The Cure of Souls

‘Did you never have the furnace checked out for…’ Lol struggled to keep the ignorance out of his eyes. ‘I don’t know – fragments of bone or whatever? Were there any forensic tests?’

‘No need, boy. Waste of resources, would’ve been. Seeing as the hunt was called off that very night. Now, I wonder if you’re simply someone with a grudge against the Lake family.’

‘The witness didn’t stand by his story, in the end. Suddenly he said he couldn’t be sure. Or maybe somebody made it worth his while to drop it?’

‘Or perhaps it’s me you’re after. Perhaps you or some mate of yours is trying for the council. But that don’t make a whole lot of sense. You wouldn’t come and face me up with some half-arsed story – less you got a little cassette recorder on you. But you en’t even wearing a jacket. No.’ Charlie leaned back. ‘It’s a puzzle. But, for the record, that girl probably left home, like a lot of young gypos did, sick of a life of squalor and ducking and diving. And the gypos, never ones to miss an opportunity, made out she was missing, presumed dead, to get back at Brother Lake for kicking them off his land. Whole bunch of ’em should’ve been charged with wasting police time. Rebekah Smith, she’s probably a suburban granny now, keeping very quiet about her origins.’

‘But Ron Welfare never forgot. And he never did make CID. His career kind of… stopped right there. For some reason.’

‘Ron Welfare left the force years back. Ron Welfare was a second-rate copper and a sick and bitter man.’

‘However,’ Lol said, ‘the DC who went with him to question Lake – he did really well. He was a sergeant by the end of the year and he never looked back at all, did he?’

The condescending smile was history. ‘Well, now.’ Charlie leaned forward, his face close up to Lol’s, eyes like knuckle-bones. ‘You wouldn’t, by any chance, be suggesting this detective was corrupt, would you, Brother?’

Point of no return. Lol wondered briefly if he hadn’t been set up by Bliss, no fan of Annie Howe, to stir an old pot. He made himself meet Charlie Howe’s bruising gaze.

‘Lake was a very powerful figure locally. Influential.’

‘So Conrad was buying off witnesses and bribing policemen to look the other way?’

‘Isn’t that how it was in those days? A strong squirearchy, and senior policemen expected to be in the Masons?’

‘I’ll ask you once again, boy, are you suggesting this particular detective was bent?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Because another alternative about you that occurs to me would be attempted blackmail. Of course, only a very stupid person would attempt to blackmail an ex-policeman. But then small-time blackmailers often are very stupid people.’

Lol shook his head.

‘And shy,’ Charlie Howe said. ‘They’re often a bit shy. And hesitant – bit timid. See, a real criminal, he’d go and hold up a bloody garage, but your small-time blackmailer, he en’t got the bottle. He’s quite often someone on the small side of average, maybe unsuccessful in his career – a misfit, a social inadequate with a personality defect. Would that be you, Brother Robinson?’ Charlie sneered. ‘Aye, that could very well be you.’

Two elderly ladies brought their trays to the next table, and Charlie broke off to smile pleasantly at them, raise a hand. ‘So piss off, boy,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth. ‘Take your forty-year-old, cobbled-together nonsense somewhere else, and don’t try and play with the pros.’

Lol’s hands were gripping the sides of his chair and for about half a second he seemed to be looking down on himself and the white-haired man with the leathery face, that condescending smile returning to it.

‘Right, you’ve done it now, Brother Howe.’ Surprised at how calm he sounded. ‘I’m going to tell you exactly why I’m here… just so you’ll know that it’s nothing to do with money – absolutely the reverse, in fact – and there’s nothing you can ever do to scare me off.’

Charlie Howe blinked, just once. It was the first time Lol had noticed him do that.

‘And also why,’ he went on, ‘if I ever find out you did take money or favours or even benefit from a word from the Emperor of Frome in the right chief superintendent’s ear – or that your old mate Andy Mumford slipped you some pictures and a manuscript he took off the Smith brothers when he nicked them for murder – if I find out any of that I’m going to hang you up to dry so high that, from where you are, I really will look very, very small.’

The old ladies were looking across. Charlie Howe smiled and it was not, Lol noticed, with immense relief, an entirely comfortable smile.

‘My place next, I think, Mr Robinson,’ he said.

At 10.45 precisely, Merrily and Simon St John drove over to Prof Levin’s studio, left the Volvo on the back forecourt and walked down the track through the meadow. The hay lay like stilled waves either side of a causeway. There were still traces of heat haze over the Malverns. Merrily saw the Frome Valley as an airless, spectral netherland where the real and the unreal wrestled in an amorphous tangle of threshing limbs.

She was afraid.

Not yet eleven on a wonderful summer morning, the kind of morning that dissolved fatigue, the kind of morning from which the uncanny was banished, but she was afraid. Her stomach felt weak; her throat was dry and sore. Walk away, Huw had said. No shame.

This would probably be her last Deliverance job. Bit of an occasion? In the museum, she’d put on her light grey cotton alb and a large pectoral cross, for the aura.

‘A holy cross is supposed to condition it, isn’t it? The aura?’

‘So I believe,’ Simon said. ‘Just as ordination does. And regular prayer, the celebration of the Eucharist – all protective.’

Simon smiled in a half-hearted way, felt in a hip pocket of his jeans and brought out a heavy gold cross on a chain, slipped it over his head.

‘What about Al?’ Merrily said.

‘I doubt it.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Al won’t be looking for protection.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because gypsies believe in destiny, and Al believes this is his.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Oh, I think you do, Merrily.’

They’d arrived at the bridge over the Frome. She stopped and stared down into the dark water of Lol’s river. She supposed she’d known since last night.

‘It’s the unspoken, isn’t it? The first Mrs Lake.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘Does everyone know?’

‘Not quite everyone. But the Frome Valley people are rather like the Frome itself. Secretive. Protective.’

‘Sally?’

‘Is her actual first name. Sarah Caroline Lake. She was very young when she married him, of course. It wasn’t exactly an arranged marriage but fairly close. Her father was a wealthy enough guy, but nothing compared with the Great Lakes. When she went off with Al, it’s hard to know which family was more appalled.’ Simon unsnagged a hanging twig from the chain of his cross. ‘At the divorce, she took only a small settlement – far smaller than someone in her position would expect today – and distributed it among a number of charities, considering this the only way of laundering, in the old-fashioned sense, Conrad’s tainted money.’

‘And when Conrad died…’

‘She and Al were able to return.’

‘She’s the Lady of the Bines.’ The thought made Merrily absurdly happy. ‘She wrote her own story and gave it to a ghost.’

‘Rather lovely, I always thought,’ Simon said.

‘It crossed my mind, of course it did. Al virtually told us.’

‘And now you can forget it, just like the rest of us have.’