The Smile of a Ghost (28 page)

‘Decorators,’ George said. ‘The son, Callum, he went to finish off a wall for her at The Weir House. Had some very peculiar requests made of him. His father’s on the town council, and he had a word with me. They’re newcomers, but they’re a decent family. Thought I should know.’

‘What were the requests?’ Merrily asked. But George shook his head in a shuddery kind of way.

‘And there’s the parties. The young people. The singing.’

‘What kind of singing?’

‘I only use that word out of politeness,’ George said. ‘Sounds like a tribe of tom-cats.’

‘You’ve heard it?’

‘Just the once. I was advised to walk down The Linney and have a listen. There was something resembling a song, but I couldn’t distinguish the words. I think it was her and some other people.’

‘Possibly the ones who gathered under the Hanging Tower after the girl’s death?’

‘Aye. The neighbours… they look the other way. Some of the local boys are less tolerant, ’specially when they come out the pubs.’

‘Was it… one of these local boys who was stabbed that time?’ Merrily asked.

George took a long breath, said nothing.

‘But nobody was charged, right? Perhaps somebody was persuaded not to make a complaint?’

‘Probably wasn’t serious,’ George said quietly.

‘As a leading member of the Police Authority,’ Merrily said, ‘I suppose it’s a bit difficult for you.’

The Mayor’s eyes flared with anger, like coals far back in an old kitchen range. Merrily came back quickly, before he could clam up again.

‘Did you know that Mrs Pepper had been seen with Robbie Walsh not long before he died?’

‘Well, of course I knew. She was seen all over the town with him – in the church, the path by the yews as leads down to the back entrance of the Bull, the old alleyways…’

‘Do you know what brought them together?’

‘No. But then, I’ve not had what you’d call lengthy conversations with her. Wisest not to.’

‘Do you have any idea at all why she does… the things she does?’

George didn’t reply. He began scratching at the back of his hand as if he’d been stung.

‘You’ve evidently been covering up for her, George,’ Bernie said. ‘For quite some time, it sounds like. For, ah, Susannah’s sake. And Stephen’s, naturally.’

The Mayor went to the French windows and pulled a cord to draw the velvet curtains. Stood with his back to the dusty pink folds, as if he was keeping something out.

‘And the good of the town, of course,’ Bernie said slyly.

‘She’s a sick woman, she’s…’ George Lackland reached up and pulled the curtains together at the top, where one had slipped off its glider, and Merrily thought she heard him say ‘evil’ but couldn’t be sure. He turned around. ‘Pressure of wondering what she’s gonner do next is getting to me a bit, have to say that. Top and bottom of it is, I wish she’d never come, and I wish she was gone.’

‘I might be slightly off course here,’ the Bishop said, ‘but it seems to me that all your problems might conceivably be part of the same one. Do you think?’

George Lackland didn’t reply.

‘And you can’t involve the council, George, and you can’t involve the police. Therefore, I suppose that’s why we’re here.’

‘Maybe I just wanted to talk to somebody who knew the town and could see the picture,’ the Mayor said. ‘Even if they thought there wasn’t anything they could do. At least they’d understand a few things.’

‘Some things are not easily understood.’

‘Likely I used the wrong word. I’m not an educated man, as you know. But there’s areas of… areas of experience where education don’t help that much.’

The curtains were swaying a little in a draught from somewhere. George Lackland watched them with a faint smile.

‘I remember a young chap thought he was up for a bit of easy money – just spend a couple of hours on his own in the Hanging Tower.’

‘Oh now, George, that was a long, long time—’

‘Never seen a man more scared, from that day to this. Comes running across the old inner bailey, stumbling and tripping – didn’t think his pals could see him, and they didn’t like to rub it in at the time.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t want you trying to escape, Bernard, so we took a few bottles of pale ale into the old Magdalene Chapel and kept very quiet. Sobering, though, in the end. We all thought you were faking it, at first.’

Merrily smiled. The Bishop saw her and scowled.

‘Bastards.’ He finished his brandy. ‘All right, George, suppose someone was to look into it. All of it. Discreetly. Someone sympathetic but, ah… knowledgeable in all the necessary areas. And, of course… utterly reliable.’

‘Then I would be most grateful to that person,’ George Lackland said, ‘and provide what assistance I could.’

Down by the fake logs, Merrily froze.

23

T
HE ROAD TO
Hereford was due south, more than twenty moon-washed miles. For the first three or four, neither of them said a word. Merrily’s black eye was pulsing. Her new sunglasses lay on the dash. Somewhere behind its facia, the old Volvo was ticking like a time bomb.

Eventually, the Bishop coughed.

‘Mother-in-law from hell, eh? Well… stepmother-in-law.’

Merrily glanced to her left: moonlight bathing the Bishop’s brow. At the Little Chef at Wooferton, the lights had gone out.

‘What have you done, Bernie?’

‘I think the word “evil” passed old George’s lips at one point, but I’m afraid he had his back to me at the time.’

‘And that justifies it, does it?’

‘We have nothing to justify, Merrily.’

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s all quite legitimate.’

‘So you’ll send an official memo to the Deliverance Panel first thing in the morning, saying you’re personally authorizing me to investigate a cluster of deaths and their possible connection with a woman who’s causing considerable embarrassment to the Mayor of Ludlow.’

‘We can deal with that,’ the Bishop said. ‘And surely… you want to, don’t you?’

‘I think I’d want to know why I’m doing whatever I’m supposed to be doing. I mean, let’s establish, first of all, what your long-time friend the Mayor is after. For instance, when he was close to advocating exorcism, which woman do you think he was talking about, the dead one or…?’

That duality again. It had been there from the start:
Why did God let her take him? Why did God let that woman take our boy?

‘Look, I had no idea,’ the Bishop said. ‘I didn’t know there was any connection between George and this woman. Until that chap who makes calendars brought her up, I’d never even heard of her.’

‘Because bloody George is using his position to hush it all up! He’s already had Andy Mumford warned off. Plus, a guy who was stabbed in the street has probably been given a bung to keep quiet about it.’

‘You don’t know that—’

‘Ha! I mean, sure, I can see the Mayor’s problem – she’s landed like an alien being from a world he can’t even comprehend – but there’s no way I want to appear to be working on behalf of someone who works the system like good old George.’

‘Merrily, he hadn’t even mentioned Mrs Pepper. It was you who introduced the subject.’

‘You think? You know what, Bernie? I think he was talking about her all along. From the beginning. I think she’s what’s causing unrest among the older God-fearing folk of Ludlow, far more than the possible influence of a silly little girl who got taken for a ride in the twelfth century. On which basis, by the way, I’m buggered if I’m going to even consider exorcizing the Hanging—’

‘Merrily!’

‘Sorry. Didn’t get much sleep last night. Got elbowed in the eye by a psychotic teenager.’

‘How come you know so much about this Mrs Pepper?’

‘Lol. And Jane on the Internet. It doesn’t take very long to find out about anything any more. Also, I saw her, when I was on the river bank with Mumford and you were in the pub with his dad. I recognized her… realized this was who Osman meant.’

‘Well, I don’t know anything about her, as I said, but I do know that George Lackland, while he may work the system, is a decent man who thinks his beloved town is being contaminated, if only by having its moral tone lowered. Is he exaggerating this? I don’t know.’

‘Personally, I just can’t see a wealthy middle-aged woman going in for wholesale alfresco sex in a town she regards as heaven. And I don’t want to get involved—’

She braked, catching a movement on the grass verge: badger about to scuttle across the road.

‘—get involved with a witch-hunt.’

‘Witch-hunt.’ The Bishop leaned his head back over the passenger seat, from which the headrest was long gone. ‘How simple things were in those days. The mob would have dragged her in front of some judge who thought he was God, and then taken her out and hanged her at Gallows Bank.’ He turned his head towards Merrily. ‘Still there, you know. Still this patch of open space, in the midst of modern housing. You can see where the actual gibbet stood, so that executions would be visible all over town. Ludlow, you see, looks after its past.’

‘Unlike Hereford?’

‘We try. Unfortunately, I think our old execution site is underneath Plascarreg.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t you dare make anything of that.’

Merrily smiled.

‘And try not to hang George. He’s an old-fashioned civic leader. Middle Ages, he’d have been the sheriff. When they eventually come to lay him out, they’ll find the imprints of chain links on his chest.’

Of course, he’d know exactly how George felt because it was how
he
felt. If Ludlow was tainted, George was tainted, and if Bernie let George down he would probably feel he’d forfeited his right to come back and live out his sunset years in the benign shadow of the Buttercross.

‘Of course, the woman’s obviously mad,’ he said. ‘Too many chemicals in years gone by, one assumes.’

‘You think we should inform the Diocesan Director of Psychiatry?’

She felt him staring at her, working this out. He shifted, something clicking ominously under his seat.

‘Saltash.’

‘You read the
Mail
, then.’

He grunted. ‘It was in
The Times
, too, actually. Yes, that man did rather exaggerate his role, didn’t he?’

‘Glad you think so.’

‘Heavens, Merrily, last thing we want is worried people avoiding Deliverance for fear of being considered eligible for assessment under the Mental Health Act.’

‘But under our new, agreed working practices, I’m supposed to report – for instance – what we’ve just been told, for consideration by the panel before any action is taken. Like I said earlier, I shouldn’t even have come tonight without clearing it with them.’

‘It’s preposterous, Merrily.’

‘It’s what we agreed.’

‘What
they
agreed, you mean.’

In theory he could, as Bishop, overrule any of it. In practice, it would be impossible without dispensing with the panel and making lifetime enemies of Siân and Saltash, and the Dean who had brokered the deal. She left all this unsaid, but it was drifting between them as Leominster appeared over to the right, an island of lights.

The Bishop sighed.

‘Merrily, let’s not fool ourselves. Look at me: overweight, over sixty and not up to much in the pulpit. I’ve never been under any illusions. I’m a caretaker here and I suspect my time’s already running out.’

‘Come on, Bernie, people like you.’

‘Like? What’s that got to do with it? There are those who could have me quietly retired in no time at all, if they chose to whisper in the right ears. And I rather suspect Ms Callaghan-Clarke’s one of the potential whisperers.’

‘You think Siân wants you out?’

‘I don’t know what I think. Hereford’s not the most exalted of dioceses, and nicely out on a limb. Good place for a woman to have a chance at the helm, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Siân Callaghan-Clarke?’ Was that the wheel shaking, or her hands? ‘Bishop of Hereford?’

‘I’m simply saying it’s a possibility that’s occurred to me, that’s all. May be years off, yet. Then again…’

‘Christ,’ Merrily said.

‘And there’s… something else. I’m not supposed to tell you this yet, but… the Archdeacon came to see me this afternoon. You know Jeff Kimball’s moving to St John’s at Worcester, leaving a major vacancy at Dilwyn?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Well, he is. And with Archie Menzies retiring in the autumn, your area of north Herefordshire’s going to be stretched. Inevitably, the Archdeacon’s looking at the possibility of a shake-up – introduction of a collaborative ministry in that area: rector, team vicar, et cetera. And, as all this would be happening very close to the Ledwardine parish boundary, it’s been suggested that Ledwardine should be included in the review.’

‘Oh.’

Her hands slackened on the wheel. She could see where this was going. Only a matter of time.