but I’m going to pick his brains about Abbeywalk . . .’
‘You will come straight home after that?’ I asked anxiously.
‘I suppose so . . .’ She sounded reluctant, still high on the thrills of the chase. ‘Why – are you all right, Morgan?’ There was a tinge of contempt in her voice, that stung.
‘I’ll manage – till then.’ I was aware of the sky outside growing dimmer still. The swallows had gone to their nests. ‘Take care, Hermione.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m used to handling reporters.’
She rang off.
But it wasn’t reporters I was worried about.
Soon after dark, the phone went again. I’d been off the couch once, to go to the loo, and make myself a sandwich I didn’t want, and put all the lights on and drawn the curtains. I felt so weary, so helpless. Things were happening to me; I wasn’t happening to anything.
It wasn’t her; it was James.
‘Mr Morgan, I want a word.’ James at his most formidable; the other side of him, Holy James. As usual I wondered what had happened to the cheerful rogue who could swap the white painted dial of a long-case clock for a repro brass-face, sell the thing for twice the money and not turn a hair . . . nobody like James for being two separate halves.
‘I’ve put our case to some friends of mine who know about such things. Who’ve spent years studying them . . .’
‘What case is this, James?’ I said very coldly. Really, I was worried about Hermione, and what she was getting up to, out there in the dark.
‘That steam-yacht . . .’
‘I told you not to mention that to anybody, James. You promised . . .’
‘There’s some things too important for our human promises. The Lord . . . I went to Him in prayer and he told me to go and tell them . . .’
Oh, these impossible people who go to the Lord in prayer. Why does He always seem to tell them to do exactly what they want to do anyway?
‘Very convenient . . .’
‘Now don’t be like that, Mr Morgan. I know you’re an unbeliever, but we can’t allow that to hinder the Lord’s Work. We think that real evil is at work here. Not just human wickedness, but Evil Incarnate that must be trampled down before it spreads. They’re prepared to . . .’
‘Look, James, can’t this wait? I’m expecting an urgent phone call . . .’
‘Not as urgent as this, Mr Morgan. Our adversary the Devil goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith. My friends have told me such things you wouldn’t believe. Right here in Birmingham. The kind of stuff that never reaches the newspapers . . . this could . . . this is . . . a matter of life and death, Mr Morgan. More important than life and death . . .’
‘You sound like Bill Shankly talking about football . . .’
‘You can scoff, Mr Morgan. But I don’t think you’ll go on scoffing for much longer. Something could be happening this very night. I wouldn’t want some other poor soul drowning themselves in the Wheatstone Pond . . .’
That touched a vital nerve. And in my pain and terror, I said something very rude about him and his religion.
There was a long and nasty silence, then he said, slowly, and keeping his temper with a great effort, ‘I feel sorry for you, Mr Morgan.’
Then there was a click, and the dialling tone resumed, and in the silence that followed, it felt like I’d turned away my last friend.
And for what? For daring to say out loud what I’d only been thinking? Why do we modern people mince words in such a mealy-mouthed way? If there was not Evil Incarnate in that house, there was the next best thing to it, and no amount of clever, reasonable psychological jargon was going to make it go away. I saw again, vivid in my mind’s eye, those tiny skeletons, and, in the face of them, clever reasonable psychological jargon was dumb.
I began to pace up and down, while Suki watched me with impassive curiosity. Why do we pace up and down, exhausting ourselves?
Before I had time to entirely exhaust myself, the phone rang again.
Oh, how good it was to hear her warm, living breathing voice.
‘Morgan? There’s some more stuff come out. D’you know, of those seven suicides in the Pond, over the last five