The Cure of Souls

‘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.’

‘So she didn’t think it was entirely a scam – the spiritualism?’

‘It started out that way, like I said. But when it began to work, when the kid’s really gone for it, she’s like, “Oh this is how it happens, this is how it happens.” You know?’

‘Not really.’

‘It was like she believed the kid’s ma really was in touch. Now, she believes she’s got the power. All the things she told people at the Christmas Fair, ever since, she’s been like, “Oh, Mrs So-and-So just died, you hear that? I told her she was gonner die!” Going on like that.’

Jane shivered.

‘They’re really cooking, you know, her and the kid. I don’t know how she found out about the murder, I really don’t. But then she reckons a load of other stuff’s coming through that she didn’t know. Layla is very excited, not that you’d know that, if you en’t known her as long as me. Come the holidays, no way does she wanner let go of little Shelbone. That afternoon, after the heavy mob crash into Stevie’s shed and bust us up, I’m like, right, that’s it, you can count me out, sister, I got better things to do. But she’s already making other arrangements.’

‘So you haven’t been in contact with Layla since school broke up?’ Jane said.

‘She rang me a couple of times. I said I was too busy? Next thing, I hear about the kid chucking up in church – well, nobody knew what that was about except me. I thought, this has gone too far. This is well over the bloody top. Next thing I hear, she’s tried to do away with herself. That’s spooky, ennit?’ Kirsty stood up. ‘There it is. You got the lot now.’

Eirion said, ‘You’ve known Layla a long time then?’

‘All my life, give or take. We were at the same little school at Eardisley. Course, they weren’t rich then, her and her ma. When Allan Henry come on the scene, he wanted to take her away from Moorfield to some private school, but she wouldn’t go.’

‘You never met her father?’

‘She never met her father. She used to have like fantasies about him, this mysterious gypsy. He was probably some travelling scrap-metal dealer, but she had him roaming Europe in his romantic caravan, seducing women with love potions and doing the business.’

‘The business?’

‘The magic. Doing the magic for his friends and cursing his enemies. She got all the books, and whenever there was gypsies in the area she’d spend hours with them. She even went off with the buggers once for two nights, her ma went bloody spare. And then… Oh yeah – she cursed a teacher once. We had this gym teacher at Moorfield, Mrs Etchinson. Gave us a hard time. Gave everybody a hard time – team spirit, all this shit. Layla was