Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

Jane clutched at the hay.

‘Both of them bloody junkies. Both parents junkies and her dad’s a murderer – and Shelbone’s this holier-than-thou, pain-in-the-arse, stuck-up little cow who’d grass you up to the teachers soon as—Unbelievable, ennit?’

‘Where did this happen?’ Eirion asked.

‘Somewhere up the Midlands? Not round yere.’

‘In a church?’ Jane felt numb.

‘Now Layla, she had a very good reason to bring down that family. On account it was Shelbone’s ol’ man, her adopted ol’ man that messed it up when Layla done that gypsy thing at the Christmas Fair.’

‘I wasn’t there. I was sick.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you, Jane, that was real scary, that stuff she was coming out with. When she gets in that gypsy gear, it’s like she’s another person. Wouldn’t have my fortune told by her, no way. But that’s beside the point. The point is ol’ man Shelbone protests that it’s unChristian and he gets it stopped. So in Layla’s view they all got it coming to them now, big-time. Gypsies don’t forget, right? And she done me a few favours, mostly money, you know? So I couldn’t say no.’

‘To helping her stage the ouija?’

‘But, after a while, I could tell this was fucking the kid up, serious.’

Merrily gazed over the glass waterfall that was Allan Henry’s home. She thought about getting out, going for a meditative walk around, with a cigarette. Perhaps there was something obvious she was missing.

‘Where’s her mother stand in all this?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Sandra Henry,’ Sophie said. ‘Sandra Riddock?’

‘You know her?’

‘Not personally, but she worked for an estate agency where my sister was manager for a while. It was how she met Henry. They were the agents for one of his first shoddy housing estates – twelve, fifteen years ago? She was quite a beauty, apparently. I remember my sister saying that no one knew she even had a child, then.’

‘The father was a gypsy, Jane says.’

‘I wouldn’t know. But you’re right – I do wonder if Sandra Henry knows what her daughter’s been up to.’

‘I wonder if she’s in. I wonder if she’s down there now – on her own. I wonder if Layla’s away, supposedly staying with friends or something equally suspicious.’

Sophie stiffened. ‘On what basis would we be calling on her?’

‘We? Well, me, I’d have to play it straight. I’m a minister of the Church. I’ve just found out my daughter’s been involved in experiments to contact the dead, along with Mrs Henry’s daughter and a girl who attempted suicide. As a priest I’m naturally very worried about that. What’s she going to do, laugh it off, turn me away?’

‘You’d be using Jane.’

‘I’m not using Jane. Jane didn’t even tell me about it. Dennis did.’

‘All right.’ Sophie started the car. ‘Let’s try and find the entrance to the drive. I’m told it isn’t obvious. I won’t say “On your head be it.” It’s both our heads.’

‘You’re a mate, Soph.’

‘Oh, shut up.’ Sophie pulled into the lane, drove very slowly down the hill. It was very quiet; there were no other houses or farms in the vicinity. No cows or sheep grazed the hill. As far as Merrily could recall, no other vehicle had passed them since they’d stopped.

‘Likes his privacy.’

‘Evidently.’ Sophie stopped opposite a tarmacked opening on the right. ‘You think this is it?’

‘Try it.’

Sophie drove into the entrance – the deep shade of big forest trees immediately closing over the car. After about fifty yards they came to the perimeter wall with its railings on top, a couple of brick gateposts, eight or so feet high, with metal gates, open. A black sign on the left-hand post decreed, in yellow lettering, NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.

‘Probably be security cameras, somewhere,’ Sophie guessed. They passed a small bungalow with a van outside. ‘Staff there, I expect. We supposed to check in, I wonder?’

‘Nobody about, anyway. Carry on.’

On the left was a clearing in the trees. Sophie braked.

‘Good heavens. Either it’s a reproduction or a museum piece.’

‘Or Layla’s dad’s dropped in.’

The vardo stood alone. It was crimson and gold, like an outsize barrel organ. It had ornate, gilt-ribbed panels, a porch with side-brackets like golden wheels, and brass carriage lamps. The windows had intricately patterned shutters. The vardo looked immaculate, out of a children’s picture book.

Really has thrown money at her, Merrily thought. For a couple of seconds she even wondered if Amy Shelbone was in there with Gypsy Layla.

‘Too easy,’ Sophie murmured, and drove on.

After a few yards, the full sky reappeared as the drive widened into a forecourt with three vehicles in it: a Range Rover, a black Porsche Carrera and a small sleek yellow sports car. There was a flight of about five stone steps up to a front door that was about the size and thickness of the one accessing Ledwardine Church.

A man came down the steps. Merrily got out of the car.

‘I’m looking for Mrs Henry.’

‘ Are you, indeed?’ He wore jeans and an old cheesecloth shirt, open to the waist. Gardener? Handyman? Security?

‘This is the right house, isn’t it?’ Merrily said.

‘And you are?’

‘My name’s Merrily Watkins.’

He nodded slowly, waiting.

‘I just wanted to talk to Mrs Henry on a private matter. I would’ve rung first, but it’s ex-directory.’

‘So it is,’ he said. ‘Well, she’s not here.’ He looked her up and down like she might have a set of burglar’s tools under her jacket. ‘Maybe I can help.’ He put out a slow hand. ‘Allan Henry.’

Kirsty Ryan said she’d first started to get cold feet when she realized that Amy Shelbone had actually not known about her real dad killing her mother until they pulled the spirit scam on her in Steve’s shed.

‘Even Layla was surprised how easy she went for it. We’d give her a bit of a spirit message from her ma, and she’d write it all down, like it was tablets of stone, and next day, half-twelve on the dot she’d come scampering across the field, desperate to contact her ol’ lady again – I’m saying ol’ lady, she was just a kid herself when the bastard carved her up. I was getting pissed off with it. I mean, a joke’s a joke, but you don’t let it take over your life.’

‘Whose life?’ Eirion asked.

‘ She needed it as much as the kid by then.’

‘Layla?’

‘Don’t get the idea she’s playing at this, mate.’ Kirsty pushed a hand through her foxy hair. ‘She’s into the gypsy thing in a big way. Whole shelves of books, wardrobes full of exotic clobber – the veils and the hats and the flouncy skirts. She got crystals and a dozen packs of Tarot cards. She got her own gypsy caravan. She mixes herbs and things. She’ll do you a love token to get the bloke you want – involving locks of your hair and his hair and ribbons and stuff. Calls herself a shuvani , a gypsy sorcerer. Like – OK – once, there was this bloke I fancied and I wanted to know if I was wasting my time, right? Layla’s like, OK, wait for the right time of the month, gimme a Tampax—’

Jane recoiled. ‘Gross!’

‘We make this necklace of beads out of clay and menstrual blood. I was supposed to hang it on the guy’s locker and then if the beads had like dissolved by morning it meant he wasn’t gonner be interested. In the end, I bottled out, threw it away, said somebody must’ve nicked it. I mean – what?’

‘She really believes this stuff?’ Eirion said.

‘It’s her life , mate.’