Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

Retribution

WHEN THEY FINALLY made it home, the dawn was bleeding freely over Ledwardine. Less than half an hour after going to her own bed, Jane appeared in Merrily’s bedroom doorway.

It was 6.08 a.m. The sun was well up now. It was already, somehow, humid and airless.

‘Cold,’ Jane said and slipped into bed beside Merrily.

Eventually, Merrily slept for almost an hour, though it felt like four minutes. All the time, the phone was ringing downstairs. Or so it seemed.

At just after seven a.m., she rose quietly. Jane was still sleeping.

Merrily prayed, in a desultory way, had a quick, lukewarm shower. All the stored hot water had fallen on Jane not so very long ago. Jane hadn’t wanted to come out of the shower. Ever.

In towelling robe and slippers, Merrily went down to the kitchen and put the kettle on. The phone was ringing again. She didn’t react to it.

She put out both wet and dry food for Ethel the cat. She made herself some tea. Outside, it was as sunny as it had been yesterday morning and the morning before. This would be the last day of the mini-heatwave, someone had said. More little yellow-green apples had fallen to the ochre lawn.

Merrily felt like the world was in colour and she was in black and white and grey.

She felt like a ghost.

In the scullery/office, she sat down in the usual sunbeam with her tea. The phone was still ringing. There were twenty-five messages on the answering machine, which meant that the tape was full.

Merrily unplugged the phone and forced herself to play every one.

There were calls from papers and radio stations she’d never even heard of.

There was a call from a woman, who even gave her name. Mrs Fry said Merrily was a smug, ambitious little bitch who deserved everything she had coming to her. Merrily didn’t recognize the voice.

There was a call from someone, a man, who just sniggered and hung up. It was a vaguely familiar snigger, quite possibly a church organist who had once exposed himself to her over a tombstone. Stock’s death had been announced too late for most of the papers; the sniggerer, like Mrs Fry, whoever she was, had probably been inspired by something on the radio or breakfast TV. What did it matter now?

A call from Dafydd Sion Lewis, in Pembrokeshire, began without preamble. ‘Mrs Watkins, I consider myself a liberal parent and what my son does in his own time is, for the most part, his own business. However—’

Merrily had already spoken to Dafydd Sion Lewis, awakening him at three-thirty a.m., because she didn’t want the police to call him first.

The only useful message was from DS Andy Mumford at Hereford. ‘Mrs Watkins, thought you’d want to know we found Amy Shelbone wandering near Clehonger, couple of miles from the Barnchurch estate. We’ll be talking to her properly today. And if we could see Jane again, that would be useful. Oh… we still haven’t found the knife, but we’re searching.’

There were several calls she had to make. She plugged in the phone and picked it up.

A man’s voice said, ‘Hello…’

Damn. How could that happen?

‘Is that Merrily Watkins?’

Yes, she said. The word didn’t come out. ‘Yes.’

She decided, at that moment, that whichever paper this was she would answer whatever questions were put to her and she would tell the entire truth. This would save a lot of time and in no way alter the final verdict.

‘This is Simon St John at Knight’s Frome.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, I’m very sorry to bother you so early. I was going to leave a message on your machine, actually. I understand from Lol that you’ve had a stressful night, so you may not want to be involved in this. It’s just that I’ve been talking to the Boswells.’

‘Oh.’

‘And we… decided that something needed to be done.’

‘In relation to?’

‘In relation to a particular area of ground and the building on its perimeter.’

‘Pardon me,’ Merrily said, ‘but weren’t you invited to attend to this particular problem a while ago? Approximately two deaths ago, in fact.’

She waited for him to hang up, the way he’d done with Lol.

‘I can understand your bitterness,’ he said at last.

‘Wouldn’t call it that, exactly. I really admire your ability to tell people with problems exactly where they can shove them. I think it’s an enviable quality in a clergyman.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you do feel inclined to help, we’ll be meeting at the Hop Museum between ten and ten-thirty.’

‘Tonight?’

‘This morning. It has to be done at noon.’

‘What does?

‘Al and I agreed this seems to require a more… customized procedure. There’s a traditional Romany form of exorcism. I believe they have a word or phrase meaning soul-retrieval, but I’m buggered if I can remember it.’

A shadow fell across the desk. She turned in her chair. Eirion stood there. ‘Oh.’ He backed away. ‘I didn’t… sorry.’

She waved to Eirion that it was OK. ‘It’s all a bit of a rush, isn’t it?’ she said to Simon St John.

‘Well, it…’ She picked up either crackle on the line or some agitation. ‘Al’s in a state. A bad way. And I suppose I’m—’

‘What time did you say?’

‘Midday.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it has to be. Al will explain. We were planning to meet as soon after ten as possible.’

‘I don’t know if I can make that.’

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I just… thank you for your—’

And now he did hang up.

Lol grabbed the ringing phone, hoping it was Merrily. He’d given up trying to call her at the vicarage. Last night/this morning, he’d forgotten to ask for her mobile number. He hadn’t been to bed. He was rediscovering, on the far shores of fatigue, a state of heightened consciousness produced by a cocktail of body chemicals that he suspected was only rarely mixed. It happened sometimes after a whole night in the studio. Afterwards, the hangover would be awesome, but right now he was floating on a luminous pool of awareness.

‘Good morning, Laurence,’ Frannie Bliss said briskly. ‘You’re up then. Gorra pen?’

‘Not on me.’

‘Good. Don’t get one.’ There was the unmuffled sound of main-road traffic; Bliss was clearly outside, on a mobile. ‘Some night, then, in the end, eh? Quite a few added complications to this Shelbone business, sounds like. What’s Merrily’s take on it?’

‘Haven’t spoken to her for a few hours.’

‘Never mind, not my case anyway. Let’s leave that alone; time’s short. I got in early this morning, couldn’t sleep – bloody full moon. And I was thinking about what you were saying, about Mrs Stock. So I had another look in Stock’s computer – we brought his computer in; fascinating, all the things a computer’ll tell you about its owner. I got into his Internet files – you click on “history” and the computer very kindly tells yer all the Web sites Stock and his missus have been into the last months or so. Now, what was the general subject that most interested one or the other or both of them over the past few weeks?’

‘Gypsies?’

‘You’re on the ball this morning, son. Aye, there’s about ten files on the general subject of gypsies. Which I already knew about, of course – and no big mystery there because that was Mr Ash’s main interest, too. But I did begin to detect another element coming through. Either Stock or Mrs Stock was going back to the same sites, following up particular angles. Gypsies and Death was a popular one, gypsy death rituals and gypsy ghosts and evil spirits.’

‘The mulo ?’

‘Exactly. The living dead. You wouldn’t want one, would you? The female version might be all right at first, but she’d start to wear yer out after a while. Couldn’t keep up, could you. Go bloody mad.’