by Phil Rickman
And today he’d come all this way in terrible driving conditions.
But when she scrambled down from the bus, dragging her flight bag full of books, she saw that he wasn’t smiling. From the beginning, the most amazing thing about Eirion had been his smile, and when it wasn’t there he looked pasty, a bit jowly, even. These days, anyway. Especially through the fog.
In the old days – March, April – arriving at her school, he’d say, I was just passing. Both of them knowing that this wasn’t a place anyone in their right mind ‘just passed’. So it was a catchphrase nowadays, and they’d be touching one another before the car’s doors were properly shut. But tonight…
‘I just needed to see you.’ Eirion making it obvious by his tone that today it wasn’t that kind of need. ‘You want a lift home?’
When she got into the new old car, the sky was going dark. It always seemed to be going dark, Jane thought. Life was one long dusk. Eirion just started the engine and when they were through the gates, he said, ‘Jane, do you think we need to talk?’
Like how many crappy soaps did you hear that line in, in the course of an average week? Or you would if you watched them. Jane tried to think of a corresponding cliché, couldn’t come up with one.
‘What about?’ she said finally.
‘Well… you.’
He took the back lanes to Ledwardine, prolonging the journey like he used to when they weren’t quite going out together but he was hoping. It could take for ever today, with these conditions. The fog had never really cleared from this morning; they’d had the lights on in the school all day. And what a long and tedious day it had been. In Eng Lit, she’d collected a couple of dagger-glances from Mrs Costello whom she liked really but, come on, wasn’t life just a little too short for flatulent prats like Salman Rushdie?
‘I, er, checked out the insurance,’ Eirion said. ‘It’s probably OK for you to drive this car, after all. I mean… when it’s a better day than this.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘A better day.’
A better day. A bright new beginning. You’re so young, people said. What I wouldn’t do if I was your age again. When what they really meant was that when they were young the idea of a bright new beginning for the world didn’t seem quite so laughable.
In the summer, after she and Eirion had made love for the first time (the first time for both of them, with anybody, it later emerged) it was incredible, like climbing a mountain, and it was all there at your feet: the whole of life a glowing patchwork of endless, glistening greenery.
Jane scowled. Didn’t ‘make love’. Had sex.
And that was it. Done it now. Done it a bunch of times and, sure, sometimes – before and during and after – it felt as though she was very much in love and didn’t want there to be anyone else ever…
In which case, this was really it? Seventeen now, an adult. Now what?
And why? Why bother? It was all going to end in tears, anyway.
‘I’ve been wondering what’s made you so negative lately,’ Eirion said.
‘Oh, really.’
‘And whether there was any way I could help.’
The car heater panted. The dipped headlights excavated shallow trenches in the grey-brownness. It was a situation that, at one time, might have seemed cosily mysterious. As distinct from totally dismal.
‘Because if I can’t,’ Eirion said. ‘You know…’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, if you don’t know…’ After a while, Jane stopped noticing the limited views – atmosphere was just a psychological condition, right? She found she was gripping folds of her skirt. What was happening to her? She didn’t even want to drive. What was the point? Be gridlock everywhere within about ten years.
‘It’s like you just want to wreck things,’ Eirion said. ‘If things aren’t working exactly as you’d planned them, you don’t want to wait.’
‘Life’s short. Very short for some people.’ Thinking of Layla Riddock, who hadn’t even made it out of school when the big pendulum did it in one blow. Thinking of Nev. Thinking of their day out in mid-Wales, when Eirion had taken her to see this particular standing stone, and it had somehow just looked like… a stone. And Eirion had been dismayed because she wasn’t going like, Hey, wow, can’t you feel that earth energy?
Jane felt her eyes filling up as the car bumped around a bit. She thought at first he’d just gone over the kerb in the fog, but it was deliberate. He was fully in control. The car stopped, and he switched off the engine. Jane looked out and saw wet grass.
‘Where are we?’ Turning to him, wanting for a moment just to see his old smile in the dimness and then fall into his arms and everything would be all right.
For a while, anyway.
So where does it begin, this clinical depression? At what stage do they prescribe the pills? She pulled her bag onto her lap, folding her hands on top of it: self-contained, untouchable. Inside, along with the books, was her Walkman with the Nick Drake compilation CD – Nick Drake, who died of an overdose of antidepressants. It could all be really funny. Except it wasn’t.
Eirion scrubbed at the windscreen with his hand. ‘You can’t even see it.’
‘What?’
‘The steeple at Ledwardine. We’re on Cole Hill.’
‘What are we doing here?’
‘I don’t know, really.’ He sank back in his seat. ‘This is where she saw it, isn’t it? Where Jenny Driscoll saw the angel. Or didn’t… as you decided.’
‘So?’ She stared at him. If she was getting an inkling of what this was all about, she wasn’t inclined to allow the idea to develop.
‘Doesn’t matter, anyway.’ He stopped rubbing. ‘It’s too foggy.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do.’ He swallowed. ‘It’s like I said before – a few months ago this whole thing would’ve been just so exciting to you that we’d’ve been up here every night on some kind of angel hunt.’
‘No, we wouldn’t. That would be stupid.’
‘Yeah,’ Eirion said. ‘It probably would be, now. But the thing is… it would also have been fun. I would’ve liked it. Flask of hot soup and the… you know, the need to keep warm.’
‘Oh, right,’ Jane said, laying on the scorn. ‘This is about sex.’
‘No!’ Almost a scream. ‘That’s not what—’
‘Think about it very carefully,’ Jane said sadly. ‘Underneath it all, it would be about sex.’
Eirion drew in a tight breath. ‘So we’re into Freud now, is it?’ Stirrings of anger bringing out the Welshness in his voice.
‘I really wouldn’t know about that,’ Jane said. ‘I think I’m probably just coming to my senses.’
He exploded then. ‘This is your senses? It seems to me that you’re losing your fucking senses. All… all six of them.’
Jane said, without thinking much about it, ‘Can you take me home?’ The windscreen was opaque with fog and condensation; it was already going cold inside the car.
‘Is this it?’ Eirion said. ‘Is this it for us?’ Talking in this dramatized way to provoke from her an outraged denial.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe like the angel will float down and spread this healing radiance all around us and we’ll feel really cool.’
It was hard to see his face in what light was left, but she could feel the extreme shock coming off him. It was like being in one of those cold patches that Mum was supposed to look for in haunted houses. And though she’d caused it, Jane felt detached from it – and that wasn’t right, was it? That was kind of… cruel.
‘Listen,’ Eirion said urgently. ‘We all get like this sometimes. You read about executive stress and mid-life crisis, but I think those people’ve just forgotten what it was like when they were in their teens and there were like whole big areas of their lives they couldn’t control.’
‘What?’
‘They don’t remember how bad it could be sometimes. When you c
an’t cont—’
‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ She looked at him with pity. ‘I’ve realized that nobody’s in control. Nobody and nothing. All this information going round and round the world on the Internet and stuff, and it’s all bullshit and everybody’s got a Website that tells you nothing you want to know, and all the politicians are like… And Mum… Mum knows these guys know sod-all really and are never going to get us anywhere, and the hospitals and everything are always going to be totally crap, but she can live with it, because she’s managed to con herself into thinking that way above all this ridiculous mess there’s this all-knowing, benevolent thing.’
‘Oh Jane—’
And meanwhile she and Lol are coming apart before it ever came together. And he’ll shag the Cairns woman, if he hasn’t already, because at least she’s there for him. At least she’s there. And Mum will just spend the rest of her life humouring fruitcakes like Jenny Driscoll. And poor old Gomer will start sitting in front of daytime telly – day after mindless day of soaps and Kilroy – not even seeing it after a bit, and falling asleep, until one blessed day he doesn’t wake up.’
Silence.
‘It’s a phase,’ Eirion said feebly at last. ‘It’ll pass, Jane.’
She jerked in her seat. ‘I don’t want it to pass, you cretin! This is reality!’
She started to cry, and wound down the window to let the fog come in like a damp facecloth.
‘I’ll take you home, then,’ Eirion said emptily.
Merrily had come home via Hereford, calling in at Tesco to pick up a sandwich and then at the hospital to see a couple of parishioners in the geriatric ward – Miss Tyler and Mrs Mackay, once neighbours in the village and now they didn’t even recognize one another on the ward. But they recognized Merrily, or seemed to, and Mrs Mackay wanted her to pray with her and, at the end of it, Merrily added her own silent prayer that something could be done about geriatric wards. Even the word itself had become demeaning and contemptuous, and when you said it aloud it made a sound like a creaking wheelchair.
Back home, she found a parcel – a brown Jiffy bag – in the porch and dumped it on the hall table when she heard the phone ringing. She exchanged grimaces with the lamp-bearing Christ and went through to the scullery to answer it.
‘You sound a bit down, lass.’
‘Oh. Hello, Huw.’
‘You find that stuff about the girl?’
‘Yeah. I was trying to think if it could be relevant, in any way, to her disappearance.’
‘Depends if it were still going on.’
‘Getting abducted by aliens becomes a regular thing?’
‘Sometimes the experience is repeated. Sometimes it even seems to be site-specific.’
‘You mean the house is haunted, rather than the individual? That rather argues against aliens, doesn’t it? More like geological conditions – fault lines, underground springs. Any atmospheric conditions that might promote hallucinations. Nothing to do with rehabilitation of the displaced dead. No requirement for social services of the soul.’ Merrily sat down, still wearing her coat. ‘Huw, I’ve got to bury Roddy Lodge.’
‘So I heard.’
‘Did you?’ Amazing how much gossip drifted up the Brecon Beacons. ‘And would you have any advice on that? For instance, there’s a body of local opinion doesn’t want him in the churchyard.’
‘That bother you?’
‘I feel OK about it. He’s entitled to a Christian burial. However, bearing in mind that I’ve never buried a murderer before…’
‘Aye.’ A pause for consideration. ‘Complications are possible. A lot of psychic fallout drifting round a murder. As for several murders…’
‘Not proved. He’s still an innocent man in the eyes of the law.’
‘And that can make it even more complex. Unfinished business, lass.’
‘This is what you rang about, isn’t it?’
Huw was silent for quite a while. Long enough for Merrily to tuck the phone under her chin while she shed her coat.
‘I had a call from young Francis,’ Huw said. ‘The detective.’
‘Bliss? You had a call from Bliss?’
‘Catholic, am I right?’
‘Ten a penny in Liverpool.’
‘And a bit… not exactly unstable. Would “volatile” be a better word?’
‘Let’s say “impetuous”. What’s this about, Huw?’
Lad’s been out and about, asking a lot of questions in certain areas. Bee in his bonnet. Bees buzz.’
‘Certain areas?’
‘Specifically, the West case.’
‘Why would he phone you about that?’ She was cautious now.
‘I, er… I were a consultant on that inquiry.’
‘You never mentioned that before.’
‘Couple of us were brought in after talk of the Wests being involved with a satanic cult.’
‘I wasn’t aware of that.’
‘Talk by West himself, mostly. Some of it was allegedly said in discussions he had with his prison carer, while he was on remand. Could’ve been bullshit. Anyroad, during the police investigation, a number of us were asked if we knew of anything, any groups operating around Gloucester or the Forest of Dean. Satanist, sadist, anything deviant. One suggestion was that Fred West were supplying this group with virgins. Abducting women, taking them to some farm for ritual abuse, subsequent murder. Course, he lied a lot. Probably just a latent attempt to shift some blame was how the coppers saw it, but they didn’t want to take any chances.’
‘And were you able to help?’
‘Well, we couldn’t supply a string of addresses of satanic temples, if that’s what they expecting. But there was evidence of hard magic in 25 Cromwell Street itself. One of the victims – young lass of seventeen – was into occultism and blood-ritual, linked to bondage, S-and-M. Whether they believed in it or not, the Wests were only too happy to join in. Lass ended up tied by her ankles to a beam in the cellar, hanging upside down like a side of meat.’
Huw’s tone of voice had altered, gone flat. The level of emotion in his voice was often an inverse reflection of his actual commitment. Merrily recalled one of her fellow students on the Deliverance course saying, Funny chap, old Huw. Been through the mill. Wears his scar tissue like a badge. This had been unfair.
He didn’t. He might slope around in baggy jeans and trainers with holes in them, looking ravaged – but only ravaged like the lead guitarist of some old blues band you vaguely remembered from your childhood. And he rarely talked about the mills he’d been through, dark or satanic.
‘Anyroad, Bliss reckons there’s a link between Lodge and West that his esteemed colleagues are not taking seriously enough.’
‘He told you about the attaché case and the pictures?’
‘Asked me if I could see any ritual angle.’
‘Asked me, too. Could you?’
‘Told him I couldn’t see either of them buggers being bright enough for that kind of stuff. However, we can’t rule out a link, can we? West got around the Forest of Dean a lot. Him and Lodge were both two-bit contractors.’
‘Hold on…’ Merrily’s hand tightened round the phone. ‘I don’t think even Frannie Bliss is going that far. He told me about a man from South Wales who had a sick fascination with the Wests and killed a girl on the edge of the Forest in 1996. Bliss was thinking along those lines – West as role model. He didn’t see a personal connection, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Merrily, what I’m saying is this: you’ve got one woman dead, and the coppers are looking at the possibility that Lodge killed her either because she wouldn’t go along with his horrific West fantasies or she found out what he’d done to the others. What he’d done to the others. See? What did he do to the others?’
‘Nobody yet knows whether there are others.’
‘Aye. And happen that’s why the police aren’t publicizing it about those pictures and the cuttings. Because once you throw down the name West, it’s no longer
an ordinary murder investigation. No longer, God forbid, even an ordinary sex-murder inquiry. It’s kidnap… torture… mutilation. It’s the unspeakable. It’s saying to the parents of every missing girl within a fifty-mile radius or more: you’ve read about West and what he did. Well, we’re not trying to worry you or anything but…’
‘Huw,’ she said, ‘he’s dead. Lodge is dead and West is dead.’ Merrily, West told this woman in Winson Green that he’d done another twenty. He also said there were other people involved. Now, there must be a lot of folk with missing relatives who can’t help wondering, whenever they wake up in the night. And in that area of West Gloucestershire and the Herefordshire border and the Forest, it’s all a bit close. Still raw. If any link with West came out, then you really would have a problem with that funeral.’
‘Yeah.’ She sagged a little in her chair. ‘I hadn’t really thought about that.’
‘Keep it to yourself,’ Huw said, ‘and pray that Francis does the same.’ He paused. ‘“The lamp of the wicked shall be put out”.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Book of Proverbs.’
‘I know. What’s the relevance?’
‘I don’t know if Lodge had any connection, real or imagined, with West,’ Huw said. ‘All I know is that nowt reignites faster than the lamp of the wicked.’
Jane let herself in and put on the hall light, which lit up The Light of the World. She stared into His lined face: so benign, so sad and world-weary, so…
… So holier than thou.
She experienced this shockingly powerful urge to pull down the picture and smash it to pieces on the flagstones. This was how the Church had been keeping bums on pews for two mil- lennia. He died for you. You owe Him.
Guilt. Original guilt.
They gave you pictures like this to underline it: you owe Christ, you owe Uncle Ted, you owe the parish and the smug bloody Church that pays you peanuts. Bastards!
Jane’s face was stiff with drying tears. The kitchen door was open, the light was on, and from the other side of the room she could hear Mum on the phone in the scullery, living the lie. She closed the kitchen door quietly, and went upstairs to her apartment in the attic, where she and Eirion had first… had sex. She