Phil Rickman - The Remains of an Altar

Devereaux lit a cigarette. Syd moved away from the smoke.

‘Not quite sure how long it’s been going on, maybe two years, maybe four. It only starts to make serious sense when you look back to Preston’s formative years. His university years.’

‘Oxford?’ Merrily said. ‘Balliol?’

‘In the 1960s. Wasn’t that guy, the Welsh guy, Mr Nice…?’

‘Howard Marks?’

‘That’s him. World-class dope dealer. Living legend in his field. And, as it happens, a student at Balliol College in the 1960s. You knew him, Preston?’

‘Before my time.’

‘Not that much before, by my reckoning. Maybe you just had some of the same contacts – I’m guessing here, you understand, I’m just a simple cleric. But where Mr Marks stuck with dope – marijuana-based goods…’

‘Evangelical, with him,’ Merrily remembered.

‘Yeah, a real calling. So he’s always maintained. The fact that he also made a few fortunes before he was nicked and banged up in the States… Preston, it’s different. Different background altogether. And different attitude. Fuelled by this self-righteous, blind resentment. Powerful. It’s in his Norman blood. Blood of the Vikings.’

Devereaux smiled. Merrily saw Lol stand up and wander over to the oak tree.

‘Mal reckoned it probably wasn’t as difficult as you might think,’ Syd said. ‘Just a question of renewing old student contacts and making connections with new ones. Cultures have changed, of course. Would’ve taken patience at first, convincing the sources. But when they know you’re a safe pair of hands, and that you mean it – that’s the important thing. Showing them that just because you come from money, that doesn’t mean you’re soft.’

Merrily said, ‘Wicklow…?’

‘Would reverberate nicely. But the way it was done… stupid. Attention-grabbing. But, like I say, Louis’s immature. He thinks it’s hugely clever. The sacrificial stone.’

‘He sent a text about human sacrifice to Raji Khan. From Elgar’s Caractacus. Whether that was intended to point to Tim…’

‘Whatever, it came off. When you’re arrogant and cocksure and on a high, things often do come off. For a while. But it’s clever-clever and so immature. Preston knows that. Anybody in their right mind, if it was really necessary to get rid of Wicklow, they’d do it the way someone got rid of that guy in Pershore… forget his name…’

‘Chris Smith. Which the police think was Wicklow. Smith worked in an abattoir.’

‘Ah. One of your boys, Preston?’

Devereaux said nothing. Not once had he admitted to anything specific.

‘Farms, abattoirs, feed merchants. Little crack labs, some of them. The stuff moved in cattle transporters, feed trucks. The kind of country-road vehicles the police were never going to search in a million years. Shambolic but also very neat. I believe we might also be looking at secret compartments in the SUVs and people-carriers of the holidaymakers coming to stay in Preston’s luxury units. Bet you’d find some of those holidaymakers had only just been on holiday. Some to Spain, some to less-favoured resorts like… which is it these days, Rotterdam?’

‘Be more than happy,’ Devereaux said, ‘for the police to search all my buildings. I’d challenge them to find a trace of anything.’

‘Lying fallow at the moment, are we, Preston? Movable feast, innit? What – a dozen farms? More? Whichever way you look at it, this has to be the most successful farmers’ cooperative since the first Iron Age village.’

‘What about Raji Khan?’ Merrily said.

‘Still a bit of a mystery there,’ Syd said. ‘He’s not clean, obviously. But he must be a very small player by comparison. Can’t be involved, or he’d never have been allowed to move in so close. What was that like, Preston, Raji moving in? You must’ve been awful nervy. Did he know, or didn’t he? If he ever found out, that could be tricky – and always a possibility with ambitious little men like Wicklow around. And do you officially support the opposition? Leonard Holliday and WRAG? Difficult one.’

‘Especially if it attracted too much publicity,’ Merrily said. ‘Thus engaging the attention of hundreds of thousands of Elgar enthusiasts, all over the world. You really had to curb Mr Holliday, didn’t you?’

‘And maybe do something about Tim Loste,’ Syd said. ‘Very much a wild card. And supported – more than supported – by your former good friend but not any more, Winnie Sparke. I tried to warn her, best I could. She wouldn’t buy it. Syd, she said, this is England.’

Lol didn’t do drugs. The only reason he had to be grateful to his psychiatric hospital: a sojourn in Medication City and you never wanted to swallow so much as an aspirin ever again.

The white in the sky had dulled, the oak was going grey. A great and beautiful mystery had shrunk to something squalid. Lol sat down next to Tim, whispered to him.

‘How much did you drink from the hip flask?’

‘Chap offers you a swig, not the thing to decline, Dan.’

‘Depends who’s offering.’

‘Raised it to my lips. Faked it.’

‘Oh.’

‘If he brought it back now, I’d drink the lot. Elgar was right, old cock. God’s against art.’

‘May just be,’ Lol said, ‘that artists don’t have mystical experiences. Artists are a medium. Think of it as an internal process you’re not aware of. You don’t have to see blinding light and the heavenly host. You might sit down tomorrow and it’ll all come out in the music.’

‘You’re full of bullshit, Dan. Anyone ever tell you that?’

‘Never,’ Lol said honestly. ‘I’m normally a low-key sort of bloke. But it did seem to me as if the leaves had turned white. Don’t give up. Give it a try.’

‘For Winnie?’ Tim said.

‘Tim-’

‘Thought it was a dream. Thought it was a fucking dream.’

‘I didn’t know, either. I’m sorry.’

‘Blocked it out. Why didn’t I stop them? Why couldn’t-?’

‘Because, somehow, you were drugged. Sedated. I’ve been there. Seen it happen. I can tell you for certain there was nothing you could’ve done.’

‘It’s a sick fucking joke, Dan. I’ve been sitting here all this time, waiting for-’

Tim’s hands squeezing the roots either side of him.

‘As a gentleman, I’m listening to you,’ Devereaux said. ‘Just not talking to you.’

‘A gentleman?’ Merrily sat up. ‘A gentleman who kills kids? Teenagers with infected syringes? Teenagers who murder old ladies in their own homes to steal enough to keep them going for another week?’

Preston Devereaux stared into the shadows below his feet.

‘The cities are a lost cause, Mrs Watkins. Reinfecting themselves on their own sewage. Nothing to be done about that. The road to ruin. No doubt the two of you can find Biblical parallels.’

‘And out of the ruins will rise… what?’

‘Better government,’ Devereaux said.

At first Merrily thought he was coughing over his cigarette. But he was laughing. She looked at Syd Spicer. Where was he going with this? Did he have some plan that she couldn’t see? Why hadn’t he just let Devereaux walk away? Why did he have to throw out that remark about the Gullet?

‘Why did you kill Winnie Sparke?’ Syd asked.

‘I didn’t.’

‘Whoever murdered France took his files,’ Merrily said, just wanting to end this. ‘Presumably that’s where they found Winnie’s name. Who would recognize that but you?’

‘Winnie’s name’s on Mal’s books,’ Syd said, ‘so it must be Winnie who’s paying him to look into the drug operation. And Winnie being Winnie, a loose cannon- My fault. Should’ve been my name.’

‘Syd, this is not something you could ever have predicted.’