The Fever of the World, page 6
Jane listened for Lucy’s distant voice. Heard nothing.
Because Lucy was dead. Patricia was dead. How many more? Both had been old. Most people who died were old.
Standing in the window, Jane thought about her oldest friend, Gomer Parry – everybody’s old friend – and realized that her sweat was turning colder.
‘There’s more to come,’ Sorrel said at the door. ‘I spent four hours last night with the star charts. All this began years ago when Pluto went into Capricorn and the stock market crashed. Pluto meets Jupiter in April. There’ll be violence and damage in the cities, even Hereford—’
Jane suddenly needed to go and see Gomer Parry who never seemed out of control, who never lived in fear and, you had to admit it, had outlived many people who did.
*
When they suddenly came face to face at the top of the vicarage drive, Lol instinctively moved to Merrily. And then both were backing away, nervous.
Lol was aware that most people in the village now knew about them, but they weren’t a recognized item, even here. And they wouldn’t want rumours to fall into the hands of the Bishop, who wouldn’t hesitate to use them.
They were alone at the entrance, nobody else in sight.
‘I know we can’t go on like this,’ Merrily said, ‘but what I just don’t know…’
‘Is when… Or how. Huw Owen thinks—’
‘You’ve spoken to Huw?’
‘Yesterday. We went in the pub. He says we should think about getting out, possibly starting again somewhere.’
‘He actually said that?’
‘I think he meant get out of this diocese.’
‘He wants you to leave Lucy’s cottage?’
‘We didn’t go into that kind of detail. He just wants you working under a more liberal bishop.’
Merrily looked perturbed.
‘He thinks I should run away from Innes?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What do you think?’
‘You must know what I think,’ Lol said.
Merrily moved closer but didn’t touch him. He felt he was caressing her inside his aura, whatever that was. She lowered her voice.
‘What if we found a way of staying here and I moved in with you at Lucy’s cottage? Having found another job. I dunno what… stacking Jim Prosser’s shelves? Am I serious? Maybe.’ She held his arm. ‘Listen, I need to ask you something. Something relating to a possible deliverance job.’
‘Innes has actually let you do one?’
‘He doesn’t know about it yet. But he hasn’t formally fired me, any more than he formally took me on. This job… is about William Wordsworth. A poem he wrote in this area. “A simple Child, that lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb…”’
‘“What should it know of death?”’ Lol asked.
Merrily smiled.
‘I thought you’d know it.’
‘Very simply written,’ Lol said, remembering. ‘Almost like a nursery rhyme. Yet somehow uncanny.’
‘Inspired by a little girl he met in the Wye Valley. Where she grew up.’
‘Or didn’t,’ Lol said. ‘We only know she’d made it to the age of eight, when Wordsworth encountered her near Goodrich Castle ruins. Where she told him she was from a family of seven, but some were dead.’
‘Left me wondering what Wordsworth thought this kid was trying to convey to him about the meaning of death that he, as an adult, didn’t get.’
‘It was about what happened after death,’ Lol said. ‘In those days people were beginning to decide that dead meant gone – and that was it. A bit like your bishop. Whereas this kid…’
‘Thought her dead siblings might still be open to conversation?’
‘Wordsworth thought it was quite significant that a little kid should be talking like this,’ Lol said. ‘As if she knew something she shouldn’t know. I read he kept coming back to try and find her again. Which he seems to have failed to do. The last time possibly fifty years after that first meeting. I always remember that, because at first I thought he must’ve invented her for the poem.’
‘That long after?’ Merrily’s eyes widened. ‘She’d have been well into middle age and he…’ She stepped back. ‘She must have made quite an impact on him. How did he know she was still even alive?’
‘Do you know exactly where the kid grew up?’ Lol asked. ‘If she ever left – Goodrich village, was it? – where did she go?’
‘Don’t know anything about her,’ Merrily said. ‘But I think she was only in that one poem.’
‘And he never even found out her name.’
‘So nobody else has. Which would be a handicap if I had to exorcize her,’ Merrily said.
Lol’s eyes widened.
‘Do you?’
‘Or bring some peace and quiet to wherever she lived. According to the poem, it was a certain Churchyard Cottage.’
‘At Goodrich?’
‘Which is where my dwindling role as deliverance consultant is probably taking me before the end of the week.’
‘You haven’t done a… what you used to call a clearance… in quite a while.’
‘I don’t know whether this is one. I hope not.’
‘An eight-year-old girl,’ Lol said. ‘Isn’t that…’
‘Post mortem child-abuse?’ Merrily frowned. ‘It’s probably better if you don’t ask Jane.’
10
Confuse a tortured spirit
THERE WAS A blurred sense of the half-forgotten in the part of Ross-on-Wye uphill from the town centre. Buildings which had lost their original identity long ago – the old school, the old magistrates’ court – existed now as hints of history amongst streets whose names were tinted with sepia backstories. Only Ross police station was still functioning, somehow, in Old Maid’s Walk, from which Vaynor found his way to Copse Cross Street – the first word of which he always seem to read as Corpse.
Not necessarily a mistake, as he learned from Roger Hamer, the coroner’s officer, when they met, as arranged, on a quiet corner in the early afternoon.
‘I may be wrong, David,’ Roger said, ‘but, as I understand it, here, cross means crossroads, and this was where they used to bury suicides. Without a priest.’
‘It actually was corpse-cross?’
‘The idea was to confuse a tortured spirit,’ Roger said. ‘It was thought that it wouldn’t know which way to turn at a crossroads, so it stayed put and didn’t come back to frighten the residents.’
Roger Hamer, tubby, deliberate and old-fashioned, right up to his Victorian moustache, probably knew more about the etiquette of unnatural death than anybody in town, Vaynor thought. The motto of the Coroners’ Officers and Staff Association was Advocates for the dead to safeguard the living. He was still trying to work that one out.
Roger put on leather gloves, clicking the poppers at the wrists, rolling his lower lip over his murderer’s moustache.
‘Now then, David, let me just get something right before we go in. What are you hoping to take away from this? What’s your issue with this death? A big death, I’ll grant you… but CID?’
Roger explained that Bliss had phoned him on his mobile to let him know they weren’t allowing the grass to grow, but he hadn’t explained why.
‘Think of me as an observer,’ Vaynor said to Roger. ‘I might want to apply for your job when you retire.’
‘You’d find my job very disappointing, David. Every other day a corpse, and some are on lavatories. Am I right in thinking you don’t want to say what this is about?’
‘Just that we’ve had some information we’re following up.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t rule out suicide. Obviously, it doesn’t mean anything that he died on his feet – but that does drive the spine through—’
‘Yes, I know,’ Vaynor said.
They walked down the street towards the office at the end of a building that was part stone, part brick, age indeterminate. PPP, it said: Peter Portis Property.
‘Met Mr Royce Portis before, have we, David?’
‘Well… not for—’
‘He’s changed. No bad thing. Bit of a hell-raiser in his youth. Fast cars till a drink-driving conviction had him off the road for a year. Father was furious. People round yere don’t buy houses from irresponsible young men in fast cars.’
‘I can understand that.’
‘Proper car now. And properly married to a local woman, for whom people still have a lot sympathy. Diana, her name. Royce is on Hereford City council, now, could be mayor in a year or two. Here we are.’
A traditional slowly revolving display was quietly illuminated in the PPP window. The sort that would usually feature costly-looking houses, but not today. All the photos showed the late Peter Portis smiling from sheer cliff-faces, secure as a barnacle.
The too-late snow had thickened, imposing a shrinelike silence on the former Corpse Cross Street.
*
‘What I can tell you, Royce,’ Roger Hamer said, ‘is that it very much looks like an accident but, in the absence of witnesses, I’m sorry to say that the coroner will have to consider other possibilities.’
‘And let me tell you this, mate,’ Royce replied. ‘If my old man had wanted to quit this world, he’d’ve gone off some rock famous for being unclimbable. Not one of the Seven fucking Sisters.’
Royce had thickened out, probably looked like Peter in his climbing prime. Hacked from the same cliff, except that there was more of him. He was moist-lipped, like Vaynor remembered, with dark hair, razored at the sides, so powerfully thick that you could almost watch it growing back. For some reason, Vaynor found himself thinking of the bronze Hereford bull in High Town, scrotum the size of a handbag.
They were talking in what clearly had been Peter Portis’s own office – photos on the walls not of properties but mountains and jagged rock faces. One was of the Seven Sisters which looked entirely unclimbable to Vaynor.
‘Was your dad doing much rock climbing these days, Royce?’ Roger Hamer asked.
‘That’s why he was semi-retired – more time for his rocks. Might’ve been fifty-nine but he kept himself acutely well-tuned. His doctor will tell you.’
‘I’m sure we’ll be checking that. And the pathologist’s report will fill in any gaps. Except, of course, those relating to your dad’s state of mind. Which you’ll probably be asked about.’
‘State of—?’ Portis sat up hard in his black leather swivel chair. ‘You think he was one of those chaps who wanders off into the night, all dressed for his last climb?’
Although he’d been born and educated here, Vaynor couldn’t hear much Hereford in Royce’s big voice. He was one of those guys for whom sorrow got quickly mixed into anger. During Vaynor’s short time in uniform, learning how to break tragic news, he’d met a few like this, usually men, whose first thought was to blame the emergency services for letting it happen.
‘As you know, he was found before dark,’ Roger Hamer said. ‘Immediately after falling from the Seven Sisters – one of them. The pathologist thinks he died instantly. Although I believe, Royce, that you told the police you hadn’t seen him at all yesterday.’
‘That’s not unusual. I knew he had a property to view in the afternoon. As it turns out, that was postponed, which probably explains why he ended up going climbing. Which he sometimes did on dry days with no wind, before it went dark.’
‘He’d often go on his own?’
‘Only on rocks he knew well. I mean, he wasn’t a loner. He liked climbing with other people. He was popular. Wide range of friends. Lately, he’d often go with this TV guy, Smiffy Gill. He’d been an advisor on rock climbing for an edition of The Octane Show a couple of years ago.’ Royce stared at him. ‘Remind me. Who’re you, again?’
‘David Vaynor, Hereford CID.’ Vaynor accepted it wasn’t unusual not to recognize blokes who’d once been younger boys at your school, though he didn’t believe Royce had completely forgotten him. ‘I don’t climb, Mr Portis, but I know the lower Wye fairly well. Did your father still have many climbing friends?’
‘Dozens, obviously. All ages. Some of them were—’
‘Women,’ Mrs Diana Portis said. ‘He wasn’t too old for women, yet, either.’
First time she’d spoken. One of those candy-sweet voices you heard in American cartoons but with a Gloucestershire roll. Something sharply turned inside Vaynor. He knew her. Too well. He didn’t know her as Royce’s wife, but…
She smiled at him. She had what he thought of as ironic eyes under a weight of dark curls. A firm, young body in a smoky-pink suit. Having insisted on giving up her chair to Roger, she was leaning back on her hands on the edge of Royce’s desk. Split skirt, one leg bent and a fair bit of it on show. She was younger than he’d expected, a few years younger than Royce, but very much a woman and… and oh, God…
‘But if we’re being honest,’ she said, ‘he loved climbing alone on rocks that were familiar to him. Yes, he did know he officially was not supposed to climb the Seven Sisters. Used to say they were his secret girlfriends. Could’ve gone up them in the dark.’
Royce Portis was expressionless, but Vaynor sensed he didn’t like borderline smutty stuff from his wife.
His wife? This was his wife?
‘Always knew where to put his hands,’ Mrs Portis purred.
‘Climbing’s this whole sub-culture round the Yat,’ Royce said. ‘Which you must know only too well, Hamer, all the times he was sometimes used by your people as an expert witness when some poor bastard took the quick way down.’
‘Yes.’ Roger grabbing at this. ‘Yes, he was, Royce. Always ready to help us. Which is why I never thought it would come to this… not for him. A man who’s been running climbing-safety courses for years.’
‘The Seven Sisters are… not far from his home,’ Vaynor said.
Roger Hamer said, ‘Didn’t he buy that house on the Doward specifically because of its proximity to those rocks?’
‘Partly,’ Royce said. ‘When he sold our family home at Whitchurch, he wanted somewhere smaller and more remote.’
Vaynor said, ‘And neither of you knew he might be going up there yesterday.’
Royce: ‘Once again, no, we didn’t.’
‘Would you have tried to stop him?’
‘What, tell him he was too fucking old?’
Royce was clearly getting tired of this. A business to pull together, Vaynor thought. Houses to sell. More important things than the sudden death of his father.
‘The more I think about it…’ Mrs Portis fingered her jawline, showcasing a neat nose-ring with a green stone ‘…the more I reckon that if you’d asked Peter how he wanted to go – though not for some years, obviously – he might have said he’d like to exit the way he did. Off the rocks overlooking the Wye. The river was part of it for Peter. Greatest river there is, he used to say.’
‘You can’t see it from the house, though,’ Vaynor said. ‘Can you?’
He looked at Mrs Portis the way he thought a policeman should if he was a stranger.
‘You can feel it, though,’ she said. ‘It calls to you and you go to it. Climbing gave Peter views of it you couldn’t see any other way. Great wide views that only climbers know. The last thing he saw would’ve been the Wye coming up at him, faster and faster, to…’ spreading her arms, hands vibrating ‘…welcome him home.’
Her voice was whispery. She was fantasizing, Vaynor thought. If, as Billy Grace had suggested, Portis had been falling vertically, staring straight ahead, all he’d’ve seen would have been bare trees and sky.
‘I’ll tell you one other thing,’ Mrs Portis said. ‘You know that old legend about the Wye taking an annual sacrifice?’
‘Diana…’ Some pain in Roger Hamer’s smile. ‘I like to think that, as coroner’s officer, I’m in a position to say that when you examine the records you’ll probably find that this particular folk-tale doesn’t quite hold water.’
‘Oh, really?’ She was peering at him under the tangle of curls. ‘Long river. Your patch is just a bit of it. I can hear Peter saying – in his matter-of-fact way – “Well, that’s this year’s sorted. Save some other poor sod.”’ She laughed. ‘Look, what’s so wrong with that? I’m the kind of person who likes to find the good in bad things. He’s had a more distinctive death than all the virus victims…’
Vaynor quickly asked Royce Portis if he’d done any climbing himself, and Royce sniffed and said it had never interested him.
‘I’ve done a bit,’ Diana said. ‘When you’re born in that immediate area, you tend to want to give it a shot. Cheaper than a gym and better views. You should try it. You’ve got the reach for it.’
‘Right,’ Royce said, ‘so if there’s nothing else you guys want to know…’
‘There is something I’m obliged to ask,’ Vaynor said. ‘As this is a sudden death in a public place with – given your father’s skills – no obvious explanation, we do have to eliminate some things, and I have to ask… did he have any enemies? Had he been involved in any recent disputes?’
‘You seem determined to have a fucking murder inquiry!’
‘No, we’re here simply to obtain closure, Royce,’ Roger Hamer said. ‘To get it all finished and sorted. Everybody satisfied.’
‘Coffee, I think.’ Diana Portis coming down from the desk, skirt rising. ‘Or tea?’
‘Not for me, thank you,’ Roger said. ‘Too soon after lunch.’
‘Well, I’m having some. If anyone wants to join me.’
An eyebrow raised at Vaynor, and he found himself standing up and following her out of the room and down the stairs until he was sunk into a deep sofa in a small room, with muted lighting, behind the main office. House-hunters could sit here and view fantasy homes in the fantasy Wye Valley on a large television over the coal-effect gas fire. Thin snow was gathering on the leaded window but, on the screen, sunshine was filtered through mature trees, reflected in swimming pools and garden ponds and wine bottles on the wicker tables in dappled conservatories.
