The Lamp of the Wicked Read Free

big brolly, in her white jeans and her clean trainers, and Gomer felt sorry for her.
    He sighed. Nobody liked jobs like this, where you had to clean up after another outfit. But this time it was Roddy Lodge, and Roddy Lodge had it coming to him.
    He went over to the house wall. No way you could be entirely sure, see, but…
    ‘See this bit of a crack in the stonework?’
    ‘Is that new?’
    ‘Sure t’be. What he’s done, see, is dug ’isself a nice pit for this article, eight, nine feet down, right up against the ole foundations.’
    ‘You’re saying’ – her jaw trembling – ‘it could cause the
house to collapse
?’
    Gomer thought about this, pushing back his cap.
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘not
all
the house.’
    They agreed it needed moving, this Efflapure, to a safer location. If you accepted that such an object was actually needed at all.
    ‘See, I wouldn’t’ve advised you to get one o’ them fancy things,’ Gomer said. ‘Wasteo’ money, my view of it. You got a nice, gentle slope to the ground there. Needs a simpler tank and a soakaway, like there was before. Primitive, mabbe, but he works, and he goes on workin’. No problems, no fancy meters to keep checking. Low maintenance, no renewable parts. Get him emptied every year or two, then forget all about him. Tried and tested, see, Mrs P. Tried and tested.’
    A gust of wind snatched at the brolly. Mrs Pawson huffed and stuttered. ‘So what on earth are we supposed to do with the… Efflapure?’
    ‘Get your Mr Lodge to take the whole kit back, I’d say. Tell him what your surveyor said. He’ll know Darren Booth, see, know how he puts ’isself around the county, talks to the right people, so if you and your husband puts it over to Lodge, tackful-like, that it wouldn’t look so good if it got out he’d been cutting corners to save ’isself a few quid, you’d have most of your money back off him pretty quick, I’d say.’ Gomer nodded seriously, figuring this was good advice – at least let Lodge know there were a few folk onto his games. ‘Who was it told you to go to the feller in the first place, you don’t mind me askin’?’
    ‘He…’ She brought out some folded paper from a back pocket of her jeans and handed it to Gomer. ‘Somebody… pushed this leaflet through the letter box.’
    Gomer opened it out. There was a drawing on the front of a roses-round-the-door Tudor cottage. Cartoon man in a doublet-thing with a ruffle round his neck and a cartoon woman in a long frock and an old-fashioned headdress. They both had big clothes-pegs on their noses. Underneath the drawing, it said:
    IN DAYS OF OLDE,
DAYS BEFORE…
EFFLAPURE
     
Gomer tried not to wince.
    Mrs Pawson said in a panicky voice, ‘It was a
local
firm. We thought—’
    Gomer shook his head. ‘Not what I’d call a
firm
, exackly. Lodge, he operates out of a yard, back of Ross-on-Wye, what I’ve yeard, with a coupler part-timers on sickness benefit.’
    ‘But he’s an authorized agent for… for Efflapure.’
    ‘Agent for more dodgy outfits than you can shake a stick at,’ Gomer said.
    ‘So you… You know him.’
    ‘Well… I knows
of
him. Seen him around.’
    Roddy, with his baseball cap and his wraparound dark glasses. Roddy and his big, whipped-cream smile.
    ‘Can you…?’ Mrs Pawson gripped the shaft of the umbrella with both hands, knuckles white. ‘Can
you
take it away?’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘You could probably make some money out of it, couldn’t you?’
    ‘Well…’ Gomer scratched his cheek. ‘There
are
places one o’ these might be suitable. Working farm, light industrial, mabbe. We could likely come to an arrangement. But I gotter say, you’d be better off going back to this Lodge and—’
    ‘No!’ Her whole body a-quiver now. ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want him here again.’
    Traffic swished past, all mixed in with the wind. There was a sudden thump in the leaves near their feet. Gomer saw that a big, ripe Bramley had tumbled from one