The Cure of Souls

by Phil Rickman

  He waited for it near the gates. This was slightly awkward, but walking away wouldn’t look good.

  Both coppers got out. ‘Mr Henry? Mr Allan Henry?’

  Lol stood blinking in the headlight beams, aware of another vehicle pulling in behind the police car: the solicitor, maybe, arriving with Henry’s legal bulletproof vest.

  ‘Er, no,’ Lol said. ‘Mr Henry’s back there. In a gypsy caravan.’

  Exchange of glances, then they came slowly towards him, one either side. He leaned back against the gates, arms loose: no threat, not part of this. Where was the gardener – he should be handling it.

  ‘Then who are you, sir?’

  ‘Me? I’m just—’

  ‘Mr Laurence Robinson, as I live and breathe!’

  Not the solicitor, then. This was a recently familiar figure with red hair and an expression of pleasant anticipation.

  ‘Remember me, Mr Robinson? DI Bliss?’

  Like there were several Scouse accents in Hereford Division.

  ‘Remind me,’ Lol said.

  Bliss laughed. ‘What a night that was, eh?’ He walked over, car keys in his hand. He looked like he’d come out in a hurry; he was wearing a dark suit jacket over a white T-shirt and sweatpants. ‘And what a night this is turning out to be – what’s left of it. What you doing here, pal? That your car, is it, on the road?’

  Lol nodded. He saw one of the uniformed men had a flashlight levelled at the ground, tracking around.

  ‘Looks like there’s been something approximating to an RTA in this vicinity, boss.’

  ‘Does there, really?’ Bliss nodded absently. ‘Tell you what, Terry, why don’t you boys go and see if you can find Mr Henry and make sure he’s in one piece. I’ll have a chat with Mr Robinson here.’

  They leaned either side of the bonnet of Bliss’s modest Nissan. Lol was explaining as best he could, covering up very little.

  ‘Two nights?’ Bliss whistled thinly. ‘A fourteen-year-old girl missing for two nights, and no bastard tells us?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Lol said, puzzled. ‘You knew this, surely. You’ve talked to the parents.’

  Bliss looked genuinely blank. ‘I know nothing about any parents, pal. We’re just responding to a 999 from a young girl. Sounded like everybody who ever bought an Allan Henry home was arriving to complain en masse. I was in bed, I had a call, the magic name was whispered in me ear and… as I’d always wanted to visit Southfork, I came. I’ll be making the most of that in a minute.’

  ‘Young girl?’ Lol said.

  ‘I doubt it was this actual missing girl, if that’s what you were thinking. Let me get this right, are you saying Henry’s step-daughter knows where she is?’

  ‘Well, that’s what the kid’s parents thought.’

  ‘I’ll give Hereford a bell in a minute, see if these parents have shown up. Hereford can handle it from their side. Me, I feel much better knowing Mrs Watkins is on the case.’

  Lol met his eyes: sarcasm or a feed-line?

  ‘I like that little lady,’ Bliss said. ‘She tries so hard.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Allan Henry, mind, that feller’s something else again. Not harmed then?’

  ‘Not that I could see.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like it was worth getting out of me pit, does it?’ Bliss stood with his hands flat on the car bonnet. ‘So… anyone tell you about Gerard Stock, then, Laurence?’

  Lol nodded.

  ‘Surprise you?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘C’mon, Lol, I’m not taking a bloody statement here.’ Bliss straightened up. ‘You’re one up on me – you knew the bugger before he was a murderer. What I’ve learned in the past day or so tells me a bloke like that doesn’t clam up then top himself. Now he’s gone, there’s not much left for us to clean up. But I’d still like to know what it was about. Really. So – what was it about?’

  ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘I am. I’m asking you ’cause you’ve got no professional angle on this. And also, well, our governor, Annie Howe… very busy little snow queen tonight. She’s probably still up in her office right now. Don’t get me wrong – good copper, Annie, good thief-taker. But limited vision. And I’ll tell you now, Annie’s out to stick this on Merrily. Big-time.’

  ‘Why?’

  Bliss blinked. ‘That’s a good question. I never gave it much thought, to be honest. Why? Well… she’s no believer. It offends her a bit, working in a cathedral city, seeing what it all costs, being told by the Chief that she’s gorra stay on good terms with the Church hierarchy. And women priests – not that she likes men priests either, but I reckon she actually thinks women should be above that kind of superstitious rubbish. Women becoming priests is a sell-out. That’s what I reckon, anyway. Women like Merrily are traitors to the cause.’

  ‘That’s a new one,’ Lol said.

  ‘Yeh, and I never told yer. So, go on. Why did Gerard Stock kill his wife and chop her head off?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I know you don’t bloody know, Lol. What do you think? What does Merrily think?’

  ‘Well, nothing you could put in a police report.’

  ‘Bloody Nora!’ Bliss gazed at the moon. ‘I’ll decide what can be made to fit into a report – and it might not even need to be a report, as such. Might be a whisper in the right ear at headquarters. I’m trying to help here, pal. I was raised a Catholic in Liverpool, me.’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘It was a long time before I even started to question whether the stuff in the jug at Mass might possibly not have turned into the actual blood of Christ. Still keeps me awake sometimes. So, what I’m saying… I’m not gonna laugh, you know?’

  ‘Well… Stock gave the impression he thought his place was haunted by the ghost of Stewart Ash. But if you believe it was haunted, maybe you’re not looking at Ash whose murderers were caught. Maybe you’re looking at something that happened there a long time ago but that was never solved at all.’

  Bliss blinked. ‘Something else happened there? Should I know that?’

  ‘Maybe something was left that affected Stephanie more than Stock, because she was a woman. Something that changed her personality.’

  ‘You’re suggesting Mrs Stock was possessed, right?’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s the right word.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Bliss said.

  So Lol actually told Bliss about the Lady of the Bines. About Rebekah and Conrad Lake. Out here, under a full moon, it didn’t sound entirely crazy. While he was talking, a Mercedes drew up and a plump man with a pilot’s case walked past them to the gates without a sideways glance.

  ‘Doesn’t waste any time, does he?’ Bliss commented. ‘Right then. You’re saying that, whatever the truth of the matter, Gerard Stock, notorious piss-artist of this parish, had every excuse for thinking his wife had been… shall we say, infected by the spirit of a woman whose murder had gone undetected.’

  ‘Not only undetected, but undiscovered,’ Lol said.

  ‘This is not uninteresting, Laurence. You think if I went back through the annals of the old Herefordshire force, I might find a reference to this missing gypsy? Not that I’m doubting your word, but it might help to have that bit official.’

  ‘I wish you would.’

  ‘I will, son, no skin off my nose. There, that wasn’t too hard, was it? I get very upset about how nobody wants to talk to us any more in case it gets taken down and used in evidence.’ Bliss patted Lol on the shoulder. ‘See, from Merrily’s point of view, what would need to be shown was that Stock wasn’t just a dangerous mental case who only needed his blue touchpaper lighting – by, say, an unwise exorcism carried out without due forethought, et cetera, et cetera – but in fact an intelligent man forced by circumstances to grapple with possibilities to which he’d not normally have given houseroom.’

  Lol noticed Merrily on the other side of the gate. She was talking to one of the uniformed coppers. She had her should
er bag and her jacket draped over an arm.

  ‘Looks like this is the bit where I’m called on to fence for a while with Henry’s foxy brief,’ Frannie Bliss said.

  ‘Um, there’s something else.’

  ‘Quick as you can, Lol.’

  ‘It’s likely Stewart Ash had an unfinished manuscript suggesting Conrad Lake as Rebekah Smith’s killer. Also some pictures – photographs – that Lake took of Rebekah, naked, with a hop-bine wound around her… the two most important elements in his life, maybe.’

  ‘Or a sadomasochistic symbol of Mr Lake’s dominance, if she was tied up in the bine, Lol.’

  ‘That too. Anyway, we know Stewart had them in his possession, and that they’ve disappeared. Be interesting to know if the Smith boys did nick them, and if they got a chance to pass them over to someone before they were arrested. I mean, how long after the killing were the boys brought in? Could they have hidden the papers and photos somewhere? Could that stuff still be found?’

  Bliss nodded. ‘All right. I’ll check it out. Might take a day or two, and I might not be able to tell yer even if I do come up wid something, but you’ll know the info’s in good hands. Thanks, son. Anything else you think of, you know where to get me. Leominster or Bromyard, usually.’

  He moved towards the gates. Lol followed him.

  ‘So what exactly… has Howe got planned?’

  ‘Well, it won’t come from her, will it? It’ll come from the Chief Constable.’ Bliss stopped. ‘Not a word, OK? You can tell Merrily, and that’s it.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I mean it, Laurence. I fuck’n hate this politicking, but I’m not gonna lose me job over it.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Right, this is it. Annie’s suggesting the Chief puts out a press statement on the lines of, if the Church can’t be relied on to police itself on matters of irresponsible exorcism, without psychiatric back-up and the like, then it should be made far more open to legal redress. Words to that effect.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I only wish it were so, pal.’

  ‘What’s the bottom line?’

  ‘The bottom line, Lol, is that the Chief Constable of West Mercia puts his name behind the suggestion that a priest who performs an exorcism that has unfortunate consequences should subsequently be held legally responsible for those consequences. In this case, for instance, we could even be looking at manslaughter.’

  Merrily came through the gate. She looked worried. She was digging in her bag for a cigarette.

  Lol said, ‘They’d want… that she could actually go to prison?’

  ‘That’s extreme, but,’ Bliss shrugged, ‘this could serve as an important precedent. Chances are nothing’ll come of it – I mean, they repealed the Witchcraft Act, didn’t they? But it’ll certainly make everybody very nervous for a good while.’

  ‘The Church has no balls,’ Lol said. ‘No bishop in this country would ever sanction an exorcism again.’

  He watched Merrily coming towards them, the ruby glow of the cigarette between her fingers. It wasn’t the wider issue that worried him so much as what it would do to her. Prison – OK, unthinkable. But being identified as ‘the precedent’ would, for Merrily, be immeasurably worse.

  The pariah. Goodbye to the clergy, obviously. And then what? He’d never fully come to terms with the awesome concept of her as a curer of souls. But ex-Rev. Watkins, the disgraced former priest – the consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about.

  He couldn’t tell her. He had to do something.

  ‘As Father Flanagan used to say to us when we missed mass,’ Frannie Bliss winked, without humour, acquired an Irish accent, ‘ding-ding, and there’s another round to the Devil.’

  42

  Witch Trials

  THERE WAS A screen behind the altar in the Barnchurch. Not a rood screen but the sort of concertina thing women used to toss their robes over in Victorian bathrooms.

  The grey-white figure was hanging from this screen like a giant moth.

  Jane stayed back. The face was chipped and grotesque: the face of a black, dress-shop dummy, greasy white rings smeared around the eyes.

  ‘People touch her clothes, usually,’ Layla Riddock said, weaving in the candlelight, ‘for healing.’

  Jane recalled Kirsty: Gypsies got their own virgin – like a patron saint or a goddess – the Black Virgin.

  ‘Sara,’ Layla Riddock said carelessly. ‘Yes, she helps. Amy’s had so much starchy religion pumped into her that we have to bring her down slowly. Sara’s the Black Virgin, and you can view that two ways, can’t you? A saint or an inversion – or a semi-Christian mother goddess. All ways, she helps. Amy’s finding her true mother. And, through that, her true self.’

  ‘Where is Amy?’ Eirion said.

  ‘Haven’t you taught him any other words yet, Jane?’ Layla tossed her hair. Jane was realizing for the first time how scarily intelligent she was. ‘Watch my lips. I – don’t – know. Perhaps she went home. Perhaps she’s walking the streets. Perhaps she let a rapist in.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Jane shouted, ‘talk like that.’

  … alk like at… The walls sent back the echo. This was a big, empty place, bigger than the average parish church. Layla seemed very much at home here.

  ‘Your mother came to see Allan,’ she said. ‘And me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yesterday. She was with another woman, from the Cathedral, looking for Amy. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s funny, because it sounded like someone had told her all about the Steve’s Shed Experience.’

  ‘So?’ Jane had backed up against something low and hard, an old manger.

  ‘Well, that wasn’t a very nice thing to do, grass up your mates, was it? And it caused a nasty little row between me and Allan, making it difficult to get away tonight. I arranged to meet Amy here, but I’m late, and now she’s pissed off. Anything could’ve happened to her. All because you had to blab.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do? My mum was in a hassle with the Bishop, because Amy had laid it all on me. Because she was scared to put you in the frame. What was I supposed to do?’

  Layla shook her head in disgust. The ring in her navel shone like the edge of a coin. Jane was bewildered and furious with herself. How could she have let all this get turned around?

  ‘Anyway,’ she found herself saying petulantly, ‘it was you who set her up.’

  ‘This is Kirsty again, yeah?’

  ‘It’s the truth, though, isn’t it? You hated that family ever since her old man got your fortune-telling act pulled at the Christmas Fair.’

  Layla smiled. ‘Oh, Jane, one forgets, you’re so young…’

  Jane gritted her teeth. ‘Caution, cariad,’ Eirion whispered.

  ‘I’d go to all this trouble for that?’ Layla exploded. ‘For fuck’s sake, what am I?’

  ‘You predicted all kinds of bad stuff. You sent old women home thinking they were going to die—’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I was pissed! I’d spent a couple of hours in the pub with some guys, then I go back to the school, put on the clobber, and I just couldn’t bear to do all that you-will-come-into-money-and-go-over-the-water shit. So I just let it come through.’

  Jane stared at Layla in her black top and her black jeans standing next to the Black Virgin in her white robes and white headdress.

  ‘I can do this stuff. The dukkering. It’s a mixture of insight and scam. You do the patter, and sometimes the real stuff comes through. But you’re also observing, judging what kind of a punter you’ve got and tailoring your predictions accordingly. But I was pissed, like I say. I mean, you wouldn’t believe some of the people you get in there. There was this old woman, well dressed, dripping with jewellery, all she wanted to know was whether her friend, who was in the hospice, was going to leave all her money to her. You think, that age and all she cares about is more money? I said, yeah, you’ll get the money but you’d better spend
it quick ’cause you ain’t got long yourself, dearie.’

  Silence. Jane looked at Eirion. There was a little smile twitching at his mouth.

  Layla chuckled in her throaty way. ‘The one I was a little sorry about afterwards – but, yeah, I said it, sure I said it – was Libby Walker who used to do school dinners part-time. You know Libby? She’s about thirty and she’s got about five kids, all by different dads, and everybody knows she just does it for a council house and the family allowance, that’s how thick and irresponsible she is. And as soon as she came in the booth I could see she’d got another one in the oven, and I just lost patience and told her in this sinister voice that I could see “a withering” in her womb. Course, the stupid bitch went bloody spare.’

  Eirion made a little noise horribly suggestive of amusement, which made Jane blurt out, ‘You cursed Mrs Etchinson!’

  ‘Yeah.’ Layla sighed and fingered the hem of the robe of the Black Virgin.

  ‘Yeah, I did that. I cursed Mrs Etchinson, and Mrs Etchinson had got MS and we didn’t know it, and that was why she was so bloody ratty all the time. I’m sorry. What is this, the Salem witch trials?’

  ‘Layla,’ Eirion said, the Welsh coming out in his voice, ‘can we come back to the Shelbone issue? Whatever you think about Mr and Mrs Shelbone, their dear little daughter has vanished and they’re worried sick. And they’ve been treated pretty abominably at your stepfather’s house – we saw this. First they had their car smashed in by a man with an aggression problem who calls himself a gardener, then your stepfather blatantly lied about it—’

  ‘Oh, Allan’s just a little boy,’ Layla said. ‘Turns peevish if he doesn’t get his own way. Forget all that. He’ll get Douglas Hutton, his lawyer, to fix it – money will change hands, faces will be saved. Allan’s not a bad guy, he’s just a crook, which everybody knows anyway. He needs a gardener on account of so many people want to punch his lights out.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Eirion said.

  Jane wondered if Dafydd Sion Lewis had a gardener, too.

  ‘Look,’ Layla said. ‘Shelbone’s bonkers, and he’s the bane of Allan’s life. He’s this kind of loose cannon. Puts the blocks on lucrative development.’