The Lamp of the Wicked (17 page)

ALIEN

Which was cool. It was a very cool cover altogether. Like Lol had been taken away and brought back but not to the place he’d been taken from. It wouldn’t have his name on the front, so that the punters would have to take it out of the rack to find out who it was by.

She asked Prof Levin, ‘Is it actually going to happen for him this time, do you think?’

‘Jane, what can I say? It’s a strange and lovely album. It needs word of mouth.’

‘People say I’ve got an awfully big mouth.’

‘Well, there you go.’

‘And Eirion’s very good at manipulating the Net.’

‘It all helps.’ Prof Levin wore an oversized
King of the Hill
T-shirt. His off-white beard was freshly trimmed. He was The Man, Eirion said.

Right now, Eirion was chatting up The Woman, having done his innocent, nervous approach, all pink-cheeked and lovable, the smarmy git, assuring her he had all her albums. For heaven’s sake, he was too
young
to have all of Moira Cairns’s albums. Lol, meanwhile, had disappeared.

‘So what’s on your mind, Jane?’ Prof said.

‘Oh, I… Well, I was just thinking that it would be like seriously useful if Lol was to become mega very soon. I mean, not for the money or the fame, as
such
.’

Prof Levin inclined his head, over-conveying curiosity. Behind him, the cappuccino machine was making impatient noises. ‘Give me a moment, darling, and I’ll be with you,’ Prof said to the machine.

Jane said, ‘Like, if he was so big, so famous… well, we all know it wouldn’t go to his head because… because it just wouldn’t.’

‘I agree totally.’

‘I mean, if he was famous enough that people would be like, hey, can it really be true that
Lol Robinson
is going out with some little woman vicar? Does that make sense?’

Prof Levin considered. ‘Some.’

‘See, it’s not as if
she
thinks she’s any kind of big deal, but
he
does. He thinks she’s spiritually over his head – like too good for him, I suppose, literally. When in fact he’s probably been to places we can’t even imagine. Mixing with really mad people on a level that even most psychiatrists never reach.’

Prof said gently, ‘I think perhaps she understands that, Jane. But maybe they have one or two things to work out before they consider going public.’

‘I still think it’d be useful if he was out there… up there, recognized, you know? I think he thinks that, too, though he’d never—’

‘Give me a break!’ Prof Levin spread his hands. ‘I
agree
.’

‘So is there anything else we can do?’

Prof shook his head. ‘I think what we do, Jane, just for the moment, is nothing. I think we butt out and let what happens happen.’

Jane saw him lift his gaze across the room towards the Cairns woman. She heard Eirion asking the Scottish siren something about a man who played the Pennine Pipes, whatever
they
were. Moira was smiling politely, but her attention was on the doorway – Lol coming in.

‘So where’s your mother now, Jane?’ Prof Levin said.

‘She’s, er, working, I think.’

Coming down from the gallery, Jane had said to Lol,
I’m sure Mum was going to call you tonight. She’s just been kind of… overburdened
. Lol had merely nodded and then gone outside on his own into the night, the alien,
Oh God
.

Prof called to Lol, ‘Jane was just telling me she thinks you should get out more.’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Jane felt the blush coming, turned her head away. She heard Lol saying, ‘I wouldn’t argue.’ He came over. ‘Prof, would it be feasible for you to spare me for the odd day? I’ve kind of… I’ve just agreed to maybe take on this kind of part-time job.’

‘Job?’ Prof said mildly. ‘What kind of job?’

‘Manual.’ Lol looked down at his guitarist’s fingers. ‘I’ll wear gloves, obviously.’

‘Sure, whatever.’ Prof turned to attend to his cappuccino machine, casually assembling mugs. ‘Manual is fine. Maybe you could also do bingo calling at night, to help destroy your voice.’

Lol explained to Jane, ‘I called Gomer. I haven’t got an HGV licence or anything, but I can do the hand-digging and things.’

Jane blinked. ‘
What?
’

‘Just to clear the backlog. Keep the business going until he can get things reorganized.’

‘You’re…’ Jane stared at him in dismay. He was sweating lightly, his hair roughed up. ‘You’re going to work with like…
shit
?’

Of all the people she’d thought might be able to step in and help Gomer – even considering Eirion, for heaven’s sake. Jane felt herself going deeply red. Humiliated. Conspired against.

The Cairns woman tossed back her lovely hair and started to laugh her croaky Glaswegian laugh. ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘the therapeutic power of shit – that’s been overlooked for years.’

On the other hand, it would at least get Lol away from this bitch.

Pulling into the car park at Hereford Police Station, Bliss said, ‘I’m not even going to
attempt
to compromise you. This is down to your own conscience, Merrily. No tapes, no video, no tricks, no water glasses up against the door. Just let him talk, and then you can tell me as much or as little as you want to.’

When Merrily got out of the car, her legs felt as unsupportive as they had last night when she was taking her first steps into the ruins of Gomer’s yard. Bliss joined her under the lighted entrance on the Gaol Street side.

‘There’ll be an alarm you can sound if he makes any kind of move. I’ll show you all that. And we’ll be directly outside.’

Merrily pushed a hand through her damp hair. ‘Could I go to the loo, first?’ Prayer for guidance. You forgot how many toilet cubicles had served as emergency chapels.

Please get me through this
. They walked up a ramp to the modest entrance. Inside: utility seating under Crimestoppers posters. A man sitting in the window, briefcase by his feet.

A white-haired sergeant appeared and raised a hand to Bliss. ‘Francis – a moment?’

‘Two minutes, Douglas, and I’ll be with you.’ Bliss led Merrily through a door and then through a couple of offices, both unoccupied. ‘You want the lavvy now?’

Maybe you could show me the room where we’re going to do it?’

‘Sure. One of the interview rooms, I thought.’ He smiled tightly. ‘You want to bless it first or something?’

When she saw the interview room, she thought a blessing wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Claustrophobic was too friendly a word. It was below ground level, a bunker almost opposite the cells, a windowless cube no more than nine feet square, with fluorescent lights and air-conditioning vents. The air felt like very old air,
re
-conditioned.

‘Bloody hell,’ Merrily said.

Bliss shrugged. ‘It’s not the flamin’
Parkinson
show, Merrily. Now, do you want the bog or do you want to stay here and purify the place while I fetch Roddy?’

There were two chairs, one small table. A microphone for the tape was plumbed into one of the brown-fibred walls. Merrily sat down in one of the chairs and said glumly, ‘Whatever you like.’

The white-haired sergeant was in the doorway. ‘Francis…’

‘Douglas, can’t this
wait
?’

The sergeant said, ‘When you came in, did you happen to notice a young man with a briefcase?’

‘Does he
concern
me?’

‘That,’ the sergeant said, ‘was Mr Lodge’s solicitor.’

Bliss stared at him. ‘Douglas, Mr Lodge hasn’t gorra fuckin’ solicitor. He
refused
a solicitor. You were
there
.’

‘You go and explain that to this kid, then,’ Douglas said.

The solicitor was on his feet, waiting for them. He wore black- framed Jarvis Cocker glasses under glossy dark hair streaked with gold. He looked all of twenty-four, but he had to be older to have qualified.

‘
He
’s a new one.’ Bliss peered through the glass.

‘Office in Ross,’ Douglas said. ‘Ryan Nye. High-flyer.’

‘He’s hardly out the fuckin’ nest.’

‘I did try to warn you, Francis, but your phone was turned off.’

‘‘Yeh.’ Bliss walked out into the reception area. ‘Mr Nye? DI Francis Bliss. How can I help?’

Ryan Nye smiled affably, if a little nervously, shaking hands. ‘Mr Bliss, this isn’t my usual sort of thing, so I hope you’ll excuse my naivety, but I was rather hoping you could either charge my client or release him. He’s not well, is he?’

‘Not well in what way, exactly, sir?’

‘I rather thought you’d have been informed. Headache, nausea, disorientation.’

‘It can be a very disorientating experience, sir, getting arrested for murder. And I’m afraid I don’t see him being charged tonight.’

‘Then I really think he should see a doctor, or— Look, I’m trying to be helpful here… have you thought about a psychiatrist?’

Bliss folded his arms. ‘Are you an expert on mental health, Mr Nye?’

‘Of course I’m not. I’m trying to be helpful.’

‘You have reason to think he might harm himself, sir?’

‘His behaviour’s erratic, that’s all I’m saying.’

Bliss was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘As a matter of fact – and I don’t know whether he’s mentioned this to you, sir – he
has
asked to see a priest.’

‘What – for the last rites?’ Ryan Nye’s face expressed pained disbelief. ‘Look, Inspector, it’s my impression that Mr Lodge doesn’t want to see anybody at all, and
I
certainly wouldn’t advise—’

‘Would you like us to go and ask him again, sir?’

‘No, I wouldn’t, actually. He certainly didn’t say anything to me about a priest. I really do think you should consider quite carefully what I’ve been saying. My client is
not a well man
.’

Outside, Bliss went off like an inexpensive firework, storming into the night then fizzling out, next to a lurid traffic car at the front of the station, looking like he wished he had the energy to put his fist through its windscreen. Or into the face of Roddy Lodge’s solicitor, Mr Ryan Nye, spoiling his glossy, streaked coiffure, dislodging his Jarvis Cocker glasses.

‘You know what
this
means?’ He leaned against the traffic car. ‘Means we’ve gorra leave the light on in Roddy’s cell, have an officer peeping in at him all night. Also means I’ve gorra get onto the Stonebow unit at the hospital and drag a psychiatric nurse over here. And if anything happens to him I’m up the Swanee.’

Merrily said, ‘You don’t really
want
him to be mentally ill, do you?’

‘He’s
not
mentally ill. He’s a crafty sod. Fuckin’ Nora, where do these leeching bastards come from? Is this lad an ambulance chaser, or did somebody engage him on Roddy’s behalf?’

‘Frannie…’ Merrily looked over a traffic queue to the new magistrates’ court that the planners had allowed to eat up a useful car park. ‘Be careful, OK?’

Merrily went home by taxi. She hung her coat over the post at the foot of the stairs and fed the cat. Alone in the vicarage, she felt edgy and unclean, and also guilty at being grateful to Roddy Lodge’s flash young lawyer for sparing her an intimate session with a man who kept eroticized pictures of dead women on his bedroom walls.

It was nearly nine p.m. To get this out of the way, she rang the Reverend Jerome Banks, Rural Dean for Ross-on-Wye. She remembered him as a wiry man with an abrupt manner, an ex-Army officer who’d once served alongside James Bull-Davies at Brecon. If Roddy Lodge had been mentally unstable, he ought to have spotted the signs. She got his answering machine and left her name, would try again tomorrow.

She had a shower, washed her hair, thinking of Jane at Knight’s Frome with Lol, wishing she was there. After putting on a clean alb, she still felt uncomfortable, a little clammy. She was pulling her black woollen shawl around her shoulders, ready to walk over to the church for some further cleansing, when the phone rang.

It was the Reverend Jerome Banks. ‘Mad?’ he said. ‘Oh yes. Absolutely barking, I’d say.’

H
AD SOMEONE FOLLOWED
her in?

If it was a footstep, it was a light one. It might be a cat. Sometimes cats came into the church, and once there’d been a badger. But badgers weren’t stealthy; they clattered and rummaged.

Merrily was sitting in the old choirmaster’s oaken chair with her hands on her knees, a single small candle lit on the altar fifteen feet away, a draught from somewhere bending the flame, making shadows swirl and dip and rise to the night-dulled stained-glass window at the top of the chancel.

Ledwardine Church was locked soon after dark, nowadays, unless a service or a meeting was scheduled. She’d let herself in through the side entrance, which at least had a key you didn’t need both hands to turn. Against all advice, she hadn’t locked the door behind her. It was fundamentally important to feel she had protection in here, inside this great medieval night-dormant engine, or else what was the point?

Probably hadn’t been a footstep at all. After a day like this, the world seemed riddled with tunnels of obsession. For a cold moment, Merrily held before her an image of the frozen smiles of all the dead women on Roddy Lodge’s bedroom walls as they writhed in other women’s bodies, and then she let it fade, whispering the Lord’s Prayer. Apart from having to give evidence at the inquest on Lynsey Davies, her role in this particular police investigation was probably over.

And yet – shifting restlessly in the choirmaster’s chair – how
could
it be over when she was still attached via Gomer, who would never back off until Lodge had been convicted for Nev? Plus, here was Frannie Bliss about to exploit Gomer in the interests of keeping the case in his pocket: bad, selfish policing, and he knew it. Maverick cops were for the movies, and Frannie was on a narrowing tightrope. Meanwhile, Roddy Lodge…

‘Barking, of course,’ the Reverend Jerome Banks had said at once. ‘A complete fantasist. Wanted to tell me about the ghosts he’d been seeing all over the place. Well, isn’t as if you and I haven’t met lots of people like this, all the clergy do… They seek us out, expecting tea and cakes and a sympathetic ear that also happens to be entirely uncritical. Hardly dangerous, in the normal… I mean, not even to themselves, not in the normal course of things. Well, hardly going to spew out all this to the detective chappie, was I? What was I supposed to say? Boy didn’t seem deranged in a psychotic sense. I had absolutely no reason at all to suspect he might ever do what he’s done – well, of course I hadn’t.’