Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘I see.’

‘Sorry to toss a spanner in the works.’ He stood with his back to the door, hands across his belly, the last man in Ledwardine habitually to wear a Paisley cravat down the front of his Viyella.

‘No, that’s… very public-spirited of you, Ted,’ Merrily said. ‘Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. Something’s happened.’

He peered at her. ‘Why are you all dressed up?’

‘Because I’m leaving for Barbados tonight,’ Merrily said. ‘I’ve come into money.’

She emptied the contents of the bin liner on to the table.

Ted picked up one of the bundles of notes and then moved rapidly to the door and flung on all the lights.

‘Bloody hell !’ he said.

Lol saw them bringing Lodge out, couldn’t easily miss him. In direct contrast to the dark blue uniforms on either side, he was wearing orange overalls, probably police-issue while they ran tests on his clothes. His head hung, so you couldn’t see his face, and his hands were cuffed in front of him. He let the two coppers move him around in the greying light, like a bendy doll.

A mist-blurred, listless moon was skulking in the trees. The wind brushed fallen leaves into heaps against the closed doors of Roddy’s garage, and the police clustered in front. Nobody was doing much talking, but Lol was aware of an excitement he guessed they wouldn’t want to show – you could hear it in the agitated jostling of the leaves and the tense, metallic thrumming in the overhead power lines.

There were about eight police visible, among them DI Frannie Bliss who Lol had met during the summer – a brief liaison founded on the need to pull Merrily out of a threatening situation. There’d been a degree of self-interest then, but you felt you could trust him, up to a point.

Surprisingly, Bliss came over.

‘Knew the music industry was in a bad way, son, but not this bad.’

Lol nodded gloomily. ‘We’ve got Robbie Williams round the back, unloading the truck.’

‘Yeh, I thought it was.’ Bliss was dressed for action in a nylon hiking jacket, jeans tucked into calf-high cowboy boots.

‘You look happy, though.’ Lol was wary: the police and their prisoner waiting around, the night closing in, and the DI sparing the time to acknowledge the hired labour.

‘ Tentatively happy.’ Small teeth flashed briefly. ‘You’re looking a bit knackered yourself, Laurence.’ Bliss pulled leather gloves from his jacket and put them on. ‘I suppose it was the little Reverend got you into this. Relieving Mr Parry’s burden, in his hour of sorrow.’

‘Thought it might help him to have somebody to laugh at.’

‘And how can we ever refuse her, eh? All right, son, listen…’ Bliss led him to the edge of the police tape, voice lowered. ‘Here’s the situation: after what’s been a difficult day, by and large, Mr Lodge has decided to cooperate. But this is’ – he waggled his fingers – ‘funny stuff, you know? Gorra go a bit careful.’ He nodded at the spade. ‘Obviously you’ve mastered the complexities of that, more or less, but what I need to know is, can you, if necessary, operate this little digger of Gomer’s?’

Lol took half a step back, stumbled.

‘Hey, we’re not talking heavy plant,’ Bliss said. ‘This is Tonka toy.’

Lol looked around. He couldn’t see Gomer anywhere, but he could see Roddy Lodge, luminous in his overalls, with a policeman either side and another man, in plain clothes, joining them. A policewoman was handing out plastic cups of tea or coffee from a couple of flasks in the boot of a police car, including one for the prisoner – Roddy clasping the cup like a chalice between his cuffed hands. The reality outside the recording studio – more of it than Lol had counted on.

‘I’m not saying we’re gonna need the digger.’ Bliss tapped the spade. ‘This might well suffice. But if we do need to go a bit deeper, I don’t want Mr Parry within quarrelling distance of Roddy Lodge. Better an inoffensive little artiste than a combustible old bugger with a grudge, this is my view.’

‘And how would you feel,’ Lol said, before he could think, ‘if your nephew’s murder was getting sidelined by a slippery copper on the make?’

Must have been even more tired than he’d figured.

Bliss merely frowned. ‘Suspicious death. His nephew’s suspicious death , Laurence. I apologize for calling you inoffensive.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, that’s over the garden hedge – Dyfed- Powys’s case. I’m not saying there won’t be meaningful discussions with our Welsh colleagues when this present business gets sorted, but right now I want to build on what we know we’ve got. It’s about seizing the moment. Now you run along and ask Mr Parry for the keys of his little digger.’

Lol didn’t move. ‘I thought you’d have real forensic people to do it, now you’ve got something positive.’

‘Never fear – you happen to strike anything softish, I’ll have vanloads of the buggers here before you can scrape the shit off your wellies. I’ve just gorra be quite sure our friend here isn’t being disingenuous.’

‘So where will this be? Where are we going?’

‘Going? We’re not going anywhere.’ Bliss patted Lol on the shoulder and walked with the wind behind him across the crowded forecourt towards the cops guarding the prisoner. ‘Right then, Roddy, my son, let’s be having yer.’

Here? He’d buried one on his own property?

‘DI Bliss!’ The third man with Lodge stepped out, his hands going up protectively as the headlights of one of the police cars sprayed his dark suit. ‘I just want to say, before you—’

Lol saw Bliss quiver. ‘Mr Nye… we’ve had an independent doctor in to check him over, we’ve also had him looked at by an experienced psychiatric nurse, neither of whom thought he was seriously ill or unfit to travel. Now, will you let us get on with our job, please?’

The guy shook his head. He looked young, maybe not too sure of his ground. ‘Inspector, I have to tell you that I’m far from confident that anything Mr Lodge might say under these circumstances can be considered admissible. I think—’

‘I know what you think.’ Bliss stood with his arms by his side, fists tight. ‘And what I think is that Mr Lodge’s mental state has no particular bearing on the situation at this stage. And I’m more interested right now in what he’s got to show us, rather than what he tells us. And if any of this upsets him further, I’m terribly sorry, Mr Nye, but in comparison with the parents of Rochelle Bowen, with whom I spent a very distressing forty-five minutes this afternoon, my sympathies—’

‘Mr Bliss, I repeat that my client is unwell, and I think you could at least – bearing in mind that Mr Lodge hasn’t been charged and he is cooperating fully – remove the handcuffs.’

Bliss threw up his arms. ‘All right, we’ll take off the f— the handcuffs.’ He moved close up to Mr Nye. ‘I should, however, remind your client that if he at any stage makes a personal decision that his continued presence here is no longer entirely essential, I’ve got police officers posted at the front and the rear and every conceivable exit from these premises. Is that fully understood, Mr Nye?’

‘We wouldn’t expect otherwise, in the circumstances,’ said Mr Nye. ‘Thank you, Inspector.’

Bliss nodded. One of the uniformed policemen bent to remove Lodge’s handcuffs.

‘You believe that?’

Lol turned. Behind him, Gomer was furiously assembling a ciggy, the headlights turning his glasses opaque, like cross-slices of banana.

‘You ask me, en’t nothin’ wrong with that piece of rubbish you couldn’t bloody shake out of him.’ He shoved the new ciggy in his mouth and closed the tin with a snap.