Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘You bas—’

‘You don’t bloody know—’ Then Roddy Lodge just erupted. ‘ Shit! You don’t know shit!’ Laughter like flames in the night. ‘This yere tank, he en’t no business o’ yours. This is my digger, my fuckin’ tank. I put him in, I took him out. No business o’ yours. Never was your business. You en’t got no business, boy. You en’t got business worth shit, every fucker knows that, knows I ’m Number One now, look, I got fuckin’ respect for miles round yere… done tanks for all the nobs all over the Three Counties and down into Wales. I done Prince Charles’s fuckin’ sewage over at Highgrove!’

Gomer shook. ‘You lyin’ bloody toad !’

‘I done Madonna’s fuckin’ sewage up in the Cotswolds! I done Sting’s shit, down in Wiltshire!’

In other circumstances, Merrily thought, this could have been funny – surreal, anyway. ‘Gomer,’ she whispered urgently, ‘listen to me, you were right, he’s not rational. Let’s get the hell out.’

‘You go fetch the van then, girl. I’ll keep him—’

‘You bloody well won’t! You can come with me now.’

‘Who’s that with you, Gomer? Darren Booth?’ Merrily could see Roddy Lodge’s silhouette, almost full-length now, in the alley between the JCB and the hedge. Bizarrely, Lodge seemed to be bouncing on his toes. ‘Come on out, then, Darren – take you both on. Come on out… come on, boys!’

He sprang into the middle of the drive and started shouting again – voice high and rapid and streaked with outrage. ‘Tried to pinch my business. Tried to blacken my good name. Tellin’ porky pies about me! Come on, boys. Take you both… Her din’t believe you, look. Her knows what I give her was good. Knows I’m Number fuckin’ One, and don’t you ever forget it, Mr Gomer fuckin’ Chickenshit—’ Roddy Lodge broke off, looked up, squinting. ‘En’t Darren, is it?’

Gomer said nothing.

‘If it en’t Darren, who is it? I bet it’s only that fuckin’ fat mental-defective you got workin’ for you.’

Merrily could almost see herself, as if in a film, slow-motion, making a lunge for Gomer and Gomer not being there – Gomer moving away from her, along the side of the JCB, thin branches whipping behind him, until he and Roddy Lodge were facing each other in the open.

‘You murdering bastard!’

No, no, no … Merrily started edging around the other side of the digger. It was a tighter squeeze and it brought her up against the half-raised shovel, about six feet wide, with a piece of tarpaulin hanging over the rim. Please God …

‘Meaning what?’ Roddy Lodge said, and she could see his lean body and then his face: concave, with a jutting, pointed jaw, pointed nose, eyes that slanted slightly. A puppet kind of face, she thought.

And he was tense now; this was clear even in vague moonlight. A sheen of sweat on his face. He’d run out of banter and mockery. He was nervous.

Because he did it, she thought. He did it. She could hardly breathe. Roddy Lodge and Gomer were standing only feet apart, on a paved forecourt in front of the house. If Lodge made a move on Gomer, took one step, she would have to go for him with the torch.

She started to tremble.

‘You set fire to my yard,’ Gomer said.

‘Never!’

‘You set light to my place tonight, boy. And my nephew, he was in there. I dunno whether you knowed that, but it don’t matter… he still bloody died.’

Roddy Lodge stood there, taking this in. She couldn’t make out his expression. She raised the torch, ready to run out.

‘And that’s murder,’ Gomer said.

Roddy Lodge didn’t move but something did – maybe a cloud, because now his face was washed by pallid light, and she could see he was smiling. It was this big, loose smile, causing his jaw to drop, as though all the tension in him was evaporating in the moonlight.

Lodge said easily, ‘You know what, Parry? You’re fuckin’ mad, you are. You’re fuckin’ out of it.’

‘It was murder,’ Gomer said.

‘Whatever you say, matey.’ Lodge’s voice was quieter now.

‘You en’t denying it. You en’t even—’

‘I en’t even talkin’ to you n’more, ole man. You’re senile. Fuck off home, I would, while you can still walk.’

Lodge began to move towards Gomer, not hurrying but not delaying either, and whatever he could see now in Gomer’s face, it was making the smile on his own grow bigger and whiter. The torch felt sweaty in Merrily’s hand as she squeezed past the digger, along the rim of its front shovel, trying to transfer the flashlight to her other hand… feeling it slip out of her grasp and down into the shovel. She expected a clang, but it landed on something soft: the tarpaulin. She leaned over, reaching down into the metal maw, grabbed for the torch, stumbled, clutching at the tarpaulin, dragging some of it back, releasing a curling, piercing, pungent sweet aroma… and her scream.

And she watched Roddy spinning round with all the inevitability of slow motion.

‘Who’s that? Who is it? ’

Merrily pushed herself away from the shovel and staggered out into the forecourt, shaking hard, feeling sick.

Roddy Lodge walked towards her across the moon-stroked flagstones. Her stomach was turning over.

He wore a grey leather jacket, tight leather jeans and cowboy boots, everything covered with drying red mud.

‘A woman ?’ His voice rose to a note of wonderment.

‘You leave her alone!’

Merrily saw Gomer Parry about five yards away, both arms down by his side, fists tight, glasses opaque. Gomer’s voice was weaker now, could have been coming from half a mile away. She was willing him not to move, and all the time her mind was scrabbling for purchase on a sheer cliff-face of solid ice. It can’t be .

When Roddy Lodge came up to her, the first thing she noticed was his aftershave. He must have put it on with a paste brush. She almost retched.

‘Nice one, too, en’t you?’ Roddy was examining her, as if she was something that had just been delivered to his door. ‘ Very nice. What you doing with the likes of this little toe-rag, my darlin’?’

The aftershave was so pungent it made her think of Nil Odour, the fluid undertakers used in coffins – the stuff the nurses at the General had kept under the bed of Denzil Joy, whose stench still sometimes soaked through her sleep.

Flash image: the half-cooked corpse of Nevin Parry. She felt faint with nausea.

Can’t be. Can’t be. Not again .

Automatically, her mind was erecting a segment of St Patrick’s Breastplate:

I bind unto myself the Name

The strong Name of the Trinity…

‘I’m very sorry about this,’ Merrily said calmly. ‘I’m really sorry, Mr Lodge.’

He had his head on one side, peering down at her. His eyes were aglow. He had a luminous white smile. She sensed a lot of energy there and even some humour. She sensed him wanting to touch her. She didn’t move away. Her coat had come open over her chest. She was expecting him to become aware of her dog collar, then realized she’d taken it off in the van.

She took a breath. ‘Mr Lodge, my name’s Merrily… The Reverend Merrily Watkins. I’m Gomer’s parish priest. I’ve been with him all night, since we first heard about the fire.’ She paused. ‘Mr Lodge, I’m sure you can imagine what kind of effect all this has had on Gomer. His nephew dead, everything destroyed.’

‘Why’s he reckon it was me?’ Roddy Lodge said.

‘Look…’ Her voice felt warm and soothing, full of pulpit- projection. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him. The police… the police said Nev had been drinking heavily, and they think he probably started the fire himself, accidentally.’