by Phil Rickman
‘I don’t understand.’
She sat up in bed. The rain had stopped.
Fred said, ‘You might be hearing from quite a few people before the day’s over.’
‘People?’
‘Well… papers. Radio. TV. Playing catch-up after the amateur media.’
‘Hang on a minute, Fred. You mean—’
‘You want me to send you the links?’
‘Never mind.’ Feet feeling frenziedly for her slippers. ‘I think I can find my way.’
‘I’ll call you back, then,’ Fred said. ‘When you’ve read it.’
* * *
Here was Zoe, only yesterday, on Facebook.
Listen i saw her.
Lou:
Who?
Zoe:
HER!!!!!!!
Lou:
OMG you R kidding right????
Zoe:
i got up last night 2 go 2 the loo and it was like all the heating had gone off and i was in the bathroom and it felt like i was being watched and i turned round and there she was standing in the doorway. Real as u like. Nearly shit myself.
Lou:
U R 4king kidding!!!!!
Zoe:
U think id make that up??? She was wearing this like black bathrobe that come down 2 the ground and her eyes were all white and she wasnt smiling. Thats what i noticed first. Shes always smiling in the pictures and she wasnt, not at me.
Lou:
Now listen Z. U REALLY serious? Only I got a bit pissed last night and Im not in the mood for no bullshit.
Zoe:
Her eyes were WHITE. But I knew she could still see out of them cos she was looking right at me like she was seeing into my head. 4king right im serious!!! She’s standing there real still and im thinking like how am i going 2 get out of here and then she was just gone and i couldn’t move for a long time. Then i just put my head down and ran back 2 bed and i pulled the 4kingduvet over my head. I dont know how i got 2 4king sleep cos I knew she hadnt gone I just knew she was with me in the bedroom cos i woke up twice in the night and i heard this voice like whispering let me in let me in but I didnt look i didnt open my eyes not once B4 morning but i could still see her in my head and there was like this darkness around her and it was shaped like a coffin the darkness all round her was like this coffin shape I could see it in my head.
Lou:
Stop it. You’re giving ME the shivers.
Nattie:
Don’t!!! Don’t U let her in. U hear me Zoe?
I’m not laughing about this. If u hear her saying let me in again, whatever u do don’t do it. DON’T U LET HER IN!!!!!!!
Lou:
U can come and stay with me if u want. We got a spare bed now Kyles at uni. Text me. But dont bring her with u (lol)
Zoe:
Thanx but i cant. Jonnos back tonite. Id love it 4 him 2 see her but if he did he wouldnt admit it.
Nattie:
U want 2 get the exorcist back. I’m serious.
Zoe:
The so called exorcist is 2 4king scared. She said shed have 2 come back with the bishop. But like i said she told me 2 get out meantime so she mustve known what was there.
Lou:
U get her back! Its her 4king job!!! I 8 you getting pissed about by this 4king bitch. What u paying your council tax 4???
Zoe:
Tell u the truth its been worse since the exorcist come. Its like its made HER real mad all that holy water and stuff. Its like its made her stronger. Im telling u its like 2 of us is living here now. Like I keep pouring an extra coffee how 4king wierd is that? Ive not seen her today thank god but sometimes I think Im feeling what shes feeling which is really 4king ANGRY. It feels like shes making me do things.
later…
Zoe
I dont like talking about this. This morning i was standing in the kitchen at the sink and i felt her next 2 me real close and it was like a shadow over me and i felt very cold
Nattie:
U got to get out of there. I can’t have u here with the baby but you do need to get the hell out of that house. Make it up with your mother. Anything.
Zoe:
Dont non of u dare laugh but i felt it was like she was trying to pull me in with her. Into the coffin. Thats it. I dont want 2 talk about it no more.
9. Nice and bold
Jane at sixteen used to be well into Facebook. Jane at eighteen, was contemptuous: all these middle-aged women turning into a huddle of adolescent girls in a corner of the schoolyard. But for all its crassness, its lazy English, the ill-considered reactions it forced - perhaps because of all that - Merrily suspected Facebook sometimes could work like a truth drug.
That immediate, serious, alarmed response from Nattie, whose ex-partner fancied the vicar.
don’t u let her in. A hint of personal experience.
But the coffin… that still looked like Zoe’s fabrication.
The phone rang.
‘See what I mean?’ Fred Potter said.
Merrily put the computer to sleep.
‘Is all this… you know… circulating?’
‘Everywhere. Soon as the news was out about Mahonie, it was being copied. All the paranormal sites are on to it. And others you need to worry about far more.’
‘The stuff attributed to me, obviously that’s… I didn’t say I’d need to come back with the bishop. I may have said that before anything went to exorcism I needed permission from the Bishop. She keeps writing things I didn’t say. You do realise that?’
‘And did she… did she call you back, as suggested?’
‘You can’t quote me, Fred, I’d just be sucked deeper into the…’
But she was already deploring her own self-protective attitude. This was not about her. This had never been about her. She’d just been a means to an end.
Fred sighed.
‘Look, I’m not going to quote you, Merrily, till you say I can. Don’t know where I stand either. The cops will probably try to get it wiped off Facebook, especially if she’s charged, but it’ll be on a thousand other sites by then. We - the media - we’re restrained by contempt of court laws that the Internet breaks with abandon. I’m not saying you won’t still get calls, but…’
‘What do I do?’
‘Short term, just don’t answer your phone if you don’t know who it is.’
‘How am I supposed to function without answering the phone?’
‘I can probably keep most of the pack off you.’
‘You mean, if I talk to you exclusively. Like you have me in your pocket?’
‘Something like that. Look, it won’t make anybody’s front page tomorrow, but it will keep ticking over. Just give me a short statement - email it if you like, so you’ve got a copy. And then lie low. Your main worry might be the foreign media who don’t have to sit on it till the case is heard.’
‘Why would the foreign media—? It’s a domestic incident with possible psychiatric implications.’
She reached for her cigarettes. She could simply decline to comment and refer them to the Bishop’s office - i.e. Sophie. Unfair. Cowardly.
‘OK.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘How about this? Most of what Mrs Mahonie’s said on Facebook is a gross exaggeration and some is untrue. They won’t use that, will they?’
‘Good to have it on stand-by. Go on.’
‘She came to me for help, saying her house was haunted. I, erm… tried to handle it with extreme restraint. Which is what we do, in the first instance. There was no question of exorcism, nor should there be in a case like this. Exorcism’s specificially about evil, so—Oh God.’
‘You want to rephrase that?’
‘Let’s just say exorcism is something that isn’t done without serious consideration and consultation. I’d only seen Mrs Mahonie once. I did advise her to leave the house until her husband came back. I didn’t think she should be on her own with this kind of anxiety about the house. But it’s never advisable to make quick decisions about situations like this. W
ill that do?’
‘Can you say something about last night?’
‘Last night, I went to the house in response to a phone call which led me to think she might be distressed. I didn’t know she wasn’t alone. When nobody answered the door, I went to talk to a neighbour. After a while we both became worried and tried to ring Mrs Mahonie. Then we… became aware that something was wrong and I called the police. I did not go into the house. I’m now talking to the police and I’ll be talking to my bishop. That enough?’
‘Can I get you on your mobile if it isn’t?’
‘Yeah.’ She sighed. ‘Whatever.’
The phone rang seven times before she’d managed to feed Ethel and make some tea.
She carried her mug up to the bathroom. What if they came to the door? It could get complicated. Fred Potter had told her she might, at some stage, even be offered money, say for her favourite charity, for the full story.
Death had made it into a full story.
But she still didn’t know the half of it. She sat unsteadily on the side of the bath, pulling on her tights. In just two or three years, the nature of this job had changed so radically. A lot of the time you felt yourself viewed through a haze of something close to contempt. She’d planned to walk over to the church, open herself to guidance, in the quiet, but it was too late, wouldn’t be quiet in there now. And people in the village would know.
She rang Sophie.
Who clearly knew. Shavings of frost in her voice.
‘Did you speak to the Daily Mail?’
‘They rang?’
‘Amongst others. After they’d tried your home number.’
She told Sophie what Fred Potter had said. Sophie said that perhaps she should work from the gatehouse office. A little fortress.
* * *
The drive into Hereford from the tail-end of Roman Road took her up Aylestone Hill with all its suburban villas and its trees. An urban hill, so people didn’t notice it was a hill any more. At the junction where she might have turned to make her circuitous way towards the house of Susan Lulham, two women were standing with a pram, one pointing.
It would be all over town by now. Biggest talking-point of its kind since the murder of the Marinescu sisters. But that had been a sign of the times, the new savagery, whereas this linked into city history, horribly so, and would not go away.
Hard even to imagine how it might end. With the Freelander parked in the sanctuary of the Bishop’s Palace yard, she climbed the steps to the gatehouse office, wondering how many more times she’d be doing this before the axe fell.
In the cell-like office, the phone was ringing, Sophie standing with her hand on the receiver. Sensible jumper and skirt, glasses on their chain below the pearls. They somehow never became entangled, the glasses and the pearls.
‘Bliss called,’ she said. ‘Twice.’
Merrily nodded, put her bag on the desk, sank down behind it, edging her chair away from the window, from the light.
‘Gatehouse office,’ Sophie said into the phone. And then, ‘No, I’m afraid she isn’t.’
Merrily called Bliss’s mobile from her own.
‘Gonna be a bit of a handful,’ Bliss said. ‘Zoe.’
‘How badly was she hurt?’
‘Lorra blood always makes things looks worse than they are. Injuries were superficial. No stitches required. Yeah, she’s out. I’ve called in a few favours from Billy Grace, dissecting Jonathan as we speak. We’ll be attempting to talk in depth to Zoe. With her lawyer, who, unsurprisingly, turns out to be my good friend Mr Ryan Nye.’
Slickest criminal lawyer in a county not widely known for slick.
‘And she’s been arrested. She’s in custody.’
‘For the present. Obviously, we’re having a shrink, if not two, talk to her. But no psychiatric history, not on any medication. If belief in the supernatural was a sign of mental illness, they’d’ve thrown away your key years ago.’
‘I’m assuming there’s no chance she’ll be able to go back to that house.’
‘Which would not be good because it’s haunted?’
‘Because she might believe—Oh God. So when you’ve finished, when the Durex suits have finished… do you clean up?’
‘Oh yeah, we send in the police housekeeping and valeting squad, all fully trained with mops and buckets and Dettol and Flash and furniture polish, room-freshener - what do you think? Meantime, I’ve asked for assistance from POLSA, the super-CSIs. Go over the whole place, looking for things we might’ve missed.’
‘Like what?’
‘If I knew that I wouldn’t need POLSA.’ Bliss paused. ‘You might be interested to know how Zoe signed the custody record.’
‘What is that?’
‘That’s to agree she’d been informed of her right to receive free and independent legal advice, stuff like that.’
Merrily waited. Sophie was listening patiently to someone on the phone.
‘Custody sergeant thought it was a bit of a funny signature,’ Bliss said. ‘Didn’t look a lot like Zoe. Or Mahonie.’
‘No, she’s in a meeting,’ Sophie said into the phone. ‘And then I believe she has to… No, if you just listen to me for one moment… I gather she’s made a statement through the Three Counties News Service, which is all she’s able to say at the moment. I’m sure you can understand that.’
Merrily said drably to Bliss, ‘Did the signature say Susan Lulham?’
Bliss said it didn’t.
‘No, that’s all I can tell you,’ Sophie said. ‘Thank you.’
‘How about Suze?’ Merrily said unhappily. ‘Just Suze.’
Rain was hissing on the window overlooking Broad Street.
‘Correct,’ Bliss said. ‘Just Suze. On a slant. Nice and bold.’
10. Keys
Sophie put down the phone.
‘Sky News.’ She stood up. ‘Despite my best efforts, they’ll be calling back. Have a cigarette if you like.’
Merrily stared at her.
‘I’m sorry…?’
Did she even hear that right? Normally, even with a window open…
Sophie was silent. She’d unplugged the phone. Never done that before, either. Merrily stared at the desk, listening to the crackle of the rain, wanting the recriminations over. She took a breath, looked up.
‘I didn’t have a choice, OK?’
Sophie had the kettle on. Her voice came through the hiss.
‘Evidently.’
‘She rang several times last night, she—’
‘I apologise,’ Sophie said.
The colour of the room seemed to change. Teapot in her hands, Sophie was gazing past Merrily out of the window. She put the teapot down on the dresser next to the sink. Merrily half-rose.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You evidently did the right thing. If not soon enough.’
‘Oh.’
‘And if that was my fault—’
Blimey…
‘No. No, absolutely not. Huw Owen said the same. Leave her alone. Don’t go near. I was resigned to not going near. It made sense.’
‘I think,’ Sophie said, ‘that we all misjudged Mrs Mahonie. It’s not simple, is it? Or perhaps not as simple as the police might think.’
‘In their terms of reference, it couldn’t be simpler. The razor killed Jonathan, she was holding it. For me, it might be all still very much in the air, but what does that matter? That’s all bollocks anyway, isn’t it, to them? And it’s their case now, and I get disparaged and humiliated, but what’s that matter, there’s a man dead.’
God, she really wanted that cigarette, but no way was the packet coming out now.
Something else had happened.
‘Have you talked to Bernie?’
‘He’s asking the Archdeacon to oversee this matter. For the time being.’
‘Sian.’
Canon Sian Callaghan-Clarke. Ex-barrister. One day she’d be a bishop. Not here, but somewhere, within the next few years. If she was carefu
l.
‘The Bishop thinks she’s probably the best person to help you,’ Sophie said. ‘As he won’t be here when it… I’m to arrange for you two to meet. Soon.’
‘I—’ Merrily spun round in her chair at the sound of a police siren down in Broad Street. In fact it was an ambulance and on its own. ‘We both know what Sian’s going to say.’
‘She’ll suggest you get on with your job.’
‘As Vicar of Ledwardine.’
‘Yes.’
‘Suspending me, in other words, from… this.’
‘That word is unlikely to be used,’ Sophie said.
‘No. Makes sense, obviously.’
‘Merrily…’ Two mugs came down, with unnecessary force, on the dresser. ‘For God’s sake…’ Steam rising around Sophie, her face momentarily as white as her hair. ‘…stop saying what makes sense. Do you really want to go back to Ledwardine and wait for… for…’
‘Wouldn’t that be the Christian thing to do?’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid.’ Sophie put out an open hand, its nails bluntly manicured. ‘Car keys.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Give me your keys. I’ll move your vehicle down to the public car park near the swimming pool.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m suppose to arrange a meeting between you and Sian Callaghan-Clarke, and I might have difficulty getting in touch with you. If you aren’t answering your phone to avoid the media. Or that’s what I can say to stall Canon Clarke. But if someone tells her they’ve seen your car in the palace yard …’
‘What if she comes in here?’
‘She never comes in here. It’s the one place she doesn’t feel fully confident. When she was chairperson of the Diocesan deliverance panel, that didn’t exactly work out particularly well, did it?’
‘OK.’ Merrily stood up. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Happened?’
‘Jesus, Sophie…’
‘All right.’ Sophie left her hand fall. ‘Two things have happened. Firstly…I discussed it with Andrew.’