The House of Susan Lulham (Kindle Single) (11 page)

‘I’m assuming,’ she said, ‘that everyone realises that the last time I was here it all ended in tears. I’m guessing the YouTtube clip’s been around.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ Anita said, ‘how combustible it was. Zoe was restricting what she told you. She was…’

‘Cleverer than we thought, yes.’

They were talking like Zoe was history.

‘When you get to my age,’ Mr Unsworth said, ‘there’s one every week.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘A funeral. But you’re right - get stuck in the traffic, you’ve missed it.’

‘If you want the metaphysics, with a modern, quickie funeral, it’s suggested the soul - or the spirit, whatever - may not… achieve separation. Might hang around, making a nuisance of itself, disturbing the living. It’s been shown - and I say this carefully - that a proper Requiem Eucharist, involving people who care, can… kick-start the next stage. But it’s not something you do lightly.’

She watched Mr Unsworth nodding slowly. Anita Wells pushed her coffee away.

‘This is Susan Lulham?’

‘She might not have started this, but it seems likely she’s become the focus. You look at the house, you see Susan Lulham. Or is that just me?’

‘And you would be attempting to… lay her to rest, as it were?’

‘It’s an option. I just wish I was more certain that she
was
disturbing the living. As distinct from being used
by
the living.’

Silence. She’d walked around the three short roads on the estate, which formed an island, like a clearing in thin woodland, getting a sense of how it was before Harry Clifton met Johnny Morgan. The cold air and the night had focused her.

‘Just saying life’s worsened here since Susan Lulham’s suicide, and now Jonno’s death… that’s primitive superstition - isn’t it? Do well-off, sophisticated, secular people
do
primitive superstition?’

Mr Unsworth’s eyebrows were lifting; she was hearing his voice from this afternoon.
Have to say you do come across them. Unhappy houses. Houses that seem to attract ill-fortune. Sickness, marital discord, violent death
…
But it
’
s all nonsense, isn
’
t it? We put things together in our minds and make all kinds of horrible patterns. But that
’
s all it is
…
it
’
s in our minds
.

Evidently wanting her to say otherwise.

Merrily met Anita’s strangely-panicked stare.

Anita Wells looked past Merrily, through the window.

‘Jonathan hated the house. He bought it almost out of spite, thinking the least it could do for him was break up his disastrous marriage. And he… he thought he could use it. Make it do things. He was a physicist, he knew how things worked and if he didn’t know, he said he could go onto the Net and make sense of screeds of impenetrable technical jargon. And make… make things happen.’

‘Like what?’

‘He was good with electrics. Rewired part of the house and the garage, not long after they moved in. And this is sounding insane already.’

‘It’s also sounding like something for the police rather than me, Anita. Or for Zoe’s lawyer. You said she was making that up, about the phenomena, but if Jonathan was helping things along, playing with her mind, then that gives the defence—’

‘All right, let me explain this. I go through periods of insomnia. Come down in the early hours, listen to the radio, do some ironing. Twice I saw lights coming on next door. When Jonathan was away.’

‘Zoe going to the bathroom?’

‘It also happened while they were away in Italy. And the lights weren’t… normal. It was a dull… As if there was only half power. A dull… fractured kind of light. It made me…’ Anita shuddered. ‘I didn’t like it.’

‘And you think something Jonathan did made that happen?’

‘That’s what I tried to tell myself at first, standing by the window with a glass of water in my hand. It was quite slow and bleary, one window to the next,
as if the light was… travelling… a travelling light exploring the house. I grabbed the mobile in case there was a burglar in there with a flashlight, though I didn’t really think… and then the glow was in several windows, quite intense for a very brief moment, like an X-ray. Light behind the bones of the house.’

An unwanted quiver in Merrily’s spine, between her shoulders. Zoe had talked about lights going on and off.

‘When they came back from Italy,’ Anita said, ‘I phoned Jonathan at work. He laughed. He said he hadn’t done anything to the electrics, it had just been a stupid idea.’

‘But you told him what you’d seen.’

‘He said I’d probably dreamt it.’

‘Did you ever consider he might have been lying to cover up having done something potentially dangerous?’

‘I don’t think so. The last thing he’d want to do would be to accidentally burn the place down and have to live in a caravan with his… beloved.’

‘Anybody else see any of these lights?’

Mr Unsworth coughed.

‘Twice. I think. After over half a century as an estate agent I’ve learned quite a lot about wiring, as you can imagine. I didn’t like it either. It was… anyway, I’m sure other people have seen things, too, which they won’t talk about.’

‘Might lose professional credibility.’

‘And reduce the value of their homes.’

Jesus wept
.

* * *

Seen some service, these cells and they looked like it. Gerry Rowbotham, desk veteran standing in as custody sergeant, stood with Bliss in the dull light outside Zoe’s dungeon, raising a calming hand.

‘
Francis
- no worries. We’ll treat her like—’

‘Listen, I’m not saying it’s likely. Nobody thinks that.’

‘I’ll have her watched like she’s my own daughter. Hard as that is for me to imagine.’

‘Yeah.’ Bliss nodding soberly. ‘She’s a bit weird, isn’t she?’

‘What are you doing here, Francis?’ Gerry’s head swiveling to face him. ‘It’s gone midnight. Saturday morning. Your day off, right?’

‘I’m a dedicated officer, Gerry. Been out for a meal and thought I’d just…’

‘Pizza Hut.’

‘Still a meal.’

‘On your own? No girlfriend yet?’

‘None of your business. She talking to you much? Zoe?’

‘Doesn’t talk at all. Doesn’t respond when you try to be friendly. It’s like you’re not of her social class. Which doesn’t really tally.’

‘It doesn’t.’ Bliss thought for a moment. ‘You ever meet Susan Lulham, the hairdresser? Suze?’

‘Not a lot she could’ve done for me, Francis, even then.’ Gerry patting his dome. ‘You’re thinking of Zoe’s signature on the custody record? What could we do? We’ve had crosses, swastikas, we’ve had Elvis Presley and we’ve had Fuck Off, Copper. She didn’t wanna explain, she didn’t wanna sign another… and it was witnessed.’

‘So now she’s Suze.’ Bliss paused on the steps. ‘You believe in ghosts, Gerry?’

Gerry shuffled up a smile.

‘Done my thirty next year. Most of them in Hereford. Nothing I don’t believe in.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Go home Francis.’

‘Might as well.’

* * *

Merrily went back to the car and called Sophie, asked her to talk to Susan Lulham’s mother. Explain some things. Ask her if she would be happy with this. If she wanted to attend.

A Requiem Eucharist. A Mass. Not a game, an attempted intercession at the highest level. Well-intentioned, but not about certainty. Never that. When had it ever been?

Faith? She hadn’t even found the faith to accept that Geoffrey Unsworth hadn’t made it all up about the feud between the farmer and the architect. She’d had to check. She felt ashamed, a sourness at what she was becoming. What she was afraid of becoming.

As she stood at the bottom of the New House steps, the walkway that veered off from the drive, a memory crashed into her like some mindless child on a bike. That first morning, with a sceptical Zoe looking on, she’d become shockingly aware of the possible craziness of her job. She’d stumbled and kicked the flask of holy water, grabbing it before it could topple from the step and smash, but even then she’d felt disconnected from the mains.

Blame the place.

It was nothing to do with the place.

We
’
re what we
’
ve always been
, Huw Owen said.
The last-chance saloon
.

She made one more call, not knowing if it was the right thing to do. She felt faintly sick.

The windows of all visible estate homes were either dark and vacant or backlit by television and computer-light, the screens to which people surrendered their senses when life wasn’t playing ball. Clouds had taken the moon, and it was like it had been absorbed into the New House.

A pulse happened somewhere around her solar plexus, expanded into her chest. She closed her eyes, drew a long, long breath.

Do the job.

However flakey it seemed, it wasn’t.

Climb back on the wild-eyed, apocalyptic deliverance horse and
do the job
.

19. Send the light in

She’d brought the airline bag in from the car, laid out the kit on the island, like for a picnic. Wine, small chalice, wafers, candles, Bible, Alternative Service book which she didn’t plan to consult during the Requiem.

She put on the pectoral cross.

‘This is really not what I expected,’ Anita Wells said. ‘It’s becoming like one of those claustrophobic dreams where you know you have to endure something before you’re allowed to wake up.’

‘You don’t have to. If it feels wrong, then that would be—’

‘I doesn’t. It feels somehow right. That’s the trouble.’

Mr Unsworth’s smile was hesitant.

‘When my wife died, Susan was one of the few neighbours who didn’t tried to avoid me. Came over one night with a bottle of whisky, most of which we drank, and I learned quite a lot about her. She was doing her items on daytime television at the time. Didn’t like the people in London at all. They seemed to think it was funny having a rather smart, inventive hair-stylist with a yokelish accent. She found that very annoying. I liked her. She was a little disturbing at first, but I grew to like her. Yes, I did.’

‘Good,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s really good, Mr Unsworth.’

The doorbell rang. Merrily glanced at Anita, who nodded. Merrily got up and went into the square, wall-lit hallway and opened the front door.

The woman on the step wore dark clothing: North Face jacket, black skirt and leggings, boots.

‘I’ve just thought,’ the woman said, like they were in the middle of a conversation. ‘Does this mean we have to go in there?’

She didn’t look at the New House.

‘You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to.’

Nattie sighed.

‘This is not about Zoe,’ Merrily said, ‘not directly. But having someone who’s known her for years, and… also Suze. You know?’

Nattie was thirtyish and conspicuously nervous. She nodded.

‘You want to come in,’ Merrily said, ‘then you can make your mind up?’

‘Um…’ Nattie looked awkward. ‘Thing is, I’m not alone. Someone turned up, not long after you rang.’ Nattie’s voice came down to an urgent murmur as high-heel footsteps sounded behind her. ‘I’m sorry, nothing I could do…’

The woman who walked into the light, stepping up beside Nattie, might have been her mother. Short, puffy jacket and maroon hair, sharp face with deep-set eyes.

‘This is Louise Dixon,’ Nattie said. ‘Lou.’

* * *

Pocketing Anita’s key, she groped around for switches, putting on all the lights in the hallway to penetrate the living room when she opened the door. Send the light in first.

She stood in the hall, at the foot of the stairs, and uttered the very obvious opening for an exorcism of place.

‘Peace be to this house.’

Bit bloody late now, lass
.

Huw’s voice, like a hand on the shoulder reaching all the way from the Beacons. She smiled, pressed down on the handle of the living room door, let it swing open. Then lurched back.

The detergent they’d used was industrial-strength. The stench was an assault, more abrasive and more metallic than blood. Her first instinct was to rush in and throw open the windows.

But that was the very last thing you did in this situation. So she just stood in the doorway and looked inside.

It already felt abandoned, derelict. Someone had shrouded the leather sofa, chairs and the huge TV, in dust sheets. The half-light showed up dried sponge-swipes on those once-pristine walls.

And there was no sound at all, a double-glazed vacuum, and yet the killing cacophony was only a membrane away: the gasp and gurgle of the dying Jonathan Mahonie, the peaking squeals of Susan Lulham dying of rage, and, in the background, the echo of a blast:
Four walls but no roof when he took his shotgun in there
.

Grenville Morgan. How it began. Or was there even more, going back?

But, for tonight, this was the house of Susan Lulham.

Was she here or in a police cell with Zoe, who’d signed her name
Suze
, and written on Facebook:
it was like she was trying to pull me in with her. Into the coffin
.

But the room was thrusting Merrily away, blowing its stink in her face and, in a way, that made her feel better about all this.

Twenty minutes. She’d asked for twenty minutes before the others came in. She’d either go back for them or call on her mobile when everything was ready, when they’d had time to get acquainted, meet Lou. Who thought exorcism was something you paid for in your council tax. Whose ex-partner, Lloyd, had fancied the vicar at a funeral.

Facebook
’
s for old people now
. Jane said that. Lou had mastered Net-speak and text-speak, all the jargon, all the acronyms. Shedding decades online, gulping down the electronic elixir of virtual youth.

Her voice tonight had been a rasp.

Me and Zoe was best mates…

The air was so harsh now, like blades in the throat, that Merrily backed up against the open door, eyes watering, skin stinging. Had Zoe
wanted
to be haunted… to become possessed by the spirit of Susan Lulham, a much more powerful, aggressively sexual woman? Had she coveted Suze’s unflinching strength, Suze’s drive, the way Lou craved irresponsible youth?