Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘I know you, don’t I?’ Dr Coll says, with a vague bit of a smile. Must be close on sixty now, but he never seems to change. Dapper, the word is. Beard a bit grey now, but never allowed to go ratty.

‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire,’ Gomer says.

‘Ah, yes.’

‘Never goes near no bloody doctors meself, but you might recall as how you used to peddle drugs to a friend o’ mine, Danny Thomas.’

‘I really don’t think so.’ The smile coming off like grease on a rag.

‘And Terry Penney, remember? But that’s all water up the ole brook, now, ennit?’

‘If you’re trying to tell me,’ Dr Coll says severely, ‘that you’re hoping I’ll supply you with proscribed drugs, I think you should decide to leave very quickly. In case you didn’t notice, there’s a police van parked directly outside.’

‘Shows what kind of a bloody nerve you got then, ennit, Doc?’

‘Mr Parry—’

‘Them coppers knew what we knew, they’d be in yere, turnin’ the place over.’

‘Are you drunk , man?’

Young Jane picks up the thread now. ‘ We know you killed that old lady in New Radnor. You’ve probably killed, like, loads of people. You’re probably like that Dr Shipman.’

‘All right!’ Dr Coll turning nasty at last. ‘I haven’t got all night to listen to a lot of ludicrous nonsense. Out of here, the pair of you!’

Gomer shoves himself back against the door. Dr Coll’s a fair bit younger than him. And taller, but then most blokes are. Don’t make no odds when you’re madder than what they are, and Gomer is sorely mad now.

‘Guess who just got dug up, Doc.’

Dr Coll tries to grab the door handle, but Gomer knocks his wrist away with his own wrist, which hurts like buggery. Gomer grits his teeth.

‘Remember Barbara Thomas? Come to see you the other week, ’bout her sister, Menna? Likely you’re one o’ the last people poor ole Barbara talked to ’fore some bugger ripped the face off her then planted her in Prosser’s bottom field, down where the harchaeologists was.’

Colour drains out of the doc’s face something beautiful. Gomer’s well heartened by this.

‘Course, the cops don’t know Barbara seen you ’fore she got done. Cops don’t know nothin’ about you an’ Weal, the bloody Hindwell Trust, all the doolally patients you recommended to Weal for sortin’ their wills...’

‘You’re making no sense to me.’ Dr Coll coming over with all the conviction of a bloke caught with a vanload of videos at two in the morning saying he’s just been to a bloody car boot sale.

‘Well, then.’ Gomer folds his arms. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Dr Death. All we wants to know right now is where we finds the vicar. The lady vicar? We finds the vicar, we’ll likely have that much to talk about, could be well into tomorrow ’fore we gets round to makin’ police statements ’bout anythin’ else – you gets my meanin’. Leavin’ quite a bit o’ time for a feller to pack his Range Rover with money and bugger off.’

‘I’ve got a wife and family,’ Dr Coll says. He blurts it out like he’s just suddenly realized. Anybody else but a bloody doctor and Gomer could almost feel sorry for him.

‘Where’s my mum?’ young Jane screams in his face.

A large chalice of red wine stood on the temple altar, with the scourge and the handbell, the wand for air, the sword for fire. Royally pissed off by now, sitting just inside the door, on the doormat for Chrissakes, Robin wanted to suggest they share it out or at least open another bottle.

Across the parlour, Betty sensed his impatience and sent him a small warning smile. The moment was close to intimate. Her face was warm and young and wonderful in the glow from the Tilley lamp which sat in the centre of the floor – what would have been the centre of the circle if they’d drawn one. But tonight’s circle would be drawn outside.

If it ever happened, though they were robed and ready. Maybe this was no night for naked, and anyway Robin could appreciate the need for a sense of ceremony. He also loved to see Betty in the loose, green, medieval gown she’d made herself two, three years ago. Robin just wore this kind of grey woollen tunic; he didn’t have anything more ceremonial. But then he would be peripheral tonight, an extra, a spear-carrier.

Ned Bain, in a long, black robe, sat on a bare flagstone below the window, opposite the hearth, where the heatless twig-fire burned. He was obviously listening, but Robin suspected he was not listening to Max.

In preparation, Max had led a meditation on the nature of the border, and read to them, in translation, an old Welsh poem about the death of Pwyll, son of Llywarch the Old, who sang, ‘When my son was killed, his hair was bloody and flowed on both banks of the brook.’ Robin had been painting it in his head – that long, bloodied hair was a gift to an illustrator. Wicca worked in strange ways; he himself might not be able to see spirits or know the future, but his imagination could be sent into instant freeflow by any image you cared to pitch him. Hell, that was something .

‘On this holy Celtic night,’ Max intoned, ‘let us close our eyes and picture – all around us – the ghostly monuments of our ancestors. We are in a wide, silent valley, the stones in a grey mist around us. But over it soars Burfa Hill, and we can dimly make out the notch marking the rising of the sun at the equinox. In the black of the night is born the bright day, the new spring. And we, too, shall be born again into a new day, a new era.’

That was it. There was silence. The stones had loomed out of the mist for Robin, his soul reached for the new day, but he dispatched it back to his subconscious. He’d had enough. He shifted uncomfortably on his mat and, across the room, closest to the altar, Betty saw him and knew he was about to say something.

Instead, she did. But first, she smiled sadly in the lamplight, and it was for him, and Robin thought his heart would burst with love.

And then Betty said, very quietly, ‘Once, not so very long ago, there were two stepbrothers...’

Jane and Gomer hurried across the street, making for the hall. It was, Jane thought, crazy to let the doctor just go , but Gomer said that if they didn’t want to spend the rest of the night in some police station, they didn’t have a choice.

The doctor had told them Mum had gone off with Father Ellis, and he knew Father Ellis was up in the hall, conducting a service. The doctor had then put his dignity back together, walked out across the yard, his medical bag swinging from his wrist, as if he was off on a house call.

Scumbag.

You couldn’t miss the village hall, with that cross lit up on the roof. As soon as you turned up the track to the steps, you could hear the singing. A song which had no tune but lots of tunes, and endless words but no sense.

Jane started racing up the steps, saw that the hall was blazing with light. But, at the same time, she became aware that Gomer, behind her, was panting quite painfully. It had been a gruelling night and you tended to forget how old he was and how many roll-ups he smoked. She stopped halfway up and waited for him to catch up.

She reckoned afterwards, after the glass in the porch burst and the flames came out in a great gouging whooomp of heat, that Gomer’s lungs had probably saved their lives.

THE LAUREL ALLEY.

Later, its leaves would be crisp with frost. Merrily could see only the alley’s outline, rippling black walls under the worn pebble moon.

‘We could use a torch.’

‘Amply bright enough,’ Judith said, ‘if you know the way.’

Which she, of course, did. She took Merrily’s arm, leading her down to the fork in the drive. ‘Mind the step, now.’ Merrily remembered Marianne’s hand on her arm, as the police burst through. Things you oughta know. Judith’s grip was firmer. Judith was without trepidation. What did Judith believe in? Not ghosts, perhaps not even God – except maybe some strictly local deity, the guardian spirit of Old Hindwell.