The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Tell me,’ Banks said, ‘what basic proof do you have of any of this, Mrs Watkins?’

‘None at all. When do people like us ever have proof?’ She pulled out the phone. ‘Excuse me.’

She went to stand in the doorway, remembering Banks telling her on the phone that he’d actually offered ‘prayers for the Unquiet Dead’ but Roddy Lodge had rejected the idea. Bumptious? Full of himself? Never seen the like, I wasn’t entirely sure, to tell you the truth, if he wasn’t taking the piss. It suggested that, while Roddy would have been very glad to lose the side effects, he really didn’t want to part with his ghosts, which was perhaps why he’d resisted Melanie Pullman’s efforts to get him to talk to Sam Hall.

‘This is Merrily,’ she said into the phone.

‘Where are you?’

‘Lol! I’m out near Ross.’

‘That’s brilliant. You—’

‘I’ll call you back, OK? Five minutes.’

‘So what advice did you give Roddy Lodge, Jerome?’ Huw said. ‘What did you recommend for his little problem? Cold showers?’

Banks looked down at his desk. Waited his customary two seconds before replying.

‘I believe I told him to – in the modern parlance – get a life.’

Huw smiled.

Banks didn’t. He looked at each of them in turn, as if to make sure they understood the significance of what he was about to say.

‘I suggested to Lodge that instead of following his solitary… pursuits, he might consider making the acquaintance of real girls.’ Bringing his fist down on the desktop. ‘Real girls!’ The fist coming down twice, like a mallet. ‘Now do you see?’

37 Long Old Nights

JANE HEARD THE voice from the kitchen and grinned with relief, saw herself floating in slo-mo across the room and into the scullery towards the answering machine and the phone, the light entering her eyes like turning up a dimmer switch, and then…

Then what?

‘Er, this is actually quite important,’ Eirion said, ‘so I’m going to hang on for about half a minute while you decide if you can possibly spare some time to speak to me.’

Jane didn’t move. Had to admit that what she was missing most right now was having someone she could open up to – someone she could lay her deepest, most secret fears on. Someone who knew exactly where she was coming from. And who was not her mother.

It was just that she’d been trying to avoid considering the name Eirion in this context – even though there was no one else.

Eirion said, ‘Basically, it relates to a Website I found concerning the Archangel Uriel.’

Naturally, he was uncomfortable too, after what had passed between them. He needed a pretext.

‘It’s something I thought you ought to know about. I mean, I don’t know much about this stuff, and I believe it’s very much on the iffy side of the scriptures, and with people who do Websites you get a lot of cranks and fanatics – but the site gives a list of people throughout history who it reckons have become vehicles for Uriel. Especially women. And the thing is, you seem to be one of them.’

‘Me?’ Jane said.

And simultaneously realized the truth. This wasn’t for her at all. The bastard was addressing Mum.

Jane felt cold, like marble. Wasn’t exactly the first time they’d conspired, was it?

The doorbell went. Meanwhile, the treacherous git was still waiting for someone to pick up the phone; she could hear his breathing in the speaker. Panting – overweight.

Jane straightened up, raised a stiffened forefinger at the answering machine and went to answer the door. Hoping it was Uncle Ted or someone else who she could take down with her, whose night she could ruin.

In the hall, she was about to give the finger to the The Light of the World, when she met the eyes of the guy with the lamp – saw how old he looked, noticed his crown of thorns, felt that it must actually hurt in a nagging, chronic kind of way – and didn’t give him the finger after all. It would’ve been gratuitous. She was not gratuitous.

The bell went again. Jane turned on the porch light and opened the front door.

Jenny Driscoll stood there, in a shiny waxed jacket with a white scarf half over her head, Virgin Mary- style.

Merrily felt in the driver’s-door pocket and brought out her pectoral cross. She slipped the chain over her head, under the cowl of her sweater.

‘I can’t believe we did that.’

‘Did what, lass?’

‘Good priest–bad priest.’ Her initial sense of triumph felt wrong now. She started up the car and pulled away from Jerome Banks’s executive rectory.

‘Aye,’ Huw said, ‘one so seldom gets an opportunity for such finesse.’

‘Huw, we practically bludgeoned the truth out of the poor sod!’

‘Doesn’t matter how we did it – where’s it got us, apart from a hint on the Baptist chapel? Not far. Confirms what you already knew: Lodge were a sick bugger, on a number of levels. But Banks’s professed sense of guilt – that’s half-arsed. Who’s going to believe Lodge got launched into a life of rape and murder by a man-to-man chat with the rector? I’m disappointed. I expected summat better than this.’

‘You can see why he wouldn’t want it broadcast, though.’ She braked at the poorly lit T-junction with the A49. ‘And why he didn’t want to conduct the funeral.’

‘If it were me, I’d feel bloody well obliged to conduct it.’ Huw sank back and stretched out his legs.

Merrily fumbled a Silk Cut from the packet. ‘Could you pass me the lighter from the dash, or can I use your halo?’

‘Cheeky besom.’ He found the lighter and lit her cigarette. ‘This woman we’re going to see, this is the woman whose septic tank…?’

‘… Started it all.’ The tiered skyline of Ross appeared, part- floodlit, across the dual carriageway and the Wye: the Herefordshire Riviera. Behind it was Howle Hill, the Forest, the dark country. ‘And as we don’t want to scare her, you can stay in the car.’

Mrs Jenny Box, nee Driscoll said, ‘You’re not expecting her back soon at all, are you, Jane?’

‘Well, she said she—’

‘Thought not.’

Driscoll sat with her white scarf around her shoulders and the cup of weak tea Jane had made in front of her on the refectory table.

Not quite the soft touch that Jane had expected.

In fact, knowing the woman’s background, why had she expected a soft touch at all – Driscoll having come over from Ireland, worked with the hard cookies of the fashion world, the flash cynics in television. Having been married, for years, to Gareth Box.

Jane sat across the table, uncomfortable. Why hadn’t she just told the woman that Mum was out and offered to pass on a message? Instead of thinking this could be heaven-sent and saying what Gareth Box had said: she can’t be long, I suppose. Do you want to come in and wait? Getting her into the house, just the two of them, a cosy chat. This woman: Mum’s… lover?

Would-be! Would-be lover!

Oh Christ, get me out of this.

‘So, is there something you wanted to say to me, Jane?’

This soft-spoken, soft-eyed, soft-skinned woman, sitting with her soft hands, one over the other, on her lap.