The Cure of Souls

by Phil Rickman

  ‘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.

  ‘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.

  When she switched the light back on, nothing seemed any clearer and it was eleven-thirty. She called Huw Owen, who never seemed to sleep.

  ‘I tossed the coin,’ she told him eventually. ‘It came up tails. Twice tails: no spiritual interference, no unquiet spirit.’

  ‘And how did you feel, lass?’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘Come on, talk grown-up, eh?’

  ‘Sorry. I felt separation. Transcendence. Little me, big God. Plus, I was in there all night, but it felt like… not so long.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Six hours felt like – I don’t know – less than two. And you don’t fall asleep on your knees, do you?’

  ‘Contraction of time, eh?’

  ‘And it was… profound, moving, exalting – all that stuff. But I’m trying not to get carried away, because somehow it didn’t tally with what happened afterwards, out here in the material world. It’s not been a great day for me, Huw.’

  ‘Bugger me.’ She heard him drawing in a thin breath, like the wind through a keyhole. ‘You’re still expecting God to make it easy?’

  ‘I should scourge myself, put Brillo pads in my underwear?’

  ‘What I’m thinking, Merrily,’ Huw said reasonably, ‘is if you were in the church all last night, you should be getting some sleep. Just a thought.’

  ‘I grabbed an hour or so earlier. Look, I’ve got a kid who tried to kill herself. What can I do?’

  ‘Nowt. Let this Dennis pick up the mucky end of the stick for a change. Hang back, see what transpires.’

  ‘What transpires? Hasn’t enough bloody transpired?’

  ‘The girl’ll be safe in hospital for the time being.’

  ‘And what about Layla Riddock?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘there’s your problem, looks like. But we’re not the police. And even if we were, what’s she done wrong?’

  ‘Apart from terrifying old ladies and driving a little girl to the point of suicide as an act of pure vengeance?’

  ‘All right, it’s a tough one,’ he admitted. ‘Needs thought, prayer.’

  ‘Or the toss of a coin?’

  ‘Get off to bed, Merrily,’ Huw growled.

  She lay in bed, with Ethel the cat in the cleft in the duvet between her knees. She slept eventually. She dreamed, over and over, that the phone was ringing. She dreamed of a withering foetus inside her and awoke, sweating, and then closed her eyes, visualizing a golden cross in blue air above her, and slept again and awoke – something coming back to her from the night in the church. And she thought, Justine?

  Awakening, stickily, into blindingly mature sunlight and the echoey squeak-and-clang of the cast-iron knocker on the front door.

  Panic. Jane would be late for—Stumbling halfway downstairs, dragging on her towelling robe before she realized there was no Jane to worry about. The knocking had long stopped; she didn’t know how long it had been going on, and now the phone was shrilling. She dragged open the front door, and found nobody there. She ran through to the scullery, saw she’d left the anglepoise lamp on all night, and grabbed the phone.


  ‘Oh. I was begining to think you’d left already.’

  ‘Sophie—? Oh God, what time is it?’

  ‘It’s just gone eight. Are you all right?’

  ‘Er – yeh. Sorry, I… Late night.’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten Mr Stock?’

  ‘Mr S—?’

  ‘The haunted hop-kiln,’ Sophie said. ‘You’re due there by nine, remember? I made an appointment for you?’

  ‘Oh shit…’

  ‘Merrily, I was ringing to warn you that we’ve had more calls from the press. The People asked if they could be there – exclusively – for the exorcism. We said on no account. We also declined to confirm that there was going to be an exorcism. Also, more alarming as far as the Bishop was concerned, the religious affairs correspondent of the Daily Telegraph—’

  ‘Did you know Amy Shelbone had tried to kill herself?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Consequently, I need to speak to both the Shelbones. I think I’ve finally got some idea of what it’s about. Now, obviously they’re not going to want to speak to me, after what—’

  ‘Is the child all right?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t know. I haven’t had—’

  ‘I’ll talk to them. I’ll arrange something if I can. Merrily. Meanwhile… I hate to do this over the phone, and I did try to reach you last night but you were constantly engaged… I have to tell you the Bishop would like you to expedite this hop-kiln thing with the minimum fuss and the minimum publicity. He doesn’t want it dragged out. He doesn’t want to see you walking out of there into a circus of flashbulbs and TV lights.’

  ‘Sophie, it’s not that big a story.’

  ‘His exact words, as I recall, were… “Tell her to throw some holy water around and then leave by the back door.” ’

  ‘Put a bottle in the post and do the rest down the phone, shall I?’

  ‘He’s nervous, Merrily. Since the Ellis affair, where Deliverance is concerned, he’s been like the proverbial cat on hot bricks. Rarely a day goes by when he doesn’t ask me if we have a shortlist yet, for the panel.’

  ‘Meaning he doesn’t quite trust me.’

  ‘He’s nervous,’ Sophie repeated. ‘And once he finds out about this attempted suicide, he’s going to be very nervous indeed. Fortunately, he’s leaving at ten for a three-day conference in Gloucester. Transsexuality in the clergy. Should absorb his attention for a while.’

  ‘Three days?’

  ‘This year alone, surgery has increased the number of female clergy in Britain by four,’ Sophie said dryly.

  ‘I need to speak to Simon St John, obviously. I trust he’s not in the operating theatre.’

  Sophie made a small noise indicating it wouldn’t surprise her unduly. ‘I shall call him and tell him you’re on your way. Just… go.’

  ‘I’ll call you when it’s over,’ Merrily said. ‘Whatever the hell it turns out to be.’

  18

  Lightform

  ‘AND THIS IS where…?’

  ‘You’re standing on it,’ Mr Stock said.

  Although a despicable shiver had started somewhere below her knees, Merrily made a point of not moving.

  ‘The police, it seems, don’t operate a cleaning service,’ he said. ‘So we could hardly avoid knowing precisely where it was.’

  They were standing, just the two of them, on stone flags in the circular kitchen at the base of the kiln-tower. The place had a churchy feel, because of its shape and its shadows. The light was compressed into three small windows, like square port-holes, above head height – above Merrily’s, anyway. And it was cold. Outside, July; in here, November – what was that about?

  It’s about doing your job, isn’t it? It’s about not prejudging the issue on second-hand evidence.

  She let the shiver run its course, let it sharpen her focus.

  She’d driven over here with a head full of Amy Shelbone and Layla Riddock and Jane – everybody but Gerard Stock, whose problem had been devalued because he was allegedly a professional conman, a manipulator, a spin-doctor.

  And then you walked out of a summer morning into this temple of perpetual gloom, and it came home to you, in hard tabloid flashes, that a man had actually been beaten to death, in cold blood, right here where you were standing, his face, his skull repeatedly crunched into these same stone flags.

  Violent death would often have psychic repercussions; you knew that.

  Then there was Gerard Stock himself – bombastic, bit of an operator, possible drink problem. This morning Gerard Stock was wearing a clean white shirt and cream-coloured slacks. His hair was slicked down and his beard trimmed. The impression you had was that Mr Stock had bathed this morning in the hope of washing away the weariness in his bones, changed into clothes that would make him feel crisp and fresh. But the weariness remained in his bleary eyes and the sag of his shoulders.

  If this was an act, he was good.

  ‘There are… two different versions of the story.’ He was standing with his back to the cold Rayburn stove that sat on a concrete plinth, probably where the old furnace had once been. His voice was as arid as cinders. ‘The prosecution’s submission was that Stewart had been in bed upstairs – alone – when the boys broke in.’

  ‘Boys?’

  ‘Glen and Jerome Smith, nineteen and seventeen. Travellers. Members of their family had been helping Stewart with his research into the links between the gypsies and the Frome Valley hop farms. He’d bought the boys drinks in the Hop Devil, paid them also in cash for their “research assistance” – mainly a question of finding Romanies who were willing to talk to him. But, according to the prosecution, the Smiths got greedy, and they came to believe he had a fair bit of money on the premises.’

  Merrily looked around. No indications of wealth and no obvious hiding places in a circular room that didn’t seem to have altered much from its days as the lower chamber of a hopkiln. Its walls were of old, bare brick, hung with shadowy implements, non-culinary.

  Romantic, maybe, but not an easy place to live.

  ‘In their defence,’ Mr Stock said, ‘the Smith brothers told a different story which, to me, has more than a ring of truth. It certainly didn’t do their reputation any favours. Basically, they admitted visiting poor old Stewart on a number of occasions at night to… administer to his needs.’

  ‘You mean sexual,’ Merrily said. ‘For money.’

  Next to her was a dark wood rectangular table top on a crossed frame which looked as if it had once been something else. A large-format book called The Hop Grower’s Year lay face down on it. On the back of the book was a photograph of the author – small features under grey-white hair so dense it was like a turban. The photo was one of those old-fashioned studio portraits with a pastel backcloth like the sky of another world, and the face brought home to her the reality – and the unreality – of why she was here. For this was him: the kiln-house ghost.

  Her first task: to determine whether it was reasonable to believe that some wisp, some essence of this person was still here. Madness. Even half the clergy thought it was madness.

  ‘… Agreed they’d accepted money several times,’ Gerard Stock was saying, ‘for research and for giving him… hand relief, as it was described to the court. All rather sordid, but gypsies aren’t squeamish about sex. As Stewart pointed out in his book, their society might be closed to the outside world, but it’s very open and liberal when you’re on the inside. Gypsy kids tend to get their first carnal knowledge at the hands of siblings, if not parents. Prudish, they’re not, which is healthy in a way, I suppose – you won’t find many Romanies in need of counselling.’

  He inspected Merrily, as if checking how prudish she might be. No way could she align this Stock with the slick PR man described by Fred Potter, the reporter, and hinted at by Simon St John. He was just someone trying to rationalize the irrational, more scared by it than he’d ever imagined he could be. He’d told her frankly that Stewart Ash and he had never got on – As
h always blaming him for leading his niece into a world of ducking, diving and periodic penury.

  People will talk to you, as a human being, the Bishop had said, meaning she came over as small and harmless – no black bag.

  ‘Look… if you want to sit down over there…’ Mr Stock indicated a chair pulled out from the table. ‘I’m afraid Stewart really was found lying with his head almost exactly where your feet are.’

  ‘I’m OK. Go on.’

  ‘Well, he was wearing pyjamas. There was a lot of blood. His face was almost unrecognizable. We’ve scrubbed and scrubbed at the flag, but when the sun’s in the right position you can still see the stains distinctly.’

  Merrily made a point of not looking down, inspecting the upper part of the room instead. She’d been in hop-kilns before, and couldn’t help noticing how basic this restoration had been – rough boarding fitted where once thin laths would have been spaced out across the rafters, supporting a cloth to hold the hops for drying over the furnace.

  ‘The Smiths always fiercely denied killing him, insisting, at first, to the police that someone must have followed them in and done it after they’d left.’

  ‘Any evidence of that?’

  ‘Of sexual activity? Apparently not. When there was nothing in the forensic evidence, nothing from the post-mortem, to suggest Stewart had recently had sex, they panicked and one of them changed his story – claiming they’d come here to do the business and found him already dead.’

  ‘That couldn’t have helped them,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Finished them completely, far as the jury was concerned. Found guilty, sent down for life. They’ve appealed now – every one appeals. Couple of civil-liberties groups assisting. Probably won’t succeed, but I imagine one or two people in the area are getting a touch jittery about it. We certainly are.’ He laughed nervously. ‘If they didn’t do it, who did? It’s one thing to live in a place where a murder was committed; something else to live with the possibility that the murderer’s still out there.’

  ‘You think that’s a real possibility?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  He walked over to the wall, pulled down a wooden pole with a slender sickle on one end. Unexpectedly, the crescent blade flashed in the shaft of sunlight from the middle window. Merrily stayed very still as he hefted it from hand to hand.