Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

… Get me out of this again .

‘Aye.’ Huw took up a position across the chancel arch, to the left of the coffin. ‘Happen we should explain what we’re at to God, eh? Let’s start with a prayer.’

Cherry Lodge was the first to kneel, Connor-Crewe the last. Connor-Crewe kept his eyes open, which Merrily knew because she didn’t close hers either – nerves. She was aware that at some point Huw had switched off the lamps at the bottom of the nave, so that this small but significant congregation was pooled in light, while the shadows behind suggested there were others back there in the darkness.

Huw began softly: ‘Lord, we come here tonight in all humility, with a full awareness of our own ignorance. We come here on behalf of certain sad, unquiet spirits on either side of the Divide. We come… to seek healing.’ He paused, then his voice roughened. ‘But we realize that, before there can be healing, there must be knowledge of the condition. Secrets must be laid open. There must be truth. Help us to find that truth. Hold up your lantern for us. Throw its light into the blackest, dingiest corners of human experience, where only the lamp of the wicked flickers with its bilious flame. Help us. Through Jesus Christ, amen.’

There was a hollow hush. They were all watching Huw, even Piers Connor-Crewe.

But Huw was looking at Merrily.

‘Your show, lass. I believe you were about to address the subject of our friend here. Roddy.’

Cairns was nauseatingly wonderful, of course. Eirion was right, Eirion was always right about these things, and one day she would tell him. But anxiety brought Jane out before the end, slipping up the aisle during the climactic applause for something epic called ‘The Comb Song’, and standing at the back, examining the entire audience, row by row, left to right.

Mum was not there.

Check again . Her gaze tracked systematically along the backs of heads, right to left this time. Definitely not there.

It was nearly nine-thirty p.m. At first it had been anger: nobody should have missed Lol’s totally mesmerizing, electrifying comeback, least of all the woman purporting to be in love with him. It was just a complete, total insult .

But in the electric brightness of the foyer, she admitted that Mum was not like that, never had been. Mum always felt responsible.

Emotions cocktailed inside Jane, making her feel slightly queasy. She could hear the music, Cairns’s voice all smoky- smooth. She thought she’d spotted Eirion in there, worship- ping. Maybe she could crawl down the aisle, throw herself at his trainers.

She went to the entrance and pulled out her mobile. Sometimes, Mum would leave a message for her on the answering machine. She put in the number.

Hello, this is Ledwardine Vicarage …’ She keyed the code, waited, heard several bleeps.

‘ Merrily, this is Ted …’ Didn’t even listen to that one. ‘ Flower, this is me …’ Right.

‘… Look, I’m really, really sorry I missed you this morning. No excuses apart from being completely knackered, and if this all goes as badly as I suspect it’s going to… and, God forbid, I don’t make it tonight, I’ve told Lol, so please look out for Lol afterwards, OK? I’m sorry .’

Yeah . She hung on in case Mum had called back with an update.

Bleep.

‘ Merrily, it’s Jennifer Box. It’s… I don’t know what time it is, it’s dark. Please help me. He’s defiled the chapel, he’s defiling everything. He’s the evil you are fighting. And, dear God, he’s coming back .’

Merrily stood there, behind the lectern with her prayer book on it. The lectern, which stood to the left of the pulpit, was a dark mahogany stand with a brass eagle, wings spread to hold the heaviest old Bible. Apart from in the oldest churches, the lecterns – like this one – were always too high for her.

She was very aware of the grave-dirt on the hem of her alb.

Earlier, before Gomer had come in with his lamp, she’d planned to address the subject of Roddy’s afflictions, the multiple pressures on him, of which perhaps no one here was fully aware. Hoping that, by the end of it, she’d at least have planted the seeds of understanding and something would come of it. One day.

It was different now. The atmosphere was charging up. Soon, arc lights would be burning in the churchyard, tapes would go up, police would guard the site until dawn. Then statements would be taken; they’d all be making statements in the search for a kind of truth that perhaps wouldn’t be the truth at all. And there would certainly be no sympathy for Roddy Lodge.

She became aware that she was clutching Melanie’s angel, very tightly, in her right hand. It felt almost hot.

Truth. Directness. Simplicity .

‘I…’ Because of the height of the lectern, she was almost speaking into her prayer book. ‘I met Roddy Lodge just the once. I was with my friend Gomer, who was convinced Roddy had started a fire that killed his nephew. Roddy was manic, dancing about as if he was on strings. He was talking a lot of rubbish about all the famous people he’d installed drainage for. All lies. While there, on his trailer, not ten yards away, lay the decomposing body of Lynsey Davies.’

Merrily looked up, registering the surprise on the faces of people who, at every funeral they’d hitherto attended, had listened to all the bad stuff being swept under the pews.

‘Gomer was wrong, as it turned out. Roddy Lodge didn’t start the fire; he was nowhere near there that night. But Roddy had a reputation – as a liar, a crook. And Gomer – and there isn’t a nicer, more well-meaning bloke in my village – had demonized him. The way that, first this village, and then maybe the whole country has done since. Demonization – a lot of it about. A monster.’ She tapped the coffin lid. ‘There’s a monster in here. What do we do about him?’

She stared at them, helpless.

‘I thought I wouldn’t have anything to do with Roddy Lodge ever again. But then another friend, a detective from Hereford, said Roddy remembered me from that night and wanted to speak to me. Well, that never happened, in the end – he’d acquired a solicitor, who didn’t want him to speak to me or anybody else, and yet allowed him to make a very wide-ranging confession. I gather a few of you know him – Mr Nye? Ryan Nye?’

She looked at Chris Cody. He’d taken off his leather cap. His once-shaven head had grown into a tight, light-brown bristle.

‘Yeah, we… we figured Lodge ought to have a brief.’ He looked a lot younger, somehow: a street kid, the tearaway who’d discovered a massively lucrative talent. ‘We’d used Ryan when

546 we was buying the chapel off of Roddy. We put work his way when we can.’

‘ You sent him to represent Roddy?’

‘We… yeah. We figured he needed a brief.’

Merrily nodded. ‘Mr Nye stopped me talking to Roddy, and I was glad. We’re trying to build a spirit of honesty here, so, yes – shamefully – I was glad I didn’t have to talk to a monster. I knew he was a monster, because I’d seen his bedroom, plastered with pictures of famous women, all dead, with parts of nude pin-ups added. Obscene, degrading, sick. A monster – my mate, the detective, wanted to dig up every Efflapure in the county, fully expecting bodies underneath some of them, and I’m thinking, yes, it’s possible.’

She wondered where Frannie Bliss was now. How he’d react when Gomer told him about Melanie. The sensible thing would be to call Headquarters, which meant she and Huw didn’t have much time. And with a eucharist to organize…

‘And then the next night, Roddy wanted to come home, so they brought him back. He’d confessed to three murders – all the murders that my friend, the detective, had put it to him that he’d done. Why was he so keen to confess, to come back here and show the police where he’d buried the bodies? Had Mr Nye told him it was for the best? Why would Mr Nye tell him that?’