Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

Howe looked at the door and back at Merrily.

‘Oh.’ Merrily rose out of a fugged image of Syd Spicer smoking in his church on a summer’s day, knowing that his deity was entirely OK with that. ‘I’ll come with you.’

Byron leaned back, arms hanging down, limp as empty sleeves, so relaxed. The state of his teeth gave him a dark grin.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Mithras. He really lit Syd’s candle.’

‘this isn’t working, is it?’ Howe said. ‘He’s tying you in knots.’

‘Sorry. Tired. Complicated day.’ Merrily backed off towards the top of the stairs. A wreck in sweater and jeans, no make-up, a woman who’d left home too quickly, a long time ago. ‘But I can certainly see why Byron agreed to be interviewed.’

‘ Agreed? ’

Annie Howe moistened her lips, took a long breath, Merrily thinking that, despite the softening effects of early middle-age, they were never going to be friends. Too much rancid history.

‘It’s a set-up,’ Howe said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You’re here to look like a fool, I’m here to witness that. And Jones, quite clearly, is only here because it was suggested to him – presumably by Lockley – that it would be very much in his best interests to get his defence in first.’

‘Defence against what?’

‘With a view to pre-empting any possible police investigation of his activities. Damage limitation. And it’s working, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Well, it…’

Out of Byron’s presence, the flaws in his argument were beginning to show. Here was Fiona: He told me Sam was making a terrible mistake in going into the church, that he was throwing away his life and damaging his country. Was that coming from a man who knew that Syd hadn’t forsaken Mithras?

But what the hell would any of that matter to Howe or Lockley? This wasn’t about theology.

A door opened, and DI Frannie Bliss appeared, cradling a mug of coffee.

Annie Howe didn’t quite look at him.

‘No arrest yet, Francis?’

Bliss said, ‘Good evening, Reverend.’

He looked worse than this morning. A sweat-sheen on his freckled cheeks, feverish eyes.

‘We’re covering all the nightclubs, I suppose?’ Howe said.

‘Young coppers looking faintly ridiculous in clubbing kit. We’re also doorstepping all her so-called mates. As if anybody’s ever grassed Victoria up.’

‘Apart from your friend on the Plascarreg.’

Bliss came out of the doorway like he was about to say something smart, then he shrugged.

‘Good point, actually. Increasingly, I’m wondering why Goldie Andrews did that.’

‘I thought you had her over a barrel. Cleverly manoeuvring her into a corner.’

Howe’s voice rinsed in acid. Nothing changed, did it?

‘Maybe I was just too plain euphoric to ask some significant questions,’ Bliss said. ‘Think I’d better go back down the Plas, boss? On me own this time?’

‘No. Take Vaynor.’

‘He’s going clubbing.’

‘Then take care,’ Howe said coldly. ‘And be sure, when you eventually bring Buckland in, that she’s undamaged.’

‘That a joke, ma’am?’

Bliss stepped back through the doorway, not looking at Annie Howe, as if he’d been expecting something from her that she hadn’t supplied. The atmosphere between them no sweeter than it had ever been.

All this in front of a civilian. Merrily had a sense of unreality, nothing quite what it seemed. Even Annie Howe looked, for a moment, almost vulnerable as she turned away from the closing door, the white-gold hair pushed back behind the ears, the woolly riding up the back of the creased black skirt.

She turned again to Merrily.

‘Those three men you mentioned to Jones…’

‘Nasal, you might remember him.’

‘Killed his wife, yes. You’re suggesting that whatever they and Jones and possibly Spicer had been doing had made them less in control of their aggression?’

‘I certainly think Syd was thinking along those lines. On the day it was in the paper that Nasal had hanged himself, he went to see Byron at his wife’s place in Allensmore. No violence on that occasion, just… harsh words.’

‘Harsh words.’ Howe shook her head. ‘Jones looks to me, Ms Watkins, like a man with a huge chip on his shoulder. But basically nothing to hide. Nothing that would be of particular interest to me, anyway.’

‘You reckon?’

Merrily took a step back.

No choice now.

‘I need to tell you something. Purely for information. If you take it any further at this stage, I’ll have to deny having said anything.’

Annie Howe steered Merrily into an unoccupied office, a room without lights, and shut the door.

‘How sure are you of this?’

‘Sure as I can be without forensic evidence.’

‘Where’s Spicer’s wife now?’

‘No, listen, I’m telling you for clarification only. If she didn’t report it then, she isn’t going to say anything now.’

‘Why didn’t she report it?’

‘Because she knew how Syd would react and what that would do to his prospective career in the Church.’

‘You’re saying that, like all these other guys, Jones lost control?’

‘No, that’s the-He didn’t lose control, that’s the whole point. This was a rape in cold blood. I think Byron Jones raped Syd’s wife as an act of violence against Syd himself.’

‘And Spicer… did he know?’

‘It’s a good question.’

‘All right,’ Howe said, ‘tell me the rest – very briefly, we’ve been away too long. Tell me about the taking of bulls. I really can’t imagine that would be easy, unless the bull was sedated.’

‘I’m told that even in Roman times it would be sedated. Maybe it was even done in the field, if it was remote enough, I don’t know. Any kind of blood sacrifice is senseless and sickening to me, but it was done. And it looks like it still is.’

‘Only one man wields the knife?’

‘That would seem to be the idea. He emerges completely covered in the bull’s-What?’

Annie Howe had the door held back, her eyes wide open to the lights.

‘We’ll go back.’

The conference room was still half-lit, with the city murmuring below. Byron Jones was telling Lockley about the archaeology. The pattern from the sky.

‘How did you know?’ Lockley asked.

‘Discoloured ground. Paler grass in the shape of a rectangle. I kept very quiet about it, of course I did.’

‘Individual skills are crucial in the Regiment,’ Lockley said to Howe, ‘and Byron went on a photography course.’

‘Got the chopper pilot to go back over it,’ Byron said, ‘give us a closer look. Took some decent pictures, and later sent them to an archaeologist I knew – in Germany, as it happened – without identifying the location. He thought it was probable.’

‘So that’s why you went after the land. What did you use before that?’

‘We improvised. Caves, a disused reservoir. But to have the remains of an actual mithraeum…’

‘Exciting.’

‘Took everything I’d got, but I knew I’d never get another chance like this. Put the digger to work initially, but most of it was done by hand. Spent three months on it. Sifted all the soil, kept everything in little trays. Didn’t find much – bits of masonry, and a stone tablet, very worn. Handful of Roman coins. But that didn’t matter. It was confirmation, of a kind. And there were other pointers I won’t bore you with showing that this was part of a ritual landscape.’

‘You mean Credenhill and Brinsop Church.’ Merrily sat down. ‘And the alignments with other churches and ancient monuments.’