Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘You don’t think he intended to die?’

‘No, I don’t. I think he saw himself as invulnerable. Merrily, look, what I wanted to ask you… why do you think he buried all these West cuttings – together with the picture of him and Lynsey as Fred and Rose? If he was suddenly worried about them being found, why didn’t he just set fire to the lot? He was good at fire, if we accept Gomer’s viewpoint.’

‘Well, he didn’t get rid of the pictures of women in the bedroom, did he? What do Superintendent Fleming and his pet psychiatrist think?’

‘We didn’t exactly get around to discussing it.’

Merrily shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know, Frannie. I mean, you’ve established that he did have some kind of West fantasy, although how far he took it none of us can say for certain. As you say, if he wanted to put all that behind him, burning would be a quicker and safer option. Sealing the picture, together with the news cuttings, in the case – making it absolutely clear, by the context, what that picture was meant to convey – seems more of a… an affirmation, I suppose.’

She found herself thinking of Gomer who, when Minnie had died, had buried both their watches, with new batteries, in her grave.

‘Go on,’ Bliss said.

‘Like it’s a way of binding them all together. Fred and Rose and Lynsey and Roddy.’

‘Binding together how?’

‘Sealed up together, underground. I don’t know.’

‘You see, he took us back there, leading us to think we were gonna find bodies. And there are no bodies buried there – only this little case, which Gomer found in the end, making Roddy bloody furious. And it was shortly after that that he did a runner.’

‘Perhaps that case was more important to him than bodies.’

‘He took us back to uncover something and then when we got there he changed his mind. What’s that tell us?’

‘Tells us he wasn’t thinking straight, Frannie. Look, I…’ Merrily didn’t see how she could help Bliss any more. From where he was sitting, his future in the police service depended on proving that he’d been right from the beginning about Roddy Lodge. It depended on finding bodies.

Bliss stood up, put on his jacket. ‘Well, thanks, Merrily. You’re a pal.’

‘I haven’t done anything.’ She followed him out into the hall, where the jaded Jesus stood with his lantern.

At the door, Frannie Bliss turned. ‘Fred and Roddy. Two self-employed contractors, who pride themselves on being methodical, efficient in what they do…’ Under the light, with those freckles, he looked like a schoolboy, and schoolboys would do anything. ‘Somewhere, Merrily, there are bodies .’

Merrily shut the front door, went back into the kitchen, reached automatically for another cigarette, then tossed the packet down and went into the scullery office, where the light was flashing on the answering machine. She pressed play .

‘ Oh, Merrily, I’m so sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but could you ring me at home? It’s twenty past five. Thank you .’

Sophie.

She rang back. ‘Something I’ve forgotten, or something I don’t yet know about?’

‘You sound gloomy, Merrily.’

‘Just trying to untangle some things, Soph. Sorry.’

There was a short silence, and then Sophie said, ‘Merrily, I’ve been meaning to ask… Why don’t you and Laurence Robinson come for supper one night?’

‘Oh.’ She knew, of course. Nothing had ever been said, but Sophie had known maybe even before Merrily had known. ‘That’s… very kind of you.’

‘I don’t mean tonight or even this week. But sometime.’

This was Sophie reaffirming that it was OK. She was not a priest – as the Bishop’s secretary, she didn’t need to be – but Sophie lived for the Cathedral, and if you knew it was OK with Sophie there seemed no immediately obvious reason why it shouldn’t be OK in the sight of God.

‘Thank you,’ Merrily said. ‘Was that what you wanted?’

‘Oh no. That would have waited until we met. This is rather more complicated. I understand you’ve been peripherally involved in the police investigation at Underhowle, of which we’ve all been reading.’

‘Who told you about that?’ She’d never thought to inform the Bishop; perhaps she ought to have.

‘You spoke, I think, on the phone to the Reverend Jerome Banks. Who, in turn, spoke to the Bishop. In connection with the late Mr Lodge.’

‘It wasn’t an official approach.’

‘He isn’t complaining , Merrily. According to the Bishop, he seemed not ungrateful for your interest. From what I understand, Mr Lodge dead is considered no less of a problem in the parish than was Mr Lodge alive.’

‘Mr Lodge wasn’t considered a problem alive. Nobody knew about his hobby.’

‘Well, they do now, and it’s put the Reverend Banks into what he perceives as a rather difficult situation. Merrily, we do realize your involvement here had no connection with the Church and that it isn’t your parish, obviously… but the Reverend Banks did have a suggestion to make which the Bishop has asked me to put to you, and that’s what I’m doing.’

There was a movement at the door. Jane stood there, wiggling her fingers in a resigned hello again kind of way. Merrily smiled and did it back.

‘In relation to Mr Lodge,’ Sophie said, ‘I have to ask you… how you would feel about burying him?’

THE SKYLINE HAD broken into a lushness of wooded hills and an elegant tiered town, the River Wye fronting it like a moat. In the late afternoon, a low, unexpected sun was burning across the dual carriageway, gilding the town and its tall steeple.

Moira looked enchanted, Lol thought, as though the pattern had been laid out especially for her, the sun’s last curtain call timed for this moment. She wound down her side window.

‘Has quite a soft air, actually. That would be the sandstone walls, I’d guess.’

Lol’s geriatric Astra rattled down the side of a traffic island and then crossed a long bridge that became more like a causeway, with green parkland beside the river bank on the left, sandstone cliffs hanging over them on the right. There were no suburbs this end; you entered the town almost at its centre, expecting a fortified gateway. Instead, there was a single medieval-style round tower set into the red walls: Victorian Gothic, but it fitted.

Moira nodded approval. ‘Somebody got this place right.’

Lol glanced at her. Often, she talked like she was reacting to a sixth sense she no longer questioned. Moira had something of the threshold about her.

According to Gomer Parry, the way the council had ballsed things up only disabled taxi-drivers could be guaranteed to get parked on the street in Ross. But this was Sunday and Lol found a space close to the top of the hill, before the first shops.

He locked the car. Moira was waiting for him, leaning on a wall, peering down towards the twisting river, pulling a black woollen wrap around her shoulders. It was that time, just before the street lights came on, when the autumn air was thickening and the church, no more than a couple of streets away, seemed less solid than it had from across the river, the steeple a sepia spectre.

‘Where’s he gonnae be, this guy?’

Lol almost said, Where do you want him to be? This woman seemed to persuade things to happen. When he’d rung the village hall at Underhowle to leave a message for Sam Hall, Sam himself had answered the phone as though he’d been waiting around for Lol’s call. Sure, let’s do this right now. But let’s not do it here. Let’s meet in town. Hour and a half, say?