Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

Sophie lifted an eyebrow. ‘He brought Marilyn and the others with him?’

When Tony and I were married we lived in a bungalow in the village so that he could carry on running the farm with Geoff. Roddy was about fifteen then and I never saw that much of him. He didn’t want anything to do with the farm except driving the tractor, so he had a few other jobs including training as a mechanic at a garage in Ross but he didn’t stick that of course, he never stuck at anything for long. The old man said he was sure Roddy was going to make something of himself one day although none of us could see it. Then Geoff went to Australia with his family and the old man died soon after. Tony got the farm and there was money for Geoff and Roddy with the proviso he spent it on setting himself up in a decent business which Tony was to approve and oversee in the early stages. Quite a few local farms etc said they would offer him work if he got himself a digger and a bulldozer and the parish council said he could dig graves, so that was how it started, although we never imagined it was going to take off like it did. I think that was because of getting into septic tanks. He never looked back, especially after he got that contract as representative for Efflapure. How he managed that we’ll never know.

I think Tony was also relieved when he started going out with girls. Or rather Melanie Pullman who was his first real girlfriend, they were going out together for quite some time, over a year, but then they broke up and then she disappeared and he started going out with that Lynsey.

‘Now that’s interesting, don’t you think, Sophie?’

‘The fact that both he and the Pullman girl were having odd experiences?’

‘I wonder why they split up.’

‘People do, Merrily – especially a first relationship. Men have one sexual liaison, and it gives them confidence to go out looking for something new.’

Merrily recalled Sam Hall in the community centre. Boy seems to have gone through what you might call a delayed adolescence – as if he’d discovered sex for the first time in his thirties. No woman was safe.

‘So, how do we follow him into the next stage? Which is killing living women.’

‘I’m not sure that’s somewhere I want to follow him,’ Sophie said. ‘And I’m not sure you need to either. I’ll just make the tea.’

Merrily marked one more paragraph.

I should also say it came as no surprise to either of us, the way he died. He was always one for the pylons, according to Tony. He had long legs and was always good at climbing. When he was about ten he had a good hiding off his father for going up the one in the field behind the farm, almost right to the top. He wasn’t afraid. He never seemed to be afraid of anything, Tony said, so it came as no surprise at all how he went.

Was that part of his world of the dead? Climbing to another level of – what? But that whole area was an electric valley. Always part of his world. Who knew what connections he might have made?

Merrily read the last sheet again.

I have never had any kind of experience in this house so I must assume that when Roddy went from here it all stopped. Well, it stopped here anyway, and that was all that mattered to Tony, I am afraid to say. Head in the sand until it’s too late! Isn’t it always the case? I’m telling you all this, Mrs Watkins, and I haven’t told anybody else and I hope that as a Church minister you will respect this. None of us could possibly have known, could we, what was going on inside him. We couldn’t. Tony says that if we could just get him buried and do our duty by his father then we can try and settle down but I don’t know. I think Tony is getting very depressed about it and I think sometimes that it would be the best thing for everyone if we were to sell up and move from here. But we can’t do that yet because who would want to buy a farm where a mass murderer was raised?

Sophie came back with the teapot and went to the window. ‘Fog’s clearing.’

‘Glad you think so,’ Merrily said.

BEFORE JANE WAS even across the square, she knew precisely how she was going to play it: deceit against deceit. Lies, illusion… front .

Despite the fog, the square was collecting its nightly quota of upmarket 4X4s: well-off couples coming in to dine – on a Monday night, for heaven’s sake – at the Black Swan and the restaurant that used to be Cassidy’s Country Kitchen. The Monday diners were mostly the youthfully retired with up to half a century to kill before death. The Swan, mistily lit up, had become more like a bistro than a village pub and pretty soon Ledwardine would be more like a theme park than a village, with its shops full of repro, its resident celebs – and, of course, its state-of-the-art, postmodern, designer vicar with the sexy sideline in soul-retrieval. Poor as a church mouse, but you wouldn’t kick her out of your vestry, haw, haw .

Unfair. Bitch . Jane straightened her back and siphoned in a slow breath. You had to channel your anger or it would all come back at you; she’d learned that much, at least, from her New Age years.

The lights of the Swan dimmed behind her in what remained of the fog, as the pub’s façade sobered up into a couple of timber-framed terraced houses. Then there was an alleyway with a wrought-iron lantern over it, which looked pretty old but probably wasn’t. It was unlit. On the other side of it – narrow and bent, with one gable leaning outwards like a man in a pointed hat inspecting his shoes – was Chapel House.

The house was the real thing. As for its owner… Hello, I’m Jenny Driscoll and this afternoon I’ll be looking at ways you can turn your living room into a true sanctuary… a place where you can really be yourself… and yet also be taken out of yourself. What do I mean? Let’s go inside and find out…

Yeah, right, let’s do that.

Three steps led from the pavement up to the front door. Jane stood at the bottom, clutching the cold handrail. It was quite dark here, away from the fake gaslamps on the square. There was a glow in one of the downstairs windows but the bottom of the window was too far above the road for her to tell where the light was coming from or if there was anyone in that room.

Cold feet, now, of course. Something like this was always ‘the obvious thing to do’ until it actually came to it. Like, would she even be here if Eirion had left his phone switched on, if he’d answered it? If it hadn’t been over .

Well, probably not. But that was not what had happened and this, in the event, was where the obvious path had led. Probably, it was meant. A confrontation waiting to happen.

Jane paused, with a hand on the knocker. All right. Stop. Consider. This was her last chance to backtrack home and think this through properly, for it might not, in fact, be such a good idea. And if it failed, and the Driscoll woman hung the whole thing on Mum, it could get seriously dicey – believe it.

Clear footsteps behind the door, then. Oh God, she’d been seen from inside. So much for the element of surprise. Jane swallowed fog, coughed. Mrs Box, look, I hope you don’t mind me just arriving like this, but I’d really like to talk to you about angels. We might be able to help each other .

Aw, she could wing this. As it were. She unzipped her fleece halfway, thinking of Jenny Driscoll at seventeen: Terrible clothes, terrible music. And this element of sadomasochism . Thank you, Irene. Goodnight.

Oh, shit, run!

Too late. None of the tugging and creaking you got at home; the door opened like it was greased. But not to reveal Jenny Box. A man stood there.