The Lamp of the Wicked mw-5

by Phil Rickman

  She shut the front door and stood with her back to it, panting. She felt as if something was making circles of madness around her. She didn’t know whether to call the police tonight or…

  Tomorrow. She’d call them tomorrow. She needed to sleep on this. Needed to sleep full stop.

  Except Jane wasn’t back yet. She was late – she’d expected to be home by eleven, because Eirion would then have to head back to Abergavenny, and it was already twenty past. OK, not over-late; maybe she should wait ten minutes before ringing Lol at the studio to see what time they’d left.

  She left the bin sack in the hall, went into the kitchen and found the Germolene, pulling up her alb to expose the kind of cut knees that Jane was always bringing home as a kid. Rubbed some on, couldn’t be bothered with plasters. She went to put the kettle on, lit a cigarette and stood for a few moments staring through the open door at the print of Holman Hunt’s Light of the World, the house-warming gift from Uncle Ted. A tired and disillusioned middle-aged Jesus doing this sorrowful simper: I’ll hold up the lamp but I don’t really expect any of you to follow.

  She thought, Sod it, went into the hall and brought back the sack that someone had left at the bottom of the aisle. Someone who had entered the church while she was praying, left the bin liner and crept away, leaving her to fall over it. Afterwards, she’d sat there on the stone flags, which also served as memorials, feeling the lumps in the sack, thinking of Roddy Lodge and dead bodies.

  Now she emptied the contents onto the kitchen table. She stared at the heap again and tried to laugh. This was beyond insane.

  Merrily sat down at the table, picked up one bundle, pulled off the rubber band and counted out the notes slowly and meticulously: £2,000 in fifties. There must be forty or fifty similar bundles. On the top of one there was a printed note on a quarter-folded sheet of A4 copier paper:

  For maintenance of the Church at Ledwardine without the need for commercial enterprise. A donation.

  She heard a car pull up outside, a door slam, Eirion’s familiar parting tap on the horn. She swept the bundles into the bin liner. Rapid footsteps on the path, then Jane’s key jiggling around in the lock. As she pulled the bag into the scullery, the phone began to ring.

  ‘How did it go?’ Huw Owen said.

  ‘Huh? Sorry, Huw, I…’

  ‘The meeting, lass. The mobile-phone mast?’

  ‘Oh.’ God, was that this year? ‘Sorry, quite a lot’s happened since then. No, Ted didn’t raise it in the end. However…’ Merrily pulled out the chair, slumped into it, stretched out her sore legs and suddenly felt like talking.

  Not about the bundled money; she wasn’t up to discussing that, not until she’d puzzled out a few things. She told him instead about Roddy Lodge, from Gomer’s fire and the death of Nev to the discovery of the body on the truck, from the visit to Lodge’s bungalow to the interview-room session that didn’t happen. It took about twenty-five minutes. After half a day with manic Frannie and the shock of the bin bag, laying out the Lodge affair for the stoical Huw was almost relaxing.

  ‘Underhowle, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Not a place I’d ever been to before.’

  ‘Dobbs went,’ Huw said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The late Tommy Dobbs, your esteemed predecessor. He were in Underhowle a few years ago.’

  ‘Not at the invitation of the rural dean he wasn’t, unless I’ve been misled.’

  ‘Who’s the RD?’

  ‘Banks.’

  ‘Happen before his time. Five, six years ago? Summat like that. Haunting job, sort of. Reason I remember it, Dobbs did summat he’d never been known to do before.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘He rang me for advice. In the normal way, his consultative procedure would begin and end with God.’

  ‘Flattering.’ Merrily was thinking this couldn’t involve Lodge’s bungalow because it wasn’t even built then. ‘Were you able to assist?’

  ‘I, er… no. He were right in this instance – not our usual thing. Alleged case of what I’m afraid you’d have to call “alien abduction”.’

  ‘Yes, that would’ve fazed him.’

  ‘ “Mr Owen,” he says – always one for formality, was Dobbs – “Humanoid entities in silver suits: what does this convey to you, Mr Owen?” Course Dobbs didn’t have a telly. Bugger-all use referring him to Star Trek.’

  ‘This was in Underhowle? Someone in Underhowle was claiming to have had a close encounter?’

  ‘Several, as I recall. Several encounters, not several people. Only one person – young woman, late teens. I believe Dobbs did a report on it, for the record, to cover himself. Sent me a copy. I could probably find it for you, but I expect Sophie’ll have it on the files up at the Cathedral, if you’re interested. Dobbs found it disturbing because he didn’t think the girl was lying or mentally ill, but he still couldn’t do owt with it. I’ve heard of alleged alien cases where blessings or minor exorcisms have helped, mind. Which makes you wonder if there isn’t a spiritual dimension to some of these so-called close encounters. Not this time, though.’

  Merrily yawned. ‘OK, perhaps I’ll have a glance at the records. You never know, do you? You wouldn’t remember the name of the girl – for the file reference?’

  ‘Aye, vaguely. Summat like yours. Melissa? No, Melanie. Pullford. Melanie Pullford.’

  Merrily stiffened. ‘Couldn’t have been Pullman?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Because if she’s been abducted by aliens again, this time they forgot to bring her back. Been missing two years. Bliss thinks Lodge might have killed her. You have any thoughts on that?’

  ‘Aye – tell the bugger.’

  ‘If it was confidential, between the girl and Deliverance, that might not be entirely ethical.’

  ‘Tell him anyroad. I don’t like coincidence. He won’t do owt, mind. He’s a copper. If even the likes of us are suspicious of alien abduction…’

  On the whole, not the best thing to say late at night to Merrily, who always felt responsible, especially if nobody else did. Sometimes your most appealing quality, Jane had said once. But most of the time your worst fault.

  She sighed and made a note on the sermon pad to call Sophie, first thing.

  And then Gomer phoned and told her what he was doing in the morning, he and Lol.

  Merrily went anxiously to bed that night, and anxiously to sleep. Had anxious dreams.

  Part Three

  It is important to acknowledge common experiences that emerge in all world cultures and religions when we are living in an ever-shrinking global village. All cultures, including our own, acknowledge the existence of spirits at levels beyond the human. We call them angels.

  Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake The Physics of Angels

  15

  Holes

  IT HAD TO be. Had to be. But now, on the steps of Chapel House, Merrily was sandbagged by second thoughts. How did you do this? How did you go about accusing someone of giving you eighty grand?

  Tell me, Jenny Box had said the other night on the square, have you asked God? For the money? Have you asked God?

  It was a very old house, as old as the vicarage but better kept. A narrow, cobbled alley now separated it from the timber- framed row that began with the Black Swan.

  She’d always thought it was called Chapel House because it was across the street from the former Zionist chapel, now selling antique furniture. Obviously, the house was centuries older than the chapel, but she’d imagined it being renamed around the turn of last century, when Nonconformism was hot.

  Beginning to feel conspicuous, Merrily lifted the knocker, let it fall and heard a long echo from inside the house. With any luck, Jenny Box would be out. This was a bad move. She wasn’t ready. Yet how could she not have come?

  After breakfast, Jane had casually told her what she already knew – that Lol had elected to become an unskilled labourer for Gomer. And they’d stared at one another for a moment, Jane displaying h
ostility, like this was Merrily’s fault, while Merrily wondered if the kid could possibly know the worst of it – what it was likely to involve.

  Evidently not. At about nine, Eirion had picked her up, and they’d said they were heading back into Wales for the day. If they’d secretly been going to join Gomer and Lol in the search for decaying bodies under waste tanks, Jane might have thrown up a smokescreen but Eirion wouldn’t.

  When they’d gone, she’d tried to ring Lol, twice. No answer. Why did he still find it so hard to accept that someone might want him to be there? Spooked by the way the Lodge affair was starting to surround them all like a blanket of smog, she’d pulled the plastic sack from under the desk in the scullery, emptying it out again to make sure she hadn’t dreamed its contents and carefully counting it all this time.

  Eighty thousand pounds exactly, for the church.

  Right. OK. She’d knotted the neck of the sack and called the Deliverance office in Hereford, got the answering machine – Sophie must be down at the Palace with the bishop. Merrily had left a message asking if they happened to have the Melanie Pullman file and, if so, could Sophie e-mail it.

  It had been then, stowing the bin sack under the desk, that she’d realized she’d finally run out of reasons for putting off a confrontation with Mrs Box.

  Inevitably, the old oak door of Chapel House opened – not bumping and scraping like the front door of the vicarage, but gliding – and here was Mrs Box, carefully made-up. Or rather, made-down: her hair was brushed and shining and her face wore pale foundation, but no lipstick, no eyeshadow. She was wearing a simple black dress with a loose cord around the waist.

  ‘Why, Merrily.’ Smiling her gracious smile, this silky-voiced, willowy woman, the ex-model who would always make you feel graceless and untidy. ‘You couldn’t’ve timed it better. I was just off to my morning prayers. Now we can go together.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was waiting for me. She knew I’d come.

  Merrily turned to descend the steps, thinking they’d be off to the church. But Jenny Box had already slipped back into the dimness of the old house.

  ‘Well, come on, then, Merrily. I’ve been dying to show this to someone who’d really understand.’

  Gomer was standing up in the mini-JCB, leaning forward like a horseman on stirrups, to witness the uncovering. ‘Easy now, boy. Don’t you scratch him.’

  As most of the tank had been buried and seemed to be coated with tough rubber, it was hard to imagine how a few scratches would matter. But this was Gomer’s show, Gomer’s world.

  Lol eased up, using the tip of the spade like a trowel, teasing away shards of clay. This was how they’d unearthed the first Efflapure, a big rubber ball full of human waste – slow and careful, as though it was likely to explode like a giant landmine in a welter of shrapnel and shit. You couldn’t pull it out without emptying it first, and they hadn’t got a convenient tanker, so it was a question of digging down to it, getting underneath, and Lol was waist-deep in the hole, his jeans soaked through because he’d said no to plastic trousers.

  Outside the hole, it was already late morning, but the sun was like a soft-boiled egg. Across the long field beyond the garden fence there were still woolly rolls of mist on the hill above Underhowle – Howle Hill this would be, hanging a literal name on a village that Lol had never heard of until today.

  He didn’t know this area, and he’d never been to the Forest of Dean, which Andy Mumford said began the other side of the hill. He didn’t know it, and yet he was already inside it, feeling its juices, smelling its smell. Everything here was earthy and pungent, but it was also, thankfully, kind of unreal: Middle- earth. Gomerland.

  Mumford was standing well clear, saving his suit from mud- spurts. As if he’d picked up Lol’s thoughts on some mental police wavelength, he whispered loudly into the hole, ‘You see anything or smell anything apart from God’s earth, Mr Robinson, you come out of there quick, and we summon the white people.’

  Meaning the forensic people – white coveralls. Until then, it would be just the three of them: two seasoned professionals and a wimpy little singer with muscles like sponge cake, guitar fingers delving in mud and slime. Gomerland. Maybe inches away from meddling with the dead.

  Which would then be Merrilyland.

  ‘Smell?’ Mr Sandford, whose garden this was, had been peering in, quite intrigued, but now he jumped back, alarmed. ‘Smell?’ Here it came, the first shower of outrage. ‘I thought this was just a formality. That’s what Inspector Bliss told us on the phone. He said it was just—’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m sure that’s right,’ Mumford said.

  ‘No, you’re not! You think there’s’ – the colour was flaking from Mr Sandford’s smooth face – ‘a dead flaming body down there!’

  ‘Mike?’ Here came the blonde wife tottering in unsuitable sandals at the edge of their bungalow’s colonial-style verandah. ‘Mike, oh, for God’s sake…’ Glossy lips retracting in revulsion. ‘It is this Melanie Pullman, isn’t it? They’re looking for Melanie Pullman’s body. Oh please, not here!’

  ‘You got some information you haven’t told us about?’ Sandford was waving his wife away and backing off from the hole like it might widen and swallow him. He was about Lol’s age, wearing sweats and trainers: suburban weekend-wear in an area of well-patched tweeds, overalls and waterproofs. He’d told them he’d taken half a day off work for this.

  ‘Please calm down, sir,’ Mumford said in his stolid, farmerly way. ‘We don’t know anything. Like I said, this is just one of a number of installations we’ll be checking out in the course of the day.’

  In fact six, Lol had been told, in an area roughly bounded by the towns of Ross, Ledbury and Coleford. This was the first – recently installed and less than half a country mile from Underhowle where this Roddy Lodge lived. From Gomer, Lol had learned a lot about Lodge: liar, conman, incompetent installer of overpriced drainage systems. The man who murdered Nev. Also a woman.

  They were here to look for number three; why deny it?

  ‘Don’t expect this, do you?’ Mr Sandford had returned nervously to the edge of the hole. His wife had gone back into the house; she’d be calming herself by phoning friends, Lol thought. This was how panic spread. The next house they arrived at, discretion would no longer be an option.

  ‘No,’ Lol said, ‘you don’t.’

  ‘Move out the bloody city to find a place where your kids can walk home from school in safety, and just when you finally think you’ve…’ Mr Sandford nodded at the exposed tank. ‘How long before you know?’

  Lol shook his head. The pit Gomer had excavated on two sides of the Efflapure was wide enough now for him to move around the tank. He reversed the spade, holding it two-handed just above the blade, and began to scrape soil from the curved, rubbery casing, his arms already stiffening under sleeves of drying mud.

  ‘You’ve got a job locally?’ he asked Mr Sandford – talking only to cover his own nerves, because if there was something dead down here, he was likely to be getting very close to it. He was aware of a dark bib of sweat spreading over the front of his T-shirt.

  ‘Computers,’ Mr Sandford said.

  ‘Oh?’ Lol took a careful sniff at the earth: decay, yes – but vegetable, surely nothing more than that. Gomer had said grimly, You’ll know, boy, when you finds it. Like he was certain they were going to.

  ‘You’re not local?’ Mr Sandford said.

  ‘No, not very.’ Lol began to prod tentatively at the pea-gravel around the bottom of the tank.

  ‘In which case, you wouldn’t know this is Silicon Valley in the making.’

  ‘You’ve got a factory?’

  ‘Not me personally. Chris Cody’s the genius. Saved the whole village from a slow death. Seventeen new jobs this year, if you include part-time employment for cleaners and so on. That’s big-time here. And it’s just the start.’

  What, software manuf—?’ Lol recoiled as his spade found something in the gravel. Black. Could be a shoe. He
looked up at Gomer.

  ‘The lot.’ Sandford hadn’t noticed it. ‘We make computers. Right now, the big thing’s computers for kids.’

  It was a pipe, just a thick, black pipe.

  ‘I thought…’ Lol collected some breath, unsure if this was relief because, of all the bits you might uncover first, a shoe would probably be the least distressing. ‘I thought kids could use anything. Eight-year-old hackers getting into the White House and… all that.’

  ‘Nah, little kids, this is. Simple computers for four-year-olds, three-year-olds, two or younger. With games they can understand. By the time they get to school they’re computer-literate and most of ’em can read and write. Puts ’em a couple of years ahead of other kids. Fantastic. Might look run-down and primitive round here, but this place is the future, and that’s why—’

  ‘All right.’ Gomer jumped down from the digger, tossing his ciggy into the mud. ‘I’ll come in there now, boy.’

  ‘You sure, Gomer?’ Lol was already out of the pit, a shiver up his back.

  ‘But you do not expect this,’ Mr Sandford said, watching the Efflapure, as if they were excavating Hell itself in his half-acre garden.

  ‘Careful now.’ Jenny Box pulled back the rug in her oak-panelled hall, revealing the hatch in the crooked wooden floor.

  ‘Chapel House…’ Merrily said. ‘You mean… ?’

  ‘Even the estate agents didn’t try to make anything of it,’ Mrs Box said. ‘They thought ’twas just a little cellar – a “wine cellar” they called it – which they thought would sound more appealing to the kind of people they were expecting to buy the house.’ She pulled back a bolt and slipped slender fingers under a black cast-iron ring. ‘This hatch is Victorian, I’m guessing, and they’d have made a feature of it, but for most of last century it’d have been nothing but a storage space.’

  The hatch came up easily. Jenny Box laid it down flat. She depressed a switch in the oak panelling. Stone steps were softly lit from below.

  ‘After you, Reverend,’ Mrs Box said.