The Lamp of the Wicked

dragged it all the way along the bloody cobbles, from the vicarage, on my own.” ’

‘So where is it now?’

‘Probably in his safe at home. I somehow can’t see him surrendering eighty grand to the police for safe keeping. He’ll give them the minimum legal leeway, just to make sure it doesn’t match up with some robbery.’

‘And assuming it doesn’t?’

Merrily shrugged. ‘Goes into the parish coffers. End of story, everybody happy. We just don’t spend any for a while, to be on the safe side.’

‘It’s a lot of money, Mum,’ Jane said soberly. ‘Take a whole canteen of collection plates to accommodate that lot.’

‘Mmm.’ Merrily was remembering a row she’d had with Uncle Ted when she’d decided to abolish the time- honoured practice of sending round collection plates during the final hymn. Let’s not make an exhibition of it, Ted. They can put something in the box on the way out. Ted had insisted this wouldn’t work; people never shelled out unless they were publicly shamed into it. It even emerged that the old bugger had sometimes taken twenty-pound notes from parish funds, placing one on each plate prior to its circulation, setting an example.

‘And Jenny Driscoll didn’t come close to admitting it was her?’ Jane said.

‘Maybe I didn’t push her hard enough, but… I suppose it’s actually quite a considerate thing to do. If it had been a cheque with her name on it, we’d both have felt uncomfortable. Like she owned the place or… me.’

‘Yeah, but secretly you know it’s her. And she knows you know. And nobody else does – just you and her. That makes it altogether more subtle, don’t you think?’

‘Too subtle for me, flower.’

For a few moments neither of them spoke. The only sound was Ethel the cat at her bowl, crunching dried food.

‘You know your problem, don’t you?’ Jane was carefully inspecting her nails. ‘You’re becoming unworldly.’

reared up. ‘Me?’

Merrily

‘Obvious side effect of Deliverance.’ Jane put her hand down and met Merrily’s stare across the table. ‘Like, in the job, if you’re exorcizing some house or something, it has to be that it’s not you doing it, it’s God. You’re just the vehicle. If in doubt, butt out. God will find a way.’

‘No.’

‘Think about it,’ Jane said. ‘She’s targeted you. All that bollocks about seeing an angel over your church. And then she bungs you eighty grand. She wants something. You’re in the cross-hairs, vicar.’

Merrily took in the kid’s serious face, the hair – darker now – pushed back behind her ears. A face she hadn’t seen before? She felt a stirring of panic, very glad now that there were some aspects of that unnerving couple of hours in the incense air below Chapel House that she hadn’t told Jane about.

She finally flared a little. ‘Somehow, I just can’t help being a little surprised at hearing the rational, not to say cynical argument from someone who used to stand on the lawn on nights of the full moon and solemnly utter ritual incantations.’

‘I was a kid then!’

‘It was last year!’

‘Look…’ Jane planted both palms flat on the table, leaning across. ‘Doesn’t this worry you in the slightest? She might look like a wilting snowdrop, but what you have here is an ex-TV person, a top businesswoman with shops all over the place who’s probably never been known to do anything that wasn’t for publicity…’

‘The money’s for the church, not me.’

‘Your church.’

‘What – you think I should take it back?’

Jane shook her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know. But I should be really, really careful, if I were you.’

Merrily said nothing. She was hearing Jenny Box from the square, the other night. It isn’t over, you see… those things aren’t over… those things have hardly begun. No, she didn’t know what that meant either.

‘Because, if you think God’s going to see you right, protect you from whatever devious shit—’

‘Jane—’

‘Like he protected Gomer. Like he protected Nev.’

Merrily closed her eyes. Not tonight, please. ‘All right.’ She breathed in and out slowly. ‘All right, I didn’t do very well, did I? There were things I should have asked her that I didn’t. Maybe I had a lot on my mind, with this… police thing. Which is probably all over now, anyway.’

‘All over? Not for Gomer it isn’t! Not for Lol either, who probably wouldn’t have got involved at all if you —’

‘What?’

Jane shrugged sulkily. ‘Just something else you’re letting slip away, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ This is not going to become a row. ‘I’ve tried to ring him several times.’

‘Maybe you’ve got more problems than you know, Reverend. Maybe Uncle Ted’s actually right—’

‘I do not—’

‘—when he says Deliverance is taking over your life. And he doesn’t even know what it’s done to your basic common sense.’

Merrily’s lips tightened. Bloody teenagers. What a great shame it was that there wasn’t some kind of hormone-reduction therapy.

‘So how did you leave it with the Driscoll woman?’ Jane said. ‘Like, thanks for the cakes and see you in church?’

‘She…’ Merrily stared into her cooling tea. ‘She asked me to do something for her. She wanted me to formally reconsecrate her private chapel. In the cellar.’

Jane’s smile was three parts sneer. ‘And?’

‘No consecrations. But a blessing, yes. Probably.’

The kid’s exhaled breath was like a slow puncture. The kitchen seemed bigger and felt colder.

‘Well, what was I supposed to say, Jane? It’s what I do!’

And of course what you do is of major spiritual, like cosmic significance. Even though it’s all f— fantasy. Whereas, us down here… I bet… I bet you don’t even know about Lol’s first gig in twenty years.’

‘Lol?’ Merrily whispered. ‘Gig?’

The rain fell steadily on the field at the back of the bungalow. Lol held the rubber-covered lambing lamp over a spot just off- centre, lighting up a circle of green and yellow. He could hardly flex his fingers any more. He thought that if he were to lie down now in the cold, wet grass, he’d probably be asleep within a few seconds.

‘Yere.’ Gomer bent down, pushing his fingers through the grass. ‘Just about yere. Sure t’be.’

Where Gomer’s hands were, you could see the soil level was lower, the grass a slightly different shade. Before locating this spot, Gomer had spent no more than twenty minutes scouring the site as if he was dowsing for water – sometimes pulling back bushes and brambles, getting Lol to shift piles of building rubble.

A circle of police was forming around them, as Gomer came triumphantly to his feet alongside Lol and the lamp.

‘’Bout last spring, I reckon, this was dug up. No later’n that. Try it, anyway, I would. You’ll know soon enough.’

Bliss was sauntering up, looking less than impressed, when a howl of outrage exploded over the heads of the circle of cops.

‘You don’t wanner take no notice of that ole fuck! He’s well past it, he is! He don’t know what