‘Works Wales, but she was gonna defend Buckland.’
‘Must be good. Or desperate.’
‘There you go.’
‘Looked at from another angle,’ Rich said, ‘what we have is a missing girl in the countryside. Day off, out of uniform, all kinds of bloody animals out there these days. And she’s a copper. She’ll know how we’re likely to react if she goes off the map, and how much that costs.’
‘Yeh.’
‘You’d better come in, Francis. We’re going to need some paperwork from you.’
Annie flicked him a glance.
‘Good. I wouldn’t risk embroidering it any further.’
She was driving back through Hay, all quiet lights, empty streets. Midnightish.
‘We think we know what’s going on out there,’ Bliss said. ‘Could be we don’t know the half of it. You ever think that?’
‘No, I don’t. Things we used to consider bizarre, not much of it gets concealed any more. There’s even some kind of grouping of pagan police, for heaven’s sake. No Witchcraft Act any more. Less contentious than being in the Freemasons.’
‘Like your dad?’
Charlie Howe, one-time head of Hereford CID. Disgraced. Annie didn’t even reply.
‘As it happens, Claudia said she could tell me the names of two senior police officers who were into it,’ Bliss said, ‘and at least four who’re witches. Though she talked about witches in slightly superior tones, like coppers talk about traffic wardens. Norra lorra mental training required, just turn up, light a fire and get your kit off.’
‘And she believes it actually works? A famously intelligent woman. QC-material?’
‘She said it works on its own terms, whatever that means. She says it’s a wonderful discipline. If you’re the type of person for whom the physical world is, as she puts it, insufficient for a rounded life.’
‘You could say that of the average churchgoer.’
Which Annie wasn’t. Calling her a sceptical agnostic would be coming down on the liberal side.
‘Difference is,’ Bliss said, ‘that your average churchgoer is told to put his faith in God and stay out of the boiler room. People like Peter Rector and Claudia… if there are other spiritual levels, they want to know how it all works. The hidden mechanics. Where they can fit their spanners.’
He could still hear Claudia’s voice, very reasonable, explanatory, like she was addressing the jury as equals. Saying she was quite sure there were lots of things she didn’t know about Peter Rector but she could assure Bliss that all her dealings with him had shown him to be, essentially, a lovely man who’d harm none, as the witches said.
Annie drove past the big car park, down and over the bridge into England.
‘Strange,’ she said. ‘I’d taken against that woman from the first time I met her.’
‘Claudia? I thought—’
‘Mrs Watkins. Women priests – that whole thing made me angry. Women who wanted to be priests, I thought we were bigger than that crap. But the night when you were taken to hospital she was unexpectedly helpful, and I realized she was getting her head around aspects of human behaviour that were a complete mystery to me.’
‘Different side of the brain, Annie.’
He let his head fall back, under the engine hum. A long night with too many bright lights. They were right. He shouldn’t be back. Should’ve stayed at home with a bunch of dvds. If something had happened to Tamsin Winterson because of something he’d failed to process, how would he live with that when they put him out to grass at barely forty?
‘Coming to say goodbye to Rector,’ Annie said. ‘That doesn’t sound convincing to me. What was she really doing there?’
‘She wasn’t exactly being surreptitious about it. Driving openly to Cusop in a bright red car, putting herself very visibly on top of an earthmound.’
‘Do we know she was actually alone there? How many students did Rector have?’
‘Five or six she knows of.’
‘So he was running courses at Cusop for fee-paying acolytes. She provide you with a list?’
‘Didn’t ask for one. No real reason to. But, like she said, she only knew what Rector wanted her to know, so there could be more of them. Which would explain what Tamsin picked up about what locals were calling the coven. And also why there’s no temple. He wasn’t performing rituals, he was conducting tutorials.’
Annie turned right again, for the Golden Valley and Hereford.
‘Francis, I really can’t take a chance on being seen taking you into Gaol Street. We’ll have to go via Marden and you can pick up your car. Will you be all right with that?’