The Lamp of the Wicked (MW5)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘This yere grave, vicar. Problem with him. En’t entirely vacant.’

  ‘Oh.’ This sometimes happened. A graveyard was crowded underground; there was slippage. It would happen tonight. ‘How far down is the other coffin?’

  Gomer said. ‘That’s the point, ennit? This one don’t have no coffin.’

  ‘Put it out of your head, all right?’ Moira picked up the Boswell guitar by its neck and handed it to Lol. ‘I told the girl you’d talk to her afterwards. She’ll find you. Now let’s get this stuff on stage.’

  Mephisto Jones had said he’d been out all day helping a friend to do some fencing on his farm. Then he’d called in for a beer on his way home. He said he was feeling good at the moment; on nights like this, feeling stronger, he wondered if it wasn’t time to come back to England, give it another try. Yeah, he remembered Prof, of course he remembered Prof.

  Lol had made himself sit down and ask some questions about the symptoms of electrical hypersensitivity, telling Mephisto about Roddy Lodge’s death on the pylon. At one point, Prof had looked in, his bald head shining with sweat, shaking both fists.

  He’d be well out of it, Mephisto had said. Wouldn’t know who he was any more.

  He said he was Satan,’Lol had recalled.

  Makes sense, Mephisto had said. I used to think I was the walking dead, but you know what they said about Satan…

  Now Lol and Moira carried the guitars down the passage, under muted lights, and out onto the stage, where black curtains concealed the auditorium. Sounds of mass movement out there. This wasn’t a big theatre, but it still felt like standing on a cliff- top overhanging a vast city.

  They put the guitars on stands: the curved-backed Boswell, the Washburn and Moira’s thin-backed Martin. There were voice microphones and guitar mikes at waist level.

  ‘Check the tuning,’ Moira instructed, and Lol went through the motions while she fingered a couple of chords on the Martin, provoking a whoop from beyond the curtain. She put the guitar down, placed both hands on his shoulders, gripping hard, and hissed, ‘She’s no gonnae go away. She’ll find you. But you have to do this first, OK?’

  A young guy in a black sweater appeared. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Moira nodded. Rustling, chatter, laughter from behind the curtains. An audience. Hundreds of people anticipating an experience. ‘Will your wee priest have made it?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’s been delayed.’

  I lied when I said I wasn’t involved… Lynsey and Piers and Roddy and the whole bit. What were the implications here? What could he do about it tonight? Moira would play for maybe forty-five minutes, then he’d shamble on, do his forgettable best, shuffle off. An hour lost, maybe more.

  On the other hand, if he were to shuffle off now…? It wasn’t as if he’d be letting Moira down – probably the reverse; appearing with sub-standard support didn’t help anyone’s reputation. And he certainly wouldn’t be letting the audience down. But how easy would it be to find Cola French and then get out of the theatre?

  They came to the black curtains at the back of the stage. The main curtains had opened now, and he could see the audience in the steep theatre, could see that it was almost full, that all the boxes set into the walls on either side seemed to have been taken.

  The house lights went down. The chat sank as sweetly as the ambient noise being lowered in the mix of a live recording. The mike stands and the guitars stood in pools of golden light, and you could almost hear the steel strings vibrating in the air.

  Silence like a gasp. Four hundred people out there. Anticipation.

  Then Moira said, ‘OK, off you go.’

  He spun in shock, and she stepped behind him to cut off his retreat, and the curtains either side of her were execution black.

  ‘I thought, with you needing to get away, you could go on first after all,’ Moira said.

  Lol’s lungs made like a vacuum pump.

  Moira pushed him hard. ‘Just get the fuck out there, eh, Robinson?’

  46

  Mephisto’s Blues

  GOMER HAD LEFT an earthen step inside the grave, and he went down onto it, but he held the hurricane lamp away so that Merrily couldn’t see.

  ‘En’t terrible attractive, vicar,’ Gomer admitted.

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She stood on the slippery rim of the grave and leaned over, the wind pulling at the hood of her alb and rattling the laurel bushes. The church crouched above them with its stubby bell-tower, and the lights from inside were dull and unhelpful.

  The smell was mainly of freshly turned earth and clay, but it was still the smell of mortality. Her foot dislodged a cob of soil, and she stumbled.

  ‘Careful, vicar.’

  ‘I’m OK. Go on… let’s have a look.’

  She drew a breath. Gomer flattened himself against the side of the grave and lifted the lamp so that it lit up the interior of the grave like an intimate cellar.

  ‘Deep,’ Gomer said. ‘Cold earth – preserves ’em better, see.’

  Merrily looked down into an absence of eyes. Decay was a corrosive face pack. In its nest of clay-caked hair, the face was like a child’s crude cardboard mask, the emptiness of it all emphasized by the mouth, the way the jaw had fallen open on one side into a last crooked plea.

  And all of it made heartbreaking by the rags of what looked like a red sweatshirt and an uncovered hand with its dull glimmer of rings. She had to be fully six feet down. Some gravediggers today didn’t go that deep. She could have ended up with a coffin on top and never have been found.

  Merrily stepped back, making the sign of the cross.

  ‘There was this.’ Gomer climbed out. He held up the lamp and opened out his other hand. ‘Cleaned him up a bit, vicar, so’s you can see.’

  She saw an angel.

  An angel on a chain.

  ‘If he was still round the neck, see, I’d’ve left him on, but he was lying on top, he was. Loose. Like somebody’d put him in after the body.’

  The angel was no more than an inch and a half long, with wings spread and hands crossed over its lower abdomen, which protruded as though it was pregnant. In fact, there was something curved there, like a small locket or a cameo.

  ‘Any idea what he is, vicar?’

  She felt a sadness as sharp as pain. ‘Think I just might.’

  ‘Valuable?’

  ‘It was to someone,’ Merrily said.

  Lol felt like he was dying, his recent past laid out before him in a mosaic of faces.

  He stood there, frozen, gazing into purgatory, a warm-col- oured vault with boxes set into the sides like the balconies of apartment blocks or the doors in an advent calendar.

  The house lights had come up again, because somebody thought he wasn’t ready – some technical problem, maybe – and now he could see the individual faces in the mosaic.

  He saw, in one of the boxes, Al and Sally Boswell – Al in his Romany waistcoat and his diklo, Sally in that long white dress with the embroidery around the bosom, the dress that was so much a part of her personal history. The two of them sitting in their box, gypsy aristocracy, as if this was a ceremonial occasion for them. Al, who’d given Lol the Boswell guitar, had come to Hereford to see it abused.

  The Boswell guitar was behind Lol, on its stand. He had the Washburn hanging from his shoulder; it felt unresponsive, like a shovel.

  He saw Alison Kinnersley, this woman who’d originally gone with him to Ledwardine and then left him for the squire, James Bull-Davies, and his farm and his horses. Bad for you, Lucy Devenish had told him sternly. Wrong type of woman entirely.

  James was there, too, in a tie. A male-menopausal stooge, said Lucy Devenish, who’s known only two kinds of women – garrison-town whores and county-set heifers.

  Lol’s hands felt numb as he stared into the huge, cavernous silence and all the people stared back at him with a tremulous fascination – that apprehension-turning-to-anticipation which had been so palpably apparent when Roddy L
odge was high in the pylon, reaching out to the insulator, the killing candle.

  Lol saw Jane, close to the front. Jane Watkins who one day, before he knew her mother, had come into the cluttered folklore emporium, Ledwardine Lore, when he was minding the shop for Lucy.

  What the hell was his first song supposed to be? Oh God. The amplified silence boomed in his head. How long had he been standing here like this? How long before they started the slow handclap? How long before someone pulled the curtain? What was he supposed to do?

  Directly opposite him was the glass-fronted control booth where Prof Levin sat. Prof was standing up, very still, his hands theatrically over his eyes, like this was some Greek tragedy.

  Then Lol saw Eirion, on the far left, probably the only person in that audience not staring back at him, because he was looking at Jane, who was looking at Lol, hands clasped, face taut with anxiety. Suddenly all she sees is darkness, doom, nothing… nothing amazing out there any more.

  There was an unexpected prickling in the corners of Lol’s eyes. He hadn’t mentioned the gig to the Boswells, wouldn’t have dared – it must have been Prof. But who had told Alison and Bull-Davies? And surely that was… who could possibly have told Sophie Hill… who was sitting with a man who must be her husband, very near the back, presumably in case the sound level proved insufferable.

  ‘Hey, man, where you been?’ A lone male voice curling out of the third row.

  Nervous laughter from somewhere. The sweat in Lol’s hands felt like cold honey.

  He whispered into the mike, ‘Away.’

  The whisper was as crisp as an iceberg lettuce, and huge; how sound systems had improved.

  ‘When you reckon you’ll be back, then?’ the guy in the third row said.

  ‘Well, I don’t really know,’ Lol said. ‘It depends on…’

  … remembering what the first song is.

  And then suddenly he did, his fingers finding the riff. Into the mike, he said,

  Tuesdays on Victoria ward We always hated Tuesdays.

  And he must have sung it, kind of, because the lights went down and some applause bubbled up.

  The last face Lol saw before the whole audience went into deep shadow was Jane’s. She was slumping in her seat with her head thrown back, and he could almost hear the whoosh of breath coming out of her, as he did the number.

  Did the number!

  Leaning on the guitar, now, as he went into the chorus.

  Someone’s got to pay

  Now Dr Gascoigne’s on his way

  And it’s another…

  HEAVY MEDICATION DAY.

  ***

  Wondering, for the first time, whether it might have been wiser to change Dr Gascoigne’s name.

  Nah. Stuff you, Dr Gascoigne, you cold-eyed sadist.

  Lol discovered he was smiling. The people out there, the unknown faces, must have thought it was part of his act, faking disorientation. Only a real professional could do that and get away with it. Lol felt he was floating, and when the song was over, someone at the back started shouting, ‘ “Sunny Days”!’ and there were ragged handclaps in support.

  Well, he wasn’t going to do that trite crap, not in a million years.

  Definitely not.

  When he reached the chorus, he was staggered at the number of people singing along.

  And it’s always on the sunny days you feel you can’t go on On rainy days it rains on everyone But I’m running for the subway and I’m hiding under trees On fine days like…

  ‘Yes.’ Sam Hall held the angel under the brass-shaded pulpit light. ‘It’s what’s known as a bio-electric shield pendant.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Merrily said. ‘Jane – my kid – was looking for one. I just couldn’t remember what it was called.’

  The two of them were up in the pulpit, voices lowered. The service had been suspended. What else could she do? There was no way this coffin was going in that grave. A grave that, before the night was out, would be surrounded by what Bliss called the Durex suits.

  ‘In here’ – Sam put a finger on the cameo part that had made the angel look pregnant – ‘we have a bunch of crystals – quartz, maybe some malachite – that are supposed to interact with the body’s own energy field to deflect electromagnetic radiation. Often worn by people who work with computers.’

  ‘And… have you seen one before? In Underhowle?’

  ‘Yep.’

  So, when you said Melanie Pullman was getting nothing but Valium from Dr Ruck, and you suggested she should consult an alternative practitioner in Hereford about her EH, was this… ?’

  ‘This was one of the items they got for Mel. Told her to wear it day and night. For a short while, she was a familiar figure in the village, with the angel around her neck. In fact, you can ask Bliss about this, but I think, when she went missing, the description the police put out suggested that she might well be wearing it.’ Sam gave the angel back to Merrily. ‘Where did this come from, Reverend?’

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Watkins.’ Down in the nave, Mr Lomas was tentatively on his feet. ‘I don’t like to interrupt, look…’

  Merrily flashed a warning glance at Sam, and went down to talk to the undertaker. Taking Mr Lomas over to the door where Gomer was waiting, telling him there’d been an unforeseen problem with the grave, that it wasn’t empty. Mr Lomas nodded, not entirely surprised; he’d been here before.

  ‘What do you want to do, then, Mrs Watkins? I don’t suppose it’s a problem easily dealt with until tomorrow. Which might cause another problem here.’ Mr Lomas nodded at the coffin. ‘You want us to take him back? Or you could lock him in here for the night, and we’ll be back tomorrow.’

  Tony Lodge came over. He’d overheard. ‘Can’t be nobody else in that plot, Reverend, it was a field twenty years ago. Our field. That’s how we got the family plot extended – we gave the field to the Church.’

  ‘Sloping graveyard, ennit?’ Gomer said knowledgeably. He’d replaced half the soil over the remains, for concealment. ‘Slippage, see. Likely there was coffins under that field when you was still ploughing him.’

  ‘God, God, God.’ Cherry Lodge was out of her pew. ‘Is this bloody nightmare never going to end?’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Lodge,’ George Lomas said. ‘We’ll get this sorted in the morning, no problem. We’ll sort out another plot, but you can’t do that by torchlight.’ He looked at Merrily. ‘Leave him here, then, is it?’

  Merrily looked at Tony Lodge, who looked non-committal. ‘I suppose so. Yeah… OK. Thank you, Mr Lomas.’

  And so the Lomases left. And then there were seven, with Gomer. Seven and a corpse. Merrily looked at the four mourners, all of them on their feet, faces waxy under the sour- cream lights. ‘I don’t really know what to do now.’

  She was aware of Huw Owen moving quietly up the aisle. Sam Hall said, ‘You can tell us about the body. That’d be a start.’

  She nodded. ‘Well… it’s a woman, as you’ve gathered. And it isn’t in a coffin.’

  ‘Oh God almighty,’ Cherry Lodge said.

  ‘Roddy…’ Merrily hesitated. ‘Roddy dug graves for the church sometimes, didn’t he?’

  ‘They always had a regular gravedigger,’ Tony Lodge said, ‘but when the ground was difficult or they hit rocks, they’d call the boy in with his digger.’

  Ingrid Sollars came over to inspect the bio-electric angel. She took it out of Merrily’s hands, held it tenderly in her own. ‘It is Melanie, then?’

  Merrily nodded. ‘Looks like it, I’m afraid. Who are her nearest relatives?’

  ‘Her parents moved six months ago, into Ross. There’s an aunt over at Ryford. Was this still around her neck?’

  ‘It was lying on her chest. Whoever buried her evidently put it there. You can see the chain’s broken.’ Did it snap when she was being strangled?

  ‘Well, that’s the end of it, far as I’m concerned.’ Tony Lodge looked at the coffin with contempt, then down at his feet. ‘Let him be cremated.
Empty his bloody ashes in the gutter.’

  Huw Owen said quietly, ‘You can do what you like after the requiem. But finish it now, before you leave him in here for the night. Before the place is swarming wi’ coppers.’ He looked at Merrily. ‘Take it from me, lass, you mustn’t do half a job on this.’

  Her heart sank. He was right. She turned to Gomer. ‘Do me one last favour? Frannie Bliss is probably down in one of the pubs. If you could give us, say, twenty minutes and then go and find him, put him in the picture, and…’

  Make his night.

  Gomer nodded, opened one of the double doors and stopped. There was a group of people packed into the porch. Seven or eight of them.

  Merrily closed her eyes. Maybe they would go away.

  ‘This is so utterly contemptible,’ Fergus Young said. ‘Who would have thought the Church would lie and cheat and conspire?’

  Lol didn’t know if it was any good, but he’d done it. As his eyes adjusted, he could again see Jane in the front row, and he was convinced at one point that she was crying – during the song he’d written about her mother when the longing was becoming acute.

  Did you suffocate your feelings

  As you redefined your goals

  And vowed to undertake the cure of souls?

  It was somewhere between this song and the next that he caught the mothlike thought that had glided past him in the Green Room, and he held it fluttering in his mind along with something Mephisto Jones had said: What happened, I was getting blackouts more frequently, and they’re not ordinary black-outs – you come round and you’re out of synch, don’t know where you are or what you’ve done.

  It was like a song already: ‘Mephisto’s Blues’. The idea rocked him so hard that he muffed the tidy bit of Elizabethan finger- style at the end of ‘Cure’. A signal that it was time to go.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lol said, bemused. ‘I mean… you know… thanks for having me.’ He nodded to the audience, turned and left.

  They were stamping furiously by the time he reached the wing of the stage. Stamping for Moira, probably.

  Moira was hugging him. ‘Back.’