Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘But what this is really… Jane… ?’

‘What?’ she said sulkily.

What this is really about is Moira Cairns, isn’t it?’

‘That’s crap. Moira Cairns is really old.’

‘And really beautiful and charismatic.’

‘Moderately attractive, I believe. If you like that kind of thing and you can put up with the grating accent.’

‘And – what – possibly five years older than your Mum?’ His patronizing lilt was back. ‘That’s not very old, really, is it? And Moira and Lol have the same musical background. And Lol’s going to be playing on her album. And she’s doing one of his songs? And they’re under the same roof, miles from anywhere, recording well into the night.’

‘That is total, absolute, complete bollocks ,’ Jane said, furious.

It was getting dark now, and some of them were carrying torches or lamps. About a dozen people, men and women, with a few teenagers lurking on the fringes. From a distance, it looked like a group of very early carol-singers but, close up, Merrily could tell they weren’t going to be bought off with mince pies.

A man came forward, his voice preceding him across the cindered forecourt of Roddy Lodge’s garage.

‘We’d like, if we may, to speak to the Senior Investigating Officer?’

Frannie Bliss turned to Merrily, raised an eyebrow and then walked out to them – a poised and dapper figure despite the loss of sleep and all the coffee. A pro, an operator.

‘That would be me. DI Francis Bliss. How can I assist?’

‘Well, I hope that, for a start, you can tell us exactly what’s going on.’ The man was half a head taller than Bliss. He wore jogging gear, luminous orange. He put out a hand. ‘Fergus Young. Chair of the Underhowle Development Committee. Also head teacher at the school.’

He and Bliss shook hands, while Merrily stayed in the shadow of the concrete building, hoping on one level that all this wasn’t going to take too long and on another – because of what lay ahead for her – that it would take half the night.

‘Mr Young,’ Bliss said. ‘I’m happy to tell you what I can, but I’m afraid it’s not going to be much.’

‘Well, to begin with, if I may ask this, where is Mr Lodge?’

‘Ah.’ Bliss put his head on one side. ‘Mr Lodge – to use a phrase which I only wish we’d been able to improve on over the years, but we somehow never have – is helping us with our inquiries.’

A woman shouted, ‘Please don’t patronize us. We know the kind of questions you people have been asking in the village.’

‘Yeh, I’m sure you do.’ Bliss peered cautiously into the assembly. ‘The press aren’t here, are they?’

‘Of course not,’ Fergus Young said. ‘We’re all local people, and we’re here because we’re quite naturally concerned about what appears to be intensive police activity around the community in which we’ve chosen to invest our lives. And if that sounds pompous I’m very sorry.’

It certainly didn’t sound local. He was about Merrily’s age, and had a bony, equine head with tough and springy dull gold hair. He looked like the kind of evangelical head teacher who did an hour’s fell-running before morning assembly.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can assure you that anything you say to us will be treated with sensitivity and discretion.’

Bliss looked pointedly at the teenagers.

‘Or,’ Fergus Young said, ‘if you’d prefer to talk to just a few of us, in a less public place, I’m sure—’

‘That might be a better idea, sir, yes.’

Young turned to the group to discuss it. Frannie Bliss moved away, hands in his trouser pockets. Merrily murmured, ‘Shall I wait in the car?’

‘Not unless you really want to. I might need back-up, with some of these plummy bastards.’

And so they all wound up walking, almost single file, into the village of Underhowle in the blustery dusk. The lane was slick with wet leaves. Nobody spoke much. Merrily knew that Bliss was working out how to turn this around, milk the villagers while telling them nothing they didn’t already know and making it sound like he was taking them into his confidence. Walking a couple of yards behind the delegation, she had the feeling of being towed into something she was going to regret.

Underhowle: she didn’t know what to expect. The village, though still in Herefordshire and close to the most expensive curves of the Wye Valley, was also on the fringe of the Forest of Dean, the less affluent part of rural Gloucestershire – former mining area, high unemployment, a fair bit of dereliction. It wasn’t only the River Severn that separated the Forest from the Cotswolds, and it probably wasn’t only the Wye separating Underhowle from the posher parts of South Herefordshire.

Bliss dropped back to take a call on his mobile. ‘Yeh.’ Then he listened for a while. ‘So that bears out? Good, good…’

The trees dwindled, lights appeared.

‘Lovely job. Ta very much, George.’

Bliss snapped his phone shut, dropped it into his jacket pocket and quietly punched his left palm with his right fist. Fergus Young glanced back at him sharply. Merrily wondered if Bliss had been given the post-mortem result, but he didn’t enlighten her. She caught up with the others.

‘Never seems to stop raining these days, does it?’ she said to nobody in particular, reaching for her hood.

‘Aspect of global warming,’ a white-bearded man growled. ‘We only have ourselves to blame.’

‘I suppose so.’

There was a solitary street lamp at a staggered crossroads, a signpost pointing through the rain to Ross in the west, Lydbrook in the east. Ahead of them, Merrily saw sporadic cottages and modern houses edging warily up a stubbly hillside with the pylons marching behind. In the dusk, with few lights, it looked stark, like a big, sloping cemetery.

‘We’ll use the village hall, I think,’ Fergus Young said.

Not what Merrily was expecting, given the bleakness of the village. Nor, after the abattoir ambience of Ledwardine parish hall, what she was used to.

It had evidently been a barn, left over from the days when the village centre had formed around old farms. Now it was the classiest kind of barn conversion: chairs with tapestry seats, tables of antique pine. Wall lights shone softly on unplastered rubblestone, open beams and rafters.

A sandstone lintel, above a window in the end wall, had one word carved into it: ARICONIUM.

There was also a coffee bar. A dark, wiry guy with a shaven head went behind it, flicking switches. ‘Gotta be espresso, I’m afraid. That all right for everyone? Inspector?’ London accent.

‘Lovely,’ Frannie Bliss said. Merrily wondered how long before he succumbed to caffeine poisoning. She took a seat near the door, glad she was wearing civvies.

Most of the villagers, including all the kids, had dropped away at the entrance. Now there were only four locals in the hall: the shaven-headed guy, the man with the white beard, a weathered woman in her fifties wearing a tan riding jacket. And Fergus Young, lean and rangy and looking more relaxed in here, briskly unzipping his orange tracksuit top.

‘I’ll introduce everyone very quickly, OK? Ingrid Sollars, who runs our visitor centre; Chris Cody making the coffee – Chris is also on the Development Committee – and, er… Sam Hall.’

‘ Not on the Development Committee.’ The bearded man was sitting on the edge of one of the tables. He had thin white hair dragged back into a ponytail, was maybe in his mid-sixties. Merrily had the feeling he’d invited himself to the party.

‘And… I’m sorry.’ Fergus Young turned to Frannie Bliss. ‘Inspector… ?

‘Bliss.’

‘Of course. And your colleague… Sergeant, is it?’