Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘I do feel obliged to warn you,’ Howe said, ‘that all legal barriers must now be considered down. No impending court case any more, only inquests. No one’s freedom’s at stake, so the gates are wide open. The media can go in now, with all its fangs bared. You understand what I’m saying?’

Merrily said nothing. She imagined Howe in her half-lit office, relishing the moment.

‘It means they can exploit the exorcism angle to the full,’ Howe said. ‘They can print whatever they like. I can’t stop them.’

Even if you wanted to .

‘And it means, of course, that they’ll come after you, Ms Watkins. If they aren’t after you already.’

‘I expect you’ll give them a full description,’ Merrily said, ‘so they don’t miss me.’

Everything under the full moon was bright and sharply defined: the crisp ridges of hay, a line of graceful poplars, Lol – still and compact, standing looking down at his trainers.

‘I should get some sleep,’ Howe said. ‘It’s been a fairly stressful couple of days for you, I imagine.’

She didn’t say, But nothing compared with the stress to come .

Eirion sat up in horror, staring around the moon-washed attic. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God .’ He bounced out of bed, ran to the window. ‘Look at it!’

‘What?’

‘It’s bloody dark . It’s got to be after ten .’

Jane put on the light. ‘Five past. No sweat.’ She looked at him, head to bare toes. She smiled. ‘Doesn’t take the little guy long to shrink, does it?’

‘Jane, I’m dead.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ On the Mondrian walls, the moon spotlit the yellow rectangle and the blue square, and Jane sighed in some kind of weird rapture. ‘Irene, isn’t life sometimes so… really quite good, in spite of everything?’

‘It—’ Eirion came back and sat on the bed and tenderly stroked her hair. ‘Well, yes. Yes, it is. But there’s always a vague downside – like we fell asleep. We weren’t supposed to fall asleep afterwards, were we, Jane?’

‘It happens.’ Jane shrugged knowledgeably. ‘Release of sexual tension.’

‘Even if I leave now, I’m not going to get back until the early hours.’

‘So don’t leave.’

‘They’ll have locked me out.’

‘You’ve got a key.’

‘They’ll have barred the doors, out of entirely justified spite.’

‘Just say the car broke down.’

‘Jane, it’s a two-year-old BMW. It’s still under warranty. Plus, we didn’t even say we were going anywhere.’

‘You know what?’ Jane said.

‘What?’

‘I don’t actually care a lot.’ She linked her hands behind her head. She felt, like, all woman . ‘The car, your family… all this is so not a problem.’

Eirion looked into her eyes.

‘And Amy Shelbone?’ he said.

‘Ah.’ Jane went quiet. That was a problem. Yes. Oh God.

‘I think we were going to see Amy, weren’t we?’ Eirion said. ‘Either before or after or instead of ringing your mum. If you recall, we looked up the address in the phone book. Some hours ago.’

‘Irene, what are we going to do?’ She was confused: part of her wildly happy, the rest horribly anxious, the combination bringing her to the brink of tears. ‘I mean what are we going to do about Amy now ?’

‘Yes.’ He stood up again. ‘I guess we do have to do something.’

‘Because that would like destroy everything, wouldn’t it, if it—?’

‘Don’t go imagining things, Jane.’

‘Irene, that stuff… you couldn’t even imagine it.’ Everything came back to her, in the tough, no-shit tones of Kirsty Ryan: They’re really cooking, you know, her and the kid . She covered herself with the duvet, as if some astral Layla Riddock might be watching her from the shadows. ‘You couldn’t dream it up, could you?’

‘No.’ Eirion walked around, discovering into which corners he’d thrown his clothes. ‘How long would it take us to get over there?’

‘Dilwyn? Ten, fifteen minutes. But suppose she’s already in bed.’

‘Then she can get up, can’t she? At least if she’s in bed she’s not going to run away. Go on, get dressed. I won’t watch.’

‘You don’t want to watch?’

‘Yes, I’d love to watch. That’s’ – Eirion gathered up his jeans – ‘why I’m getting dressed in the bathroom.’

‘Irene?’ Jane slipped on her bra. Eirion paused at the door. ‘You will come in with me, won’t you? At the Shelbones’. You’re more likely to convince the parents than I am.’

‘Sure. We’re… an item, aren’t we? Official.’

‘I…’ Jane smiled a little stiffly, wondering how she felt about that, like, post-coitally. Hey!

She reached down to the little pile of her clothes lying beside the bed.

‘Maybe he left a suicide note,’ Lol said.

They were on the wooden footbridge. The river was down there somewhere, but even the full moon couldn’t find it. Lol was standing over the Frome which went nowhere in particular, maybe aching to join another river before it was too late.

‘If he refused to make a statement,’ Merrily said, ‘I don’t see him leaving a note, do you?’

Lol didn’t have an answer to that. He couldn’t imagine why a man like that would ever have hanged himself – taking Gerard Stock out of the picture, robbing the world of a sensational trial at which he might easily have put up a strong defence, with Merrily Watkins left to hang.

‘Sophie mention the media?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘So, do you want to risk staying here?’

‘Risk?’ She was wearing a blue cotton skirt, a top the colour of the moon, a small gold cross on a chain. She looked very small. ‘What are they going to do to me? The press are only people.’

‘In the pack, they tend to lose their humanity.’

‘We’ll see what happens. Look, I…’ She brought out her phone. ‘I’d better call David Shelbone again.’ She switched on the phone and the screen came up green. Merrily put in a number and listened. ‘Engaged.’

‘What was it Al told you?’ Lol said. ‘When I was taking the call. What was Al so keen to tell you?’

‘Oh, he’d… had a little too much wine.’

‘Something about not trusting the dead.’

‘He was talking about the gypsy dead. Romany ghosts. What he called the mulo . He said gypsies were terrified of their own ghosts, though they didn’t give a toss about ours. It didn’t seem entirely logical to me. But what do I know?’

‘He say anything about there being a presence in the kiln?’

‘Only in passing.’ She stepped onto the footpath on the other side of the bridge. ‘But it doesn’t matter now, does it? Nothing to explain to the Crown court. Just an inquest.’

Lol followed her. ‘And yourself. If you can’t somehow explain it to yourself, you’ll never trust Deliverance again, will you?’

‘Well, sure, I’d rather have got myself shredded in the witness box, have the whole exorcism thing held up as some kind of tawdry medieval spoof, than lose another life.’ She waited for him by the first of the poplars, the moonlight on her face, shadows under her eyes. ‘Or maybe I’m fooling myself? Maybe I’m secretly glad he’s dead, because he’d already set me up and he was probably going to do it again.’

‘You don’t have it in you to be glad anyone’s dead,’ he said.

‘As a vicar.’

‘Not even – let’s be honest here – as a person.’

‘Oh, well, you – you kind of stop being a person when you join the Church,’ Merrily said. ‘You have to learn to suffocate your feelings.’