Lila waited. She wasn’t as nervous as she had expected. Walking into the shop, asking for Conroy, staring down the kid behind the counter, it all just came to her. Naturally, she thought. Or what passed for naturally to her now. And here she was standing in front of the big man, expecting him to toy with her before giving her anything, probably undercutting her. Well, she wasn’t prepared to do that. She had had enough.
‘Well,’ he said eventually, with an irritable sigh, ‘what you got for me?’
She took the package out of her jacket – she was thinking of it as hers now – and extended her arm across the desk. He made to grab it. She pulled her hand back.
‘First,’ she said, ‘I want to make sure you’re going to pay me.’
‘If what you’ve got’s worth it, I’ll pay you.’
‘It’s worth it. Just make sure you’ve got the money.’ Her voice was steady, legs shaking only slightly from adrenaline. Where had this new-found confidence come from? A mental image of her parents flashed into her mind and what they had done to her, then Noah and Kai. Rage gave her new strength.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Sure of yourself, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah. I am.’
‘Let’s see it, then.’
She handed the package over. He opened the plastic bag, took the contents out one by one, laid them on the desk. Studied them. Looked up.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said.
‘It’s good stuff.’
He kept studying it. ‘Hmm.’ He picked up the passport, looked through it. Scrutinised something in the pages. Then the same with the NHS card, then the credit cards. He placed them all back down on the desk, looked at her. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Too good.’
Lila frowned. ‘What d’you mean? They’re perfect. You should have no trouble shifting them.’
He held up a pudgy finger. ‘One. You’re right. Perfect.’ Another finger. ‘Two. I might get into a lot of trouble.’
‘Why?’
He pushed them back across the desk towards her. ‘Because I know hooky stuff when I see it.’
She was totally confused now.
He leaned forward. The effort seemed to cost him. ‘Hooky. Snide. Whatever. Bent. This is . . .’ He pointed to the passport. ‘Too perfect. It’s new.’
‘So?’
‘So are the cards, all of them. Brand new.’ He shook his head. His neck moved several seconds afterwards. ‘Means they’re not real. Warning flag.’
Lila couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘But they are, look at them.’
‘Yeah, they look real. And they might pass scrutiny. But I’ve seen stuff like this before.’ He leaned back. ‘I wouldn’t touch them.’
Lila felt all the air, all the earlier confidence, leave her body. ‘What . . . what d’you mean?’
‘They’re the kind of things you give to someone when they get a new identity, witness protection or something. Or when they’re an undercover cop. Security services. Or they’re on the run from something or someone. No, sorry. And since I don’t know anything about them, or what I’m getting into, I’m not interested. More trouble than it’s worth.’
Lila just stared, unable to speak. All her hopes had been pinned on that money. Her plans for escape, for . . .
Conroy leered at her. ‘Pity,’ he said, baring his rotten teeth once more. ‘I was quite looking forward to . . . negotiating with you . . .’
She gave a shiver that was nothing to do with the temperature. ‘So . . . what now?’
He held his hands up. ‘Dunno. Pick your stuff up and off you go.’
‘Will anyone else round here take it?’
‘Me or no one.’
Numbly, she gathered the cards, passport back together, replaced them in the plastic bag, pocketed the bag. ‘I was . . . counting on that.’ As soon as she spoke she regretted it. Don’t show weakness, no matter how desperate you feel. Especially in front of someone like him.
Conroy looked thoughtful. Lila didn’t move because she sensed he was about to make some offer. She didn’t know whether it would be something she wanted to hear, but she had to listen.
‘You need money?’
She nodded.
‘You want work?’
‘Doing what?’
A laugh. As ugly as the rest of him. ‘Don’t think you’re in a position to be choosy, darlin’. D’you want work? Money?’
Part of her wanted to tell him no, she didn’t. She was worth better than anything he could offer her. But she found herself with that familiar feeling of a sinking heart, that dread, nodding.
‘Thought you might. Go see Leon in the front shop.’
‘Who’s Leon?’
‘You’ve already met him.’
The black kid. The leering one. She must have let her disgust show on her face.
Conroy laughed once more. ‘He’s not all that bad. Usually. Follow me. Oh.’ He stopped. Held out his hand. ‘I’ll take those cards from you. Just in case.’
‘You said you wouldn’t touch them.’
He shrugged. It took a while. ‘Give. If you want a job.’
Lila handed them over.
‘Thank you. Come on.’
Her earlier confidence was now well and truly gone. Lila followed him, like the condemned on her way to the gallows.
13
If Crack Converters had been off the beaten tourist track, the house Leon took Lila to could have been in a different town entirely.
If it could actually be called a house. Lila had seen static caravans before. Had even accompanied her parents on several joyless holidays in one. But this was different. It was set out as a holiday park, regimented and grid-like, but with one crucial difference. The caravans were more than static – they had become permanent residences. Metal walls gave way to brick leading to the ground. Small fences indicated wooden-clad courtyard gardens with spaces made for cars. Some had been extended with aluminium second storeys added. Most had been kept in some semblance of good repair, but not the one Leon led her to.
‘Where we going?’ Lila asked.
‘We’re here.’
There hadn’t been much conversation en route. Leon asked Lila questions: on her background, whether she had a boyfriend, where she was living, why she was here. Everything. But she had answered as monosyllabically as possible. Shrug, shrug, shrug, needed some money. Even that confession seemed to be too much for her and she hated herself for admitting it.
‘Don’t worry,’ he had said. ‘Where we’re going, there’s plenty money to be made.’
She couldn’t place his accent. Definitely not Cornwall, more London. She could have asked him where he was from and why he was here, but that might make him think he could ask her things and expect answers. And that wasn’t going to happen.
She looked at the house/caravan. The park was well away from the seafront, past the bars, restaurants, nightclubs, B & Bs and hotels, which made her think it wasn’t for holiday homes. Retirement? Perhaps. But more likely a cheap alternative to buying a real house for economic strugglers. The one they stood in front of wasn’t in good repair. The metal was dirty, as were the windows. Net curtains added to the darkness within. The space surrounding it was a weed-encrusted concrete patio with the rusted skeletal remains of garden furniture scattered about. Fag butts. Stretched black bin bags, torn and spewing their innards through rodent incursions. Chicken bones and fast-food wrappers rain-stuck to the ground. No brick around the bottom of this one, only mildewed, warping wood slats. The step that Leon stood on looked like it would collapse at any moment.
Leon knocked on the door, waited.
Eventually it was answered. ‘Got someone to meet you,’ he said, and stepped inside.
Lila, expected to follow, did so.
The inside was as she had imagined from the outside. Grease-stained cardboard pizza boxes littered the surfaces, given second lives as makeshift occasional tables for drug paraphernalia. Old cans and bottles were turned int
o ashtrays. The stink of weed was everywhere, along with sweat and dirt. A TV set in the corner had been turned into a games screen, wires and handsets snaking from it. A couple of off-brand laptops lay around. The furniture and carpet were covered with fractals of cigarette burns.
There were three people inside, all male. Two were the same age as Leon, dressed similarly in trainers and shiny sportswear. One black, one mixed race. The other one was older, fatter, dressed in stained jogging bottoms and an aged T-shirt, hair greasy, cut in no discernible style. Velcro-fastened old trainers on his feet. Lila knew the guys were looking at her, knew how they were looking at her and that made her feel uneasy. But it was this other one who drew her attention. He didn’t belong there. He didn’t look happy. In fact he looked scared. Very scared. His eyes darted from one youth to the other, watching their reactions to Lila’s entrance before he dared give his own response. Looking at Lila, some kind of plea in the gaze.
‘Who’s this?’ the black youth said.
‘Name’s Lila,’ said Leon. ‘Conroy sent her. Reckons she could be useful.’
At Leon’s words, the third man became animated. ‘Conroy? What did Conroy say? Me?’
If Lila hadn’t worked it out already, his speech would have given him away. He had some kind of learning difficulty. Quite a severe one.
‘No, he didn’t mention you, Josey. This is work.’
Josey sat back down in his filthy armchair, head slumped, like he had just been switched off.
The darker kid got up from his game. Behind him a car crashed, bodies were torn apart, explosions boomed and screams came from the TV. Josey looked up, laughed at it.
‘Fuck’s sake, man,’ said the lighter-skinned one, angry. ‘We’re playing here.’
The darker youth walked towards Lila, eyes all over her body. ‘Playing. Yeah.’ Despite the fact that she was bundled up in the big coat, he must have liked what he saw. Or what he imagined he saw.
Leon became territorial, stepped in front of her. ‘She’s here to work,’ he said. ‘Conroy said so.’
‘Just being friendly, man.’ He finally looked at her face. ‘You’re Lila, yeah?’
She nodded. ‘And you?’
‘Ashley. So you lookin’ for work?’ He smiled, showing lax dental work. ‘I could give you a job.’
Again, Leon interceded. ‘Conroy wants her out there. Reckons she’s got connections. Can shift stuff easy.’
Lila frowned to herself. Conroy hadn’t said any such thing. She said nothing, tried to pick up some more clues from the conversation.
Ashley turned away from Leon, looked towards her once more. ‘That right? You got connections?’
‘Yeah,’ she said because it was expected of her.
‘So have we. Yours better be good. Otherwise we won’t need you.’ Eyes hard, anger behind the words, unhappy at being challenged by Leon, taking it out on her.
‘We could find something for her to do.’
The light-skinned guy had risen now and she could tell straight away that this one was the leader, the alpha male in their scrawny pack. Smaller than the other two, wiry, but with a glint of something in his eye. Or rather a lack of something. He moved towards her.
‘We’ll make use of you. Don’t worry.’
And for the first time since she had arrived there, Lila felt scared.
‘So what do I have to do?’ She didn’t want to ask the question but knew she had to.
Ashley smiled. ‘Get out of that coat for a start . . .’
She pulled it further around her.
‘Shut it, man,’ said the smaller one. Ashley immediately became mute.
‘I’m Aaron,’ he said. Gestured: ‘This is my crew. Lila, yeah?’
She said yeah, then fell silent, not knowing what else to say.
‘And Conroy says you got contacts, yeah?’
She nodded. Hoped he wouldn’t catch the tell in her eyes, the lie.
If he had done so, he didn’t let on. ‘Good. We’re just waiting for a new batch. When we get it, you’ll go out selling. You OK with that?’
‘What am I selling?’
‘Weed, mainly. Skunk. Some pills. Spice. E.’
‘And the good stuff . . .’
Josey had stood up and was grinning at her. She looked once more at him. This time clearly noting the dried-up veins, the scabbed, ulcerated moonscape of his arms. Heroin.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Aaron said without even looking at him. Josey shrank away, like a happy puppy that had been kicked. He turned back to Lila. ‘So yeah, that’s it.’
‘So when’s this new batch coming?’
‘Any day now. Down from London.’
She nodded once more. ‘So . . . what happens now?’
Aaron looked round. ‘You find somewhere to sleep. If Conroy vouches for you, you’re good. You’re one of us.’ He stepped in close. She smelled decay and sugary, fizzy drinks on his breath. ‘But you fuck us over and you’ll regret it. Right?’
She didn’t doubt him.
‘Make yourself at home, then. Have a drink, smoke, whatever.’
She looked round the cramped, squalid caravan once more. Wondered yet again why it was always other people who got to live happy lives.
14
Morrigan saw St Petroc as it really was. Not the crumbling, dilapidated, dying village everyone else saw, but the glorious, beautiful place that had once existed and could again, when all the premonitions, practices and rituals came to fruition.
Rain had swept the streets, cleansed them. A chance for a new beginning. Or an ancient one to return. Morrigan saw the drying buildings as they had once been, in childhood days. No mildew or mould, no disrepair. Shops flourishing, the streets full of happy, contented people. Homes well lived in. Obviously the church wouldn’t survive. The state of neglect and disrepair it currently stood in, it would have to be completely abandoned. Or subsumed once more by the old gods. The old religion. For it was only through a return to them that the future would emerge.
When Morrigan was a child, the old religion had been everywhere.
‘You’re lucky to come from where you do,’ Morrigan had been told at university. ‘The wall between the two worlds is very thin here. And magic is strong. The spirits can cross over and back again. And when you ask them for help they will give it. If you ask correctly.’
Morrigan from that point on always asked correctly. And in returning to St Petroc after university, Morrigan’s power grew.
Evidence of the old religion, the old ways, was everywhere. The church was there but Christianity never got much of a foothold in an area that still clung to the trade and practised its traditions. Pagan, in its purest definition, meant ‘of the village’. That, Morrigan knew, was its true heart.
Morrigan always took pleasure from walking past an open window and smelling a working powder like witch or spirit or love being made up, or one of the working incenses. Morrigan would smile, content to know the craft was still being practised, and that no amount of fashionable surface cynicism could disguise that.
But those practitioners were dying out now, the evidence of them becoming sparser and sparser. The youngsters who could keep the traditions alive were moving away, turning their backs. It was up to Morrigan to keep them going, to bring the young ones back. To demonstrate that both they and these traditions were still central to the future of St Petroc. It didn’t need much. Most people knew of the power of the old ways. Still believed in them.
Someone approached. Morrigan knew them, had known them all their life. A smile, a nod. They gave a brief incline of the head in return, hurried away. Morrigan’s features remained set. Watching them go. Fear and respect. That was only right. That was the way of the old religion.
A quick watch check: Morrigan had to be somewhere. Saying a prayer for the future of the village, Morrigan got to the car, drove off.
*
Bill Watson’s farm was just outside St Petroc. He still considered himself a local to the villa
ge though, proud member of the Round Table and contributor to the country show when it used to run. Stoic and capable-looking, he was the very epitome of the West Country farmer. He had only taken a weekend away from the farm when he got married, then it was back to business as usual, up at five, his new wife alongside him. He hadn’t broken his routine when his daughters were born, nor when he became a grandfather. So the fearful expression that greeted Morrigan’s arrival was totally out of place.
‘Blessed be, Bill.’
He nodded. ‘Did you speak to him?’
‘I did. There’ll be no more trouble from John. He saw sense.’
‘Did you have to . . .?’
‘No.’ Morrigan’s eyes darkened. ‘But next time’ll be a different matter. Not that there’ll be a next time for him. It’s all taken care of.’
Bill sighed, shoulders slumping, releasing a weight he wasn’t aware of holding.
‘Everything all right here?’
He nodded once more, eyes averted. ‘Fine. Since the . . . you know. Everything’s fine. Herd’s back to normal. Defra said it was contaminated feed, that was all.’
Morrigan moved closer. ‘And what d’you think, Bill?’
Again, he averted his gaze. His mouth worked but the words took a while to make their way out. ‘It was a murrain.’ His voice quiet, not even a shadow of the booming drinker’s voice he used in the pub with his farmer mates.
‘That’s right, Bill. Murrain. The old religion is powerful and not to be sneered at or dismissed easily. If Defra explained why your cows were ill after you successfully completed the ritual then it means the ritual worked. The plague lifted. That’s all.’
Bill nodded once more. Then looked up, a puzzled expression on his face. Fearfully, he asked a question. ‘Why did you come here? You could have just called me to tell me about John.’
Morrigan stared at him, eyes dark beads, crow-like in their blackness. ‘I could. But I wanted to remind you, Bill. Of what’s at stake. John had second thoughts. But he won’t any more. I’m just making sure that you don’t either.’
‘I don’t . . . I don’t, Morrigan.’
Morrigan nodded, smiling. ‘I know you don’t, Bill. I know you’re with us . . . Till the end.’
The Old Religion Page 7
