The Lamp of the Wicked (52 page)

Mrs Pawson was holding her blouse together at the neck, as if it had suddenly gone cold in the room. ‘I was teaching in comprehensive schools for fifteen years, and I’ve seen some very distasteful things. But this… I still don’t see how it would help
you
to know about it?’

Merrily sat down on one of the sofas, near the window. ‘If you had a missing relative – a daughter, a sister – wouldn’t you want to know whether there’d been another Fred West at work?’

‘I mean, in some places,’ Jane said, ‘there are
legends
of angels being seen. Like in the local folklore. And apparitions of the ‘

Virgin and all that. But, I mean… Ledwardine? Do me a favour.’

Immediately regretting the scorn, but it was too late now.

‘You don’t believe people see angels, Jane?’ Jenny Box said. ‘Depends what you mean by angels.’ ‘Oh, I think we all know what we mean by angels.’ ‘I think I know what
you
mean.’ ‘I’m entirely sure of what I mean.
And
what I saw.’

‘What I think is that you just saw Mum. You were looking for somewhere to live – like, that bit was probably true. You were looking for somewhere to live and to like… entertain yourself. Out of sight of the media and all the London gossips. And then you saw Mum.’

‘Eventually, yes.’

‘And you fancied her,’ Jane said.

Jenny Box didn’t move, but her eyes flickered. Jane was suddenly so choked up with horror at what she’d said, mixed with rage and hurt at the possibility of it being true, that she could hardly get her breath.

‘That’s something like blasphemy, Jane.’

Jane stood up. ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? You’ve got, like, everything – brilliant house, successful business, gorgeous husband – and you have to come here and mess with people’s lives. There’s nothing angelic in any of this.
Divine fire?
Like, the way I see it, there’s only one kind of divine fire as far as you’re concerned.’

Jenny Box was out of her chair now. She was very pale. Her white scarf had slipped to the flags.

Jane was in tears. It didn’t matter; she’d said it. It was out. Her eyes were wet. She wiped her sleeve across them and saw Jenny Box picking up her white scarf. Then the older woman was standing at the open kitchen door, with the table and ten feet of stone flags between them.

Jenny Box said, ‘When did you see my husband?’

‘How do you know…?’

‘He’s back in London now. We have the same houses, but we don’t live together. Did he come here?’

No.’

‘Which means you went to him.’ Jenny Box stood in the doorway, and when she spoke all that fey lilt had been punched out of her voice. ‘And did he touch you, Jane? As well as defaming me the best he could, did he touch you?’

‘
What?
’

‘Did you let him near you?’

Jane felt her mouth going out of shape.

‘It’s all right,’ Jenny Box said calmly. ‘I won’t distress you further. I’m going now.’

Jane came round the table, her fists clenched. When she reached the hall, Jenny Box had the front door open and was standing next to the Holman Hunt picture, half under the porch light but blocking it, so that it looked for a moment as if she was actually lit by the lantern that Christ was carrying in the picture. Her face was as white as a communion wafer. And she was muttering ‘Oh, dear God, dear God,’ and pulling her scarf over her head.

‘It was as if they wanted me to know,’ Mrs Pawson said. ‘From the first.’

‘They
both
came to install it?’ Lol asked.

‘It was quite a warm autumn day. She – the woman, Lynsey – was wearing a skimpy black top with nothing underneath it. Even when they were unloading the appliance from the truck, they kept touching one another all the time.’

‘What was
she
like?’ Merrily said.

‘Quite a big woman. Not much over medium height, but big bones. She had black, frizzy hair, dark eyes. She wasn’t
particularly
good-looking, but she had a sexiness about her, I suppose you’d have to call it. A sexiness that was not so much sultry as
glowering
. The way she moved – prowled – even when she was working, hauling these plastic pipes and equipment and… She hardly ever smiled – that was something that struck me – and when she did it wasn’t a very big smile, and… sly isn’t quite the word. It was as if she knew something you didn’t.’

Lol noticed that Mrs Pawson kept glancing at one of the table lamps as if to make sure it was still on.

‘I made the mistake of asking them in when they first arrived. They… their glances were everywhere. Looking at the furniture – which was fairly sparse at the time – not exactly admiring things, but
noting
them. As if they were checking if there was anything valuable. Then he asked if he could go to the lavatory, and I directed him to the downstairs washroom, but then I could hear him walking about in the bedroom overhead. Meanwhile, she started looking among the books, and she pulled one from the shelf, and she said, “John Donne – he was a sexy bugger, wasn’t he?” and gave me that half-smile. And then Lodge came back down, still smelling of that dreadful aftershave, and before they went back out, he stared at me in… I suppose a rather blatant way, and he asked me how I was getting on. Whether I was lonely without my husband. “Long nights,” he said. “Long old nights, eh?” ’

Mrs Pawson squeezed her arms together and began to rock slightly. Lol didn’t think she was aware of it.

‘At lunchtime, they would… They had a van – which she drove, because he’d brought the digger – and it was parked at the back of the house with the rear doors facing the kitchen. At lunchtime, they went into the back of the van, supposedly to eat their sandwiches, but it became obvious very quickly what they were actually doing. There was a single mattress in there. No attempt to hide it, no attempt at all to keep it quiet. In fact, they seemed to be making as much noise as they could. As if they were oblivious of everything else, like rutting animals. The van was actually creaking on its springs.’

Mrs Pawson stopped and looked at them, perhaps to make sure that they didn’t consider this was perfectly reasonable behaviour during a lunchtime break.

‘How many days did the work take?’ Lol asked. ‘The installation?’

‘Two. I’m sure it could have been done in one, but they seemed in no hurry – about anything.’

Evidently,’ Merrily said.

‘Naturally, but now I was regretting I’d ever hired him.’

‘Did you say anything to them?’

‘What was I supposed to say, without sounding middle-class and sanctimonious and… like a townie? Like some sort of buttoned-up townie who didn’t understanding country… spontaneity.’

‘What, you wondered if perhaps this was how all healthy young rural workers…?’

‘It’s not funny.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Merrily said. ‘Especially when you were on your own. It’s insulting, and it’s threatening.’

‘Anyway, on the second day, they left the back doors of the van wide open, and I assumed they really were eating their sandwiches this time, and I went out to ask… I
steeled
myself to go out and ask if they wanted a cup of tea. And they were both sitting there in the back of the van, naked. Well,
she
was, almost… she had her top off and her jeans unzipped. He was stripped to the waist, his belt undone.’

Merrily closed her eyes, shaking her head.

‘I screamed, I’m afraid. One tries to be cool in this sort of situation, but… Then Lodge laughed. He said what a hot day it was. Just cooling off, he said. I said something like, You’ll have to excuse me, and then
she
said, in this very low, throaty voice, “Why don’t you join us? Why don’t you join us, love? Do you good.” ’

Mrs Pawson started to cough, brought a hand to her mouth. Lol asked, ‘Can I get you a drink? Some coffee?’

‘No, thank you, I’ll be going in to dinner soon. If I can face it. So I said, very coldly, “How long will you be before you’ve finished?” I could smell the awful aftershave, and I was feeling sick. And she said, “As long as you want… as long as you can stand it.” And Lodge said, “Longer…” And he laughed. And I ran back to the house and locked the door and stood over the phone for quite a long time, wondering if I should call the police… if what they were doing – or what they’d
said
– constituted any kind of offence.’

‘They never came out of the van?’ Lol said.

‘No, not at this time. It could have been said that they were demonstrating nothing more than what you might call a lamentable lack of common courtesy. But there was – I really can’t tell you – an indescribable menace around them both. A quite palpable sense of something… predatory. I know people will say this is all with hindsight.’

‘What did you do?’ Merrily asked.

‘I didn’t know what to do then. I didn’t go out again. After a while, they came out of the van and simply finished the job, replacing all the soil. They didn’t come back to the house. I felt I
should
have gone to the police or somebody. But it would be my word against theirs. A townie, an incomer. And of course I absolutely dared not tell my husband. He never wanted that house, never really wanted to move to the country. Kept talking about, you know, living among… sheep-shaggers. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. The next day, I just had the locks changed – and doubled.’

‘Did you see them again?’

Mrs Pawson laughed harshly. ‘I went back to London that weekend to spend some time with our child, Gus. We have a nanny, who I’d hoped to persuade to come down here with us, so that I could continue my work – I do some proof-reading for an educational publisher – but she has a boyfriend in London, and it… Anyway, I came back on my own the following week, to meet the surveyor we’d hired, Mr Booth – who would subsequently point out the problem with the Efflapure and point me in the direction of Mr Parry. I was finding it hard to sleep, and I remember getting up in the night to go to the bathroom and get a drink, I…’ She closed her eyes for a moment, took a breath through her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, but this is absolutely the first time I’ve talked about this to anyone.’

‘Take your time,’ Merrily said.

‘The bathroom overlooks the side of the house, where the Efflapure had been installed. And when I looked down – it was about half past midnight, and a bright night, with the moon almost full – she was standing there. The woman. Standing on the lawn under one of the apple trees. Just standing there, quite relaxed, with her legs apart and her arms folded, dressed much as she had been the first time I saw her. Looking up at me with that same smile that said,
I know things you don’t
.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I was terribly afraid. I thought at first, Oh my God, they’re
both
here. They’ve come to rob me or… or worse. I got dressed in the dark, very quickly. I found the mobile phone and I keyed in 999, so that I’d just have to press the button, and then I ran into the front bedroom and looked out of the window. Went all around the upstairs, peering through windows, but there was no sign of the van or the truck or… anything. Or anyone. And when I went back to the bathroom, she… wasn’t there any more.’

Merrily said softly, almost casually, ‘When
exactly
was this? Do you remember?’

‘It must have been at least a week after I’d seen them. I remember there was a bill for the job – for the Efflapure – waiting behind the door when I returned from London.’

Lol looked at Merrily and saw her bite her lip.

The door of the lounge opened suddenly, and Mrs Pawson’s whole body jerked.

A man in a dark suit said cheerfully, ‘Are you all right in there? Anything I can get you?’

‘Fine,’ Mrs Pawson said. ‘Everything’s… fine.’

T
HE ROYAL HOTEL
was tucked into the side of the Ross churchyard, and they went up into it, then followed the path down towards the Plague Cross. The cross was edged with cold moonlight.

Lol said, ‘You didn’t really push her on dates.’

‘No point. I think we both knew what we might have been talking about,’ Merrily said. ‘If she knew for a fact that Lynsey Davies was dead by then, how would
that
help her to sleep? I slipped her a card on the way out, whispered I could maybe help if anything happened again.’

‘I don’t think she wants to go down that road. She just wants out.’

‘No wonder she’s staying in the hotel. I’m not sure I’d want to be in that house on my own, even now.’

Lol looked up at the Plague Cross. The cross itself was quite small, like a fist on the end of an upthrust arm, representing the triumph of mere survival.

‘The picture that’s coming over of Lynsey Davies is not really the image of a victim, is it?’

‘Nothing I’ve heard about her so far makes her
terribly
endearing,’ Merrily said. ‘Dumps her kids, probably breaks up Roddy’s relationship with someone who might have helped him and tries to lure an already nervous woman into three-in- a-van sex.’

Do you want to know more about her? Would that help?’

There was no one else in the churchyard. The street-front opposite – now mainly offices – was hushed, but the air around them was vibrant with the sharp spores of frost.

‘Lol, why aren’t you rehearsing? Why aren’t you getting an early night before the gig?’

‘Because I’d start thinking it was important. And if I start thinking it’s important, I’m… Anyway, there’s someone here, in Ross, who knew Lynsey well – someone Gomer and I met on the tank dig. If you wanted to come with me, we could maybe—’

‘I can’t. I’ve left Huw Owen in The Man of Ross, trying to find a pint and a pasty. We’re going over to Underhowle. He’s decided he wants to be involved, which is not, frankly, as reassuring as you might think.’ She looked up at the cross. ‘So this is Sam’s symbol.’

‘“The insidious wind which blows through skin and tissue and bones”.’

‘He said that?’

‘It’s the only good line in his song, and even that sounds more than a bit reminiscent of Dylan’s “Idiot Wind”.’

‘Electromagnetic waves,’ Merrily said, ‘radio waves… ghost waves… alien waves… soft porn blowing through the church steeple. It’s a wonder
any
of us can breathe.’