by Phil Rickman
Merrily jerked back in her chair.
‘Fifty three hits? Already?’
‘Minimal,’ Jane said. ‘Could be thousands by the end of the day. But, you know… by YouTube standards, it’s fairly innocuous. I mean, there must be more sensational exorcisms on vid—’
‘Jane, it was a blessing. Basic. Ground floor.’
‘Yeah, well, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I mean your face isn’t very clear.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Just tell the slag to sod off,’ Jane said. ‘I would.’
* * *
She reported it to Sophie. Sophie said she’d tell the Bishop. An hour later she called back.
‘He didn’t really have time to say a great deal. Medical appointment. I don’t think he’s overly worried at this stage, but, like me, he thinks you should avoid Mrs Mahonie.’
‘I left a card. What if she calls me?’
‘After this? Is that likely?’
‘After this it’s very likely. You think she’s going to be embarrassed? I had to promise to make it discreet, OK? She hadn’t even told her husband she was getting us involved. How many other lies? However…’ Merrily sighed unhappily. ‘…that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a… problem.’
Wondering now if Zoe was planning to use her as evidence that the house really was haunted. Were the Mahonies planning to take some kind of legal action against the seller? Was the fortuitously-absent husband pulling Zoe’s strings?
‘If you do ever find it necessary to visit Mrs Mahonie again,’ Sophie said, ‘shouldn’t you be accompanied by a psychiatrist? As there’s now explicit mention of an evil spirit?’
‘Not from me..’
‘I realise that. But her use of the word surely takes the situation on to a different level.’
‘Not nec—’
‘And gives you an excuse to take a psychiatrist. Do you see what I mean?’
‘I suppose.’
‘I could send a copy of your report to someone on the psychiatrist list, just in case.’
So far this year, two psychiatrists had volunteered their assistance, a woman and a man; neither of them seemed as toxic as Nigel Saltash, who’d been dumped on her a while back. And at least a visit from a shrink wouldn’t be a development Zoe was likely to share on Facebook.
‘Meanwhile, if I just talk to her on the phone…’
‘Merrily…’
‘I know—’
‘No, listen to me. If you go to the house again and she doesn’t answer the door, she’ll probably be filming you from a window, on her phone. Then she’ll be telling Facebook that… I don’t know, that you’re stalking her or something. And providing proof. Equally, if you phone her, you don’t know if it’s being recorded.’
She was right, of course. Merrily felt numb, useless. Maybe a peripheral victim of Zoe and Jonno’s fury at being sold a notorious suicide house. Collateral damage.
* * *
‘It’s not as if you have to be any kind of believer,’ she said, ‘to experience a… a visceral revulsion at the thought of something that horrible having taken place in your sitting room. Every time you’re watching something violent on the great big TV on your wall, it’s going to come to mind, isn’t it? I mean, even if it was my house—’
‘Stop there,’ Huw Owen said.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s not your house. Don’t project personal feelings.’ Huw’s voice was like a drab day in Sheffield, where he’d grown up. ‘Let’s go through the possibilities,’ he said. ‘Points out of five: a, basket-case.’
‘Nothing to suggest it, but then I’m not qualified to give an opinion. Let’s say two points.’
‘And, to return to the point you’ve just made, b: over-imaginative?’
‘Almost certainly not. One.’
‘C: volatile?
Huw’s word for a poltergeist. An energy often activated by uncontrolled human emotions.
‘Can’t be ruled out, though I don’t like the lipstick. Three.’
‘D, insomniac.’
The remains of a person. Someone who couldn’t rest. Tied to a former life by anxiety, guilt, unfinished-business, human passions, addictions.
‘Hmm. On a paranormal basis, it’s the most likely… I’m going to say three again. Maybe four. All the elements are there.’
‘We’ll carry on. E: lying.’
‘Four-and-a-half.’
‘Interesting.’
She pictured him in his fireside chair, stuffing leaking out. Hair like sun-bleached straw. Jeans and a dog collar the colour of old bone. She imagined him nodding in the silence of his rectory in the Brecon Beacons.
‘The lies have it, then,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Well… because some of the things she said on Facebook went beyond exaggeration. And she’s not exactly the jokey kind. At times she’d appear scared and upset, but in an angry way - she and Jonno, the ambitious high-school teacher, getting taken in by a ruthless vendor. Estate agent’s particulars admit to four bedrooms, ensuites, triple-glazed conservatory, etcetera… but fail to mention the former owner who sat on the living room floor with the phone and slashed every accessible vein.’
‘So they’re planning to sue either the vendor or the agents. And they want the background out in the open and evidence of psychological damage, the wife’s desperation. Someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts but is so distressed she calls in a priest anyway.’
‘You ever known a case where an exorcist has been called to give evidence in court?’
‘Not personally, but it’s happened. If she’s lying and they lose the case it’s not going to do us any good, either in the eyes of the public or our masters. And if she wins, that could be even worse.’
‘The Church gets bombarded with similar cases.’
‘And then we’ll be rubbished by all the bloody Dawkins-ites as the naive suckers they always said we were.’
Silence. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been talking about packing in, tired of the apathy and the scorn. Taking the shit for militant Islam and kiddie-fiddling Catholic priests. We’re either naive or laughable or we’re part of a sinister old conspiracy to control folks’ minds and have sex with their children.
Bernie Dunmore hanging up his mitre, Huw on the edge. Merrily felt unsteady.
‘What do I do?’
‘Back off. Lie low.’
‘That’s what Sophie says.’
‘She’s right. The woman’s plastered you all over the Net. Behaved like it’s a joke. You did the necessary, you’re under no obligation to take it any further or talk to her again.’
‘Right.’
‘End of.’
‘OK.’ Why had she hoped for more? ‘Um… you all right, Huw?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Good.’
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘sometimes compassion has to be sat on.’
‘OK.’
‘You’re clear on that?’
‘Sure.’
6. She’s here
A sporadic rain misting the ornamental conifers. A few early lights visible on the executive estate, the flickering of wall-mounted TVs.
No lights in the house of Susan Lulham, its angles stabbing a caramel sky.
Merrily parked her old black Freelander just past the last house on the estate to which Zoe’s home was closest. A white Mini Cooper was parked on the rising drive, but no-one answered the doorbell. Merrily stood in the fine rain, looking up, thinking she saw a curtain move in an upstairs room. Backed away, down the steep drive, so that Zoe, if she was up there, could see who it was. Or maybe Zoe already knew who it was, and that was why she wasn’t opening the door.
‘You’re not helping her, you know.’
Merrily spun around in the road. A car had pulled in behind the Freelander. She saw a slender, dark-haired woman, about her own age, in an open, sea-green jacket, off-white silk scarf. Car keys in one hand.
‘Or yourself, I’d guess,’ the woman said. �
��But you’d know best, I suppose.’
‘I’m sorry—?’
‘Forgive me.’ Hands waving dismissively, car keys jingling. ‘I don’t know you. I know about you. A little. Enough to suggest that you really ought to know better than to frighten a woman like Zoe Mahonie.’
Merrily took a step back. Was the entire estate on bloody Facebook?
‘Look, take no notice of me.’ The woman looked annoyed, perhaps with herself. ‘I’ve had a fraught day.’
‘Is she in? Is that her car? The Cooper?’
‘She doesn’t drive,’ the woman said.
‘I thought a curtain moved.’
The woman smiled crookedly.
‘Perhaps it was Suze,’ she said.
* * *
Her name was Anita Wells. Evidently the neighbour who’d finally told Zoe why the house had been so cheap. A calmly-attractive, soft-voiced divorcee working, she said, for Herefordshire Council. In an executive role, Merrily guessed when it came out that she’d served on a committee with Sian, the Archdeacon.
They were on tall stools in opposite bays of the island unit, in the warm dimness of an opulent Smallbone fitted kitchen, green and blue pilot lights like distant night-shipping in the shadows.
‘I was warned to leave her alone,’ Merrily said.
‘Sensible.’
‘I was going to do that, though I didn’t feel good about it. Then the phone rang. An hour or so ago. Picked up… silence. A mobile. Checked the number and, yes, it was hers. Phone rang again. Same thing. This time, I rang back, but there was no answer.’
‘Hmm.’
Actually there was more. About five minutes later, it happened again. Zoe’s voice. Two words.
She’s here.
Then silence. Jesus Christ…
‘So I… came out. Thought I ought to.’
‘And she’s not answering the door.’
‘No.’
Anita Wells sighed.
‘Not my place to subject the poor woman to analysis, but I will say things were rather more peaceful when Susan Lulham was living here. Despite the parties.’
Mrs Wells had admitted to Google-imaging Merrily after a neighbour had shown her Zoe’s Facebook entries amidst inevitable gossip about an exorcism on the estate. So Anita Wells had recognised her out there, made a move, indicating, perhaps, that there was something she wanted - or even needed - to know.
She smiled.
‘I do rather admire you. Can’t be easy.’
‘Holding down a medieval job in a secular society?’
Was that a small, amused noise or the coffee pot? Merrily lifted both hands, backing off.
‘Sorry. I’m prone to self pity. What’s the husband like?’
‘Jonathan?… Spends as much time as he can away from home. Berating himself for his stupidity in falling for a… well, a much younger woman.’
‘Younger,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s all?’
‘Without a thought,’ Anita said, ‘for what they’d have to say to one another outside the bedroom.’
‘Is that his car in the drive?’
‘I… didn’t see him arrive. I’ve been at work.’
Nearly dark now, but Anita Wells didn’t switch on lights. Through a window, you could see part of Zoe’s house, a concrete elbow jabbed into the brown sky.
‘Awful eyesore,’ Anita Wells said. ‘There used to be more trees in front and a high hedge. Zoe was so proud of it she had to have it all cleared.’
‘The house of Susan Lulham.’
‘Perhaps proud of that, too,’ Anita said. ‘The awful glamour? I don’t know. What do you think? Does she find it perversely exciting?’
‘Do you know why she isn’t answering her door? Why, if her husband’s in there, neither of them are answering it?’
‘I… no.’
‘You were here when Susan Lulham was?’
‘Only for about six months before she died. She’d come round sometimes, to unload. Either manically happy or terminally distraught. Giving up men - again. All bastards. Always shit on you in the end. Never thinking she might be the kind of woman who attracted bastards.’
‘So you’d’ve been here the night she died.’
‘I’m glad to say I was on holiday.’
‘Right. Erm… am I right in thinking it was you who told Zoe whose house she was living in?’
Anita shrugged.
‘She’d have found out soon enough. At least I could explain it to her in a sensible way. I promise you, if I’d thought it was going make her completely delusional—’
‘That’s what you think?’
‘And you - I mean despite your… calling - don’t think that? Lipstick on the mirror? The ghost of Susan Lulham on the steps? Good heavens, Mrs Watkins, I don’t know why you didn’t walk away as soon as you saw the bookshelves.’
‘Oddly enough,’ Merrily said, ‘Richard Dawkins doesn’t scare me.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Books about why God doesn’t exist.’
‘Jonathan’s books, yes. No—’ Anita Wells flapping the air with an exasperated hand. ‘—I meant the others.’
‘Education? Psychology?’
‘The DVDs.’
‘I didn’t see any DVDs.’
‘What, no lurid films? No Exorcist. No Amityville Horror? No complete set of Most Haunted? You’re saying she’d removed them from the shelves before you arrived?’
Merrily’s stool wobbled. She leaned over the island counter.
‘All right, look, the mirror and the rest, did you get all that stuff from Facebook?’
‘I don’t use Facebook.’
‘Who told you, then?’
Silence. A glimmering in the wide, low window of the house of Susan Lulham. The reflection of car-lights, street lamp, an early moon?
Merrily said, ‘Please…’
‘Jonathan,’ Anita Wells said. ‘Jonathan told me.’
‘Oh God.’ Merrily closing her eyes. ‘Oh, bloody hell.’
* * *
The darker it grew, the more illuminating the evening became, and not in a good way, Anita disclosing that she knew Jonathan much better than she knew Zoe, and there was only one likely explanation for that.
‘You’re in the education department?’
‘I’m an assistant director,’ Anita said. ‘Before local government, I was a teacher. So Zoe told you she was keeping it all from Jonathan, did she?’
‘Did you see a light flicker just then? In that house?’
‘That house,’ Anita said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’d still hate to live there.’
‘She told Jonathan? Zoe told him all about the phenomena?’
‘She told him lies. Because he said he couldn’t stand it anymore. Because he was going to leave her.’
‘And you know that because..?’
Anita Wells sighed.
‘Look. We had a brief fling. It was years ago. Before his marriage. Before his first marriage, even.’
Oh.
Take this slowly.
‘Did he know whose house this had been? Why it was so cheap? And that… that you’d be his nearest neighbour? Did he know all that before they came?’
Silence. Anita seemed to be shrinking back into the shadows between the pilot lights. There was a lot to be explained here, and perhaps Anita wanted to do that. It was strange - you experienced this all too often - how people, even if they had no religious beliefs, would gravitate towards a priest when they had something on whatever had replaced a conscience.
‘Are they both in there now, Anita? Zoe and Jonno?’
‘Don’t call him that. She calls him that, not—’
A sudden caffeine rush had brought Merrily to her feet.
‘Shall we go and find out, then? Both of us?’
7. Raw liver
The sky was gutter-brown, and there was no moon and the spiky house was dark, except for the reflection of a streetlamp, from the estate, in the living room window. Anita le
d Merrily up the drive, past the Cooper and then down towards a flat-roofed double garage, with a door at the side, hanging open, accessing a side door of the house.
‘Usually unlocked. Until nightfall, anyway.’ Anita shaking the door. ‘Locked. Jonathan! Jonathan…’
They came out of the garage and stood on the steep drive next to the car.
Merrily whispered, ‘Did she know? About you and Jonathan?’
‘Couldn’t have. Sometimes she went to stay with her mother. Only then… only ever then. Look, she was driving him out of his mind with her inane…’
Of course she knew, Merrily thought. Neighbours told her. Or Facebook. Social media that used to be for kids. She walked up the drive to the low, wide living-room window. She could hear voices and music: TV noise. Peered in, saw nothing clearly, only jerky TV light. But it was a white room. And the sky wasn’t quite dark. She should be able to see in.
She backed sharply away from the glass.
Anita said, ‘What?’
Merrily moved to another part of the window and saw the white room, muted to grey but most of it visible now: the squashy sofa, the bookcase, half-empty. When she looked back along the glass she saw, in the light of the streetlamp over the road, a view obscured by dark spots and two smeared handprints.
Heard Anita saying, ‘Is that… what it looks like?’ as she turned away, feeling for her mobile, standing on the patio at the top of the steps, where Zoe had said she’d seen the woman with the short red leather jacket. Calling Zoe’s number and hearing the white phone ringing in the living room. The room where Susan Lulham had been talking into a different phone with the expensive Bismarck razor opened up and ready.
Answering machine. Man’s clipped voice. Merrily walked over to Anita, holding up the phone.
‘They’re not picking up.’
They both went back to look at the window. It certainly wasn’t lipstick.
Merrily spoke to the machine.
‘Zoe, if you can hear me… if you thought I didn’t believe you, you were wrong. Are you getting this?’
Nothing but the cut-off bleeps. She ended the call.
Anita said, ‘Just call the police. I don’t like this at all.’
Merrily called Zoe’s number again. No machine this time.
‘Anyone there…?’
No reply.
But it wasn’t dead, this phone.