by Phil Rickman
‘Mm,’ Lol said.
‘But you’re all right. I never… I never thought you’d be here. I thought you were a…’ Denny laughed out some blood. ‘… a bit of a nancy, if I’m honest. No… no… you stay there. Don’t fucking look down here, man. Not having you throwing up on my motor.’
‘Shut up now,’ Lol said. ‘I’ll have an ambulance here as soon as I can find the bloody phone.’
‘I think on the table – bottom of the stairs. Be part of my fucking sump now.’
Lol tried the driver’s door. ‘Don’t be stupid, mate,’ Denny said. ‘You open that, I’ll just fall out in several pieces. An Iron Age Celt dies in his chariot. I tell you about my dream? A mystic now, man – finally a fucking mystic.’
Lol saw that Denny’s earring was gone. Or maybe the ear itself.
‘You’re so… indiscreet, Lol. That’s your problem. You don’t trust yourself – always got to tell somebody.’
Lol sighed. ‘The extension. You heard me leaving that message for Merrily.’
‘Been eavesdropping on your calls for weeks, Laurence. Needed to hear what you were saying to Lyden – about Kathy. Could never figure why you weren’t all over Kathy. She attractive, this vicar?’
‘Listen,’ Lol said. ‘I’m going over to the farm. I’ll have to break in and use their phone.’
‘If that makes you feel better. But if I’ve gone to the ancestors, time you get back…’
‘I’ll be less than five minutes. I’ll smash a window in the kitchen.’
‘Got a lot to say to those primitive fuckers,’ Denny muttered. ‘To the ancestors.’
‘Don’t go away,’ Lol said.
‘No. Cold in here, en’t it? Must be the extra ventilation.’
Denny laughed his ruined laugh.
Headlights and warblers. Déjà vu. The ambulance cutting across the green again, directly to the north porch. A police car behind the ambulance. Behind that, a plain Rover: Howe.
‘Later, Annie,’ Merrily said, ‘please? Is that all right? I need to see that Jane’s…’
‘Just don’t go off anywhere,’ Howe said.
‘No further than the hospital.’
‘No,’ Jane protested, sitting up in the back of the ambulance, a paramedic hanging on to her arm. ‘You’re not coming. I’m not going. This is ridiculous. It’s just like… mild concussion.’
‘Could be a hairline fracture, Jane,’ the paramedic warned.
‘No way. This guy’s just blowing it up on account of having his hands all over me.’
‘I had my hands all over you,’ the boy in white said patiently, ‘because you were on fire.’
‘Sure,’ Jane said. Some of her hair was singed, and she had quite a deep cut on her forehead and bruising on the left side of her jaw and under her left eye. ‘And, like, if you’re wearing a dress and your name’s Irene, you think nobody’s going to suspect anything.’
‘Eirion,’ the boy said. There were black smuts all over his hands and his white alb.
‘Whatever.’
‘I’ll be here for quite a while,’ Annie Howe told Merrily. ‘We have to talk in depth, Ms Watkins.’ She pulled Eirion away from the ambulance. ‘I think you need to tell me how she got on fire.’
‘She was down in the crypt – with a candle. She said she must have tripped, but…’ He hesitated. ‘There was nobody else there when I got to her, OK? But she was face-down and her coat was on fire and… I really think you need to talk to James Lyden.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘The Boy Bishop. His parents were looking for him. They’ve probably taken him home. They live in one of those Edwardian houses in Barton Street. And you need to talk to his girlfriend.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Merrily said, ‘I think you definitely want to talk to James’s girlfriend.’
‘Name?’
‘Melissa,’ Eirion said. ‘But she seems to have gone.’
Merrily said, ‘Melissa?’
‘I don’t know her other name. James told me she lives with her foster-parents on a farm up on Dinedor Hill. He knows where it is – he’s been up there a couple of times.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Merrily said.
She went into the Cathedral and stayed away from everyone, even Sophie. Especially from Sophie – she mustn’t be involved.
Merrily saw that there was a blanket over the body of Thomas Dobbs, and two uniformed policeman guarding it. The nave had a secular feel, like some huge market hall. Spiritual work to be done, here – but by whom?
Jane had absolutely refused to let Merrily go with her to the hospital, but in the end she had accepted Eirion’s company. Merrily smiled faintly. The boy must have masochistic tendencies.
Across the nave, over by Bishop Stanbury’s ornate chantry, she saw Huw Owen pacing about, hands deep in the pockets of his RAF greatcoat. She hadn’t spoken to him yet, although George Curtiss had told her it had been Huw who’d brought Dobbs along, after helping him sign himself out of the General Hospital.
Dobbs’s last stand. Where was the squatter now? Should James Lyden be exorcized, or merely counselled by his father? Where would they go from here? Who would work from the office with on the door? Not a woman, that was for sure.
A hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t turn round. She knew his smell: light sweat, sex.
‘A busy day, Merrily.’
‘Indeed, Bishop.’
‘Were you looking for me?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’
He came round to face her. He’d changed into his jogging gear. His thick brown hair looked damp with sweat.
‘I have to run sometimes, to clear it all away. It’s very calming. I run through the streets and nobody knows who I am.’
‘Oh, I think they do, Bishop. They’ve all seen your picture, running. But you can only run so far, can’t you?’
Mick didn’t smile. ‘Let’s go for a walk, shall we?’
‘All right.’
She followed him out of the south door, towards the cloisters, along a narrow, flagged floor, dim and intimate. She’d left her cloak in the Cathedral and felt cold in her jumper and skirt, but was determined not to show it.
‘This farce will be in the papers,’ he said.
‘Something will be in the papers.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I imagine you’re excellent at news management.’
‘Said in a somewhat derogatory way.’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘No, you aren’t. You think I’m just an ambitious administrator, with few spiritual qualities.’
‘If any,’ Merrily agreed. What the hell. Jane was going to be all right, Huw was there in the Cathedral. What the hell!
The Bishop leaned against a door to his left, and the cold bit hard. They were almost outside.
This was the tourist part of the Cathedral – in summer, anyway. A stone-walled courtyard, a snackbar, steps and benches and tables. The Bishop held open the door for her and followed her out, pulling the door shut behind them. They were on a raised stone path bordered by flowerbeds and evergreen shrubs. There was a circular lawn with a dead fountain in the middle, a picturesquely ruined wall behind it, overhung by decorative trees and vines. Idyllic in summer: you could be miles from the city.
Deserted now under the icy moon.
‘You,’ Mick Hunter said mildly, ‘are an unbelievable little bitch – an incredible cock-teaser.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Merrily shook her head, moving back to the door. ‘This is not what I wanted to talk about.’
The Bishop placed himself in front of the door, shaking his head slowly. ‘All right, what do you want to talk about?’
‘Dobbs?’
‘You want me to express regret? Very well, I regret it.’
Merrily folded her arms against the cold. There was no delicate way to put this. ‘When Canon Dobbs was dying, he put out his arm and he pointed, and he managed to say, “Devil… unclean spirit.” And
everyone thought he was pointing at James Lyden. But I saw he was pointing at someone standing just to the left of James – in the shadows for once.’
Hunter didn’t deny it. ‘Does it surprise you that he hated me?’
‘Under the circumstances, hardly. When you arrived, he was an old man in bad health. He was due to retire at any time, but you pushed him out. When he wouldn’t resign voluntarily, you chose to humiliate him. Thus antagonizing the Dean and the Chapter and countless other people – people who really counted.’
‘One can’t be sentimental about these things.’
‘This wasn’t pragmatism, Bishop. This was lunacy. When you told me last night that you’d been advised against appointing a female Deliverance consultant, it didn’t strike me at the time, but later I thought, that’s not the kind of thing he does. He’s a politician. He might appoint me later, when he’s proved himself, but not… I mean, I bet the people who advised you against it were those people whose support you really needed.’
He said nothing.
‘It had never really made obvious sense, but I thought – and Sophie often said – that you were young and radical and a bit reckless. But you’re also clever and cautious. You never put a foot wrong. How would some hot-headed revolutionary ever make bishop under the age of forty-five? How could he ever make bishop at all?’
‘Merrily,’ he said. ‘Did it ever occur to you that I simply fancied the hell out of you?’
‘God forgive me, it did. It occurred to me you were looking for a nice, safe legover, and what safer option than a female cleric with ambition and no husband? Sure, I thought that for quite a while. I even came to the conclusion I could handle it if we weren’t alone too often.’
‘How plucky of you.’ He moved out of the doorway. His face was two-dimensionally gaunt – light and shadow – in the moonlight.
‘But I still wondered why it was so important for Dobbs – the hardest, possibly the most uncompromising exorcist in the business – to be out of the way now? And quickly. Who could it possibly help to have a barely qualified novice floundering about? Someone who really didn’t know the score on certain aspects of the situation. Someone whose appointment was politically sensitive. Someone who could be pushed around, blamed, bullied…’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Merrily. It’s been an emotional few days for you, and you’re—’
‘Acting like a silly woman.’
He said, ‘You know, frankly, I couldn’t believe it when you wouldn’t let me take you home and fuck you that night. It was such an amazing night… with the new snow and the ambulance and that wonderful charge in the air. We were all so high.’
‘High?’ She stared at him. ‘High on an old man having a stroke? Wow! Even better tonight, then, Mick. This time he really died. I bet you nearly came in your episcopal briefs.’
The Bishop slapped her face.
She said, ‘What?’
He’d hardly moved his body, simply reached out and done it. Almost lazily, as if to show that if she really annoyed him he could knock her head from her shoulders without breaking more sweat than it took to circuit High Town.
‘There are policemen in the Cathedral,’ Merrily said.
‘It’s a cathedral, Merrily. It has very thick walls and windows which don’t open. You aren’t supposed to hear what goes on outside.’
‘I can’t believe you did that.’
‘You can believe anything you want to believe. You can believe or disbelieve at will.’
‘I think we should go, Bishop, before you do or say something else that won’t help your glittering career.’
She was now realizing how stupid she’d been. She could have told Annie Howe. She could have called Huw over. Earlier, Sophie had offered to come with her. But, as usual, she hadn’t been able to quite believe she wouldn’t be making a complete fool of herself in front of others. And she had thought she’d be quite safe virtually anywhere in the shadow of the Cathedral.
He seemed quite relaxed, but he wasn’t going to let her through the door. She found she was backing away on to the circular lawn.
‘Do you know young James Lyden?’ The Bishop put a foot on to the grass, already brittle with frost.
‘Not really.’
‘Not a popular boy. Even I don’t like him awfully. He behaved rather badly today. What do you think’s going to happen to him?’
‘I don’t know. His father’s a psychotherapist. Perhaps he’ll be able to handle it.’
‘I don’t think so – neither does James. Where do you think he is now?’
‘I believe his parents took him home,’ she said cautiously. What was this about?
‘Wrong,’ the Bishop said. ‘James gave his old man the slip. The last thing James wanted was to go back home in disgrace – Hereford-cred is Dick Lyden’s raison d’être. The boy’s now undone all the good work for him. I told James he could hang out at the Palace for a while. Nobody knows he’s there. Nobody there but me today, as Val left for the Cotswolds this morning. Rather an unpleasant, maladjusted boy, our James.’
‘Yes.’
‘He nearly killed your daughter.’
‘Yes.’
‘And who knows what he’ll do now?’ Mick said.
He came towards her, moving as an athlete, his arms loose. She knew that if she tried to run past him, towards the closed-down snackbar and the steps, he’d catch her easily. She stopped in the middle of the circular lawn, near the fountain with its stone pot on top. She put her hands up. He waited, a couple of yards away, moonlight on his hair.
‘Look—’ She tried to produce a laugh. ‘How about we treat this like last night’s conversation and pretend it never happened?’
Somewhere, over God knew how many intervening walls, she heard a car start up. That was the only sound.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said quietly. ‘I think you’d better carry on talking.’
‘I think I’ve said all I want to say.’
‘But not all I want to know.’
She found she’d now backed up against the ruined wall, far too high to get over. Probably the Bishop’s Palace garden behind.
‘There are people,’ she said, ‘who wish us ill. And I think – whether unwillingly, or because of blackmail, or something – you’ve been playing on their side.’
Her right shoulder rammed against a projecting stone, and she winced.
‘All the signs for them… Cantilupe’s shrine in pieces, I suppose, was the main one… I mean, if Dobbs had still been official, the spiritual defences would have been so much stronger, wouldn’t they? Instead of him having to struggle alone and furtively at night, exposed to whatever psychic influences were at work.’
She began to edge, inch by inch, along the wall. There was a lower section further along, no more than three feet high. OK, she might wind up on the Palace lawn, but she could make it down to the river bank and…
Oh Jesus, that was wrong, wasn’t it?
But what alternative was there? She kept moving – imperceptibly, she hoped.
‘Try pinching yourself,’ the Bishop said. ‘It might all be a dream, a silly fantasy.’
‘I don’t think so. And I still don’t know what you believe, if anything. I don’t even know if you believe that what they’re doing is likely to have any effect whatsoever.’
He smiled and stepped back from her. ‘You know, I never wanted to be a bishop. There’ve been far too many in my family. From an early age I knew what unholy shits most of them were, so I never wanted to be one of them. No, I wanted to be a rock star – or a cabinet minister. I actually quite envied poor Tony, for a while, but politicians… everyone suspects them, don’t they?’
‘Do they?’
‘Politicians are capable of anything, whereas bishops… bishops somehow are still seen as quite remarkably saintly. They might occasionally make some ill-advised remark about the fantasy of a virgin birth, but they don’t embezzle large sums, fuck other people’s wives or… what? What else
don’t they do, Merrily? What else don’t bishops do?’
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Don’t make me say it.’
He straightened up, a foot taller than her.
‘Let’s go in now,’ she said. ‘You’ve already sacked me. I’m pretty stupid, really. A lousy exorcist, too.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll go away immediately. I’ll apply for vicar of Penzance.’
‘Merrily, what else don’t bishops do?’
‘I don’t know that you did it. And if you did, I don’t understand why – or even if it was an accident.’
‘Go on.’
‘Paul Sayer – the Satanist dragged from the river.’
‘Ah,’ he said.
‘I think you know how he died,’ she said.
And she dived for the low wall.
He caught her easily and threw her down, well away from the wall, into the frozen flowerbed under the central fountain. He slapped her hard, backwards, forwards, across both cheeks, shocking away her scream as he straddled her, pushing her skirt up and thrusting a hand between her legs.
He gave a long, ragged, rueful sigh.
Then took his hand away.
She froze up.
‘The really unfortunate part, for me, Merrily,’ he said, ‘is that I cannot give you what you so richly deserve and would probably end up rather enjoying.’
She couldn’t move. She heard herself panting in terror, panting so loud that it might have been coming from someone else lying next to her.
‘DNA,’ he said. ‘D-N-bloody-A.’
Her spine was chilled, literally: the frost melting through her jumper as he pressed her into the soil. She tried to pray, while at the same time looking to each side of her for a possible weapon.
‘Because this isn’t me, of course,’ he told her. ‘Bishops don’t do this. It’s never considered feasible for a bishop to even contemplate doing this to a woman. A bishop’s whereabouts on the night in question are rarely – even in these suspicious times – ever questioned. Especially… if there’s an unpleasant, arrogant, sociopathic teenager like young James Lyden on the loose. Having been found hiding in the Bishop’s Palace and unceremoniously ejected therefrom by the understandably irate Bishop, he wanders the grounds…’
‘You can’t possibly—’
