The Lamp of the Wicked

covered boom mike.

‘Amanda Patel, BBC Midlands Today. Is it Mrs Watkins? Could we have a word?’

The light on top of the camera was full in Merrily’s eyes. She was on her own; Huw had slipped out of the car without a word and moved away. Huw who had never been known to give an interview, not even to the Church Times.

‘Could you give me a minute to find out what’s happening?’ She’d managed to drive as far as the community centre before the crush of bodies had forced her to stop. There must be a couple of hundred people here: men, women, kids.

‘OK, look,’ Amanda Patel said, ‘we’ll come back to you in about five. If you want to listen to what some of these people have to say and then respond to it, is that OK? It’ll be for the half-ten bulletin, and breakfast.’

Merrily nodded. No dog collar, frayed old duffel coat. She didn’t want to do an interview at all, and the Bishop wouldn’t be happy, but it would look worse if she backed out and all they had was pictures of the Volvo surrounded, and her and Huw blinking in the lights, bemused, ineffectual clergy.

The camera light swept from her face to illuminate a placard opposite.

Roddy’s body – OUT!

Amanda Patel was setting up a tall, rangy-looking guy in a fur-trimmed leather jacket. ‘OK, Nick, if you just stand… yeah, that’s fine. OK, George? Right.’ A giggle, then into TV-tone. ‘Nick Longton, you’re the councillor for this area, why are you backing this protest?’

‘Well, let me say first of all that I’m very proud to represent this village on the Herefordshire Council – an example of the wonders that can be achieved when we all work together, the people and the local authority…’

Merrily recalled Fergus Young this morning saying that five years ago the council had been ready to shut down the school.

‘… And I don’t want to see this place becoming notable for the wrong reasons.’ Nick Longton’s accent was not local. ‘I also have enormous sympathy for the relatives of people already buried in the churchyard who don’t want to have to walk past the grave of a serial murderer.’

‘But surely,’ Amanda Patel said, over muted applause, ‘Roddy Lodge, in the eyes of the law, is an innocent man because, however damning things may seem—’

‘Amanda, we know he killed one woman, and dozens of the people here tonight heard him confess to killing at least two more. It may be weeks, months, even years before more bodies are found, and this is going to hang over everyone – particularly the family of Melanie Pullman, whom Lodge named as one of his victims – and it would be disgraceful if they had to keep walking past his name on a gravestone, with some pious Rest in Peace carving on it. What kind of peace will his victims be resting in?’

‘But he’s a local man. Isn’t his family entitled to have him buried here?’

‘In my view and the views of my constituents, a murderer forfeits that kind of right,’ Nick said. ‘We don’t want that man’s body here.’

Amanda Patel nodded, and the camera light went out. Merrily was thinking how pompous councillors had become, talking of their ‘constituents’, having their own ‘cabinet’. She felt annoyed. Stared at the flickering faces, saw duplicity, hypocrisy… and the funfair factor. How many of these so-called protesters were really angry or distressed at the thought of having a murderer in the churchyard? How many of them wouldn’t be secretly thrilled by the vicarious notoriety?

Merrily saw Huw beckoning to her from the village hall entrance, turned to him and spread her hands, helpless. And then the light was back on her, and up came the boom mike in its fluffy wind-muff, like an inquisitive woolly puppet, deceptively friendly.

‘Merrily Watkins,’ Amanda Patel said, ‘you’re the priest sent in by the Church to conduct the funeral service for Roddy Lodge, after the local minister refused. Do you feel entirely happy about what you’re doing?’

‘Nobody could really feel happy in this situation, but everyone, in my view, is entitled to a Christian burial. I feel deeply sorry for people whose missing relatives were named by Mr Lodge, but even if he’s guilty – which, as you said earlier, he is not, in the eyes of the law – he should be properly laid to rest.’

‘Don’t you think it would be better if he was simply cremated?’

‘That’s not a decision for me.’

‘It’s no secret, Mrs Watkins, that you’re also the Diocesan Deliverance Consultant – the Hereford exorcist. Roddy Lodge referred to himself as Satan. Does that have any bearing on why you were selected for this job?’

‘Erm…’ Well, BBC News didn’t believe in the supernatural, and certainly not in connection with a hard news story. ‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘None at all.’

Amanda Patel nodded. ‘Mrs Watkins, these residents – now supported, as you can see, by dozens of people from surrounding villages – say they’re going to keep up a permanent watch, and any hearse attempting to bring Roddy Lodge’s body into Underhowle will be stopped. Even the regular gravedigger’s saying he’ll be refusing to dig a grave for Lodge. How do you feel about that?’

Merrily said, ‘I think you’ll find that any interference with the free flow of traffic is probably a matter for the police, not for me. However, grave-digging is a matter for the Church, and I’m sure something will be sorted out.’

‘So you’re saying you’re prepared to go ahead with this funeral no matter what happens.’

‘Like if somebody puts a bomb under the church?’

Amanda Patel smiled in resignation and signalled to the cameraman to stop recording. The light went out. ‘Cheers,’ Amanda said.

People had started chattering again. She heard a woman say, ‘Of course, half of them are lesbians…’ as some of the protesters set up a chant: ‘Roddy’s body OUT, Roddy’s body OUT ’.

It was unlikely, especially with the TV here, that this demo was spontaneous. But who would have planned it? Perhaps the media-wise Development Committee. Merrily stood in the lane, feeling furious. A bit player in a fantasy – several fantasies colliding like the torch beams, like short-lived fireworks, brief explosions in the common-sense night.

‘Merrily…’ A hand under her elbow.

She turned. Huw was standing under one of the globular lamps outside the village hall.

‘Let’s get out of here, Huw.’

‘Merrily,’ Huw said. ‘This is…’

There was a woman with him: flaking waxed jacket, penetrating brown eyes in a faintly familiar, wind- tanned face.

Huw said, ‘Ingrid’s going to show us the new tourist centre.’

‘Huw, I just—’

‘The Baptist chapel? You remember Jerome telling us about the Baptist chapel? A place of considerable historic significance. Well worth a visit. Besides…’ Huw nodded at an elderly woman in a long purple mac advancing from the crowd. ‘You might not want to hang around here.’

‘You!’ The elderly woman pointed at Merrily. ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you’re the beginning of the end, you are, women priests! Only a woman so-called priest would bury the damned!’

‘Don’t get involved, lass,’ Huw murmured.

Amidst the half-manufactured excitement, the chants of Roddy’s body OUT, there was an eye-of-the-storm stillness around him, conveying an awareness of being exactly where he needed to be.

39 Good at Men

‘I’M WRITING A new play,’ Cola French said from the bed, ‘about a woman I’d be, you know, really scared of