The Lamp of the Wicked (67 page)

Sam Hall was at the foot of the coffin, and their gazes met:
what now?
She didn’t know. If Roddy was going to the crematorium, there didn’t even need to be a funeral.

From over by the door, Frannie Bliss called, ‘Do we want to take this further? I don’t think I’m in any position to demand that everybody stays, but if I phone my boss – which is what I ought to do – I can guarantee a long night for some of us.’

Piers Connor-Crewe’s big, pale body twitched. ‘Are you going to tell us exactly what you’ve found?’

‘
Found
, Mr Crewe?’

Sam Hall said, ‘Merrily, you just raised the possibility that Lynsey Davies had someone else kill Melanie. You want to explain that?’

‘Well…’ She moved away from the coffin. ‘I think if we look at what we know about Lynsey…’

‘I know a bit more now, in fact,’ Bliss said. ‘Andy Mumford finally called. It’s not much, but it might make you think.’ He moved away from the door, resting a foot on a pew seat, hands on his knee. ‘Some of it we knew, but there’s no harm in going over it again. Lynsey – like Roddy, actually – grew up in a Nonconformist household on the edge of the forest – Drybrook or Lydbrook, one of those places. Her old feller was a coalman – one of the blokes who carted the sacks about, rather than ran the yard – and he was also the caretaker at his chapel. There were four kids, and Lynsey was the eldest. And the old man used to make them go twice on a Sunday to chapel. Strict. Very strict.’

‘He still alive?’ Sam asked.

‘No, neither parent, but Mumford talked to a sister, who hadn’t seen Lynsey in years but did remember things like how she was once suspended from school for bullying. And how much she hated the chapel.’

‘Figures,’ Sam said.

‘Actually, it wasn’t that simple,’ Bliss said. ‘Funny, these are things you’d never bother going into when somebody’s just “the victim”. Even less important when you’re just
a
victim – one of several. When we say she “hated the chapel”, we mean the organization, the religion. The actual building – this stark old place with the Dr Phibes harmonium – she bloody loved that. Used to pinch her old man’s keys and go in with her mates at night, playing.’

Merrily said, ‘Presumably, you don’t mean the harmonium.’ Bliss did his acid smile. ‘I think the games got more adventurous the older she became. And then one day – the sister’s not sure what happened, it being a serious scandal at the time and a great embarrassment for the family – one day traces of these activities were found by the cleaner. As a result of which, Mr Davies lost his position as part-time caretaker. And he was not a happy man. And he held Lynsey responsible.’

Mumford wasn’t sure what Mr Davies did to Lynsey, but there was certainly a long period of fear and loathing in that household, Bliss said. The sister had told Mumford they didn’t see much of Lynsey once she got into her middle teens. But there was a teacher who thought she was an intelligent girl with prospects and suggested she’d be better away from home, persuading the parents to let her go to this commercial college in Gloucester – possibly even arranging a grant.

Either way, Mr Davies was probably glad to see her go,’ Bliss said. ‘And I think some of us know the rest. So there you have it: an intelligent girl raised in a strict household starts to rebel against it from quite a tender age. Though tender’s not the word for Lynsey, is it? The suspension for bullying, the hints of early sexual adventures… all hinting at the bad things to come.’

‘And the use of religious premises in a sexual context?’ Merrily said.

‘Dead right. And we’re all looking at you, Mr Crewe. ’Cause of all the people here, we’re thinking, nobody knew Lynsey as well as Mr Crewe.’

Connor-Crewe didn’t look back at him. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

‘You said you didn’t know about Lynsey being at Cromwell Street. I wonder if that’s true.’

‘If you want to accuse me of anything—’

Huw Owen said, ‘
As
Francis has raised the issue of Cromwell Street, I think we can all agree that his original theory of Lodge as a West obsessive has been turned on its head. It was Lynsey who was obsessed.’

Bliss shrugged.

‘Thank you, lad.’ Huw went to stand at the lectern. ‘Nobody likes to think of anybody, especially a woman, becoming so corrupted inside as to find inspiration and energy in a situation as foul as that. But we have to face it. Just as we had to face the fact that the number of lives
destroyed
by twenty years of carnage in Cromwell Street far exceeded the number of lives
lost
. Which itself may be a lot bigger than the list read out at the trial of Rosemary West.’

‘I’m sorry…’ Fergus Young looked like a man who’d been containing himself for as long as he reasonably could. ‘I don’t see the relevance of this. It’s frankly obscene. There’s no proven link between Underhowle and anything connected with West, and I really don’t think we should manufacture one. Lodge and Davies are both dead… gone…
finished
.’

‘No, lad. Nowt’s finished. If you don’t see the living darkness at the heart of this—’

‘
Living darkness!
’ Fergus stood up, his hair springing. ‘That is
such
nonsense! That’s
defamatory
nonsense.’

Huw held tight to the wings of the brass eagle. ‘See, I don’t usually talk like this to lay folk. It doesn’t help. But I’m looking at a woman who was drawing energy from a black hole, a place from which all kindness, tenderness, pity and moral awareness had been sucked out. Drawing
energy
from that. Can you understand?’

Merrily said softly, ‘I think we should look at what she was creating. With Melanie out of the way, she’d begun to reorganize Roddy’s life. Perhaps starting with something fairly innocent like setting up his sitting room as Roddy’s Bar – like the one at Cromwell Street. And then redecorating his bedroom.’

Cherry Lodge whispered, ‘
Yes
.’

‘There were two bedrooms in that bungalow – the one Roddy set up for himself, which was a bit old-fashioned. And the one I think Lynsey created for him, with black sheets and eroticized pictures of beautiful women who also happened to be dead. Reflecting the connection he was perhaps already making between sex and death, but… brutalizing it, I suppose. Like she was trying to turn him into… somebody else.’

Fergus said, ‘Somebody
else
?’

‘Work it out, lad,’ Huw Owen told him.

‘It’s preposterous!’

‘She also revamped his social calendar,’ Merrily said. ‘Poor Jerome Banks thinks he was the one who encouraged Roddy to go out and find some real girls. In fact, Lynsey was building up his confidence… and also turning him into a predator. Like people train hawks.’

She looked up at the sound of Piers Connor-Crewe edging out of his pew, making for the door. ‘I’ve heard enough.’

Bliss stood in his path. ‘I don’t think so, Piers.’

‘Are you actually attempting to
detain
me?’

I have some questions.’

‘Up your arse with them, inspector. I’ve had quite enough of you for one day.’

‘It’s just that I’ve been wondering: if Lynsey – or somebody else, other than Lodge – killed Melanie Pullman, who buried her? I’ve just recalled you saying this morning that Roddy lent you his digger, to put in some trenches near the chapel. Only, I was watching my good friend Mr Parry today. You could take a digger – as I presume Roddy often did – from his garage to this churchyard, along the path through the fields, in… what? Ten minutes? Bit longer at night?’

‘You’re insane.’

‘It’s just a thought, Piers. Neither you nor Lynsey would want Melanie buried near the Baptist chapel, if there was ever any chance of a real archaeological dig. Nowhere safer for a body than a graveyard. And who’d be next in there – Tony Lodge? Well, not in the near future, we all trust and hope. And anyway, as soon as they saw bone down there, it’d be, whoops… that’s another one slid down the hill, better move on a couple of yards.’

‘Unless they found this.’ Merrily held up the angel. ‘Bit of a give away. Was to us, anyway.’

The angel shone with a coppery light, brighter somehow than the lighting globes.

‘Yeh, that’s odd,’ Bliss said. ‘I can’t explain why they didn’t take that off her, dispose of it.’

A discreet cough from Gomer. ‘Likely di’n’t see him, ennit? If her weared him under her clothes, next to the skin, like, mabbe he wouldn’t be visible. At night, if they was in a hurry. But then the clothes starts to rot… up he comes.’

Thank you, Gomer
.

He knew as well as she did that it couldn’t have happened like that, because the fabric of the clothes had not rotted. The angel shone from Merrily’s hand and burned with a soft heat. A witness. Perhaps it had found its own way to the surface.

‘What do you think, Piers?’ Bliss asked.

‘What
should
I think? I have no proof you’ve found anything at all.’

Bliss said steadily, ‘You planted her, pal. Let’s start with that, see where it gets us.’

‘You
dare
to accuse me of that – in front of all these witnesses?’

‘I’m feeling lucky.’ Bliss opened the door into the porch. ‘Go on, if you want. You go home and have a couple of glasses of your favourite fifteen-year-old malt and a good night’s sleep. Or maybe you’d prefer to lie awake all night and think about it, work out your story.’

Bliss was winging it, Merrily thought. He wouldn’t even have seen what was in the grave.

‘Or perhaps, if you want to be less public about it, you could drop in at police Headquarters tomorrow.’ Bliss held open the door and froze. He took a cautious step back, then relaxed, smiling thinly. ‘Ah, Mr Laurence Robinson, as I live and breathe.’

Merrily almost ran down the aisle. Lol stood in the doorway, smiled bashfully at her, the way he always did when she was in uniform. But the slanting alien eyes were watching sardonically from the region of his chest. Merrily stopped.

‘If you’ve come to collect the little woman, she may be a while yet.’ Bliss let Lol in and closed the door.

‘Who the hell’s this?’ Connor-Crewe was looking limp with unease now.

Lol said nothing. He went to stand with Gomer in a shadowed spot under a stone plaque commemorating
Ald. Joseph Albert Persham: 1894–1966
.

‘If you drop in at Headquarters,’ Bliss said to Connor-Crewe, ‘we can fingerprint you, take a little DNA swab… and that should put you in the clear.’

‘You don’t frighten me in the least,’ Connor-Crewe said. ‘You’re an ambitious little bastard, but of limited intelligence.’

‘He don’t
need
intelligence.’ Chris Cody was leaning wearily against a pew-end, rubbing his face and then looking over his fingers at Connor-Crewe. ‘And for what it’s worth, he frightens
me
. You got no idea, have you, Piers? You don’t know what these animals are like, mate.’

Merrily’s hand closed around the angel. She was staring, like everyone else, at this slightly built man in an oversized overcoat, who could buy and sell all of them and the church around them. Cody shook his head like he was sick of the whole thing.

‘It’s a murder inquiry now. They lose all sense of proportion on a murder, ’specially if it’s a woman or a kid. They’ll lie, they’ll plant evidence, they’ll have you on a fucking sandwich, mate. You’re this upper-class bastard who’s been to fucking Oxford. They love nailing a nob.’

‘Chris, what on earth are you…?’ Connor-Crewe was sweating.

‘You go out there,’ Cody said, ‘you’ll find another twenty coppers lined up like bleeding dominoes. I’m telling you, soon as I knew they had the body, I’m like, you know, this is it, we been set up. We walked into it.’

Merrily exchanged glances with Frannie Bliss. The tip of an angel wing was piercing her palm and she felt almost faint. But Bliss was deadpan, entirely relaxed, as if he’d been expecting this and wondered why it had taken them so long. But he hadn’t; inside, he’d be as shaken as she was. She looked around for Huw and found him sitting on the chancel step, leaning forward with his hands in prayer position between his knees, not looking at anyone, listening.

Bliss said, ‘Who killed Melanie, Mr Cody?’

Cody looked at Piers Connor-Crewe and shrugged.

‘Lynsey, of course,’ he said. ‘Oh yeah – and Fred West.’

Moira Cairns drove quite slowly out of Hereford, her face lightly tanned by the dashlight. Hands low down on the wheel, relaxed. Like they had been all night. Like she was totally unaware of the tension in Jane.

‘He was awfully good.’

‘Yes.’

‘Like, I was scared out ma mind when he first went out there but, Jesus, once he was into it, it was like this was the second week of his long-awaited world tour. And I guess the reason for that was he had something bigger on his mind.’

‘Mmm.’

A long pause as Cairns let this huge lorry come growling past. For Christ’s
sake
.

‘And you’re thinking Lol and I are making out, yeah?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, I’m sorry, too, if that’s way off,’ Cairns said, ‘but I couldnae think of a better reason for you behaving the whole time like a wee pain in the arse, you know?’

‘It’s the way I am,’ Jane said. ‘I
am
a pain in the arse.’ And then, as Cairns slowed right down for the Whitecross roundabout, she said, ‘
Are
you?’

‘Er… no. We’re not.’

‘Oh.’

‘Where’s Eirion, Jane?’

‘Dumped me.’

‘For being a pain in the arse?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Uh huh.’ Moira Cairns drove in silence for maybe half a mile. The road was quiet, too. Then she said, ‘But when life’s such a bitch, and the world’s this big kidney stone floating in a universe of liquid manure, where’s the point in
not
being a pain in the arse?’

Jane turned her head and looked directly at Cairns. Neither of them was smiling.

Jane moistened her lips. ‘Have you been speaking to Eirion?’

‘Not since the night the both of you were there, at Prof’s. And Eirion was doing most of the talking then. Why?’

‘Just… wondered.’

They hit the countryside, and she turned away to look out at the empty fields opening up on the left, all the way to the Black Mountains.