Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

Bliss had wandered off to consult with his team and Merrily had phoned Lol, asking him to get a message to Jane: don’t wait up.

‘Henry says people come up here for the Midsummer sunrise,’ Bliss said as they climbed down from the 4?4. ‘In which case they’ll be disappointed tomorr-’ He looked at his watch. ‘Dear me, it is tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t want any bugger on that hill until we’ve been over it in daylight.’

‘How long are you staying?’

‘I’ll drive you to your car and then I’ll come back for an hour or two. See if I can make enough progress to stake a claim.’

‘On the case?’

‘Soon as Howe gets in tomorrow, she’ll be working out how to remove me from the investigation. Being so close to the Worcester border doesn’t help.’ Bliss unlocked his car. ‘Don’t want to be too tired to put up a decent resistance.’

He drove past the side of the Malvern Hills Hotel and into the road that led back to Wychehill.

‘However,’ he said, ‘if I did want to keep going until sunrise, and probably the sunrise after that, the answer would be in the knapsack that one of the lads has found among the rocks. Up by the Giant’s Cave, as it’s known.’

‘A knapsack… full of…?’

‘In very saleable quantities. We’ll know for certain in the morning if it belonged to our friend.’

‘He was a dealer?’

‘Not for me to defame the dead without forensic evidence, but… yeh.’

‘He was dealing on Herefordshire Beacon?’

‘Oh heavens! A purveyor of narcotic substances on a national monument. Merrily, imagine for a moment, if you’re a Malvern professional person throwing a dinner party, how much more civilized it would be to stock up on the After Eights on a balmy summer evening with all-round views.’

‘Luckily I’m a vicar who can’t afford to throw dinner parties. Bloody hell, Frannie.’

‘But what puzzles me is who would brutally unthroat a drug dealer

… and then not even nick his flamin’ stash?’ Bliss cruised down the hill past the darkened Royal Oak in its tree-lined quarry. ‘I’m norra great believer in coincidence, Merrily.’

‘Look… what can I tell you? I’ve been to a public meeting where the community had to decide what it wanted me to do about the ghost of

… of a cyclist. If anything in that connects with an appallingly nasty murder of a drug dealer on the lower slopes of Hereford-shire Beacon it isn’t obvious to me. But then, it is late.’

‘But you’ll be coming back, I take it.’

‘I suppose.’

‘And I might not be. So keep me informed.’

‘And you keep me informed.’

In the north-eastern sky, she could see amber strips. Probably a false dawn. Midsummer morning in Elgar’s England.

‘Not only did they not take his drugs,’ Bliss said, ‘they didn’t even nick his mobile. Work that out.’

Freelancing

Jane, at breakfast, said, ‘I haven’t been trying to avoid you.’

‘Did I say you had?’

‘Lol said you had. Which means the same thing.’

‘Actually,’ Merrily said, ‘I was feeling bad that I hadn’t been, as they say, here for you. Maybe you could take me to see this Coleman’s Meadow? When you get home from school.’

After some sweaty, befuddled dreams that she couldn’t remember but knew were unpleasant, Merrily just wanted to do something normal. She sat and looked at Jane across the refectory table. Wished they could stay here like this all day.

Jane said, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Difficult night.’ Merrily put an extra spoonful of sugar in her tea. ‘After the meeting, Frannie Bliss took me to look at a murder scene.’

‘Scousers really know how to show a woman a good time. Like… why , exactly?’

‘Because the dead man was found with his throat cut on something called the Sacrificial Stone at Herefordshire Beacon and Bliss wanted to eliminate the possibility of it being a ritual midsummer slaughter by pagans.’

‘Wow. For a vicar, you really-’

Merrily watched her daughter, translating every facial twitch: Jane trying not to be impressed while remembering she had guilty secrets and couldn’t afford to be too abrasive over…

‘Pagans doing ritual murder? That is so insulting.’

‘As Bliss pointed out, there are pagans and pagans. Anyway, it was bloody horrible, and I didn’t get back until nearly two a.m. So if you’ve been trying to avoid me, I’ve not been aware of it.’

‘Who was the vic?’

Kid watched too many American crime shows on Channel Five.

‘When I left, he was still unidentified. Jane… do you know anything about a dance venue called Inn Ya Face?’

‘Best thing about that place -’ Jane spread a slab of honey, obscenely, on a crumpet ‘- is its name.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve been, obviously.’

‘ When? You never mentioned that.’

‘We didn’t stop long. I mean, it’s a good place to go because there’s masses of parking space, supervised by these hard-looking guys so you don’t get your car nicked, and it’s free. We thought we might go again some time, if there was anybody particularly cool appearing, but we somehow never have.’

‘You and Eirion?’

‘Dr Samedi was supposed to be on – you remember Jeff, from Kidderminster?’

‘Oddly, I was only thinking about Dr Samedi last night. He’s still in business?’

‘Yeah, but we got the wrong night. There was this really poxy band on, thought they were the new Chemical Brothers. Really bad. Not bad as in wicked, bad as in… crap.’

‘Talking of chemicals-’

‘Whoever told you I’m doing drugs is-’

‘I meant the Royal Oak. Inn Ya Face. Could you – if you wanted to – get much there?’

‘Mum, how naive are you? You can get it anywhere. There are like ten-year-old dealers outside playgroups? I mean, all that meet-me-on-the-corner-when-the-lights-are-going-on stuff… that’s costume drama.’

‘That’s an exaggeration, right?’

‘Not much of one. Prices have never been lower in Hereford. So I’m told. Look, Mum… erm…’ Jane’s eyes flickered. ‘You heard from anyone? About… me?’

‘Like who?’

‘I don’t know… Morrell?’

‘The head?’ Merrily drank some hot tea. What was this? ‘Why Morrell, Jane? Does he know about your serial truancy?’

‘Serial-? Mum, that is absolute sh-’

‘How many times?’

Jane picked up a piece of crumpet, put it down again, stared at it and sighed.

‘Two.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I swear. Look, if I’d asked for time off the premises to work on my project I’d’ve got it. I just didn’t want to…’

‘Tell them exactly what the project involved.’

‘Because… All right, because I went round to Councillor Pierce’s place to ask him about this housing plan, and there were all these county council guys there, and one was a woman from the education authority.’

‘Why don’t I like the sound of this?’

‘I mean I wasn’t, you know, rude to them or anything. Just tried to get my point over about Coleman’s Meadow being, essentially, an important ancient monument, and they said that was all crap, and Alfred Watkins was a misguided old man. They called it “acceptable infill”. And Lyndon Pierce said he wanted to build Ledwardine up into a thriving little town with like restaurants and massage parlours?’