The Lamp of the Wicked (MW5)

by Phil Rickman

  What she was hoping for was… OK, a sign. Like, sometimes, you could open a book – it didn’t have to be the Bible – to a random page, and the solution would be there, as though at the end of a shaft of light. The answer might not depend on a literal interpretation of the text; it might be a certain metaphor which sprang a diversion, lit some indirect path to an unexpected truth.

  Jenny Box: what the hell does she want from me?

  Jenny’s angel: was that a metaphor, or what? A person coming from New Age spirituality – from earth-powers, shamanism and healing crystals – to Christianity would probably need some kind of visionary incentive, real or imagined. Jenny Box would have to find ample metaphysical justification for her move to an obscure village in Herefordshire: Ledwardine as Glastonbury, Ledwardine as Lourdes. Just as Merrily herself often wondered if she’d been washed up here for a reason – at college, she’d always seen herself as an urban priest, firing faith in concrete alleys full of vomit and discarded syringes.

  She lay back on the sofa with the Aquinas paperback on her lap, closed her eyes and saw four possibilities:

  1. Jenny Box had hallucinated the angel.

  2. Jenny Box had invented the angel.

  3. An optical illusion.

  4. An angel.

  Floodlit by a dozen small lamps, it looked like a gigantic headless metal puppet, with six arms rigidly outstretched – wires from its pendulous fingers, wires from its elbow joints.

  If there was a formidable elemental force travelling those wires, the pylon itself looked dangerously unstable, Lol thought. And archaic. A skeletal survivor of the days when cars broke down every few weeks and a single computer filled a whole room.

  This was your standard National Grid tower, the bearded man in denims had explained in his relaxed, tour-guide kind of way. He’d hung around with Lol when the adrenalin kicked into Frannie Bliss. There were over fifty pylons in this part of the valley, he said, and this was one of the big ones. It was carrying 400,000 volts.

  And Roddy Lodge.

  Lodge was about forty feet up, like a crawling insect, not far beneath the first pair of arms, at the end of which the live powerlines were coiled around insulators resembling hanging candles of knobbly green glass.

  Lol heard Bliss telling someone to call for an ambulance and the fire brigade. He was standing about twenty feet from the pylon’s splayed legs of reinforced steel, hands in the pockets of his hiking jacket, more controlled now that he could see his prisoner again – could see that the prisoner had nowhere to go.

  Nowhere in this world.

  Lol wiped his glasses on the sleeve of his jacket. It had stopped raining, but the wind was up. The wires were zinging in his head. Vicarious vertigo.

  ‘You’re not with the police, then,’ the bearded man said. Directly in front of them was the abandoned excavation, the spade still sticking out of it. From here they could see the whole of the pylon, maybe 150 feet tall, and the shape of Howle Hill behind it, a black thumbprint on the sky.

  ‘I’m just one of the gravediggers,’ Lol said.

  ‘That mean I can actually talk to you without I get told to climb back on the school bus and leave it to the grown-ups?’

  ‘Least the police don’t have guns,’ Lol said, hoping he was right about this.

  ‘One of the reasons I came home, my friend. Protest about something in New Labour Britain, you don’t get shot, you just get patronized. Name’s Sam Hall, by the way.’

  ‘Lol. Lol Robinson.’ He saw that Sam Hall was older than he’d first appeared, well into his sixties, maybe beyond that – that backwoods-pioneer look grizzling over the years.

  ‘Tough day, Lol?’ Sam said mildly. As if they were unwinding at something not over-exciting, like crown-green bowling.

  Before Lol could reply, a woman screamed. He saw Roddy Lodge gripping an overhead girder, swinging himself, apelike, into a steel V, finally wedging there. The orange overalls might have been designed to make him conspicuous in a pylon at night, like a warning beacon for aircraft.

  ‘Aw, Roddy!’ A small shrillness under Frannie Bliss’s voice as he called up, ‘Roddy, you daft bugger, where’s this gonna get yer? Tell me that, eh?’

  No answer.

  ‘That’s because he doesn’t know,’ Sam Hall said to Lol.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘’Less, of course, he has an end in mind.’

  Lol glanced sharply at him.

  ‘Which would depend on whether he’s done all they say he’s done,’ Sam Hall said.

  ‘How much danger’s he in?’

  ‘Boy, we’re all of us in danger from those monsters. I could name you three, maybe six people’d be alive today if they’d lived the other side of that hill. But Roddy… My guess would be that he’s done this before. You’ll notice somebody already cut through the barbed wire the power guys snag around the base to stop people climbing – and this is Roddy’s land, so I’d say it was him. Evidently knew where to find the footholds. He’s been up there before. Just look at the guy go…’

  Roddy was moving again, pulling himself onto the first of the great arms, about sixty feet up now, lamp beams following him.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ a woman shouted from behind them, ‘can’t anyone get him down?’

  ‘Not possible, Ingrid,’ Sam Hall said, although there was no way she could hear him. ‘Not worth the candle,’ he said to Lol. ‘Tower’s earthed, so anyone standing on it’s earthed, too. Electricity will do anything to hitch a ride to the ground. What happens – he gets too close, it’s gonna jump him, and I wouldn’t like to be the person holding on to his feet when it does.’

  ‘You know a lot about it.’ Lol had his hands deep in his pockets, hunched against the shivering. ‘Worked in the power industry?’

  Sam Hall let out a big, echoing laugh that sounded a little shocking in this situation, like it was bouncing around the valley. ‘Partner, what I do is I work against the power industry.’

  Roddy Lodge had come fully to his feet. He was standing on the arm, a yard or so out from the shoulder, holding on to a diagonal steel bar with one hand. On the ground, the policewoman, Tiffany, and a male colleague were arranging a sheet of white plastic over the hole Lol had dug, weighting down the edges with bricks from a pile of building rubble.

  ‘Fact is,’ Sam Hall said, ‘a bunch of fat cats here and over in the US would give just about anything in the whole world to have me up there, ’stead of that poor sucker.’

  A gasp of wind hit Roddy and he swayed and lost his footing and slipped down between two girders and hung there, his feet dangling in space.

  ‘Christ,’ Lol whispered. Three police officers ran, amid screams, towards the pylon.

  ‘Could be safer if he dropped now,’ Sam Hall said. ‘He doesn’t hit metal on the way down, he might not die. All depends on what he wants out of this.’

  ‘This is a little early for you, cariad,’ Eirion said.

  ‘How’s the party?’

  ‘Yn Cymreig. I’m having to watch my grammar.’

  ‘The whole party’s in Welsh?’ Jane sat on the edge of her bed, wrapped in the big bath towel.

  ‘My step-gran’s discovered cultural correctness in her old age. And her heritage – distant cousin of Saunders Lewis, see.’

  ‘You’ve lost me already.’

  ‘Anyone who wants to speak English is finding it expedient to go outside,’ Eirion said. ‘Bit like having a fag out on the balcony.’

  ‘Wow,’ Jane said, ‘another world. Is that where you are now?’

  ‘I’m in the kitchen. But not, I have to tell you, because my Welsh isn’t wholly fluent. Where are you?’

  ‘My bedroom. Just got out of the bath. Goose bumps everywhere.’

  She heard Eirion moan faintly.

  ‘We could have telephone sex, if you like,’ Jane said. ‘I’m letting the towel slip slowly down my breasts. There are tiny bubbles of moisture…’

  ‘What is it you want?’ Eirion said tightly.
/>   ‘OK, I lied. I’m fully dressed. In fact, it’s so cold in this house that I’m wearing my fleece and leg warmers.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Listen, how far are you from the nearest computer?’

  ‘Decades,’ Eirion said obliquely.

  ‘Check someone out for me? On the Net? You remember Jenny Driscoll? All soft-voiced and drippy. Did these crappy daytime TV shows on fashion and decor and make-overs and stuff.’

  ‘Like the ones I always watch to find my feminine side.’

  ‘Irene, this is—’

  ‘Yeah, I do know who you mean. Nice-looking.’

  ‘You’re really into old ladies, aren’t you? There’s a word for it.’

  ‘And she lives in your village.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Christ, was I ever that sad? Irene, listen, this sounds… this is going to sound very stupid. But this woman, this Driscoll – or Mrs Box, as she now calls herself – she’s got her claws seriously into Mum.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, but it comes out of some middle-aged religious obsession. Or maybe it’s just attention seeking, or maybe she’s just a lonely old bag, I wouldn’t like to venture a hard opinion at this stage but, essentially, she’s claiming – this is what she’s told Mum, right? – that she’s had a mystical experience. Involving an angel. In the sky, over the church – our church. Don’t laugh. And she has a chapel in her house – this kind of shrine, under the floor, and she took Mum down there, and there was incense and candles and stuff. And of course Mum’s reacting in a suitably spiritually correct fashion.’

  ‘And you think this is another world,’ Eirion said.

  ‘It’s not actually a joke. It’s not actually funny, for at least one very bizarre reason that I’m not allowed to tell you about, so don’t ask me. But I do not believe this woman has had any kind of… experience, and— Irene, are you still there?’

  Yeah. I… Jane, it’s still happening isn’t it? You’re still…’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Your… This whole dark-night-of-the-soul thing. A few months ago, if anybody claimed to have seen an angel within fifty miles of Ledwardine, you’d have been so excited you’d be up all night with a video camera.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m over it, all right? It was pitiful, and I’m finally over it. You can waste your life on that kind of shit.’

  ‘I don’t think you mean that, Jane.’

  ‘How would you know what I mean?’

  Eirion sighed. ‘What do you want me to try and find out?’

  ‘Anything. What happened to her marriage. Why she got out of TV. Any of the kind of scurrilous flotsam that gets washed up on the Net.’

  ‘Surfing for shit?’

  ‘Just help me, Eirion.’

  Silence. I called him Eirion, Jane thought in dismay.

  ‘You want any dirt I can find on Moira Cairns at the same time?’ he said.

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Eirion didn’t sound sorry. He sounded disappointed, somehow.

  A crowd had gathered, the way crowds did. Suddenly it was just there.

  Lol didn’t know how many people lived around Underhowle, but at least seventy of them had to be here now. The ones who hadn’t broken through the police tape must have come across the fields on the other side of the pylon, by the edge of the woods fringing Howle Hill. Perhaps forty people were standing within twenty feet of the tower, like they’d bought tickets. Not enough police here to move them on – like the police didn’t have enough to think about.

  Frannie Bliss was pacing around the base of the pylon, conspicuously uneasy now. Lol could make out people crouching ‘with their camcorders. Bliss stood back, hands cupped around his mouth. A sudden white light shone all around him – someone had brought along one of those long-distance spotlamps.

  ‘Roddy. Can you hear me, son? This is DI Bliss. Frannie Bliss.’

  Roddy Lodge had pulled himself back on to the metal arm; he was braced against the tower’s skeletal spine. Clouds had dropped away from the wafery moon, and the girders gleamed white like bone.

  ‘Roddy, can you hear me?’

  On the ground, Bliss was competing against the spectator buzz, but the voice from the pylon burst sharply in the air.

  ‘NO!’

  Like a hole punched in a paper bag, making its own hush.

  ‘DON’T WANNER TALK TO NO MORE COPPERS!’

  ‘Roddy…’ Bliss bent backwards. ‘Let’s be sensible. You’re about six feet from enough juice to light up half the county. Just let yourself come down, and take it very carefully. You got nowhere else to go. You know that, son.’

  ‘THAT’S WHAT…’ A surprise blast of wind. Gasps from the crowd as Lodge clutched at a steel diagonal, caught it and clung to it. ‘THAT’S WHAT YOU RECKONS, IS IT, MR COPPER?’

  ‘It’s very dangerous, Roddy, that’s all I’m saying. There’s massive voltage up there, you know that.’

  Silence.

  ‘Roddy, if you—’

  ‘NOT TO ME. EN’T NO DANGER TO ME, COPPER. I’M ELECTRIC ALREADY, LOOK!’

  Frannie Bliss stared at the churned ground. Lol could feel him groping for viable words. High above him, washed by swirling lights, Roddy Lodge was glowing red like a pantomime demon – Lol willing him to give it up, come down from there, don’t raise the stakes.

  Roddy suddenly reeled back, one arm locked around the cross bar, the other thrown across his face. His feet seemed to skate on the metal.

  The light,’ Sam Hall said. ‘Light’s affecting him. Plus the shit coming off of the power lines. He’s gonna be disoriented by now. His balance’ll go completely, can’t they see that?’ Angrily, he strode down the field towards Bliss. Two uniformed police came out of the dark from two sides, restraining him. Sam turned on one of them. ‘Not me, you asshole! Get across there and tell some of those stupid bastards to switch off their lights if they don’t want to kill him. Jesus!’

  ‘Why’n’t you jump?’ A sudden, strident male voice in the crowd. ‘Why’n’t you take a bloody running jump, Lodge?’

  They do want to kill him, Lol thought, sickened. He was sweating and trembling with the cold but, at the same time, he was glad he was this side of the pylon, away from that crowd. It was an audience. Audiences wanted it all. He felt hollow inside, and his head was throbbing with fear for the man on the pylon, the performer in the spotlights. You reappear on stage now, Moira said softly in his ear, it’s gonnae be like, ‘Hey, is that no’ the big sex-offender?’ When he turned away, teeth clenched, he could still see the shining red figure projected like a hologram, vibrating in charged air.

  ‘Why’n’t you go for a swing on the high wire, Roddy?’ The same man’s voice. ‘Save the tax-payers havin’ to keep you the rest of your bloody useless life!’

  A fragment of silence.

  ‘Shaddup!’ a woman shrieked. ‘You en’t lived here two minutes, it’s no damn business of yours!’

  Bliss was tramping back up the field. ‘This is useless. How am I supposed to try and talk him down with these fuckin’ hayseeds—? Andy! Where’s…? Right. Listen. Get half a dozen uniforms, go across and get the lot of them out of there. It’s gorra be private land. Tell them they’re trespassing, they’re obstructing the police, whatever you want. But the first one objects, you nick him!’

  He tore past Lol, making for the cars.

  Sam Hall was back, brushing himself down, straightening his denim jacket. ‘This is not good.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He looks down, all he sees now is row upon row of blinding lights. His head’s gonna be close to exploding.’

  The lamps aimed up into the pylon made a white gauze in the rain mist. Lol sensed an ambivalence in the crowd. He’s a murderer. He’s murdered one of our own. At least one. Yet Lodge himself was one of their own.

  The lights went in and out of focus.
Lol looked down.

  He saw a tiny red glow tracking across the field.

  ‘Lodge!’

  The beams from the crowd swung down again, like they were voice-activated, and found – Oh God – found Gomer Parry, standing where Bliss had stood, his cap off, his white hair on end in the wind, like a hearth brush, a fresh roll-up in his teeth.

  ‘Lodge… Gomer Parry Plant Hire! You yearin’ me?

  ‘Gomer!’ Bliss went lurching back. ‘No!’

  ‘Where was it you set that fire, boy? Where’d you go? Where was it you went Monday night?’

  ‘YOU KNOOOOOOOOW!’ A roar of pain.

  Gomer snatched out his ciggy. ‘Say it, boy! Say it again. Where’d you go exac’ly that night? Tell these folks.’

  Silence. Beams intersecting like aircraft-spotting searchlights. Gomer waited, rocking back on his heels in the mud.

  ‘I DONE IT!’

  Gomer bounced. ‘What? Where?’

  ‘I BURNED HIM! I… F – FRIED HIM.’ A shrill giggle, tremolo yelps. ‘I FRIED THE FUCKING BASTARD IN HIS OWN FAT!’

  Bliss had hold of Gomer, was dragging him away. ‘Christ’s sake, what you trying to—?’

  ‘YOU KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!’

  ‘Tryin’ to get at the bloody truth.’ Gomer pulled away. ‘Which is more’n you done. And I’m tellin’ you, boy, it en’t—’

  ‘I… DONE…’ Roddy Lodge was shambling slowly along the down-sloping arm of the pylon, arms outstretched like a tightrope artist, a man on a high diving board. Not too far above him now hung one of the insulators from the second tier, its power- hugging glass discs gleaming cold green. Candle of death. ‘I DONE ’EM ALL!’

  Bliss’s head went back. His fists were clenched tight. Gomer just stood there and stared down at the ground. Both of them in shadow, all the lights trained on the pylon. Roddy stopped. Even from where Lol stood he could see Lodge was grinning.

  ‘I DONE…’ He shuffled, swayed. ‘I DONE ALL THEM WOMEN! I DONE LYNSEY! I DONE… I DONE MEL! YOU YEARIN’ ME? I DONE ’EM ALL! I DONE THAT WELSH GIRL! I DONE… I DONE MORE’N YOU KNOWS. ’CAUSE…’