The Lamp of the Wicked

stark old place with the Dr Phibes harmonium – she bloody loved that. Used to pinch her old man’s keys and go in with her mates at night, playing.’

Merrily said, ‘Presumably, you don’t mean the harmonium.’ Bliss did his acid smile. ‘I think the games got more adventurous the older she became. And then one day – the sister’s not sure what happened, it being a serious scandal at the time and a great embarrassment for the family – one day traces of these activities were found by the cleaner. As a result of which, Mr Davies lost his position as part-time caretaker. And he was not a happy man. And he held Lynsey responsible.’

Mumford wasn’t sure what Mr Davies did to Lynsey, but there was certainly a long period of fear and loathing in that household, Bliss said. The sister had told Mumford they didn’t see much of Lynsey once she got into her middle teens. But there was a teacher who thought she was an intelligent girl with prospects and suggested she’d be better away from home, persuading the parents to let her go to this commercial college in Gloucester – possibly even arranging a grant.

Either way, Mr Davies was probably glad to see her go,’ Bliss said. ‘And I think some of us know the rest. So there you have it: an intelligent girl raised in a strict household starts to rebel against it from quite a tender age. Though tender’s not the word for Lynsey, is it? The suspension for bullying, the hints of early sexual adventures… all hinting at the bad things to come.’

‘And the use of religious premises in a sexual context?’ Merrily said.

‘Dead right. And we’re all looking at you, Mr Crewe. ’Cause of all the people here, we’re thinking, nobody knew Lynsey as well as Mr Crewe.’

Connor-Crewe didn’t look back at him. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

‘You said you didn’t know about Lynsey being at Cromwell Street. I wonder if that’s true.’

‘If you want to accuse me of anything—’

Huw Owen said, ‘As Francis has raised the issue of Cromwell Street, I think we can all agree that his original theory of Lodge as a West obsessive has been turned on its head. It was Lynsey who was obsessed.’

Bliss shrugged.

‘Thank you, lad.’ Huw went to stand at the lectern. ‘Nobody likes to think of anybody, especially a woman, becoming so corrupted inside as to find inspiration and energy in a situation as foul as that. But we have to face it. Just as we had to face the fact that the number of lives destroyed by twenty years of carnage in Cromwell Street far exceeded the number of lives lost. Which itself may be a lot bigger than the list read out at the trial of Rosemary West.’

‘I’m sorry…’ Fergus Young looked like a man who’d been containing himself for as long as he reasonably could. ‘I don’t see the relevance of this. It’s frankly obscene. There’s no proven link between Underhowle and anything connected with West, and I really don’t think we should manufacture one. Lodge and Davies are both dead… gone… finished.’

‘No, lad. Nowt’s finished. If you don’t see the living darkness at the heart of this—’

‘Living darkness!’ Fergus stood up, his hair springing. ‘That is such nonsense! That’s defamatory nonsense.’

Huw held tight to the wings of the brass eagle. ‘See, I don’t usually talk like this to lay folk. It doesn’t help. But I’m looking at a woman who was drawing energy from a black hole, a place from which all kindness, tenderness, pity and moral awareness had been sucked out. Drawing energy from that. Can you understand?’

Merrily said softly, ‘I think we should look at what she was creating. With Melanie out of the way, she’d begun to reorganize Roddy’s life. Perhaps starting with something fairly innocent like setting up his sitting room as Roddy’s Bar – like the one at Cromwell Street. And then redecorating his bedroom.’

Cherry Lodge whispered, ‘Yes.’

‘There were two bedrooms in that bungalow – the one Roddy set up for himself, which was a bit old- fashioned. And the one I think Lynsey created for him, with black sheets and eroticized pictures of beautiful women who also happened to be dead. Reflecting the connection he was perhaps already making between sex and death, but… brutalizing it, I suppose. Like she was trying to turn him into… somebody else.’

Fergus said, ‘Somebody else?’

‘Work it out, lad,’ Huw Owen told him.

‘It’s preposterous!’

‘She also revamped his social calendar,’ Merrily said. ‘Poor Jerome Banks thinks he was the one who encouraged Roddy to go out and find some real girls. In fact, Lynsey was building up his confidence… and also turning him into a predator. Like people train hawks.’

She looked up at the sound of Piers Connor-Crewe edging out of his pew, making for the door. ‘I’ve heard enough.’

Bliss stood in his path. ‘I don’t think so, Piers.’

‘Are you actually attempting to detain me?’

I have some questions.’

‘Up your arse with them, inspector. I’ve had quite enough of you for one day.’

‘It’s just that I’ve been wondering: if Lynsey – or somebody else, other than Lodge – killed Melanie Pullman, who buried her? I’ve just recalled you saying this morning that Roddy lent you his digger, to put in some trenches near the chapel. Only, I was watching my good friend Mr Parry today. You could take a digger – as I presume Roddy often did – from his garage to this churchyard, along the path through the fields, in… what? Ten minutes? Bit longer at night?’

‘You’re insane.’

‘It’s just a thought, Piers. Neither you nor Lynsey would want Melanie buried near the Baptist chapel, if there was ever any chance of a real archaeological dig. Nowhere safer for a body than a graveyard. And who’d be next in there – Tony Lodge? Well, not in the near future, we all trust and hope. And anyway, as soon as they saw bone down there, it’d be, whoops… that’s another one slid down the hill, better move on a couple of yards.’

‘Unless they found this.’ Merrily held up the angel. ‘Bit of a give away. Was to us, anyway.’

The angel shone with a coppery light, brighter somehow than the lighting globes.

‘Yeh, that’s odd,’ Bliss said. ‘I can’t explain why they didn’t take that off her, dispose of it.’

A discreet cough from Gomer. ‘Likely di’n’t see him, ennit? If her weared him under her clothes, next to the skin, like, mabbe he wouldn’t be visible. At night, if they was in a hurry. But then the clothes starts to rot… up he comes.’

Thank you, Gomer.

He knew as well as she did that it couldn’t have happened like that, because the fabric of the clothes had not rotted. The angel shone from Merrily’s hand and burned with a soft heat. A witness. Perhaps it had found its own way to the surface.

‘What do you think, Piers?’ Bliss asked.

‘What should I think? I have no proof you’ve found anything at all.’

Bliss said steadily, ‘You planted her, pal. Let’s start with that, see where it gets us.’

‘You dare to accuse me of that – in front of all these witnesses?’

‘I’m feeling lucky.’ Bliss opened the door into the porch. ‘Go on, if you want. You go home and have a couple of glasses of your favourite fifteen-year-old malt and a good night’s sleep. Or maybe you’d prefer to lie awake all night and think about it, work out your story.’

Bliss was winging it, Merrily thought. He wouldn’t even have seen what was in the grave.

‘Or perhaps, if you want to be less public about it, you could drop in at police Headquarters tomorrow.’ Bliss held open the door and froze. He took a cautious step back, then relaxed, smiling thinly. ‘Ah, Mr Laurence Robinson, as I live and breathe.’

Merrily almost ran down the aisle. Lol stood in the doorway, smiled bashfully at her, the way he always did when she was in uniform. But the slanting alien eyes were watching sardonically from the region of his chest. Merrily stopped.

‘If you’ve come to collect the little woman, she may be a while yet.’ Bliss let Lol in and closed the door.

‘Who the hell’s this?’ Connor-Crewe was looking limp with unease now.

Lol said nothing. He went to stand with Gomer in a shadowed spot under a stone plaque commemorating