by Phil Rickman
‘In the vicarage. With him. But…’ She reached out to his arm. ‘No… Honestly, she’s fine. Like, what’s he going to do? She knows him. She told me to come and have a drink with you and she’d be along later. There’s not going to be any more trouble. Not till he finds out what the little bastards did to his car, and even then… I don’t know.’
Her thoughts were swimming in the white noise of bar chat. Lol had been with Gomer and Barry, glasses on his nose, head turning as the door opened. Excusing himself quickly when he’d seen her face, guiding her to the little niche behind an oak pillar.
‘But Wall was scared?’ Lol said.
‘It was weird. You know what he’s like, all mouth and bullshit and phoney bravado. I thought he was going to give the kid a serious kicking.’
She sank back, head against the oak pillar. Bloody hell, you went away for a few weeks and it was like the whole climate had altered. Kids at the door, too old for what they were doing – trick or treat becoming a protection scam with menaces.
‘Dean Wall… he was always just a thick yob. But still a kid. Like when I was a kid. And now he’s a man. Facing charges for dealing, according to Mum.’
‘You don’t know if there’s history here. If Wall is on bail and the stories about Khan and the drug trade are true… I’m not sure what I’m saying here, Jane, I’m just a jobbing guitarist.’
He’d never expressed much of an opinion on drug use one way or the other. Probably a legacy of his unwarranted stretch in a psychiatric hospital on a diet of orange-coloured pills.
‘Remind me,’ Jane said. ‘Mum met Khan at Wychehill, in the course of the job?’
‘When Syd Spicer was vicar there. I went over with her a couple of times, as you know, but I never met Khan.’
‘Thing is, Lol, the dealers and the fences and all that in Hereford, they all live on the Plascarreg and everybody knows that. But Khan’s in another league. He has this respectable side. You see his picture in the paper with councillors.’
‘But he also has a respectable side?’ Lol said.
Jane laughed. She’d really missed Lol. Realized she hadn’t seen him for nearly two months. He was wearing a dark jacket over a sea-green T-shirt. Looking tired, but in a good way. His hair was shorter. Since he and Mum had become an item, she’d had to concentrate on not fancying him any more, counting every new grey hair, that kind of thing.
But now…
She felt queasy. In the mullioned window above their table, the panes of thick, scarred glass had dulled to near-opaque.
She dug out a smile.
‘You had this planned? Dinner?’
‘Not really, it was just a spur of the moment thing. With getting back early.’
‘Romantic.’
‘We’ve never actually done it before. Seemed like extravagance.’
‘Special occasion?’
‘Not really. Just that I’m home. Properly home.’
‘And, like… you have a little box in your pocket? With a ring in it?’
He looked worried.
‘You think I should have? You think she—?’
‘No.’ Jane patted his hand. ‘Bound to be the wrong kind. In the movies it can be like a curtain ring or a keyring. Real life, always more complicated. But hey…’
‘We have talked about it,’ Lol said.
‘Yeah, well, keep talking. If you ever get another chance.’
She wondered if she could talk to him properly. About some things she really would not like to tell Mum. She’d noticed how Lol had kept looking at her, puzzled, like he thought she’d changed.
God, what a mess she was.
Too warm in the glittery dress, too informal, too girly. God. Merrily had offered Mr Khan coffee, which he’d declined, then tea, which he’d accepted – did she have Earl Grey? She’d had to go down on her knees to a rarely opened cupboard under the worktop. The Earl Grey packet had been embarrassingly dusty.
‘As I recall,’ Mr Khan said, ‘when we met, you were investigating, on behalf of your diocese, a series of road accidents in the Malvern hills, prior to which the drivers experienced either the same hallucination or… something else.’
He paused, as if giving her a chance to finish the story, which she didn’t plan to do. It had no happy ending, they both knew that.
‘The job title is Diocesan Exorcist?’ he said. ‘Is that correct?’
‘Tends to operate under different names nowadays. Deliverance Consultant, Adviser on the Paranormal. I think the Church is hoping it’ll get lost in a scattering of inexact terminology.’
‘But you’re still doing that?’ he said.
‘Far as I know.’
‘The casting out of devils.’
‘Well, that’s a bit…’
‘Extreme?’
‘A bit.’
He nodded solemnly, leaning back in the cane chair, hands in his lap, the pot of Earl Grey between them on the refectory table. How long had he been feigning this absurd young-fogey gentility? What did he think it conveyed, apart from that he was someone you’d be a little crazy to trust?
‘OK, devils,’ Merrily said carefully. ‘Some of my colleagues would tell you that was all in the movies. I wouldn’t be quite so dismissive. Never had to carry out a major exorcism – that is, an attempt to release someone from alleged demonic possession. Never easy to distinguish from mental illness. Apparently.’
Raji Khan was nodding. He had his sinister side, but how much of that was theatre? He looked down and bent to pick up something from the flags.
Ethel, the cat. He sat her on his knees.
‘What about houses, Mrs Watkins?’
‘In what respect?’
‘Houses that might appear to be inhabited by… what you might call non-human…’ He fondled Ethel’s ears. ‘… presences.’
Mr Khan and Ethel waited, both golden-eyed in the lamplight. Merrily sat and thought for a moment.
‘A surprising number of people do come to believe something is sharing their homes.’
‘The dead? Or something else?’
‘In many cases, it’s simply a question of things getting moved around. Disarranged. Possibly linked with the extreme emotions – or hormones – of living people.’
‘Poltergeists.’
‘It’s word we’re stuck with, I’m afraid.’
‘And you can deal with that?’
‘Pest control? We do what we can. With…’ She raised her eyes briefly to the beams. ‘… whatever help we can get.’
It never got easier explaining to people what probably was not meant to be understood. Assuring them that they weren’t alone. Weren’t mentally ill. Unless, of course, they were.
‘I recall…’ Raji Khan was stroking Ethel now, long and luxuriant motions, one hand after the other. ‘… when we met at Wychehill you were considering holding a service. A Requiem for the dead. Which you thought I might like to attend.’
‘Seemed logical at the time. Your… venue was being accused of putting too many dangerous drivers on the local roads, and that was getting mixed up with the other problems. A death’s an awful catalyst. A Requiem – we believe – can calm a situation. Bring people together. I thought maybe you wouldn’t be against that.’
‘It would have been a very public occasion.’
‘Intentionally so, but that’s not—’
‘My cousin’s difficulty, you see,’ Mr Khan said, ‘is something that he and his family would very much prefer to be kept out of the public domain. And not only because of his faith.’
‘You’re both Muslim?’
He was, she recalled, a Sufi, a follower of the more mystic side of Islam. He opened his hands, leaving Ethel balanced for a moment before dropping to the flags.
‘In which case,’ Merrily said, ‘wouldn’t your cousin talk to his imam? Wherever he is.’
‘Worcester.’
At least an hour’s drive. Hereford didn’t have a mosque, or many Muslims for that matter. The ones here in the
north usually went to Kidderminster.
‘And here we come to the problem, the reason for my visit,’ Mr Khan said. ‘It was actually my cousin’s imam who suggested he might discuss the situation with you.’
‘Erm… why?’
Mr Khan drank some Earl Grey then set his mug down.
‘He didn’t want to touch it, Mrs Watkins. Wouldn’t go near.’
7
Not one of ours
‘HAVE I ALARMED you?’
The dapper Khan was leaning back in his chair, his head tilted oddly, like a puppet’s, a wing of black hair over one eye.
‘I— No.’
Yes.
‘It is, I suppose, a political barrier rather than a spiritual one.’
‘Mr Khan, that’s even more frightening.’
He laughed.
There were supposed to be over two hundred Muslims in and around Hereford. Which, compared with almost every city east of the county, was minimal. In theory, the C of E was still almost uniquely dominant in this part of the country, more Anglican churchgoers per head of population in Herefordshire than any other English county, according to census figures. No mosque. You occasionally saw a woman in a face-hugging scarf, though rarely a burka. Merrily didn’t know any imams.
She drank some Earl Grey: too sweet, too scented, never liked it much. Raji Khan sighed.
‘It is a cause of the greatest sorrow to me, Mrs Watkins, the way the merest mention of Islam provokes apprehension. My cousin wanted to be a suicide bomber but failed the intelligence test. So had to become an orthopaedic surgeon.’
He looked concerned to the point of stricken. A lightbulb was buzzing somewhere. Merrily glanced from lamp to lamp then back to Raji Khan.
‘You see… you’re afraid even to laugh, Mrs Watkins.’
‘Was that an Islamic joke?’
‘A Sufi joke. We’re famous for them.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘But let’s put all that aside for the moment. Let me tell you about my cousin’s house.’
She traced the failing bulb to the converted oil lamp on the dresser, went to switch it off, leaving the big kitchen ochre-lit and full of sepia shadows.
The Golden Valley was in the extreme west of the county, green pillows under the headboard of the Black Mountains. An area of hidden villages, its nearest towns in Wales.
Adam Malik had never intended to live there. Certainly not in a crumbling medieval farmhouse where the only neighbours were sheep.
‘We grew up in the same industrial area of the west Midlands,’ Khan said. ‘I am… what you’d think of as godfather to his daughter. At university, he took up with a woman of white, English stock. Nicole. Now Nadya.’
‘She converted to Islam?’
‘Oh, yes. Her father is a Herefordshire heritage builder… Dennis Kellow?’
Merrily shook her head. At one time, the Welsh border seemed to have more heritage builders than heritage.
‘I do realize,’ Khan said, ‘that many of these chaps are well-spoken cowboys. Claiming to have worked extensively for the National Trust and numbering the wealthier estate agents among their drinking companions. Choose your heritage builder with care. Kellow, however, has been one of the exceptions – painstaking, not cheap, and impatient with clients who expected quick and cosmetic results. He’d been working, on and off, for several years, on an ancient farmhouse owned by the scholar Selwyn Kindley-Pryce.’
‘I must be sounding very ignorant, here, Mr Khan, but…’
‘I wouldn’t worry. Eminent but not terribly well known. Pryce’s income fluctuated. He’d have restoration work done when he could afford it, until ill-health forced him to move out, with the work far from finished. And when its sale to a film director fell through, Kellow saw his chance. I think he’d been planning for some time to sell his business and retire, but he wasn’t the kind of man to buy himself an expensive armchair, if you see what I mean. He wanted to retire into a project – a labour of love.’
Khan described it: large, rambling, six bedrooms, barns and a hundred acres of land. More than just a house, far more, and even during the property slump it had been beyond the resources of Dennis Kellow. However, it failed to sell to anyone else and he’d ended up renting it, in the hope of buying at a future date.
‘The opportunity eventually presented itself when his sonin-law obtained a senior consultancy at Hereford Hospital, and was in need of a home.’
‘Ah.’
‘I’m not sure of the details – indeed, it’s none of my business – but I believe they agreed to buy the house between them and share the renovation costs. The house would eventually pass to the Maliks.’ Khan raised his eyes to the beams. ‘After my experiences at Wychehill, I would have urged Adam to run a mile, but he’s more of a romantic than me. Even more of an Englishman than me.’
Was that possible? Merrily said nothing.
‘The thought of becoming a country gentleman… you know? Madness. However, an element of urgency crept in when Dennis Kellow had a stroke.’
‘Oh God. Serious?’
‘Caught quite early. He’s recovered and wants to continue with his life project. Promising to take it slowly, calm down, improve his diet… and, of course, with a doctor in the house…’
‘No better safety net than that. That mean they’ve moved in now, the Maliks?’
‘Some months ago.’
‘OK.’ Merrily fired up her e-cig. ‘So we have an old house, a man with health problems and… did you say there was a baby?’
‘A teenage girl. Aisha.’
‘Right. And, erm…’
‘Something else. Another, unwanted, member of the household. Which the Maliks thought their imam in Worcester might deal with. Until he informed them that he was unable to assist.’
‘Because? Can we spell this out?’
‘Because this is an old house. A very old house. And whatever is happening there is almost certainly linked to its history. Which is not our history, do you see what I mean?’
‘Not Islamic?’
Mr Khan sipped his tea, his feline eyes finding hers over the cup.
‘How to put this. In large areas of the Middle East, the heritage is Islam, and other faiths are considered interlopers. At the same time, we accept that in other places, here in the West, it’s we who are the newcomers and must tread carefully.’
‘I see.’
‘There are… let’s say fundamental theological differences pertaining to what you might call paranormal phenomena. The imam tells my cousin his problems relate to lower spiritual forces emanating from something entirely British. That if he wants the problem addressed he needs to approach a Christian priest.’
‘Is he Sufi, too? Adam?’
‘Oh, heavens, no. We both grew up in the more orthodox, Sunni tradition. I felt the need to move on… and move inwards, if you like. Most members of my family have nothing to do with me now. Never been an issue for Adam, and so when I told him I’d actually encountered the Hereford diocesan exorcist…’
Already she was foreseeing problems. She poured herself more of the stewed tea.
‘So… what exactly are we looking at? And please don’t go all elliptical on me.’
‘I think you should hear it from the people concerned.’
She folded her arms on the tabletop.
‘There are going to be formalities. I’ve never dealt with an inter-faith situation before, so I’ll have to get some kind of clearance from—’
‘No, no.’ He sat up. ‘I don’t think so.’
She stared at him.
‘I don’t know what level of bureaucracy you have in the Anglican Church pertaining to this kind of situation, but we’d feel better if you were… shall we say operating below its threshold.’
‘What?’
‘Adam Malik is a quiet man, a good man in a very public occupation. His daughter’s settling in at a local secondary school. He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself or his family, doesn’t want talk around the hospital.
Or amongst his new neighbours – not that there are many of those.’
‘There’s always a strong element of privacy in deliverance. Everything kept mainly between me, my bishop and our mutual secretary.’
‘Mrs Watkins, with all respect, I doubt you have any control at all over your bishop and who he consults. He might, for example, want to discuss it with a senior Muslim cleric. He might even want to make a “thing” of it. Publicity.’
‘He wouldn’t.’
‘Islam itself has no great foundation in Hereford. There’s a meeting room and embryonic plans for a mosque. It’s at a delicate stage. No one wants controversy of any kind.’
‘This is already getting too complicated for me.’
‘No, no.’ Khan was shaking his head. ‘It’s not complicated at all. We’re simply asking for a modicum of discretion.’
Merrily poured herself some more of the awful Earl Grey.
‘It might take a while. It’s never a quick fix. It can involve several visits.’
‘I realize that.’ Khan’s fingertips tapping softly on the table. ‘Look, if you were to say now, go away, Khan, leave me alone, this is not my problem… well then, I should do that. Walk away and that would be an end to it.’
‘Except it wouldn’t be, would it?’
He thought for a few moments, fingers steepled.
‘I’ll tell you one aspect of this. Which you can accept or reject, according to your beliefs. The situation had been escalating, from minor what you would call poltergeist phenomena… to more extensive damage and disruption. And then… an apparition. And Kellow’s stroke.’
‘They think there’s a connection?’
‘You ask Adam Malik if he thinks there’s evil here,’ Khan said, ‘and he’ll become subdued, reticent, embarrassed even. He’s a doctor, a scientist.’
‘But he sees a link between paranormal activity in this house and his father-in-law’s illness?’
‘He agreed to discuss it with the imam. I offered to make an approach to someone who I thought would handle it all with discretion. His wife Nadya was, I have to say, averse to having a Christian priest in the house.’
‘This is Dennis Kellow’s daughter…’
‘Converts,’ Khan said, ‘can sometimes be more… extreme than most people born into a faith.’