Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

A car pulled alongside.

‘You all right, Merrily?’

Bliss’s face at the car window. She’d actually forgotten all about Bliss and his incident. She pulled back in mid-stride.

‘Is this going to improve my night, Frannie?’

‘Quite honestly,’ Bliss said, ‘I’d say probably not.’

Power of Place

Merrily jerked her head away. ‘ Oh God…’

The DC, who was called Henry, pulled back his lamp.

‘You could’ve waited over by the truck,’ Bliss said. ‘I did warn you.’

And maybe she would have hung back, but a call a few minutes ago from Lol to say that he’d found Jane had fortified her, made her feel obliged to go across to join Bliss and what lay, in its abattoir splatter, across the jutting shelf of stone.

Bliss had driven up to the car park opposite the Malvern Hills Hotel at the foot of the Beacon, where they’d got into Henry’s police 4x4. A roundabout route along dirt tracks had taken them to the other side of the hill, Henry parking in some woodland before leading them by lamplight, like a shepherd, along an uphill mud footpath.

It had brought them to a wide-mouthed cave in a wall of rocks, like a black gable under a roof. Two uniformed policemen were in the opening, smoking cigarettes. Incident room, Bliss had said, and laughed.

Merrily swallowed. Being sick wouldn’t help the forensics.

‘Frannie?’

‘Uh?’

‘You think there’s a chance he did this to himself?’

The Home Office pathologist, Dr McEwen, looked at Bliss, probably to check that it was OK to speak in front of the woman in the dog collar. Bliss nodded.

‘I’d say the chances that your man did this to himself are fairly remote.’ McEwen was a soft-voiced Irishman in a red and blue baseball cap. ‘With a suicide – if we assume this is something the individual has never attempted before – he’s usually unsure of the best place to go in, so you’ll normally find two or three test cuts above and below the main wound. Now, if you see here…’

This time Merrily didn’t look, turning away towards the few lights of somewhere in Worcestershire laid out like a broken necklace under the ochre-streaked charcoal sky.

‘But there is more than one cut.’ Bliss’s fluorescent orange hiking jacket creaking as he bent down.

‘Sure, but they’re not what anybody would call test cuts,’ McEwen said. ‘This one here looks like knife-skid, but this one, arguably a secondary slash, is far too deep. See what it’s done to the trachea and the muscle there? There’s also a wound on the back of the head, which might… Look, give me a few minutes more, all right?’

‘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.