The House of Susan Lulham (Kindle Single)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘From what I can remember.’

  ‘So Zoe had acquired a copy of the Church’s official source book on exorcism. Not something lay people normally buy.’

  Bliss looked interested.

  ‘And what’s that tell you, Merrily?’

  ‘Might tell me - if I didn’t already know - that she’s cleverer than she wants us to think she is. That she wanted to… I dunno, get into the Church’s mindset. Work out what she could invent to convince me. Make sure I brought out the holy water. Are the socos still in the house?’

  ‘They’ll be out by mid-afternoon on account of we’re not made of money.’

  ‘Where’s Zoe now?’

  ‘In a cell. Darth’s having another go at her when I get back. I think she likes Darth, and I’m letting him run with it. He’s also been flashing his Oxford graduate credentials in the faces of various education officials and discovering that Mrs Mahonie had some very good, entirely earthly reasons, for puncturing Jonno.’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘And older schoolgirls. Of course, that’ll not stop the defence from introducing the spooky stuff to muddy the waters. And when the defence accuse you of inflaming Zoe’s delusions - this is the important bit - you shouldn’t expect any support whatsoever from the prosecution.’

  ‘Who don’t do metaphysics.’

  ‘They’ve seen the YouTube video of you sprinkling holy tap-water around the terrace. I could hear the wincing over the phone.’

  ‘I’m on my own.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Bliss stood there, watching her in silence. The dispiriting rain started up again.

  ‘But you’re still my mate,’ she said dully. ‘In a discreet way.’

  ‘I’m giving you worst case scenario, just so you know. Don’t go near the house, don’t talk to anybody about it. This is still a small town and word gets round. It gets back.’

  She nodded - a nod meant nothing - and asked him if he could find out a few things for her.

  13. Serious

  ‘Who is this?’ the woman said.

  Merrily shifted the phone to her other hand, moving the chair away from the office window. Her car was gone from the Bishop’s palace yard. She wasn’t here.

  ‘You left a message for me,’ she said. ‘I’m the phony.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Or maybe just a sham.’

  Silence. Sophie was sitting down on the other side of the desk, an open packet of Paracetamol by her elbow. Unprecedented.

  ‘Wasn’t me,’ the woman said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She borrowed my phone, OK?’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘A friend. Kind of.’

  ‘Kind of? You mean a Facebook friend?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Which are you then? Lou?’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘But you obviously know who I mean.’

  ‘Look, they turned up this morning - she brought a couple of mates. They came to support Zoe, kind of thing.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She’s just fascinated. She seems to have a lot of free time. Unlike me. She wants to be like close to the action? I’m sorry. I didn’t know she was gonna phone you.’

  ‘This is Lou?’

  ‘Louise. We used to work together.’

  ‘OK, I’m sorry… which one are you?’

  ‘Look, I’ve got a young baby, I need to—’

  ‘Nattie?’

  ‘You’ve read the stuff, then. God, I still can’t believe this has happened. It’s horrible.’

  ‘But to Lou…’

  ‘Horrible, but exciting. This is probably the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to Lou. Zoe killing Jonno, for Christ’s sake. Shit, what is she like?’

  Merrily said nothing.

  ‘It was my phone,’ Nattie said, ‘and I’m sorry. They’ve left, and I hope they don’t come back. I’ve come off Facebook, all right? Wiped it off this morning. For good. Takes you over and you come out with all kind of crap that you think about two minutes later and wish you’d kept it to yourself.’

  The screen lit up in Merrily’s head.

  Don’t!!! Don’t let her in. U hear me Zoe?

  ‘Can I talk to you?’

  ‘Look, I don’t really—’

  I’m not laughing about this. If u hear her saying let me in again, whatever u do don’t do it. DON’T U 4king LET HER IN!!!!!!!

  Merrily shifted the phone again, sitting up.

  ‘I don’t think you’re coming from quite the same place as the others. Am I wrong?’

  Silence.

  * * *

  ‘They worked together,’ Merrily told Sophie. ‘They worked for a firm that provided meals for schools. Nattie was the youngest. Lou was the most volatile and… irrational, probably. Zoe was the quietest. Also the best looking. It was Lou who encouraged Zoe to make a move on Jonno.’

  ‘And they kept in touch, presumably,’ Sophie said.

  ‘Mainly through social media. Social media at its best - or worst - is non-stop, personalised reality TV.’

  ‘Facebook friends are seldom your friends,’ Sophie said. ‘You don’t know what they really are, often just the glamorized side they want to project through glamorized pictures.’

  ‘Might not even be them in the picture. But these three obviously knew each other of old. So when Zoe got married and moved to Hereford with Jonno, leaving the others behind in the Forest of Dean, Lou was always keen to know what Zoe was doing in her posh new house. When Jonno was away, she’d go over and visit.’

  ‘She knew whose house Zoe was living in?’

  ‘Not in the early days. Neither did Nattie at first. Jonathan wouldn’t let her put outside pictures of the house on the Net. He said it was how some burglars targeted places. Then they went to visit, Lou and Nattie, and Nattie recognised the house from the papers, but said nothing because Zoe seemed so happy. So proud of her new home.’

  ‘You would have thought,’ Sophie said, ‘that Zoe would also have known about Susan’s death and where it happened. A minor celebrity. The Forest of Dean’s less than an hour’s drive away.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Merrily shook her head. ‘The Forest’s… different. Separate. It’s in a different county and a different world. Could be a hundred miles away. Sure it was in the national papers because of the EastEnders connection, but Zoe didn’t seem to read papers at all, and Jonathan only read the Guardian. And it’s probably a different local TV news. Assuming she even watched the news, which is doubtful.’

  Nattie had sounded angry at first, then upset. She’d talked about Zoe’s first hints of something not right about the house. This, clearly, had not excited her the way it had excited Lou.

  ‘Because, you see, Nattie also knew Susan Lulham. As a teenager, she used to save up to have her hair done at the expensive salon in Gloucester, where Lulham trained. And found her… she was very much the junior, but it was like it was her salon. She’d make style decisions for you. She was very dominant. Nattie seems to have found her fascinating but scary. She read everything she could get hold of about the suicide.’

  ‘And did she believe what Zoe was saying?’

  ‘Mmm. I think she did. Very much. And unlike Lou, she didn’t find it exciting. God, this doesn’t get any easier, does it?’

  ‘You’re tired.’ Sophie came to her feet. ‘Go home, Merrily. Get some sleep. Having unplugged the phone.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  14. Undawn

  The view from the doorway. Near the mirror in the white room. It might not have been a white room in Suze’s time there, but it was in this dream, even whiter than Zoe’s room, so that it seemed to glow, until small blisters began to appear in the emulsioned walls.

  The worst of it… half the time it wasn’t even a dream. Twice more she’d awakened, and it was still happening in her head, like a fever, like an infection. When she closed her eyes, the blisters burst and became blood. As if it was c
oming out of the walls like in one of those poltergeist movies.

  But movies couldn’t do the smell, the rusty, salty stench.

  First the skin - Sophie’s voice - and then… every visible vein.

  Here was Suze, barefooted on the deep-pile carpet. Suze writhing and pulsing and spouting.

  Suze smiling with a determined savagery, all flashing teeth and deep pink gums.

  Suze sharing her death.

  Merrily lying there cold in bed. Cold as a corpse.

  Early-morning imagery. Mortuary metaphors. God, how far off dawn? Check the—

  No, don’t.

  Don’t open your eyes to look at the clock on the dressing table, because the clock is going say 3.00 am.

  The time when the TV came on in Zoe Mahonie’s white room, the time when it was believed Suze had died.

  Merrily didn’t move. If you could steel yourself to go back into the dream, you might learn something. Your mind might put things together.

  She lay there breathing rapidly, merging with the fitful jerking of the dream. The blisters on the wall went plip-pop and trickles of blood joined them, one to another like the splattery pattern on a summer dress.

  Think. Was there a point when Suze had realised, as she bled into the carpet, that she’d lost too much blood from too many wounds for there to be a happy outcome… that nobody was going to find her in time? She’d be too weak by then to get to her feet, open the door, scream for help - and would anyone have responded if she had? Not the first time they’d been disturbed by Susan’s antics, Sophie said, so nobody went out.

  But too weak to prod 999 for an ambulance? Or did she think, What’s the point? Was there a moment when she knew the angel of death had her in his arms?

  What was that like - the realisation that it was done? That she’d killed herself.

  Merrily felt her eyelids quiver.

  And then, suddenly, she was Suze, rushing for the door but failing to move, both feet sticking to the glutinous pile of the sodden carpet, blood bubbling up between her toes, oh dear God…

  Her eyes sprang open into a rusty sky.

  Dawn.

  The clock’s acid-green fingers signaled five minutes to six. She’d made it through three am to the dawn. And yet…

  Realisation of the truth was like the duvet being snatched away. She sat up in bed, shivering.

  She’d picked up the Freelander in the swimming pool car park and driven home in the early afternoon, walking in to the bleeping of the answerphone, unplugging the phone but not the machine, not eating or drinking, just doling out some food for Ethel and then stumbling up the stairs.

  The truth of it was that she’d been in bed barely three hours. It was approaching six in the evening. The bloody light in the sky was the dying of the day.

  Undawn.

  Dear God, a whole night to come.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, hearing the chatter of the sparse central heating coming on, she thought about Canon Dobbs, her predecessor as diocesan deliverance consultant. Except he’d refused to call it that.

  He was old and scary. The Diocesan Exorcist, who had bitterly opposed the ordination of women. As for the idea of handing over his job to a woman… he wouldn’t even discuss it with her. He wouldn’t see her, although he’d once left a note for her which said, The first exorcist was Jesus Christ.

  How would Dobbs have handled this? Dobbs poring over Facebook, Dobbs watching himself on YouTube.

  Merrily got dressed, pulling on a skirt this time, and went down to the kitchen, putting on the lights; it was dark now. She plugged in the kettle for tea before padding through to the scullery, plugging the phone back in and playing back the messages on the machine: nine from journalists. Many more would have called but not left a message. She was thinking she might call Fred Potter when the machine said,

  ‘It’s Anita Wells. Could you please call me back.’

  This was the last message. It was timed…

  Six minutes after six.

  Not five minutes ago.

  She didn’t call Anita back. She rang Bliss on his mobile.

  ‘You still at work?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I live at work. What’s happening?’

  ‘Well, we’ve charged her. Didn’t seem much point in hanging on. An interim psychiatric report gave us what we needed for the CPS to greenlight it. And the custody sergeant to decide she could be a danger to herself. Not that she even asked for bail.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Spending the night with us. Eastwood Park in the morning.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Women’s nick in Gloucestershire.’

  ‘She said anything?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Two familiar words. Taking her cue from all those friggin’ reality cop-shows, she says no comment to everything. Would you like another mug of tea, Zoe? No comment.’

  ‘Anybody still at the house?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘We’ve finished with the house,’ Bliss said. ‘POLSA’s gone home, leaving downstairs curtains tightly drawn against sightseers. House has nothing more to tell us. And looking like a bit of a health hazard, so I authorised a basic clean-up of the living room out of me pocket money. Happy, now?’

  ‘No comment,’ Merrily said.

  15. Spite

  Anita Wells said Jonathan had been terribly unhappy, had come to realise he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.

  In the kitchen, dark, uncurtained double-glazing was multi-reflecting the dimmed globular hanging lights. Only one window was covered by a roller blind.

  ‘I probably should be telling this to the police,’ Anita said, ‘although it doesn’t alter anything. It might even cause damage. Complicate things.’

  Merrily lowered her coffee cup. The pot stood on the island unit between them.

  ‘Do you ever think this might actually be quite complicated?’

  No reply. Silences could be left now without embarrassment. Their short relationship had changed forever, no ice left to be broken; you could almost see it lying in splinters on the quarry tiles around their high stools.

  ‘This mistake was marrying Zoe?’ Merrily said.

  She’d parked in a neighbouring estate road. One police car had passed her - routine patrol, probably - as she’d walked, close to the hedges, around the corner to Anita’s house. No cars outside the New House, jagged against the flaring of headlights on Aylestone Hill. She’d thought of a broken bottle.

  Anita was wearing a thick, dark-green sweater and a plain black scarf which she eased away from her throat. She seemed ill-at-ease, not yet recovered from last night. Looking grateful to see Merrily. Or maybe anybody. Things that need to come out, that’s all, she’d said at the door.

  She poured more coffee.

  ‘At the school, she was a fantasy figure for the older boys. Jonathan told me that. They couldn’t wait for lunchtime to get a glimpse of Zoe sweating over the food. His words.’

  ‘You’re saying that was part of it? Jonno, an older man, a teacher, getting off with the girl they were all—?’

  ‘He wasn’t that much older than Zoe - maybe twelve years. But yes, sure, there’d be some of that. He accepted he was far more educated than she was. He seemed to think that didn’t matter. You came home to relax, not to have intellectual debate. He was actually quite fascinated with her. He used to talk about… you know, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe?’

  ‘Marilyn Monroe wasn’t dumb. She just played dumb. And Zoe…’

  ‘Oh, Zoe was clever in ways Jonathan simply couldn’t see. If she’d been thick but adoring, they might have held it together. But Zoe was becoming more assertive and his friends were not made welcome. Parties… Oh God, dinner parties. You know?’

  ‘I don’t really do dinner parties,’ Merrily said, ‘but I’ve heard they go on.’

  ‘He was ambitious. Bigger schools. Headships. Committees, advisory bodies. It simp
ly hadn’t occurred to him that Zoe, who had no particular interest in his work, might want to… well, play more of a part in things than simply providing the food. Apparently, she sometimes became embarrassingly drunk.’

  ‘Was he… perhaps wishing he’d hung on to you?’

  Anita frowned.

  ‘That wasn’t going to happen.’

  ‘But it had happened…’

  ‘Long time ago. Well over. Never much, anyway. More of a foundation for friendship. That’s how I saw it, anyway.’

  ‘Did he know you were living here… before they moved in?’

  ‘He knew everything. He knew whose house it had been and why it was so cheap. Did that bother Jonathan? Not in the least.’ Anita shook her head, bleakly exasperated. ‘You know Zoe wouldn’t live in an old house because she was afraid of ghosts?’

  ‘She just told me she didn’t like old places.’

  ‘It was more than that. She found them frightening. And yet she liked to be frightened - on her own terms, as Jonathan used to say. She was fascinated by the supernatural. She liked horror films and Most Haunted and all those American ghost-hunting programmes. But as entertainment. As long as there was a glass screen between her and them. You know?’

  ‘It’s not uncommon.’

  ‘Jonathan, of course, despised all that. Even when they were living in a flat, they were watching TV in separate rooms. Programmes he had to watch for his work, she’d say, rather than admitting that everything she loved to watch bored him rigid. He said her tastes were unbearably crass. He’d thought at first he could change her. Perhaps she’d even led him to think he could do that… that she wanted him to. That age-old courtship game.’

  ‘Eliza Doolittle?’

  ‘Men can be so naive. She wasn’t going to change at all. She was just going to stop being a dinner lady and enjoy herself in a nice house in a posh area.’

  ‘A modern house.’

  ‘No history, no cellars, no attics, no dark corners. Somewhere you could watch horror films without feeling you were in one. Jonathan, now - someone who sneered at the very idea of ghosts - had always preferred older houses with spacious accommodation, room to breathe. When they’d been together for about six months in a poky flat, and the quarrels were becoming more frequent, he thought he’d found the perfect place to give them some space. This… Georgian house, I think it was, in the Wye Valley, had been divided into four separate dwellings and one was about to become vacant because the owner - acquaintance of Jonathan’s - had taken early retirement and wanted to live in France and thought they might be able to dispense with an estate agent for speed.’