‘Nice argument, Merrily. Almost convincing.’
Gwyn Arthur said, ‘This is… the same as Tamsin? Thirty years on?
‘Except he didn’t finish the swastika.’
Bliss telling Gwyn Arthur about the photograph inside the book in Rector’s library. Probably Polaroid. Instant picture. Muddied up in a photocopier to obscure the identity even more.
‘Why would he do that? Why would he send it to Rector?’
‘Because he’s trying to shift the blame?’ Merrily said. ‘Maybe not so much what will you do next? as… Look what you made me do.’
‘That could be right.’ Bliss sat down again. ‘Like a peevish kid. And then he dismembers her body in his bath. I’d guess the reason they stopped recording is it went on for two or three hours. You realize what’s involved there? How many bin sacks you’d fill? It’s not just arms and legs, is it? It’s sordid and messy and disgusting, not like…’
‘Not like a magical ceremony,’ Merrily said.
Jerrold Brace’s tribute to his forefather, his liberating performance of something hideously at odds with civilized behaviour, his self-initiation. The electric charge, the magical high dissipating into the hot, greasy grind of pulling a human being apart and packing away the bits, prime cuts and offal.
‘There’s something else.’ Gwyn Arthur went over to the tape player, switched it back on. ‘Think I can work this thing. Would both of you mind listening to this bit again?’
He sat close to the screen, rewinding.
‘You’re listening for the woman’s voice in the background. Tell me what you think she’s saying.’
Merrily closed her eyes. The thin voices in the cans suggested a climber clinging to a cliff-face in high wind.
‘There,’ Gwyn Arthur said. ‘What are the words?’
Clear enough this time. She took off the cans.
‘She’s saying… say it. Quite urgently. ‘Say it, say it, say it.’
‘That’s what I thought. Thank you.’
‘What’s that signify?’ Bliss said. ‘What’s that about?’
In the real world, a phone rang, sending him over to his jacket.
‘Assuming this is a copy,’ Gwyn Arthur said to Merrily, ‘what happened to the original tape, do you think? Would it have been mailed, perhaps, to Mr Loftus at the Order?’
Bliss stood with his phone at his cheek. He stiffened.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I haven’t. Where was this?’
Merrily watching him, alarmed. Watching his already disfigured face become an emotional car crash.
‘A dilemma for Mr Loftus if that arrived in the post,’ Gwyn Arthur said. ‘The young master, at the time, of right-wing rhetoric. You can imagine him writing his inflammatory books, self-published under false names, inspired by the early work of Peter Rector. Brace’s shop a valued outlet in the days before the Internet, but suddenly here’s Brace himself presenting this horror. Saying also to Loftus, Look what you made me do.’
Silence. Bliss still on the phone, listening, expressionless now. It didn’t look like good news.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks, Karen.’
‘Perhaps we need to talk to Mr Loftus again,’ Gwyn Arthur said. ‘Perhaps I need to talk to him this time. Or you, Francis?’
‘Let’s keep Loftus on ice for a bit.’ Bliss’s voice was dull and beaten as he shut the phone. ‘Looks like all hell’s about to break loose out there. They’ve found Tamsin.’
Gwyn Arthur shut off the player.
‘How did they find her?’
‘Anonymous phone call to the Incident Room. Brent’s on his way in. Looks like all the key people have had individual phone calls.’
‘That was yours?’ Merrily said.
‘No. Looks like I’m not gerrin one. That was Karen. Me mate.’
‘Maybe they didn’t tell you,’ she said forlornly, ‘because they could see how knackered you were when you left.’
‘Possible. Not likely.’
Merrily stood up. Bliss’s face was like an envelope torn down one side.
‘Sounds like we were seen, doesn’t it, Merrily? It’s unlikely anyone just happened to stumble on that cellar so soon after we left. Sounds like we’re stuffed. Me, anyway.’
‘Or,’ Gwyn Arthur said, ‘your friend Miss Cornwell made the call.’
‘Trust me, she wouldn’t.’
‘Or the killer did. Listen, I think… I think if anyone needs to atone it’s probably me. Though until I saw the tape I had no real reason to think killing was involved. But it…’ He had his pipe between his hands, screwing and unscrewing the stem ‘… it’s pretty obvious to me who we’re looking at.’