Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

‘She was good to me. And if you’d seen her lying dead in the road—’

‘Well, I didn’t. But if I had, I’d still’ve thought she was a cranky, meddling old troublemaker, and this village better off with her gone.’

‘You rotten bastard,’ Jane blurted. ‘What did she ever do to you?’

‘Plus,’ Lloyd said pedantically, ‘she was a danger to herself and every other road-user. Two reasons – one, she never wore protective headgear.’

‘She liked her cowboy hat, and everybody knew it was her coming along, it was part of her im—’

‘Two, that ridiculous Mexican poncho thing. Get the wind under that, it blows up over your handlebars. Up over your head, if you’re unlucky. Which was exactly what happened, wannit?’

‘Yes,’ Jane whispered, shutting her eyes as if that would drive away the picture of Lucy’s face under the happy, summer poncho.

Lloyd revved hard and she was flung back into the passenger seat. ‘Silly bugger,’ Lloyd said and put both hands on the wheel, sending the truck bolting back in the direction of Ledwardine.

Thank God for that, Jane thought. Suddenly, the idea of being dumped back at the vicarage or outside the church with some snide little comment to Mum about keeping her daughter off the booze seemed almost cosy. She only hoped, the speed Lloyd was going, that no more sheep had strayed on to the road.

There was a cold explosion in her head.

Oh God.

Second one just dropped dead in two days, you get weeks like that. No reason for it, he’d said.

Not, And that makes it two with the one Lucy Devenish ran into. He was saying it had already dropped dead. How could he possibly know that?

Plus that poncho thing. Up over your head, if you’re unlucky. Which was exactly what happened, wannit?

How did he know that? How did he know Lucy had been lying dead with the poncho over her face, when he said he hadn’t seen her? Nobody had, except Jane and Bella and the police who’d immediately concealed the area.

Lloyd put his headlights on full beam, as the truck began jolting like all the tyres had gone flat or something.

‘What’s happening? Why’s it gone all bumpy?’

‘Short cut,’ Lloyd said tersely. In the green glow from the dashboard, he looked angry.

‘No, it’s not, where are we going?’

He rounded on her. ‘ Shut up! ’

‘What’s the matter? What have I done?’

‘This is all your bloody fault, you stupid little cow. I never bloody wanted this. I tried to be fair with you and you just kept pushin’ it and pushin’ it and pushin’ it. You couldn’t leave well alone.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. What have I said?’

‘It’s not what you said, it’s what you made me say. Leadin’ me on all the time, laying traps. You come yere, you all think you’re so smart. You and your university-educated parents and all I ever went to was the local agricultural college, all laughing behind your hands, bloody ole yokels, we’ll show ’em how to organize ’emselves, oh you think you’re so—’

‘We’re not ... My mother dropped out of university,’ Jane said. Desperately grabbing at a change of topic, anything not to do with sheep and road accidents. ‘She got pregnant. She’s worked really hard all her life. We’re not posh townies, Mum’s family came from—’

‘Shut your bloody clever little gob.’ The truck slithered to a greasy stop. ‘Let me think!’

‘Take me home.’ Jane discovered she was crying. She didn’t feel disgusted with herself, anybody would cry in this situation. ‘Please, Lloyd.’

‘You’ve had that, miss. You won’t get home now.’

‘Where are we?’ She made a grab for the door handle; he reared over her. She screamed. The scream floated away out of the window, into nowhere.

‘Don’t make me touch you,’ Lloyd said.

Jane got both hands to the door-pull, but it just kept clicking and the door didn’t open.

‘Don’t work from the inside n’more,’ Lloyd said. ‘I was gonner get him fixed, then I saw he had his uses.’

Gomer caught up with Merrily under the porch lantern.

‘Vicar. Hold on.’ He was out of breath.

She stepped outside again, although she didn’t think she could bring herself to explain what had happened.

‘Gomer—’

‘Seen ’em fetchin’ ’im out, Vicar. At least four people told me the story ‘tween Church Street and the market. Should be more’n halfway round the county by now. Forget that. That don’t matter, see. You gotter get back in there, ‘fore they all leaves.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You gotter tell ’em the truth.’

‘Dear Gomer.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know any truth any more. And if I did, nobody would want to hear it from me.’

‘ I know the truth. Me and Lol, we figured it. If you’d just give me chance—’

‘Gomer, whatever it is, it’s too late.’

‘En’t,’ Gomer said obstinately.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve got to find Jane.’

He followed her back into the porch. ‘Vicar, you gotter listen. Lol, see, he’s been puttin’ me in the picture ‘bout a lot o’ things you been keepin’ to yourself too long.’

‘Then he shouldn’t have. It’s all been a waste of time and I should’ve known better.’

Inside the porch, sitting on the stone bench like a smug gnome, Dermot Child smirked at her. ‘Quite an interesting night, Reverend. In spite of everything. I’m sure the repercussions will be many and varied.’

‘Who’s that?’ Gomer peered sourly at him, ‘Ah, it’s you, Mr Child. Didn’t recognize you with your dick in your pants.’ He held open the church door for Merrily.

‘Gomer—’

‘Hear me out, Vicar.’

At the prayer-book table, just inside the door, Detective Constable Ken Thomas was sitting taking names. Ken was local, well known to most of the villagers and Merrily too. He was a nice man, overweight and approaching retirement age, therefore consigned by Howe to such menial, clerical tasks as this. He didn’t seem to mind.

‘You en’t gonner write my full name down, are you, Ken?’ Jim Prosser was saying. ‘Just put Jim, Shop, you’ll remember.’

‘But she won’t, and she’s the one matters.’

‘That girl?’

‘That girl could be divisional commander next year, way things are going. It’s called accelerated promotion. Tonight’s likely shoved her up two more rungs.’

‘Bugger me,’ Jim Prosser said. Behind him, Brenda, his wife, fussed with her inappropriate crinoline. Behind her Dr Kent Asprey looked impatient, Rod Powell dignified and unconcerned. James Bull-Davies, heritage vindicated, hung out by the pulpit, aloof, chin thrust out, gazing up at the opaque apple window, on the opposite side of the church to the Bull chapel where, Merrily was convinced, he’d earlier hacked his way into a seventeenth-century tomb. But who would ever learn about that now?

Nobody seemed to notice Merrily. There was no sign of Jane.

‘Probly gone home lookin’ for you,’ Gomer said. ‘We’ll find her, don’t you worry ‘bout that. Now, where’s quiet? Vestry?’

He held back the curtain and almost pushed her inside.

Jane wrapped her arms around herself, shrinking into the corner where the sunken passenger seat ended and the metal partition separated her and the dead sheep in the back of the truck.

This was the Powell farm, on the wrong side of the new road, the village a sparse and distant glimmering through the orchard.

‘I’m not getting out. I want to go home. You’ve got to take me home.’

‘Stop whining, bitch,’ Lloyd said. ‘I gotter think.’

He was clutching the steering wheel tightly with both hands as though he wanted to bang his head on it. The film of sweat on his forehead was lime-green in the dashlight. The engine was chunnering. A smell of petrol inside the cab, mixed with cattle feed and manure.