by Phil Rickman
‘That was him. Bloody ole thing that is, vicar – does about eleven miles a gallon on a long run. You en’t come across Jumbo? Got this place the other side o’ Talgarth – second-hand motors, stock fencing, animal feed, newspapers. And a snack bar. Harrods, they calls it.’
Merrily smiled and thumbed the Zippo, illuminating Gomer’s face. Seeing what might be small tear marks, she lit her cigarette quickly and put out the flame.
‘And also a private investigator,’ Gomer said.
‘You’re kidding.’
Gomer sniffed. ‘En’t that bloody brilliant, tell the truth, but he’s cheap. Checks out stuff for farmers, mostly. Stuff the NFU won’t do for free. Spyin’ on neighbours in feuds… land disputes, stock-thievin’. Goes around with a video camera. Mickey Mouse operation, you ask me, but Jumbo, he thinks he’s bloody Humphrey Bogart.’
‘Hang on, this is the man you were keeping pace with on drinks? You and he each drank four pints in the Swan and then he drove off in this huge, conspicuous American limo?’
‘Charmed life,’ Gomer said. ‘Plus he do weigh over twenty stone. Reckons it don’t affect him the same.’ He paused. ‘Come to think of it, he had a couple of whiskies as well. We had a good ole chat – catchin’ up, you know. And he told me a good bit about Lodge.’
‘Oh,’ Merrily said.
It was after midnight now and she was cold and tired. But Gomer was sounding increasingly focused and rational, and that was good. And if he needed to talk, well, women were good at listening – who said that? Never mind. Merrily smoked and listened.
It had been a rare case for Jumbo Humphries, the one that brought him up against Roddy Lodge. Probably routine for city private eyes, Gomer said, but rare for Jumbo: divorce.
What he’d previously failed to mention about Roddy was the boy’s legendary success with women. Gomer said he’d found this hard to believe: flash bastard, but not much to look at. Anyway, Jumbo Humphries had been retained by a farmer from down near Welsh Newton, who’d employed Roddy for field-drain work and come to regret it big time.
First off: tools, equipment. Things disappearing – a hay-fork, a stainless steel spade – whenever Roddy had been. Which he couldn’t believe at first, this farmer, as he knew the Lodge family: honest, straight, religious – Baptists. Couldn’t believe it was down to Roddy, this petty thieving, so he didn’t say anything.
And then, a couple of weeks after Lodge had finished the job and left, the farmer got word in the pub that his wife, who seemed to have made a lot of extra shopping trips lately, had been seen getting out of a white van in a lay-by where her own car was parked. When the shopping trips continued to increase, the farmer hired Jumbo Humphries to follow the wife.
Merrily found it hard to imagine how a twenty-stone man in a Cadillac was going to operate undercover in the vicinity of sparsely populated Welsh Newton, and this turned out to be a valid point. Although Jumbo Humphries had used one of the Land Rovers from his used-vehicle lot to follow the farmer’s wife one afternoon to a disused quarry, where a man was indeed waiting in a white van, he evidently had, at some stage, been spotted.
‘The van man – this is Lodge, right?’ Gomer said. ‘Jumbo recognizes him soon as he seen the dark glasses. So he parks out of sight – he thinks – on the edge of this quarry, gets out his video camera, starts creeping up on the van, figuring he might film ’em through the back window, get his evidence. Then…’
Gomer got out a roll-up, and Merrily lit it for him, noticing his hands were a long way from steady. He had two good drags before continuing.
‘Then just as he comes around the side o’ the van… bloody thing starts up, see. Spins round, comes after Jumbo – big empty space this is, the ole quarry yard – and Jumbo’s running for his bloody life. Van’s coming straight at him, near takes his foot off, and Jumbo, he stumbles and drops the camera. Van runs over it. Four hundred quids’ worth of camera!’
‘Occupational hazard, I suppose, for private eyes,’ Merrily said.
‘Not round these parts it en’t. But there was more to come, see. Lodge knowed Jumbo. Everybody does. He knowed where to find him, where he goes, where he drinks. That night, Jumbo comes out the pub at Llyswen, just on closing time, finds all four of the Caddy’s tyres slashed. Had to call a taxi to get home, come back with a low-loader next day to pick up the ole Caddy.’ He looked at Merrily expectantly. ‘See?’
‘Well… Gomer, it’s one thing running over a camera and slashing four tyres. I mean, it’s bad… But a major arson attack on a competitor’s yard involving… loss of life…’
‘Vicar, you yeard what that woman said on the phone. And Darren. And “You’re gettin’ a warnin’ tonight”.’
‘How did Jumbo know that it really was Lodge who slashed his tyres? Could’ve been pure coincidence, couldn’t it?’
Gomer snorted. ‘Put it together, vicar. Darren says he en’t stable. Somebody tells Lodge Gomer Parry Plant Hire’s been on his patch, Lodge goes straight round there and leans on Darren. Then he’s on the phone trying to put the frighteners on Mrs Pawson, only she’s in London…’
‘Didn’t Jumbo take it any further?’
‘Vicar, we en’t talkin’ about bloody Peter Marlowe yere. No, he didn’t take it no further. He backed off. What he says to me, he says, “Mess with Lodge, Gomer, you en’t dealin’ with a normal human being n’more.” ’
‘In what way?’
‘Mental, vicar. Lost it, blown it. Works on his own all night sometimes – been witnessed. Fires from the bloody hip when he feels threatened. And he en’t scared what he does. Feels he’s… nobody can touch him.’
‘Invulnerable.’
Ar. Met that type a few times.’
Gomer, you are that type, Merrily thought dismally.
‘ “You’re pushin’ seventy, Gomer,” Jumbo says, “and Roddy Lodge en’t even forty. Don’t be a bloody hero.” ’
‘That was tonight?’
‘In the Swan.’
‘Look…’ Merrily sensed his absolute certainty and turned to face him, an arm around the wheel. ‘I accept that the guy’s erratic, possibly a little unhinged. I realize you were right to tell the police, and I think you should tell them again tomorrow. I’ll tell them.’ She turned the key in the ignition. ‘Tomorrow, though. Let’s just… go home now.’
She let out the clutch and the van lurched into the empty road. Gomer was silent for a while. Merrily considered the possibility that, in his state of desolation, he was simply demonizing Roddy Lodge. What little evidence there was still pointed at poor Nev.
‘He knows they en’t there, see,’ Gomer said after a couple of minutes. ‘These Pawsons. Knows they en’t there ’cept weekends. Plus, he likely knowed we was coming to take out this Efflapure come the morning. Her said her was gonner tell him, right?’
‘Sorry… what are you getting at?’
‘Suppose he was plannin’ to go for that tank ’isself, meantime?’
‘Gomer, for… Why would he do that?’
‘Keep his good name, ennit? Small county, vicar. Man like that couldn’t live with folk knowin’ Gomer Parry Plant Hire had come and took away his fancy tank on account he’d put it in the wrong place and it weren’t needed anyway. Plus, also – I just figured this – we’d have one to look at, then, wouldn’t we? We’d all know what a piece of ole junk it was. Suppose he was makin’ sure we couldn’t do that job at all, by torchin’ the shed, destroyin’ the gear? Listen, I en’t sayin’ he knowed Nev was in there. I en’t sayin’ that… yet.’
‘Gomer, I know this has been a… an unimaginably awful thing to happen, but is that even vaguely—?’
‘Meanwhile he comes for the Efflapure ’isself under cover of dark, just to be sure. Knowing he got the place to ’isself…’
‘Is that entirely rational?’
‘He en’t a rational man, vicar. If he’s done the job tonight, if he’s been and took the Efflapure, that’s evidence.’
‘Possibly. If the Paws
ons stick to their story.’
‘Don’t matter if they don’t, vicar, we got it on tape on the machine.’
‘Yes. I suppose you have.’ Merrily drove slowly into Eardisley, the first village on the black-and-white tourist trail which ended up eventually in Ledwardine. At night – all dark oak, whitewash and shadows – the village shed centuries and the car-dealer’s showroom right in the centre looked surreal.
‘Seventeen, mabbe eighteen,’ Gomer said. ‘No more’n twenty.’
‘What?’
‘Miles.’
Merrily sighed. ‘To this Pawson place, right?’
‘No traffic in Hereford, mind. Say half an hour, max?’
‘And what are we going to do if we find out he has taken the tank?’
‘Vicar, we’ll know.’ The two moons were clear and sharp in Gomer’s glasses. ‘We’ll bloody know.’
7
Legs Off Spiders
SO THIS WAS what they called The Hour of the Wolf. Something like that.
The dark night of the soul. The time of being transfixed by this acute, piercing awareness of the total pointlessness of everything – and of an utter, mindless, universal cruelty.
Jane had lain awake for nearly an hour, with Ethel the black cat on the bed beside her and real life hanging over her like this huge, leaden pendulum swinging slowly from side to side in the darkness.
You might as well just lie here for ever because, if you sat up at the wrong time, the lead weight – which you were never going to see coming – would suddenly smash you down again with sickening force.
This was what happened. This was the great, almighty secret of everything.
The moon – the once-beloved moon – made fitful appearances amid smoky cloud in the attic window, turning the coloured squares between the timber framing of the Mondrian walls into variations of grey. Everything was variations of grey.
Jane felt suddenly almost breathless with horror… with the thought that this – where her life was now – could actually be as good as it was ever going to get. Felt aglow inside with this bitter rage – the understanding that, as you got older and your body got weaker, the lead weight would smash you harder and more frequently until you couldn’t get up any more.
The way it was hammering Gomer Parry, who was one of the kindest, most actually decent people Jane had ever known, like a grandad to her now.
Because Gomer was getting old, and old people got ill and they got mugged – some universal law setting them up for this, the law that said: it’s always going to get worse. It was as if she’d never fully realized this painfully simple fact of life.
Made her mad as hell at Mum, this smart, still-attractive woman devoting most of her creative essence to the totally pointless adoration of something which, if it existed at all, existed only to treat us like shit!
Jane sprang up in bed, switching on the wall light, plucking the pay-as-you-talk from the bedside beanbag. She leaned back against the headboard, switching on the phone, punching out Eirion’s mobile number. OK, totally uncivilized time to ring anybody, especially the guy you were supposed to be in love in, but he’d have switched off his phone by now, so it wouldn’t matter; she’d just dump something into his voice-mail. Had to say something about this, and couldn’t call Mum without sounding like the little girl all alone in the big, dark vicarage.
‘Hello, Jane,’ Eirion said.
Oh sh—! She nearly stabbed the no button. ‘Jesus, Irene, I am so sorry – I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, why isn’t your phone switched off? It’s nearly one a.m.’ She reached up in a panic and snapped off the light, as though he could somehow see her with her hair all over the place and her eyes all puffy. ‘How did you know it was me?’
‘Because,’ Eirion said patiently, ‘of the solemn pact we made that we would always leave our phones switched on at night, so that if one of us was in crisis and needed to talk…’
Jane swallowed. ‘Oh.’
‘We remember now, do we?’
‘I didn’t think we meant it.’
‘Obviously one of us didn’t.’
She started to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Irene. I’m truly sorry. I’m the worst kind of bitch that ever—’
‘What’s wrong? You been listening to that Eels album again?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jane said. ‘It was very stupid of me. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Jane…’ Eirion’s soft Welsh voice sounded like it was weighted with all the sorrow of his ancestors. ‘If you hang up on me now, I may have to steal my stepmother’s BMW again and drive thirty miles to quench my overwhelming desire to strangle you very slowly.’
‘All right.’ Jane sniffed hard. ‘You asked for this, right? Big question: am I the only person of my age ever to realize that God, if God exists, is in fact some enormous, moronic, cosmic… infant who just, like, sits there, pulling the legs off spiders?’
Eirion thought about it for some time.
‘Probably not,’ he said.
Jane said, ‘Is there a longer answer?’
‘There undoubtedly has to be a longer answer, cariad, and probably a good reason why that concept is theologically unsound. Just don’t ask me what it is without giving me some kind of notice.’
‘And you’re really proposing to go to university next year?’
‘But not to read theology.’
‘Theology’s shit, anyway. I speak from insider knowledge.’
‘Jane, just tell me what’s wrong, could you do that? What’s happened?’
‘How do you know something’s happened?’
‘Because you didn’t ask me if I was naked.’
‘Right,’ Jane said.
‘That was a joke.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m not, anyway.’
‘Tonight, I don’t think I even care,’ Jane said.
And she told him why she was alone in the vicarage at one a.m.
It evidently knocked him back. He didn’t seem to know how to react. He knew Gomer; she couldn’t remember if he’d met Nev. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Oh bloody hell, that’s… The poor guy. Shit.’
‘Like, consider, OK? Nev. Consider that this guy was just put here – this human being was created – to be a digger driver… to live in the same valley all his life… to become overweight… to have a very bad marriage, to… to get humiliated, get drunk… and then get fucking burned to death. That’s it! I mean, that’s it, Irene – The Nev Parry Story. The whole incarnation! What was that about? What was it supposed to teach him? How is it going to help refine his immortal soul? And like don’t give me any of that Welsh-chapel bollocks about redemption through endless suffering.’
‘I don’t know,’ Eirion said soberly. ‘Maybe it’s not something we’re permitted to understand.’
‘Yeah, great. Either that, or it’s all complete crap. How often do you think of that? I find I’m thinking it a lot now: no God, only chaos.’
‘You’re an emergent atheist suddenly? What happened to paganism?’
‘Yeah,’ Jane said. ‘Paganism. What did happen to paganism? You want the truth? Sometimes I’m inclined to think modern paganism’s purely and simply about having fun – a reaction to the grey, studied bloody misery of Christianity. Dressing up, casting spells, cobbling together phoney rituals that sound heavy and significant, and kidding yourself you have like exclusive access to some arcane inner knowledge, which… I mean, somehow, it all just like… dissolves in the face of real life, the fucking savagery of it.’ Jane rubbed a wet eye with the heel of her palm. She felt cold and barren, nothing left to cling to except… ‘I wish you were here, Irene.’
‘Well, me too, obviously. I’m coming over tomorrow anyway… later today, would that be? Knight’s Frome? The session?’
‘Oh yeah.’ Lol had finally fixed it with Prof Levin for Eirion, the all-time rock-obsessive, to sit in on a recording session. ‘I don’t even know about that now. I don’t know how things are going to turn out. Life just comes
at you, doesn’t it, like an axe? I was just thinking – again – Is Mum Living a Lie? It often comes back to that.’
‘Why don’t you have a proper talk to her?’
‘There’s never time. If it’s not trivial parish crap it’s Deliverance stuff. And how valid is that, really? I used to worry that she was in genuine spiritual danger from the unseen world… But how much crap is that? How often does the bloody unseen world destroy your—’
‘Jane, is this the time to talk about this stuff? I don’t think so.’
‘Au contraire, Irene, it’s the time when you can see the reality of it in all its stark… reality.’
‘What about your psychic experiences? You were always going on about that stuff.’
‘I think… I think we fool ourselves half the time. We desperately want there to be something else, and our subconscious minds, our brains, help us out. Comfort chemicals.’ For a moment she was shocked at the hard, croaky sound of her own voice. ‘And she… like Mum always says, when everything else fails, you just have to believe in love.’ Jane stared into the darkness. ‘I don’t know whether that’s a smart answer or just a smart get-out.’
She was thinking, What if love’s also a lie? What if there’s only sex, to take your mind off the shit for a few minutes?
‘I’d better go,’ she said.
‘Mabbe this was a mistake,’ Gomer said as they followed the A49, a couple of miles out of Hereford, hitting the open countryside again south of Belmont. ‘You needs your sleep, vicar, all these buggers in the parish trying to stab you in the back.’
‘Parish politics, I’m afraid,’ Merrily murmured, ‘are what people do when life isn’t happening to them.’
‘I gotter be up early, too, mind,’ Gomer said. ‘See about hiring some machines for a week or two. Got a mini-digger at the bungalow, but he en’t gonner handle much.’
She slowed. ‘Oh, Gomer.’
Got clients. They en’t gonner wait around.’
‘Gomer, that’s not – excuse me – entirely sane.’
‘Nev would want it.’ He sounded like he was somewhere else: Planet Plant Hire. ‘Twenty-four-hour service, see.’
