Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

Merrily asked her, ‘What did the Development Committee have to say about that?’

‘Not the kind of publicity we need. Get another firm.’

‘Think back,’ Huw said. ‘It was converted into a bottling plant – when?’

‘Oh, quite recently. It didn’t take long for businesses to crash in Underhowle. Early nineties?’

‘Any trouble then?’

‘If there was, I didn’t hear about it.’

Merrily said, ‘The power lines go right over here, don’t they? Did they follow the same route then?’

‘I don’t think anything’s changed,’ Mrs Sollars said. ‘But I get all that from Sam.’

‘Good old Mr Hall,’ Huw said, and she glanced at him sharply.

‘I don’t have to share his obsession, Mr Owen, but I respect his right to have one.’

‘I see .’ Huw smiled. ‘So you’ve got new builders in now.’

‘Starting on Phase Two in a couple of weeks.’

‘You felt anything in here yourself?’

‘I don’t come in alone unless I really have to.’

‘And if you do…’

‘There’s an atmosphere, I’ll go that far. You have a feeling of… being observed.’

‘In what way?’

She didn’t look at him directly. ‘Sam says that’s a symptom of electrical hypersensitivity, but I certainly haven’t exhibited any of the others. I live, like him, on the hill, well away from the power lines.’

‘So what do you think it is, lass?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s not a good thing.’

‘Would you like us to say some prayers?’

‘Whatever you think might help.’

Huw said, ‘But there’s summat else, isn’t there, Ingrid?’

The wine case was sealed along the top with brown parcel tape. Cola set it down on the hessian rug by the computer table under the window, slipped a fingernail under the tape and slit it open.

‘I want free tickets for your gig for this.’

‘They’ll be on the door,’ Lol said. If he didn’t make it, at least she’d enjoy Moira.

‘Nah, I didn’t mean that,’ Cola said. ‘I don’t want anything.’

‘They’ll still be on the door.’

They knelt together on the rug. Cola lifted the box’s cardboard flaps. ‘So you were actually there when Roddy went to the angels. I wasn’t. I waste all that time watching you not finding a body under Piers’s tank and then I miss the big one. Some writer. OK, here they are.’ She took out some books, trying to hide the first one, but he saw it. It was a children’s Bible with Noah’s Ark on the front.

‘Scary,’ Lol said.

‘That’s mine. I’m embarrassed.’ She held the children’s Bible to her chest.

The second book was a thick black paperback, but its spine was white with fishbone creases: Aleister Crowley’s Magick . Then a hardback: The Secret Rituals of the OTO , by Karl Wurtz. Cola let this one fall open to show Lol some scribblings, in black biro, in the margins. There were two more books on Kundalini serpent power and sex magic. ‘You know about this stuff?’

‘A little.’ Lol noticed that since she’d opened the box, all the bounce had gone from her voice, like a rubber ball rolling away.

‘Sex magic – you use the build-up to an orgasm to channel and focus energy for a particular purpose and then… boom. I mean, I’ve only been a little way along that road, but it is scary. You just have to look at some of the people who went in for it. Aleister Crowley? I mean that guy was a total shit, he was a professional shit. But she’s like – this is Lynsey – “Oh Crowley, he was a pioneer, he knew about real freedom, he didn’t give a fart for anybody. ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’ Brilliant!” She actually wrote it out – Do what thou wilt , et cetera – in big Gothic letters, had it as a kind of frieze over her bed.’

‘The OTO was the magical society founded on all that – is that right?’

‘ Ordo Templi Orientis , something like that. Yeah, still going, I think. Lynsey studied everything she could find, and she got quite a few people into it.’

‘Not the OTO?’

‘Nah, she wasn’t in anything. But she was into everything, if you see what I mean. Into pushing out boundaries – sexual boundaries. Overcoming your inhibitions and breaking through to, like, real enlightenment. Overcoming pain, humiliation and… well, revulsion sometimes.’ She paused, looking at him almost shyly. ‘Coprophagia – you know what that is?’

‘It’s, er, an old album by The Who, isn’t it?’

Cola grinned.

‘Not really, was she?’ Lol said.

‘Don’t ask.’ She gathered the books into a pile. ‘See, I was always having to keep stuff like this for her since the day she had a row with this guy Paul, who she was living with, and he burned some of her books. She said she didn’t mind when they had fights – I mean actual fights , black-eye, split-up stuff – but she drew the line at him messing with her stuff. She had two kids, I think it was, with Paul. Big guy, Jamaican, smoked dope on an industrial scale. If you’d told me Paul had done for her, in a barney, I wouldn’t’ve been that surprised. His ma has the kids now, which is just as well.’

‘If she was still with this Paul,’ Lol said, ‘where did Roddy Lodge come in?’

‘The word “with” is relative.’ Cola dipped back into the wine case and brought out a cardboard folder. ‘I feel better for this, really. I still had this stuff when she died, and I thought, do I take it to the cops or what? But I couldn’t think how it was gonna help anybody and… you know…’

‘You had this idea for a play.’

‘See… you understand. Another creative person. I still haven’t decided whether to do Lynsey herself – kind of documentary – or have a character based on her. You’d have to tone it down, either way. People wouldn’t believe the – you know – the appetite.’

‘You said, good at men…’

‘You ever seen her? Look…’ She opened the folder and slid out a photograph but kept most of it covered up so that Lol could just see the top half of a woman with frizzy black hair and deep-set eyes. ‘I’m not a man, but I could feel it sometimes, you know?’

‘How well did you know her?’

‘From the pubs. And of course from the shop. From Piers.’

‘Piers was…?’

‘Oh yeah ! Payment for books was how it started. Piers likes to interface with his customers, says a bookseller should be like a good doctor or a herbalist – give you advice, supply you with what you need to cure your… mineral deficiencies.’ Cola tried half-heartedly to wink and her eyebrow ring dipped. ‘It’s a bigger shop than it looks. Some punters get to go up into the attic or down into the basement, if you see what I mean.’

‘Sorry, I’m naive,’ Lol said. ‘You mean for books or…’

‘Yeah, books. Books, too. Mainly books. Heavy books, heavier than this stuff. The other activities, it’s The Old Rectory mostly.’ He also does’ – Lol tapped the books – ‘this stuff?’

‘Sex magic? Mostly he just does sex, but he’s up for most things. Nice enough guy, in a lot of ways, Piers. Easy-going, and he doesn’t ask for too much in some departments, if you want the truth. You could actually feel sorry for him with Lynsey, ’cause Lynsey asked for a lot . And didn’t always ask. You know?’

Lol said, ‘You have mixed feelings about having these books around, don’t you?’

‘Aw, I just… you know, I didn’t like to think where they’d been, and when we knew she’d died I packed them up. I mean there’s a lot of stuff in there, a lot of notes she made. I like to think I’ll get round to unscrambling it all one day. But not yet. It’s too soon. And…’ She put down the children’s Bible. ‘This was… I just felt I wanted something like a barrier, you know? It was all I could get in a hurry. Bought it from the second-hand stall on Ross market. Religion and innocence. Put it on the top and sealed the box.’