Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘What does Kirsty say?’

‘Kirsty left last night, Merrily. Back to the farm. With the kids.’

‘Frannie, no…’

The door opened. A woman of maybe twenty-six stood there. ‘Sorry, we’re a bit behind this morning.’ She had short hair bleached white and a silver ring in her left eyebrow.

Bliss smiled bleakly at her. ‘Mr Connor-Crewe in, is he?’ Like he hadn’t phoned first, to make sure of it.

‘He’s unpacking some books upstairs, if you want to hang around for a couple of minutes… You trade?’

‘Collector,’ Bliss said. ‘ Beano annuals, mainly.’

‘Yeah?’

Bliss flashed his card. ‘DI Bliss, West Mercia.’

‘Oh, right.’ She seemed unsurprised. ‘Go through, officer.’

‘Ta.’

They went in, Merrily holding the plastic carrier bag with Hereford Cathedral on it. The window had been deceptive; the building was narrow but deep, a darkening tunnel of shelves. Arrowed signs indicated two other floors. The woman stood at the bottom of some narrow wooden stairs.

‘Hey… you know Mumford?’

‘So this is where he gets his first editions.’

She grinned. ‘I’ll tell Piers. So it’s DI… ?’

‘Bliss. And, er…’

‘Merrily Watkins,’ Merrily said, thinking, Cola French?

The white-haired woman stopped on the second step, turned with a hand on the rail and inspected her. Merrily wore her best coat over the black cowl-neck sweater, the cross concealed. ‘Yeah,’ the woman said sadly. ‘Oh well.’ And carried on upstairs, leaving Bliss peering curiously at Merrily.

‘If you go straight down, you’ll find an alcove on your left, with some chairs,’ Cola French called back. ‘Criminal History’s right at the bottom. But, er… Theology’s in the cellar.’

‘Bound to have read them all, anyway,’ Merrily said.

What bothered Merrily most was that she hadn’t seen Jane, not to speak to. She’d overslept, and it had been nearly nine a.m. when she’d staggered into the kitchen to find a note on the table.

Mum, I’ve gone.

Just in case you’re vaguely interested, it’s Lol’s gig tonight at the Courtyard. So I’ve taken a change of clothes with me and I’ll carry on to Hereford on the school bus. If you don’t make it there later I’ll just have to thumb a lift back or something, so don’t let it interfere with your spiritual schedule or anything.

J.

And Jenny Box called. She’d like to talk to you. You should.

‘She wouldn’t actually thumb a lift, of course,’ Merrily had said later to Huw. ‘This is just a gentle dig.’

‘With a bayonet,’ Huw said.

‘No, for Jane, this is a gentle dig.’

Huw had refused to eat breakfast or to drink tea. He’d drunk one glass of water. Was this a fast, purification, in anticipation of… what?

Merrily had eaten half a slice of toast and felt guilty. Then she’d gone into the scullery and looked up the number for Ingrid Sollars. She had in front of her Lol’s note, which said, The PCC mentioned in the diary is Piers Connor-Crewe. If you feel you have to go and see him, please don’t go on your own . This morning, Lol had phoned, filling in some gaps, bless him.

The phone at Ingrid’s place had been picked up by Sam Hall, which didn’t surprise her a lot. Merrily had asked Sam some straight questions about his former colleague on the Underhowle Development Committee.

Before leaving the vicarage, she’d left a message on Prof’s answering machine asking if Lol, or even Prof himself, could keep an eye open for Jane tonight. Left a similar message on their own machine for the kid to pick up if she rang in. Just in case this situation proved more complex.

As now seemed likely.

Piers Connor-Crewe, plump and moon-faced and cheerful, wore his baggy cream suit over a denim shirt with a frayed collar. One of those men, Merrily thought, who might greet you in pyjamas, always confident that you’d be blinded by the aura of his personality, his intellect.

‘Merrily Watkins, how nice. And back in your role as consultant to the Herefordshire Constabulary.’

Bliss stood up. ‘DI Francis Bliss. We haven’t met.’

‘No, indeed – I’m afraid I was working late the night you encountered the Committee.’

Connor-Crewe went to sit behind the desk, which filled half of this dimly lit airspace between bookshelves. He motioned Bliss and Merrily to a couple of battered smokers’ chairs. The alcove seemed to serve as his office. There was a phone on the desk, a vintage, crane-necked electric lamp and a large book on Roman pottery.

‘Well now,’ he said, ‘if this is about what I think it’s about, let me first apologize that the police were not informed about last night’s demonstration. However’ – he opened his hands – ‘neither was the Committee. Seems to have been entirely impromptu – grass-roots protest – therefore, any damage is—’

‘Not why we’re here,’ said Bliss. ‘We’ve come to ask your advice about a book. Whether you think it’s authentic, that kind of thing.’

Piers Connor-Crewe inclined his big head to one side and raised an eyebrow. Bliss turned to Merrily, who placed her Hereford Cathedral carrier bag on the desk and extracted the white book: The Magickal Diary of Lynsey D.

Piers leaned over and looked at it but didn’t touch it. ‘And where did you acquire this, Inspector Bliss?’

‘Pick it up if you like, sir.’

‘Oh, dear me, no. One never knows about journals like this.’

Bliss turned to Merrily. ‘What’s he mean by that, Mrs Watkins?’

‘I think he means there might be some sort of protective curse around it.’

‘Like King Tut’s tomb.’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘No problem, then, for a man like me with bugger-all left to lose.’ Bliss opened the book, turned it round to face Connor- Crewe, pulled the lamp over, switched it on and directed its cuplike shade at the page. The light illuminated one of the pages of complex-looking tables and correspondences, all meticulously drawn in different-coloured inks.

‘What’s this about, sir? What are all these funny little squiggly things?’

Connor-Crewe coughed. ‘Those would be sigils, inspector. What one might call condensed spells. Configurations of particular desires, alphabetically and numerically reduced to their basics for, ah, intensity of focus.’

‘Spells.’

‘This is what might be described as someone’s magical wishlist.’

‘Would you be able to decode it yourself, sir?’

‘Possibly, to an extent. Given time.’

‘You’re an expert on the occult, then?’

‘In a largely academic way. There’s a very significant international trade in old books on ceremonial magic and ritual. Something no antiquarian dealer can afford to ignore.’

‘You handle a lot of them?’

‘It probably accounts for up to twenty per cent of my trade. Perhaps even more.’

But you didn’t want to handle this one.’

Connor-Crew smiled. ‘When I said that, I was being a little ironic. The so-called magical diary—’

‘Because you knew where this one had been?’

‘The magical diary is a very personal and private document, often considered to be a magical tool in itself.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m not sure you do, inspector, but I don’t suppose it matters, in a strictly forensic sense.’

‘So you’ve never seen this before?’

‘Occasionally one appears on the market but in the case of this one I can safely say… no.’

‘But you did know its owner.’

‘Oh? Did I?’

‘My information is that she was a regular customer who even helped out here sometimes. In one way or another.’