by Phil Rickman
Banks turned away, stood thinking. Then he went to sit behind his desk. There was a regimental photo on it: Banks and fellow officers either side of an armoured car.
‘It disgusted me,’ he said. ‘And after half a lifetime in the Army, as you can imagine, I’m not easily disgusted.’
‘He told you about having sexual fantasies involving women who were now dead.’
‘Yes.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘About two years ago.’
‘Did he just show up and ask to talk to you?’
‘No, he… I don’t know whether I should be telling you this, but he was more or less referred to me. By his GP. Dr Ruck.’
‘This is the same man you refer people to when they complain of nocturnal apparitions or whatever?’
‘He’d gone to Allan Ruck with general complaints of debilitation, headaches, muscle pains. And then he’d starting talking about all this psychic malarkey. I believe Allan eventually sent him to a brain specialist, but of course they couldn’t find anything. After that he could only suggest a psychiatrist. Lodge reacted somewhat aggressively to this. Ruck said, then why don’t you go and see the rector?’
‘Palming him off.’
‘If you like.’
‘Did nobody even consider the possibility of anomalous electrical—?’
‘And give that maniac Hall more ammunition? Anyway, how could it possibly explain the sexual fantasies?’
Huw said, ‘Electrical stimulation, if I’ve got this right, of the septum area of the brain.’
‘I think what we’re suggesting,’ Merrily said, ‘is that if someone like Roddy Lodge, who already has a well-established fantasy life, moves into what’s become known as an electromagnetic hot spot, then the foundation – the template – for sexual fantasies of a very real and intense kind is already laid. Perhaps it all became just a bit too intense. Too intense to be pleasurable, in the conventional sense. And coupled with the debilitating physical effects of electro-hypersensitivity… Well, no wonder he went to his doctor.’
The mobile shuddered in her coat pocket. She thought, Jane.
‘Tell me,’ Banks said, ‘what basic proof do you have of any of this, Mrs Watkins?’
‘None at all. When do people like us ever have proof?’ She pulled out the phone. ‘Excuse me.’
She went to stand in the doorway, remembering Banks telling her on the phone that he’d actually offered ‘prayers for the Unquiet Dead’ but Roddy Lodge had rejected the idea. Bumptious? Full of himself? Never seen the like, I wasn’t entirely sure, to tell you the truth, if he wasn’t taking the piss. It suggested that, while Roddy would have been very glad to lose the side effects, he really didn’t want to part with his ghosts, which was perhaps why he’d resisted Melanie Pullman’s efforts to get him to talk to Sam Hall.
‘This is Merrily,’ she said into the phone.
‘Where are you?’
‘Lol! I’m out near Ross.’
‘That’s brilliant. You—’
‘I’ll call you back, OK? Five minutes.’
‘So what advice did you give Roddy Lodge, Jerome?’ Huw said. ‘What did you recommend for his little problem? Cold showers?’
Banks looked down at his desk. Waited his customary two seconds before replying.
‘I believe I told him to – in the modern parlance – get a life.’
Huw smiled.
Banks didn’t. He looked at each of them in turn, as if to make sure they understood the significance of what he was about to say.
‘I suggested to Lodge that instead of following his solitary… pursuits, he might consider making the acquaintance of real girls.’ Bringing his fist down on the desktop. ‘Real girls!’ The fist coming down twice, like a mallet. ‘Now do you see?’
37
Long Old Nights
JANE HEARD THE voice from the kitchen and grinned with relief, saw herself floating in slo-mo across the room and into the scullery towards the answering machine and the phone, the light entering her eyes like turning up a dimmer switch, and then…
Then what?
‘Er, this is actually quite important,’ Eirion said, ‘so I’m going to hang on for about half a minute while you decide if you can possibly spare some time to speak to me.’
Jane didn’t move. Had to admit that what she was missing most right now was having someone she could open up to – someone she could lay her deepest, most secret fears on. Someone who knew exactly where she was coming from. And who was not her mother.
It was just that she’d been trying to avoid considering the name Eirion in this context – even though there was no one else.
Eirion said, ‘Basically, it relates to a Website I found concerning the Archangel Uriel.’
Naturally, he was uncomfortable too, after what had passed between them. He needed a pretext.
‘It’s something I thought you ought to know about. I mean, I don’t know much about this stuff, and I believe it’s very much on the iffy side of the scriptures, and with people who do Websites you get a lot of cranks and fanatics – but the site gives a list of people throughout history who it reckons have become vehicles for Uriel. Especially women. And the thing is, you seem to be one of them.’
‘Me?’ Jane said.
And simultaneously realized the truth. This wasn’t for her at all. The bastard was addressing Mum.
Jane felt cold, like marble. Wasn’t exactly the first time they’d conspired, was it?
The doorbell went. Meanwhile, the treacherous git was still waiting for someone to pick up the phone; she could hear his breathing in the speaker. Panting – overweight.
Jane straightened up, raised a stiffened forefinger at the answering machine and went to answer the door. Hoping it was Uncle Ted or someone else who she could take down with her, whose night she could ruin.
In the hall, she was about to give the finger to the The Light of the World, when she met the eyes of the guy with the lamp – saw how old he looked, noticed his crown of thorns, felt that it must actually hurt in a nagging, chronic kind of way – and didn’t give him the finger after all. It would’ve been gratuitous. She was not gratuitous.
The bell went again. Jane turned on the porch light and opened the front door.
Jenny Driscoll stood there, in a shiny waxed jacket with a white scarf half over her head, Virgin Mary-style.
Merrily felt in the driver’s-door pocket and brought out her pectoral cross. She slipped the chain over her head, under the cowl of her sweater.
‘I can’t believe we did that.’
‘Did what, lass?’
‘Good priest–bad priest.’ Her initial sense of triumph felt wrong now. She started up the car and pulled away from Jerome Banks’s executive rectory.
‘Aye,’ Huw said, ‘one so seldom gets an opportunity for such finesse.’
‘Huw, we practically bludgeoned the truth out of the poor sod!’
‘Doesn’t matter how we did it – where’s it got us, apart from a hint on the Baptist chapel? Not far. Confirms what you already knew: Lodge were a sick bugger, on a number of levels. But Banks’s professed sense of guilt – that’s half-arsed. Who’s going to believe Lodge got launched into a life of rape and murder by a man-to-man chat with the rector? I’m disappointed. I expected summat better than this.’
‘You can see why he wouldn’t want it broadcast, though.’ She braked at the poorly lit T-junction with the A49. ‘And why he didn’t want to conduct the funeral.’
‘If it were me, I’d feel bloody well obliged to conduct it.’ Huw sank back and stretched out his legs.
Merrily fumbled a Silk Cut from the packet. ‘Could you pass me the lighter from the dash, or can I use your halo?’
‘Cheeky besom.’ He found the lighter and lit her cigarette. ‘This woman we’re going to see, this is the woman whose septic tank…?’
‘… Started it all.’ The tiered skyline of Ross appeared, part- floodlit, across the dual carriageway and the W
ye: the Herefordshire Riviera. Behind it was Howle Hill, the Forest, the dark country. ‘And as we don’t want to scare her, you can stay in the car.’
Mrs Jenny Box, née Driscoll said, ‘You’re not expecting her back soon at all, are you, Jane?’
‘Well, she said she—’
‘Thought not.’
Driscoll sat with her white scarf around her shoulders and the cup of weak tea Jane had made in front of her on the refectory table.
Not quite the soft touch that Jane had expected.
In fact, knowing the woman’s background, why had she expected a soft touch at all – Driscoll having come over from Ireland, worked with the hard cookies of the fashion world, the flash cynics in television. Having been married, for years, to Gareth Box.
Jane sat across the table, uncomfortable. Why hadn’t she just told the woman that Mum was out and offered to pass on a message? Instead of thinking this could be heaven-sent and saying what Gareth Box had said: she can’t be long, I suppose. Do you want to come in and wait? Getting her into the house, just the two of them, a cosy chat. This woman: Mum’s… lover?
Would-be! Would-be lover!
Oh Christ, get me out of this.
‘So, is there something you wanted to say to me, Jane?’
This soft-spoken, soft-eyed, soft-skinned woman, sitting with her soft hands, one over the other, on her lap. This very feminine woman. Very feminine, like Mum. Wasn’t one of them supposed to be kind of… butch?
Something she wanted to say? She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘The Archangel Uriel.’
‘And what about her?’ Jenny Box asked gently.
‘Her?’
‘Of the four principal archangels, Uriel is the only one sometimes perceived as female. In works of art mainly.’
‘Oh.’
‘You don’t know too much theology, do you, Jane?’
‘I know quite a lot about angels, actually. But that’s not proper theology anyway. The Bible doesn’t have very much to say about angels. And certainly not Uriel, who only shows up in the book of Esdras, in the Apocrypha – which is like a bit iffy.’
‘The Bible’s been censored more times than you or I will ever know,’ said Jenny Box. ‘Uriel’s the Divine Fire, an energy of light and summer. Of warmth. And so can only be female. Which, I suppose, was one reason she was pushed out of the picture for so long.’
Jane found she was clasping and unclasping her hands under the table. She pulled them apart. ‘So like this would be the Uriel you’re supposed to have… over the church?’
‘She told you about that?’ No expression. Not bothered.
‘She tells me everything. We’re very close. She…’ Jane hesitated. Sod it. ‘She told me about the money, too.’
‘Ah yes,’ Jenny Box said, ‘the money. Doesn’t everybody always get so excited about money?’
‘I mean, like… was it you who brought it?’
Mrs Box raised a faint eyebrow. ‘An anonymous gift is an anonymous gift, Jane. ’Twas always my feeling that all donations to the Church ought to be anonymous. Nobody can buy admission to Heaven, can they now?’
‘You’re pretty slick, really, aren’t you?’ Jane said.
Jenny Box laughed. ‘Years around TV. So hard to shed. All right, where’s your mother, really?’
Jane shrugged awkwardly. ‘Ross, I think.’
‘Underhowle?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I hoped to speak to her about that. I read all the papers. I’ve been up in London and I read all the papers on the train coming back. That’s more important than she could know – maybe what her whole life’s been leading up to, you know?’ She smiled at Jane. ‘Yes, I’m sure you do.’
‘No.’ Jane felt a slow seepage of anger. ‘No, I don’t know, actually.’
‘Oh? I thought you said she told you everything.’
‘But not as much as she tells you, evidently.’
The eyebrow went up again, like a goldfish flicking its tail.
‘You never really saw an angel at all, did you, Mrs Box?’ Jane said. Because at this stage of the game there was really nowhere else to go.
Mrs Pawson’s arms were down by her sides, stiff. Lol saw the knuckles tighten on her small, white fists. Oddly, he found he was starting to like her. She didn’t seem neurotic, she was really quite strong. She probably would have got along quite well in the country, in normal circumstances.
They were waiting in a carpeted, cream-walled passageway, people passing them on the way to dinner.
Mr Robinson, I’m not usually a wilting violet, and if I thought this might have helped someone I would have told the police. I would have made a full statement. But, as you said, he’s dead. Lodge is dead, and… oh…’
They’d both seen the discreet glint of the cross at the entrance to the passage, and Lol’s heart did what it always did when he saw Merrily for the first time, after…
He said, ‘I’ll go, shall I? Leave you to it.’
Mrs Pawson looked embarrassed. ‘No, don’t. This is becoming surreal.’
Merrily smiled, held out a hand. ‘I’m Merrily.’
A man and a woman had come out of a room to the right, and Mrs Pawson looked in through the door. ‘This is empty now. Let’s go in here.’
They followed her in, Lol shut the door behind them. It was a residents’ lounge, narrow, with pink and gold Regency-striped sofas and the same extensive view as the one from The Prospect.
‘How is this really going to help anyone?’ Lisa Pawson said.
Merrily walked to the window. ‘Wonderful view.’ There was a floodlit terrace and, in the middle distance, the lights of the traffic on the bypass. She turned to Mrs Pawson. ‘I get the feeling we’ve both had slightly disturbing experiences with Roddy Lodge. I’m supposed to be conducting his funeral, and I suspect there’s quite a lot that needs to be laid to rest.’
Mrs Pawson was holding her blouse together at the neck, as if it had suddenly gone cold in the room. ‘I was teaching in comprehensive schools for fifteen years, and I’ve seen some very distasteful things. But this… I still don’t see how it would help you to know about it?’
Merrily sat down on one of the sofas, near the window. ‘If you had a missing relative – a daughter, a sister – wouldn’t you want to know whether there’d been another Fred West at work?’
‘I mean, in some places,’ Jane said, ‘there are legends of angels being seen. Like in the local folklore. And apparitions of the ‘
Virgin and all that. But, I mean… Ledwardine? Do me a favour.’
Immediately regretting the scorn, but it was too late now.
‘You don’t believe people see angels, Jane?’ Jenny Box said. ‘Depends what you mean by angels.’ ‘Oh, I think we all know what we mean by angels.’ ‘I think I know what you mean.’ ‘I’m entirely sure of what I mean. And what I saw.’
‘What I think is that you just saw Mum. You were looking for somewhere to live – like, that bit was probably true. You were looking for somewhere to live and to like… entertain yourself. Out of sight of the media and all the London gossips. And then you saw Mum.’
‘Eventually, yes.’
‘And you fancied her,’ Jane said.
Jenny Box didn’t move, but her eyes flickered. Jane was suddenly so choked up with horror at what she’d said, mixed with rage and hurt at the possibility of it being true, that she could hardly get her breath.
‘That’s something like blasphemy, Jane.’
Jane stood up. ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? You’ve got, like, everything – brilliant house, successful business, gorgeous husband – and you have to come here and mess with people’s lives. There’s nothing angelic in any of this. Divine fire? Like, the way I see it, there’s only one kind of divine fire as far as you’re concerned.’
Jenny Box was out of her chair now. She was very pale. Her white scarf had slipped to the flags.
Jane was in tears. It didn’t matter; she’d said it.
It was out. Her eyes were wet. She wiped her sleeve across them and saw Jenny Box picking up her white scarf. Then the older woman was standing at the open kitchen door, with the table and ten feet of stone flags between them.
Jenny Box said, ‘When did you see my husband?’
‘How do you know…?’
‘He’s back in London now. We have the same houses, but we don’t live together. Did he come here?’
No.’
‘Which means you went to him.’ Jenny Box stood in the doorway, and when she spoke all that fey lilt had been punched out of her voice. ‘And did he touch you, Jane? As well as defaming me the best he could, did he touch you?’
‘What?’
‘Did you let him near you?’
Jane felt her mouth going out of shape.
‘It’s all right,’ Jenny Box said calmly. ‘I won’t distress you further. I’m going now.’
Jane came round the table, her fists clenched. When she reached the hall, Jenny Box had the front door open and was standing next to the Holman Hunt picture, half under the porch light but blocking it, so that it looked for a moment as if she was actually lit by the lantern that Christ was carrying in the picture. Her face was as white as a communion wafer. And she was muttering ‘Oh, dear God, dear God,’ and pulling her scarf over her head.
‘It was as if they wanted me to know,’ Mrs Pawson said. ‘From the first.’
‘They both came to install it?’ Lol asked.
‘It was quite a warm autumn day. She – the woman, Lynsey – was wearing a skimpy black top with nothing underneath it. Even when they were unloading the appliance from the truck, they kept touching one another all the time.’
‘What was she like?’ Merrily said.
‘Quite a big woman. Not much over medium height, but big bones. She had black, frizzy hair, dark eyes. She wasn’t particularly good-looking, but she had a sexiness about her, I suppose you’d have to call it. A sexiness that was not so much sultry as glowering. The way she moved – prowled – even when she was working, hauling these plastic pipes and equipment and… She hardly ever smiled – that was something that struck me – and when she did it wasn’t a very big smile, and… sly isn’t quite the word. It was as if she knew something you didn’t.’
