The Lamp of the Wicked (MW5)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Go on,’ Lol said.

  ‘You wanna cut me off, you cut me off. Everybody cuts me off sometime. Anyhow, after the boy died the other night, I listened to all my neighbours walking home saying how it was all for the best, save the taxpayers having to keep him in jail for the rest of his miserable life, and I’m thinking, Hell, am I the only person in this whole village sees this as some kind of a tragedy? I’m always saying that – am I the only person in this whole valley knows what’s happening to us all? Anyhow, this time I went home and I started to write myself a poem. Sat up the whole night to finish it – a two-candle poem. And when Bliss told me about you, I started thinking, hey, this is more than coincidence. This is meant to be.’

  Not one of Lol’s favourite phrases. Meant to be was a trap.

  ‘I’m gonna ask you straight out,’ Sam said, ‘I like to be direct. If there’s any way at all that you could find the time to turn this poem into a song – well, I don’t have the money to pay you, but you could keep the song, if you liked the idea. And the cause is good. It’s a world issue and a big one. It’s what my life’s been building towards.’ Sam paused. ‘You still there, boy? You hung up on me yet?’

  When Eirion called, Jane was lying on her bed with Ethel the cat and a paperback. As soon as she heard his voice, she thrust the book under the pillow, as if he could see it down the line.

  Eirion said, ‘I’m afraid I have to tell you she seems genuine, Jane. There is like no dirt at all on Jenny Driscoll – not on the Net anyway, and I searched hard. In fact, what I’ve read I rather like.’

  Jane thought that, with this unnatural thing he was developing for once-good-looking old ladies, his opinion was hardly to be trusted, but she didn’t say anything.

  ‘Do you want to know now?’ Eirion said. ‘Or shall I print some of it out and fax it over or something?’

  ‘Can you give it to me potted? I’ll stop you if anything sounds interesting.’

  OK.’ Eirion cleared his throat and started to enunciate like it was the voice-over on a TV biog. ‘She was born in County Wicklow into a respectable lower-middle-class family. Father was the manager of a small soft-drinks business. As a teenager, Jenny apparently got itchy feet and sent her picture to a model agency with an office in Dublin. It turned out she had the kind of looks that appealed at the time, and she wound up in London within a year. Someone said she “looked like a girl who bruised easily”. Evidently a famous quote. This was the post-punk New Romantic era, apparently. Terrible clothes, terrible music. And this element of sadomasochism.’

  ‘Mum was there – I’ve seen the pictures. She was briefly into Goth.’

  ‘Yes,’ Eirion said thoughtfully, ‘I know.’

  ‘Lewis…’ Jane gave it serious menace. ‘Kill that fantasy right now.’

  Eirion chuckled.

  ‘OK, so New Romantic.’ Jane knew some of this, but there might be something new.

  ‘But romantic in a kind of besmirched way,’ Eirion said. ‘Because she looked so vulnerable, they were putting her into these Vivienne Westwood type of things, so that she came across like some kind of teenage streetwalker. Smudged lip gloss and mascara with dribbles, like she’d been crying. Tarnished before her time, you know? It was all a little bit pervy, I suspect.’

  ‘I’m so glad you recognize it.’

  ‘She seems to have recognized it, anyway,’ Eirion said. ‘She suddenly packed in modelling at the height of her career, washed off all the make-up and got a job in children’s television, on the production side.’

  ‘How saintly.’

  ‘Where she was soon found to have an aptitude for presenting.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘And kids liked her because she still had this faintly risqué ‘reputation, so in no time she’s presenting this cult teenage show – she was out of her teens by then, but she didn’t look it. And she eventually became quite popular with parents and older people because there was obviously a genuinely nice person underneath. And, as she got older, she resurfaced, presenting these lifestyle kind of shows – this is the mid- to late nineties, when she was also offered a column on one of the papers – could’ve been the Mail or the Express, I forget, but that was how she met her husband, Gareth Box. A journalist.’

  ‘Wrote the column for her?’

  ‘Do you have to be disparaging all the time?’ Eirion said. ‘Box was an assistant editor in charge of features or something but, since she was making so much more money than him, he seems to have packed that in soon after they got married, to manage her career. Maybe she was being exploited.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Jane said sceptically.

  ‘Anyway, this was when private TV production was really taking off, and Jenny and her husband came a long way very rapidly and started creating these home make-over type of programmes, with heavy emphasis on feng shui – there was a series for Channel Four which I remember seeing a couple of and it was actually pretty good. And that was when they set up this shop called Vestalia, which very rapidly became a chain and seems to be worth… well, a lot of money.’

  ‘Never put a foot wrong, then.’

  ‘But then she backed out of the spotlight.’

  ‘Or she saw when the spotlight was about to move on. Or they were making so much money that she didn’t need all that bullshit any more.’

  ‘There was some speculation at this time that the marriage was cracking up,’ Eirion said, ‘although she was never linked with anyone else.’

  ‘Staying together for the sake of the business?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jane. They were worth quite a lot by then, because Vestalia was into major cities, and also changing direction. One article I found, from the Telegraph, at the end of last year, was about how she was increasingly into personal development and meditation and spirituality, and he wasn’t particularly, but he went along with it. And it was then that the shops started to really specialize in creating a spiritual home environment. They’d stopped using the phrase feng shui, though, because that was seen as a passing fad.’

  ‘This is quite good, actually,’ Jane said. ‘We’re getting closer.’

  In fact, this was moving nicely in the direction of home chapels.

  She slid the paperback book out from under the pillow. It was called Working with Angels, Fairies and Nature Spirits. About a year ago – OK, she would admit this – she’d been finding it seriously inspirational, entirely sensible in its evocation of a complex world with all these different layers of existence, all these forces and incorporeal intelligences you could call on to improve and focus your own life.

  Now, however, as a more balanced person, she was simply consulting the book to establish where the Box woman was coming from. Obviously, it helped that not too long ago Jane herself had been just as loopy, but there was method in Jenny’s particular madness; her so-called spiritual development always seemed to run parallel with an increase in material wealth.

  The bottom line: this didn’t sound like a woman who gave away eighty grand without some underlying purpose unconnected with her immortal soul.

  ‘You actually did OK here, Irene.’

  ‘How very kind,’ Eirion said.

  ‘No, really, I mean… thanks.’

  Maybe she and Eirion, approaching this from different directions – his investigative skills, her background esoteric knowledge – could nail the duplicitous bitch to the wall before Mum got stitched up.

  ‘What do you do now? How do you respond to this?’ Prof Levin advanced on Lol across the studio floor. ‘What you do now, Laurence, is not respond. That is, you decline… rapido. Because the one thing you, of all people, do not need at this stage is to get in with crazies. So what you do is you call him back and you put it very politely and very firmly. You don’t ask any more questions, you resist all his attempts to make you read the lyric, and you never ever write a song or the merest line of a song that reflects this proposed theme in any way.’

  ‘Except…’ Lol backed up against the glass-si
ded recording booth, ‘I kind of—’

  ‘You then make sure to avoid having dealings of any kind with this person, ever again.’

  ‘Only I kind of like him,’ Lol said.

  ‘Jesus.’ Prof feigned an intention to put his foot through the golden weave fronting the Guild Acoustic amp. ‘Of course you liked him. These people, they’re oh so very nice and humble and they tell you you’re Lennon and Dylan and Paul Simon all rolled into one, and they would consider it an honour to, in some small way, serve your art. Pah! Two years later, five, ten… whenever it seems like you’re finally doing OK for yourself, along comes the exceedingly unfriendly letter from their lawyer.’

  ‘He actually dealt with that,’ Lol said. ‘He said he was prepared to sign the whole thing over to me. Draw up whatever document you like, he said, and I’ll sign it. He said this wasn’t about money.’

  ‘Laurence, everything, at some stage, is about money. However, this is your funeral.’ Prof turned away, shaking his head, and mooched off towards the kitchen and his cappuccino machine. ‘Make it a noisy one.’

  When he’d gone, Moira Cairns leaned back against the outside wall of the recording booth. She wore very tight jeans and a black top, her hair loosely tied behind with a crimson ribbon.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘what is the great world issue this guy feels so strongly about?’

  ‘Electricity,’ Lol said. ‘Pylons, dangers of.’

  ‘Ah. So this would be a person you met at the, ah, execution.’ Moira came to sit on the amp opposite. ‘Tell me about it. Where’s the guy coming from exactly?’

  ‘Strong aura of old hippy,’ Lol said. ‘He’s very proud that some elements in the US government and the power companies were glad to get him off their backs. He talks about extensive scientific research linking overhead power lines with everything from brain tumours to leukaemia clusters – research that is constantly ignored.’

  ‘There’ll be background. There always is.’

  Lol told her that Sam Hall appeared to live in a remote cabin on Howle Hill, generating his own electricity with a windmill while putting pressure on the power companies if not exactly to accept responsibility for all the health damage then at least to run more cables underground in rural areas.

  ‘He says he’s a crank and a loony and proud of it, and he admits to propositioning anyone he thinks might be able to publicize the cause. He says that seeing Lodge dying up there traumatized him into action – again. I mean, if he was asking Bruce Springsteen or Sting to write a song about it…’

  Moira put her head on one side. ‘Perhaps he doesnae know Sting and Springsteen. Listen, loony or not, I wouldnae quarrel with the sentiments – I hate those things. There has to be a better way.’

  ‘Going round with Gomer, I got to see the whole valley. On environmental grounds alone, I’d like to help. Assuming he’s on the level. I mean, we don’t get to do much for anybody, do we, in this business? Not like some people.’

  ‘Not like your wee friend the Reverend, huh?’ Moira smiled. Lol stared at her in dismay. People always said she was psychic; they didn’t say she had the ability to uncover the hidden motives you hadn’t even admitted to yourself.

  ‘It’s so charming, the way you blush,’ Moira said. ‘So few guys today can still do that. Laurence, it’s perfectly fine for you to wannae be involved with the stuff in her life. Like I said the other night, a guy who understands the nature of madness…’

  He let out a shallow, baffled sigh. ‘There was something else. It was when I was standing there watching this man climbing up towards… eternity. Knowing how it was going to end. And getting a strong feeling of people wanting it to happen.’

  ‘What, like the audience at the Colosseum or somewhere, willing the emperor to give the thumbs-down to the gladiator who came second?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was like there was something there to be… understood.’

  ‘What did you arrange with this guy?’

  ‘He said come and see him sometime. “Bring your lady,” he said.’

  ‘Will she go with you?’

  ‘I… can’t see her having time.’

  ‘Tell you what.’ Moira stood up. ‘Suppose I were to tag along, check out this guy. I can be quite intuitive, you know? That wouldnae bother you, if I came along?’

  ‘No, that would be—’

  ‘Call him, then.’

  ‘I can’t call him. He doesn’t have a phone. You leave a message for him at the village hall, and he calls you back. There are lots of things he doesn’t have.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Moira said.

  23

  Nothing But the Night

  ‘THE WIFE,’ Bliss said, ‘Kirsty…’ Shovelling a third sugar into his coffee, letting the spoon clang on the tabletop. ‘Aw, it’s dead difficult, Merrily, this personal shite.’

  The first thing she’d noticed was that he hadn’t shaved. This wasn’t Frannie. Frannie was dapper, Frannie was tidy.

  He drank some of the coffee, made a face.

  ‘I mean, I’ve gorra say I never really wanted a wife. In some ways it was that simple.’

  Merrily rolled her eyes.

  ‘The police… It’s like you either go at it firing on all four cylinders, day and night, or it’s just a… just a job. Me, I never wanted just work. I’m like you, it had to be a vocation, a calling – and there was never gonna be a wife, not till I was pushing forty anyway, and I certainly never wanted kids.’ There were tears in his eyes now. ‘Needy little twats.’

  ‘Have you had anything proper to eat, Frannie?’ Merrily asked. He’d told her on the square that he’d give her an hour or so to get changed, get sorted – meaning get Jane out of the way, she guessed – and then he’d come and see her, if that was all right.

  ‘Nothing for me, thanks.’ He put up both hands. ‘Kirsty… she used to make me take a flamin’ yoghurt to work. She doesn’t bother any more. I miss that.’

  He looked out of the window towards the ragged apple trees. There was silence, not even the mouse-scratch of Jane listening behind the door to the hall. Perhaps, Merrily thought, she’d grown out of that and therefore really had gone up to her apartment after lunch. She’d be back at school tomorrow.

  ‘So she’s a local girl,’ Merrily said. ‘Kirsty.’

  ‘Shit on her shoes soon as she could walk.’ Bliss made a desolate face. ‘All her family’s sunk into these bloody dead-end farms, all within about ten miles – ma and pa and her old bloody gran and about six thousand aunties. Jesus, they look so normal when you first meet them, country girls. She worked in the fashion department at Chadd’s. She was… very chic. So anyway, that’s why I’m still out here, chasing sheep-shaggers. Before we got married, West Mercia was gonna be strictly short-term. I was looking towards – I dunno…’

  ‘The Met?’

  ‘Yeh, maybe the Met. Or even back to Merseyside, with a bit of rank to stand on. But Kirsty, she’d just die in a big city, just curl up and… I’m not kidding, I’m not exaggerating.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I hate that in her. It’s not how wives are supposed to be, is it? She’s supposed to want to follow me to the ends of… wherever.’

  ‘Except that wherever you go, you’ve always got your family around you,’ Merrily said. ‘Because your family’s coppers – the Job. And she knows that. And she knows that if she’s stuck in some city suburb and all she has is you and you’re not there half the time…’

  ‘Very slick, Reverend. Very psychologically acute.’

  ‘True, though?’

  ‘Probably,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Tell me if this is not what you came for. I mean, you could always go to your long-suffering priest for five Hail Marys and a—’

  ‘Yeh, all right, it’s what I came for. Shuffling round the village square like a stray dog on a Sunday morning. It’s finally come to this.’

  Merrily poured herself some black tea. ‘So you made a martyr of yourself. You put your career on the back she
lf for love.’

  ‘Tugging me forelock to fast-track floozies like Annie Howe. Grovelling on me knees to po-faced jobsworth gits like Fleming. Listen, I might not be university-educated, Merrily, but I was doing all right. I’ve had… approaches, you know? You get enough results, it’s still possible to make your own fast track.’

  ‘Until you fall off it.’

  ‘Yeh.’ Bliss looked at her. ‘You fall off, you go down the flamin’ embankment so fast, you break both legs. So I’ve gorra simple choice: stay here and rot in an office or bugger off. What a waste. Either way, what a fuckin’ waste.’

  ‘OK.’ Merrily reached for her cigarettes. ‘Let’s look at the facts. After what happened in Underhowle, this Luke Fleming comes over from Headquarters and decides that you mishandled the case from the start. If you hadn’t kept it all to yourself, played all these wild cards, including Gomer, Roddy Lodge would be safely tucked up in his cell instead of on the slab.’

  ‘I took a risk.’ Bliss leaned on an elbow, hand cupped around his unshaven jaw. ‘Several risks.’

  ‘Even I could’ve told you that.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Mmm, well…’

  When you thought about it, he was actually lucky his conduct hadn’t been the subject of an internal inquiry. In fact, with an inquest pending, he wasn’t out of the disciplinary shadows yet.

  And yet Merrily couldn’t help thinking that the last time she’d been aware of him bending the rules was when, last summer, he’d passed information to Lol that might well have prevented Annie Howe hanging her out to dry on a very public washing line. Did she still owe him? Did it matter, anyway?

  ‘I mean, it could have been worse, Frannie.’

  ‘Suspended. Bumped down to sergeant But that would’ve been a public admission that we fucked up. Still comes down to the fact that I’ve no future in West Mercia now, and the normal thing would be to go on the transfer list. And we know what that means.’