by Phil Rickman
Jenny Box said, ‘When did you see my husband?’
‘How do you know…?’
‘He’s back in London now. We have the same houses, but we don’t live together. Did he come here?’
No.’
‘Which means you went to him.’ Jenny Box stood in the doorway, and when she spoke all that fey lilt had been punched out of her voice. ‘And did he touch you, Jane? As well as defaming me the best he could, did he touch you?’
‘What?’
‘Did you let him near you?’
Jane felt her mouth going out of shape.
‘It’s all right,’ Jenny Box said calmly. ‘I won’t distress you further. I’m going now.’
Jane came round the table, her fists clenched. When she reached the hall, Jenny Box had the front door open and was standing next to the Holman Hunt picture, half under the porch light but blocking it, so that it looked for a moment as if she was actually lit by the lantern that Christ was carrying in the picture. Her face was as white as a communion wafer. And she was muttering ‘Oh, dear God, dear God,’ and pulling her scarf over her head.
‘It was as if they wanted me to know,’ Mrs Pawson said. ‘From the first.’
‘They both came to install it?’ Lol asked.
‘It was quite a warm autumn day. She – the woman, Lynsey – was wearing a skimpy black top with nothing underneath it. Even when they were unloading the appliance from the truck, they kept touching one another all the time.’
‘What was she like?’ Merrily said.
‘Quite a big woman. Not much over medium height, but big bones. She had black, frizzy hair, dark eyes. She wasn’t particularly good-looking, but she had a sexiness about her, I suppose you’d have to call it. A sexiness that was not so much sultry as glowering. The way she moved – prowled – even when she was working, hauling these plastic pipes and equipment and… She hardly ever smiled – that was something that struck me – and when she did it wasn’t a very big smile, and… sly isn’t quite the word. It was as if she knew something you didn’t.’
Lol noticed that Mrs Pawson kept glancing at one of the table lamps as if to make sure it was still on.
‘I made the mistake of asking them in when they first arrived. They… their glances were everywhere. Looking at the furniture – which was fairly sparse at the time – not exactly admiring things, but noting them. As if they were checking if there was anything valuable. Then he asked if he could go to the lavatory, and I directed him to the downstairs washroom, but then I could hear him walking about in the bedroom overhead. Meanwhile, she started looking among the books, and she pulled one from the shelf, and she said, “John Donne – he was a sexy bugger, wasn’t he?” and gave me that half-smile. And then Lodge came back down, still smelling of that dreadful aftershave, and before they went back out, he stared at me in… I suppose a rather blatant way, and he asked me how I was getting on. Whether I was lonely without my husband. “Long nights,” he said. “Long old nights, eh?” ’
Mrs Pawson squeezed her arms together and began to rock slightly. Lol didn’t think she was aware of it.
‘At lunchtime, they would… They had a van – which she drove, because he’d brought the digger – and it was parked at the back of the house with the rear doors facing the kitchen. At lunchtime, they went into the back of the van, supposedly to eat their sandwiches, but it became obvious very quickly what they were actually doing. There was a single mattress in there. No attempt to hide it, no attempt at all to keep it quiet. In fact, they seemed to be making as much noise as they could. As if they were oblivious of everything else, like rutting animals. The van was actually creaking on its springs.’
Mrs Pawson stopped and looked at them, perhaps to make sure that they didn’t consider this was perfectly reasonable behaviour during a lunchtime break.
‘How many days did the work take?’ Lol asked. ‘The installation?’
‘Two. I’m sure it could have been done in one, but they seemed in no hurry – about anything.’
Evidently,’ Merrily said.
‘Naturally, but now I was regretting I’d ever hired him.’
‘Did you say anything to them?’
‘What was I supposed to say, without sounding middle-class and sanctimonious and… like a townie? Like some sort of buttoned-up townie who didn’t understanding country… spontaneity.’
‘What, you wondered if perhaps this was how all healthy young rural workers…?’
‘It’s not funny.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Merrily said. ‘Especially when you were on your own. It’s insulting, and it’s threatening.’
‘Anyway, on the second day, they left the back doors of the van wide open, and I assumed they really were eating their sandwiches this time, and I went out to ask… I steeled myself to go out and ask if they wanted a cup of tea. And they were both sitting there in the back of the van, naked. Well, she was, almost… she had her top off and her jeans unzipped. He was stripped to the waist, his belt undone.’
Merrily closed her eyes, shaking her head.
‘I screamed, I’m afraid. One tries to be cool in this sort of situation, but… Then Lodge laughed. He said what a hot day it was. Just cooling off, he said. I said something like, You’ll have to excuse me, and then she said, in this very low, throaty voice, “Why don’t you join us? Why don’t you join us, love? Do you good.” ’
Mrs Pawson started to cough, brought a hand to her mouth. Lol asked, ‘Can I get you a drink? Some coffee?’
‘No, thank you, I’ll be going in to dinner soon. If I can face it. So I said, very coldly, “How long will you be before you’ve finished?” I could smell the awful aftershave, and I was feeling sick. And she said, “As long as you want… as long as you can stand it.” And Lodge said, “Longer…” And he laughed. And I ran back to the house and locked the door and stood over the phone for quite a long time, wondering if I should call the police… if what they were doing – or what they’d said – constituted any kind of offence.’
‘They never came out of the van?’ Lol said.
‘No, not at this time. It could have been said that they were demonstrating nothing more than what you might call a lamentable lack of common courtesy. But there was – I really can’t tell you – an indescribable menace around them both. A quite palpable sense of something… predatory. I know people will say this is all with hindsight.’
‘What did you do?’ Merrily asked.
‘I didn’t know what to do then. I didn’t go out again. After a while, they came out of the van and simply finished the job, replacing all the soil. They didn’t come back to the house. I felt I should have gone to the police or somebody. But it would be my word against theirs. A townie, an incomer. And of course I absolutely dared not tell my husband. He never wanted that house, never really wanted to move to the country. Kept talking about, you know, living among… sheep-shaggers. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. The next day, I just had the locks changed – and doubled.’
‘Did you see them again?’
Mrs Pawson laughed harshly. ‘I went back to London that weekend to spend some time with our child, Gus. We have a nanny, who I’d hoped to persuade to come down here with us, so that I could continue my work – I do some proof-reading for an educational publisher – but she has a boyfriend in London, and it… Anyway, I came back on my own the following week, to meet the surveyor we’d hired, Mr Booth – who would subsequently point out the problem with the Efflapure and point me in the direction of Mr Parry. I was finding it hard to sleep, and I remember getting up in the night to go to the bathroom and get a drink, I…’ She closed her eyes for a moment, took a breath through her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, but this is absolutely the first time I’ve talked about this to anyone.’
‘Take your time,’ Merrily said.
‘The bathroom overlooks the side of the house, where the Efflapure had been installed. And when I looked down – it was about half past midnight, and a bright night, with t
he moon almost full – she was standing there. The woman. Standing on the lawn under one of the apple trees. Just standing there, quite relaxed, with her legs apart and her arms folded, dressed much as she had been the first time I saw her. Looking up at me with that same smile that said, I know things you don’t.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I was terribly afraid. I thought at first, Oh my God, they’re both here. They’ve come to rob me or… or worse. I got dressed in the dark, very quickly. I found the mobile phone and I keyed in 999, so that I’d just have to press the button, and then I ran into the front bedroom and looked out of the window. Went all around the upstairs, peering through windows, but there was no sign of the van or the truck or… anything. Or anyone. And when I went back to the bathroom, she… wasn’t there any more.’
Merrily said softly, almost casually, ‘When exactly was this? Do you remember?’
‘It must have been at least a week after I’d seen them. I remember there was a bill for the job – for the Efflapure – waiting behind the door when I returned from London.’
Lol looked at Merrily and saw her bite her lip.
The door of the lounge opened suddenly, and Mrs Pawson’s whole body jerked.
A man in a dark suit said cheerfully, ‘Are you all right in there? Anything I can get you?’
‘Fine,’ Mrs Pawson said. ‘Everything’s… fine.’
38
Bit Player in a Fantasy
THE ROYAL HOTEL was tucked into the side of the Ross churchyard, and they went up into it, then followed the path down towards the Plague Cross. The cross was edged with cold moonlight.
Lol said, ‘You didn’t really push her on dates.’
‘No point. I think we both knew what we might have been talking about,’ Merrily said. ‘If she knew for a fact that Lynsey Davies was dead by then, how would that help her to sleep? I slipped her a card on the way out, whispered I could maybe help if anything happened again.’
‘I don’t think she wants to go down that road. She just wants out.’
‘No wonder she’s staying in the hotel. I’m not sure I’d want to be in that house on my own, even now.’
Lol looked up at the Plague Cross. The cross itself was quite small, like a fist on the end of an upthrust arm, representing the triumph of mere survival.
‘The picture that’s coming over of Lynsey Davies is not really the image of a victim, is it?’
‘Nothing I’ve heard about her so far makes her terribly endearing,’ Merrily said. ‘Dumps her kids, probably breaks up Roddy’s relationship with someone who might have helped him and tries to lure an already nervous woman into three-in- a-van sex.’
Do you want to know more about her? Would that help?’
There was no one else in the churchyard. The street-front opposite – now mainly offices – was hushed, but the air around them was vibrant with the sharp spores of frost.
‘Lol, why aren’t you rehearsing? Why aren’t you getting an early night before the gig?’
‘Because I’d start thinking it was important. And if I start thinking it’s important, I’m… Anyway, there’s someone here, in Ross, who knew Lynsey well – someone Gomer and I met on the tank dig. If you wanted to come with me, we could maybe—’
‘I can’t. I’ve left Huw Owen in The Man of Ross, trying to find a pint and a pasty. We’re going over to Underhowle. He’s decided he wants to be involved, which is not, frankly, as reassuring as you might think.’ She looked up at the cross. ‘So this is Sam’s symbol.’
‘“The insidious wind which blows through skin and tissue and bones”.’
‘He said that?’
‘It’s the only good line in his song, and even that sounds more than a bit reminiscent of Dylan’s “Idiot Wind”.’
‘Electromagnetic waves,’ Merrily said, ‘radio waves… ghost waves… alien waves… soft porn blowing through the church steeple. It’s a wonder any of us can breathe.’
‘Prof says we’re mutating into it. One day we’ll become electric beings, just light and sparks. That’s a better line, maybe I’ll use that instead.’
Merrily said, ‘Huw wonders if there’s the remains of some satanic cult still out there. I wouldn’t know what to do about it if there was. It’s not even against the law any more.’
‘Killing people is.’
‘And the known killers are dead, so the police aren’t interested.’
‘No. Listen…’ Lol turned away from the cross. ‘There’s no good time to say this, but I don’t imagine there’ll be a better one.’
He saw her stiffen.
He said, ‘When I was here with Moira, something happened.’
Merrily said sharply, ‘No. Maybe this isn’t a good time.’
‘‘If I don’t talk about it now…’ She didn’t look at him. ‘Sam Hall was telling us about how the bodies were buried, without coffins, all that… and later Moira said she’d experienced what she described as a loathsome, curling sensation in her gut. She talked in an oblique way about evil. She—’ Lol shrugged. ‘That’s it.’
Merrily looked at him and he thought she almost smiled. ‘That’s it? That’s what you had to tell me?’
‘I know how you feel about clairvoyance. Just thought I ought to tell you about this. Even if you scoffed. But if you do accept this sort of thing, you might think she was getting it not so much from the cross and this situation as from… Sam.’
‘Lol—’
‘I’m worried about this, that’s all. Underhowle, Lodge, West. Worried about you. Sorry. Also, Eirion came to see me last night. On his own.’
‘Oh God,’ Merrily said. ‘They’ve split up, haven’t they?’
‘She told you?’
‘Didn’t need to. I like Eirion a lot – the kind of guy she needs to meet in ten years’ time. At Jane’s age I suppose you need to split up a few times.’
‘He may even be prepared to wait. He…’ Lol breathed out. ‘He also said Jane thinks I’m sleeping with Moira Cairns.’
‘Did he?’
‘The way we musicians do. When we’re not shooting heroin into our arms.’
‘I’ve heard that, too.’
‘About Moira?’
‘And the heroin, but I think that’s exaggerated in your case. Look… we’re OK, aren’t we?’
Lol nodded. He kissed her slowly, both hands in her hair. ‘I hope.’ And then they walked down, towards the not-very-bright lights of the town.
Jane snatched her fleece from the peg and ran out of the front door, catching up with Jenny Box on the edge of the square.
I’m sorry…’
Jenny Box turned. Her scarf fell away. Her red-gold hair shone under one of the fake gaslamps.
‘Mrs Box, I’m really sorry, OK? I should not have said that stuff.’
‘Jane—’
‘It’s not my place to be judgemental. I’m immature for my age and I’m probably becoming right-wing and moralistic and—’
‘Jane,’ Jenny Box said, ‘if you want to continue the conversation, fine.’
‘Do you want to… come back to the vicarage?’
Jenny Box looked around the square. ‘I think I’d rather walk, if you don’t mind. Sitting there facing each other across a table, that can be a little fraught. Besides, there’s less opportunity for me to try and seduce you out here on the street.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jane said, eyes still full of tears. ‘I don’t know what to believe any more. About anything.’
Merrily took the Walford road out of Ross, turning left when the headlight beams penetrated the tight steel compound that was the base of the first big pylon in the great chain.
‘I’ve never come into the Forest of Dean from this end,’ Huw said. ‘Always come down from Gloucester before.’
‘It’s strange. Like a frontier.’ She drove slowly along the narrow valley road, the full beams occasionally finding one of the pylons gripping the hillside like the skeletons of steel-clawed eagles. ‘The Forest’s
a different country. You assume it must have different laws, and you wonder if you might be breaking one of them without knowing it.’
‘You feel insecure?’
‘Bit.’
She’d told him about Lisa Pawson’s unnerving encounter with Roddy Lodge and Lynsey Davies, expecting him to make some reference, as Frannie Bliss might have done, to the couple behaving like Fred and Rose West. But he’d said nothing. She
hadn’t told him about the postscript; she wanted to ask Bliss if they’d been able to ascertain roughly when Lynsey had died.
Merrily said, ‘I’m still not sure what we’re going for… what you’re chasing – peace-of-mind, redemption… or some kind of revenge.’
Huw did his small throaty laugh – a smoker’s laugh, which was odd in somebody who didn’t smoke. He didn’t reply. What a strange, unfocused job this was: no framework for measuring success. Not like Frannie Bliss, walking away with a conviction, a result. Most times, you just came away confused.
The headlights picked up the base of the lone Scots pine at the right turning for Underhowle. There’d be a big sign here next summer, perhaps: The Ariconium Centre.
‘I went over to Much Marcle once,’ Huw said, ‘one fine afternoon – October 1995, some weeks after Julia’s death. I went into the church – a white feeling inside, lots of marble, nothing there. Nothing for me, anyroad. And then I went and sat inside the hollow yew tree, in the churchyard, where I know he must have sat, because everybody has. Happen that were the problem: every bugger had sat there at some time or other. It was all smudged.’
‘You were looking for anything that might be left of West?’ ‘So I got back in the car and I drove up on the Kempley road, to the Fingerpost Field and the Letterbox Field, up near where the bugger lived. Where he buried two bodies – happen more, but two’s all they found. County boundary goes through there, and he knew exactly where it was and he buried ’em both on the Gloucester side because, when it come down to it, he never really liked Much Marcle, on account of everybody knows your business in a village. He liked the anonymity of the city. So he planted ’em on the Gloucester side, so they could look down on Marcle and nobody in Marcle’d ever know.’