by Phil Rickman
‘Circumstances?’ Down the Callow pitch now, and off into the country, reminding her of that night with Gomer, when it all began, experiencing again that feeling of being drawn in.
‘He’d just had a rather difficult year, Merrily. One of his kids had told a schoolfriend about the domestic arrangements at 25 Cromwell Street, and Fred had found himself in Gloucester court facing charges of tampering with a daughter. Three counts of rape, one of buggery. Rose next to him, accused of cruelty and complicity. Police and social services walking all over the beloved home, kids taken into care. So then Fred has to discuss his married life in detail with the coppers – “My wife and I, we leads a very full sex life.” Nudge bloody nudge.’
‘They got off, though, didn’t they?’
‘Aye. So near and yet so far. In the end, the victim wouldn’t give evidence. Nobody would. Nobody wanted to break up the happy home. So they got off, the pair of ’em – embracing in the dock, picture of bloody innocence.’
But the police had been inside number 25, seen all the signs – the sex aids, the pornographic home-videos. And, while the other children were in care, the social workers had heard the ‘family jokes about Heather, who was missing (run off with a lesbian, Fred said), being buried under the patio. It was the beginning of the end. Within nine months they’d arrested him for the murder of Heather, buried more or less where she was said to be buried. Not a very good joke any more.
So did Fred realize the clock was ticking? Was he determined to get a last one in before the bells went off? Or did he just happen to run into Donna in Cheltenham and couldn’t resist?
Or did somebody else kill her?
‘You think Donna might’ve been killed by Roddy Lodge, don’t you? That was what you told Bliss. And it’s no wonder Frannie’s excited. Because if this was down to Lodge, it proves that we’re not just looking at another copycat,’ Merrily said.
‘No.’
‘Because, while it might not have been a perfect match, it was still very close to West’s modus operandi, including the bones. And when poor Donna was buried, two years before the arrest and all the publicity, the only way anyone could possibly have known about West’s modus operandi would have been by actually knowing West.’
‘There we are, then,’ Huw said placidly.
So Huw had come to take over, AGENDA written now in neon capitals between the lines on his forehead. Huw was running a crusade on behalf of the parents of all them dead and missing girls, lying awake night after night wondering precisely what were done to their kids and how many times.
Or just for one parent, one girl.
Or just – God forbid – for his own redemption.
Now Huw wanted to talk to the Reverend Jerome Banks, to whom Roddy Lodge had gone with his haunted-bungalow stories and been turned away. Why? And why had Banks offloaded the funeral so fast? Why had he really done that? Huw wanted answers. Huw Owen, with his wolfhound hair and his slow-burn stare.
Scary.
Before they left, Merrily had gone up to the apartment, with the chip money in one hand – Jane, at seventeen, was becoming what in Liverpool they used to call a latchkey kid. This couldn’t go on.
‘Flower, Huw and I have… someone to see.’
‘Wow,’ Jane said in her most bored tone. ‘Really?’
‘Shouldn’t take long, but—’
‘Yeah, yeah, chips’ll be fine.’
‘Unless you want to come along? We could call somewhere for a meal afterwards.’
Jane had turned down the stereo and stared at Merrily, with that awful twisted little smile. ‘Let me get this right. You’re offering me a night out with a couple of vicars talking shop. Discussing like God’s Work.’ The kid had sighed, shaking her head in slow motion. ‘Merrily, if you only knew how distressingly patronizing that sounded.’
‘You used to be quite interested in… aspects of the job.’
‘Interests change,’ Jane said. ‘Or maybe we get people wrong. Like, for quite a while, I thought my mother had a normal interest in men.’
‘Now what does that mean?’
Jane had shrugged.
They passed a pub on the Ross road called, with an awful irony, The Axe and Cleaver.
‘If there ever is evidence that Lodge killed Donna,’ Merrily said, ‘what could that mean? It would seem to me to suggest there really might have been a group of them.’
‘Aye. The cult that Fred talked about, and everybody thought he were just trying to spread the blame. However, when all’s said and done, if Roddy Lodge killed Donna he didn’t kill Julia. Fred killed Julia.’
‘You mean just the thought of…?’
‘The thought of Fred and Rose and what they’d done to the others. The images of his hands on Donna. Julia was an artist. She couldn’t live with the images.’
‘I’m so sorry, Huw.’
‘Been dreaming about her again, Merrily. Julia and her white portraits of Donna. Keep seeing the white portraits. I’ve got one at home. I don’t think she’s at peace. I don’t think either of them are at peace.’
‘No.’
‘And West’s still killing,’ Huw said. ‘He always has been. You read about his grown-up children attempting suicide. And a man called Terry Crick: in January 1996, he attached a hose to his car exhaust and killed himself with carbon monoxide… couldn’t live with the thought that he might’ve stopped it. They were mates, you see, back in the late sixties – young Terry, bit of a hippy then, and genial young Fred. Do anything for you, Fred. Showed Terry his abortion tools once. Very proud of his abortion tools, was Fred. Loved to tell women that if they ever needed help that way, he was their man. Terry thought it were a joke.’
‘Huw—’
‘Until, years later, when he read about the case and remembered staying with the Wests when they were in a caravan near Cheltenham, hearing Fred and Rose giggling in bed… became convinced he must’ve heard future murders being conceived. Didn’t go to the police until it were too late. Couldn’t go on living with the thought that he might’ve prevented something. People have been dying of guilt, Merrily. I doubt it’d’ve made any difference at all if Terry Crick had told the cops about Fred West waving his abortion tools around. Just having a laugh, Fred would’ve said. Mucky owd tools like that, who’d believe it…? Why’ve you stopped?’
Merrily wrenched up the handbrake and switched off the engine. ‘I was trying to tell you – Banks’s rectory is up that lane on the left, I think. You still want to go?’
‘Of course I still want to go. Be some guilt there, I reckon, don’t you? Let’s go and help Mr Banks get it off his chest.’
They were parked with two wheels on the verge, at the side of the A49, the old Volvo shaded by high bushes still heavy with sodden leaves. Merrily said quietly, ‘One more time – what are you doing here, Huw?’
Never before, in all the hours she’d spent with him, had she felt the quiver of instability that was now so real it was almost shaking the car.
‘Covering me back,’ he said. ‘Put it like that if you want. Call it selfishness. Call it me not wanting to take any guilt to my grave if more lives get lost.’
‘Why should more get lost?’
Huw leaned back against the passenger door. ‘If there’s a group of people out there still, and they’re taking lives or harming folk in any way, it’s a police matter. If there’s a spiritual evil, it’s ours. Accepted?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I don’t know anything about Lodge – yet. But I know a lot about West. A man driven by lust. An uneducated man who arranged his life around the constant need for sexual pleasure. No moral values, no sense of remorse. Not a hint of basic decency. A man who watched through holes in doors, who had sex with his own kids because they were there. In his house. His house. The house he’d converted with his own tools. A man who loved nobody, yet loved things. Tools, gadgets. A man who possessed.’
‘Huw—’ Merrily wound down the window. She wanted both fresh air and a
cigarette.
‘And what’s changed, Merrily? He might’ve gone, physically, but how many people have died since?’
‘Because the lamp of the wicked must be put out.’ Cold air on her face. ‘That’s why you’re here. You’ve come with a view to snuffing out his lamp, haven’t you?’
‘Start the car,’ Huw said roughly. ‘Let’s go and see this bugger Banks.’
Dressed for dinner, in a dark wool jacket over a white blouse, her features sharp with suspicion, Mrs Pawson was scanning the reception area at the Royal Hotel for whoever had put out the call.
Lol stood up and walked over to her. He didn’t have the smallest idea how he was going to handle this but, on the night before his first gig in nearly two decades, fear was relative.
‘What do you want?’ Mrs Pawson’s voice was hard and brittle as dried nail varnish. She was flicking glances to either side of him, probably to see if there was anyone around she could call on if he attacked her.
‘Have you…?’ Lol looked around too, saw two elderly women, nobody else. ‘Could you spare a few minutes?’
Mrs Pawson didn’t move. ‘What’s this about?’
‘It’s about Lodge,’ Lol admitted. ‘I’ve not been able to stop thinking about what you said this morning, and I’m sorry, but I think there was more you weren’t saying.’
‘And are you, in fact, something to do with the police?’
Though aware that Mrs Pawson’s general experience of the drainage trade would not predispose her to be generous or open, he still shook his head.
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘I do not want to speak to you. That man caused enough damage. I don’t want to discuss him. You’d better go.’
Lol nodded and had half turned away, to leave, when he suddenly turned back. He’d thought about this a lot after returning to the studio, rehearsing a couple of songs in a desultory kind of way, finding that even at the eleventh hour his heart wasn’t in it. Mrs Pawson had been perhaps the last person to have any business dealings with Lodge, and she was a woman on her own and something was not right.
‘You mentioned another woman,’ he said. ‘When you said Roddy Lodge was a nightmare person, I didn’t think you were talking about getting conned over a septic tank. And then you mentioned a woman.’
And then he told her that he’d been there when Lodge had died, standing underneath that pylon. And that something like this didn’t just go away. He told her he didn’t normally work with Gomer Parry and was just helping out because Gomer had had a lot of trouble that he didn’t imagine Mrs Pawson even knew about as it hadn’t exactly been national news. And then he told her he and Gomer were both friends of the church minister who’d landed the job of burying Lodge.
He shook his shoulders helplessly and told her what a small county it was. He apologized to her again.
Mrs Pawson looked him in the eyes. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’
‘Usually, yes,’ he said, ‘to be honest.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Robinson. Laurence Robinson. If you don’t want to talk to me, what about Merrily Watkins?’
‘The priest?’
‘I could probably arrange that. Maybe I could bring her here.’
She stared at him. ‘Why do you think I’d want to talk to a priest?’
‘I was thinking maybe a woman. The woman who found the body in the shovel of Lodge’s digger after he…’
It was this that seemed to do it.
Jerome Banks’s study had Ordnance Survey maps on the walls, with coloured drawing pins marking his churches. It was next to the living room and you could hear the sound of the TV through the wall. His wife was sitting in there. He’d told her not to bother with refreshment; this wouldn’t take long.
Jerome was irritated by their visit and was making no effort to conceal it.
‘My day off,’ he said. ‘Always take every second Tuesday off, everyone knows that.’
The wrong attitude to take with Huw, tonight.
‘Creature of habit, eh?’
‘Something wrong with that? I’ve always found people like to know where they are with their clergy.’
‘No mysteries,’ Huw said.
None here, Merrily thought. The rectory was a modern house on the edge of a small estate of neo-Georgian detached homes west of Ross. There was a cold street lamp outside the study window. Only one hardwood chair in front of the desk, and he’d made Merrily sit in it, and she felt very small but aware that this probably wasn’t going to be her showdown.
Jerome Banks surveyed Huw, both of them standing up. They were about the same height, but Banks held himself straighter. Military backbone. His checked shirt was crisply ironed, and you could have sliced bread with the creases of his trousers. ‘We met before?’ He had stiff, sandy hair and a nose with a small red bump on the tip, like a bell push.
‘Can’t see it, somehow,’ Huw said.
‘No. If you’re who I think you are, I agree it’s unlikely. And if you’ve come about what I think you’ve come about, I doubt there’s much I can say to assist you.’
‘What would that be?’
‘You tell me, Mr Owen.’
‘Well, like a lot of people, including the police, I’m becoming a little concerned about events in and around the village of Underhowle. And in my experience it’s always best to have a chat with the lad on the ground. We don’t stick our noses in much these days, the clergy, but there’s not much we don’t at least hear about.’
‘Some of us stick our noses in further than others,’ Banks said.
‘Agreed. How long have you got before retirement, Jerome?’
Banks coloured. ‘Obviously, Owen, I’ve heard about you and your little Deliverance empire. Your incantations and your Thermos flasks of holy water, your new medievalism. And, yes, you’re quite right. I don’t have long before retirement – eighteen months at the most – and I don’t intend to spend any of that time kow-towing to the charismatics and the damn happy-clappies!’
Merrily smiled.
Huw scowled. ‘I don’t clap much, pal. And I’m not happy.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to know about a few of the incidents that’ve been brought to your notice but which you haven’t felt inclined to do owt about, being as how you’re not into new medievalism.’
Merrily sat still and said nothing. She just wouldn’t have dared…
‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about,’ Banks said, but he’d left too long a pause. ‘If you think I’ve been “got at” over the Lodge funeral, I can show you two dozen letters and a small petition, all of them urging me not to bury Lodge at Underhowle, and no letters at all in support.’
‘Urging?’ Merrily said. ‘No threats, then? I’ve had a threat.’ Huw looked at her. ‘Had an anonymous phone call warning me to stay at home on Friday.’
‘You never said owt about that,’ Huw said. ‘You told the police?’
‘As the funeral’s now tomorrow, I didn’t think it really applied.’
‘If anyone had threatened me,’ Banks said, ‘I should have made a point of personally digging the grave.’
‘Why did you suggest Merrily for the job?’
Banks waited a couple of seconds. ‘Did I suggest her?’
‘Somebody did.’
‘Perhaps because her name had already been mentioned in connection with Lodge?’
Huw nodded, letting the silence hang until Merrily began to feel uncomfortable.
‘Look,’ Banks said, ‘I’m aware that there’s a particular local activist in the Underhowle area with a chip on his shoulder about high-voltage power lines and pylons being detrimental to health and possibly causing some people to have… odd experiences. I don’t necessarily subscribe to any of that and if I did, I should be obliged to conclude that it wasn’t a matter at all for the Church – not even your particular outpost.’
‘Aha,’ Huw said.
‘You’ve had reports of odd experie
nces?’ Merrily said.
‘As you know, people often say things they have difficulty justifying.’ Banks was gazing over Merrily’s head at his own and Huw’s reflections in the window. ‘Often because they want rehousing. A better house. Think we’re all idiots.’
‘This is hauntings?’ Huw asked.
‘As there are usually also physical symptoms, I’ve tended to refer people to the doctor.’
‘He cure them?’
‘I’ve no idea. I have heard of some people going to so-called alternative practitioners in Ross and Hereford. The very people to deal with their alternative problems. It’s nothing to do with religion.’
‘And that’s what you said to Lodge, eh?’
The tip of Banks’s nose went white. ‘How bloody dare you—’
‘Look!’ Merrily stood up. She was getting tired of breaking up Huw’s fights. ‘Mr Banks, you might not think much of what we do – or try to do – but if there’s a remote possibility that it helps people to cope, we’ll just… we’ll muddle on, if you don’t mind. If I told you what this was really about, you probably wouldn’t thank me. And call me overzealous, but I kind of like to know exactly who I’m burying. Isn’t that the most important thing we ever do for someone?’
‘Are you trying to tell me my job?’
‘Not your job any more,’ Huw said. ‘You unloaded it. Be interesting to know why.’
‘You know why – matter of local politics.’
‘So you ignored all the other complaints of psychic intrusion for purely political reasons, and not wanting to encourage happy-clappy hysteria.’
‘You bastard.’
Huw beamed. ‘That’s the first perceptive deduction you’ve made all night, pal.’
‘Look,’ Merrily said, ‘we all appreciate that we – the clergy – come from different directions… which is healthy. And we’re not trying to cause trouble, Mr Banks. We’d just like to be able to work out what we’re dealing with. A bit of background – in confidence – would help.’
She watched Banks contemplating this, working out where he stood.