Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

‘The Hereford boys.’ She found the case. ‘Look, there’s something I should’ve mentioned, but with Winnie-’

Merrily gripped the sides of her seat. Every time she thought of the name, she saw the breathless mouth, the unseeing eyes. The body ripped up like old clothes. A woman who was sometimes a life-force and sometimes a vampire.

‘We can see this place from some distance, right?’

‘Reasonably well. But there’s lots of cover when you get there. Dells, copses.’

Within a minute, a small green area came up in the headlights. A display case for local notices.

‘This the village?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the five-barred gate?’

‘End of that little lane, but you can’t get… I mean you’ll just block the track.’

‘I’ll pull in here, then. Close your door quietly when you get out.’

At the five-barred gate, Spicer pointed ahead of them. He was still wearing his thin black gloves.

‘Know what that is?’

‘Shiny white clouds. Weird.’

‘Noctilucent clouds. Quite rare. Sometimes caused by chemicals, sometimes natural. Second night this week we’ve had them. Maybe a good thing, maybe not, but something to be aware of. What were you going to tell me back there?’

‘When you mentioned the Hereford boys… I don’t know whether you heard this on the news. A former SAS man’s been shot. In Hereford.’

Spicer kept on looking over the gate, but he’d gone still.

‘A security consultant,’ Merrily said.

‘Do you know his name?’

‘Malcolm France.’

He went on watching the bright clouds.

‘Bliss – the detective I know – called me about it. His records had been stolen, but they found out from the bank that he’d once been paid two hundred and fifty pounds. By Winnie Sparke. Syd…’

He was standing so still you’d swear he wasn’t breathing.

‘Just tell me,’ Merrily said.

‘My mate. We were working together. Until a few seconds ago, I thought we still were.’

‘Oh God, I’m-’

Syd Spicer held up his palms for silence. ‘

I’ll give you the basics. Winnie’s convinced she’s going to be the next Mrs Devereaux and all her money problems are over. When he dumps her, she starts obsessing over whether there’s someone else. Kind of woman she is. Life on the scrap heap, not for Winnie. Comes to bits on my kitchen table. I tell her there’s this mate of mine could check him out. She doesn’t have much money to spare, and there’re things I want to know, too. It was expedient. I put up some of the fee. On the side. Cash in hand.’

‘I should’ve told you about him ages ago, but it… circumstances intervened.’

‘How were you to know?’

‘I did know. I knew Winnie had been his client.’

‘Yeah, well, another thing you should know,’ Syd said. ‘He was the guy I rang. Back at Wychehill, soon as I saw the body. I left a half-coded message. I told him to go to the police with everything he knew. Mal always checked his messages very assiduously every hour. I was about to call him back, bring him up to date. He has… had police contacts and credibility.’

Merrily felt light-headed. Now nobody in the police could know they were here. She watched Syd Spicer opening the gate.

‘He was a bloody good guy. Went through the first Gulf War. Did Bosnia.’

Syd kicked the five-barred gate, hard, once, until it jammed against the long grass and quivered.

‘We’re on our own,’ he said.

‘And your training says go back, phone for help.’

‘Except your bloke’s…’

‘Yes, he is.’

Lol didn’t go far. How could he? Where was he supposed to go?

Was he going to leave a damaged man to wait, like some half-demented hermit in the rocks, for God?

Elgar had been right, it was a kind of blasphemy, or at least arrogance. Not really Tim Loste’s arrogance; he was the tool of someone’s else’s ambition.

All he was going to face tonight was the cold, unredemptive shining of his own madness. His own induced madness.

And yet…

Lol walked away over the rise and followed a slow arc back towards the open barn, went down on his knees as he approached it, patting the grass in search of his phone.

And yet he understood. He understood the desperation of Elgar who had done it before, made art, and was afraid – as you always were, every time – that you were never going to be able to do it again, that your best had gone.

And he knew that what Elgar was drawing from the landscape was not – like his contemporary, Vaughan Williams – inspiration from an English rural tradition, because Elgar’s style was influenced more by German music… Wagner.

No, this was about pure, electrical energy. Energy was what Elgar, with his daily walking and his fifty-mile bike rides, was all about. What he was tapping from the countryside was its life-force.

The trees are singing my music or am I singing theirs?

What happened when the trees stopped singing? Or, in Loste’s case, never had sung much. How far would you go?

Lol looked into the sky where strange white lights were kindling pale sparks in the springing antennae of the ancient oak. He imagined Tim Loste huddled like a goblin into its bole.

The difference was that Elgar had been a natural. He didn’t need photo blow-ups or three choirs singing Praise to the Holiest at the stroke of midnight or whatever kind of Golden Dawn ceremonial magic they were planning. He didn’t need a structure.

This was wrong. Lol, on all fours, felt his heart beating and discovered one hand was embedded in a patch of nettles.

It came out stinging like hell and holding the mobile phone.

Still switched on, and it still had battery life. Lol let out a long breath, stumbled to his feet and took it into the barn. Crouching in the hay, he found three messages, the last of which ended, ‘… Winnie murdered. Keep away from it. I love you.’

He’d started to call her back when he heard a voice.

Tim’s voice, conversational. If he was talking to God, it hadn’t taken long to break the ice.

Lol moved out of the barn, up the rise. He saw Tim, with roots humped around him like serpents and, across his knees, the leather-bound book open to the score of Mr Phoebus and the Whiteleafed Oak.

The man sitting next to him handed him a hip flask and Tim drank.

Into the Pit

Merrily watched Preston Devereaux screw the top back on his hip flask and stow it inside his dark green overalls. She slipped back behind Syd Spicer, with no idea how to play this.

Looking at Lol coming up the rise and willing him not to move, not to speak. Looking across at Syd and realizing he had no idea how to react either.

Seeing Preston Devereaux coming slowly to his feet among the roots of the sacred oak. Tim Loste huddling into the tree.

Nobody spoke. Syd was watching Devereaux. The vapour trail of a plane you couldn’t hear was like a chalk scribble on the shiny sky.

It struck Merrily the chances were that none of them could be entirely sure what the others were doing here or how much each of them knew.

In which case, go for it.

She walked up to the base of the tree, put out a hand.

‘Mr Loste? My name’s Merrily. I’ve been trying to talk to you for days.’

Relief was amazing. At first it weakened you, and then it flung you back into life with an unexpected strength and a vividly heightened sense of reality. Suddenly, there was nothing you couldn’t handle.

Which was probably dangerous, but what the hell?

Tim Loste was on his feet now, his back to the bole of the oak. His hand felt like soft cheese.

Merrily glanced at Lol, gave him a half-smile, her eyebrows slightly raised, and then turned back to Tim.