Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

‘Yeah, that totally stinks, but it doesn’t…’

‘No,’ Gomer said. ‘It don’t. A cock don’t even have to die in the ring, see, but it’s like with them ole… what you calls them ole Roman fellers?’

‘Gladiators?’

‘One o’ them, he gets the thumbs-down – curtains, ennit? Specially if he en’t put up much of a fight. En’t the same for the crowd, see, if both of ’em struts out at the end.’

‘It’s sick.’

Gomer puffed awhile, watching the sun.

‘This that Savitch?’

‘Cornel was one of his clients… guests. I mean it’s bad enough they think they can go round just shooting anything, but… You think Savitch is actually staging cockfights?’

Gomer lowered the sack to the grass.

‘He can’t be that daft, can he? What you wanner do with this ole boy?’

‘Isn’t it evidence?’

‘You gonner be a witness, girl?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘In court? Against the kind o’ lawyer this banker feller’s gonner hire? That’s even if it went that far. One dead cock is all you got. We don’t really know where he died or how. En’t nothin’ there for certain to say he went in the ring. Hell, Janey, I might be wrong…’

‘You wouldn’t’ve told me if you thought for one minute you were wrong. What about Barry? He saw it.’

‘All he seen was a dead fowl in a bin bag. He’s been around, that boy, but it don’t mean he’s ever seen a cockfight.’

‘Yeah.’ Jane shook her head gloomily. ‘And like is he going to want to tear up his meal ticket? And the cops couldn’t give a toss about rural petty crime. Apparently.’ She looked up. ‘There just has to be a connection with Savitch. It’s the kind of thing he’d do, give the city guys a little extra thrill. Show them how hard people are in the sticks.’

‘This banker feller… don’t seem likely he owned the cock, do it?’

‘He said it was rubbish.’

‘Mabbe he had money on it.’

‘Brought him back… the loser… to eat? Because it had let him down?’

‘This other feller…’

Twin brownish suns in Gomer’s bottle glasses. Pretty savvy for an old guy who, Mum reckoned, had rarely been north of Leominster or south of Ross the whole of his life.

‘I didn’t really see him and I didn’t recognize his voice.’

‘You figure they was both at the cockfight, Janey?’

‘Sounded like it. He was sneering at Cornel. This was before he hit him. He said it was about manhood. He said Cornel wasn’t ready. I have no idea what he meant. What do we do, Gomer? How about the RSPCA, the League Against Cruel Sports?’

‘Mabbe I’ll talk to a few folks,’ Gomer said. ‘See what I can find out.’

‘You know people who might be involved?’

‘Gotter get their fowls from somewhere. Mating season now, ennit? Cocks is well up for a fight.’

Gomer tapped the sack with the edge of his trainer, looked at Jane.

‘Bury him, proper?’

Jane nodded. The sun had sunk terminally into cloud, and the air smelled sour. She watched Gomer pick up the black bin sack with its sad bundle of feathers. Her fingers were curling tight.

With Jane, it was always more than body language. She could give off fury like smoke.

When Merrily ran into her, where Church Street met the square, she was still in the school clothes she normally couldn’t wait to shed, and she looked starkly monochrome against the vivid pink sky.

Or maybe everyone would look like that tonight. Merrily shook herself.

‘Sorry, flower, had to go to Jim’s. We were clean out of bread. You weren’t looking for me, were you?’

‘No, I… yeah.’

No, there was something wrong. But Jane turned it around.

‘What’s happened? You OK?’

‘Bit of a shock, that’s all. Syd Spicer, who was vicar of Wychehill, in the Malverns?’

‘OK.’

‘He’s dead. He was found this afternoon on the side of Credenhill. Where the earth-steps are. Where we walked that time. Apparently he’d gone for a run on the hill. Might’ve fallen, hit his head. I don’t know.’

‘I’m sorry. That’s awful. Was he still a mate?’

‘Kind of.’

They walked out onto the square under a brushing of rain.

‘Life’s very often crap,’ Jane said. ‘Have you noticed?’

And she might well have gone on to explain if Barry, in his black suit, with his polished shoes, hadn’t come briskly down the steps of the Swan, striding across the cobbles, asking Merrily if she could spare him a minute.

If you could call that asking.

Barry’s office was behind the reception desk, a small, woody, windowless space with nothing at all to say about the Swan’s Jacobean origins. It had a strip light that turned Barry’s face blue-white.

‘Now I’m nervous.’ He shut the door, pointed Merrily to his leather chair. ‘You come in here last night, asking me what might frighten a man trained not to be frightened of anything, and next day he’s bleedin’ topped himself.’

‘Barry, nobody’s saying that. Probably natural causes, maybe an accident.’

‘Accidents like that don’t happen to men like Syd. Besides, that would hardly’ve caused what you might call a small tremor in the ranks.’

‘What’s that mean?’

Merrily instinctively pulled the cigarettes from her bag, then shoved the packet back. Barry waved a hand.

‘Nah, light one, you want. This ain’t public space.’

‘It’s OK.’ She closed her bag. ‘Who told you?’

‘These things get round. You were with Fiona?’

‘Yes.’

‘One in a million, that woman. She understands. Better than both mine did, anyway.’

He stood over her, waiting. Merrily lowered her bag to the floor.

‘All right, what happened, I was asked to talk to a group of clergy on a deliverance training course last Friday night, and Syd turned up, with something on his mind. Which he wouldn’t talk about. Not to us, so we assumed it was SAS-related.’

‘Who’s us?’

‘Huw Owen. My spiritual director.’ Looking steadily up at him. ‘You knew Syd well, didn’t you? Well enough to know his wife, obviously.’

‘I served with him.’

‘He was a friend?’

‘For a time, yeah.’

‘For a time?’

‘We didn’t fall out or nothing. I saw him a couple of years ago. He seemed OK. You can usually tell when they’re not. I heard he was in full kit when they found him.’

‘He had a Bergen, that’s all. A lot of weight in there, including a very big family Bible. This… has kind of knocked me sideways, Barry.’

Merrily’s right hand was shaking and she placed her left hand over it. Barry pulled out the other chair, sat down opposite her.

‘I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to sound like I was interrogating you.’

‘Huw was convinced Syd needed help.’

‘Kind of help?’

‘He didn’t tell us, did he? Some people are embarrassed by the… anomalous. Especially the clergy. He sat in the shadows and he listened to what we had to say in the chapel. Like he had to deal with it himself, get it out of the way.’

‘You had dealings with him before though.’

‘Yeah. He consulted me about something he either didn’t believe or wanted nothing to do with. He told me, more than once, that he didn’t like that kind of thing. He wanted me to deal with it. This time… I can only assume this was something he did believe in, however reluctantly. Or that it was personal.’

Even in here, you could hear the plink, plink of the pool table in the public bar. No voices, no laughter, just cue on ball. It sounded random, directionless. Lonely, somehow.

‘Frank Collins,’ Barry said, ‘not long before he died, he became chaplain to twenty-three SAS – the reservists. So not as close as Syd. Only, when his book came out, it hadn’t been cleared by the MoD, and he had to resign. Got very depressed about that. Looking at it from the other side, maybe it was the Church what done for Frank Collins.’