Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

She looked at Chris Cody, who looked perturbed.

‘Well, Mr Nye isn’t here, so we can’t get any enlightenment there. But there was another good reason why Roddy Lodge found Hereford Police Headquarters – with its mass of equipment, its radio transmitters and especially its almost subterranean interview rooms – an unbearable place to be. Because Roddy had become electrically hypersensitive. He had to get out of there and he didn’t care what it took.’

Merrily moved out in front of the lectern, feeling more confident.

‘But there was more to it than electrical pollution; there had to be.’

She talked about Roddy’s childhood, his isolation in an all-male household, his manufacture of a series of mother substitutes, the peculiar comfort he found in the realm of the dead – nothing essentially morbid in it, a way of coping, a world he felt he could control.

‘Can we say he was psychic? Can we say he actually began to see the dead? Had he developed what some people like to call mediumistic faculties? Sam would say he was simply the victim of hallucinations, caused by the effects of force fields on the brain. All I know is that it was something he was allowed to grow up with, something that was never discussed.’

She didn’t look at Tony Lodge; this wasn’t an inquisition. Tony Lodge didn’t say anything.

‘We do know that Roddy was becoming disturbed by his condition, because he went to see the doctor. Who, like most GPs, seems to have believed in neither psychic powers nor EH. And who referred him to the Rector. Who gave him some advice which was… well meant.’

Ingrid Sollars made a small, contemptuous noise.

‘In fact, there seems to have been only one person with whom Roddy Lodge was able to discuss his condition. And that was Melanie Pullman, a girl who was also experiencing problems of an apparently psychic nature… which Sam believes to have been a result of living very close to power lines and other signals. I’ve had access to some background on Melanie Pullman. On balance, the evidence of some electrical stimulation of parts of the brain does seem, in her case, to be the most persuasive explanation. But Melanie’s not… here to discuss it.’

Merrily heard the muffled clunk of the door latch and saw figures moving in the shadows. Gomer. And Frannie Bliss. Nobody else.

‘My feeling is that Melanie was good for Roddy. The evidence is that they had a close relationship. She was probably his first real girlfriend. There was nobody else in Roddy’s life at that time – as far as I can tell.’

‘It’s true.’ Cherry Lodge was leaning over the prayer-book shelf. Her face was flushed. ‘He was never any kind of a ladies’ man. He wasn’t smooth and he wasn’t that bright, if you want the truth. Never a girlfriend when he was young – Tony’ll tell you. Tell them .’

Tony grunted. ‘Embarrassed him, women did, when he was at home. Afterwards, he embarrassed us , all the tales. And the sports car. Nobody in our family ever had a sports car.’

‘What changed?’ Merrily said. ‘What made him… in a woman we call it promiscuous, but in a man it’s “a bit of a lad”. I mean, when he was with Melanie he wasn’t like that, was he?’

‘She was a nice girl,’ Tony said. ‘Quiet. Nice-looking – I never knew what she saw in him.’

‘A soulmate, perhaps?’

‘Then why did he… ?’ He turned his face away.

Merrily said quickly, ‘Sam Hall found out about Melanie and tried to help her – with some success, I think. And Melanie, in turn, tried to help Roddy. Maybe she encouraged him to go to the same alternative practitioner who’d given her a device to wear around her neck to ward off electromagnetism. But Roddy didn’t want to know. I wonder why not?’

Frannie Bliss slid into a pew halfway down the nave, where the shadows began. ‘I think we both know that, don’t we, Merrily?’

She nodded as the other heads turned. ‘What’s happening, Frannie?’

‘Nothing special,’ Bliss said coolly. ‘Thought I’d see how things’ve changed in the so-called Church of England before I made any kind of move.’

Merrily saw Piers Connor-Crewe bounce a disdainful glance from Bliss to her. ‘You two lovers or something? I think we should be told.’

‘Uncalled for, Piers,’ Fergus Young snapped.

‘Fergus, I’m so tired of these shallow, nit-picking people. Why do we even care about the mental state of the waste of space in that box? As for this bloody little woman trying to find a new role for the ailing Church in some sort of spiritual- criminal profiling…’

Merrily said, ‘What did Lynsey Davies say about Roddy Lodge, Piers? Did she think he was a waste of space? I suspect not.’

‘Get off my back, Mrs Watkins.’

‘I think Lynsey found him extremely interesting. Because of what he was – i.e. someone apparently in day-to-day contact with the dead… of whom he had no fear whatsoever . And because he was the owner of Underhowle Baptist chapel. Which for her had become a kind of shrine.’

She looked at Huw, but he didn’t react. The angel was almost burning in her hand.

‘There was a problem, of course: Roddy had a steady girlfriend, with whom he had a lot in common. And Melanie, who seems to have suffered for years from EH, was suddenly – thanks to Sam – discovering a possible cause. And a possible solution.’

She looked at Sam, guessing that she was reaching a conclusion he’d come to several minutes ago. He left his pew and went to stand in the aisle, slowly punching a fist into a palm.

‘She was trying to persuade Roddy to go to the same alternative practitioner, to understand what she was now convinced was the real nature of the problem. Maybe she would’ve succeeded. Maybe she’d have helped him, if…’ She opened her hand and let the angel dangle on its broken chain. ‘ If …’

‘If Lynsey Davies hadn’t killed her first,’ Sam said.

Merrily looked down at her prayer book. ‘Or persuaded someone else to do it?’

‘AH YES,’ MOIRA Cairns said, like she’d just remembered something vaguely distasteful. ‘Hi, Jane.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Jane stepped away from the box office, dismayed. ‘This woman says Lol’s gone.’

Cairns was looking smaller and somehow younger in jeans and this big Hebridean sweater, her hair tied up, the make-up washed off.

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘He had to leave.’

Leave? The big star gone off with some major international promoter, some record company exec. Goodbye to the old life. Hello hotel rooms, hello groupies.

Jane bit her lip, feeling isolated among the crowd in the foyer, probably the only one of them who was here alone and now would leave alone. Come to support Lol, and he’d triumphed and gone. She’d twice called Mum’s mobile to tell her about that call from Jenny Box, if she didn’t already know about it. Nothing – switched off.

‘I said I ’d run you home,’ Cairns said, autographing the sleeve of an old vinyl album some sad git had brought along. ‘Sorry about the shaky bit,’ she said to the sad git. ‘Must be ma age.’

‘You look younger than ever,’ the sad git said, going off, and Cairns blew him a kiss.

Jane looked down at the poisoned blade of betrayal. ‘ What? ’ Give me five minutes, OK?’ Cairns said. Jane said tightly. ‘I can get a bus.’ Of course, there was no late bus to Ledwardine midweek, and

she caught herself making swift glances to either side. Maybe Eirion? He must still be around. He couldn’t really have dumped her. Just because she’d come on like somebody spoiled and bitchy. He wasn’t like that. He loved her.