Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain (54 page)

Heard the doors close behind her. Didn’t move.

‘Go on,’ Cornel said. ‘Go down.’

‘The dead bird in the sack,’ Barry said, ‘I just thought, get this bastard out of my bar. I’d had a bellyful of Cornel. Never once thought of cockfighting. Gomer sure about this?’

‘Doesn’t usually make mistakes,’ Lol said. ‘Not where Jane’s involved.’

‘Would Savitch do that on his own doorstep?
I’d
like to think it was him, and, yeah, if Cornel was involved… He’s not exactly compos mentis is he, Cornel? That makes sense – always needs somebody to blame. Fighting cock lets him down, he wants it cooked for his dinner. Juvenile. Well, worse than juvenile. I tell you what happened after that incident with Jane?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Lol felt the pull of the stitches in his wrist, remembering Cornel peering into the bar.
Wherever you are, you little bitch, I just want you to know it doesn’t end here
.

‘This is while everybody’s talking about Mansel Bull,’ Barry said. ‘Cornel – very drunk, if you recall – goes into the Gents’, presumably in search of paper towels. When he only finds a hot-air hand-dryer, he forces the lock on the cleaner’s room and then he smashes his way into a couple of cupboards to locate the necessary, which he leaves scattered all over the floor. Then he strips off his wet jeans and his underpants and marches upstairs to his room, naked from the waist down. Not long afterwards, a guest opens the door of her room to see a half-naked man pissing down the stairwell.’

Lol winced.

‘What did you do?’

‘I know what I
wanted
to bleedin’ do, but I’m a genteel hotel manager now. I did a mop-and-bucket job and then I rang the guy at the bank who booked Cornel’s room and said perhaps they should think twice about the kind of people they send on these courses. And he puts me on to another guy, and I tell
him
what happened, and he apologizes and says, in this meaningful way, to leave it with him. Obviously, I never heard from him again, and Cornel left the next night. At least I thought he’d left. Until he shows up with the bird in the bag.’ Barry finished his beer. ‘Odd that Danny hasn’t told you what they found at The Court.’

‘To be honest, so much has happened since that until you mentioned Danny I’d kind of forgotten about it.’

‘If you’ve got Danny’s mobile, give him a call.’

‘I’ll do it now.’

But when Lol brought out his phone it was playing the riff from ‘Sunny Days’.

‘Lol? That you, man?’

‘Eirion?’

‘I’ve been everywhere,’ Eirion said. ‘Left messages. She doesn’t do this. I mean, you never know which way she’s going to jump, but she doesn’t stand you up. You know?’

‘Jane?’

A
NNIE
H
OWE
–
YOU
thought you knew how she was wired, but now it was as if something in the system had gone awry. This normally emotionless woman pinched and twisted by some painful, insistent electricity. She’d had a shock and she was still getting aftershocks. Her questions were fluid and focused but some of them seemed disconnected and illogical, and somehow not…

… not
police
questions.

Merrily drank a second cup of coffee – too much, but she needed to be on top of this.

‘I can’t quite believe what you’re implying,’ Sollers Bull said. ‘You really think I’ve been serving up pedigree livestock for some kind of ritual slaughter?’

‘Somebody has, Mr Bull.’

‘We’re not talking about halal?’

‘We’re
not
talking about halal.’

‘Then perhaps you should be looking at rustlers rather than poor bloody farmers. That hidden heap of uninvestigated crimes in the countryside.’

Sollers was on his feet, leaning back against the Aga’s chromium bar. Annie Howe sitting next to Merrily at the table, the long coat hanging open.

‘Do you know Kenny Mostyn, Mr Bull?’

‘I’ve bought items from his shops.’

‘What kind of items?’

‘Guns. A shotgun for me, an airgun for my son.’

‘How old’s your son?’

‘Were you thinking you might want to arrest him, Annie?’

Annie
. That was it. That
small county
thing again. Howe and Sollers Bull knew each other socially, but how well? Had it ever been more? They were around the same age.

Howe looked down at the table, her white-blonde hair turning rose-gold in the kitchen light. Then she looked up slowly.

‘The woman who was leaving as we arrived…’

‘A neighbour. Collecting for a local charity.’

‘So soon after your brother’s murder?
She
must’ve been keen.’ Annie pushing a straying strand of hair behind an ear. ‘Mr Jones’s peculiar religion… did you know about that, Mr Bull?’

‘No.’

‘Does it surprise you?’

‘Nothing like that surprises me. Country areas are full of eccentrics who think they can get away with whatever they’re doing more easily out here.’

‘How did you feel when your brother sold the top field to Magnis Berries?’

Sollers blinked, then expelled an impatient breath, shaking his head as if he found the question meaningless. Annie Howe didn’t move.

‘You don’t have to answer
any
of my questions, Mr Bull, but—’

‘But it might look suspicious if I don’t? For God’s sake, Annie, I’ve cooperated fully from day one. I’ve given you a DNA swab for elimination purposes, I’ve explained exactly where I was when my brother was killed and who was with me…’ Sollers upturned his head, bit his lip, sniffed, looked back at Howe. ‘All right, I don’t like selling ground, and I did not understand why my brother had done so.’

‘You took it up with him.’

‘Of course I did. He was my brother.’

‘And?’

‘He glossed over it. He’d actually bought that land some twenty years ago from a neighbour, and he said he’d never really
felt it was part of the farm, so when he was offered a good price he chose to get rid of it.’

‘And that satisfied you?’

‘Look, my brother and I were different people. His kind of farming was more of its time… instinctive…’

Merrily said, ‘What does that
mean
, Mr Bull?’

‘He’d often follow his feelings rather than agricultural economics. Farming was in his blood. He used to laugh at my business degree – in a
good-natured
way, I should add.’

‘Was he superstitious?’

‘What a ridiculous question.’

Annie Howe said, ‘Is it possible that your brother supplied bulls to Mr Jones?’

‘As for
that
suggestion—’

‘But he did keep Herefords.’

‘You know he did. What are you doing, Chief Inspector – trying to prove in front of your subordinate that us being old friends in no way prejudices your inquiries?’

‘We were friends of friends,’ Annie Howe said. ‘That was all.’

Subordinate
. Merrily smiled. At least it showed that Sollers had no idea who she was. She turned the smile on him.

‘The boss doesn’t have anything to prove to me, Mr Bull.’

A faintly amused twitch at the corner of Annie’s mouth, but it didn’t last.

‘You feel happier now about your neighbours, Mr Bull? Magnis Berries?’

‘And I
certainly
don’t see how
that
—’

‘I’m told you’ve been a regular visitor. In a manner of speaking.’

‘I like to keep an open mind about these things,’ Sollers said.

‘What things?’

‘Polytunnels. Much condemned.’

Howe nodded.

‘And the migrant workers? You suggested to my colleague, DI Bliss, that migrant workers might be at least partly responsible for the increase in rural crime.’

‘I was saying all kind of things that night. I’d just seen my
brother’s butchered body. And I’m sure your
colleague
exaggerated my comments.’

‘We’ll come back to that, if you don’t mind. How well do you know Ward Savitch?’

‘We’re acquainted.’

‘What do you think of him?’

Another odd question.

‘I’m just interested,’ Annie Howe said.

‘He’s just a rich man in search of an identity. Wants to recreate the countryside as somewhere that makes him feel welcome. Lots of them around, in the so-called New Cotswolds, some of them TV celebs, like Smiffy Gill. And now they have an official voice.’

‘Countryside Defiance.’

‘Ostensibly the voice of the local people. In fact financed and run
by
incomers
for
incomers. I believe it began as a kind of business-class social networking site on the Internet. Then various resources got pooled, and they were away. Good luck to them.’

‘But you’re their figurehead, and you’re not an incomer.’

Sollers bent forward, ear stud winking.

‘I’m their much-prized well-known local person, who can get them into both grass-roots farming circles and hunt balls.’

‘And what’s in it for you?’

‘I don’t like being treated like a suspect, Annie.’

‘This is really not how I talk to a suspect, Mr Bull, but if that’s how you want to—’

‘Some of us
need
incomers. They buy meat from my farm shop, they eat in my restaurant…’

‘And I suppose it means you get to dictate some of Countryside Defiance’s policies?’

‘Don’t like the word
dictate
. They listen to me.’

‘Influence, then. The campaign against rural policing, for example?’

‘The campaign
for
rural policing.’

‘Which particularly targets DI Bliss.’

Sollers snorted.

‘Man’s a liability, as I’m sure your masters are beginning to realize. A crass little man, who was particularly insensitive on the night my brother died.’

‘Why do you think that was?’

‘Because he’s in the
wrong place
. Because he has no sympathy with country people.’

‘Especially,’ Annie Howe said, ‘when they’re shagging his wife.’

Merrily knocked her cup over.

Annie Howe said, ‘That
was
Mrs Bliss, wasn’t it, on her way out as we arrived? The woman you identified as a neighbour. Not exactly a
close
neighbour. Well, in a manner of—’

‘Don’t you fucking sneer at me, Annie. Kirsty and I… we’ve known each other many years, long before her marriage to that…’

‘Oik?’

‘… which had turned sour long before she and I got together again.’

‘And your wife…?’

‘My wife knows. We’ve had separate lives for some time, but we’re being responsible about it. We’ll stay married until the children leave home.’

Merrily righted her cup, pulled out a tissue to mop up the coffee. Bloody
hell
.

‘And Kirsty’s family also know,’ Sollers said, relaxed again now. ‘And approve. Everyone who needs to know knows… except, presumably, for Bliss.’

Annie Howe said nothing, but something in her face quite visibly flinched.

‘Too busy hiding his own indiscretions,’ Sollers said.

Annie Howe had started to say something. It appeared to catch in her throat. For a moment she looked almost nauseous, and maybe Sollers glimpsed that, too; he slid lithely away from the stove, switched on more lights.

‘My information is that a physical relationship between serving police officers in the same division is normally frowned
upon to the extent that, should it become known about, one of the officers is immediately put on the transfer list. Who would you rather left Hereford, Annie: Bliss, or—’

‘I
think
you should consider…’ Annie Howe’s voice cold, even for her ‘… very carefully before you continue.’

The lights were unhealthily bright, halogen hell. Sollers dragged out a chair and sat down directly opposite them.

‘Bliss?’ he said. ‘Or Sergeant Dowell?’

Annie Howe was motionless.

‘Pot… kettle… black,’ Sollers said.

‘You have any proof of this, Mr Bull?’

‘Mrs Bliss has been aware of it for quite some time. And she should know, don’t you think?’

Annie was silent for a couple of seconds.

‘Yes,’ she said quite slowly. ‘She should know.’

‘And all this,’ Sollers said, ‘relates to the murder of my brother
how
?’

‘Did your brother know?’

No hesitation from Annie. In the pink light, Sollers Bull’s face froze for just an instant.

‘Your brother,’ Annie said. ‘Did he know about the resumption of your friendship with Mrs Bliss?’

‘My brother and I didn’t discuss social life. We moved in different circles. And you know what, Annie? I’m not putting up with this any longer. I’m going to ask you to leave.’

‘
Did
your brother know?’

‘Get out,’ Sollers said.

Annie Howe drove the Audi back up the track with the headlights on full beam, took the left at a fork, let the car crawl up to the stone gateposts and a cracked sandstone sign.

OLDCASTLE

The metal gate to the drive was closed, no lights. Rearing beyond it, the house looked to Merrily like a derelict nursing
home: three storeys, a flat sheen of moonlight like tin plate on its highest windows.

Annie Howe flashed the Audi’s headlights at the gates and waited, lowering her window as a uniformed policeman emerged from a smaller gate to the side of the main entrance.

‘Don’t bother with the big gates, George, I’ll leave the car out here.’

‘Ma’am, you do know they’re looking for you?’

‘I can imagine. I’m not here.’

‘Bad night, Ma’am.’

‘Yes.’

‘I never trust a full moon,’ George said.

‘Nonsense.’ Howe turned to Merrily. ‘You spare me another hour?’

‘You had a phone call. Before you started talking to Sollers Bull.’

Annie Howe pushed her hair back.

‘Yes. I had a phone call.’ She parked to the left of the gates, leaving the engine running. ‘The woman Bliss was looking for, the prime suspect in the Marinescu case… he found her.’

‘Oh.’

‘She was attending – if not running – an illegal cockfight in the cellar of a well-known flophouse and brothel on the Plascarreg. The woman is a large, violent sociopath, and the cellar was also full of men who have no reason to love the police. For reasons known only to himself, Bliss went down there. On his own.’