Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘Jim Prosser know about that?’

‘Jim Prosser’ll be retired soon. And we can catch up on what the rural areas’ve been missing all these years. You don’t think local people should have sophisticated facilities, Laurence? Decent leisure centre?’

‘Has anybody asked them?’

‘Laurence…’ Lyndon Pierce blew air slowly down his nostrils. ‘That’s why you elect councillors. It’s called local democracy .’ He beamed, case proven. ‘Anyway, if you do hear from Mrs Watkins, put her in the picture, would you? If she wants to speak with me about this matter I’ll be available.’

‘Are these … ?’ Lol heard the stairs creak. ‘Are these protesters still there?’

‘Not for long. New legislation’s made it easier to deal with time-wasting scum. Likely we’ll have it sorted before teatime without any arrests.’

‘What with, water cannon? Rubber bullets?’

‘People like you worry me,’ Pierce said. ‘Vicar be back home tonight, will she?’

‘Far as I know.’

‘Only, folks keep saying to me as how she spends so much time out of the parish these days we might as well not have a vicar at all.’

‘Who would that be, specifically, Lyndon?’

‘Pretty hard, seems to me, for a parish vicar to win back support once it starts to slip, Laurence. Specially if her daughter’s setting a bad example to other kids, skipping school, making trouble. I’ll leave you to think about the implications of that.’

Pierce placed a hand on the living-room doorknob, then turned back to Lol with a minimal smile.

‘Oh … and if certain people who en’t local don’t like the way we do things around yere, seems to me they might think about moving on? Knowing they can always get a good price for their period cott—’

The door opened, pushing Lyndon Pierce back into the room. Jane was standing there, face as white as her school shirt, gazing at Pierce with all the warmth of a November twilight.

‘You mean if people don’t like things being run by bent councillors?’

Pierce’s smile was history. Lol watched, with a horrified kind of fascination, as the man tongued his full lips as though he was trying to tease it back.

‘Or maybe,’ Jane said, ‘maybe if they don’t like bastards who used to shoot blue tits off the nut-containers with their airguns?’

‘You…’ Pierce’s forefinger came up ‘… had better watch your mouth.’

‘Lyndon,’ Lol said softly. ‘She’s just a child .’

Pierce spun round at him.

‘As for you … vicar know you’ve had her daughter upstairs? ’Cause it looks like she’s gonner find out, ennit? But don’t you worry, Laurence, it won’t be from me. Not directly, boy, not directly .’

Lol had to grab Jane and hold on to her to stop her going for Pierce. Or maybe it was the other way round.

Whichever, them holding one another like this, he knew as soon as Pierce stepped briskly outside and all the heads began to turn that it wasn’t going to look good from the crowded street.

In the copy of the Malvern Gazette open on Raji Khan’s ebony desk, there was a hole where the face of Leonard Holliday used to be.

Mr Khan stabbed it again with his gold Cross pen.

‘Why are they doing this to me, Mrs Watkins? Can you tell me that?’

He was wearing a cricket shirt and cream slacks and white shoes. His black hair hung beyond his shoulders, cavalier style. In his left ear he wore what might have been an emerald. Merrily sat on the other side of the desk in a dark wood chair which was meaningfully lower than his.

‘Probably just that … this is not what they expect to find,’ she said carefully, ‘in a place like this? Have you tried inviting the Wychehill Residents’ Action Group up here to discuss it?’

Mr Khan’s office, upstairs at the Royal Oak, was like something out of Sherlock Holmes: drapery and brass standard lamps, deep maroon walls and a grey picture-rail. Didn’t really work in summer, but with a coal fire on a December day it would be awfully cosy. A middle-aged Asian woman who dressed like Sophie had shown Merrily up. No doormen apparent on the premises, no DJ Xex.

‘You know, I once did invite them,’ Mr Khan said. ‘They wouldn’t meet me. I am, it would appear, the very spawn of Satan.’

‘And I left the holy water in the car.’

Mr Khan beamed. At first, she’d been thinking how surreal all this was, how unlike anyone’s idea of a drug baron’s lair. But it was, in effect, like a traditional drug baron’s lair, and Mr Khan was behaving curiously like the kind of urbane, educated executive criminal you saw in old films. While she didn’t feel uncomfortable here, it might have made sense to tell Bliss she was coming.

‘Now.’ Mr Khan was leaning back in his leather swivel chair, hands behind his head. ‘Tell me again. You are planning to hold … ?’

‘A requiem.’

‘A requiem ?’

Repeating it in the manner of Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, disarming young fogey that he was. An expensive education hadn’t quite ironed Wolverhampton out of his accent.

‘Requiem Eucharist, Mr Khan. A Holy Communion for the dead. I wasn’t sure whether your own faith might present some—’

‘Oh, not a problem at all, Mrs Watkins. In my capacity as a patron of the arts and popular culture, I’ve attended no small number of Christian funerals. My initial problem, however … is the fact that I simply didn’t know these poor people as individuals. Many hundreds, thousands, now frequent Inn Ya Face and travel many miles to do so. Did you know the late Mr Cookman?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘And yet you’re proposing to conduct a service in his memory and that of his girlfriend.’

‘Not exactly that. Or rather, not entirely that. It also relates to the circumstances of their deaths and the effects all of that has had on the community.’

‘ All of that?’

‘There have been a number of other accidents. Very minor, in comparison, but there’s a general atmosphere of … discomfort.’

‘ Discomfort .’

‘I’d like this to be a service of closure. Of healing. Which, in my experience, can be quite … all-embracing. Which is why I thought it would be appropriate for you to be there.’

‘And why is it being conducted by you, rather than by Mr Spicer?’

‘Because…’ Aware of painting herself into a corner. ‘Because I specialize in this kind of healing.’

‘You’re a spiritual healer. A faith healer.’

‘That would not be a description I’d welcome.’

‘And what would be?’

Mr Khan waited, his prominent chin uptilted.

‘I’m the Deliverance Consultant for Hereford Diocese,’ Merrily said. ‘I suppose I should explain what that—’

‘You think I don’t know ? It certainly suggests that your earlier reference to holy water was not entirely in jest.’

‘It was entirely in jest, but I can understand your … misgivings.’

‘We hear so much nowadays about so-called deliverance.’ Mr Khan frowned. ‘Children and babies being exorcized to the point of abuse and beyond, because they are believed to be harbouring evil spirits.’

‘Not us. If we’re ever invited to exorcize a young child, the social and psychiatric reports come first. And the situation in Wychehill, fortunately, is nothing to do with kids. We’re looking at the relatively high incidence of problems on the road and other … problems. Which have been linked to experiences of a possibly paranormal nature.’

‘I can’t wait to hear this, Mrs Watkins.’

‘People say they’ve become aware of a figure on a bicycle. In the road. Before an accident. That’s it, basically.’