Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

‘And about time, too, Father,’ Lloyd said. ‘Excuse me.’

When he’d shut the door efficiently behind him and locked it again, Jane gave up, threw herself into the filthy straw. She was thirsty. She had no more tears left. Her chest hurt from sobbing. It was over. All she had left to hope for was that they would see her as a fox -fast, bang.

Please God, not a badger.

She thought back in horrified amazement to the side of herself which had persuaded her to go into the orchard with two full bottles of gassy cider. When you knew you were going to die quite soon, your body put into a clammy bin liner, the idea of being suspended in some parallel, ethereal, faerie universe was just the most awful, self-deluding crap imaginable. Lucy Devenish believed all this shit and they’d killed her too, and she hadn’t come back because all that afterlife stuff Mum preached was utter crap as well. What she’d had in the orchard that day had been some kind of black-out; she probably had a brain tumour and would have died anyway.

Jane lay there and sniffed the stinking straw because it was better than the piercing perfume of Colette. She, too, would start to smell like that, quite soon, when she was lying in her own bin sack, she and Colette decaying side by side, good mates turning bad. Jane sobbed and snuffled over this until, weak and exhausted – please God, not a badger – her body slackened into a thin sleep and Mr Powell was there, with his chain tight and his thing out, not smiling.

James lifted his chin, his eyes focused on the rafters. His tone was clipped.

‘Many times, I gather, the destruction of that document was mooted. But there was a sound reason for it being preserved. Eventually, about a hundred years ago, my great-grandfather suggested it should be entombed with its author. That’s all there is to it.’

‘James,’ said Merrily. ‘You can’t just tell us there was a sound reason without saying what it was.’

‘It’s a private—’

‘James, listen to me. About thirty years ago, a girl called Patricia Young went to work for your father in the stables. She got pregnant – never mind how I know, I know. She returned after the child was born, to try and persuade the father to face up to his responsibilities. He obviously did. He faced up to the responsibility he obviously felt to his family, and she was never seen again.’

Someone shouted out, ‘Patricia came back?

‘This is disgraceful,’ James snarled.

‘Bloody well come clean, Bull-Davies,’ a man yelled. Several people were on their feet. Ken Thomas had put on all the lights. Bull-Davies’s face was white, a vein throbbing in his forehead. He flung out his pointing arm at Merrily.

‘If there’s a bloody witch here, it’s you.’

‘Shame!’ Minnie Parry cried out and was echoed by at least a dozen people, some of them out in the aisle.

‘All right!’ James threw up his hands. ‘Reason we didn’t destroy that document is because it also vindicates Tom Bull. Didn’t kill Williams. Didn’t even order it done. Truth of it ... like Thomas a Becket all over again. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? One of his ... servants did it. And that’s all I’m saying. That’s it. Show’s over. I’m leaving. Goodnight.’

To a chorus of groans and protests from the pews, he strode away to the south porch, didn’t look at Ken Thomas, went out. Alison glanced at Merrily then followed him.

Merrily shrugged and followed Alison. Behind her, a score of conversations were detonated.

Garrod Powell had a Sunday car, a silver-grey Ford Escort. Whenever he came to church, he parked it in the same place on the square adjacent to the market hall where it reached out towards the mews where Cassidy’s Country Kitchen was and Ledwardine Lore. Rod’s space. Only tourists parked there when Rod wasn’t in town.

When Gomer spotted the car, Rod was in it, talking on the phone.

Gomer pulled his Jeep into the kerbside at the mouth of Church Street and waited.

Bull-Davies strode past towards his blue Land Rover, almost dragging the floozie behind him. He was unlocking the driver’s door when the little vicar caught them up.

Alison suddenly snatched her hand away and turned on James like a cornered cat.

‘Tell her, you bloody fool. Why don’t you just tell her everything you know? This has nothing to do with honour or tradition.’

‘If that were true ...’ He leaned back against his Land Rover and breathed in through his teeth. ‘If that were true, my darling mistress, this would not be a problem.’

‘The problem is,’ Merrily said, ‘that I think we’re talking about a tradition that’s far from honourable.’

‘You’re very clever, Mrs Watkins.’

‘No I’m not. I’ve not been very clever at all. I’ve got people killed.’

‘If you’re talking about Coffey—’

‘You didn’t kill Coffey, did you, James?’ It just came out.

‘What?’ James’s jaw fell open like a padlock. He blinked. ‘Good Lord. You saw Alder in there. Fellow as good as confessed. Didn’t say a word in denial, took it’ – he grunted – ‘took it like a man.’

‘He’s an actor,’ Merrily said. ‘His great performance was dying on its feet. I wondered if he was just grabbing the chance of getting out on a moment of high drama.’

‘Look. Mrs Watkins ... Mrs Watkins, no. I did not kill Coffey. Found the man and went to the police, cooperated fully. Even let them take my fingerprints. No. Did not kill Coffey. May have wanted to, but that’s not my way. Couldn’t. All right?’

‘Tell her, then,’ Alison said. ‘Tell her that the Bulls don’t kill. Tell her who—’

‘Stop. Please. All right. According to his own account, Thomas Bull got very drunk one night. Opened his heart to the only man he felt he could still trust. His bailiff, gamekeeper, head groom, land steward, his ...’

Merrily, shuddering, had a vision of big brown hands around a small, white throat.

‘His Powell,’ she said.

‘Now do you see?’ James bellowed. ‘ Now do you bloody well see?’

‘The ... this Powell ... killed her.’ Merrily felt breathless, felt the sudden closeness of the woman who was Wil. ‘Strangled her.’

‘Robert Powell, his name. He was trying to help Tom Bull, and he did a terrible thing.’

‘Even more terrible,’ Alison said, ‘because he’d have soon realized he was killing a woman. It’s not so easy to strangle a man.’

‘He didn’t just strangle her,’ Merrily said. ‘He raped her first. He raped the minister. He went to kill a priest, and—’

‘Don’t make it worse, woman!’

‘But it is worse, James. It got worse. Because it didn’t stop. From then on, the Powells had a hold on the Bulls, and maybe it strengthened over the centuries because of the things the Powells would do without compunction. Things it wouldn’t have been proper or seemly or honourable ... Who killed Patricia Young?’

Bull-Davies reeled. ‘I don’t know that! Gord’s sake, don’t know anything. Don’t know if the damned woman was killed. I was a boy then, probably still away at school, nobody would have told me. I don’t know anything. Just inherited all this shit, been trying to keep the damned toilet lid down ever since.’

Merrily looked at Alison.

Alison gave a tiny nod, her face flushed with anticipation.

‘Who do you think killed her?’ Merrily said.

‘Do you never give up? Presumably the father of her child, whoever ...’ James swallowed. ‘Whoever that was. Certainly not my poor bloody father who for the last twenty years of his life was impotent through illness and drink and got his only pleasure from ...’