Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘An angel?’

‘Well, someone said it must be the archangel Uriel, the one with the flaming sword, and perhaps there is something in that. I wish I could’ve painted it myself, but I’ve never been very good that way. ’Twas all I could do to paint the walls.’

It was hard to imagine Jenny Box sweating in overalls, collecting those unavoidable emulsion spots on her delicate skin.

‘Well, I couldn’t let anyone else in. Not after I realized what it had been before. I couldn’t have vulgar fellers smoking and swearing down here, now could I?’

Jenny Box smiled down at Merrily, arms by her sides, her black dress simple and monastic, except for the way its velvet cord hung loose just above her hips. In this moment, Merrily was entirely sure that this woman had left the money, unpretentiously in the black plastic bin sack. And in the next moment, she recognized the church steeple in the painting. And the wooded hills behind it.

‘It’s…’

‘Oh, that part’s exact,’ Mrs Box said. ‘I gave her a fine set of postcards to work from.’

Merrily took a good hard look at the picture. It was about two feet by four, in a plain, matt-white wooden frame. The paint was probably acrylic, and it looked surreal now, like a Magritte – the church hard-edged, an almost-photographic image, no brush strokes either in the clouds. Airbrush, probably – very professional. She turned to ask a simple question: What does it signify?

Jenny Box had gone to sit on the oak settle, her hands folded primly on her lap, her face lambent like some Rembrandt saint.

Merrily saw that the question wasn’t going to be needed.

Three tanks raised, and still nothing. Relief for the Sandfords and two other householders, frustration for Mumford. They’d moved almost in a circle around Underhowle but had never gone into the village itself. The last Efflapure had fallen back suddenly into its pit, and Lol had twisted his ankle hurling himself out of the way.

‘One more,’ Mumford said, ‘and then likely we’ll call it a day.’ Like he ’d been doing the digging.

At the last place, there’d been a bunch of curious villagers and this pitiful middle-aged couple from Monmouth whose nineteen-year-old daughter had been missing for five months. A relative in Ross had told them about a man being arrested and the police digging for bodies.

Anything, they said, was better than not knowing.

It was heartbreaking. And probably unnecessary, Lol thought. He was aching all over by then. Earlier, he’d listened to Mumford talking to Bliss on the phone, arranging for the couple to meet him.

‘When do you decide this isn’t working?’ Lol asked Mumford as they were unloading the gear for the fourth time. No point in appealing to Gomer, for whom this was personal.

‘Isn’t for me to decide,’ Mumford said. ‘Likely, the boss’ll turn up in person at some point.’

They were on the gravel forecourt of a tall Victorian stone house with an ‘Old Rectory’ nameplate on the gate. A woman of about twenty-five with short fair hair and an eyebrow ring was standing watching, hands on her narrow hips. After a while, she sashayed over to Lol.

‘You don’t really think Roddy’s a mass murderer, do you?’

‘Don’t actually know the bloke,’ Lol said.

‘He’s just a little weird.’

‘Is he?’

‘You people, if somebody’s weird they’re automatically some raging psychopath, right?’

‘I’m not a copper,’ Lol said. ‘ He ’s the copper.’

She looked over at Andy Mumford and rolled her eyes. ‘For get it.’

Mumford went to meet a man coming out of the house. ‘Mr Crewe?’

‘ Connor -Crewe. Piers. How’s it going, Inspector?’

Big guy – well, overweight, certainly. Fiftyish, with luxuriant grey-speckled hair and a wide, easy smile. He wore a denim shirt overhanging baggy corduroy trousers.

‘Sergeant, sir,’ Mumford said, in the resigned way that told you sergeant was as high as he was going and even that had been unexpected. ‘That’s Mr Parry over there. He’s a professional drainage contractor, he won’t take long, and he’ll leave your ground without a blemish.’

‘I’m sure that’s true.’ Mr Connor-Crewe beamed, his big, round face like the friendly planet in a space picture book Lol had owned as a kid. ‘Just as sure as I am that you’re all wasting your time here. Not that it’s my place to offer an opinion.’

‘At this stage, sir,’ Mumford said, a very slight eye-movement conveying what Lol judged to be intense interest, ‘we’re open to anyone’s opinion. Did you know Mr Lodge?’

Well, obviously he installed this set-up for me, and it’s worked efficiently enough so far.’

Gomer sniffed in contempt.

‘And he had an assistant, like your man here,’ Mr Connor- Crewe said, ‘and they were both very civil, very obliging.’

Which must have saved Mumford a question. At each of the other places, he’d asked if there’d been anyone helping Roddy Lodge. In each case it had been someone different, and, no, they hadn’t been there all the time. Mumford had said Lodge was known to use cheap, casual labour, usually pulling someone from what he said was a bottomless local pool of fit blokes claiming sickness benefit.

‘Or, rather, not like your man,’ Mr Connor-Crewe said. ‘In this case, the assistant was the – I believe late – Lynsey Davies.’

The young woman stared at him. ‘You never told me she was helping.’

‘Aha,’ said Connor-Crewe. ‘Lots of things I haven’t told you , my sweet.’

‘Shit, Piers,’ she said. ‘He might have dumped her here.’

‘He certainly might have killed her here, the way they were carrying on – violent arguments one minute, practically shagging in the mud the next.’

Mumford got out his notebook. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s have a proper chat, shall we, sir? In the house.’

At first, Lol had thought she must be Connor-Crewe’s daughter. Evidently not. She stayed outside with him and Gomer, after Mumford and his notebook had followed Connor-Crewe into the Old Rectory, watching them mark out a circle around the Efflapure, which was sunk into a paddock behind the house.

‘That was a shock, mind,’ she said. ‘Lynsey.’ She looked out across the paddock and another couple of fields to the tops of some houses: Underhowle. ‘We all knew Lynsey, in Ross. Everybody’s saying she was a slag. Which is… yeah, I suppose, dropping babies everywhere, but that’s not the whole story. She was smart.’

‘Who’s looking after them babbies now?’ Gomer said, as Lol uncovered the top of the globular tank.

She shrugged. ‘Who’s always looked after them? Grannies, ex-boyfriends, ex-boyfriends’ mums. Having kids never held Lynsey back. Ace at palming them off on people. “Can you just mind him for a hour?” And then she don’t come back for six weeks. You had to admire it, in a way. She had this fierce determination to experience everything she could get out of life. Used to buy these heavy books from Piers’s shop, which was how I got talking to her. I mean, she wasn’t stupid. When she wasn’t around any more we just figured she’d gone off with some bloke – could be anywhere. You just… couldn’t imagine her being dead, that’s all.’

‘If her wasn’t stupid’ – Gomer slid an oily tow-rope under one of the thick rubberized loops on top of the tank – ‘how come her wound up with Lodge?’

‘Dunno. Probably because he had a fair bit of money – like a lot of money compared to Lynsey’s usual men – and a fast car. She did use people. Let’s be honest, she was good at men.’