The House of Susan Lulham (Kindle Single) (6 page)

‘Right.’

She kept telling herself that, later, as she lay in bed listening to the rain.

8. Her

The phone awoke her just before eight am. A green dawn in the leaded window.

‘How about off-the-record?’ Fred Potter was saying. ‘No attributed quotes. Can you do
that?’

She didn’t know. She’d managed three hours sleep, if sleep was the word for that patchwork-state. She pulled the phone onto the pillow.

‘Where’s Zoe?’

‘Discharged from hospital into police custody. Straightforward. Except it isn’t, is it?’

‘What do the police say?’

‘Absolutely nothing, as you’d expect. But in this case we don’t really need them, do we?’

Fred Potter still sounded like a sixth-former, but he was a partner now in the Three Counties News Service, Cheltenham-based, the only surviving freelance news agency left in this general area. No daily newspapers or national broadcast outlets had staff this far outside Cardiff and Birmingham these days, so there was still money to be made from sending them stories. Used to hear from Fred quite often when she first got the night job, but now most papers were wary of the anomalous. Secular society thing.

‘I don’t understand.’

She sat up in bed. The rain had stopped.

Fred said, ‘You might be hearing from quite a few people before the day’s over.’

‘People?’

‘Well… papers. Radio. TV. Playing catch-up after the amateur media.’

‘Hang on a minute, Fred. You mean—’

‘You want me to send you the links?’

‘Never mind.’ Feet feeling frenziedly for her slippers. ‘I think I can find my way.’

‘I’ll call you back, then,’ Fred said. ‘When you’ve read it.’

* * *

Here was Zoe, only yesterday, on Facebook.

Listen i saw her.

Lou:
Who?

Zoe:
HER!!!!!!!

Lou:
OMG you R kidding right????

Zoe:
i got up last night 2 go 2 the loo and it
was like all the heating had gone off and
i was in the bathroom and it felt like i was
being watched and i turned round and there
she was standing in the doorway. Real as
u like. Nearly shit myself.

Lou:
U R 4king kidding!!!!!

Zoe:
U think id make that up??? She was wearing
this like black bathrobe that come down
2 the ground and her eyes were all white and she
wasnt smiling. Thats what i noticed first. Shes
always smiling in the pictures and she wasnt, not
at me.

Lou:
Now listen Z. U REALLY serious? Only I got a bit
pissed last night and Im not in the mood for no
bullshit.

Zoe:
Her eyes were WHITE. But I knew she could
still see out of them cos she was looking right
at me like she was seeing into my head.
4king right im serious!!! She’s standing
there real still and im thinking like how
am i going 2 get out of here and then she
was just gone and i couldn’t move for
a long time. Then i just put my head down
and ran back 2 bed and i pulled the 4kingduvet
over my head. I dont know how i got 2
4king sleep cos I knew she hadnt gone I just
knew she was with me in the bedroom cos i
woke up twice in the night and i heard this
voice like whispering let me in let me in but
I didnt look i didnt open my eyes not once B4
morning but i could still see her in my head
and there was like this darkness around her and
it was shaped like a coffin the darkness
all round her was like this coffin shape I could
see it in my head.

Lou:
Stop it. You’re giving ME the shivers.

Nattie:
Don’t!!! Don’t U let her in. U hear me Zoe?
I’m not laughing about this. If u hear her
saying let me in again, whatever u do don’t
do it. DON’T U LET HER IN!!!!!!!

Lou:
U can come and stay with me if u want. We
got a spare bed now Kyles at uni. Text me.
But dont bring her with u (lol)

Zoe:
Thanx but i cant. Jonnos back tonite. Id love it 4
him 2 see her but if he did he wouldnt admit it.

Nattie:
U
want 2 get the exorcist back. I’m serious.

Zoe:
The so called exorcist is 2 4king scared. She said
shed have 2 come back with the bishop. But like i
said she told me 2 get out meantime so she mustve
known what was there.

Lou:
U get her back! Its her 4king job!!! I 8 you getting
pissed about by this 4king bitch. What u paying
your council tax 4???

Zoe:
Tell u the truth its been worse since the exorcist
come. Its like its made HER real mad all that holy
water and stuff. Its like its made her stronger. Im
telling u its like 2 of us is living here now. Like I keep
pouring an extra coffee how 4king wierd is that? Ive
not seen her today thank god but sometimes I think
Im feeling what shes feeling which is really 4king
ANGRY. It feels like shes making me do things.

later…

Zoe
I dont like talking about this. This morning
i was standing in the kitchen at the sink and
i felt her next 2 me real close and it was like
a shadow over me and i felt very cold

Nattie:
U got to get out of there. I can’t have u here
with the baby but you do need to get the hell out
of that house. Make it up with your mother.
Anything.

Zoe:
Dont non of u dare laugh but i felt it was like
she was trying to pull me in with her. Into the
coffin. Thats it. I dont want 2 talk about it no
more.

9. Nice and bold

Jane at sixteen used to be well into Facebook. Jane at eighteen, was contemptuous: all these middle-aged women turning into a huddle of adolescent girls in a corner of the schoolyard. But for all its crassness, its lazy English, the ill-considered reactions it forced - perhaps
because
of all that - Merrily suspected Facebook sometimes could work like a truth drug.

That immediate, serious, alarmed response from Nattie, whose ex-partner fancied the vicar.

don’t u let her in
. A hint of personal experience.

But the coffin… that still looked like Zoe’s fabrication.

The phone rang.

‘See what I mean?’ Fred Potter said.

Merrily put the computer to sleep.

‘Is all this… you know… circulating?’

‘Everywhere. Soon as the news was out about Mahonie, it was being copied. All the paranormal sites are on to it. And others you need to worry about far more.’

‘The stuff attributed to me, obviously that’s… I didn’t say I’d need to come back with the bishop. I may have said that before anything went to exorcism I needed
permission
from the Bishop. She keeps writing things I didn’t say. You do realise that?’

‘And
did
she… did she call you back, as suggested?’

‘You can’t quote me, Fred, I’d just be sucked deeper into the…’

But she was already deploring her own self-protective attitude. This was not about her. This had never been about her. She’d just been a means to an end.

Fred sighed.

‘Look, I’m not going to quote you, Merrily, till you say I can. Don’t know where I stand either. The cops will probably try to get it wiped off Facebook, especially if she’s charged, but it’ll be on a thousand other sites by then. We - the media - we’re restrained by contempt of court laws that the Internet breaks with abandon. I’m not saying you won’t still get calls, but…’

‘What do I do?’

‘Short term, just don’t answer your phone if you don’t know who it is.’

‘How am I supposed to function without answering the phone?’

‘I can probably keep most of the pack off you.’

‘You mean, if I talk to you exclusively. Like you have me in your pocket?’

‘Something like that. Look, it won’t make anybody’s front page tomorrow, but it
will
keep ticking over. Just give me a short statement - email it if you like, so you’ve got a copy. And then lie low. Your main worry might be the foreign media who
don’t
have to sit on it till the case is heard.’

‘Why would the foreign media—? It’s a domestic incident with possible psychiatric implications.’

She reached for her cigarettes. She could simply decline to comment and refer them to the Bishop’s office - i.e. Sophie. Unfair. Cowardly.

‘OK.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘How about this? Most of what Mrs Mahonie’s said on Facebook is a gross exaggeration and some is untrue. They won’t use that, will they?’

‘Good to have it on stand-by. Go on.’

‘She came to me for help, saying her house was haunted. I, erm… tried to handle it with extreme restraint. Which is what we do, in the first instance. There was no question of exorcism, nor should there be in a case like this. Exorcism’s specificially about evil, so—Oh
God
.’

‘You want to rephrase that?’

‘Let’s just say exorcism is something that isn’t done without serious consideration and consultation. I’d only seen Mrs Mahonie once. I did advise her to leave the house until her husband came back. I didn’t think she should be on her own with this kind of anxiety about the house. But it’s never advisable to make quick decisions about situations like this. Will that do?’

‘Can you say something about last night?’

‘Last night, I went to the house in response to a phone call which led me to think she might be distressed. I didn’t know she wasn’t alone. When nobody answered the door, I went to talk to a neighbour. After a while we both became worried and tried to ring Mrs Mahonie. Then we… became aware that something was wrong and I called the police. I did not go into the house. I’m now talking to the police and I’ll be talking to my bishop. That enough?’

‘Can I get you on your mobile if it isn’t?’

‘Yeah.’ She sighed. ‘Whatever.’

The phone rang seven times before she’d managed to feed Ethel and make some tea.

She carried her mug up to the bathroom. What if they came to the door? It could get complicated. Fred Potter had told her she might, at some stage, even be offered money, say for her favourite charity, for the full story.

Death had made it into a full story.

But she still didn’t know the half of it. She sat unsteadily on the side of the bath, pulling on her tights. In just two or three years, the nature of this job had changed so radically. A lot of the time you felt yourself viewed through a haze of something close to contempt. She’d planned to walk over to the church, open herself to guidance, in the quiet, but it was too late, wouldn’t be quiet in there now. And people in the village would know.

She rang Sophie.

Who clearly knew. Shavings of frost in her voice.

‘Did you
speak
to the
Daily Mail
?’

‘They rang?’

‘Amongst others. After they’d tried your home number.’

She told Sophie what Fred Potter had said. Sophie said that perhaps she should work from the gatehouse office. A little fortress.

* * *

The drive into Hereford from the tail-end of Roman Road took her up Aylestone Hill with all its suburban villas and its trees. An urban hill, so people didn’t
notice it
was
a hill any more. At the junction where she might have turned to make her circuitous way towards the house of Susan Lulham, two women were standing with a pram, one pointing.

It would be all over town by now. Biggest talking-point of its kind since the murder of the Marinescu sisters. But that had been a sign of the times, the new savagery, whereas this linked into city history, horribly so, and would not go away.

Hard even to imagine how it might end. With the Freelander parked in the sanctuary of the Bishop’s Palace yard, she climbed the steps to the gatehouse office, wondering how many more times she’d be doing this before the axe fell.

In the cell-like office, the phone was ringing, Sophie standing with her hand on the receiver. Sensible jumper and skirt, glasses on their chain below the pearls. They somehow never became entangled, the glasses and the pearls.

‘Bliss called,’ she said. ‘Twice.’

Merrily nodded, put her bag on the desk, sank down behind it, edging her chair away from the window, from the light.

‘Gatehouse office,’ Sophie said into the phone. And then, ‘No, I’m afraid she isn’t.’

Merrily called Bliss’s mobile from her own.

‘Gonna be a bit of a handful,’ Bliss said. ‘Zoe.’

‘How badly was she hurt?’

‘Lorra blood always makes things looks worse than they are. Injuries were superficial. No stitches required. Yeah, she’s out. I’ve called in a few favours from Billy Grace, dissecting Jonathan as we speak. We’ll be attempting to talk in depth to Zoe. With her lawyer, who, unsurprisingly, turns out to be my good friend Mr Ryan Nye.’

Slickest criminal lawyer in a county not widely known for slick.

‘And she’s been arrested. She’s in custody.’

‘For the present. Obviously, we’re having a shrink, if not two, talk to her. But no psychiatric history, not on any medication. If belief in the supernatural was a sign of mental illness, they’d’ve thrown away your key years ago.’

‘I’m assuming there’s no chance she’ll be able to go back to that house.’

‘Which would not be good because it’s haunted?’

‘Because she might
believe
—Oh God. So when you’ve finished, when the Durex suits have finished… do you clean up?’

‘Oh yeah, we send in the police housekeeping and valeting squad, all fully trained with mops and buckets and Dettol and Flash and furniture polish, room-freshener - what do
you
think? Meantime, I’ve asked for assistance from
POLSA, the super-CSIs. Go over the whole place, looking for things we might’ve missed.’

‘Like what?’

‘If I knew that I wouldn’t need POLSA.’ Bliss paused. ‘You might be interested to know how Zoe signed the custody record.’

‘What is that?’

‘That’s to agree she’d been informed of her right to receive free and independent legal advice, stuff like that.’