The Lamp of the Wicked

whatever document you like, he said, and I’ll sign it. He said this wasn’t about money.’

‘Laurence, everything, at some stage, is about money. However, this is your funeral.’ Prof turned away, shaking his head, and mooched off towards the kitchen and his cappuccino machine. ‘Make it a noisy one.’

When he’d gone, Moira Cairns leaned back against the outside wall of the recording booth. She wore very tight jeans and a black top, her hair loosely tied behind with a crimson ribbon.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what is the great world issue this guy feels so strongly about?’

‘Electricity,’ Lol said. ‘Pylons, dangers of.’

‘Ah. So this would be a person you met at the, ah, execution.’ Moira came to sit on the amp opposite. ‘Tell me about it. Where’s the guy coming from exactly?’

‘Strong aura of old hippy,’ Lol said. ‘He’s very proud that some elements in the US government and the power companies were glad to get him off their backs. He talks about extensive scientific research linking overhead power lines with everything from brain tumours to leukaemia clusters – research that is constantly ignored.’

‘There’ll be background. There always is.’

Lol told her that Sam Hall appeared to live in a remote cabin on Howle Hill, generating his own electricity with a windmill while putting pressure on the power companies if not exactly to accept responsibility for all the health damage then at least to run more cables underground in rural areas.

‘He says he’s a crank and a loony and proud of it, and he admits to propositioning anyone he thinks might be able to publicize the cause. He says that seeing Lodge dying up there traumatized him into action – again. I mean, if he was asking Bruce Springsteen or Sting to write a song about it…’

Moira put her head on one side. ‘Perhaps he doesnae know Sting and Springsteen. Listen, loony or not, I wouldnae quarrel with the sentiments – I hate those things. There has to be a better way.’

‘Going round with Gomer, I got to see the whole valley. On environmental grounds alone, I’d like to help. Assuming he’s on the level. I mean, we don’t get to do much for anybody, do we, in this business? Not like some people.’

‘Not like your wee friend the Reverend, huh?’ Moira smiled. Lol stared at her in dismay. People always said she was psychic; they didn’t say she had the ability to uncover the hidden motives you hadn’t even admitted to yourself.

‘It’s so charming, the way you blush,’ Moira said. ‘So few guys today can still do that. Laurence, it’s perfectly fine for you to wannae be involved with the stuff in her life. Like I said the other night, a guy who understands the nature of madness…’

He let out a shallow, baffled sigh. ‘There was something else. It was when I was standing there watching this man climbing up towards… eternity. Knowing how it was going to end. And getting a strong feeling of people wanting it to happen.’

‘What, like the audience at the Colosseum or somewhere, willing the emperor to give the thumbs-down to the gladiator who came second?’

‘I don’t know. It was like there was something there to be… understood.’

‘What did you arrange with this guy?’

‘He said come and see him sometime. “Bring your lady,” he said.’

‘Will she go with you?’

‘I… can’t see her having time.’

‘Tell you what.’ Moira stood up. ‘Suppose I were to tag along, check out this guy. I can be quite intuitive, you know? That wouldnae bother you, if I came along?’

‘No, that would be—’

‘Call him, then.’

‘I can’t call him. He doesn’t have a phone. You leave a message for him at the village hall, and he calls you back. There are lots of things he doesn’t have.’

‘Interesting,’ Moira said.

23 Nothing But the Night

‘THE WIFE,’ Bliss said, ‘Kirsty…’ Shovelling a third sugar into his coffee, letting the spoon clang on the tabletop. ‘Aw, it’s dead difficult, Merrily, this personal shite.’

The first thing she’d noticed was that he hadn’t shaved. This wasn’t Frannie. Frannie was dapper, Frannie was tidy.

He drank some of the coffee, made a face.

‘I mean, I’ve gorra say I never really wanted a wife. In some ways it was that simple.’

Merrily rolled her eyes.

‘The police… It’s like you either go at it firing on all four cylinders, day and night, or it’s just a… just a job. Me, I never wanted just work. I’m like you, it had to be a vocation, a calling – and there was never gonna be a wife, not till I was pushing forty anyway, and I certainly never wanted kids.’ There were tears in his eyes now. ‘Needy little twats.’

‘Have you had anything proper to eat, Frannie?’ Merrily asked. He’d told her on the square that he’d give her an hour or so to get changed, get sorted – meaning get Jane out of the way, she guessed – and then he’d come and see her, if that was all right.

‘Nothing for me, thanks.’ He put up both hands. ‘Kirsty… she used to make me take a flamin’ yoghurt to work. She doesn’t bother any more. I miss that.’

He looked out of the window towards the ragged apple trees. There was silence, not even the mouse- scratch of Jane listening behind the door to the hall. Perhaps, Merrily thought, she’d grown out of that and therefore really had gone up to her apartment after lunch. She’d be back at school tomorrow.

‘So she’s a local girl,’ Merrily said. ‘Kirsty.’

‘Shit on her shoes soon as she could walk.’ Bliss made a desolate face. ‘All her family’s sunk into these bloody dead-end farms, all within about ten miles – ma and pa and her old bloody gran and about six thousand aunties. Jesus, they look so normal when you first meet them, country girls. She worked in the fashion department at Chadd’s. She was… very chic. So anyway, that’s why I’m still out here, chasing sheep- shaggers. Before we got married, West Mercia was gonna be strictly short-term. I was looking towards – I dunno…’

‘The Met?’

‘Yeh, maybe the Met. Or even back to Merseyside, with a bit of rank to stand on. But Kirsty, she’d just die in a big city, just curl up and… I’m not kidding, I’m not exaggerating.’

‘I know.’

‘I hate that in her. It’s not how wives are supposed to be, is it? She’s supposed to want to follow me to the ends of… wherever.’

‘Except that wherever you go, you’ve always got your family around you,’ Merrily said. ‘Because your family’s coppers – the Job. And she knows that. And she knows that if she’s stuck in some city suburb and all she has is you and you’re not there half the time…’

‘Very slick, Reverend. Very psychologically acute.’

‘True, though?’

‘Probably,’ Bliss said.

‘Tell me if this is not what you came for. I mean, you could always go to your long-suffering priest for five Hail Marys and a—’

‘Yeh, all right, it’s what I came for. Shuffling round the village square like a stray dog on a Sunday morning. It’s finally come to this.’

Merrily poured herself some black tea. ‘So you made a martyr of yourself. You put your career on the back shelf for love.’