reporting her progress. She’d taken a vacation with some relations up in Shropshire, well away from power lines. Done some walking up there. Cut out the Valium, of course. When she came back home, she switched bedrooms to a smaller room at the front of the house, not directly under the cables. Gave in her notice at the drugstore. She was feeling a little better – even just knowing about it makes you feel a different person. But electro-allergy goes deep. It takes a long time to get it out of your system, if you’re lucky enough to be able to do that totally. There’s good reason to think she just upped and left Underhowle, knowing there was no future for her, healthwise, in this place.’
‘Leaving all her possessions, all her clothes?’
‘Maybe she went someplace else and felt so good she just didn’t come back. Maybe she met somebody. People do this kind of thing with far less reason than she had.’
‘What about Roddy?’
‘I think she tried to help him, I really do. I just don’t think he wanted to know. Besides, he had a new girlfriend by then. He had Lynsey. And he was changing – boy was he
‘Would you mind if I told Bliss about this?’
He shrugged. ‘Long as there’s no comeback on me.’
‘I think I can guarantee that.’ Merrily stood up. ‘So that’s what you meant when you told Lol about a spiritual aspect to all this.’
‘Uh…’ Sam turned his back on the view, plucked at his Icelandic sweater. ‘I guess I still hope it is. I’m not sure. I have a friend – you met Ingrid Sollars?’
‘At the hall.’
‘Sure you did. Well, Ingrid and I are very close friends, but we don’t always agree. And there’s stuff happening here…’ Sam shook his head. ‘I dunno…’
‘What stuff?’
‘Could I go fetch Ingrid?’
Merrily looked at her watch. ‘I have to go and see Cherry Lodge, and then I’ve got to get back for someone. Can I call you? Tonight, maybe?’
‘Sure.’ Sam followed her to the door. ‘This has become a weird place, Mrs Watkins. And more than a little sick.’
Parked outside the Lodge farm, Merrily called Bliss from the car and left a message on his voice-mail. Cherry Lodge, in her army parka, was coming round the side of the house, carrying a paper sack of mixed corn.
‘Been and seen them, have you, Reverend?’ She put down the corn sack. Freed from fog, the farmhouse behind her looked less stable, with rubble-stone showing through holes in the rendering. Less fortified.
‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ Merrily said. ‘Has anybody threatened you?’
Cherry Lodge managed a tired smile. Merrily decided not to tell her about her own anonymous caller.
‘Just I was told that people – friends of Melanie Pullman – had threatened to damage Roddy’s grave, if… if there was one.’
‘There’s brave of them.’ Cherry pulled the sack of corn up against the wall. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘No, thanks, I’ve got to get back. Erm… the other argument is that it’ll be an unpleasant sort of attraction to the wrong kind of tourists. But the committee said that to you, didn’t they?’
‘The wrong kind of tourists. Oh yes, we had that.’
‘Cherry, in your e-mail, you said how much Roddy had changed when he went to live on his own. You said he’d become more confident. Did he change in any other way? I mean, for instance, he went around all the time in dark glasses… people saying he was a bit of a poser. But could there have been another reason? For instance, Sam Hall thinks—’
‘Sam thinks a lot of things and some of them sound sensible and some sound like rubbish and I don’t think he knows the difference. What does it matter now? Roddy killed a woman – only one woman, as far as we know, despite all this West rubbish – and then he killed himself. And if he was
‘Look,’ Merrily said. ‘I’ll
‘Mrs Watkins…’ Cherry’s face wore BSE and foot-and- mouth and stupid EU regulations in layers of dried-out anxiety; what did she care about petty village vigilantes with a manufactured crisis? ‘If anyone vandalizes the grave, it’s up to the police to deal with it. Anyone threatens us,
‘And you’re… happy about tomorrow, rather than Friday.’
‘We’re not happy about any of it,’ Cherry Lodge said. ‘But if it’s what we have to do to keep it quiet, it’s what we’ll do.’
‘What about flowers and things? You got all that arranged?’
‘Flowers for Roddy? I don’t think so.’
Merrily nodded. ‘You know my number.’
‘Don’t take too much notice of Sam,’ Cherry said. ‘And don’t try and find excuses for Roddy – it’s not worth it now.’
‘Don’t you want to know the truth?’
‘I don’t think we ever will know. Perhaps some of it’s beyond knowing.’
‘You mean the ghosts? The dead women?’
‘I won’t talk about that again. It needed to be said, that’s all. It was hanging over me. Hanging over the family and never talked about. I just thought that, now he’s gone, someone outside should know. Just to… take it off us.’
Merrily nodded. There was more than one level of exorcism.
But she no longer thought it was beyond knowing.
When she was on the A49, the other side of Ross, the mobile bleeped and she pulled the Volvo into the kerb. It was Bliss, and she told him what she wanted.
34
EH
RECORD OF INTERVIEW
MERRILY HAD PHONED Frannie Bliss to ask if he had a copy of the actual tapes, but transcripts was the best he could do. He’d arrived at the vicarage as the day was fading, in hiking jacket, jeans and a terrible mood.
‘This better be worth it, that’s all. Coming, as it does, on a day I just want to be…
‘Caffeine?’
‘Intravenous, if you have it, please, Merrily.’ He hooked out a dining chair with his foot, collapsed into it.
‘I’ve only seen the
‘How I wish I could say the flamin’ same.’
She poured coffee for him and sat down opposite. She’d changed into jeans and a black, cowl-neck sweater. ‘I thought you
