Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

‘Like hell I will!’

‘Not me, all right?’ Cornel looked up to where three women were sitting down, a couple of tables away. ‘Not me personally. I don’t like to get my hands dirty.’

‘You only don’t dig out badgers for hygiene reasons?’

‘ Shut up.’

‘But that’s something else Savitch organizes for bored rich bastards, right?’

‘Jane, drop it. You’re a kid. Go away. Have fun.’

‘Anybody,’ Jane said through her teeth, ‘ anybody who expects me to go away and have fun while this obscene shit-Just give me something on Savitch, Cornel. Why can’t you do that?’

A silence between them. You could hear everything, every gush and tinkle from behind the counter, every scrape of a chair leg. One of the three women at the next-but-one table was talking about how she’d only take some guy back if he promised to cut down on the booze.

‘You told anybody about this?’

‘No.’

Instinct saying lie, think about it later.

One of the women at the other table told the first woman she was making a big mistake because they never cut down on the booze, whatever they told you, unless some quack told them their lives were on the line.

Cornel said, ‘So you didn’t tell your mother, for instance?’

‘ God, no. Why would I? She’s in a difficult enough position, as vicar. Anybody gets the shit on Savitch, it’s better it’s me. I’m just a pagan.’

‘Yes,’ Cornel said. ‘They were laughing about that in the Ox.’

‘Yeah, well, they would, those morons.’

‘Some of them found it rather titillating.’

‘Yeah, Dean Wall. Moronic slob. Like I go out dancing naked. It’s just native religion. It’s my central interest. Ancient sites and stuff. Studied it for years.’

Cornel had his smartphone out, flicking through some stuff on the screen, then he handed it across.

‘What’s this, then?’

‘Huh?’

‘Look at it. If you know so much about paganism, tell me what this is.’

The picture blinked up at Jane, very clear in the dim light. You were looking down this weird kind of stone vault, like the crypt of a church with a fairly primitive plinth at the end. A tablet of stone with a carved face on it with like a Mohican haircut. Primitive, but not prehistoric, and definitely not Celtic.

‘Is it Roman?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Well, where is it?’

Cornel didn’t reply. Jane had another look. You could see stone blocks, like seating, stepped up from a closed-in area, like an arena. She’d seen arenas like this on the Net. Well, not exactly like this, but the same size, a small, closed-in area, impossible to escape from.

If you were poultry.

Holy shit.

‘Cornel…’

‘What?’

‘Is this where it happens? The cockfights?’

Thinking back to the Web sites she’d forced herself to read. It was starting to make sense. The sport which had apparently been introduced to Britain by the Roman invaders.

Was this some little purpose-built Roman arena, a cockfight colosseum?

‘You going to tell me where this is, Cornel?’

Cornel smiled.

‘Why should I?’

‘Then why are you showing me this?’

‘Just thought you might know what it is. Obviously you don’t know as much as you-’

Jane put the smartphone down again, looked Cornel in the eyes.

‘They do badger-baiting here too?’

You could just imagine that, the squeals, the yipping and the ripping in this claustrophobic vault, blood all over its walls

It had Savitch written all over it. The way he was always going on about reviving old traditions.

‘Cornel… please.’

‘Jane, I’m a stranger here. I don’t even know what the place is called. Guys who go there… what usually happens is they’re taken at night. Sometimes blindfolded.’

‘But you know where to find it?’

‘You’re asking me to take you?’

Jane read the car number plates over the bar again, right to left.

‘I’d keep you out of it. I’d just take some pictures on my phone, and that would be it.’

‘I hate to be boring.’ Cornel looked at her, and not just at her face. ‘But what’s in it for me?’

‘Cornel, I’ve got a boyfriend.’

‘And even if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t fancy me, would you?’

Jane said, ‘Please…?’

If Danny had ever seen Gomer this mad before, he didn’t know when it was.

‘Hangin’ offence, sure t’be.’ The ole feller was flattened against the back end of a stone ex-pigsty, firing up another ciggy like it was a little stick of gelignite. ‘Passing theirselves off as Her Majesty’s Special Forces. Wartime, that’d be a bloody capital offence. Treason, see. Treason, boy!’

‘Gomer,’ Danny said. ‘There’s boys all over Hereford pretends to be Sass, to get their end away with the local talent. This en’t-’

‘This is bloody different!’

‘It was common land. It was under a foot of snow. No different to… to kids goin’ out with sledges.’

Knowing, even as he was saying it, that this was different. Remembering the tone of voice, the sense of threat. The feeling he’d had at the time that they were gonner get done over at the very least. And a man naked in the snow. Laughing, but serious. The whole thing serious.

‘You know another thing?’ Gomer said, quieter, more sober now. ‘What happened that night all but destroyed my bit o’ faith in the Sass. The Sass is hard bastards, sure t’be, but I always had ’em down as polite, kind o’ thing.’

Ah, so that was it. Danny stared out over the field with dead docks and no stock. Put your lights out, then fuck off. Gomer Parry Plant Hire dissed.

‘Kenny bloody Mostyn,’ Gomer said.

‘You knows him?’

‘Knowed his ole man, Eugene Mostyn. Inherited a tidy farm from an uncle and pissed it all away. Goes off to Birmingham weekends, nobody lookin’ after the stock. Ewes caught in the wire, cattle left out in freezin’ conditions.’

‘I hates that kind,’ Danny admitted.

‘Gets a Brummie girl up the stick, right? Seventeen years later, this boy Kenny turns up from Brum, lookin’ for his ole man. Eugene’s gamekeeper now for ole Glenda Morgan – and her was three sheets by then, else her’d never’ve employed the useless bastard. Boy gets took on by Glenda, to help his ole man, which means doin’ Eugene’s job while Eugene’s down the bettin’ shop. Best thing happened to Kenny was when Eugene comes out the pub on a dark afternoon, goes for a slash in the road and gets flattened by a timber lorry.’

‘Kenny collect much?’

‘No, but ole Glenda seen him right, and when her’s gone he rents a shop in Hereford, and that’s how Hardkit was born. Right, then.’ Gomer peeled himself off the wall in a blast of ciggy smoke. ‘I’m goin’ back in there. Gonner find that boy, have a word.’

‘No, listen…’ Danny stepping in front of him. ‘Mostyn en’t there. I looked around. It’s just a promotional video. Fellers in there’s just punters and a few blokes as done it before, spreadin’ the word.’

‘Where is he?

‘I don’t know, Gomer.’

‘Ah, this is nasty, boy.’ Gomer’s ciggy hand was shaking, and that didn’t happen often. ‘Like goin’ back to the days when you got all kinds o’ scum lurkin’ in the hedges after dark.’

‘Only difference being,’ Danny said, ‘that this is rich scum payin’ for the privilege of crawlin’ through shit and brambles an’ freezin’ their nuts off in the snow. And freezin’ your nuts off en’t a crime.’

He watched a few blokes leaving the Hardkit tent with leaflets, some shaking hands with a bulky bloke he figured he’d seen before.