December (45 page)

      
'The Infirmary tell me you discharged yourself entirely
against medical advice. And appearing to be still in shock. I cannot but
agree.' Malcolm buzzed his secretary. 'A black coffee for Moira, please, Fiona.'

      
'What d'you have that thing for anyway? The kid works the
whole time with an ear to the wall. Two sugars, Fiona, please! Jesus, would you
mind if I stood up? I'm finding it a wee bit hard getting myself comfortable.'

      
'Moira ...' In some anguish, Malcolm ran both hands through
his light tan hair. 'Not only are you probably clinically insane, I don't think
you're even my client any more.'

      
'Client?' She went and stood over by the filing cabinet. She
was wearing this outsize, pastel blue fluffy sweater - mainstay of the
normal woman's wardrobe
- pulled down to
near knee-level to hide the terrible mess she and the ambulance team had made of
her jeans, getting them off. It was true that she was getting past the age when
she could look like this and it would be rather fetching.

      
'Malcolm,' she said, in a small voice but precise. 'If it'd
make you feel better, I'd gladly surrender ten per cent of the first-degree
burns, but it would be quite nice if for just a few minutes you could see your
way to assuming the role of mere friend.

      
'I'm sorry,' Malcolm Kaufmann closed his desk diary, took the phone
off the hook. 'Sit down. Or rather, do go on standing up, if that helps.' He
pushed his chair back, smoothed his hair.
      
'Tell me exactly what happened.'

      
Where to begin? A wee lecture on metaphysics?
      
'Exactly,' she told him tiredly,
'is what I haven't precisely figured out. In plain, physical terms, a hotel kettle
malfunctioned. I had hold of the flex at the time. I pulled the kettle on top of
me. The lid came off About a pint and a half of boiling water gushed over my
milky-white thighs.'
      
Malcolm recoiled.

      
'Actually, I was wearing these jeans at the time. That probably
made it worse. Whatever ...' She wrinkled her nose. Blistering, and stuff. I
won't give you details. Suffice to

say …'

      
She tried for a grin; it didn't happen.

      
'... No intimate relations for wee Moira for
quite
some time.'
      
'You appear to have a charmed
life,' Malcolm said soberly, in reverse. What did you do?'

      
'This is the Clydeview Private Hotel. What
could
I do? I ran into the
en suite,
which was about half a mile
down the fucking corridor, gave myself a cold shower and screamed the place down.'

      
Malcolm was quiet for a surprising while.
      
'The Clydeview Private Hotel,' he
said at last. 'We both know you could be earning enough to
buy
the Clydeview Private Hotel. What offends me the most is the
thought that one day, perhaps not so far into the future, you will be generally
regarded as a Tragic Case.'

      
Moira scowled, said she was awful sorry if anyone had seen her
coming into his establishment in this condition, but when you discharged yourself
in a hurry you were obliged to leave in the clothes they cut off you in the
ambulance.

      
'Give Fiona your size,' Malcolm said at once. 'And I'll send her
to Marks and Spencer's. You can't go home like that.'
      
'I can't go home at all,' Moira
said dismally. 'This is the real tragedy.'

Eddie Edwards had to sit
down afterwards. He was feeling almost faint.

      
This was altogether beyond comprehension.

      
Ivor Speed had said to him that if they didn't put this piece
of candle very rapidly into the hands of the police, both he and the University
of Wales could be in very serious trouble.

      
Ivor Speed was not being humorous.
      
Eddie had asked him, his voice
failing, 'Can you be sure this?'

      
'Well, no, it's too early to say that. We may
never
be able to confirm it. But it's a strong
and plausible possibility. Most candles today are made of this petroleum-based
stuff or beeswax if you can afford it. Old-fashioned tallow, now, that was
bovine or sheep fat. Which we thought it was at first. Goes brown with age and
oxidization, which partly explains the colour and consistency. Although there
were also traces of powdered charcoal here. And, er, possibly blood. We can't
say for
sure
that it's human fat, but
it's certainly consistent with the properties thereof. Where the hell did you
find the dreadful thing?'

      
'Well, I... I'm not sure I should say,' Eddie stammered. 'I would
need to talk to someone about it.'

      
'You need to talk to the police, boy, and fast.'
      
'Well, look ... suppose it's
hundreds of years old. That's not going to start a manhunt, is it?'

      
'Unlikely. It might look old, but it isn't. Probably. My chap reckons
it's no more than a year or two or three since that stuff was wobbling about on
somebody's midriff.'
      
'Oh, good God.'
      
'Get it to the police, Eddie. Look,
I'll tell you what I'll do. There's a senior policeman I know in Gwent who
isn't going to overreact and haul you into the station. Not in the short term.
Not if I tell him about you. I'll ring him, OK?'

      
And the police would say: What made you think to send candle
for analysis?

      
Because it seemed so strange and old, so redolent of dark
mystery, that's the only reason. Because, in forty years of being unable to
pass a sign that says Museum, I have never seen its like before.

      
And because of the way the vicar reacted.

      
Was he going to tell the police that? No, he was not. He would
not drop the vicar in it. But, by Christ, he was going to use this to get some
answers out of that chap before the law was upon them.

      
Human fat? And recent? It was the 'recent' element which made
the mind reel. The implications were clear. Much of Eddie Edwards's work as an
adviser to schools had been angled on social history, especially for primary
establishments and the less academically able streams at secondary level. Talk
to youngsters about witchcraft and the like and you had their full attention,
so yes, Eddie Edwards knew full well the significance of candles made with
human grease.

      
But who? Who would burn a human body until the fatty tissue
melted and collect it and mould it into a tube with a wick down the middle? And
where would they acquire such a thing as a body without committing ...
      
murder?

      
And how had the candles
been installed unnoticed?
The church was right in the centre of a very small,
fairly remote community. Strangers going in and out were observed. Cars
arriving late at night were noted. There were some very, very nosy people in
this village, speaking as one of them and not ashamed to confess it.
      
So how did whoever it was bring the
candles into the church, unless it was someone with a right to be there?

      
And why? Why the little parish church of St Mary at Ystrad Ddu
when, if they wanted to carry out some nauseous, heathen ceremony, there were
so many comparatively isolated churches in this area ... old, ruined churches,
even.
      
Why not the Abbey?

      
He saw Marina watching him from the kitchen door, the question
And What Have You Been Getting Into Now? written across her placid features.
      
'No problems, my love,' he said.
'Just a little something to sort out with the vicar.'

      
He couldn't but look embarrassed. Normally,
the thought that he was with the vicar should be a comfort. In this case, perhaps
quite the opposite.

'Listen to me,"
Malcolm Kaufmann said. 'Don't talk. Don't throw anything at me. Just drink your
coffee and listen.'

      
And Malcolm went on for a good while about her career as a
singer and a songwriter; how it wasn't too late, how - with her distinctive
presence ... yes,
presence
- she
might even wish to consider a little acting. The bottom line being that in
whichever direction she wished to turn there were many and varied possibilities.
      
For a while.

      
'Until whichever goes first,' Moira said, 'my looks or my
mind, right? Listen, do you know why I had to get out of the Infirmary? Because
I was causing distress to the other sick folk on the casualty ward.'

      
Nurses waking her none too gently in the middle of the night,
an old lady near-hysterical.
Make her
stop. Tell her we don't want to hear about it. This is a hospital ward, tell
her we don't want to hear about death!

      
'Bad dreams,' Moira said. 'Another night like that and I
wouldn't have extricated myself so easily. Be getting a discreet transfer to
the divisional psychiatric unit.'

      
'Have you money?'

      
'A few grand in the Bank of Scotland, and a croft house I'm
scared to go back to. See, I thought it was the island protecting me, Malcolm.
I was wrong. It was the Duchess. I've been wrong about a lot.'

      
'Protecting you from what?' Malcolm was just this side of
beating his head in exasperation. He was a showbiz agent, for God's sake. 'Is
it this Dave Reilly?'

      
'Och, no.' This was getting neither of them anywhere. She was
just grateful for the coffee and someone's filing cabinet to lean on. 'Let's
just call it the Curse of the Witchy Woman.'

      
'I'm simply not buying it this time,' Malcolm said. 'Is this anything
to do with the TMM letter? Is that what's brought all this back?'

      
'Maybe. Partly. Maybe that's another symptom."
      
'OK.' Malcolm picked up his phone,
pressed the button to reclaim the line. 'Why don't you ring them now? Find out
what they want?'

      
He held the phone out to her. She shrank away from it, shaking
her head.

      
Malcolm didn't say anything; just sat there holding out the
phone like some aborigine witch-doctor pointing the bone.
      
'I can't.'

      
'I would normally never think of applying a tin opener to
someone else's can of worms,' Malcolm said. 'But if you don't phone them, I
shall.'

The vicar of Ystrad Ddu
choked back the sob which had become like an habitual cough. Pulled on his
boots and his waterproof jacket.

      
Then, angrily, he flung the jacket off. He wanted to be cold.
He wanted to be wet. He wanted to walk out there and die of exposure.

      
He strode out of the vicarage, leaving the front door
unlocked, crossed the road to the church and followed, under a dishwater sky,
the path curving around the churchyard to the great cleft rock.

      
Truth was, he'd wanted to sleep, but had been afraid to. Even
in daylight. That was the truth.

      
Afraid of waking up again, sticky in the waxy darkness, throat
full of grease and self-hatred, and the Bible on the floor. He could go to bed
clutching the Bible and all it symbolised to his chest, and something inside
him - so deep inside that it was now beyond his grasp - would oh-so-casually rip
the good book physically and symbolically into the waiting darkness.

      
And release his devil.

      
Had he, therefore, answered the question which had brought him
here, made him apply for a post he didn't want in a place he'd never wanted to
see again?

      
Is it in this place? Or
is it inside me?

      
Swathes of rain swept up the valley as Simon veered from the winding
path. He stood on a narrow ledge at the bottom of the cloven rock, the
tree-strewn hill behind him sloping steeply to the churchyard.

      
He hesitated. A test beckoned. His breath quickened in
anticipation and the promise of fear. Then he put his hands on the stone,
started pulling himself up the side of the rock towards the cleft.

      
Simon was mindlessly angry. He hated his body, distrusted his
soul.

      
He had no head for heights.

      
The rock was wet, slimed with moss and lichen.