The Lamp of the Wicked (68 page)

‘Tell me something, Jane. Does it make it worse when your mother’s a priest of God?’

How do you mean?’

‘Well, she’s up in the pulpit, telling a dwindling audience about the Kingdom of Heaven, and you’re thinking, what’s
this
shite?’

‘I wouldn’t say that to her.’

‘Or at least no more than twice a week.’

‘That’s not exactly—’

‘But, hell, if it’s what you
think
… ?’

Jane said, anguished, ‘It’s not what I
used
to think.’

‘But in those days you’d had no real experience of life, right?’

Jane slumped. It was like all her thoughts and fears had been laid out in this smorgasbord situation, and the Cairns woman was collecting a slice of this, a segment of that on a plate, and poking them with her fork, but not actually eating anything.

‘Next right,’ she said. And as they made the turn, at the sign pointing to Weobley, she rallied, hit back with the big one. ‘Do
you
believe in God?’

They must have driven for nearly a mile before the reply came. They were passing through a wooded stretch, no visible sky, the headlights on full.

‘Doesnae mean I have to like the bastard.’

‘What?’

‘God – whatever he/she is – if it thinks you can take it, it’s likely to give you a hard time. You want a nice life, the best way is to turn up for the weddings and funerals and don’t even think about any of it the rest of the time.’

‘But that—’

‘Or, of course, the other way is, whenever some shit comes at you, you say, Ah, well, it’s the Will of God.
That
works. That saves a
lot
of heartache.’

‘So your philosophy is what?’

‘You just heard it.’

‘I don’t think I believe you.’

‘But once in a while I forget, and I stick my head out the trench, then
slam
… two black eyes, chipped teeth, nosebleed.’

‘And when people say you’re psychic… ?’

‘Aw now, Jane,
you
know what a pile of crap
that
is.’

Jane said, ‘Can’t you go any faster?’

‘Probably. Would there be a good reason to?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jane said.

‘You could try telling me.’

Chris Cody looked over at Connor-Crewe. ‘There’s no
point
now, mate.’ He folded his arms, his back braced against the pew- end, and addressed Bliss. ‘One night, Piers asked me round, and there was four of us, Piers and me and Lynsey and this woman who worked for Piers down the shop, and – after some stuff – Lynsey says, “What would you like most in the world? Apart from this?” And she pulls up her… Anyway, that’s how it started.’

‘The magic.’ Bliss smiled.

‘I dunno what I was expecting – black robes and upside- down crosses, maybe, but it was nothing like that. Well, candles… bit of atmosphere. And a circle. Bit of mumbo-jumbo, but nuffing you couldn’t live with. The others had done it before, but Lynsey said that wasn’t a problem. She said outsiders could bring in new energy.’

‘Lynsey was in charge.’

‘Oh yeah. Piers was – I’m sorry, mate – like a bloody schoolgirl when Lynsey was there. Sometimes you felt she’d got more testosterone than any of us. Anyway, we were pretty small-time at the factory then – struggling, you know? And there was this contract I was after, to run a system for this new stationery manufacturer over at Tewkesbury, and Lynsey asks me to describe the place and talk about it, and then refine what I want into this like single image.’

‘Image?’ Huw said from the chancel steps.

‘I’m not telling you what it was, ’cause I’m superstitious. Wasn’t then, but I am now. The four of us had to fink about the image and then we sat in a circle, naked, almost touching, but not quite, and then—’

‘For God’s sake,’ Connor-Crewe snapped, ‘they can imagine the rest.’

‘And you got the contract,’ Merrily said.

Oh yeah. First of many that year. Before I went home, Lynsey told me some fings I could like… practise. Fings I could do…’ He grinned uncomfortably. ‘You know, on me own. To build up… the visualization skills in connection wiv… Anyway, the next time I went – no, the time after that – Roddy Lodge was there. I didn’t know who he was, but there was a hell of a… I mean it was incredible. Powerful, you know? It was like you’d taken somefing. Acid or somefing. At one stage, I could’ve sworn there was other people wiv us. Big black figures. Weird.’

‘This was still at The Old Rectory?’

‘Nah, this was in the chapel. The old Baptist chapel. I didn’t like it at first in there, it was a bit cold. I’m like, what’s the point of this? Then I found out.’ Chris Cody shook his head. ‘Roddy and that chapel – crazy. Energy, you know? You come out, you felt you could do anyfing.’

‘Was Roddy on his own?’ Bliss asked. ‘No Melanie?’

‘Nah. I didn’t know about Melanie then, but a few months later we goes along to the chapel – I mean, I’m well into it by then. I had a few qualms now and then, but bloody hell… Anyway, I get there, and Roddy’s on his way over, and there’s this girl like clinging to his legs and that, screaming at him – like does he want to destroy himself, don’t he realize what he’s getting into? And she’s crying and screaming and he’s trying to ignore it and he’s pulling away, but in the end she’s making so much of a scene he has to go back wiv her, and he don’t come in that night at all. And you could really tell the difference wivout him there. Somefing missing, you know? I can’t put this into words, but… somefing definitely missing.’

Merrily glanced at the coffin and caught Ingrid Sollars’s look. Ingrid was sitting straight-backed on the edge of her pew, as if she was on horseback.

‘There was a couple of other times Roddy didn’t show,’ Chris Cody said, ‘and we knew she was getting to him, wearing him down. One night we couldn’t get in – she’d been up and locked the chapel. Which was becoming our place by then – essential. We all knew it was moving now, like big time, and we was ‘scared of losing the momentum. One day, Piers says why don’t we buy it off of him?’

‘With your money, of course,’ Bliss said.

‘Yeah, well, I’d got a bit by then. And this was important. Like, it was all tied in – wivout what we had going there wouldn’t
be
no money. The energy we was generating, you know? I mean, I know what it must sound like coming out wiv all this in church and everything, but… it didn’t feel bad. It didn’t feel
bad
. Not then.’

Bliss said, ‘And you thought it might be better, given his domestic problems, if the chapel wasn’t owned by Roddy Lodge.’

‘Wasn’t as if it was worth much, and I felt it was putting something back. So we got Nye to arrange it. And the Development Committee was up and running, and we put in for grants, turn it into a museum. Course we’d still use it. Lynsey said that’d be cool, surrounded by all these ancient ritual artefacts and that.’

Bliss looked across at Ingrid Sollars. ‘Did you know about this?’

‘No, she didn’t,’ Cody said. ‘Nor did Fergus. And I bloody wish I never had, now.’

‘Why?’ Bliss asked innocently. ‘You were doing all right.’

‘Look, I’d probably
still
’ve been doing all right. I realize that now, but Lynsey was charismatic. She could make you believe anyfing, especially when it was all so… intoxicating. Like, it was around this time that Roddy gets the contract with Efflapure. Never looked back. Lynsey magicked it. Truth was, Lynsey knew this guy who was a director of Efflapure, and she rigged it – probably blackmailing the guy over something, knowing Lynsey. I found out later, but Roddy never knew. He fought she’d magicked it for him. Magicked it. Bleedin’ hell.’

‘Aye,’ Huw said. ‘That’s how it works. They operate outside the rules. All the rules. Sex, drugs, blackmail. You can never work out where it begins. Or quite where the evil seeps in.’

‘So you fixed up to buy the chapel,’ Bliss said.

‘Yeah. I’d just do fings on a whim then. I was flying, man.’

‘What was Roddy’s relationship with Lynsey around this time?’ Merrily asked. Oh… like he was hypnotized. It was pretty much like you said. She was giving him the make-over.’

‘And Melanie?’

‘She went away for a few weeks. She was ill and she went away, and Lynsey just moved in. Wiv Roddy. And she had him. I mean really had him in her hand. And then this complete make-over. We didn’t know what was happening then, but I never seen a bloke change so fast. And then Melanie’s back. Looking really well, you know? Fresh. I mean, she was a nice girl. And, like the vicar said, she was on at Roddy to get treatment. We didn’t know what that was about, but Lynsey did, and that’s when fings started happening… like very fast. We – me and Piers – we get summoned to the Baptist chapel.’

‘By Lynsey?’

‘Yeah. When you was summoned, you went, mate. You didn’t get her angry, you couldn’t predict what she was gonna… So we went. It was one afternoon, and Roddy was out on a job for Efflapure, and Lynsey’s there alone, except for this big thick plastic sack. Lynsey and a sack. Like she’s just collected the rubbish for the tip. Never forget that fucking sack, tied up with orange baler twine. She opens it up, so we can see in. Jesus.’

‘Melanie?’ Bliss said.

Cody rubbed his eyes. ‘Worst fing I’ve ever seen.’

‘How?’ Bliss said.

‘Strangled. Froat was all black, you know? Tongue out. Stiff. Rigor mortis. And the fucking smell. And Lynsey’s shouting at us. “Come on… move yourselves. Get this out.” And I knew if we didn’t help her… I mean you didn’t know which way she’d go. She wasn’t
safe
.’

Merrily came closer and realized he was rubbing his eyes because he was crying. Cody looked at her.

‘She said she done it for Fred West. She said Fred West had been wiv us from the start, when we was… doing the business, the rituals. Fred fucking West. Over our shoulders. She said he—’

Huw Owen spoke over Merrily’s shoulder.

‘Liked to watch?’

A
S THEY FILED
down the hill into the half-lit street, Sam Hall said, ‘Maybe we oughta be chanting a litany. Like, in the darkest hour of the plague, when the minister led a procession through Ross?’

Huw, who was leading them, rounded on him. ‘It’s not a school outing. Best if we don’t even talk.’

He was afraid of shattering the spell, Merrily thought. Dissolving the horror before its time. To keep this little ragbag congregation, he needed them all to accept the continued reality of the evil, needed to keep the lamp of the wicked held aloft, lest anyone should start to see this as no more than a sordid tale of small-town ambition and sexual games gone catastrophically wrong.

She was still holding Melanie’s angel like a talisman, apprehensive. He might know what he was doing, but was he the right person to be doing it? Oh yes, they’d been in the wrong place, Huw had known that from the beginning.
Lodge? Leave him be, lass. Who’s he harming now? We’ll do the chapel
.

Huw scenting the enemy.

Lol walked beside Merrily. She sensed a calm around him, which meant the concert had either been a big success or a monumental failure. He’d whispered that Moira was taking care of Jane. Moira? Jane and
Moira
?

A police car slid past towards the church. Cody and Connor-Crewe had already been taken to Hereford in separate cars. Bliss had not arrested either of them, simply asking, with a certain savage courtesy, if they’d care to discuss it in more depth.

What would the charges be? Accessories to the concealment of a murder? Cody said he and Piers had taken the body through the fields in the early hours, on a trailer pulled by a quad bike. Maybe they could simply have shopped Lynsey, Cody said, and still saved their business lives – all they’d done was participate in what would be known as ‘sex orgies’. No big deal, these days, even out here in the sticks.

Merrily suspected that Lynsey had had more on them than they would ever disclose.

Bliss had seen them into the cars. Then he’d made a short call and cut the connection and waited. Within three minutes the phone had buzzed. Bliss had listened with a foxy little smile, and then said, ‘No real need for you to turn out at this hour, boss.’ Then, cutting the connection again, he’d said ruefully, ‘Fleming’ll be here in just over an hour.’

Gomer had stayed behind with Bliss, to show the Durex suits where to dig.

As she walked towards the crossroads, with the old duffel coat over her alb, Merrily was still hearing:
Done it for Fred West… wiv us from the start
.

Fred West, several years dead, who liked to watch. It was all that Huw had needed.

They were passing the school now. Fergus Young held up his long head, his hair high in the wind, and didn’t give it a single sideways glance.

How much had
he
known? He must have known
something
.

At the bottom of the hill, past the steel-shuttered Post Office and Stores and the Head Office unisex hair salon, Cherry Lodge waited for Merrily and whispered, ‘We won’t come with you, if that’s all right.’

‘Nobody could expect you to.’

‘I feel somehow empty inside now,’ Cherry said. ‘Do you know what I mean? These were the very people who came to our door, asking us to see some sense, not damage the community.’

Merrily squeezed Cherry’s arm. ‘At least you know now why they were so keen to prevent Roddy going into that grave.’

It didn’t take much to spark a protest, not with people like Richard, the newsagent, around – a word here, a word there, a suggestion that the value of your property might be damaged.

‘And if you want to arrange something at Hereford Crematorium, soon as you like, I’d be happy to do it properly.’

‘Thank you,’ Cherry said. ‘We might sleep tonight. Eventually.’

Merrily raised a hand as the Lodges walked away, following their lamp up the narrow lane to their bleak farm on the hill above the place that was, or wasn’t, Ariconium.

What would happen to all that now: the plans, the reconstructions, the suspect artefacts and the audio-visuals?

Underhowle… where nothing succeeded for long.

By the grimy gleam of the last street lamp, she saw the face of Ingrid Sollars and wondered about all the things Ingrid must have chosen not to see for the sake of progress. And yet, in this light, you might have thought Ingrid’s expression was actually one of relief.