by Phil Rickman
Mr Khan’s office, upstairs at the Royal Oak, was like something out of Sherlock Holmes: drapery and brass standard lamps, deep maroon walls and a grey picture-rail. Didn’t really work in summer, but with a coal fire on a December day it would be awfully cosy. A middle-aged Asian woman who dressed like Sophie had shown Merrily up. No doormen apparent on the premises, no DJ Xex.
‘You know, I once did invite them,’ Mr Khan said. ‘They wouldn’t meet me. I am, it would appear, the very spawn of Satan.’
‘And I left the holy water in the car.’
Mr Khan beamed. At first, she’d been thinking how surreal all this was, how unlike anyone’s idea of a drug baron’s lair. But it was, in effect, like a traditional drug baron’s lair, and Mr Khan was behaving curiously like the kind of urbane, educated executive criminal you saw in old films. While she didn’t feel uncomfortable here, it might have made sense to tell Bliss she was coming.
‘Now.’ Mr Khan was leaning back in his leather swivel chair, hands behind his head. ‘Tell me again. You are planning to hold … ?’
‘A requiem.’
‘A requiem?’
Repeating it in the manner of Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, disarming young fogey that he was. An expensive education hadn’t quite ironed Wolverhampton out of his accent.
‘Requiem Eucharist, Mr Khan. A Holy Communion for the dead. I wasn’t sure whether your own faith might present some—’
‘Oh, not a problem at all, Mrs Watkins. In my capacity as a patron of the arts and popular culture, I’ve attended no small number of Christian funerals. My initial problem, however … is the fact that I simply didn’t know these poor people as individuals. Many hundreds, thousands, now frequent Inn Ya Face and travel many miles to do so. Did you know the late Mr Cookman?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘And yet you’re proposing to conduct a service in his memory and that of his girlfriend.’
‘Not exactly that. Or rather, not entirely that. It also relates to the circumstances of their deaths and the effects all of that has had on the community.’
‘All of that?’
‘There have been a number of other accidents. Very minor, in comparison, but there’s a general atmosphere of … discomfort.’
‘Discomfort.’
‘I’d like this to be a service of closure. Of healing. Which, in my experience, can be quite … all-embracing. Which is why I thought it would be appropriate for you to be there.’
‘And why is it being conducted by you, rather than by Mr Spicer?’
‘Because…’ Aware of painting herself into a corner. ‘Because I specialize in this kind of healing.’
‘You’re a spiritual healer. A faith healer.’
‘That would not be a description I’d welcome.’
‘And what would be?’
Mr Khan waited, his prominent chin uptilted.
‘I’m the Deliverance Consultant for Hereford Diocese,’ Merrily said. ‘I suppose I should explain what that—’
‘You think I don’t know? It certainly suggests that your earlier reference to holy water was not entirely in jest.’
‘It was entirely in jest, but I can understand your … misgivings.’
‘We hear so much nowadays about so-called deliverance.’ Mr Khan frowned. ‘Children and babies being exorcized to the point of abuse and beyond, because they are believed to be harbouring evil spirits.’
‘Not us. If we’re ever invited to exorcize a young child, the social and psychiatric reports come first. And the situation in Wychehill, fortunately, is nothing to do with kids. We’re looking at the relatively high incidence of problems on the road and other … problems. Which have been linked to experiences of a possibly paranormal nature.’
‘I can’t wait to hear this, Mrs Watkins.’
‘People say they’ve become aware of a figure on a bicycle. In the road. Before an accident. That’s it, basically.’
Coming out with this kind of stuff cold was, Merrily often thought, the hardest part of the job. Sometimes you could almost feel the derision on your skin.
‘How extraordinary, Mrs Watkins. And did the civilized Mr Devereaux witness this apparition?’
‘We haven’t yet discussed it in any depth. But it seemed to me that a Requiem Eucharist for two people who’d recently died on the road would be a calming influence, as well as bringing together the local community in a spiritual way. I think I’m right in saying that Islamic theology accepts that social and atmospheric disturbances can be caused by various discarnate … presences.’
‘Oh, very much so. Very much so.’ Mr Khan stood up and moved to the window. ‘So this has absolutely nothing to do with the murder of my employee Mr Wicklow.’
‘Not directly,’ Merrily said. ‘But I’m sure he’ll be very much in our minds.’
He smiled. ‘What diplomacy.’
‘It seems he was a violent man, Mr Khan.’
‘Yes, apparently he was. But still a man. And still, in the end, a victim. Who is mourned. Look…’
Mr Khan beckoned her and she walked over to the window. Down in the courtyard, a man was adjusting the driving seat of a bright orange sports car with an ENGLAND sticker in the rear window. Two women looking on, the older one clutching a tissue.
‘His family?’
‘They’ve been here most of the day, to attend the opening of the inquest and collect his personal possessions – his car, his clothing, his jewellery. His mother’s taken it very badly. He was her only son.’
Merrily said nothing, wondering about the mothers of dead junkies whose habits had been fed by Roman.
‘Perhaps I was naive,’ Mr Khan said, ‘in watching my head doorman walk out onto the hills with his knapsack and his binoculars and being gratified by his seeming appreciation of the natural world. It’s been a sobering experience for all of us.’
He turned away from the window.
‘And you don’t really believe me, do you, Mrs Watkins? You don’t believe I knew nothing about Roman’s enterprise. Perhaps you even think I’m involved in it myself.’
Hadn’t been expecting that.
‘Well…’ She went back slowly to her chair. ‘I don’t think you’re naive. Not all your regulars like to keep going all night unassisted. It’s a chemical culture. If you were widely known for taking a hard line against drugs, this wouldn’t be considered a very cool venue, would it?’
Khan gave Merrily a sharp look which, she thought, was close to conveying respect.
‘I’ll tell you one thing.’ He sat down again and prodded the newspaper on his desk, opened at ‘THIS CARNAGE WILL GO ON…’ ‘This is a quite ludicrous exaggeration. A couple of weeks ago, I made a point of parking my own car in Wychehill early on a Sunday morning to see for myself the alleged havoc we were wreaking. No one, in the course of an hour and a half, seemed to stop there, and there was no noise. And although we sell alcohol, like any other country pub, I’m aware of no drink- or drug-related convictions, so far this year, that are connected with Inn Ya Face. And the traffic police do target us – they’d be foolish not to.’
Merrily chanced her arm. ‘But not the drug squad?’
‘Why are you—?’ He spread his arms. ‘Mrs Watkins, why are you pursuing this? The police aren’t. The media are still calling Roman’s death some sort of ritual murder. The police have been inclined to view it as an extreme reaction to something considered … culturally alien to the area. While you … is this a holy war?’
‘Do you know DCI Howe well?’
Khan’s eyes narrowed, for just an instant, and then he smiled.
‘She’s a fine officer. Her record on community relations is impeccable.’
‘Clearly going right to the top,’ Merrily said.
And wondered what their relationship was, Annie Howe and Raji Khan. He’d surely be an informer to die for.
‘I do hope so,’ he said. ‘The police service needs more people like Annie.’
‘And I hope you’ll be ab
le to attend the service.’ She stood up. ‘Erm … if you don’t mind me asking, how did you get into this business?’
‘This murky business?’ He laughed, a yelp of delight. ‘This world of gangland rivalry and territorial wars? Mrs Watkins, you have such a … a darkly romanticized view of the nightclub scene.’
‘I tend to watch a lot of trash TV. To unwind from the pressures of the job.’
Raji Khan came around the desk.
‘I shall tell you why, rather than how – despite coming down from Cambridge with a moderately acceptable second – I got into this business. I came into it, Mrs Watkins, because I absolutely love it. I love it to death … the music, the atmosphere, the milieu … have loved it since escaping from my dormitory at fourteen, with a friend, to attend my very first rave on a hillside in Wiltshire. Electrifying. Pure, ecstatic, naked vibration. You leave everything behind … your mind, your body, your— I’m sorry, was that your generation – acid house, drum-’n’-bass – or did you miss out? Do you know what I’m talking about? Or are you persuaded, like Mr Holliday and his cohorts, that we are demonic?’
‘Well, I…’
‘I am a Sufi,’ Raji Khan said. ‘Music is a sacred form to me. I tell people that Inn Ya Face has been transformed from a common drinking den into a temple of sound.’
‘Yes.’
Two wires connecting in Merrily’s head with an almost audible fizz.
‘Have I said something, Mrs Watkins?’
‘Mmm, I think you have. Have you got something on tonight?’
‘Of course. It’s Friday. We have an old friend of mine, the good Dr Samedi.’
‘From Kidderminster? Jeff?’
Khan looked startled.
‘He was hired for a party in our village, a couple of years ago. With his voodoo hip-hop show. He still doing that? Not so famous then, of course.’
‘My, my,’ Raji Khan said.
He escorted her to the car park. Roman Wicklow’s family had gone. Two white vans were arriving.
‘Well,’ Khan said, ‘I’m not sure whether I shall be able to attend your requiem. But I do hope that you can help to stop the carnage.’
40
Netherworld
All Jane wanted was to leave, go running back to the vicarage, bar the doors and spend the night slapping tin after tin of white paint on the Mondrian walls. But Lol said that leaving now would only make it worse, like they actually did have something to hide, so she just kept walking round and round the little front parlour like a caged tiger – hamster, more like – ending up face-down on the sofa, beating the cushions in blind despair at a world where the scum always came out on top.
And at the bottom of it all, like a cold stone in her gut, was the knowledge that this was all so totally her fault. This half-arsed venture had been cursed from the start, and the curse was spreading and, of all the people she never in her life wanted to harm, of all the people who didn’t deserve it…
Lol was always tethered to his past, that was the problem. He’d stretch it just so far and then something would send it snapping back, old rope twisting itself into a new noose.
After the disgusting Pierce had gone, Lol had sat at the desk assuring her that this was really not a problem, and the kind of people who’d believe someone like Lyndon were the kind who were not worth worrying about.
But he must be worried, terribly worried about the damage Pierce could do, with a word here and a word there, scattered like rat poison over all the places he went in his capacity as a democratically elected member of the Herefordshire Council. Democratically elected, Lol said, because nobody could be bothered to stand against him.
Lol’s personal history, however, would always stand against him.
She’d been called Tracy … Cooke? Jane had known all about this for a couple of years now. Anyway, her name was Tracy and she’d been aged about fifteen at the time.
Lol would have been only eighteen or so himself when he was set up by the bass player in his band who’d wanted Tracy’s mate and had got them all, Lol included, hopelessly drunk … and then had decided he was having both girls and had crept into Lol’s hotel room and virtually raped Tracy while Lol was sleeping it off. Slipping away and leaving Lol – who knew nothing about it, hadn’t even had sex with the girl – to face the police investigation that would crush his career, turn his loopy, born-again Christian parents against him and tip him down the chute into what he’d called in a song the medicated netherworld of psychiatric so-called care.
Taken years to drag himself out of the System and, while he wasn’t exactly on that register, he must still have a record for a distant sex offence. An offence that never was, but which explained everything about Lol: all the caution, the timidity, the fear of facing an audience which he’d seemed finally to be leaving behind.
Did Lyndon Pierce know about this, or was it just a lucky stab? Villages were such evil places.
At least she wasn’t under-age, just the bloody vicar’s bloody daughter, so, even if anyone believed it, the worst they could say…
Oh God, God, God…
Harsh colours collided behind Jane’s eyelids, a small universe exploding.
When she eventually opened her eyes, she saw that Lol was looking surprisingly calm – a danger sign, surely? Sitting there at the desk in his black T-shirt with the alien motif, his little round glasses on his nose, fine slivers of grey in his hair, and the phone at his ear, and he was going, ‘Yes, thank you … Look, I wonder if it’s possible to speak to Mrs Pole.’
Jane scrambled to her feet. ‘Lol?’
Lol was saying, ‘Margaret Pole, yes … Oh … Oh no. I didn’t know. I’m so … I’m really very sorry…’
Jane didn’t know what was happening. She wanted to snatch the phone out of his hand and start shaking him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just a friend of the family. I came to visit her once, a few years ago. I’ve, um, been abroad. It’s just that I’m not far from Hardwicke, and I was thinking … I had some flowers and chocolates and … Well, never mind. Sorry you’ve been…’
Lol’s face tightening in concentration. Jane felt almost panicked now. Why was he trying to reach a woman who was evidently dead? What if something had gone wrong in his head? Or hers.
‘Unless…’ Lol said. ‘Look, she had a friend there, I remember, we got on very well. Miss White. Athena White. I expect she’s dead, too, by now.’
Lol listened. When he put the phone down, he was looking kind of excited.
‘She’s still there, Jane. When I said I expect she’s dead, too, the woman said, No, I’m afraid not.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Miss White. Athena White is still a resident at The Glades Residential Home at Hardwicke.’
‘So?’
‘Maybe you never met her. I don’t suppose Merrily would have gone out of her way to introduce you. Not then, anyway. Jane, will you do something for me?’
‘I’ll do bloody anything, Lol, if you’ll just tell me what’s happening?’
‘If I give Gomer a call, will you go down to his place and stay there until Merrily gets back?’
‘Why?’
‘Because, under the circumstances, I don’t want you on your own. And if we’re seen driving out of here together – and we will be seen…’
‘Where are you going? This is not funny, Lol – we’ve got to warn Mum about Pierce.’
‘I’m just following up something that Gomer told me. Won’t take long. I’m going to try and find out about Coleman’s Meadow.’
‘Does that matter any more?’ Jane said bleakly.
Lol pulled his old denim jacket from the back of the chair.
‘Oh yes,’ he said.
Merrily drove away from the Royal Oak still undecided about Raji Khan. It could be that Bliss, for once, was entirely wrong and that Khan was no more than what he seemed: arrogant and pompous in a way that was almost engaging because you could detect, behind it, something young and almost
naive.
Mr Khan was delighted with himself and a system in which an enterprising Englishman from an Asian family could capitalize on his cultural roots to an unprecedented degree.
On the way out, he’d shown her how the Royal Oak had morphed discreetly into Inn Ya Face. It was not a listed building, and so it had been possible to remove internal walls, creating a series of archways and turning two ground-floor bars and a restaurant area into something cavernous. Black-painted wooden shutters had been installed at the windows. Although it was at ground level, with the shutters across it would be like a cellar. Yes, it did now resemble a temple, and the stone-based stage, built out from a big fireplace, was its altar.
And it had a feeling of permanence that belied Preston Devereaux’s insistence that Raji Khan wouldn’t be here long.
Would Khan risk destroying all this by involving himself in the wholesale distribution of illegal drugs? Or did he have relationships inside West Mercia Police permitting a certain … freedom of movement?
Whatever you thought about Annie Howe as a human being, it was hard to imagine her operating on that level.
Not exactly a deliverance issue, anyway.
But this was…
Driving past Wychehill Church, Merrily braked hard, drove across the road into the Church Lane cutting and turned the Volvo around, swinging back into the parking bay in front of the lantern. By the time she was running through the gates, he’d gone into the church. If it was him.
In the porch, getting her breath back into rhythm, she hesitated, the way she’d done at the Rectory.
Dealing with eccentrics … fruitcakes … imaginative and inspired people – whatever they were, it was important to keep reminding yourself that it was not about what you believed could happen so much as what they believed could happen. And it was about accepting that, when someone believed strongly enough, something could happen.
There was a lot she didn’t know, but she was getting closer.
She pushed at the double doors into the body of the church. The doors resisted her.
