‘I’m a bloody madman, en’t I?’ Gomer said. ‘Even look like a bloody madman, so people tell me. I got a wife en’t gonner speak to me for a month as a result of what I already done tonight this far. So what do we do, boy? What we gonner do about this?’
‘The cider house?’
‘The cider house where the Bulls took their women until they give it to the Powells. Soon as Tess Roberts told that story tonight, it bothered me. Had to go out, have a ciggy. Whatever they’re doin’ in that cider house it en’t makin’ cider.’
‘Whereabouts is it?’
‘Top of a field, other side o’ the new road, as I recall. A barn, an ole sheep shed and the cider house. Used to be a tiny little shepherd’s cottage there at one time, but that got pulled down years back.’
‘You want to take a look?’ Lol said. ‘Put your mind at rest?’ Meaning put my mind at rest. If they’d found Jane he’d have said, Let’s call it a night, let’s go and find Merrily and talk about all of this, see how it looks in daylight.
But they hadn’t found Jane.
‘Unpredictable kid, though, Gomer. She comes and goes. Has her own ideas, her own apartment in the vicarage. She could be back there now, for all we know.’
‘All right, boy, I’ll tell you what we does.’
Gomer said he’d go back via the old bowling green, through into the churchyard, check on the situation there and whether the kiddie had been found, grab his Jeep off the square – always felt better on wheels, never much of a foot soldier, see. Lol, meanwhile, would torch-sweep as much of the orchard as he could before making his way to the gate opening on to the new road, where Gomer would pick him up in about half an hour.
‘That way, we covers both exits. If her’s in the orchard, one or other of us’ll mabbe stumble-’ Gomer coughed, shuffled. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean…’
‘She’ll be OK,’ Lol said. ‘She’ll be OK.’ Like repeating it was going to make it so. ‘She’s always OK.’
But when Gomer had gone, the Garrod Powell in his head faded into Lloyd Powell and both of them merged into Karl Windling and the white-robed apple trees stood around like bent old druids at some woodland ceremony, and he didn’t think Jane was OK.
He was very fond of Jane. He could say that to himself now. It was OK to be fond of a fifteen-year-old girl. It was OK to fall in love with her mother. He walked away. The salmon moon was entangled in a cluster of spiky dead branches projecting from the blossom below. Gomer was right; the only way to make any kind of productive orchard here was to start again.
He walked quickly, pointing the torch at what remained of the path, sometimes apprehensively sweeping it from side to side, and finding patches of fungus pale as flesh and exposed roots like withered limbs.
She went as far away as she could get, squeezing herself into different corners, squatting in the straw. But wherever she was, she could still see the loft and the bin sack. Wherever she went, she thought she could see Colette’s eyes, popping out at her like marbles.
Even though she’d dragged the bin sack back over the face, she seemed to see the eyes making little round bulges in the plastic.
What a bummer, eh, Janey? Ain’t this just the pits?
But the cool, sassy voice she remembered no longer matched the face. Colette, dead, had a child’s face again, this was what was so awful. She looked so pitifully young. Younger than me.
And the smell. Colette’s sickly new perfume. Putrefying. A putrefying child. A little, swollen doll with a livid throat.
‘Pleeeeeease.’
The folds of the bin sack settled around Colette’s face with a crinkling sound.
‘Naaaaaw!’
In a frenzy, Jane scrambled back on to the stone mill wheel and balanced there, piling more and more empty bin sacks over the corpse, to lose the shape, lose the smell, a stink which would have so disgusted Colette. Her thoughts flitting fearfully into the forbidden unknown. How long had Colette been kept here before they killed her like a turkey? What had they done to her before they throttled her and took her clothes and dumped them in a ditch at King’s Oak Corner and dressed her in a crinkly black shroud? Hunky Lloyd Powell and his dignified father. What had they done to her?
She remembered what Lloyd had said about pests and badger-baiting. It’s a bit of fun. It’s cheap. Nobody gets harmed, ‘cept the badger and that’s his fault for being a badger.
Behind her, the door swung open. She didn’t even try to get down. What was the point?
‘Ah, you found her then, is it?’
Lloyd standing in the doorway with his legs apart. Lloyd sounding quite pleased, like Colette’s body was a birthday present they’d hidden.
‘Amazing what you find when you snoop around, girl. Still. It’s not very nice. Shouldn’t leave ’em unburied. Health risk, it is. I apologize.’
He sighed.
‘We got too much on, see, at present. And too many strangers about. We never wanted the slag, mind. We never done anything like that before. You don’t, not on your own doorstep, not on your own land. Stupid, that is. And then we couldn’t even bury her with all these police tramping around. Untidy. Hate that, I do.’
‘Stop it!’ she screeched, jumping down, putting the mill wheel between them. ‘I don’t want to know. You disgust me.’
Lloyd folded his arms, affronted. ‘Now, don’t you bloody come on like that with me, Jane. It was your fault. It was you sent me after the bitch. Oh, you gotter stop them, you gotter get them out, Lloyd, please, Lloyd, please, please, please… You think I wanted that? Last thing we bloody wanted after that one Father brought back from Kingsland, did nothin’ but bloody cry, day and night… But no, you had to keep on at me. Please, Lloyd, oh please, please ‘Stop it!’ Jane shrieked and bent her head into her arms between her knees.
‘So I find the slag, and she’s looking at me like I’m God’s gift. Throwing herself all over me in the middle of our own orchard. Got rid of her mates fast enough, she had, and here she is, wandering around half naked all by herself. What was I supposed to do? You tell me that, Jane. Fetch her back to the restaurant, with her slobbering all over me, making up her lies? What would that do to my reputation. What would it do to Father?’
‘You didn’t have to bring her back here. Why couldn’t you just… just make love to her… whatever she wanted. You didn’t have to bring her back here!’
‘But we always fetches ’em back yere.’
Lloyd looked momentarily puzzled, like even he wasn’t quite sure why they always fetched them here. Just what he’d been brought up to do. A few stupid city people might think it was cruel, but it was a different way of life out here, wasn’t it?
Nobody gets harmed, ‘cept the badger and that’s his fault for being a badger.
Colette’s fault for being a slag.
Jane didn’t know how to talk to him any more. He wasn’t mad in the normal sense. He didn’t have the imagination to be mad. You couldn’t humour him; he had no humour.
Jane said, in a very low, faint voice, ‘I didn’t throw myself at anybody. I’m not going to spread any lies. Why can’t you just let me go?’
Lloyd shook his head in his brisk and businesslike way. ‘Not an option, Jane. You gotter see that. ‘Specially now.’
‘I’m sure your father’ll say to let me go. He’s a councillor, for God’s sake. My mother’s the-’
Lloyd sort of smiled. ‘You don’t really know Father, do you, Jane?’
And there, suddenly, was Mr Powell in her head, his council-chairman’s chain wound around his hands and tightened.
She braced herself to attack Lloyd. She would go for his balls.
Lloyd leaned back slightly on his heels and regarded her sorrowfully. ‘You try anything, Jane, on me, I got to tell you I’ll punch your face flat. Won’t offend Father. Won’t put Father off. Don’t look at the ole mantelpiece when you’re-’
She saw that Mr Powell wore no trousers and his shirt flap was sticking out. In Lloyd’s hip pocket, the mobile phone had begun to bleep.
‘And about time, too, Father,’ Lloyd said. ‘Excuse me.’
When he’d shut the door efficiently behind him and locked it again, Jane gave up, threw herself into the filthy straw. She was thirsty. She had no more tears left. Her chest hurt from sobbing. It was over. All she had left to hope for was that they would see her as a fox -fast, bang.
Please God, not a badger.
She thought back in horrified amazement to the side of herself which had persuaded her to go into the orchard with two full bottles of gassy cider. When you knew you were going to die quite soon, your body put into a clammy bin liner, the idea of being suspended in some parallel, ethereal, faerie universe was just the most awful, self-deluding crap imaginable. Lucy Devenish believed all this shit and they’d killed her too, and she hadn’t come back because all that afterlife stuff Mum preached was utter crap as well. What she’d had in the orchard that day had been some kind of black-out; she probably had a brain tumour and would have died anyway.
Jane lay there and sniffed the stinking straw because it was better than the piercing perfume of Colette. She, too, would start to smell like that, quite soon, when she was lying in her own bin sack, she and Colette decaying side by side, good mates turning bad. Jane sobbed and snuffled over this until, weak and exhausted – please God, not a badger – her body slackened into a thin sleep and Mr Powell was there, with his chain tight and his thing out, not smiling.
James lifted his chin, his eyes focused on the rafters. His tone was clipped.
‘Many times, I gather, the destruction of that document was mooted. But there was a sound reason for it being preserved. Eventually, about a hundred years ago, my great-grandfather suggested it should be entombed with its author. That’s all there is to it.’
‘James,’ said Merrily. ‘You can’t just tell us there was a sound reason without saying what it was.’
‘It’s a private-’
‘James, listen to me. About thirty years ago, a girl called Patricia Young went to work for your father in the stables. She got pregnant – never mind how I know, I know. She returned after the child was born, to try and persuade the father to face up to his responsibilities. He obviously did. He faced up to the responsibility he obviously felt to his family, and she was never seen again.’
Someone shouted out, ‘Patricia came back?
‘This is disgraceful,’ James snarled.
‘Bloody well come clean, Bull-Davies,’ a man yelled. Several people were on their feet. Ken Thomas had put on all the lights. Bull-Davies’s face was white, a vein throbbing in his forehead. He flung out his pointing arm at Merrily.
‘If there’s a bloody witch here, it’s you.’
‘Shame!’ Minnie Parry cried out and was echoed by at least a dozen people, some of them out in the aisle.
‘All right!’ James threw up his hands. ‘Reason we didn’t destroy that document is because it also vindicates Tom Bull. Didn’t kill Williams. Didn’t even order it done. Truth of it… like Thomas a Becket all over again. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? One of his… servants did it. And that’s all I’m saying. That’s it. Show’s over. I’m leaving. Goodnight.’
To a chorus of groans and protests from the pews, he strode away to the south porch, didn’t look at Ken Thomas, went out. Alison glanced at Merrily then followed him.
Merrily shrugged and followed Alison. Behind her, a score of conversations were detonated.
Garrod Powell had a Sunday car, a silver-grey Ford Escort. Whenever he came to church, he parked it in the same place on the square adjacent to the market hall where it reached out towards the mews where Cassidy’s Country Kitchen was and Ledwardine Lore. Rod’s space. Only tourists parked there when Rod wasn’t in town.
When Gomer spotted the car, Rod was in it, talking on the phone.
Gomer pulled his Jeep into the kerbside at the mouth of Church Street and waited.
Bull-Davies strode past towards his blue Land Rover, almost dragging the floozie behind him. He was unlocking the driver’s door when the little vicar caught them up.
Alison suddenly snatched her hand away and turned on James like a cornered cat.
‘Tell her, you bloody fool. Why don’t you just tell her everything you know? This has nothing to do with honour or tradition.’
‘If that were true…’ He leaned back against his Land Rover and breathed in through his teeth. ‘If that were true, my darling mistress, this would not be a problem.’
‘The problem is,’ Merrily said, ‘that I think we’re talking about a tradition that’s far from honourable.’
‘You’re very clever, Mrs Watkins.’
‘No I’m not. I’ve not been very clever at all. I’ve got people killed.’
‘If you’re talking about Coffey-’
‘You didn’t kill Coffey, did you, James?’ It just came out.
‘What?’ James’s jaw fell open like a padlock. He blinked. ‘Good Lord. You saw Alder in there. Fellow as good as confessed. Didn’t say a word in denial, took it’ – he grunted – ‘took it like a man.’
‘He’s an actor,’ Merrily said. ‘His great performance was dying on its feet. I wondered if he was just grabbing the chance of getting out on a moment of high drama.’
‘Look. Mrs Watkins… Mrs Watkins, no. I did not kill Coffey. Found the man and went to the police, cooperated fully. Even let them take my fingerprints. No. Did not kill Coffey. May have wanted to, but that’s not my way. Couldn’t. All right?’
‘Tell her, then,’ Alison said. ‘Tell her that the Bulls don’t kill. Tell her who-’
‘Stop. Please. All right. According to his own account, Thomas Bull got very drunk one night. Opened his heart to the only man he felt he could still trust. His bailiff, gamekeeper, head groom, land steward, his…’
Merrily, shuddering, had a vision of big brown hands around a small, white throat.
‘His Powell,’ she said.
‘Now do you see?’ James bellowed. ‘Now do you bloody well see?’
‘The… this Powell… killed her.’ Merrily felt breathless, felt the sudden closeness of the woman who was Wil. ‘Strangled her.’
‘Robert Powell, his name. He was trying to help Tom Bull, and he did a terrible thing.’
‘Even more terrible,’ Alison said, ‘because he’d have soon realized he was killing a woman. It’s not so easy to strangle a man.’
‘He didn’t just strangle her,’ Merrily said. ‘He raped her first. He raped the minister. He went to kill a priest, and-’
‘Don’t make it worse, woman!’
‘But it is worse, James. It got worse. Because it didn’t stop. From then on, the Powells had a hold on the Bulls, and maybe it strengthened over the centuries because of the things the Powells would do without compunction. Things it wouldn’t have been proper or seemly or honourable… Who killed Patricia Young?’
Bull-Davies reeled. ‘I don’t know that! Gord’s sake, don’t know anything. Don’t know if the damned woman was killed. I was a boy then, probably still away at school, nobody would have told me. I don’t know anything. Just inherited all this shit, been trying to keep the damned toilet lid down ever since.’
Merrily looked at Alison.
Alison gave a tiny nod, her face flushed with anticipation.
‘Who do you think killed her?’ Merrily said.
‘Do you never give up? Presumably the father of her child, whoever
…’ James swallowed. ‘Whoever that was. Certainly not my poor bloody father who for the last twenty years of his life was impotent through illness and drink and got his only pleasure from…’
James clenched his teeth.
‘… watching.’
Alison gasped.
‘Watching who, James?’ Merrily’s voice was very faint.
He wouldn’t answer. He hardly needed to. An engine roared suddenly and the side of the Land Rover was blasted by headlights.
‘Vicar!’
‘Gomer?’
Merrily saw, with a spasm of panic, that he was alone behind the wheel of his jeep.
‘Where’s Jane?’
‘You en’t seen her?’
‘Oh Christ!’
Gomer reached over and threw open the passenger door.
‘Get in, Vicar.’