Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘Yeah, I did that. I cursed Mrs Etchinson, and Mrs Etchinson had got MS and we didn’t know it, and that was why she was so bloody ratty all the time. I’m sorry. What is this, the Salem witch trials?’

‘Layla,’ Eirion said, the Welsh coming out in his voice, ‘can we come back to the Shelbone issue? Whatever you think about Mr and Mrs Shelbone, their dear little daughter has vanished and they’re worried sick. And they’ve been treated pretty abominably at your stepfather’s house – we saw this. First they had their car smashed in by a man with an aggression problem who calls himself a gardener, then your stepfather blatantly lied about it—’

‘Oh, Allan’s just a little boy,’ Layla said. ‘Turns peevish if he doesn’t get his own way. Forget all that. He’ll get Douglas Hutton, his lawyer, to fix it – money will change hands, faces will be saved. Allan’s not a bad guy, he’s just a crook, which everybody knows anyway. He needs a gardener on account of so many people want to punch his lights out.’

‘Hmm,’ Eirion said.

Jane wondered if Dafydd Sion Lewis had a gardener, too.

‘Look,’ Layla said. ‘Shelbone’s bonkers, and he’s the bane of Allan’s life. He’s this kind of loose cannon. Puts the blocks on lucrative development.’

‘That’s necessarily bonkers?’ Jane said.

‘From Allan’s point of view, yes,’ Layla said patiently. ‘The situation was that Allan had been after some dirt on Shelbone for years. Unfortunately, although he’s out to lunch, he’s cleaner than the Pope. But some councillor knew about Amy’s origins, and Allan told me, and I admit I got so utterly tired of his constant ravings and his threats to have Shelbone’s brakes seen to, that I thought maybe if Shelbone was already cracking up, like everybody said – maybe we could destabilize his life enough to push him into early retirement or something. No real harm done.’

‘So you admit it,’ Jane said.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I admit it, big deal. I am a bad, bad person. But, then, my old man was a gypsy who conned his way into my ma’s pants and pinched her car and stuff, so it’s in my genes. It’s a hard and ugly world, Jane. Also, Amy was such a pompous little sod that for quite a while it was very much a pleasure, I have to admit. And I had Kirsty, who’s this delightfully amoral creature with no sense of moderation – it was all too funny. But then…’

Layla went to sit on the altar between the candles. She looked cool and exotic. She didn’t look at all worried, about Amy or anything else. Jane supposed that growing up in Allan Henry’s household kind of emulsioned over your conscience.

But the really disturbing thing about all this was that the Layla with the cut-off jumper and the navel-ring didn’t really seem such a vicious, evil person. And this weird, echoey half-church, with the grotesque Black Virgin overseeing the proceedings wasn’t the best environment for working out whether this was simply because she could be witchily enchanting and insidiously plausible, or—

‘The word is, you’re quite interested in matters of the spirit yourself, Jane. And I don’t mean Church.’

‘Er, yeah – kind of…’

‘Which, of course, was why I let you into Stevie’s shed. Thinking you could be relied on. Thinking the last person you were going to tell was your old lady.’

‘I couldn’t know, could I, that she was going to get called in by the Shelbones, thinking their little girl’s possessed or something?’

‘Yeah.’ Layla tucked her legs under the altar. ‘That’s what they would think. Me, I just thought she was a pain. I don’t think any of us could’ve known.’

‘Known what?’ Eirion asked.

Layla glanced at him. ‘He OK with this stuff, Jane?’

‘He’s been around me for months.’

Layla smiled. ‘What none of us could’ve known was that Amy Shelbone is the most—it blew me away.’

‘What did?’

‘She’s a natural. That kid is the most amazing natural psychic I ever encountered.’

‘Huh?’

‘When we did the ouija – and I know how to do this, right? I know how to move the glass and you would never know I’m doing it. Which was what I did. I started it off – and it was like the bloody Internet. I punch in Justine and boom – like a search-engine: “We have forty-six listings for Justine .” You know what I’m saying? All this stuff comes pouring through, and I didn’t have to do a thing, the glass is moving like a bloody piston. Kirsty couldn’t write fast enough. She tell you this?’

‘Not the way you’re telling it,’ Jane admitted.

‘Ah, she’s in denial, is Kirsty. It was just a scam to Kirsty. Beyond that she wasn’t interested. All the time, she wanted to think it was me swinging the glass. I wanted to think it was me. For a couple of weeks, I did think it was me – me as a psychic. I got a little cocky. Then I did it with somebody else.’

‘The ouija?’

‘Got squat.’ Layla looked down at her feet. ‘Sod-all. Embarrassing. This was at the end of term. Next day, I called Amy, picked her up when the Shelbones were out, and we came here.’ She looked up. ‘Jane, what a blast! We get into Justine, I ask a question, the glass doesn’t move. Won’t move. I couldn’t push it. I ask the question again… Amy starts speaking. Only it’s not her. It’s not the little squeaky I’ll tell my mummy voice; this is grown-up, it’s kind of raunchy – and it’s got this Brummy accent .’

‘Oh, wow.’ Jane felt Eirion squeezing her hand. A warning. He was telling her not to take all this as gospel. He was reminding her that Layla Riddock was a notorious manipulator.

But, like, wow .

‘What I’m listening to is a detailed description of a killing. Little Amy Shelbone sitting there in her prim little summer frock, and her mouth’s twisting, spittle on her lips, and this like slurred, bitter voice, going, “I’m gonna cut him this time, I swear, I’m gonna put him away for ever…” ’

‘— way for ever ,’ the walls sang. Jane dragged her hand away from Eirion’s, shoved it down into a pocket of her fleece.

‘So she… like, she really was possessed, then. Mum got it completely wrong.’

‘No.’ Layla shook her head briskly. ‘No way. She’s a medium . It’s a different thing altogether. The medium has control. The medium can let the spirit come through and shut it off whenever. Jane, I am psychic. I get insights. A lot of people are, you know that. It’s either in the blood or it isn’t. But it’s nothing I can control. I’ve spent years trying to master it – since I was about twelve. Read hundreds of books, tried all kinds of stuff. And I’m not a medium. I’m just one of a million people who get insights. She made me very jealous, did little Amy.’

Layla stood up, lifted up the chalice, sniffed the contents and put it back. Whatever Eirion thought, Jane’s feeling was that this was the absolute unvarnished truth, as Layla saw it.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I just marvelled, Jane. I just wanted to understand. The complete injustice of it. I wanted to understand how come this obnoxious little—I’m going, “How long’s this been happening to you? You had experiences like this before? You must have!” She’s like “What d’you mean?” ’

‘Did that mean she hadn’t? Or she just didn’t understand what you were talking about?’

‘I still don’t know for sure. What I felt – feel – is that she hadn’t, or wasn’t aware of having had any serious psychic experience. Quite often it’s something that doesn’t happen until puberty. But also she’d been brought up in this strict religious household, with the fear of the Devil and all this stuff hanging over her, and the Bible on the bedside table. She was surrounded by this big, white wall of sterile, puritanical—You know what I mean?’