The Lamp of the Wicked (MW5)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘What was Roddy’s relationship with Lynsey around this time?’ Merrily asked. Oh… like he was hypnotized. It was pretty much like you said. She was giving him the make-over.’

  ‘And Melanie?’

  ‘She went away for a few weeks. She was ill and she went away, and Lynsey just moved in. Wiv Roddy. And she had him. I mean really had him in her hand. And then this complete make-over. We didn’t know what was happening then, but I never seen a bloke change so fast. And then Melanie’s back. Looking really well, you know? Fresh. I mean, she was a nice girl. And, like the vicar said, she was on at Roddy to get treatment. We didn’t know what that was about, but Lynsey did, and that’s when fings started happening… like very fast. We – me and Piers – we get summoned to the Baptist chapel.’

  ‘By Lynsey?’

  ‘Yeah. When you was summoned, you went, mate. You didn’t get her angry, you couldn’t predict what she was gonna… So we went. It was one afternoon, and Roddy was out on a job for Efflapure, and Lynsey’s there alone, except for this big thick plastic sack. Lynsey and a sack. Like she’s just collected the rubbish for the tip. Never forget that fucking sack, tied up with orange baler twine. She opens it up, so we can see in. Jesus.’

  ‘Melanie?’ Bliss said.

  Cody rubbed his eyes. ‘Worst fing I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘How?’ Bliss said.

  ‘Strangled. Froat was all black, you know? Tongue out. Stiff. Rigor mortis. And the fucking smell. And Lynsey’s shouting at us. “Come on… move yourselves. Get this out.” And I knew if we didn’t help her… I mean you didn’t know which way she’d go. She wasn’t safe.’

  Merrily came closer and realized he was rubbing his eyes because he was crying. Cody looked at her.

  ‘She said she done it for Fred West. She said Fred West had been wiv us from the start, when we was… doing the business, the rituals. Fred fucking West. Over our shoulders. She said he—’

  Huw Owen spoke over Merrily’s shoulder.

  ‘Liked to watch?’

  49

  Apocryphal

  AS THEY FILED down the hill into the half-lit street, Sam Hall said, ‘Maybe we oughta be chanting a litany. Like, in the darkest hour of the plague, when the minister led a procession through Ross?’

  Huw, who was leading them, rounded on him. ‘It’s not a school outing. Best if we don’t even talk.’

  He was afraid of shattering the spell, Merrily thought. Dissolving the horror before its time. To keep this little ragbag congregation, he needed them all to accept the continued reality of the evil, needed to keep the lamp of the wicked held aloft, lest anyone should start to see this as no more than a sordid tale of small-town ambition and sexual games gone catastrophically wrong.

  She was still holding Melanie’s angel like a talisman, apprehensive. He might know what he was doing, but was he the right person to be doing it? Oh yes, they’d been in the wrong place, Huw had known that from the beginning. Lodge? Leave him be, lass. Who’s he harming now? We’ll do the chapel.

  Huw scenting the enemy.

  Lol walked beside Merrily. She sensed a calm around him, which meant the concert had either been a big success or a monumental failure. He’d whispered that Moira was taking care of Jane. Moira? Jane and Moira?

  A police car slid past towards the church. Cody and Connor-Crewe had already been taken to Hereford in separate cars. Bliss had not arrested either of them, simply asking, with a certain savage courtesy, if they’d care to discuss it in more depth.

  What would the charges be? Accessories to the concealment of a murder? Cody said he and Piers had taken the body through the fields in the early hours, on a trailer pulled by a quad bike. Maybe they could simply have shopped Lynsey, Cody said, and still saved their business lives – all they’d done was participate in what would be known as ‘sex orgies’. No big deal, these days, even out here in the sticks.

  Merrily suspected that Lynsey had had more on them than they would ever disclose.

  Bliss had seen them into the cars. Then he’d made a short call and cut the connection and waited. Within three minutes the phone had buzzed. Bliss had listened with a foxy little smile, and then said, ‘No real need for you to turn out at this hour, boss.’ Then, cutting the connection again, he’d said ruefully, ‘Fleming’ll be here in just over an hour.’

  Gomer had stayed behind with Bliss, to show the Durex suits where to dig.

  As she walked towards the crossroads, with the old duffel coat over her alb, Merrily was still hearing: Done it for Fred West… wiv us from the start.

  Fred West, several years dead, who liked to watch. It was all that Huw had needed.

  They were passing the school now. Fergus Young held up his long head, his hair high in the wind, and didn’t give it a single sideways glance.

  How much had he known? He must have known something.

  At the bottom of the hill, past the steel-shuttered Post Office and Stores and the Head Office unisex hair salon, Cherry Lodge waited for Merrily and whispered, ‘We won’t come with you, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Nobody could expect you to.’

  ‘I feel somehow empty inside now,’ Cherry said. ‘Do you know what I mean? These were the very people who came to our door, asking us to see some sense, not damage the community.’

  Merrily squeezed Cherry’s arm. ‘At least you know now why they were so keen to prevent Roddy going into that grave.’

  It didn’t take much to spark a protest, not with people like Richard, the newsagent, around – a word here, a word there, a suggestion that the value of your property might be damaged.

  ‘And if you want to arrange something at Hereford Crematorium, soon as you like, I’d be happy to do it properly.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Cherry said. ‘We might sleep tonight. Eventually.’

  Merrily raised a hand as the Lodges walked away, following their lamp up the narrow lane to their bleak farm on the hill above the place that was, or wasn’t, Ariconium.

  What would happen to all that now: the plans, the reconstructions, the suspect artefacts and the audio-visuals?

  Underhowle… where nothing succeeded for long.

  By the grimy gleam of the last street lamp, she saw the face of Ingrid Sollars and wondered about all the things Ingrid must have chosen not to see for the sake of progress. And yet, in this light, you might have thought Ingrid’s expression was actually one of relief.

  But then, Ingrid couldn’t know what Huw had in mind, as he brought out a stubby torch to lead the rest of them past the darkened community hall and out of the village towards Roddy Lodge’s garage and the track to the old Baptist chapel.

  No wonder he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  Jane saw Jenny Box as soon as they came into the square at Ledwardine.

  It was just on closing time at the Black Swan, and some people were leaving, urged into their vehicles by an irritable wind.

  Jane saw James Bull-Davies and Alison Kinnersley, who she was sure she’d spotted at the Courtyard – could have got a lift with them if she’d realized in time. She saw Jim Prosser back from the Eight-till-Late, and she saw her appalling ex-schoolmates, Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes, going into the Swan in the hope of a last pint.

  And then, between the rainy haloes around the fake gaslamps, she saw Jenny moving across the square – not from the pub, but from the other side, from the direction of her home, Chapel House. Jenny Box, with her scarf over her head like the Virgin Mary and that flickering, flinching blur passing across her face, as she paused on the edge of the cobbles as if looking for a light in the vicarage, before turning back.

  ‘Moira, stop!’

  Moira braked. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s her. Jenny Driscoll.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just going… the woman with the white scarf over her head.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Moira said.

  ‘She doesn’t know this car. Did you see?’

  ‘What?’

 
; ‘The look on her face. That look she has – as if her expression’s out of synch with her feelings.’

  Moira pulled up on the edge of the square, where you weren’t supposed to park. In the last fifteen minutes, Jane had just kept talking, without thinking, like someone did when they were drunk: talking about Jenny Box and the angel, which seemed to have brought everything to a crisis. Telling Moira Cairns what she’d never told anyone – about the night she’d drunk wine with Gareth Box and fallen under his spell and the spell of the house: autumn wine and firelight, the sheer intoxication of it, the first time in weeks that she’d found any texture in her life.

  And then about last night, walking these streets with Jenny – how weird that had been – discovering that she actually liked this manipulator, this hate-figure. Finding that she could understand Jenny’s aching need for a true spiritual refuge, somewhere she could feel safe from abuse, safe from hypocrisy.

  Not daring, while she was saying all this, even to look at Moira Cairns, who had been, after all, the other significant hate-figure in her recent life.

  ‘Jane.’ Moira cut the headlights. ‘Seriously. What do you think is happening here?’

  ‘I reckon Gareth Box is in her house, and she’s afraid to go back there. She said he’d defiled her chapel.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know, it was only a message on the machine. She’s obviously looking for Mum, but there’s nobody in at the vicarage. She doesn’t know about this funeral, you see. She thought it was on Friday. She’s confused, messed up. You could see that.’

  ‘OK,’ Moira said. ‘Why don’t we just make sure first that your Mum really isnae back yet?’

  Jane salvaged a smile. ‘Before you stick your head out of the trench?’

  ‘That your house?’

  ‘Just behind those trees.’

  ‘All right. I’ll find somewhere safer to park and I’ll wait for you here.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Might be a wee bit premature to call the police. We’ll go knock on this woman’s door.’

  ‘Right.’ Jane slid out of the car. She was aware of the sharpness of the wind and the shape of the cobble under her shoe: texture.

  When they reached the chapel, Merrily was thinking: Question everything.

  The feeling was confirmed once they were inside the wooden porch and Ingrid had pulled her keys out, while Huw put down his bag of wine and wafers, lurched ahead with his torch and tried the door.

  Which, thank God, stayed shut.

  ‘You wanted it to be open, didn’t you?’ Merrily said in dismay. ‘Just like in the stories.’

  Huw didn’t reply. He levelled his torch beam at the lock so that Ingrid could fit her key. He wanted it to be open. He wanted someone waiting there for him.

  From just outside the porch door, someone said hesitantly, ‘Would this be the one about how, if you find the door open and you go in, something’s… ?’

  ‘Lol?’ Merrily stared at the compact silhouette against the sludgy sky.

  ‘It’s just that I’ve had another long talk with the person who started it all,’ Lol said. ‘Who was asked by Lynsey Davies to plant the story. As an experiment. She had to sit in a café in Ross, where the schoolkids go, and tell the story to some friends in a very loud voice.’

  ‘That actually happened?’

  ‘Must’ve been all over the school by going-home time,’ Lol said. ‘What happened after that was that Lynsey would borrow Piers’s keys some nights and go down and unlock the chapel door. So that, you know, sometimes it was locked and sometimes…’

  Sometimes kids, like Zoe Franklin and Martin Brinkley, would be able to walk into the hollow vastness of it, and the air would be vibrant with the power of suggestion. Could it be that simple?

  Ingrid Sollars sounded relieved. ‘I’d never have admitted it, but that scared me. If I had to come down here after dark, I’d get Sam to come with me.’ She looked over her shoulder at Lol. ‘I’m sorry – I don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘This is Lol Robinson,’ Merrily said comfortably. ‘Him and me – we’re like you and Sam, only even more secretive.’ She started to laugh.

  Huw snarled, ‘Shush!’ He turned the handle and slammed his shoulder against the door. ‘That changes nowt.’ He went in roughly, the door juddering. ‘Lights!’

  Ingrid followed him in and snapped down the switches. The filaments in the hanging bulbs strained to reveal what they could of the former Underhowle Baptist Chapel in all its shabby splendour – and of the Reverend Huw Owen who, with his dusty, scarecrow hair and his liver-spotted dog collar, was looking suddenly like the minister it deserved.

  ‘In fact,’ Huw said, ‘what the lad’s just said makes it worse. The bitch was trying to feed it.’

  He looked around the hacked-at walls, at the dust sheets hanging from the gallery. Then he moved into a shadowed area the size of a carport and came back dragging a plywood tea- chest, which he upturned and placed at the opposite end to the gallery, kicking shards of plaster into the corners.

  ‘Altar,’ he said.

  The door just opened. As soon as Jane touched the knocker, the door fell away under her hand into the oaky darkness, and she stumbled forward into Chapel House.

  Moira’s hand came from behind, took hold of Jane’s arm above the elbow and pulled her back.

  ‘All I did was touch it.’

  ‘I know,’ Moira said soberly.

  ‘Why would she leave it open? I mean, even in Ledwardine.’

  ‘She wouldn’t, Jane. She wouldnae do that.’

  As they’d walked across the square from the lightless rectory, just a minute ago, Jane had seen Jenny Box at the top of these steps, at the door of Chapel House. She must have rushed in, leaving the door unsecured.

  But there were no lights on inside. The wrought-iron lantern over the adjacent alley also remained unlit, just like the other night.

  ‘If you want the absolute truth, Jane,’ Moira said, ‘I do not like the feel of this.’

  Jane held on to the railing and glanced back down the steps. Just a few doors away, the Black Swan was fully lit, a couple of men chatting by the entrance. A car door slammed on the square. The whole situation was absolutely normal.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘we’re going to look stupid if we start raising the alarm and then it’s nothing. It’s not like this is some remote—’

  Shush a minute.’ Moira slipped inside.

  ‘Can you hear something?’

  ‘I won’t hear a bloody thing if you don’t— Just stay there, all right?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m trying to… OK, c’mere a minute.’

  Jane stepped into the darkness. She thought for a moment that she could smell the beautiful, sensuous scent of apple wood, but then she couldn’t.

  ‘What’s that?’ Moira said.

  ‘Oh.’

  There was this gilded sliver in the middle distance, low down in the darkness.

  ‘Don’t move, hen.’ She could hear Moira’s hand sliding about on the wall, and then the lights came on: subdued, concealed lamps sheening the old oak panels.

  Something was lying on the floor. Jane clutched Moira’s arm.

  ‘It’s a rug,’ Moira said, ‘rolled up. But what’s that alongside?’

  The golden bar was a slit in the floor, a light on underneath it.

  ‘Trapdoor,’ Jane whispered. ‘That has to be her chapel down there.’

  Moira called out, ‘Hello! You left your front door open!’

  Nothing.

  Moira went and tapped on the trapdoor. ‘Hello down there? Mrs Box?’

  ‘There’s a ring handle.’

  ‘Yes, Jane, I can see the ring handle.’ Moira sighed and pulled it. The trapdoor came up as easily as the front door had opened, as if it was on a pulley system, uncovering a mellow vault of light.

  ‘I’ll go down,’ Jane said. ‘She knows me.’

  ‘You bloody well will not g
o down.’ Moira called out, ‘Hello! You OK down there, Mrs Box?’ She pulled a face and put a foot on one of the stone steps.

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Aye.’ Moira went down. She wasn’t creeping, she was clattering, which was sensible. If Jenny was holed up in there, expecting trouble, best not to scare her.

  Moira was down there like for ever, or that was how it seemed. Jane looked out of the front door, could see the tail lights of a car on the square, could hear voices. ‘Yeah, cheers!’ someone shouted, and a car horn beeped. Situation normal.

  Jane was about to go down the steps when Moira emerged.

  ‘Right, Jane,’ she said briskly. ‘Let’s go, yeah?’

  With no make-up, you could tell straightaway how pale she’d gone.

  Jane said, ‘Oh shit. What?’

  ‘Jane…’ Moira pointed at the front door. ‘Out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s keep this nice and quiet, huh? We’ll talk about it outside.’

  Jane slammed the front door, shutting them in, something welling up in her chest. ‘No! I want to know. What’s happened to her?’

  Moira sighed. ‘Isnae her. It’s… it’s him. I guess.’

  ‘Gareth?’

  ‘Big moustache?’

  ‘Yes.’ Staring at Moira, Jane moved towards the steps.

  Moira pushed down the hatch and stood on it. ‘I really don’t think so. I… it’s not that I don’t think you can take it, because I’m sure you’ve seen dead people before—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Just…’ She had her hands on Jane’s shoulders. ‘I don’t think we should touch anything.’

  Jane looked back at the closed front door and pulled away from Moira, ran to another door, flung it open, saw the cold green tint on leaded glass – the room she’d been in with Gareth. Light from the hall showed that the fireplace was dead. She backed out, went to the foot of the oak stairs and shouted up, ‘Jenny!’

  Leave it,’ Moira hissed. ‘For Christ’s sake, she’s beaten the guy’s head in with a bloody great iron cross and there’s blood over three walls. Now will you just open that front door and get the—’

  ‘Jenny…’ Jane ran up the stairs. ‘Jenny!’