Midwinter of the Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  The slanting rain plucked at the mud.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lol said. ‘Do you want me to come back?’

  She looked at him, smiling almost coyly. ‘Only as yourself.’

  As Merrily rolled gratefully into bed, the phone rang.

  ‘Unplug it!’ Jane screeched from the landing. ‘Unplug it now! I’ll get it downstairs.’

  ‘Hello,’ Merrily said. ‘Ledwardine Vicarage.’

  ‘Merrily? It’s Sophie at the Bishop’s office. Michael asked me to ring. We wondered if you’d be popping into town today and, if so, could you call in?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t planning…’ On the one hand, she very much needed to talk to the Bishop; on the other, not in this state. ‘Bit tied up this morning.’

  ‘Oh. Well, this afternoon there’ll be nobody here. Better make it tomorrow, I suppose. It’s just a little job – in connection with the Deliverance side of things.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I don’t imagine it’s terribly urgent.’

  ‘Good. Sophie, do all the Deliverance cases come through your office?’

  ‘Well, it’s intended that they should. I’m afraid Canon Dobbs was less organized.’

  ‘What about the problem last night at the General Hospital?’

  ‘At the hospital? Was there a problem?’

  ‘So it didn’t come through the office?’

  ‘It didn’t come through me.’

  ‘If you weren’t there, would the Bishop have handled it himself?’

  ‘They wouldn’t normally get through to the Bishop. Anyway he wasn’t here last night. He was at his parents’ home in the Forest of Dean. They thought his father had suffered another heart attack but it was a false alarm, I’m glad to say.’

  ‘Oh,’ Merrily said, ‘good.’

  ‘Did you have to go to the hospital, then, Merrily?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ She gripped the phone tightly. If Hunter had been away, then who had directed the hospital to approach her? Who set her up for Denzil Joy’s grisly farewell party?

  ‘Merrily, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I… This other job – can you tell me what that is?’

  ‘I’m not sure I should over the phone.’

  ‘You don’t need to mention names.’

  ‘Well, it’s… a haunting. At a home for the elderly. Near Dorstone, out towards the Welsh border.’

  ‘And where did that come from? Who told you about it?’

  ‘It came from the new vicar of Dorstone, I believe. Michael had asked me to keep him informed of any reports of this nature, and when I mentioned it to him he said he’d like you to… take a crack at it, as he put it. He…’ She hesitated. ‘What he went on to say, if I’m not speaking out of turn, is that it would be a test of how committed you were.’

  ‘Committed?’

  ‘Frankly, he feels you’re rather stalling. He’d expected a firm answer by now. When we spoke on the phone, he asked if I’d heard from you.’

  ‘I see. So if I sidestep this haunting, or suggest the Vicar of Dorstone handles it himself, he’ll take that as a no.’

  ‘I may be wrong about that.’

  Sophie was never wrong. Merrily felt she could almost see the hand of fate, grey-gloved in the half-light of the bedroom.

  From the landing, Jane called out, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum!’

  In Merrily’s head, the demonic Denzil Joy sat up in bed for the last time, tubes flying out of his nose in twin puffs of snot. Huw Owen’s voice echoed over the Brecon Beacons. Might as well just paint a great big bullseye between your tits.

  And, she thought, it was Dobbs, wasn’t it? It was bloody Dobbs – it has to be. Dobbs set me up.

  She felt light-headed with fatigue. She knew that later, when she awoke again, she was going to be very angry, but now the rage was still misty and distant.

  So were the words she spoke, so faintly that she wasn’t sure she hadn’t merely thought them. ‘I’ll come in tomorrow then, Sophie. Ten? Ten-thirty?’

  She didn’t hear the reply, wasn’t even aware of hanging up the phone.

  There were no dreams, thank God.

  14

  The First Exorcist

  SHE STOPPED AT the top of the gatehouse stairs, rubbing circulation back into her hands. It seemed to have become winter overnight. The waxed jacket felt as flimsy as a bin-liner. No good, she’d have to get herself a proper coat when she had time.

  When she saw the office door, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or turn around and creep quietly away.

  The white panels were adorned by a single, black gothic letter. Above it, a simple, black cross.

  The Rev. Charlie Headland was chuckling softly in her head. More like MI5…

  Too late to turn around and creep out. Sophie – grey suit, pearls, neat white bun, half-glasses on a chain – stood in the adjacent doorway.

  ‘Merrily, good morning. Did you see a few specks of snow? I’m convinced I saw snow. Heavens, come up.’

  ‘Do I have to sign in? Maybe pass through a detector?’

  Sophie smiled wryly. ‘Michael’s specific instructions. In one respect I suppose it’s rather elegant.’

  ‘Sophie, it looks like the entrance to a bloody chapel of rest.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sophie looked put out. She was the Bishop’s person, whoever the current bishop happened to be.

  The new arrival on the office desk was an Apple Mac and a printer, and something Merrily took to be a scanner.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘All I know how to do on one of these is type.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Sophie said, a little cool now. ‘I’m your secretary as well, for a while. Michael wants me to open a Deliverance database: filing and categorizing the various cases, and giving area breakdowns. He also wants me to arrange a meeting with the Director of Social Services, the Chief Executive of the Health Authority, charities like MIND – and also the police.’

  Merrily flopped down behind the desk. ‘What?’

  ‘And you’re to have an e-mail address, possibly a website.’

  She looked into the blank computer screen as though it were a crystal ball, conjuring up Huw Owen’s tired, rugged face. I don’t want stuff letting in. A lot of bad energy’s crowding the portals. I want to keep all the doors locked and the chains up…

  Her new secretary stood by the window, hands linked demurely at the waist of her tweed skirt.

  ‘Look… Sophie,’ Merrily moistened her wind-roughened lips, ‘the thing about Deliverance, it needs to be low-profile. I wouldn’t go as far as to use the word “clandestine”, but there’s a danger of attracting time-wasters and fanatics and loonies and… other undesirable elements. The Bishop doesn’t seem to have grasped this basic point.’

  ‘Deliverance is getting a high priority, Merrily.’ Sophie slipped into the visitor’s chair. ‘Look… I really wouldn’t worry about this. Michael’s a very young man to be a bishop, and he perhaps feels he’s been put in place to make an impression, help push the Church firmly into the twenty-first century. He’s also a very clever man, with an impeccable pedigree which he tends to underplay. Father and an uncle were both bishops… father-in-law’s the Dean of Gloucester. Michael feels that if people are aware of the amount of work undertaken by the Deliverance ministry, they may be more inclined towards what you might call spiritual preventative medicine.’

  ‘You mean what we used to call “Going to Church”?’

  Sophie smiled wryly.

  ‘I know,’ Merrily said wearily. ‘It all makes a kind of sense. I just wish there was less… bollocks.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that you’ll cope, Merrily. You’ll find the details of the Dorstone haunting on your computer, if you click on the desktop file marked Memo. I shall be next door if you want me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Merrily shed her coat and switched on the computer.

  And then closed the door and picked up the phone and rang Eileen Cullen at home.

  ‘Timed it well, Merrily. Co
me off shift, whizz round Tesco, home to bed.’ Away from the ward, Cullen’s voice sounded softer. ‘How are you now?’

  ‘Bit confused.’

  ‘Ah-ha. Well… what can I tell you? There’s a palpable sense of relief on the ward. We laid him out – he made the scariest corpse I ever handled – then we fumigated the side ward. Too much to expect that he’d take his smell down to the mortuary with him.’

  Almost immediately, Denzil’s reptilian odour was in her head. Merrily stifled a cough.

  ‘Oh, and later in the morning,’ Eileen Cullen said, ‘I’m told that the old man came in and said a prayer or two.’

  ‘Old man?’ Merrily tingled.

  ‘I don’t even know his name, but his collar was the right way round so nobody questions it.’

  ‘His name is Dobbs,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Aye, that’s the feller, I suppose.’

  ‘He already knew about Denzil. Didn’t he?’

  ‘He must’ve. Though how he’d have found out the man was dead, I don’t know. We’ve hardly got the time to put out a general bulletin to the clergy.’

  ‘OK, look, let’s not keep walking around each other – I’ll explain. Canon Dobbs is the Diocesan Exorcist. I’m the one being set up to take over from him. He doesn’t want to go, and he certainly doesn’t want to be replaced by a woman. I’m coming round to thinking he set me up with Denzil last night to give me a taste of just how nasty and squalid the job could be. And why it’s not a suitable job for a woman.’

  After a moment Cullen said, ‘That wasn’t very nice of him then, was it?’

  ‘Not awfully. So I’d appreciate just… knowing. Like, anything you can remember. Entirely off the record, Eileen.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Cullen, ‘you get surgeons like that. They love to leave you holding the shit end of the stick. All right, I’ll tell you what I know. He did know Denzil Joy. Whether this was from Denzil’s life outside of hospital I wouldn’t know. Probably. But he came in once – I didn’t see this, I wasn’t there, but Protheroe was – and they had to ask him to leave. Denzil’s spitting at him, coming out with all kinds of foul stuff you don’t want to be hearing from a sickbed, and it carried on that way after the priest was well out of the building. It’s why we put him in solitary the past two times. Though obviously his wife lived to regret that.’

  ‘Did anyone ask Dobbs about the incident?’

  ‘Oh, he wouldn’t talk to the likes of us – except very briefly to Protheroe. He said to let him know if we had any further trouble with Mr Joy. So, naturally, the other night, after the business with the wife, Protheroe’s screaming, “Call the priest, call the priest, the man’s possessed with evil.” ’

  ‘And you called him?’

  ‘I called the number she gave me and a woman answered, and I told her what it was about and she said to hang on, and then she came back and said to call the Reverend Watkins. Does that solve your problem?’

  ‘Do you remember the phone number you rang for Dobbs?’

  ‘Oh, I probably wrote it down and threw it away. Protheroe probably keeps it in a gold locket around her neck.’

  ‘Well, thanks. You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘Aye.’ A pause. ‘How’re you feeling yourself, Merrily? Like, did he do anything to you?’

  ‘I… maybe.’

  ‘I don’t want to worry you,’ Cullen said, ‘but they say it comes back sometimes. Like the ache you get with the shingles, you know?’

  ‘I’ve never had shingles.’

  ‘Pray you never do,’ Cullen said. ‘Seems daft saying this to a priest, but if you ever want a chat about anything, you’ve got the number.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Merrily said. ‘Thanks.’

  She clicked on Memo.

  STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

  Mrs Susan Thorpe, proprietor, the Glades Residential Home,

  Hardwicke (between Dorstone and Hay-on-Wye) requests a

  discreet meeting with regard to unexplained occurrences.

  Sophie’s head came round the door just then, as if she’d heard the click of the mouse. ‘Would you like me to call her for you? Make an appointment?’

  ‘Just leave the number on the desk. Sophie, could you give me another bit of information?’

  ‘It’s what I’m here for, Merrily.’

  ‘Could you tell me exactly where in the Close Canon Dobbs lives?’

  Sophie removed her half-glasses. ‘Ho-hum,’ she said.

  ‘The Bishop’s specific instructions are to keep Dobbs and me well apart, right?’

  ‘Michael doesn’t discuss Canon Dobbs. Perhaps you could try the telephone directory?’

  ‘Of which you know he’s ex-.’

  Sophie sighed. ‘He moved out of the canonry when his wife died. He lives in a little terraced house in Gwynne Street.’

  ‘That’s…?’

  ‘Less than fifty yards from where I sit – just down from the Christian bookshop. And I didn’t tell you that.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I suppose you had to get this over at some stage.’ Sophie refixed her glasses. ‘Don’t forget your haunting, will you?’

  Frost-blackened plants dripped down the sides of a hanging basket next to the door. The green door needed painting. Paint was peeling from the wooden window ledge; the wood was rotting. The house itself rather let Gwynne Street down.

  The street was narrow, almost like an alley, following the perimeter wall of the Bishop’s Palace, and sloping downhill towards the river. The house was one of the lower ones, before they gave way to warehouses and garages near the banks of the Wye.

  There was no bell, no knocker. Merrily banged on the door with a fist, which hurt and brought more paint flying off.

  There was no answer. She peered in at the window. The curtains were drawn against her. She looked around in frustration. There was no sign of another way in. Above her, the sky was tight and dark-flecked like stretched goatskin.

  ‘Hello, Merrily. All right, luv?’

  ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Oh.’ Silence on the line as Huw Owen mulled this over. ‘That sounds like you took on the job. I thought you wouldn’t back out.’

  ‘I was actually about to turn it down.’ Merrily lit a cigarette, looking out of the window into the Bishop’s Palace yard. ‘Then a case happened.’

  ‘Just happened, eh?’ Huw said. ‘Just like that. Well, what’s done’s done, in’t it? How can I help?’

  ‘I don’t suppose any of the others’ve called. Charlie? Clive?’

  ‘Never off, lass. “Do excuse me bothering you again, Huw, but I have a teensy problem, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s a weeper or a breather.” ’

  Merrily blew an accidental smoke-ring. ‘So I’m the first to come crying to the headmaster.’

  ‘I always liked you the best, anyroad, luv. Charlie and Clive’ll fall on their arses sooner or later, but they won’t tell me.’

  She started to laugh, picturing him sitting placidly in his isolated, Brontë-esque rectory, like some ungroomed old wolfhound.

  ‘Let’s hear it then, lass.’

  She told him about Denzil Joy. She told it simply and concisely. She missed out nothing she thought might be important. Scritchscratch. And then the Dobbs link. It took over fifteen minutes, and it brought everything back, and she felt unclean again.

  ‘My,’ Huw said, ‘that’s a foxy one, in’t it?’

  ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘Could be a few things. Could be just a very nasty little man. Or it could be a carrier.’

  ‘A carrier. Did you tell us about carriers?’

  ‘Happen I forgot.’

  ‘Meaning you deliberately forgot. Would carriers be the people who pick up hitchhikers?’

  ‘You’re not daft, Merrily. I said that, din’t I? Provable carriers are… not that common. And not easy to diagnose. And they can lead to a lot of hysteria of the fundamentalist type. You know, if one bloke’s got it, it must be contagio
us? And then you get these dubious mass-exorcisms, everybody rolling around and clutching their guts.’

  ‘Just one man,’ Merrily said, ‘so far.’

  ‘That’s good to know. Well, a carrier is usually a nasty person who attracts more nastiness to him – like iron filings to a magnet. Usually there’s a bit of a sexual kink. An overly powerful sex-drive and probably not bright. Not a lot up top, too much down below.’

  ‘Anything I need to do now he’s gone?’

  ‘To make sure he don’t come back? Sounds like Mr Dobbs has done it. Not going quietly into that good night, is he?’

  ‘Clearly not.’

  ‘Might not work, mind. That’s the big irony with Deliverance – half the time it don’t work. But in somewhere like a hospital it’ll fade or get consumed by all the rest of the pervading anguish. You could happen do a protection on yourself periodically. Oh, and leave off sex for a week.’

  ‘Gosh, Huw, that’s going to be a tall order.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Huw said. ‘So you’re still on your own, eh? What a bloody waste. God hates waste.’

  Before lunch, Merrily made an appointment to meet Mrs Susan Thorpe at the Glades Residential Home at eleven o’clock the following morning. There must have been somebody in the room who didn’t know about this issue, because Mrs Thorpe kept addressing her as if she were Rentokil coming to deal with an infestation of woodworm.

  Sophie was meeting a friend for lunch at the Green Dragon. Merrily decided to see what was on offer at the café inside All Saints Church: a fairly ingenious idea for getting bums on pews or at least close to pews.

  But first – Sod it, I’m not walking away from this – she slipped round the wall and back into Gwynne Street.

  There was a weak, cream-coloured sun now over Broad Street, but Gwynne Street was still in shadow. The only point of light was in the middle of Dobbs’s flaking green door.

  It turned out to be a slender white envelope trapped by a corner in the letterbox flap. As she raised a fist to knock on the door and wondered if she ought to push the envelope through, she saw the name typed on the front: