Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Why you got to keep messing with that mobile? Just switch it off. If he calls now, you’ll have to say you’ll get back to him in the morning.’

Lol had left two messages for Mephisto Jones. Maybe Mephisto was sick, struck down with an electric migraine. Then, half an hour ago, Merrily had rung, upset, close to tears. She wasn’t going to make it in time. Probably wasn’t going to make it at all. He was almost relieved, and he told her that, and she said, If you run away, now… don’t you dare run away …

He’d gone down to the booking office to leave a message there: when a Jane Watkins arrived to pick up her ticket, tell her to wait for Lol Robinson afterwards. Then he’d changed into black jeans and a fresh alien sweatshirt with no holes in it, remembering how King Charles I had worn an extra shirt for his execution so that at least he wouldn’t be trembling with the cold. Sitting on a stool in the Green Room, Lol had a terrible feeling now: ominous.

‘What’s wrong?’

Moira had drifted in, the beautiful folk-rock goddess in her long dress of midnight blue, low-cut. A silver pendant was trickling like water between her breasts, as though it was part of the same stream that began in her long dark hair.

‘Talk him through this, Moira,’ Prof said. ‘I have to go check things in the booth.’

Lol smiled uncertainly at Moira. ‘So you’ll do half a dozen songs ending with “Tower”, and then I kind of creep on and we do “Baker’s Lament”.’

‘Then you play for as long as you feel happy about, and I’ll come back as and when. Piece of cake, Laurence.’

‘Piece of cake,’ he said and felt that flicker of separation, putting him minutely out of synch, and for a moment he was watching himself looking at the beautiful woman in midnight blue and silver, knowing now for certain that it wasn’t going to happen for him, that this was her concert and hers alone and nothing else was going to happen.

‘Oh, it will happen,’ Moira said, and he didn’t even wonder how she’d plucked that thought from his mind, because he might actually have said it while he was out of synch. Anything could have happened; his head was full of storm clouds.

A possibly important thought came to him, then wafted past like a pale moth, and he put his head in his hands for a moment to try and catch it. But it had gone, and he heard Moira saying, ‘Who the hell are you?’

Cola French was standing in the doorway, the golden stars in her hair and a small black hat with a feather.

‘How’d you get in?’ Moira growled.

‘Friends,’ Cola said. ‘And lies. I tell a lot of lies.’ She looked past Moira at Lol. ‘I lied before, Lol – I lied when I said I wasn’t involved.’

Lol was on his feet. Then his phone buzzed.

‘Lynsey and Piers and Roddy and the whole bit,’ Cola said. ‘But when I heard the copper with Piers, and your… lady, this morning at the shop, I’m thinking, I can’t sit on this shit any more.’

‘Aye, well, you can sit on it a wee bit longer, hen,’ Moira said. And as Lol watched her shepherding Cola French into the passage, he heard in the phone, ‘It’s Jones here. That Lol Robinson?’

Another voice, one of the Courtyard staff, said, ‘Ten minutes, Moira.’

‘We meet in the name of Jesus Christ, who died and was raised to the glory of God the Father. Grace and mercy be with you.’

There was a muffled gonging from one of the cooling radiators. Under those opaque glass globes, it looked as cold inside here as it was starting to feel.

No warmth for those who would mourn a murderer.

It was a boxy place, the Church of St Peter, Underhowle, so regular and heavy with dark wood that it might have been a Victorian magistrates’ court. A Jerome Banks kind of church. Merrily, wearing her monastic white alb, was not comfortable here.

‘We… we’ve come here to remember before God our brother Roddy, to commend him to God, our merciful redeemer and our… judge. To commit his body to be buried. And to comfort one another.’

There were two rows of pews – to her right the Lodges, on the left Ingrid Sollars and Sam Hall. Ingrid wore a brown shawl over her ravaged wax jacket. Sam’s silver ponytail was tied with a thin, black ribbon.

The light-pine coffin rested on a bier like a hostess trolley. Lomas and son sat two rows down, behind the Lodges, inflating the congregation by twenty-five per cent.

‘Almighty God, you judge us with infinite mercy and justice… and love everything you have made. In your mercy, turn the darkness of death into the dawn of new life…’

Alone at the bottom of the nave, hunched like a night- watchman, was Huw. He’d phoned Banks himself, to arrange for the sacrament. Merrily didn’t trust him. The word AGENDA hung in the air above him, in mystic neon.

‘… And the sorrow of parting into the joy of heaven; through our saviour, Jesus Christ.’

Meanwhile, Gomer was out there, working by hurricane lamp at the bottom of the churchyard. Tony Lodge had shown them the spot, to the left of his parents’ grave, about ten feet from the boundary hedge, a line of laurels screening it from the rest of the churchyard. Seeing the spot had made Merrily wonder why anyone had thought it worth objecting; this would be a grave you’d need a map to find.

It was fortunate, in a way, that the funeral had been delayed because Gomer had also made a late start.

This was due to his stoical digging around the Baptist chapel uncovering nothing but stones.

At four-thirty, Frannie Bliss, pale and sweating, had still been refusing to give up, raging against the dying of the light, Try here… Try back there. It’s gorra be here, or it all falls down. And then, in agony, Don’t let me down, Gomer! Until Gomer, exasperated, had snatched out his ciggy: I’m tellin’ you, boy, you blew it. There en’t nothin’ buried yere but clay.

At 4.55, Fleming’s secretary had rung, wondering where Bliss was. Merrily saying, Isn’t he there already? I hope he’s not had an accident , like she was Mrs Bliss, poor woman. By then Frannie – so convinced earlier that he’d be making the triumphant call that would bring Fleming and his team down here, with a small army of SOCOs and the Home Office pathologist – had been close to tears. He’d said he might come up the church later; Merrily hoped he wouldn’t. Rage and despair were not helpful at a funeral.

The reflection of the cold globe above it wobbled now in the steel plate on the coffin. Merrily imagined Roddy Lodge lying there in the merciful darkness, sealed away from a hostile world of electric lights, televisions, mobile phones, radiation.

The schedule for Common Worship suggested this was the most suitable time for the first hymn. Hymns were useful; they gave you a break, time to gather your thoughts for the next stage, which was your ‘tribute’ to the deceased.

For which she wasn’t ready. There were some things still to work out. It was important to at least approach the truth.

But there would be no hymns tonight. There was no organist. She imagined seven strained voices raised in stilted intimacy under the dismal hanging lamps.

No hymns.

She was grateful, at first, when the side door opened and Gomer slipped in. He didn’t come any further, just stood by the entrance, still carrying his hurricane lamp, and when she raised a questioning eyebrow at him, wild, white light flared in his glasses: warning, warning, warning .

‘Would you… excuse me… one moment.’ Merrily moved down past the coffin and followed Gomer into the porch, closing the doors against the wind. Gomer coughed.

‘This yere grave, vicar. Problem with him. En’t entirely vacant.’