The Smile of a Ghost

experience where education don’t help that much.’

The curtains were swaying a little in a draught from somewhere. George Lackland watched them with a faint smile.

‘I remember a young chap thought he was up for a bit of easy money — just spend a couple of hours on his own in the Hanging Tower.’

‘Oh now, George, that was a long, long time—’

‘Never seen a man more scared, from that day to this. Comes running across the old inner bailey, stumbling and tripping — didn’t think his pals could see him, and they didn’t like to rub it in at the time.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t want you trying to escape, Bernard, so we took a few bottles of pale ale into the old Magdalene Chapel and kept very quiet. Sobering, though, in the end. We all thought you were faking it, at first.’

Merrily smiled. The Bishop saw her and scowled.

‘Bastards.’ He finished his brandy. ‘All right, George, suppose someone was to look into it. All of it. Discreetly. Someone sympathetic but, ah… knowledgeable in all the necessary areas. And, of course… utterly reliable.’

‘Then I would be most grateful to that person,’ George Lackland said, ‘and provide what assistance I could.’

Down by the fake logs, Merrily froze.

23 Duality

The road to Hereford was due south, more than twenty moon-washed miles. For the first three or four, neither of them said a word. Merrily’s black eye was pulsing. Her new sunglasses lay on the dash. Somewhere behind its facia, the old Volvo was ticking like a time bomb.

Eventually, the Bishop coughed.

‘Mother-in-law from hell, eh? Well… stepmother-in-law.’

Merrily glanced to her left: moonlight bathing the Bishop’s brow. At the Little Chef at Wooferton, the lights had gone out.

‘What have you done, Bernie?’

‘I think the word “evil” passed old George’s lips at one point, but I’m afraid he had his back to me at the time.’

‘And that justifies it, does it?’

‘We have nothing to justify, Merrily.’

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s all quite legitimate.’

‘So you’ll send an official memo to the Deliverance Panel first thing in the morning, saying you’re personally authorizing me to investigate a cluster of deaths and their possible connection with a woman who’s causing considerable embarrassment to the Mayor of Ludlow.’

‘We can deal with that,’ the Bishop said. ‘And surely… you want to, don’t you?’

‘I think I’d want to know why I’m doing whatever I’m supposed to be doing. I mean, let’s establish, first of all, what your long-time friend the Mayor is after. For instance, when he was close to advocating exorcism, which woman do you think he was talking about, the dead one or…?’

That duality again. It had been there from the start: Why did God let her take him? Why did God let that woman take our boy?

‘Look, I had no idea,’ the Bishop said. ‘I didn’t know there was any connection between George and this woman. Until that chap who makes calendars brought her up, I’d never even heard of her.’

‘Because bloody George is using his position to hush it all up! He’s already had Andy Mumford warned off. Plus, a guy who was stabbed in the street has probably been given a bung to keep quiet about it.’

‘You don’t know that—’

‘Ha! I mean, sure, I can see the Mayor’s problem — she’s landed like an alien being from a world he can’t even comprehend — but there’s no way I want to appear to be working on behalf of someone who works the system like good old George.’

‘Merrily, he hadn’t even mentioned Mrs Pepper. It was you who introduced the subject.’

‘You think? You know what, Bernie? I think he was talking about her all along. From the beginning. I think she’s what’s causing unrest among the older God-fearing folk of Ludlow, far more than the possible influence of a silly little girl who got taken for a ride in the twelfth century. On which basis, by the way, I’m buggered if I’m going to even consider exorcizing the Hanging—’

‘Merrily!’

‘Sorry. Didn’t get much sleep last night. Got elbowed in the eye by a psychotic teenager.’

‘How come you know so much about this Mrs Pepper?’

‘Lol. And Jane on the Internet. It doesn’t take very long to find out about anything any more. Also, I saw her, when I was on the river bank with Mumford and you were in the pub with his dad. I recognized her… realized this was who Osman meant.’

‘Well, I don’t know anything about her, as I said, but I do know that George Lackland, while he may work the system, is a decent man who thinks his beloved town is being contaminated, if only by having its moral tone lowered. Is he exaggerating this? I don’t know.’

‘Personally, I just can’t see a wealthy middle-aged woman going in for wholesale alfresco sex in a town she regards as heaven. And I don’t want to get involved—’

She braked, catching a movement on the grass verge: badger about to scuttle across the road.

‘—get involved with a witch-hunt.’

‘Witch-hunt.’ The Bishop leaned his head back over the passenger seat, from which the headrest was long gone. ‘How simple things were in those days. The mob would have dragged her in front of some judge who thought he was God, and then taken her out and hanged her at Gallows Bank.’ He turned his head towards Merrily. ‘Still there, you know. Still this patch of open space, in the midst of modern housing. You can see where the actual gibbet stood, so that executions would be visible all over town. Ludlow, you see, looks after its past.’

‘Unlike Hereford?’

‘We try. Unfortunately, I think our old execution site is underneath Plascarreg.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t you dare make anything of that.’

Merrily smiled.

‘And try not to hang George. He’s an old-fashioned civic leader. Middle Ages, he’d have been the sheriff. When they eventually come to lay him out, they’ll find the imprints of chain links on his chest.’

Of course, he’d know exactly how George felt because it was how he felt. If Ludlow was tainted, George was tainted, and if Bernie let George down he would probably feel he’d forfeited his right to come back and live out his sunset years in the benign shadow of the Buttercross.

‘Of course, the woman’s obviously mad,’ he said. ‘Too many chemicals in years gone by, one assumes.’

‘You think we should inform the Diocesan Director of Psychiatry?’

She felt him staring at her, working this out. He shifted, something clicking ominously under his seat.

‘Saltash.’

‘You read the Mail, then.’

He grunted. ‘It was in The Times, too, actually. Yes, that man did rather exaggerate his role, didn’t he?’

‘Glad you think so.’

‘Heavens, Merrily, last thing we want is worried people avoiding Deliverance for fear of being considered eligible for assessment under the Mental Health Act.’

‘But under our new, agreed working practices, I’m supposed to report — for instance — what we’ve just