The Cure of Souls mw-4

by Phil Rickman

  ‘You and your thugs!’ Mrs Shelbone was out of the car, now, a big, bulky woman, arms flailing. ‘You can have your thugs destroy our car, but you won’t intimidate us, with the… with the Lord Jesus Christ on our side!’

  ‘Destroy your car?’ Allan Henry looked for a moment like he was going to laugh but in fact, Jane thought, his expression had turned suddenly menacing. ‘Thugs? You arrive at my private residence at one in the morning in a car that’s either been in an accident or been… quite deliberately damaged by you and your husband and you wake everyone up – to accuse me and my gardener—’

  ‘You—’ Mr Shelbone stabbed a quivering finger at him. ‘You’re filth. God will punish you!’

  ‘Ah, you’re a sad and a sick old man, David Shelbone,’ Allan Henry said, almost lazily. ‘You should be having treatment. You should be on medication.’

  ‘It’s you that’s made my husband ill!’ Mrs Shelbone shrieked. ‘And you’ve turned our daughter… You and that… witch.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Allan Henry turned on Mrs Shelbone. ‘That’s something else, isn’t it? I had a silly little woman vicar here allegedly investigating some ludicrous allegations against my stepdaughter. I might have known where all that came from.’

  Jane began to quiver. Eirion put a hand over her mouth. ‘Save it,’ he whispered. ‘Just remember everything that’s said. You’re a witness.’

  She thought she caught a movement behind Allan Henry, a figure flitting like a moth. Eirion took his hand away.

  ‘You…’ David Shelbone’s rigidly pointing arm began to shake suddenly. God, Jane thought, what if he has a heart attack? ‘You tell me… where you’ve got’ – his voice rose to a howl of helpless anguish – ‘GOT MY DAUGHTER!’

  And suddenly Allan Henry was losing it. ‘Shelbone!’ Advancing through the gate in the illumination from the headlights. ‘What would I want with your fucking daughter? Truth is, you and this mad old bat should never have been allowed to adopt that child, and if she’s run away, then you’ve driven her away. We—’

  He half turned as headlights appeared behind him. There was the mean, throaty snarl of a powerful engine, and then the lights were full in Jane’s eyes.

  ‘It’s coming out!’ Eirion yelled. He started to drag her back into the rhododendrons.

  Jane heard Mrs Shelbone scream, saw the woman throwing herself in panic across the bonnet of the Renault as the yellow car came through the gates. There was a vicious scraping of metal on metal, a small splintering crunch as it tore a tail light from the Renault and spun off into the bushes, no more than a foot from Jane’s legs, to get past and back onto the drive. She heard tyres spinning and then the wheels hit the tarmac, skidding, and the car took off into the night, and Jane yelled,

  ‘Layla!’

  Eirion was frantic. ‘You OK? Jane? Jane!’ Feverishly pushing foliage aside, like he might find both her legs severed at the thighs.

  ‘That was Layla Riddock!’ Jane cried. ‘Where’s the car? Get after her!’ Her legs worked. She began to run back up the drive. ‘Come on!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please, Irene, go, go, go – go!’

  Nice idea. Quick thinking in the circs. Except that when the BMW reached the lane, there was no sign of the yellow car. She could have gone either way, either left towards Dilwyn or right to Hereford. Jane was sobbing in frustration, scanning the horizon for tail lights, but the horizon was no more than five yards away, here: high hedges either side of the twisty road.

  ‘Right! Irene, go right!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to try something. It just seems more likely. Just do it.’

  ‘Call the police.’ Eirion was poised at the junction, holding the car on the clutch. ‘The phone’s on the dash. Dial 999.’

  ‘And tell them what?’

  ‘Tell them there’s a disturbance at Allan Henry’s. Tell them you’re a neighbour and you heard crashing and screams.’

  ‘There aren’t any neighbours. Please, Irene, go – go!’

  ‘Call the police! And if you really want to help the Shelbones, give the cops our names as witnesses.’

  ‘Oh, all right!’ Jane stabbed at the phone, and Eirion sent Gwennan’s car racing towards Hereford, Jane half hoping that after a couple of hundred yards they’d find the yellow sports car upended in some ditch.

  ‘Emergency – which service?’

  ‘Police.’

  Eirion made pained noises as Jane described the sounds of what could have been a massacre coming from the Henry spread, and then conveniently got cut off.

  ‘Why the hell did you—?’

  ‘Just keep going, Irene.’

  ‘Why? What’s the point?’

  ‘Haven’t you figured this out yet?’

  ‘Forgive me, I’m Welsh.’

  ‘She’s got the kid in the car,’ Jane said. ‘She’s got Amy.’

  Merrily was breathing again. In the confining darkness of Lol’s car, they’d approached the absurd, cornered the chimera… been able to talk about something that otherwise might have remained undiscussed, possibly for ever, putting a permanent distance between them – a gap that might never have been crossed.

  Now, she was feeling closer to Lol than she had to anyone except for Jane, Sophie sometimes and – curiously – Gomer Parry, since first coming to Ledwardine and taking on this impossible job and discovering that the people she could trust to try and understand her were all too few.

  Ironically, Lol remained unconvinced about the threat posed by Layla Riddock – maybe because, without her, they wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have reached this level of communication.

  ‘She’s seventeen,’ he said as they neared Canon Pyon. ‘She’s just a rich girl with a hobby.’

  ‘However,’ she reminded him, ‘she clearly believes that being half-gypsy gives her access, a power base.’

  ‘Imaginary power base.’

  ‘And she’s now got remarkable influence over one of the richest developers in the county.’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘Taking over his house, his bed? From her own mother?’

  ‘She’s a young girl, he’s a rich middle-aged man,’ Lol said sadly. ‘The gypsy magic could be entirely superfluous.’

  ‘And the fact that she’s also assuming responsibility for conserving and regenerating his finances? And somehow being allowed to?’

  ‘It’s not a fact, though, is it?’ Lol said. ‘It’s only what she thinks. He scatters her mystical charms and talismans around, it keeps her sweet. He doesn’t believe any of it, and they both know it won’t last.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She watched Lol driving, the slit-eyed alien on his sweatshirt lit green by the dashlights. The mature woman’s dream: a nice-looking man who, targeted by a young girl, any young girl, could be firmly relied on to run like hell. ‘So, what about the persecution of the Shelbones? It starts as a game, becomes a serious fixation for the persecutor as well as for the principal victim. And it’s working.’

  ‘Why is it working?’

  ‘It just does,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Black magic just works?’

  ‘In the short term, it works. People who go down that road find they can get what they want very quickly. Then it starts to mess them up and they can’t get out. I’m not being metaphysical here. Pure, calculated evil works, short-term, because it nearly always takes us by surprise. We’re not conditioned to turn the corner and meet the man with the knife.’

  ‘And what happens when we are conditioned?’

  ‘Then maybe we also start to carry knives,’ Merrily said miserably. ‘Then it gets ugly. Hang on, Lol, I think we’ve just passed the turning.’

  She’d spotted a man standing by the roadside, smoking a cigarette.

  Lol pulled in and reversed. The man threw down his cigarette and stamped on it. The Astra drew level with him. Merrily wound down her window.

  ‘Good morning, Reverend Watkins,’ Allan Henry said wearily.
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  On the edge of the Holmer industrial estate, at the top of Hereford, there were temporary traffic lights. They took for ever to change. There was already a great wide Dutch container lorry waiting at the lights.

  ‘Mum was right after all,’ Jane said. ‘There is a God.’

  Behind the container lorry, its headlights full on, was a chrome-yellow Mazda sports car. Its driver kept revving impatiently. It was clear that if it hadn’t been for the Dutch lorry, this particular driver would have shot the lights.

  ‘Just as I was convinced we’d got it wrong and Layla had just kindly taken her home to Dilwyn,’ Jane said.

  ‘We’d got it wrong?’

  ‘Just don’t lose the slag.’

  Eirion said nothing. This was not such a happy development for him, evidently.

  Over the old city, the moon was very bright. You could see right across to the hills and Wales beyond. Jane didn’t think she’d ever felt so wide awake.

  40

  Bleed Dry

  THEY FOLLOWED THE yellow car down to the silent city, past Hereford United’s ground and the livestock market, losing the Dutch lorry at the big traffic island.

  Just the BMW and the Mazda now and, on Greyfriars Bridge, Eirion let Layla widen the gap.

  ‘You’ll lose her!’ Jane wailed.

  ‘Not now. I know where I am now. I know all the escape routes.’

  ‘What if the lights turn against us at the bottom, and she’s away? You want to lose her, don’t you?’

  ‘That would be nice,’ Eirion admitted, ‘but unfortunately I’m an honourable sort of person.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Jane glanced back across the River Wye where the Cathedral sat placidly beyond the old bridge, above a nest of modern buildings turned greyly medieval under the moon.

  They watched the Mazda go around the bottom island and up towards Belmont and the Abergavenny road, Jane leaning forward, peering through the windscreen to see if there were two heads in there. But the sports car was too low; Amy could be sunk down in the seat. The clock in the BMW said five past two.

  ‘Look – how do we know she’s got the kid?’ Eirion said.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Layla was there all the time – behind Allan Henry at the gates. I’m sure I even saw her once. She’d have heard everything. She knew the Shelbones were raising hell and the police were likely to be involved. She had to get Amy out.’

  ‘Out of where? She was staying with the Henrys? Does that sound likely to you?’

  ‘Irene, the whole thing’s sick. I don’t know what the arrangement was. For instance, Layla’s supposed to have a gypsy caravan somewhere in that wood. Maybe the kid was in there, maybe that’s where they were doing their seances, I don’t know.’

  ‘All this presupposing she’s so much under Layla’s thumb that she’d let her nearly run her mother down on the way out, without protesting, leaping up, shouting out. Admit it, none of this is making a lot of sense.’

  ‘Just stay behind her.’

  They tailed the Mazda through the Belmont District, past the all-night Tesco, another roundabout, a half-mile or so of main road, and then Layla took a left, and Eirion slowed but didn’t turn.

  ‘This looks like a minor minor road. If we so much as turn down here she’ll know we’re following her.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Let’s not blow it now, Jane, for the sake of a bit of caution.’ There was woodland both sides of the entrance, but it wasn’t too thick; anyone the other side would see their headlights. Eirion switched them off. ‘I don’t think there are many places you can get to from here, anyway, I think it just goes into plant roads.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Industrial development.’

  ‘So like maybe she killed Amy and she’s going to have her body set into some concrete foundations?’

  ‘Let’s try and retain just a modicum of proportion here.’

  ‘Oh yeah, let’s be sensible.’

  ‘OK, let’s not, then.’ Eirion turned left, put his headlights back on. They were into a newly made road through woodland that you could tell was being cleared: another ecological disaster zone. About half a mile in, they came to a fully cleared area washed by sterile, high-level security lamps. Eirion suddenly slammed on the brakes, cut his lights.

  Because there was the Mazda, parked outside some utility wire-meshed metal gates. A sign behind and above them said:

  DANGER. KEEP OUT.

  ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE

  PROSECUTED.

  At the side of it, another sign:

  Arrow Valley Commercial Properties

  BARNCHURCH TRADING ESTATE

  Phase 2

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Jane said.

  ‘Stay here,’ Eirion warned.

  Jane snorted. What was the point of that? She zipped up her fleece and got out of the car. She walked out into the middle of the clearing, the big lights shining down like this was a prison yard. A lone tree, a Scots pine, towered over the site, its steep trunk filigreed with moonlight.

  There was nobody in the Mazda. It was dead quiet, surreal.

  After a couple of seconds, Eirion stepped out, too, and Jane turned to wait for him. It was now that a shadow peeled off the base of the pine.

  Jane squeaked.

  The shadow spoke.

  ‘Little Jane Watkins. The vicar’s child. We are honoured.’

  Allan Henry leaned down to the Astra’s wound-down window. ‘My solicitor’s on his way. Not his usual office hours, but with all the money I pay the fat bastard, he’d’ve been reaching for his pinstripes even as we spoke.’

  He grinned, all those nice white crowns shining in the moonlight: teeth like stars. Basically unworried, Merrily concluded, up against it yet perversely energized; a stroll around the grounds with a cigarette and he was ready for anything. Been here before, and he’d be here again.

  ‘Where are the Shelbones now?’ she asked him.

  ‘Finally gone to the police, I imagine. I told them the bloody kid wasn’t here, never had been here. They weren’t convinced. My own fault: I’d antagonized them – maybe a mistake. Can’t believe they got you out again. Those people are frighteningly unbalanced. Look, how about you come down to the house and have that drink, Mrs Watkins. Is that your friend in there, the very proper Mrs Hill?’

  ‘It’s my other friend, the very self-effacing Mr Robinson.’

  ‘Boyfriend, eh? What a shame. When you’d gone yesterday, I had a little fantasy about you in your cassock.’

  ‘Thirty-nine buttons to undo, one by one,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s an old one. You haven’t seen a couple of teenagers around, boy and a girl?’

  ‘I told you: nobody here but me.’

  ‘But you’re a notorious liar, Allan.’

  ‘I swear on my Swiss bank account.’

  ‘OK.’ Merrily got out, Lol too, leaving the sidelights on, locking the car.

  ‘What’s he do, then?’ Allan Henry asked. ‘Archdeacon?’

  ‘He makes music. He writes songs.’

  ‘I think I feel one coming on now,’ Lol said.

  ‘Be careful, my friend,’ Allan Henry said, as if by instinct. ‘I don’t just threaten, I sue. I always sue. Go for everything. Bleed dry – it’s the only way.’

  Layla unlocked the metal gate with a steel key. She was wearing tight jeans and a black cotton top that finished three inches above her gold-ringed navel. Her tumbled hair was dyed black, with a long, streak of gold that seemed to have been spun from the moon. Jane could tell Eirion was unexpectedly impressed; he’d gone very quiet.

  ‘You don’t know about the Barnchurch, Jane?’ Layla’s voice was throaty, almost gravelly.

  It stood no more than twenty yards behind the gates. All the ground around it had been cleared, and a small mountain of sand had been dumped a few yards away. It was a regular red-brick building with a slate roof. There were brick steps up the outside, tough grass sprouting between them.

  It looked like, well, jus
t a barn, and not a very old one – except that, where the gable end was half-lit by the security lamps, you could make out where a Gothic window had been bricked up, just the ridge now, like an old operation scar.

  ‘This Welsh miracle-worker used to preach here, way back,’ Layla said. ‘Sinners reborn, the sick taking up their beds and walking out, angelic visitations. Powerful stuff. In fact, the farmer here was so impressed he gave him this barn, and all the local people helped turn it into a church, and the miracles went on for a while and then… I dunno, the buzz died, or the preacher fucked off back to Wales, or the miracles stopped happening or something, and it became just a barn again and got forgotten about. But, hey, once a holy place – you know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jane said, though it really wasn’t much more than a breath.

  ‘Imagine all that energy shut up with chickens and cows, sacks of feed, tractor parts. Throbbing away on its own for about a century. And then Allan buys the site and it wakes up again – so much energy focused on the old Barnchurch, so much money banked up, so many greasy palms, so much desire… that it’s become really charged again.’ Layla’s face was radiant. ‘You go in there, pow! Heavy shit, Jane. This place really makes it, where so many real churches are just old dust.’

  Eirion said, ‘Where is Amy?’

  Layla turned to appraise him. ‘Boyfriend?’ She walked right up to Eirion, gazed arrogantly into his eyes from about three inches away, her breasts almost touching his chest. Eirion blinked. Jane tensed.

  ‘Hey, this boy’s had nooky tonight!’ Layla spun away from him. ‘Was that with you, Jane?’

  Jane said nothing.

  ‘Where’s Amy?’ Eirion said stolidly.

  ‘You want to keep this boy, Jane? You’d like to stay together? I can actually fix that, if you like. I can show you kitan-epen. I fixed it for Eagles and Sigourney, did you know?’

  ‘Ms Riddock,’ Eirion said, ‘is Amy Shelbone with you?’

  ‘She’s probably in there.’

  ‘In the barn?’