Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘He must’ve forgotten to mention it to me,’ Devereaux said. ‘And as that particular item has now been dealt with—’

‘It hasn’t really been dealt with, though, has it? It’s just been pushed under the table.’

Lot of heads turning, some muttering. No going back now.

‘Mrs Watson—’

‘Watkins. And I’m not a big conspiracy theorist, but I’ve encountered enough cover-ups in the past couple of years to recognize—’

‘Madam!’ The gavel came down with a crack that must have dented the table. ‘Let no one accuse me of that .’

‘I’m not accusing—’

‘I think you’d better forsake the shelter of your back pew and attempt to justify it, Reverend.’

Preston Devereaux pulled out the chair next to his, calling out to the back of the church.

‘Can we have some decent light on the proceedings?’

Merrily stood up in the brittle, glassy light. She felt weak with fury.

Moved into the aisle, reaching into her bag to switch off her mobile. Would have felt better about this if Jane had called. In the end she’d gone round to Lol’s, asked if he’d mind staying behind and trying to find her. OK, she was seventeen, for heaven’s sake, nearly an adult. And yet…

Oh God, get me through this .

She stepped behind the table next to the chairman, looking out at twenty or thirty people, widely spaced, Winnie Sparke standing out in a crocheted white woollen shawl.

Lights came on, as if to dispense with the possibility of anything beyond normal occurring here. They were theatre-type spotlights, directed at the chancel, presumably for use during the choral concerts. The lights put the congregation into shadow and hurt your eyes when you looked up.

Merrily looked down.

‘The main qualification for this job is, I’ve discovered, a high embarrassment threshold.’

Nobody even smiled.

‘I was told – by the Rector, who doesn’t seem to be here tonight – that at least four people had had experience of an inexplicable light, sometimes accompanied by a figure, in the road outside. Each sighting preceding an accident of some kind.’

She paused. Were they out there now? Tim Loste, Stella Cobham? Or had they been persuaded, by whoever had gagged Joyce Aird, to stay away? She thought about all the hours she’d spent, dragging Lol out to Wychehill, fruitlessly knocking on doors, needlessly infuriating the uniquely invaluable Sophie.

‘The message spelled out tonight by Mr Holliday is that it’s all superstitious rubbish. And he was thoughtful enough to put all that on my answering machine earlier today, when he phoned to advise me not to bother coming.’

A few murmurs at last. She could see Holliday, stiff-faced, in a left-hand pew, second row.

‘Now what I’m gathering from what’s been said is that Mr Holliday had earlier considered that the alleged phenomenon might have been useful as a publicity gimmick … to focus attention on his campaign against what’s happening at the Royal Oak. Get the protest into the national papers. Maybe on TV.’

Merrily paused again, looking over to where she’d last seen Holliday, giving him a warm smile – the pompous, duplicitous git.

‘You can see the TV reports now, can’t you? Long shot of the hills at sunset, overlaid with some suitably serene pastoral music written by … the cyclist .’

Preston Devereaux’s chair creaked.

‘Mrs Watkins, I think—’

‘And then it goes dark,’ Merrily said. ‘And we see the Royal Oak throbbing with purple strobe lights and a blast of drum-’n’-bass all over the forecourt. And then Mr Holliday steps into shot with a grim face and a petition to the council.’

‘ Mrs Watkins .’

‘All right … I’m sorry.’ Putting up her hands, turning to Preston Devereaux. ‘Mr Chairman, I take it that you were tacitly informing us a few minutes ago that in the moments before that horrific crash you did not see a strange light or a strange cyclist. But where are the people who insist that they did? Is Mr Loste here tonight, for instance? Because I’d’ve thought if this meeting was to make a decision it ought to hear all the evidence. Mr Loste? ’

She peered into the lights. Silence.

‘Well … thanks, Mr Chairman. That’s all I wanted to say, really. Just didn’t want anyone to think that, having been invited, I’d failed to show up. Thank you.’

Merrily shouldered her bag amid a rush of whispers. Preston Devereaux said nothing. She slid around the table and walked away, out of the spotlight pool, down into the shadows of the left-hand aisle, aware of hushed discussions opening up on both sides, like a small motor coming to life, and then the scuffling sound of someone standing up.

‘Wait…’ A tall woman, black top, spiky red hair, standing sideways in the pew space.

Merrily stopped and leaned against a pew-end.

‘I saw it,’ the woman said. ‘This fully formed man on a bike – high up on his bike, this great, black…’ she stared around the church ‘… pulpit of a bike. Right there in front of me. And I wasn’t drunk, whatever people are saying. I hadn’t been drinking. When they gave me a breath test, it was totally negative. But I’m telling you I saw him. He was there. Absolutely and totally … bloody there .’

‘You’re…’ Merrily felt a small worm of excitement uncurling in her spine. ‘You’re Mrs Cobham, right?’

‘Correct. I swerved and he vanished and I went into this bloody camper van about half a second later.’

‘How did you feel at that moment?’

‘Feel? Mixture of … shock and … just sheer, primitive terror. I thought I was actually going to die. Die of shock, you know? All I remember after that was being out of the car and just standing at the side of the road, shivering. They wouldn’t come near me, the people in the camper, they wouldn’t leave their vehicle, I must’ve looked—’

‘Was there any … change in the atmosphere when you saw the cyclist? The temperature?’

Merrily saw that the focus of the room had altered, people drifting to the ends of pews on either side, two semicircles forming and Preston Devereaux on his own by the chancel, sitting upright, his long sideburns like the chinstrap of a helmet. Stella Cobham gripped the pew in front of her.

‘I felt cold. Whether that was just the shock … Couldn’t seem to keep a limb still until daylight. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think of anything else. Kept seeing him again and again in my head. I can see him now.’

‘Mrs Watkins…’ Preston Devereaux was on his feet. ‘This is neither the time nor the place…’

Merrily just kept on talking to Stella Cobham, a damped-down silence around them, the windows in the nave filled with a dull purple half-light that didn’t go anywhere.

‘Could he see you , do you think?’

‘I don’t think he could see anything. His eyes were … somewhere in the distance. It was the eyes I remember most. It was the eyes that … there’s a photo of him on the back of one of these books we bought – it’s called Elgar, Child of Dreams – and it’s one of those double exposures with his face superimposed on the hills, and his eyes are looking away, into some sort of infinity? You know? And there are these pinpoints of light in his eyes. Where’s … where’s Tim Loste?’

‘Gone,’ a man said. ‘Or he didn’t come.’

‘Well, can somebody get him back? Because he’ll be able to tell you—’

‘Leave him alone.’ Helen Truscott had appeared in the aisle next to Merrily. ‘He’s not well.’

‘Oh God, the fount of all medical bloody knowledge. I’m trying to give him a chance to unload it.’