Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

CANON T. H. B. DOBBS,

DIOCESAN EXORCIST,

HEREFORD.

Merrily was unexpectedly impressed by Canon Dobbs’s general diligence and open-mindedness. OK, this hadn’t, unfortunately, extended to women priests – and women exorcists in particular. But he had done his best with what, to him, must have been a perplexingly contemporary kind of haunting.

The idea of aliens as post-modern fairies was one she’d heard before. True, there was no suggestion of the demonic here, nothing for the Deliverance ministry to combat with traditional means. But who did you go to when you were convinced that something which you couldn’t resist had arrived in the night and taken you away for experimentation?

Certainly not the police. If she showed this to Frannie Bliss, it would only put question marks over Melanie’s mental state. As for the doctor: bloody Valium, the universal panacea.

Merrily recalled when Jane, approaching the peak of her New Age phase a year or two ago, had believed she was having nature spirit experiences in the orchards of Ledwardine.

And she was startled by a pang of nostalgia, realizing that she very much preferred that fey, impressionable kid to the hard- bitten cynic who’d emerged around the approach to her daughter’s seventeenth birthday. She wondered what Eirion thought of the new Jane.

She went back to the computer to e-mail her thanks to Sophie… and discovered that she couldn’t. The screen had frozen, but in a peculiar foggy way, and when she tried to restart the computer she found it wouldn’t.

Bugger. Hard disk gone, or what? She’d have to ask Eirion who, she had to admit, was becoming an indispensable extension of this household.

Meanwhile, she rang the Cathedral gatehouse. ‘Sophie, thanks for doing this.’

‘Do we have another case in this particular village?’ Sophie’s voice, which had once seemed severe, now conveyed this inimitable mixture of calm and capability.

‘Alien abduction? No, but Dobbs’s subject has since disappeared, and the police are worried about her.’

‘And you’ve been consulted?’

‘In a roundabout kind of way. Has there been anything on the radio about the discovery of a woman’s body early today, near Ross?’

‘Oh,’ said Sophie, ‘ that .’

‘No, this is not her . That’s… another one.’

Oh well, at least this would delay having to take the sack to Ted. She told Sophie everything that had happened last night up to, but not including, the bin-sack incident, which was purely parish business.

It was like unloading stuff on your older sister.

‘My God… what an appalling night for you,’ Sophie said. ‘Two of them. Two dead bodies.’

‘Possibly both victims of the same man.’

‘I hadn’t heard about Mr Parry’s fire. I’m so very sorry. He’s a wonderful man – and a good friend to you. Do you really think this person was insane enough to start that fire?’

‘Gomer’s in no doubt. And there’s definitely something wrong with Lodge. The bedroom wall was very… yuk. I mean, I can understand why Bliss is convinced Lodge has killed more women.’

‘And you say Mr Parry’s out there now, digging for more corpses?’

‘With Lol.’ Merrily fumbled a cigarette into her mouth.

‘Is this entirely wise of Inspector Bliss?’

‘Not in my view,’ Merrily said. ‘But who ever listens to me?’ Jenny Box , she thought. Jenny Box listens .

MADE SENSE, SEE, Gomer told Lol, as the truck bumped down into the valley, under the big pylons. This place was on the edge of the Forest, and anything could happen in the Forest – full of old secrets never told. Perfect place for a killer to lurk undiscovered for years.

Unlike Radnor Forest, that area of crowded green hills forty miles west of here where Gomer had grown up, the Dean was the real thing. Trees: oaks, chestnuts, sycamores, conifers. Miles of the buggers, wall-to-wall – twenty-five thousand acres, sure to be. Royal hunting ground in the Middle Ages, therefore operating according to separate rules, its own code.

‘What you gotter remember, Lol, boy…’ Gomer’s eyes shrank shrewdly behind his telescopic glasses. ‘What you gotter remember ’bout the Forest is it’s wedged up between these two big rivers, the Wye by yere, and the Severn in the east. And the Severn’s real wide; the other side’s like another country, so you’re lookin’ across at neighbours you likely en’t never gonner talk to the whole of your life.’

‘Sounds like West London,’ Lol said.

‘Point I’m makin’, boy, if you wanner get the other side of that river, from yereabouts, you gotter drive miles and miles down to the big bridges in South Wales, else your only alternative’s all the way up to the city of Gloucester and struggling through the terrible bloody traffic you gets there. Now… in between Gloucester and South Wales, see, you got the Forest. Like a big island full o’ trees.’

Trees were already thickening on both sides of the road and the cab of the truck was blue with Gomer’s smoke.

‘And if the Forest folk couldn’t easy get out, where do they go but down ? Pits, see? Iron mines, it was, way back to Roman times, and coal mines. All closed down and covered over now, mostly, but the land’s still riddled with bloody ole shafts. Mines and secrets, boy, that’s the Forest. Mines and secrets .’

Despite the cold and the shuddering of the truck, Lol’s body was sagging into sleep. He sat up, shaking himself like a dog. ‘How come you know so much about it, Gomer?’

‘Ar, well…’ Gomer’s voice went gruff. ‘My first wife, God rest her, her family comed from Cinderford. Used to have to go over at Christmas, times like that. Never felt accepted, mind. Suspicious devils, her family. Close. Interbred.’

It was noticeable that Gomer had been talking more in the last five minutes than he had all day. He’d never mentioned his first wife before, not in Lol’s hearing. This was Gomer galvanized, sensing the closeness of a climax.

C oughed on three: Lynsey, Melanie Pullman and the girl from Monmouth, Rochelle Bowen.

Rochelle was the daughter of the couple who’d caught up with them when they were excavating the third Efflapure, at a brick cottage outside Pontshill. She was nineteen, a trainee dental nurse, missing for five months. Lol had felt heartsick; seeing in the faces of the parents this withering combination of resignation and cold dread, making it all searingly real. He hoped they weren’t going to be around when Bliss arrived with his prisoner.

Gomer slowed at a sign pointing to Under Howle – two words, as though the village had no identity separate from the hill. Lol couldn’t see a village out of the truck windows, only close-growing trees with brown, frizzled leaves.

‘This actually counts as the Forest, Gomer? So close to Ross?’

Gomer sucked on his ciggy. ‘This, boy, counts as a place even the Forest folk don’t know. Perfect hidey-hole for the likes of Lodge. Bastard goes out from yere, like them bloody ole raiders from centuries ago… cheatin’, philanderin’… killin’… He coughed. ‘Burnin’. Then crawls back to his lair, all snug.’

They came down into the village, which looked muddled and haphazard, houses floating in the early dusk like croutons in a brown soup. They passed the hulk of a church, entering a street with – surprisingly – several shops, their lights coming on. Down through a disjointed crossroads, back into the trees.

And then Lol saw, on his left, the first police car, the police tape and the tiered façade of the garage, like a concrete Lego garage from his childhood, with the pylon rearing behind it. Gomer turned in very slowly and deliberately, truck wheels grinding cinders.