by Phil Rickman
‘It is Tracey you’ve been speaking to, I assume,’ Young said, seeking absolute confirmation.
‘Tracey?’ Lol said.
‘And she’s saying I was there.’
‘Weren’t you?’
‘She was very mixed up, that girl.’
‘I think scared to death might describe it better,’ Lol said.
I realize, Cola had said, in the car on the road to Ross, that there’s no way of concealing that it was me who told you all this, but just make sure it isn’t for nothing. You know what I mean.
So Lol was relieved that Fergus Young had raised the issue before he himself was forced into it. Like being pushed out onto the stage. Now he had to follow through.
Three of them, Cola had said. Lynsey developed this bond between these three, which was all to do with Ariconium, which had become a kind of dream place. Like Utopia. Atlantis. It was very strong. It gave them focus. ‘Fuse your dreams,’ she was saying. ‘Fuse them inside me!’
‘Ariconium,’ Lol said. ‘It became an excuse for everything you did.’
Sam Hall was shaking his head. ‘How could it be anything good, built inside lines of pylons, this cage of steel shot through with beams and rays?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Sam,’ Fergus snapped, ‘do you never get beyond that drivel? Look, I want to say I’d have gone with the police – with Piers and Chris. But I guess they thought there was a chance of keeping me out of it. As the one who must be seen to have integrity. The figurehead. If I could survive this, I suppose there was a chance of pulling it together – the e-schools, the book I was writing and that Piers would publish, Ariconium… everything.’
Lol looked at Merrily: small and wide-eyed, the old duffel coat hanging open over the alb with the muddied hem. She clearly hadn’t been expecting this, but he thought the older woman seemed less shocked.
In a way, it all began with Fergus, Cola had said. He was in a sad state. It was his first school as headmaster and they were gonna close it down, and he reckoned he wasn’t well in enough to get another school, and his wife was into the status, you know? Oh, he was a real loser, Fergus, the night he showed up on Piers’s doorstep – the way people did, the way Piers encouraged them to: your bookseller’s your counsellor, shrink, priest, all rolled into one. What an ego. And Fergus would come up some nights, to get away from his wife, and drink too much. And this particular night we were there, Lynsey and me, all of us at a bit of a loose end, and Lynsey suddenly springs up, with her eyes all glittering, and she’s going ‘Let’s DO something about it…’
‘It’s like Chris said, it was incredible how she seemed to turn things around,’ Fergus said. ‘How ideas came to you that were clear winners. Came to all of us. In reality, I suppose it was just because it brought the three of us together – people who could help each other and the community coming together in that spirit of… release. Outside the rules. And when we managed to pull the school back from the brink of closure and turn it into something extraordinary, it was… suddenly it was something bigger than all of us.’
He turned to Huw Owen, who’d started to say something. Huw hadn’t taken his eyes off Fergus Young since he’d used the word exorcize.
‘I suppose you’d say there was something slightly Faustian about it and perhaps you’d be right. But we didn’t feel that at the time. It was release and not only sexual. To us, she was an extraordinary woman who seemed able to open doors one hadn’t even known were there. And look at what we achieved… look at it! Look at what we achieved for everybody!’
‘But look how it was achieved,’ Merrily said bleakly.
‘Look,’ Fergus said, ‘when we found out about her… past associations, we – I was determined to get out of it any way I could.’
I think, when they thought they were all on top of the situation and maybe they didn’t need her any more, that was when they got, you know, a little blasé, a little… Well, you didn’t ever diss that woman, Lol, not if you valued your peace of mind. What she had was hard won, and nobody was gonna… you know, nobody. So maybe that was when she started to be less circumspect. And she was involving Roddy by then, and Roddy was this real wild card. And that was when I started to try and get out of the circle, keep different company, ’cause I could see it going pear-shaped in front of my eyes. I knew what she was and where she’d been and they couldn’t see it, not for a long time. They were just too high on it all.
Huw Owen said, ‘You were here, in this chapel, after Lynsey Davies killed Melanie. With the other two.’
Yes,’ Fergus said.
‘Therefore, you were part of the cover-up.’
‘I…’ Fergus’s mouth tightened.
‘Come on, lad, if you were, sooner or later one of the others is going to spill it to the police. You think they won’t shop you, but they will. Like young Cody said, it’s a murder inquiry now.’
Fergus said, ‘We all decided to keep quiet about it, for—’
‘The good of the community,’ Huw said.
‘We were doing great things. We had an energy!’
‘Was she blackmailing you, in the end?’ Lol suggested.
‘That’s nonsense.’
Really rubbing their noses in it, Lol. Cromwell Street, the whole bit… where she’d come from, and therefore where they were coming from. What they were – by association – now part of. It must have seemed very dirty and repugnant. Maybe Piers could take a little of that, but I’m not sure about the others. I mean, Chris was a street kid, but… bloody hell. As for Fergus… a primary-school head? A man in charge of developing the minds of little children? But she knew that. I think she knew what it would do to Fergus and that’s why she was concentrating on him.
‘When we found out about her,’ Fergus was saying, ‘I’m not even going to try to tell you what that was like for me.’
Lol said, ‘But your whole future – and the future of the community – was somehow mortgaged to her now. I mean, if she did something again, if she killed somebody, and this time she got caught… it would all come out.’
Fergus shook his head. ‘Wasn’t so much her we were worried about as him – Lodge. She was going round with him, looking for… opportunities for him.’
‘Like Mrs Pawson?’ Lol said. He saw Merrily’s face twist.
‘I don’t know anything about that, but there were other instances. They were becoming totally irresponsible, the pair of them. Like delinquents. Undisciplined. They thought they were protected, invulnerable. Protected by us, in a way, because we were at the centre of the establishment – especially Chris and
me. Lodge, by this time, was becoming quite mad, and his condition was worsening – he’d be having blackouts all the time. But he didn’t realize, or he didn’t care because, in other respects, he was having the time of his life.’
‘Number One,’ Merrily said.
Lol said, ‘Satan,’ and Sam Hall looked at him. And so he gave them the explanation of this that he’d had on the phone from Mephisto Jones.
‘Sometimes, with EH, you experience dramatic temperature changes, particularly at the extremities. Hands, feet… genitals?’
‘Holy shit,’ Sam Hall said.
‘In the days of the witch-hunts, when women would be made to confess to having intercourse with the Devil, they’re supposed to have said that they could tell it was him because his penis was so cold.’
Merrily was nodding. ‘Yes, and in Roddy’s first statement to the police, he said Lynsey liked to call him Satan because he was hard and cold. And therefore… I mean, maybe she convinced him he could have… relations with any woman he wanted. Particularly if she was dead. Maybe in his dreams, I don’t—’
‘His electric dreams,’ Sam said.
‘It’s quite obscene,’ Fergus said. ‘Everything we had going here was threatened by this unstable, odious little twerp, his fantasies and his… his keeper. Yes, I’m afraid we were all immensely relieved when he killed Lynsey. Getting rid of both of them, two people who we
re beyond the pale, seemed like a kind of cleansing. We could move on now. And if that’s a terrible admission to make, I’m facing the truth. I’m facing my demons.’
Not really, though, are you? Lol was thinking.
And maybe Sam wasn’t fooled either. ‘I wouldn’t rule it out, Fergus, that one of you somehow got it over to Roddy that Lynsey murdered his girlfriend, Melanie. How far off the truth would I be there?’
Fergus reared up. ‘No. Certainly not. Being glad at what happened – even grateful – is one thing, but actually conspiring to make it happen? No. I couldn’t do that. You know me. You must realize how deeply, deeply sorry I am for ever becoming involved in something so ultimately obnoxious. I only ask you to believe that it began at a difficult time emotionally for me… and that I did not know the kind of psychotic individual we were dealing with. And I want to go on serving this community. Because there’s so much for me still to do – you know that. Ingrid… Sam… you know that. We mustn’t fall back.’
Lol looked at him standing there in his white shirt, the local hero, regrettably a little tarnished by an unfortunate choice of friends in adverse circumstances, but humbly seeking redemption: Here I am, baring my back for the lash.
Fergus turned to Huw. ‘I would like to take communion from you. I would like to confess. To pray for absolution. I would like you to exorcize me.’
Huw didn’t respond.
Lol felt suddenly very, very tired, and he just wanted to get this over. ‘Mr Young,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you just tell them how you killed Lynsey?’
Jane went timidly into the bedroom, the only one with a light showing under the door. On the bedside table, a small table lamp with a parchment shade was spreading a honey warmth.
The bedlinen was all white. There were magnolia rugs on the oak floorboards. A plain wooden cross hung on the white wall over the bed under oak beams stained almost black. There was an overwhelming silence in here, as thick as candle wax.
Jenny wore a long white nightdress with a high neck. She lay on her back with her hands, loosely clasping a small white prayer book, crossed over her breasts.
Her eyes were open but there was a glaze on them, a blur.
She would always be blurred.
There was a carafe of water on a bedside table and a glass and two small brown bottles with their tops off.
Designer death, Jane thought cynically, for just a moment before she began to cry quietly, going down onto her knees and touching one of the hands, which was like porcelain. And cold.
‘Don’t, Jane,’ Moira said softly. ‘Don’t touch a thing.’
‘She’s not a thing,’ Jane said.
‘No. I’m sorry.’
Jane looked up at Moira. ‘I don’t understand. She’s so cold.’
‘She’s been dead quite some time, Jane. Since long before we got here.’
‘No. She couldn’t be. We… saw her. On the square. On the cobbles. She…’
There was silence. The leaded window was grey-green and mysterious in the subtle lamplight, with just a faint reflection of the room, of Jane herself kneeling by the bed. But Jenny Box was invisible in the reflection and even in reality remained amorphous and indistinct.
‘No,’ Moira said gently. ‘We didn’t see her. You did.’
Jane’s voice rose, querulous. ‘You must’ve seen her.’
‘No.’
Jane’s voice almost vanished. ‘Oh God,’ she breathed. ‘Oh my God.’
But what if he was wrong? This had been kicking at Lol’s insides ever since he’d watched Lodge up there, edging towards inevitable death, since the night he’d lain in bed with Merrily and said, How can anybody feel sorry for a man who killed women?
That sense of Lodge as just another loser.
What’s it like? he’d asked Mephisto Jones. How long does it last?
Oh, man, complete disorientation, Mephisto said. You don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve done. It’s not like drink, not even quite like dope. You’re well out of it, well out of it.
The final piece had dropped into place just now in the church, when the computer guy had been spilling it all to Bliss. The thing was, Lol hadn’t been able to see either of those two in the role. But this one… this one he could see.
Cola, trying to conceal the fear, had said, Just make sure it isn’t for nothing.
He looked up at the visceral hanging bulbs, so reminiscent of the dull lights in the hospital corridors of his twenties, and at the drabness of the place. Above all, he hated drabness. His own song was raging in his head now: Someone’s got to pay, now Dr Gascoigne’s on his way. He looked at Fergus and saw Dr Gascoigne whom all the nurses loved.
He took a breath. The air here smelled foul to him now.
He said to Fergus, ‘You said Roddy Lodge had blackouts more and more often. He must have had them in front of you a few times, maybe during… magical practices. Especially in this chapel – right under the pylon, right here in the middle of the hot spot. How long was he out of it, usually… five minutes, ten… longer?’
‘I never studied it,’ Fergus said distantly. ‘We tried to help him.’
Lol said, ‘Why don’t you take us through Lynsey’s last night? You were there.’
‘What are you talking about? You’re absolutely crazy,’ Fergus said. ‘Cola couldn’t—’
‘I know, Cola wasn’t there. I didn’t get this from Cola. She probably doesn’t even have an inkling…’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Fergus turned to the others. ‘What’s he talking about?’
Lol exploded. ‘Oh, you fucking do know. I get so pissed off with people like you… teachers, shrinks…’
He squeezed his eyes closed and heard Fergus saying, ‘What’s the matter with him? Is he on medication?’
Lol felt a merciful warmth, and when he opened his eyes Merrily was next to him, and she was holding his hand, pressing something hot and metallic into it, holding his hand closed over it, holding him together. He put his arm around her. He needed help. He instinctively knew the truth of it, but he couldn’t make that final leap.
‘Blackouts, huh?’ Sam Hall was rubbing his white beard. Lol remembered Sam on the night of the execution: … Shit coming off of the power lines. He’s gonna be disoriented by now. His balance’ll go completely, can’t they see that? Warning the police about what might happen. Empathizing with the man on the pylon.
‘Sam, help me,’ Lol said. ‘Roddy Lodge wasn’t a killer. He probably wasn’t a very nice man, especially in the end, but he didn’t kill this Melanie, and I really don’t think he killed Lynsey Davies, either. But when…’ He shook his head, trying to clear the fog.
Sam said, ‘You’re saying that when he came round from a blackout, resulting from heavy electrical bombardment, he might’ve thought he had. Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ Lol breathed, and he felt the breath coming out of Merrily, too. ‘If you… I mean, if there were certain people who knew he’d often have blackouts in a certain situation…’
‘Say, like in here?’
‘They were coming more and more often, I think Mr Young just said. But if they were all ready for it – ready for the next one to happen – and there was another person among them whom they very much needed to kill…’
‘They’d wait till Roddy was out of it, and then do it.’ Sam Hall started to smile. ‘And when he came round, with the body at his feet, they’d say, “Jeez, look what you did, you crazy bastard.” ’
‘Or maybe they’d just go out and leave him to come round on his own and find it. He might not remember they’d even been here too.’
‘Are you both mad?’ Fergus Young cried, and Lol could hear the strain, the striving for effect.
‘I tell you, though,’ Sam said, ‘killing like this, by strangulation, not everyone’s capable of that. That is ultimate contact- killing. Intimate killing. I never did think Roddy Lodge could do that.’
‘But this isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?
’ Huw Owen said, almost brightly. ‘This is all daft speculation.’ He looked at Fergus. ‘You meant what you said about being cleaned out, lad?’
Fergus glanced suspiciously from side to side. ‘What kind of set-up—?’ It’s entirely up to you,’ Huw said. ‘Nobody ever gets forced.’
Lol looked at Fergus – the head teacher, the golden-haired golden boy of Underhowle, the local hero, the man who wore the admiration of the community like a halo – and Fergus looked down at Huw and smiled ruefully.
‘Rather set myself up for this one, didn’t I?’ He shrugged. ‘All right. Do what you want.’
Huw shook his head regretfully. ‘Not me, lad. I’m too close to it.’ He turned, putting out an open hand in invitation. ‘Merrily?’
51
Sacrificial
HUW MOVED RAPIDLY, setting up candles on the packing case and lighting them. Sam and Ingrid stood quietly with Lol against the wall, while Fergus prowled restlessly like an actor waiting to be auditioned, going over his lines. When Merrily caught his gaze once he smiled and shook his head. It’s a farce; we both know that.
‘Minor exorcism?’ Merrily murmured to Huw. ‘You reckon?’
‘Aye, but you can’t mess about. He’s not going to sit still for the whole bit. Have to compress it a little.’
‘Is he a Christian?’
‘Ask him. No, don’t bother. You’ll find out.’
‘Huw… You tricked him.’
‘He tricked himself,’ Huw said. ‘Now put the lights out.’
Merrily took off her coat, knelt at the packing case and prayed. The cold seeped through her alb, and it felt as though her back was naked. She was aware of Huw standing behind her, as if trying to shield the fragile candle flames from an unfelt wind.
She said the Lord’s Prayer, muttered St Patrick’s Breastplate and wondered what this spontaneous, makeshift ritual, without any of the important preliminaries, could possibly achieve. Was this Huw grabbing his last chance, while Fergus was relaxed enough – or hypocritical enough – to throw himself at the mercy of a God in whom he had probably never believed?
