Frannie Bliss beamed. ‘How are you, Laurence? Can I come in?’
‘Well, you can,’ Lol said. ‘But she’s not here.’
‘That’s a shame.’ Bliss stepped inside, followed Lol into the kitchen. ‘Hoped I’d catch her. My day off, strictly speaking, but, with having to go over to Leominster to see Gail Mumford, I thought I’d call in.’
‘I haven’t spoken to Merrily this morning. I’m just here kind of minding the phone.’
‘She’ll be in Ludlow, then, will she?’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘You know anything about that peculiar business?’
‘What?’
‘Let’s deal with Merrily and Mumford.’ Bliss rubbed his forehead. ‘Lol… being straight with each other now can only save a lorra serious pain later. Had a call at home this morning from Karen, my new DC. You won’t have met her. Karen’s current headache is being second cousin, twice removed, to Mumford, who seems to have forgotten he’s no longer permitted to hit people with his truncheon, as it were. Basically, Karen’s feeling guilty because, for reasons of Family, she’s been doing PNC checks for him and divulging things she shouldn’t have.’
‘Family,’ Lol said. He didn’t seem to have one any more, outside of Merrily and Jane.
Bliss sat down at the pine refectory table. ‘It’s bloody lucky I understand how this area operates. This got passed up to headquarters, Karen’d be ironing her uniform tonight. How much do you know about the Robbie Walsh business?’
‘I just live a quiet life, Mr Bliss,’ Lol said, ‘writing my little songs.’
‘But you do have the ear of the Reverend. And other bits, too, it’s rumoured. Lol, let me put it this way: Andy Mumford was a fine detective, with a good nose. But once you’re out, you’re out, and Andy’s crossed a line you do not cross.’
Bliss talked about a family on the Plascarreg Estate, name of Collins, who were being looked after by the police after fingering several drug dealers. They had a son, Niall, formerly associated with some youngsters who, it seemed, had not been nice to Robbie Walsh.
‘I had Karen looking after them. There was a message for her this morning, to ring the Collinses at their safe-house. Seems they’re not too happy about this strange copper who turned up to talk to Niall, in some detail, about Robbie Walsh and things that got done to him. Drugs are one thing, but the Collinses are sincerely hoping their son’s not gonna be called to give evidence against his former playmates on this one. For reasons that may become apparent.’
‘Have you spoken to Mumford?’
‘Laurence… this is the whole point: we can’t find Mumford. His wife says he went out yesterday, saying he was finalizing arrangements about his mother’s funeral, and didn’t come back. He phoned – would you believe? – a neighbour, asking her to convey to Gail that he was OK.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘He doesn’t like confrontation. And whether he thinks we…’ Bliss shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know, Lol. He’s not himself. Or maybe he is himself, and he shouldn’t be any more, because he’s fuckin’ retired. Gail is, consequently, frantic. Gail knows how he’s been lately and how far he might go.’
‘Compulsory retirement’s like a jail sentence in reverse, and probably just as stressful,’ Lol said. ‘He’ll have something to prove, if only to himself. Maybe he won’t feel able to come home until he’s done it.’
‘I agree,’ Bliss said. ‘But it’s worse than that. OK… our colleagues in Shropshire had Robbie down as accidental death – no evidence to the contrary, no suicide note, no one else involved they knew of. Mumford seems to have thought there was more to it, and this was getting to him.’
‘Because he thought, as a copper, he should have seen it and stopped it.’
‘Exactly. And it looks like he could be right. Knowing what we now know – thanks, it seems, to Mumford – there’s reason to think the lad was so terrified of going back to the Plascarreg he topped himself.’
‘And what is the reason to think that?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘And frankly I don’t really want to know,’ Lol said. ‘But it might help Merrily.’
‘You think he’s still in contact with her?’
‘None of us is in contact with her – she went out without her phone. The thing is… Do you want a cup of tea, Frannie? Glass of cider?’
‘No, ta. I want to know what the thing is.’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Lol said.
Bliss smiled. ‘Bastard.’
Lol shrugged.
‘All right,’ Bliss said. ‘You first.’
‘She went out with Mumford to the Plascarreg, and she got hurt.’
Bliss half-rose. ‘She got hairt?’
‘Bruised face. Black eye. Some kids. Mumford found Robbie’s computer, and they were seeing what he had on it there – in this garage. These kids evidently thought there might be something on the computer that could incriminate them, so they… smashed it. Mumford got attacked, and Merrily was hurt trying to get some kid off him. Kid was trying to choke him with a chain.’
Bliss leaned back, breathed down his nose. ‘And she didn’t report this incident to me because…?’
‘Because of Mumford.’
‘Don’t.’ Bliss stood up. ‘Don’t say another word, Laurence. I encounter Mumford, I’m likely to nick the bastard meself. I just urge you, if you talk to Merrily, and she’s in contact with him, to tell him to…’
‘Give himself up? I mean, what’s he actually done?’
‘Impersonated a police officer.’
‘Impersonated himself, in fact.’
‘It’s what he could do,’ Bliss said.
‘To whom? I think I need to know, don’t I?’
‘Yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘All right, I’ll have a glass of cider, please. This looks like being a long day.’
‘Holy shit!’ Eirion said. ‘You bastard.’
Somehow, Jane had expected him to have calmed down since last night, but it was clear that his usual chapel-whipped, Welsh-speaking caution had failed to re-engage. What if going out with her had fatally damaged his equilibrium?
Still, she could see that J.D. Fyneham’s home office, occupying the upstairs of what seemed like a whole wing of a very sizeable house, was something to inspire strong feelings – envy, lust, that kind of reaction – in the male of the species.
The room was dotted with pinpoint lights and underlaid with a low hum. It had this blue-mauve ambience, from concealed lighting with daylight-quality bulbs. Most of the stuff in here, Jane was unsure what it actually did. There were three computers – one was an Evesham, and they didn’t come cheap – on plush, kidney-shaped workstations, a cluster of printers and scanners and other hi-tech-looking items of hardware which seemed to be connected with… well, desktop publishing, she guessed.
Like, on an industrial scale.
‘You could…’ Eirion seemed to be having respiratory problems. ‘You could produce bloody Vogue up here.’
‘Pays its way, Lewis, pays its way,’ J.D. Fyneham said.
The way he kept calling Eirion ‘Lewis’, it was like that sneering way that Inspector Morse talked to Sergeant Lewis on the TV. He was wearing a deep purple rugby shirt and black trousers in this kind of snakeskin leather.
‘That’s all you need to know,’ he said. ‘Now what do you want? I’m busy.’
‘Obviously,’ Eirion said bitterly.
‘Look, we were a bit pissed last night, all right?’
‘It’s not about last night,’ Eirion said.
Jane had wandered over to a side table stacked with A4-sized glossy magazines. The top one had a picture on the cover of a black and white village that she was sure she ought to recognize. Beside the magazine was a stack of flyers.