‘And do you accept the idea of communication with the dead?’ Morrell asked, as heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, like the dead themselves walking in, on cue. Merrily jumped, but Morrell looked relieved. ‘We’re in here, Charlie!’
‘Rob, so sorry I’m—’ The chairman of governors came into the room like someone used to having people wait for him. ‘Oh.’ A leathery face registered unexpected pleasure. ‘I was expecting old Dennis – whatshisname?’
‘This is Mrs Watkins, Charlie. She’s—’
‘I know who she is. She’s the reason Bernie Dunmore spends so much time in Hereford these days instead of walking off some of that weight on the golf course.’ His right hand flashed. ‘Charlie Howe.’
‘Hullo.’ Merrily was letting him squeeze her fingers when she suddenly realized who he was. ‘I think I… may have encountered your daughter.’
‘Yes indeed!’ He beamed. ‘We’re all very proud of Anne.’ His local accent was as mellow as old cider. He wore a light suit and a broad, loose tie. He was in his sixties, had wide shoulders and strong, stiff, white hair in what, in his young days, would have been called a crew-cut.
Charlie Howe: one-time head of Hereford CID, father of its current chief, DCI Annie Howe, the steel angel. Icy blonde with a serious humour deficiency. Merrily searched for family resemblance, could find none at all.
‘She’s done well, Mr Howe.’
‘Youngest head of CID we’ve ever had. She’ll have outranked her old man before she’s finished. Can’t hold you girls down, these days.’ Charlie Howe took a step back to have a proper look at Merrily. ‘My Lord, when I think of your predecessor, old Tommy Dobbs, what a—well, God rest his poor old soul, but what a bloody improvement!’
And she had to smile, not least because this was the kind of sexist remark guaranteed to turn Annie Howe white.
Morrell said, ‘Mrs Watkins believes there’s reason to suspect the school’s become infested with the Powers of Darkness, Charlie.’
Merrily sighed.
They sat at a circular table from which Morrell had discreetly removed a pack of playing cards. ‘You must know,’ he said, ‘that even as the chief executive of this establishment, there isn’t much I can do without knowing the name of either the victim or the instigator.’
Merrily hadn’t felt empowered to name Amy, had revealed only that it involved a girl with a dead mother. She didn’t think Morrell would be able to narrow it down, especially with no staff to consult.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘You asked how the child had been damaged. What you had here was a well-behaved, considerate, hardworking, honest and possibly slightly dull kid who’s turned into someone who is secretive, remote, resentful… and seems to have rejected God while embracing what some people like to call the spirit world. In effect, it seems the dead mother’s become her private support mechanism, to the exclusion of… anyone else.’
‘The way children sometimes find an imaginary friend,’ Morrell said smoothly. ‘To fill a gap in their lonely lives.’
Merrily shook her head. ‘Not really.’
Charlie Howe leaned back on an elbow. ‘Can you believe this young girl might actually be in contact with her mother, Merrily?’
‘I could believe it. But I think it’s more likely to be a contact with… something else.’
‘Like what?’ Morrell’s chair jerked back with a squeak that amplified his outrage.
‘Poor Rob,’ said Charlie Howe, ‘this en’t your world at all, is it?’
Merrily said, ‘When a group of people get together, in a circle – like we are now – with a particular objective in mind, then perhaps that focus of group consciousness could result in – well, it could be like a radio picking up signals. Or maybe like a computer network, and one of the group goes home with a virus attached.’
‘That’s based on science, is it?’ said Robert Morrell.
Merrily shrugged. ‘I’m just telling you it can have harmful effects.’
‘You’re talking about possession?’ said Charlie Howe.
Merrily wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s not my favourite word.’
Morrell said, ‘Mrs Watkins… when I was teaching in Bristol, I used to pass, every day, on my way to work, a former warehouse that sported a large sign proclaiming it to be a Spiritualist Church. A church. Like your own, but less grand. And presumably some of the members of this church had children or grandchildren attending local schools, where the teaching staff were obliged to respect all the various forms of religion, whether Islam or Sikhism or Hinduism or… Voodoo, for all I know.’
‘We’re not talking about religion, Mr Morrell, we’re talking about a bunch of kids hunched up in a cloakroom with an upturned glass and a set of Scrabble letters!’
‘And frankly, as I’ve made clear, Mrs Watkins, I’d have to find something like that a good deal less disturbing than if they were trading their pocket money for pills and then, when the pocket money ran out, clobbering some elderly lady for her pension.’
‘Whoa!’ Charlie Howe put up his hands. ‘Let’s get this into proportion, shall we, folks? I was a copper for nigh on forty years. Sure, I know what drugs can do and I know what some kids’ll do to keep supplied. But I also know, Rob, what… what religion can do. Well, not religion, so much as… well, I don’t know what you’d call it. But I think I know what Merrily’s warning us about, and in my experience it can sometimes lead to offences a sight worse than mugging.’
Morrell’s lips clamped shut. He looked affronted.
‘For instance,’ Charlie Howe said, ‘some years back, I was on the fringe of a very big murder hunt – one that I’m sure we all know about – where the murderer, when he was finally nicked, insisted he’d been told by “voices” to kill a particular kind of woman.’
‘Charlie, that’s—’
‘Give me an hour or two and I could find you a dozen or more other cases in the past ten years where killings, serious assaults and God knows what else, with someone acting entirely out of character, have been put down to—’
‘But Charlie, this is—’
‘This is a juvenile. Certainly. But aren’t youngsters more prone to this kind of thing than adults because their imaginations are that much bigger? I’m going to use the word “delusion”, Merrily, for Robert’s sake. And, anyway, we all know that a delusion can be just as real to the person involved. Now if this child’s become antisocial and starts taking advice from what she reckons is her dead mother, then who knows what her so-called mother’s going to advise her to do next? No, I’d be the last to dismiss this kind of problem out of hand.’
Merrily felt like filling the silence with applause. Morrell spread his hands on the table, looked down between them for a moment.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘but what do you suggest we do about it now? The summer holidays have just started. The students are no longer under my jurisdiction. Chances are that, by September, there’ll be some new fad.’
‘The truth of it is,’ Merrily said apologetically, ‘this was supposed to be an informal inquiry.’
‘Nothing formal about me, my dear,’ said Charlie Howe.
‘I was hoping somebody might have some idea about what was going on – like if there were certain kids known to be particularly fascinated by the occult… maybe encouraging or even pressurizing other kids into getting involved. Teachers usually have their noses to the ground.’