Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain Read Online Free PDF

there, apparently.’
    ‘Yes, but who—?’
    ‘Oh, Mansel…?’ Barry stepped back. ‘Gawd, James. That mean he’s a relation?’
    ‘Cousin. Of sorts.’ James straightened up, bit his lower lip. ‘Hell’s bells.’
    A flaking log rolled out of the fire up against the mesh of the fireguard. Danny Thomas came back and sat down, pushing fingers through his beard.
    ‘Barry just had a call from a mate. Feller been found dead. Farmer.’
    Lol said. ‘What… storm-related?’
    ‘Sounds like way too many coppers for that,’ Danny said.

5
Gangland
     
    U P AGAINST THE brick wall under a bleary bulkhead lamp, Bliss was struggling into his Durex suit. Big, wide puddles in the yard, four of them rippling like something tidal in the lights and the remains of the gale. The fifth puddle much smaller, not rippling at all, the colour and consistency of bramble jelly.
    Farmers. Never felt comfortable around farmers, not even dead farmers.
    ‘Boss…’
    Terry Stagg came lumbering out of a litter of uniforms and techies shielding the body from the wind, Bliss looking up from the flapping plastic.
    ‘DCI know about this, Terry?’
    Realizing this was the very last question he’d normally ask. This was getting ridiculous. He peered at Terry Stagg’s eyes in the lamplight. Terry was working on a beard to cover up his second chin. His eyes looked tired. And faintly puzzled?
    Shit
.
    ‘Boss, it was actually the DCI who said to get you out. Be more convenient for DI Bliss were her actual—’
    ‘Bitch.’
    Stagg said nothing. Bliss turned away, nerves burning like a skin rash. Probably digging himself an even bigger pit.
    ‘My impression was that the DCI won’t be coming out tonight at all,’ Stagg said. ‘Which is unusual, given the social status of the deceased.’
    ‘Don’t question it.’ Bliss zipped the Durex suit from groin to throat. ‘Give thanks.’
    He plucked the elasticated sleeve away from his watch: just gone nine. Taken him the best part of half an hour to get here from home. Blown-off branches all over the roads, one lacerating the flank of his car as he squirmed past on the grass verge.
    ‘So this is…?’
    ‘Mr Mansel Bull, boss. Fifty-seven. Farmer, as you know. Old family.’
    ‘Double-page spread in the
Hereford Times
kind of old?’
    ‘Maybe special supplement,’ Terry Stagg said.
    ‘Not short of a few quid, Tez. Lorra leckie going to waste, or is that you?’
    The yard was ablaze with lights on sensors, like a factory, and alive with bellowing creaks, the smashing of blown-open doors, the restive moaning of the cattle in the sheds – Bliss thinking all this was like the sounds of his own nerves amplified.
    ‘Billy Grace?’
    ‘On his way,’ Terry said. ‘Allegedly. But we do have time-of-death to within half an hour or so. Mr Bull’d gone to a parish-council meeting arranged for seven, but called off due to the conditions. Sounds like he came directly back. Walking into… something.’
    A council meeting explained the suit and tie, what you could see of it under a glistening beard of blood. Hard to say if his head was still even attached. Was that bone? Was that an actual split skull? Bliss stepped back. You never quite got used to this.
    ‘Who found him?’
    ‘Brother. Heard the cattle moaning in the shed, so he had a walk up. With his shotgun.’
    ‘Oh aye?’
    ‘Not loaded, he
claims
. Lives in the big bungalow down towards the river. Mr Bull lived here, on his own.’
    ‘On his
own
– in
that?
’
    Security lights on the barn opposite flushed out mellow old brick and about fifteen dark windows on three storeys. OldcastleFarm. The house and buildings wedged into a jagged promontory above the Wye, embedded like a fort. Georgian or Queen Anne or whatever, had to be big enough for a family of twelve, plus servants.
    ‘Divorced. For the second time, apparently.’
    Terry looking sideways at Bliss. Mr Bull was face-up to the lights, eyes wide open in his big, bald, dented head,