The Lamp of the Wicked

‘No. Not then. I didn’t know what I was seeing.’

‘Are you scared now?’

‘A bit. When we found her dead, it was… it was like somebody had played this awful trick on me. But afterwards… I mean it’s awesome, isn’t it? It’s bloody awesome, Mum. The implications, you know? Awesome.’

‘Yes. It is, sometimes.’

‘And I’m sorry, Mum,’ Jane said. ‘I’m really so sorry.’

It was after nine when Frannie Bliss arrived. Jane had gone to ‘bed. Merrily had fallen asleep on the sofa. She staggered to the door and brought him back into the lounge.

‘You look terrible,’ she said.

‘And you look all sleepy and sexy. And I didn’t say that. I’m a married man, just.’

‘Have you even seen Kirsty today?’

‘Nope.’

‘Do you have a job?’

‘Bloody right.’

‘Do you want coffee?’

‘I don’t think I will.’

‘Heavens,’ Merrily said, ‘have we entered a parallel universe?’

The fire had burned low. Bliss sat down on the sofa. ‘I’ve nicked Fergus.’

‘You sure of him?’

‘No. But, by God, I’ll try. I want this man so bad I can’t breathe when I think about it.’

‘Handle him carefully.’

‘Merrily, I’ll handle him like with those little plastic tongs they give you to shovel a scone onto your plate in these self- service joints. I, er… Lol… Lol did well.’

‘Six numbers and an encore.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yes, he did.’ Merrily shovelled a little coal onto the fire and poked it until a few small flames appeared. ‘I think he was probably the only person who, from the very beginning, had a strong feeling that Roddy Lodge was innocent. And he didn’t let it go. It was… a new Lol.’

‘Lot of changes.’ Bliss looked very tired. ‘Lots still to understand. Lots we never will. Listen.’ He moved to the edge of the sofa. ‘Couple of things. You were in from the beginning, so I’m telling you. One… Melanie Pullman. Missing bones.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Two toes and an ankle bone from the left foot.’

‘They’re definitely not… ?’

We went down another metre. Nothing.’

‘So what’s it tell you?’

‘I don’t know, Merrily. I don’t know what it tells us. The other thing is this.’ He brought a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket. ‘It’s a photocopy – one of the photocopies I showed you before. Neither of us noticed this, but then why should we?’

Merrily unfolded the paper and held it close to the flames.

INSIDE THE HOUSE OF HORROR

EXCLUSIVE

Former tenants talk for the first time about real life in

Twenty-Five Cromwell Street.

By GARETH BOX

‘Christ,’ she said.

Frannie leaned back in his chair. ‘Box started his career in the Gloucester office of the Three Counties News Agency.’

‘Yeah, I know Three Counties.’

‘They don’t pay much, but it’s good experience for a young reporter. You get to see your stories in the big papers – usually under somebody else’s byline, but it’s a start. Also the big papers get to know you. You can make an impression.’

‘But he wasn’t at the news agency when he wrote this, was he?’

‘No, he was in London by then, working on a national, but in quite a lowly position. But then the West story breaks, and he gets them to send him back to his old hunting ground. And he comes up with some heavy dirt. He knew exactly who’d been in Cromwell Street when all the murders were happening, all the torturing in the cellars. He knew exactly who to go to for the inside stuff. His paper was very pleased with him. Never looked back. Within a year he’s an assistant editor in features and writing Jenny Box’s column, and the rest is… as they say.’

‘But you think the real history…’

‘Young reporter in Gloucester in the late seventies, finding ‘his way, earning peanuts. In need of some cheap accommodation. Merrily, there is so much… so much gossip about that place, and he may not have been the only young journalist to have spent some time there. There are – as I’m sure you’ve heard – even suggestions that some lads who dropped in for an occasional leg-over had to take off their dark blue trousers first. But Box – yeh, we’re pretty sure about him.’

‘Oh God, Frannie.’ Merrily was wide awake. ‘He was also a director of Efflapure.’

‘Yeh, and Lynsey Davies knew somebody at Efflapure and was thus able to bend somebody’s arm to put the area contract Roddy’s way.’ He did his acid smile. ‘The Old Cromwellians, eh?’

‘And he liked young girls.’

Bliss nodded.

‘You knew all about that?’

‘Mrs Box didn’t leave a note, and it’s always nice to know why they do these things, isn’t it? The general feeling is that he only married her because… well, because she was famous and earning more than him, but also because she still had the look of a teenager who’d been given bad drugs and then beaten up.’

‘Yes.’

‘By mid-morning, Annie Howe even had the names of four of Box’s ex-girlfriends, all with bad memories. And a fifth, who’d… disappeared some time ago.’

Merrily poked mindlessly at the fire.

A deep-embedded evil.

She looked up. ‘You think he killed? You really think Box killed?’

‘One thing you learned at Cromwell Street,’ Frannie Bliss said, ‘was how easy it could be.’

‘And he knew Lynsey…’

‘And you’re thinking about Donna Furlowe.’

She nodded and wondered how much Jenny Box had known, and what else Jumbo Humphries had been able to tell her. The enormous, holistic connections her mystical mind must have made as she waited for Gareth Box, with the iron cross held high.

‘Don’t you sometimes feel,’ Frannie said, ‘when these horrible little coincidences occur, that there’s a wider plan, and it isn’t always constructed by somebody with our best interests at heart?’

‘I don’t get paid to feel that,’ Merrily said uncomfortably.

That night, she prayed by the landing window overlooking the square. She didn’t see a woman out there with a white scarf over her head.

But she found she still had Melanie’s angel, and she slept with it under her pillow.

CLOSING CREDITS

NOBODY WHO HAS studied the Cromwell Street case believes it was satisfactorily resolved or even, in the