Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

‘Whereabouts is it?’

‘Top of a field, other side o’ the new road, as I recall. A barn, an ole sheep shed and the cider house. Used to be a tiny little shepherd’s cottage there at one time, but that got pulled down years back.’

‘You want to take a look?’ Lol said. ‘Put your mind at rest?’ Meaning put my mind at rest. If they’d found Jane he’d have said, Let’s call it a night, let’s go and find Merrily and talk about all of this, see how it looks in daylight.

But they hadn’t found Jane.

‘Unpredictable kid, though, Gomer. She comes and goes. Has her own ideas, her own apartment in the vicarage. She could be back there now, for all we know.’

‘All right, boy, I’ll tell you what we does.’

Gomer said he’d go back via the old bowling green, through into the churchyard, check on the situation there and whether the kiddie had been found, grab his Jeep off the square – always felt better on wheels, never much of a foot soldier, see. Lol, meanwhile, would torch-sweep as much of the orchard as he could before making his way to the gate opening on to the new road, where Gomer would pick him up in about half an hour.

‘That way, we covers both exits. If her’s in the orchard, one or other of us’ll mabbe stumble—’ Gomer coughed, shuffled. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean ...’

‘She’ll be OK,’ Lol said. ‘She’ll be OK.’ Like repeating it was going to make it so. ‘She’s always OK.’

But when Gomer had gone, the Garrod Powell in his head faded into Lloyd Powell and both of them merged into Karl Windling and the white-robed apple trees stood around like bent old druids at some woodland ceremony, and he didn’t think Jane was OK.

He was very fond of Jane. He could say that to himself now. It was OK to be fond of a fifteen-year-old girl. It was OK to fall in love with her mother. He walked away. The salmon moon was entangled in a cluster of spiky dead branches projecting from the blossom below. Gomer was right; the only way to make any kind of productive orchard here was to start again.

He walked quickly, pointing the torch at what remained of the path, sometimes apprehensively sweeping it from side to side, and finding patches of fungus pale as flesh and exposed roots like withered limbs.

She went as far away as she could get, squeezing herself into different corners, squatting in the straw. But wherever she was, she could still see the loft and the bin sack. Wherever she went, she thought she could see Colette’s eyes, popping out at her like marbles.

Even though she’d dragged the bin sack back over the face, she seemed to see the eyes making little round bulges in the plastic.

What a bummer, eh, Janey? Ain’t this just the pits?

But the cool, sassy voice she remembered no longer matched the face. Colette, dead, had a child’s face again, this was what was so awful. She looked so pitifully young. Younger than me.

And the smell. Colette’s sickly new perfume. Putrefying. A putrefying child. A little, swollen doll with a livid throat.

‘ Pleeeeeease. ’

The folds of the bin sack settled around Colette’s face with a crinkling sound.

‘ Naaaaaw! ’

In a frenzy, Jane scrambled back on to the stone mill wheel and balanced there, piling more and more empty bin sacks over the corpse, to lose the shape, lose the smell, a stink which would have so disgusted Colette. Her thoughts flitting fearfully into the forbidden unknown. How long had Colette been kept here before they killed her like a turkey? What had they done to her before they throttled her and took her clothes and dumped them in a ditch at King’s Oak Corner and dressed her in a crinkly black shroud? Hunky Lloyd Powell and his dignified father. What had they done to her?

She remembered what Lloyd had said about pests and badger-baiting. It’s a bit of fun. It’s cheap. Nobody gets harmed, ‘cept the badger and that’s his fault for being a badger.

Behind her, the door swung open. She didn’t even try to get down. What was the point?

‘Ah, you found her then, is it?’

Lloyd standing in the doorway with his legs apart. Lloyd sounding quite pleased, like Colette’s body was a birthday present they’d hidden.

‘Amazing what you find when you snoop around, girl. Still. It’s not very nice. Shouldn’t leave ’em unburied. Health risk, it is. I apologize.’

He sighed.

‘We got too much on, see, at present. And too many strangers about. We never wanted the slag, mind. We never done anything like that before. You don’t, not on your own doorstep, not on your own land. Stupid, that is. And then we couldn’t even bury her with all these police tramping around. Untidy. Hate that, I do.’

‘ Stop it! ’ she screeched, jumping down, putting the mill wheel between them. ‘I don’t want to know. You disgust me.’

Lloyd folded his arms, affronted. ‘Now, don’t you bloody come on like that with me, Jane. It was your fault. It was you sent me after the bitch. Oh, you gotter stop them, you gotter get them out, Lloyd, please, Lloyd, please, please, please ... You think I wanted that? Last thing we bloody wanted after that one Father brought back from Kingsland, did nothin’ but bloody cry, day and night ... But no, you had to keep on at me. Please, Lloyd, oh please, please—

‘ Stop it! ’ Jane shrieked and bent her head into her arms between her knees.

‘So I find the slag, and she’s looking at me like I’m God’s gift. Throwing herself all over me in the middle of our own orchard. Got rid of her mates fast enough, she had, and here she is, wandering around half naked all by herself. What was I supposed to do? You tell me that, Jane. Fetch her back to the restaurant, with her slobbering all over me, making up her lies? What would that do to my reputation. What would it do to Father?’

‘You didn’t have to bring her back here. Why couldn’t you just ... just make love to her ... whatever she wanted. You didn’t have to bring her back here! ’

‘But we always fetches ’em back yere.’

Lloyd looked momentarily puzzled, like even he wasn’t quite sure why they always fetched them here. Just what he’d been brought up to do. A few stupid city people might think it was cruel, but it was a different way of life out here, wasn’t it?

Nobody gets harmed, ‘cept the badger and that’s his fault for being a badger.

Colette’s fault for being a slag.

Jane didn’t know how to talk to him any more. He wasn’t mad in the normal sense. He didn’t have the imagination to be mad. You couldn’t humour him; he had no humour.

Jane said, in a very low, faint voice, ‘I didn’t throw myself at anybody. I’m not going to spread any lies. Why can’t you just let me go?’

Lloyd shook his head in his brisk and businesslike way. ‘Not an option, Jane. You gotter see that. ‘Specially now.’

‘I’m sure your father’ll say to let me go. He’s a councillor, for God’s sake. My mother’s the—’

Lloyd sort of smiled. ‘You don’t really know Father, do you, Jane?’

And there, suddenly, was Mr Powell in her head, his council-chairman’s chain wound around his hands and tightened.

She braced herself to attack Lloyd. She would go for his balls.

Lloyd leaned back slightly on his heels and regarded her sorrowfully. ‘You try anything, Jane, on me, I got to tell you I’ll punch your face flat. Won’t offend Father. Won’t put Father off. Don’t look at the ole mantelpiece when you’re—’

She saw that Mr Powell wore no trousers and his shirt flap was sticking out. In Lloyd’s hip pocket, the mobile phone had begun to bleep.