Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

A white-haired sergeant appeared and raised a hand to Bliss. ‘Francis – a moment?’

‘Two minutes, Douglas, and I’ll be with you.’ Bliss led Merrily through a door and then through a couple of offices, both unoccupied. ‘You want the lavvy now?’

Maybe you could show me the room where we’re going to do it?’

‘Sure. One of the interview rooms, I thought.’ He smiled tightly. ‘You want to bless it first or something?’

When she saw the interview room, she thought a blessing wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Claustrophobic was too friendly a word. It was below ground level, a bunker almost opposite the cells, a windowless cube no more than nine feet square, with fluorescent lights and air-conditioning vents. The air felt like very old air, re -conditioned.

‘Bloody hell,’ Merrily said.

Bliss shrugged. ‘It’s not the flamin’ Parkinson show, Merrily. Now, do you want the bog or do you want to stay here and purify the place while I fetch Roddy?’

There were two chairs, one small table. A microphone for the tape was plumbed into one of the brown-fibred walls. Merrily sat down in one of the chairs and said glumly, ‘Whatever you like.’

The white-haired sergeant was in the doorway. ‘Francis…’

‘Douglas, can’t this wait ?’

The sergeant said, ‘When you came in, did you happen to notice a young man with a briefcase?’

‘Does he concern me?’

‘That,’ the sergeant said, ‘was Mr Lodge’s solicitor.’

Bliss stared at him. ‘Douglas, Mr Lodge hasn’t gorra fuckin’ solicitor. He refused a solicitor. You were there .’

‘You go and explain that to this kid, then,’ Douglas said.

The solicitor was on his feet, waiting for them. He wore black- framed Jarvis Cocker glasses under glossy dark hair streaked with gold. He looked all of twenty-four, but he had to be older to have qualified.

‘ He ’s a new one.’ Bliss peered through the glass.

‘Office in Ross,’ Douglas said. ‘Ryan Nye. High-flyer.’

‘He’s hardly out the fuckin’ nest.’

‘I did try to warn you, Francis, but your phone was turned off.’

‘‘Yeh.’ Bliss walked out into the reception area. ‘Mr Nye? DI Francis Bliss. How can I help?’

Ryan Nye smiled affably, if a little nervously, shaking hands. ‘Mr Bliss, this isn’t my usual sort of thing, so I hope you’ll excuse my naivety, but I was rather hoping you could either charge my client or release him. He’s not well, is he?’

‘Not well in what way, exactly, sir?’

‘I rather thought you’d have been informed. Headache, nausea, disorientation.’

‘It can be a very disorientating experience, sir, getting arrested for murder. And I’m afraid I don’t see him being charged tonight.’

‘Then I really think he should see a doctor, or— Look, I’m trying to be helpful here… have you thought about a psychiatrist?’

Bliss folded his arms. ‘Are you an expert on mental health, Mr Nye?’

‘Of course I’m not. I’m trying to be helpful.’

‘You have reason to think he might harm himself, sir?’

‘His behaviour’s erratic, that’s all I’m saying.’

Bliss was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘As a matter of fact – and I don’t know whether he’s mentioned this to you, sir – he has asked to see a priest.’

‘What – for the last rites?’ Ryan Nye’s face expressed pained disbelief. ‘Look, Inspector, it’s my impression that Mr Lodge doesn’t want to see anybody at all, and I certainly wouldn’t advise—’

‘Would you like us to go and ask him again, sir?’

‘No, I wouldn’t, actually. He certainly didn’t say anything to me about a priest. I really do think you should consider quite carefully what I’ve been saying. My client is not a well man .’

Outside, Bliss went off like an inexpensive firework, storming into the night then fizzling out, next to a lurid traffic car at the front of the station, looking like he wished he had the energy to put his fist through its windscreen. Or into the face of Roddy Lodge’s solicitor, Mr Ryan Nye, spoiling his glossy, streaked coiffure, dislodging his Jarvis Cocker glasses.

‘You know what this means?’ He leaned against the traffic car. ‘Means we’ve gorra leave the light on in Roddy’s cell, have an officer peeping in at him all night. Also means I’ve gorra get onto the Stonebow unit at the hospital and drag a psychiatric nurse over here. And if anything happens to him I’m up the Swanee.’

Merrily said, ‘You don’t really want him to be mentally ill, do you?’

‘He’s not mentally ill. He’s a crafty sod. Fuckin’ Nora, where do these leeching bastards come from? Is this lad an ambulance chaser, or did somebody engage him on Roddy’s behalf?’

‘Frannie…’ Merrily looked over a traffic queue to the new magistrates’ court that the planners had allowed to eat up a useful car park. ‘Be careful, OK?’

Merrily went home by taxi. She hung her coat over the post at the foot of the stairs and fed the cat. Alone in the vicarage, she felt edgy and unclean, and also guilty at being grateful to Roddy Lodge’s flash young lawyer for sparing her an intimate session with a man who kept eroticized pictures of dead women on his bedroom walls.

It was nearly nine p.m. To get this out of the way, she rang the Reverend Jerome Banks, Rural Dean for Ross-on-Wye. She remembered him as a wiry man with an abrupt manner, an ex-Army officer who’d once served alongside James Bull-Davies at Brecon. If Roddy Lodge had been mentally unstable, he ought to have spotted the signs. She got his answering machine and left her name, would try again tomorrow.

She had a shower, washed her hair, thinking of Jane at Knight’s Frome with Lol, wishing she was there. After putting on a clean alb, she still felt uncomfortable, a little clammy. She was pulling her black woollen shawl around her shoulders, ready to walk over to the church for some further cleansing, when the phone rang.

It was the Reverend Jerome Banks. ‘Mad?’ he said. ‘Oh yes. Absolutely barking, I’d say.’

HAD SOMEONE FOLLOWED her in?

If it was a footstep, it was a light one. It might be a cat. Sometimes cats came into the church, and once there’d been a badger. But badgers weren’t stealthy; they clattered and rummaged.

Merrily was sitting in the old choirmaster’s oaken chair with her hands on her knees, a single small candle lit on the altar fifteen feet away, a draught from somewhere bending the flame, making shadows swirl and dip and rise to the night-dulled stained-glass window at the top of the chancel.

Ledwardine Church was locked soon after dark, nowadays, unless a service or a meeting was scheduled. She’d let herself in through the side entrance, which at least had a key you didn’t need both hands to turn. Against all advice, she hadn’t locked the door behind her. It was fundamentally important to feel she had protection in here, inside this great medieval night-dormant engine, or else what was the point?

Probably hadn’t been a footstep at all. After a day like this, the world seemed riddled with tunnels of obsession. For a cold moment, Merrily held before her an image of the frozen smiles of all the dead women on Roddy Lodge’s bedroom walls as they writhed in other women’s bodies, and then she let it fade, whispering the Lord’s Prayer. Apart from having to give evidence at the inquest on Lynsey Davies, her role in this particular police investigation was probably over.

And yet – shifting restlessly in the choirmaster’s chair – how could it be over when she was still attached via Gomer, who would never back off until Lodge had been convicted for Nev? Plus, here was Frannie Bliss about to exploit Gomer in the interests of keeping the case in his pocket: bad, selfish policing, and he knew it. Maverick cops were for the movies, and Frannie was on a narrowing tightrope. Meanwhile, Roddy Lodge…