The Lamp of the Wicked

Eirion didn’t sound sorry. He sounded disappointed, somehow.

A crowd had gathered, the way crowds did. Suddenly it was just there.

Lol didn’t know how many people lived around Underhowle, but at least seventy of them had to be here now. The ones who hadn’t broken through the police tape must have come across the fields on the other side of the pylon, by the edge of the woods fringing Howle Hill. Perhaps forty people were standing within twenty feet of the tower, like they’d bought tickets. Not enough police here to move them on – like the police didn’t have enough to think about.

Frannie Bliss was pacing around the base of the pylon, conspicuously uneasy now. Lol could make out people crouching ‘with their camcorders. Bliss stood back, hands cupped around his mouth. A sudden white light shone all around him – someone had brought along one of those long-distance spotlamps.

‘Roddy. Can you hear me, son? This is DI Bliss. Frannie Bliss.’

Roddy Lodge had pulled himself back on to the metal arm; he was braced against the tower’s skeletal spine. Clouds had dropped away from the wafery moon, and the girders gleamed white like bone.

‘Roddy, can you hear me?’

On the ground, Bliss was competing against the spectator buzz, but the voice from the pylon burst sharply in the air.

‘NO!’

Like a hole punched in a paper bag, making its own hush.

‘DON’T WANNER TALK TO NO MORE COPPERS!’

‘Roddy…’ Bliss bent backwards. ‘Let’s be sensible. You’re about six feet from enough juice to light up half the county. Just let yourself come down, and take it very carefully. You got nowhere else to go. You know that, son.’

‘THAT’S WHAT…’ A surprise blast of wind. Gasps from the crowd as Lodge clutched at a steel diagonal, caught it and clung to it. ‘THAT’S WHAT YOU RECKONS, IS IT, MR COPPER?’

‘It’s very dangerous, Roddy, that’s all I’m saying. There’s massive voltage up there, you know that.’

Silence.

‘Roddy, if you—’

‘NOT TO ME. EN’T NO DANGER TO ME, COPPER. I’M ELECTRIC ALREADY, LOOK!’

Frannie Bliss stared at the churned ground. Lol could feel him groping for viable words. High above him, washed by swirling lights, Roddy Lodge was glowing red like a pantomime demon – Lol willing him to give it up, come down from there, don’t raise the stakes.

Roddy suddenly reeled back, one arm locked around the cross bar, the other thrown across his face. His feet seemed to skate on the metal.

The light,’ Sam Hall said. ‘Light’s affecting him. Plus the shit coming off of the power lines. He’s gonna be disoriented by now. His balance’ll go completely, can’t they see that?’ Angrily, he strode down the field towards Bliss. Two uniformed police came out of the dark from two sides, restraining him. Sam turned on one of them. ‘Not me, you asshole! Get across there and tell some of those stupid bastards to switch off their lights if they don’t want to kill him. Jesus!’

‘Why’n’t you jump?’ A sudden, strident male voice in the crowd. ‘Why’n’t you take a bloody running jump, Lodge?’

They do want to kill him, Lol thought, sickened. He was sweating and trembling with the cold but, at the same time, he was glad he was this side of the pylon, away from that crowd. It was an audience. Audiences wanted it all. He felt hollow inside, and his head was throbbing with fear for the man on the pylon, the performer in the spotlights. You reappear on stage now, Moira said softly in his ear, it’s gonnae be like, ‘Hey, is that no’ the big sex-offender?’ When he turned away, teeth clenched, he could still see the shining red figure projected like a hologram, vibrating in charged air.

‘Why’n’t you go for a swing on the high wire, Roddy?’ The same man’s voice. ‘Save the tax-payers havin’ to keep you the rest of your bloody useless life!’

A fragment of silence.

‘Shaddup!’ a woman shrieked. ‘You en’t lived here two minutes, it’s no damn business of yours!’

Bliss was tramping back up the field. ‘This is useless. How am I supposed to try and talk him down with these fuckin’ hayseeds—? Andy! Where’s…? Right. Listen. Get half a dozen uniforms, go across and get the lot of them out of there. It’s gorra be private land. Tell them they’re trespassing, they’re obstructing the police, whatever you want. But the first one objects, you nick him!’

He tore past Lol, making for the cars.

Sam Hall was back, brushing himself down, straightening his denim jacket. ‘This is not good.’

‘No.’

‘He looks down, all he sees now is row upon row of blinding lights. His head’s gonna be close to exploding.’

The lamps aimed up into the pylon made a white gauze in the rain mist. Lol sensed an ambivalence in the crowd. He’s a murderer. He’s murdered one of our own. At least one. Yet Lodge himself was one of their own.

The lights went in and out of focus. Lol looked down.

He saw a tiny red glow tracking across the field.

‘Lodge!’

The beams from the crowd swung down again, like they were voice-activated, and found – Oh God – found Gomer Parry, standing where Bliss had stood, his cap off, his white hair on end in the wind, like a hearth brush, a fresh roll-up in his teeth.

‘Lodge… Gomer Parry Plant Hire! You yearin’ me?

‘Gomer!’ Bliss went lurching back. ‘No!’

‘Where was it you set that fire, boy? Where’d you go? Where was it you went Monday night?’

‘YOU KNOOOOOOOOW!’ A roar of pain.

Gomer snatched out his ciggy. ‘Say it, boy! Say it again. Where’d you go exac’ly that night? Tell these folks.’

Silence. Beams intersecting like aircraft-spotting searchlights. Gomer waited, rocking back on his heels in the mud.

‘I DONE IT!’

Gomer bounced. ‘What? Where?’

‘I BURNED HIM! I… F – FRIED HIM.’ A shrill giggle, tremolo yelps. ‘I FRIED THE FUCKING BASTARD IN HIS OWN FAT!’

Bliss had hold of Gomer, was dragging him away. ‘Christ’s sake, what you trying to—?’

‘YOU KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!’

‘Tryin’ to get at the bloody truth.’ Gomer pulled away. ‘Which is more’n you done. And I’m tellin’ you, boy, it en’t—’

‘I… DONE…’ Roddy Lodge was shambling slowly along the down-sloping arm of the pylon, arms outstretched like a tightrope artist, a man on a high diving board. Not too far above him now hung one of the insulators from the second tier, its power- hugging glass discs gleaming cold green. Candle of death. ‘I DONE ’EM ALL!’

Bliss’s head went back. His fists were clenched tight. Gomer just stood there and stared down at the ground. Both of them in shadow, all the lights trained on the pylon. Roddy stopped. Even from where Lol stood he could see Lodge was grinning.

‘I DONE…’ He shuffled, swayed. ‘I DONE ALL THEM WOMEN! I DONE LYNSEY! I DONE… I DONE MEL! YOU YEARIN’ ME? I DONE ’EM ALL! I DONE THAT WELSH GIRL! I DONE… I DONE MORE’N YOU KNOWS. ’CAUSE…’

Bliss stood there, ramming his fists into the sides of his thighs. Roddy reached up like he was trying to clasp the wind and the night.

‘’CAUSE I’M THE DEVIL! I’M SATAN! I’M THE BIGGEST FUCKIN’ SERIAL KILLER EVER LIVED!