Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘Charlie, that’s—’

‘Give me an hour or two and I could find you a dozen or more other cases in the past ten years where killings, serious assaults and God knows what else, with someone acting entirely out of character, have been put down to—’

‘But Charlie, this is—’

‘This is a juvenile. Certainly. But aren’t youngsters more prone to this kind of thing than adults because their imaginations are that much bigger? I’m going to use the word “delusion”, Merrily, for Robert’s sake. And, anyway, we all know that a delusion can be just as real to the person involved. Now if this child’s become antisocial and starts taking advice from what she reckons is her dead mother, then who knows what her so-called mother’s going to advise her to do next? No, I’d be the last to dismiss this kind of problem out of hand.’

Merrily felt like filling the silence with applause. Morrell spread his hands on the table, looked down between them for a moment.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘but what do you suggest we do about it now? The summer holidays have just started. The students are no longer under my jurisdiction. Chances are that, by September, there’ll be some new fad.’

‘The truth of it is,’ Merrily said apologetically, ‘this was supposed to be an informal inquiry.’

‘Nothing formal about me, my dear,’ said Charlie Howe.

‘I was hoping somebody might have some idea about what was going on – like if there were certain kids known to be particularly fascinated by the occult… maybe encouraging or even pressurizing other kids into getting involved. Teachers usually have their noses to the ground.’

‘Tell me,’ said Morrell, ‘have you asked your daughter about this?’

‘She’s… away on holiday.’

‘You see, I’m afraid I really can’t help you. I don’t know anything about any ouija-board sessions. They could very well be happening outside school hours, outside the campus. If you want to give me this girl’s name, we can probably arrange some counselling for her next term.’

‘Or,’ said Charlie Howe, ‘why don’t you ask Merrily to come and give a talk to the sixth-formers? We still have religious education, don’t we?’

‘Social and cultural studies. I’d have to discuss it with my team.’

Merrily pushed back her chair. ‘Well… thanks for listening to me. Although I suspect I’ve wasted your time.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Charlie Howe placed a hand over hers. ‘ Emphatically not. Anything that’s affecting the lives of our young people, we want to know about it.’

‘Of course,’ Morrell said.

The car park had a view of playing fields and the distant Black Mountains. Moorfield High, serving scattered villages in north and central Herefordshire, was half a mile from the nearest one and not a church steeple in sight – which wouldn’t displease Morrell, Merrily thought.

Watching the head driving away, the chairman shook his head.

‘It’s his one blind spot, Merrily. He’s a good headmaster in most respects. Knows about discipline. Doesn’t let the little beggars run wild. But he’s an unbeliever. Don’t mind me calling you Merrily, do you, Reverend? I feel I know you, after talking to Bernie.’

‘Whatever’s he been saying?’

‘He just gets anxious about you, poor old devil.’

‘Ah, but he handles anxiety very well,’ said Merrily. ‘It’s part of being a bishop.’

‘You’re not wrong.’ He patted her shoulder, then consulted his watch. ‘Half-four. Fancy nipping over to Weobley for a coffee?’

‘I’d like to, Mr Howe, but I’ve got to… talk to someone.’

‘ Charlie . If I can’t be Chief Super any more, I’ll just be Charlie. Least you didn’t call me Councillor Howe.’ He looked sad for a moment, as though his useful life had ended when he retired from the police, which it clearly hadn’t.

‘You’re Chairman of the Education Committee now, aren’t you?’

‘Vice-chairman.’ He put his head on one side, winked at her. ‘As yet. Tell you what, why don’t you come and talk to one of our sub-committees? Tell the beggars a few things they didn’t know.’

‘You think they’d want that?’

‘They never know what they want these days. Think they know what goes on, but they bloody well don’t. I know you’ve got a pretty thankless job. Got to deal with some weird customers.’

‘You’d know all about that.’

‘What, thankless jobs?’

‘I meant weird—’

‘Oh, aye,’ Charlie said. ‘Getting more thankless all the time, policing. I don’t know how they keep going, today’s coppers, with all the restrictions and the human-rights legislation – known criminals laughing at you from behind their slippery lawyers.’

He gazed across the fields towards Wales, sucking air through his teeth. A pillow of cloud lay over the Black Mountains.

‘Your daughter seems to be coping,’ Merrily said.

‘You reckon?’ He looked up at the sky for a moment, as if deciding whether it would be disloyal to take this any further. Then he turned to her. ‘I’ll tell you, Merrily, it was the shock of my life when Anne joined the force. Never told me, you know. Never said a word. Leaves university with a very respectable law degree, moves away, next thing there she is on the doorstep in her uniform.’

‘Not for very long, I imagine.’

‘Oh no. Fast-track, now. Doing undercover work while she was still a PC, out of uniform altogether within a couple of years. Detective Sergeant at twenty-five.’

‘Chief Constable material, then.’

‘Aye,’ Charlie said. His eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘Don’t get on too well with her, do you?’

‘She tell you that?’

‘No need. When it comes to religion, Anne stands shoulder to shoulder with Brother Morrell. Always been her blind spot.’

‘Hasn’t held her back. Not even in a cathedral city.’

‘No.’ Charlie Howe stood with his legs apart, his back to the horizon. He must have cut an intimidating figure as a detective, framed in the doorway of the interview room. ‘Not as a copper, no.’

Merrily, who’d had two encounters with Charlie’s daughter, didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure she could have got on with Annie Howe if the woman had been Mary Magdalene with a warrant card.

Charlie took out his car keys and tossed them from one hand to the other. ‘Didn’t tell Brother Morrell everything, did you?’

‘I doubt it would have helped. What do you think?’

‘Oh no, you’re quite right, it wouldn’t’ve helped at all. But you wouldn’t have brought him out here in the school holidays if there wasn’t something about this issue that had you particularly worried – now, would you?’

Merrily met his eyes: they were deep-sunk but glittery, playing with her.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t really like this kind of thing. New Age stuff I can put up with – a bit of fortune-telling, astrology, meditation. Trying to contact the dead, that’s unhealthy. Let them go, I say.’

‘And where do the dead go, young Merrily? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory?’

‘Leominster, Charlie. Everybody knows that.’

He grinned. ‘Well, you have a think about talking to my subcommittee. I’ll give you a call in a week or two.’

She stood by the old Volvo and watched him drive away in his dusty Jaguar. She thought she liked him but she wasn’t sure if she could trust him – he was a councillor.

Back in the vicarage, she paused under the picture in the hall: a good-quality print of Holman-Hunt’s The Light of the World . It had been a gift from Uncle Ted, who knew nothing of the lamplit path, and showed Jesus Christ at his most sorrowfully benign. A middle-aged Jesus, laden with experience of humanity at its most depressing.