Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Aye, lass, let’s have a debate. We’ve got all night.’

‘Mr Owen, I told you that the people who ran the bottling plant were evasive on the phone last night about the name of the contractor. It was worrying me, so I rang them back this afternoon. Last night I spoke to the man, today I got the woman – and a rather different story. She implied that the contractor was, in fact, a relative, who did the job for cash in hand, and that was why—’

‘Did you believe her?’

‘I saw no reason not to.’

‘I can see every reason. Sergeant Mumford’d certainly heard the rumour about West working here.’

‘Huw,’ Merrily said, ‘you’ve just heard how another rumour was spread. For God’s sake, it could be apocryphal! Maybe he was never here. This psychotic woman… for all we know, she might never even have been at Cromwell Street. So many people here have just lied and lied.’

A moment’s silence.

Huw shrugged. ‘All right. How would you play it, lass?’

Merrily shook her head. It was one of those situations when this game of Deliverance, the whole of religion, seemed too full of holes and traps to be worth the candle. She looked at Huw – tired-eyed and robbed of redemption.

And then Fergus Young said, ‘Do I understand that, in the absence of a person to exorcize of this… evil, your options are limited?’

‘One way of looking at it,’ Huw said.

Fergus moved out and stood in front of the altar and took off his jacket. He was wearing a white shirt.

‘I think you’d better exorcize me , then.’ He looked at Lol. ‘I suppose he knows why.’

‘DON’T YOU?’ The tall guy challenging Lol.

It was like being pushed out on stage all over again, except that the lighting was a little more primitive and, although everybody was staring at him, it was clear that nobody was expecting to be entertained.

Lol had been waiting for this. He could perhaps have made it happen earlier, but it had been a long night, and he’d been hoping it might have been taken out of his hands. Perhaps it had: this Fergus Young had authority. Lol had never seen him before tonight, but he recognized the aura and it had often, in his past, been around men in suits followed by lesser men in white coats. It was the aura of pseudo-sanctity.

‘It is Tracey you’ve been speaking to, I assume,’ Young said, seeking absolute confirmation.

‘Tracey?’ Lol said.

‘And she’s saying I was there.’

‘Weren’t you?’

‘She was very mixed up, that girl.’

‘I think scared to death might describe it better,’ Lol said.

I realize , Cola had said, in the car on the road to Ross, that there’s no way of concealing that it was me who told you all this, but just make sure it isn’t for nothing. You know what I mean .

So Lol was relieved that Fergus Young had raised the issue before he himself was forced into it. Like being pushed out onto the stage. Now he had to follow through.

Three of them , Cola had said. Lynsey developed this bond between these three, which was all to do with Ariconium, which had become a kind of dream place. Like Utopia. Atlantis. It was very strong. It gave them focus. ‘Fuse your dreams,’ she was saying. ‘Fuse them inside me! ’

‘Ariconium,’ Lol said. ‘It became an excuse for everything you did.’

Sam Hall was shaking his head. ‘How could it be anything good, built inside lines of pylons, this cage of steel shot through with beams and rays?’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Sam,’ Fergus snapped, ‘do you never get beyond that drivel? Look, I want to say I’d have gone with the police – with Piers and Chris. But I guess they thought there was a chance of keeping me out of it. As the one who must be seen to have integrity. The figurehead. If I could survive this, I suppose there was a chance of pulling it together – the e-schools, the book I was writing and that Piers would publish, Ariconium… everything.’

Lol looked at Merrily: small and wide-eyed, the old duffel coat hanging open over the alb with the muddied hem. She clearly hadn’t been expecting this, but he thought the older woman seemed less shocked.

In a way, it all began with Fergus , Cola had said. He was in a sad state. It was his first school as headmaster and they were gonna close it down, and he reckoned he wasn’t well in enough to get another school, and his wife was into the status, you know? Oh, he was a real loser, Fergus, the night he showed up on Piers’s doorstep – the way people did, the way Piers encouraged them to: your bookseller’s your counsellor, shrink, priest, all rolled into one. What an ego. And Fergus would come up some nights, to get away from his wife, and drink too much. And this particular night we were there, Lynsey and me, all of us at a bit of a loose end, and Lynsey suddenly springs up, with her eyes all glittering, and she’s going ‘Let’s DO something about it… ’

‘It’s like Chris said, it was incredible how she seemed to turn things around,’ Fergus said. ‘How ideas came to you that were clear winners. Came to all of us. In reality, I suppose it was just because it brought the three of us together – people who could help each other and the community coming together in that spirit of… release. Outside the rules. And when we managed to pull the school back from the brink of closure and turn it into something extraordinary, it was… suddenly it was something bigger than all of us.’

He turned to Huw Owen, who’d started to say something. Huw hadn’t taken his eyes off Fergus Young since he’d used the word exorcize .

‘I suppose you ’d say there was something slightly Faustian about it and perhaps you’d be right. But we didn’t feel that at the time. It was release and not only sexual. To us, she was an extraordinary woman who seemed able to open doors one hadn’t even known were there. And look at what we achieved… look at it! Look at what we achieved for everybody !’

‘But look how it was achieved,’ Merrily said bleakly.

‘Look,’ Fergus said, ‘when we found out about her… past associations, we – I was determined to get out of it any way I could.’

I think, when they thought they were all on top of the situation and maybe they didn’t need her any more, that was when they got, you know, a little blasé, a little… Well, you didn’t ever diss that woman, Lol, not if you valued your peace of mind. What she had was hard won, and nobody was gonna… you know, nobody. So maybe that was when she started to be less circumspect. And she was involving Roddy by then, and Roddy was this real wild card. And that was when I started to try and get out of the circle, keep different company, ’cause I could see it going pear-shaped in front of my eyes. I knew what she was and where she’d been and they couldn’t see it, not for a long time. They were just too high on it all .

Huw Owen said, ‘You were here, in this chapel, after Lynsey Davies killed Melanie. With the other two.’

Yes,’ Fergus said.

‘Therefore, you were part of the cover-up.’

‘I…’ Fergus’s mouth tightened.

‘Come on, lad, if you were , sooner or later one of the others is going to spill it to the police. You think they won’t shop you, but they will. Like young Cody said, it’s a murder inquiry now.’

Fergus said, ‘We all decided to keep quiet about it, for—’

‘The good of the community,’ Huw said.

‘We were doing great things . We had an energy !’

‘Was she blackmailing you, in the end?’ Lol suggested.