‘And do you know a psychometrist?’
‘Well… kind of. But I were taking it dead slow. I see her periodically, and I go, bloody hell, I saw that woman and I forgot to flaming mention it. Bugger! Letting her think it’s no big deal to me, but avoiding giving her the woman’s name.’
‘Because this woman doesn’t exist, right?’
‘Uh… not exactly.’ Jon stopped. There was a bench up against the castle wall, near a gateway into the outer ruins. He gestured for Merrily to sit down.
‘You really do sail close to the wind, don’t you, Jon?’
‘What life’s all about, Mary, i’n’t it? See, there’s a friend of mine, lives over in Bewdley, does the same business – ghost-walks. Anyway, I met this girl when I were just setting up, and we had a bit of a thing going and she give me a few tips. Still do each other favours. She was gonna do it, play the psychic for me.’
‘But she’s not a psychic?’
‘Well, we all are a bit, aren’t we? I mean, it’s easy – there are staples in haunted houses: man in uniform, woman at the window. Baby crying. Cold spots. It’s how mediums do it. You mention something – old geezer always wore a muffler, somebody goes, yeah, that’s my grandad. Only in a house, they go yeah, I did feel something in that pantry. Piece of piss, Mary.’
‘Well, forgive me for being—’
‘I’m telling you, you go in there, tell her you can hear a baby crying or something, I guarantee you’ll get a result.’
‘Jon, have you forgotten what I do normally?’
‘God’ll protect you, then, won’t He? Look, you genuinely know about this stuff, right? What you were giving me earlier about phantasms of the living – that’s serious, in-depth knowledge. You could carry it off, no problem. I tell you, she thinks she’s getting something out of you, she’s a pussycat.’
‘And what do you want out of this, Jon? What do you want out of her?’
It was a still day; you could hear the weir. Over Wales, the sun was just visible, like a coin pressed into tinfoil.
‘What do you think I want?’ Jon Scole gripped his knees, leaning forward. ‘How much you think it costs these days to have a shop in Ludlow? Keep enough stock to attract people in?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Me parents left me enough to get a bit of a business going, but costs are always higher than you think they’re gonna be, especially here. The ghost-walks don’t do badly in the season, but it’s peanuts really. And if the Mayor and his family wanna squeeze me out they can do it any time. Could make sure the lease don’t get renewed, for a start.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘He bloody would, Mary. And could I afford to buy anything proper? Not the way property’s going in this town.’
‘I thought you sold a café to the Little Chef?’
Jon sighed. ‘I sold a bit of land with a prefabricated transport caff on it. No comparison with posh high-street business premises in an upmarket place like this.’
‘So you’re looking for a backer, in other words.’
‘Think what she’s spent on that house. And buying the land to stop the building? You heard about that? Imagine what that cost. Bought it straight out, no financial juggling required. Imagine.’
‘So if she sees you as someone who’s done her a few favours…?’
‘Who knows? Bit of a tightrope, I’ll give you that.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry to’ve hung this on you. I just thought… Well, obviously, I didn’t think at all, did I? I just come out with it.’
He looked a bit lost. He was younger than he’d seemed, maybe no more than thirty. The beard was deceptive, as it was no doubt intended to be.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you go back to your vicarage, have a think, and if I don’t hear from you again… well, it’s been interesting, hasn’t it?’
‘There’s just one problem here, Jon. Supposing we find out that she did something that could take her away from here? How would that help you?’
‘What, to prison?’
‘Well, I’m not going to arrest her, I’m just a jobbing priest, but…’
‘I’m under no illusions, girl,’ Jon said. ‘The day she finds it impossible to live in Ludlow, that’s the Mayor’s birthday. And you wouldn’t shed any tears neither if you found Robbie’s death was in some way down to Bell. But I reckon whatever you did find out you’d accept it, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t try to twist it or move the goalposts. So if it turns out she’s, OK, out of her tree, but basically harmless, that’s all right, i’n’t it?’
‘We’ll… have to see.’
‘I believe in fate, me,’ Jon Scole said. ‘Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen.’
Merrily got back into the car and lit a cigarette.
It could hardly be worse, could it? Either she could go along with it, faking ridiculous psychic skills just to gain some kind of access to Bell Pepper (and then what?) or make an ignominious retreat, put the whole issue in front of the Deliverance Panel, let them dismiss it out of hand, accept an official rebuke for not informing them earlier and then wait for the axe to fall.
How the hell had she got into this?
She supposed the paper bag on the passenger seat answered that question. She picked it up and shook out the book: Everyday Life in the Middle Ages, in Pictures. What had a boy as clued-up as Robbie Walsh wanted with a picture book anyway?
She laid it on the passenger seat and flicked through it, expecting cartoon-like artist’s impressions; in fact, most of the illustrations seemed to be from old engravings, stained glass, carvings on tombs. This made more sense – he would have wanted as authentic an illustration as possible of what life in the Middle Ages had been like. It had obviously been important to him, as he’d walked these streets, to see through medieval eyes.
Why had that been so important? Why had an evidently personable adolescent boy needed to retreat through time? What had made the present so unbearable?
She leafed through the book – the reason she’d bought it, for £7.99 – for where the page had been ripped out. Just one missing page, and the facing one had been about… Trial by Ordeal? Was that it? She turned to the chapter headed ‘Medieval Misdeeds and Retribution’.
Page ninety-one had a reproduction of a sombre woodcut, depicting a man hanging from a gibbet, his head bowed over a tightened noose. Several people were gathered around, watching. Some appeared to be smiling.
Merrily stared at it, recalling how the page had been quite carefully removed from Robbie’s copy. The reverse, page ninety-two, had a black and white photograph of the reconstruction of a medieval wooden gibbet from some interpretive museum. Immediately, she was hearing Bernie Dunmore telling her how Bell Pepper might have been dealt with in times gone by on Gallows Hill, still preserved as open space in Ludlow.
Unfortunately, I think our old execution site is underneath Plascarreg. Don’t you dare make anything of that.
She wasn’t about to; it seemed unlikely to be relevant, but it was worth mentioning, and so she called Mumford.