The Cure of Souls

tolerable ghosts. But the Romanies – I may be wrong, but I think mulo is the only word they have for a ghost.’

‘And it can also mean vampire,’ Merrily said, ‘in the real sense.’

‘They don’t have to take your blood, Al says. They’ll just take your energy.’

‘That’s…’ He sensed her strained smile. ‘I was going to say “normal”. It’s usually suggested by those who accept these things that spirits need to absorb energy in order to manifest. Hence cold spots in haunted houses. Hence, in extreme cases, possession.’

‘In the case of the mulo or muli,’ Lol said, ‘it seems to be… sexual energy. It’s sexually voracious. Sometimes it comes back to its old partner. In the old gypsy stories, it would come out of its grave and appear in its lover’s wagon and spend the night. The next day, the lover would be physically drained. And this would go on. And eventually the lover would die. Exhausted. A husk. Maybe become another mulo. Something like that. I don’t know. Al was losing it by then, and you were just coming off the phone.’

‘This is not going to be pleasant,’ Merrily murmured. ‘It’s going to be much worse than I could have imagined.’

‘When you asked Sally why Conrad Lake would have knocked down the house but kept the kiln – I mean, why would he? Especially if that was the place where he’d left Rebekah to die, where he’d burned her body. You’d think it would be the very first place he’d choose to demolish, wouldn’t you? Unless the kiln was the place where they used to meet…’

‘And would perhaps go on meeting?’ Merrily said.

‘Yes.’

‘And if he had to keep going back there. I mean had to. He said—’ Merrily coughed. ‘Boswell said Lake became old quickly and died quickly. He said he virtually drove his second wife and the child away – as if he wanted to be alone there. People were saying his mind was going.’

Lol heard Al talking. Exhausts him sexually, but it’s like a drug, until he doesn’t know what day it is. You know what I’m telling you, boy?

‘As if he had to be alone with her,’ Merrily said tonelessly, ‘and with what he’d done. Killed a gypsy, but he couldn’t kill the need. Kept her pictures in the kiln. A memorial. A shrine. And she was still there. In his head. A physical dependency.’

Lol glanced at her. She was holding the cigarette between finger and thumb, eyes focused on its smouldering tip.

‘But he wasn’t always alone there,’ he said. ‘According to Al, he’d pick up prostitutes in Hereford and Worcester and pay them to come back with him. I believe that. You can’t take women regularly in and out of the kiln without somebody noticing. But people would keep quiet – at least until such time as Conrad no longer had any money left to pay them.’

‘Still found money for the women, though?’

‘Because she needed them.’

‘Rebekah.’

‘Yes.’ Lol drove faster as he saw the lights of Hereford gathering ahead and then surrounding them. He wanted them to get there soon, wherever they were going. He didn’t want to talk about this any more. He didn’t want the theory expanding to take in Stephanie Stock and the scratches she’d made down her husband’s back – maybe Stephie and Rebekah between them. Stephie and Rebekah on the bed with the bine.

Stephie and Rebekah in the hop-yard, rustling and crackling with the cold electricity of the dead, and the keening in the wires.

Had Stewart Ash known this would happen when he left them the house? But why would he do that to his favourite niece? The answer, Lol supposed, was simple: Stewart was unaware of it. He was gay, so Rebekah’s muli could never have reached him. It had taken predatory males to destroy Stewart.

Lol drove into half-lit Hereford with its shutters up, its pubs long shut, a cruising police car waiting at the traffic lights.

He thought of Merrily finally in his arms, breath on breath, the warm confluence, then the passion turning cold as they became a foursome: Lol and Merrily and Stephanie and Rebekah.

The lights changed. He felt her hand on his arm.

39 Rich Girl With a Hobby

BIG, BLACK, METAL gates. Not decorative gates, but gates with bars more than an inch thick, and with spear-prongs on top. Gates designed to keep you out. White security lights pooling the turning circle in front of them.

The Renault was stopped outside them with its engine running and its headlights on full, and its horn was blasting, an unbelievable noise down here in the woods.

What was more unbelievable was that this was adults, in the old-fashioned sense: staid middle-aged people. It was kind of shocking. And, sooner or later, it was going to have to get a reaction.

It was cooler now, in the hours before dawn. Jane, in her old fleece jacket, was hunched down by some rhododendrons about ten yards behind the Renault. She’d got Eirion to drop her at the end of the drive and she’d walked down through the trees while he’d gone to find a place to park the BMW – so it would be ready for a fast getaway, he said; also so it wouldn’t be damaged in the event of—

—whatever happened.

Jane couldn’t blame Eirion for being cautious; he was in enough trouble, domestically. And anyway she wasn’t in any mood to blame him for anything tonight. Right now, stocky, solid Eirion was very OK; Jane still carried that warm glow, warmer than the fleece, and her body felt different, felt stronger; felt like a complete unit – though maybe the unit now was her and Eirion: an item, official. Yeah, OK, cool. It felt like the start of a journey. Scott Eagles and Sigourney Jones? Had it come to this?

‘STOP THAT NOW!’

This guy was inside the gates, on the edge of the area floodlit by the headlamps – big guy in a leather jacket and jeans.

The horn stopped, though Jane could still hear it in her head, so the silence was kind of shattering. Mr Shelbone got out and stood next to the Renault, staying behind the headlights, a long silhouette.

‘I want to speak to Allan Henry.’ His voice sounded harsh and fractured, the way cardboardy voices did when they were raised.

‘We’ve got an office,’ the guy in the leather jacket said. ‘You can phone in the morning and ask for an appointment like anyone else. Now go away.’

‘You tell Allan Henry I want to see him now. Tell him it’s Shelbone.’

‘Do you know what time it is?’

‘Tell him if he doesn’t come out, I shall stay here all night, blowing my horn.’

‘You won’t, you know. Because if you aren’t away from here in two minutes, I’m calling the police.’

‘And you are?’

‘The gardener. Don’t you even know it’s illegal to sound a car horn after dusk? Now get back in your car and get out of here, before I get annoyed.’

Oh yeah, he really looked like a gardener. The kind of gardener who planted people.

Mr Shelbone got back into his car, like he’d been told – and just leaned on the horn again. It filled the night like a wild siren. Jane felt a little scared. If this was a bunch of kids, like drunk or stoned, it wouldn’t mean a lot, but these were quiet, suburban, middle-aged, extremely Christian people, and they believed this man and his stepdaughter had somehow taken away their precious child.

And Jane was now inclined to believe this, too, though it didn’t make any proper sense. It was one thing for Layla Riddock to be very turned-on by the idea of real communication with the spirit of Amy’s murdered mother,