The Magus of Hay by Phil Rickman Read Free Book Online

that’s why she liked having Alys Nott around. A secretary for all eternity. And, presumably, Alys liked that too.’
    ‘Doesn’t matter one way or the other, now, does it?’
    ‘I don’t know. Do I have responsibility to what remains of Alys?’
    ‘Hell, no. Definitely not. I don’t know much about theology, but I’m guessing she’s well out your sphere of influence now.’
    ‘Out of the mouths of babes and songwriters… bugger.’ She pushed back the duvet. ‘I need a wee. Do you want a cup of tea, or…?’
    It was chilly, for May. She pulled her bathrobe from the back of the door. She was replaying what Sylvia Merchant had said.
    Her eyes were without light. And I wasn’t sure she could see me.
    Alys Nott held in some limbo. Trapped and blind.
    ‘You know that night? When I thought I saw something on the stairs to the attic?’
    He’d been here that night, though long before they were an item. Downstairs on the sofa while she was upstairs, getting speared by the pure wild energy. He’d been the first to see her, afterwards.
    ‘You had seen something,’ Lol said. ‘Nightmares don’t have that effect.’
    ‘But, given the state I was in at the time, to what extent was that a subjective experience? I was looking for answers, and that’s how the answer came. Was that a case of the subconscious mind translating something into an image? I don’t know. I still don’t know how any of this works.’
    ‘You know more than most people.’
    ‘I’ve read a lot of books about paranormal phenomena, mysticism, occultism. I’ve studied case histories. I’ve observed otherpeople’s spiritual crises, but I still don’t know how much I can accept. I could be self-deluded. I could be a charlatan.’
    This was how you thought in the darkest hours.
    ‘Actually,’ Lol said, ‘there’s something I need to tell you…’
    She turned, the robe half on. Because it was still before dawn, the devil’s time, she felt queasy with trepidation.

PART TWO
    JUNE, end of
    My Cabinet was picked in five minutes in the pub. Most were wearing jeans and there was a high proportion of lorry drivers.
    Richard Booth
My Kingdom of Books
    (Y Lolfa, 1999)

7
    Sad case
    T HE NOISE OF the waterfall was like mass excitement, but not in a good way. Bliss was thinking of football frenzy before a grudge game. Wincing at a jagged memory from when he was a young copper in Liverpool, getting his wrist broken on a barricade at Goodison Park. He’d loved it then, the Job. Really hated how long that wrist had kept him off the streets.
    In retrospect, it was bugger all, a broken wrist. Fully fixable.
    Bliss could’ve wept.
    He was unsteady and locked an arm around one of the young trees growing out of the steepening bank just before the rushing water went into its lemming dive. On a warm day it might even be nice here, dappled sun through big trees, white splatter like a vanilla milkshake. Not today. Not with a dead man down in the pool.
    He saw one of the divers heaving himself up on to a rounded rock-shelf, mask on his forehead. Grinning up at Bliss.
    ‘Wanna stay put there for a bit, boss? Should we call for risk assessment?’
    ‘Piss off,’ Bliss said mildly enough. ‘Left me wellies in the car, that’s all.’
    How much did the diver know about his condition? How much did any of them know? He looked down into the pool and felt dizzy. The diver and his mate were at the water’s edge, below the fall. Apparently it was deeper than it looked, this pool.
    Bliss glanced back the way he’d come and saw two rapidstreams, side by side. Shit. Hands linked around saplings either side, he leaned forwards, his neck inclined until the two streams coalesced into one, and he straightened up.
    ‘Just get him out, eh?’
    Back in Hereford, he’d seen Terry Stagg exchanging a look with Darth Vaynor – why would the DI want to drive all the way out to the rim of Wales for a body spotted in a pool, likely a routine drowning?
    Why had he? He