The Lamp of the Wicked

by Phil Rickman

  So it was a haven for itinerant kids, some of whom might otherwise be sleeping in cardboard boxes in shop doorways. Some actually said it was the happiest, safest time of their adult lives, being in Cromwell Street, being part of Fred and Rose’s big family, with all that this involved. Looked back on it with real nostalgia.

  Strange. And yet not so strange.

  Because it was an organism, was 25 Cromwell Street, Huw said, and Fred loved it for that. It was end-of-terrace, tall and narrow – three storeys, plus cellars, plus attics – built like a person. And Fred knew all its private parts: where the wires went, where the pipes went.

  He liked to feel the presence of the bodies in there, bodies live and dead. Bodies became part of the fabric of that place, said Huw, who had studied it all in nauseating depth. Bodies, not people, because Fred basically was not interested in people, only their bodies.

  25 Cromwell Street: a bargain flophouse, a free brothel and a burial chamber, and Fred loved it. Loved messing with it, altering this and that, contriving, bodging. He turned one room into a primitive cocktail bar – the Black Magic Bar, they called it, with optics on the bottles and a big mural of a Caribbean ‘beachscape. It was the first real house he’d ever owned; got it for seven grand, but it needed renovation; it needed a builder, needed him. And he’d keep working on it whenever he had the time: extending it, building new bits, fabricating this, concreting that. Building himself into that house. Putting his consciousness into it.

  Such as it was.

  Fred’s consciousness was basement stuff, Huw said. Fred thought about sex all the time, talked about sex most of the time he was awake.

  And if the walls in 25 Cromwell Street all had eyes, they were Fred’s eyes. Eyes and ears: microphones and speakers, video cameras, so Fred could absorb the sights and sounds of sex – squeals of ecstasy upstairs, sobs of fear and despair in the cellars, the dungeons. 25 Cromwell Street throbbed with it. The house that Fred built, full of Fred’s porno pictures, Fred’s porno videos, Fred’s tools. And the dead.

  ‘And they knocked it down,’ Huw said. ‘That were all they could think of to do with it afterwards. There was talk of having a memorial garden, for the victims, but nobody wanted to be reminded what had happened there.’

  So the council had knocked it down and built a walkway, with street lamps, so that nobody would know it had even been there. So you could walk past where it had been, walk over it, as a short cut to the centre of Gloucester. They’d turned it into another small extension to the old Roman street plan that still lay at the heart of the city – one of the best-preserved Roman street patterns anywhere in Britain. Glevum, the Roman name for Gloucester, meant place of light.

  The darkest corner of the place of light: gone. But where had Fred gone? The man who was so attached to the flesh and to gadgets and tools and working with his hands; the man with no morals, no sensitivity, no spark of spirituality.

  A one-man definition of the term ‘earthbound’.

  Where was Fred? The man who remained unconvicted, who had cheated justice, who was said to have sat in his cell, between interrogations, and dreamed of Cromwell Street.

  Where was whatever remained of Fred?

  ‘This is crazy,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Is it? You know about Lodge. You’ve been in his bungalow. You’ve seen his facsimile of the Black Magic Bar. You’ve seen the buried cuttings and the photo of him and Lynsey Davies on the sofa, posing like Fred and Rose. All I know is, lass, there were too much holding him to Cromwell Street and they took it away. First, they took his kids away, then they took the dead away. And they took him away, and he couldn’t cope with that. And then, when he was dead and burned and sprinkled over Much Marcle, they took the house itself away… his creation.’

  ‘Huw…’ Merrily was finding it hard to breathe. ‘This is a notorious killer of the lowest kind who—’

  ‘I don’t believe you can lay a man like that so easily to any kind of rest. I expected traces—’

  ‘—Who, in the end, avoided the processes of the law—’

  ‘I expected traces in the fields at Marcle, but I should’ve realized – he didn’t like it there because it was a village and everybody knew your business. He liked to watch, not be watched.’

  ‘—And now nobody can get at him,’ Merrily said. ‘All the relatives of the dead denied justice. All the relatives of the missing who’ll never know for sure… never.’

  ‘No,’ Huw said.

  ‘And nobody can get at him. Except…’ She was gripping the wheel tightly with both hands. ‘… Except, perhaps, for you, and I wonder what the Christian Deliverance Study Group would think of whatever you have in mind.’

  Huw didn’t reply. Merrily drove slowly over Wilton Bridge towards the bypass, and the moon edged out for a moment and glimmered in the Wye.

  42

  Vampires

  THE VAN PULLS up in the Tesco car park, where it backs on to the bus station, just the other side of the little wall, and Jane sees him getting out and she has to smile.

  Coming towards her, pointing with his stubby right forefinger, a loose semi-grin on his face, plastic carrier bag hanging from his left hand. He’s actually not bad-looking in the right light, for his age, in this gypsyish sort of way. In this earthy sort of way, which you’d probably call ‘coarse’ if you were snobby and middle-class and buttoned-up, which Jane definitely is not.

  ‘Well, well,’ he says, ‘I thought it was you!’

  Jane’s been waiting for her bus to Ledwardine, and it’s late and there’s nobody else waiting in the North Hereford queue, and in fact she was beginning to wonder if she’d missed it. Bugger. Going to be late, so she needs to ring Mum, but she’s left the mobile at home again, and if she goes off to phone and the bus comes, she’ll be stuffed.

  ‘How you doing, then, girl?’

  ‘I’m OK, Fred. You?’

  ‘Busy. Up to the eyes, as usual, look, but that en’t no bad thing.’ Looking her up and down, with the old saucy wink. ‘You’ve grown, en’t you? How old you now?’

  ‘Seventeen.’ Jane rolls her eyes. ‘Over the hill.’

  He smirks in delight. ‘Well, don’t seem no time at all, do it, since we done your bathroom, took out the ole shower? Had a good laugh then, di’n’t we? How’s your ma? Still doin’ the ole…?’ Miming the dog collar like it’s got a ball and chain attached.

  ‘Well… She’s probably OK now, at this moment,’ Jane says doubtfully. ‘But she’ll be mad as hell if it turns out I’ve missed this bus and she’s late for her communion class.’

  ‘Missed your bus, is it? Bugger.’

  ‘It’s OK, there’ll be another three in about two hours.’

  ‘Well now, hang on…’ He purses his lips, thinking. ‘Just you hang on a mo, Jane… Ledwardine, ennit? I’m off up to wosser- name… Weobley, look. So how far’s that from Ledwardine? No distance, is it, if we goes back along the ole Brecon road – no time at all. Hey, listen, I got Rose in the van, too. You en’t met Rose, did you?’

  Jane’s actually curious to know what Fred’s wife’s like, the way he went on about her, this great big bundle of fun, always ready for a laugh, day or night, know what I mean?

  But in the van, when Jane gets in – it’s actually quite decent of him to do this; she knows what he’s like, always on the go, always another job lined up, do anything for anybody – Rose doesn’t seem like that at all. Bit frumpy, actually. Got this kind of high, whiny voice. Still, she seems friendly enough, in her way. Just not as instantly outgoing as Fred, as is often the case with wives of really extrovert guys.

  Fred’s leaning across, apologizing to Rose. ‘Now I know you won’t mind, my love, not really, but we gotter drop Jane off in Ledwardine. Take us n’more’n five minutes out of our way, I promise. You all right in the back there, Jane? If you moves them tools, in the black bag, there’s an ole mattress, be more comfortable for you. That’s it.’

  The van rattling out of Hereford now and into th
e country up towards Stretton Sugwas, Rose taking the occasional glance back at Jane, to make sure she’s OK in the back. There’s a strong smell of oil in here, and sweat. A working van. Jane remembers the problem with Fred is he’s always working so hard he doesn’t get that much time for baths, as he was the first to admit when he was putting in their new shower at the vicarage. ‘Oughter ’ave a quick one now, Jane – test him out, look. You wanner get in there with me, scrub me back?’ he’d said. Little grin and a wink to show he didn’t really mean it. Totally faithful to Rose, is Fred – not that he don’t get a few offers, mind. Beggin’ for it, some of these housewives, have you up the ole stairs in no time at all, you don’t watch it.

  ‘So how’s wossername, the Welsh boy, Irene?’ Calling back over his shoulder as he drives. ‘You still goin’ with him? You know what they says about the Welsh? That true, Jane, you found out yet? I bet you bloody ’ave, girl, I seen the look in your eyes. You all right back there? Sorry about the state. Tell you what, I’ll move that ole…’

  The van stops.

  Jane notices he’s pulled off the road and driven through an open field gate and, looking between the front seats, through the windscreen, she can see that there’s a thick hedge now between the van and the road, and she’s thinking, Why are we… ? What’s he stopping for? They haven’t been on the road five minutes. Then the rear doors creak open and Fred climbs in with her. He’s wearing his old overalls; the smell of sweat is very strong now.

  He’s holding a roll of wide, brown tape that he’s pulled from the tool bag.

  He isn’t smiling any more. He’s got this intent look on his face, like when he was sizing up the bathroom wall, working things out. There are little points of light so far back in his bulblike eyes, it’s as if they’re actually shining from somewhere inside his brain.

  ‘What are you… ?’ An amazed fear shoots up through Jane’s body.

  And with that first lilt of it in her voice, she sees that something has happened. The little lights have filled up Fred’s eyes, making them glow as if they’re veined with filaments, and his teeth are bared. The whole atmosphere in the van has changed, become charged, Fred and Rose connecting now like jump leads on a battery, sparks bouncing between them.

  Then this great big bunched fist, knuckles like ball-bearings, thrusts up like a greased piston on a machine and smacks Jane thunderously in the mouth. She can feel the blow echoing in her skull.

  Then there’s this kind of time-lapse and the next thing she’s on her back tasting salty blood, smelling this overwhelming sweat smell – Fred on top of her taping her wrists together, his lips drawn back, teeth set in concentration, breath coming in efficient little spurts.

  And then, satisfied with his wrist-taping, he’s saying, ‘You di’n’t ’ave no dad to show you what’s what, did you, Jane? Me and Rose gonner help you out now, look. Be thankin’ us, you will, you and that Welsh boy, wossername, Irene. Show you what’s what, where the bits goes, you little smart bitch…’

  Merrily spasmed and jerked up in bed. The light was still on, and Happy like Murderers was spread spine-up on the duvet.

  It was ten past two in the morning, and the experience had been so shatteringly vivid that she had to get out of bed and go rushing up to Jane’s apartment, to stand panting in the doorway, listening to the kid’s breathing.

  Afterwards, at the top of the stairs, she felt so faint that she had to go down on her knees, head in her hands. Her hair was matted, her skin felt like latex, and she’d have to have a shower, even if it sent the pipes into a strangled symphony.

  Under the water, she relived the unspeakable, through the split consciousness in the dream that had been scripted by her reading – the absolute insanity of reading that stuff until sleep had blurred the filth.

  In the dream, part of her had been Jane, and yet she was there, too, invisible and helpless, as Jane’s mum.

  Knowing what Jane could not know – knowing what was going to happen. What had happened, over and over again: Fred and Rose feeding off fear.

  Sexual vampires.

  Merrily thought about the mothers of the known victims, all the stricken mothers who had to read about it, had to know, had to be there with their daughters, at least once, in the greasy, blood-smelling, semen-smelling darkness.

  In Fred and Rose’s cellar, which was not there any more.

  A one-man definition of the term ‘earthbound’.

  Was it conceivable that whatever had been inside Fred, whatever had ignited the bilious filaments of evil in those eyes, could be passed on, could jump – the way the electricity had jumped into Roddy Lodge from live coils around the insulators on the pylon – into someone receptive?

  And was it – as some deeply troubled part of Huw might need it to be – something beyond the human?

  Wearing a clean white T-shirt under her towelling robe, Merrily crept up the stairs to check on Jane again.

  The kid had seemed to be genuinely asleep when she and Huw had arrived back at the vicarage just after midnight. Behind the front door, they’d found a brown paper bag containing a white, hardbacked notebook labelled The Magickal Diary of Lynsey Davies, and a note from Lol that said: It’s all here. You don’t even need to read between the lines.

  When she’d shown Huw to his room, he’d taken the diary with him. She wondered what his nightmares had been like.

  As she stood looking down at Jane she thought the kid’s eyes opened briefly. But then they closed again and she turned over onto her side, and Merrily slipped out.

  She stopped by the top landing window with its view through the trees to the village square and the all-night lantern on the front of the Black Swan. And then she knelt, in her long white T-shirt, and prayed for guidance, slow and intense, from far inside herself, inside her heart-centre, in the emotional silences back there.

  Part Six

  Countless repetitive murderers have said that they felt they were in the grip of something foreign, that ‘something strange came over them’ which they could not resist at the time of the offences… ‘I don’t know what got into me.’ Priests do know, of course…

  Brian Masters

  She Must Have Known

  A hundred years from now, we will look back at pylons as relics of the mid-20th century. It probably won’t happen in five or ten years, but eventually a new generation will come along, change things and wonder why we did nothing.

  Denis Henshaw

  Professor of Physics, Bristol University

  43

  Fun Palace

  IT WAS DOWN at the bottom of Ross town centre, among a cluster of antique shops, and still hard to find. It had a door with no glass and one narrow window with no actual books in it, just a small sign on a greying card.

  Piers Connor-Crewe Bookseller

  Frannie Bliss found the discretion interesting. ‘Porn. Gorra be. How else is he gonna make any kind of a living?’

  ‘Word of mouth,’ Merrily said. ‘The Internet. You can turn over a week’s income on about four books, if you know what you’re doing – so I’m told.’

  ‘We’re not talking John Grisham here, are we?’ Bliss pushed at the door; it didn’t give.

  ‘Try the bell, Frannie.’

  ‘Hard porn – mark my words.’ Bliss pressed a black button in the white door. ‘I’ve been summoned, by the way.’

  ‘Fleming?’ Merrily looked up the hill towards the Market House, where clouds were massing like bonfire smoke. It was not yet eleven a.m.

  ‘It was only a matter of time. He knew I was still around – well, obviously. Wants to see me in Hereford at four this afternoon, which is ominous – anything heavy, you say it late afternoon. Limits the victim’s options. He thinks, Aw, sod it, I’ll go and get pissed instead. I’m guessing formal suspension this time.’

  ‘What sort of case have they got for that?’

  ‘He’s been heard to say, “If Bliss wants to be a private eye, I’m not going to hold him back any longer.” And he’ll
have stuff going way back. I never claimed to be the divisional Mr Popular.’

  ‘What does Kirsty say?’

  ‘Kirsty left last night, Merrily. Back to the farm. With the kids.’

  ‘Frannie, no…’

  The door opened. A woman of maybe twenty-six stood there. ‘Sorry, we’re a bit behind this morning.’ She had short hair bleached white and a silver ring in her left eyebrow.

  Bliss smiled bleakly at her. ‘Mr Connor-Crewe in, is he?’ Like he hadn’t phoned first, to make sure of it.

  ‘He’s unpacking some books upstairs, if you want to hang around for a couple of minutes… You trade?’

  ‘Collector,’ Bliss said. ‘Beano annuals, mainly.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Bliss flashed his card. ‘DI Bliss, West Mercia.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ She seemed unsurprised. ‘Go through, officer.’

  ‘Ta.’

  They went in, Merrily holding the plastic carrier bag with Hereford Cathedral on it. The window had been deceptive; the building was narrow but deep, a darkening tunnel of shelves. Arrowed signs indicated two other floors. The woman stood at the bottom of some narrow wooden stairs.

  ‘Hey… you know Mumford?’

  ‘So this is where he gets his first editions.’

  She grinned. ‘I’ll tell Piers. So it’s DI… ?’

  ‘Bliss. And, er…’

  ‘Merrily Watkins,’ Merrily said, thinking, Cola French?

  The white-haired woman stopped on the second step, turned with a hand on the rail and inspected her. Merrily wore her best coat over the black cowl-neck sweater, the cross concealed. ‘Yeah,’ the woman said sadly. ‘Oh well.’ And carried on upstairs, leaving Bliss peering curiously at Merrily.

  ‘If you go straight down, you’ll find an alcove on your left, with some chairs,’ Cola French called back. ‘Criminal History’s right at the bottom. But, er… Theology’s in the cellar.’