Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘He had killed, though, hadn’t he?’ Merrily said. ‘What about Lincoln Cookman and his girlfriend?’

‘I meant murder.’

‘Yes, well…’ Merrily bent her head into her hands. ‘This is probably nonsense, but when I went to talk to Raji Khan at the Royal Oak, Roman Wicklow’s family were there, collecting his stuff. Including his small sports car. Quite a deep colour of orange, which might look red at night, I don’t know. It was just a feeling I had, and I don’t get them often.’

Syd sat back. ‘A Mazda?’

‘I think it was a Nissan, but about the same size and shape, and late at night, coming towards Preston Devereaux at speed, with a black guy inside … He told me he was very tired at the time. He said if he hadn’t been so tired it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘An impulse thing?’

‘If Wicklow was preying on his mind…’

‘You said Wicklow killed that man in Pershore?’

‘He was tortured before he was shot,’ Merrily said. ‘Maybe he gave Wicklow information leading Wicklow back to Devereaux.’

‘Then Wicklow turns up at Old Wychehill to ask for a job. Blackmail in a thin disguise. What if Wicklow tells Khan? Assuming Khan doesn’t already know.’

Suspecting that Khan had a charmed-life arrangement with Annie Howe, Merrily didn’t think he did know.

‘I could be totally wrong about the Wychehill crash, anyway. How could he know they’d both be killed?’

‘He couldn’t,’ Syd said. ‘But he was a massively angry man in a business that brutalizes. I remember he was in a very … excited state that night. In fact, I don’t rule out that Preston, like Louis, partook of the produce. In his careful way.’

‘It could even be that Cookman had been involved with Wicklow. The police did find a bag of crack under his spare wheel.’

‘Anything’s possible and most of it won’t come out. The cops have too many angles to follow up. Could take weeks with several forces involved. Could be dozens of people charged. But it’s not our problem. Is it?’

‘Meanwhile,’ Lol said, ‘do we ring A and E at Worcester Hospital?’

‘They’ll ring us,’ Merrily said. ‘Tim has no known relations in the country. Not that anybody knows of.’

She pushed her cup away. One of the parameds had mentioned the possibility of damage to the pulmonary artery. The kitchen seemed dim. The garden, where it was lifted towards the bald hill, was pallid with tired moonlight and what remained of the so-called noctilucence.

‘I may’ve screwed up badly.’ Syd plucked at his cassock. ‘Probably gonna get out of this now.’

‘The cassock?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Quitting’s not in your nature, Syd. Or your training.’

He smiled faintly.

‘Increasingly, I admire you, Merrily. You’ve watched it fall to pieces from your point of view. Every deliverance angle going, one after another, down the toilet.’

‘That’s what you think?’ Merrily sank her head into her arms, looking up at him from table-top level. ‘You really don’t see anything bordering on the paranormal?’

‘You mean you do?’

‘Syd,’ she said. ‘When I’ve slept, I’ll make you a list.’

‘You think there should still be some form of requiem?’

‘I don’t know. You think that would make everything all right in Wychehill? Sweetness and light and harmony and Mr Holliday inviting Mr Khan to afternoon tea?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I suppose I think truth sometimes heals on its own. Winnie said there was a festering wound in the hills. Maybe she added to the infection. Maybe she – let’s be fanciful – annoyed Elgar, bringing him to judgement when all he wanted was to pedal up and down, whistling his sad little up-and-down cello tune.’

‘Bringing him to judgement?’

‘What right did she have? It was essentially a magical ritual, you know, what they were—’ She stood up. ‘What they’re still doing, presumably, in your church.’

Merrily had never been a hymn kind of person, but she knew them. Most of the words, if not the tune in this case.

‘ Oh wisest love that flesh and blood

Which did in Adam fail . . .’

‘ Praise to the Holiest in the Height . That’s … ?’

‘What the heavenly choir sings before the appearance of the Angel of the Agony,’ Lol said. ‘Tim’s expanded it, I think. Dan said it goes into a speaking-in-tongues kind of chant. He said that’s when you start to get high.’

They were in the parking bay outside Wychehill Church. The singing was much louder now than when Merrily had last heard it, standing on an upturned bucket below a window. As if the choristers had been pacing themselves like athletes.

‘You think we should stop them?’ Syd Spicer stood under the cracked lantern, his eyes uncertain. ‘How long’s it got to go?’

‘What time is it now, Syd?’

‘Two-twenty.’

‘It ends at three,’ Lol said.

‘Let them finish then.’ Syd brought out his keys. ‘You want to go in?’

Lol nodded. Merrily had caught a movement in the churchyard.

‘Join you in a few minutes. OK?’

Sliding among the bushes and the graves not a moment too soon because within a few seconds there were voices behind her, talking to Syd, and one of them was Annie Howe’s. ‘No, I’m not sure,’ she heard Syd say. ‘She was here not long ago. Do you want to talk to me first?’

She was standing under the statue of the Angel of the Agony, pink cardigan over a summer dress with cartwheels and roses on it. Male and female voices cascaded down through the warm air, fluid and ethereal, coloured rain.

‘ God’s presence and his very Self

and Essence —’

‘I thought,’ Merrily said, ‘that on Friday and Saturday night you stayed in behind locked and barred doors.’

‘Sometimes I sit at the window,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘From the front dormer I can just see the church gates. I had the window open tonight, to hear the choir. Then I saw you come in with the Rector and the other gentleman.’

Merrily sat on the edge of the tomb, looked up into her face, meagrely lit by the candles inside the church.

‘What don’t I know about you, Mrs Aird?’

‘Oh dear, is it that obvious?’

‘I did think of ringing Ingrid Sollars, but there hasn’t been much time.’

‘Oh well,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘Ingrid doesn’t know anything really. I don’t make a point of telling people my family history. Not round here, especially. There’s still quite a bit of strong feeling in certain quarters.’

She glanced up at the Angel of the Agony, whose face, even by diffused candlelight, reflected none of the compassion that you might expect.

‘Oh,’ Merrily said. ‘I see … I think.’

‘He was my grandfather.’

‘Joseph Longworth.’

‘I don’t remember him. He died when I was very young. I didn’t even know where he was buried for a long time. It was quite a shock when I first came here.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘He left some money, in trust for Wychehill Church. The interest to be handed over as a lump sum every ten years, as directed by the principal trustee. Which at present is me, as the eldest in the family. He wanted the money to perpetuate the church’s connection with Elgar.’

‘Ah…’

‘What I was told was that Elgar’s music was not very popular by the time my grandfather discovered it in the 1920s. He became, you know, besotted with it. He thought it was the greatest music ever made in England. He wanted to help. And to make up, in a small way, for all the damage done by the quarrying. And I suppose he’s been proved right, hasn’t he, about the music?’