The Lamp of the Wicked (6 page)

‘Stupid fat bastard,’ Gomer said.

‘Only, we know Nev didn’t go home, see, or he didn’t
stay
home, because when we goes to his flat over the paper shop, after the fire was reported, Nev en’t there.’

‘What you saying?’ Gomer snapped a glance over his shoulder towards the pyramid of smoking debris, his fists clenching. Merrily saw that, behind the collapsed shed, a small building was still standing, probably because it was made of concrete blocks. In the distance, below the moon, she could see a conifered hillside, the view of which the aircraft shed must once have concealed.

‘What we want to ask you, Gomer,’ Cliff said, gently enough to make Merrily very worried, ‘is where might Nev’ve gone? A mate’s… a girlfriend’s?’

‘What you saying?’ Gomer turned slowly, the blue light flaring in his glasses. ‘What you bloody
saying
, Cliff Morgan?’

Some more people were gathering around, firemen with their helmets off, like a sign of respect. Gomer suddenly spun away and pushed through them, disappearing into a hollow of darkness beyond the milky confluence of vehicle lights.

***

Merrily found him standing outside the concrete building. The air smelled of oil and charred wood. She felt slightly sick. From behind, she heard Cliff saying wearily, ‘Don’t let the little bugger go in, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Lend me the torch, vicar.’

But it was only holding tight to the heavy, rubberized flashlight that kept Merrily’s hands from shaking. Drawing a long breath, she shone the light inside the building to where the water was still an inch deep, from the damping-down. And then the beam was all over the place as she pushed her sleeve into her face because of what the breath had brought in with it.

She started to cough again. Amid the diesel vapour and the wet wood-ash was an odour you could taste. The torch beam found its own way down scorched plasterboard walls, over a dented grey metal desk, a wooden chair that now looked like it was made of hollow columns of ash. The remains of a wooden partition hung in grotesquely ornate strands, like the rood screen in some abandoned church.

Biting down on her lip, Merrily shone the light back onto Gomer, standing there with his cap gone and his white hair springing up, an unlit roll-up between his teeth. As she watched, he seemed to sag, as if what she saw was just his clothes, and the living essence of Gomer was deflating inside them. She let the beam follow his gaze to what had been a mattress, reduced now to lumps of scorched fabric and exposed springs.

And
Oh God. Oh, sweet Jesus
. Like a prayer opening up.

Was that what she was supposed to do at this moment – offer up a prayer for what lay on the mattress, for the soul that had vacated the blistered, split skin, the flesh cooked in blue denim and left to congeal, the legs burned back to the bone, the feet fused into the Doc Martens by their melted rubber soles?

Merrily’s stomach lurched

Hands gripped her shoulders. Gomer was alive again and turning her around, snatching the torch from her, but even when she was away from the smell, standing in a puddle, letting the cold water seep into her shoes, she was still seeing the spindle of an arm thrown protectively across the swollen, football face so that all you could make out underneath was the grimace of teeth.

She heard Gomer saying hoarsely to Cliff, ‘You want that name? You want the name now, boy?’

I
T WAS RAINING
again, the moon hidden. Cliff Morgan said, ‘I know how hard this is, so if you’re not one hundred per cent certain then you should say so.’ His grey moustache covered most of his lips and his eyes suggested that he was more than ready for retirement. ‘And frankly, Gomer, I don’t see how you
can
be certain. I’m sorry. I think this is going to be a dentist job.’

He offered them shelter in the police car, holding open one of the back doors, but Gomer stood defiantly in the rain, rubbing hard at his glasses without taking them off. ‘You bloody write this down,’ he was insisting, as if he hadn’t heard anything Cliff had said to him. ‘You get it wrote down official, boy. I wannit in the report, black and white.’

‘I en’t writing anything down just now, Gomer. I think you’re very much in shock.’ Cliff looked at Merrily. ‘Mrs Watkins, right?’

She nodded. She didn’t think she’d seen him before, but he seemed to recognize her. Dyfed-Powys Police; maybe one of the cops involved in the Old Hindwell conflict last winter.

‘Gomer been with you all night, has he?’

Merrily was startled. ‘What’s that mean?’

‘I’m just pre-empting other people’s questions, Mrs Watkins. People who don’t know him as well as I know him.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Of course. Sorry.’ When a building on its own in the middle of the countryside got burned down at night, police inquiries were always going to start with the owner.

‘At this moment, it’s a suspicious death, Reverend. CID have been informed, the pathologist sent for, the scene-of-crime people. We don’t yet know whether we’ve
got
a crime, but procedures are stricter now. Infantrymen like us, we’re not allowed to touch anything any more. We’re not clever enough, see.’

‘All the same, you’ve obviously seen this… kind of thing before. Do you think… I mean, do you think he was dead before the fire?’ She swallowed; she was still feeling sick, was somehow still smelling that awful smell – like roast pork – as though grease and fumes were in her hair. She knew why Gomer didn’t want to come out of the rain.

The senior fireman said, ‘I would
think
… although he must’ve been close to the seat of the fire, I would say he was overcome with smoke before it got to him. I don’t think he would have suffered, if that’s what you’re asking.’ He turned to Gomer. ‘That mattress, Mr Parry – has that always been in the back room there?’

‘Ar.’ Gomer had his tin open and his fingers were at work on a new ciggy whether he knew it or not. ‘Boy used to sleep there sometimes when things was bad between him and Kayleigh.’

‘And sometimes not on his own, what I heard,’ Cliff said.

‘Mabbe. Her once locked him out best part of a week. Turned a blind eye, I did. He had enough problems back then. I never figured he was still kipping yere, mind. Mabbe there’d be nights when he’s walking into the ole flat, and it just comes down on him that her’d gone and left him for a biker and a bloody ole squat in Cornwall. And he just… he couldn’t stay there.’

Gomer stopped rolling the paper and tobacco, as if his fingers had gone numb, and he stared at the ground. Merrily wondered how often, since last January, he’d walked into his own bungalow and experienced that same cold dismay.

‘But if you was thinking…’ Gomer looked up at Cliff. ‘If you was thinking that mabbe Nev Parry come in yere tonight pissed out of his head, and set all this off by accident or bloody carelessness, you can forget it now, boy.’

‘Not my job to decide, Gomer.’

‘’Cause I’m giving you this other name now, and don’t you forget it.’

‘Gomer—’

‘Roddy Lodge,’ Gomer said. ‘Roddy Lodge, plant-hire cowboy from up by Ross. You go over there and you talk to that bastard about this. Now. Tonight. ’Fore he can wash the bloody oil off his clothes. Roddy Lodge. You write that down.’

Cliff wasn’t writing anything down. Another car was pulling in behind the police car and Gomer’s van. ‘CID, I do believe,’ the younger copper, Robbie, said. ‘Just in time for breakfast.’

Merrily put a hand over her mouth.

What you said to the bereaved, usually in hospitals, was something like,
Would you like me to say a prayer? Would you like us to pray together?

It was not always appropriate.

Merrily drove Gomer’s van for three or four miles before pulling into a lay-by, a mile or so over the hill from Kington Cemetery. Overhanging trees were dripping on to the bonnet, an all-night bulb was glowing outside a cottage across the empty road. As she killed the engine, a barn owl glided low, almost at windscreen level, seemed almost to hover for moment.

‘Why’ve you stopped, vicar?’ It was the first time Gomer had asked a question since they’d left the yard. He’d sat stiff-backed in the passenger seat, staring through his glasses and the windscreen.

‘Ought to ring Jane,’ she said.

‘Her’ll be in bed.’

‘I don’t think so, Gomer, somehow.’

‘You gonner tell her?’

‘I think so.’

She fumbled for her phone. Nev: she hadn’t really known him. Yet she had.

No problem, vicar, I’ll get Nev to do it, see…

That bloody Nev… digged a whole trench, got called away, come back and filled it in and forgot he en’t put the bloody pipes down…

Daft bugger. Bloody sweatshirts. Never live it down. Gotter laugh, though. You gotter laugh…

Be meeting Nev on the site at eight – say this for the boy, no matter what he’s put away the night before, he en’t never late…

Probably because Nev would have been sleeping on the premises.

There was nobody for them to tell immediately about Nev. His mum and dad – Gomer’s elder brother and his wife – were both dead. His ex-wife, Kayleigh, was presumably still in a squat in Cornwall with a biker. And the police had advised Gomer not to inform anyone more peripheral until there was confirmation.

Dentist job.

The quizzing of Gomer by a dishevelled detective constable had been brief and routine; they’d want to talk to him again tomorrow when they knew more. This time he hadn’t mentioned Roddy Lodge, whoever
he
was… perhaps just a name thrown up by the shock, a convenient focus for Gomer’s uncomprehending anguish, his denial of the obvious.

Merrily called up the vicarage number and was starting to get anxious when it rang six times before Jane picked up.

‘Sorry.’ The kid sounded muzzy. ‘Think I kind of fell asleep in the chair.’ A pause. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’

Merrily told her most of it. No point in dressing it up. Jane was silent for a while, then she said, her voice pitched high and querulous, ‘Couldn’t it be like a tramp or something? I know that’s just as like— just as bad for
somebody
, but it…’

‘We have to wait for official confirmation, flower.’

‘I just like
knew
there’d be something like this. It’s that kind of year – anything that could possibly be bad is always worse. Starting with Minnie… What will you do now?’

‘Come home, I suppose.’

‘Mum…’ Another pause as the wider implications sank in. ‘This is going to screw him up completely, isn’t it? It’s not like he can revive that business on his own, not at his age. But if he doesn’t, he won’t know what to do with himself. He’ll just fade into—’

‘We won’t let that happen,’ Merrily said quickly. ‘Go to bed this time, flower, or you won’t be fit for school.’

‘It’s half-term.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Holiday time,’ Jane said. ‘What fun.’

Merrily had been holding the phone tight to her ear and didn’t think Gomer had heard any of Jane’s side of the conversation at all. But when she pocketed the mobile and started the van’s engine, he turned to her, green dashboard lights reflected in his glasses. Whatever small amount of light was available, Gomer’s glasses always seemed to reflect it.

‘En’t gonner pack in, vicar. En’t gonner walk away.’

‘Never thought you would.’

‘Gotter put it all back together. Somehow.’

‘Yes.’

‘Kind of memorial would that be for the boy, the business went down the toilet?’

‘We should talk about that.’

‘Put me outer the picture,’ Gomer said. ‘It’s what he wanted.’

‘Who?’

‘Roddy Lodge.’

‘Well, we can talk about that, too.’ Merrily let out the clutch too quickly – the van lurched and the engine stalled. ‘When we’ve got clearer heads. When we’re not so—’

‘You’re bloody well fobbin’ me off, ennit?’

‘No, I’m not, but…’

‘Poor ole bloody Parry! Shock of it turned his mind, done his ole brain in! Won’t face up to the truth: the boy had a drink problem. Comes in out of his bloody head, sets light to the mattress. Always been a liability. Accident waitin’ to happen. That’s what they’re gonner say, ennit?’

‘No.’ Merrily restarted the engine. ‘No, they’re not. Everybody liked Nev. Everybody who knew him.’ Ar. Well, that’s true. That’s dead right. But it weren’t Nev he was after. Me he wanted to get at, see. Poor bloody Nev, he just got in the way.’

‘Gomer—’

‘Can’t back away from this, vicar. Gotter take my piece o’ the blame. I never thought, see. Even after what I yeard in the Swan tonight, I never thought anybody in his right mind would…’ He shook his head. ‘But he
en’t
, see. That’s the point. En’t in his right mind. I never really reckoned on that.’

It was something about his voice this time. And the realization that he must have been going over this, in a kind of mental mist, all the time she’d been talking at him. Merrily switched off the engine and then the lights, watching the green glow fade from Gomer’s bottle glasses.

She slid a hand under her hair, undid her dog collar, pulled it off and put it on top of the dashboard.

She lit a cigarette.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Who’s Roddy Lodge?’

G
OMER BORROWED
M
ERRILY’S
mobile and rang his home number. He wanted her to hear a message on his machine, which, if you didn’t use the skip signal, would relay everything recorded since you last wound back the tape. He sat there for about four minutes with the mobile at his ear before thrusting it back at her.

‘Listen…’

The moon was back in the sky, two of them back in Gomer’s glasses: animation.

Merrily listened.

‘
Mr Parry, it’s Lisa Pawson. I’m back in London. Listen, I’m afraid I’ve had Lodge on the phone…
’

Private drainage: for serious country-dwellers there was no other kind; you had a septic tank, and when the smell got too bad you had it emptied. For some incoming city types, however, having to take responsibility for your own waste could be a perpetual source of fear. What if it overflowed? What if it all started oozing back up your lavatory, in the middle of a dinner party?