December

by Phil Rickman

  'Marginally,' Simon said, head bowed in the doorway. 'we wanted to save your legs.'

  'What for?" Prof dumped himself on the bed. 'Sorry, I shouldn't moan.'

  Oaths and clumping on the stairs told them the others were moving in, full of phoney banter.

  '... stupid can you get, putting a frock on?'

  'Just when you think you've forgotten ...'

  '... what a shithole this is ...'

  'Yours is the penthouse suite, Tom.'

  'Like fuck it is.'

  'Is that a rat?'

  'Where? Oh, you bastard, Davey!'

  Prof grinned. 'Sounds like a Sunday school outing.'

  'Mmm,' said Simon. 'Let's just pray the accommodation is the worst of it.'

  'You do a lot of praying, Simon?'

  'Most of the time,' Simon said. At first Prof thought his expression was deadpan, then realised there was a lot of truth about it. 'I'd like us to pray together tonight, if that doesn't offend you.'

  'No, no,' Prof said vaguely, 'not at all.' Strewth, he thought.

  Laying a small pile of books on the altar, Eddie Edwards said, 'I have been thinking about the Abbey.'

  'I've thought of bugger all else in twenty years,' Isabel Pugh said without rancour.

  It was getting very much colder now; she wore a woollen beret and a thick woollen cape that hung over the arms of the wheelchair. Even inside the church, Eddie's breath was turning to steam. No heating, see. No heating, no lights; they were going to have to find somewhere more congenial to meet. But where else could you go in a village like this without being overheard and being thought quite mad?

  Or not.

  'Funny, isn't it?' Eddie said. 'Everyone here knows about those candles and Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones and his "discreet" inquiries about satanism. Yet, is there a big fuss about it? Oh, we must protect our children against this evil? Not a bloody word. They were laughing about it in the Dragon last night, Len Hughes doing an impression of Gwyn Arthur and his mouldy old pipe.'

  'People have different ways of coping in the country,' Isabel said. 'You just haven't been here long enough to understand the psychology of it.'

  'I'm getting wiser.' Picking up the books from the altar, Eddie sat on a front pew, arranged his overcoat over his knees as a table for them. 'But the villagers are an open book compared with Simon. Unless ...' He gave her a shrewd look '... you know him better than me.'

  Isabel said, 'What's your opinion, Eddie? If a man has an session, sexual, with a twelfth-century monk, is he a good bet for a husband?' She laughed, really laughed, finding a tissue up her sleeve to wipe her eyes. 'My luck all over, that is.'

  'Yes,' Eddie said. 'I've been giving it a lot of thought, what you were telling me, about the candles - and the monk.'

  'Just never tell Simon I told you, that's all.'

  'Never,' Eddie promised. 'Let me tell you about my researches. Spent most of the day, I have, in Abergavenny museum and then Hereford Library. He lifted the topmost book from his knees. 'Giraldus now, if you read between the lines ...'

  'Skip the boring bits,' said Isabel. 'Skip the sources and dates. Just give me the dirt.'

  'A hard, snappy woman you are, Isabel.'

  'A cold woman I am.'

  'Ah, no,' Eddie said. 'Not cold. Never that.'

  'Well, you're too old for me anyway,' Isabel said, not unkindly. 'I'm sorry. Go on. Your researches.'

  'I'm not going to bore you. You want the dirt, I'll give you the dirt. Richard Walden, founder of the Abbey. The facts are rarely spoken of. A pederast. Expelled from his monastery for giving it to choirboys. Or monastic novices, as they were then. Corrupted half the youth of South Herefordshire.'

  'There's novel.'

  'Aye, and does a man like that change his spots just because he's had a holy vision?'

  'Well, in theory he does,' said Isabel. 'Isn't that what holy visions are supposed to do?'

  'Humbug.'

  'You've got a point.' Isabel nodded. 'Not much light left in here. Shall I put a match to a candle or two?'

  'I don't think so, really. You don't know where they've been. My God, I've been thinking and thinking about that, the most charitable conclusion being that the poor boy is seriously confused.'

  'No. I think he's telling the truth. I do.' Isabel's broad face shone with a most unlikely faith.

  'Candles from the Middle Ages? I can't deal with that. It's even more lunatic than the idea of a satanic cabal in Ystrad melting down bodies.'

  'But the monk...?'

  'The monk, yes. The obsession with the monk, certainly. It's not nice, not in my old-fashioned view, but it's not unlikely. Nobody likes to think of their vicar as a shirt lifter; however, a lot of them are, that is an established fact. And it stretches credibility not at all to imagine that Simon knows all about Richard's unsavoury activities and is perhaps using that to make sense of his own ... base desires. Here is a flawed human being, he is saying, just like me. But look, he went on to found a great abbey!'

  'But can we help him?'

  'That's what you asked me the other night. That's why I spent all day deep in my researches. Can we help him?' Eddie sighed. 'Buggered if I know.'

  Isabel was jiggling up and down in her chair with frustration.

  'But he's in there now, Eddie! He's gone to the Abbey, with the others. Last time he was there he reckons this ... monk - Abbot Richard, if you like - transmitted thirteen of these filthy candles and arranged them around the studio. And then it all went wrong for them and there was that terrible car crash. All I'm saying is, we can't just sit around and wait for something else to happen.'

  But wasn't that the pity of it. All she could do was sit around.

  'Isabel, why's he doing this? Why did they have to go back, these people, this band?'

  'Because they're all as barmy as him, presumably,' she said glumly, and then her hands tightened on the chair arms. 'No! Because they want to get their lives back, rescue their sanity, that's why they've gone back. You might not be able to understand that. But you know something? After twenty-one years like the last twenty-one, I think I bloody can.'

  She set her chair in motion.

  'Hang on.' Eddie stood up. 'Twenty-one years. And fourteen years since the other business?'

  The chair squeaked to a halt. 'So?'

  'Multiples of seven, that's all. Did anything happen at the Abbey in - let's see - nineteen eighty-seven?'

  'Not that I can think.'

  'Ah well, another one bites the dust.'

  'Another what?'

  'Theory. Puzzle. I don't know. You had your terrible fall twenty-one years ago, this other incident was fourteen years ago, and December 1994 makes it another multiple of seven. Were the dates the same? Forgive me, I ramble too much.'

  The chair rolled back to where he sat. Isabel said, 'Look at me, Eddie.'

  He never objected to that. He liked the way her eyebrows were just slightly irregular and that twist to her lips which could be either petulant or humorous and sometimes, intriguingly, both. He only wished it was light enough in here to see her better.

  'Go ahead, then,' he said. 'Make your point.'

  'My accident was on the tenth, OK? The car crash was in the early hours of the ninth. No anniversaries here, but close enough. Don't think I haven't thought about that. And don't ever dismiss anything as too far-fetched. It can be a fatal mistake.'

  Eddie smiled. This was quite the reverse of the way Marina spoke to him at home.

  'Aelwyn,' he said suddenly. 'Aelwyn Breuddwydiwr.'

  'Who? Oh ... him.'

  Eddie put an arm around the back of the chair and gave one of her shoulders an affectionate squeeze. 'Just another one my far-fetched ideas. Leave this with me.'

  Weasel had two ten-pence pieces and pushed them both in. This was a drag; 10p bought you sod-all time these days. About time Love-Storey equipped him with a mobile. He called the shop.

  'Hello, yes.'

  'That you Shelley?'

 
; 'Tom ...?'

  'Nah, nah, it's Weasel. I'm sorry.'

  'God, for one moment ... What's wrong. Weasel? Oh, listen, a woman rang for you ...'

  The money counting itself down on the meter, 18p, 17p,

  'Shel...'

  'From London. I'm sure I recognised the voice, but she didn't leave a message, just a number. It could be about Tom, so could you call her back and then ...?'

  14p, 13p, 12p...

  'Shel, listen, I got Vanessa wiv me ...'

  'Vanessa's at school. I'm picking her up in ...'

  'Nah, she ain't. She stowed away in the van.'

  'She did what?'

  10p, 9p …

  'Hid in the van. Listen. It's Tom. I fink we found him.'

  'Where are you?'

  'I can't explain about this, I just got to check somefink out and then I'll get back to you, OK?'

  5p, 4p, 3p ...

  'Weasel, what the hell...?'

  'The money's running out, I got no time to explain, I'll call you ...'

  'Weasel, where are you? Bring Vanessa back at ...'

  '... later,' Weasel said into the dead phone. He ran back across the road to the dark green van parked outside the Dragon Hotel in Ystrad Ddu.

  'Least she won't worry now, Princess. Gives us more time to play wiv.'

  He was dead chuffed. They'd cracked it. Him and the kid between them, what a team!

  Rolling into Ystrad-wotsit - and what a bleak and lonely place this was in a mist - who should they see, who should be the first person they seen ... but bleeding Morticia, weird as life, striding across the road with a shopping bag.

  Into the pub she goes; turns out it's a kind of village store, provisions and that. Weasel's treading on the brakes - you stay there, Princess, don't move - and off into the boozer after her.

  Inside, there's no sign of Morticia, maybe she went to the khasi but the two geezers standing at the bar just reek of the recording industry. One has a little pony-tail and one of these shapeless jackets that cost a bomb, the other's got long hair and shades and looks kind of familiar.

  'Looking for Tom,' Weasel says, dead casual. 'Tom Storey.'

  'Who are you?' asks pony-tail, like Weasel is a piece of shit that just dropped off somebody's shoe.

  'Weasel. Tom's roadie. Everybody knows me. Got his gear in the van.'

  'What makes you think he's here?'

  'Well, blimey, they ain't gonna send me here if he ain't. You're wiv Tom, are you?'

  'Stephen Case,' pony-tail says coolly. 'TMM. Wait there, would you?'

  Bingo. And Morticia here too, Knew it, bleeding Morticia and this slimy git are hand in glove. Say no more.

  Geezer keeps him waiting five, six minutes; when he comes back at least he's a bit more pleasant.

  'You say you've a van outside, Mr, er ...'

  'Weasel.'

  'OK, Weasel, why don't you go and sit in it and someone will be along to take you to Tom. He'll go with you, OK?'

  'Spot on. Fanks a lot.'

  Weasel buys a few items at the bar, comes out to the van grinning like a frog, glad he didn't ring Shelley again earlier. Next time he'll have something to say worth hearing.

  'Spot of afternoon tea.'

  Back in the van. Weasel, all smiles, produced a bag of goodies - tuna sandwiches, crisps, Coke - he'd bought in the pub. Bit of a sweetener.

  'Do's a favour, Princess. Hop in the back again, would you? Just for fifteen, twenty minutes, yeah?'

  Be warm enough in the back now all the produce was unloaded and the cooler turned off. What he wasn't going to have was the kid involved in any aggro which might result when they turned up at the Abbey or wherever they was headed.

  'Not long now. Next face you see when those back doors opens'll be your dad's. Promise.'

  Vanessa went along with it. Weasel closed the doors on the kid with a cheery thumbs-up sign and went back to the cab to wait, munching an apple, thinking how he was going to handle this.

  How to tell the big guy he'd been scammed, set up, lured into the studio on false pretences. Maybe save that for later. The fact that Weasel was not sure what the false pretences had actually been - or why - would kind of take the meat out of the sandwich.

  Maybe he should just get Tom on his own, whizz him round the back of the van, tell him, I brung somefing for you, special delivery. And let the Princess do the rest.

  In other words, play it by ear.

  Presently, a farmer-looking geezer in a long coat, flat cap, appeared across the road. Walked over, tapped on the passenger door and Weasel let him in.

  'Mr Weasel?'

  'S'me. Where we going?'

  'The Abbey, of course. Where did you think?' Bit of a Welsh accent.

  'Oh, right.' Quite eager to see the place at last.

  Weasel motored down this lane, narrow and getting narrower, trees meeting overhead, branches scratching the paintwork. Who in their right minds would live in the country?

  'Right, now, what I want you to do, Mr Weasel ... slow down … past the next telegraph pole you'll see a little track. Now. By here. This is it.'

  'Shit, I can't get down there.'

  'You'll be fine. Gets wider after a bit.'

  'Bloody rough. Ain't got four-wheel drive, you know.'

  Bet the poor kid's getting shaken up something rotten back there.

  'This it, guv'nor? Don't look like no Abbey to me.'

  'This is the Grange. The old Abbey farm.'

  'Right.'

  'Go round the back, you'll see a barn, double doors open. Drive in.'

  'I ain't stopping long, mate. Can't I leave it outside?'

  'As you please.'

  Weasel pulled up outside this old, grey house, major dilapidation, few slates missing from the roof. Typical rundown Welsh farm, outbuildings collapsing all around. He wasn't going to drive into no barn where the roof might come down around him.

  The geezer had the door open, and as soon as Weasel applied the handbrake he was hopping down and there was another guy sliding into the passenger seat. A guy with close shaven hair and a tight beard like iron filings.

  'Ferret. How are you, lad?'

  'Jeez.'

  It was only sodding Sile Copesake, godfather of the bleeding blues.

  'Sile,' he said.

  'So what's this all about, Ferret?'

  'Weasel,' Weasel mumbled.

  'Summat on your mind, Ferret? Everywhere I go, people keep telling me they've been getting calls from a little bastard in Gloucestershire running up his boss's phone bill.'

  Shit. People couldn't keep nothing under their hats more.

  'You should've come directly to me, Ferret. I'd've cleared the whole thing up for you. As it is ...'

  'Look, Sile,' Weasel said. 'This is nuffink personal. I work for the Storeys, they been good to me. I don't wanna see 'em damaged, yeah? Tom's my gaffer. Always has been, always will be.'

  'How touching,' said Sile. 'Tell me. Ferret ...'

  'It's Weasel!'

  'All nasty little scurrying creatures are much the same to me,' said Sile. He tutted. 'Forgotten what I was going to say now; you always have this effect on people?'

  'Situation is,' Weasel said, sticking to his story without much hope. 'I got a whole pile of Tom's gear in the van. His favourite Telecaster. He can't work wivout his 'Caster, can he?'

  Sile smiled. 'Where'd you get that idea?'

  'Stands to reason, dunnit?'

  'Does it?'

  'Lemme speak to him.' This was not going at all how he'd planned. Something distinctly iffy about this whole set-up. Crummy farmhouse, middle of nowhere. Time for straight talk.

  'Just get Tom out, willyer, I ain't got all night,'

  Sile smiled. 'That's exactly what you have got, Weasel, and a very long night it's going to be.'

  'You freatening me?' Weasel felt his fists bunching. He might be little but he'd always been able to handle himself. Never took no shit in stir.

  'Threatening?' Sile looked amazed. 'Why sh
ould I have to threaten you?'

  You know summink? Weasel thought but didn't say. I never liked you much.

  He glared resentfully into Copesake's eyes, which were dry and dead, like cinders.

  Never rated you neither. You was strictly mediocre as a guitarist, as a singer. Like, derivative. You only got there on the backs of all the real talent you got in your bands. You was a fixer, a wheeler-dealer. Too smart to have the blues. And you always worked with young guys. Young guys you could push around.

  'Balls.' Sile grinned suddenly and his eyes lit up in the darkness of the cab, like somebody'd put bellows behind the cinders, and he pushed Weasel very hard in the chest and Weasel fell back against the driver's door.

  'Never pushed anyone in my life,' Sile said.

  Weasel gasped. Bastard had knocked all the breath out of him. Had he said all that out loud? Nah. Not a bleeding word.

  'Never pushed nobody, eh?' he found himself gasping. 'What about...'bout Carlos Ferrers?'

  'Yeah, OK,' Sile said, leaning back against the window dead relaxed, like he'd never moved. Must be bloody fit, say that much, for a geezer wouldn't see sixty again. 'I'll give you that one, Ferret.'

  'What ... what you was always good at, Sile. Persuading people to split wiv their mates, sign up wiv you. Get 'em while they're weak, doing dope. Dope you bunged 'em, yeah? Prob'ly that's what got you up the ladder in ... TMM. Yeah? And ...'

  It occurred to Weasel then that Sile hadn't contradicted him when he'd accused him of pushing old slave-driving Carlos down the stairs at the Croydon Lido or wherever it was. He'd said, I'll give you that one.

  Cocky bastard. 'I tell you, one day, Copesake ...' Weasel so mad his mouth was full of spit or bile or some shit '… you're gonna land yourself ...'

  'What are you going on about, lad?'

  Weasel sat up. It seemed darker in the cab, except for where Sile was. There was like a hazy, whitish glow around Sile. It certainly wasn't from his smile, not with the state of Sile's teeth.

  You'd think he'd have had them capped, all the bread he was raking in.

  Weasel's lips felt wet.

  'I said, yeah,' Sile said. 'Yeah to everything. Except the bit about having no talent. I resent that. I resent that very much. That's the reason you're dying, Ferret.'