Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘The thirteenth.’

It was like one of those damn signposts being erected in the scullery, hammered into the floor in front of the desk.

MAT PHOBE?

Something about that name. Not a real name, obviously.

‘Think about it and let me know early tomorrow,’ Adam Eastgate said. ‘OK?’

‘OK. I will.’ Her stare travelling up and down the names, alighting on—

SYCHARTH????

‘Adam, tell me something.’

‘If I can.’

‘The threats received by the Duchy—’

‘Oh, now—’

‘It’ll go no further, I promise. Come on. Someone’s given you the green light to trust me.’

‘Where did you get this?’

‘From Jonathan Long.’

Which she had, in a way.

‘Wales,’ Merrily said. ‘He was talking about Wales.’

‘Aw, look, it was rubbish, Merrily. They decided it was all complete rubbish. A joke.’

‘What sort of threats were they? Please. It’s important.’

‘I have to refer these things up, you know? They have to be looked into. Once we got them translated … the grammar wasn’t even right, apparently. I can’t tell you any more.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Merrily said, going up the list from the bottom as she clicked off.

CROWLEY.

DE MOLAY

MAT PHOBE?

Printing that last one out again, separating the letters.

MAT PHOBE

Then, in slight disbelief, she began to pick out individual letters, writing them down in a different order. Very lightly, so that it was almost a ghost of a word. As if she couldn’t bear to give it more solidity …

BAPHOMET

TOO EARLY TO panic.

It couldn’t happen. Not on a mild autumnal Wednesday afternoon in Tanworth-in-Arden, in Middle England.

And he must have done this a couple of times before – distinctly remembering leaving his car in a particular place when it was actually somewhere else. It had definitely happened before.

If never with nearly four thousand pounds’ worth of kit in the back, not including the Boswell guitar which was as close to priceless as anything he’d ever possessed.

Who was he trying to fool?

Lol stood in the road, in the empty space between two vividly green-gold beech trees. Standing exactly where he remembered parking the truck … and parking it not too confidently, because the Animal was so much longer than his old car.

But it had been a strange, unpredictable day. He needed to check and double-check before reporting it to the police. Damn, damn, damn .

The sky was clouding over, the sun hazed like a smear of butter on white bread, and he’d begun numbly retracing his steps to the churchyard, when his mobile played the riff from ‘Heavy Medication Day’.

When he opened up the phone, a phone number he didn’t recognize appeared in the screen.

A male voice he didn’t recognize, either.

‘Robinson.’

‘Yes.’

‘Try the pub car park.’

Lol said, ‘Who’s that?’

There was no answer.

Lol said, ‘Listen …’

There wasn’t going to be an answer; this was the time of no reply. He began to breathe hard, that sense of dislocation again. He turned around, and the pub was directly opposite.

He didn’t move, realizing he could actually see the truck from here, silver blue, centrally parked. A man in a suit, with a briefcase under one arm, came out of the pub and bleeped open a BMW. Nobody else was about.

Lol approached the Animal slowly, walking all around it from a distance, until he was sure there was nobody sitting in it. Clutching his keys, very much afraid that he wasn’t going to need them. Not to open the driver’s door, anyway.

Nor, as it turned out, the roll-top that Gomer and Danny Thomas had fitted onto the box, now bunched up at the end like an accordion.

There was a gap at the tailgate where the lock had been prised. When Lol pushed it, it jammed halfway, but that was enough for him to read the message.

YOU WON’T BE NEEDING THIS ANY MORE.

TRUST ME

The lettering was black and ragged. It had been wire-burned into the lightly polished face of the Boswell guitar which lay in its rigid velvet-lined case, like a child’s body in an open coffin. The hinged top of the case had been bent back, snapped strings writhing in the air where the Boswell’s neck had been broken.

On the square, the shadow of the medieval market hall had lengthened over the grey Lexus. In other circumstances, you could almost start to worry about what might have happened to the driver.

It was nearly four p.m., and Merrily realized she hadn’t eaten today, at all – not good – but still wasn’t hungry. In her mind, the candle was burning between the horns of the hermaphrodite goat and would not go out.

‘This is the fourth time you been out yere, vicar.’

She spun round, and the candle flame seemed to waver.

‘Some’ing on your mind, I reckon,’ Gomer Parry said. ‘Not that I been spying – just doing a bit o’ tidying round the churchyard, collecting the ole windfalls, kind o’ thing.’

‘Sorry, Gomer, I’m …’

‘You en’t bin around these past two days, vicar.’

‘No. I meant to tell you … it was all done in a bit of a rush.’

She’d thought perhaps he was slowing down, pottering around the village more, leaving the big digger jobs to Danny, but he looked bright enough, his bottle glasses full of light, his white hair projecting like the bristles on a yard brush, ciggy tin poking out of the top pocket of his old tweed jacket.

‘No problem – I seen Janey and her explained. I’d come out a time or two, see if I could spot you. Thing is, vicar … you got a minute?’

Gomer took her arm and nodded towards the market hall, and they moved between two oak pillars. Whatever it was, she didn’t really have time for it, but this was Gomer Parry.

‘Thing is, vicar, last time we was talking I wasn’t exac’ly straight with you.’

That had to be a first; this man was embarrassingly straight.

‘I’m sorry, been a bit preoccupied. What are we talking about here, Gomer?’

‘You asked me about a partic’lar woman.’

‘Oh.’

‘And I was kinder talking all round the subject, if you recalls.’

‘Well, I didn’t really—’

‘Which was wrong. Things between us, that en’t how it’s ever been.’

‘No.’

‘What I should’ve said, see, was there’s stuff I could tell you – tell you – that shouldn’t ever be repeated to nobody. On account of there’s some things what, on the surface, is a bit … your job, you’d most likely have to say sinful .’

‘Not really one of my words, but never mind …’

‘But it en’t. Not really. Not in the … how can I put this …? Not in the circumstances in which these things is being looked at, kind o’ thing.’

‘Not in the context of a particular situation?’

‘ Contex! That’s the word, vicar. In this yere contex, sin is …’

‘Relative?’

‘Exac’ly.’

‘And the context is ?’

‘Garway, vicar. Garway is its own contex. There’s Hereford and there’s Wales … and there’s Garway. And Garway’s its own contex.’

‘Gomer, I just want to say … you don’t have to tell me everything. I mean, I’m not—’

‘I knows that, vicar.’

‘However, as it happens, a situation has arisen where the more I know about the particular woman you were referring to, the more I might actually be able to help her.’

‘That a fact?’

‘So, frankly, any dirt you have on Mrs Morningwood, I’m up for it, basically.’