The Fever of the World, page 2
It has some of us hunting for spurious evidence of an active, supernatural evil.
Crowden was the sceptical deliverance minister for an English diocese beyond the north-eastern fringe of Hereford. He seemed committed to putting himself and Merrily – especially Merrily – out of a job. He was, unsurprisingly, in favour with the Bishop.
As we’ve no means of understanding what, if anything’s, actually happening, he’d said, we should regard it all as potentially evil, in the sense that we could be opening doors to the growth of mental illness.
Merrily arranged a heavy log in the stove. It kept her hands steady. She looked up at Huw to make sure he wasn’t displaying any obvious symptoms of the virus. He looked fatigued, certainly, but not conspicuously ill.
‘Took me back many years, to the days of Lampe and Cupitt – long before your time, lass.’
‘I’ve read about their campaign to get exorcism dumped by the Church. But they clearly failed.’
‘Aye. At the time. And that were well before your time. Back in the 1970s, when understanding the Unseen and, when necessary, facing up to an active evil, were still accepted as part of the Church’s job. Now t’Church is groping for credibility in an increasingly secular society by reducing what it admits to believing in. Demonic possession… that’s become a mental health issue.’
Yes, she thought. And ghosts were officially considered to be illusion or scientific anomalies. Because the Church, increasingly, took a realistic stance.
‘End of the day, none of it’s our business,’ Huw said. ‘That’s what we’re being told. And they’ll consign us to history.’
He leaned back. Outside the kitchen window, the day glowered into evening. He’d been in this room for fewer than ten minutes, and already was asking the big questions. This was going to take some time.
Huw pulled off his woolly hat. His hair looked like old straw left out in a blizzard.
‘Some basics, lass. Can I take it you still want to go on peering into the Unknown? Listening to folk who think they’re getting glimpses of the Unseen? I need to ask because I need to get this right. You’ve a decision to make and this is the time to make it. Either don’t resist, just go quietly or… How are you coping wi’ Innes’s new rules?’
He meant the Bishop Craig Innes’s decree that any enquiries involving the paranormal must now be run past his office, so they could, when possible, be quietly dumped. Or referred to social services – or the NHS, if it had time for any of this rubbish. Or, more likely, dealt with by what remained of the local clergy, using various forms of counselling and always avoiding the now-discredited E-word.
‘All right, then.’ Merrily pushed hair back from her eyes and stopped avoiding the big question. ‘People like me, Huw… are they actually winding us down? Is that the way it’s going – all clergy offered a basic one- or two-day deliverance course… grounded in psychology? And that’ll be an end to it?’
There was silence and then Huw nodded soberly.
‘They’re saying the clergy are here to help, not investigate, and shouldn’t ask too many questions to which they know they won’t get answers. But… if the Church is phasing out your role, who’s left to assist parish priests facing summat genuinely iffy?’ Huw threw a small log on the cringing fire. ‘Tell me – when are you finding that nervous vicars are coming to you these days?’
Merrily stared into the smouldering logs.
‘When the Bishop says they can.’
And the Bishop didn’t have to explain himself. Deliverance advisors, who used to be called exorcists, weren’t licensed. A bishop could simply stop making use of his, if he wanted to. When he was told about something he thought could be dealt with under the heading of mental health or dismissed as superstition, wishful-thinking or hocus-pocus, Innes no longer passed it down to Sophie in the gatehouse so a decision could be taken on whether further action was necessary. Taking action, now, was less of an option. Sophie was reduced to working two days a week.
‘When Bernie Dunmore was Bishop, all the spooky stuff eventually landed on Sophie’s desk and we were the ones who decided priorities.’
Huw said nothing. She wondered if he’d seen Sophie today – and, if he had, whether this would be for the last time.
‘I’ve had just two routine bereavement apparitions since Christmas,’ she said. ‘Listening sympathetically to new widows who desperately want to believe the fireside chair is still occupied.’
She watched small flames flickering hopefully as they tried to reach the latest log.
‘Bereavement apparitions, we’ve always quietly accepted that imagination has a part to play. But they’re a part of the grieving process. And if we have a policy of rejecting it, we’ll soon be rejecting other stuff, like…’
Like the call from Sophie an hour ago, saying that the new vicar of Whitchurch, in the Wye Valley, wanted to talk to the diocesan deliverance advisor about an alleged haunting reported by a female parishioner in a holiday home.
Merrily was watching Huw closely. He knew more about this than he was chasing.
‘Sophie indicated that, as the Whitchurch guy hasn’t informed the Bishop’s office, as all vicars are now expected do, I should be taking a look at it and, if necessary, quietly pursuing it. “Quietly” meaning me not telling the Bishop either. Which, as you know, is a bit risky right now.’
Sophie had said mysteriously that she and Merrily needed more time to discuss it – and not on the phone.
Merrily had tried not to get too interested. It could be a trap. And, if she didn’t report it to the Bishop’s office because it looked genuine, she’d step right into it.
The fire glimmered silently in the woodstove’s windows, as the phone rang behind her in the scullery.
‘And your two widows,’ Huw said. ‘Do you just politely discourage their… delusions?’
‘Perhaps I should suggest to them that they ought to pull themselves together and take their old wedding pictures off the piano for a while?’
‘And how would that seem to you?’
‘Erm… quite brutal, Huw? Don’t you think?’
Huw said nothing. The phone in the next room went on ringing, and she went on not answering it, letting the answering machine cut in.
It was the new vicar of Whitchurch.
They’d never met, but she recognized his voice. From television. Huw must have known that this man would be ringing Merrily – Sophie must have told him. She wanted to know if Merrily was up for the summons, if she was prepared to disregard the Bishop’s instructions.
In her head, Merrily heard the theme music rising and saw the thin, pale face of the Whitchurch vicar tightening as he bent over a loaded syringe.
3
Bringer of Light. Also…
ON THE WAY out of the building, the head of CID called in at Bliss’s office, pulling on a dark green trench coat.
‘It’s Peter Portis, the property man,’ she said. ‘Did you know?’
Bliss nodded.
‘Found dead near a well-known beauty-spot.’ He went back to his desk. ‘Panoramic views. Fine open aspects over the famous River Wye. Close to all amenities and the renowned Symonds Yat.’
Detective Chief Inspector Annie Howe sighed.
‘There was me vainly hoping you’d resist the property gags.’
‘Actually, that was an exaggeration,’ Bliss said. ‘It doesn’t seem to be close to any obvious amenities. Only Vaynor knew where it was exactly, so I sent him up there for a poke around in case it was suspicious.’
‘Quite a big death in Hereford,’ Annie Howe said.
‘According to the NHS guys there could be a lorra little ones soon. If you can call them little.’
‘Eleven cases of the virus in the hospital,’ Annie said, ‘but nobody’s died yet.’
‘This could be early days.’
They’d talk about it tonight, discreetly. They never left together or drove the same road out of Hereford at the same time, although they’d been quietly turning out the light over the same bed for more than a year now.
‘Never actually met him,’ Bliss said, ‘Portis. Though me and Kirsty did buy a house off his firm.’
The CID room outside the office door was deserted. Annie stopped, turning back to face him.
‘This is your house at Marden? The one with…’
Bliss nodded.
‘His son did the business. Royce, his name. Seemed a bit of a cocky twat.’
Annie tucked very pale blonde hair into her collar, came into the office and stood with her back to the door.
‘Peter Portis’s death appears to be linked to his rock-climbing activities – which is how I met him, as it happens.’
‘Recently?’
‘No, would have been several years ago. He was involved in some climbing-safety publicity exercise supported by my father in return for the work he was doing with young offenders on the rocks. Any particular reason for CID to take an interest in this?’
‘Possibly.’ Bliss shrugged. ‘Portis scared the life out of some of them hard kids, gerrin’ them up the rocks on bits of rope.’
‘They didn’t have to go up, did they?’
‘They were all volunteers,’ Bliss said. ‘Better than detention – they thought. And they all came back down, one way or another. Anyway, Vaynor’s looking into it. He volunteered, too. I’m sending him to talk to a young woman, possibly the only witness to the fall.’
‘Where, exactly?’
‘Seven Sisters rocks in the Wye Valley. Portis fell off one. Didn’t actually land at this girl’s feet, but it was near enough to spoil her walk.’
‘Francis, Portis was a serious rock climber. They don’t just fall.’
‘No. Not often. This has overtones of possible suicide as well as… the other thing. But Billy Grace reckons Portis wasn’t the kind to top himself. He lived not far from where he landed, which might mean something. Anyway, I thought it’d be worth gerrin’ Darth to have a quick poke around. He seems to have left his PhD up there.’
Annie used a tissue to dust Bliss’s chair before perching on the edge of it.
‘What did he get a PhD in, then? I should know, but…’
‘Involved the poet Wordsworth,’ Bliss said. ‘Who spent weeks around there at the end of the eighteenth century, thinking up fancy rhymes and stuff.’
‘Vaynor came down from Oxford with a dissertation on English romantic poetry?’ Annie said. ‘And now he’s working for you?’
‘Life’s strange like that, isn’t it, ma-am?’
Annie stood, pulled up the collar of her trench coat and tightened her belt.
‘People’ve been saying that to me since panic first set in over this virus. And they might be right. Unusual things do appear to be happening everywhere. Except, of course, that crime’s been coming down.’
*
‘Who found the body?’ Vaynor asked.
‘A client of his, as it happens,’ Billy Grace replied. A lot of houses and former farms round here. This was a young woman his firm’s rented a village house to, someone said. Must’ve been quite a shock for her, taking a stroll before dark and a body almost lands on you. Well, couldn’t have been long after it happened. I wonder if he wanted to land in the river.’
‘So he jumped?’
Vaynor looked up to where the nearest of the Seven Sisters was summit-butting a night cloud, and shuddered. A grey van drew up and Slim Fiddler, Hereford crime scene boss, staggered out. Then there was a traffic car containing two uniformed cops. Headlight beams intersected across the grass.
Only a mile or two from the normally crowded A40 dual carriageway, there was a separateness about this slice of the England–Wales border, an aloof beauty unlike anywhere else Vaynor knew in southern Britain. Yet there were places where the Wye Valley wildtrack included the low rumble of not-sodistant industrial traffic. After a while, he became aware of the moving paleness of a plastic-covered stretcher. Too dark now to see how many people were supporting it.
A timeless scene, Vaynor thought. Could have been the body of some Celtic chieftain borne from a battlefield in the Dark Ages.
It stopped.
‘Always attracted picturesque drama, this area,’ Billy Grace said, as van doors rattled open. ‘Despite the remains of industry, the lower Wye was probably Britain’s first actual tourist area, did you know that?’
Vaynor did. It had been a theme in the introduction to his PhD thesis: the combination of steep rocks, crumbling walls and partly overgrown castle ruins that had gradually become part of the landscape.
The river was on their right, visible through the wooden bones of the Biblins footbridge. He’d crossed it just the once, didn’t like the way the slats swayed under you. It was said that someone died in the Wye every year.
‘Tourism, as we know it, was only just starting when Wordsworth came here,’ he told Billy Grace as a uniform and one of the crime scene team bore the body to the rear of the van.
‘Meanwhile, death never stops happening,’ Billy said. ‘Or maybe I just notice it more in this job.’
Wherever you met him, there was a story attached to the place, some mortality tale, told with professional relish. Vaynor should have known there was going to be a memory held in this deep valley. Billy’s neon teeth were projecting a smile like a death-ray.
‘Moonbathers,’ he said.
‘Here?’
‘Man and wife. Both drowned.’
‘When would that have been? Before my time, I imagine. And after Wordsworth’s or I’d’ve read about it.’
‘Well before your time. She was naked, he was fully clothed apart from plimsolls and socks. Indicating she’d gone swimming – on impulse, perhaps – and pretty soon got into difficulties. He’d plunged in to try and save her, but evidently wasn’t as strong a swimmer as he’d thought. And it was too near the rapids – down there. You’ll hear them in a minute.’
‘I’ve never heard that story.’
‘David, you wouldn’t’ve even’ve started school back then.’ Billy waved an empty sleeve towards high crags piercing the last light, as the van pulled away. ‘Not that much older than the baby, if at all.’
‘Baby?’
‘I believe they had one with them.’
‘In the river?’
‘One assumes not, as it certainly survived, but I do seem to remember something.’
He was staring up at the fading rocks. The first, or maybe the seventh of the sisters was in hard view, a limestone outcrop high above the river. Even in full daylight you’d only see three of them from here, peering out like giant skulls, as if the rest of the bodies were entangled in the forestry and the feet were in the water.
‘You’re not a climbing man, then, David?’
‘I get vertigo on tall bar-stools.’
Someone at Gaol Street had once asked Vaynor if he didn’t get vertigo just standing up. You attracted these predictable remarks when you were six and a half feet tall. Bliss had immediately dubbed him Darth, and it had stuck. Darth Vaynor, from Star Wars. At least there was no reference in that to anything academic.
‘But you’ve obviously spent some time up here, even if you don’t like heights,’ Billy Grace said. ‘You know your way around.’
‘The um…’ Vaynor hesitated. Might as well get it over. ‘… the thesis brought me. I was born in Hereford, so this was quite local, and it was the setting for a relatively unexplored side of William Wordsworth. Changed him a lot, the time he spent down here, and I thought I’d try and find out why.’
‘And did you?’
‘Um… not to my complete satisfaction. He left some elements of mystery behind. Which I failed to solve. I wasn’t a copper then.’
‘If you got the PhD, it must’ve made sense to somebody. But you became a copper in the end.’
‘If this is the end.’ Vaynor went on walking towards the lights, letting go a long breath. ‘My girlfriend thought I’d made a… bad decision and I’d eventually go back to academia.’
‘But you won’t?’
‘Bit late now.’
‘Is it? How old are you?’
‘Coming up to twenty-eight. Soon.’
Around the same age Wordsworth had been when he was here for the second time, having returned from post-revolution France, disillusioned by the violence and blood. Seemed to have seen more death than Vaynor.
‘Extraordinary sight, that, isn’t it?’ Billy Grace looked up at the spectacular planet, pulling off his windjammer. ‘So dominant that it’s still often reported as a UFO.’
‘“It cheers the lofty spirit most,” Vaynor said, “to watch thy course when daylight, fled from earth, in the grey sky hath left his lingering ghost”.’
‘Wordsworth again?’
‘He wrote at least two poems about Venus. One as an evening star, one about when it appears in the early morning.’
‘And changes its name,’ Billy said.
‘Also its sex. Known as Lucifer in the early morning sky.’
‘Bringer of light.’ Billy began to unzip his protective cover-suit, shedding it like a shiny snakeskin. ‘And, ah… also Satan. Who the hell…?’ Pulling his mobile out of a hip pocket. ‘Better get this. Yes, he is…’
Thrusting his phone at Vaynor, he shrugged on his jacket.
Vaynor sighed. If someone had found even the smallest indication that Peter Portis had been assisted down from one of the Seven Sisters, they’d be here all night.
‘You’ve gorra gerra more powerful phone, Darth,’ DI Bliss said.
‘It’s a bad place for signal, boss, the Wye Valley.’
‘What about Goodrich?’ Bliss said. ‘That’s not far from you, is it? Walking distance?’
‘Well… if you know where you’re going.’
‘The woman who may have seen Portis’s body come down. You’ll find her at a house called Churchyard Cottage,’ Bliss said. ‘Near the church, as you might imagine.’
4
Reopening an old door
THE WALLS THAT had been white yesterday were now dark blue, and still gleaming wet in the thin light. They’d all be matte when dry, like night sky. Jane scanned the surface for gaps, holding up her paintbrush so that any drips would fall on her fingers or one of the two frayed sweaters she was wearing against the cold.
