Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘The thought of Fred and Rose and what they’d done to the others. The images of his hands on Donna. Julia was an artist. She couldn’t live with the images.’

‘I’m so sorry, Huw.’

‘Been dreaming about her again, Merrily. Julia and her white portraits of Donna. Keep seeing the white portraits. I’ve got one at home. I don’t think she’s at peace. I don’t think either of them are at peace.’

‘No.’

‘And West’s still killing,’ Huw said. ‘He always has been. You read about his grown-up children attempting suicide. And a man called Terry Crick: in January 1996, he attached a hose to his car exhaust and killed himself with carbon monoxide… couldn’t live with the thought that he might’ve stopped it. They were mates, you see, back in the late sixties – young Terry, bit of a hippy then, and genial young Fred. Do anything for you, Fred. Showed Terry his abortion tools once. Very proud of his abortion tools, was Fred. Loved to tell women that if they ever needed help that way, he was their man. Terry thought it were a joke.’

‘Huw—’

‘Until, years later, when he read about the case and remembered staying with the Wests when they were in a caravan near Cheltenham, hearing Fred and Rose giggling in bed… became convinced he must’ve heard future murders being conceived. Didn’t go to the police until it were too late. Couldn’t go on living with the thought that he might’ve prevented something. People have been dying of guilt, Merrily. I doubt it’d’ve made any difference at all if Terry Crick had told the cops about Fred West waving his abortion tools around. Just having a laugh, Fred would’ve said. Mucky owd tools like that, who’d believe it…? Why’ve you stopped?’

Merrily wrenched up the handbrake and switched off the engine. ‘I was trying to tell you – Banks’s rectory is up that lane on the left, I think. You still want to go?’

‘Of course I still want to go. Be some guilt there, I reckon, don’t you? Let’s go and help Mr Banks get it off his chest.’

They were parked with two wheels on the verge, at the side of the A49, the old Volvo shaded by high bushes still heavy with sodden leaves. Merrily said quietly, ‘One more time – what are you doing here, Huw?’

Never before, in all the hours she’d spent with him, had she felt the quiver of instability that was now so real it was almost shaking the car.

‘Covering me back,’ he said. ‘Put it like that if you want. Call it selfishness. Call it me not wanting to take any guilt to my grave if more lives get lost.’

‘Why should more get lost?’

Huw leaned back against the passenger door. ‘If there’s a group of people out there still , and they’re taking lives or harming folk in any way, it’s a police matter. If there’s a spiritual evil, it’s ours. Accepted?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I don’t know anything about Lodge – yet. But I know a lot about West. A man driven by lust. An uneducated man who arranged his life around the constant need for sexual pleasure. No moral values, no sense of remorse. Not a hint of basic decency. A man who watched through holes in doors, who had sex with his own kids because they were there . In his house. His house. The house he’d converted with his own tools. A man who loved nobody, yet loved things . Tools, gadgets. A man who possessed .’

‘Huw—’ Merrily wound down the window. She wanted both fresh air and a cigarette.

‘And what’s changed, Merrily? He might’ve gone, physically, but how many people have died since ?’

‘Because the lamp of the wicked must be put out.’ Cold air on her face. ‘That’s why you’re here. You’ve come with a view to snuffing out his lamp, haven’t you?’

‘Start the car,’ Huw said roughly. ‘Let’s go and see this bugger Banks.’

Dressed for dinner, in a dark wool jacket over a white blouse, her features sharp with suspicion, Mrs Pawson was scanning the reception area at the Royal Hotel for whoever had put out the call.

Lol stood up and walked over to her. He didn’t have the smallest idea how he was going to handle this but, on the night before his first gig in nearly two decades, fear was relative.

‘What do you want?’ Mrs Pawson’s voice was hard and brittle as dried nail varnish. She was flicking glances to either side of him, probably to see if there was anyone around she could call on if he attacked her.

‘Have you…?’ Lol looked around too, saw two elderly women, nobody else. ‘Could you spare a few minutes?’

Mrs Pawson didn’t move. ‘What’s this about?’

‘It’s about Lodge,’ Lol admitted. ‘I’ve not been able to stop thinking about what you said this morning, and I’m sorry, but I think there was more you weren’t saying.’

‘And are you, in fact, something to do with the police?’

Though aware that Mrs Pawson’s general experience of the drainage trade would not predispose her to be generous or open, he still shook his head.

‘In that case,’ she said, ‘I do not want to speak to you. That man caused enough damage. I don’t want to discuss him. You’d better go.’

Lol nodded and had half turned away, to leave, when he suddenly turned back. He’d thought about this a lot after returning to the studio, rehearsing a couple of songs in a desultory kind of way, finding that even at the eleventh hour his heart wasn’t in it. Mrs Pawson had been perhaps the last person to have any business dealings with Lodge, and she was a woman on her own and something was not right .

‘You mentioned another woman,’ he said. ‘When you said Roddy Lodge was a nightmare person, I didn’t think you were talking about getting conned over a septic tank. And then you mentioned a woman.’

And then he told her that he’d been there when Lodge had died, standing underneath that pylon. And that something like this didn’t just go away. He told her he didn’t normally work with Gomer Parry and was just helping out because Gomer had had a lot of trouble that he didn’t imagine Mrs Pawson even knew about as it hadn’t exactly been national news. And then he told her he and Gomer were both friends of the church minister who’d landed the job of burying Lodge.

He shook his shoulders helplessly and told her what a small county it was. He apologized to her again.

Mrs Pawson looked him in the eyes. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

‘Usually, yes,’ he said, ‘to be honest.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Robinson. Laurence Robinson. If you don’t want to talk to me, what about Merrily Watkins?’

‘The priest?’

‘I could probably arrange that. Maybe I could bring her here.’

She stared at him. ‘Why do you think I’d want to talk to a priest?’

‘I was thinking maybe a woman. The woman who found the body in the shovel of Lodge’s digger after he…’

It was this that seemed to do it.

Jerome Banks’s study had Ordnance Survey maps on the walls, with coloured drawing pins marking his churches. It was next to the living room and you could hear the sound of the TV through the wall. His wife was sitting in there. He’d told her not to bother with refreshment; this wouldn’t take long.

Jerome was irritated by their visit and was making no effort to conceal it.

‘My day off,’ he said. ‘Always take every second Tuesday off, everyone knows that.’

The wrong attitude to take with Huw, tonight.

‘Creature of habit, eh?’

‘Something wrong with that? I’ve always found people like to know where they are with their clergy.’

‘No mysteries,’ Huw said.

None here, Merrily thought. The rectory was a modern house on the edge of a small estate of neo-Georgian detached homes west of Ross. There was a cold street lamp outside the study window. Only one hardwood chair in front of the desk, and he’d made Merrily sit in it, and she felt very small but aware that this probably wasn’t going to be her showdown.