Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘I had a call from young Francis,’ Huw said. ‘The detective.’

‘Bliss? You had a call from Bliss ?’

‘Catholic, am I right?’

‘Ten a penny in Liverpool.’

‘And a bit… not exactly unstable . Would “volatile” be a better word?’

‘Let’s say “impetuous”. What’s this about, Huw?’

Lad’s been out and about, asking a lot of questions in certain areas. Bee in his bonnet. Bees buzz.’

‘Certain areas?’

‘Specifically, the West case.’

‘Why would he phone you about that?’ She was cautious now.

‘I, er… I were a consultant on that inquiry.’

‘You never mentioned that before.’

‘Couple of us were brought in after talk of the Wests being involved with a satanic cult.’

‘I wasn’t aware of that.’

‘Talk by West himself, mostly. Some of it was allegedly said in discussions he had with his prison carer, while he was on remand. Could’ve been bullshit. Anyroad, during the police investigation, a number of us were asked if we knew of anything, any groups operating around Gloucester or the Forest of Dean. Satanist, sadist, anything deviant. One suggestion was that Fred West were supplying this group with virgins. Abducting women, taking them to some farm for ritual abuse, subsequent murder. Course, he lied a lot. Probably just a latent attempt to shift some blame was how the coppers saw it, but they didn’t want to take any chances.’

‘And were you able to help?’

‘Well, we couldn’t supply a string of addresses of satanic temples, if that’s what they expecting. But there was evidence of hard magic in 25 Cromwell Street itself. One of the victims – young lass of seventeen – was into occultism and blood-ritual, linked to bondage, S-and-M. Whether they believed in it or not, the Wests were only too happy to join in. Lass ended up tied by her ankles to a beam in the cellar, hanging upside down like a side of meat.’

Huw’s tone of voice had altered, gone flat. The level of emotion in his voice was often an inverse reflection of his actual commitment. Merrily recalled one of her fellow students on the Deliverance course saying, Funny chap, old Huw. Been through the mill. Wears his scar tissue like a badge . This had been unfair.

He didn’t. He might slope around in baggy jeans and trainers with holes in them, looking ravaged – but only ravaged like the lead guitarist of some old blues band you vaguely remembered from your childhood. And he rarely talked about the mills he’d been through, dark or satanic.

‘Anyroad, Bliss reckons there’s a link between Lodge and West that his esteemed colleagues are not taking seriously enough.’

‘He told you about the attaché case and the pictures?’

‘Asked me if I could see any ritual angle.’

‘Asked me, too. Could you?’

‘Told him I couldn’t see either of them buggers being bright enough for that kind of stuff. However, we can’t rule out a link, can we? West got around the Forest of Dean a lot. Him and Lodge were both two-bit contractors.’

‘Hold on…’ Merrily’s hand tightened round the phone. ‘I don’t think even Frannie Bliss is going that far. He told me about a man from South Wales who had a sick fascination with the Wests and killed a girl on the edge of the Forest in 1996. Bliss was thinking along those lines – West as role model. He didn’t see a personal connection, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Merrily, what I’m saying is this: you’ve got one woman dead, and the coppers are looking at the possibility that Lodge killed her either because she wouldn’t go along with his horrific West fantasies or she found out what he’d done to the others. What he’d done to the others . See? What did he do to the others?’

‘Nobody yet knows whether there are others.’

‘Aye. And happen that’s why the police aren’t publicizing it about those pictures and the cuttings. Because once you throw down the name West , it’s no longer an ordinary murder investigation. No longer, God forbid, even an ordinary sex -murder inquiry. It’s kidnap… torture… mutilation. It’s the unspeakable. It’s saying to the parents of every missing girl within a fifty-mile radius or more: you’ve read about West and what he did. Well, we’re not trying to worry you or anything but…’

‘Huw,’ she said, ‘he’s dead. Lodge is dead and West is dead.’ Merrily, West told this woman in Winson Green that he’d done another twenty. He also said there were other people involved. Now, there must be a lot of folk with missing relatives who can’t help wondering, whenever they wake up in the night. And in that area of West Gloucestershire and the Herefordshire border and the Forest, it’s all a bit close. Still raw. If any link with West came out, then you really would have a problem with that funeral.’

‘Yeah.’ She sagged a little in her chair. ‘I hadn’t really thought about that.’

‘Keep it to yourself,’ Huw said, ‘and pray that Francis does the same.’ He paused. ‘“The lamp of the wicked shall be put out”.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Book of Proverbs.’

‘I know. What’s the relevance?’

‘I don’t know if Lodge had any connection, real or imagined, with West,’ Huw said. ‘All I know is that nowt reignites faster than the lamp of the wicked.’

Jane let herself in and put on the hall light, which lit up The Light of the World . She stared into His lined face: so benign, so sad and world-weary, so…

… So holier than thou.

She experienced this shockingly powerful urge to pull down the picture and smash it to pieces on the flagstones. This was how the Church had been keeping bums on pews for two mil- lennia. He died for you. You owe Him .

Guilt. Original guilt.

They gave you pictures like this to underline it: you owe Christ, you owe Uncle Ted, you owe the parish and the smug bloody Church that pays you peanuts. Bastards!

Jane’s face was stiff with drying tears. The kitchen door was open, the light was on, and from the other side of the room she could hear Mum on the phone in the scullery, living the lie. She closed the kitchen door quietly, and went upstairs to her apartment in the attic, where she and Eirion had first… had sex. She

‘dropped her bag on the floor and threw herself on the bed under the Mondrian walls, and sobbed in rage and incomprehension. It used to be so wonderful up here, so exclusive. It had never felt so lonely, so empty.

What’s happening to you? Are you like some kind of freak that you can’t just talk about blokes and bands and DVDs, like your mindless little friends at school?

Not that she actually had any friends. Not really. She got on with everybody OK, on a superficial level, but there was nobody to really talk to, no real-life friends. The one who might have been, Layla Riddock, was gone. Leaving only Eirion, who was intelligent and thoughtful and only a little overweight, and who she’d just…

… Just abused. For no real reason… other than that he probably did understand. And of course she’d known that he didn’t just want sex, he wanted love, which she couldn’t give him.

And now it’s over. You just ended it, like on a whim because… maybe because he was getting too close; he was blocking your horizon… the horizon beyond which is nothing. Nothing at all .

No heaven; you could only make a temporary heaven, out of money or sex or drugs. She’d never done drugs. Had opportunities, inevitably – Es, whizz, spliff, all that – but she’d resisted it. Felt slightly contemptuous of kids who spent all their spare cash on chemicals, because there were other ways to get there, weren’t there? Meditation, ritual dance, spiritual exercises. Other ways of actually being there .