Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

‘Oh, yes.’

The clouds had gulped up the sun. Merrily, starting to shiver, walked down through the little gate and stepped down towards the car. The fields looked raw and winter-stripped.

‘So… what happened?’

Convinced that Fiona, unprompted, would simply not have finished the story.

‘I didn’t resist him. He had me against the side of a garage block, and I didn’t resist.’

‘He raped you.’

‘It was over very quickly. It was, for him, I think, not so much the doing it as the having done it. What I remember most was the sound of his breath. A hollow sound. As though he was drawing breath from somewhere else. Afterwards, he just said goodnight. I don’t think he even remembered my name.’

‘You’ve never told anyone?’

‘You’re the first.’

One in a million.

Barry had said that.

Merrily smoked half a cigarette, put on her coat and went back into the church.

Byron’s church.

Up to the glittery chancel, but it didn’t feel right. She walked back down the nave and across to the Romanesque stone tympanum. St George spearing a snake-like dragon. An untypical St George in a kind of pleated skirt. Essential violence.

Fiona had said she’d gone back into the hotel through another door. Gone upstairs to their room and locked herself in and showered for a long time and put on fresh make-up and a different dress. Syd had been looking for her. She told him she hadn’t been well. She said she’d been sick and had had to change.

All that night, her skin had felt greasy and she’d had a filthy taste at the back of her throat.

Merrily thought about Denzil Joy, found she was breathing far too fast and became aware that on the wall opposite her, above the church door, another act of violence was evoked in smoke.

She stood staring at it, uncomprehending for a few moments, taking several long breaths before approaching it across the space at the back of the nave.

It was not smoke. Nor was it imagination. She stopped, flipping feverishly through the leaflet.

The 13th century wall painting above the door is of The Crucifixion.

Like most wall paintings, there wasn’t much left. Could have been a dampness stain, like the grey monk in Huw’s chapel.

Two pains… the first wrought to the drying while his body was moist, and that other slow, with blowing of wind from without…

All the colours gone. The cross gone. He was a corpse or very nearly, drained of all resistance. His head, dead weight, had collapsed into an elbow. His body was brittle as a chrysalis, flaking into the wall.

Four-thirty. Too quiet in the CID room. An air of getting nowhere.

‘Boss, you’re dead on your feet,’ Karen said. ‘Go home, eh?’

‘I’m all right. Just sick of drawing blanks. Not even as if it’s a wall of silence.’

Bliss quite liked a wall of silence. Justified the use of a wrecking ball. Problem here was that once you were over the language barriers the Bulgarians, Romanians, Lithuanians, Poles would tell you anything you wanted. All of them shattered by the East Street atrocity. Not an enemy in the world, these girls. Clean-living, religious. Just wanted to make some money to send home.

Men? Of course not. They were inseparable, anyway. The prevailing opinion now was that they’d somehow, perhaps innocently, offended one of the criminal gangs. That the men seen by Carly and Joss in the Monk’s Head were hard-core. Following the sisters out, pretending to fancy them, that was just an act.

‘Something will give,’ Karen said. ‘On the third day, something always gives. Now, please, will you go home? Me and Darth can hold it together till the morning. Have a big glass of whisky and go to bed. Anything breaks, we’ll send a car for you?’

‘Yeah,’ Bliss said.

‘Now, boss? Straight home?’

‘I’m gonna make a call first. I’ll be in my office.’

In the office he didn’t quite shut the door and stood by the gap, out of sight, listening. But nobody seemed to be talking about the DI beating up his wife and nobody’s expression changed when he walked back in, claiming he’d left his chewy behind.

Bliss sat down and put in a call to Jeremy Berrows, who farmed beyond Kington, where Herefordshire met the paler hills of Radnorshire. Jeremy lived with a lot of sheep and a lot of sheep-dogs. Also with a beautiful woman called Natalie, who was known to the police from way, way back, but it was all right now.

‘You sounds a bit on edge, Mr Bliss,’ Jeremy said.

He was what people called an old-fashioned kind of farmer, open to superstitions and signs and portents. A haloed moon, three magpies, the ash out before the oak, all that. Jeremy thought his land confided in him.

Bliss said, ‘You’ve got Mansel Bull’s dogs, I believe. All of them.’

‘They’re a gang. He didn’t wanner split them up. Problem with that?’

‘We’re talking to everybody who’d had dealings with Mansel.’

‘Wasn’t exactly a deal. Bit of an agreement, that’s all, between two blokes as knew a bit about dogs and sheep. Not everybody got along with Mansel, but he looked after his dogs.’

‘And you came and took them after he died.’

‘Before. Just as well. His brother woulder stopped it. Trained dog’s worth money. Or mabbe he’d’ve had the whole bunch shot.’

‘What?’

‘Mabbe that’s unfair,’ Jeremy said.

‘See, apart from the inhumanity of that, Jeremy, it would indicate a fairly strong element of not exactly honouring his brother’s memory.’

Jeremy didn’t reply. Bliss liked the sound of the silence. He’d once listened to the lovely Natalie at the right time, and whilst Jeremy didn’t exactly owe him…

‘Word is,’ Bliss said, ‘that Sollers wasn’t too pleased when Mansel sold that ground. Any whispers about that?’

‘Don’t go much on whispers. Too many of ’em round yere’s been about me and Nat. As you know.’

‘How is she?’

‘Good.’

How many local people knew about Natalie’s time in detention was debatable. The probability was that the gossip was just about how a little woolly-haired farmer held on to a serious beauty from Off. But it was unlikely either of them would ever be able to relax.

‘Jeremy, you’re a straight sort of bloke, as farmers go, so I’ll be straight with you. I think there’s quite a lot Sollers Bull hasn’t told us. I accept you don’t listen much to gossip, but how did you feel things were between Mansel and Sollers?’

‘Different generations, different attitudes. Mansel was a businessman in the ole sense. Tight as a duck’s arse, but you knowed where you was. Sollers is all for the image. Puttin’ hisself around. Prize cattle at the Royal Welsh, diversifyin’, farm shops and cafes. Huntin’. I was at school with him for a few years. Lady Hawkins.’

‘And what was he like at school?’

‘Head boy.’

‘Figures. See, I’m guessing Mansel would realize Sollers wouldn’t be too keen on him flogging that ground to the fruit farm. So why’d Mansel do it? Bit of pique, maybe?’

‘No, no, that wasn’t it at all, he…’

Jeremy sounded uncertain again, like he was worried about breaking a confidence.

‘He’s dead, Jeremy. He was killed. It was mairder. Remember?’

‘Wasn’t going well, that’s all. The dogs. Mansel thought mabbe he was losin’ it.’

‘What, his marbles?’

‘His skill. Had three shelves full of awards. Come close to winning One Man and His Dog on the box, once. Then it wasn’t workin’ n’more. Used to train his dogs down by the river, but Sollers wanted more ground for his cattle, and he had to move up to the top field. Not used much for stock, usually they just had the hay off it. And it wasn’t the same. Seemed obvious to me it wasn’t the dogs, but he was losin’ heart. Mansel, either he was on top or he didn’t wanner know – got that much in common with Sollers, at least.’