And how none of that mattered after you saw the tape that Gwyn Arthur had already watched on the player borrowed in Brecon. Which he said would put everything into a hellish perspective.
60
Name of my father
THE TV SCREEN vibrated to black.
Chairs and stools were set up in front of the monitor which shared a desk under a cricket bat hanging from a beam, a shadow against the low lights, like some antique punishment device.
Merrily said, ‘Where’s Betty?’
‘Back at the bookstore. Waiting for you.’ Robin sounded disconnected, hair sweated to his forehead. ‘She… didn’t wanna see it again. I’m just here to remind you ’bout what you planned. Tell you she’s waiting. When you’re through here.’ He nodded at a coffee machine. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Perhaps I’ll have one later, thanks.’
Her throat was like a sandpit, but this didn’t feel like a social occasion. She’d actually forgotten what she’d agreed with Betty, and there weren’t many distractions that made you forget about a proposed exorcism.
She heard the shop door closing, the rattle of a blind coming down.
‘This is Francis Bliss, boys,’ Gwyn Arthur said, flat-voiced. ‘Here to help us.’
Merrily sank down in front of the screen, between Gwyn Arthur and Bliss, who didn’t seem up to helping an old lady across the road. Her head ached.
Gwyn Arthur nodded to Kapoor and the screen acquired a shaky image, dark and oily like the inside of an old car engine. Kapoor stepped away, as if he didn’t want it to be any clearer. Gwyn Arthur peered at Merrily.
‘You all right with this?’
‘Tonight I’m all right with anything.’ What the hell was coming? ‘Sorry, that’s not what I meant.’
Gwyn Arthur caught Kapoor’s eye, lifted a forefinger. Kapoor set the tape rolling. Robin reached for his stick.
‘I’m outa here. Don’t wanna leave Betty alone. OK?’
But she knew that wasn’t it, as Kapoor followed Robin to the door, held it open for him, and shut it behind him, letting out a staccato steam-train breath as he came back to the TV. On the screen, something glimmering in a shifting darkness.
‘Pre-digital,’ Kapoor said. ‘Very basic camera, I’d guess.’
A face was fading out of the darkness.
‘It’s night,’ Kapoor said. ‘The lights in the room are poor. Altogether… a bleedin’ mercy, really.’
A woman’s face. Grey and indistinct, but you could make out closed eyes. Bliss leaned into the screen.
‘Dead?’
Dear God, how much of this could anyone take in one night? But the camera had pulled back to throw the woman into shadow and reveal a second person. If that was a person.
Bliss said, ‘What’s he gorrover his head, Gwyn?’
‘Looks like the corner of a black bin liner. See the point at the top, with a kind of ridge and the way it’s pull back tight?
The eyeholes were no more than knife-slits, crudely scissored around the edges to widen them.
‘Wearing the rest of the bin liner, it looks like,’ Bliss said. ‘Underneath, covering his upper body. More wrapped round his arms. Look at the hands. Looks like friggin’ Homer Simpson. Homer Simpson’s hands.’
‘Rubber gloves. He’s dressed for…’
‘I can see what he’s dressed for,’ Bliss said tightly. ‘The woman… she’s gorra be well out of it. Nobody gonna sit still for this.’
‘We had a stack of pictures of Mephista,’ Gwyn Arthur said. ‘But this is not her. This, I think, has to be Cherry Banks. You can detect slight movements. I think she’s sedated. Whatever they used before Rohypnol. I used to know.’
‘Someone’s laughing,’ Merrily said.
A short burst – stifled, muffled. She thought of Jane. Jane laughed like that when she knew she shouldn’t be laughing at something. A squeak of instinctive, suppressed mirth.
‘Look at the camera shake,’ Kapoor said. ‘All over the place. Way the camera’s suddenly shooting the ceiling.’
Merrily jerked back.
‘What’s that in his hand?’
Glint above a yellow fist.
‘You really don’t have to watch this,’ Gwyn Arthur said, ‘but I’d be glad if you’d listen. Try and make out what he’s saying.’
‘Bloody hell, Gwyn—’
‘Listen. Please.’
She shut her eyes on it, plucking words out of white noise. And then opened them too soon.
‘Sound fluctuates,’ Kapoor said, his back to the screen. ‘Amateurs. Cheap kit.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Merrily said.