Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

This had to be the right path.

Jane began to drift and, as on the night of Colette and the cider, could hardly feel the grass beneath her feet. When she stepped onto the ley it was as if she was floating on sunlit air-currents, and she saw Lucy waiting for her as she began to walk towards the steeple and the holy hill beyond.

‘Hi,’ Lucy said. ‘Are you Jane?’

Jane stood there, blinking. The woman wore not a poncho but a kind of denim smock with lots of pockets, and there was a square metal case at her feet.

‘Sally Ferriman. For the Guardian?’

‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Hi.’

‘You ready, Jane?’

Jane looked at Sally Ferriman, then up at Cole Hill, discovering that she had one of her own hands pressing down on top of her head as if she was trying to stop some part of it floating away.

‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘I think so.’

Merrily reached the church door and then turned back.

She wasn’t ready. She went back to the vicarage and sat in front of the list of people whom she needed to tell about the idea for a requiem on Sunday. Crosses against Mrs Cookman and Stella Cobham. She tried the number for Sonia Maloney’s parents: still no answer.

One more name on the list. She’d agonized about this one, had wondered whether to consult Syd Spicer – or even Bliss – about it first.

She rang Bliss’s mobile. Switched off, but he rang back within a minute from outside the building.

‘They’ve still got Loste, and they may make an application to hold on to him, but there’s been no charge. They may still be waiting for forensics. However… it doesn’t look good from his point of view. They now have a witness who’s identified Loste as someone seen conducting what may have been a transaction on the side of the Beacon with a black man in a woolly hat.’

‘Loste bought drugs from Wicklow?’

‘That’s what it looks like. Usual rules, of course, Merrily.’

‘Not a word to anyone.’

‘So,’ Bliss said, ‘what do you have for me?’

‘Erm… another question?’

‘Jesus, Merrily, I can’t believe how one-sided this relationship’s become.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. This probably isn’t something you can answer, anyway.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll see you around, then-’

‘It’s probably a Traffic matter.’

‘In that case, all the abuse I’ve thrown at Traffic over the years, no chance.’

‘It’s my Wychehill road accidents. I just – this is stupid – just want to be sure they actually happened as they were described to me. Or indeed happened at all. Loste had a crash that wasn’t reported to the police, so I can’t do anything about that. But there was a lorry driver supposed to have gone into the church wall.’

‘Name?’

‘No idea.’

‘Date?’

‘Can’t give you an exact… Never mind, it was just a thought.’

‘Merrily, even a brilliant investigator like myself…’

‘The only one where I do have a name, although I gather there was no charge in the end, so it may not be instantly accessible either… Stella Cobham? And it was early this month. Could you possibly get anything from that…?’

She heard the sound of grinding traffic and the gasp of air brakes.

‘Frannie?’

‘The doughnuts are on you, Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘Probably for the rest of your life.’

And she’d forgotten to ask him about the final name on the requiem list.

But then, why should she ask him? Or Spicer. Spicer had unequivocally opted out of the requiem, and she wasn’t a goddamn stoolie for the cops. Not officially, anyway.

Merrily switched on the computer to check the emails and, while it was booting up, stared at the phone. Should she?

Sod it. What was there to lose? She went into Yellow Pages for the number and then rang the Royal Oak at Wychehill and asked to speak to Mr Rajab Ali Khan.

Some guy said he wasn’t there, mostly he worked out of his offices in Worcester and Kidderminster, and what did she want and could he take a message?

Merrily said yes, he probably could. No hurry. She merely wanted to invite Mr Khan to a church service.

The emails came up. Piece of spam offering her guaranteed penis enlargement and – wow – one from Wychehill Rectory.

Dear Merrily

IN CONFIDENCE – you might find something here. Couldn’t scan it – too faded – so I’ve copied it, for speed. It’s in the parish records, a letter, dating back to 1926, apparently forwarded to Longworth, who seems to have preserved it as some kind of corroboration of his choice of site for Wychehill Church. I don’t know who it’s from or who he’s talking about – in fact, for all I know, it could be a forgery – but Winnie was certainly impressed, so I’m guessing one of them’s Elgar. Also note that Winnie changed the name of her house to Starlight Cottage.

Spicer hadn’t even signed the email. But then, what had she expected – love, Syd?

Merrily scrolled up the letter. It was something that he’d taken the trouble to send it.

My dear Sirius

How are you? We seem hardly to have spoken since the utterly devastating loss of poor Electra, and so I was delighted to receive your letter… and further delighted to confirm that your Hereford friend is absolutely right as regards the significance of the Wyche Hill site. My researches tell me this would be a most propitious place to build a church or temple. As we once discussed, there is a tradition of worship in the Malvern Hills long predating Christianity yet absorbed by the early Church, and also, as recorded in the Triads of Wales, a most inspiring, long-lost tradition of sacred music-making. It is my belief – and wonderful to think it could be so – that there may be no area of southern Britain more conducive to the creation and performance of music of the most exalted power than this. Your own work is surely ample testament to its extraordinary influence .

Please tell me if I can be of any further assistance to any of you, and I look forward to experiencing the church if ever it is built. But we must get together before that.

With every good wish,

Starlight

PS Some of my old, as Electra would say, ‘out of the world’ associates are inclined to think your friend’s interpretations of his remarkable discovery tend toward the prosaic, but I suppose his provincial background is a bit of a constraint!

That night, Jane went out with Eirion and Merrily went over to Lol’s. They set off to walk to Coleman’s Meadow, and she showed him the email.

‘If one of them’s Elgar, it’s probably going to be Sirius.’

It was a warm night, the northern sky still a shimmering electric blue. Lol said that the weather forecast had suggested tomorrow would be the hottest day of the year so far.

‘So Electra…?’

‘Would be Alice, who’d died some years earlier.’

‘Music of the most exalted power,’ Merrily said. ‘What does that say to you?’

‘I think it says, even with a Boswell guitar don’t get any ideas.’

Coleman’s Meadow was empty. Lol said there’d been Hereford cattle last time he was here, but now only a few rabbits bobbed around on the eastern fringe, by the thorn hedge.

The path through the middle of the meadow was strikingly evident, even among the shadows. Even when it disappeared through the gate and into the undergrowth, you could feel it burrowing like a live cable to light up the summit of Cole Hill, which, at nearly ten p.m., was ambered by an almost unearthly sunset afterglow.

‘What do you think?’ Lol said. ‘Worth saving?’