Free To Dream of the Dead by Phil Rickman

whole area’s been completely screened off by the police who’ve set up an incident room at the Cantilupe School next door to the monastery. I’ve been told a press conference has beenscheduled for twelve noon, when obviously we hope to learn more. But I
can
tell you that the head was found last night by a member of the public on or near the medieval preaching cross in the rose garden at the front of the monastery ruins
.’
    ‘
Bit of a shock for someone, Bella. And of course, this all happened when the city was absolutely packed with Christmas shoppers, in town for the traditional Wednesday evening late opening
.’
    ‘
There probably weren’t as many shoppers as usual, Colin, because of the floods, but obviously it’s made the police investigation a lot more difficult. With so many extra people about, it would be far easier for whoever left the head to come and go unnoticed
.’
    ‘
Now it’s a . . . it’s the head of a
man,
is that correct?
’
    ‘
That’s what we understand, Colin
.’
    ‘
And is this someone who was actually, you know, beheaded?
’
    ‘
My information is that it was done after death
.’
    ‘
Do they know who it is yet?
’
    ‘
Well, personally, I think they do, and there’s quite a buzz about it. I can’t see that they won’t be revealing a name in the course of the day, but relatives will have to be told first, of course. There has, obviously, been an extensive search for the rest of the body, but no suggestion that anything’s been found yet
.’
    ‘
And what about local people, Bella? The people living and working in a very built-up part of the city. How are they reacting?
’
    ‘
Well, as you can imagine nobody here can quite believe that something so, you know, horrific and barbaric should have come to Hereford. Earlier this morning, I talked to people living in the streets behind Blackfriars Monastery, as well as some coming to work in shops and offices around lower Widemarsh Street
—’
    Merrily switched off the litany of shock and disbelief and what’s the world coming to?
    A black Christmas for somebody. No surprise that Bliss didn’t have time to speculate about what Jonathan Long might have been doing in Ledwardine.
    Peace on earth, goodwill to all men
.
    Yeah, right.
    Under a sky the colour of wet mortar, she came off the White Cross roundabout at the fourth exit, for the crematorium.

11
     

A Sense of Eternity
     
    Q UITE A TURNOUT for Tom Parson, and Merrily had known him well enough to make it meaningful – as much as you ever could with another funeral party waiting outside, stamping its feet and rubbing its hands.
    Tom had been Old Ledwardine – at least, that was what she’d thought until she’d talked to the family.
    ‘Tom was . . . a
character
,’ she said in the chapel at the crem. ‘Someone of whom, now he’s gone, we say,
We won’t see his kind again
. Someone who was part of the fabric of the village. Old Ledwardine. I’m . . . not exactly Old Ledwardine, and I just assumed Tom’s family had been around the village for generations.’
    In fact, she’d discovered, Tom Parson had been an incomer, a retiree. OK, thirty years ago and only from Shropshire. But there was surely a message here about how a community – even a landscape, or, as Jane would insist, the spiritual essence of a place – would absorb and condition people.
    If it happened slowly. If it happened naturally. And if you kept open a few pathways to the past. If you had that
grounding
.
    She didn’t say any of that. There wouldn’t be time – that was her excuse. Anyway, there’d be a memorial service for Tom back in the village after Christmas, followed by interment of the ashes in the churchyard; she’d be able to do a better job then. Tom’s niece had sent her away with a pile of his historical notes which she thought the parish ought to have. Maybe Jane could go through them.
    But that was it for today. Merrily drove into the city centre and found a parking space on