Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

Jerome Banks surveyed Huw, both of them standing up. They were about the same height, but Banks held himself straighter. Military backbone. His checked shirt was crisply ironed, and you could have sliced bread with the creases of his trousers. ‘We met before?’ He had stiff, sandy hair and a nose with a small red bump on the tip, like a bell push.

‘Can’t see it, somehow,’ Huw said.

‘No. If you’re who I think you are, I agree it’s unlikely. And if you’ve come about what I think you’ve come about, I doubt there’s much I can say to assist you.’

‘What would that be?’

‘You tell me, Mr Owen.’

‘Well, like a lot of people, including the police, I’m becoming a little concerned about events in and around the village of Underhowle. And in my experience it’s always best to have a chat with the lad on the ground. We don’t stick our noses in much these days, the clergy, but there’s not much we don’t at least hear about.’

‘Some of us stick our noses in further than others,’ Banks said.

‘Agreed. How long have you got before retirement, Jerome?’

Banks coloured. ‘Obviously, Owen, I’ve heard about you and your little Deliverance empire. Your incantations and your Thermos flasks of holy water, your new medievalism. And, yes, you’re quite right. I don’t have long before retirement – eighteen months at the most – and I don’t intend to spend any of that time kow-towing to the charismatics and the damn happy-clappies !’

Merrily smiled.

Huw scowled. ‘I don’t clap much, pal. And I’m not happy.’

‘What do you want ?’

‘I want to know about a few of the incidents that’ve been brought to your notice but which you haven’t felt inclined to do owt about, being as how you’re not into new medievalism .’

Merrily sat still and said nothing. She just wouldn’t have dared…

‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about,’ Banks said, but he’d left too long a pause. ‘If you think I’ve been “got at” over the Lodge funeral, I can show you two dozen letters and a small petition, all of them urging me not to bury Lodge at Underhowle, and no letters at all in support.’

‘Urging?’ Merrily said. ‘No threats, then? I’ve had a threat.’ Huw looked at her. ‘Had an anonymous phone call warning me to stay at home on Friday.’

‘You never said owt about that,’ Huw said. ‘You told the police?’

‘As the funeral’s now tomorrow, I didn’t think it really applied.’

‘If anyone had threatened me ,’ Banks said, ‘I should have made a point of personally digging the grave.’

‘Why did you suggest Merrily for the job?’

Banks waited a couple of seconds. ‘ Did I suggest her?’

‘Somebody did.’

‘Perhaps because her name had already been mentioned in connection with Lodge?’

Huw nodded, letting the silence hang until Merrily began to feel uncomfortable.

‘Look,’ Banks said, ‘I’m aware that there’s a particular local activist in the Underhowle area with a chip on his shoulder about high-voltage power lines and pylons being detrimental to health and possibly causing some people to have… odd experiences. I don’t necessarily subscribe to any of that and if I did, I should be obliged to conclude that it wasn’t a matter at all for the Church – not even your particular outpost.’

‘Aha,’ Huw said.

‘You’ve had reports of odd experiences?’ Merrily said.

‘As you know, people often say things they have difficulty justifying.’ Banks was gazing over Merrily’s head at his own and Huw’s reflections in the window. ‘Often because they want rehousing. A better house. Think we’re all idiots.’

‘This is hauntings?’ Huw asked.

‘As there are usually also physical symptoms, I’ve tended to refer people to the doctor.’

‘He cure them?’

‘I’ve no idea. I have heard of some people going to so-called alternative practitioners in Ross and Hereford. The very people to deal with their alternative problems. It’s nothing to do with religion.’

‘And that’s what you said to Lodge, eh?’

The tip of Banks’s nose went white. ‘How bloody dare you—’

‘Look!’ Merrily stood up. She was getting tired of breaking up Huw’s fights. ‘Mr Banks, you might not think much of what we do – or try to do – but if there’s a remote possibility that it helps people to cope, we’ll just… we’ll muddle on, if you don’t mind. If I told you what this was really about, you probably wouldn’t thank me. And call me overzealous, but I kind of like to know exactly who I’m burying. Isn’t that the most important thing we ever do for someone?’

‘Are you trying to tell me my job?’

‘Not your job any more,’ Huw said. ‘You unloaded it. Be interesting to know why.’

‘You know why – matter of local politics.’

‘So you ignored all the other complaints of psychic intrusion for purely political reasons, and not wanting to encourage happy-clappy hysteria.’

‘You bastard.’

Huw beamed. ‘That’s the first perceptive deduction you’ve made all night, pal.’

‘Look,’ Merrily said, ‘we all appreciate that we – the clergy – come from different directions… which is healthy. And we’re not trying to cause trouble, Mr Banks. We’d just like to be able to work out what we’re dealing with. A bit of background – in confidence – would help.’

She watched Banks contemplating this, working out where he stood.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘And this is political. One complaint concerned the old Baptist chapel.’

‘The one more or less adjacent to Lodge’s garage.’

‘Disused. Previously used as a bottling plant for spring water, which failed. Now being converted into a museum, or some sort of visitor centre. But still a Baptist chapel in my eyes, and I don’t intrude on other denominations.’

‘You were told the place was haunted?’

‘I was told of disturbances, but some looked to me to be of distinctly human origin. For instance, the firm working on the conversion had complained of equipment going missing. Nothing supernatural there . Probably find the items in various garages in Goodrich Close.’

‘And that was it?’

‘Oh, the usual: noises, smells. I suggested they had the drains examined for blockages. Suggested they…’ Banks smirked ‘… hired Lodge to look into it. In fact, I believe he owned the chapel at one time. Came with the garage. All part of the bottling enterprise, which I gather failed because of impurities in the spring water.’

‘And did they hire him?’ Merrily asked.

‘I don’t know. The Development Committee had obtained some sort of grant to buy the property from Lodge. I… don’t really know. I do know that one building firm apparently refused to work there after a while. You’d have to ask Mrs Sollars about that; she’s supposed to be in charge there.’

‘Erm… When we spoke on the phone a few nights ago, you said Roddy Lodge came to you with a problem, the details of which you seemed to have difficulty remembering.’

‘He was—’

‘Barking, you said. Lodge told you he was seeing images of women in his new bungalow. Which I understand from relatives was nothing very new for him. When he was a child, he seems to have created projections of his dead mother – or mother-substitutes. Comfort projections. Maybe you or I wouldn’t have been able to see them, but it was all very real to him. And when he moved into the bungalow, the images – hallucinations, whatever – obviously intensified, whether through environmental effects, or… Anyway, they seem to have acquired a different… status. And this was what he told you about, wasn’t it?’