‘Sit down, Merrily.’ Annie Howe switched off the TV. She went over to the window and reeled up the blind, revealing a small yard and the back of the old magistrates’ court.
It was possibly the first time she’d said ‘Merrily’, rather than ‘Ms Watkins’. Using the first name the way police talked to suspects — patronizing, to make them feel lowly and vulnerable.
Right now, it was entirely superfluous. Merrily sat in an armless chair, one with aluminium legs. She felt sick, wishing she’d said no to the scones. And to Gerard Stock.
The last time she and Annie Howe had been face to face, Howe had said, I don’t know how you people can pretend to do your job at all. To me, it’s a complete fantasy world.
Merrily put her hands on her knees. ‘Where’s Lol?’
‘Robinson’s being interviewed separately, by Inspector Bliss.’
‘Frannie Bliss?’
‘If you only knew,’ Howe said, ‘how badly I’m wishing there was something I could charge you with.’
She was in white blouse, black skirt. Her ash-blonde hair was tied back. She was wearing maybe a little eyeshadow, mauvish. If she’d worn glasses they would doubtless have been rimless, like a Nazi dentist’s — Jane’s line. Merrily thought, There is absolutely nothing I can tell this woman that she’s going to believe.
She bit her lower lip. The whole office was painted butcher’s-shop white. There were no plants, no photographs. The calendar did not have a picture; it was framed in a metal box, and you expected it to have ten days in a week, ten months in a year. Andy Mumford sat in the corner by the door, presumably in case Merrily should try to do a runner.
‘Still,’ Annie Howe said, ‘I suppose by the time you leave here, you’ll at least be in a better position to assess your own degree of responsibility.’ She ejected the videotape from the machine. ‘At some point you and I will have to watch it all the way through, to verify certain points. Did you know you were being recorded?’
‘No. It never even occurred to me.’
‘Two cameras.’ Howe went to sit behind her desk, which was away from the limited distraction of the window. ‘Semiprofessional: one digital, one hi-eight. Both of them wedged between timbers in the ceiling. It’s a fairly primitive ceiling, with small holes and gaps all over it, so all he had to do was prise up a couple of boards in the bedroom and position the cameras underneath — one wide-angle, one focused on the table. Why do you think he wanted it all on tape?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Of the suggestions so far, the most likely is that he may have been planning to make the material available for some future television documentary. I’m told he’s always looking to the main chance. Perhaps — let’s not overestimate the man’s intelligence — perhaps he thought he might even capture something looking vaguely paranormal.’
‘Media-oriented, I suppose. He’s a… professional PR man.’
‘Really? According to people in the village, he’s a washed-up drunk.’
‘He wasn’t drunk when I was with him,’ Merrily said.
‘No, amazingly, he wasn’t. So you didn’t even hear the cameras? One was quite old and noisy.’
‘There was a big fridge, which made a lot of noise. If I heard anything, I would have assumed it came from that.’
Howe thought for a moment, expressionless. It was hard to credit she was probably only thirty-two years old.
‘Doesn’t seem to have been a very successful exorcism, does it, Ms Watkins? Or are they always like that?’
‘They’re all different, in my limited experience. But no, it wasn’t as… productive as I might have hoped.’
‘Depending on how one interprets the word “productive”.’
Merrily winced.
‘What time did you leave?’
‘I’m not sure exactly. It couldn’t have been long after midday. I’d suggested we might go back tonight.’
‘He didn’t seem to take that proposal terribly well.’
‘No.’ Merrily was looking down into her lap. Her hands were on her knees, but they wouldn’t stay still.
‘My impression from the tape is that he’d about had enough of you.’
‘Yes.’
‘He described you as amateurish.’
‘I remember exactly what he said.’
‘You and Robinson left at the same time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘I drove back to Hereford. I had an appointment to meet someone at the Green Dragon.’
‘Who?’
‘You know who; your dad.’
‘Why?’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘It was in his capacity as a school governor. He rang me while I was at Knight’s Frome to tell me he had some information relating to an attempted suicide by a young girl whose parents thought she was… spiritually troubled.’
Howe’s top lip lifted in disdain. ‘And was this attempted suicide before or after you were called in to assist this child in her alleged religious distress?’
Merrily didn’t answer.
‘Really not your week, is it? Did you go directly to the Green Dragon?’
‘No, I went to the Deliverance office first. I parked on the Bishop’s Palace forecourt which, as you know, is only a couple of minutes’ walk from the Green Dragon.’
‘Was Robinson with you?’
‘He followed in his own car. We had a brief discussion, and then I had to go and meet your father. Lol and I agreed to meet up afterwards.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t get my-I can’t believe how quickly this all happened.’
‘If it’s any help, the videotape shows that it happened precisely eleven minutes and fourteen seconds after you and Robinson made your last appearance on the tape.’
‘Useful, that videotape.’ Merrily moistened her parched lips.
‘From our point of view, it’s unique. Like being handed a case gift-wrapped with a pretty bow on top.’ Howe stood up, looking down on Merrily. ‘We can even say that it was approximately sixteen minutes after the event itself when Gerard Stock telephoned here, asked to be put through to CID and baldly informed DC Little that he’d just slaughtered his wife.’
It was an interview room with a tape machine, for suspects, and that didn’t help. DI Francis Bliss was about Lol’s age, with red hair, a Merseyside accent and a chatty manner, and that didn’t help either.
It all took Lol back to when he was twenty, a baby rock star… the accused. So hard to tell with young girls these days, isn’t it, Laurence? How old did you think she was? Stitched up by the police and a ruthless bass-player called Karl, and by the parents of a nice girl called Tracy Cooke. Prelude to the great psychiatric symphony.
‘Listen, I’m gonna get yer another cup of tea,’ DI Bliss said.
‘I’m all right, thanks.’
‘You’re not, you know. You’re in shock. Be a shock for anybody.’ Bliss perched on a corner of the interview table. ‘Sorry about this room, but I’m not based here, so I’ve not gor an office of me own. Known Merrily long?’
‘Just over a year.’
‘And you two just met up in the village this morning, after not seeing each other for a few months, and she told you what she was doing and she asked you to go in with her, yeh?’
‘I know that sounds…’
Bliss put out placatory hands. ‘I’m not trying to catch yer out, Lol, I’m just trying to get the basic picture, that’s all.’
‘I was worried about her doing it,’ Lol said.
‘Because of what you knew about Mr Stock?’
Lol nodded.
‘That’s fair enough, I’d’ve been a teensy bit worried meself after reading that stuff in the papers… and the local vicar himself refusing to have anything to do with him.’
‘It was the vicar who suggested I should try and talk her out of it.’
‘Was it now?’
‘He was suspicious of Stock’s motives. But Merrily doesn’t like to prejudge people.’
‘She’s a very nice person,’ Bliss agreed fervently. ‘I was there during that thing, back before Christmas at… Oh, what was that little church called? Anyway, she was giving it a spiritual clean-out after this bugger broke in and hacked up a crow all over the altar. She wasn’t very well that night, mind.’
‘I wasn’t there.’
‘She was with this priest looked like an old hippy. Hugh somebody. He took it over in the end, ’cause she wasn’t well.’ Bliss had a gulp from a can of Diet Pepsi. ‘See, unlike the Snow Queen in there, I’ve gorra very open mind about all that stuff. Comes with being raised a Catholic in a big Catholic city. You’re a Christian yourself, obviously.’
‘I’m not sure what I am,’ Lol admitted.
‘Just a good friend of Merrily’s, then, Lol.’ Bliss put down the can. ‘Listen, pal, I do know a bit about what happened to you way back, and I accept you may’ve had a bad time with coppers in the past… but I do like Merrily and I fully understand the problem she’d got with this guy. And I know it’s her job, and I realize that after that stuff in the papers there was no way she could duck out of it.’
‘No.’
‘So, you’ve gorra believe me when I say I’m not trying to stitch her up, I’m not trying to stitch either of yer up — it’s just we’ve got a feller down the cells putting up both hands to the big one and, before we start talking seriously to him, we want as much background as we can get. Make sense to you?’
Lol nodded. He decided that, for Merrily’s sake more than his own, maybe he should open up a little to this cop. To a point… a point stopping well short of the Lady of the Bines.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just-’
‘You’re all right, pal. Take your time.’
‘Truth is, I was on edge from the minute we went in there. I mean, I didn’t think — not in a million years — that the guy was going to do anything like…’
‘Goes without saying.’
‘But everybody who’d had anything to do with Stock was on about what a conman he was, and a manipulator, and how he’d drop you in it without a second thought. Also, I’d seen him in the village pub a couple of times when he was well pissed. Had a big chip on his shoulder about this bloke Adam Lake — virtually suggesting he was behind Stewart Ash’s murder, rather than the two lads who went down for it.’
‘Let’s not open that can of worms for the time being, eh, Lol?’
‘I was just worried he might try and involve Merrily in that.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, but she doesn’t like to turn away from anyone.’
‘So what was he like when you and Merrily went along today?’
‘Not himself. I mean, he couldn’t’ve been nicer.’
‘Why was that, you reckon?’
‘Well, it might have been genuine. Maybe he was serious about needing an exorcism, and he didn’t want to put her off or make her suspicious. That was what I started to think, but now… I suppose that’d be for the tape, wouldn’t it? Like, if he was videoing the thing, he’d want to appear on it as a sincere and honest man, genuinely concerned about what was happening in his house.’
‘That’s a good point, Lol.’ Bliss thought about it. ‘Mind, he wasn’t being very appreciative at the end, was he, when he threw yer out?’
‘But he’d got it all in the camera by then, hadn’t he? Everything that counted. The Deliverance stuff. He could just have wiped the end of the tape afterwards.’
‘True. Why’d he turn nasty, you reckon? Apart from his wife’s attitude.’
‘I don’t think there was anything apart from that. Stephanie started taking the piss, so Stock took it out on Merrily.’
Bliss nodded. ‘Certainly the times you see him looking at her you can tell he’s trying to keep his temper — or something. But then, she was a lot younger than him. And clearly not too worried at being in a haunted house. Or was that bravado?’
‘She was a Catholic, like you. Protected. She said earlier — maybe before we went into the kitchen — that she didn’t think Uncle Stewart would do her any harm.’
‘Oh, we’re not scared of ghosts, us Catholics?’ Bliss blew out his lips. ‘News to me. How did Merrily react to the wife?’
‘Tried to ignore it. Just carried on.’
‘A true professional.’
‘A good person,’ Lol said. ‘Doing the best she could.’
‘You’re fond of her, aren’t you?’ Bliss smiled. ‘Who wouldn’t be, eh?’
Lol said, ‘You haven’t told me exactly what he did.’
‘How he killed her?’
Lol looked at Bliss: pale skin, freckles, an unusually small nose.
‘What happened when you all went upstairs, Lol?’
‘Well, just…’
Lol had a terrifying thought: the only cameras in the bedroom were the ones under the floorboards, pointing downwards, but suppose their microphones had picked up the voices from above, during Merrily’s blessing of the upstairs room? And during what happened afterwards, when Merrily had followed Stock downstairs. If there was anything on the tape, the quality would be terrible. But they could work on that. Someone like Prof Levin could clean up the thinnest of recordings.
‘… Just more or less what happened in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘With different words.’
He could tell Bliss about Stephie’s implicit invitation. But it sounded too incredible, unless you knew about the Lady of the Bines incident. Which he’d also kept quiet about. Which he hadn’t even told Merrily about.
Lol blanked it out. He was terrible at cover-ups. He would look furtive, he’d sweat.
Bliss said, ‘Nothing happened up there you think might throw more light?’
‘Not… not that I can think of.’
‘You wanna see the tape, Lol?’
‘Not really.’
‘Don’t blame yer. But… I think you’re gonna have to. I think we’re gonna have to take the both of you through it. I’m sorry.’ Bliss thought for a moment, then sighed. ‘Look, all right, I’ll be frank wid yer — he’s not saying a lot.’
‘Stock?’
‘In fact, the bugger’s not saying a thing. Won’t see a solicitor, won’t make a formal statement, just sits there like some bloody big Buddha.’
‘But he phoned you to confess…’
‘Oh aye. When we get there, he hands us the videos. Looking relieved, if anything. He won’t talk about it, though, won’t explain. That’s why you and Merrily are so important to us at the moment.’
‘I see.’
‘Don’t tell the Snow Queen I told you that.’
***
Annie Howe said, ‘Have you heard of the case of Michael Taylor?’
‘Yes.’
She’s loving this, Merrily thought. A case on a plate.
Me in the toaster.
She was desperate for a cigarette, but she wouldn’t give Howe the satisfaction. She was also desperate for silence, somewhere to collapse and think and, if necessary, scream. Nothing made any sense. Nothing had made sense for days. She felt a welling hatred for Gerard Stock and a bitterness towards Simon St John who had known enough to shut the door in his face.
‘Happened near Barnsley, in Yorkshire.’ Howe was back behind her desk. ‘In the mid-seventies. I know most of the details because of the pseudo-Satanist person we found in the Wye last year. I called up some background on Satanism and related issues, and this case was the first to come up on the screen.’
Merrily closed her eyes and inhaled on an imaginary cigarette. This was one of Huw’s cautionary favourites, which Howe would just love relating.
‘Michael Taylor was thirty-one, a good Christian, a family man — and a member, with his wife, of some local religious group. At some point, for reasons I’ve never found entirely understandable, he came to believe he’d been taken over by the Devil.’
Howe had a set of files on her desk. She opened one and extracted a cellophane folder.
‘Two church ministers agreed that Taylor appeared to be possessed by evil, and they spent all night trying to exorcize him, claiming to have expelled — I think — forty demons — the statistical exactitude here obviously adding important credibility to what most people might consider an inexact science. However, Taylor left the priests early the following morning, went home-’
‘I know,’ Merrily screwed up her eyes in anguish. ‘I know what he did, there’s no need to-’
‘He went home and, with incredible savagery, attacked his wife with his bare hands.’
‘Yes…’
‘He tore at her skin, ripped out her tongue. And her eyes.’
Merrily leaned her head back, stared at the ceiling.
‘Eventually, she choked to death on her own blood,’ Howe said.
‘And Taylor claimed, in his statement to police’ — Merrily’s voice was starved; she couldn’t look at Howe — ‘that he loved his wife very much but there was an evil inside her that had to be destroyed.’
‘Not, I think it’s fair to say, the Church’s finest hour.’
‘Exorcism of a person is a complex and dangerous process,’ Merrily said. ‘But this… this case wasn’t anything like that.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘It wasn’t an exorcism. I made that completely clear to Mr Stock from the start. I even decided to hold off the customary Requiem Eucharist because it might look too much like Christian magic. It was prayer, that’s all — prayer as the first stage in dealing with a suspected spiritual presence, there being no reason to suspect any demonic infestation.’
‘Let’s go back to Taylor,’ Howe said. ‘Found not guilty by a jury for reasons of insanity. Caused quite a stir, didn’t it?’
‘What should be said about that verdict… although Michael Taylor had been, by all accounts, a friendly and popular man with no history of violence, nobody — not the judge, nor the jury, nor the media — seemed prepared even to consider that he might actually have been possessed by a metaphysical evil.’
‘He was considered insane.’ To Howe the difference between insanity and possession would be indiscernible. ‘His mental decline appears to have coincided with his taking up membership of a Christian group. His recourse to almost unimaginable violence immediately followed his so-called exorcism by two Christian ministers, isn’t that true?’
Merrily could only nod, knowing now where this was going — a goods train with a toxic cargo inexorably picking up speed, and nothing she could do to stop it.
Howe was still flipping through the file on her desk. ‘I’m trying to find what the local bishop said at the time.’
‘I can tell you more or less exactly what he said.’
‘Here we are… “Exorcism is a type of ministry which is increasingly practised in Christian churches. There is no order of service for this; it is administered as the situation demands. Clearly a form of ministry which must be exercised with the greatest possible care and responsibility.” ’
‘But this was not-’
‘Ms Watkins, the tape clearly shows the sacrament laid out on your impromptu altar, and the sprinkling, by you, of water, which I assume is what you regard as holy water.’
‘The sacrament wasn’t even used, it was-’
Annie Howe wasn’t listening; she was back into the report, flipping pages.
‘Yes… the Taylor case was also commented on by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan, who said, I quote: “We must get this business out of the mumbo-jumbo of magic. I do not see exorcism as something set off against and in opposition to medicine. Far from it. I think there are many cases where the more rash exorcists have bypassed the work of psychiatrists.” ’ Howe looked up. ‘Partly as a result, I believe, of the Taylor case, there was a re-examination by the Church of the usefulness of exorcism and how such disasters might be avoided in the future. As a result, the guidance now to exorcists is that they should always work with community psychiatric resources. Is that correct, Ms Watkins?’
‘Before an exorcism is carried out on an individual, it’s recommended that they should be seen by a psychiatrist, to make sure they aren’t, for instance, schizophrenic. Yes.’
‘And when an exorcism takes place, it’s advised that a qualified psychiatrist should be present. Is that correct?’
Merrily sighed. ‘Yes.’
Howe rearranged the papers in the report, applied a paper clip and slipped them into the folder. She smiled pleasantly at Merrily.
‘So, is your idea of deploying community psychiatric resources — in carrying out a ritual that might loosely be described as “mumbo jumbo” at the behest of a notoriously unstable, possibly alcoholic, individual — to take along with you-’
‘That’s not what-’
‘-take along with you, as your expert medical consultant, a former psychiatric patient with a police record?’
‘You stay the fuck away from me!’ Stock screamed. ‘You do not come near me!’
He was backing into shot. His shirt had come out of his trousers. The sweat patches under his arms were the size of hi-hat cymbals, Lol thought.
And it was all so beautifully bright. This was what video did; it compensated for the conditions. Clear and clinical, then, even if the quality was not great; Bliss had said these were quickly made VHS copies of the two originals. The one they were looking at was wide-angle, evidently shot from a camera position just above the fridge. The constant picture included all of the table and an area of flagged floor about three feet around it.
On the table were Stewart Ash’s book on hop-growing, and a wine stain.
Frannie Bliss froze the tape.
‘I think, boss, that this bit gives the lie to the theory that this whole thing was like some big theatrical production… that he even had an idea how it was gonna end. Whatever she’s doing now, you can tell he’s not expecting it.’
‘Not necessarily,’ DCI Howe said. ‘We can’t even see Stephanie at this point. We don’t know that she’s doing anything. She might not even be there. This could be part of his act.’
‘He’d have to be bloody good.’ Bliss started up the tape again.
Stock was shaking. He just stood there trembling, almost full-face to the camera. His beard was shiny with sweat and spittle.
The fridge noise was rumbling out of the TV speaker. Lol thought of rocks before an avalanche. He thought of Stock in the seconds before he’d spouted a gutful of sour beer over Adam Lake. He prayed that both Stock and his wife would be out of shot when the killing happened.
‘If I didn’t know the circumstances, I’d say he was shit-scared,’ Bliss said. ‘What would he be scared of, Merrily? What could she be doing that would put the fear of God into him?’
‘I couldn’t give an opinion on that.’ Merrily’s voice was all dried out.
‘We’re looking for ideas, that’s all,’ Bliss said. ‘Doesn’t have to be a thesis.’
Merrily had been placed near the covered window, DCI Howe standing next to her chair like the angel of death. They’d brought Lol into the room, but only just, seating him near the door, between Frannie Bliss and the other detective, Mumford; he couldn’t even exchange glances with Merrily.
‘Not saying much, is she, young Stephanie?’ Bliss said. ‘She still taking the piss? Is she taunting him, you reckon? What’s she doing, Lol? What d’you reckon?’
Lol said nothing. Why should Bliss think he would know? Had he given something away, with a reaction, an expression? Had Merrily told them that Lol and Stephanie had been alone together, upstairs, not long before the killing?
‘Bearing in mind that her body was unclothed,’ Bliss said, ‘when we found her.’
‘I don’t…’ Lol was thinking of Stock that first night in the pub. Derek, the landlord, must certainly have overheard when Stock had said, My wife leaves scratches a foot long down my back.
‘Stock implied that his wife was highly sexed,’ Lol said. ‘He talked about it in the pub a few nights ago.’
‘Boasting?’
‘Kind of.’
‘He’s not looking too turned-on now, is he?’
There was a movement on the screen — Stock reaching up to the wall.
‘Recognize that thing, Ms Watkins?’
‘Yes. It’s a hop-cutter’s hook. It was part of Stewart Ash’s collection of hop-farmers’ implements. Stock said-’
Breaking off because Stock had walked out of shot again. Carrying the hook. Lol had seen enough. Both Howe and Bliss had gone quiet and were watching the screen. There was nothing to see there now but stone flags, a curving brick wall and a table with a book on it. The fridge was going whump, whump… whump — irregular, as though its metal heart was about to fail.
After about a minute, there arose, from somewhere in the house, perhaps everywhere in the house, this cavernous, animal bellow, mingling with its own echo and the sound of the fridge.
Rage and terror, Lol thought, numbed.
Then only the sound of the fridge.
‘What were you about to say, Ms Watkins?’ Howe asked mildly, as if the TV was merely screening some corny old melodrama they’d all seen many times before. ‘What did Stock say?’
‘He told me he’d sharpened it himself.’ Merrily’s voice was flat. ‘He said that, because of what had happened to Uncle Stewart, he’d become afraid of someone breaking in at night, and so he… he wanted to be ready.’
On the TV screen: flags, table, book. The only sound was the fridge.
Frannie Bliss said delicately, ‘I wouldn’t think there’s any particular need for Merrily to watch any more, would you, boss?’
Lol heard Merrily saying, ‘He said it might seem ridiculous, but he just didn’t trust the countryside.’
‘Boss…’ Bliss said plaintively, ‘do you really think this is…?’
Annie Howe didn’t reply.
Lol was still hearing But he just didn’t trust the countryside, repeated like a loop in his head, when Gerard Stock walked casually back into the kitchen.
He wasn’t carrying the hop-cutter’s hook any more. The picture quality was crisp and suddenly very pleasant, the midday sun throwing a bright path from the middle window across the flags, creating a golden alley. Into it, Gerard Stock — the stains on his white shirt as startling as poppies in the snow — put down Stephanie’s head.