The Cure of Souls mw-4

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Have nothing to do with this person,’ Al said. ‘Erm… it’s my job, Mr Boswell.’

  His face was blank in the milky moon and candlelight. ‘What, at the end of it all, is so important about a bloody job?’

  ‘It’s a gaujo thing,’ Lol said.

  ‘Black magic,’ Al said flatly. ‘Raising the dead to damage another person or acquire wealth – that’s the black arts. And also, let me tell you, it’s far too stupid a thing for a traditional Romany ever to go near.’

  ‘There are no evil Romanies?’ Lol said.

  ‘You don’t understand, boy. Romanies respect, sometimes consult the ancestors. But they let the dead lie. Most of us don’t even like to touch a body after death. This is about fear.’ He leaned towards Merrily and into the candlelight, as if he was concerned that she should see how agitated he was. ‘Listen to me, drukerimaskri, I want to tell you – and this also concerns the other thing, the thing in the kiln – I want to say to you, don’t ever trust the dead.’

  In Merrily’s bag – she jumped – her phone began to shrill, just like it had in the Stocks’ bedroom when she could have sworn it was switched off. She didn’t touch the bag. ‘Go on,’ she said to Al.

  The phone went on bleeping – Al glancing nervously at the bag, as if this might be a spirit coming through.

  ‘I’ll get it if you like,’ Lol said. Merrily nodded gratefully, dug in the bag and pulled out the phone, handed it to him. Lol took it over to the boundary fence.

  ‘We have a word,’ Al said, and he whispered it. ‘Mulo. This is the Romany word for a ghost. The same word… this word is also used for a vampire: the living dead.’

  Sally Boswell was silently observing her husband’s melodramatics with a faintly sardonic expression, but her skin looked whiter than the moon.

  ‘The point being, I think, that we don’t see that much of a difference,’ Al said.

  Merrily didn’t know how to react to this. Was she supposed to say something inane about not all ghosts sucking your blood? The moon picked out a circle of pink, as perfect as a tonsure, on the crown of Al’s white head.

  ‘This is our dead I’m talking about. We don’t worry about your dead – we’ll settle down to sleep in your cemeteries any night of the week. We believe that the Romany dead… we believe they don’t come back for no reason. And they’ll leech off you. They’ll steal your life-energy. They’ll keep on taking it until you’re a cored and cancerous husk. We are very afraid, drukerimaskri, of the vengeful power of our dead.’

  She didn’t really know what he meant. She didn’t understand what he was saying to her.

  Lol came and sat down again, but said nothing. Nervously, Merrily drank some more of the nettles and hops. The night was suddenly swollen with tension.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ Sally said to Lol, ‘you’d better tell her. We’ll go away and leave you.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. It’s no big secret.’ Lol handed the phone across the table to Merrily. ‘It was Sophie. The police are trying to get hold of you.’

  Merrily drew a fearful breath. She was thinking of Amy Shelbone… David Shelbone not answering his phone.

  ‘There’s been an incident at the remand centre in Shrewsbury where Gerard Stock was taken. He, um—’ Lol cleared his throat. ‘Stock’s hanged himself.’

  35

  Left to Hang

  THE TURNED HAY was a rich confection, baking under the moon. Merrily stood on the hard mud track that bisected the meadow below Prof’s place, the mobile damp against her ear, a cigarette in her other hand.

  The air was so very still and DCI Annie Howe’s voice so crisp and distinct and authoritative, it was like the news was being broadcast to the whole valley.

  ‘Easier for them to do it in remand centre,’ she explained, as if she was talking about laundry or something. ‘Fewer personal restrictions there. As they haven’t been convicted of anything, they’re not forced to wear prison clothing.’

  The full moon, Merrily was thinking, outraged. She and Lol had walked all the way back from the Boswell hop museum before she’d felt able to make the call to Hereford police. Why the hell don’t they watch them more carefully under a full moon?

  ‘Unfortunately, it’s not too infrequent an occurrence,’ Annie Howe said. ‘There’s more of an element of loneliness and despair among remand prisoners. But a man of Stock’s apparent intellect and resilience – I have to say I wouldn’t have expected it from him, and I do wonder what pushed him over the edge. Did he suddenly realize he enormity of what he’d done? Was it remorse? Or had something… perhaps altered his state of mind?’ Meaningful pause. ‘What do you think, Ms Watkins?’

  Merrily thought about the court scenario Lol and she had built from what they knew of the mind of Gerard Stock. She didn’t like Howe’s innuendo, but she let it go.

  ‘How did he do it?’

  ‘With his shirt,’ Annie Howe said. ‘The shirt was torn and soaked – he’d urinated on it and rolled it up tight.’

  ‘Not a cry for help, then,’ Merrily said dully.

  His white shirt. White for innocence. White for the side of the angels. Out in the endless darkness, Gerard Stock’s heavy body was revolving slowly, his feet inches from the floor. Don’t really know what the fuck you’re doing, do you? You’re a waste of time. Geddout. Stock revolving slowly for ever: an obscene enigma.

  ‘I do feel obliged to warn you,’ Howe said, ‘that all legal barriers must now be considered down. No impending court case any more, only inquests. No one’s freedom’s at stake, so the gates are wide open. The media can go in now, with all its fangs bared. You understand what I’m saying?’

  Merrily said nothing. She imagined Howe in her half-lit office, relishing the moment.

  ‘It means they can exploit the exorcism angle to the full,’ Howe said. ‘They can print whatever they like. I can’t stop them.’

  Even if you wanted to.

  ‘And it means, of course, that they’ll come after you, Ms Watkins. If they aren’t after you already.’

  ‘I expect you’ll give them a full description,’ Merrily said, ‘so they don’t miss me.’

  Everything under the full moon was bright and sharply defined: the crisp ridges of hay, a line of graceful poplars, Lol – still and compact, standing looking down at his trainers.

  ‘I should get some sleep,’ Howe said. ‘It’s been a fairly stressful couple of days for you, I imagine.’

  She didn’t say, But nothing compared with the stress to come.

  Eirion sat up in horror, staring around the moon-washed attic. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’ He bounced out of bed, ran to the window. ‘Look at it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s bloody dark. It’s got to be after ten.’

  Jane put on the light. ‘Five past. No sweat.’ She looked at him, head to bare toes. She smiled. ‘Doesn’t take the little guy long to shrink, does it?’

  ‘Jane, I’m dead.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ On the Mondrian walls, the moon spotlit the yellow rectangle and the blue square, and Jane sighed in some kind of weird rapture. ‘Irene, isn’t life sometimes so… really quite good, in spite of everything?’

  ‘It—’ Eirion came back and sat on the bed and tenderly stroked her hair. ‘Well, yes. Yes, it is. But there’s always a vague downside – like we fell asleep. We weren’t supposed to fall asleep afterwards, were we, Jane?’

  ‘It happens.’ Jane shrugged knowledgeably. ‘Release of sexual tension.’

  ‘Even if I leave now, I’m not going to get back until the early hours.’

  ‘So don’t leave.’

  ‘They’ll have locked me out.’

  ‘You’ve got a key.’

  ‘They’ll have barred the doors, out of entirely justified spite.’

  ‘Just say the car broke down.’

  ‘Jane, it’s a two-year-old BMW. It’s still under warranty. Plus, we didn’t even say we were going anywhere.’

  ‘You know what?’ J
ane said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t actually care a lot.’ She linked her hands behind her head. She felt, like, all woman. ‘The car, your family… all this is so not a problem.’

  Eirion looked into her eyes.

  ‘And Amy Shelbone?’ he said.

  ‘Ah.’ Jane went quiet. That was a problem. Yes. Oh God.

  ‘I think we were going to see Amy, weren’t we?’ Eirion said. ‘Either before or after or instead of ringing your mum. If you recall, we looked up the address in the phone book. Some hours ago.’

  ‘Irene, what are we going to do?’ She was confused: part of her wildly happy, the rest horribly anxious, the combination bringing her to the brink of tears. ‘I mean what are we going to do about Amy now?’

  ‘Yes.’ He stood up again. ‘I guess we do have to do something.’

  ‘Because that would like destroy everything, wouldn’t it, if it—?’

  ‘Don’t go imagining things, Jane.’

  ‘Irene, that stuff… you couldn’t even imagine it.’ Everything came back to her, in the tough, no-shit tones of Kirsty Ryan: They’re really cooking, you know, her and the kid. She covered herself with the duvet, as if some astral Layla Riddock might be watching her from the shadows. ‘You couldn’t dream it up, could you?’

  ‘No.’ Eirion walked around, discovering into which corners he’d thrown his clothes. ‘How long would it take us to get over there?’

  ‘Dilwyn? Ten, fifteen minutes. But suppose she’s already in bed.’

  ‘Then she can get up, can’t she? At least if she’s in bed she’s not going to run away. Go on, get dressed. I won’t watch.’

  ‘You don’t want to watch?’

  ‘Yes, I’d love to watch. That’s’ – Eirion gathered up his jeans – ‘why I’m getting dressed in the bathroom.’

  ‘Irene?’ Jane slipped on her bra. Eirion paused at the door. ‘You will come in with me, won’t you? At the Shelbones’. You’re more likely to convince the parents than I am.’

  ‘Sure. We’re… an item, aren’t we? Official.’

  ‘I…’ Jane smiled a little stiffly, wondering how she felt about that, like, post-coitally. Hey!

  She reached down to the little pile of her clothes lying beside the bed.

  ‘Maybe he left a suicide note,’ Lol said.

  They were on the wooden footbridge. The river was down there somewhere, but even the full moon couldn’t find it. Lol was standing over the Frome which went nowhere in particular, maybe aching to join another river before it was too late.

  ‘If he refused to make a statement,’ Merrily said, ‘I don’t see him leaving a note, do you?’

  Lol didn’t have an answer to that. He couldn’t imagine why a man like that would ever have hanged himself – taking Gerard Stock out of the picture, robbing the world of a sensational trial at which he might easily have put up a strong defence, with Merrily Watkins left to hang.

  ‘Sophie mention the media?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, do you want to risk staying here?’

  ‘Risk?’ She was wearing a blue cotton skirt, a top the colour of the moon, a small gold cross on a chain. She looked very small. ‘What are they going to do to me? The press are only people.’

  ‘In the pack, they tend to lose their humanity.’

  ‘We’ll see what happens. Look, I…’ She brought out her phone. ‘I’d better call David Shelbone again.’ She switched on the phone and the screen came up green. Merrily put in a number and listened. ‘Engaged.’

  ‘What was it Al told you?’ Lol said. ‘When I was taking the call. What was Al so keen to tell you?’

  ‘Oh, he’d… had a little too much wine.’

  ‘Something about not trusting the dead.’

  ‘He was talking about the gypsy dead. Romany ghosts. What he called the mulo. He said gypsies were terrified of their own ghosts, though they didn’t give a toss about ours. It didn’t seem entirely logical to me. But what do I know?’

  ‘He say anything about there being a presence in the kiln?’

  ‘Only in passing.’ She stepped onto the footpath on the other side of the bridge. ‘But it doesn’t matter now, does it? Nothing to explain to the Crown court. Just an inquest.’

  Lol followed her. ‘And yourself. If you can’t somehow explain it to yourself, you’ll never trust Deliverance again, will you?’

  ‘Well, sure, I’d rather have got myself shredded in the witness box, have the whole exorcism thing held up as some kind of tawdry medieval spoof, than lose another life.’ She waited for him by the first of the poplars, the moonlight on her face, shadows under her eyes. ‘Or maybe I’m fooling myself? Maybe I’m secretly glad he’s dead, because he’d already set me up and he was probably going to do it again.’

  ‘You don’t have it in you to be glad anyone’s dead,’ he said.

  ‘As a vicar.’

  ‘Not even – let’s be honest here – as a person.’

  ‘Oh, well, you – you kind of stop being a person when you join the Church,’ Merrily said. ‘You have to learn to suffocate your feelings.’

  It went so quiet you could even hear the Frome moving below.

  ‘Ah,’ Lol said.

  ‘Redefine your goals. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Damn,’ Lol said.

  ‘Nice tune,’ Merrily said.

  They both stood with their backs to the door, so there was no way out, short of physical violence. And although they were both seriously into middle age, they were big people. She was kind of pudgy-armed and hefty and he was tall and thin and, although he didn’t look too well, he did look desperate enough to damage somebody.

  Like, for instance, somebody who might know where his daughter was but was refusing to tell him.

  ‘Honest to God,’ Jane said, scared, ‘we didn’t even know she was missing. We came here to see her.’

  Invoking God because it looked like this might well cut some ice here. The room was too bright from a big white ceiling bowl loaded with high-wattage bulbs. There was a wooden crucifix on the mantelpiece over the Calor gas fire and round the walls these really awful religious paintings by one of those pedantic Pre-Raphaelite guys who thought it was important to paint every blade of grass individually.

  ‘I wouldn’t lie,’ Jane insisted. ‘My mum’s a vicar. I wasn’t brought up to lie, OK?’

  ‘Your mother knows you’re here, then?’ said Mr Shelbone. He had a weak voice that sounded kind of laminated, and Jane felt slightly sorry for him; it was clear his wife called the shots.

  ‘Of course she doesn’t,’ Mrs Shelbone snapped. ‘Her mother seems to know very little of what goes on.’

  Jane let the slur go past. ‘No, she doesn’t. But only because I feel responsible for dropping her in it when I didn’t tell her at the time because I didn’t think there was anything particular to worry about, but now I know I was wrong, and I want to put it right.’ She drew a long breath.

  ‘Why should we believe you?’ Mrs Shelbone demanded. ‘How do we know you’re not just sensation-seeking?’

  ‘This is silly. Jane’s only trying to help.’ Eirion’s Welsh accent coming through. ‘That’s all she wants – and to find out what’s going on.’

  ‘And what,’ said Mr Shelbone, ‘is going on, in your opinion?’

  Jane swallowed. It was one thing telling Amy what kind of psychotic slag Layla Riddock was; it was something else laying it on her parents in her absence. Serious as this whole thing could turn out to be, it broke some kind of code of honour. You didn’t grass until you reached the stage where it was impossible to deal with it yourself.

  This didn’t seem to worry Eirion, however. Maybe he’d just had it with the whole thing. Or maybe he thought this was the stage.

  ‘It comes down to bullying, Mr Shelbone. Your daughter’s been picked on by an older girl, who evidently thinks she’s… something special.’

  ‘Picked on?’

  ‘Ensnared. You must know
what I’m talking about. Especially as it’s been suggested to us today that she – this girl – might have wanted to use Amy to get at—well, to get at you.’

  Mr Shelbone was silent. Once Eirion mentioned the Christmas Fair, Layla Riddock would be in the frame. Best to leave it here, Jane decided. They should say as little as possible, get out and go and grovel to Mum, let her decide what to do.

  ‘Sit down.’ Mr Shelbone indicated a sofa in a pine frame, like the bottom half of a bunk.

  Jane said, ‘We have to be…’

  Eirion just shrugged and went over to the sofa and sat down.

  ‘Now then, son,’ said Mr Shelbone. ‘Let’s start at the beginning.’

  ‘Well, her name’s Layla Riddock,’ Eirion said.

  36

  Confluence

  LOL TENSED. There was the tower across the fields, just as he’d seen it the first time, the tip of its witch’s hat askew, as if a low-flying aircraft had clipped it. He remembered how he’d thought it looked like a fairy castle, with that glow in the window.

  Where a glow was now.

  ‘What?’ Merrily demanded.

  ‘There’s—’ He sagged, his back to a tree trunk, the breath forced out of him as if he’d been punched. ‘Sorry, it’s just the moon. It’s just a reflection of the moon.’ It seemed to be everywhere tonight.

  ‘What did you think it was?’

  ‘How about we go back?’ He searched for the path, then spotted where he’d gone wrong the last time: there was a stile he could have climbed over to follow a circular route back to the bridge, and another path that led into the tangled wood. ‘Merrily?’

  ‘Erm… Lol, how do I get to the old hop-yard? Where you saw Stephanie that night?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Lol stood in the middle of the path, ‘I really don’t think so.’

  ‘Lol…’

  ‘Merrily – tell me. That’s why we’re here?’

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I haven’t got the gear, I haven’t got the holy water, I haven’t got the sacrament. But I can pray. I can do the words.’

  ‘Words?’

  ‘Words to get them out of here.’