by Phil Rickman
‘Sophie, what am I going to do about this bloody woman?’
This morning she’d phoned Huw Owen, leaving a message on his answering machine. He’d come back to her just after twelve when she was getting into her black coat for the funeral. He hadn’t found out very much and none of it was encouraging.
Except that there appeared to be no hidden agenda. No worthwhile conspiracy theory. No credible faction, in or out of Canterbury, with a mission to destroy Deliverance.
Which, of course, didn’t mean it wasn’t bubbling under, somewhere.
Huw told her what he’d learned about Siân Callaghan-Clarke: fifty-one years old, formerly a barrister — which would explain her need to work with professionals like Saltash, the resident expert witness. Born in Winchester to an upper-middle-class, High Church, landowning family.
‘Word is,’ Huw said, ‘that the father was a traditionalist. Her younger brother would have the career, Siân was expected to marry well, raise kids — women’s stuff.’
Not a good time to impose those values. Siân had not only not married well, she hadn’t married at all, moving to Worcester as a criminal barrister and managing to raise two sons inside a comfortably loose arrangement with her head of chambers. He was still around, still in Worcester, and the sons were both at Oxford.
The Church?
‘Well, it was in the family,’ Huw said. ‘Uncle became Bishop of Norwich. Her brother — who she appears to have resented from an early age — is now an archdeacon, Exeter or somewhere. Siân, commendably enough, began to help some of the youngsters she was defending and concluded that the Church had the facilities to operate a support network for addicts and suchlike and wasn’t using them. It’s not that simple — as I’ve just been finding out up in Manchester — but it was enough to get her involved. And that was the time when the battle for women priests was on, and her younger brother, apparently, was strongly anti.’
‘That would do it,’ Merrily said.
‘Oh aye. That were the red rag, all right. She’d get into the Church and she’d leave the brat behind.’
As a priest, Huw said, Siân was exactly what she seemed: a modernist and a politician. Known to be tolerant of Islamic fundamentalism while deploring its equivalent in Christianity. Suspicious of evangelism and Alpha training. Considered opposition to gay clerics to be irrational to the point of superstition.
Talking of which…
‘Aye, well… there were rumours of her having a bit of a thing in Worcester with a bloke I trained with, Keiran Winnard — younger than me, charismatic in all senses of the word. She’d certainly be his type: striking blonde, plenty of style and fancy footwork in debate. Liked a woman with a bit of intensity, Keiran, as I recall.’
‘Risky, though, in the Church. In the same diocese?’
‘Wouldn’t be the first. Pure physical attraction, not necessarily a meeting of minds. Anyway, it must have burnt through quickly enough, leaving her even less well disposed towards the miracle-and-wonder lads than before. Happen that was the reason she got out of Worcester. Or she just thought she could rise faster in Hereford — smaller pool, bit of an outpost. Either way, looks like Hereford’s got her for the foreseeable future. And so have you.’
‘So maybe she sees Deliverance as a method of exercising control,’ Merrily said to Sophie.
‘You mean, over the wilder elements within the diocese? The charismatics, the evangelicals?’
‘If you consider that, in certain hands, exorcism itself can be very rigid and repressive… keeping the lid on the cauldron, as someone once said. Taking a dim view of the Charismatic movement, arm-wavers, happy-clappies, speakers in tongues, because of what they might be opening themselves up to. Look at my predecessor. He hated all that.’
‘But from a different perspective, surely.’ Sophie leaned into the lamplight. ‘Canon Dobbs lived an ascetic life — self-denial, fasting, long hours of prayer. A deeply spiritual man. Bitterly opposed to women priests, as we know, and I have no doubts at all where he’d have stood on the issue of gay clergy.’
‘With his back to the altar and a big cross in front. You’re right, it works both ways. Rationalism can be even more repressive, in its way: all possession is mental illness, all ghosts are psychological projections. Siân is potentially more restrictive than Dobbs.’
‘Then why…’ Sophie pinched her chin, forefinger projecting pensively along her cheek. ‘Why would she want Martin Longbeach on the Panel? A… well, a tree-hugger.’
‘Window dressing, Huw reckons. I mean, he’s harmless, isn’t he? And gay. Probably an excellent source of information from the lunatic fringe. And doubtless so deeply honoured to be chosen that he’s more than happy to pass it on.’ Merrily smiled. ‘Is Siân a gay icon, do you think? Or maybe Martin’s being groomed as my successor…?’
The phone rang. Sophie snatched it quickly, probably to kill the image of Martin Longbeach here in this office with his thinking-candles and his herbal teas.
‘Gatehouse.’
Merrily heard a man’s voice on the line. Pale sheet-lightning brought the office up in shades of grey.
‘One moment, I’ll see if she’s in.’ Sophie covered the mouthpiece. ‘It’s former-Sergeant Mumford, are you—?’
‘Sure.’
She’d spoken to him very briefly last night, telling him about the woman who had proved to be Belladonna. It had meant nothing to Mumford, who said his knowledge of rock music began and ended with the Rolling Stones. Sophie passed the phone across the desk.
‘Andy, I was going to ring you tonight. How are—?’
‘You got a TV, switch it on.’ Mumford’s voice, flecked with storm crackle, also loaded with the kind of urgency you didn’t expect from him. ‘Just caught the headline, called you at home, your daughter said you’d be there. You got a television in the office?’
‘Well, we have…’
Looking up at the portable collecting dust on the filing cabinet.
‘Switch it on. Central News, it’s on now, don’t hang around. I’ll call you back.’
Thunder trundling, like a heavy goods vehicle over the horizon, as he hung up.
PART TWO
Jemmie
‘People who will accept an apparition because it is a visual experience will tend to reject the conviction of a sense of a presence because the experience is not externalized… I am convinced that this sense of a presence is experienced far more often than is reported.’
Andrew Mackenzie, The Seen and the Unseen (1985)
‘And who that lists to walk the towne about
Shall find therein some rare and pleasant things.’
Thomas Churchyard (on Ludlow, 1578)
13
Extreme
‘… remains a possibility, but, yes, very unlikely to have been accidental.’
The stonework, in jagged close-up, was hard against the patchy sky. Then the picture pulled back, and you could see that the shot had been done from the ground.
This was as near as they could get because the tower was taped off, two police protecting the site. Old videotape from coverage of the Robbie Walsh tragedy, Merrily thought.
They cut back to the policeman who’d been talking over the shot. She didn’t recognize him. ‘… Just about possible to survive that kind of fall, but unlikely,’ the policeman said.
Now Robbie Walsh’s face came up, the school photo, Robbie with his hair brushed and his tie straight, his mouth in an unsure smile, his eyes flicked to one side. The reporter’s voice over the picture:
‘… weeks since the town was shattered by the death of fourteen-year-old Robbie.’
They’d been too late to catch the link into the story and had also missed the first part of the report. It looked like Central News was going heavy on the death of Mrs Mumford, rehashing the events preceding it.
The boy’s photo had been replaced by another one, a poignantly blurred holiday snap of a woman in a sundress leaning — bitter irony now — against a li
febelt hanging from a sea wall.
Merrily bit her lip.
‘And then, at the weekend, came news of the shocking death of Robbie’s grandmother, Mrs Phyllis Mumford, whose body was pulled from the River Teme, flowing just below the castle here. Eighty-three-year-old Mrs Mumford was said by neighbours today to have been inconsolable after the death of her grandson, who’d been staying with her and her husband at the time.’
Shot of the river, a police barrier, two sheaves of flowers lying up against it, the cellophane flapping.
‘The town is in mourning once again. But absolutely nothing could have prepared the people of Ludlow for what was to happen today.’
‘Huh?’
Merrily looked at Sophie. The phone on Sophie’s desk started to ring. Sophie opened a drawer and put the phone in and shut the drawer up to the wire. Merrily moved closer to the TV.
‘… Hard to take in. We’re shocked… shattered.’
Man in his sixties, hair like wire wool and hollow cheeks. George Lackland, Ludlow Mayor, the caption read.
‘… Gather she wasn’t local,’ George Lackland said. ‘We don’t know where she came from, but the thought that she came here — a girl that age — specifically to… you know, to die, in this horrible way… that really doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’
‘Christ,’ Merrily said.
Long shot of the tower. The reporter saying, ‘And that’s the terrible question that just about everyone here is asking tonight…’
The camera finding the reporter — evidently live, picking up off the back of his taped report — standing outside the castle, on a walkway halfway down the banks above the river, his spread arms conveying universal incomprehension.
‘… Did the girl come here to kill herself in a macabre imitation of the death of Robbie Walsh? There was nothing to suggest that Robbie’s death was anything other than an accident. But two identical accidents at the same castle? As the Mayor said, the implications of this are, to say the least, disturbing.’
In the studio, the presenter, a blonde young enough to be the reporter’s daughter, said, ‘Paul, do we know yet where exactly the girl had come from — how far she’d travelled?’
‘Tammy, my information is that the police do have a name, and the parents of a fifteen-year-old girl are, at this moment, being brought to Ludlow in the hope of a formal identification. But it could be several hours before that name is formally released.’
‘Is there any connection with Robbie Walsh?’
‘It’s a question that’s been asked, but there’s no reason to suppose there was any connection between them at all — except, of course, the circumstances of their deaths.’
‘And what does that say about Robbie’s death, Paul?’
‘Well, there’s no particular suggestion that it throws a different light on Robbie’s death. There’ll always be an element of mystery about that. What I’d guess police and townsfolk are asking is: was this girl, in some awful way, inspired by… by the way he died and, of course, the dramatic location?’
‘Obviously, Paul, this is something nobody could have predicted. But how could it possibly have been prevented?’
‘Tammy, it’s an impossible situation. This is a major tourist attraction that gets hundreds of visitors every day, many drawn in by its dramatic location, at the highest point of the town, with these high walls, these ruined but still very tall towers and this steep drop almost to the river. Yes, of course it’s dangerous, but so are hundreds of beauty spots all over the country and what’s being said is, well, if someone’s determined to die, there’s no shortage of places to go.’
‘But two teenagers — both at Ludlow Castle?’
‘Why here, particularly? Yes, that’s a question a lot of people are now trying to answer. Children do have to be accompanied by an adult and, with the number of tourists increasing daily as we move towards the main holiday season, there’s no doubt at all that attendants here are going to be exercising considerable extra vigilance.’
‘Paul, thank you,’ Tammy said. Turned back to camera. ‘And if the girl’s name is released, we’ll update you on our late-night bulletin.’
Merrily switched off the set. The phone had stopped ringing, and Sophie brought it out of the drawer.
‘A girl,’ Merrily said. ‘A fifteen-year-old girl. What’s it mean? Another one.’
‘Children are impressionable,’ Sophie said.
She used to teach.
Merrily reached for the phone. ‘I’ll ring Andy. He mustn’t’ve known anything about it, either, until he switched the news on.’
Mumford’s line was engaged.
‘Probably ringing the sergeant he knows at Ludlow. Poor guy must feel right out of the loop when something like this happens and he finds out from the news like the rest of us. Especially when it’s going to add a lot of fuel to his own suspicions.’
‘Merrily, as the reporter said, there’s no reason to think Robbie Walsh’s death was anything other than accidental. Children have always been impressionable. Now they’ve become horribly… extreme. They want extreme experiences, extreme sports, sensations…’
‘Death?’
‘They see death on TV, and it’s usually rather exciting.’
Merrily pulled the Silk Cut from her bag. ‘Bloody hell, Sophie.’
Sophie frowned at the cigarettes.
‘When I was a child, the country had just come through a world war, and people were simply grateful to have survived, and we children were aware of that. Today… some of them seem to treat life almost like an unwanted present that they might as well take back. I’m sorry, Merrily, if I seem to be losing my Christian compassion. I’m sure there’ll be a thoroughly heartbreaking story behind it.’
The phone rang. Merrily grabbed it.
‘Andy?’
‘Ah, you are still there,’ the Bishop said. ‘I suppose you’ve heard the news from Ludlow.’
‘Just caught the last part of the TV piece.’
‘Tragic,’ the Bishop said. ‘Awful… wasteful. Three deaths, three… and in fact it’s more than tragic, it’s nightmarish, now, in ways I…’
‘We don’t know where she’s from?’
‘Other side of Herefordshire. Ledbury, I think. That is, George— I rang an old friend in Ludlow, George Lackland, the Mayor — you saw him on the TV thing. Used to be my senior churchwarden. George says the police are saying she seems to have hitch-hiked across.’
‘Thirty-odd miles? Forty?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Do they know why?’
‘Will they ever?’
‘Witnesses?’
‘Someone on the bowling green below The Linney appears to have seen her fall. No one inside the castle was aware of it, although it must have happened while the place was open to visitors. So easily done, you see. You can’t follow everybody around. She apparently paid to go in and just… never came out. Nightmarish.’
‘Was she dead when they found her?’
‘I’m not sure. George thinks there may have been complications. But if she was alive when they found her she didn’t survive long.’
Outside, the rain had started, like nails on the window.
‘Bernie… erm, should we be… involved in any way?’
Merrily heard his breath, slowly expelled.
‘I don’t know. Something did strike me when I saw the TV pictures. Actually, I feel rather foolish and trivial even mentioning it at a time like this, but you just know that some people in the town are going to be talking about it. This sort of gossip… one can’t do anything to stop it. You, ah… Marion. You remember Marion.’
‘I think I can just about remember Marion, yes.’
‘And we were all thinking, yes, but… wrong tower.’
‘The keep, as distinct from the Hanging Tower.’
‘Precisely. Well, you wouldn’t know the layout of the castle, but I do. And there it was, on the news.’
‘Sophie and I mi
ssed the beginning of the report,’ Merrily said cautiously.
‘Well, they didn’t make a point of it, but they wouldn’t know either. However…’ The Bishop coughed. ‘They showed it from the outside. Unmistakable. This time, it was the Hanging Tower.’
14
Black Poppies
That night, Lol boiled some water for tea, using a Primus stove in his kitchen, leaving Merrily to finish dressing by firelight. He had something to tell her, but it could wait.
When he came back into the living room with the tray, she was sitting on the end of the sofa, small and demure, with — unless he was deluding himself — the same glow on her face that he’d once seen by the light of altar candles, and her hair tied back with a rubber band. But, too soon, the glow was fading.
‘OK?’
‘I’ll go up to the bathroom later, with a torch and a mirror, to check the fine details.’
‘That’s not exactly what I meant,’ Lol said.
As so often, it had been a touch furtive. Curtains surreptitiously drawn. Cushions from the sofa, this time, on top of freshly washed paint cloths on the flagstones. Like teenagers, when the parents might come in… only the parents were the parish.
‘Jane kept a straight face,’ Merrily said, ‘when I said it was my turn to help you with the painting. And then she spoiled it by murmuring something I didn’t quite catch, about brushes and paint pots.’
Lol smiled. Merrily looked around the fire-lit parlour with its bounding shadows. There were always shadows. Lol thought about Lucy Devenish, who’d made him read the poems of Thomas Traherne, the seventeenth-century Herefordshire minister who believed that God wanted you to be happy. Sitting there listening to your mournful, wistful records. It’s spring! Open your heart to the eternal! Let the world flow into you!
Lucy’s last spring, as it had turned out. Suddenly, he could almost feel her in the room with them — Lucy sensing Merrily’s underlying gloom and frowning, and turning, now, towards him, poncho aswirl, eyes like the smouldering core of the fire.
