The Lamp of the Wicked

take it, because I’m sure you’ve seen dead people before—’

‘No!’

‘Just…’ She had her hands on Jane’s shoulders. ‘I don’t think we should touch anything.’

Jane looked back at the closed front door and pulled away from Moira, ran to another door, flung it open, saw the cold green tint on leaded glass – the room she’d been in with Gareth. Light from the hall showed that the fireplace was dead. She backed out, went to the foot of the oak stairs and shouted up, ‘Jenny!’

Leave it,’ Moira hissed. ‘For Christ’s sake, she’s beaten the guy’s head in with a bloody great iron cross and there’s blood over three walls. Now will you just open that front door and get the—’

‘Jenny…’ Jane ran up the stairs. ‘Jenny!’

Huw stood in front of his tea-chest altar, with the chalice on it and the saucer of wafers, and addressed the five of them: Ingrid, Sam, Fergus, Lol, Merrily.

‘We’re asking God to cleanse this place of evil.’ Over his head, a pale bulb burned coldly on a black flex. ‘I want us all to be quite sure what we’re about.’

Merrily said, ‘I honestly don’t see how we can be sure.’

‘Aye.’ Huw looked down at his shoes. ‘All right, I’ve an axe to grind. As Merrily knows, a woman who became a very close friend of mine lost a daughter, it were thought, to Frederick West. Donna Furlowe – found not in the garden or the cellar at Cromwell Street or under Fingerpost field or Letterbox field, but in the Forest of Dean. Was it West? Or an imitator? Or was it a person or persons who believed they had… let him in?’

Merrily saw that they’d instinctively formed a semicircle around Huw – at one end Lol, looking a little shivery in his alien sweatshirt, and pensive; at the other the lanky, dark-suited Fergus Young.

‘Look…’ Huw pushed out his hands. ‘I don’t know who killed Donna. Could very well’ve been Lynsey Davies, and one day somebody might find the finger bones that were taken away from her, and they might find them here, and then we’ll know. But until then, all we know is the source. And the source is the evil that was nurtured in West and in Rosemary West. I’m inclined to say that that were a demonic evil and may eventually have to be dealt with as such.’

‘But not yet,’ Merrily said. ‘Not until we know.’

Huw said nothing.

‘Let’s be sure about this, Huw. You’re saying that the malign, earthbound essence of West, with his beloved 25 Cromwell

Street removed from the face of the earth, was… invoked here.’ Ingrid broke the semicircle to approach Huw. ‘Can I say something?’

‘Aye, lass, let’s have a debate. We’ve got all night.’

‘Mr Owen, I told you that the people who ran the bottling plant were evasive on the phone last night about the name of the contractor. It was worrying me, so I rang them back this afternoon. Last night I spoke to the man, today I got the woman – and a rather different story. She implied that the contractor was, in fact, a relative, who did the job for cash in hand, and that was why—’

‘Did you believe her?’

‘I saw no reason not to.’

‘I can see every reason. Sergeant Mumford’d certainly heard the rumour about West working here.’

‘Huw,’ Merrily said, ‘you’ve just heard how another rumour was spread. For God’s sake, it could be apocryphal! Maybe he was never here. This psychotic woman… for all we know, she might never even have been at Cromwell Street. So many people here have just lied and lied.’

A moment’s silence.

Huw shrugged. ‘All right. How would you play it, lass?’

Merrily shook her head. It was one of those situations when this game of Deliverance, the whole of religion, seemed too full of holes and traps to be worth the candle. She looked at Huw – tired-eyed and robbed of redemption.

And then Fergus Young said, ‘Do I understand that, in the absence of a person to exorcize of this… evil, your options are limited?’

‘One way of looking at it,’ Huw said.

Fergus moved out and stood in front of the altar and took off his jacket. He was wearing a white shirt.

‘I think you’d better exorcize me, then.’ He looked at Lol. ‘I suppose he knows why.’

50 Fuse Your Dreams

‘DON’T YOU?’ The tall guy challenging Lol.

It was like being pushed out on stage all over again, except that the lighting was a little more primitive and, although everybody was staring at him, it was clear that nobody was expecting to be entertained.

Lol had been waiting for this. He could perhaps have made it happen earlier, but it had been a long night, and he’d been hoping it might have been taken out of his hands. Perhaps it had: this Fergus Young had authority. Lol had never seen him before tonight, but he recognized the aura and it had often, in his past, been around men in suits followed by lesser men in white coats. It was the aura of pseudo-sanctity.

‘It is Tracey you’ve been speaking to, I assume,’ Young said, seeking absolute confirmation.

‘Tracey?’ Lol said.

‘And she’s saying I was there.’

‘Weren’t you?’

‘She was very mixed up, that girl.’

‘I think scared to death might describe it better,’ Lol said.

I realize, Cola had said, in the car on the road to Ross, that there’s no way of concealing that it was me who told you all this, but just make sure it isn’t for nothing. You know what I mean.

So Lol was relieved that Fergus Young had raised the issue before he himself was forced into it. Like being pushed out onto the stage. Now he had to follow through.

Three of them, Cola had said. Lynsey developed this bond between these three, which was all to do with Ariconium, which had become a kind of dream place. Like Utopia. Atlantis. It was very strong. It gave them focus. ‘Fuse your dreams,’ she was saying. ‘Fuse them inside me!’

‘Ariconium,’ Lol said. ‘It became an excuse for everything you did.’

Sam Hall was shaking his head. ‘How could it be anything good, built inside lines of pylons, this cage of steel shot through with beams and rays?’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Sam,’ Fergus snapped, ‘do you never get beyond that drivel? Look, I want to say I’d have gone with the police – with Piers and Chris. But I guess they thought there was a chance of keeping me out of it. As the one who must be seen to have integrity. The figurehead. If I could survive this, I suppose there was a chance of pulling it together – the e-schools, the book I was writing and that Piers would publish, Ariconium… everything.’

Lol looked at Merrily: small and wide-eyed, the old duffel coat hanging open over the alb with the muddied hem. She clearly hadn’t been expecting this, but he thought the older woman seemed less shocked.

In a way, it all began with Fergus, Cola had said. He was in a sad state. It was his first school as headmaster and they were gonna close it down, and he reckoned he wasn’t well in enough to get another school, and his wife was into the status, you know? Oh, he was a real loser, Fergus, the night he showed up on Piers’s doorstep – the way people did, the way Piers encouraged them to: your bookseller’s your counsellor, shrink, priest, all rolled into one. What an ego. And Fergus would come up some nights, to get away from his wife, and drink too much. And this particular night we were there, Lynsey and me, all of us at a bit of a loose end, and Lynsey suddenly springs up, with her eyes all glittering,