The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Jesus.’

Lol was fitting his car key into the door when a man said, ‘Lol Robinson?’ The night blared white, three times. He was blinded. He stumbled against the car. ‘Sorry about that, mate,’ the man said. ‘Thanks a lot. All the best.’

Cola said, ‘Does this mean we’re an item?’

Lol stared after the photographer, fifty yards away by now, walking fast. He thought he could rule out the Hereford Times.

It couldn’t even be mistaken identity; the guy had known his name.

In

They got into the Astra; he drove to the roundabout and then over Greyfriars Bridge, on to the Ross road.

Cola said, ‘I’m not even called Cola French, it’s just the name I write under. But if your name was Tracey Gilbert, how would you play it?’

‘You said you’d lied when you said you weren’t involved.’ Lol drove south from the city. Not too many suburbs this side; you were soon out of the street lights. ‘What did you mean?’

‘She’s pretty,’ Cola said, stepping over the question. ‘She’s not what I imagined.’

‘No. What did you mean? Not involved in what?’

‘All right. That copper, the Liverpool guy, he asked Piers what kind of people went to his parties. Like, what kind of people would do sex magic? Like he thought it was all black robes and manacles and blood sacrifice. Well, yeah, some of that. Though you don’t realize when you start. You think it’s just games. Risky games, but still games.’

‘And you were involved in that?’

‘It was like, how can you be a writer if you haven’t lived? At first. And then you think, do I really want to be that kind of writer? And that’s when you know it’s bad. I don’t mean bad, I mean evil. There’s a difference, isn’t there? I mean I’ve been bad lots of times, but I don’t think I’ve ever been evil. Because that’s a thing in itself, isn’t it? A commitment. No going back.’

‘So when did you get out?’

‘When I knew where it was coming from, of course. I mean… shit.’

‘Cromwell Street.’

‘I read about it. I went and got the books.’

‘From Piers?’

‘You’re joking.’ She was hunched up in the seat as though she was very cold. ‘See, he did a lot of stuff nobody could explain. He’d travelled a bit, been to sea, mixed with all kinds of weirdos. Picked up stuff he maybe didn’t understand.’

‘West?’ Lol put the heater on; sometimes it worked.

Yeah. He had all these weird ideas that were maybe just an excuse for kinky sex. There was all this stuff where he was trying to like mix his sperm with the sperm of these other guys who were giving it to Rose. I won’t go into details, but it was like he was planning to create some kind of super-race situation. Genetic experiments. Well, you don’t have to be a bloody biologist to know what kind of bollocks that is. I mean, it’s a joke, right? In the scientific sense. Where did he get it from? Where did he get those ideas?’

Lol said, ‘You mean it only makes sense at all from an occult viewpoint.’

‘Something like that.’

‘And Lynsey?’

‘Yeah,’ Cola said, ‘I think you could say something made a sick kind of sense to Lynsey.’

47 Requiem

MERRILY WAS SURE she heard this: ‘You were warned.’

From one of the men in the porch. Just like that. You were warned. Some urban lout with a degree in computer science introducing pseudo-gangland into rural village life. She didn’t recognize his face, couldn’t even see it properly, but she thought she recognized the voice from the phone, muffled under a handkerchief.

‘If one of you was the threatening caller,’ she said tiredly, ‘I took your advice. You said if we held the funeral on Friday I’d regret it. This is Wednesday.’

‘At night?’ Piers Connor-Crewe said. ‘You’re actually holding a clandestine funeral… at night?’

‘Hold on – threats?’ Fergus Young’s sharpened voice raised a silence. He turned to his companions. ‘What does she mean?’ He turned to Merrily. ‘We’d just concluded a meeting at the Village Hall with the MP – to discuss aspects of possible Government funding, when we saw lights in the church. Are you saying you’ve been physically threatened?’

As well as Connor-Crewe and Chris Cody, Merrily recognized the fat man from the Post Office and Stores, who had said, We ain’t rolling over for this one, no way. She didn’t know any of the others.

‘It was just the one call,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not making a thing about it.’

It does matter.’ Fergus’s long face hardened. He wore a dark suit and a tie tonight. ‘We don’t descend to that level. We’re not thugs. Does anybody here know who was responsible for that? Richard?’

‘Not me, Fergus,’ the Post Office man said. ‘But I know a lot of people were upset when Lodge got tied in with Fred West.’

Fergus, already taller than the rest of them, seemed to rise up further, his chin jutting. ‘Well, I would like very much to know who was prepared to risk tarnishing this community’s reputation. We are civilized people, we are educated people. We do not issue anonymous threats to members of the clergy or anyone else.’

Bizarre. It was the first time Merrily had seen him behaving like an old-fashioned headmaster. He treated the kids at school as equals, but seemed about to threaten these adults with mass detention unless the culprit confessed.

She was worried. If it emerged now that Melanie Pullman’s body had been found, the entire village would be up here within ten minutes. Melanie left to rot in the soil while her murderer lay here in state, the subject of a requiem eucharist, no less. How did that look?

Huw Owen met her gaze and looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he smiled, stepped to the doors and, just when she thought he was going to slam them in Fergus’s face, flung both of them open like the church was a bingo hall.

‘Gents. Huw Owen, my name. The Church, in its old-fashioned way, didn’t feel it were appropriate for a lady minister to conduct the funeral service for a murderer. Not on her own, in such a hostile community. I’m back-up.’

‘Look, I apologize,’ Fergus said tightly. ‘However, this remains a betrayal of our—’

‘Please!’ Huw lifted his hands. ‘Let me explain. All we’ve got here is a simple memorial service. Something the Diocese feels is essential to clear the atmosphere surrounding a chain of events going back… oh, quite a long way.’

He stepped back into the nave. Richard, from the shop, saw the coffin. ‘Bloody hell, he is here.’

Huw went to stand by the coffin and put a hand on it, almost affectionately. ‘First, I should tell you that, without wanting to appear to bow to any kind of pressure – particularly the kind of drunken behaviour we observed the other night – Mr Lodge here has now said he’d be quite happy for this lad to be consigned to the flames.’

Cherry Lodge looked up at her husband, as if afraid he was going either to deny it or change his mind. But Tony Lodge said nothing.

Fergus looked at both the Lodges and smiled stiffly. ‘We all know Underhowle’s emerging from half a century