The Smile of a Ghost by Phil Rickman

Author:Phil Rickman [Rickman, Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime, General, Women Sleuths, Mystery & Detective, Fiction
ISBN: 9780857890221
Google: Nd9j9-058CQC
Amazon: B006VSP9ME
Publisher: Corvus
Published: 2012-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

27

Carrying a Light

IT WAS JUST after three p.m. when Merrily left Corey’s, walking, more or less aimlessly, up Broad Street, past de Grey’s café and then the clothing shop which Bernie Dunmore had told her had been retail premises since the fourteenth century.

She started imagining Robbie Walsh drifting this way, his self-educated inner vision replacing tarmac with cobbles, delivery vans with wooden carts, coats with cloaks, Levis with leggings. Ending the exercise when, without trying too hard, she was able to turn a man with a charity tin on the steps of the Buttercross into a leper in rags with a peeling face and wretched, burning eyes.

There’s some places with more resonance than others, Jon Scole had said. All it would take would be a moment of slippage, a mental stumbling, and she’d be seeing through Mrs Mumford’s eyes: dead Robbie shivering in sun-splashed glass.

She hurried away and didn’t look into shop windows.

There were times when you needed spiritual advice. Back in the car, she rang Huw Owen at his rectory in the Beacons, and, thank God, he was there.

‘How old is she, lass?’

‘Late forties, fifty, hard to say exactly; she’s wearing well.’

‘Been around?’

‘In every sense. She seems to have had a fairly nomadic existence, maybe not able to settle anywhere until she found this place.’

‘That would figure. Feels she’s come home at last. This is the place she should always have been. She has to make up for lost time.’

‘I think that’s exactly right. She’s bought a rebuilt medieval house on an old site. When a wall needs replastering, she gets the builder to mix in some of her own hair.’

‘Instead of horsehair.’

‘Exactly. Only, this is evidently pubic hair.’

‘Nice touch,’ Huw said.

‘What are we looking at here, then? Sympathetic magic?’

‘All magic’s sympathetic magic, lass. But this goes back to folk custom. When I were a lad, I remember an owd bloke saying that if you wanted to really make a house your own, you and the missus should make sure you use every room. “Use” being the operative word.’

‘That would figure, too, from what I hear.’

‘You’d probably also find that she’s drawn some of her own blood and mixed it with paint or varnish,’ Huw said. ‘Or she might use urine or… any other bodily fluids that come to hand.’

Merrily wrinkled her nose. ‘So it’s about belonging.’

‘Or, if she feels the house is haunted – say a presence from the past appears to be the dominant force there – then, by infusing her own essence into the fabric of the place, she’s making it clear who’s possessing who.’

‘You’re good, Huw.’

‘Ah, you know all this yourself, really, lass. This is just belt and braces.’

‘It’s what I need right now.’ She told him what Bernie Dunmore had suggested about Siân Callaghan-Clarke. ‘All rumour and conjecture, of course.’

His voice grew concerned. ‘So you’re really working privately for bloody Dunmore…’

‘Not as such. Just that we haven’t told anybody.’

‘Serving his agenda, though, not yours. I’d go home if I were you, Merrily. Keep your head down.

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