Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘No, I was just wondering,’ Bliss said, ‘how many sewerage systems Roddy’s put in around here. Every farm needs one, doesn’t it? Every cottage.’

Merrily saw where this was heading. ‘You could start a terrible scare.’

Bliss nodded, didn’t seem too concerned.

‘You put this out in the media,’ she warned, ‘you get everybody for miles around wondering if they’ve got a dead body under their septic tank.’

In a pocket of her coat, she’d discovered the card that Roddy Lodge had given her last night.

Efflapure

R F Lodge

registered contractor

The Old Garage,

Underhowle,

Nr Ross-on-Wye.

It was in a plastic evidence bag now, locked in the boot of the Alfa. Frannie Bliss seemed close to becoming obsessive about Roddy Lodge.

‘I wouldn’t mind looking under, say, a few selected septics. Narrow it down a bit.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll see, anyway. How’s business? The Evil One doing much locally?’

‘You’d know better than me.’ He was changing the subject, but she could sense his anticipation and was unnerved by it.

He glanced at her. ‘How’s Lol?’ He’d encountered Lol during the summer, over the hop-kiln tragedy and the problems surrounding Allan Henry, the developer. Oddly, Bliss and Lol had seemed to understand one another, but that didn’t mean she could trust him with an update.

‘We’re still friends. And how’s your private life, Inspector Bliss?’

‘Not many private bits left.’

‘What’s that mean?’

He took a sudden right between a Scots pine and an untrimmed hedge. The car skidded on some mud, and Bliss narrowly avoided the hedge.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘just the usual police thing. Your married life suffers on account of the job, and then it gets so bloody messy at home the job becomes a refuge. Like that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t want us to be over, but it’s going down so fast now, I don’t really know how to stop it. And before you say “Do you wanna talk about it, Frannie?” – no, thank you, not now. Maybe when this is finished.’

‘I wonder how often you’ve said that. Maybe—’

‘All right,’ Bliss said, ‘probe over. We’re nearly there. Listen, when we get to the actual place, I’m not gonna force yer into a Durex suit, but try not to touch anything, eh?’

‘We’re just going to his house, aren’t we? It’s not as if it’s a murder scene…’ She registered his chilly half-smile. ‘Oh.’

‘We don’t know for certain,’ Bliss said. ‘But he had to’ve done it somewhere. And we do know he brought women back here, and when you see inside the place… well, you’ll probably want to wear a Durex suit.’

This was where Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean looked to be stealthily pinching bits of Herefordshire. The lane narrowed between wild saplings growing on the verges. And then, within fifty yards of a sign announcing Underhowle, but before any evidence of a community, they were there: a clearing and a short cindered track opening into a forecourt fronting a building of grey concrete – a classic garage from the 1950s, sectional temple to the motor car, with a white metal sign: R. F. LODGE. In front, the stumps of petrol pumps, behind one of the towering pylons that looked as though it had just walked down from the conifered hillside.

Either side of the garage with its high, twin entrances, shuttered now, stood newer concrete buildings. Frannie Bliss parked the Alfa between a police car and a white van on the forecourt, lowering his window as a uniformed constable came over.

‘Sir, there’s been a deputation of local people demanding to know what’s going on here. DS Mumford didn’t want to speak to them, so I just told them I wasn’t authorized to make a statement, it’d be up to the SIO. Just to put you in the picture. I think they’ll be back.’

‘I do not doubt it, son. Andy’s up at the house, is he?’ Bliss turned to Merrily. ‘I’ve had Andy going through Roddy’s books, phoning his fantasy clients. Is he known at Highgrove, you reckon?’

‘You’re really building this up, aren’t you?’

‘Merrily, I’m a detective inspector who would like to be a detective chief inspector. I’m thirty-six years old, and I think I’m worth it.’

She grinned and stepped out into the peppery breeze. Bliss ushered her along a flagged pathway down the side of the garage, and there, within ten yards of the rear of the grey building, was the bungalow. It had been invisible from the front. Maybe just as well, as it wasn’t pretty: multicoloured bricks assembled in no particular pattern, flat roof, no garden, no flower tubs, just a concrete surround and the tiled pit of a drained swimming pool near the back wall of the garage.

‘And in summer you can float on your back and watch the sun sizzling through the power lines,’ Merrily said.

‘Apparently he got the land cheap. Built the bungalow himself, more or less.’

‘You don’t say.’ Down in a parallel field she could see half of what looked like a stone chapel.

‘Be worth quite a bit now. It’s actually quite well built, according to Mumford who knows about these things.’

‘Maybe it just lacks the feminine touch.’

Bliss glanced at her. ‘How true that is,’ he said.

Roddy Lodge’s office was at the rear of the bungalow, to the right of the back door. Its walls were only half plastered, and its rectangular window looked into the brackeny hillside, through the steel bones of the pylon.

Merrily saw a filing cabinet and a metal desk with a bright red computer and a phone on it. Also, a bulky middle-aged man in a shapeless dark suit sitting in a vinyl-backed executive swivel chair. Bliss bent down to him, cocking his head on one side.

‘So was the Prince cooperative, Andy? Was he as nice as he always seems on the telly?’

‘Good afternoon, Reverend.’ Mumford carefully folded up his mobile phone and placed it on the desk. ‘Nice to see you again.’

‘Hello, Andy.’ Merrily wondered, not for the first time, what kind of vocation this was turning out to be, when she seemed to encounter more coppers than priests.

Mumford looked at the mobile. ‘Boss, I’m just waiting for a call back from Mrs Jilly Cooper’s secretary. They do seem to remember being approached by Lodge sometime last year, but had no need of his services.’

‘How wise,’ Bliss said.

‘And… Highgrove came back to me to confirm getting repeated letters and leaflets from him. I asked if they’d kept any, but apparently they didn’t. I’ve also found a pile of press cuttings in the filing cabinet, mostly relating to famous people who’ve moved to this area… in fact, anywhere within a fifty- or sixty-mile radius.’

‘What does that tell you,’ Merrily wondered, ‘apart from that he’s enterprising?’

‘And a terrible celebrity-stalker,’ Bliss said.

‘He’s very upfront for a stalker.’

‘He’s certainly not efficient.’ Mumford nodded at the scarlet computer, which had yellow speaker grilles and looked like a toy. ‘At one time he seems to have tried doing his bills and stuff on that thing, but the last one I can find on the hard disk seems to be over a year old. He’s all over the place after that, and the computer’s gathering dust.’

‘Other things on his mind, Andy?’

‘Shows a lot of nerve, in a way,’ Merrily said. ‘I mean, a small operator making a direct approach to Prince Charles?’

‘ And Princess Anne at Gatcombe,’ Mumford said. ‘At least, she’s down here on his list. When I phoned, I wasn’t able to talk to anybody who might know about him, so I’ve arranged to call back in an hour or so. As for Sting’s place – no answer at all. A couple of other people you won’t’ve heard of, boss, seem to remember getting leaflets from Roddy as well as individual letters.’