Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘Put it this way…’ There was a faint smile on his face, but she could tell he was annoyed by her attitude. ‘I’d rate it considerably lower down the scale of antisocial behaviour than marketing drugs in the cloakrooms.’

Morrell was going on holiday with his family tomorrow, which was why the meeting had been arranged for this afternoon, before Merrily would’ve had a chance to talk to Jane. It was clear he would also rather have put it off – probably until next term, when it all might have blown over – but Sophie had enviable ways of dealing with authority figures.

‘However,’ he said, ‘to forestall any accusations of being anti-Christian, I took the liberty of inviting our chairman of governors to sit in. A regular churchgoer, Mrs Watkins.’ He inclined his head to her, patronizing bastard. ‘And, as it happens, a golfing companion of your Bishop’s.’

‘Listen.’ She must have looked pained; like everybody else, he was covering his back. ‘I’m not here to make a big deal out of it, Mr Morrell, I’m just trying to find out what’s happening, who’s involved and if any other kids have been damaged by it.’

‘Damaged?’ A corner of his mouth twisted up; not quite a sneer. ‘Damaged how ? Physically? Emotionally? Psychologically?’

She shrugged, reluctant to use a word he would sneer at. Jane despised him for teaching maths, playing electronic Krautrock in his car and joining the older boys for rugby training – his way, the kid reckoned, of getting around the ban on corporal punishment.

Thoughts of Jane made Merrily tense. Maybe she’d still been high from the time-lapse experience, or lack of sleep, but so far she’d managed not to think too hard about the kid’s possible involvement. Now, in this deserted school, with its hostile head teacher, she felt insecure and it seemed altogether less unlikely that Jane had been into some psychic scam.

‘And do you accept the idea of communication with the dead?’ Morrell asked, as heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, like the dead themselves walking in, on cue. Merrily jumped, but Morrell looked relieved. ‘We’re in here, Charlie!’

‘Rob, so sorry I’m—’ The chairman of governors came into the room like someone used to having people wait for him. ‘Oh.’ A leathery face registered unexpected pleasure. ‘I was expecting old Dennis – whatshisname?’

‘This is Mrs Watkins, Charlie. She’s—’

‘I know who she is. She’s the reason Bernie Dunmore spends so much time in Hereford these days instead of walking off some of that weight on the golf course.’ His right hand flashed. ‘Charlie Howe.’

‘Hullo.’ Merrily was letting him squeeze her fingers when she suddenly realized who he was. ‘I think I… may have encountered your daughter.’

‘Yes indeed!’ He beamed. ‘We’re all very proud of Anne.’ His local accent was as mellow as old cider. He wore a light suit and a broad, loose tie. He was in his sixties, had wide shoulders and strong, stiff, white hair in what, in his young days, would have been called a crew-cut.

Charlie Howe: one-time head of Hereford CID, father of its current chief, DCI Annie Howe, the steel angel. Icy blonde with a serious humour deficiency. Merrily searched for family resemblance, could find none at all.

‘She’s done well, Mr Howe.’

‘Youngest head of CID we’ve ever had. She’ll have outranked her old man before she’s finished. Can’t hold you girls down, these days.’ Charlie Howe took a step back to have a proper look at Merrily. ‘My Lord, when I think of your predecessor, old Tommy Dobbs, what a—well, God rest his poor old soul, but what a bloody improvement! ’

And she had to smile, not least because this was the kind of sexist remark guaranteed to turn Annie Howe white.

Morrell said, ‘Mrs Watkins believes there’s reason to suspect the school’s become infested with the Powers of Darkness, Charlie.’

Merrily sighed.

They sat at a circular table from which Morrell had discreetly removed a pack of playing cards. ‘You must know,’ he said, ‘that even as the chief executive of this establishment, there isn’t much I can do without knowing the name of either the victim or the instigator.’

Merrily hadn’t felt empowered to name Amy, had revealed only that it involved a girl with a dead mother. She didn’t think Morrell would be able to narrow it down, especially with no staff to consult.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘You asked how the child had been damaged. What you had here was a well-behaved, considerate, hardworking, honest and possibly slightly dull kid who’s turned into someone who is secretive, remote, resentful… and seems to have rejected God while embracing what some people like to call the spirit world. In effect, it seems the dead mother’s become her private support mechanism, to the exclusion of… anyone else.’

‘The way children sometimes find an imaginary friend,’ Morrell said smoothly. ‘To fill a gap in their lonely lives.’

Merrily shook her head. ‘Not really.’

Charlie Howe leaned back on an elbow. ‘Can you believe this young girl might actually be in contact with her mother, Merrily?’

‘I could believe it. But I think it’s more likely to be a contact with… something else.’

‘Like what ?’ Morrell’s chair jerked back with a squeak that amplified his outrage.

‘Poor Rob,’ said Charlie Howe, ‘this en’t your world at all, is it?’

Merrily said, ‘When a group of people get together, in a circle – like we are now – with a particular objective in mind, then perhaps that focus of group consciousness could result in – well, it could be like a radio picking up signals. Or maybe like a computer network, and one of the group goes home with a virus attached.’

‘That’s based on science, is it?’ said Robert Morrell.

Merrily shrugged. ‘I’m just telling you it can have harmful effects.’

‘You’re talking about possession?’ said Charlie Howe.

Merrily wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s not my favourite word.’

Morrell said, ‘Mrs Watkins… when I was teaching in Bristol, I used to pass, every day, on my way to work, a former warehouse that sported a large sign proclaiming it to be a Spiritualist Church. A church. Like your own, but less grand. And presumably some of the members of this church had children or grandchildren attending local schools, where the teaching staff were obliged to respect all the various forms of religion, whether Islam or Sikhism or Hinduism or… Voodoo, for all I know.’

‘We’re not talking about religion , Mr Morrell, we’re talking about a bunch of kids hunched up in a cloakroom with an upturned glass and a set of Scrabble letters!’

‘And frankly, as I’ve made clear, Mrs Watkins, I’d have to find something like that a good deal less disturbing than if they were trading their pocket money for pills and then, when the pocket money ran out, clobbering some elderly lady for her pension.’

‘Whoa!’ Charlie Howe put up his hands. ‘Let’s get this into proportion, shall we, folks? I was a copper for nigh on forty years. Sure, I know what drugs can do and I know what some kids’ll do to keep supplied. But I also know, Rob, what… what religion can do. Well, not religion, so much as… well, I don’t know what you’d call it. But I think I know what Merrily’s warning us about, and in my experience it can sometimes lead to offences a sight worse than mugging.’

Morrell’s lips clamped shut. He looked affronted.

‘For instance,’ Charlie Howe said, ‘some years back, I was on the fringe of a very big murder hunt – one that I’m sure we all know about – where the murderer, when he was finally nicked, insisted he’d been told by “voices” to kill a particular kind of woman.’