Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

‘I don’t know. Please! ’ Hugo rolled off his crate onto the flags, putting his hands up. ‘Honest to God!’

Syd stood up.

Hugo rolled away. He was weeping.

‘I’m locking you in, son.’ Syd stepped away from him. ‘At some stage, the police’ll be told where you are. When they arrive, I’d cooperate fully, if I were you.’

Hugo nodded, sagging, not trying to get up.

‘It’s completely finished, Hugo. But I’m guessing you knew that in Loste’s back room. There’s a point where you cross a barrier, and Louis led you right to the wire, and you didn’t go over. It’s a life you didn’t quite take, and you’ll be grateful for that.’

Hugo said nothing. Syd motioned to Merrily and followed her out of the door. The door was oak and reinforced and not very old. Syd tried various keys until one of them locked it.

‘I hope you didn’t want to pray with the boy, Merrily, but I’m afraid that would’ve conveyed the wrong message.’

‘Unlike hitting him again…’

‘Once. God forgive me, but experience suggested it needed underlining, or he might’ve thought he could get away with lies or half-truths. Intelligent lad, and he’d’ve been able to string the cops along. For a while. But we don’t have a while. We did the best we could. We hit on the weak link. That was the easy part. I suspect we’ve exhausted our quota of good fortune for one night.’

Merrily went ahead of Spicer up the stone steps into the manure-smelling back hall, with its coat hooks and its wellies, and waited for him by the door to the courtyard. She felt reduced and dirty and a long and twisted way from God.

‘What’s the gullet?’

Syd Spicer hung the bunch of keys on one of the coat hooks.

‘The Gullet is this deep pool, flooded quarry, up near the Beacon. People get drowned there sometimes. Kids thinking it’s safe for a swim on summer nights like this. Only it’s very, very cold.’

‘ And? ’

‘It’s on Tim Loste’s regular route – they knew this; they’d followed him enough times – takes him close to the Gullet. The plan was to mess him with Winnie’s blood and turn him loose and catch up with him near the Gullet, and then oops. Only, what happened with Winnie, Hugo couldn’t take it, he’s only a boy. Hugo went badly to pieces and Louis had to take him outside, case he left vomit anywhere. And of course by the time Louis’d slapped some sense into Hugo, Tim was away. Not quite on the usual path, either, which was understandable under the circumstances, and they couldn’t find him.’

‘They were going to…?’

‘Toss him in the Gullet. Drown him. Nothing easier. So many accidents there, but this would be suicide. Louis’s scenario ends with the recovery from the Gullet, maybe tomorrow, of the body. Winnie’s blood not quite washed away. Murder and suicide. Case closed. Only Tim had wandered off. Can’t trust drugs. Where did you put the car, Merrily?’

‘What drugs?’

‘Where’s the car?’

‘In the Dutch barn, like you said.’ Trying to keep pace with Spicer across the yard. ‘What am I not getting? What crucial piece of information have I been denied?’

Spicer kept on walking, pointing around the courtyard, building to building, the density of it, row upon row, nicely leaning stone and timbered alleyways reaching back into the fields and the woodland.

Merrily persisted. ‘Drugs?’

‘They’d spiked his Scotch. Roofies.’

‘What?’

‘Rohypnol. Know what that is?’

‘The date-rape drug?’

‘Compliance. Do what you want with them. Softened up. Plus, it causes short-term memory loss, which is useful. Tim habitually leaves his door unlocked, for Elgar or whoever. Hugo comes in earlier in the day, spikes his whisky with Rohypnol. Tasteless, odourless. Works well with alcohol, as we all know. On men as well as women. If you get the dose right, the effects are usually predictable. Can be used in combination with certain drugs to improve the high.’

‘Hugo told you this?’

‘Emily, once.’

‘Your-’

‘Don’t ask. But whether that means Loste was sitting there with a vacant smile on his face when they were killing Winnie-’

‘Oh my God.’

‘We don’t know that. We don’t know how much he had, but that sounds likely. It can take hours to wear off. Maybe he’s asleep somewhere on the hill, maybe… I don’t know. Time he comes out of it, blood on his hands and his clothes, he may even think Winnie was down to him. But… the plan was he wouldn’t come out of it.’

They reached the car, and Merrily handed Spicer the keys. Glad she wouldn’t be driving.

‘Syd, what is this?’

Thinking what Bliss had said about outrage killing. Fight for our traditions, we’re branded criminals, Devereaux had said. This government’s scum. Anti-English. Don’t get me started.

Rage against the system? Little Englander vigilantism gone mad?

Winnie. Hacked to death by the sons of a former lover, like the climax of some old and bloody folk-ballad.

‘We could spend all night going over the farm,’ Spicer said, ‘and I could doubtless show you signs – things that are obvious when you know – but it would take a long time and I’m afraid we don’t have that kind of time. Whiteleafed Oak, you said. That’s where he goes.’

‘Loste?’

‘Loste, yes.’ He was gripping her shoulders. ‘You’re sure about this.’

‘We were supposed to meet them there tonight, Loste and Winnie. Lol’s waiting in case he-’

‘They’ll find him, then. Maybe they already have.’

‘What about Lol?’

‘I don’t think we should hang around, Merrily.’

‘What will they do to Lol? They surely-’

‘Why don’t I drop you in the village, give you the keys to the rectory?’

‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘All right.’ Spicer opened the passenger door for her. ‘Perhaps a serious prayer wouldn’t come amiss. I can never seem to do it when I’m driving.’

Mr Phoebus and the Whiteleafed Oak

Tim Loste and the oak stood together under the moon with its acid-green halo.

‘Tell me about the demons,’ Lol said.

He’d followed Tim out of the barn, leaving the lamp behind in the hay. Tim no longer staggered, as if beating his head on one of the uprights had unblocked something. He looked slowly around the whitewashed wooded valley and finally up at the great oak, its branches laden with dark foliage and glittering things like some weird midsummer hoar frost.

‘A living symphony, this tree. Look at the complexity of it. We’re old mates now. I’m bringing up some of the children.’ Tim started to laugh. ‘Sat here, meditating for hours. All weathers. Freezing cold. Snowed on, soaked to the skin.’

‘Elgar’s mother would have approved.’

‘Yes.’

‘Was nobody curious about what you were doing?’

‘The few people who come here, if you’re meditating they leave you alone. They understand that much.’

Lol tried again.

‘The demons. That is the Royal Oak? The demonic counterpoint to what you’re doing. Like when the demons come for the soul of Gerontius

… they’re discordant. They’re taunting him.’

‘Didn’t really notice it,’ Tim said. ‘Not at first.’

‘You didn’t hear the noise?’

‘I could block it out with headphones. Put on the old cans, close my eyes and I’m in a concert hall. Or a cathedral. Or when I’m writing just put them on, unplugged, and it’s a blank canvas. But she made me take them off. She said it was meant.’

‘Winnie?’

‘Made me take my headphones off while I was writing, to experience the violence. Suppose I didn’t react strongly enough. So we walked down the hill one night, a Saturday night – we’d been drinking… well, I ’d been… and she said, this is evil. It’s deriding you. And it was filling the valley, terribly loud, and I was getting pretty sick of it and I said, can’t we go? And then she took me to where there was a loose stone in the wall.’