The Lamp of the Wicked (59 page)

Jane’s actually curious to know what Fred’s wife’s like, the way he went on about her, this great big bundle of fun, always ready for a laugh, day or night, know what I mean?

But in the van, when Jane gets in – it’s actually quite decent of him to do this; she knows what he’s like, always on the go, always another job lined up, do anything for anybody – Rose doesn’t seem like that at all. Bit frumpy, actually. Got this kind of high, whiny voice. Still, she seems friendly enough, in her way. Just not as instantly outgoing as Fred, as is often the case with wives of really extrovert guys.

Fred’s leaning across, apologizing to Rose. ‘Now I know you won’t mind, my love, not really, but we gotter drop Jane off in Ledwardine. Take us n’more’n five minutes out of our way, I promise. You all right in the back there, Jane? If you moves them tools, in the black bag, there’s an ole mattress, be more comfortable for you. That’s it.’

The van rattling out of Hereford now and into the country up towards Stretton Sugwas, Rose taking the occasional glance back at Jane, to make sure she’s OK in the back. There’s a strong smell of oil in here, and sweat. A working van. Jane remembers the problem with Fred is he’s always working so hard he doesn’t get that much time for baths, as he was the first to admit when he was putting in their new shower at the vicarage. ‘Oughter ’ave a quick one now, Jane – test him out, look. You wanner get in there with me, scrub me back?’ he’d said. Little grin and a wink to show he didn’t really mean it. Totally faithful to Rose, is Fred – not that he don’t get a few offers, mind. Beggin’ for it, some of these housewives, have you up the ole stairs in no time at all, you don’t watch it.

‘So how’s wossername, the Welsh boy, Irene?’ Calling back over his shoulder as he drives. ‘You still goin’ with him? You know what they says about the Welsh? That true, Jane, you found out yet? I bet you bloody ’ave, girl, I seen the look in your eyes. You all right back there? Sorry about the state. Tell you what, I’ll move that ole…’

The van stops.

Jane notices he’s pulled off the road and driven through an open field gate and, looking between the front seats, through the windscreen, she can see that there’s a thick hedge now between the van and the road, and she’s thinking, Why are we… ? What’s he stopping for? They haven’t been on the road five minutes. Then the rear doors creak open and Fred climbs in with her. He’s wearing his old overalls; the smell of sweat is very strong now.

He’s holding a roll of wide, brown tape that he’s pulled from the tool bag.

He isn’t smiling any more. He’s got this intent look on his face, like when he was sizing up the bathroom wall, working things out. There are little points of light so far back in his bulblike eyes, it’s as if they’re actually shining from somewhere inside his brain.

‘What are you… ?’ An amazed fear shoots up through Jane’s body.

And with that first lilt of it in her voice, she sees that something has happened. The little lights have filled up Fred’s eyes, making them glow as if they’re veined with filaments, and his teeth are bared. The whole atmosphere in the van has changed, become charged, Fred and Rose connecting now like jump leads on a battery, sparks bouncing between them.

Then this great big bunched fist, knuckles like ball-bearings, thrusts up like a greased piston on a machine and smacks Jane thunderously in the mouth. She can feel the blow echoing in her skull.

Then there’s this kind of time-lapse and the next thing she’s on her back tasting salty blood, smelling this overwhelming sweat smell – Fred on top of her taping her wrists together, his lips drawn back, teeth set in concentration, breath coming in efficient little spurts.

And then, satisfied with his wrist-taping, he’s saying
,
‘You di’n’t ’ave no dad to show you what’s what, did you, Jane? Me and Rose gonner help you out now, look. Be thankin’ us, you will, you and that Welsh boy, wossername, Irene. Show you what’s what, where the bits goes, you little smart bitch…’

Merrily spasmed and jerked up in bed. The light was still on, and
Happy like Murderers
was spread spine-up on the duvet.

It was ten past two in the morning, and the experience had been so shatteringly vivid that she had to get out of bed and go rushing up to Jane’s apartment, to stand panting in the doorway, listening to the kid’s breathing.

Afterwards, at the top of the stairs, she felt so faint that she had to go down on her knees, head in her hands. Her hair was matted, her skin felt like latex, and she’d have to have a shower, even if it sent the pipes into a strangled symphony.

Under the water, she relived the unspeakable, through the split consciousness in the dream that had been scripted by her reading – the absolute insanity of reading that stuff until sleep had blurred the filth.

In the dream, part of her had been Jane, and yet
she
was there, too, invisible and helpless, as Jane’s mum.

Knowing what Jane could not know – knowing what was going to happen. What
had
happened, over and over again: Fred and Rose feeding off fear.

Sexual vampires.

Merrily thought about the mothers of the known victims, all the stricken mothers who
had
to read about it,
had
to know, had to
be
there with their daughters, at least once, in the greasy, blood-smelling, semen-smelling darkness.

In Fred and Rose’s cellar, which was not there any more.

A one-man definition of the term ‘earthbound’.

Was it conceivable that whatever had been inside Fred, whatever had ignited the bilious filaments of evil in those eyes, could be passed on, could jump – the way the electricity had jumped into Roddy Lodge from live coils around the insulators on the pylon – into someone receptive?

And
was
it – as some deeply troubled part of Huw might
need
it to be – something beyond the human?

Wearing a clean white T-shirt under her towelling robe, Merrily crept up the stairs to check on Jane again.

The kid had seemed to be genuinely asleep when she and Huw had arrived back at the vicarage just after midnight. Behind the front door, they’d found a brown paper bag containing a white, hardbacked notebook labelled
The Magickal Diary of Lynsey Davies
, and a note from Lol that said:
It’s all here. You don’t even need to read between the lines.

When she’d shown Huw to his room, he’d taken the diary with him. She wondered what
his
nightmares had been like.

As she stood looking down at Jane she thought the kid’s eyes opened briefly. But then they closed again and she turned over onto her side, and Merrily slipped out.

She stopped by the top landing window with its view through the trees to the village square and the all-night lantern on the front of the Black Swan. And then she knelt, in her long white T-shirt, and prayed for guidance, slow and intense, from far inside herself, inside her heart-centre, in the emotional silences back there.

Countless repetitive murderers have said that they felt they were in the grip of something foreign, that ‘something strange came over them’ which they could not resist at the time of the offences… ‘I don’t know what got into me.’ Priests do know, of course…

Brian Masters

She Must Have Known

A hundred years from now, we will look back at pylons as relics of the mid-20th century. It probably won’t happen in five or ten years, but eventually a new generation will come along, change things and wonder why we did nothing.

Denis Henshaw

Professor of Physics, Bristol University

I
T WAS DOWN
at the bottom of Ross town centre, among a cluster of antique shops, and still hard to find. It had a door with no glass and one narrow window with no actual books in it, just a small sign on a greying card.

Piers Connor-Crewe Bookseller

Frannie Bliss found the discretion interesting. ‘Porn. Gorra be. How else is he gonna make any kind of a living?’

‘Word of mouth,’ Merrily said. ‘The Internet. You can turn over a week’s income on about four books, if you know what you’re doing – so I’m told.’

‘We’re not talking John Grisham here, are we?’ Bliss pushed at the door; it didn’t give.

‘Try the bell, Frannie.’

‘Hard porn – mark my words.’ Bliss pressed a black button in the white door. ‘I’ve been summoned, by the way.’

‘Fleming?’ Merrily looked up the hill towards the Market House, where clouds were massing like bonfire smoke. It was not yet eleven a.m.

‘It was only a matter of time. He knew I was still around – well, obviously. Wants to see me in Hereford at four this afternoon, which is ominous – anything heavy, you say it late afternoon. Limits the victim’s options. He thinks, Aw, sod it, I’ll go and get pissed instead. I’m guessing formal suspension this time.’

‘What sort of case have they got for that?’

‘He’s been heard to say, “If Bliss wants to be a private eye, I’m not going to hold him back any longer.” And he’ll have stuff going way back. I never claimed to be the divisional Mr Popular.’

‘What does Kirsty say?’

‘Kirsty left last night, Merrily. Back to the farm. With the kids.’

‘Frannie, no…’

The door opened. A woman of maybe twenty-six stood there. ‘Sorry, we’re a bit behind this morning.’ She had short hair bleached white and a silver ring in her left eyebrow.

Bliss smiled bleakly at her. ‘Mr Connor-Crewe in, is he?’ Like he hadn’t phoned first, to make sure of it.

‘He’s unpacking some books upstairs, if you want to hang around for a couple of minutes… You trade?’

‘Collector,’ Bliss said. ‘
Beano
annuals, mainly.’

‘Yeah?’

Bliss flashed his card. ‘DI Bliss, West Mercia.’

‘Oh, right.’ She seemed unsurprised. ‘Go through, officer.’

‘Ta.’

They went in, Merrily holding the plastic carrier bag with Hereford Cathedral on it. The window had been deceptive; the building was narrow but deep, a darkening tunnel of shelves. Arrowed signs indicated two other floors. The woman stood at the bottom of some narrow wooden stairs.

‘Hey… you know Mumford?’

‘So this is where he gets his first editions.’

She grinned. ‘I’ll tell Piers. So it’s DI… ?’

‘Bliss. And, er…’

‘Merrily Watkins,’ Merrily said, thinking,
Cola French?

The white-haired woman stopped on the second step, turned with a hand on the rail and inspected her. Merrily wore her best coat over the black cowl-neck sweater, the cross concealed. ‘Yeah,’ the woman said sadly. ‘Oh well.’ And carried on upstairs, leaving Bliss peering curiously at Merrily.

‘If you go straight down, you’ll find an alcove on your left, with some chairs,’ Cola French called back. ‘Criminal History’s right at the bottom. But, er… Theology’s in the cellar.’

‘Bound to have read them all, anyway,’ Merrily said.

What bothered Merrily most was that she hadn’t seen Jane, not to speak to. She’d overslept, and it had been nearly nine a.m. when she’d staggered into the kitchen to find a note on the table.

Mum, I’ve gone.

Just in case you’re vaguely interested, it’s Lol’s gig tonight at the Courtyard. So I’ve taken a change of clothes with me and I’ll carry on to Hereford on the school bus. If you don’t make it there later I’ll just have to thumb a lift back or something, so don’t let it interfere with your spiritual schedule or anything.

J.

And Jenny Box called. She’d like to talk to you. You should.

‘She wouldn’t actually thumb a lift, of course,’ Merrily had said later to Huw. ‘This is just a gentle dig.’

‘With a bayonet,’ Huw said.

‘No, for Jane, this
is
a gentle dig.’

Huw had refused to eat breakfast or to drink tea. He’d drunk one glass of water. Was this a fast, purification, in anticipation of… what?

Merrily had eaten half a slice of toast and felt guilty. Then she’d gone into the scullery and looked up the number for Ingrid Sollars. She had in front of her Lol’s note, which said,
The PCC mentioned in the diary is Piers Connor-Crewe. If you feel you have to go and see him, please don’t go on your own
. This morning, Lol had phoned, filling in some gaps, bless him.

The phone at Ingrid’s place had been picked up by Sam Hall, which didn’t surprise her a lot. Merrily had asked Sam some straight questions about his former colleague on the Underhowle Development Committee.

Before leaving the vicarage, she’d left a message on Prof’s answering machine asking if Lol, or even Prof himself, could keep an eye open for Jane tonight. Left a similar message on their own machine for the kid to pick up if she rang in. Just in case this situation proved more complex.

As now seemed likely.

Piers Connor-Crewe, plump and moon-faced and cheerful, wore his baggy cream suit over a denim shirt with a frayed collar. One of those men, Merrily thought, who might greet you in pyjamas, always confident that you’d be blinded by the aura of his personality, his intellect.

‘Merrily Watkins, how nice. And back in your role as consultant to the Herefordshire Constabulary.’

Bliss stood up. ‘DI Francis Bliss. We haven’t met.’

‘No, indeed – I’m afraid I was working late the night you encountered the Committee.’

Connor-Crewe went to sit behind the desk, which filled half of this dimly lit airspace between bookshelves. He motioned Bliss and Merrily to a couple of battered smokers’ chairs. The alcove seemed to serve as his office. There was a phone on the desk, a vintage, crane-necked electric lamp and a large book on Roman pottery.

‘Well now,’ he said, ‘if this is about what I think it’s about, let me first apologize that the police were
not
informed about last night’s demonstration. However’ – he opened his hands – ‘neither was the Committee. Seems to have been entirely impromptu – grass-roots protest – therefore, any damage is—’