Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

She didn’t look at Gomer, but she could feel it setting around him: a shabby concrete overcoat of bafflement and betrayal. She lowered her voice.

‘He’s an old man, Mr Lodge. He’s lost everything. When he wanted me to drive him here, I… I didn’t know anything about this… whatever history there is between you and him. I just assumed this place… that it held some memories for him and Nev, or something. I don’t know what he’s got against you or why it’s come up now, but I’m really sorry.’

‘Turned his mind, is it?’ Roddy said.

‘I’m sure he’ll come through this, with help. I’m just… I mean, I hope you’re not going to go to the police or anything. I promise you I’ll talk to him.’

‘Come and talk to me , you want, sweetheart.’ Roddy grinned. It was a wide engaging grin, but separate from his eyes, which seemed to have their own staccato light, like the sparks from her Zippo. ‘Vicar, eh? I goes and talks to our vicar sometimes. Nice feller.’ He unzipped a breast pocket of his leather jacket. ‘En’t as sexy as you, though. I reckon he’s a bit scared of me, tell the truth.’ He laughed, a high barking. ‘I scared him, I did. I scared the ole vicar.’

‘Did you?’

‘Told him ’bout all the things I seen in the night. Spooky!’

‘Sounds… interesting.’

‘Well, then…’ Merrily didn’t move as Roddy pulled out a card and came right up to her. ‘You come and talk to me any time you want. Any time. And anything you want doing, I’m your man. Special rates for the Church, look.’

He inspected her face, as though he was committing it, feature by feature, to memory.

‘Thanks.’ She took the card. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Yeah,’ Roddy said. ‘You would indeed, my darlin’.’

Merrily walked away without once looking back, Gomer following behind like a beaten old dog. She didn’t look at him, either.

She walked along the side of the big yellow digger without glancing at it or breathing in, walked out of the gateway and along the verge of the A49, with the long grass wet and cold around her ankles, sensing that Roddy Lodge was watching them and so not hurrying, not giving in to the urge to run, to the pushing in her chest. She walked around the bend in the road to where the van was almost embedded in the hedgerow. She unlocked the van and opened the door wide, so that Gomer could climb across to the passenger seat, where he sat in silence, sagging, as if all the life-energy had been vacuum-pumped out of him. She got into the van and turned the key in the ignition and for a moment was afraid it wasn’t going to start, but the engine caught on the second turn and she waited until there were no headlights in view before carefully reversing the van out onto the road. She drove for a mile or so in the direction of Ross before pulling off the road into the car park of a darkened pub. She switched off the engine but left the headlights on, illuminating a hanging sign featuring a rabbit or a hare, with a fluffy tail, seen from behind.

Merrily needed light. She needed to see anything coming. She tossed her head back over the peeling vinyl of the driving seat and let the breath out of her mouth, and when it came out it was an enormous sob, her body slumping into shudders.

‘Vicar?’

She held the wheel as if she was never going to let it go. ‘Couldn’t you smell it?’

He didn’t reply. He didn’t understand.

Merrily pulled herself up and found her phone. She couldn’t remember the number of Hereford Police. She’d have to ring 999 and see if they could put her through to anyone in CID.

‘I stum— stumbled, Gomer. Grabbed hold of this tarpaulin in the shovel of the digger, and it came away.’ She switched on the phone and turned to look at him. ‘I know… I know the smell now, you see. From when we found Barbara Buckingham. You remember. No mistaking it ever again, is there?’

Gomer lurched to the edge of his seat. ‘In the shovel ?’

‘Thought I was hallucinating at first. Thought it was the shock… you know, of seeing Nev and… But it wasn’t the same. This one was putrid. State of decay.’

Merrily stabbed 9 three times. Later she would have to call Jane and explain why she might not be home until dawn, or later.

THE WOMAN IN Lol’s bed smiled sleepily. An arm came out, a long, warm forefinger touching his lips as he bent down.

‘Before you say a word,’ she said, ‘I will tell you right now, from the bottom of ma heart, that it was very, very good.’ Looking into his eyes now and slithering up in the rumpled bed like a mermaid breaking surface. ‘And also right. Right for this moment. What I so much needed. OK?’

Lol sighed.

‘ OK , Laurence?’ She took away her finger but stilled him with her gaze, even though one eye was lost under this tumble of black hair with the long, pale streak, like a vein of silver in onyx.

‘Ah, well, you were good.’ Lol straightened up ‘You were wonderful. Me…’ He shrugged, spread his hands, did all this stuff that he was afraid was going to look deliberately self- deprecating. Uncomfortable now, he looked away, out of the left-hand window, where the mid-morning sky over Knight’s Frome was grey and shiny with unshed rain. It made the window seem like a square of tin plate in the wall of freshly plastered rubble-stone.

‘Aye, all right…’ She swung her legs out of bed. ‘If you push me, I’ll concede that “good” was maybe just faintly inappropriate. But “right” was… right. See, I was with this young guy before – doesnae matter who, these kids’re ten a penny, believe me: slick, cool, deft… and empty, you know? Awful proficient, sure, but proficiency isnae even halfway there, especially when it’s like received technique – out of Jansch, out of Thompson, John Fahey, whoever. In addition, I was getting well fed up with him trying to get into ma knickers.’

Like Merrily, she wore a long T-shirt in bed – this one worn thin from many washings; the faded figure on it with the top hat seemed, at one time, to have been Bugs Bunny.

‘Like I should be grateful to him for being fifteen years younger, you know?’ Moira said. ‘Jesus, the arrogance of these guys.’

She stretched and the T-shirt rode up and, through the thin cotton, Lol saw her nipples over the rabbit ears. He backed up, embarrassed, catching the edge of the tea tray, which rattled.

‘Like I’m some hag,’ Moira said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hair almost reaching the duvet. She started rearranging the things on the tray. ‘This is entirely wonderful, Laurence, but faintly ridiculous. Why not just leave me a kettle?’

‘Prof’s orders,’ Lol said.

He’d awoken her with a call to her mobile, as arranged, at eight, and then carried the tray rapidly along two hundred yards of mud track before the teapot could cool, and then up fourteen stone steps to the granary. There’d be a small kitchen here eventually; meanwhile, Prof had said he wanted Moira Cairns looked after in the old-fashioned way. This apparently was something to do with memories of Moira bringing morning tea and toast to his room when they were recording, way back.

‘Ach,’ said Moira when Lol went on to remind her of this, ‘that was just to make sure the auld bastard didnae take anything stronger.’ She poured tea, steam rising. ‘Tell me, how’s he doing now, in that particular area?’