Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Tell you what I’m thinking,’ she called from the bathroom. ‘Maybe we should do the one gig, to begin with. Just to see how it goes, yeah?’

Lol sat down on the edge of the bed.

Moira said, ‘Sorry, what was that? Couldnae hear with the taps on. See, what’s happening, I’m booked to play somewhere called The Courtyard in Hereford in… I think it’s a week on Wednesday. We could use that, for starters. As an experiment?’

Lol’s heel clinked on something under the bed.

‘Nothing formal, nothing on the posters – I mean, too late anyway. You just show up, drift in and out as you please. Then we toss in a couple of your own numbers, see how it feels.’

Lol already knew how it would feel. He could already sense his fingers sweating on the frets. With any more than three other people in the room, all the chords would crumble, he’d lose the tune, forget the words. And in any audience, there were always going to be two or three people who would remember…

He bent down. The item under the bed proved to be his kettle, its flex coiled up next to it. All that stuff about the morning-tea tradition never had made total sense – if Prof thought it was important to return old favours, why hadn’t he brought the tray?

A set-up.

Moira Cairns came out of the bathroom, looking fresh and composed in a lime-green kimono.

‘So,’ she said, ‘where do you wannae start?’

Well, naturally, Lol didn’t want to start at all. Hadn’t he done half a college course in psychotherapy, worked for a while with an analyst and counsellor in Hereford? He could deconstructit all very efficiently for himself, thank you, even down to the implications of his Nick Drake fixation: Nick Drake had made three classic albums but was always afraid to perform in public. Consequently, perhaps, the albums had undersold, and Nick Drake, undervalued, had died of an overdose of antidepressants.

‘But, Lol, the poor guy was mentally ill ,’ Moira pointed out. ‘And you never were. You were just a victim of the system, with no support at all to fall back on when this… bastard bass-player very kindly gets you a conviction for having sex with a fifteen- year-old girl – to keep himself out of the shit – when you were – what, eighteen… nineteen?’

‘Thereabouts.’ She’d evidently been thoroughly briefed by Prof.

‘An innocent, all alone – your parents having become these totally insane religious maniacs, who disown you…’

The more Prof tells the story, the more insane my parents become.’

‘… So you fall into the system: unnecessary residential psychiatric so-called care – i.e. drugged senseless by the fucking state.’ Moira tossed back her hair – forked lightning in a night sky. ‘No way that ’d happen now, with no damn beds to spare for the real loonies. Laurence, why aren’t you angry ?’

Lol shrugged.

‘One day,’ Moira warned, ‘your shoulders are just gonnae freeze up . Let me get this right: if you reappear on stage now – nearly two whole decades later – the whole audience isnae gonnae be thinking, “Ah, here’s the awfully talented person from Hazey Jane, where the hell’s he been all this time?” It’s gonnae be like, “Hey, is that no’ the big sex offender of 1982 or whenever?” You really think that?’

‘ No ,’ Lol said too quickly. ‘Look…’ He turned to her. ‘I’m really grateful, Moira, and if I could do it I’d be – you know – I’d be incredibly proud. But we’re talking albatross here. Like what you don’t need around your neck.’

‘Now, listen, I’m a vulnerable wee creature behind the shell.’ She came and sat next to him on the side of the bed. ‘I need compatible support. I don’t need flash, I need sensitive and faintly flawed.’

‘You need somebody who can get the chords right and won’t just stand there in a pool of sweat.’

‘Laurence…’ She took him by the shoulders. ‘You can do this. You have to do this. Where’s your main income from?’

‘This and that. Royalties.’

‘From songs? From the old Hazey Jane albums? I wouldnae even like to ask how much that comes to. What’s your girlfriend say about it?’

Lol tensed. ‘Girlfriend?’

‘The wee priest?’ Moira said patiently. ‘I bet even the wee priest earns more in a year than you do.’

‘Who, er… who told you… ?’

‘Prof told me. Simon told me. Now, see, there ’s something – I ‘mean, I shouldnae have to spell this out to an ex-loony who trained as a shrink, but that’s something you did overcome. Rejected by the born-again parents, and now here y’are in a close personal relationship with an Anglican priest. Major psychological breakthrough, or what?’

Lol stared down at the bedside rug. ‘They weren’t supposed to say anything about that.’ Which sounded a little pathetic.

‘Who?’

‘Prof… Simon.’

Moira blinked. ‘But you’re an item, right? You and the priest. You’re “going out together”.’

‘Well, we…’ Lol smiled ruefully. ‘We stay in together. Sometimes.’

Moira stared at him.

‘Or rather we just don’t go out anywhere very public. She’s… inevitably, like a lot of women priests, especially in a country parish, she’s insecure about some things… attitudes. I don’t want to make it any more difficult for her.’

It started to rain, a pattering on the east window.

‘Lol, what year is this?’

‘Yeah, I know, it sounds ridiculous. But when you consider that she also has this other… this other thing she does in the diocese.’

‘Exorcist. Yeah, I know… they don’t talk about it.’

‘She still tends to attract publicity,’ Lol said. ‘I mean, there still aren’t that many women priests in the UK, let alone women… Deliverance ministers. So if the press found out, even the local press…’

‘Ah.’ Moira contemplated this, supporting her chin with a hand, gnawing the side of a finger. ‘Right. I think I get the picture. Crazy woman who pursues evil spirits for a living takes up with ex-loony singer with a conviction for a sex offence.’

‘Not good, is it?’

Moira Cairns shook her head slowly. ‘Jesus, Laurence, you don’t go out of your way to make things easy for yourself, do you?’

Lol smiled his hopeless smile.

IN THE EARLY afternoon, with wind-driven rain coming in hard from Wales and the last of the apples down on the vicarage lawn, the police arrived.

Actually, just one of them: DI Francis Bliss, of Hereford CID, which was a relief; it meant this was informal. DI Bliss sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee greedily. He was unshaven, been up all night, couldn’t hide his excitement.

‘Merrily, we’ve gorra name.’

‘For the… ?’

‘Dead person.’

‘Oh.’

They had Merseyside in common, he and Merrily, if not synchronistically. She’d been a curate there, her first job in the clergy, her baptism of fire and acid, but good times, on the whole. By the time she’d arrived in Liverpool, Frannie Bliss – stocky, red-haired, raised a Catholic in Kirby – would already have left. It was unclear how he’d wound up in Hereford.

He folded his hands around his warm mug.

‘Lynsey Davies. Local woman. Reported missing back in the middle of August by her partner – I say “partner”… one of her partners. The father of two of her kids, anyway, which he reckons gives him first claim.’

‘Claim on what?’

‘On any compensation that might be due to the dependants of a murder victim, I imagine. Everybody talks compensation now. You don’t have a loss, you have an opening for gain.’