To Dream of the Dead by Phil Rickman Read Free Book Online

apples off the backs of carts in High Town. Through the glass, he saw Karen Dowell coming in through the main door, taking off her baseball cap, shaking a cupful of rain off it.
    Gerry put on his reading specs as Bliss opened the laptop’s lid and clicked on the photo icon.
    ‘There you go.’
    The head trembling into focus, coming up sharper and brighter than it had looked in the flesh. And yet artificial, somehow, like it had been sent over from props. Bliss zoomed it up to full screen, looked at Gerry.
    Gerry winced.
    Bliss said, ‘This
is
Ayling. You’re sure?’
    ‘He bought me two pints once. You don’t forget that level of generosity.’
    The old feller quite pale in the bilious light. Stepping back, taking a couple of breaths and risking his ticker with another good long look. ‘This was summer, Francis, we’d be turning off all the fans. Gonner throw up more shit than my brother’s muck-spreader.’
    A light cough. Bliss waved Karen in.
    ‘Anything?’
    ‘Nothing dramatic so far, boss. Problem is, most of the neighbours are elderly people. Almshouses, you know? Doors locked, curtains drawn, tellies on, mugs of Horlicks.’
    ‘CCTV?’
    ‘Couple of possibles. One or two iffy hoodies. Trouble is, in this weather everybody’s a hoodie. A live witness would be nice.’
    ‘Keep at it. Somewhere there’s an old dear who sees all. I want her.’
    Preferably before Howe arrived with the entourage.
    ‘Er . . .’ Karen trying not show excitement. ‘Actually right, is it, what they’re saying?’
    ‘Well, yeh.’ Bliss accepted a Polo mint from Gerry Rowbotham. ‘Does indeed begin to look like it. So much for gangland, eh?’
    ‘God,’ Karen said. ‘What happens now?’
    ‘It gets corporate. Doesn’t it, Gerry?’
    ‘Francis,’ Gerry Rowbotham said, ‘You haven’t actually
said
. . .’
    ‘What?’
    ‘What’s happened to . . . you know, what they’ve done to his eyes?’
    ‘Ah, yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘The eyes.’
    You didn’t need to be much of a detective to know that the thing with the eyes was going to be central.

THURSDAY
     
But we should not criticise councillors because of their ineptitude. We wouldn’t berate an idiot for not comprehending quantum theory
.
     
    Reader’s letter to the
Hereford Times
,
February 2008
     

Viler Shades
     
    T HE HEATING, SUCH as it was, was due to kick in at seven, for a strict one and a half hours. A cost-of-oil thing. You could get twenty-five per cent of your fuel costs from the parish, for business use of the vicarage, but Merrily had never bothered. Stupid, probably, but too late to start now, at these prices. So she and Jane had cut back. Lost the old Aga, for a start.
    Merrily moved rapidly around the kitchen, putting the kettle on, activating the toaster, feeding Ethel, and then running back into the hall, calling up from the bottom of the stairs.
    ‘Flower?’
    Her lips could hardly frame the word, all the nerves in her face deadened by the cold. On the wall by the door, Jesus Christ looked down from Holman Hunt’s
Light of the World
with a certain empathy, obviously not drawing much heat from his lantern.
    ‘Jane!’
    The kid was definitely up. She’d been wandering around at least half an hour ago. Probably trying for stealth, but when there were only the two of you in a big old vicarage you developed an ear for creaks.
    No reply from up there, no sound of radio or running water. Merrily went back to the kitchen and cracked three eggs into a bowl. Tom Parson’s funeral was at eleven at Hereford Crem. Old Tom, local historian, one-time editor of the parish magazine, now the third village death in a fortnight. Another funeral, another empty cottage up for grabs at a crazy price, removal vans more common in this village now than buses.
    The cold came for her again, and she went scurrying back into the hall.
    ‘Jane!’
    Nothing. Merrily pulled her robe together and ran upstairs, two flights, to what Jane liked to call her apartment, in