Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘They’d pre-record you,’ Eirion said. ‘And then they’d edit out the names.’

‘I could do something . I could get that slag. I will get her.’

They both stood looking at the light out at sea, Jane thinking, What a magic night, what a magic place to make love. What an incredible memory to have for the rest of your life .

Too late now. It was all soured.

LOL WOULD KEEP pausing, glancing at her to see if she believed him. As if she might be thinking he’d invented these two bizarre, creepy and sexually provocative encounters with Stephanie Stock, both of them ending with him walking away. But this, in fact, confirmed it: walk away was what Lol would do.

Of course she believed him. But what was it all supposed to convey, apart from that Stephanie had been as mad as Gerard?

As she followed Lol across the yard, a sensor switched on two lamps projecting from the stable wall, revealing the cottage in front of them. She could see it had originally been quite small, a typical Herefordshire farmworker’s timber-framed home: two up, two down and a lean-to. There was a brick extension, probably nineteenth century, longer and taller than the original dwelling.

‘Just the four bedrooms at present.’ Lol had a long key for the cracked and ill-fitting front door. ‘But there’s scope for conversion of a few more outbuildings, if Prof can get listed-building consent.’

Merrily thought that with David Shelbone around this could turn out to be more of a problem than Prof might figure.

Unexpectedly, she discovered she was starting to feel less depressed. It was clear that the case of Gerard and Stephanie Stock had several dark and, as yet, unprobed levels, was more complex than either the police or even she had imagined and went deeper than a violent rage inflamed by a botched Deliverance.

If she could be convinced of this, it was a start. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself – as an exorcist, a priest or a person – if she thought anything she’d done had led, however indirectly, to the slaughter of Stephanie Stock.

‘It’s a nice idea, in principle,’ Lol was saying. ‘Musicians can come and stay, no real time limit, and help out generally around the place when they’re not recording. Van Morrison on orbital sander – that’s yet to happen, but people will do all kinds of things for Prof.’ He pushed open the front door and put a hand inside, feeling around for light switches. ‘This is the living room. It’s still a bit, er…’

Merrily stepped inside, looking around by the harsh light of two naked bulbs. She saw several wooden packing cases, a bubblewrap mountain, an inglenook full of CDs, a TV set on a tea chest, two deckchairs and one padded garden recliner in the middle of an ice floe of polystyrene packing.

‘Lol, this is a dump.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s, er… that’s one way of—’

‘It’s the only way, Lol.’

‘The bedrooms are tidier,’ Lol said.

Which was true. Merrily chose the smallest of them, which contained just a tiny porcelain washbasin, a rag rug and a bed. It was in the old part of the cottage but had recently been done up – fresh plaster between the beams. The three-quarter bed had no headboard, but there was a new duvet lying on it, still in sealed plastic.

It was stuffy in here. ‘It was supposed to be my room.’ Lol prised open the window – one pane, eighteen inches square. ‘But for some reason I keep going back to a camp bed in one of the lofts over the stable.’

Yes, he would do that; he’d need the feeling of impermanence .

Merrily sat on the bed. She felt like an asylum seeker in a hostel; tomorrow seemed as impenetrable as Prof Levin’s living room.

‘Hang on a minute.’ Lol went off and came back with a small wooden reading lamp with a parchment shade. He placed it on the deep window sill and plugged it into a socket underneath. With the ceiling bulb switched off, the lamp turned the room a hazy buttermilk. Monastic cell to cosy boudoir in two clicks.

Lol asked if could bring her up a drink. ‘Probably better if you didn’t see the kitchen tonight.’

‘Bad?’

He shrugged. ‘The rats live with it.’

‘Is there a kettle, say, and a teapot that we could perhaps bring up?’

‘Sure.’ He was hovering in the doorway. ‘I’ll… fetch your case in, then?’

‘You want some help?’

Lol held up both hands. ‘Stay. Luxuriate.’

She spread the duvet on the bed and sat down again, staring at the rough plaster. She and Lol had shared some secrets again. She wondered if he still had the sweatshirt with the Roswell alien motif.

With Lol, it all went back to a teenager called Tracy who had a mate called – Kath, was it? Karl Windling, the aggressive and unpleasant bass-player in Hazey Jane, had fancied this Kath and set Lol up with Tracy – she was about four years younger than Lol, but you probably wouldn’t have known, seeing the two of them together, and he certainly wouldn’t have suspected. And then Windling had decided he wanted Tracy as well, and it had all turned nasty, and Windling had squirmed out of it, leaving Lol – innocent in everyone’s eyes but the law’s – with a conviction for having sex with an under-age girl, six months’ probation and rejection by his family.

That was the start of it. A long time ago. A long time for anyone to remain an alien. But it would partly explain his reaction, both times, to Stephanie Stock.

‘You must have thought she was unreal… a ghost.’

‘I’d’ve been happier with a ghost.’ Lol put down the tea tray.

Merrily thought back to his involvement with the ethereal Moon, who’d lived on Dinedor Hill. ‘It’s like cats, isn’t it?’

‘Cats?’

‘Put a cat in a room with someone who’s afraid of cats or allergic to cat hair, the cat invariably heads straight for them, jumps onto their laps.’

‘I like cats.’

‘Well, I know that. And you quite like women, too – I realize this is an inexact analogy. I’m talking about women with problems. Weird women. They tend to come on to you like cats. And you put out a tentative hand, and then experience tells you to back off.’

‘I’m not proud of backing off.’

‘I don’t like to imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t.’ Merrily poured the tea. ‘Could she have been stoned?’

‘Or was she ill?’ Lol wondered.

‘What? Something long-term? Schizophrenia? Could that have been why Stock kept her apart from the community? Was he drinking to excess to cope with it? The mad woman in the isolated kiln? But you can’t really do a Mr Rochester these days, can you? You can’t keep this kind of thing secret any more – if she was on medication, for instance… and schizophrenics are almost invariably on medication.’

‘ And she apparently went out to work.’

‘Yeah, but did she?’

‘She said she was temping for a car-dealer in Hereford.’

‘But was she?’ Merrily leaned her head against the side of the bed. ‘All this will have to come out.’ She looked at Lol. ‘That night in the hop-yard – was she aware of you?’

‘Yes.’ Lol drank some tea. ‘And no.’

‘Good answer. Helpful.’

‘It was dark.’

‘She was aware of you in the bedroom, though. And she was certainly aware of you downstairs before we began.’

‘Well… coming on to me like I used to be this big rock star – what kind of crap was that? She’d probably never heard of me until Stock mentioned I was staying at Prof’s. But she gave absolutely no sign of recognizing me from the hop-yard. Not then, anyway.’