by Phil Rickman
‘Something’s happened?’ Merrily swung her feet to the bare boards.
‘Well, it seems Mrs Shelbone’s done something rather drastic.’
‘Oh, Jesus…’ The unlit cigarette fell from her lips.
‘Nothing like that,’ Sophie said hastily. ‘What’s happened is that she’s apparently left home and taken the child with her. Convinced – he claims – that, in the wake of her attempted suicide, Social Services will try and take Amy away from them and put her into care. Mr Shelbone reckons there’s a story going round that he and his wife are religious extremists and the child may be psychologically dam—’
‘Does he know where they are?’
‘If he does, he isn’t saying.’
‘Sophie, I need to talk to him.’ A couple of days ago this would have seemed like a serious breakthrough, and it was still important. ‘Maybe Lol could give me a lift in.’
‘If you must do this, I’ll pick you up. An hour? Don’t wear a dog collar.’
First time Sophie had ever said that.
Lol had somehow produced scrambled eggs in the microwave. He’d spread a clean tablecloth on a packing case. Merrily looked around, felt quite touched. Either he’d lied about the condition of the kitchen or he’d been up for a long time, scrubbing.
He brought her more toast from the toaster. He was actually wearing his old Roswell alien sweatshirt, faded now to light grey – big slanting eyes on the chest, holes in the elbows. She told him about Sophie’s call and that the worst of the heat was off, for a while. She also told him about the Shelbone situation, why it was important for her to go back to Hereford.
‘And afterwards?’ Lol said lightly.
‘I’ll get Sophie to bring me back here. If that’s OK with you.’
Lol smiled.
‘Or maybe I’ll just pick up the Volvo. Not as if it’s got a Deliverance sticker in the window. Sophie was perhaps being a little overcautious last night.’
‘I just don’t think she trusted you on your own,’ Lol said. ‘How do you feel now?’
‘Well – I’m eating… thank you.’ She looked at the remains of her breakfast, then at Lol. ‘Can’t say I feel a more seasoned human being for having seen a man carrying his wife’s head around like a potted plant.’
First shudder of the day. Get it over with. Why had Stock done that – brought in the head, put it down in a beam of light, like a Stone Age priest with a sacrifice commemorating the arrival of the midsummer sun? She carried her plate to the sink, turned on hot water.
‘Lol, when – when I said Stock had confessed, Sophie said, “Has he?” Like there was some doubt.’
She watched his reaction. Lol was looking unhappy.
‘Am I missing something?’
‘Well…’ He picked up a tea towel. ‘Maybe she means, what if he pleads not guilty?’
‘But he did call the police, didn’t he? He did actually tell them he’d killed his wife?’
‘But he’s had time to think about it, hasn’t he? I didn’t like the idea of him refusing to make a statement. He’s clever. Suppose he gets a smart barrister and they try to hang the whole thing on exorcism?’
‘You mean on me, right?’
‘I don’t know. You studied law for a while, didn’t you?’
‘But saying what?’ The backs of her legs felt weak. ‘That Stock had acted out of character due to a sudden infusion of the Holy Spirit? I don’t think even that was quite suggested in the Taylor case.’
‘But you said that was over a quarter of a century ago. Probably twice as many people going to church as there are now. We’ve become a secular country very quickly. You might talk about the Holy Spirit…’
‘I imagine some barrister would argue that’s become a meaningless term. Mythology.’
‘They’d probably bring on a tame shrink,’ Lol said. ‘There are dozens of the buggers out there – university professors… authors of distinguished textbooks, theses. Awesomely eloquent, frighteningly fluent, oozing with… certainty. I’ve been listening to them for months. They’re scary. Not necessarily right, but convincing.’
He put down the tea towel, and came to lean against the stainless-steel draining board. Merrily let the hot water run over her wrists. This was a new Lol, wasn’t it?
‘So they screen Stock’s video in court,’ he said. ‘The jury see you at work. Then they see Stock at the end, when he’s about to throw you out. He’s angry, almost irrational – this is the real Stock, of course, but the jury don’t know that. The first Stock they saw was this quiet, subdued, compliant character who just wants peace restored to his home. They’re thinking to themselves, what happened in there? What brought about this change?’
‘He was annoyed at Stephanie, the way she was behaving.’
‘But on the video he isn’t going for Stephanie, he’s going for you. And me – he’s questioning what I’m doing there. Am I there as a psychotherapist in case he’s bonkers? So what’s this other guy about? the jury asks itself…’
‘Is directed to ask itself,’ Merrily said, ‘by the smart brief.’
‘Meanwhile, back on the video, Stock’s trying to find out what’s been achieved there, and he’s not satisfied with the answers. He loses it completely, hurls the brimstone tray to the floor. And what do we do? We just walk out, leaving this unstable and clearly violent man—’
‘With the offer of a few prayers to tide him over,’ Merrily said bitterly.
‘And then they… I suppose they put you in the witness box.’
‘And screen the – what they’ll keep on calling an exorcism. They take me through it, prayer by prayer, line by line, demanding explanations, justifications. They ask: What happened to you when you looked like you were choking? Why did you suddenly start rushing around opening doors?’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Well, that was… that was just something I should’ve done before we started. You’re supposed to open all the doors.’
‘So the evil spirits have nowhere to hide?’
‘I…’ She stared down into the sink. ‘Something like that.’
‘You actually had an awareness of evil?’
‘Maybe.’ The water was very hot on her hands and wrists, but she didn’t remove them.
Lol took a step back. ‘Did you?’
‘Yeah, I know – how do I qualify that? How do I define evil?’
‘No,’ Lol said. ‘This is me, not the barrister. I want to know. Did you feel an evil?’
‘I… I smelt sulphur. I tasted sulphur. It went to the back of my throat in this raw, searing way that sulphur does. I can’t explain that, but it did feel like I was choking. For a couple of seconds I felt like I was going to—’
The water began scalding the backs of her hands and she pulled them back with a small scream. Lol wrenched a hand towel from a hook on the wall.
‘—die.’ She pushed her hands gratefully into the towel. ‘Now that sounds really stupid, doesn’t it? Imagine having to say that in court. But yeah… I mean, obviously, what happened afterwards took the edge off it in a big way, but for one terrifying split second I really thought I was about to choke to death, or at least pass out, lose consciousness. So I started to say in my head something called St Patrick’s Breastplate, which is a complete spiritual self-defence thing, surrounding yourself with the power of Christ, and I went around opening doors, and it… it went away. And I got my act together and carried on. How would your psychologist and your agnostic barrister react to that?’
Lol didn’t reply. He was holding her hands, still wrapped in the towel.
‘Go on.’ She felt her voice shrink. ‘Finish the scenario.’
Crunch of tyres on the track outside. Sophie?
Lol took his hands away. He stood there in that same old alien sweatshirt, those same sad, whipped-puppy eyes behind his brass-rimmed specs. But this was Lol back from psychotherapy school – six months exposed to concerned humanism, sympathetic psychobabble. He was right: he did k
now these people now.
‘They’d take me apart, right?’ Merrily said. ‘They have full access to science and psychology and scepticism and cynicism. I’m—’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t’ve started this. It could be that none of it will happen.’ He followed her to the door. ‘I was just playing devil’s advocate.’
She turned and stared at him, and he realized what he’d said and smiled ruefully, eyebrows rising above his glasses.
‘Jesus,’ he murmured.
‘Two thousand years of exorcism on trial,’ Merrily said.
It seemed so ridiculous when you put it like that.
So why was she sweating?
28
A Religious Man
LOL FOLLOWED MERRILY out to the grey Saab, its engine running. She was wearing a short, orange-coloured skirt and a crumpled white jacket and carrying a canvas shoulder bag under an arm. The exorcist.
He thought: They’ll do it. They’ll sacrifice her.
At the car, as though she’d simultaneously reached the same conclusion, Merrily turned to him, tried for a smile but failed. She shrugged instead.
Her image misted. Behind her, in the meadow sloping down to the Frome, the hay had been cut and turned and lay heavy, like acres of gold leaf, a heat haze hanging over it.
From behind the wheel of the Saab, the stately Sophie raised a hand in formal greeting, like the Queen or somebody. She wore a dark blue business suit and no smile. She revved the Saab like a getaway driver. Sophie would do her best for Merrily. Probably even the Bishop would do what he could. But in the end they’d both have to walk away.
Lol watched the Saab turn, crunching baked red earth, vanishing around the curve of the track. A cold electricity was branching through him as he walked rapidly away, down the footpath, across the hay meadow, to the river that seeped below the brambles, under the hedge and the fat, purple-spotted banks of willowherb.
The River Frome, flowing invisibly. Like the truth.
Just when it seemed entirely unimportant, the substance of the final verse of his river song seeped unbidden into his head.
What you did, Lol realized, was join another river.
Walking through Knight’s Frome, he saw nobody: no police, no press. He crossed the bridge, to the small, sunken church. The churchyard was wilderness, so overgrown around the perimeter that you couldn’t tell where the countryside began, several gravestones even poking out of bushes.
Lol stood in the porch and listened: no voices, no clatter. He went in, letting the iron latch fall behind him.
Sometimes they still oppressed him, churches, with their rigidity and weight, the ungivingness of them, their atmospheres dense with the residue of humourless old hymns. This one was almost frugally plain, the air inside ochre with sunlight and dust. Lol went and sat in a back pew, over in a corner. He couldn’t quite see the altar; that was OK.
He sat for a while in silence. The prayer-book shelf was thick with dust; in it, someone had finger-drawn two sets of initials and a heart.
Lol took off his glasses, wondering how often Merrily did this, how many times a day – how long it took to break the ice. His feeling was that it could be like meditation, that you’d have to connect with your deepest inner self, the part that flowed into some collective unconscious, rippling under the light of whatever it was you called God.
Rivers again.
‘Listen,’ he whispered, when the level seemed beyond his reach. ‘I mean, we don’t really know each other – at least, I don’t know you. But we’ve got one mutual interest, and I hope you’re not going to let her down.’
His eyes had half closed and all he could see was a dark yellow haze, with blobs of white where the windows were.
‘Because she’s not going to help herself, you know that. She’ll just keep on telling the truth as she sees it, and that might be the wrong kind of truth for certain people. And I realize we only learn by suffering, by screwing up, and maybe she did screw up… but her heart was in it, and what else can you ask? And if she goes, she won’t come back, and I don’t think that’s going to help anybody. I mean, how do you want to play this? You want a church run by politicians or by people who actually give a shit?’
He glanced over his shoulder towards the vestry, which Merrily had entered as a woman and emerged from as a priest. He leaned back and thought for a few minutes.
‘So, like… don’t you think some things need to start coming out? I mean, don’t know how far this goes back, but I think it probably pre-dates Stewart Ash. I think something bad happened there, apart from Stewart’s murder. And I think that Stewart, as a lingering presence… was an irrelevance, and I think Stock knew that. So what did Stock really want? Why did he want an exorcism? Why did he approach Simon and then go after Merrily?’
Talking to himself, now. He’d tried to puzzle it out last night and early this morning as he’d mopped and scrubbed the kitchen. But puzzling had produced nothing. He just didn’t know enough.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘This is bollocks, isn’t it?’
He stood up. Nothing resolved. No revelation. No inspirational feedback from his inner self.
When he put on his glasses, the white blobs hardened into pearly Gothic windows. He slid wearily out of the pew and across to the church door.
Daylight filled the crack around the door. When he put a hand up to the latch, he found it was already up. Which was odd, because he was sure he’d closed the door and heard the latch fall into place.
It was probably warped. He opened it and went out, and there she was in the porch, blocking his path with her wheelchair.
‘A religious man after all, then, is it, Lol?’
There were no unfamiliar cars in the palace yard; no one was waiting under the arch or at the top of the stairs.
Sophie unlocked the office door. ‘If he doesn’t show up now, I think I shall be very annoyed indeed.’
Inside, the phone was ringing. They heard the machine pick it up. ‘This is for Mrs Watkins. We’ve met before. Tania Beauman, formerly of the Livenight programme, now researching for the Witness series on Channel Four. I’d appreciate a call back. Thank you.’
Merrily drew a surprised breath. ‘She’s got a nerve after last winter’s fiasco.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Sophie said. ‘I can handle this. I didn’t tell you, but we’ve had a similar approach from Panorama at the BBC. They’re all thinking ahead to the court case. They make a background programme in advance, to be screened immediately the case is over and the shackles are off. The spiel is that they’re going to make the programme anyway, and if you don’t agree to appear, your views may not be fully represented.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘I said we’d discuss it when you returned from your holiday, adding – God forgive me – that I was sure we could trust the British Broadcasting Corporation to produce a balanced and accurate account, with or without your help.’
There were two other messages on the machine, one from the Bishop, nervously demanding an update, the other from Fred Potter, of the Three Counties News Agency.
‘Look, nobody can print anything now, so I won’t be on your back for a good while. I just wanted to say thanks for your help, and if there’s anything I can do to help you at all… because, you know, I’ve heard one or two things which don’t sound that promising from your point of view… so, if you think there’s anything I can maybe tell you… you know where I am, OK. Thanks. I’ll give you the number again, just in case…’
‘Little shark.’ Sophie lifted a finger to delete the message.
‘No, I’m going to ring him.’
‘You’re not!’
‘What have I got to lose? Besides, he was—’
‘Everything,’ Sophie snapped. ‘For a start, you’re supposed to be on holiday.’
But Merrily was already tapping in the Worcester number. The young woman who answered said Fred was on the phone, asked who was speaking.
>
‘It’s Mrs… Sharkey, from Hereford. I’ll hold.’
When Fred Potter came on the line, Merrily said quickly, ‘Just don’t say my name aloud, or I’ll have to hang up.’
‘Mrs Sharkey?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Well, thanks for calling back, Mrs Sharkey. Hold on a moment. Ah, Sinead, you don’t fancy getting me a tuna on rye from the sarny bar? Plus whatever rabbity morsels you allow yourself. Excellent, thank you. This enough? Cheers.’ Pause. ‘Right, Mrs Sharkey, we’re on our own. Bloody hell, that was a bit of a turn-up, wasn’t it?’
‘A turn-up. Yes, it was.’
‘You know about the video?’
‘Video?’
‘All right, I’ll be honest. I knew Stock had the place bugged and wired up for sound and pictures. He told me himself.’
‘Did he?’
‘He had one camera wedged into a shelf at the time, and of course it fell over while I was there, and it was dangling by the strap. He asked me if I’d mind keeping quiet about it. Said he was convinced he was going to get something mind-blowing on tape that would prove he wasn’t making it up. That’s why I said I believed he was on the level – I couldn’t tell you, I’d agreed to say nothing.’
‘That’s OK.’ Thanks a bunch.
‘Besides, I was thinking, if he does get something mind-boggling…’
‘Seems like he has,’ Merrily said.
‘You reckon he thought something might appear during the exorcism?’
‘You’re just trying to find out whether I did one or not.’
He laughed. ‘All right, forget it. Anything I can tell you, stuff you might not know? No notes, no recording, swear to God.’
‘What did you think of Mrs Stock, Fred?’
‘Good question. Er… well, the first thing I thought was, he’s landed on his feet there, hasn’t he just, jammy bugger?’
‘Meaning what’s a clapped-out old drunk doing with a charming young thing like that?’
‘I wouldn’t say say charming. Sexy. Not beautiful, but she’d got a certain… It’s funny, he was going on about what it had done to them, living in that place, making them withdrawn, nervous, all this… and she kept very quiet while I was there. But after it came out about the murder, when we’d got all we could in the village, I drove into Hereford and hung around outside the secretarial agency where Stephanie worked, back of Aubrey Street, and I had a word with a few of the girls when they came out. And I got just a completely different story.’
