The Lamp of the Wicked (62 page)

‘The morality’s skewed,’ Merrily said, ‘but it’s a flawed world. Look at what Cody’s done for Underhowle in terms of jobs and morale and education.’

Huw nodded at the hillside, where the mobile-phone transmitter poked out of its clearing. ‘And health.’

‘A
very
flawed world,’ Merrily acknowledged sadly.

Huw turned his face into the rising wind and gazed down the valley, where the Roman road had led from Ariconium to Glevum, the city of light, the way marked now by electricity pylons.
And spirits
, Merrily thought uneasily. She could almost see the cracks opening in the façade of Underhowle, in the soil and the tarmac, like ruptured graves on Judgement Day.

Gomer came over. ‘Right then, folks. Three places I can see there’s been a bit o’ digging. Nothing recent, mind.’

‘How not recent?’ Bliss asked.

‘Not since summer. Can’t say n’more’n that. So… I got two hours for you, boy.’ He turned to Merrily. ‘That all right with you, vicar? I been up the churchyard with Mr Owen yere. Lodge plot’s out on the edge where it joins the field and the ground’s soft. Reckon I can do the grave by hand – less noise, ennit?’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘
He
’s sure,’ Bliss confirmed. ‘Right.’ He dug into a pocket of his hiking jacket and presented Merrily with his mobile. ‘If you wouldn’t mind holding on to that for me. I’ve asked Mumford to try and get me some more background on Lynsey Davies, since she’s now centre-stage, so to speak. So if he calls I’ll take it. If it’s any bastard from headquarters, you don’t even know where I am.’ He clapped Gomer on the back. ‘Let’s do it, son. We’re looking for a body, female. Maybe more than one.’

***

‘And what are
you
looking for, Huw?’ Merrily screwed up the bag that had held the pasties and stuck it in her pocket. She wished all this was over: the digging, the exposure, the secret funeral.

‘Looking for an end, lass.’

She realized she didn’t want to know what he meant.

Frannie Bliss was helping Gomer bring down the mini- digger, a grown-up yellow Tonka Toy with caterpillar tracks. Here was Gomer starting to work again, resilient, his demons dealt with – not entirely satisfactorily, but no longer burning inside his head. But Frannie was like a failing footballer at the start of a winter game: jumpy, rubbing his hands. Dangerous.

Merrily said, ‘What happens now?’

‘All down to you.’ Huw looked her in the eyes – an old wolfhound, trusting.

Deceptively trusting. She was fairly sure now that Huw must have had a hand in setting her up for the Lodge funeral. A quiet call to the Bishop, a favour called in. Huw, by virtue of what he did – a responsibility that few would shoulder – could quietly pull ropes that made bells ring in cathedrals. Huw had unfinished business, and he was looking for a way in, and she was it: the female Deliverance minister, the vulnerable one who relied on guidance.

‘Family wants a small funeral,’ Huw said. ‘Quickie. No hymns, no eulogies. Everybody’d like that. You could give ’em their quickie and walk away. Let Underhowle get on with its bright, clean future full of new jobs and computer literacy.’

‘I
could
do that. What
should
I do?’

‘Modern world, lass,’ he went on, as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘And not even your parish. It’s Jerome’s – good old turn-a- blind-eye-for-tomorrow-we-retire-to-the-seaside Jerome. You’re just the hired help, the dishrag.’

‘Yes. Thanks. Now, what do you think I should do?’

‘I’d think about the full requiem.’

She stared at him. ‘A
requiem eucharist
… for Roddy Lodge?

Are you serious?’ This was not the Roman Catholic Church, not High Anglican. ‘We don’t
do
requiems in this area, except even for the seriously devout, and…’

Huw regarded her solemnly. The yellow digger trundled slowly past, Gomer in the saddle, Bliss walking in front like he had Gomer on a rein.

‘… The unquiet dead,’ Merrily said. ‘Ah, yes.’

‘The
insomniacs
,’ Huw agreed.

‘Huw, this is an actual funeral. At night.’

‘Exactly,’ Huw said. ‘Things need to be laid to rest. Anyroad, if these lads find a body, the whole place’ll be alight by then.’

‘I don’t know.’ In Deliverance, a requiem eucharist was employed to unite a disturbed, earthbound spirit with God. ‘Who are we talking about? Roddy… Lynsey? Or… ?’

‘Or the whole village, if you like. And the evil that’s come into it.’

‘For most people,’ Merrily said, ‘nothing’s come into this village but progress. Therefore, good.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ She gripped the top bar of the gate with both hands. It was greasy with lichen. ‘You’re like Sam and his death road. You’re following a black trail all the way from Gloucester, and I don’t know how valid that is. I don’t know if it exists. You always told us to question everything – question, question, question. So now I’m questioning you. Like, how objective is this?’

In her coat pocket, a phone began to buzz. She pulled out two: her own and Frannie’s.

Hers.

‘Mrs Watkins?’ Female, young-sounding. ‘My name’s Libby Porterhouse, from the
Mail on Sunday
. I know you’re rather busy at the moment, but I wonder if we could have a chat.’

Not
what she needed, but if there was one thing you learned about dealing with the press it was never to say
no comment
. Express interest, surprise, ask some questions of your own, but never let them think you had any reason to be unhelpful.

‘Well, I’ll tell you what I can,’ Merrily said, ‘but I’m not sure I’m the best person. I’m just the hired help on this one.’

‘Ah, we may be talking at cross purposes,’ Libby Porterhouse said. ‘I know you’re involved with this serial killer funeral row in the Wye Valley, but this is something entirely different. I’m with Features, and I’m doing quite an extensive piece on Jenny Driscoll.’

‘What about her?’

‘I understand she’s a friend of yours.’

‘We live in the same village.’

‘And that she’s given you a large sum of money. I’d like to ask you about that and a few other things, get your side of the story.’

‘Story?’

‘How long have you known Jenny Driscoll?’

Merrily said, ‘It’s just that I’m standing in a muddy field, with some people…’

‘Well, if you tell me when it’s best to call you back. I really don’t want to keep hassling you, and I truly think, when you know about this, that it’s something you’ll want to comment on. For your own sake.’

Oh
God
. ‘Can we leave it till tomorrow? If you’re not carrying the piece until Sunday…’

‘What about tonight?’

‘OK, I’ll see what I can do,’ Merrily said.

Remembering the note from Jane but not Jenny Box’s number, Merrily rang Directory Inquiries and asked for Box, Ledwardine. It turned out, as expected, to be ex-directory. Damn. Nothing else she could do from here.

‘Problem?’ Huw said.

‘Parochial.’ She rang Uncle Ted’s number. What the hell kind of story had the
Mail
got? She remembered James Bull- Davies:
Woman’s got a bit of a crush on you, after all. Pretty common knowledge.

No answer at Ted’s. She shut down the phone and stood staring across the scrubby field to where Gomer was shovelling out his first shallow trench, Bliss walking alongside now, peering down. The chapel, behind them, was black and formless.

Ring the brother, eh?’ Huw said close to her ear. ‘Tell him you think a requiem would be best for all concerned and, as nobody’s going to know, time’s no longer of the essence.’

‘Huw,’ she said, ‘did you set me up for this funeral?’

‘Banks genuinely didn’t want to do it.’

‘I realize that.’

‘Merrily,’ Huw said, ‘you’ve not been at it long but, of all of them, you’re the one I trust most. You don’t make assumptions and you never just go through the motions. And you’re never too sure of yourself, never afraid to say when you don’t understand.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Merrily said.

Huw looked away. ‘I’ve said enough. Don’t want to influence you.’

‘I’m already influenced. I think you and Frannie are letting personal issues block your objectivity. Personal grief, in your case.’

‘Sometimes you have to follow your heart.’

‘You never said that before. That’s the opposite to what you told us on the course.’ She stood in front of him, her back to the digger. ‘You
never
said that before!’

‘Happen I never knew it.’

‘Christ, Huw…’ Her shoes were sinking into the mud. ‘You
cannot exorcize him
! Even if you think he’s here. Even if you think he’s in that chapel, you cannot do it. Because, no matter what kind of pond life he was, he was
of this earth
.’

‘What if there were summat else?’

‘There was
nothing
else.’ She thought of the missing builders’ tools, the callused hands around Zoe Franklin’s neck, the walking definition of the term
earthbound
, the lamp of the wicked and the hunger of the dead. ‘It was soiled lust of the worst kind – a depraved appetite that could only be sated, in the end, by causing extreme, mortal fear.’

‘And what happens when the body’s gone and only the appetite remains in a black void? What
is
that? And what happens when there are human beings out here, amongst us, who ‘actually
aspire
to the black void? People who are, by whatever means, prepared – eager – to call it into themselves?’

Merrily closed her eyes. She felt the cold mass of the old Baptist chapel very close behind her, almost as if she was carrying it on her back. She could hear the digger coming towards her, and then the shuffling, metallic scraping of the blade in the earth.

‘At least do the requiem,’ Huw said.

She nodded and brought out her phone.

T
HERE WAS A
low rumbling: the wind on ill-fitting leaded windows.

‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.’

No need to raise the voice above normal, not for a congregation of nine, including the two undertakers and the corpse.

Under lights that were dusty orbs, yellow going on brown, Merrily walked over to Roddy Lodge’s coffin.

‘I’m convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rules, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.’

It had been well after dusk when a white van had been driven to the church door. George Lomas, cheerfully overweight, with rimless glasses, and his son, Stephen, stocky and hedgehog- haired, had slipped Roddy inside like contraband.

Only ninety minutes later than planned.

No disrespect, but it seemed like the best way
, Mr Lomas had whispered to Merrily, shaking hands in the porch.
I panicked a bit after that demo last night. Didn’t want no scratches on the hearse, so I phoned the Lodges, suggested we put the whole thing back until everybody’s home from work, watching telly. Didn’t nobody tell you?

‘I’m afraid not,’ Merrily had said coldly to Mr Lomas, whose bill might reasonably be expected to reflect the unorthodox hours.

Lol’s concert!
She could have wept.

From the glass wall beside the stairs you could see most of the city glowing just below you, and you wanted to walk out into it, like some glistening sea.

‘Maybe I’ll go out for some air,’ Lol said.

Prof leaped up and put his back against the door of the Green Room. ‘You’ll stay where you are, you paranoid bastard!’

‘It’s OK,’ Lol said. ‘Loads of time.’ He wasn’t due to go on until halfway through the gig.
And then only if it feels right
, Moira had said.

As if it ever could.

The Courtyard, all glass and Lego, was set at right angles to the road, in the city’s recreational quarter, opposite Hereford United’s Edgar Street ground. Lol had driven himself there in the Astra, Prof driving tight behind him the whole way to make sure he didn’t take a detour via Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff…

When he’d driven into the car park, the lights in the glass front were scary, making it seem very public, like a bus station. Within a couple of hours he was supposed to be standing alone on a stage inside that glass palace with the lights burning down on him, only a guitar to protect him and a crowd four times the size of the one which had watched Roddy Lodge die. Screaming encouragement:
Why’n’t you jump?

Moira had the dressing room immediately behind the stage and Lol was changing here in the Green Room, with a washbasin and a kettle, the Washburn guitar, the Boswell guitar and Prof Levin hopping about like a surrogate nervous system.

‘Why you got to keep messing with that mobile? Just switch it off. If he calls now, you’ll have to say you’ll get back to him in the morning.’

Lol had left two messages for Mephisto Jones. Maybe Mephisto was sick, struck down with an electric migraine. Then, half an hour ago, Merrily had rung, upset, close to tears. She wasn’t going to make it in time. Probably wasn’t going to make it at all. He was almost relieved, and he told her that, and she said,
If you run away, now… don’t you dare run away
…

He’d gone down to the booking office to leave a message there: when a Jane Watkins arrived to pick up her ticket, tell her to wait for Lol Robinson afterwards. Then he’d changed into black jeans and a fresh alien sweatshirt with no holes in it, remembering how King Charles I had worn an extra shirt for his execution so that at least he wouldn’t be trembling with the cold. Sitting on a stool in the Green Room, Lol had a terrible feeling now: ominous.

‘What’s wrong?’

Moira had drifted in, the beautiful folk-rock goddess in her long dress of midnight blue, low-cut. A silver pendant was trickling like water between her breasts, as though it was part of the same stream that began in her long dark hair.

‘Talk him through this, Moira,’ Prof said. ‘I have to go check things in the booth.’