The Lamp of the Wicked (12 page)

‘What about DNA?’

‘After a fire?’

‘But you’ve charged him.’

‘Er… no. No, I haven’t. Not yet.’

‘Oh?’

‘I want it in the papers,’ Bliss said. ‘If he’s charged, it’s sub judice and the clamps go down. I want it splurged all over the papers, radio, TV, the lot, that we’ve found a woman’s body under a new-fangled septic tank and that a thirty-five-year-old man is helping with inquiries. I want people to think about it and talk about it. Not just in the village. I want the name Efflapure in the public domain.’

‘I’m sorry…’ She poured another coffee for herself, maybe thinking it would attune her to Bliss’s wavelength. ‘Why?’

‘’Cause Roddy works over a wide area.’

‘Yes.’
I done tanks for all the nobs all over the Three Counties and down into Wales. I done Prince Charles’s fuckin’ sewage over at Highgrove
.

‘See, what I’m looking for, Merrily, is a full list of all the Efflapures or anything else he’s put in. We’ve got his books, but we all know that, with a bloke like Roddy, they won’t all be down on paper for the taxman. I want to know exactly where he’s been.’

She nodded. She didn’t really get this – too tired, maybe – but she nodded anyway.

‘Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘You’re a woman.’

‘Yeah, I still like to think so.’ Suddenly, despite – or maybe because of – her fatigue and the sordid, sickening nature of the discussion, she felt a piercing need to be in Lol Robinson’s bed in the white room in the granary. She looked away, knowing she was blushing.

And a priest.’ Bliss sat up in his chair, facing her with both hands flat on the table, his voice becoming Scouse-nasal. ‘And you’ve been close to evil. Closer than most priests, I’d say, even if you’ve not been at it long. So I just want to ask you – off the record – about the kind of stuff that’s not in your statement. I want to know how
you
felt about Roddy. As a priest. As a woman.’

She met his gaze. His eyes were bright with caffeine and candid ambition. She liked Bliss, actually – more than she liked his boss DCI Howe, who was apparently away on something called an SIO Module course. But she wasn’t quite ready to say how she felt about Roddy Lodge.

You come and talk to me any time you want.

Thanks. I’d like that.

Yeah. You would indeed, my darlin’.

She said, ‘You’re leading the inquiry then, Frannie?’

‘So far,’ he said. ‘But I may not have long before somebody takes over, you know how it goes.’

‘So all that about being in no hurry…’

‘… Was bollocks. Yeah. Truth is, Merrily, I’m chasing a feeling about this feller. I’m supposed to’ve gone home for a kip ages ago, but I’ve been driving round thinking about it.’

‘Roddy?’

He nodded. ‘What I reckon…’ He took a breath and seemed to be swirling it around his cheeks before letting it out. ‘I reckon there could be more of them. More Lynseys.’

The problem was, Jane realized, that nobody really understood Gomer. They looked at this weedy little old guy in the bottle glasses and they somehow failed to see the rebel warrior crunching down the border clay on his grunged-up caterpillars, swinging the arm of his JCB like some huge broadsword. They couldn’t discern the
elemental
side of Gomer. Even Mum, who should have known better by now, had been like,
Keep an eye on him… make sure he takes it easy… don’t let him overreact
.

They didn’t understand. Overreaction was what kept Gomer fully alive.

He’d agreed finally to let Jane go to the chip shop, then he’d left half his lunch. All morning he’d kept phoning people, in a compulsive kind of way.
No!
he’d go.
It don’t matter what you’ve yeard, it en’t over! Gimme a week, I’ll be back to you. Gimme ten days, max!

But there was a dullness in his glasses.

‘I’ve got my provisional licence now.’ Jane wrapped the congealing chips in their newspaper and dumped them in Gomer’s kitchen bin. ‘I could work for you weekends. I mean JCBs… it’s just a matter of experience and technique, right?’

‘And an HGV licence,’ Gomer said heavily.

‘Oh. That, too, certainly. I knew that.’

She also knew that, in some curious way, he wouldn’t feel free to mourn Nev until he’d secured the business. If he let it go, it would be a kind of betrayal. In the same way, the small, modern kitchen was amazingly clean and neat, everything shiny – the way Minnie had kept it, but not like a shrine, Jane thought. A shrine was static and frozen; in here you could still feel Minnie’s busy spirit, and Gomer needed that. Like he always needed to know the big diggers were out there, oiled and ready to move the earth.

The kitchen window overlooked the orchard, out of which the buttressed church spire rose like a rocket on its launching pad. Starship Mum. Soon to be transmitting soft porn, if Uncle Ted got his way.

Everything was getting out of proportion.

Jane said, ‘I suppose, if you could wipe off the jobs you’ve already got on the stocks, you could take some time to kind of reorganize things. Like, reduce the scale of the operation.’

Gomer looked up. ‘Ar. Mabbe you put your finger on it there, Janey. Gotter deal with the commitments first, ennit? I en’t given up hope. I know where I can rent a digger, and there’s a coupler fellers I know would likely help me out, but they won’t be in till tonight, see.’

‘I suppose it’s going to be an even smaller pool, now that this Roddy Lodge is going to be… whatever happens to him.’

Gomer’s glasses, she would swear, darkened. Jane could’ve punched herself for bringing this up again. This whole Lodge thing was very weird and sick. When Mum had told her, she’d felt obliged to feign disappointment at missing the excitement, but in reality she was glad she hadn’t been there. Awfully glad, too, that Mum had got herself and Gomer out of it, avoiding confrontation. Jane had learned that, in situations involving crime and death, only distance lent any kind of excitement. The fact that this Lodge, in all probability, had killed Fat Nev, who Jane had known – OK, not well, but she could picture him, could hear his voice, knew what a crappy life he’d had – made the guy repulsive, a monster.

But Gomer was different. Somehow, for Gomer, the discovery of the woman’s body in the truck had been almost a frustrating development, an intrusion coming between him and the man who’d murdered his nephew and wrecked his business. Did Gomer feel – maybe unconsciously – a certain resentment towards Mum for forcing him to take the easy way out, let the police handle it?

Unlikely, because Gomer’s affection for Mum was almost a father–daughter thing.

But there was something.

‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ Frannie Bliss said.

‘I… nothing vital.’

Lie down for half an hour, maybe. Go across to the church and say some prayers for Gomer and Nev. Phone Lol. Avoid Uncle Ted. Go back and talk to Gomer, see if there’s any way to help him through this.

‘Only, I’d like you to come and look at his place. At Underhowle. Take less than an hour to get there. You know me, Merrily, I don’t have too much faith in psychologists and profilers, but I’ve still gorra sneaking regard for priests.’ He gave a small smile. ‘Of whichever side of the fence.’

‘Frannie,’ Merrily said, ‘do you have any real concrete
reason
for suspecting he’s done it more than once?’

‘Just his attitude. And the fact that at least one other woman’s gone missing from that area in the past year.’

‘Oh.’

‘He likes women.’

‘It’s not a crime.’

‘I use the word “like”…’

‘OK.’ Merrily put out her cigarette. ‘I’ll tell you. He was heavily suggestive, I mean towards me. In an old-fashioned way, I suppose you’d have to say. I was standing a couple of yards away from a body he’d just exhumed and he was telling me I was… you know… It wasn’t exactly sophisticated and it wasn’t subtle: he actually used the word “sexy”. Here we are in the grounds of an empty house, he’s just been accused of murder by Gomer, and he’s talking like we’ve just met up in a singles bar and we’ve both had a bit to drink.’

‘Had he, do you think?’

‘I wouldn’t’ve thought so. His voice didn’t seem to be slurred and I couldn’t smell anything on him other than an awful lot of aftershave. He was still hyped-up, though.’

‘In what way?’

She thought about it. ‘At first, I thought he was nervous – Gomer had called him a murderer. However, as soon as he found out this was about the fire, he – as you said – kind of denied it. Laughed it off, anyway. That was about when I gave myself away – dropped the torch in the shovel, on the tarpaulin covering… Anyway, as soon as he saw I was a woman, maybe that was when he got cocky. He seemed quite relaxed, from then.
I
wasn’t, of course. I’d smelled… the smell. I just wanted us to get the hell out of there before he pulled a gun or a knife or something.’

‘Do you think he detected you were scared, and that was what made him so forward?’

‘You mean, do I think he got off on that, a woman being blatantly nervous of him? Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Where was Mr Parry at the time?’

‘Mr Parry was standing there, gobsmacked at me selling him down the river. I really don’t think… The impression I have, thinking back on it, was that Roddy had ceased to be aware of Gomer from the moment he became aware of me. He said, “a woman” – like, you know, “For
me
?” ’ Merrily shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, that sounds – even to me, that sounds like the kind of thing you say in hindsight, when you know you’ve been face to face with a…’

‘It sounds about right, actually,’ Bliss said. ‘For instance, when the lads brought him in last night, he was rabbiting nonstop in the car, like they were his best mates. Like they were all on a coach coming back from an outing. He’s there, jammed up between two burly uniforms, and at one point he’s suggesting that if they ever fancy a one-nighter, with the trimmings, he can get them fixed up.’

‘Trimmings?’

‘I’ll spare you the details.’

‘Did he realize why they were arresting him?’

‘Oh yeh. Merrily, you say in your statement he told you he’d been to talk to the local vicar?’

She nodded. ‘That would be Jerome Banks. You spoken to him?’

‘Would I need to?’

‘Lodge claimed he scared the vicar. Told him about things he’d supposedly seen. “Spooky” was Lodge’s word.’

‘Didn’t go into detail?’

‘He seemed… I dunno… kind of proud of this – spooking the vicar. I said that sounded very interesting, and he said – in this heavily lecherous way – that I could go and talk to
him
any time I liked.’

‘And you said?’

‘I said that’d be nice, or something like that.’

‘Ah.’ Frannie Bliss rubbed his stubble-roughened jaw.

‘What?’

‘
Nice
. Yes. That’s more or less what he said to us.’
‘Huh?’ She reached for the Zippo and the Silk Cut.

‘Like I say, they couldn’t shut the bugger up last night. And yet this morning, when we brought him out of his cell and into an interview room… he’s a very different man. Withdrawn. Sort of hunched up into himself. Like he’d been drunk last night and now he’s very badly hung-over. Didn’t want to know us any more. Kept muttering, “Not talking, not talking.” Kept wanting to go back to his cell. See, that’s a bit unusual. Normally they can’t wait to get out. We tried all the usual things.’

‘Good cop, bad cop.’

‘We’re a little more psychologically sophisticated nowadays, Merrily.’

‘Since when?’ She drew out a cigarette with her teeth.

‘Anyway, it wasn’t happening. We weren’t getting anywhere. He didn’t even ask for a solicitor. We offered him one, he said no. No to everything. No, no, no. Don’t wanner talk, leave me alone. Sinking further back into himself, complaining of headaches. Well, all right, we’ll have enough forensic by the end of the day to package him up, no problem. But I…’ He looked into Merrily’s eyes. ‘I
know
there’s a lot more to come out if we handle this right.’

‘And you want to be the one to uncover it, before they send Howe back from her course to take over.’ Merrily eyed him along the length of her cigarette.

‘Aw, please…’

‘Sorry.’

‘But eventually,’ Bliss said, ‘he just looks at me through his fingers and he says, “You get that little woman. I’ll talk to that little… woman.” ’

‘What?’

Bliss smiled a touch bashfully, not quite meeting her eyes.

‘You took a bloody long time to get round to
that
,’ Merrily said.

‘Yeah. Sorry about that.’

‘No, you’re not.’

Bliss shuffled in his chair. ‘Merrily, how
would
you feel about talking to him? Might save us all some time.’

Help you get it wrapped before they bring in some flash DCI from headquarters or summon Ms Howe back.

‘By “talking to him” you mean either with you there or with a tape running.’ Something like that. But I wouldn’t like to have you going in there cold. That’s why I want you to see his place. Get an idea of what kind of bloke we’re dealing with. It won’t take long.’

‘Now?’

‘Wouldn’t mind.’

‘Look, I know the Bishop and the Chief Constable have had drinkies together—’

‘But you don’t work for the police. Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to cross any of your personal barriers. I just want a firmer idea of whether I’m talking to a sexual fantasist who got carried away one time, or to a real sexual predator – maybe somebody who started out degrading women and progressed to killing them.
Them
– plural.’

‘And as well as whatever he might disclose to me, you probably want to watch how he reacts to me as a woman, right?’

‘Well, you know, I hadn’t actually thought of that.’

‘Frannie, forget it.’

Bliss was silent for a moment. He waved away her smoke. ‘You’ve disappointed me, Merrily. I thought what you did was all about stopping the spread of evil.’

‘And suppose he’s in some way innocent? Suppose you’re getting carried away.’

‘I can show you—’

‘All right.’ She put out her cigarette. She’d have to admit that the possibility of Lodge’s innocence was remote. ‘I’ll talk to him, but I’ll warn him first that under the circumstances there could be things I would feel obliged to pass on to the police. Then he has the option of telling me to push off.’