Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘Stephanie Stock?’

‘And when she talked about her husband, it was like he was some sort of guru – her mentor, her guardian. Gerard this, Gerard that. “Oh, I don’t know, I’d better ask Gerard.” “No, I don’t think Gerard would approve.” This was when she talked at all.’

‘So what happened?’

‘She changed.’

‘Damn right she changed,’ Merrily said.

‘Not overnight; it was a continuing process. If I’d been writing it up for the tabs, I’d’ve had the girls saying something like, “Stephanie was very quiet at first and hard to get to know, but the job really brought her out of herself, and in her last few days she’d been full of life and getting on with everybody.” ’

‘Meaning?’

‘You’re clergy, Mrs Watkins. I can’t…’

‘Oh, sod off —’ Merrily looked up, uncomfortably, with a strained smile for Mr Shelbone.

‘All right,’ Fred Potter said. ‘There was a bloke upstairs, an accountant. Divorced. Sports car. There’s always one, isn’t there? The one no woman likes to meet on the stairs on a dark morning. The one where they always prefer to hold open the door for him , yes?’

‘I know.’

‘Again, this is one of those bits where the girls’re exchanging knowing glances, and frankly I don’t think any of them knows exactly what happened between Stephanie and this randy accountant. But someone saw her coming down from his office one lunchtime, and after that the man was very subdued.’

‘More than he bargained for?’

‘No, he was actually scared – that was the consensus. I don’t know if this was an exaggeration, but they said he was working from home the rest of the week. Like he was frightened.’

‘You serious?’

‘Yeah,’ Fred said. ‘Yeah, I am actually.’

‘These women – they didn’t like her.’

‘I think it’s fair to say they did not like poor Stephie. One of them started whispering that she was probably a bit mental, and who knows what her husband had to put up with, and then another one’s shouting, “Hey, this isn’t going to be in the papers, is it?” and of course that was it for me – everybody clams up. Well, no way was it going in the papers, even if he didn’t get charged last night – this is the victim; if you make a victim sound too much like a slag, the level of interest goes right down.’

‘Meaning the amount of space you get, the amount of money…’

‘Well… yeah.’

‘What about the haunting? Did she ever talk about that at work? I mean, she must have, after that spread in the People .’

‘Somebody apparently said something like, “How can you go on living there?” but she just laughed, and then the boss sent her off to this garage, Tanner’s, temping, so they never saw her again.’

‘What’s the name of the agency?’

‘The Joanna Stokes Bureau.’

Merrily made a note. ‘Thanks, Fred.’

‘Thank you ,’ he said. ‘I’ve been wanting to tell somebody. It’s like I’ve been carrying her around.’ A little laugh, part cynical, part embarrassed… part something else.

‘It’s different, isn’t it,’ Merrily said, ‘when a murder victim is somebody you knew, however slightly. Somebody you’d seen not long before it happened.’

‘Yes,’ Fred Potter said, ‘it’s different. Look, is it OK if I ring you again, if I… if you…?

‘Of course.’

She gave him her mobile number. She didn’t usually do that. It was that phrase carrying her around .

EVEN FROM A few feet away, it looked as though the wheelchair was gliding through the undergrowth, cutting brambles like Boudicca’s legendary chariot with the knives in the wheels.

In fact, Isabel knew where the overgrown path went burrowing through the tangled churchyard to the bank of the Frome. Where the wheelchair stopped you could see the river down below, like smoked glass.

‘Look at that,’ she said contemptuously. ‘No rocks, no rapids. Seemed such a nice boring place, it did, after Wales. No historical baggage, see – no ruins, no megalithic sites. No history at all that wasn’t to do with hops.’

She wore a short-sleeved tropical top, with big golden flowers, and cord jeans. Her hair had amber highlights. There was a thin, grey shawl folded on her lap.

‘Perfect, it was,’ she said. ‘Perfect for us. And now – blood everywhere.’

‘Everywhere?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Huh?’

Isabel shook her head. Apparently, she’d sent the vicar off on a pastoral visit to the farthest of his four parishes, up towards Ledbury. Missionary work.

‘Starting to mope, see. Becomes dangerous when he mopes.’ She looked up coyly at Lol. ‘ “You want a church run by politicians or by people who actually give a shit?” I like that. That’s telling Him.’

Of course, she’d overheard it all, every whispered word.

‘And now you’re throwing it all back at Simon. Can’t blame you for that. Fair play, though, he did say bring her along to see him first, if she had plans to go into that place.’

‘We tried,’ Lol said tonelessly. ‘You weren’t at home. You were in Hereford, shopping.’

‘My fault. He was moping, and I got the feeling he was getting ready to… go in there himself.’

‘To exorcize the kiln?’

‘Or whatever was needed.’

‘He’d made it pretty clear he didn’t think anything was needed!’

‘Ah, well,’ said Isabel, ‘what he says and what he thinks …’

‘You’re saying,’ Lol looked up in despair at the flawless sky, ‘he did think something was needed.’

‘I’m not saying what he thought. You can blame me, like I said. I didn’t want him in there. I didn’t mind him warning your lady friend, that was only right. But I didn’t want him in there. So you see… It’s me to blame.’

Lol didn’t say anything. Isabel wheeled herself back from the river bank, along the path, to the base of an arthritic-looking apple tree.

‘ Funny , though, isn’t it, this whole religion business? God working in mysterious ways. How do people expect Him to work – bolts of lightning all the time? And there I am, sitting at the door, and you pleading for enlightenment: “Isn’t it time it all came out?” Me thinking, I must be it – the mysterious way. What a bloody honour.’

Lol shook his head, mystified.

Hands folded on the shawl on her lap, Isabel fixed him with a gaze blazing now with what looked like a fearsome candour, and her voice acquired a flint edge.

‘Time for us to talk, isn’t it, boy?’

She got him to push her back to the vicarage gates and then down towards the main road. The haze had been burned out of the sky and the tarmac was beginning to sweat. There were hops on either side of them now, high on their frames, the fruit tight and green on the bines.

‘Preserve the beer, they do,’ Isabel said. ‘And the memories, I bet. And all the old hate.’

Lol sensed a stage being set out and climbed up onto it. ‘So who do you think killed Stewart Ash?’

‘Does it matter?’ Isabel gazed downhill towards the just-visible roof of the hop museum. ‘Wasn’t Adam Lake himself, was it?’

‘No?’

‘Hasn’t got the balls. Big man, macho image, but no balls. I reckon, see, that what Stock was trying to suggest the other night was that Lake got somebody else to do it. No balls, plenty of money – that’s what Stock was saying.’

‘But like Lake said, would he really kill somebody just get back another little bit of his old man’s estate?’