Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

A certain sweetness drifting up. More than one kind of dragon. Lol smiled, shook his head, nodded at the truck. Bax assured Lol that he’d been biking these lanes, pleasantly stoned, for the best part of two decades, never once been stopped.

‘Tell you how far back this all goes,’ Bax said. ‘If we could get into the church you’d see this old stone slab with a picture carved on it of St George and the dragon. Only George is wearing like a skirt? Which means somebody seen him either as a cross-dresser or a Roman soldier – you know the little whatsits they had, wiv the belt?’

‘St George is portrayed as a Roman?’

‘Well, that’s the answer, innit? That’s what it’s about. It’s the Romans slaughtering the Celts. You really here for inspiration?’

Lol told Bax about ‘The Simple Trackway Man’. Which could use another verse. Bax was delighted, clapped his hands.

‘A lot of Roman stuff around here, too,’ Lol said. ‘Or there used to be. I was reading this poem by Wordsworth. “The men that have been reappear”.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know it. Often wonder… did he see them?’ Bax waved his spliff. ‘Bigger than they know, that Roman town. Me and the missus found maybe a dozen coins down the years.’

‘And the men who reappear?’

Bax shuffled around, prodded a tyre on his bike.

‘I live in hope.’

Lol said, ‘Ever come across a bloke called Byron Jones?’

‘Round here? Should I have?’

‘I think he lives in a caravan. Or he did.’

‘Oh…’ Bax blew out smoke. ‘You mean Colin Jones?’

‘Probably do.’

‘He don’t live in the caravan no more. Got permission for a bungalow on the edge of his land. The Compound. Nice, too. Swimming pool.’

‘Compound?’

‘That’s what it looks like. All that high barbed-wire fencing. Don’t know him, exactly. We are acquainted. He does intensive fitness training. Got a gym in there and an assault course where you swing over a pond on a rope, that kinda caper. You know him?’

‘Know of him.’

‘Ex-Sass. And then he was a minder. Quite well fought of, in these parts.’ Bax sniffed. ‘As they are, the Sass.’

‘People like you… ever go on these courses?’

‘Me? Nah. Wouldn’t be able to afford it. Though occasionally Mr Jones offers a one-day crash-course sort of thing to local boys, for nothing. Excellent for local relations.’ Bax took a long, noisy pull on his spliff, now down to a fragment. ‘Blimey, that din’t last long, did it?’

Lol smiled.

‘I was wondering if that wasn’t the dragon you came here to meet.’

‘The Magic Dragon. Poor ole thing, he ain’t too welcome at home no more, not since the missus joined the WI. When we first come here and she wore cheesecloth, we grew it in the dingle. Gotta pay for it now, in town. But, tell you one thing, Mr Lol… it ain’t slowed my brain enough that I can’t tell you’re fishing for som’ink? Nah, nah…’ Bax held up his hands like saucers. ‘I don’t wanna know, mate. You wanted me to know, you’d tell me, wou’n’cha?’

Lol didn’t know what to say. It was an odd, dreamlike encounter, Brinsop Church snuggling into its shadows behind them, only its bell tower showing like a periscope.

‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. But a new verse for the song would make it worthwhile.’

Bax said, ‘What about the fings what reappear?’

‘I thought you hadn’t seen them.’

‘I know a bloke who has,’ Bax said. ‘You interested?’

It was still fully light when Bliss reached the entrance to Chris Symonds’s farm, so he drove past, crawled around the lanes for a while. Needed to be sure the kids were in bed.

He drove out towards Moreton-on-Lugg, through the flat-lands, towards the western horizon.

Saw no way round this any more but to take her on. How the hell she’d found out about Annie he still had no idea, but if she knew, then she knew, and he was tired of playing games. He’d let her know that, yes, he was prepared to leave the division. He’d go on the transfer list directly after Easter. With the single proviso that the shit-stirring stopped.

As from now, as from tonight, any more lies about physical abuse, any whispers about him and Annie Howe… anything… and he’d flog his car and give his last penny to the flashest lawyer he could find to trash her through the courts and anywhere else she showed her devious little face.

Tell her now. On the doorstep. No discussion, no explanations, no attempts at self-justification. Then piss off back home, get the best night’s sleep he could manage and throw himself into nailing the killers of the poor bloody Marinescu Sisters before he left Hereford.

Credenhill, rising like a crusty loaf across the shadowed fields, told him he was only a few miles from Magnis Berries, and he felt a pang of guilt about his behaviour there, the way he’d leaned on Vasile Bocean.

And yet…

Why did they leave, Vasile?

I told you. They always seeing dead men, ghostmen.

They were fired? Dismissed… for that?

They was causing upset. Bad vibes. Praying out loud. Lighting candles. Is fire risk! Health and Safety!

Vasile had said he thought they were, in the end, happy to take some money to go. Maybe they took the ghosts with them. Or maybe they didn’t, all the murmurings that went on afterwards.

Bliss could hear Jeremy Berrows telling him about places where the air was loaded and Mansel’s sheepdogs had become uncontrollable. He’d thought of going back, alone, to talk to Vasile again, man to man. But the problem was that when people’s testimony bordered on the unlikely it negated everything else they’d told you, making them useless as witnesses. Guaranteed to get you laughed out of court.

He turned the car at the next junction and headed back to his father-in-law’s farm.

Jane lit a candle on the altar and sat down in the choirmaster’s chair.

She was alone, hadn’t seen much of Mum tonight – parish meeting at the village hall, Uncle Ted, usual trivial crap, but at least it kept her out of the church.

The full preparation now, systematic relaxation.

Sitting upright, hands on knees, slowly sensing the body from the toes to the top of the head. It was getting a lot easier. Practice. Jane was finding she could almost slide into a relaxed state these days, without the tedious preliminaries.

Meditation: probably the only procedure which actually transcended all the halfway-workable religions. Of course, Jane only did this in here when she was sure she wouldn’t be disturbed by Uncle Ted or some other tosser. Didn’t want anyone to think she’d found Mum’s God.

The Easter holiday had begun tonight. Tomorrow would be the first day of what was, in effect, the last school holiday she’d ever have. When the big summer holiday began, it wouldn’t count because she’d have left school. Not a break, but a springboard into adult life. Whatever that was about.

Jane listened to her breathing. She’d brought along the copy of Revelations of Divine Love from Mum’s desk. Mum had marked a section where Mother Julian was welcoming the sickness she’d contracted at the age of thirty, wanting it to bring her as close as possible to death. To know the reality of dying, in the hope this would cleanse her and bring about a spiritual rebirth. OK, a touch masochistic but this was not a woman who messed around. Maybe knowing there were some secrets you could only learn through pain. Jane went into some chakra breathing, a kind of energy conveyor belt, but soon lost the cycle. The body was still, but the mind wouldn’t switch off.

She’d seen Cornel again tonight. He’d parked his Porsche on the square but, instead of going into the Swan, he’d followed his jutting chin down Church Street, like some zombie on the prowl, and she’d watched him enter the Ox, where the serious drinkers went. She’d almost gone after him – Mum would be in the village hall for at least two hours – but wasn’t sure she was ready to handle it.