Concrete
HUW OWEN HAD always laid it down that you didn’t just leave without doing something. Prayer, blessing, something. You didn’t just walk or drive away saying you’d sleep on it, maybe come back tomorrow, because tomorrow might be too late. Huw would talk about suicides he’d known caused by delays and hesitation and simple scepticism.
Merrily watched Lara Brewer walking slowly away, head bowed, towards the pub and the sporadic lights of the newer Kilpeck.
Call me, she’d said to Lara. Call me anytime. Day or night. I’ll come out.
OK, people lied to you sometimes. Although experience told you that mostly they didn’t. Occasionally they were deluded but, more often than not, whatever had happened to them would have been far enough out of the box to shock them into complete openness.
Still, what could she have done? This was all second-hand. She needed Lara to persuade Gareth Brewer to make himself available. And it needed thinking about, too, because its origins might lie in the churchyard at Ledwardine.
Lights had come on in the farmhouse, distant lights in the hills beyond the church. Julie Duxbury was unlocking her old Renault Clio.
‘Her father was a psychiatrist at the Stonebow unit in Hereford, her mother was a teacher. As was Lara until she had the kids. Her parents’ house was near a riding stables and she used to help out there during her summer holidays from college. Gareth Brewer was in and out over the summer months, doing what farriers do, which was how they met.’ Julie looked up from the car door. ‘Can you take it from here?’
‘If I’m allowed to.’
‘Is it always this difficult?’
Where did you start? There would always be somebody on the fringe of a situation who would think you yourself were dangerously deluded and shouldn’t be allowed near normal people. Partly why, in these litigious times, there was often a deliverance panel and exorcists went out in pairs, like cops at night.
‘I’m prepared to help,’ Julie said. ‘I do realize there’s something here that needs resolving, and I’m working on it. But that shouldn’t affect you.’ She turned, tossing her keys from one hand to the other. ‘Don’t you get tired, as a woman in the ministry, of being treated like some mumsy figure? Soppy?’
‘Male clergy get that, too.’
‘I know, I married one. But I’m not soppy, you see, and I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that we’re the only people left who can take some things on. In the old days, people used to listen to the parish priest, whatever their social position. Don’t any more, but that’s no reason for us to keep our noses out.’
‘Did you know Aidan Lloyd?’
‘He didn’t live here.’
‘What did she mean by the Man of Leaves? And the mask.’
‘She meant the green man.’
‘Like on the church?’
‘I find it all rather juvenile. Nor do I like the black faces.’
‘I wonder what Lara thinks about that.’
‘Doesn’t seem to bother her. Bothers me. Wishy-washy, guilt-ridden liberal.’ Julie was half into the driving seat. ‘I shall have to go. Parish council in just over an hour. Please let me know if this goes any further. I—’ She came out of the car again. ‘Look, it’s difficult. He helps us.’
‘With the church. I’m not even sure of the figures involved. The money would normally go through the parish accounts, but it seems to be paid directly to the diocese. A national treasure. I’d rather have a big congregation worshipping in precast concrete, but there we are.’
Merrily looked up at the church, remembering its response to the sunset.
‘I should take a look at the corbels before I—’
‘No. Please don’t. Go up in the daytime. It’s… not terribly safe.’
‘The masonry?’
‘Nothing wrong with it. Could’ve been built yesterday. That’s remarkable, isn’t it? The castle in ruins, village gone, church as good as new.’
Julie got back into the car.
‘You really don’t like it, do you?’ Merrily said.
A cluster of ancient churches in her care, including Dore Abbey, lofty, rambling and far less well preserved.
‘I did like it. I ought to like it.’
It was just over eight miles to Hereford. Merrily drove into the lights, up past the Plascarreg estate where the drug dealers hung out, and all the time Lara Brewer’s voice kept coming back to her, what she’d said about Aidan Lloyd.
Gareth always said he belonged here.
Kilpeck. She joined the traffic crossing Greyfriars Bridge over the River Wye, the Cathedral on her right, through the traffic lights and into the concrete canyon that Jane called Death Valley. She drove slowly, her mobile phone open on the passenger seat, switched on.
Had they come that night, the Kilpeck Morris, to bring Aidan Lloyd home? In a manner of speaking.
With the heater still gasping, she drove slowly through the security-lit trading estates which not so long ago had been open fields. Thinking about Paul Crowden and his insistence that investigation wasn’t part of an exorcist’s job. Let God take care of all that and accept your role as his device. Presumably, Crowden would also urge Julie Duxbury not to interfere in the feud between the Kilpeck benefactor, Sir Lionel Darvill, and his bête noire Iestyn Lloyd, Ledwardine’s biggest farmer whose ground arrowed into the churchyard and who hadn’t put a penny into the parish. Iestyn. Last seen on the edge of Aidan’s grave, muttering, Devil took—
Something occurred to her, with a small mental explosion, just as she cleared the last of the city lights and the mobile barked on the passenger seat.
With its famous disinterest in tourism, Herefordshire Council didn’t provide much in the way of lay-bys and picnic places. She had to go off-road to take the call, the Freelander up into the verge, hazard warning lights on, the mobile on speaker.
‘Things have moved on,’ Lara Brewer said. ‘I told him you were ready to come out here. He said that wasn’t going to happen. Not in front of the kids.’
‘What had you said to him?’
‘Asked him what they’d done. Left the kids in front of the TV and took him into the kitchen and asked him what they’d done in Ledwardine. I had the strong impression that you know exactly what they did. You wouldn’t’ve come over here so quickly, otherwise.’
An old Land Rover went rattling past, dangerously close.
Merrily said, ‘I admit there are some things I couldn’t talk about. Other people were affected.’
‘These aspects – would they have made me feel better?’
Lara’s brittle laughter was like the snapping of twigs. Merrily sat back, firing up the vape stick.
‘What did your husband say when you asked him what they’d done in Ledwardine?’
‘He asked me what you’d said. I told him everything, but we were still going round in circles. Look, they’ve been changed, these men. They’ll do things for Darvill now, without questioning much. Things that might seem completely crazy to you.’
‘Try me.’
‘I’ve said too much already. I’m not from round here, which is pretty obvious to everybody, and if you’re not from a place, as they say, you keep your nose out, don’t you?’
‘While keeping your ears open.’
‘And your mouth shut. If I were to say I think Darvill’s mad, that would be too easy. Look, the reason I’m ringing, I’d had enough, I got angry. As I said, I don’t really know what I believe, but it seemed to me that you needed to talk to each other without delay. I told him that if we had another sleepless night I might just start being less discreet. But if it’s not convenient I’ll call him on his mobile.’
‘Sorry?’
‘He’s coming to you. To Ledwardine.’
‘When?’
‘He’s on his way. Left about five minutes ago. I can call him—’
‘No. Don’t do that.’ She took a hit on the vape stick. ‘He knows where it is, the vicarage?’
‘He’s going to your church. He’s been there before.’
‘Yes.’
‘This is… none of it’s normal, is it? I just want it sorted, and better it’s dealt with by someone like you than…’
The police?
‘Lara…’ She stared into the white vapour clouding the cab. ‘He’s coming alone, presumably?’
‘Of course.’
‘So nobody else knows…’
‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t like to say. I never thought about that. The KM, I suppose he could’ve rung any of them from the van.’
‘Or Darvill.’
‘He might’ve felt obliged to tell Darvill what he was doing?’
‘In which case…’ Lara sighed. ‘While he left the house saying he was going over to Ledwardine, that doesn’t mean he’ll arrive.’
She rang Jane, told her something had come up that may or may not take over the night.
‘Good luck,’ Jane said soberly. ‘Seriously.’
A couple of miles from home, coming off the bypass, the headlights found a commercial sign for Churchwood Farm. It had a streamer urging passing motorists to buy the best of British meat.
You didn’t have to live on the Welsh border very long to know that feuds in these parts were like guerrilla warfare and could go on for generations until the reasons for them had been almost forgotten, leaving only enmity set like concrete. And periodic collateral damage. Usually, they were between neighbouring farmers, but what was twenty miles on the Welsh border?
A snatch of voice came through to her, three more words, the most she’d ever heard from the man in the overcoat, under the blood-blister sun, looking down into an open grave into which he’d thrown no earth.
Devil took him.
Small mental explosion.
This time it came out as Darvill took him.