Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘That was him? With the—’

‘The young squire… the wanker… wants it all back… roots, birthright – the whole, sprawling Lake estate.’

‘Right,’ said Lol. Some of this he’d already had, if less colourfully, from Sally Boswell.

‘Field by field, barn by barn. He’s approaching the buggers who bought land off his old man, one by one, making ’em offers only a complete idiot would refuse. His heritage, geddit? Buying back his heritage. The young Emperor of Frome.’

‘He can afford?’

‘Oh, yeah. Big irony is the liddle shit can well afford. He’s a dot… com… fucking… millionaire.’ Stock spat out the words like cherry stones. ‘Or whatever else they called them ’fore someone coined the term. Adam, we’ve since learned, invested some of his ma’s money, few years ago, in what might’ve appeared at the time to be an off-the-wall software concept proposed by an old university friend… which in fact created the world’s fastest search-engine… at the time. Probably be like a bloody steamroller these days. Sold it off for some obscene sum, and then… Oh, this is boring, it’s not bloody important how the cunt got his millions.’

Lol sipped at his shandy, which was warm. ‘I’m sorry about your wife’s uncle.’

‘Poor old bugger,’ Stock said viciously. ‘Wonder how well he knew the fucking vicar.’

‘That’s it,’ said Derek softly, coming out of the shadows, a bald, middle-aged man with serviceable fists. ‘Out you go, Mr Stock.’

‘Shimon shirtlifter,’ Stock said and giggled into his glass.

Lol couldn’t avoid walking back with him, and for most of the way Stock was talking about his career as a publicist, at TMM and other recording and management companies, and then working solo for book publishers and film and TV companies: outfits that hadn’t known how badly they needed him until they had him on board.

‘ And I could do it for Levin, too, man. Doesn’t see it yet, but he will. Poor old guy thinks he’s being cool and enigmatic getting out of London, downsizing, all that shite. Doesn’t realize how soon he’ll be forgotten.’

‘Actually, I think he wants to be—’

‘I could make that hovel of a studio world-famous in six months. A hint here, a line there. I could get Levin on The South Bank Show . Got a good friend at LWT.’

‘Maybe, you—’ Lol gave up. Stock wasn’t the kind of bloke to whom you said: You don’t really know Prof very well, do you?

They left the lane and walked down the track, past Prof’s stables towards the concealed river, under a sky like beaten copper. Gerard Stock raised his face to the sun and it reddened his beard. He looked wide and powerful and ruthless – and yet somehow, Lol thought, unsure of himself, like a Viking on a strange shore.

‘And you, Lol Robinson. Shy boy with the liddle glasses. Very cute, to a certain kind of woman. You were marketable, man. Once.’

Lol said nothing. Stock was talking, the way he had earlier, as if it was all too late for a career which Prof seemed to see as still salvageable. Maybe this was deliberate, to sound him out – or put Prof down.

‘And let us not forget’ – Stock grinned slyly – ‘all those years in and out of the loony bin. Marketable, plus .’ Lol shot him a sidelong glance. ‘Oh, yeah, I know your history. Checked you out soon’s I got home. My business is to know everything about everybody. I am The Man.’

Stock kicked a stone down the track, and then he looked directly into the sinking sun and his voice suddenly sagged.

‘And now – all right – I’m broke. Only cash flow, of course, as we say.’

‘You’ve got the house – the kiln.’

‘Yeah, stroke of luck, there, ’cause we’d been reduced to living in a bloody trailer at the time. Poor old Stewart. Perhaps he should’ve taken the wanker’s offer when he had the chance. You see, buying the kiln back – very, very important to Adam, because that was the site of the original ancestral home.’

‘Conrad Lake’s mansion?’

‘Lord, no, that came later. But this was the original family farm. Twice the size it is now – but not big enough for Conrad, once he was on the up. Built the new place for the new wife, ’bout a mile over the hill there – where Adam lives. All there was left to bequeath to the boy. The old man’d already knocked down half the farmhouse – this is late sixties, when you could still get away with flattening history – just kept the kiln. When he died and the bank or whoever flogged it off, Stewart picks it up for a song.’

They crossed the river bridge, passed between the poplars. And then suddenly the kiln was in view, halfway up a hill – or, rather, part of a conical tower was visible, the tip of its cowl pointing at an angle.

Lol stopped, shocked.

A wall of bright blue corrugated metal concealed the rest of it – the side of some huge industrial building, rising almost as high as the kiln itself. It hadn’t been apparent the other night, except as a patch of shadow that might have been trees or part of the hill. Now, in an area where most of the farms and cottages looked almost organic, its brashness was savage.

Stock watched Lol’s reaction, half-smiling. ‘You like Adam Lake’s barn? There’s another one the other side, even higher. About ten yards away. Man, we’re living in a barn sandwich.’

‘ He did that?’

‘Wanker’s land surrounds us. Had the first one put in place after Stewart refused to sell him the kiln.’

‘Can he do that?’ Stock’s fury made sudden sense.

‘Done it, hasn’t he? Yeah, sure he can. Country landowners can throw up whatever kind of monstrosity they want, long as it’s an agricultural building and they can show a need for it. Need . Jesus. You know what those barns are used for? Nothing. They’re empty – great, echoing, empty shells.’

‘He did it just to—’

‘Steal the light.’ Stock was sweating, but he seemed sober now. ‘It’s about stealing the light. You see, this was particularly cruel – though whether Lake was subtle enough to realize that is anybody’s guess – because the old boy was a photographer.’

‘Light being his medium.’

‘Yeah.’ Stock took out his tin to roll a smoke. ‘He loved light. Course, Lake wasn’t trying to force him to sell. He just needed some extra storage facilities for hay and sundry fodder at the extremity of his estate. That’s what he tells you. The cunt.’

‘Didn’t… Stewart make any kind of protest?’

‘Didn’t live long enough, thanks to his good friends, the gypos – those lithe and slippery gypo boys, dear, oh dear. But, yeah, he did make a last, meaningful gesture.’

The path forked – Lol thought this was probably the point at which he’d lost his way the other night – and Stock went to the left and climbed over a stile.

The kiln house was in front of them now. It was built of red brick and was smaller than it had looked by night, and now the full horror of the barn sandwich became apparent. The actual kiln tower, with just one window, was at the front, but most of the other windows seemed to be on the sides, permanently shadowed by industrial metal.

Lol climbed over the stile and found Stock standing on the edge of the field, lighting his roll-up.

‘If you hadn’t guessed, Uncle Stewart’s final gesture was Gerard Stock. Stephie was Stewart’s’ –he coughed out smoke, – ‘favourite niece. Always close to her after her parents split. How’s she repay him? Marries Gerard Stock. Steph’s sweet eighteen, this guy’s twenny years older, smokes a lot of dope, gets both of them busted one time, dear oh dear. And, oh yeah, the clincher: one night Stephie falls downstairs and loses her baby and there’s some internal messiness so there aren’t gonna be any more babies. And this is all Gerard Stock’s fault, naturally. And Stephie, once beloved, gets sliced out of Stewart’s will. We thought.’