The Lamp of the Wicked (71 page)

He looked up at the visceral hanging bulbs, so reminiscent of the dull lights in the hospital corridors of his twenties, and at the drabness of the place. Above all, he hated drabness. His own song was raging in his head now:
Someone’s got to pay, now Dr Gascoigne’s on his way
. He looked at Fergus and saw Dr Gascoigne whom all the nurses loved.

He took a breath. The air here smelled foul to him now.

He said to Fergus, ‘You said Roddy Lodge had blackouts more and more often. He must have had them in front of you a few times, maybe during… magical practices. Especially in this chapel – right under the pylon, right here in the middle of the hot spot. How long was he out of it, usually… five minutes, ten… longer?’

‘I never studied it,’ Fergus said distantly. ‘We tried to
help
him.’

Lol said, ‘Why don’t you take us through Lynsey’s last night? You were there.’

‘What are you talking about? You’re absolutely crazy,’ Fergus said. ‘Cola couldn’t—’

‘I know, Cola
wasn’t
there. I didn’t get this from Cola. She probably doesn’t even have an inkling…’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Fergus turned to the others. ‘What’s he talking about?’

Lol exploded. ‘Oh, you fucking
do
know. I get so pissed
off
with people like you… teachers, shrinks…’

He squeezed his eyes closed and heard Fergus saying, ‘What’s the matter with him? Is he on medication?’

Lol felt a merciful warmth, and when he opened his eyes Merrily was next to him, and she was holding his hand, pressing something hot and metallic into it, holding his hand closed over it, holding him together. He put his arm around her. He needed help. He instinctively knew the truth of it, but he couldn’t make that final leap.

‘Blackouts, huh?’ Sam Hall was rubbing his white beard. Lol remembered Sam on the night of the execution: …
Shit coming off of the power lines. He’s gonna be disoriented by now. His balance’ll go completely, can’t they see that?
Warning the police about what might happen. Empathizing with the man on the pylon.

‘Sam, help me,’ Lol said. ‘Roddy Lodge wasn’t a killer. He probably wasn’t a very nice man, especially in the end, but he didn’t kill this Melanie, and I really don’t think he killed Lynsey Davies, either. But when…’ He shook his head, trying to clear the fog.

Sam said, ‘You’re saying that when he came round from a blackout, resulting from heavy electrical bombardment, he might’ve
thought
he had. Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Lol breathed, and he felt the breath coming out of Merrily, too. ‘If you… I mean, if there were certain people who knew he’d often have blackouts in a certain situation…’

‘Say, like in here?’

‘They were coming more and more often, I think Mr Young just said. But if they were all ready for it – ready for the next one to happen – and there was another person among them whom they very much needed to kill…’

‘They’d wait till Roddy was out of it, and then do it.’ Sam Hall started to smile. ‘And when he came round, with the body at his feet, they’d say, “Jeez, look what you did, you crazy bastard.” ’

‘Or maybe they’d just go out and leave him to come round on his own and find it. He might not remember they’d even been here too.’

‘Are you
both
mad?’ Fergus Young cried, and Lol could hear the strain, the striving for effect.

‘I tell you, though,’ Sam said, ‘killing like this, by strangulation, not everyone’s capable of that. That is ultimate contact- killing. Intimate killing. I never did think Roddy Lodge could do that.’

‘But this isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?’ Huw Owen said, almost brightly. ‘This is all daft speculation.’ He looked at Fergus. ‘You meant what you said about being cleaned out, lad?’

Fergus glanced suspiciously from side to side. ‘What kind of set-up—?’ It’s entirely up to you,’ Huw said. ‘Nobody ever gets forced.’

Lol looked at Fergus – the head teacher, the golden-haired golden boy of Underhowle, the local hero, the man who wore the admiration of the community like a halo – and Fergus looked down at Huw and smiled ruefully.

‘Rather set
myself
up for this one, didn’t I?’ He shrugged. ‘All right. Do what you want.’

Huw shook his head regretfully. ‘Not me, lad. I’m too close to it.’ He turned, putting out an open hand in invitation. ‘Merrily?’

H
UW MOVED RAPIDLY
, setting up candles on the packing case and lighting them. Sam and Ingrid stood quietly with Lol against the wall, while Fergus prowled restlessly like an actor waiting to be auditioned, going over his lines. When Merrily caught his gaze once he smiled and shook his head.
It’s a farce; we both know that
.

‘Minor exorcism?’ Merrily murmured to Huw. ‘You reckon?’

‘Aye, but you can’t mess about. He’s not going to sit still for the whole bit. Have to compress it a little.’

‘Is he a Christian?’

‘Ask him. No, don’t bother. You’ll find out.’

‘Huw… You tricked him.’

‘He tricked himself,’ Huw said. ‘Now put the lights out.’

Merrily took off her coat, knelt at the packing case and prayed. The cold seeped through her alb, and it felt as though her back was naked. She was aware of Huw standing behind her, as if trying to shield the fragile candle flames from an unfelt wind.

She said the Lord’s Prayer, muttered St Patrick’s Breastplate and wondered what this spontaneous, makeshift ritual, without any of the important preliminaries, could possibly achieve. Was this Huw grabbing his last chance, while Fergus was relaxed enough – or hypocritical enough – to throw himself at the mercy of a God in whom he had probably never believed?

Huw whispered, ‘Call him.’

Merrily said, ‘Fergus.’

Huw and Lol had dragged over one of the rubber mats and then folded a dust sheet and laid it on top, Lol squeezing her hand and leaving something in it.

‘Where do you want me?’ Fergus said.

‘Might be as well if you just knelt. If that’s not too uncomfortable.’

‘I try to keep myself flexible, Merrily.’

‘Good.’

Fergus knelt. She stood. She still didn’t have far to gaze down on his open, bony face, his wide-apart brown eyes.
Had
he? Was any of this even conceivable? She saw how long and bony his hands were, knuckles like ball—

‘If you could move a little closer to the altar.’ She wanted it so the two candles lit the upper part of his face, so that she could see his eyes.

It was always going to be the eyes.

Very quietly, Huw was removing from the bag two items: the white diary of Lynsey Davies and a small picture, the miniature in its slender frame, and he was edging silently along the dust- sheeted wall towards the entrance. He could leave this to the lass.

He had to.

Huw crept away, to be on his own. He hadn’t eaten for more than a day now. He’d awoken at five a.m. in the dark, and had spent nigh on three hours in meditation at the window. His room had faced east – she were thoughtful like that, the lass – and before the dawn came he’d established inside himself a centre of calm to which periodically, during the day, he’d returned.

His head was light now, filled with this quiet incandescence that was still linked to his spine as he padded down the body of the chapel, arriving at the side of the door. Standing there with his back to a hanging dust sheet, looking down to the altar at the opposite end of the chapel where, between the shapes of the people gathered there, he could see the candlelight, as remote from him now as starlight.

He placed the diary on the flagstones at his feet and held the miniature for a few moments in both hands. Too dark to see it, but the image was clear to him. He could see the face of Donna Furlowe sketched by her mother in pale grey pastel on white paper, so that it was like an imprint on a sheet. Or a shroud.

Huw knelt and, clasping the picture to his heart, held it there behind his hands as he put them together to pray.

With the bulbs out, there was a vague ball of light around them; Merrily could barely see anyone else.

‘Our Father…’

She said the Lord’s Prayer, the old exorcism, for the second time, slowly, and she could hear the others joining in, a grounded echo. She saw that Fergus was mouthing some of the words but not all of them, as if finding them difficult to remember. He looked briefly puzzled.

Merrily said, ‘Deliver us, merciful Lord, from all evils, past and present and to come, and grant us peace in our day. Keep us free from sin and safe from all distress…’

Fergus knelt with his heavy, proud head raised up like the prow of a Viking longboat, his eyes closed. Where was he? Where were his thoughts taking him?

Merrily floundered, sought out Huw’s shadow, couldn’t see him anywhere, but she thought she heard his whisper: ‘Confession.’

Yes
, she thought,
of course
.

‘Almighty God, in penitence we confess that we have sinned against you, through our own fault, in thought, word and deed…’

No penitence, no regrets, course there wasn’t. He was what he was, no getting round that. He’d scratched it out on the wall of his cream-painted cell at Winson Green:
Freddy the mass murderer from Gloucester.

Gloucester, not Hereford, them days was long gone. He’d picked Gloucester; made his home there, made it hisself, filled it full of hisself and what he’d took – bringing bits of Gloucester home
.

Some nights he’d go back to Number 25 – not to the place it was now, look, emptied and gutted by the bloody coppers, but what it used to be, full of sweat and heat… vibrating with it
.

Him too. He was strong then, at his peak, ready for anything: work hard, play hard, that was him
.

Now he’d lost a lot of weight, didn’t feel too good no more. Not here in this shithole, no privacy, nothing to see, nothing to watch. Nothing to watch here but
him –
people looking at him all the bloody time, having a laugh, the laughs echoing across the exercise yard
– ‘Build us a patio, Fred? Ho ho!’

Days fading into more days, going nowhere, never going nowhere again. Never working for hisself again, no more building things with his hands. Nothing to do with his hands no more
.

No women, no more women ever. No wife. When they was in court, she wouldn’t look at him – after all he’d done for her, trying to keep her out of it, telling the coppers she didn’t know nothing. And she en’t talking to them neither. And him… he’s talked enough. All he’s got left now’s his secrets – the who and the when and the where. The how-many-times. They don’t know next to nothing, when you works it out, en’t got the half of it and that’s all right by him – Freddy the mystery man. Freddy the mass murderer from Gloucester
.

And Huw stood there in the gutted chapel, and he could hear the voice well enough, but he couldn’t feel anything. No energy. All he was getting was the husk in the prison cell on New Year’s Day, 1995. The day the prison officer couldn’t get the cell door open because of what was hanging behind it from a rope made out of – versions differed – a prison blanket, or prison shirts.

This was the very worst crime to be committed against the relatives of every missing girl in Britain: allowing him to do it – letting Fred escape, with all his secrets.

Why hadn’t they – the police, the prison authorities – put the psychology together, realized just how depressed he was likely to become without the anticipation of gross and grosser sexual excesses to heat his blood? Had nobody guessed he’d become empty, a husk, insubstantial enough to hang?

Maybe they had. Maybe they just bloody
had
. He’d heard of coppers who’d cheered when they’d heard about the death at Winson Green. A banner going up:
Nice one, Fred
– something as inane as that.

And now nobody would know the who, the where, the how- many. Lynsey had written her secrets down, in the
Magickal Diary
, but amiable, garrulous Fred had been barely literate, and Rose was saying nowt.

Freddy, the man of mystery, and those who followed him: Lynsey and the others, the unknown others who’d lived in Cromwell Street or had just dropped in for an hour or two, and would never be identified now. Out there, with the virus inside them.

Huw stared into the darkest corner of the chapel, listening for the remains of the laughter and the sniggers, the sound of a hammer, thrown from a ladder, clanging on the flags.

He heard nothing but the drone of Merrily’s
ad hoc
ritual, useless in itself.

It was all useless. There was nobody watching, nothing worthy of a fight.

Huw held the pastel drawing of Donna, by Julia, close to his aching heart, thinking of all the relatives and friends and lovers of long-missing girls and women who did something like this every night. And he broke down.

At some point, Fergus’s eyes opened, and Merrily came in at once with the ritualized question, ‘What do you want from God in his Holy Church?’

Fergus, unprepared, made no reply at first. While she waited, she could hear the wind outside, coming down off Howle Hill. Sam Hall’s line came into her head:
insidious wind
. Where was Sam? She couldn’t see him. Where was Lol? All she could see were Fergus’s eyes, looking into hers.

‘I want,’ Fergus said, ‘what I deserve.’ He smiled at her.

Merrily felt a hollowness in her stomach. She gripped the angel pendant and felt the weight of her pectoral cross.

‘Do you renounce the Devil and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?’

Fergus kept smiling. ‘Sure.’

‘Do you renounce all the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy what God has created?’

‘I… yes,’ Fergus said. ‘Of course.’

‘Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you away from the love of God?’

When he hesitated, Merrily saw that he was looking at her breasts. Then he looked up.

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

The heat from the pendant went right up her arm. She looked into his eyes, then, and knew.