It was still only mid-morning when the bedside phone awoke her. She hadn’t been in bed long enough for it to be a sleep of any depth — although the half-dreams were dark — and she was instantly focused and expecting the worst.
She didn’t expect him.
‘It all comes down to demonization, you see, Merrily,’ he said, as if they’d been talking for hours. ‘I was demonized from an early age — twelve, to be exact. He was the little Christ, and I was the Antichrist. He and his mother were always very efficient at the demonization of anything in their way. And he still is, of course.’
He sounded as if he’d been drinking. His voice was dark and smooth and intimate. Merrily sat up in bed, fumbling a cardigan around her shoulders.
‘He wanted dragons, so I sent him dragons. I sent him serpents.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It isn’t all done by magic. The postal service can be equally effective, and now the Internet and e-mail… almost as fast as one can transmit a thought. But then it’s all electricity, isn’t it? Everything’s a form of electricity. Science is catching us up. Soon everyone will be doing magic. What a dispiriting thought.’
She heard the clink of a glass against his teeth.
‘I’ve been a bad man, in my way. No worse, I would submit, than Simon, but bad enough. Sometimes I yearn for redemption. Is that possible, do you think, Merrily?’
‘It’s possible for everybody.’
The sunlight penetrated through the crack in the curtains and put a pale stripe down the bed. Celtic spring had come.
‘I hoped you’d say that,’ he said. ‘So… will you help me? Will you help a poor sinner onto the… lamplit path?’
She froze. ‘Who told you about that?’
He laughed. ‘I know everything about you. You’re in bed, aren’t you?’
She felt his Sean-breath, the warm dusting, and she was afraid.
‘I can just see you in bed,’ he said, ‘all rumpled, a little creased around the eyes. Rumpled and smelling of softness and sleep.’
She remembered the blood he could not have seen on her hands. She remembered the red and white lights on the motorway, false lights in a night of filth.
‘Can we meet?’ Ned Bain said. ‘And discuss my redemption?’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said, and put down the phone and sat there in bed, shivering.