Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Entrance is just past the house itself, up a little drive,’ Gomer whispered. ‘All the land’s the other side, see.’

‘And that’s where the… thing is?’

‘The Hefflapure.’ He stopped and looked back at her, shaking his head as if he was just waking up. ‘Bloody daft, this, ennit?’

‘Something you had to do, that’s all,’ Merrily said.

‘Naw, just an ole man lookin’ for a… what’s the word?’

Scapegoat? ‘Can’t think,’ Merrily said. ‘Look, tonight we… you’ve seen what no relative should ever have to see. Maybe… I dunno… maybe we both needed to drive around a bit.’

‘Ar.’ Gomer stood at the edge of the A49, squeezing his fingers together. He seemed to have left his ciggy tin in the van. Merrily pulled out her Silk Cut, offered him one. Gomer shook his head.

‘People thought he must be called Neville. Used to get letters addressed to Mr Neville Parry.’ I thought that, too. What was he called?’

‘Nevin. Seaside place in North Wales, where his folks used to go on their holidays. Likely he was conceived there.’

Merrily smiled, and they both stepped back onto the grass as a high-sided touring coach swished past towards Ross, probably empty except for the driver. Its passenger windows, only feebly lit, were reflected, fragmented, in the leaded upper windows of the Pawson house.

But its dipped headlights set up more of a glare in Gomer’s glasses. And in the dusty back windscreen of the big digger in the drive.

All the breath came out of Gomer in a rush and Merrily actually went cold with shock.

The digger sat there silently, unoccupied, its shovel half- raised in front.

‘It’s him,’ Gomer said drably, after a moment. ‘Lodge. He’s bloody well yere.’

AFTER A MOMENT, Merrily felt calmer. When she’d first seen the JCB in the drive it had been like the instant when a dream turned malignant, when your subconscious mind presented you, unexpectedly, with an image so loaded with menace, within the logic of the dream, that it jerked you awake for reasons of mental self-preservation. And then you thought, surprised at yourself, For heaven’s sake, it was just a truck .

‘Gomer,’ she said, ‘let’s just… let’s think about this.’

But Gomer was already off – the way he’d reacted back at the depot when he’d realized the savage truth behind Cliff Morgan’s gentle probing about Nev’s whereabouts. Only now he had a real, solid target; he was a man with something to prove, something tangible within his grasp. Before she could think to stop him, he was in through the gateway, urgently pushing back shrubs and squeezing around the side of the digger and under its wide front shovel.

Which was as far as he got, because that was when the nightmare came out of remission.

Merrily must have seen it first – a movement from the blackness between the drive and the house, and it made her jump, but she didn’t cry out because it could have been a cat or an owl. And then she saw Gomer come skating backwards, bumping along the side of the digger, bushes ripping at his jacket.

Gomer!’ He crashed back into a timber gatepost. She rushed to him. He was still on his feet but wheezing. ‘Gomer, Christ, are you—’

And then there was another man’s voice uncoiling from the shadows.

‘You want some more? You want some more, matey, you come right back now, look, and touch my digger again.’

Merrily gripped Gomer’s arm, steadying him. ‘He hit you?’

‘Pushed me, was all. Caught me off guard, ennit? Can you… can you find my glasses, vicar? Somewhere just yere.’

Merrily crouched, fingers scrabbling in the gravel, but her gaze was fixed all the time on the narrow alley between the digger and the shrubs at the edge of the drive, made wider by Gomer’s hurtling body. She found she was screwing up her eyes, expecting some sudden harsh light to hit them, but there was none. She could see the uneven roof-line of the house and the moving white dot of a plane between clouds.

She was about to switch on their own torch, then changed her mind because…

Because, oh Jesus, because maybe it was better kept as a weapon. She tightened her grip on the rubber stem of the torch, still patting the gravel with her other hand, while trying to rationalize this, trying to think of any possible explanation other than that Gomer’s crazy theory about Roddy Lodge had been, for heaven’s sake, dead right.

The only other explanations involved coincidence. One coincidence too many.

In the gravel, she touched smoothness and a wire earpiece and, in the same moment, saw a man standing at the end of the drive, between the tailgate and the house, moonlight glinting on the creases of his jacket: leather. He stood in silence, not moving, then he called out.

‘What you at over there?’

Merrily stood up, thrusting Gomer’s glasses into his hands. ‘OK, that’s it. This is where we leave. We’ve seen the digger, we know he’s here. Let’s go.’

‘We can call the police.’

‘Can’t do that, vicar.’ Gomer pushed his glasses on, calmly curling the wires around his ears. ‘Can’t just walk off now.’

‘No good. Buggers en’t gonner believe us. Anyway, time they gets yere, if they comes at all, he’ll be long gone. We got this bastard cold right yere, now… two of us… witnesses.’

‘Gomer—’

‘Chicken, then, is it?’ the man enquired, no hint of fear in the voice, although the words were spoken rapidly. ‘You boys chickenshit?’

Merrily whispered, ‘Let it go. Let’s just go back to the van. You’re right, we’re witnesses. It’s all we need. I promise you, Gomer, I’ll back you up all the way, but we need to—’

Gomer straightened up, bawled out, ‘You wanner know who I am, is it?’

‘ No! ’ Merrily dragged on his arm. Gomer didn’t move, felt as firmly rooted as the gatepost. She let go with a sound she realized was a sob, as he started to shout.

‘ WHO AM I? GOMER PARRY PLANT HIRE! THAT’S WHO I AM, YOU MURDERING BASTARD!’

Silence. Merrily closed her eyes, squeezing the torch with both hands. Please, God, get us out of this . She could hear another lorry grinding round the bend in the A49 and considered running out into the road, waving her arms to flag down the driver.

‘Well, well, well,’ the man said.

Gomer stepped away from Merrily. Stood there with his arms by his side. Little soldier, little gunfighter. Merrily shook her head. No .

‘Lodge!’

‘Who says?’

‘What you done with that JCB, Lodge?’

‘En’t your business.’ The voice higher now, like a fox barking in the night.

‘It’s that bloody tank, ennit? You took him out.’

Pause. The lorry rumbled away on the road to Ross.

What tank’s that, then, Mr Gomer Parry?’

‘The bloody Hefflapure.’

‘Oh, you heard o’ that, then?’ Pause. ‘Thought they was still digging cesspits where you come from. Carryin’ it out in buckets.’

Gomer took a breath. There might be method in this madness, but Merrily didn’t think so. A duel: plant-hire rules? And then she thought, What if he isn’t on his own? How could he move that thing without help? What if he’s keeping us talking while someone else… ?

She whirled round. The entrance gaped.

‘You better ’ave a good explanation of where you was tonight, Lodge,’ Gomer said. ‘You better’ve got some good witnesses.’

A moment’s silence.

‘What you on about, little man?’

‘You know bloody—’

‘’Cause I don’t reckon you knows what the fuck you’re talkin’ about any more, Mr Gomer Parry. I don’t reckon you knows nothin’ ’bout nothin’, ole man. Well bloody past it. Clingin’ on by your bloody old arthriticky fingertips. Oughter’ve packed in while you was ahead, look, but you couldn’t let go… else you was just doin’ it to keep away from your ole woman.’