.’

‘Yes, it does,’ Bliss said. ‘You think of that poor kiddie found in the Thames a few years back.’

‘Yes, but that wasn’t—’

‘ One of ours? Tut, tut. This is multicultural Britain, Merrily. Suggesting that the only valid form of ritual sacrifice in this country should be conducted by white men in white robes with sickles is tantamount to—’

‘Oh, I see. Because this guy’s black —’

‘A black man found with his throat cut at a famous Ancient British monument … that’s slightly cross- cultural, isn’t it? I don’t think it’s anything like that, but we need to eliminate it. Tell me about Midsummer’s Eve.’

‘Most traditional forms of paganism would focus on the solstice sunrise. Which is still a few hours away. But it’s stupid anyway … modern pagans just don’t do this kind of thing.’

‘Never say that, girl. There’s always some bastard who’ll do anything. But I take your point.’

‘Also … I mean, how long’s he been dead?’

‘Few hours, max. Found by some kids. Teenagers.’

‘So he was probably killed before dark. Still be a few walkers about. They’re going to stage a sacrificial ritual with the constant risk of an audience?’

A burst of light made Merrily turn in time to catch the second contained flash from a crime-scene camera, bringing the horror luridly alive: the obscene hole in the victim’s throat like parted lips with a protruding tongue. She thought of hostages in Iraq dying on video, heard the keening of the knife in the air, saw the blade shining red-golden in the sunset. A slash, a spurting, a choked-off scream. She shivered.

‘You’re doing well,’ Bliss said. ‘This is what I wanted to hear.’

‘Huh?’

‘Look, if you need a cig, go ahead, just don’t drop the stub.’

‘I’m OK.’

‘You don’t look it. I’m sorry, Merrily, I didn’t think. I do tend to use people, me.’

‘Really? I’ve never noticed that side of you.’

Bliss grinned. Headlights washed across the sloping trees below them. The turf under Merrily’s feet felt as springy as an exercise mat. With the smoky hills snaking away before her, it was like standing on some kind of natural escalator. Power of place.

‘It’s an execution, isn’t it?’

‘Possibly,’ Bliss said. ‘Of sorts.’

‘And you’re thinking the victim’s connected with the Royal Oak.’

‘A good detective is open to all possibilities.’

‘Only…’ She hesitated. ‘… A guy in the parish meeting just now was insisting that the licensing authority had been tolerating what was happening at the Royal Oak because you got better tourism grants if you could show the government you were encouraging black and Asian visitors.’

‘Must send the council a picture. This could be worth thousands.’

‘So I was wondering…’

‘A racist execution?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You know what I think, Merrily? I think if this lad had been found with the same injuries behind one of the garages on the Plascarreg Estate we wouldn’t be asking ourselves any of these questions.’

‘Power of place,’ Merrily said.

It was another ninety minutes or so before they went back to the British Camp car park. Bliss had offered to get Henry to take Merrily back to her car at Wychehill, but she’d hung on, watching the police tape going up, lights bobbing around the hillside.

Bliss had wandered off to consult with his team and Merrily had phoned Lol, asking him to get a message to Jane: don’t wait up.

‘Henry says people come up here for the Midsummer sunrise,’ Bliss said as they climbed down from the 4×4. ‘In which case they’ll be disappointed tomorr—’ He looked at his watch. ‘Dear me, it is tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t want any bugger on that hill until we’ve been over it in daylight.’

‘How long are you staying?’

‘I’ll drive you to your car and then I’ll come back for an hour or two. See if I can make enough progress to stake a claim.’

‘On the case?’

‘Soon as Howe gets in tomorrow, she’ll be working out how to remove me from the investigation. Being so close to the Worcester border doesn’t help.’ Bliss unlocked his car. ‘Don’t want to be too tired to put up a decent resistance.’

He drove past the side of the Malvern Hills Hotel and into the road that led back to Wychehill.

‘However,’ he said, ‘if I did want to keep going until sunrise, and probably the sunrise after that , the answer would be in the knapsack that one of the lads has found among the rocks. Up by the Giant’s Cave, as it’s known.’

‘A knapsack … full of … ?’

‘In very saleable quantities. We’ll know for certain in the morning if it belonged to our friend.’

‘He was a dealer?’

‘Not for me to defame the dead without forensic evidence, but … yeh.’

‘He was dealing on Herefordshire Beacon ?’

‘Oh heavens! A purveyor of narcotic substances on a national monument. Merrily, imagine for a moment, if you’re a Malvern professional person throwing a dinner party, how much more civilized it would be to stock up on the After Eights on a balmy summer evening with all-round views.’

‘Luckily I’m a vicar who can’t afford to throw dinner parties. Bloody hell, Frannie.’

‘But what puzzles me is who would brutally unthroat a drug dealer … and then not even nick his flamin’ stash?’ Bliss cruised down the hill past the darkened Royal Oak in its tree-lined quarry. ‘I’m norra great believer in coincidence, Merrily.’

‘Look … what can I tell you? I’ve been to a public meeting where the community had to decide what it wanted me to do about the ghost of … of a cyclist. If anything in that connects with an appallingly nasty murder of a drug dealer on the lower slopes of Hereford-shire Beacon it isn’t obvious to me. But then, it is late.’