The Echo of Crows, page 14
Merrily reached for the kettle. ‘I don’t know but we’re more or less interested in the same things and – for what this is worth – Jane does know what it’s like to lose a parent. Her father died in a car crash.’
‘And have you…? Can I ask, have you seen him since?’
‘No,’ Merrily said instantly, ‘but I suspect that you may have seen your mother.’
Autumn thought about it as she nodded to the offer of coffee.
‘I might have sensed something of what she did in her last moments of consciousness, or I may have fabricated that, just wanting to feel close. A comfort-blanket thing.’
Close to tears, she changed the subject.
‘Ethel’s here. Shall I put some food in this bowl?’ Merrily nodded.
‘Jane’s gone to her shop or somewhere. Is it her shop?’
‘Until next year’s Ledwardine Festival is over. She’s running the festival’s retail outlet, selling music and books and tickets, of course. Gives her time to decide what to do next, college or whatever.’
‘That makes sense. I’m still trying to work through all that’s happened this year,’ Autumn said. ‘Just the ground keeps shifting under me. Look, both you and Jane must have been trying to figure out whether I’m an oddball or someone who’s a bit psychic-sensitive. But, whatever you think, I really hope you’ve decided that I’m not a killer.’
‘Yes, and so, I think, has DI Bliss,’ Merrily said. ‘Let’s have some coffee while you tell me about the people you’ve encountered in Longtown.’
‘The new people there,’ Autumn said, ‘many of them want to feel more accepted and some stay kind of aloof.’ She carried two mugs to the kitchen table. ‘They’ve heard what established locals are saying about newcomers, and they rather like it. It makes them feel… enchanted in a way.’
‘Local people say newcomers are “from Off”,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s not meant as a compliment.’
‘No. I think my grandparents are accepted. They have been there a long time and the neighbours were so kind when my parents were killed. We’ve had a chat this morning – they’re always up early – and I’ve told them where I am. Nothing about last night, though. Hopefully, I can go and see them in a day or two.’
‘I can fix something up,’ Merrily said, ‘but, meanwhile, we need to concentrate on your welfare. I’ve got a parishioner in mind I think can help. She’s a psychotherapist and bereavement councillor and a really lovely person. Would you be willing to have a chat with her?’
Autumn agreed and, after a short phone call, Merrily got an immediate appointment. Her friend, Jess, had a day off and, intrigued by the case, said she’d be happy to spend a good part of it with Autumn. With no one in the vicarage to overhear, Merrily rang Frannie Bliss.
*
Driving in from the Golden Valley, Bliss was a couple of miles from Longtown when he heard the mobile ring. He trod on the brakes and pulled in behind a Land Rover and trailer in a field entrance on an open stretch of country lane.
‘Things OK, Merrily?’
‘Fairly,’ she said. ‘Have you got a few spare minutes?’
‘Yeh, good timing. I’m parked up to rendezvous with Eddy’s brother but there’s no sign of him yet. Must be checking on his sheep and dropping off some food. Deliverewe, you might say.’ Bliss chuckled.
‘You sound chirpy this early,’ Merrily said. ‘I had a late night. What you could call eventful, which is why I’ve rung.’
Merrily tried to sum up what had happened in those darkest of dark hours and how the imprint had probably provoked Autumn’s preoccupation with being hanged.
‘More things in heaven and earth, eh, Merrily? I’m trying to digest that, along with a bacon sarnie. It takes some processing. Not the stuff you can type up in a police report but totally mind-boggling. Explains why she didn’t want to go back there.’
Merrily had just finished telling Bliss about the counselling appointment when he spotted Len Davies on his way to the car. He signed out with, ‘Thanks, talk to you later. Ta-ra.’
*
Len Davies now opened the car door and sat in the passenger seat. He’d looked all around, probably to make sure he was free of prying reporters and amateur sleuths.
An old-fashioned farmer – navy waterproof overalls, wellies and a battered tweed cap, now removed and both hands curled tightly around it, as if it held a few old-fashioned banknotes. All this telling Bliss that Len, last quizzed about his late brother’s will, was most comfortable in stained overalls and muddy wellies, feeding his flocks.
‘We spoke earlier, Mr Davies. DI Bliss, Hereford CID.’
‘Aye,’ Len said, unsmilingly. ‘I reckon you’s him.’
Bliss glanced through the windscreen, seeing a framed close-up of the Black Mountains under a cold bank of early fog. A low shelf of unfriendly grey hills, somehow an older place than Hereford, with serious country for miles. A different world. Why did he keep thinking that?
‘This must be confusing for you, Len,’ Bliss said, wondering how long he would keep on farming here now the fields were full of images of his dead brother. Would he feel obliged to stay or would he want a new farm somewhere without memories, which he could now get… anywhere and at any price? Bliss concluded he’d probably stay. This was his place, for good and bad and…
Len looked across fields, trees and low hills to the moody Black Mountains. He sighed.
‘Things’ll work ’emselves out. Always does in the end, look. Death is all part of life. You see more of it in the countryside and in farming. You should plan for the future but never presume you’ve got one. Now, about them women you wanted to know about…’
Bliss remembered asking Len briefly to think about any of several women from Off who’d spent quality time with his late brother, who seemingly had a reputation as a ladies’ man.
Len turned to him.
‘Some come and go and some stick around for longer and longer then don’t leave.’
‘You mean make their home here?’
Len nodded, turned back to the mountains.
‘In Autumn Wise’s case, Eddy provided a house,’ Bliss said. ‘Does that deal still stand… if she’s still around?’
Len Davies had a long sniff then wiped his nose with a big white hanky that obviously had a dedicated pocket in the overalls.
‘Hadn’t given it a thought. Farm to run, funeral to plan. Why would she want to come back here anyway? Could go back to her grandparents. I never understood why Eddy was smitten. I don’t get why he couldn’t settle hisself on a normal girl.’
‘How d’you mean normal?’
‘OK,’ Len said, ‘he’d won all that money and her’s a rare eyeful and her’s sort-of local, but he was never short of… of…’
‘Women? Never short of a choice of girlfriends?’
For a while, they both sat on in silence. In the car window, the early sun tentatively explored fields that might now be owned by Len.
‘Eddy, he worked for me mostly at weekends,’ Len said eventually. ‘I let him live in my bottom field. In his caravan. It’s still there.’
‘He live on his own?’
‘Usually.’
Bliss said carefully, ‘But not always?’
Len looked down at his boots.
‘Some nights… he’d bring women back. Well, one at a time. Boy had a fair few floozies in that van. He was never too choosy, mind, past closing time. Always knowed he could count on his looks, if you know what I’m saying.’
‘I think so,’ Bliss said.
‘There was never nothing long-term, mind. Not before the big money come along. Folks reckons it’d gone to his head, and they might not’ve been wrong, but not the way they figured. Din’t go directly to his head. It just added a hell of a boost to his pulling power and it certainly went to women’s heads.’
‘What about Autumn Wise?’ Bliss said. ‘Was she not intended to be… longer term than the others?’
Len said, ‘If he’d got round to askin’ me, I’d likely’ve warned him off.’ He went quiet for a few thoughtful seconds. ‘Not as he’d’ve listened to me, mind… Before the Wise girl, it was usually incomers’ wives. I gived him a warnin’ when he took to bangin’ the wives more’n once… any wives.’
It was mainly women on holiday, Len said. Brummies, etc… Bliss would be surprised how many of them were up for it. Along with drink or drugs. You never used to see that with wives a few years back. Well, not that much.
‘One of the husbands found out what was happenin’, and then he was looking for Eddy. To fill him in.’
‘He find him?’
‘Likely not.’ Len sniffed. ‘In the end, seems he just drags the wife off home and we en’t seen either of ’em since. Cottage-owner it was told me. Wanted me to see it didn’t ’appen again, like I could hold the boy back. When it got out why some wife kept wanting to come back yere, I thought…’ Len did a rueful half-smile, ‘thought I was gonner get hammered meself.’
‘When was this?’
Len told Bliss it would’ve been summer last year. The couple had left early. The husband didn’t pay, and it got round about Eddy attracting female guests. Long as they was up for it, mind… he din’t go round twistin’ no arms.’
Things changed with the lottery win and Eddy’s eyes lighted on another prize: the Wise girl who’d previously seemed beyond him. Len remembered one day last year seeing the girl looking up at the castle, and she’d asked him some questions about it – questions he couldn’t answer.
‘Her’s supposed to’ve done this telly thing, they en’t screened yet,’ Len said, ‘and they was thinkin’ about another with her, made around yere. Her was living with her mam and pa but they was reachin’ the end of their lease, see, and the owners wanted it back. Times’d changed and the owner could sell the place – down there, see, facin’ the ole castle – and make a bloody packet. Fat wallets from Off. So the Wises, they was looking for another place.’
Bliss was trying to visualize a farm on a hillside opposite the castle ruins. The farmhouse and its outbuildings had become three or four cottage homes, the biggest of which had been leased to the Wises.
‘So who were the owners?’ Bliss asked.
‘Changed hands a few times – folks from Lunnon or Brum. There’d been rumours for a while about folks after that place. Folks with money from miles off, even abroad. I’ve had knocks on the door about our place.’
Len’s hands slammed hard together, a clap of finality. Bliss winced and shifted back in his seat.
‘Things is movin’ too fast,’ Len said. ‘We en’t sure what’s happenin’ n’more. Folks gets left what d’ seem like an ordinary house in a few fields and then they realize they’re bloody millionaires! You don’t need no lottery, look.’
‘No?’
‘Not if you got a bit of ole property round yere. But then you’re thinkin’ if you’d waited another year you’d likely be gettin’ twice as much.’
‘Or half as much?’
‘No chance.’ Len shook his head. ‘The ole price, he don’t never drop back n’more, way he used to. N’matter how much a place needs doin’ to it, even collapsed walls on a scrubby plot of brambles, it’ll sell.’
Bliss noted that Len Davies was looking kind of bewildered. Not too long ago he’d been a small farmer, scratching a living on rough and rocky land, and now he was in Herefordshire’s Hollywood Hills. A lot of people were like Len in this area, men and women who remembered their parents living in the same house and struggling to buy an old tractor and enough red diesel to keep it rumbling from field to field, and now… tumbledown cottages were goldmines. Easier money than farming 365 in all weathers.
‘Then Eddy comes in with his lottery fortune and bought a little farm. For daft money you’d have thought at one time. I even got to wondering if he wasn’t gonner give Autumn the whole bloody place.’
Bliss sensed the higher pitch in Len’s voice, suggesting still some disbelief.
‘God knows why. Lynda Steen was more his level. Good-time girl. I didn’t like her and nor did the missus. But Eddy changed. Couldn’t do enough for Autumn. Can’t figure that at all. Decent lass but I just couldn’t see ’em as a couple. Nothing in common, see, but he’s falling over himself to get her attention. Must have been love, whatever that meant for Eddy.’
‘You think?’
‘Boy wakes up a multimillionaire, he’s finding there en’t nothing he can’t get his hands on. Yet she didn’t ever seem like a gold-digger. Like I said, he’d have given her that cottage, just for starters.’
‘But she… she surely wouldn’t take that size of gift…’
‘Dunno. P’rhaps not. Her got it for as long as her wanted, though, for a pittance, and could live yere while he was doing up some neighbourin’ ruins, which he could sell for big money…’
The lottery windfall had put Eddy in line for a lot of fun he would never have considered possible. Property-buying was win-win, and he was on a roll.
‘He could make a stack more money real quick, look, and at the same time be gettin’ in the way of outsiders—’
‘Ah…’ Bliss sat back, smiling. This was what he’d been looking for.
‘He bought two houses and four acres of ground in a few weeks.’ Len looked relieved to be talking about this. He’d probably thought Eddy was just throwing money around because he could. ‘Then he sold half the ground to a local feller lookin’ to start his own farm.’
‘For which the feller needed more land?’
‘Eddy said the boy could give him the money later…’
‘…when his new farm was showing a profit,’ Bliss said. ‘Yeh, I’m gerrin’ it now. The more money you’ve got, the easier it is to hold onto and you can still help your mates.’
‘He was at school with this boy, see? Knowed him since they was kids. He’d started hanging out with him and other ole friends from way back.’
‘Yeh.’ Bliss was grinning as it all assembled in his head. ‘He’d gradually give back the village to people who grew up here, and he’d still be loaded. Look… what kind of state would you say Autumn was in, after her parents died?’
‘Well… well, mabbe I got the Wise girl wrong,’ Len said. ‘Likely her’s just comin’ out of a bad time. Her don’t belong here, but en’t got nowhere else t’go, now there’s only grandparents left. Her needed somewhere to live and Eddy give her that. Matter of fact, he looked out for her straight after the crash. Felt sorry for her, like the whole village did. Or even more so, when I thinks back. Mabbe a step towards getting her to move in with him. Who knows what might ’ave happened if her hadn’t shot him.’
Bliss sighed. ‘Hang on, Len, don’t you go round saying that. Seems unlikely now and we need to look at all the evidence and none of it points to her.’
Len shifted around in his seat and groaned. ‘Boy played out of his class with her.’
Bliss said, ‘Rich men often wind up with women above what they see as their class.’
‘This boy thought he could buy hisself the best-lookin’ tart in town.’
‘Except she wasn’t a tart,’ Bliss said.
Len Davies sniffed. ‘Mabbe not. Suppose I can still help her out when the deal goes through.’
He pushed the passenger door open, pulled himself into the morning and gazed around as if the view had become strange to him.
‘I once knew everybody in these villages. Growed up with ’em, see. Went to school with a fair few.’ Len wiped a stretch of air with one hand. ‘Not no more. Mostly all gone. All sold up and buggered off. Always a big demand, but more than ever now. All about the Black Mountains.’ He grinned and pointed up into the white sky. ‘Where Ole Nick waits for you and then he puts out your light.’
Bliss nodded.
‘Yeh, I heard that story. Don’t the alleged chances of bumping into Satan’s crow put people off?’
Len didn’t smile.
‘Some folks wants wild country and a big sky they can see stuff in. And they keeps comin’ back, as if it’s only a matter of time ’fore they gets to stay. Like this woman Eddy was shaggin’… I seen her again, in spite of he dumped her. I seen her this mornin’. With that Highgrove, comin’ out the ole castle down Longtown. Then it was just him and I thought I’d seen it wrong and it wasn’t her I seen. But it bloody was. Sure t’be. Boy was shaggin’ her regular till he thought he had a chance with the Wise girl. They said her was looking like a crow. All black, head to toe, ennit? All black. Head to toe.’
‘Len,’ Bliss said, ‘there’s the will to look at. I’ll follow you to Eddy’s house. You said you knew where he kept it. Won’t keep you much longer.’
PART THREE
The combination of a malicious person and a demonic entity, empowered by a dynamic will, is a fearsome force to confront.
Martin Israel
29
Autopsy
WHEN SHE FIRST heard it, the place name Clodock had struck Jane as clunky and quaintly comical – identifying a tiny village sprouting from the very end of England’s Welsh border country and the beginning of Eirion’s homeland.
But, for Jane, Clodock had now acquired a certain menace. And the lonely hamlet, where dark grey hills were irascibly charging into a white sky, had also collected a couple of police patrol cars.
Eirion had picked her up early, at home, for the planned trip to the Black Mountain villages. Now he was like, ‘What…?’
Jane said, ‘You didn’t know about the guy getting shot dead because it was over the border?’
Eirion, irritated, spotted a third police car. ‘Of course I did. But covering that isn’t my job right now. I thought we were only here because of the murder which led to a hanging. Look, let’s forget this English/Welsh thing. A murder’s a murder, and I’m a journalist. Wherever it happened, I will have heard or read about it.’
‘OK, OK,’ Jane said, waving a hand downwards. ‘It wasn’t an insult, like I was trying to paint you as a parochial hack. Just thought that, with getting the new flat sorted, you might have missed it.’
