by Phil Rickman
Simon walked over to the pub door and pulled it until the latch caught. ‘Where did you get that idea, anyway, Gerard?’
Stock tapped a meaningful finger on the side of his nose: not telling. ‘But what a reaction, vicar. What a beautiful, instantaneous reaction… and’ – inclining his head to Simon – ‘in front of witnesses.’
Lol wondered precisely how drunk Stock had really been in there. How pissed did you have to be to throw up on cue?
A good publicist has control, tells you what he wants you to know, when he wants you to know it. Timing.
What was happening here? Lol felt on the edge of something from which he could still, if he wanted to, turn away. ‘You OK to walk home?’ he said to Stock. ‘Or you want Simon or me to—?’
Stock looked down at the dirt and cindered surface of the forecourt. ‘Not going home, yet, Lol, thank you. Gonna take a walk, clear my head. Time is it?’
‘Nearly closing time,’ Simon said, ‘in case you were thinking of going back inside, to attempt to get served.’
‘Actually, I think this may finally call for a change of hostelry.’ Stock produced a hawking laugh. ‘What d’you think, vicar?’
‘I think you’re walking a narrow ledge,’ Simon said.
‘Reason I need a clear head,’ Stock said, ‘is I’ve got your lady exorcist coming to visit. Tomorrow, we lay Stewart, as it were.’
Lol froze, as the latch of the pub door clacked. ‘Thanks very much,’ Isabel said to someone, and wheeled herself out. Then she saw Stock. ‘Bloody hell, you still here?’
‘You’re going to ask this woman to exorcize your place, then, are you?’ Simon said quietly. ‘It isn’t that simple, you know, Gerard. It isn’t just a formality.’
Stock sniffed. ‘Goodnight, boys. Goodnight, Mrs St John.’
He began to walk away towards the lane. Above him rose the broad-leaf woods that enclosed the village, the pinnacles of occasional pines piercing the green-washed sky, stars beginning to show.
‘Gerard,’ Simon called out, ‘it’s not something you fart about with.’
Stock stopped about fifteen feet beyond him and turned round. He was quite steady. He pointed a finger at Simon.
‘Don’t you,’ he said, ‘presume to patronize me, sunshine. I came to you with an honest request and you told me to piss off. Whatever happens with this woman, it’s down to you. Remember that.’
Lol thought the pointing finger quivered; he thought he saw a smear of something cross Stock’s half-shaded face, and then Stock stiffened and turned and walked away. At some point before the shadows took him, Lol thought the walk became a swagger.
Lol walked back to the vicarage with the St Johns, Simon pushing Isabel’s chair, lights blinking up on the Malverns.
‘Bloody hell,’ Isabel said. ‘Stink rotten, you do, Simon.’
They crossed the humpback bridge over the silent Frome, hop-yards either side, the bines high on the poles. Simon looked over to the church, about fifty yards from the river bank, small and inconspicuous among trees risen higher than its stubby tower.
‘Maybe the stink around Stock is subtler.’
‘I’m not sure he’s right about Lake,’ Lol said. ‘The way he claimed he just threw out a question and Lake dived on it, like this was a sign of some kind of guilt. I don’t think—’
‘Be nice, it would, to think he did have a hand in it.’ Isabel looked up at Lol. ‘But it didn’t feel right to me either. Boy was clever enough to realize smartish where Stock was going, but not intelligent enough to control his reactions – if he had something to hide. Does that make sense?’
Lol nodded. ‘Lots of money, well educated, but nowhere near as clever as Stock. And yet…’ He turned to Simon, took a breath. ‘Look, what you said about exorcism…’
They came to the vicarage; against dark woods and hills and the lines of foliate poles in the hop-yards, its whiteness seemed symbolic. There were no lights on in the front rooms, but a soft glow seeped through to most of the windows from some inner core.
‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ Lol said.
Simon didn’t reply, went to open the gate. Isabel reached up and squeezed Lol’s arm. ‘Listen, love, he gets things he can’t put into words, sometimes. You know what I mean?’
Lol looked up over the wheelchair to a broken necklace of moving lights rising up into the Malverns, to a band of black below the stars.
17
Comfort and Joy
SOD IT. NOT a question of keeping confidences, not any more. Merrily switched on the anglepoise in the scullery, picked up the phone. At 10.45 p.m., this wasn’t going to make her very popular.
However, the situation had altered. She hadn’t been in a position to give away any names before, when all her information had come from Hazel Shelbone. But now there was another and possibly more reliable source.
Reliable? Merrily sat in the circle of light and prodded in Robert Morrell’s home number. Really?
Little Jane Watkins, now learning that there was no such thing as a free holiday, had done it again. While she hadn’t actually initiated the spirit sessions, she had been involved, albeit peripherally.
Peripherally? She’d had a finger on the damned glass!
The phone was ringing out at the other end. Morrell was going to be in bed getting a pre-holiday early night, sleeping the sleep of the self-righteous. The phone would also awaken his wife and kids – always hard to get kids off to sleep on the eve of a holiday.
Merrily wondered how easily Jane would sleep tonight. Getting it into proportion, she couldn’t really imagine herself as a kid – the black-clad, black-lipsticked Siouxie and the Banshees fan – standing up and warning her mates that their ouija game was actually a form of psychic Russian roulette, then walking primly away, to communal jeering.
Not even if she’d been a vicar’s daughter.
‘Yes?’ The woman’s voice wasn’t sleepy, but it wasn’t exactly accommodating either.
‘Mrs Morrell? Could I speak to your husband? I’m sorry it’s so late. My name’s Merrily Watkins.’
‘One moment.’ Resentful now.
Merrily waited. The fact remained that Jane hadn’t even mentioned the incident afterwards, even knowing it would be in confidence. This hurt; she’d thought they’d got beyond secrets, beyond concealment. She’d thought there wasn’t anything they couldn’t discuss any more. She’d thought they were friends, for God’s sake.
The phone was snatched up. ‘Mrs Watkins, I have to tell you that in just under seven hours, we’re leaving for the airport with three small children.’
‘Look, I’m really sorry. But this is something I need to know and if I left it until tomorrow I’d be doing it behind your back, which—’
‘If this is about what I think it’s about, I’d be immensely glad if you did look into it behind my—’ Morrell calmed down. ‘All right, I’m sorry. It’s been a difficult year. I need a holiday. Go on.’
‘I’ll be very quick. I understand the organizer of – what we were talking about – is a girl called Layla Riddock.’
He breathed heavily into the phone. ‘And you’re asking if I’m surprised?’
‘I can tell that you’re not – which is interesting.’
‘Before we take it any further,’ Morrell said, ‘anything I tell you has got to be absolutely unattributable. And I mean—’
‘Of course.’
‘Because normally I’d only discuss any of my students in this way with the police, and only then if there was some suspicion of—’
‘Sure.’
‘All right,’ Morrell said. ‘Layla Riddock… God almighty, do I really need this? Layla is… a dominant kind of girl. Stepdaughter of Allan Henry, yes?’
‘Allan Henry of Allan Henry—?’
‘Homes. With all the baggage that implies, and more. Obviously, I don’t have an overview of their domestic situation, but if I had to guess, I’d say that, like a lot of wealthy men with potentially probl
ematical stepchildren, he’s been throwing money at her for years. Buying her compliance, until such time as she leaves home. She’s driving around, for instance, in the kind of car I couldn’t afford. Well… I probably could, but you know what I’m saying…’
‘Mmm.’
‘She’s an intelligent girl, but she’s got away with too much at home, which is why she expects to get away with the minimum of work at school. Swans around the place under this thin veneer of disdain at having to spend her days with children. You getting the picture?’
‘A bully, would you say?’
‘Not in the physical sense, far as I know. To be honest, I don’t think she’d lower herself. I think she can be intimidating enough, without resorting to physical violence. I mean, she’s quite…’
The line went quiet. Jane’s word had been ‘sinister.’
‘Something you’re thinking about, particularly?’ Merrily pulled her sermon-pad into the lamplight, reached for a fibretip. ‘Something which might save us both some time?’
She heard him breathe down his nose. ‘I’m thinking, inevitably, about the Christmas Fair we held at the school last year. Did you come?’
‘No, I was… a bit busy before Christmas. And Jane was off school, she wasn’t very—No, we didn’t come.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I can tell you we were all quite surprised, to say the least, when Ms Riddock volunteered to take part in the fund-raising – a Christmas Fair being something she might normally consider well beneath her. What she did, she approached the teacher in charge of the event and volunteered to set up a fortune-telling stall.’
‘Oh, did she?’
‘Yeah,’ he said ruefully. ‘I thought that might get you. Made a few of the staff sit up when she appeared on the day in full gypsy costume. Very exotic – and very expensive, too, according to my wife. Long, low-cut black dress, big gold earrings – gold, not brass. Black hat with a dark veil. All very mature, very mysterious, just a bit sinister, I suppose – but that may be hindsight.’
She always looks… tainted, somehow, Jane had said. Merrily lit a cigarette.
‘Some of the staff had reservations from the start,’ Morrell said. ‘But as it was the first time in anyone’s memory that Layla Riddock’d shown any enthusiasm for anything apart from burning rubber outside the gates, they weren’t inclined to push it. So they set her up in the hall, back of the stage, behind a curtain. Somebody painted a sign – Gypsy Layla – and, as all the other stalls were fairly routine, people were queuing up to cross her palm with silver. Men, too, once they’d seen her.’
‘She’s very attractive?’
‘I suppose you would say she exudes a certain hormonal something. Something you don’t often find at school Christmas fairs, anyway.’
‘And was she good at telling fortunes?’
‘She was bloody good at frightening people,’ Robert Morrell said bitterly. ‘Wouldn’t have frightened me, as you probably realize by now. But I accept that a lot of people are taken in by that kind of rubbish, against all their better instincts. Anyway, I don’t know much about this sort of thing, but I gather that the usual routine is to tell the customers they’re going to cross the water, or come into some money, live long and happy lives, have lots of children.’
‘What was she using? Crystal ball?’
‘I wouldn’t know. She was certainly reading palms at some stage. Anyway, the staff started to notice that very few people were coming out actually smiling. And the ones who did, their smiles tended to be rather strained. Then some granny emerges very white-faced and almost fainting. One of the female staff sits her down, brings her a cup of tea, learns that Layla’s looked at her palm and advised her to start getting her affairs in order because she ain’t… got… long.’
‘Oh.’
‘Quite. There were several others, we found out later. One pregnant woman, for instance, had been told to prepare for the worst. Or, as Layla apparently put it, “I see a withering in your womb.” ’
‘You found this out on the night?’
‘Not all of it. Some of the stories came out over a period of days. But, I suppose, the atmosphere on the night itself… well, as Christmas Fairs go, it’s fair to say there was gradually less of an ambience of comfort and joy than one might have wished for.’
‘She wasn’t stopped?’
‘Oh, she was stopped. Eventually. One of the parents had been kicking up about it long before it became widely known that she was taking people’s money for predicting death and sickness. The guy was objecting on religious grounds. Eventually, to my shame, we had to use that as a way of bringing it to a close.’
‘Anyone talk to Layla afterwards – ask her why she was doing this to people?’
‘I had Sandra – the deputy head – haul her in on the Monday morning. Waste of time. The girl pretended she couldn’t understand what the fuss was about – she was simply passing on the information she was picking up. Psychically. She claimed there was a long line of gypsies on her father’s side – her real father. I wanted to make her an appointment with the schools psychiatrist…’
Merrily wrote down: Gypsies – ask J.
‘But Sandra talked me out of taking it any further. Let it go. Just make bloody sure Gypsy Layla and her crystal ball don’t get invited back.’
‘Any of the kids, the other students, go in to get their fortunes told?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who was the parent who complained?’
‘A religious nutter. I’m sorry, I should say, one of our churchgoing parents, appalled that such a thing should be allowed to go on in an educational establishment, was threatening to take it up with the Director of Education. I was a bit short with him at first.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Is that important?’
‘Might be.’
‘Shelbone.’ A thoughtful pause. ‘David Shelbone. Father of – a fourth-year girl. And unfortunately he works for the council. He actually knows the Director of Education.’
Merrily kept her voice steady. ‘Layla know about this?’
‘Well, yes, of course, everybody did. I… the way we played it – and I’m not proud of this, but it seemed expedient at the time – Shelbone was still around, in another part of the school, so we had someone tip him off that people had been upset by the girl’s predictions. Sure enough, he comes rushing back. In God’s name, stop this wickedness! Embarrassing, really.’ Morrell chuckled. ‘But I don’t think anybody else went to have their fortune told after that. After a few minutes, Gypsy Layla walks away through the hall, head held high, grim little smile on her face. Crisis over.’
‘You thought.’ Merrily sat in the circle of lamplight and tried to remember if Jane had ever mentioned the incident. But she hadn’t gone back to school until the January term; probably all blown over by then.
‘And that’s all I can tell you,’ Morrell said. ‘However, if you are planning to take this any further, I’d offer two suggestions – one, if you’re going to take on Layla Riddock, remember you’re taking on Allan Henry, too, and he’s a man with unlimited money and with friends in high places.’
‘Not as high as mine, I always like to think.’ Merrily was starting to feel light-headed. How peevishly simple this could all turn out to be: Shelbone terminates Layla’s power-trip; Layla puts the frighteners on Shelbone’s daughter.
Morrell said, ‘My other advice is, leave Shelbone alone.’
‘You think he might try to convert me to Christianity?’
‘If you want to know about David Shelbone, talk to our friend Charlie Howe. He’ll tell you what kind of fanatic you’re dealing with – and I don’t just mean religion, which would probably never seem like fanaticism to you. The other reason not to bother Shelbone is that I’m afraid the poor guy has personal problems at the moment. I… I had a call about it earlier this evening. His daughter attempted suicide this afternoon.’
Merrily froze, the cigarette at her lips.
&nb
sp; ‘Less uncommon, I’m afraid, than it used to be,’ Morrell said, ‘especially at this time of year – children thinking they’ve done badly in their GCSEs, therefore their lives must be over. Maybe nothing at all to do with us, so I’m not going to theorize at this stage. Summer can be a stressful time for some kids.’
‘What did she do to herself?’ Half an inch of ash fell to the desk.
‘Friend of… Jane’s – is she?’
‘What did she do?’
‘Overdose, I believe. Taken to the County Hospital. They got to her in time, I gather.’
Merrily closed her eyes. The penny started spinning.
‘Always sad,’ Morrell said. Just like Merrily, he must have been putting two and two together from the moment the name Shelbone left his lips.
But he did have to be at the airport by seven.
‘So… if that’s all, I’ll get off to bed,’ he said.
She called Dennis Beckett; he knew nothing about Amy and an overdose. He couldn’t seem to absorb the significance. ‘But I prayed with her,’ he said querulously. ‘We prayed together.’ And then he added vaguely, ‘Perhaps she should have seen a doctor.’
‘Her parents wouldn’t.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘when I left her, she was spiritually calm.’
And how could you possibly know that?
Merrily asked him if he’d be visiting the parents tomorrow. ‘You are still minding the parish, aren’t you?’
‘Why did this have to happen?’ Dennis said plaintively.
Meaning, why did it have to happen while Jeff Kimball was on holiday.
‘What is it you want me to try and find out?’ he asked her at last, with resignation. He clearly didn’t want to have anything more to do with this case.
‘Could you find out if they’ll talk to me?’ Merrily said. ‘Both of them?’
She switched off the anglepoise and sat in the dark, watching the red light on the answering machine, wondering how she would have handled this if she’d known from the beginning about Layla Riddock.