The Fabric of Sin

28 Suicide Note – Kind Of

MRS MORNINGWOOD, HAVING beckoned her into the window, now appeared to see something worrying in Merrily’s eyes.

‘You’re not at all well, are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Shoes off,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

‘Look, I—’

‘Lie down on the chaise longue. Put that pillow behind your head, the other one under your back where the springs have gone in the middle.’

Mrs Morningwood wore jeans and a military sort of jumper, ribbed, and a pale lemon silk scarf. Her hair was down and looked freshly washed. Merrily tried to focus, saw the blur of a timelessly handsome woman no longer over-fussed about what she looked like. A clock was ticking somewhere. The room had cream walls, a bentwood rocking chair, an ebony desk and a black cast-iron range with a fresh log on a glowing bed, Roscoe the wolfhound lying full length below it, longer and hairier than the rug he was on.

‘I’m sorry …’ Merrily looked around for the clock, confused. ‘What time is it now?’

‘I should think coming up to midday. Clock’s in the kitchen. We don’t allow time in here.’

Midday. Oh my God.

She’d had breakfast at nine – most of a boiled egg, one slice of dry toast – watching Teddy Murray cheerily loading his knapsack, off to plan out a circular ten-mile walk for the German party next weekend, Bev inspecting Merrily, practical, blonde head on one side. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Merrily?’

She’d gone back to her room, lay down for a moment on the bed … woke up over an hour later, in a panic. Rushing into the bathroom, washing again, brushing her hair and stumbling down the stairs – nobody about, a radio somewhere playing Classic FM, but it still brought back celloed strands of ‘The Cure of Souls’, that reproachful song. She’d ring Lol, just as soon as she got back. Wasn’t his fault – her dream, her paranoia. Slipping quietly out of the front door, which had steps down to the lane, forgetting for the moment where she’d left the Volvo, only remembering where she had to go in it. Past The Turning three hundred yards, sign on the right, Ty Gwyn. Short track.

An end of a terrace, two tiny white-rendered cottages at one end knocked together, set well back from the road, overlooking fields and woodland under a pocked and mottled cheesy sky. Didn’t really remember getting here.

Mrs Morningwood had pulled up a piano stool with a black velvet seat to the foot of the chaise longue. Arranging a blue woollen travelling rug over Merrily’s legs. Bending over her feet now, reading glasses on her nose. Separating the toes and then running a thumbnail along one sole; it felt like a Stanley knife. Blanking out the pain, Merrily scrabbled for a question unrelated to her state of health.

‘Why did Jacques de Molay come to Garway?’

‘Who?’

‘Templar boss.’

‘Haven’t got a heart condition, have you?’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘Should’ve asked before I started. Remiss of me. Jacques de Molay. I suppose it’s more or less established that he did come here. About twelve years before his unfortunate death, I believe.’

‘Where would he have …? Oh my—’

‘Your stomach, darling. Tight as a drum. Intestines wound up like a watch spring. And then something implodes. I think you’re rather close to an ulcer. What’ve you been doing?’ Mrs Morningwood stood back, deep lines in her long face, all her features hard-focused in the sunless light. ‘You really weren’t aware of this? At all?’

‘No, I … God!’

‘It’ll get less painful after a while. At first, you know, I was thinking premature menopause.’

‘What?’

‘No stigma. Sometimes happens to girls in their twenties. Probably isn’t. Probably plain stress. Never had reflexology before?’

‘Well …’ Rolling her head in the pillow ‘… Not quite like this. Not the seriously painful kind.’

‘Some so-called practitioners are merely playing at it. Feelgood, massage-parlour stuff, bugger-all use to anybody. Sorry, darling, what was your question?’

‘De Molay. I was trying to ask you where he might have stayed. When he was here.’

‘You really need to rest. A holiday. When did you last have a holiday?’

‘Four years? Five? I don’t know, we weren’t living here then. Another lifetime.’

‘I can feel other people’s problems curled up tightly inside you, stored away in little sacks.’

The Stanley knife again, biting into the side of a big toe.

‘Sacks that swell,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

Merrily shut her eyes. This was not going the way it was supposed to. The plan had been to walk in, eyes wide open, go for some straight answers: Mrs Morningwood, you didn’t just accidentally bump into Jane and me the other day, you had an agenda and presumably still have. Why did you court Jane with your revelations about the four pubs and the heavenly bodies? Why were you so keen that we should check out the Master House while you buggered off?

The pain faded. She let her head sink into the pillow. With her usual uncompromising dynamism, she’d staggered up the path, under a wooden pergola still lush with vines. Still trying to find a doorbell or a knocker when the door had opened and she’d virtually fallen over the threshold.

‘I suppose you’re thinking of the Master House,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘It would make sense of the name, certainly. Doubtless the sort of grand celebrity occasion they’d have wanted to commemorate.’

‘Nobody know for sure?’

‘So little from that period was written down, Mrs Watkins. Not exactly known for their illuminated script, the Templars. Didn’t keep diaries or ledgers, far as I know.’

‘Being illiterate couldn’t have helped. No word-of-mouth, old wives’ tales about why de Molay came?’

‘He was presumably inspecting the preceptory. Why does it interest you?’

‘Trying to get a handle on the place, that’s all. To what extent it’s connected to the Templars.’

A log collapsed in the range, gases spurting, Merrily starting to sweat.

‘Good.’ Mrs Morningwood didn’t look up, working on a toe with both hands, like peeling a plum. ‘You’re probably full of toxins. I’d hate to even inquire about your diet.’

‘Mostly vegetarian. Bit of fish.’

‘Bit of this, bit of that, I know. A vegetarian diet needs to be carefully organized or there’ll be deficiencies. Looks of you, I bet you don’t even bother to eat at all half the time.’

‘You find life isn’t something that happens between meals.’

‘Life, my darling, needs to be battered into shape.’

‘Easier said than— Oh, for … I thought you said it’d get less painful.’

‘I expect I lied,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

When Merrily awoke, still on the chaise longue, the light in the two windows was blue-grey and the light in the cast-iron range was molten red, like the crater of a live volcano. Like the sun through the glass of red wine she’d been given. The sun had been out then, when she’d drunk it. Gone now, the sun and the wine.

Mrs Morningwood was rocking gently in the bentwood chair, smoking. Merrily raised herself up on her elbows.

‘What was in it?’

‘Nothing much. Valerian, mainly.’

‘What’s that do?’

‘A remedy for nervous debility. Unclenches the gut. Promotes sleep, quite rapidly sometimes.’

‘You didn’t tell me that.’

‘Of course I didn’t tell you that – you’d’ve buggered off.’

‘This wasn’t supposed to …’ Merrily’s head fell back. ‘How long have I been here now?’

‘Why are you so obsessed with time? You’ve been here as long as was necessary.’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t get up yet, Watkins, you might fall over.’

Couldn’t have if she’d wanted to. Merrily felt limp and disconnected and distinctly odd but not in a bad way. And not, as she’d feared, in a drugged way. Something seemed to be vibrating inside her, like a motor idling.

‘Where did you learn all this stuff?’

‘The basic herbalism – and it is basic – was from my mother and she had it from her mother and so on.’

Always be a Morningwood on Garway Hill, as long as badgers shit on the White Rocks.

Right. Merrily felt like someone abducted by aliens, taken away to the mother ship, physically investigated, brought back. Mrs Morningwood supervising the experiment.

‘Wasn’t complicated, darling. Bad diet, insufficient sleep and nervous stress. You’ll sleep well tonight, probably wee quite a lot first, mind. And after that it’s up to you. The reflexology, picked that up in London. Seemed to be something I could do, almost from the outset. Technique might go back to ancient Egypt – who knows that the Templars didn’t bring it back from the Middle East? Although it’s not, as far as I know, in the traditional repertoire of the nine witches of Garway.’

‘Garway’s loss. I expect.’

‘You feel better.’

Merrily eased herself up again, nodded slowly, very aware of the movements of her neck, the fulcrum of bones.

‘I feel – a bit worryingly – relaxed.’

‘Smoke if you want to. Why worryingly relaxed? You feel guilty about relaxation?’

‘Teddy Murray says it’s a function of the clergy to appear totally placid at all times. I realize that’s his excuse for spending hours strolling the hills, but maybe there’s something— How much do I actually owe you, Mrs Morningwood?’

‘Owe?’

‘It’s going dark, I’ve been here over half a day—’

‘Lots of other tasks were performed in between. You just didn’t notice.’

Mrs Morningwood arose from the chair, went over to the range. There was an earthenware teapot on the hob. She detached a brown mug from a hook.

‘But since you mention recompense, sadly from your point of view I’m not much of a Christian, so yes, I have every intention of extracting payment in kind.’

‘Oh.’

‘What brought you here – feeling of failure?’

‘Partly.’

‘What could you have done?’ Mrs Morningwood brought over the cup, steaming. ‘It’s only tea, weak as gnat’s piss, and I can assure you there’s nothing in it that will send you back to sleep. What do you think you might have done to save either of them?’

‘Could’ve believed her. Thank you.’ Merrily sipped, holding the mug in both hands, swinging her feet tentatively to the floor. ‘Although I had no reason to at the time.’

Drinking the weak tea slowly, telling Mrs Morningwood how Fuchsia had claimed to have been haunted by something which, it transpired, had been invented by M. R. James.

‘Interesting.’

‘You’ve read that one?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And you knew James was in Garway?’

‘My grandmother met him. And the girl – his ward, Jane McBryde. But that’s by the by. So Fuchsia Mary Linden borrowed Monty’s seaside ghost. How very imaginative of her.’

‘What’s that say to you?’

‘Only that she didn’t want to tell you – or Barlow – what actually happened to her in the Master House.’

‘Which was?’

‘How should I know?’

‘She wanted me to bless her, give her protection. Before she came back here.’

‘And then, afterwards, she returned and battered Barlow to death. What do you know about Barlow’s history?’

‘Not a great deal.’ Merrily thought about it; where was this going? ‘He spent time in a tepee community in West Wales where he met Fuchsia’s mother, who was already pregnant. Felix was a bit in love with her and also, I think, felt sorry for her. He said she was … fragile. And he seems to have accepted a role as a kind of godfather … guardian. Tragically sealing his own fate, if you want to be—’

‘Tepee community,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

‘Tepee City. In Cardiganshire.’

‘Why did Barlow go there?’

‘Gap year was all he said.’

‘No such thing in those days, darling.’

‘I think he was probably being ironic. It was just a year between leaving school and having to do something responsible connected with his dad’s building supplies business. Which maybe didn’t seem very appealing at a time when everyone else seemed to be sleeping around and taking exotic drugs.’

‘Did he …’ Mrs Morningwood sat on the piano stool ‘… mention being a part of any other community? Before Wales?’

‘No, he didn’t. What are you thinking of?’

‘I’m thinking of the one that was in occupation at the Master House in the 1970s, when the Newtons were repeatedly leasing it out.’

‘Don’t know anything about it.’ Merrily finally brought out her cigarettes. ‘Some kind of good-life smallholding – did you tell me that?’

‘Good life? Not me, darling. Bastards couldn’t even grow their own dope. The house was leased by the Newtons to an honourable – son of some minor member of the Midlands aristocracy. Newtons were well pleased, at first. Not realizing he’d turn out to be the kind of dissolute, overprivileged hooray hippie that could turn … I don’t know, Sandringham into a shell in a matter of weeks.’

‘Anybody I’ve heard of?’

‘Shouldn’t think so. Lord Stourport?’

Merrily shook her head.

‘Endless rumours about the things that went on there,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Orgies and the rest. Nude bathing in the Monnow. Place would probably’ve been burned to the ground, result of some discarded spliff, if there hadn’t been a rather timely police raid. Result of which Lord Cokehead was sent down for three months or so. Lease effectively terminated.’

‘So why would Felix Barlow have been there?’

‘Most of the hoorays couldn’t replace a washer on a bloody tap, so anybody who was halfway practical was welcome to move into one of the sheds, drugs on the house, long as he brought his tools. That’s what I was told, anyway – wouldn’t know anything for sure, all this happened while I was … away.’

‘Well … Felix was indeed a very practical man, but I’m not getting why you think he would’ve been at the Master House. In fact …’ Merrily sat up, the cigarette halfway to her mouth. ‘What is your angle on this, Mrs Morningwood? Where are you actually coming from? Like, what did you mean when you said on the phone that someone didn’t do a terribly good job?’

Merrily slumped on to the edge of the chaise longue. Her body felt weak but the low vibration was still there and went cruising up into her head, bringing on a dizziness.

‘Steady, girl. You got the works, you know.’

Mrs Morningwood turned and threw the remains of her cigarette, with practised accuracy, into the heart of the fire.

Merrily lay back against the pillows. The windows had dimmed, crimson caverns opening up in the iron range. Roscoe, the wolfhound rose up and stretched, his front legs extended, revealing the black smudges of old burn marks on the rug where he’d been lying.

Mrs Morningwood stood up and moved across to the ebony desk. Sound of a drawer sliding open. She bent and drew the piano stool towards the well of the desk, switching on a green-shaded oil lamp converted to electricity.

Placing a fold of paper on the floodlit blotter and beckoning Merrily over.

‘Sit there. Won’t take you long to read it. I have to go and shut the chickens in for the night. Toilet’s back into the hall, second left. You’ll probably need it now you’ve been on your feet.’

Merrily sat looking down at the paper, pooled in lamplight, apple green. She opened it out.

‘What is it?’

‘A suicide note,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Kind of. With hindsight.’

29 Like a Ghost

SITTING ON THE lavatory, bent over, elbows on her knees, head in her hands, Merrily was holding the first sentences in her head.

People say death is like sleep.

I just hope they’re wrong. Sometimes I think I must be very close to death and I hate sleep more than anything.

It wasn’t the original, that was clear. There was no address, and – she’d looked at the bottom – no signature. Mrs Morningwood, or somebody, must have copied it into a computer.

When she came out of the downstairs bathroom, a bit fresher, Mrs Morningwood had returned and was stripping off her old Barbour, hanging it in the whitewashed hall, fluffing up her hair – the first conspicuously feminine thing Merrily had seen her do.

‘You’ve read it?’

‘I had to stop. Had to … go.’

Mrs Morningwood nodded, and Merrily went back to the desk in the living room.

You wouldnt know me Muriel. Theres nothing of me no more I am so thin and my head feels like a rotten egg sometimes and what can you do with a rotten egg except get as far away from it as possible. But you can’t, can you, if it’s inside your head day and night and all your dreams are addled. (See, I remember all about eggs. They were the good times.)

Merrily looked up.

‘This is a girl?’

‘Poor little darkie.’

Mrs Morningwood came over to the desk. Brought out a small leather photo album and began thumbing through it.

‘It was what people called her. Almost a novelty in the 1970s, a black girl in these parts. Mixed race, actually. Used to come here on holiday with her parents, in a caravan on a farm at Bagwyllydiart. There.’

The photo, its colours faded, showed two girls sitting together on a five-bar gate.

‘That’s … you?’

‘Frightening, isn’t it?’

The young Muriel, willowy and lovely, linking arms with the other girl, who was laughing so hard that her face was fuzzed and her white hoop earrings had ghosts.

‘They were from Coventry. Black father, white mother. They didn’t appear one year and then we heard the parents had broken up. Learning later – from the poor kid herself – that she was being interfered with by the mother’s new man. She’d’ve been fifteen or sixteen. Ran away a couple of times, finally hitch-hiking to just about the only place that had good memories for her.’

‘Here?’

‘Twenty quid in her pocket. Got picked up by the chip man – there was a chap in Monmouth ran two or three fish-and-chip vans, came out to the villages one or two days a week. He recognized her, picked her up, gave her a job in his shop in Monmouth, let her sleep in the room over the top. Until his wife found out.’

‘Oh.’

‘It was probably quite innocent. She’d never have told, anyway. He was there when she needed help. Upshot of it, she turned up at our door, ended up moving in. Would’ve been on the streets otherwise.’

I’m sorry to keep on at you but you were always strong and I dont know anybody else I can tell who wouldn’t just hate me more.

‘You didn’t try to contact her parents?’

‘So she could go back and get fiddled with again? Not a chance, darling. She asked us not to, anyway, and she was sixteen or seventeen, we knew that. Besides, I was going to London, had a job lined up with a distant relative, theatrical agent. She filled the space.’

Mrs Morningwood took the photo back, put it in the album, left the album on the desk and went back to the hob.

‘House was only half as big then. I suppose she was here nearly a year. My mother found her a post as housekeeper – not live-in. Farmer called Eric Davies whose wife’d walked out because she couldn’t stand the isolation and Eric’s refusal to take a day off. Go on – read the rest.’

I’m writing this now because theres times when I still think I can get rid of it if I want to. Like Oh its not that bad it’s only your body and look at the money your getting.

‘I take it this is not about Eric Davies.’

‘Hardly. That came later. We exchanged letters for about a year. Most of them more coherent, I have to say, than this one. She was actually an intelligent girl, resourceful. Adaptable.’

‘So this is referring to the Master House, is it?’

Mrs Morningwood chose a wooden block from the log basket, wedged it into the fire and talked about the Master House commune. Two or three couples there originally, but there was always room for more bodies in the five bedrooms and outbuildings. Then two of the women left and one of the men. Eric Davies, meanwhile, had been made aware of gossip – he was in line for chairman, or president or something, of the local branch of the NFU and someone had discreetly pointed out that perhaps Mary Roberts was not good for his image, middle-aged farmer with a little darkie on the premises several hours a day.

Merrily said, ‘Mary Roberts?’

‘I don’t know where she got the name Linden from. Perhaps she thought it sounded pretty.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Merrily said. ‘You’re absolutely sure about this?’

‘Soon as I saw the girl with the builder. Look at the photo again. Look at the eyes.’

The eyes were blurred in the picture, but the size and the separation … well, maybe.

‘If I had one of her a couple of years later, even you would be in no doubt. Fuchsia, the first time I saw her and Barlow, they weren’t here to work, just look around, so not in overalls. She was even wearing the same kind of clothes as Mary had. Highly coloured. As if she’d seen some old photos of her mother and gone out of her way to recreate the image. Barlow was asking about the house and I tried to help him – rambling on in a state of slight numbness, trying not to keep staring at the girl. Hell of a shock, Watkins. Like seeing a ghost.’

‘Did you say anything?’

‘No. I needed to know if she knew. Needed to get her alone. The name, you … that was the clincher. Mary’s few possessions included a decrepit, much-thumbed paperback copy of Titus Groan. Mervyn Peake? Leading female character?’

‘Fuchsia.’

‘Pretty conclusive.’

‘And did she know?’

‘Never got her alone to ask. Barlow came back alone some days later telling me she’d been troubled by something in the house. Wouldn’t go into details.’

‘You didn’t tell him you may have known Fuchsia’s mother?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

Mrs Morningwood bit her lip.

‘You’d better tell me the rest,’ Merrily said.

When you dont go to bed no more because they come to you in your sleep thats pretty bad isnt it. And when you wake up it’s like your body is not yours no more, it’s their’s. They can make your arms and legs move about and make you see what nobody should have to see. Well thats when you think you must be getting close to the end of this sick life and thank God for that.

‘I’d actually wanted her to come to London with me,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘I was working for a magazine by this time, making better money – in the process of moving to a flat in Clapham. But, for reasons I didn’t know about at the time, she declined. I … didn’t make proper arrangements for the forwarding mail so may have missed a couple of letters from her. And then that one arrived … five months after it was posted.’

‘That does not sound good. At all.’

‘I phoned my mother straight away, and of course it had all gone wrong – Mary had been staying away for several nights at a time, and then a whole week. Having taken up, it emerged, with one of the Master House people. And taken various drugs, obviously. Possibly, judging from the letter, LSD or mescaline.’

You wouldn’t recognise me now. Youd walk past me in the street, I probably look like some old bag out the gutter. I went into Hereford once, into the shops but I could sense like a shadow behind me all the time and once it touched me and run its fingers down my back and I turned round and I screamed GET AWAY GET AWAY FROM ME and people did get away they all crossed the road thinking I was drunk or doped up and that was awful. I really need normal people not to hate me like your mum does now.

‘And your mother hadn’t told you any of this?’

‘There was … a distance between us at the time.’

Mrs Morningwood was smoking again, the room clouded, Roscoe prowling.

‘“Thinking I was doped up”,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s saying fairly categorically here that she was neither drunk nor stoned.’

‘Then what?’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘How would you explain the rest of it?’

I went into the Cathedral but it didnt feel right, it was too big and quiet and I had to keep walking round to be near people because I dont like being on my own in a big empty place and then I found I was standing in front of the old map. You know the one called something in Latin and these disgusting things were grinning out at me and the shadow was leaning over me like when the sun suddenly goes in and you feel cold

‘The old map.’ Merrily looked up. ‘The Mappa Mundi?’

‘Displayed in the cathedral in those days.’

‘Yes.’

Hereford’s only world-class treasure. Medieval map of the world, now on view, along with the historic chained library, in a recently constructed building of their own in the cathedral grounds. Merrily had seen it a few times, never really had time to study it. Remembered the bizarre drawings around the primitive topography – a bear, a mermaid, a griffon, a unicorn. Didn’t remember any of them as grinning or obviously disgusting, but …

and I mustve screamed out or something because there was this man in black clothes and he said I’ve been watching you he said I can see your in trouble let me help you and I screamed at him GET AWAY GET AWAY GET AWAY YOUR EVIL.

I think it was just that he was in black clothes I thought he must be evil. He gave me a card to get in touch with him but I never have, whats the use.

One of the cathedral canons? Might even have been Dobbs, the exorcist.

‘She must’ve been looking a bit deranged to get that kind of approach.’

‘Evidently.’ Mrs Morningwood nodded. ‘What does it suggest to you?’

‘Extreme paranoia? Which obviously could be linked to drug use. Did the police find any acid? If she was still tripping, she might look at the Mappa Mundi, with all these mythical beasts, and it becomes like a nest of monsters or something.’

‘I’ve never seen an inventory of what they found.’

‘I could probably get some background. There’s a cop I know—’

‘No!’

Mrs Morningwood backing away, well out of the pool of light, leaving Merrily blinking.

‘Sorry?’

‘What’s the point of involving the police? They’re not going to find her now, are they? Not going to be remotely interested.’

‘Find her? I thought she was—’

‘I don’t know she’s dead. I simply never heard of her again. Nobody I know ever did. We even tracked down her mother in Birmingham. Not interested. Didn’t seem to care. Nobody cared. Except me, because I could’ve saved her. Could’ve got her out of there.’

‘But somebody obviously did …’

Mrs Morningwood’s face was grim amongst the shadows.

‘Mary came back to my mother, apparently unwell. Stayed for four days. Quiet, penitent. And … my mother would awake in the morning to hear her throwing up. Coming to the obvious conclusion. Which she put to Mary. When she got up the next morning, Mary had gone. For good.’

‘Didn’t leave a note or anything?’

‘Only this one. Which took weeks to find me. I came back at once, but of course it was all too late.’

I expect you guessed I’m writing to ask a favour. You were always so strong Muriel and I cant go back on my own.

You see I’ve got a baby now.

30 Directionality

NOT THAT JANE was fooled or anything. This woman was a former barrister. Barristers defended people they knew were guilty and prosecuted people they guessed were innocent. You didn’t need to watch much TV to know that.

You didn’t trust barristers, you paid them. And if someone else was paying, you’d mean less than nothing to them. They’d take you apart with merciless precision and discard the bits.

OK, Siân was a priest now, but you could still sense this kind of – to borrow a stupid word from one of those hi-gloss US forensic shows – directionality. Focus. Everything she said was coming from somewhere down in the small print of her personal agenda.

Like, when Jane was showing her round the vicarage, entering the nest of rooms around the back stairs, Siân going, ‘It’s awfully large, isn’t it? For just the two of you.’

Translating as, Even in its present condition, we could flog this place for well over half a million and put you in a bungalow.

With no attics and no apartment.

‘Well, you know, I used to think that, too,’ Jane had said, ‘but that was before we had to take people in. Like deliverance cases? People who think they’re mad? Need a big house for that, so nobody can hear the screams.’

Knowing as soon as it was out that, if she’d been in the witness box, Siân would have dismantled her. Having studied all the cases in her capacity as Deliverance Coordinator, she’d know this was not even loosely true. Well, except for …

‘Like, Dexter Harris?’ Jane pointing at the blackened oak beam where a door had once hung at the bottom of the stairs. ‘That was where he … you know …’

‘Yes, I heard about that. Regrettable.’

‘Mum had to do the necessary, for quite a few nights afterwards, to make sure there was no, like, detritus?’

‘Yes, I’m sure she would have felt that was necessary.’

Like, Your mother is a superstitious idiot.

It really hadn’t been easy last night, having to watch what you said all the time, looking for the loaded questions. Now, with dusk and rain seeping in, Jane, in her old parka, airline bag over a shoulder, was standing between the oak pillars of the market hall, looking across at the vicarage, psyching herself up before going home. Except it wasn’t really home at all, right now, was it?

After school, she’d slipped into Leominster in the vain hope that Woolies might have any CD by Sufjan Stevens who, she’d just discovered, was sufficiently like Lol to be interesting. Catching the last bus back to Ledwardine, predictably Sufjanless, she’d realized this had been just an excuse to shorten the evening.

The hardest bit of all was when Mum rang and Jane, taking it from the privacy of her apartment, had been like, Oh, no, fine, she’s really quite nice. We had a long chat about how she’d wanted to be a barrister from the age of about eight.

Mum trying hard to conceal her dismay, Jane going, Hey, Mum, it’s not my fault she wasn’t being a bitch. Knowing that if she’d come out with the truth, Mum would be on edge the whole time, imagining this cataclysmic row exploding, Jane screaming at Siân. Mum imagined her daughter was still fifteen or something and had no subtlety. But Jane was changing. She had to.

During the lunch hour, she’d called the vicarage from the school library stockroom, borrowing Kayleigh Evans’s mobile in case Siân checked. Getting the answering machine and deepening her voice, sounding posh, she’d asked for the time of the wonderfully inspiring meditation service and would it really be all right if someone from outside the parish attended, she’d heard it was always so packed.

A few more calls like that, carefully spaced, would do no harm at all. Maybe a toned-down Scottish accent next time. Go careful, though, because this woman was …

… oops, coming out.

Jane stiffened. It was strange, almost surreal, watching another woman cleric emerging from the vicarage drive. Siân had on a dark belted coat, unbuttoned, over her cassock, the dog collar luminous and her pewter hair gleaming in the lights from the square. Walking purposefully, with directionality, up towards the church through sporadic rain.

On the edge of the square, Siân was ambushed by Brenda Prosser from the Eight till Late. Nobody else was about, so Jane could hear most of what they were saying.

‘Yes, I am indeed,’ Siân said. ‘We couldn’t leave Ledwardine without a priest for a whole week, could we?’

‘Well, you know, I hadn’t seen her since church on Sunday,’ Brenda said, ‘and I thought she might be ill or something. She works a bit too hard, I think, sometimes.’

Well, thank you, Brenda.

‘Merrily is very conscientious,’ Siân said. ‘Now, I know you’re at the shop, Mrs Prosser, and I fully intend—’

‘Oh, quite a few years now, Mrs Clarke. Came over from Mid-Wales, we did, when my husband was made—’

‘Only— I hope you don’t think I’m being terribly rude, but I did arrange to meet someone at the church at six o’clock, and I’ve just realized I’m going to be late.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry—’

‘No, it’s not your—’

Meet someone? Hadn’t taken her long to get her feet under the table, had it? And why not meet whoever it was at the vicarage?

Unsettling as the situation may appear, trust your instincts, listen to your inner voice and by next week’s climactic conjunction of—

Jane’s horoscope in the Sunday Times.

Right. Sod this.

Pulling up the hood of her parka, transferring the airline bag to her left shoulder, she came out from behind the pillar, walking directly towards Siân and Brenda. And then, drawing the fur trim across her face, she was gliding anonymously past them towards the end of the square. Crossing the street, slipping under the lych-gate and running through the spitting rain down to the church, calculating that the lower door would be unlocked because Tuesday night was choir practice.

It always felt better sidling in by the smaller door. OK, she might be coming around to accepting the sense and the structure and the basic morality of Christianity, but she couldn’t imagine ever going the whole way, not even when she was old and scared; it lacked thrills, wasn’t sexy.

And yet its buildings were, somehow. The church yawned around her, that sudden sense of live air you never quite got used to. The secondary lights were on, high in the rafters.

Jane didn’t move until she was sure that all the pews were empty. Then padding down the aisle, listening for footsteps, voices. Sliding into the Bull Chapel. Always a good place to hide; if anyone came in, you could slide around the wooden screen to where the organ was and then out through the chancel.

The effigy on the tomb of Thomas Bull, long-dead squire figure, had a naked sandstone sword by its side and, instead of the eyelids being humbly lowered, the eyes were wide open, part of this self-satisfied half-smile.

Lowering herself into the only pew, Jane smiled back: Don’t smirk at me, pal, your family counts for zilch these days.

Siân’s meeting, she was thinking maybe Uncle Ted. Retired solicitor – maybe he’d even worked with Siân?

Ted in senior churchwarden mode was a hypocritical old sod, suspicious of Mum’s deliverance role, for ever whingeing that she should be devoting all her energies to the parish. Ted would love that the village was getting increasingly upper-middle-class, and given the choice between ancient stones and executive homes in Coleman’s Meadow …

He’d sell you down the river. Jane patted Tom Bull’s eroded cheek, hoping his bones were twisting and tangling up in fury. Turn this chapel into a wine bar.

She jumped as the main doors creaked, and they came in together, the famous acoustics soon making it clear that this wasn’t Uncle Ted.

31 No Smoke

THERE WASN’T MUCH doubt at all, any more, was there?

‘Let me try to understand this,’ Merrily said. ‘Mary was writing to you from Tepee City.’

‘Yes.’

Mrs Morningwood was squatting on the floor now, arms around the dog, face in deep shadow, Roscoe panting. Merrily picked up the letter.

‘She wanted to meet you back at Garway. She wanted you to go with her to the Master House – because you’re the strong one. And yet you read this … and it doesn’t seem right.’

It’s in my dreams, Muriel. I thought I’d got away but I cant. When I was having the baby it was terrible, the dreams I was having then I cant tell you. Rachel who was looking after me said it was just the hormones and they got Rick who was a priest to pray with me and it was all right for a while but then it started again after the baby was born.

‘She’s had a very bad time at the Master House and yet she wants to go back?

‘She needs to deal with it,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘And now it’s different. Now she isn’t the only one affected.’

The baby cries too much. The baby cries day and night. I cant get no sleep and when I do the dreams start.

The baby cries whenever shes WITH ME. Thats not how it should be! It really frightens me! Please help me Muriel! Theres nobody else I can go to to do what I need to do.

‘You agreed to meet her? You replied saying you’d—’

‘I didn’t waste time replying, I came back. Drove across to West Wales, found this rather pathetic community, boiling their drinking water from the ditches. She’d left. Nobody knew where she’d gone. They weren’t terribly helpful.’

‘Nobody told you about a baby, then.’

‘Not a word. Probably thought I was a spy from Social Services.’

‘And you never heard from her again.’

‘Nobody did. And then, of course, while I was in Wales, something else happened. The police carried out their famous dawn raid on the Master House, removing quantities of drugs … and the future Lord Stourport.’

‘Just Lord Stourport? He carried the can?’

‘Couple of others, I think. Nonentities. There were said to be some more people involved in the activities, but not living in. They may have got away minutes before the police broke the door down. A dawn raid tends to be less effective when its targets are habitually not going to bed until dawn.’

‘Have you still got the original letter?’

‘Somewhere. It was getting worn with repeated, agonized readings, so I retyped it, word for word. Preserving the erratic application of the apostrophe, as you may have noticed.’

‘And this is all of it? I mean, is this all she said? No explanation of exactly what happened to her at the Master House.’

‘No, it … perhaps she’d explained in a previous letter that went astray. That seems the most likely explanation.’

‘Or that she didn’t want to put it in a letter anyone might read. Or that she couldn’t bear to write about it. What’s all this about money? Look at the money your getting.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The people at the Master House seem to have been paying her. For what?’

‘Evidently not merely as a housekeeper.’

‘No local gossip about it?’

‘Of course there was gossip. Sex, drugs, orgies. But nobody really knew.’

‘What about Lord Stourport? What’s happened to him?’

‘Became some kind of rock-music promoter, putting on concerts and festivals and making a ridiculous amount of money. Last I heard of him he was languishing at his family seat in Warwickshire – I think he acceded to the title within a few years of coming out of prison. I actually wrote to him once asking if he remembered Mary Roberts. Had quite a polite, civilized reply – under the circumstances he could hardly deny he’d been at the Master House – saying there’d been quite a number of young women at the house over the months and, to his shame, he didn’t really remember their names.’

‘That figures.’

‘Lying, I don’t doubt, but, darling, what could I do? You know what always haunted me?’

‘The thought that Mary might have gone back to the Master House without you?’

‘You’re very perceptive.’

‘It’s …’ Merrily shrugged ‘… It’s what would’ve haunted me, too. Look, the only thing that occurs to me – if she’s out there, she’s likely to have heard about what happened to Fuchsia. I shouldn’t think it’s made that much impact in the national press, but it’s not a common name, is it, Fuchsia Mary Linden, and if Mary is out there …’

‘You mean if she’s still alive.’

‘You’re fairly sure that Fuchsia was conceived at the Master House?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘So her father could be Lord Stourport himself? The story Felix gave me was that the father had gone to America. But that’s the sort of thing Mary might just say to forestall questions. And you were obviously wondering about Felix himself.’

‘I was simply thinking of reasons why the girl might suddenly have wanted to smash in the skull of the man she was living with.’ Mrs Morningwood waved an unlit cigarette. ‘Might she simply have found out, coming here, that Barlow was at the Master House at the same time as her mother? The same time, in fact, as her mother got pregnant?’

‘With the worst will in the world, I really don’t think we’re looking at an incestuous relationship.’

‘Some strange and complex alliances are formed, Watkins. I merely floated the possibility.’

‘Yeah, well, I feel fairly confident about sinking it. If Felix was Fuchsia’s father, why would he tender for the building contract at the Master House in the first place and bring her with him? Wouldn’t a few people have recognized him?’

‘Hmm.’ Mrs Morningwood sniffed. ‘Stourport’s people didn’t exactly mix in the community, but I take your point. It would have to be unusually perverse – especially whilst employed by the Duchy of Cornwall.’

‘Who were the other girls Lord Stourtport mentioned?’

‘I … I’ve no idea. I suppose you didn’t have to be able to change a washer to get a bed at the Master House. You could also be a woman. And probably didn’t have to be all that good-looking either, towards the end, when everyone was perpetually stoned.’

‘No idea where Mary got to, between walking out on your mother for the last time and turning up in Tepee City? She must’ve been introduced to the community.’

‘I have no idea. Tell me – why do you think Fuchsia did it – killed Barlow?’

‘Don’t know. It’s why I’m here. Partly.’

Roscoe hauled himself up, stretched and wandered over to Merrily, tail waving. She stood up.

‘He wants me to go. Would it be his dinner time?’

‘You’re very perceptive,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

‘I wanted to be a vet when I was a kid. And then discovered about all the pets they had to put down.’ She patted Roscoe, didn’t need to bend. ‘It’s surprising how well behaved he is, isn’t it, when he’s not in a churchyard?’

‘Good icebreakers, dogs.’ Mrs Morningwood smiled, disarmingly girlish in the glow from the range. ‘Had to get your attention somehow. I thought – and still do – that you would be my best bet for finding out … not only what happened to Mary, but … other things I can’t quite put my finger on. The girl showing up like that, after all these years …’

‘And then you made sure you kept our attention by telling Jane just what she wanted to hear about the mysteries of Garway.’

‘It was all true.’

‘What – including the gruesome tale of Mrs Newton laid out in her coffin to be pawed by the whole village?’

‘That was true … in essence. Garway was almost certainly the last village in Herefordshire to maintain the Watch Night traditions.’

‘So which bits did you exaggerate?’

‘Well, it … wasn’t the whole village. Just a few neighbours. But I really didn’t like the place and like it even less since Mary disappeared. Whatever you propose to do there, it needs it. What will you do?’

‘I was thinking some form of Requiem Eucharist.’

‘A Mass?’

‘A service for the repose of the dead. Thinking originally of Felix and Fuchsia but, from what you’ve said, we could be looking at something more extensive. Mrs Morningwood, look … thank you for all you’ve done. I do feel better. If a bit tired.’

Face it: without the reflexology, she’d most likely be on her way home by now, driving slowly, popping aspirins.

‘That’s normal, that’s good. You need to come back in a couple of days, have it topped up … and, of course, tell me what you’ve found out. This Requiem Eucharist – would that aim to deal with what one might term evil residue?’

‘Evil residue?’

‘Those accusations of heresy and idolatry against the Templars – no smoke without fire. We get people here, a handful every year, poking around, taking measurements in the church. Freemasons, some of them, believing themselves to be the inheritors of the Templar legacy. Idiots in robes, sometimes. Think about what might’ve destroyed Mary’s sleep. What they were doing to her. What continued to throw a shadow over her wherever she went.’

‘Well …’ Merrily picked up her bag. ‘The Eucharist can be very powerful. I need to go away and think about it.’

They walked out of the cottage, Roscoe between them, into a greyness of fields, a blackness of woodland. Two windows were lit up at Mrs Morningwood’s end of the terrace, the rest of it dead, like a neon sign in which most of the letters had fused.

‘What are the neighbours like?’

‘Absolute worst kind.’ Mrs Morningwood snorted. ‘These are all holiday cottages. We were isolated in Garway at one time, but now it’s getting just like everywhere else – local youngsters priced out by London lawyers and stockbrokers and junior government ministers here for an average of about three weeks a year. Three out of four in a single terrace, all so-called weekend cottages, and the bastards wonder why we have a housing crisis. Answer is, we don’t, we’re simply top-heavy with self-indulgent second-bloody-homers.’

Merrily stood looking back at the terrace. An empty holiday home conveyed its own distinctive form of dereliction. But then, what right did she have to moralize, her and Jane rattling around in their seven-bedroom vicarage?

‘I can’t get my bearings up here.’ Eyes adjusting now, she looked away, along the limited horizon, hills concealed by the woods. ‘Where’s the church?’

‘The church – this church – is always closer than you think,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Go carefully, Watkins.’

32 Hysterical Frenzy

‘… FOR AGREEING TO meet me, Canon.’

A woman.

‘My pleasure. That’s what I’m here for.’

‘You see, it’s difficult—’

‘And let me say that, although I’m only here for a few days and you don’t really know me at all, you can safely tell me anything you would have told Merrily.’

Safely. Jane glared at Tom Bull. Oh yeah.

‘Mrs Clarke—’

‘Look, it’s all right.’

‘No … this is about Merrily, you see.’

Jane stood up quickly, her back to the wooden screen.

‘I think we’d better sit down,’ Siân said firmly, and Jane, well out of sight, automatically sat down again, before realizing.

‘I’ve agonized about this, you see,’ the woman was saying, really intense. ‘When I heard that a very senior minister had taken over for a few days, I knew what I had to do. I said to myself, you’re not going to get a better opportunity than this, are you? In fact, to be honest, I thought … well, I thought this was a sign from God.’

‘I see,’ Siân said.

Oh sure. Like she’d believe in signs from God. Jane stood tensed against the wooden screen, airline bag at her feet, hands clenched into fists, pushing at the pockets of her parka, listening to it all coming out, this senseless stream of totally unfounded bollocks. No sublety at all, no restraint, no … no basic intelligence.

‘… I know people were beginning to have their doubts when she reduced the number of hymns at the morning worship from three to two. Hymns are traditional, aren’t they? Songs of praise we all know. And the church I went to before, there was always an evensong.’

‘Well, yes,’ Siân said, ‘I’m afraid quite a few parishes have had to dispense with it, mainly due to falling congregations, especially in the winter. Many people really don’t like leaving their firesides and, indeed, in some places, simply don’t feel safe any more going out after dark. Especially the elderly.’

‘But replacing it with this so-called service of meditation?’

‘It seems to be rather popular.’

‘But it’s not Christian, is it, Canon Clarke? It’s eastern religion, that’s what it is. Sitting there in a circle with candles, men and women, dressed in … in casual clothing, so-called opening themselves up …’

‘Well, you know, there is a fairly well-established tradition of Christian medi—’

‘Not in the Bible!’

‘Well that depends on how you— However—’

Siân, you had to give her some credit, was doing her best, but you could hear the woman’s voice rising higher, when she wasn’t getting the reactions she’d obviously expected, the accusations getting wilder, crazier. Jane getting madder.

‘… And I think what offends many of us is the way she makes no attempt to conceal her private life, which is not … Well, she has a boyfriend, see, and there’s no doubt – no doubt at all – that they’re sleeping together out of wedlock. A priest! What kind of example is that setting to young people?’

Jane fought for control. All the time and energy she’d spent bringing Mum and Lol together, and this small-minded—

‘At least, she’s one of the women he’s sleeping with. He’s a so-called musician, see, a rock musician of some kind, and we all know the level of their morality.’

‘I’m sorry, Shirley, I’m not sure I understand precisely what you’re saying here.’

Shirley?

‘Well, I’ll tell you, Canon. My brother overheard some young women talking in the Black Swan. They were drunk, as so many of these young women are today, and one of them said she … well, there are words I will not use in church, or anywhere else, but she seemed very much to be implying to her friends that she’d had sexual congress with this man.’

Jane froze up, Thomas Bull smiling at her, and she wanted to kick his smug face in. The despicable, small-time viciousness of this village. Anyone who really knew Lol. But they didn’t want to, did they? They just watched from behind their curtains and muttered and fantasized.

She wanted to storm out there, snatch this bitch out of her pew, point out that people like her were the reason the Church was dying on its Celtic foundations, losing what was left of its real spirituality. Haul her to the door and throw her out.

‘And the smoking. It’s not nice, is it? There’s no excuse any more, all the help that’s available. It’s a sign of weakness. I’ve seen her smoking in the churchyard, with the gravedigger. It’s a public place. I could have them arrested.’

Jane let her face fall into her hands.

‘… And you do know, I suppose, that she’s supporting these people who want to reinstate a pagan temple?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Siân said. ‘A pagan temple?’

‘In the field where they were going to build a housing estate? Starter homes for our young people.’

Executive homes, you ignorant …

‘Nobody can tell me that those stones were not buried for a good reason.’

‘Oh, the stones,’ Siân said. ‘I see.’

‘You would expect our parish priest to oppose that on principle.’

No reply from Siân. She must surely have realized by now the level of insanity she was dealing with here.

‘And if it wasn’t for the daughter …’

‘Jane?’

‘The daughter – well, that explains a lot.’

‘You’ve rather left me behind here, Shirley.’

Shirley.

Shirley West. Mum had talked about this woman a few times, Jane only half-listening because this had been Mum as doormat: feeling obliged to help someone whose attentions had become kind of smothering. Just another vicar-hugger, Jane had figured. And all the time, behind Mum’s back …

‘Put it this way,’ Shirley West said. ‘How often do we see the daughter in church?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

‘Never!’

Jane had to hold on to the screen to prevent herself from walking out there and going, Not quite never.

‘Believe me, Canon Clarke, she’s had a terrible time with that girl. Hated the idea of her mother becoming ordained and has just … gone out of her way to make her life a misery. Impossible to control, absolutely no respect … and this is not gossip, Canon, I’ve had this from a respected public figure. This girl and that old man who digs the graves and smokes, they were very nearly arrested for vandalizing the buildingsite in Coleman’s Meadow, did you know that? She was in a kind of hysterical frenzy.’

‘Shirley, I …’ Siân paused. ‘Regrettable as all this might be, I’m afraid you’d probably find similar situations in the homes of over half the clergy in this diocese. Most teenagers go through a period of rebellion against their parents’ values. The only consolation being that if children are left to make up their own minds, without being pressurized, they will often find their own way into what we still like to think of as the fold.’

‘But is it?’

‘I’m sorry …’

‘Is it a rebellion? Because Merrily is involved with the other business, isn’t she? Ghosts and the demonic.’

‘You mean deliverance.’

‘Which is to do with the occult. I’ve been in the vicarage, Canon Clarke, I’ve seen the occult books on the shelves.’

‘Well, she’s had to study all that, Shirley. She’s had to go into areas of study that many people would find distasteful.’

‘But does she?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Does she find it distasteful? I’ve talked to people about this. I have many Christian friends all over the country. My information is that this is a job that’s always been done by men before. She was probably the first woman exorcist in the country, that’s my information. And she’s also the first that I – or any of my friends in the church – have known to introduce this so-called meditation. This opening up of a congregation to unseen presences.’

‘I don’t think you’ll find it’s that uncommon nowadays. As for deliverance being a male preserve, just a few years ago, the whole ministry—’

‘I think we have to look at all these things together – the interest in exorcism … the meditation … the pagan temple … and the near-Satanism practised by the daughter. And see what it adds up to. I think it adds up to a terrible danger.’

The silence was so absolute that Jane could hear her own breathing. Jesus, this was not a joke.

She made eye contact with Tom Bull, his bearded face openly malign. Jane thought of the green man and Baphomet, anger giving way to a kind of fear of the unknown. Fear for Mum, out there on the unknown border, Lol gigging somewhere miles away. Their little nucleus fragmented, and she was alone here, in this supposedly sacred place, this sanctuary, watching the poison dripping into the chalice.

Shirley West said, ‘I think before Merrily goes around encouraging people to open themselves up, she needs to take a good look inside her own family. Don’t you?’

And then Siân, who so far had been displaying a reasonable attitude to this insanity … Siân blew it.

‘You’d better tell me everything,’ she said.

33 Turn Over Stones

OVER DINNER – RAIN rolling down the dairy’s main window, silent as tears of old grief – Merrily asked the Murrays how much they knew about the Grays and the Gwilyms.

‘Our friends either side of the great divide,’ Teddy said.

Lifting his wineglass, as if in a toast, his silhouette a magic-lantern show on the white wall behind him in the lamplight.

‘Not that you’d know it,’ Beverley said. ‘They sound exactly the same. Not as if the Gwilyms have Welsh accents, let alone speak Welsh. Well, certainly not … Oh, I never know how to pronounce that man’s name.’

‘Sycharth, Bevvie. We’re inclined to say Sickarth, but it’s Suckarth. Yes, it’s an odd thing. If someone lives just a few yards over the border in what might seem to be a very English part of Wales they become determinedly Welsh Welsh. Perfectly affable chap, though.’

‘Not that we see much of him,’ Beverley said, ‘since his business has become more Hereford-based. Rich enough now to have a farm manager.’

‘And his family owned the Master House,’ Merrily said.

‘Since medieval times, I believe.’ Teddy nodding. ‘I can certainly tell you something about that.’

His version tied in with Mrs Morningwood’s. As a result of the sudden death of the head of the family, the house had been sold around the turn of last century. The wife, embittered at the way she’d been treated over the years, had got rid of it almost before anybody noticed.

‘Causing an awful fuss, but there was nothing the Gwilyms could do,’ Teddy said.

‘But the Master House is in England.’

‘Well, yes, Merrily, but a part of England that seems to have been more Welsh, in its time, than many parts of Wales. In religious terms, particularly. Both early Welsh Christianity and Welsh Nonconformism in the nineteenth century have their roots hereabouts. And, of course, if Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion had been successful in the fifteenth century, the border would have been redrawn, putting this whole area in Glyndwr’s new, independent Wales. You do know about Glyndwr’s connection with this area?’

‘He’s supposed to have retired here, after his campaign collapsed.’

It had always seemed odd to Merrily that Glyndwr should spend his last years in the border area where he’d caused maximum damage, burning down most of the major castles. You’d have thought he’d feel safer in some Welsh heartland.

‘Hidden away, more like, with a price on his head,’ Teddy said. ‘A celebrity outlaw. His daughter, Alice, had married a Scudamore from Kentchurch Court, and they might have helped to conceal him. He was never caught, he just disappeared. There is a legend that he once hid out at the Master House – but, then, lots of places claim that connection.’

Beverley said, ‘It’s the sort of legend I imagine some of the Gwilyms liked to pretend was actual history.’

‘And they’ve been trying to … reacquire it?’ Merrily said. ‘I mean, the Master House?’

‘Periodically, yes. I’m not sure how bothered Sycharth is now.’

‘I heard he was totally hell-bent on getting it back.’

‘Well, you could be right.’ Teddy shrugged. ‘I don’t know. How are your plans going, as regards, ah …?’

‘Still thinking it would be good to get the Gwilyms and the Grays under that roof. Especially as it no longer belongs to either of them. No better time to heal old wounds.’

‘Would you like me to have a word?’

‘With?’

‘The Grays, at least. They come to church – Paul in a wheelchair now, poor chap. My feeling is that they were more than glad to get rid of that house. Whether you believe in some sort of spiritual malaise or not, they haven’t had much luck. The question is, will they come if the Gwilyms are going to be there? I don’t know. I’ll talk to them. I’ll do what I can.’

‘Thank you, Teddy.’

‘If I tell them someone from the Duchy of Cornwall will be there?’

‘I’ll try and talk to the land agent tomorrow.’

‘Not the, ah, Duke himself, presumably.’

‘At a rite of cleansing?’

‘Quite.’ Teddy smiled. ‘Although that would certainly bring both families out of their cupboards, wouldn’t it?’

‘It would also bring the Special Branch out of theirs,’ Merrily said. ‘And, on the whole, I don’t think my nerves would stand it.’

Earlier, sitting on a corner of the bed at The Ridge, with the bedside lamp on, she’d called Lol on spec, a bit surprised to catch him in.

‘I’ve been back all day,’ Lol had said patiently. ‘Last night’s gig was Brecon. Thirty miles?’

‘Of course … sorry.’

‘Old hippies and young soldiers, mainly.’

‘What?’

‘Brecon. It’s a garrison town. Plus a few girls who couldn’t have been born when Hazey Jane started.’

‘Groupies?’

‘In Brecon?’

The power of bad dreams. Merrily closed her eyes. Sometimes you could punch yourself in the mouth.

Lol said, ‘Been watching Canon Callaghan-Clarke familiarizing herself with the village landmarks: church, market hall, Black Swan, Gomer Parry …’

‘I’m sorry. Couldn’t even let you know we were getting her. Events … overtook.’

Lol had met Siân only once, last spring, during a tense and troubling evening in Ludlow Castle, when Siân had finally been exposed to the blurred reality of deliverance. Not a comfortable night, for any of them.

‘Not a problem,’ Lol said. ‘I kind of thought you’d wind up going. Under the circumstances.’

Not a problem? Why wasn’t it a problem?

‘Lol, I’m sorry, it’s … I’m still a bit tired. Got up feeling lousy and wound up having foot-reflexology. From this Mrs Morningwood. It was … strange.’

‘But it worked?’

‘Something worked. I think. It’s just knocked me out a bit. After some moments of rare clarity, I’m tired and confused again, but yeah, I feel better. Don’t knock it.’

‘Merrily—’

‘Never straightforward, this job. You turn over stones, things crawl out. You ever come across Lord Stourport?’

‘Lord …?’

‘Stourport.’

‘Well, we’ve obviously exchanged nods at various receptions,’ Lol said. ‘Buckingham Palace garden parties, that kind of …’

‘You’ve never heard of him, then.’

‘No.’

Merrily took a long breath and told him, in some detail, about Lord Stourport’s time at the Master House, his supposed connections with the music industry. About Mary Linden nearly thirty years go. It was good to talk about it, to bring it out of the dreamlike fug of the day.

‘We think she was abused.’

‘Abused how?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t know anything for certain. Or even if there was an element of fantasy. Drug-fuelled. I mean, it was a very long time ago but I really, really don’t like the feel of it.’

‘How about I ask Prof about this guy,’ Lol said.

‘Prof. Of course. That would be … What the hell is that?’

Her head wouldn’t process the clamour, but its vibration brought her to her feet.

‘You OK, Merrily?’

‘It’s …’ She started to laugh. ‘It’s a dinner gong.’

And no time to hang out of the window to smoke half a cigarette.

‘A period boarding house,’ Lol had said. ‘I so envy you.’

There was a strained kind of formality about the Murrays. As if she was a child they were in the process of adopting.

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Merrily …’ Beverley was putting out nut roast; why did non-veggies always think it had to be nut roast? ‘… You seem rather … sleepy. I was quite worried about you this morning. Now, you don’t look unwell, but you do look exhausted. And Teddy, please don’t say anything about the powerful air of God’s own country.’

‘Actually,’ Merrily said, anything to get this sensible woman off her back, ‘I had some treatment today.’

Telling them about Mrs Morningwood. No reason not to. Presumably it was a legitimate business, the reflexology.

Beverley frowned. Teddy looked intrigued.

‘It was effective? Because I’ve often thought of consulting her myself. A lot to be said for preventative therapy. Beverley’s not so sure, though, are you, Bevvie?’

Beverley didn’t reply until she’d finished serving the nut roast, the onion gravy and the veg.

‘It’s nothing to do with alternative therapy, which I’m sure has its place. I just never know quite what to think of Mrs Morningwood.’

‘In what context?’

Merrily realized how hungry she was, the body craving food, even nut roast. Beverley sat down, pushing a strand of blonde hair away from an eye.

‘Oh, you hear things. Put it this way, if Teddy was to go I’d certainly make sure I went too.’

Merrily’s fork froze just short of her lips.

‘Something of a man-eater,’ Beverley said. ‘That’s what they say, anyway.’

‘Mrs Morningwood?’

‘Always strikes me as a little … threadbare for that sort of thing. Eccentric, deranged. The way she drives around in that big Jeep, taking corners too fast. Sorry, I didn’t mean deranged, I think I meant disarranged.’

‘Can’t say anyone’s said anything to me,’ Teddy said. ‘Apart from you, of course, Bevvie.’

‘Well, they wouldn’t, now, would they?’

‘Blimey,’ Merrily said.

She ate slowly, aware, it seemed, of every spice in the roast. Aware of herself eating – that element of separation which sometimes came with extreme physical tiredness when the senses, for some reason, were still alert.

Gossip. There was, unfortunately, a place for it; it was often the most direct route to … if not the truth, then something in its vicinity. She looked at Beverley.

‘Who are we talking about, then? Mrs Morningwood and … who?’

‘Oh dear.’ Beverley pouring herself some water from a crystal jug. ‘I wish I’d never …’

‘Ah, now you’ve started …’ A slightly sinful sparkle in Teddy’s blue eyes. ‘Can’t not tell us now, Bevvie.’

He knew, of course. Merrily watched their eyes. They must surely have had this discussion before. Now they were having it again for her benefit, passing on something they thought she ought to be aware of. Especially if submitting to further reflexology.

‘Farmers. I was told,’ Beverley said.

‘Farmers plural?’ Merrily blinked. ‘I mean … how plural?’

‘Well … at least two, certainly. I suppose she has that sort of rough … edge that I imagine a certain kind of man would find attractive. Admittedly, always farmers living alone. And it never seems to lead to anything. No evidence that she’s after anyone’s money, if you see what I …’

‘An independent sort of woman,’ Teddy said. ‘Was she ever married? I’m never quite sure.’

‘In London,’ Beverley said. ‘She was in London for over twenty years. Long enough to lose her local accent, certainly. But she came back, unmarried, re-adopting her maiden name, and whatever she gets up to … is a question of roots, I suppose. They go back many generations in Garway, the Morningwoods. Whatever they do is accepted.’

‘Whatever they do?’

‘Well, her mother … oh, I hate this.’

Beverley drank some water. Teddy leaned back.

‘It’s all right, I know. The family has quite a history of what are now known as alternative remedies. Folk remedies. What were known as wise women. There’s an old tradition of nine witches of Garway, and her mother and grandmother were more in that mould. Allegedly.’

‘They were …’ Merrily looked up ‘… considered to be witches?’

‘They dispensed herbal remedies. They were also said to – no way to dress this up, I’m afraid, Merrily – assist girls who got themselves into trouble.’

‘Oh.’

‘Used to be a local social service, didn’t it? No great need for it now.’

Merrily remembered Gomer Parry’s uncharacteristic reticence on the subject of Mrs Morningwood.

Beverley looked down at her plate.

Lord Stourport – Lol was surprised to find out that he did know him. Well, knew of him, mainly – they’d met, briefly, maybe a couple of times.

‘I never realized,’ he said on the phone to Prof Levin. ‘Jimmy Hater.’

He’d called around nine p.m., when Prof habitually took a coffee break from whatever album he was mixing. Often, he would work through midnight, the cafetière at his elbow. An addictive personality, but caffeine was safer than the booze of old.

Lol said, ‘I remember he always sounded kind of upper-class, in comparison with most of the others.’

‘Real name James Hayter-Hames,’ Prof said. ‘If you were rock ’n’ roll management in the punk era, that was not a good time to let it get out that your family was even posher than Joe Strummer’s. Hayter on its own, however – that was a strong and impressive name to have. Especially if you left out the “y”.’

‘I didn’t even know about the “y” for a long time.’ Lol recalled a stocky, strutting guy, Napoleonic. ‘I used to think it was a completely made-up name, like Sid Vicious. You ever produce anything for any of Hayter’s bands?’

‘Produced, no.’

‘Engineered?’

‘For my sins. Post-punk death-metal. Not my favourite period, Laurence. Bearable at the time, with three or four bottles of red wine, God forbid, on the mixing desk. That era, I like to draw a curtain across it. Death metal – mostly foul. Jimmy Hayter – a twat.’

‘Still?’

Prof said, ‘Once a twat …’

‘Where does he live? I mean, is he accessible?’

‘Yes and no. He inherited the pile eventually, of course. It’s a responsibility. Nobody wants to besmirch the coat of arms. On the other hand, the family seat gobbles wealth. And farming, even big-time farming, doesn’t pay half the bills any more. So the earl, whatever he is now, he keeps his hand in, and when the roof falls in on the orangery or something he puts on a festival. On the very fringe of his estate, naturally. The house a mere dot on the horizon.’

‘Where is the house?’

‘I dunno, someplace south of Brum. Stratford way, possibly. I could find out.’

‘Death metal,’ Lol said. ‘A lot of occult there?’

‘Generally pseudo. Guys on Harleys, with skull rings and slash-here neck tattoos. So … occult … this would be a Merrily inquiry, would it?’

‘Would he talk to her, do you think? Say, on the phone?’

‘On the phone, Laurence, he won’t say anything worth the price of a cheap-rate call. And, frankly, the last thing you want is to expose a woman as appealing as little Merrily, with or without the dog collar, to Jimmy Hayter. Especially with his lovely wife, her ladyship, living a lavishly subsidized life in France, her physical role in his life complete … and, from what I hear, bloody grateful for that.’

‘Would he speak to me, do you think?’

‘Why should he do that?’

‘Maybe in the interests of … I don’t know … keeping the past where it belongs?’

Lol had the map book open on the desk in the window, marking out the route to a village he didn’t know, outside Gloucester. Tomorrow night’s concert: a big pub with a folk club, the kind of intimate gig which, on the whole, he preferred. He pushed the page under the lamp. How far from Stratford? Forty miles, fifty?

‘The situation is, Prof, that in his youth Jimmy Hayter seems to have been part of a commune. In a farmhouse down on the Welsh Border. Some of what they might have got up to … it would help Merrily to know about that.’

‘Might have got up to?’ Prof said. ‘What’s that mean? Do I like the sound of that? I don’t. What does Merrily say?’

‘She says it gives her a bad feeling.’

‘Never dismiss a woman’s feelings, good or bad,’ Prof said, and Lol could hear the clink of the beloved and necessary cafetière, the slurping of the brown elixir. Then a silence, then, ‘Jesus, Lol, you need to understand, you must not threaten this man.’

‘Don’t take the glasses off, then?’

‘Laurence, listen to me. Jimmy Hayter … stately home, dinner parties with the gentry, but the guys with the skull rings and the slash-here tattoos, they still dig his garden, you know what I’m saying?’

34 Shaman

TEDDY WAS RIGHT, it had once been an accepted rural service, like blacksmithing, and there had been an opportunity for Muriel Morningwood to talk about it and she hadn’t.

My mother would awake in the morning to hear her throwing up. Coming to the obvious conclusion. Which she put to Mary.

Merrily lay on the bed, gazing up at the wardrobe. Just a wardrobe, mesh over its ventilation slits, nothing like Garway Church.

There was a different light, now, on Mrs Morningwood Senior’s motherly concern for Mary Linden. Finding out about Mary’s pregnancy, would she have offered to terminate it, or what? What had actually passed between them to cause Mary to leave the Morningwood house before morning?

Need to know. Did she need to know? Was this important? You kept turning over stones and uncovering other stones. At which point did you back off?

There were times when deliverance could seem like the most rewarding role in a declining Church, but it was also the most ill-defined.

It was not yet nine p.m. Needing to think about all this, Merrily had accepted Beverley’s assessment of her level of fatigue, taken herself upstairs. Had a shower, put on a clean T-shirt, lay down, her body instantly falling into relaxation … but her damn head just filling up with questions, anomalies …

Tomorrow she’d need to talk to Sycharth Gwilym. Might find him at his farm, or it might mean driving into Hereford.

Before or after facing up to Mrs Morningwood? This time, no flam, no bullshit.

She sat up. There was an electric kettle on the dressing table. She prised herself from the bed, filled the kettle in the shower room. And, of course, she needed to call Jane, perhaps talk to Siân, make sure everything was OK. Sitting on the side of the bed, she switched on the phone, and it throbbed in her hand.

Message.

‘Merrily, it’s Sophie. Could you ring me at home?’

Sounding strangely close to excited, Sophie said she might have solved the mystery of the cuttings.

‘Cuttings?’

‘Canon Dobbs, Merrily.’

‘Oh … sorry.’ Hell, the cuttings. On hands and knees on the carpet, Merrily pulled one of the overnight bags from under the bed, dug out the plastic folder. ‘I was just … going through them again.’

‘In which case, you’ve probably noticed several mentions of the late Sir Laurens van der Post.’

‘Yes.’ Scrabbling through the papers. ‘That’s, erm …’

Uncovering an article enclosing a picture of this benign-looking old guy with a grey comb-over, side-on to the camera: PRINCE’S GURU: SAGE OR CHARLATAN?

‘You haven’t read them, have you, Merrily?’

‘I …’ Merrily sighed. ‘I haven’t read them all. Things have been complicated. Just inconveniences, really. But time-consuming.’

‘Do you know anything about van der Post?’

‘This and that.’

Van der Post, Laurens: white South African who bonded with the bushmen of the Kalahari studying so-called primitive belief systems and showing what Western societies might learn from them, while drawing public attention to the horrors of apartheid.

A war hero. But known primarily, in later years, as a close friend of the Prince of Wales. A seminal influence.

‘The Church wasn’t happy,’ Merrily recalled, ‘when Charles decided he should be William’s godfather. On account of van der Post’s own belief system being not strictly C of E. Correct?’

‘He believed that all religions were, essentially, one,’ Sophie said.

‘Which possibly accounts for Charles’s declared intention of becoming Defender of Faiths, when he becomes king?’

‘Which almost certainly does account for it. The extent of van der Post’s influence can never be overstated. He was extremely mystical in a way that I suspect your … daughter would understand.’

‘Pagan?’

‘That would be too simplistic. He died in’ 96, at the age of ninety, having been far closer to the Prince in his crucial formative years than, I would guess, anyone in the Church of England. You’ll find details in the cuttings about the time they went together into the wilderness of Kenya and van der Post imparted his knowledge of … I suppose the word “shamanism” would not be inappropriate.’

‘It’s coming back to me. Closeness to the land, anyway.’

‘And the alleged … spirits of nature. Evidently a very powerful experience for a young man. They were camping out in a very remote area, without guards or detectives. And there, if you want to look for it, lies the basis of this much publicized – and possibly much misrepresented – communication with plants. It might have sown the seeds of the Prince’s passion for conservation and green issues generally.’

‘Interesting.’

What was also interesting was the way Sophie – who worked for the cathedral – talked about it, with no hint of condemnation. As if even the fringe-pagan became less obnoxious, for her, if it happened to be championed by royalty. If it ever came to a stand-off between the Church and the Crown, whose side would Sophie be on?

‘But where’s it leading, Sophie?’

‘It leads,’ Sophie said, ‘directly to Canon Dobbs. When he first came over here in, I think, the late 1920s, van der Post became a farmer in Gloucestershire for some years. Canon Dobbs grew up near Cirencester. My information is that he might even have worked on the van der Post farm as a boy, during holidays.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘I’ve been speaking to a retired clergyman – nobody you would know, so don’t ask – who knew Dobbs years ago. He said Dobbs would often talk about a South African farmer he’d known before the war who had helped to awaken his spiritual faculties.’

‘If they stayed in contact, Sophie, that doesn’t totally add up. Dobbs’s attitude to spirituality, while not exactly fundamentalist, was certainly tightly focused.’

‘Merrily, you only encountered him at the very end. We’re talking about the 1930s, when he was a boy, and Laurens van der Post a young man. They may not subsequently have followed the same spiritual paths, but in their questing years … Anyway, they were exchanging letters almost until van der Post’s death.’

‘You know this for a fact?’

‘I confirmed it about an hour ago, with Mrs Edna Rees. You remember her?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Dobbs’s housekeeper in Gwynne Street who had once told Merrily he hardly spoke to her. A cloistered existence in his later years.

‘She sometimes, in his absence, managed to clean his office,’ Sophie said. ‘And she remembers the letters.’

Merrily recalled Mrs Rees. Stolid West Herefordshire countrywoman. Shrewd.

OK, crafty.

‘She read these letters?’

‘As Canon Dobbs was apparently shutting her out – unnecessarily, she felt – I would guess she saw it as justified. How far she understood them is another matter. The parts that stuck in her mind, inevitably, were the references to the late Princess Diana.’

‘By Dobbs?’

‘It’s been widely reported, since, that Sir Laurens was not entirely in favour of that marriage. Once describing the poor child as, I recall, a pinhead.’

‘Sharing his opinions with Dobbs? Elderly men conspiring against Diana?’

‘So it seemed to Mrs Rees.’

‘A big Diana fan, I’d guess.’

‘Until then, she hadn’t really known who Laurens van der Post was.’

‘When was this?’

‘Early nineties, I would guess. Mrs Rees made it her business to find out about him – afterwards, of course. And although she insists she never discussed the correspondence with anyone from that day to this, I think she was rather glad to have finally unloaded it all on … someone.’

Someone who worked for the cathedral. And who – humiliatingly excluded, for the first time, from the Bishop’s confidence – would be bitterly identifying with Mrs Rees’s dilemma.

‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘it’s certainly fascinating from an historical perspective, but—’

‘There’s more. Mrs Rees believes something was entrusted by Sir Laurens to Canon Dobbs – information, perhaps even a package of some kind. Canon Dobbs never actually accused her of reading his mail, but a locksmith arrived one day to change the locks on his study door, and this time Mrs Rees never found the keys.’

‘Any idea what it was?’

‘There was one significant reference in the last letter she saw from Sir Laurens. He … believed he was under surveillance.’

‘Well, that would figure. Anybody that close to the heir to the throne, the security services would be bound to check him out.’

‘Yes, I suppose.’

‘I don’t know what to say about this, Sophie. It’s intriguing, but unlikely to have any bearing on what I’m supposed to be dealing with. It’s all getting too crowded for me. I just want to strip it down to the basics, get the right people in one room, hold a suitable service. I’m just a small-time cleric in the sticks – let’s not get too ambitious.’

‘Oh,’ Sophie said.

‘What?’

‘The Bishop’s here.’

‘With you now?’

‘Standing in my porch. I can see him through the window.’

‘He usually show up this time of night?’

‘No. I’m going to have to go and let him in.’

‘Of course you are.’

Jane said everything was absolutely fine which, if you knew Jane at all, meant that everything was very much not fine.

‘Can you talk? I mean, is Siân there?’

‘She’s not far away.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

‘Jane, I don’t want you handling anything.’

‘Mum, have you seen the Baphomet again? I mean, have you been back to that house?’

‘Don’t change the subject. Do I need to come back to deal with anything?’

‘Of course not. Don’t even think about it.’

‘If you need any advice,’ Merrily said, ‘you go to Lol, OK?’

‘Sure. When he’s here. Listen, if you’re going to, like, cleanse that place, it’s going to be a problem, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘The Baphomet. You’ll be taking it on. Some kind of power symbol that maybe goes back to Celtic times? The Baphomet is also a representation of the great god Pan – nature at its most merciless and ferocious. I’d be a bit careful.’

‘You watch too many weird DVDs, Jane.’

‘Yeah, well, even practising Satanists have to relax sometimes,’ Jane said. ‘Goodnight, Mum. Sleep well.’

35 Unleashed

THE SLEEP, AS Mrs Morningwood had predicted, had been deep, and there were no clinging dreams. The muted chimes of the phone awoke Merrily. She rolled out of bed, the mobile clutched, like some throbbing fledgling, in her hand. Dislodging the bedside table, the lamp wobbling, her watch falling, and then the Bishop saying, very clearly, ‘Merrily, I’m going to ask you to wind this up.’

She sank down to the floor.

‘Give me a moment, Bernie.’

On hands and knees, patting the carpet for her watch. The window was flushed with pink and orange. What the hell time was it?

‘I’m sorry if you’re not yet up and about,’ Bernie Dunmore said, ‘but I wanted to catch you before you went anywhere. After all, you didn’t even tell me you were doing this.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Didn’t tell me that you were going to stay at Garway Hill.’ His voice distant, abnormally formal. ‘In fact, my information—’

‘I couldn’t. You weren’t there.’

‘—My understanding of the situation was that you’d found some obvious discrepancies in this pitiful woman’s story which had rendered further inquiries unnecessary. You told me yourself last Saturday that you could prove fabrication.’

‘That’s not … I’m afraid that’s not true, not any more. And as for not knowing I was coming here …’ On her feet now, couldn’t believe this. ‘You wanted me to come and stay at Garway. Remember? Full attention? Need to get you a locum?’

‘I may have overreacted,’ the Bishop said.

‘That was what I thought at the time, but it’s a bit, you know … it’s a bit late now.’

‘Late?’

‘Two people died?’

She walked barefooted to the window, the valley rising into view then plunging into a mist that was opaque, like set honey. She was wide awake now, and she didn’t understand.

‘Merrily, let’s be sensible about this.’

‘I’m trying—’

‘I do know about the deaths. I also know of no one, apart, it seems, from yourself, who is connecting them, in any way, with these alleged disturbances at Garway.’

‘Bernie—’

‘Furthermore, I do not believe that it would be in the best interests either of the Diocese or the deliverance ministry if it were to become known that we were making something out of this. Do I really need to remind you why having Deliverance linked with the taking of life, whether it’s suicide or murder or, in this case, God forbid, both, is—’

‘No. You don’t.’

‘Good.’

‘And the subtext here is what, Bernie?’

‘Just come home,’ the Bishop said, as though she was abroad. ‘Administer a blessing, if you think it’s necessary, and then come back. There are other issues we need to discuss. Organizational issues. Re organization.’

‘Of parishes?’

‘Merrily, I don’t want to get into this over the phone, it’s very early days, and you know how I feel about it. I generally think you’ve been doing a terrific job under less than ideal conditions, and I don’t want to see your position prejudiced …’

‘Is this something to do with Siân Callaghan-Clarke? Does Sophie know about it?’

‘It’s nothing to do with Siân, essentially, and I talked to Sophie last night—’

‘Essentially?’

‘—And asked her not to telephone you until I’d spoken to you myself. I’ve also, in the meantime, spoken to the Duchy who are a little worried about what might have been unleashed.’

‘Unleashed?’

‘You, Merrily. We unleashed you. Or rather I did.’

‘I …’ She rubbed her eyes; maybe she wasn’t actually awake. ‘I’m sorry, would you mind spelling this out for me, Bishop? Preferably in big coloured nursery letters?’

‘Traditionally …’ Bernie Dunmore hesitated; his uncertainty was almost audible. ‘Traditionally, the role of the deliverance ministry has been in the way of … of administering balm to what might be seen as an open wound – a psychic wound, if we must. You’ve displayed a tendency to go beyond the brief. Which, in normal circumstances, is not necessarily a bad thing. However …’

‘You’re saying you don’t consider these to be normal circumstances. This case might be tiptoeing around the edges of national-security issues. Which are obviously more important than the little lives of ordinary people.’

‘Merrily, please don’t make this more difficult than it—’

‘Has a detective called Jonathan Long been to talk to you, by any chance?’

‘No. I’ve never heard of a detective called Jonathan Long.’

‘All right.’ Merrily sat down on the bed. ‘I accept that you might not be able to tell me if he had been round. But if you could listen for just half a minute? Yes, initially, the evidence did suggest an element of scam. But now … now I feel strongly – and sometimes you have to run with feelings – that there’s something that needs looking into.’

‘Then let someone else look into it.’

‘You really think someone else is going to?’

‘That’s not your problem.’

‘I can’t believe you said that. Look, give me one more day, and I’ll submit a written report which I’ll email to Sophie so it’s on your desk by ten o’clock tomorrow. It will explain exactly why – with the underlying issues here – I feel this is not something we can, in all conscience, ignore.’

‘Merrily, you clearly haven’t been listening.’

‘And – as you’ve accepted that there should be at least a blessing at the Master House – there’s at least one person I need to talk to before I can organize it.’

‘And that would be …?’

‘His name’s Sycharth Gwilym.’

‘Mrs Watkins,’ the Bishop said, ‘the only thing I want to see on Sophie’s desk tomorrow morning is the Reverend Murray’s bill. Tell him we’ll pay him for the full five days.’

‘This is totally—’

‘I most certainly don’t want you to talk to anyone else. Please humour me. Pack your case.’

‘Bishop, be honest. I think we’ve always been honest with one another. Have you been – how can I put this? – got at?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Merrily saw her watch glinting underneath the bedside table, bent and retrieved it, peered at the face and was initially relieved. It wasn’t yet ten minutes past seven. She knew the Bishop always rose early these days, but this was …

‘I’m sorry,’ Merrily said. ‘That was a bit offensive.’

Dead silence.

He’d hung up.

Christ.

Jane had been down since seven. In the cold kitchen, fully dressed for school. She’d fed Ethel, put the kettle on, was spooning tea into the pot when Siân Callaghan-Clarke appeared in the doorway, wearing a silk dressing gown – sea green, very expensive, almost swish.

‘Good morning.’

Jane took a breath.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m not sure it is.’

She’d avoided Siân last night, claiming that she had essays to do and escaping to the apartment, where she seemed to have lain awake half the night, replaying the drab, whiny voice of Shirley West. Listening to edited highlights of her own history, twisted by an expert.

Siân walked into the kitchen, pulled out a cane chair near the head of the refectory table and sat down, gathering her robe across her knees. This was where Mum would have lit a cigarette. Siân didn’t move. Jane pulled down two mugs.

‘Sorry. I’ve forgotten. Is it one sugar?’

‘It’s no sugar, Jane.’

‘Right.’ Might have guessed. ‘I’ve only just put the kettle on, so it’ll be a minute or two.’

‘Thank you.’

‘OK,’ Jane said. There was no clever way of dealing with this. ‘Here’s the situation. I was in the church last night, while you were talking to that woman. I was in the Bull Chapel. Behind the screen.’

‘I know,’ Siân said.

Jane stared at her. Siân’s sleek metallic hair was brushed back from her face, which had surprisingly few lines, even first thing in the morning, and no expression. A barrister face.

‘I was mildly concerned …’ a barrister tone of voice ‘… when you didn’t get off the school bus at what I’d been advised was the appointed time and I didn’t like to leave the house until you were home. I know you aren’t, strictly speaking, my responsibility, but I did think it wise to wait until the last possible moment. When I eventually saw you on the square, I decided it was safe to leave. And when you walked directly past me and Mrs … I’m sorry, I …’

‘Prosser.’

‘Yes, of course. When you walked directly past us – particularly Mrs Prosser – without saying a word and with your face concealed, I rather anticipated your intentions.’

Shit.

‘Look,’ Jane said, ‘I just …’

‘You were curious.’

‘I was suspicious.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, I …’ Jane tossed the spoon onto the worktop. ‘Oh, for—’

‘Come and sit down, Jane.’

‘I’m not going to apologize.’

‘What have you to apologize about? You were simply – I would guess – trying to protect your mother.’

Jane said nothing. Siân steepled her fingers.

‘Jane, there are certain issues on which Merrily and I are unlikely ever to agree but, for what it’s worth, I suspect the level of my regard for her somewhat exceeds the level of hers for me.’

Siân’s smile was kind of wan and regretful. Jane didn’t know how to respond and didn’t.

‘I realize that I would hardly have been her first choice for looking after the parish,’ Siân said. ‘She was probably dismayed?’

‘Erm, yeah.’

Jane sat down, near the bottom of the table. Couldn’t get anything right at the moment, could she? Walked right into this one, thinking she was going to nail Callaghan-Clarke first thing in the morning, while her senses were fuddled.

As if.

The tables had been turned, Jane stitched up like a unreliable witness in the box. Stitched herself up, in fact. Mum might almost have predicted it last night: Jane, I don’t want you handling anything.

Siân Callaghan-Clarke, practised in silence, just sat there. Waiting for you to dig yourself further in.

‘OK …’ Jane proceeded with extreme caution. ‘If you knew I was there, in the church … why did you get her to go through it all? All the stuff about me being a not-so-closet pagan, worshipping the goddess in the vicarage garden.’

‘Do you?’

‘No. I mean, I did once, maybe a couple of times, in a half-hearted kind of way, but not any more. And, like, all the stuff about me having an altar in the attic and, like, chanting and trying to raise dark forces, that is total crap. I wouldn’t do that. I mean, OK, I thought about it … an altar. But only as a kind of a focus point. I didn’t … I mean, I was just a kid.’

‘A teen-witch?’

‘Never that much of a kid, Siân.’

‘My apologies.’

‘And, for heaven’s sake, it’s not satanic, is it? She’s making the fundamental mistake that all these ignorant fundamentalists— I mean, Satanism’s just a perverse reversal of Christianity. It doesn’t even qualify as any kind of paganism.’

‘Yes, Jane, I have read my deliverance handbook. And – since you ask – the reason I invited Shirley to pour out everything was that I thought it might help if we both knew the extent of it. There’s one in every parish, Jane. Often more than one – a faction, even.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Probably harmless most of the time, but she needs watching. She might well be used, for instance, by opponents of the plan to re-erect your standing stones in Coleman’s Meadow.’

‘Right.’

‘Although I wouldn’t imagine it would improve their case to any great extent.’

‘No.’

‘Well …’ Siân sat back. ‘And there was I, feeling rather pleased with my success at drawing Shirley out in a way that perhaps wouldn’t have been open to Merrily. I’m sorry you felt the need to put a rather different interpretation on it.’

Jane sagged in her chair.

‘But I’m glad you brought it up this morning,’ Siân said. ‘It says something about you.’

‘Like that I’m a totally immature idiot who shouldn’t be allowed out?’

‘I think the tea should be almost brewed by now,’ Siân said. ‘Would you like to pour for us, Jane? And have you eaten yet, or were you waiting for me?’

Jane stood up and went over to the worktop. Taking the opportunity – which the bloody woman had obviously deliberately just given her – to hide her reddening face.

‘I just want to say, in case you were wondering …’ talking into the mugs ‘… All that stuff about Lol and other women …’

‘It’s nonsense, of course.’

‘You …’ Jane looked up. ‘You do believe that?’

‘I met Mr Robinson once,’ Siân said. ‘He wasn’t what I might have expected.’

‘No. No, he isn’t. Look …’ Jane started talking, in this great, hot rush, before she could stop herself. ‘Why are you really here? Why did you offer to come?’

‘Why do you think I’m here?’

Lawyers. Always elegantly turning your questions around.

All right, then.

‘Mum thinks … that there’s a possibility they’re putting together some kind of carve-up? And that she’s going to end up with about eight parishes and lose the deliverance thing. Or it gets divided up and, like, run by a committee?’

‘I see.’

‘I don’t suppose I should’ve said that, but, you know …’

‘Why not? It’s true.’

‘Oh.’

‘There is such a proposal, and I have been asked to make an unofficial report.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Right.’

Siân shrugged.

In the end, the bedroom had been too small to contain Merrily’s emotions. She came out of the shower room and dressed in a hurry: jeans, sweatshirt, trainers. Within ten minutes, she was at the foot of the stairs, sliding back the bolt on the front door of The Ridge, letting herself out into a breeze swollen with rain.

It wasn’t cold and, physically, she was feeling much better. Still slightly … well, not weak exactly, but a bit tender, a bit raw.

Oh, come on … very bloody raw.

The blowing rain was stinging Merrily’s face. Like the Bishop’s veiled threats.

Threats? From good old easygoing Bernie Dunmore? Could she possibly have misheard?

I don’t want to see your position prejudiced.

No. It wasn’t even subtle. It wasn’t veiled at all.

And she’d thought she knew him. Thought he was a friend. But a friend would have said, Come over and we’ll talk about this. There are some things I can’t say on the phone. He hadn’t said that. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all. There were other issues they needed to discuss. Of an administrative nature.

And if it was hard to fire an incompetent vicar, it was a lot less complicated to remove a deliverance consultancy from someone who tended to go beyond the brief.

The mist was lifting over the woods in the valley, the landscape forming in a watercolour wash as Merrily walked down the steps to the parking area and the intersecting footpaths, one up to the hill, one down to the church. Behind her the steep, tawny house was silent. Nobody about yet. No real need to be; she was the only guest, and she hadn’t exactly been demanding an early breakfast.

Maybe, by nine, she’d feel up to talking to people.

And then what?

She could go, on her own, to the Master House, suitably attired and equipped with holy water. A straightforward room-by-room blessing. An end to it. Or merely a reprieve, because Bernie Dunmore would know there’d be no easy retrieval of their old relationship.

On which basis, she might just as well ignore the bastard’s instructions and go in search of Sycharth Gwilym.

Angry now, but she cooled it. She unlocked the Volvo, reached behind the driving seat for her waterproof and then, on impulse, tossed it back and climbed in, switched on the engine and let the car slide away, down the hill.

Merrily drove slowly, although there was no other traffic around, not even a tractor or a quad bike. She was looking for a lay-by, a field entrance, a patch of grass verge wide enough to park on. She needed to sit alone somewhere. And listen.

… This sieve of our own needs, desires, fears … what we’re afraid they might really be saying. We’re processing the words, analysing. Our minds are taking an active role. We’re not listening.

In a service with no sermon, it had probably been the best sermon she’d delivered all year.

She needed to listen. She took a left turn, high hedges either side, trees still laden with a summerload of leaves. The point of the tower of Garway Church, with its bent cross, appeared over the trees.

Why not?

Weighted as it was with the density of the Templars, it was still a church, and Merrily wondered if it was open yet.

Never did find out, though, because that was when the dog ran in front of the car.

36 Only Darkness

SHE’D PULLED HARD into the verge, a thorny hedge screeching against the Volvo’s side panels, its scratchy mesh compressed against the window. Finishing up in a cage of brambles, with a back wheel in a shallow ditch and the engine stalled.

Oh God, no …

She’d been travelling at well under thirty m.p.h., but the road was wet and the brakes were spongy. She’d slammed on and gone into a skid on the overflowing verge of grass and mud, letting go of the steering wheel as she was flung back into the seat, the frayed belt slipping and cutting into the side of her neck.

What was she doing in the bloody car, anyway? Driving off in a self-righteous fury. Resentment. Inflated self-esteem. They can’t treat me like this.

Releasing the belt, she inched painfully across the slanting seat, over the gear lever and the handbrake, to reach the passenger-door handle, pushing the door open.

Climbing out and staggering around to the front of the Volvo, Merrily went down on her knees, half-sick with dread, looking underneath.

Couldn’t see. The grass was still knee-high on the verge, around the bumper. She had to lie down on the wet tarmac, edging between the front wheels and …

… Face it, there was unlikely to be more than one Irish wolfhound in this part of Garway.

‘Roscoe?’

With one wheel in the ditch, the other on the edge, the big car was tilted in the undergrowth, its belly hard into the muddy bank. Impossible to squeeze underneath; she just about managed to push her left arm under, feeling around in the soaking foliage.

‘Roscoe!’

Nothing moving under there, only … multiple stabbing pains in her left hand and up the inside of her wrist told her she’d grabbed a handful of nettles.

This was no use, basically; she’d have to get back in and try to shift the car. With extreme care.

Warm breath on the back of Merrily’s neck made her body retract, twisting over onto her side. Like they always did when you were on the ground, he thought she wanted to play; he was standing over her with his nose above her ear, poised and quivering.

‘Oh, Jesus, Roscoe—’

Collapsing into the road in a moment of wild relief, head in her arms, before pulling herself up. The dog waited, panting. His coat was messed up, matted, spiked and sodden, a thorny twig trapped in his collar. He’d been through hedges and perhaps a stream.

Merrily pulled herself up, clothes wet through, cold and clinging. There was no sign of Mrs Morningwood, and it seemed unlikely that she habitually turned her dog out in the mornings to take exercise in fields full of sheep.

Detaching the thorn twig, Merrily slipped a hand under Roscoe’s collar. He squeaked.

‘What’ve you done?’

She ran her hands down his flanks; at some point he squirmed away, as if in pain, but eventually let her lead him to the car. Tried twice to jump in; she had to help him into the back seat before dragging herself back through the passenger door.

The easy bit. She started the engine, one wheel spinning, another spurting mud and the old chassis creaking and moaning as she fought to wrench the Volvo out of the ditch.

Lol had set the alarm. Best to leave early; he had no knowledge of Warwickshire, only its awful motorways.

Prof Levin had called back just short of midnight, as the ashy-pink embers of last night’s hastily built fire had been quietly crumbling into the hearth.

‘Get a pad, Laurence, I’ll give you the directions.’

‘You … actually called him?’

‘I phoned his office, left a message and he was back within half an hour. Must be some call-referral system.’

‘I’m impressed,’ Lol said.

He’d always known Prof had some serious clout in this business, but even so …

‘Hayter and me – first time we’d spoken in some years. I knew he’d get back, if he was in the country, if only because he was always on at me to tell him what happened at the Abbey on the anniversary of Lennon’s murder.’

‘You told him that?’

Lol knew two other people who’d been involved in this notorious, myth-soaked session. Neither of them, nor even Prof, had ever disclosed what had taken place, and it wasn’t something that had ever bothered Lol. The dark, narcotic side of the music business, like parts of the Old Testament, was best left alone if your faith was shaky. So this – telling Hayter – was above and beyond, and it spoke less of Prof’s friendship with Lol than his admiration for Merrily and what she did. The explicit nature of which, Prof would often say, was not something on which, as a recovering alcoholic, he ever wanted to dwell.

‘I told him some of it, Laurence. He won’t put it around, if only because everybody knows he wasn’t there.’

‘But he’ll see me?’

‘And you will see him, that’s the downside. Eleven-thirty in the morning. You get half an hour. You don’t get lunch. You owe me one, needless to say.’

‘I think I do.’

‘You also owe it to me to listen. I may have said this earlier – Hayter, if he’s doing business, prefers to deal with people in the flesh, rather than talk on the phone or exchange emails. This is because he needs to have them exposed to the full awesome glory of his repellent personality. But do not make the mistake of thinking this is all special effects, you know what I’m saying?’

Lol shook his head.

‘You still there, Laurence?’

‘I’m nodding,’ Lol said. ‘It’s because my mouth’s gone dry with fear.’

‘It’s not a joke. And be sure you call me afterwards. If you still have fingers to push the numbers.’

Now, memorizing his route from the map book, Lol looked at the clock on the desk. He needed to call Merrily, to find out exactly what she wanted to know from Hayter, but it was probably too early. He’d leave it an hour and, meanwhile, get on the road.

His stuff was still in the hall where he’d left it yesterday. The Guild acoustic amp, the Takamine jumbo, the exquisite lute-shaped Boswell, the harmonicas and the little drum machine. Loading and unloading the truck without injury to the kit was getting to be a serious chore. He just couldn’t imagine years of this.

He put Merrily’s number in the frame on his mobile.

Merrily had never really looked at the Morningwood house in the light of day, too fever-ridden yesterday morning to take it in. With its shambling pergola, its rampant chicken wire and its chaos of sheds, it was an almost comical contrast to the manicured holiday homes at the other end of the terraced row.

The only one of them, though, with any signs of life: the smoke like a curl of wispy hair above the chimney stack, the clutter of free-range chickens.

But if Morningwoods had been on this hill as long as the badger shit on the White Rocks, it hadn’t always been here at Ty Gwyn. This row couldn’t be more than a century and a half old, its angles too sharp, doors and windows too regular, too uniform for real age.

The rain had stopped, but dirty pink clouds were still bunched like muscles over the hills. Not a promising day. The car window was halfway down, Roscoe’s snout halfway out, his head up against Merrily’s hair. She could hear the chickens from the sloping land behind as she drew up in front of the two end houses. Blocking the lane, but it was a dead end; apart from Mrs Morningwood, it seemed unlikely that anyone else would be here until next spring.

‘Roscoe, I’m going to leave you in the car, in case she’s out looking for you or something. OK?’

Maybe this visit was meant. She thought about the Prince of Wales, his attention to coincidences and signposts.

It was just gone seven-thirty. At the front door, she looked around for a bell or a knocker. Sense of déjà vu – at this stage yesterday, she’d been ill and the door had been opened for her. Lifting a fist to beat on the panels, she thought she could hear movement from the back of the house … or one of the others, the holiday homes?

She glanced along the terraced frontage of emptied hanging baskets, smokeless chimneys. At Mrs Morningwood’s end of the block, there was a long fence reinforced with chicken wire, lining an unmade drive leading to a carport with a roof of galvanized sheets.

Under the carport was the back end of an old black Jeep Cherokee. Merrily glimpsed a figure moving along the side of the garage towards a barn or a stable.

‘Mrs Morningwood?’

She stopped, up against the house wall. The figure kept on moving, looking back just once, on the edge of the barn.

It didn’t look like Mrs Morningwood. It didn’t look like a woman. It didn’t seem to have a face, only a darkness.

Come on, this didn’t mean a thing. It didn’t mean a thing that the back door was ajar, like another door had been last summer, or that curtains were drawn across two downstairs windows, like on the days of funerals when she’d been a kid.

But still Merrily drew a long breath, and still it came back out as Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, half oath, half prayer.

And, because she really didn’t want to, she went in.

Entering the kitchen to the smell of something overboiled and a rumbling, refrigerator or a Rayburn, overlaying a sound from deeper into the house, like a roll of carpet being dragged across the floor.

Call out? She opened her mouth to do it, but no sound came.

A door was half-open to the living room – the treatment room where she’d spent most of yesterday. Merrily stayed just short of the doorway. A dimness in there and a drifting smell, salty and sour. A smell that had not been apparent yesterday, a smell she half-recognised and …

OK, phone.

She pulled out her mobile, switched it on and then plunged it back into her hip pocket, cupping both hands over the bump. One day she’d figure out how to mute the electric piano chord that told you – and everybody else – that the phone was awakening.

Waiting. Mobiles these days, all this techno, they took for ever to boot up. In the living room there was a gap at the top of the drawn curtain which lit a triangle of blue-white across the room, like a flickering sail on dark water, and then it vanished. She took out the phone again, pressed the nine key three times, didn’t send it. Not yet.

The darkness pulsed and jittered. Someone was fumbling about in there. Merrily was feeling around for a light switch when something fell over with a bong, and then a sharp, tight shattering of glass jerked her back into the doorway.

Halfway down the wall, her hand found the metal nipple of the switch, and she flipped it down.

‘Come any closer …’ a voice high and cracked ‘… and I shall take out your—’

The light flickered on, a frosted bowl, flat to the ceiling, exposing a woman crouching in a corner.

Merrily said, ‘Oh dear God.’

‘—Take your throat out.’

Mrs Morningwood was a cramped detail from an engraving of hell, her hair crimson-rinsed, thick ribbons of dark red unrolling from her scalp, collecting in her eye sockets, blotching on her bared teeth.

Both her hands were bleeding freely around a shivering tube of jagged glass.

‘Mrs—’

‘Get back!’

The glass shuddered in her hand, and Merrily saw that it was the smashed chimney from the green-shaded oil lamp, its tip serrated but the whole thing cracked, cutting into the hands that gripped it.

She saw the brass body of the lamp on the carpet at the end of its flex. The darkwood piano stool on its side, blood-flecked. The log basket overturned, leaving the rug cobbled with logs. The bentwood rocking chair still in motion, as if someone had just stood up.

Mrs Morningwood was wearing a pale blue nightdress. She was squinting through the blood, trying to divert a river away from an eye and making a red delta across a cheek and over her chin, spatters sporadically blossoming, like wild roses, on the blue nightdress.

It seemed likely that she couldn’t see who was with her in the room because her eyes were full of blood.

‘It’s me,’ Merrily said. ‘Merrily Watkins.’

Mrs Morningwood held on to the lamp-glass.

‘He’s gone,’ Merrily said.

She crossed the room, watching the jagged lamp-funnel – now in Mrs Morningwood’s right hand.

‘I saw him running into the trees. I think he had a hood … black bag over his head, with eye holes. Just let me—’

‘No. Don’t touch me.’

Merrily said, ‘I’m getting an ambulance … all right?’ She opened up the phone. ‘Just …’

‘No!’ Mrs Morningwood edging crablike around the wall. ‘Go away. Forget you ever came here.’

‘Who was he?’

‘There was nobody.’

‘Mrs Morningwood, I saw him. I saw him running towards the barn.’

‘Forget it. What are you doing here, anyway?’

Reaching the chaise longue, Mrs Morningwood tried to heave herself up. Sudden, frightened pain came out in a compressed mouse-squeak from the back of her throat.

Dragging a handful of tissues from a Kleenex box on the desk, Merrily moved across, kneeling down beside her. Mrs Morningwood turned sharply away with a snort, tossing her head like a horse, blood bubbling in her nose and on her exposed and blueing throat you could also see red indents, which …

‘Jesus Christ, you’ve been—’

Mrs Morningwood felt at her throat and winced.

‘Did most of this myself.’

And she probably had, with her nails.

Trying to prise his fingers away.

‘Put that fucking thing—’ Bloodied hands clawing out; the phone dropped to the carpet. ‘Leave it!’

‘We need the police, Mrs Morningwood.’

‘Shush! Was that …?’

‘It’s all right, he’s gone.’

But suppose he hadn’t?

They waited, listening. Merrily was aware of the clock ticking in another room. Out in the car, Roscoe barked once. Mrs Morningwood’s head jerked up.

‘The dog …’

‘In the car.’

‘Dog’s all right? I thought—’

‘He’s fine. I picked him up in the lane.’

‘Thank you.’ Mrs Morningwood’s bloodied head fell back into the pillows on the chaise. Big bruises on her thin arms were almost golden in the light. ‘Thank you, Watkins. Owe you … a whole course of bloody treatment.’

She started to laugh and sat up and went into a spasm of coughing and had to spit out some blood into the wad of tissues. Merrily pulled out some more from the box.

Could be internal bleeding.

‘You have got to let me get you some help.’

‘Help myself, darling. What I do. Get me a cigarette, would you? Mantelpiece.’

‘Just—’

‘Wouldn’t give the bloody doctors the satisfaction. One other thing you might do …’

‘Just listen. Please. We can’t put this off, he’s going to be miles away if we don’t—’

‘Lock the back door.’

‘All right, but—’

‘And then go into the bathroom and turn on the shower for me, would you?’

‘It’s a crime scene, Mrs Morningwood. You’ve been subjected to a … a savage bloody … We need an ambulance and we need the police. There’s no way you—’

‘You’re wasting your breath, darling. Not as if they’re ever likely to get the bastard. Take you in, strip you down, probe your bits, accuse you of lying …’

‘There’ll be DNA.’

‘He was masked. Wore surgical gloves and a fucking condom, he—’

Silence.

Merrily gasped. Mrs Morningwood began to laugh again, with no humour, the blood already drying in the deep lines in her face.

PART FOUR

37 Threadbare

SIÂN SAID, ‘YOU’LL need to explain this again.’

‘Can’t. Sorry. Not my decision. Look – sorry – the signal’s not great. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re in the car?’

‘I’m coming back.’ Keep it short; less chance of voice-shake. ‘Bishop’s decision. I think he should be the one to explain. I’m baffled, frankly, Siân, but he makes the rules.’

If Merrily was quieter inside now, it was the result of an hour’s violent scrubbing of the floor, the walls and the legs of furniture. The painstaking removal of sticky blood from the fabric of the chaise longue. The careful and complete incineration of a blue nightdress in the range. A full hour of scrubbing and squeezing until her hands hurt and her knees were abraded from the flags.

So calming, these domestic chores.

The car was at the side of the track, engine running. Merrily sitting, quite numb, looking directly in front of her at the rain-greyed hills and thanking Siân for looking after things, saying how very grateful she was.

Playing a part.

Now would be the time for Siân to point out that she was still, if only nominally, the deliverance coordinator for this diocese and therefore entitled to the facts. But Siân said nothing for several seconds.

‘So you want me to leave, Merrily.’

‘Obviously, had we known it was only going to be a couple of days, there wouldn’t have been any need to bother you. Or anybody. I’m really sorry.’

Siân was smart, would pick up any stray nuance, any hint of the spiralling descent into madness represented by the woman sitting stiffly beside Merrily.

Like a badly wrapped parcel: outsize sunglasses, the scarf around her discoloured, swollen face, the cracked Barbour storm-flapped over the pink silk scarf covering the lesions on her throat.

‘Ah … there will probably be issues for us to discuss,’ Siân said, ‘after you talk to Jane.’

‘Oh.’ Merrily laughed lightly. ‘I won’t ask.’

The other, still-visible damage: two black eyes from the fists, two deep cuts just above the hairline from falling against the piano stool, a split lip, a broken tooth. It was what they did: first, they beat you into semi-consciousness. It was about violence, more than sex, most experts agreed on that.

Siân said, ‘If you’d like to talk about the Bishop’s attitude, I can wait.’

‘I am so pissed off about this,’ Merrily said, ‘I don’t think I want to talk to anybody for quite a long time.’

She’d phoned The Ridge, not tarting it up for them either. The best lies were always the bald truth: the Bishop had told her to come back at once. She was bewildered and resentful and trying to conceal it. She’d have to return sometime for her things. Sorry, sorry, sorry. And Teddy was like, I really don’t think I could cope with your job, Merrily.

‘So Garway … that’s over,’ Siân said.

‘Yes, it’s over.’

‘Against your advice.’

‘I wasn’t asked for my advice.’

‘All right,’ Siân said. ‘I think I’m getting the message. I shall leave.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Merrily released the clutch and nosed the Volvo slowly out into the road which led past the area known as The Turning, above the church. Beside her, Mrs Morningwood mumbled something.

‘Mmm?’

‘Over. You said it was over.’

‘Yes, well, the lies have been coming so much easier since I was ordained.’

Which was cynical and untrue and she didn’t know why she’d said it. A sidelong glance showed her Mrs Morningwood trying to release a laugh through lips liked diced tomato. It seemed to be getting harder for her to speak.

‘Stronger woman than you look, Watkins.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Have I thanked you?’

‘What for?’

Mrs Morningwood laughed. The fear and the pain glittering in her eyes. along with the fury. Fury, almost certainly, at herself, for letting someone do this to her, Merrily feeling much the same.

‘Just don’t …’ Squeezing the wheel. ‘I must’ve been temporarily insane to go along with this, and it’s done now. But there is no way I’m going to forget that you have been—’

‘In a car accident,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

She’d shut herself in the downstairs bathroom, showering in water so hot that Merrily, scrubbing the floor, had heard her screams, all the rage that would find no other form of expression.

‘How long do you intend to keep this up?’

‘You want to hear me sob? You think there’s something wrong with me, something unnatural, that I’m not sobbing my heart out? You think I’m … unwomanly?’

On the back seat, the wolfhound whimpered. He’d been kicked, Mrs Morningwood said. Trapped in the door and then kicked. They’d examined him between them. No bleeding, nothing broken.

Merrily said, ‘I don’t understand you, that’s all. There’s something about you I don’t understand.’

‘And have no need to,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

Before the shower, before the scrubbing and the burning, she’d said, ‘If you report this I shall deny it.’

‘Oh sure.’ Merrily starting to lose it too, by then. ‘That’ll work. People just won’t look at you. They’re tactful like that, especially in the country. Pride themselves on minding their own business. Are you crazy?’

‘I shall simply go out and run the Jeep off the road and leave it sticking out of the hedge with my blood on the seat and the steering wheel. No-one will dispute it, and they won’t get close enough to be able to.’

‘Insane.’

‘I’ve done it before. Crashed the car, that is. Police find out, they’ll just think I was drunk. Police always like to think you were drunk.’

‘Why? Why are you doing this?

‘You have no need to know.’

‘I have an increasingly urgent need to know. In fact, seems to me that the only reason you could have for covering this up is because you recognized the man who attacked you and you don’t want him arrested, because … I don’t know. But you do.’

Rape, violence, it was usually the husband or partner. All those times when the police knew about it, urged the conspicuously injured party to give evidence, and the victim refused. It seemed unlikely that Mrs Morningwood had ever before been a victim.

She said, ‘You’re wrong. I do not know who it was.’

‘But you don’t think it was just a random thing, either, do you? Have you been followed? Stalked? Seen anybody hanging around the house?’

‘No.’

‘What are you not telling me?’

No reply.

‘What if I tell the police what I found?’

‘You wouldn’t do that. You’re implicated now. Cleaned up his mess.’

‘What if he does it to somebody else?’

‘He won’t.’

‘This man you don’t know. What if he comes back?’

Silence.

‘Either you tell me exactly what happened,’ Merrily had said, ‘or I ring my friend in the police, who knows me well enough by now to—’

‘All right. But you’ll be the first and last to hear this.’

Muriel Morningwood got up at first light, as usual, letting Roscoe and then the chickens out into the mist.

Her attacker had simply followed her back into the house, trapping the dog with the door, kicking him back out, slamming the door.

He wore camouflage clothing, no skin exposed, and what had been most frightening about him was not the hood with the eyeholes, but the flesh-coloured surgical gloves, one of them coming at her face as she turned and then there was an explosion in her left eye and she’d been thrown into the living room, punched repeatedly in the mouth, stomach, mouth again. Slammed to the floor, her scalp raked on a corner of the piano stool, hair filling up with blood, as he knelt astride her and put on the condom.

She was a strong woman, very fit. Self-sufficient. Prided herself on it, always thought she’d be able to defend herself. What you never accounted for was the effect of shock – the way the body, untrained, was shocked into a kind of inner collapse by sustained, unrelenting, extreme violence.

The sound of the car had stopped it. He’d lifted himself, listening and she’d managed to scream. He’d been kneeling over her, holding her down with both hands and when she opened her mouth, he’d slammed a hand across it, freeing one of her arms, and she’d punched him as hard as she could in the balls, and he’d uncoiled in agony, clutching himself with both hands, and she’d squirmed away, blinded by the blood, just as the footsteps had sounded on the path.

She’d thought he looked at her once, through his eyeholes, and then he wasn’t there, only the smell of his sweat, his fluids, her own blood.

It had been obvious to Merrily that if she hadn’t shown up when she did, Mrs Morningwood would, by now, have been waiting for Dr Grace, the pathologist. And something else was also clear.

‘You can’t stay here.’

‘Where would I go?’

‘I live in a big house.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘There’s no alternative, Mrs Morningwood.’

‘There’ll be other people.’

‘Only Jane. And, at the moment, a woman priest who’s standing in. I’ll need to tell her to go. Is there anyone who can look after things here?’

There was a couple, graphic artists from the village, reflexology patients who’d helped out once before when Mrs Morningwood had had to go away. She’d got Merrily to phone them, explain that she had to travel to see a patient urgently, in Devon. No problem, they’d come and look after the chickens and anything else, morning and night, until further notice.

When Mrs Morningwood had brought down an old brown case, Merrily had one last try.

‘I know a good copper. A decent guy.’

Mrs Morningwood had held out her cigarette to Merrily’s lighter, both hands trembling.

‘Wasting your breath, darling.’

‘He was on foot,’ Merrily said. ‘Where could he have been going when I saw him?’

‘Anywhere.’ Watery blood soaking into the wobbling cigarette from lips failing to grip. ‘Over the hill and far away.’

38 Doormat

ON THE WAY here, Lol had glimpsed a signpost and braked. At the next junction, he’d turned round and gone back. Sat in the cab of the truck, gazing at the three words on the sign. A name with only one meaning. A place of sorrowful pilgrimage.

He hadn’t realized that he was going to be so close. No time now, but there would be no excuse on the way back. He’d turned round again and driven on into the Warwickshire countryside, and now the Animal was in an off-road parking area a short way from the castle lodge.

A burger van was opening up at the far end. The big man in the long tan leather coat evidently knew the burger guy because he walked past him without a glance, directly to Lol’s truck, and Lol lowered his window.

Five times he’d attempted to call Merrily on her mobile. It was always switched off. He’d left two messages, the first one explaining he had a chance to talk to Lord Stourport and how far did she want him to go? The second one saying that if she didn’t call back within twenty minutes he was going to be late.

‘Yow got business here, pal?’ the man in the leather coat said.

Lol told him he had an appointment with Lord Stourport in – he looked at the dashboard clock – twelve minutes?

The man, who had gelled hair and chewed gum, asked for his name and Lol told him, and the man nodded and went back to the lodge. Lol sat back and waited and kept seeing the signpost in his mind’s eye.

He’d never been there. He’d spoken to dozens of people who had been, some travelling hundreds of miles. But, all these years, he’d avoided it. What good would it do now?

When his phone rang, he didn’t even look at the caller’s number.

‘Merrily.’

‘Uh, no. Lol, its me … it’s Eirion, it is.’

‘Oh,’ Lol said. ‘Hello, Eirion.’

‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I figured you’d probably be gigging at night. Saw a piece on you. In Mojo? They’d reviewed your gig in Oxford, did you know?’

‘No, I didn’t. Eirion, look—’

‘It was pretty good.’ Eirion’s South Wales accent kicking in, usually a sign of nerves. ‘It was this guy who’d seen you in Hazey Jane when he was young. He said Hazey Jane were never quite as good as they might have been. Or as good as they would be now if they’d had the quality of material you’re producing at the moment. Something like that.’

‘Well, that’s …’

‘Pretty positive.’

‘… Not really the reason for your call, is it?’

‘Er, no,’ Eirion said. ‘No, it isn’t.’

This would have to be about Jane who, according to Merrily, had not heard from Eirion for a couple of weeks and was thinking she’d been dumped. And he’d love to find out something that might help, but this really wasn’t a good time.

‘Eirion, could I call you back? I’m expecting—’

‘Lol, please … could you give me just two minutes? One minute.’

‘Well … yeah, OK. As long as it—’

‘Only I rang the vicarage, see, I was going to ask Mrs Watkins, but this other woman answered. Is there something wrong, Lol? Have they – you know – gone?’

‘Where?’

‘Gone. Left.’

‘Good God, no.’

‘Then why isn’t she returning my calls, Lol?’

‘Jane isn’t returning your calls?’

‘See, I didn’t want to bother you with this, it’s not like she’s your daughter or anything, but I’m going crazy here, man.’

‘Well, you know … this is difficult, but the impression we were given was that, now you’re at university … your lives had kind of taken different paths?’

‘I’m at Cardiff! It’s less than an hour and a quarter away. I come back every weekend. I mean, you know, I could’ve gone to Oxford.’

‘You could have?’

‘They’d accepted me. It was a bit borderline, but they said yes.’

‘You turned down Oxford so you could be nearer to Jane?’

‘My old man’s still fuming. Weeks before he’d even talk to me.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Lol said.

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘Does Jane know?’

‘I told her … I said they’d turned me down.’

‘Eirion!’

‘Don’t say anything, will you?’

‘I don’t— How many calls have you made?’

‘To Jane? Bloody dozens. Her phones’s always switched off, and I leave messages and she doesn’t call back.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘She’s with someone else, right? It’s this bloody archaeologist, isn’t it?’

‘I … I don’t know.’

‘You know he’s married, don’t you? And he’s nearly thirty. I mean, he’s married. All right, Jane, she can be … you know … I mean, you know what she can be …’

‘Yeah.’

‘And yet … you know what I mean?’

‘Oh yes,’ Lol said.

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t be hanging this on you.’

‘I’ll talk to her, OK? I’ll find out something. Look, I’ll call you back … maybe tomorrow?’

The man in the leather coat was standing outside the lodge, beckoning, pointing to the gates. Telling Lol it was time.

The vicarage was immaculately tidy, and Siân had made a coal fire in the parlour and banked it up. This was thoughtful; Merrily rarely lit a fire before evening.

Upstairs, the guest room looked like Siân had never been there. It was at the rear of the house, overlooking the old Powell orchard. The sun had come out and ripe apples gleamed like baubles. Roscoe plodded around on the oak boards, and Merrily’s move to replace the duvet cover with a fresh one got a dismissive wave of the hand from Mrs Morningwood.

‘Don’t bother, it’ll only be stinking of this stuff by morning.’

Jars and bottles, some labelled, were set out on the pine dresser with a glass and a spoon. She’d accepted a cup of weak tea, declined food. Merrily sat on the edge of the bed.

‘At the risk of—’

‘No.’

‘I’m thinking, primarily, of the head injuries. The doctor here, he’s not exactly a fan of alternative remedies, but he could at least put your mind at rest.’

‘You mean your mind. It’s not necessary. I don’t have a skull fracture, and even if I did—’

‘He doesn’t need to know what happened to you.’

Knowing, as she said it, that she was wrong. Kent Asprey would need to know and, while Mrs Morningwood might get away with her story about the head injury, how many people emerged from car crashes with strangulation marks?

‘Sooner or later this is going to hit you, Muriel.’

‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’

‘No, I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. You get some rest, I’ll pace around for a couple of hours.’

When she turned at the door, Mrs Morningwood was standing by the window, a wounded smile on damaged lips. Or maybe not a smile at all, just the wound. It just had to be someone she knew.

‘And no, you won’t wake up to find police at the bedside,’ Merrily said.

‘Thank you.’

‘You need anything, just—’

‘I won’t. Equally, if you need to go out to attend to your parish affairs, go ahead.’

‘Right.’

Merrily went unhappily downstairs and through the kitchen to the scullery. Sat down and stared at the blotter on the desk, trying to be impressed by Mrs Morningwood’s resilience, but becoming only more mystified, not to say horrified by the bloody woman’s ability to contain the rage and the pain which ought to be taking her apart.

Merrily felt useless, ineffectual and – Jane had been right – some kind of doormat. She’d … for God’s sake, she’d just cleaned up a crime scene. This monster was out there, and she’d mopped up his mess, destroyed any usable traces of his DNA, and she …

… needed to pray and couldn’t.

Her palms were moist with sweat and she couldn’t summon the will even to put them together. A kind of barren coldness in her chest. A sense of desertion, as if something had vanished from her life.

Like the meaning of it. Like a basic feel for the spiritual validity of her job, her role in this black farce. Like any kind of self-worth.

She made herself look up Adam Eastgate’s number in the index. Maybe, if she hadn’t been so flattened by the Bishop’s early call, she’d have stood up to Mrs Morningwood, made her see some sense.

Stood up to a woman who’d been beaten up and raped? Made her ‘see sense’?

Merrily shook her head almost savagely, as if this could crumble the sludge in her brain so that the fragments might resettle into some random but interpretable pattern. Then she lit a cigarette, picked up the black bakelite phone, abruptly replaced it, reverted to the mobile and made the call.

‘No, the Bishop didn’t phone,’ Adam Eastgate said. ‘He came to see us, Merrily. At home.’

‘He came to your home?’

‘Said he was passing – I live over at Burghill, not the kind of place you just happen to pass. What he had to say made sense, I suppose. A pity, mind.’

‘He told you … what, exactly?’ She was aware of her stomach contracting. Close to an ulcer. ‘He suggested that it might be dangerous to be connected with a murder and suicide?’

‘More or less.’

‘For the Church or the Duchy?’

‘I think he meant for us, but that would be our problem, wouldn’t it?’

‘Maybe suggesting it would not look good if it got out that I’d administered a blessing for Fuchsia, in a disused church, just a short time before she killed her partner? Did he say that?’

‘Close.’

‘And if it got out that I’d been involved at the behest of the Duchy of Cornwall …’

‘He might have said something like that as well, aye.’

Merrily had expected a reluctance to answer her questions, but it wasn’t there. Eastgate wasn’t obviously eager, but he wasn’t erecting barriers.

‘Did the Bishop tell you I’d come to the conclusion that Fuchsia had made the whole thing up? So it had all been for nothing.’

‘My information is that the inquest will be told that the girl killed Felix and then took her own life while the balance of her mind was disturbed. I think that’s the official wording.’

‘So, erm … did you then tell the Bishop that you didn’t want us to take it any further?’

‘No. I didn’t say that.’

‘Oh.’

‘I liked Felix. I was wishing I could turn the clock back to the time we were first offered the property by the Grays. If I could unmake that deal, I’d be a happier man.’

She remembered him standing by the window in the Duchy’s barn. We don’t often make mistakes.

‘Adam, when you bought it, did you know about the feud with the Gwilyms? That is, did you know the Grays were offering it to you specifically because they wanted to keep it out of the hands of the Gwilyms? That they wanted it to go to someone richer, more remote … impregnable. Someone who couldn’t be leaned on to sell it. Did you know any of that?’

‘Not then, no. I learned some of it later, and I’ve since had a long chat with Paul Gray. Yesterday, in fact. Mr Gray’s got his problems, as you may know.’

‘Yes.’

‘He told me he didn’t want them compounded by an old feud. He didn’t want – if anything should happen to him – for his wife to be left with it.’

‘The feud.’

‘Or the house. He wanted to apologize for unloading an unhappy place on us. He’d considered us as – like you just said – rich and remote. Hadn’t realized that local people would be involved.’

‘An unhappy place.’

‘Well, he’s not had much luck, has he? In that situation, mind, you can get a bit irrational. I told him we were taking steps. I was sorry for the man. Sorry for all of us.’

‘This was before the Bishop …?’

‘Obviously. It was … disappointing, the Bishop’s attitude.’ Eastgate spoke slowly, edging around something. ‘I wasn’t expecting that. Left us in a bit of a dilemma.’

‘Has it?’

‘As you know, I was in two minds, from the start, about involving the Church, but I’d told them I liked the look of you, and it couldn’t do any harm.’

‘Told who?’

‘You must’ve realized there’d be people I needed to keep informed. And when the Bishop backed off, I referred the whole thing up. That is, to my immediate boss in the Duchy.’

‘Right.’

‘And he referred it further up.’

‘How much further?’

‘I think you know what I’m saying.’

Blimey.

‘When was this?’

‘First thing this morning. You should expect a call, Merrily.’

‘From …?’

‘I was asked to provide what information I could about you. I’m telling you this in case someone mentions it. I wouldn’t like you to think we were going behind your back.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Somebody went on your website, found a lot about deliverance, not much about you personally.’

‘Low-key, Adam. Part of the brief.’

‘Your daughter’s been a bit of a feisty lass, mind.’

‘That isn’t on the website.’

‘No. It isn’t.’

‘If you’re talking about the stones in Coleman’s Meadow,’ Merrily said, ‘for what it’s worth, I’m behind Jane all the way. I’m sorry if—’

‘No, no, that’s good, Merrily. That was well received. Part of our heritage. I was going to say that, meanwhile, someone else was consulted. A senior person in the Church who knows you. Thinks a lot about you, as it turns out. Anyway … you should expect a call.’

‘Who was this you spoke to? In the Church.’

‘Merrily, I’m just the land agent.’

‘Expect a call, you said?’

‘Aye.’

‘Is this a call for which I need to wear my best cassock? As it were.’

‘No.’ Eastgate laughed. ‘That’s not how it works.’

When she stood up, it felt as if the scullery floor was tilting beneath her feet, and she had to get out of here, and the damn mobile was chiming again.

‘Yes.’

‘So what’s the weather like over there, Reverend? Bracing?’

‘Hello, Frannie.’

‘The way you snapped “yes”, just then … are my detective’s acute antennae picking up an element of stress, or—?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Just I hadn’t heard from you in a while. Wondered if you’d tripped over anything that might interest me – even mildly – in the impenetrable jungle that is Garway.’

‘You mean you’ve finally won the fight againt inner-city crime in Hereford and you’re at a loose end?’

‘You know, Merrily …’ Bliss paused. ‘Experience has taught me that these small displays of facetiousness on your part often conceal a profound anxiety.’

‘I’m a Christian. I don’t get profound anxiety.’

‘So nothing’s happened that you might need to tell me about.’

‘Nothing special at all,’ Merrily said, God forgive her.

39 A Place in the Country

‘LOL ROBINSON,’ JIMMY Hayter said. ‘Remind me, have we met?’

‘Um, very briefly at Glastonbury, way back. We only played there once. On a very small stage. You wouldn’t remember.’

‘Nah, I wouldn’t remember. I don’t like Glastonbury.’

Lol said nothing. He hadn’t imagined there was anybody who didn’t like Glastonbury.

What he was sure of was that he didn’t much like this room, with its lofty cathedral windows and an elaborately carved ceiling bulging with lumpen cherubs blowing trumpets. Victorian Gothic. Unsubtly different from the original soaring, arboreal Gothic, in Lol’s view. Built not so much to elevate as dominate.

Intimidate, even.

‘Levin – he back on the piss, Lol?’

‘Is somebody saying he is?’

Lol had a four-seater sofa to himself, about the size of his truck. He’d shuffled himself to one end, hunched forward so that his feet would actually reach the floor. Lord Stourport was in a well-worn leather armchair, close to the vast open fireplace, half a tree trunk sizzling there like a whole pig at a pig roast.

‘Just he wasn’t very lucid on the phone,’ Stourport said, ‘about what you wanted.’

‘He drinks coffee. It was probably a caffeine high. And maybe I hadn’t explained it very well.’

‘Let’s hope you can now, then, cocker.’

Hayter had a leg thrown over one of the arms of his chair, revealing a small split in the crotch of his jeans. He was squat and overweight, but not too much of it was fat. His hair was dense and white and wedged on his forehead, a weighty awning over his deep-set penetrating dark brown eyes.

‘This is not easy, Jimmy,’ Lol said.

Hayter’s eyebrow lifted at the familiarity, probably on account of this was not Jimmy’s drum, this was the seat of Lord Stourport.

Very Hayter, all the same, this Victorian fake. More powerful, in its heavy-duty way, than some authentic medieval castles rendered romantic by time and erosion. Very death-metal. Lol had counted four staff, including the guy in the leather coat and a gardener in a greenhouse, and he wondered if there was also a formal butler somewhere, in a butler suit, like the guy in the Celeb strip in Private Eye.

‘So you’ve come up from Herefordshire,’ Hayter said. ‘Where your girlfriend is the official exorcist. Working for the council or what?’

He wasn’t smiling. Hard to work out whether he was taking the piss or this was genuine ignorance. Best played down the line.

‘The Diocese. The Bishop. She’s an ordained priest.’

‘Right.’ Stourport nodded. ‘So if I rang the Bishop’s office …?’

‘You want the number?’

‘No, I’ll trust you. What’s she do, basically?’

Lol told him, patiently, about the cure of troubled souls and troubled premises. Like the Master House at Garway.

Lord Stourport leaned back, contemplating the cowboy boot on the end of the leg over the chair arm.

‘I’m a bit hazy. Would that be the tumbledown shit-hole a bunch of us rented for the summer, way back?’

As if Prof hadn’t told him and he hadn’t already done some hard thinking.

‘I heard it was you who paid the rent,’ Lol said. ‘And it was quite a bit longer than a summer.’

‘Summers could last for a couple of years, back then,’ Stourport said. ‘Back when we were young.’

‘I think this one got a bit autumnal. Quite quickly.’

Hayter’s eyes refocused.

‘You’re not here to try and blackmail me, are you?’

‘No,’ Lol said. ‘Sincerely I’m not. I’m just hoping you could give me some background. It’s like … people are saying it’s disturbed now, but is there any history? My friend, sometimes people ask her to clean up a place, and they’re making it up for some reason. Or there’s an element of delusion. Or they’re not telling her the whole story.’

‘How would I know the whole story?’

‘Maybe you wouldn’t. But you were an outsider living there. No local pressure to cover anything up.’

‘She goes to that kind of trouble?’ Stourport wore a grimace of disbelief. ‘A priest?’

‘Either you do the job properly …’

‘Because if you’re bullshitting me …’

‘Why would I?’

‘… Because if you are, I should just tell you, any hint of anything I say to you appears in the press, you are truly fucked, cocker. I’ll come after you. Well, not me personally, obviously, but someone.’

‘You’ve found that approach helps, generally?’ Lol said.

‘Sometimes it does.’ Stourport waved a languid hand. ‘Go on. Ask what you want.’

‘Did you get any feeling the place was – I have to say this – haunted?’

‘Could be.’

‘Really?’

‘It was old. I mean, this pile’s old, after a fashion – built on the site of the original Norman castle – and it’s haunted. Shapes seen out of the corner of an eye, on the stairs, in the long gallery. Nobody should give me that all-in-the-mind bullshit. But I would have to say this house isn’t haunted like that house was haunted. Or maybe the drugs were too new and lovely, then.’

Lol smiled. Stourport brought his leg down from the chair arm, inched the chair closer to the fire.

‘Doubt if I’d’ve got through it without the drugs, thinking back. Who’s living there now? Let me guess – couple of gay hairdressers from Islington, weekends only.’

‘Nobody’s living there at the moment. But it’s been bought by the Duchy of Cornwall.’

‘Has it, by God?’

‘The plan is to restore it. Sensitively.’

‘Right.’ Lord Stourport shifted in his chair. ‘Now you’re starting to make sense. They have weight, those guys. And money.’

‘And there are complications.’

Lol told him about the deaths. No reason to hold any of that back, not as if it hadn’t been in the papers. Stourport drew in his lips like he was about to whistle, but he didn’t comment.

‘So you’re just the boyfriend,’ he said when Lol sat back. ‘You don’t meddle yourself?’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘You mean this is all for … lerve?’

Lol shrugged lightly.

‘We’ve been educated out of all that nonsense, the aristocracy. I tell you, Robinson, most of us were mightily relieved when punk came in and we no longer had to babble on about peace and lerve. Except for poor Charles, of course, who’s at least half-hippie. Never could stand the man, personally, but if he’s had the Master House unloaded on him one can only sympathize. What will she do, this woman of yours?’

‘She’ll say some prayers. Bless the premises. Or maybe organize a small service, a Requiem for the people who died, with people there who might still have problems with the house and people who had problems with it in the past. You could come if you wanted.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Your commune’s been mentioned, anyway.’

‘It was never a commune. Nothing so formal.’

‘Can you tell me about it?’

‘I can tell you what I remember, but what I remember might have very little to do with what actually happened.’

‘Like that, huh?’

‘Very much like that, cocker.’

On the sunlit square, Merrily felt like a tourist. The last couple of nights were probably as long as she’d spent away from here since they’d moved in. You came back, it made you blink – the black and white houses and shops unexpectedly exotic in the Lucozade light of an autumn morning.

Or was that because she was afraid she was going to lose it all? Didn’t even feel safe in her own house any more.

Which wasn’t her own house. Which was the Church’s house. The Church, as represented, in her life, by the Bishop. The Bishop behind whose back …

She was alone on the square, a few people around the shops, none of them close enough to have to greet – God, had it come to this? She slid into the familiar sanctuary of the market hall, took out her mobile, switched it on to find it frantic with messages.

There was a bunch of calls from Lol, who was on his way to … where? She listened. She called him back at once. His phone was switched off, she left a message: ‘Lol, I don’t know what it’s best to ask Lord Stourport. This is getting messier than you could ever imagine. All I can say, just play it by ear, maybe don’t even mention Mary Linden, because I’ve only had that from one source which I … don’t entirely trust. I’m sorry.’

And then there was Sophie: two cautious call me back messages from her. Merrily called the gatehouse.

‘Are you alone?’

‘For the moment. Merrily, I need to apol—’

‘Doesn’t matter. I understand. Sophie, did you tell the Bishop that I’d finally concluded that Fuchsia had made it all up?’

‘Well, it’s certainly what he wanted me to tell him.’

‘When was this?’

‘Last night. When he arrived on our doorstep in a state of some agitation. He instructed me quite formally not to call you until he had. I gave him until nine-thirty then I began to leave messages. I’m sorry, Merrily, he’s still my boss, however … eccentric he’s become.’

‘Well, look, I’m back at the vicarage, and there’ve been some developments, which I’ll explain in due course.’

‘You sound upset.’

‘I’m OK. I’ll explain it face to face, when the Bishop’s not on your back or mine. You said he was agitated. Why? Like he was getting pressure?’

Sophie didn’t reply.

‘I’ll tell you something else. He suggested that the Duchy itself would be happier if I forgot all about the Master House. He indicated he’d had this from Adam Eastgate. It wasn’t true.’

‘I see.’

‘Who might be leaning on him, Sophie? Could it be Canterbury?’

‘I certainly haven’t taken any calls from Church House, but that means nothing. Ah—’

‘Who else? Come on, Sophie, who else can you think of with any influence over the Bishop? Who the Bishop might be intimidated by?’

Sophie said, ‘Perhaps I could call you back a little later, Reverend Longbeach.’

‘Oh.’

He was there. He’d walked in on her. Merrily killed the line and walked out on the other side of the market hall, emerging next to a grey car parked tidily in its shade.

She’d wanted to ask if Sophie knew – or could find out – who exactly had been tapped for information about Hereford deliverance … and her … and Jane. Who was the other minister consulted by the Duchy?

Well, obviously this described Huw Owen. But Huw would have told her. No way Huw would not have told her.

She’d call him anyway. She scrolled through the list on the mobile. She should call him now.

And then Merrily closed up the phone with a snap. Stood staring at the grey Lexus parked next to the market hall, noting, on the back seat, a lavishly labelled case of Italian leather. Siân Callaghan-Clarke’s gloves on the dash.

‘We were not kids,’ Lord Stourport said. ‘That’s too easy. We were young, voracious adults, the world spread out in front of us like a picnic. We had the power of youth. And that is a power, because it comes without responsibility except to yourself. Well, that’s commonplace now, that’s almost the norm – Crowley’s line, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, that’s every fucker’s motto now, nobody thinks twice. Back then, it was new and risky and seductive.’

Lol was quite fascinated by the way Stourport/Hayter would unconsciously switch from officer-class drawl to street-hard pseudo-cockney without a breath in between.

‘Actually, it was quite a sad time for a lot of them,’ Stourport said. ‘The hippie dream all gone to shit, with nothing to replace it, no real energy. Everybody seemed to be sprawled around, stoned and directionless. It never bothered me. I was quite happy to be stoned and directionless for a while.’

‘When was this?’

‘Seventy-three, seventy-four. I’d dropped out of Cambridge in disgrace but with a portfolio of music-biz contacts par fucking excellence, and a working knowledge of how to make money that would subsequently win the reluctant respect of even my old man – living here in faded splendour, buckets catching the drips, sitting in his overcoat in winter watching his black and white TV surrounded by old masters. Imagine the ignominy of having your heritage saved by the ill-gotten millions of the disreputable punk impresario son. Poor old bastard never recovered.’

‘How long’ve you been here?’

‘Fifteen, sixteen years. It was sudden, really. Ironically, living a warm, damp-free existence seemed to do for the old man’s health. But of course all this was still far into the future when we moved into the Master House.’

‘How did you find out about the house?’

‘Can’t remember. I mean, it was that time when bored young people of my generation would look up and go hey, let’s start again, let’s go out into the sticks, be pioneers. Ronnie Lane decamping to Shropshire, touring in a gypsy caravan, bucolic bliss – that was a myth as well, of course, even if you’ve got the money, if you have land it needs to be worked. Scores of idle freaks lying in the grass – a spade? What’s that about?’

The man in the leather coat put his head round the door, looking pointedly at Lol, but Stourport waved him away.

Lol said, ‘Did you know anything about the history of the place when you took it? The Knights Templar?’

‘Robinson, I knew nothing about the Knights frigging Templar. Had a flat in London with my girlfriend at the time, Siggi, and we had a lot of parties which were – as we used to say – busted by the pigs, on no less than three occasions. It was getting tiresome, and my friend Pierre Markham – you know who I’m talking about?’

‘No.’

‘The merchant banker? Never mind. Anyway, it was Pierre who said why don’t we get a place in the country? Well, I’d been born in a place in the bleeding country, so the idea held no particular magic for me. Besides which, although I had plenty of readies, I didn’t really have a lump sum to put down on a property, but Pierre’s saying, “No, we lease somewhere” … That was Siggi and me, Pierre and his lady, and a guy called Mickey Sharpe who was basically our dealer, kept us supplied with whatever we needed. In quantity.’

He flung his leg back over the chair arm, lounging back, slowly shaking his head.

‘Actually, I remember now. What put us on to the Master House, it was just an ad in Country Life or The Lady. It didn’t actually say No Hippies, but it probably did no harm at all reverting to being The Hon. until the deal was done. Anyway, we move into this hovel – throw some money at it, scatter the sheepskins and the Afghan fucking rugs, set up the important item, this monster B&O stereo. And … it was summer and life passed in a bit of a haze. Mickey had a van, and he’d go off to London and come back with the stuff, early mornings, and we had a secret stash we called the Grotto of Dreams, as you did in those days.’

‘What broke the idyll?’

‘What makes you think it broke?’

‘They always do,’ Lol said.

‘This one didn’t break, it just got diverted. Got a lot more intense very quickly. After some weeks we discover this guy called Mathew is living with us.’

‘You discover he’s living with you?’

‘He was just there. You know? People came and went. Any problems we had, plumbing and whatever, Mickey would fix it for some guy to attend to it. Mickey was an excellent man, he’d go out and find the right people, the ones on the fringe who, in return for a small package, wouldn’t spread it round that we were, you know, dangerously subversive. Then this guy Mathew – Mat, with one T, he was very particular about that – your name, the number of letters it had – very important, the numerological correspondences, all this shit.’

‘Bit mystical?’

‘I thought, at first, he was just some fucking gardener Pierre’d hired. This messianic-looking guy – not much older than any of us but he had the look. Mat Phobe, he called himself, obviously not his real name. But who used their real names in those days? You called yourself what you thought you ought to be called, what would reflect your spirit. So it was a while before we became aware that Mat Phobe was actually in charge of us all.’

‘How do you mean, “in charge”?’

‘Yeah, exactly. I don’t believe we knew. You did one weird thing, weirdness became the norm. Especially if you were getting a buzz. But the Templars – it was Mat knew about the Templars. We’d all been down this weird little church and wandered around, but it hadn’t meant that much to us. There wasn’t all this shit about the Templars all over the media in those days. Medieval history wasn’t cool. Stone Age was cool, the golden age of ley lines when the land was irrigated by mysterious energies that could blow you away. We knew all about that, but we knew diddly-squat about the Templars. Except for Mat.’

And so it came out, Lol wishing there was some way he could record it all for Merrily.

Mat came and went. He’d go off for weeks at a time and come back with some new idea. Mat had said they were sitting on energies the like of which they couldn’t imagine. Mat had said the Master House was at the centre of forbidden secrets, all this stuff that gave a deep and wonderful significance to their lives when they heard about it, stoned.

He’d told them about the Templars being suppressed because of their advanced esoteric knowledge. He knew about Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Order, coming to Garway in 1294. Mat was convinced de Molay had stayed in the Master House. He was also convinced that the Grand Master had brought something with him.

Lol sat up.

‘Like what?’

‘He reckoned Garway was … I dunno, the chosen place? He said this guy Jacques could already see the writing on the wall, knew that all these kings and popes were suspicious of the Order and jealous of their wealth and their influence and the secret knowledge they had – all this Da Vinci Code shit.’

‘Is it shit?’

‘Probably. But we had no point of reference back then, anyway – the book that raised the whole bloodline of Christ issue, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, wouldn’t come out for several years.’

‘So are you saying Mat knew something of this before it was in the public domain?’

‘Oh man …’ Jimmy Hayter raised his eyes to the cherubs ‘… you listened to that guy, you thought there was nothing he didn’t know. He had all these charts and symbols and glyphs and astral correspondences and all this impenetrable balls. He was the high priest, the adept. Looking back, I can see that he was probably full of shit, but we didn’t question it at the time because the women found it, shall we say, very alluring. At first.’

‘So what did he think he was going to find?’

‘Treasure. Money … gold. Whatever. The Templars had massive wealth. They were a multinational enterprise. They ran a banking system across Europe and the Middle East. Mat’d got it into his head that de Molay had chosen Garway as a hiding place if the deal went down in France. Garway made sense, he’d say, because it was not only remote, it was on the Welsh border and the Templars were well in with the Welsh. And the Scots – they rode with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn.’

‘Mat thought there was Templar treasure stashed at Garway?’

‘He thought we were sitting on it.’

‘At the Master House?’

‘The Grand Master House. Which was built soon after the church, just far enough away that nobody would suspect.’

‘And he thought the treasure was still there?’

‘Oh, Jeez …’ Jimmy Hayter laughed. ‘We were all over the place after that, tapping walls, looking for signs and symbols. Pierre and his woman, whatever her name was, they’d gone by then, and some other guy was there and I remember him being chased out of the church by the vicar after taking a crowbar to one of the long stones that were originally the lids of Templar coffins. I remember Mat gave him a talking-to, and then he gathered us all around and he said we were going about it all wrong. He said the only way to find out the secret was to get onto the Templar wavelength.’

Suddenly, Stourport was back, and his face seemed less relaxed now, his eyes harder.

‘That was when it got intense. That was when we started on the magic.’

40 Frail

MERRILY WENT BACK to check on Mrs Morningwood, listening outside the door of the guest room. All she could hear was Roscoe, padding around on the other side. Once, he growled.

Twice she went back out to the square, and Siân’s car was still there. Just after midday, she rang Huw Owen from the scullery and asked him straight out if he’d been approached by the Duchy.

‘I never thought you had so few friends, lass. No, it’s not me.’

‘Then who?’

‘Doesn’t have to be somebody you actually know. Could just be somebody as knows you. Somebody as knows exactly what you’ve been doing the past couple of years. Could even be Merlin the Wizard.’

Huw’s name for the Welshman who was Archbishop of Canterbury. Huw seemed oddly – for Huw – fond of him, which might have been down to their shared affection for The Incredible String Band, old Celtic hippies sticking together.

‘Help me out here,’ Merrily said. ‘What are they likely to want?’

Huw said. ‘You might remember what I told you about royalty and the Church. Reference to seismic shifts and little folks getting dropped down crevices?’

‘I remember.’

‘Follow your conscience but watch your back.’

‘And did it work?’ Lol asked. ‘The magic?’

He could feel the atmosphere hardening. He felt like he was stirring cement and running out of water to soften the mix. Soon Jimmy Hayter’s memories would become clogged, Lord Stourport less accommodating, and when his curiosity about Merrily ran out it would be time to go.

‘It was magick with a “k”,’ Hayter said.

‘Aleister Crowley put the “k” on the end, didn’t he?’

‘A tosser.’

‘But an influential tosser,’ Lol said. ‘I’m told.’

‘My dear friend …’ Stourport heaved himself up on an elbow. ‘If you thought I was going to tell you what we were doing …’

‘Well, I did, actually,’ Lol said. ‘Hoped, anyway. It was a long time ago, after all.’

Crowley. Lol remembered a discussion he’d once had in a flat in Ross-on-Wye with a woman called Cola French who had hung out with some weird people and had told him about …

‘The OTO? That was something to do with Templars, wasn’t it? Ordo Templi Orientis?’

Stourport eyeing him balefully now, sitting up in the chair.

‘Somebody’s been talking, have they?’

‘I was just thinking Crowley … Templars …’

‘Crowley was into them, yeah.’

‘And Mat Phobe was into Crowley?’

Stourport said. ‘You want a drink?’

‘No, thanks, I’m working tonight.’

‘All the more reason, my dear.’

‘Not when you’re your own roadie.’

‘Jeez, you poor, sad bleeder. Why do you bother?’

Lol shrugged. Stourport was quiet for a while, looking up at the cherubs with their trumpets. Then he got up and went over to a Chinese lacquer cabinet with dragons on it, came back with a heavy glass and a squat bottle of tequila.

‘All right.’ He sat down again. ‘But don’t take any of this as gospel – I was only half there.’

It was clear that the rambling reminiscence was over. Hayter was being monitored by Stourport now, and there was more care, less free-flow as he talked about Mat Phobe telling them how the Order of the Poor Knights had been officially stamped out, its churches closed, its assets seized, its leaders burned.

How, in spite of this, it had never really gone away. The Templars had gone underground under different names, their secrets passed on through Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry and some of the magical orders which had manifested in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yeah, including the OTO.

‘He said he could show us,’ Stourport said. ‘He said we’d never look back. That was when Pierre split. He’d had a bad experience. We got up one morning and he was flailing around, saying we were all evil and we were laying ourselves open to eternal damnation – he’d been brought up as a Catholic and it taints you for life.’

‘What had you done?’

Stourport shook his head. Lol thought about the girl called Cola French, who had worked in a bookshop.

‘The OTO was into sex magic.’

Cola French had said, You use the build-up to an orgasm to channel and focus energy for a particular purpose and then … boom.

‘With women,’ Lol said, ‘or men. Or on your own.’

‘Two out of three was good enough for me. Mat said we could employ supernatural … this sounds like utter shit now, but you have to remember the chemicals we were absorbing. He said we could follow a path to enlightenment. Focus our will-power, strengthened by sexual tension. Like, for instance, the Templars had this girdle kind of thing they wore in bed as an aid to chastity. He showed us how to use something similar, only this was to prolong an orgasm.’ Hayter smiled ruefully. ‘A guy who thinks he can show you how to come for ever, you’ll follow him anywhere.’

‘What was his background?’

‘Never knew. Narcotics make you incurious. He was just there, you know? And, yeah, we might have plumbed what some people may consider the depths of depravity, except it didn’t seem like depravity at the time. Me, I was up to here with peace and lerve and ready to get steeped in the dirty stuff.’

‘I’m not really getting this,’ Lol said. ‘How it ties in to the location … the Master House. How was this leading you to whatever you wanted to find?’

Lord Stourport sipped his tequila. Sun flooded one of the vast Gothic windows.

‘You call something up and you ask it. A spirit, a demon. You do a ritual to invoke whatever you think can tell you what you want to know. I remember there was a blood sacrifice once – Mat sent Mickey Sharpe to steal a cockerel from one of the farms. I didn’t care too much for that, fucking blood was everywhere. That was when Siggi split. I think Mat was glad. Siggi was getting a little flaky.’

‘So that was just the two of you left? You and Mat Phobe. Two men?’

‘Oh, none of that stuff, old boy. Anyway, other people were there by then. Mickey had discovered a source of …’ he smiled ‘… Farm girls.’

Lol said, ‘A source?’

‘Country girls who knew their way around. Country girls are undervalued, as if they’re naive or something compared to your hard-nosed city chicks. Not the case. Bulls and cows, rams and ewes, they’ve lived with it since they could walk. Not easily shocked, is what I’m saying. We were not corrupting innocents.’

‘Who was this? You, Mat … this Mickey?’

‘I remember Mickey thought that, given the circumstances, he ought to be paid more. I remember that.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Paid him, of course. After all, we were paying the girls.’

‘Paying them to …?’

‘Go a little further. And keep their mouths shut … well …’ Hayter chuckled. ‘Some of the time. No problems there, like I said. They’d never seen that kind of money before. I want to stress this: no corruption of innocents.’

‘You make it sound like they were … working girls.’

‘And that wouldn’t happen in the sticks, would it?’ Stourport put his glass down on the edge of the stone fireplace. ‘Don’t knock it, Robinson, it has its uses.’

So they were paying local girls to take part in ceremonial magic involving sexual practices – the kind of practices you wouldn’t get your own girlfriend into no matter what she’d taken.

He said, ‘How could you be sure they wouldn’t talk about it?’

‘Put it this way: they never did. You wouldn’t want to, would you? Not if you’d been paid more for a couple of nights than you’d normally earn in a month. And like I said, country girls … and none of it was illegal, they weren’t under age. I was more worried about the men. I didn’t want any more men, but Mat … there was one guy Mat was keen to involve. I thought he was a pain in the arse. Fortunately, he didn’t live in.’

‘Local guy?’

‘Oh yeah. His family used to own the house. Had a name that was ridiculously Welsh. He didn’t sound Welsh. Mat soft-pedalled him for a while, until it was clear he was up for it. He didn’t smoke so we gave him pills and got one of the girls to bake hash brownies, which loosened him up a lot. We got him talking about the house and what had happened there … I remember one night, him saying to me, “You think you’re a nob … I’m royalty, man.” He was a pompous shit. Bloody Welsh and their upside-down inferiority complex. Didn’t even sound Welsh.’

‘What did he mean, royalty?’

‘Oh … his family was descended from the Welsh princes, all this bollocks. But Mat was interested. He constructed some kind of ritual this bloke had to be at the centre of. Some necromantic thing, to put him in touch with his ancestors. We taped it. Candles and incense and a magic circle and a tape recorder. He went into some sort of trance, and all this balls came out in Welsh. He swore he couldn’t speak Welsh. Actually quite shattered, I remember, when we played it back to him.’

‘This was in the house?’

‘This was in the main room, yeah. Maybe you need to talk to him. Wish I could remember his name. William something-unpronounce-ably-Welsh? Tell your lady to talk to him, if he’s still alive. Make the bastard squirm.’

‘So did you ever manage to contact his ancestors?’

‘I don’t know. I had to go back to London to meet my father who I did not want coming down to Garway. Get out the suit, drive up to London. Would’ve stayed in London, if I’d had any sense, but I was keen to get back. Still had the hots for one of the girls, who’d been away and come back.’

‘One of the farm girls?’

‘Nah.’ Stourport sniffed. ‘The farm girls, they were … they didn’t … they weren’t bothered. They weren’t fazed. They just accepted it. And the money, of course. No, this was actually a black girl. Strange as it may seem, I’d never had a black girl. At the time.’

‘Such sheltered lives people had, back then,’ Lol said. Stourport scowled.

‘Wasn’t to be, anyway. I’d been back from London one … no, maybe two nights, when the Herefordshire Constabulary paid us an early-morning call.’

‘I think I heard about that.’

‘Pulled me and the faithful Mickey. Bastard Hereford magistrates sent me to jail. Served nine weeks. A nightmare. Mat and the Welsh guy got away … and the black girl. She was the only woman there at the time. I didn’t think about this then, but maybe it was a blessing for her, she was getting quite frail. Didn’t have the stamina of the other slappers.’

‘They used her in rituals? Sex rituals?’

‘Robinson, watch my lips and remember this: all I did at the Master House was pay for the drugs and expend some testosterone. The so-called magic passed over my head. I didn’t believe in it, then, and I don’t believe in it now. It was libidinal spice.’

‘So you never found the gold. Or whatever it was.’

‘Need you ask?’

‘What happened to the tapes?’

‘Mat took them, I suppose. If I should come across one, I’ll let you know. Or anything else that occurs to me. Just write down your phone number on there.’

Hayter picked up a folded copy of The Independent from beside his chair, tossed it at Lol, who wrote down his mobile number. The chances of Hayter getting back to him were about as likely as Alien going platinum. He looked up.

‘So the girl—?’

‘She was black. It was a novelty. She was … succulent.’

There was a coldness in the room and it seemed to gather in Lol’s spine and he sat back against a cushion. Stourport finished his drink and didn’t pour another.

‘Don’t expect me to go any further than that – not that any of it’s spectacularly obscene in comparison with some of my later escapades. Most of which have been extremely well chronicled, as you know.’

‘What happened to them? The ones that got away.’

‘Dunno. I was in the slammer. A nightmare. You couldn’t even get decent dope in British prisons back then.’

‘You didn’t hear from Mat?’

‘No. Dead, now. Somebody told me he’d gone out to the Middle East or somewhere and he’d died or been killed. I wasn’t sorry. He was a cold bastard.’

‘What about Mary?’

‘Dunno where she went. I was in the pokey, like I said. When I came out, just about the last place I was likely to go near was the Master House. In fact—’

Lord Stourport broke off, slowly put his glass back on the hearth and looked out from under his shelf of white hair, levelling at Lol a steady gaze that went on for a long time. All the time it took for Lol to realize that he’d said the name Mary and Jimmy Hayter had only ever mentioned a nameless black girl.

41 Time of No Reply

ON THE BACK of the stone, it said:

NOW WE RISE

AND WE ARE EVERYWHERE.

‘Where are you now?’ Merrily was asking in Lol’s ear.

‘In a churchyard. Under an oak tree. Tried to call earlier but your phone was busy. All the time.’

On the grave, in front of the stone, strewn like the fallen petals of plastic flowers, Lol had counted fourteen plectrums.

Above them, on the small, grey memorial, a blunted plectrum of stone in the grass, the names of MOLLY DRAKE and RODNEY DRAKE and their dates.

At the top, the name of the son who had predeceased them both. His dates: 1948 – 1974.

‘Churchyard, where?’

‘Um, Tanworth. Tanworth in Arden. In Warwickshire.’

Pause.

‘Lol, that’s …’

‘Nick’s village.’

‘Oh God, Lol.’

‘It’s OK.’ His glasses had misted; he took them off. ‘It was on the way. I saw the signpost. Had to stop, obviously, never having been. Maybe – you know – avoiding it.’

‘Of course you had to stop.’ Slightly awkward pause. ‘What do you … I mean, what’s it like. You know, the …?’

‘Very quiet and modest, really. Not unhappy. Listen, there are things I need to tell you. Lord Stourport.’

‘You saw him? I tried to reach you.’

‘Um … you won’t find this edifying.’

Lol put his glasses back on, took out a folded tour-schedule, full of the notes he’d scribbled in the truck, back near the burger van, and told her what he’d learned from Jimmy Hayter.

Standing next to the grave of Nick Drake and his parents, decent, prosperous residents of this increasingly wealthy village, while the sun was hiding in the oak tree, making an autumn bonfire amongst the turning leaves.

Merrily made notes on the sermon pad.

She wrote down the names:

PIERRE MARKHAM

MICKEY SHARPE

SIGGI—?

MAT PHOBE?

DE MOLAY – TREASURE?

With a kind of mental shiver, she wrote down,

CROWLEY

OTO

And then,

GROTTO OF DREAMS???

And, in rapid sucession,

BLOOD SACRIFICE … COUNTRY GIRLS.

… PAID

Underlining this, remembering Mary’s letter: it’s only your body and look at the money you’re getting.

Because he was safely out of there, in the sanctuary of the Tanworth churchyard, at the shrine of his first tragic hero, she was able to smile at the way Lol had blown it, dropping Mary’s name when Stourport had referred only to a black girl.

She wrote,

FRAIL.

And then, finally,

SYCHARTH????

Amid the distaste, an unexpected fizz of excitement as Merrily put down her pen.

‘Lol, did Lord Stourport miss something when he was in London, do you think?’

‘I can’t help wondering if he even went to London,’ Lol said. ‘Or if, whatever happened towards the end, he was effectively dissociating himself from it. Giving himself an alibi. And the way he was stressing that he was only in it for the sex, wasn’t really involved in the ritual magic.’

‘Was that true, do you think, or just a blokey thing to say?’

‘Well, it was blokey, but … the sex, the magic, I don’t think you can divide them. I think he did get off on all that. You sensed a kind of pride. After a while, he was enjoying talking about it – his decadent youth, before he had the responsibility of property and a title dumped on him. I think he’d do it again tomorrow if there was another Mat Phobe around to set it up.’

‘But he never went into detail?’

‘No. You’d probably be looking at whatever rituals Crowley did in that context.’

‘Templars. He was always intrigued by the Templars.’

Thinking of the time, while she was waiting for the first deliverance course at Huw Owen’s chapel in the Beacons, when she’d been reading heavily about magic, and Crowley in particular. All the books came back to Crowley, his attempts to raise spiritual and demonic entities, representing various energies – sexual arousal going hand-round-cock with higher consciousness. His ambition to become godlike.

In a seedy kind of way.

She remembered once making the mistake of reading in bed about how, at his abbey in Sicily, Crowley had supervised a ritual which involved a woman having sex with a goat, culminating in Crowley cutting the goat’s throat so that the blood washed over the woman.

It was about the magical energy of blood. Crowley liked to call them Scarlet Women, and that was how they’d end up, the sick bastard.

‘The Welsh guy,’ Lol said. ‘He must’ve been there at the end.’

‘Yes. That’s your big discovery, Lol, and I’m truly grateful for this. I need to talk to the guy, don’t I? If it’s who I think it is.’

Was she going to talk to Sycharth, in defiance of the Bishop?

Oh yes. Oh God, yes.

Lol said, ‘You foresee him reacting with the same kind of half-suppressed glee as Jimmy Hayter?’

‘Not exactly. He’s a big businessman in Hereford now. He owns the Centurion on Roman Road.’

‘Do not go on your own.’

‘What’s he going to do, sacrifice me?’

‘You need a witness.’

‘I just want to invite him to a small service.’

God, was she still going to do that? A deliverance swansong?

‘You’re not going today, are you?’ Lol said.

‘I’ll call him, make an appointment.’

‘Get Sophie to do it. Makes it seem more official.’

Merrily said nothing. It would take too long to explain.

‘You’re OK, aren’t you?’ Lol said. ‘I mean, you’re feeling all right?’

‘I’m feeling surprisingly well. Surprisingly well. What time will you be home?

‘Gig’s at nine.’

‘Decent gig?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Do this one for Nick,’ Merrily said. ‘You know what I mean? And when you get in, come round. I don’t care what time.’

‘Well, then.’ Lol knelt down next to the grave. ‘Made it at last.’

Two blokes in the same business, one who went down, one who – having begun his career by shamelessly copying the other – had somehow come through.

This was silly. Embarrassing. Futile. Not only did he not know what to say, he wasn’t even sure who he was addressing. He was now over a decade older than Nick had been when he’d died alone in his bedroom in a big house in this village, from an overdose of antidepressants.

Having already overdosed on cannabis and commercial failure. The house was called Far Leys, and apparently was quite easy to find, but Lol had decided that he wasn’t going to.

If Nick Drake was alive now he’d be nearly sixty. What would he sound like now?

Now we rise and we are everywhere.

Could hear him breathily singing those words on the summery ‘From the Morning’, the last song on the last album released in his lifetime.

Like a prophecy.

The last one. His songs had always been full of dark prescience, if you wanted to hear it – as if he’d seen the design of his short life laid out in symbols. He was the fruit tree that would only flourish when his body was in the ground, when the pink moon had taken his life after the years of the black-eyed dog howling at his door, asking for more, giving nothing.

This man who could stand in silence for two hours on the periphery of a party, like a half-formed apparition. Some people had actually seen his possible suicide as part of a life-plan. Others thought he was just plain screwed up and smoking too much dope.

Maybe, it was often said, a woman might have saved him, if he’d been able to let a woman in. Or a man? Gay men liked to suggest that Nick – who, despite his elegance, his good looks and his profession, never seemed to have had a physical relationship – had been in the closet.

The most likely answer was that he was too well brought up in the careful, post-war Agatha Christie Fifties, too plain uptight middle English. I can’t really imagine Nick having sex with anyone – a friend, quoted in the latest biography – because he would have to take his clothes off and he was always far too shy.

This in the Seventies, when Jimmy Hayter, close to the same age as Nick, and actually far more upper-class, had been up to here with peace and lerve and ready to get steeped in the dirty stuff.

Jimmy Hayter, who was Lord Stourport, who hadn’t spoken to Lol again as Lol stood up, murmured ‘thank you’, nodded and walked away like he was walking on an open blade. Hayter’s body never moving, only his stare coldly following him to the door.

‘You’d have encountered people like him, right?’ Lol said. ‘I mean, you were just a little too late – especially with your background – to have been a real hippie.’

Lol picked up one of the plectrums, tortoiseshell, and then put it back, finding he’d rearranged them into a rough semicircle around the gravestone.

‘You came in at the wrong end of the dream. When everybody was waking up into the cold daylight, trying to pull the covers over their heads and it was … all going rancid under there.’

Those sublime albums bombing, one after the other. No reason for it; they were massive these days, the songs ubiquitous.

Now he had risen and he was everywhere.

The last prophesy fulfilled. There was nothing left to say.

Lol stood up. He had no plectrum to leave. Hadn’t used one in years, just his fingers and his nails on light strings.

As he walked away, a slow breeze passed through the brittling leaves on the oak tree, like a low sigh, and Lol turned and thought for a moment that a tall figure was shadowed under the tree. Slightly stooped. Raising a languid hand in a brief, shy salute.

Lol smiled and waved once and ran out of the churchyard, all the way back to where he’d left the Animal at the side of the road in a quiet lane with trees.

Only it wasn’t there.

Using the landline, Merrily rang The Centurion in Roman Road.

A woman said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gwilym’s in a meeting. Who shall I say called?’

‘When will the meeting be over?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know. Can I take a—?’

‘I’ll call back,’ Merrily said, the mobile starting to chime at her elbow.

‘It’s Adam Eastgate, Merrily. About that call I warned you to expect.’

‘It hasn’t happened yet.’

‘Well, no. As it turns out, this is it.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’ve been asked to make the call rather than somebody whose voice you wouldn’t recognize. Bottom line, Merrily, I have to ask you if you ever do any work … privately, like.’

‘Privately?’

‘You know what I’m saying.’

‘Independently of the Diocese?’

‘And on a confidential basis.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the service in the Master House. Paul Gray says he’ll go along with it, though perhaps I’m not the best person to make an approach to Mr Gwilym.’

‘You want me to go ahead, despite the Bishop.’

‘It’s not seen as a confrontational thing. Just something we feel should take place, and if it’s done quietly there won’t be any of the problems Bernard was afraid of.’

‘Who else would be there?’

‘Me.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘It wouldn’t be wise for there to be … anyone else.’

‘This is a tough one, Adam.’

‘Aye. I can see that.’

‘If I did it,’ Merrily said, ‘and it got out … it could get me in a lot of trouble.’

Because there was a difference here. If she just went ahead with it on her own, it would be merely a small rebellion, out of conscience.

Where the royals are concerned – the royals and Canterbury – the smallest rumour can cause a seismic shift, and little folks like you can get dropped down the nearest crevice.

‘It won’t get out, Merrily. Nobody wants it to get out.’

‘And the idea’s been approved, has it, at the highest level?’

‘I referred it up. The suggestion came back.’

‘From?’

‘Just from higher up.’

‘When did they have in mind?’

‘Soon as possible. Soon as you can get the people together. What’s the earliest, do you think?’

‘I suppose …’ Merrily thought about it, counting days. ‘I suppose the earliest might be the day after tomorrow. That would be … Friday?’

She looked at the calendar and her gaze caught the sermon pad, propped up now against the computer, open to the list of names: PIERRE MARKHAM … MICKEY SHARPE … SIGGI—?

‘That would be Friday the twelfth?’ Adam Eastgate said. ‘I’m writing it down.’

MAT PHOBE?

‘Or Saturday, I suppose,’ Merrily said.

‘The thirteenth.’

It was like one of those damn signposts being erected in the scullery, hammered into the floor in front of the desk.

MAT PHOBE?

Something about that name. Not a real name, obviously.

‘Think about it and let me know early tomorrow,’ Adam Eastgate said. ‘OK?’

‘OK. I will.’ Her stare travelling up and down the names, alighting on—

SYCHARTH????

‘Adam, tell me something.’

‘If I can.’

‘The threats received by the Duchy—’

‘Oh, now—’

‘It’ll go no further, I promise. Come on. Someone’s given you the green light to trust me.’

‘Where did you get this?’

‘From Jonathan Long.’

Which she had, in a way.

‘Wales,’ Merrily said. ‘He was talking about Wales.’

‘Aw, look, it was rubbish, Merrily. They decided it was all complete rubbish. A joke.’

‘What sort of threats were they? Please. It’s important.’

‘I have to refer these things up, you know? They have to be looked into. Once we got them translated … the grammar wasn’t even right, apparently. I can’t tell you any more.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Merrily said, going up the list from the bottom as she clicked off.

CROWLEY.

DE MOLAY

MAT PHOBE?

Printing that last one out again, separating the letters.

MAT PHOBE

Then, in slight disbelief, she began to pick out individual letters, writing them down in a different order. Very lightly, so that it was almost a ghost of a word. As if she couldn’t bear to give it more solidity …

BAPHOMET

42 Contex

TOO EARLY TO panic.

It couldn’t happen. Not on a mild autumnal Wednesday afternoon in Tanworth-in-Arden, in Middle England.

And he must have done this a couple of times before – distinctly remembering leaving his car in a particular place when it was actually somewhere else. It had definitely happened before.

If never with nearly four thousand pounds’ worth of kit in the back, not including the Boswell guitar which was as close to priceless as anything he’d ever possessed.

Who was he trying to fool?

Lol stood in the road, in the empty space between two vividly green-gold beech trees. Standing exactly where he remembered parking the truck … and parking it not too confidently, because the Animal was so much longer than his old car.

But it had been a strange, unpredictable day. He needed to check and double-check before reporting it to the police. Damn, damn, damn.

The sky was clouding over, the sun hazed like a smear of butter on white bread, and he’d begun numbly retracing his steps to the churchyard, when his mobile played the riff from ‘Heavy Medication Day’.

When he opened up the phone, a phone number he didn’t recognize appeared in the screen.

A male voice he didn’t recognize, either.

‘Robinson.’

‘Yes.’

‘Try the pub car park.’

Lol said, ‘Who’s that?’

There was no answer.

Lol said, ‘Listen …’

There wasn’t going to be an answer; this was the time of no reply. He began to breathe hard, that sense of dislocation again. He turned around, and the pub was directly opposite.

He didn’t move, realizing he could actually see the truck from here, silver blue, centrally parked. A man in a suit, with a briefcase under one arm, came out of the pub and bleeped open a BMW. Nobody else was about.

Lol approached the Animal slowly, walking all around it from a distance, until he was sure there was nobody sitting in it. Clutching his keys, very much afraid that he wasn’t going to need them. Not to open the driver’s door, anyway.

Nor, as it turned out, the roll-top that Gomer and Danny Thomas had fitted onto the box, now bunched up at the end like an accordion.

There was a gap at the tailgate where the lock had been prised. When Lol pushed it, it jammed halfway, but that was enough for him to read the message.

YOU WON’T BE NEEDING THIS ANY MORE.

TRUST ME

The lettering was black and ragged. It had been wire-burned into the lightly polished face of the Boswell guitar which lay in its rigid velvet-lined case, like a child’s body in an open coffin. The hinged top of the case had been bent back, snapped strings writhing in the air where the Boswell’s neck had been broken.

On the square, the shadow of the medieval market hall had lengthened over the grey Lexus. In other circumstances, you could almost start to worry about what might have happened to the driver.

It was nearly four p.m., and Merrily realized she hadn’t eaten today, at all – not good – but still wasn’t hungry. In her mind, the candle was burning between the horns of the hermaphrodite goat and would not go out.

‘This is the fourth time you been out yere, vicar.’

She spun round, and the candle flame seemed to waver.

‘Some’ing on your mind, I reckon,’ Gomer Parry said. ‘Not that I been spying – just doing a bit o’ tidying round the churchyard, collecting the ole windfalls, kind o’ thing.’

‘Sorry, Gomer, I’m …’

‘You en’t bin around these past two days, vicar.’

‘No. I meant to tell you … it was all done in a bit of a rush.’

She’d thought perhaps he was slowing down, pottering around the village more, leaving the big digger jobs to Danny, but he looked bright enough, his bottle glasses full of light, his white hair projecting like the bristles on a yard brush, ciggy tin poking out of the top pocket of his old tweed jacket.

‘No problem – I seen Janey and her explained. I’d come out a time or two, see if I could spot you. Thing is, vicar … you got a minute?’

Gomer took her arm and nodded towards the market hall, and they moved between two oak pillars. Whatever it was, she didn’t really have time for it, but this was Gomer Parry.

‘Thing is, vicar, last time we was talking I wasn’t exac’ly straight with you.’

That had to be a first; this man was embarrassingly straight.

‘I’m sorry, been a bit preoccupied. What are we talking about here, Gomer?’

‘You asked me about a partic’lar woman.’

‘Oh.’

‘And I was kinder talking all round the subject, if you recalls.’

‘Well, I didn’t really—’

‘Which was wrong. Things between us, that en’t how it’s ever been.’

‘No.’

‘What I should’ve said, see, was there’s stuff I could tell you – tell you – that shouldn’t ever be repeated to nobody. On account of there’s some things what, on the surface, is a bit … your job, you’d most likely have to say sinful.’

‘Not really one of my words, but never mind …’

‘But it en’t. Not really. Not in the … how can I put this …? Not in the circumstances in which these things is being looked at, kind o’ thing.’

‘Not in the context of a particular situation?’

‘Contex! That’s the word, vicar. In this yere contex, sin is …’

‘Relative?’

‘Exac’ly.’

‘And the context is?’

‘Garway, vicar. Garway is its own contex. There’s Hereford and there’s Wales … and there’s Garway. And Garway’s its own contex.’

‘Gomer, I just want to say … you don’t have to tell me everything. I mean, I’m not—’

‘I knows that, vicar.’

‘However, as it happens, a situation has arisen where the more I know about the particular woman you were referring to, the more I might actually be able to help her.’

‘That a fact?’

‘So, frankly, any dirt you have on Mrs Morningwood, I’m up for it, basically.’

Gomer nodded, plucked the ciggy tin from his pocket.

‘This qualify as a public place, vicar, under the law?’

‘As there’s no actual market on at the moment, I don’t really know.’ Merrily pulled out the Silk Cut and the lighter, an old rage pulsing through her at the attempted management of people’s lives, the negation of God-given free will. ‘But who gives a shit? Go on …’

‘This person. I think I tole you this person helps farmers, kind o’ thing.’

‘With tax problems and DEFRA forms.’

‘DEFRA, that’s a war, them bastards, vicar, but that en’t really the issue in hand. And it en’t only farmers. And it en’t hexclusively Garway. Like, for instance, you met my ole friend Jumbo Humphries, Talgarth?’

Merrily recalled a man the size of a double pillar box who ran a garage and animal-feed operation up towards Brecon while doubling as a private inquiry agent.

‘Now Jumbo, when his wife walked out – and this is confidential, vicar …’

‘Goes without saying.’

‘Jumbo was lonely, you know what I’m sayin’? Not that he di’n’t have no offers. But the kinder women making the offers, they had an eye to the business, which is worth a quid or two. What I mean is, not Jumbo. They wasn’t looking at Jumbo, not even in the dark, and he knowed it.’

‘It’s sad, Gomer.’ Merrily lit his roll-up, stepping back as a bus pulled in with a hiss of brakes. ‘But it happens.’

‘So this person … over at Garway … this person we been discussing … It was this person got Jumbo through a bad patch. Fixed him up. With his Michelle.’

‘Oh. I see.’ She looked at Gomer, his glasses opaque. She was thinking, Not a Thai-bride situation. ‘Do I see?’

‘No,’ Gomer said. ‘Likely not.’

First Siân, then Robbie Williams.

Getting home half an hour earlier than usual, Jane was as unhappy and confused as when she’d left this morning. Life in flux, nobody you could count on.

Siân – it had been encouraging, in a way. All that about holding Mum in high esteem, treating Shirley’s crap with the level of respect it deserved. It had seemed encouraging. But it could be a screen, couldn’t it? You couldn’t trust people in the Church because the Church was in flux, too, a time of rapid change, everybody grabbing what they could.

That was the trouble with the present. It was always in motion and, if you let yourself get dragged in, you could be pulled to pieces.

The past was different. You could get a feel for the past.

Jane looked around at the black and white village settling in for the dusk, the first lights kindling way back inside the Black Swan. The sense of an ancient heart. You could stand here, on these cobbles, at dawn and dusk particularly, and feel part of something at the deepest level.

This was most apparent when she was in Coleman’s Meadow, on the prehistoric trackway to the top of Cole Hill. In the meadow where Gomer’s JCB had – as if this was meant – uncovered the first stone. Eight to ten feet long. Awesome.

Finding the stones, fighting for the stones, had grounded her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. But now she was expected to break it. The System said she must go away next year to college, develop around herself a new kind of life. With all the bureaucracy involved, it was even likely she wouldn’t be here when – if – the old stones were raised again.

Ancient signposts to a mystical communion with the planet.

As above, so below.

She’d wanted to talk about this with Robbie Williams again. Discuss what she’d gathered from the internet as a result of his suggestion about the real identity of the Garway Green Man: If that is Baphomet, is he guarding the altar? Or is he drawing attention away from it?

History had been the last period before lunch, and she’d hung round as Robbie packed his notes into his briefcase, but he’d looked up with a faintly worried expression in his eyes.

‘Ah … Jane. In a bit of a hurry today, unfortunately …’

‘This is just a quick question, Mr Williams. It’s basically about what happened to the Templar tradition after the Order was dissolved. I’ve been reading about Eliphas Levi and Baphomet, and he was French. What I was really interested in was what happened here.’

‘Jane …’ Robbie had come to his feet, buttoning his jacket over his beer gut. ‘I need to make something clear. While one can only applaud your interest in the fringe issues of history, this is not part of the syllabus.’

‘I never thought it was,’ Jane said. ‘It’s far too interesting.’

‘However, I get paid – and not as well as I’d like to be – to improve this school’s reputation as an A-level factory. It’s not about knowledge any more, Jane, it’s about results and statistics.’

‘That’s a pretty cynical attitude, Mr Williams, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Jane, if you were as close to blessed retirement as I am, having seen all that I’ve seen …’

‘But, like, I thought you were interested. In Garway Church and everything. You seemed interested the other day.’

‘Well, all I’m interested in at the moment,’ Robbie said, ‘is my lunch. And if you want to make the best use of your time here, I would suggest you pay more attention to the syllabus, because your essay on Charlemagne was skimpy, to say the least.’ He swung his briefcase from the desk. ‘Thank you, Jane.’

It made no sense. It was like he’d become a different person. She’d never ask him anything again. It was like there was suddenly nobody she could count on. Mum was working away, and Lol was out there making a career which, if it continued to build, would take him out of the village for months at a time. Lol and Mum, maybe their relationship had only worked when one of them was a loser.

And then there was Eirion … she’d chosen to end that before he did, because the writing was on the wall, anyway. One way or another, all the foundations were cracking, and Jane had spent the whole afternoon in a state of increasing isolation until, with the last period free, she couldn’t stand it any more; she’d walked out of the school and caught a bus into Leominster, strolled around the town in a futile kind of way, shrouded in gloom, before grabbing the chance of a bus to Ledwardine.

She shouldered her airline bag and tramped wearily across the cobbles, and … oh.

The Volvo was parked in the vicarage drive.

The way her heart leapt – well, you despised yourself, really. I missed you, Mummy. God. Jane folded up her smile, buried it deep as she walked into the drive.

Inside the vicarage a dog barked when she fitted her key into the front door. Inside the hall, she recoiled at the sight of the woman in the kitchen doorway with her hand on the head of the wolfhound, like Britannia or something from an antique coin, only made more sinister by the dark glasses, the dark green fleece zipped all the way up, the crust of foundation cream and the ruin of a smile which, when you looked hard, wasn’t a smile at all.

‘You don’t tell her where you got this, mind,’ Gomer said. ‘Her’s gonner have a bit of an idea where it come from.’

Nodding at her sweatshirt, where it said:

GOMER PARRY

PLANT HIRE

‘I think,’ Merrily said, ‘that I need to persuade her to tell me. May have to use you as a threat but … no way have we spoken. Gomer, this … I don’t know what to say … this fills out so many gaps in my meagre knowledge. Just need to have a walk around for a while to think it all out, work out how to approach it.’

‘Good luck, vicar.’

Gomer squeezed out the end of his roll-up, fanned the air. He hadn’t asked about her own involvement with Mrs Morningwood; he’d know she’d have told him if she could.

They came out of the market hall from separate sides. In this village you could never be too careful. Merrily leaned against one of the pillars for a few moments, gazing out towards Ledwardine Fine Arts and the Eight Till Late.

Information overload. She didn’t know where to start.

But, once again, circumstance decided, when Siân came out of the Eight till Late in her black belted coat with the collar up, an evening paper under her arm.

Merrily walked out.

‘Siân,’ she said. ‘Something you forgot?’

43 Shadow

IN THE LOUNGE bar at the Black Swan, they ended up at the corner table where Merrily had sat with Lol the night she’d met Adam Eastgate. Seemed like weeks ago. Merrily made a point of buying the drinks. Coffees. And a cheese sandwich. Still not hungry, but this was no time to be light-headed.

‘Unfinished business,’ Siân said. ‘Hate to leave loose ends. Luckily, she was out.’

‘Who?’

‘Shirley West. I expect Jane’s told you.’

‘I haven’t spoken to Jane. She’s at school. You’ve been to see … Shirley West?’

‘We’ll get to that. Have your sandwich, Merrily. You look as if you need it.’

‘That’s taken you all day?’

‘Not only that. Although it did swallow several hours. Tell me, Merrily, are you on a fixed-term contract here?’

‘Five years. Why?’

‘What about deliverance?’

‘No contract at all. I just do it.’

‘I think you’ve been rather remiss there.’

‘Well, I …’ Merrily put down the sandwich, barely nibbled. ‘You don’t think about these things, do you?’

‘I do. But then, I was a lawyer for over twenty years.’

Siân had unbuttoned her coat. Underneath, she was in civvies – navy skirt, pale blue sweater – looking almost uncomfortable in them, and Merrily realized how similar, apart from the wig, clerical clothing was to what a barrister wore in court.

‘Someone wants to get me out?’

She looked steadily at Siân, who shrugged.

‘Wherever you are, there’s always someone who wants to get you out. But, since you ask, when your contract comes up for renewal, it’s quite likely the terms will have altered.’

‘Extra parishes?’

‘That’s the most likely. And if you don’t play ball …’

‘The contract doesn’t get renewed.’

‘Doesn’t happen often, but it happens. How much have you had to do with Mervyn Neale?’

‘The Archdeacon? Not much at all. It’s been mainly the Bishop. As you know.’

‘Which might partly account for it.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Mervyn doesn’t like you, Merrily.’

‘He hardly knows me.’

‘Perhaps …’ Siân sipped her coffee ‘… he simply dislikes what you represent.’

Which couldn’t be womankind. Without the female clergy, this diocese would be in trouble. Merrily bit off another corner of her sandwich.

‘Neale’s a traditionalist,’ Siân said. ‘He doesn’t, on the surface, object to the women’s ministry, but he does expect us to keep a low profile.’

‘What, like you have?’

‘Well, yes, he was quite angry when it was suggested that I should shadow him for a month, with a view to possibly succeeding him when he retires.’

‘That’s on the cards, is it?’

‘I hope so. I think it’s something I could do.’

‘Mmm, I think it probably is.’

‘Because I’m a ruthless, ambitious bitch, presumably.’

Merrily leaned her head back against the oak panelling, shook her head, smiling faintly. And you thought Gomer Parry was direct.

‘You don’t like me, you don’t trust me,’ Siân said.

‘Siân, it’s not that I don’t like you—’ Merrily rolled her head against the panelling. ‘Oh God.’

‘You know what the problem is with Shirley West, don’t you?’

‘Sure, she thinks I’m some kind of chain-smoking punk priest who dabbles on the fringes of the occult.’

‘Well, that, too. But what it really comes down to is her ex-husband being distantly related to the man often said to be Britain’s most appalling serial murderer, ever.’

Merrily sat up, spilling her coffee.

‘Fred West?’

‘A sexual predator. And, of course, a Herefordshire man.’

‘Shirley told you this? How—? You’ve only been here a couple of days.’

‘Do calm down, Merrily, I’m not trying to take over your parish. I met Shirley West – Jane will tell you – I met her in the church last night. You’d hardly left before I had a phone call from Shirley asking to meet me. Jane – protecting your interests – eavesdropped on our meeting. Jane is … Well, how many teenage daughters would even spare the time? She’s a good girl, Merrily.’

‘I know.’

‘Shirley … was desperately eager to tell me about the evil to which you were exposing your Sunday-evening meditation group. Among other things.’

‘She made a bit of a scene on Sunday night. I didn’t handle it very well. Wasn’t feeling too good, actually.’

‘No, you didn’t look at all well when you left for Garway.’

‘Still, I should’ve made time to talk to her.’

‘If you made time for everybody, you wouldn’t sleep. However, as I explained to Jane, I was rather concerned that Shirley might be causing mischief where you really didn’t need it. So, when you … liberated me this morning, I decided to drop in on her, on that estate off New Barn Lane, not thinking she’d be at work. Her sister-in-law saw me and came out, and I identified myself and she invited me in for a cup of tea, and … I was there nearly three hours.’

‘Her sister-in-law … Joanna? I think I’ve met her once.’

‘Joanna Harvey. She doesn’t come to church, and in her place I suspect I’d probably stay away as well, or attend another one miles away. Shirley moved here after her divorce, to be near her older brother, Colin. After just a few months of Shirley as a neighbour, Joanna’s at the end of her tether. Desperately wants to move, just to get away from her, but Colin feels a certain family responsibility.’

‘All the things I ought to know.’

‘Shirley had been married seven years before discovering at a party that the late Frederick West had been some sort of distant cousin to her husband. Who hadn’t bothered to tell her – doubtless suspecting the effect it might have. An effect evidently worsened by the way Shirley found out and the thoughtless jokes about what might be under the concrete patio that Colin had made. It preyed on her mind, becoming an obsession. She came to believe that her husband was tainted by evil. That evil hung over the family.’

For a shortish man, Fred West had thrown a long shadow.

Merrily said. ‘His brother John was facing a rape charge when he hanged himself, exactly the way Fred had. Other members of the family have suffered emotional damage with predictable effects on their domestic situations. But … there are dozens of perfectly normal, well-balanced Wests …’

‘It’s clear that Shirley herself has psychiatric problems.’

‘Though not immediately clear to me, apparently,’ Merrily said.

‘She moved into a separate bedroom from her husband, accusing him of unnatural sexual behaviour. He worked – still works, presumably – for a feed dealer, making deliveries to farms, and she accused him of having a relationship with two sisters who had a smallholding. Entirely unfounded, according to Joanna. There’s more, but you get the idea.’

‘Oh God.’

‘She washes her clothes compulsively. She doesn’t watch television and she doesn’t read newspapers because of the filth they transmit. She began going to church for the first time since childhood about four years ago … obsessively. She joined Christian internet chat groups, particularly in America. Before moving here, she used to attend services at Leominster Priory, where she attached herself to a curate – Tom Dover?’

‘I knew him slightly. He moved on.’

‘And faster than he might have normally. Shirley would insist on doing his washing – washing his vestments, in particular. He’s still a curate, near Swindon. I called him on my mobile about an hour ago. He said he felt guilty – ought to have told someone about Shirley.’

‘But she’s a professional woman. Branch manager at a bank.’

‘Where, according to Joanna Harvey, she frequently offers unsought moral and spiritual advice to customers. Having kept her married name as a sort of penance. You really should be more careful, Merrily, especially after your problem some time ago with Jenny Driscoll. As I suggested to Jane, this is not an uncommon situation, particularly for women priests.’

‘I realize that. What do you suggest?’

‘She needs guidance. Not someone like our friend Nigel Saltash, but I do know a person – a psychiatric nurse and a churchgoer who I would have suggested as suitable for your deliverance team if I didn’t think you’d be suspicious of anyone proposed by me.’

Merrily sighed. ‘Siân—’

‘And yes, after Saltash, I can accept that. One reason why I elected to be your locum – if I do become Archdeacon, I’d hate us to start on the wrong foot, due to … misconceptions. I accept we have theological differences, but I respect what you’ve achieved. Against the odds.’

‘Siân, I …’ Merrily found she’d finished both her cheese sandwich and her coffee. She felt like a real drink. ‘I don’t know what to say any more.’

‘No need to say anything at all,’ Siân said. ‘Because I haven’t finished yet.’

Siân had been the Archdeacon’s shadow for a month. Learning the ropes. Learning many things.

‘You know he’s a Freemason.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

On the edge of a minefield here. It had often seemed to Merrily that paranoia about Masonic influence was exaggerated; she’d never had any problems, never really had cause to notice the Masons, although she was aware there were some in the Church. Besides, it was in decline, wasn’t it? All the existing Masons getting on in years, very little new blood.

‘Freemasons claim to be Christian,’ Siân said. ‘Although you would be hard-pressed to find, within Masonic dogma, any recognition of Christ. There’s a very interesting book by a former vicar of New Radnor who’d become a Mason in – he maintains – all innocence and began to find it alarmingly incompatible. Have you read that?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll send you a copy. Making my own position on this quite clear from the outset … as a barrister I came up against it time and time again. I made a point of learning the Masonic signals so that I could spot them in court. You’d be surprised how often I saw them directed towards the bench, from the dock, and I still believe it’s one of the best arguments we have for more women judges.’

‘And women Archdeacons?’

Siân didn’t smile.

‘And women Bishops,’ she said.

The bar noise meshed into white noise, the lights receding into a single point of light. Merrily pushed her plate to one side, her coffee cup to the other.

‘What are you saying?’

Siân – even Siân – looked around at the handful of customers. Merrily spotted a couple of farmers she knew slightly and James Bull-Davies, former Army officer. OK, surely?

‘The position of Bernard Dunmore is an ambivalent one,’ Siân said. ‘He was a Freemason, many years ago. Like a number of clergy, he apparently became aware of an incompatibility and hasn’t had anything to do with the Craft in years.’

‘But …?’

‘He’s never actually renounced Masonry. And, as far as I can tell, I don’t think he’s ever formally left.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I think you’ll just have to accept that I do. Call it a nervous hangover from my years at the Bar.’

‘And what does it mean?’

‘I wasn’t sure it meant anything. In his allocation of livings, the Bishop appears to have been fairness itself. Doesn’t seem to have been unduly influenced by Mervyn Neale, although obviously reliant, to some extent, on his organizational recommendations.’

‘And the Archdeacon?’

‘Nothing I can prove, although perhaps I will one day. He doesn’t like you. Doesn’t like deliverance, as a ministry, and he doesn’t like the way you handle it, the way you’ve widened the brief. I don’t think— What have I said?’

‘This morning, the Bishop told me I’d displayed a tendency to go beyond the brief. Like they’re all saying the same things.’

‘I do know he’s had a number of meetings with the Archdeacon in the past few days – far more contact than in any of the weeks since I’ve been shadowing Neale.’

We unleashed you.

And now we’re reining you in.

‘You’re fully aware of what I’ve been working on? In Garway.’

‘I think so. And I think it might well be relevant. Your attitude on the phone this morning was rather extraordinary.’

‘I was … in a state of shock.’

‘Evidently. It made me wonder what on earth the Bishop had said to you.’

‘He …’

It all began to tumble forward, the rape, the cover-up, the desperate need to tell somebody, just to stay sane. She held it back all the same.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Siân said.

‘He trotted out the usual stuff about the dangers of deliverance being connected with yet another murder. Which is valid enough. But then he said the Duchy of Cornwall also wanted me to forget it. I rang the Duchy. He’d lied. Why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know. He might simply have developed cold feet. Are you going to do what he says?’

‘Erm …’ Merrily sat back. ‘Siân, this might be a naive question, but if you were to expose Mervyn Neale as having used Masonic influence in the course of his executive work in the Diocese, how would that affect your chances of getting his job?’

‘That’s a very interesting point.’ Siân smiled, mouth only. ‘I imagine I could say goodbye to the job. Even if the Church wanted to make a point of distancing itself from Freemasonry, appointing me, in the wake of a scandal – even if it were only an internal one – might be seen as a step too far. It’s still a conservative organization.’

‘But you’d still do it, if you had the evidence?’

‘First and foremost, I’m a Christian,’ Siân said. ‘Of course I’d do it. Are you going along with what the Bishop wants?’

‘No.’

‘Then you’ll need support,’ Siân said. ‘Or you could, very soon, find you’ve become a very small footnote in ecclesiastical history.’

‘Huw Owen said much the same.’

‘Interesting.’ Siân looked at her watch, frowned and rose to her feet. ‘You trust him, don’t you?’

‘I used to trust the Bishop.’

‘It’s a slippery slope, Merrily. Letting trust slip away.’

‘You lose some, you … win some?’

‘Yes. I suppose you do.’ Siân picked up her bag, the kind of doctor’s bag that exorcists were often assumed to carry. ‘When we get outside, however. I’d really rather you didn’t hug me.’

Merrily smiled.

‘But get help,’ Siân said. ‘I implore you.’

44 The Morningwood Heritage

‘I’VE BEEN TELLING Jane about my car accident,’ Mrs Morningwood said, quite softly, looking at Merrily, ‘And how you came to my rescue.’

‘Mmm.’ Merrily frowned. ‘Sometimes people just happen to be in the right place at the right time.’

Jane and Mrs Morningwood were on the sofa, Roscoe stretched across both their knees, Ethel the cat watching warily from the edge of the hearth, where the fire glowed red and orange through a collapsing scaffold of coal and logs.

Merrily wondered how to get rid of Jane.

‘And other stuff,’ Jane said. ‘You thought much about the significance of the number nine, Mum?’

‘John Lennon always liked it. “Revolution Nine”, “Number Nine Dream”. Jane, I wonder if—’

‘In the Garway context. The Nine Witches of Garway. Why nine?’

‘It’s three squared. The trinity?’

‘And the sacred number of the Druids. But the point is, the number nine was also a sacred number of the Templars. When they first started out in Jerusalem, there were supposed to have been nine of them. Which, when you think about it, is ridiculous. Nine knights to protect all the pilgrims in the Holy Land?’

‘Maybe it was just the nine senior knights, with a lot of armed underlings.’

‘Nah, symbolic. Gotta be. Also – get this – nine Templars were required to form a commandery – like at Garway? Plus the order was in existence for 180 years, which, like … one plus eight equals nine.’

‘Sometimes, Jane, I think that without the internet the world would be a happier and less confusing place.’

‘OK, I’ll skip some of the other examples and cut to the chase. The burning of Jacques de Molay. He died on 18 March – one and eight? In the year 1314, one … three … one … four. Do the math, as they say.’

‘It’s intriguing, Jane, however—’

‘And how long did he take to die?’

‘Nine minutes?’

‘Hours, actually.’

‘Ouch. And all this means …?’

‘It’s to do with cosmic correspondences. As above, so below.’

‘You don’t actually know, do you?’

‘Well, no, but if you put it all together, it’s like the landscape and the community of Garway was being primed for some sacred purpose. The number and the symbols that keep recurring. The astrological pubs. You could probably go into the church and find the numbers nine – and three, of course – reflected in all kinds of architectural features. They were, like, building something into the landscape?’

‘Like?’

‘Just bear it in mind. Nine witches, nine original Templars … maybe you’re looking at the need for there always to be nine people in the know. Nine people preserving the tradition.’

Merrily said, ‘Have either of you eaten?’

‘We were waiting for you, Mum. Do you want me to make something?’

‘I know we’re trying to stop doing this, flower, but why don’t you pop over to the chip shop?’

‘It’s peak time! There’ll be a queue a mile long!’

‘Chips,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Yes, I think I should quite like some chips.’

It was fully dark now. The light came from the fire and just one reading lamp. Quiet light. Merrily sat down in the armchair opposite Mrs Morningwood, who’d removed her sunglasses.

‘How do you feel now?’

‘I’m sore. What would you expect?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘But rested, thank you. I may go home tomorrow.’

‘We can talk about that later. Erm … I’ve been finding out some background. My friend Lol … has been to see Lord Stourport.’

‘Has he indeed?’

‘Which means I can now tell you quite a bit about the days before the police raid on the Master House. Only it’s … it’s a bit of a one-way street at the moment, isn’t it, Muriel?’

‘Don’t call me Muriel. Hate it. Sounds like a bloody librarian.’

‘I’ve had some background on you, too,’ Merrily said. ‘Hard to avoid it really.’

Mrs Morningwood shook her head gently; even this was clearly painful.

‘Just been talking to an old friend of mine,’ Merrily said.

‘In a community this centralized, Watkins, it would be surprising if you hadn’t.’

‘We didn’t talk much about you. But we could have.’

‘Who was this?’ Mrs Morningwood’s gaze was on the sweatshirt. ‘As if I couldn’t guess.’

‘This friend … I think he knows a lot more about you than he felt able to tell me.’

‘So go back and ask him.’

‘You don’t think he’d tell me?’

‘You can try.’

‘And, you know, I think I could probably persuade him.’

‘To tell you what? You think there’s some big secret? I’m the Pope’s secret love-child?’

‘The thing is,’ Merrily said, ‘I don’t want him to have to tell me. I don’t want him to feel he’s betrayed you.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t think you do either.’

‘Although I do think he would tell me. I’m just trying to convey to you that I’m …’ Merrily held up a thumb and finger, minimally apart ‘… that close.’

‘Watkins … this is not about betraying me.’

‘The first time we met, you took a phone call from a Mr … Hinton?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You were obtaining something for him. At first – putting this together from what I heard – I thought maybe you were fixing up Thai brides for lonely farmers. Doing the paperwork.’

Mrs Morningwood laughed.

‘Then I heard about what your mother did, on the side. And there was something that Lord Stourport said to Lol. About country girls.’

‘Country girls.’ Mrs Morningwood sniffed. ‘She was livid about that. Do you know how much they were paid? Well, I suppose it wouldn’t sound very much in today’s money, but then … absolute fortune. Rural wages were a complete joke, even then. Farm labour one up from slave labour, and ordinary people would need two or three jobs to get by – many still do, of course, as you know. Ironically, it’s largely the farmers themselves now. Tragic.’

‘These were your mother’s girls.’

‘Were. It all rather fell apart after that. I had to laugh. She’d been ripping those girls off for years. And my grandmother before her.’

‘The Morningwood heritage. How far does it go back?’

‘That’s it, really. Two generations. Before that, I imagine they were witches. Lived in a tiny little place over towards the White Rocks, I think it’s a sheep shed now. But, you see, Watkins, it was part of the rural culture … a necessary part of the culture.’

‘We’re talking about abortions?’

‘And the rest. My grandmother, who never married, raised three daughters on the profits of what, basically, was prostitution.’

‘She was doing it herself?’

Merrily trying for surprise, but once you knew, you knew.

‘And then, as she got older, began pimping for youngsters trying to earn enough money to make something of their lives. It was like …’ Mrs Morningwood’s mouth twisted at the thought, and her lip began to bleed again ‘… almost a gap year for some of them before they left the area, went to college, got themselves good jobs. Strong independent young women who’d learned how to … handle men.’

‘Can I get you something for that lip?’

‘Won’t die, Watkins. And when I say handle men, that was all it amounted to in most cases.’

‘You make it sound like an essential social service. Which I suppose …’

‘Well, isn’t it?’

‘Still?’

Mrs Morningwood sighed. A shift in terminology for the new millennium. Sex therapist specializing in rural needs. As a teenager, she’d grown – despicably, she said – to despise her mother. She’d gone to London, to work as a secretary for a theatrical agent – loose term, very loose. Had ended up working on what she described as adult magazines. Very adult. All very enlightening and destined to alter her opinion of her mother and her grandmother. Got married, not for long. Had been single again when the letter from Mary Roberts had finally reached her.

‘So was Mary …?’

‘Not up to the time I left. Eric Davies – that was a respectable job. But afterwards, perhaps inevitably, she made friends with the other girls.’

‘How many girls were there at the time?’

‘Three, I think. A very informal arrangement by then. My mother really was more of a herbalist, and the demand for herbs was increasing – from middle-class people by then, able to pay more, alternative health becoming quite an industry. She was still furious, though, when two of the girls took the Stourport shilling.’

‘And Mary?’

‘My mother always claimed she didn’t know about that until it was too late.’

‘I would have thought maybe she would’ve offered to get rid of Mary’s baby?’

‘Oh no.’

‘She’d stopped doing that?’

‘No, she was still doing it. She simply wouldn’t tamper with a foetus conceived at the Master House. Call it superstition.’

‘I’m not getting this.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything.’

‘But the tradition … that didn’t end.’

‘It altered. My mother became ill. I nursed her over the final weeks – all over very quickly, as it always used to be before the medical profession became part of the drug culture. During that time I fielded seven phone calls from hesitant men. Two of whom I felt so sorry for that I … Well, what was I supposed to do?’

‘A warm heart under that bluff exterior?’

‘You can’t embarrass me, Watkins. Rural needs are essentially different to urban needs. No verge-crawling in the Land Rover. Extreme discretion is crucial, and there’s a certain mutual respect. Wasn’t going to dress up, mind. Take me as you find me.’

‘Literally?’

‘God, you’re prurient. It was nothing where I couldn’t pretend I was milking a cow.’

‘So Mr Hinton, the other day …?’

‘All sorted. Safely delivered. Delia, I think he’s called her. It’s not a major enterprise or anything, I think I’ve supplied seven in two years. A comfort, for mild-mannered chaps lacking in social skills. In one case, because of the cost, one was shared between two brothers.’

‘I see … do I?’

‘Delia – she and her sisters, the point about them is that they’re not impossibly beautiful. They don’t pout. They’re not Hollywood. The fantasy in these parts, it’s the girl in the T-shirt behind the counter at Hay and Brecon Farmers. You know what I mean? Sometimes, the outlet I deal with, I’ve actually provided them with photographs to work from – from the local papers.’

Jumbo’s Michelle, he really loves her, see, Gomer had said. Wouldn’t swap her for a top o’ the range quad bike. Had her reconditioned twice. Jumbo weighs seventeen stone, mind …

‘Mum?’ Jane’s head came round the door. ‘You going to have them by the fire or what?’

‘No, I think we’ll come into the kitchen, flower, if you want to get some plates down.’

‘OK.’

‘Rubber dolls?’ Merrily said. ‘Inflatable girlfriends? That’s why you won’t go to the police?’

‘How could I?’ Mrs Morningwood easing Roscoe’s head from her lap. ‘Seriously, how could I? All right, it’s mainly the inflatables now, nothing illegal there, but they’d start excavating.’

‘I think you could handle it. The identity of rape victims—’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, this is Garway Hill. Besides, even if they believed me after they discovered what they would very quickly discover … it isn’t just me, is it?’

‘You’re worried about the clients.’

‘It would be like a bomb under the hill. Don’t get me wrong, Watkins, I don’t fear personal exposure, but the handful of shy, vulnerable men throughout South Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, the Black Mountains, whose private lives would be taken apart, who’d would be subjected to the most degrading—’

‘OK, I understand.’

And as they went through to the kitchen, she finally did understand.

She was asking for it, of course. Been asking for it for years, the old slag.

Generations, even.

‘Besides,’ Mrs Morningwood murmured in the hall, ‘what he intended was to kill me. Don’t you think?’

45 Past Rising

OBVIOUSLY, JANE KNEW there was something she wasn’t party to. At one stage, washing the dishes, she looked at Mrs Morningwood and then tentatively grinned at Merrily.

‘I hope Siân was still here when you got back.’

‘Erm, no. She’d gone.’

‘Pity. I was only explaining to her why it was so essential we should have a big vicarage. Like because of the, you know, damaged people you had to bring back sometimes?’ Sheepish smile for Mrs Morningwood. ‘Sorry.’

‘Damaged,’ Mrs Morningwood said tonelessly. ‘And yet somehow still alive.’

And, perhaps sensing the need for a mother and daughter to talk in private, she went off – quite unsteadily, Merrily noticed, still worried – to the bathroom.

‘Mum,’ Jane said when she’d gone. ‘There’s something I have to tell you about, and it’s not going to—’

‘Shirley West?’

‘Oh.’

‘Siân told me.’

‘As an example, presumably, of why your daughter would be unlikely to make it as a private eye.’

‘That was the encouraging bit. I’m now going to tell you the rest. In absolute confidence. Just sit down for a minute.’

Even summarized, the story of Shirley’s obsession made a sad sense. More than twelve years since Fred West had hanged himself while awaiting trial, a core of unexplained evil still hung in the air like an invisible planet. Shirley’s story was not so ridiculous. Might not even be an illness.

‘Well,’ Jane said, ‘I’m quite glad she’s certifiably insane. I mean, it helps, doesn’t it?’

‘That’s typically selfless of you, flower.’

‘So, you know … what will you do about her?’

‘I think Siân’s going to handle it herself. With some psychiatric support. Makes sense for me not to be involved. I think … Siân was proving something to me. She didn’t need to do that.’

‘Yeah. She’s not quite what I imagined.’

‘From my comprehensive character assassination? She’s made me feel a little wanting in the generosity-of-spirit department.’

‘Maybe she’s changed. Or maybe she’s just seen another side of you.’

This kid was getting so smart she could scare you sometimes. Merrily sighed.

‘She has principles. Moral fibre.’ She tapped a teaspoon against an open palm. ‘Perhaps it’s time I got some.’

‘Along with five more parishes?’

‘Yeah, well … who knows? Jane, look, go and hang around in the hall, will you, in case Mrs Morningwood needs any help?’

At the door, Jane looked over her shoulder.

‘She wasn’t in a car crash, was she?’

‘I wasn’t there.’

‘Huh.’

‘Look, I need to make a phone call, and it might take a while. You’ll have to talk among yourselves. Numerology, Renaissance cosmology …’

In the scullery, the sermon pad was still open to the word B A P H O M E T. She tore off the page and screwed it up very tight. Looked at the mobile and then – why fry your brains for these bastards? – picked up the big black bakelite receiver.

‘I need some help,’ she told Huw Owen. ‘Badly.’

‘Sycharth.’ Mrs Morningwood smiled thinly. ‘I ought to have known.’

‘How would you?’ Merrily said. ‘He’d want to keep it very quiet that he’d been spending quality time at the old family home. Certainly wouldn’t want the Grays to know … or would he?’

‘Newtons. Still the Newtons, then.’

‘Sorry, yes, the Newtons.’

The fire was burning low. Jane had taken Roscoe for a walk, with a clothes line doubled up through his collar and a home-made poop-scoop. Dogshit watch, smoking watch. Ledwardine, heart of the New Cotswolds, had them all now, and they never slept.

‘Getting a foot inside the ancient portal.’ Mrs Morningwood had a cigarette and a glass of neat brandy. ‘That alone would make it worthwhile to Sycharth. Other obvious attractions, of course. Nubile young things bathing naked in the Monnow. Would’ve taken a youth with more will-power than Suckarse to look the other way.’

‘This would be the girlfriends, before they left?’

‘Would’ve been the time when Sycharth’s father, Gruffydd – keen as ever to shaft the Newtons – was apparently complaining to the parish council about Lord Stourport’s habit of biking around the lanes stark bollock naked except for a pair of Doc Martens.’

‘You ever meet Stourport?’

‘I’ve told you, I wasn’t there.’

‘You knew Sycharth, though. When you and he were young.’

‘He made a play for me once, at a barn dance. I was almost tempted to go out with him – he had an old Triumph Spitfire. Yellow. Passed his test on his seventeenth birthday. It used to roar sexily up and down the lanes. I always liked speed.’

A moist sadness came into Muriel Morningwood’s bruised eyes. Days of innocence? Yeah, sure.

‘Long time on the phone, Watkins.’

‘I was consulting a colleague. Didn’t want to miss anything out. Don’t look at me like that, it’s a priest. A proper priest. Nothing gets out.’

Mrs Morningwood drank some brandy.

‘Tell me, what were they doing, apart from taking drugs and shagging? Do hate the way another generation has appropriated the word shag as if they invented it. Why can’t they they come up with one of their own? Sorry, I’m rambling again. I don’t think I want to know what they did to Mary Roberts. Not in this state.’

‘Didn’t you ask any of the other girls who were involved?’

‘As far as I know there were only two. My mother wouldn’t have anything to do with them again. I tried to talk to one about it – she just walked away. Too well paid. They’ve both left the area now. I don’t think either of them was there at the end. You should get to Suckarse before he has time to fabricate a story.’

‘You ever hear of a man calling himself Mat Phobe?’

‘Never. Who’s he?’

‘It was all apparently stage-managed by this man. He seems to have decided there was some kind of Templar treasure hidden at the Master House.’

‘Never heard of that.’

‘Mat Phobe – it’s an anagram of Baphomet – the sacred head? Also the name adopted by the occultist Aleister Crowley as leader of a Templar-based outfit experimenting with the magical power of sex.’

‘That what the Knights Templar did, do you think?’

‘They were more less accused of it, weren’t they? Maybe riches led to decadence.’

‘I can certainly see Sycharth in ceremonial robes.’

‘They seem to have tried some kind of mediumistic thing, to put him in touch with his ancestors – the Welsh princes, he claimed, apparently.’

‘His ancestors were sheep-shaggers.’

‘People keep saying he doesn’t speak Welsh,’ Merrily said. ‘Is he likely to know any Welsh at all?’

‘Shouldn’t think so. Wasn’t compulsory at school when Sycharth was a boy, not in an Anglicized area like Monmouth. His son would have to learn it, I expect – Cynllaith.’

‘How old’s he?’

‘Fifteen or sixteen.’

‘Cynllaith? What’s that mean?’

‘Could be something to do with milk – llaith. Or – more sinister, according to my dictionary – battle or slaughter.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Pretentions to warrior status. These sex rituals – was that just an excuse?’

‘Was for Lord Stourport.’

‘But in the course of it …’ Mrs Morningwood’s voice hardening ‘… one of them seems to have impregnated Mary Roberts.’

‘That’s how it looks.’

‘And was, therefore, Fuchsia’s father.’

‘Yes.’ Merrily heard the phone ringing, let it ring. ‘I’ve thought of that.’

‘Suppose it’s Sycharth?’

‘We’re unlikely ever to know.’

‘But does he? And if that child was born as a result of some degenerate ritual, Watkins, what might the effects of that be? I’m asking you as a priest.’

‘As a priest, I don’t really have an answer.’ Merrily stared into the fire. ‘Looking at it psychologically, I would think that would depend on whether she knew about it, wouldn’t you?’

‘If she knew, might she think of herself as inherently soiled and corrupt because of the circumstances of her conception?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘And did she know, do you think?’

‘It would explain some things, wouldn’t it? But if she knew of her own connection with the Master House before Felix tendered for the job, why did she go along with it, then throw a wobbly? What was she like when you first met her?’

‘Inquisitive. Lots of questions.’

‘Not spooked at that stage?’

‘No suggestion of it. This would’ve been their first visit, and they were both fired up with the idea of restoring the house in a sympathetic way. She wanted to know what I could remember about it – the atmosphere, the colours of the walls. Hard for me to recall what she asked in much detail because, of course, I knew at once who she must be and it had, as we used to say, rather blown my mind.’

‘You definitely didn’t say anything to her about that … or give any indication? I mean, if she saw you looking shocked …’

‘I don’t give anything away unless I want to.’

‘Suppose Fuchsia really didn’t know about Mary and the Master House until she actually came here. Something happened to make her go dashing into the church demanding a blessing and spiritual sanctuary from Teddy Murray.’

‘Who would’ve recommended a five-mile walk in the fresh air,’ Mrs Morningwood said sourly.

‘If someone had already recognized the resemblance to Mary the way you did and made Fuchsia aware of it … then the idea of the place being haunted, something rising from under the dust sheets, might have been her own way of externalizing her feelings. Or is that psychobabble?’

‘The past rising up to haunt her?’

‘And she’s a devotee of M. R. James, and perhaps she’s learned that James went to Garway, where something happened to disturb him – and all that goes into the emotional mix. She’s afraid she’s carrying around something corrupt, tainted. She wants to be blessed, purified.’

What is this that is coming?

‘Perhaps, for the first time, starting to question the fate of her mother,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Did Mary come back to Garway, after she wrote to me and I failed to respond? Was your friend able to find that out?’

‘Mmm. I think so.’

‘So they would have known about the baby. Sycharth and the other clowns.’

‘I presume.’

Mrs Morningwood was silent. Merrily heard Jane coming in with Roscoe, big paws skidding on the flags in the kitchen.

‘Sycharth would hardly have wanted a bastard child,’ Mrs Morningwood said at last.

‘Perhaps I’ll get to talk to him tomorrow.’

‘But first, I think you need to talk to the Grays.’

It was after midnight when Merrily switched off the lamp in the parlour. Mrs Morningwood had gone to her herbal bed, taking the dog up with her. Jane had gone over an hour ago to her apartment in the attic. Merrily went through to the kitchen for the last time, put some food down for Ethel, smoked half a cigarette and listened to the answering machine bleeping in the scullery. Eventually, she stubbed out her cigarette, went through and hit the button.

‘Coming over, lass. I’ve things to clear in the morning, so it’ll be mid-afternoon.’

Huw seemed about to hang up, then came back.

‘The bloke who cleared you for the Duchy. Nowt to worry about.’

Another silence, questions drifting like steam in the scullery’s sepia light. There was a soft tapping at the window; Merrily turned sharply.

‘But don’t go near Dunmore yet,’ Huw said.

‘You did say it didn’t matter what time,’ Lol said at the back door. ‘I’ve been back an hour, but you were obviously busy.’

‘Why didn’t you just come in?’

They’d swapped keys months ago.

‘I thought I’d walk around for a bit.’

Maybe it was the light or the lateness, but he looked washed-out, stripped down, drained, as sorrowful and weary as Jesus in The Light of the World that still hung in the hall.

‘Do you want something to eat?’

‘No, thanks. Not hungry.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m fine. Really.’

‘Come to bed, then,’ Merrily said.

46 Call it Superstition

SHE WAS AT the farm by eight-forty-five. Not a problem; Roxanne reckoned she’d been up since five. A wiry woman, early thirties, in a dark blue fleece and a baseball cap over curly hair already greying at the front. Out by the gate with two sheepdogs when Merrily drove in; now in the kitchen, clinking mugs, scraping toast.

‘You’ve just missed Paul, he’s taken the kids to school, then he’s got an appointment at the hospital, which always puts him in a bad mood. Very wary of the drugs, reckons your mate Mrs Morningwood does him more good. The doctors humour him on that score, and that makes him even madder.’

‘What, reflexology?’

‘Has it once a week now. Probably just as well he isn’t here, actually – you talk to him about the Gwilyms, it takes him the rest of the day to calm down. And he isn’t even family.’

The farmhouse was red brick and pebble-dash with bay windows downstairs. Built to function, two barns in front, no name displayed. The kitchen table was scrubbed pine, the coffee as bitter as Roxanne.

‘You know they brought Foot and Mouth into the valley in 2001? You know that, do you? Way to get rid of all your stock, clean up on the compensation. Well, a lot of unscrupulous farmers did it, but rarely anything so blatant. He made no secret of it, he wanted it, he embraced Foot and Mouth.’

‘You mean Sycharth Gwilym had his farm deliberately infected?’

‘Yeah, but try to prove it. Well, we did, we told the press, but the press wouldn’t use it. He’s a big man now, Sycharth, the King of Hereford. Most of his money’s in property and he wanted his stock gone, and he grabbed the opportunity and sod the rest of us. We had a lovely herd of Herefords, wiped out in an afternoon by the trigger-happy bastards from DEFRA. Paul cried. He stood out there and he cried. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. I’m a Newton, I know what they are, the Gwilyms. Scum is what they are.’

Roxanne brought her coffee to the table, snatched off her baseball cap.

‘Adam put us in the picture about what you’re doing. I’ll be there, never fear. Well, it should be me. I’m the Newton, no way Paul should be put through that.’

‘It’s not meant to be an ordeal.’ Merrily spread some honey on a half-slice of toast. ‘Most people say they feel much better afterwards. Some people even …’

She didn’t like to mention the sense of healing. An occasional side effect of a cleansing and not necessarily restricted to residents of the affected property. But … too many false dawns in this household, you could tell.

‘I’m sorry,’ Roxanne said. ‘I didn’t mean you. Sycharth Gwilym. Always so considerate to Paul, opening doors, laying ramps. With a sneer on his face that he barely tries to conceal. Gives him a sick buzz. Or it did, when he thought we’d have to sell up and get out. So, yeah, I’ll do it, you can count on me, I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with Adam Eastgate, and I’ll look Sycharth in his shifty eyes and I’ll pray to God for anything that remains of the Gwilyms to be eradicated from that house until the end of sodding time.’

‘Knows all the history, that girl,’ Mrs Morningwood had said when she came off the phone at seven-thirty a.m., ‘but you’ll need to keep her on track. All she really wants is to pour venom on the Gwilyms.’

Was the venom deserved? Rage could be inherited, the reasons for it long forgotten. Sins-of-the-fathers.

‘You know what this is about,’ Merrily said to Roxanne. ‘Some people refusing to work in the house.’

‘Poor bloke. I showed him round, the first time he came. He was all right, I thought.’

‘But did that make any sense to you? Why people were scared.’

‘Just the one person, I think?’

‘Maybe one more.’ The darkness of the inglenook, the crackle of bird bones, the face. She took a hit of the coffee. ‘Possibly.’

‘Well, I never lived there, obviously.’ Roxanne crunched toast. ‘My parents’d been over here for some years when I was born, so this is the only home I’ve ever known. But I know my mother was glad to move out of the place.’

‘You know why?’

‘Not really. When I was a kid, the times it was empty – between tenants – I always wanted to get inside, it looked so mysterious, like an old castle or something. But it was always kept locked up, and my mum told us it was dangerous. I mean falling slates and stuff. Then it would be let again, to some family – people with horses once – but they never stayed long. I remember one couple, the Rogersons, banging on the door one morning and the woman yelling, “You should’ve told us! Should’ve told us about it, we’d never have taken it.”’

‘You ever find out what had happened to them?’

‘Nope.’ Roxanne shook her head. ‘Wasn’t talked about in front of us kids. Any more than I’d talk about it in front of mine.’

‘They didn’t want to sell it?’

‘No, they didn’t. I suppose the farm was doing well, and it was an asset. Also, the Master House is in the centre of the land, and they didn’t want to sell any land. So there’d be access to organize, a road to put in, rights of way … and the Gwilyms were always hovering. They’d bought another farm – the one Sycharth has now – and the Master House was between us and them, and even if we’d sold it to someone else, what was to stop them selling it on to the Gwilyms?’

‘What’s to stop the Duchy doing the same?’

‘I don’t think they would. He doesn’t give up on things, the Prince, what I’ve heard.’

‘I wouldn’t really know. Was much said about what happened when it was leased to a commune?’

‘That was before my time, but I’ve heard there was a lot of drugs and wild parties. Oh … and I also remember, when I was little, some chap with a big beard coming to the house, saying he was researching a history of … I think it must’ve been the Templars, and could he have a look around the Master House? And my dad was quite rude. He said, “No, bugger off, we’ve had enough of all that.”’

‘So you heard that they were into the Templars. The commune.’

‘Must have.’

‘Did you ever hear any stories about treasure?’

‘What?’

‘Treasure being hidden at the Master House?’

‘Treasure?’ Roxanne laughed, pushing fingers through her curls. ‘If there was any suggestion of treasure at the Master House, you don’t think we’d’ve ripped the place apart to try and find it? The only thing they ever found, my dad used to say, was a priest’s hole, when he was a boy – there was a lot of persecution of Catholics around Garway. But that was completely empty, so they blocked it up again.’

‘What about the history generally ? You know much about that?’

‘Only that it used to be very important, apparently, when the Newtons first came. We have an old … hang on, I’ll show you. Won’t be a minute.’

Roxanne put down her toast and got up, brushing crumbs from her fleece, vanishing through a door. Merrily looked out of the bay window. It had been dark when she left, and the early sun was still muffled. She couldn’t see any landmark that she recognized, not the church, nor the top of the hill with its radio mast. Certainly not the Master House.

It was as if the Newtons had sought out a spot without any prominent landscape features, somewhere with no visible history.

When Roxanne returned, she was carried a wedge of dark wood a couple of feet long and a paperback book. She put the book on the table and held the piece of wood up for Merrily. It was a plaque, gilt-edged. It said:

HONOUR THE MASTER

CARE FOR THE CUSTOMS

Roxanne leaned the plaque against the table.

‘My family, when they moved in, there was a maiden aunt who threw herself into researching the history. We’ve still got a box of her papers – we keep being told we ought to have it all published as a book, but it would take a lot of work. But this aunt – Aunt Fliss – said it was important for the family to realize that we hadn’t just bought a farm, we’d taken on a very powerful piece of history that one day would come into its own.’

‘What did she mean by that?’

‘Don’t think she ever worked it out fully, but it was obviously about the Grand Master of the Templars. People think it’s called the Master House because it was the main farm, but it’s because the Grand Master stayed here when he came to Garway. Aunt Fliss had had this thing made to put up over the fireplace, so future generations wouldn’t forget. My mum and dad brought it with them when they moved out. We still have it hung in the hall. Sentimental value, I suppose.’

‘But is there any actual evidence that de Molay came to Garway?’

‘It’s here.’ Roxanne put the book in front of Merrily. Knights Templar and Hospitaller in Herefordshire by Audrey Tapper. ‘You read this one?’

‘Not had time to read anything much, to be honest. This has all happened very quickly.’

‘Well, there you are.’ Roxanne opened out the book and flattened its spine. ‘This is the bit. This is when Edward II started imprisoning English Templars after they were closed down in France, accused of all this heresy and stuff. One of them was called John Stoke, who’d only been a Templar for about a year and he came to Garway, and he made this confession about what they made him do.’

The account of it, Merrily read, had come from the St John Historical Society, presumably linked to the Hospitallers who had taken over Garway from the Templars.

He was in Garway during the visit there by Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Stoke’s deposition when the Templars were arrested was that he had been called to the Grand Master’s bedchamber at Garway and in front of two other foreign knights he was asked to make proof of his obedience and to seat himself on a small stool at the foot of the Grand Master’s bed.

‘So de Molay’s bedchamber … was that definitely at the Master House?’

‘That’s what we were told,’ Roxanne said. ‘He was a bit of a boy, wasn’t he, old Jacques?’

De Molay then sent to the Church for a crucifix and then two other Templars placed themselves at either side of the door with their swords drawn. Stoke said that he was asked to deny ‘Him whom the image represents’ but he replied ‘Far be it for me to deny my Saviour.’ The Grand Master ordered him to do so, otherwise he would be put in a sack and carried to a place ‘by no means agreeable’. Through fear of death he denied Christ, ‘but with his tongue and not his heart.’

‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ Roxanne said. ‘I like that bit where the poor guy’s threatened with being put in a sack if he didn’t renounce Jesus Christ. Toss him in the Monnow, you reckon, or just the nearest slurry pit. So, I mean, were the Templars Christians, or were they into something a bit off-colour? It’s interesting, really. Wish I had time to go into it.’

‘Or the confession could be fabricated. After the suppression of the Templars, it was easier to slag off Jacques de Molay than go into some dungeon.’

‘That’s what Aunt Fliss used to say, apparently. She said he was a good man. But then, who wants to think they’re living in the house where some psycho was holding court?’

‘Roxanne, can I ask you …? I mean, you probably won’t have an answer to this under the circumstances … But how do the Gwilyms tie in? I mean, they’re supposed to have been in that house since the Middle Ages, is that right?’

‘So they say.’

‘So are they claiming to be descended from the Templars or what?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, yeah, it was their house and they were pretty pissed off about losing it to us. But I thought it was just about money and land. But then I’ve never had anything to do with them – I was being told not to from a very early age. And then I learned the sort of things they did and what a shit Sycharth was. I mean, there’s got to be something, hasn’t there, but he’s clever. When he learned about Paul, he was like, “Look, I know the fix you’re in and why don’t I take it off your hands?” Oh yeah, like I want my dad and my grandad turning in their graves.’

‘You weren’t ever tempted?’

‘No … and he blew it anyway, didn’t he? I mean, yeah, the Master House was falling into ruins and nobody in their right mind was going to want to rent it now. So the only option was to get rid of it. And, like, when we had another approach, six or seven months later, from a chap in Abergavenny, we did start negotiations … until we found out he was a proxy bidder for Sycharth.’

‘Devious.’

‘No more than you’d expect. Then Paul was reading about Harewood Park and all the property the Duchy of Cornwall was buying in Herefordshire and we thought, what’s to lose? So we took a lot of photos and printed up stuff on the history and posted it off. Couldn’t really believe it when they went for it, but … well, good things happen sometimes. And it meant the Gwilyms were stuffed. So maybe old Jacques was on our side.’

‘Getting de Molay on your side.’ Merrily nodded at the plaque. ‘That’s what this is about? I mean, the caring for customs bit … you – the Newtons – clearly went out of your way to observe local traditions. The Watch Night?’

‘Not in my time.’ Roxanne put on a shudder. ‘Thank God. But there was always a feeling – and I do feel that way myself sometimes – that either a place is working for you or it’s working against you. It’s very much a thing you get with farms.’

‘And the Master?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, but then we’re not in the house. That’s Prince Charles’s problem now. Did … did Mrs Morningwood tell you about Naomi Newton?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Thought not. That’s the one she doesn’t tell. The lovely Naomi … she was the youngest sister of my great-grandmother – and of Aunt Fliss. All daughters of John Newton, who bought the farm off Mrs Gwilym. Naomi … she was the beauty. Well, this was during World War One, and there weren’t many men around – all off getting killed in France. Except for Madog Gwilym – can’t remember how he avoided it. Running the farm or a club-foot … something.’

‘They all had very distinguished-sounding Welsh names, didn’t they?’

‘Pretentious gits. Anyway, Madog Gwilym didn’t go to war and he fancied his chances with Naomi. This was before the feud set in – all the anger was on the Gwilym side until this happened. Maybe Madog suggested Naomi owed him one for the way the Newtons got the farm, I don’t know. But he had a go and she wasn’t having any, and she actually called him a coward. In public. In church, actually.’

‘Garway Church?’

‘Before a congregation of mainly women praying for the boys at the front. Naomi Newton publicly telling Madog Gwilym he wasn’t a man. Imagine.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He’s supposed to’ve walked out of the church in this absolute dead silence. Following day, Naomi’s out collecting the eggs and he’s waiting for her, and he’s like I’ll show you whether I’m a man or not. Drags her into the trees and forces himself on her.’

‘She was raped?’

‘He denied it, of course, he said she was up for it, well, don’t they always— Well, no— Let me get this right, neither of them said anything at the time. Naomi didn’t tell anybody at first. Her brothers were at the war, the only man around was her father, John, well over sixty by then and working day and night to hold the farm together, and she knew what he’d do if he found out and she was afraid for his health. But then the worst happens. Finds out she’s pregnant … and she goes along, on the quiet, to … the local woman who deals with eventualities like this.’

‘Would that have been … Mrs Morningwood?’

‘Oh, you know. That’s all right, then. Her gran, this would be. She goes to Mrs Morningwood’s grandmother for an abortion. Mrs Morningwood obliges … but it all went horribly wrong. I don’t know what happened, but she got home and there was nobody in at the time, and she began to, you know, haemorrhage?’

‘Oh God. It wasn’t like you could pick up a phone and call for an ambulance.’

‘No. Whether she tried to … you know … sort it herself, nobody quite knows, but when my great-grandmother came in with Fliss, they found Naomi on the floor in the big room, in a big pool of blood, her life just … ebbing away. They hadn’t even known she was pregnant. They’re desperately trying to stop the bleeding and make her comfortable … got a big fire going, and somebody sent for Mrs Morningwood but, of course, it was too late. Mrs Morningwood was stricken with remorse, and my grandmother and Fliss, well …’

‘Must’ve been shattered and … furious.’

‘They say Mrs Morningwood could never show her face at the Master House again.’

Something clicked.

‘Aunt Fliss,’ Merrily said. ‘Felicity Newton?’

‘That’s right.’

First time I’d seen a dead ’un … Face like the skin on a cold egg-custard.

‘She was ninety-eight when she died,’ Roxanne said. ‘Whole village came to pay tribute. They say she was a lovely old girl. They laid her out where Naomi had died, in front of the inglenook, and everybody came.’

‘Even the Morningwoods.’

‘I’d guess. Likely the first time any of them’d been through that door since Naomi died. Wasn’t her fault, mind, she only tried to help. But they say my great-grandmother and Aunt Fliss could never sit in that room again without seeing Naomi trying to raise herself up on an elbow … you really want to know this? Gives me the creeps even now.’

‘Well, I probably don’t,’ Merrily said. ‘But on the other hand …’

She simply wouldn’t tamper with a foetus conceived at the Master House. Call it superstition.

Something else explained.

Roxanne leaned on the shoulders of a dining chair.

‘Yeah, I know what you’re saying. Something else to remember, when you go in there with your Bible and your holy water. I was eighteen before my mother told me about it. Wish she hadn’t bothered, sometimes.’

Roxanne sat down and poured herself some more of the powerful coffee from the pot and told it quickly.

‘Seems Naomi sits up in the blankets, blood all over her legs and the fire roaring behind her, and she curses Madog Gwilym – curses him in the name of the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay. Kind of … you know, last breath, before she lies down and dies.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

Ironically, the sun slid out in the south-east and filled the bay.

Merrily said, ‘Madog?’

‘Didn’t last the year out,’ Roxanne said. ‘Came out of one of the pubs one night – The Sun or The Globe, one or the other – saying he didn’t feel too well, and collapsed, stone dead at the side of the lane.’ Roxanne drank some coffee, winced. ‘What a place this is.’

47 A Rough Saw

A WHOLE SUMMER had come and gone since Merrily had seen him last. His hair was still long and rough but more yellow-white, now, like old bone, his dog collar faded to the colour of parchment.

He likes the effect he has, she thought, one hand on the kettle, one hand on the tap. This combination of old hippie and Victorian scholar. He’s very much aware of his image.

She hadn’t been back from Garway more than a few minutes before he’d trudged in with his case, a hand raised to Merrily, a nod to Mrs Morningwood, before pulling out a chair and spreading papers and books over the refectory table like dealing hands of cards.

‘I thought you weren’t coming till this afternoon.’

‘Got someone to see at two. Might be a bit knackered after that, Merrily. Up far too late last night, thanks to you.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No consideration, this lass. Leave that for now. Sit down here. Read this.’

‘This is Huw Owen. Mrs Morningwood, Huw.’

‘Oh aye?’

Huw looked up over his reading glasses. Mrs Morningwood was wearing black jeans and another Army sweater with shoulder patches. Her injuries looked like war wounds and, if anything, worse than last night. One eye was half-closed and weeping; she wiped it with a tissue and put on her sunglasses.

‘I’ve got a sore shoulder,’ Huw said. ‘Reckon you can do owt?’

‘Massage, Mr Owen?’

‘I were thinking summat in a pot.’

‘That can be arranged.’

‘Ta.’

Outside, it had started to rain out of a half-blue sky. Merrily accepted the pages of text Huw was waving at her, glimpsing a Maltese cross before he grabbed them back.

‘Save you some time and bullshit.’ He turned over a couple of the sheets, tapped a paragraph. ‘Start there.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s about how to become a Knight Templar,’ Huw said.

‘Now or then?’

‘For you, never. It’s a lads’ thing.’

Who comes here? Merrily read.

Answer: A pilgrim on his travels, hearing of a Knights Templar encampment, has come with a hope of being admitted.

‘This somebody’s primary school project, Huw?’

‘Save the sarcasm. Over the page and read the bit I’ve marked.’

Merrily sat down. Under the heading Obligation, she read about the pilgrim having his staff and cross taken away in exchange for a sword, placed in his hand by the Grand Commander.

After which, he swore that he would never knowingly take the blood of a brother Templar, but espouse the brother Templar’s cause, knowing it to be just. And if he failed …

‘Oh dear.’

… May my skull be sawn asunder with a rough saw, my brains taken out and put in a charger to be consumed by the scorching sun and my skull in another charger, in commemoration of St John of Jerusalem, that first faithful soldier and martyr of our Lord and Saviour. If ever I wilfully deviate from this my solemn obligation, may my light be put out from among men, as that of Judas Iscariot was for betraying his Lord and Master.

Merrily sighed, put down the papers. ‘Masons.’

‘Masonic Order of Knights Templar,’ Huw said. ‘But fear not. Only Christians are admitted.’

‘That’s good to know.’

‘It’s in the rules, lass.’

‘If you’re going to have your skull sawn open and your brains fried, best to have it done by a good Christian, that’s what I always say.’ Merrily propped her elbows on the table, chin falling into cupped hands. ‘Huw, I’m feeling tired already. This is a big subject, I’m a little woman. I know nothing about Freemasonry.’

‘Why I’ve come over, lass. I’m a man, and I know a fair bit.’

‘What?’ She looked up. ‘Does that mean …?’

‘No. Not that I haven’t been approached, mind. Twice, in fact.’

‘Since being ordained?’

‘Only since I were ordained. Despite all the disapproving noises and a number of critical reports, there’s still scores of clergy in the Masons. Most of ’em at ground level. Not so many in the Templars, unless they’ve got a private income. Can’t pick up your surcoat and sword in Asda.’

‘They actually … dress up like Templars?’

‘Oh aye. Full bit. Costs an arm and a leg for a full Templar kit, but they get it back. One way or t’ other.’

‘So I’ve heard. Huw …’

Huw looked at her, thin smile.

‘Why do I need to know this? Are you telling me the Bishop of Hereford …?’

‘That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? But, sadly, Brother Dunmore, according to my information, never progressed beyond basic Craft Masonry and hasn’t been to a Lodge meeting for a number of years. Although the bugger’s never formally resigned.’

‘Why would a man like Bernie get into it in the first place?’

‘Happen his dad were in it. That’s how it usually happens. Fathers, brothers. Family tradition.’

‘What do they get out of it? Apart from contacts and favours. Allegedly.’

‘Get out what you put in. Most of ’em, it’s a social club. Relaxed night out. Well, relaxed after you’ve gone through the bit where they hold you at knifepoint. For others, it’s a spiritual journey. Sounds like a joke, but for some it becomes just part of your life – it is your life. Endless passageways, lass.’

‘Leading to?’

‘The light. Masonic light. You’re travelling towards enlightenment. Through knowledge.’

‘Gnosticism.’

‘A prominent Mason, Canon Richard Tydeman, said – famously – that trying to describe the joys of Masonry to an outsider was like trying to describe the joys of motherhood to a spinster.’

‘How would he know?’

‘Suffice to say it brings a sense of order and direction and personal satisfaction to men who were just meandering along. Gives their lives a very clear focus. Whether this—’ Huw shook the papers ‘—mirrors any actual Templar rituals we’ll never know because the Templars never wrote owt down, but it’s become one of the most popular and sought-after degrees in Masonry. Read the next bit.’

The sword is taken from the candidate and a skull placed in his hand

Furthermore, may the soul that once inhabited this skull, as the representative of John the Baptist, appear against me in the day of judgement …

‘What’s that say to you, lass?’

‘Baphomet,’ Mrs Morningwood said, and Huw smiled at her and stretched his legs under the table, hands behind his head.

‘One major theory is that Baphomet translates as baptism – the official start of a spiritual life. The head, in this context, is therefore the head of John the Baptist, and some scholars are convinced that’s what the Templars venerated.’

‘And that’s the Christian bit, is it?’ Merrily said.

‘Or the Christian veneer. Borrow a Biblical figure, make him your own. Regular, ground-floor Masonry you only have to accept a supreme ruler of the universe. Whose name, for the record, is Jahbulon, which they’re not supposed to say outside the temple. And which opponents of Masonry say is a weird combination of Christian and Satanic – principally, Jah, for Jehovah, and Baal, the opponent or Devil. The Methodists brought out a report in 1985 that reckoned the name “Jahbulon” constituted the single biggest barrier to a true Christian being a Mason.’

‘Personally, I’d’ve thought that threatening to saw open somebody’s skull …’

‘That’s just the Masonic Templars. Your bog-standard Craft Mason merely accepts that if he gives owt away his tongue will be ripped out by the root and buried in the sand of the sea at low-water mark.’

‘Oh well, that’s OK, then.’

Merrily thought of the Templar who claimed he’d been brought before Jacques de Molay at Garway and ordered to deny Him whom the image represents or get himself put in a sack and dumped somewhere less than congenial.

Huw was looking at her over his glasses.

‘The skull bit – it’s quite likely the original Templars swore a similar oath. Fighting-men in brutal times. The idea of Jahbulon is a total composite god. Three syllables, note, a trinity. Again, in line with what many scholars accept as Templar belief, which was a cobbling together of Christianity, paganism, Judaism and Islam. I believe some of the Templars were Gnostics. I think it’s likely that some did support the bloodline-of-Christ theory. And I think some of them were devoted to undermining Christianity from within.’

Mrs Morningwood got out her cigarettes.

‘Mind if I …?’

‘Aye, please yourself,’ Huw said.

‘Mr Owen … how many of these Knights Templar Masons are there?’

‘Thousands in this country. A proportion of them higher clergy.’

‘And they’re here? In Herefordshire?’

‘You could say that.’

‘OK.’ Merrily sat up. ‘Where’s this leading, Huw?’

‘All roads lead to the cathedral. But you knew that. You had it from Callaghan-Clarke.’

‘She said the Archdeacon was a Mason.’

‘Mervyn Neale is Grand Commander, I’m told.’

‘Of the Templar Masons?’

‘On an Archdeacon’s screw, you can afford the kit,’ Huw said.

48 Oddball

THINK ABOUT IT, Huw said. The oldest cult in the West.

He talked. He was persuasive. Clouds had closed the sky’s one sunny opening, like a cut healed over, and the kitchen had gone grey. Merrily left the lamp off.

Occult: it meant hidden. Freemasonry was occult in every sense, Huw said. A template for all the nineteenth and early twentieth century magical orders – notably the Golden Dawn, where Crowley started, and W.B. Yeats. The symbols, the ceremonial, all there.

‘But how much of basic Masonry,’ Merrily asked him, ‘is actually based on the Templars?’

‘Some Masonic scholars would say the lot. The Temple of Solomon, all the architectural jargon? God with a set square and protractors?’

‘Where did you find all this out?’

‘General knowledge, lass.’

‘I mean about Mervyn Neale.’

Huw said that was fairly widely known, too. Not as secretive as they used to be, the Masons. Not in much of a position to be, now they’d been outed in popular books and most of the rituals were online. Taken Huw all of twenty minutes to find and download the Templar initiation ritual, with the sword and the skull and the threat of sunburned brains.

‘The Archdeacon,’ Merrily recalled, ‘was with the Bishop at the Duchy reception in Hereford, where Adam Eastgate first mentioned the problem with the Master House.’

‘Merv’s ears pricking up. Always been fascinated by Garway, the Masons. Funny you’ve not run into the bugger up there.’ Huw looked at Mrs Morningwood. ‘Where do you come into this, lass?’

‘Lass.’ Mrs Morningwood smiled wistfully. ‘How kind.’

‘This Sycharth Gwilym on the square, you reckon?’

‘Ticks all the right boxes, I should’ve thought, Mr Owen. His particular business, in a city like Hereford …’

‘Still a lout of clout in Hereford, the Masons,’ Huw said. ‘So I’m told. Cathedral. Tory council. You going to see Gwilym today, Merrily?’

‘I’ll call The Centurion again. Go this afternoon, if he’s free.’

‘We’ll have a quick chat before you go. Just go over them family names again – Sycharth … Gruffydd … Fychan …?’

‘Madog.’

‘Aye, that’s a good one.’

‘And …’ Merrily glanced at Mrs Morningwood. ‘Cynllaith?’

‘Cynllaith,’ Huw said. ‘Lovely. People round there really don’t know where all these names come from, Mrs M?’

‘We’re inclined to suspect Wales,’ Mrs Morningwood said, and Huw smiled.

‘I’ll do a last check. Use your computer, lass?’

He stumped off into the scullery, shutting the door, and Merrily turned to Mrs Morningwood.

‘People certainly seem to know about Jacques de Molay. Or they did.’

‘Naomi Newton.’ Mrs Morningwood took off her sunglasses and applied a tissue to an eye. ‘I suppose Roxanne related that episode in all its gory detail.’

‘Well, you certainly didn’t.’

‘Better you heard it from them. Not my family’s finest hour. Haunted my poor grandmother to her own dying day.’

‘Anything else you’re keeping to yourself that might be relevant?’

‘Darling, I have over half a century’s worth of knowledge. Who knows what’s relevant?’

Huw was back within a few minutes, nodding, satisfied.

‘If you were worrying about the Duchy of Cornwall, no need. You’re looking at the first generation of male Royals not tied up with Masonry. Duke of Edinburgh, he were one – lasped now, mind. Queen’s not eligible, of course, but her old man, George VI, he was well in. And so it goes.’

‘If Charles broke the chain,’ Merrily said, ‘how does the Masonic hierarchy feel about that?’

‘Aye, well, you might’ve put your finger on summat there, lass.’

‘Erm …’ Merrily shook out a Silk Cut. ‘In your message on the machine last night, you talked about …’

‘The feller who advised the Duchy of Cornwall that you wouldn’t blab.’

‘I think I’ve managed to contain my curiosity quite well.’

Huw looked at Mrs Morningwood, who gathered up her cigarettes and matches.

‘I need to go and bathe my eyes.’ She stood up, Roscoe stretching at her feet. ‘Perhaps apply something foul-smelling to other abused areas.’

‘Nice dog,’ Huw said.

‘Interesting woman,’ he said when she’d gone. ‘Always been attracted to strong ladies. When you get past a certain age, mind, almost all womankind develops a strange and sorrowful allure.’

Merrily sat back, arms folded, gazing at the ceiling.

‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘Sorry for the anticlimax. You were right first time. Well, I couldn’t say owt on the phone, could I?’

‘You bloody denied it!’

‘No big deal, anyroad. I’m not an official consultant or owt like that, just acknowledged as not linked to any of the factions in the Church. Safe pair of ears, in other words.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘No. Never. No need. Best not to, really. Basically, this is summat I inherited from Dobbs. No offence to you, but he could never trust a woman. And you weren’t around then, anyroad. Essentially, there’s a handful of us – Jeavons is another.’

‘Ah.’

Canon Llewellyn Jeavons, once tipped as the first black Archbishop of Canterbury – until his wife died and he went strange, becoming an expert on healing and deliverance with an email address book containing Somali witch doctors and Aboriginal songline-hoppers. It figured.

‘It was decided that certain people close to the throne needed a bit of looking out for. With regard to spiritual aspects of their lives and work. This lad, his heart’s in the right place, but he will keep putting his foot in it.’

‘BMA chauvinism and architectural carbuncles?’

‘Tip of the iceberg, lass. He gets frustrated and fires off letters to Government ministers. Well, fair enough, I say. An independent mind. If a man thinks he can see the civilized world going down the pan and he wants to use whatever influence he’s got to try and stop it, I’m all for it. But they don’t like it. Far as the Government’s concerned, the Family ought to know its place. Which is on the sideboard.’

‘Strictly ornamental.’

‘Exactly. You heard from that chippy little copper?’

‘Bliss? Yesterday.’

‘Got a feller on his back, you said.’

‘Jonathan Long.’

‘Aye. Slime like him, see, times’ve changed. Used to be the spooks automatically supported royalty as an institution. Now they’re Government animals. Servants of spin. And if the Government of the day should contain a number of people of, shall we say, republican instincts, in key positions … You know what I’m getting at?’

‘Go on.’

‘For instance, Governments, national and European, don’t like alternative medicine, they like straight doctors, drugs and drug companies. They like GM foods and meat imports and they don’t really give a shit for animal welfare. Or farmers, for that matter.’

Huw stopped and looked at Merrily. Merrily shrugged.

‘Plus, unless you’re Islamic and they can’t decide whether to bang you up or kiss your arse, this is now a secular country. Merlin the Wizard, he could be heading for the sideboard, too, and he knows it. And yet, despite what anybody says, there’s a great spiritual yearning out there.’

‘Just that the way some of it’s expressed doesn’t please some of our more traditional colleagues,’ Merrily said.

‘And if some of these oddball spiritual pathways appear to have been trodden by the heir to the throne – well, not good news for the Church, but not necessarily bad news for the republicans. Use it to shaft him again – eccentric’s one thing, bonkers summat else. There’s quite a body of opinion thinks this could turn out to be a good time to lose ’em.’

‘Dump the monarchy?’

‘Or stand well back and allow it to dump itself. A lot of cynicism about the Family right now. What’s your view?’

‘Expensive, undemocratic. And some, on the fringes, have been free-loading airheads. But, at the end of the day, I suppose I feel happier that they’re there. They represent something I feel kind of reassured to have around. Plus, can you think of a contemporary politician you could stand to see as President?’

‘Happen you’d’ve got on with Dobbs better than either of you thought possible.’

‘I’m guessing Dobbs was closer to all this than you. He knew Laurens van der Post, for a start.’

‘Aye, he did. Knew him way back, and renewed the contact not long before his death. See, there’s a lot of superstition around the monarchy, and Charleses haven’t been too lucky. Charles I, executed – very public human sacrifice. Charles II had to hide in an oak tree, thus becoming the Green Man. You heard that one?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘The head of Charles II peering through the foliage … the green man to the life.’

‘I suppose it is. What’s the significance?’

‘A title which, for different reasons of his own choosing, could easily be applied to the future King Charles III. But because Charles is seen as an unhappy name for a king, the word is he’ll adopt one of his other names and become King George VII. Which doesn’t change things much, as your green man in churches has also been associated with Saint George. But that’s by the by.’

‘Huw, aren’t we getting just a bit …’

‘I’m giving you the folklore. The mythology. The superstition. Dobbs was a mystic. He believed the monarchy – good or bad, strong or weak – was preserving something fundamentally essential to the spiritual welfare of Britain … part of the soul of the nation, if you like. That if Church and State were still in bed together, nowt much would go wrong in the great scheme of things.’

‘So Charles suddenly announcing he wants to be defender of faiths plural …?’

‘Weakens it. At the wrong time, Dobbs thought. That’s where he and van der Post fell out. All that about all religions being the same dog washed, that came from van der Post.’

‘I don’t knock it,’ Merrily said. ‘If we can coexist …’

‘Aye, in theory. In practice, it gets politicized, and Islam wants to run the show. And that’s where the Templars came in – the first fusion. Picking up Islam from the Saracens, Jewish mysticism, Egyptian mysteries, happen some Celtic paganism and goddess-worship via the Cistercians. They were accused of undermining Christianity from within and happen there’s some truth in it. A multifaith multinational, building up massive wealth, very, very quickly. Undermining kings and popes.’

‘And did they practise some kind of ritual magic?’

‘It were said they used their knowledge of the so-called dark arts in warfare. Change the weather? Bring down mist, create storms? We’re never really going to know what they were about.’

‘And you see van der Post in the Templar tradition?’

‘In some ways. Mate of Carl Jung, who was an admirer of the Gnostics … and can you find a better Jungian archetype than the green man or the Baphomet? Ah, you can go on like this for ever.’ Huw started gathering up papers. ‘Folk might well be asking why the Duchy’s suddenly buying Templar properties in Herefordshire.’

‘Just the one, surely?’

‘No. Let’s not forget the big project – Harewood Park. Large estate, with an old chapel in the middle, granted to the Knights Templar in 1215 by King John.’

Upstairs, Roscoe started barking.

‘Why don’t I know these things?’ Merrily said.

‘And a satellite of Garway, as it happens. Could be pure coincidence, but some folks might see a significance. The Masons, for instance. They don’t like no longer having a foot under the throne. If he appears to be into Templarism, they’re happen wondering if he might not be ripe for a new approach.’ Huw looked up. ‘How do, lad.’

Lol had let himself in, having slipped off home in the early hours.

Merrily thought he still didn’t look too happy.

For some reason, he was insisting that when she went to see Sycharth Gwilym, she shouldn’t go alone.

49 Let Her Squirm

THE WORD ACROSS Hereford was that The Centurion was already a gold mine. Converted out of a single-storey derelict factory off Roman Road, to the north of the city. Good access, sweeping views, plenty of parking.

And now that Roman Road had become the outlet for the network of new roads serving Hereford’s secret bypass … why, you’d almost think Sycharth Gwilym had learned something in advance.

Merrily had been thinking about this and what it might imply but now, suddenly, she wasn’t.

‘He did what?’

Sitting up hard, the seat belt straining.

‘Didn’t seem a good time to tell you last night,’ Lol said.

‘For God’s sake!’

‘I’m not saying Gwilym operates on the same level, but maybe it’s as well to know the kind of people you just might be dealing with.’

‘This …’ Merrily shutting her eyes ‘… is all my fault.’

Broken into the truck, hot-wired it, driven it away and forced the box. Then used another kind of hot wire on the Boswell. She stared at Lol, an acid sensation in her chest. Knowing he hadn’t gone to the police because that would have meant explanations. Same with the insurance.

‘It’s not … your fault. Can’t say Prof didn’t warn me about the kind of people he employed.’

‘It was your most precious …’

‘It was just a guitar.’

‘Four grand’s worth. More than that, a huge sentimental …’

‘Maybe,’ Lol admitted.

‘I’m going to call Al Boswell, see how much it would cost for him to replace it.’

‘Merrily, we don’t even tell Al Boswell. He’d take it very personally, and he isn’t getting any younger and all his guitars are like children. And neither of us has four grand to spare, and even if we did …’

‘Bastard.’ Tears stinging her eyes. ‘Plus, he’s giving you a clear warning that he’s going to try and destroy your career.’

‘What could he do? Independent producer, independent label …’

‘… Reliant on major distribution networks and chain stores. Sorry if this sounds like I’m getting drunk on conspiracy theory.’

‘But you …’ Lol glanced sideways. ‘You’re OK, though?’

‘Mrs Morningwood’s offered to give me more reflexology tonight.’ Merrily leaned back, trying to kill the tightness. ‘I’m fine. Much better. So this is why you were insisting on coming with me.’

‘I’ll stay in the truck when you go in, but I’ll be just outside. Call you on the mobile after an hour?’

‘How could they know the importance of the Boswell?’

‘Look …’ He sighed. ‘Let’s leave it for now.’

‘But how?’

‘It was in Mojo. Someone showed me a copy at the gig. Concert review, picture of me and what – unmistakably to any musician – is a Boswell.’

‘How did you manage at the gig?’

‘Still had the Takamine, which they hadn’t damaged. You said do it for Nick, so I did. He was sitting at the back. He didn’t walk out.’

‘Lol?’

‘Kidding. I think.’

‘But it went well?’

‘Strangely, it did. I felt very tired afterwards. Slept for half an hour in the car park with the top of the box held down with bailer twine. Look, be careful in there. None of this smells good. Stourport, Gwilym, Mat Phobe.’

She’d told him about the anagram.

‘Of course, we only have Hayter’s word that Mat’s actually dead,’ Lol said. ‘This the entrance?’

Merrily looked up at an archway of sandstone.

‘Think it’s supposed to look like a Roman villa?’

‘Chapel of Rest, circa 1963.’

‘Maybe ’65,’ Merrily said.

This time, when she’d called, the receptionist had said that Mr Gwilym would be happy to talk to her at two-thirty. When she walked in five minutes early – best black woollen coat – he was already waiting, on the edge of a mosaic tile circle, standing between two small fountains burbling into bidet-type projections. Bending to her, handshake smooth and soft, like suede.

‘Mrs Watkins.’

‘Good of you to spare the time.’

‘How could I not? All so intriguing. My office is just here. Can I order you a drink? Coffee … wine?’

‘Just had lunch, thank you, Mr Gwilym.’

‘Here?’

‘A sandwich. At home.’

‘Most remiss of me not to have offered you a proper lunch. My apologies.’ He shouldered open a matt-white door in a recess. ‘Business, of late, has been utterly frenet ic.’

His voice was public-school English but – whatever anybody said – there was posh South Wales down there, something slow and rhythmic like an evening tide washing against a jetty.

‘I wouldn’t have had time,’ Merrily said. ‘But thank you, anyway.’

For some reason, she’d been expecting barrel chest, spider veins, flashing eyes, belligerent – someone it would be easy to goad into saying too much. But Sycharth Gwilym was a loose, big-boned man with a jutting chin and grey-brown hair which rose and fell, like the plume on a knight’s helmet, and his manner was relaxed, his eyes pale and tranquil. And when you looked into them you didn’t see anything of Fuchsia Mary Linden.

Merrily’s confidence waned. This was going to take time and maybe skills that she didn’t have.

Mr Gwilym waited for Merrily to sit before moving behind his desk. The office had a picture window with a view over the car park, over the city, towards the cathedral and the river. White walls and a glass-topped, white-painted desk with the wood grain showing through. Twin swivel chairs in grey leather. A small conference table.

‘So …’ He sat down, leaning back, composed. ‘You wanted to ask me about the Master House.’

Behind his head was a large framed print: an engraving of a robed man with a forked beard, sitting in a Gothic canopied throne, holding a sceptre.

No prizes.

‘You do realize,’ Sycharth Gwilym said, ‘that the house hasn’t been in my family for over a century?’

‘I do know that. But it does seem to have been occupied by Gwilyms for several centuries before that.’

‘I’m not entirely sure about Gwilyms, as such, but various of my ancestors, yes.’

Start off with the routine stuff. Merrily brought out a pad and a pencil.

‘Do you know exactly how long the family was there?’

‘I do not know when the family was not there. Although records – such as they are – go back no further than the fifteenth century.’

‘That would be the time of the Owain Glyndwr rebellion.’

‘Indeed. Mrs Watkins, may I … inquire the purpose of this? The stories I hear about the nature of your mission to Garway are probably far more lurid than the truth.’

Merrily told him why the late Felix Barlow had refused to work in the Master House, what had happened to Felix and Fuchsia, and he lifted his jaw.

‘Oh. Not more lurid then.’

He didn’t smile. There was always a point, during every inquiry of this kind, where you felt fairly foolish, where you thought, What am I doing here?

‘Mr Gwilym, look, I’m well aware that we live in a secular age and most people consider me some kind of anachronism and the basis of my job barely rational, but …’

He didn’t say anything. Why should he? Let her squirm.

‘… All I can say is that sometimes I’ve been able to help people feel more comfortable about their situations or a particular place.’

Sycharth Gwilym crossed his legs.

‘And who would you be helping in this particular instance, Mrs Watkins? The Prince of Wales?’

‘Well, I don’t imagine anyone knows, at this stage, who’ll eventually be occupying the Master House. We’d just like them not to be bothered by whatever remains of whoever was there before them. Or whatever they did.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘If you like.’

‘By which you mean the spirits of the dead?’

‘Or aspects of memory. Lingering guilt.’

Sycharth Gwilym nodded patiently.

‘I appreciate, Mrs Watkins, that you are doing your best to tread carefully, and I shall try to assist you however I can.’

‘Thank you.’

He extended a hand, offering her the floor.

It seemed a wide and exposed area.

50 Sycharth

SHE SAT IN the grey swivel chair, trying not to think of cigarettes.

‘Do you remember the last time you were in the Master House, Mr Gwilym?’

He didn’t hesitate, nodding in a resigned way.

‘Yes, I am rather afraid that I do.’

‘When would that have been?’

‘Oh … more than thirty years ago, certainly. I was a young man. I’d been invited, along with other local youngsters, to a party – the kind of party I would not attend today, but I expect that in your own, clearly more recent, youth, you also …?’

Gwilym said that the Master House had been leased by the Newtons to a group of people who had money to spare, took drugs and behaved with … a certain lack of inhibition. He supposed that, as country kids, they’d been fascinated and flattered to be invited to join in, half-expecting celebrities to be there.

Merrily said, ‘So that would’ve been you and …?’

‘Mainly young women – perhaps another reason I was keen to go.’

‘Do you remember their names, by any chance?’

Do you remember the black girl?

A minimal shake of the head. Pointless asking that at this stage.

‘And what happened at the party?’

‘I was offered cannabis, which I felt obliged to take. And which must have had an effect because I recall very little of what happened afterwards.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Although I do remember, towards midnight, someone suggesting that – given the age of the house and its atmosphere by candlelight – we should hold a sort of seance. With the intention of making contact with the dead.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘I doubt whether there’s a logical answer to that.’

‘A sort of seance?’

‘I do remember some of the people there being excited to discover that many generations of my family had lived in the house. Someone suggested that it would be interesting for me to be put in touch with my ancestors.’

‘How did you feel about that?’

‘Hardly in a position – or, I would guess, in any state – to say no.’

‘And how did they go about it?’

‘All a blur, I’m afraid, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Ouija board?’

‘You mean letters and an upturned glass? Not that I recall.’

‘Do you remember which of your ancestors they were trying to reach?’

‘I imagine any one of them would have been more than welcome. Why? Do you think we might somehow have conjured up something that is still, ah, walking the place?’

‘It’s just that … your first name, the names of several of your forebears and your son seem to correspond to a particular pattern. One called Owain. Then there was Gruffydd. And Fychan?’

‘My father. And my great-grandfather.’

Merrily looked up at the engraving of the fork-bearded man with the sceptre.

‘The last man to try to bring about an independent Wales by force, in the fifteenth century – having himself declared Prince of Wales – was Owain ap Gruffydd Fychan.’

Was that an actual movement in Sycharth’s sleepy eyes?

‘Widely known as Owain Glyndwyr. And his father’s name …’ Merrily consulted the pad ‘… was, I believe, Gruffydd Fychan ap Madog.’

‘You have a better knowledge of Welsh history than most of your countrymen, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Welsh friends. Now. Owain’s father, I think, was baron of somewhere called … Cynllaith Owain?’

No reaction.

‘And Glyndwr’s own mansion in north-east Wales was, of course, called … Sycharth.’

‘Well done indeed, Mrs Watkins.’

‘So the Gwilyms have a family tradition of male children being given names connected with Owain Glyndwr. Who is said to have stayed at the Master House while on the run from the English, after his campaign collapsed.’

‘I believe that is the story, yes.’

‘One your family is evidently very proud of.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose we are. Especially now, in a time when Owain’s vision is becoming reality. How gratified he would be to see the formation of the Welsh Assembly … as a start. Not yet enough, but a start.’

‘And all done without anyone being killed,’ Merrily said. ‘Or a single castle being burned to the ground.’

‘Yes, quite a number of castles in this area were destroyed. And people killed. Still, many landowning families in the vicinity of Garway supported his campaign. The whole area – even as far as Hereford itself – had been part of the old Wales, and allegiances remain to this day.’

‘And here he is on your wall, here in England. The Mab Darogan – Son of Prophecy? Who, according to legend, never died, just faded into the landscape of his beloved Wales, until such time as Wales has need of him again.’

‘I am a fan,’ Mr Gwilym said.

‘But if his daughter was at Kentchurch Court, just down the valley, why would he need to spend time at the Master House?’

‘To his enemies, Kentchurch would have been a rather obvious place to go. Not that he didn’t, but …’

‘Maybe there were other attractions at the Master House?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I was wondering …’ Merrily was gazing up at Owain, the sceptre rising meaningfully from between his legs ‘… if perhaps there was … I don’t know, a Gwilym daughter? Who, when Owain was in hiding and understandably a bit depressed about the way things had turned out, devoted herself to … kind of cheering him up a bit.’

‘You are suggesting that we might be descended directly from Owain Glyndwr.’

Merrily shrugged.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Some of my family have believed that. There was a woman called Elinor Gwilym, born around the turn of the fifteenth century, who became quite a matriarch in my family. Some of my ancestors bore quite a resemblance to …’ He glanced up. ‘It has even been said that I … Anyway, which of my countrymen would not wish to be related to the greatest Welshman in history, the last real Prince of Wales?’

‘Quite.’

Merrily was remembering the way Adam Eastgate had looked at her when she’d reminded him, rather tactlessly, that Edward II was only the first English Prince of Wales.

‘However,’ Gwilym said, ‘I doubt that the great man would have deigned to appear to a bunch of stoned kids.’

‘Of course, Owain wasn’t the only great historical figure to have stayed at the Master House. Would your ancestors have been there while the Templars were in Garway?’

‘It was a Templar farm.’

‘Perhaps hosting Jacques de Molay in 1294?’

‘So it is said.’

‘And whatever he brought with him?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m not sure I do either, but people keep mentioning the possibility of Templar treasure winding up in Garway.’

Sycharth Gwilym laughed.

‘Your family never looked for it? Although, when you think about it, I expect the Gwilyms had already lost the house when all this speculation started about the Templars and their wealth and the secrets they guarded.’

No response.

‘Be a good reason to want the house back,’ Merrily said. ‘Especially if you had all the family records.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Just passing on gossip.’

‘Ridiculous.’

‘Yes. I expect it is. It’s just that a friend of mine – a Welsh friend – was pointing out that Glyndwr’s campaign was fired by the unjust treatment of the Welsh by the English marcher lords. And, more specifically, a personal injustice, when some of his own land in North Wales, near the English border, was seized by his neighbour, the Lord of Rhuthun.’

‘That’s recorded history.’

‘Owain then sought justice from the English parliament and was turned away. Lord Rhuthun kept the land. Another version of the story suggests that Lord Rhuthun was close to the king of England, Henry IV, and blackened Owain’s name at court. Either way, it started a devastating war.’

‘And?’

‘Lord Rhuthun’s name was Reginald Grey. That’s an interesting coincidence, isn’t it?’

Sycharth Gwilym raised an eyebrow.

‘I mean the way the Master House fell, quite recently, by marriage, into the hands of the Grays. Unlikely to be any relation, but I suppose it has a certain … poetic resonance.’

Gwilym shaking his head dismissively, but Merrily wasn’t abandoning the punchline.

‘And then … just when you thought you were going to be able to buy it back, and can well afford to – this house, the house that puts you at the centre of so much crucial history, handed by the Grays to … well, not to the Crown exactly, but, even worse, to—’

Merrily’s phone chimed in her bag. Not now, Lol, please …

She saw Sycharth Gwilym wetting his lips and shut her bag on the phone.

‘… To the latest English Prince of …’

‘I think you had better answer your call,’ he said. ‘Go outside, if you like.’

‘Thank you … I’m sorry.’

When she stood up and was taking the phone to the door, Merrily saw Sycharth Gwilym standing up too, following her out. When she was holding the phone to her ear, he’d closed the office door behind them.

‘Lol,’ she said, ‘look—’

‘Do yourself a favour, lass,’ Huw said. ‘Get over to the cathedral. Now.’

‘Huw, if you can give me just a few minutes, I’ll call you back.’

‘I wouldn’t hang around, I were you.’

‘Most pleasant talking to you, Mrs Watkins,’ Gwilym said as she folded the phone. ‘You are a most intelligent and charming woman. But I’m afraid I have a meeting at three-thirty.’

‘Mr Gwilym …’ Dropping the phone in her bag, feeling a fizzing of panic in her stomach. ‘Before you go … the main reason I came was to ask if you’d be interested in joining me and one of the Grays and a representative of the Duchy of Cornwall at a short Requiem service at the Master House.’

‘I think I shall probably discover a prior appointment on that occasion,’ Gwilym said. ‘As it is not our house any more.’

The two fountains trickled. Merrily felt spray on her face.

‘I was thinking that, as the house no longer belongs to either of you, this might be a good time to draw a line under the years of bad feeling between the two families. For instance, I was hearing only this morning about your great-grandfather. Madog? The way he died?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Outside the pub.’

‘That’s a lot of nonsense. Madog seems to have had a heart condition.’

‘Anyway, I was just thinking we might … heal some history.’

‘The idea,’ Gwilym said, ‘that history can – or should – be healed is, to some of us, anathema.’

Merrily looked over at the woman receptionist who wore a pale dress secured with a brooch at the shoulder, Roman-style. She was on the phone.

‘The people leasing the house – Lord Stourport …’

‘Mrs Watkins, I don’t remember his name, but I’m sure he wasn’t a lord.’

‘And another man who called himself Mat Phobe … do you remember him?’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember a black girl called Mary?’

‘No. I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me.’

‘Do you know what happened to—?’

She watched him slip away under an archway. The phone rang, and this time it was Lol.

‘Merrily, if Gwilym’s there don’t react, but I’ve just seen Jimmy Hayter going into the main bar.’

51 The Deal

WHEN JANE GOT in from school, the Volvo was parked in the vicarage drive, but there was no sign of Mum, just Mrs Morningwood and Roscoe. Mrs Morningwood was unwinding her scarf.

‘I’ve been across to the shop, Jane. He was getting tired of cat food. My God, I felt like the Phantom of the bloody Opera in there, the way people stared.’

‘You should’ve asked me to go,’ Jane said. ‘As I understand it, nobody’s supposed to know you’re here.’

‘Felt liked a caged tiger today, darling, I can tell you.’

‘Where’s Mum?’

‘In Hereford. Talking to Suckarse. Wish I was a bloody fly on that wall.’

‘Mrs Morningwood, while we’re on our own …’ Jane shed her bag and her parka in a pile on the flags, pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. ‘You got beaten up, didn’t you?’

‘What’s wrong with a car crash?’

‘What’s wrong with it is I’m seventeen. As distinct from, like, nine?’

‘Poor Jane.’ Mrs Morningwood sat down. ‘Balancing on the cusp.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Jane looked at the ruins of what she guessed had once been a seriously cool woman. ‘Who did this to you? Why can’t you just spit it out?’

‘I well remember being your age. The fear of making a commitment to the wrong future.’

‘The future. Right. I hate the sodding future.’

‘Yes, that’s how things have changed, isn’t it? When I was your age we couldn’t wait to plunge into it, like a deep blue swimming pool. Now the pool seems have gone and you’re looking down into hard, cracked mud.’

‘Yeah.’ Jane decided she wasn’t going to get anywhere on the phoney car crash. ‘You believe in clairvoyance, Mrs Morningwood?’

‘Depends how you’re spelling it.’ Mrs Morningwood broke into a fresh packet of cigarettes. ‘I accept, to an extent, the phenomenon of clairvoyance. While remaining generally sceptical about clairvoyants – people who profess to prophecy.’

‘A woman once did a tarot reading for me,’ Jane said. ‘She said – for instance – that I’d have more than one serious lover before I was twenty?’

‘Not the most ambitious prediction, darling.’

‘I went out with this guy for, like, ages? Well over a year.’

‘A serious commitment.’

‘We were good friends.’

‘Quite rare.’

‘And I’m thinking, you’re seventeen. And you’re in danger of becoming, like, half of a couple?’

‘Too cosy?’

‘I mean we’d nearly broken up a couple of times, but it never lasted. Then he went to university – last month. And I just stopped answering his calls.’

Mrs Morningwood sat and thought about this.

‘You mean you were angst-ridden because your love life was lacking in angst? No one else on the horizon?’

‘There was this guy I quite fancied. Not realizing that he was married. At one stage I was kind of thinking that could be, you know, quite … quite an experience. Being the other woman. But then I thought …’

‘Breaking up someone’s marriage?’

‘Then I thought of my dad betraying Mum. He had another woman. He was a lawyer, and she worked in his office and they got killed together in a car crash when I was little.’

‘Oh dear.’ Mrs Morningwood sounding less than sympathetic. ‘I … did that once, you know. Broke up a marriage.’

‘What happened?’

‘I married him, and it was a disaster. After the decree nisi, I ran into his first wife, and she was into a new relationship and very happy. She said she was … grateful to me. Quite.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Pretty pissed off, darling, but that’s life, isn’t it?’

‘Nobody else, since?’

‘Oh, quite a few. But none of them ever became friends.’

‘And that’s the moral, is it?’ Jane said. ‘If he’s also a friend, hold on to him.’

‘Oh, I never talk about morals, of any kind. Nor do I give advice. What else did your tarot reader tell you?’

‘Well, that’s the problem. She knew what Mum did, and she had an agenda. So I can’t really trust the rest.’

‘But you trusted what she said about your love life.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you had sex with the married man?’

‘Actually, erm, no. But I think I could make it happen.’

‘Well, of course you could—’

‘Actually, it’s already been kind of good for me. In a life-changing way, really. What’s he …?

Roscoe was on his feet about half a second before the front doorbell rang.

‘I’ll get it.’ Jane stood up. ‘You’d better pop into the scullery in case it’s Bliss or somebody who asks questions.’

In the hall, she opened the door to a guy in a green hiking jacket. Clergy shirt and a dog collar underneath. Familiar-looking baggage at his feet.

‘Hullo.’ Dome head, big friendly smile through his white beard. ‘Would you be Jane, by any chance?’

‘Um, yeah. I’m afraid Mum’s out, though.’

‘Oh, well, look, I’m Teddy Murray. Odd-job man at Garway. Your mother was staying with us for a couple of nights and had to leave in a hurry. Said she’d come back for her stuff, but I know how busy she is and I happened to be passing through, en route to Hereford, so …’

He picked up the bags and beamed.

‘Oh, right,’ Jane said. ‘Great.’

‘Must say, this is a lovely village, Jane. You’re both very lucky.’

‘Yeah. I suppose we are.’

‘Well, I’ll just … leave them here, shall I?’

Teddy Murray dropped the overnight bags over the threshold, into the path of Roscoe who’d come trotting through from the kitchen.

And Roscoe just went totally crazy.

Snarling. Like all-snarl, huge jagged teeth exposed, like the ripper teeth on a circular saw. This Teddy Murray backing away into the drive.

‘Roscoe!’ Jane down behind the dog, desperately hauling on his collar through the hackles. She could be in trouble here. ‘Oh, God, sorry … sorry …’

Getting dragged through the doorway, Roscoe’s jaws opening and shutting like a gin trap on a spring.

‘Guard dog, eh?’ Teddy Murray trying to smile from a few metres back. ‘I suppose two girls on their own in a big house …’

‘Back to the …’ Jane’s knees grazed on the mat ‘… obedience classes.’

‘Tell your mum I’ll talk to her again,’ Teddy Murray said.

Jane got the door shut, the dog inside, the snarl reduced to a low rumble. Blowing out a lot of air in a whoosh, she went back into the kitchen where Mrs Morningwood was standing in the middle of the floor, face like hardening plaster.

‘My fault, darling.’ Her voice clearly on autopilot, somewhere different from her thoughts. ‘Should have shut him … somewhere.’

‘He hasn’t done it before, has he?’ Jane said. ‘I mean, like … tried to savage somebody?’

‘Oh.’ Mrs Morningwood was expressionless. ‘No. No, he hasn’t.’

Huw was in the North Transept with his old mate Tommy Canty, lighting a candle.

‘Dunmore’s here.’

‘Where?’

Merrily looked around. Six candles were burning on a tiered stand in front of the renovated shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe. Back in the Middle Ages, there’d been long queues – scores of pilgrims, sick people and relatives of the sick. Tommy Canty had been Beckett-class in his day.

There was a container of candles you could buy to light and ask for the saint’s help. Huw fitted his candle into one of the holders.

‘Bishop’s in one of the chantries. Trying to reach an arrangement with his Governor.’

‘That’s why you’ve got me here? To face up to the Bishop?’

She was feeling very much on edge. Lol had driven her down to Broad Street, dropped her on the corner by the Cathedral Green and then, against all her pleas, driven off back towards Westgate and Roman Road to find the man who’d destroyed the most beautiful guitar in the world.

‘Dunmore wants to talk to you,’ Huw said.

‘About what?’

‘About what he’s just trying to clear with his God.’

‘Bernie’s who you came to see? He was your appointment?’

‘And every bit as knackering as I’d figured. You forget how shit-scared they are. Bowed under the gross weight of centuries of solemn, dark ceremonial.’

‘Not as many centuries as the Church has. Not by a long way.’

‘Only the Church doesn’t threaten to rip your tongue out by the roots if you finger a brother or shout out Jahbulon on the bus.’

‘Fair enough. What’s he going to tell me?’

‘I’d say whatever you want to ask. So have a think about it before you go in.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Unless he chickens out.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘Mr Gwilym helpful, was he?’

‘Didn’t intend to be, but I rather think he was. What did you say to the Bishop?’

‘I’d better be off, lass.’

‘You’re going?’

‘Nowt else I can do here.’ He looked over the candles to the shrine. ‘See you, then, Tommy.’

Nodding to the tomb in which there hadn’t, for many years, been anything of Tommy.

‘Huw, I think I’d rather you stayed.’

‘Lass …’ Huw bent to her. ‘It’s part of the deal. Just you and him.’

‘Oh.’

‘I won’t pray for you.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Already done that bit.’

He pointed to the seventh candle.

‘What did you say to him, Huw?’

‘Didn’t need to say much. Callaghan-Clarke’d already been in.’

‘Oh.’

‘Just get on with it, eh?’

Looking slightly irritable, Huw left Merrily in the cold light of the North Transept, the handful of candles a small and lonely glow.

52 Male Thing

LOL WAS STANDING next to Jimmy Hayter’s champagne Jaguar, the formula fantasy flashing past: he hot-wires the Jag, takes it away, calls Hayter on his mobile with directions.

And then what?

As he didn’t know Hayter’s mobile number or how to hot-wire a car, there wasn’t much point in taking it further. He just stood there, leaning against the front of the Jag, in full view of the picture window identified by Merrily as the window of Sycharth Gwilym’s office.

The sky had gloomed over again and it began to rain. Lol didn’t move. The mobile in his pocket was switched on. Until he had a call from the cathedral, there was nowhere to go.

After twenty minutes, his grey Alien sweatshirt dark with rain, he still hadn’t moved.

He was very cold.

After twenty-five minutes, it stopped raining and Lord Stourport came out.

The walls and ceiling of the fifteenth-century Chantry Chapel of Bishop John Stanbury were of richly foliate stone. It was like being under a copse of low, weeping trees in winter.

‘I’m going to retire, Merrily,’ the Bishop said.

It wasn’t warm in here but he’d taken off his jacket. There was a small green stain on a shoulder of his purple shirt.

‘You always say that,’ Merrily said.

She was sitting next to him, facing the golden-haloed Virgin and Child in the triptych, Gothic-spired, over an altar the size of a boxed radiator.

Bernie Dunmore had lost some weight in the past year and his tonsure had expanded.

‘It is possible, you know,’ he said, ‘to be a Freemason and a priest, without compromise.’

‘But hard, I’d’ve thought.’

‘Hard, yes. My father and two uncles were Masons. When I joined, I was barely out of theological college. For a while it seemed almost compatible. The lodge included two canons and the Dean. Several bishops were still active Masons, then. Not now, of course.’

‘You could’ve left.’

‘Yes, of course you can leave. But they consider that the vows, once made, cannot be revoked.

‘But you never actually did.’

‘Haven’t been to a lodge meeting or a social event for well over twenty years. But it always seemed to me that to publicly renounce the Craft would’ve caused more fuss than it was worth. I’ve never courted controversy, as you know.’

‘Why did you stop going, in the end?’

‘They … they tell you it can’t be incompatible because it isn’t a religion. And then you find yourself asking, but is it an anti-religion?’

‘Anti-faith, anyway.’ Merrily kept her eyes on the Virgin. ‘Gnostic. The search for some kind of God within yourself.’

‘Yes. In a way.’

‘And is it?’

‘Anti-religion? I still can’t decide. We even have Masonic services, as you know, at the cathedral. All I know is that at some stage, I prayed for help. The answer was: get out.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘It wasn’t a problem, Merrily. Not until …’

‘Last week?’

Dunmore was silent for what must have been close to half a minute. It had become darker in the chantry, the stained glass in the window dulled. Merrily sensed that it was raining outside.

‘You were approached,’ she said.

‘Nothing so formal. I was advised that well-intentioned, well-regarded men might be damaged by … your inquiries.’

‘Well-intentioned, well-regarded Masons.’

‘The word was never used.’

‘But the person who gave you the advice …’

‘Was someone who had given me good advice on many occasions, let’s not forget that.’

‘Archdeacon Neale.’

‘It was felt that you were going too far into areas that weren’t essential to what you were being asked to do.’

‘What, you mean God’s work?’

‘It …’ Dunmore gritted his teeth. ‘You always go too bloody deep, Merrily. Anybody else, it would be in and out, a quick blessing, a Requiem. You had to ask questions, even getting Jane to …’

‘What?’

‘Ask questions. At school.’

‘How would you …?’ Merrily thought about it. ‘The history teacher? Robbie Williams?’

‘Richard Williams.’

‘On the square?’

Bernie sighed.

‘Knight Templar, perhaps?’

‘He’s a medieval historian, Merrily.’

‘Bloody hell, Bernie, this is worse than CCTV. Do you know Sycharth Gwilym?’

‘Not personally. I know he’s become a prime mover in this city, fingers in pies.’

‘But Mervyn Neale knows him, presumably.’

‘Yes.’

‘Knight Templar?’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’

‘Have you come across Lord Stourport?’

‘No. Lapsed. I believe. Look, Merrily, it doesn’t mean they’re all corrupt. It’s done a lot of good. Straightened out men whose whole lives might have been selfish and pointless.’

‘Well, not for me to judge. But, just to put you in the picture, Bernie, over thirty years ago Stourport and Gwilym were both involved in pseudo-Templar rites at the Master House in which women were abused. One of them has never been seen again. She was the mother of Fuchsia Mary Linden, found dead on the railway after her friend was murdered. Oh, and it seems likely that Stourport or Gwilym was the father.’

‘God …’

‘Or possibly a third man who called himself Mat Phobe, who Stourport says is dead. I’ve just been to talk to Sycharth Gwilym, who I’d say is suffering from a severe case of censored-memory syndrome.’

‘What would you expect?’

‘There’s also been … another incident. Someone very nearly killed.’

‘Who?’

‘You wouldn’t know her. And if one of them knew another had committed a murder, would he keep quiet?’

‘I …’

‘Bernie …’ Merrily looked at Bernie Dunmore hard, through the dense, sacred dimness of the chantry. ‘I can’t believe this – you’re sweating.’

‘Don’t … don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t. I cannot rationally explain it. I’m going to retire next year, and I shall leave Herefordshire.’ He had his hands clasped on his knees; he stared down at them. ‘The call I made to you yesterday morning. Forget it. It never happened. Do what you have to.’

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I couldn’t prove anything – I don’t know the half of it. Not yet, anyway.’

‘If it’s a matter for the police, go to the police.’

‘Can’t. Not yet. Bernie, how important – say to the Masonic Knights Templar – would it be to uncover some long-hidden secret at Garway, connected to the original Templars? Big kudos there?’

‘That’s not a question I can answer. Probably be up to the individual.’

‘I’m told some Masons have got quite obsessed over the years about Garway.’

‘Some men, it rather takes them over, yes.’

‘Especially now? The day after tomorrow being the seven hundredth anniversary of the suppression of the Templars. Saturday the thirteenth.’

‘Friday.’

‘It was Friday, when it happened. Friday the thirteenth, which—’

‘I meant at Garway. The service at Garway’s tomorrow.’

‘Is it?’

‘Been … quite a problem for us, Merrily. For me. The C of E is obviously in two minds about the Templars. We have their churches, but we weren’t the ones who persecuted them.’

‘We probably would’ve done, though, if we’d existed at the time.’

‘You know the Vatican’s being asked to apologize?’

‘For the suppression? No, I didn’t.’

‘Some of the modern Knights Templar societies are calling for it. Doesn’t affect us, one way or another, but holding memorial services is a bit iffy, politically. Churches, as you know, have two different roles. Places of worship and historic buildings open for tourism.’

‘So we show the tourists the Templar coffin lids and the remains of the circular nave … but as for including the Templars – Baphomet and all – in a religious service …’

‘Dicey. Very dicey. And, officially, I should have said no.’

‘Teddy Murray doesn’t seem too enthusiastic either.’

The Bishop smiled through the dull sheen of sweat.

‘You really don’t know the half of it, do you?’

Mrs Morningwood was feeling her throat through the silk scarf. Her throat where the marks were.

Jane said, ‘You look like Mum looked … when she came out of that house.’

Roscoe looked up at Mrs Morningwood, whimpering. She clasped his head to her lower thigh.

‘I’m going to make some tea,’ Jane said. ‘Or can I get you a brandy?’

‘What house?’

‘Well, the Master House.’ Jane filled the kettle. ‘You remember … No, you don’t, you’d gone, you’d left us to it. You said Roscoe wouldn’t go in. You said you always trusted the dog.’

‘I do.’

Mrs Morningwood looked down at Roscoe; he was panting. It was like they were tuned to the same wavelength, the woman and the dog, picking up messages that nobody else could hear.

‘Jane, will you tell me about this?’

‘I’m sorry, I thought Mum must’ve told you. Maybe I should keep quiet.’

‘Up to you, Jane.’

Jane walked to the window, looking out at the orchard, at the last red apples near the tops of the highest trees.

‘She looked like death. Like she’d just seen … I dunno, Lol in a porno video or something.’ Jane turned to face Mrs Morningwood. ‘She always insists she’s not psychic, maybe because she doesn’t like to believe anyone else is.’

‘Did she tell you what happened?’

‘Oh yeah. It was when she found the green man. Which is actually Baphomet. But it’s the same thing – Baphomet, Pan, the green man … the male thing in nature.’

‘This is in the church?’

‘No, no …. in the house.’

‘That’s what I thought you meant.’

‘It’s in the fireplace. Behind the inglenook. Someone’s put a green man, or Baphomet, on the wall inside the inglenook where nobody would normally see it. You didn’t know about it?’

‘Is it old?’

‘Probably not. Could be something to do with whatever stuff was going on there back in the 1970s. But then it might be old – might be original Templar. Might’ve been brought from somewhere else at some stage. Dunno, really.’

‘And your mother found it disturbing.’

‘You ask her now, she’ll probably deny it. Are you all right, Mrs Morningwood?’

‘No.’ Mrs Morningwood sat down. ‘No, I don’t think I am.’

‘You want me to call the doc or something?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She looked up. ‘Do you think Merrily would mind if I borrowed her car? I’d bring it back tonight.’

‘I’d have to ask. You might not be insured.’

‘In that case … you can drive, can’t you Jane?’

‘Sure.’

‘You see, I came in your mother’s car. Mine’s at home. Your mother’s gone with …’

‘Lol. In his truck.’

‘Would it be possible to take me home? Just for a few minutes, so I can collect some medication.’

‘Herbs?’

‘Won’t take me long, darling, I know what I’m looking for. I suppose I could phone for a taxi …’

Herbs? No way.

‘No,’ Jane said. ‘No, it’s OK. I’ll get the keys.’

‘Good. I can pick up my Jeep.’

‘Oh.’

This would mean she’d have to drive back on her own, on her provisional licence.

‘OK,’ Jane said.

She’d need to get the L-plates off before Mrs Morningwood spotted them.

Because, whatever this was about, it was not about herbs.

53 Damage

‘TEN COVER IT?’ Jimmy Hayter said.

Lol stared at him. It had started to rain again. Big spots on Hayter’s buttermilk Armani.

‘I could go to twelve, Robinson. Cash, by tonight. Leave it in an envelope for you, at the desk in there.’

‘Twelve what?’

‘Twelve K.’

‘Perhaps you could explain what you’re talking about, Jimmy.’

‘I heard you had a guitar irreparably damaged.’

‘Wow,’ Lol said. ‘It’s amazing how quickly word gets out.’

‘I’ve always liked to help underprivileged musicians.’

‘So I’ve noticed.’

‘Twelve, and you and your priest leave me alone. And you don’t lean on my fucking Jag.’

Lol didn’t move.

‘Jimmy, you are … I think what our friends over the ocean would call a piece of work.’

‘All right,’ Hayter said. ‘You tell me what you want.’

‘I’ll be reasonable about it. Four grand in an envelope and a bit of honesty.’

‘I could …’ Hayter’s face might have darkened, or it could have been the sky. ‘I don’t think I need to spell out what damage I could do to your … what you laughably call a career.’

‘Well …’ Lol shook his head, sighing. ‘I mean that’s just the point, isn’t it? I don’t call it a career, and you already have spelled it out. Or your … employee, with whatever destructive implement he carries around with him. And the thing is—’

‘Whoever did that … might have gone further than instructed,’ Hayter said.

‘—Thing is, I’m really not anywhere near significant enough to be damaged by somebody with your level of connections. I mean, what are you going to do … like, sabotage the renewal of my six-album contract with the Sony Corporation?’

‘Maybe he concentrated on the wrong guitar.’

Hayter turned away, shoulders hunched against the rain which had drained the colour out of the city below them, making the Cathedral spectral. Then he turned back.

‘We haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘Who?’

‘Me and …’ Hayter jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards The Centurion ‘… him.’

‘Mr Gwilym. Who you haven’t seen in thirty years.’

‘Actually, I hadn’t,’ Hayter said. ‘Not until today.’

‘So what … I mean, why the reunion? Can’t be the anniversary of the ritual abuse of Mary Roberts, surely?’

Lol, the wet soaking through to his chest, suddenly felt this kind of transcendent exhilaration. Somehow, he had the bastard.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Hayter said.

‘So tell me what it was like.’

‘You want to come inside?’

‘Jimmy, do I look stupid?’

‘I’m getting wet.’

‘Rain’s healthy. Start with Mat Phobe. Move the letters around and it becomes Baphomet. That’s this head thing the Templars are supposed to have worshipped. And also what Crowley called himself, when he was doing sex magic with the OTO.’

‘Yeah, we did our share of that. Mat had this obscure book, with the rituals of the OTO. You needed women. Or men would do, in some cases, but we never went there, like I said. Unlike some of the Templars, apparently.’

‘What happened to Mary?’

‘I’ve told you.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘I told you I went to London to meet my old man.’ Hayter’s eyes were half-screened by his heavy hair. ‘And Gwilym went home to his old man’s farm. And when we got back, she’d gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So when you and Gwilym had left the premises, who was left?’ Mickey what’s-his-name and … Mat Phobe?’

‘No.’ Hayter wiped the air with both hands. ‘That’s absolutely as far as I go, Robinson.’

‘You haven’t even explained why you’re here yet.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘What about the four grand? I could after all …’ Lol started to laugh, hair dripping, leaning back over the bonnet of Hayter’s Jag ‘… seriously damage you.’

‘It’ll be on the desk by tonight.’

‘Hey, I’m not going in there. Especially at night.’

Hayter started to walk away, then turned. ‘HSBC. The bank?’

‘Centre of town?’

‘With your name on it. One hour. You’ll need some ID.’

Hayter walked back to The Centurion, quickly, through the rain.

54 The Confines of the Triangle

MERRILY SPOTTED THE Animal, a serious presence in the Broad Street traffic, and ran out across the cathedral green as Lol pulled in on the yellow lines. Holding on to his left arm as she climbed in from the running board.

‘God, you’re soaked!’

‘Where’s Huw?’

‘Left ages ago.’ Merrily hauled the passenger door shut. ‘You OK?’ Checking him out, peering into his face as he waited for a gap in the traffic. ‘You saw him?’

‘Hayter? Yes.’

‘And?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘He admits it was him?’

‘Not exactly, but … Where’re we going?’

‘Somewhere we can talk,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m trying to come to terms with something that … I don’t quite know what it means, but it’s disturbing.’

‘Hayter’s worried. He’s floundering.’

‘So he bloody should be.’

‘He offered me ten thousand for the damage to the Boswell.’

‘What, just now?’

‘He implied that the guy who did it overreacted. It must’ve happened very quickly. He was still thinking I was trying to blackmail him, told his guy to follow me. Guy rings him from Tanworth after I’ve left the truck to go into the churchyard. Hayter – some kind of knee-jerk thing – tells him what to do to show me what I’m taking on.’

‘How did he find out you’re on the level?’

‘I’m thinking two possibilities.’ Lol turned left into Bridge Street, traffic congealing around them. ‘Maybe he called Prof back, in a rage, and Prof explained the situation. Or he talked to Gwilym on the phone and Gwilym did some checks.’

‘What did you do … about the money?’

‘Told him to make it four grand and give me some honest answers. We reached the same point, where Mary disappears, then he clammed up. He says the money will be at HSBC in an hour. Unless he already has some arrangement with them, I don’t know how he’s going to do that, so maybe he was just lying, to get rid of me.’

‘But he and Gwilym are together?’

‘For the first time, he insists, since Garway. What does that suggest?’

‘I may just be able to tell you in a few minutes.’

Lol drove down to the car park near the swimming pool. By the time he’d found a space big enough for the Animal, Merrily had the mobile out, was consulting its index of numbers.

‘I just want to try something, see what reaction I get.’

She put the call through. The rain had stopped again but the sky was smoky over the hills.

‘Good afternoon,’ Beverley Murray said professionally. ‘This is The Ridge.’

‘Beverley, it’s Merrily Watkins. Sorry to bother you. Don’t suppose Teddy’s around?’

‘Oh. Merrily … haven’t you seen him? He was supposed to be calling at your place with the bags you left behind.’

‘Oh, well, actually I’m not at home. Perhaps he’s left them somewhere.’ Unlikely that Mrs Morningwood would have answered the door, especially to someone from Garway. ‘It was very kind of him, but there was really no need, I’ll be back there, probably tomorrow. In fact …’

She told Beverley she’d only just found out that the special service for the Templar anniversary was tomorrow, the twelfth, rather than Saturday, the thirteenth.

‘Oh … yes, that’s … There has been a change of plan, I think.’

‘Only, I know Teddy was feeling a bit apprehensive about it, and I was thinking there was nothing I could do because I’ve got this wedding on Saturday … but, of course, Friday’s not a problem.’

‘Oh … Well, I think …’

‘And obviously I’ve learned a lot about the Templars in the past few days. So, you know, I’d be happy to take it off his hands …’

‘Merrily, I—’

‘So, do you know what time it is? That’s all I wanted to know, really. I’ll come up and meet him an hour or so before and we’ll work it out.’

A silence. Merrily watched rain clouds tangling in the rust-coloured sky over Dinedor Hill.

Beverley said, ‘Can I call you back about this, Merrily?’

‘Sure.’

Merrily clicked off, sank down in the seat.

‘I wasn’t getting the right messages. From Beverley.’

‘This is the wife of the guy who’s standing in as vicar at Garway.’

‘Mmm, they’re waiting for a new team minister. Beverley was telling me how stressed out Teddy was and how it would be bad for him to get involved in any exorcism, and that he didn’t really want to do a service to commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of the suppression of the Templars. Which, of course, led to all kinds of torture and burnings at the stake, for which the Roman Catholic Church is now being asked to issue a formal apology.’

‘By whom?’

‘Some neo-Templar groups. The Vatican won’t authorize an apology, of course, because the Templars are still very iffy. The accusations may, at least in part, be true. No religious organization is totally clean.’

‘Certainly not one consisting largely of trained killers.’

‘There is that.’

‘You really want to do this service?’

‘No way. I was just seeing what reaction I got. The situation is that the C of E didn’t want to be involved, but Teddy said a lot of people had been pushing for something at Garway. What he didn’t say is that this was going to be a Masonic service.’

‘Oh …’

‘Reluctantly approved, possibly under pressure, by Bernie and conducted – something else Teddy didn’t say – by a Mason.’

Merrily watched a trans-Euro container lorry coming off Greyfriars Bridge inside a grey haze, thinking maybe she knew this city no better than its driver.

‘Teddy Murray, it seems, has been on the square for many, many years. Which opens up so many scary possibilities that I don’t know where to start.’

‘Suggests a special relatonship with Gwilym.’

‘Mmm. And it means he’s been extremely parsimonious with the truth in his various conversations with me. The guy’s always so vague and far-back. Butter wouldn’t melt. She said he’d actually been to the vicarage this afternoon.’

‘Your vicarage?’

‘Ostensibly to bring my bags back. Unlikely. It suggests he wants to talk about something. I’ll see if …’

Merrily rang home. No answer. Jane must be back by now, so she left a message saying she could be late, was reachable on the mobile, if Jane could see her way to calling.

‘What do we do now?’ Lol said.

‘Pick up the money for the Boswell?’

‘It’s not going to be there, Merrily.’

‘Be interesting to see. Stourport clearly very much wants you off his back.’

They parked at Tesco, walked round the corner by All Saints Church and Lol went into the bank on his own.

Came back with a thick yellow envelope.

‘Let’s not get too excited, it might be a letter bomb. Or something.’

Insisting on her getting into the truck while he opened it on his own in the car park, up against a perimeter wall.

He slid back into the truck.

‘I’ve never had a fifty-pound note before. Let alone eighty of them.’

‘Well, well …’

‘And there’s also this.’

He laid a plastic CD case on the dash. Merrily grimaced.

‘I do hope it’s not death metal.’

‘I seriously don’t like to put it on.’ Lol took out the CD, held it up to the light. ‘Doesn’t look like it’s been tampered with.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake …’

‘Now?’

Lol switched on the engine, loaded the CD, turned up the volume.

A background hum was relayed through six speakers. A lot of rustling, movement of objects. A female voice.

‘Is this what you wanted?’

‘Yeah, yeah … over there.’ Male voice. ‘Near the mirror. And don’t talk again, all right? Just keep quiet. Whatever happens, you keep quiet. This is important.’

After about a minute of near-silence, the girl said:

‘Ooh, kinky.’

And the man hissed:

‘’King shut it!’

‘That could be Hayter,’ Lol said, ‘but …’

Merrily said, ‘The girl … did that sound like a Brummie accent to you?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Christ.’

The atmosphere – a suggestion of burning, a hissing – was issuing like steam from speakers on either side, filling the cab. After some minutes, another male voice came in, up-and-down, liturgical.

‘I conjure thee by the name under which thou knowest thy God and by the name of the prince and king who rules over thee. I conjure thee to come at once and to fulfil my desires, by the powerful name of Him who is obeyed by all, by the name Tetragrammaton, Jehovah, the names which overcome everything, whether of this world or any other … Come, speak to me clearly, without duplicity. Come in the name of Adonai Sabaoth, come, linger not. Adonai Shadai, the king of all kings, commands thee!’

Background noise, with swishing movements. An exclamation of distaste. ‘Sulphur! Jeez!’ A nervous giggle.

After a while, another voice.

‘Told you it was boll— Sorry.’

Then the whole incantation repeated. Twice.

Near-silence this time. A thump, as if the tape had been unsubtly edited. Then two voices, one going, ‘Oh my—!’

Cut off by the second, louder, triumphant.

‘Welcome. Thou wert invoked in the name of him who has created heaven and earth and hell. I hereby bind thee so that thou shalt remain here, within the confines of the triangle, while I still require thee and leave not without the licence to depart, and then not without answering the questions I shall put to thee.

‘That which was brought here on the instructions of the Grand Master and Grand Preceptor of all England, Jacques de Molay, to be hidden from those who would purloin it … if it be still here, I command you to inform me of its true location and if it be not here I command that you so inform me.’

More invocation of the secret names of God. The question repeated. No clues as to what hidden item they were hoping to locate. It went on for another ten minutes, with edit bumps, until whatever had been welcomed was formally dismissed and the recording ended.

‘The problem with ceremonial magic,’ Merrily said, ‘is that it can be incredibly tedious. The language they use … stilted, pompous. Mock liturgy.’

‘Very defined, though,’ Lol said. ‘Very exact, focused on what they want and closing up all other avenues. I don’t know what to make of it. All smoke and mirrors, or what?’

‘Actually, it involves both smoke and mirrors. This ex-Catholic priest Eliphas Levi – huge admirer of the Templars – once claimed to have conjured up a spirit for a friend of Bulwer-Lytton, the writer. Admitting that he couldn’t really be sure what he’d got, but claiming to see the figure of a man. And he asks it the designated questions and gets the answers in his head.’

‘No big, sonorous voice echoing around the temple?’

‘Inside your head,’ Merrily said, ‘is usually as good as it gets. Apparently.’

‘So who were they trying to invoke here?’

‘Dunno. You go through the Key of Solomon and all these magical texts, you get a selection of spirits – funny names, Biblical-sounding roots – which perform certain functions to order. Finding hidden treasure – that’s a big favourite.’

‘It’s been quite heavily edited.’

‘Because this stuff takes for ever,’ Merrily said. ‘But, yeah, it also covers up essential facts. Like, we don’t find out exactly what they’re after or who they’re trying to talk to. Or what they get out of it … if anything. It’s just rich kids messing around, trying to scare themselves. Like, hey, we’ve done all the drugs, had all the weird sex, let’s do Other Spheres of Existence? Point is, why did Hayter want us to hear it?’

‘Sign of good faith? He said that if he found any of the tapes he’d let me know. I thought that was just to get my phone number. Which, of course, he put to good use a short time later.’

‘But why is he telling us anything? Went to a lot of trouble here. He must’ve either shot straight round to the bank with it, or he’d taken it earlier, making provision for collection by someone else. He didn’t have to offer you any money – there was no way you could pin the Boswell on him.’

Lol ejected the CD, slid it back into the plastic case.

‘Well, he doesn’t want us to drop it, does he? He’s just trying to steer us away from him. More or less editing himself out. Like, “something did happen, but it wasn’t down to me.” The girl … could that be Mary?’

‘Perhaps I’ll play it to Mrs Morningwood. And of course, Sycharth’s not in there at all. Where’s his big Welsh-language scene?’

‘Yet Hayter told me about Gwilym. Without mentioning his name.’

‘But that, presumably, was before he spoke to him again,’ Merrily said. ‘Now it’s like they’re on the same side, both pointing at the guy who conducted the ritual.’

‘Saying this is the bad guy, Mat Phobe, and he’s dead? End of story?’

Merrily’s mobile chimed.

‘I don’t know. It might be somebody they can’t— Hello?’

‘I think I should like to talk to you, Merrily,’ Beverley Murray said.

55 Monty and Jane

‘SO WHERE DID it happen?’ Jane asked.

The Volvo roared and surged because she’d put it back into second gear instead of up into fourth. Shit.

‘Was it at your home?’ Jane said. ‘Is that what this is all about?’

Mrs Morningwood glanced at her.

‘It wasn’t far from home. It’s an established fact that most car accidents take place on roads that are well known to the victim. Familiarity breeding carelessness.’

‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘Very good.’

She wasn’t totally stupid. She was driving slowly but trying not to make it suspiciously slowly. She’d left a message on the table for Mum telling her the truth, that she was driving Mrs Morningwood home to collect some stuff, but not the entire truth, that she’d be driving back, almost certainly in the dark, unaccompanied by a qualified driver.

She could do this. Country roads all the way, a wide arc around Hereford.

‘So what was it like growing up in Garway, under the shadow of the Templars?’

‘Good question,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

Obviously any question unrelated to her having been viciously assaulted was going to be a good one.

‘Like, the first time I went up there,’ Jane said, ‘I was noticing things. But maybe if you grow up in a place you take it all for granted.’

‘In this case, Jane, I think not. Even people who profess no interest at all in the Templars are, I think, affected in some way. It’s one of those areas that seems to … I don’t know … condition the way people think and behave. It somehow imposes its own rules and strictures. You noticed yourself the names of the pubs. I’ve never worked out how far they go back, but I don’t think it matters. They might simply be echoes from memory. The people are the memory cells of the hill.’

‘Cool.’

‘My mother, for instance. I don’t think she once mentioned the Templars to me as a child, but she knew about the Nine Witches. I can name them, she used to say. Every one.’

‘So who were the other eight?’

‘I never asked, she never told me. Of course, when I was a child, a witch meant an old woman in a pointed hat, stirring a cauldron. They were probably all around me and not all of them women.’

‘Are there nine now?’

‘Probably. It’s not a coven or anything, Jane. It simply suggests that there are always going to be nine people who, whether they know it or not, have been entrusted with the guardianship of the hill and its ways. Whenever an issue arises which might damage us, certain people will project … a certain point of view. I can’t explain it any better than that.’

‘People with Garway in their blood?’

‘Nothing so prosaic as blood, Jane. It’s in their very being. I really do believe that. It conditions how one does what one does.’

‘Like your herbalism? Healing?’

‘Or dowsing. Water-divining. Or painting, sculpture, gardening, furniture-making. Everything somehow relating to the place and its relationship with the heavens and infused with … a special energy. Sometimes.’

‘As above, so below. Paracelsus?’

‘I’m not aware that Paracelsus was ever in Garway, or even if someone so loud and demonstrative would have been welcome here. We’re very low-key. Which is why I’ve always felt that Owain Glyndwr, as depicted by Shakespeare, would have been unlikely to have fitted in either.’

‘Archetypal Welsh windbag?’ Jane figured she had a good working knowledge of Shakespeare, the big ones, anyway. ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’

‘Anyone who goes around telling people he can call spirits is usually bugger-all use at it,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Do you mind if I smoke, or are you like most kids, indoctrinated by the fascists in Westminster?’

‘Are you kidding? In our house?’

‘Thank you. I’ll open the window. You see, that’s why I suspect Glyndwr was not such a windbag. Although the wind does appear to have been important to him in other ways.’

‘Huh?’

‘Vast amount of mystery and superstition attached to the man – the wizard, who could manipulate the elements, alter the weather, leaving opposing armies drowning in Welsh mist. A very Templar thing to do. I can’t believe that, coming here a mere century or so after the dissolution, he wasn’t exposed to the full blast of residual Templarism. Some of them would still have been here, undercover now, sitting on their secrets.’

‘But he only came here towards the end of his life, didn’t he?’

‘Who says that was the first time? I think not. Besides, the Templars may have favoured Welsh independence, just as they supported the Scots at Bannockburn. I’ve even heard it said that they included among their number Llewelyn ap Gruffudd, the last official Prince of Wales, in the thirteenth century. His dates certainly fit.’

‘Really?’

‘The Templars seemed to like governments being fragmented, Jane. Made it easier to sustain their own international power-base.’

‘Right.’

Jane slowed at the single-lane Brobury Bridge over the Wye, waiting for every possible oncoming car to come across before chancing her arm. Dorstone Hill, narrow, winding and wooded, wasn’t going to be easy. When she and Eirion had come last summer he’d had to keep reversing to find somewhere to pull in to let other cars get past. And she was … well, crap at reversing.

She’d stopped talking, to concentrate, but Mrs Morningwood seemed to want to talk, as if she was afraid of where her own thoughts might lead her.

‘OK,’ Jane said. ‘So, like, is Garway the way it is because of the Templars? Or did the Templars only come here because Garway was already, you know, this really charged-up landscape? Maybe back into Celtic times?’

‘Mixture of the two. Whatever was here, they certainly enhanced it. It’s an unstable area, too. Has a major geological fault line. Climatic anomalies are often noted. We used to talk about gusts of wind from The White Rocks, which are supposed to be a Celtic burial ground. And then, of course, there’s M. R. James.’

‘We must …’ Jane’s hands tightened on the wheel. ‘… have offended someone or something at Garway … ’

‘My God, Jane, for a child you’re remarkably well informed.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Anyone under forty’s a child to me now. It’s the wind again, you see. Why did James have this chap discover a whistle that could arouse the wind on the site of a Templar preceptory? It’s never explained in the story.’

‘But you think the Templars … and Owain Glyndwr …?’

‘And farmers in this area, at one time. John Aubrey refers to the winnowers of Herefordshire who believed they could arouse a wind to blow the chaff from the wheat, by whistling. Whistling up the wind. That’s undoubtedly where Monty James got the idea from.’

‘You reckon?’

‘It’s the only possible connection.’

‘But M. R. James didn’t even come here until years after he’d written that story. He didn’t come until this Gwen McBryde came to live here with her daughter. Erm … Jane.’

‘Well we don’t know for certain that he hadn’t been here before that. But, as an antiquarian, it’s most unlikely that he hadn’t heard of Garway.’

‘I keep thinking of Jane MacBryde,’ Jane said. ‘How old would she have been?’

‘When they came to Garway? About thirteen. You know her father was the artist who illustrated some of the early stories?’

‘And Jane also … drew things.’

‘Jane had a macabre imagination. Clawlike hands emerging from tombs.’

‘Do you know what she looked like?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t. Nobody ever described her to me.’

At the turning to Dorstone Hill, Jane snatched a quick look sideways. Mrs Morningwood had her old Barbour on and the sunglasses, her cigarette arm on the open window, a small smile on her still-swollen lips. Roscoe’s head next to hers, his grey fur flattened in the slipstream.

‘Do you want to know the story?’

Jane McBryde had known in advance about the visit to Garway Church. Although it wasn’t more than a few miles from their home and she’d probably been before, visiting somewhere with Uncle Monty was always a joy. He was kind and he was funny and full of good stories – well, everybody knew that now, and Jane McBryde had read them all.

Uncle Monty, of course, could spend all day poking around old churches and Garway Church, with all its Templar relics, was a special treat. One of his most famous stories – Jane found it deliciously terrifying – had been about a Templar preceptory and what a solitary sort of professor had found there … and came to wish he hadn’t, or at least had left it well alone.

Monty didn’t really notice – he was probably safely in the tower or the vestry or somewhere, bent over something, his glasses on his nose – when Jane slipped out of the church and started looking round the outside walls, feeling along them with her hands.

‘What you after?’

The girl was a few years younger than Jane, maybe eight or nine. She had blonde hair and a wild look. The year was 1917.

Jane McBryde said, quite open about it, ‘I’m looking for a hole in the wall. I want to play a trick on my uncle.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Jane said. ‘I mean, you’re not making it up or anything?’

‘I am telling it,’ Mrs Morningwood said, ‘just as my mother told it to me.’

‘So the blonde girl …’

‘Norah. My mother was quite a forward child. Not many of the local kids would dare approach a stranger. My mother, knowing every stone in the tower below her own height, was able to show her one quite close to the ground – perhaps in the area where the circular nave would be excavated just a few years later – which could, with the aid of a stick or a small knife, be eased out of the wall.’

Mrs Morningwood began to smile for real, shaking her head.

‘Imagine the scene an hour or so later when Monty and his ward are strolling around the tower, perhaps planning to take in the famous dovecote, and Jane says, “Why’s that stone sticking out, Uncle Monty?” and Monty gets down on his hands and knees, the stone pops out and so does … a very old and grimy whistle.’

‘Oh … cool.’

‘Nothing engraved on it, of course, but you can imagine the look on Monty’s face. Perhaps, after the initial shock, he has an inkling that he’s been set up, but he’s very fond of Jane, realizes all the trouble the girl’s taken over this, and goes along with it.’

‘Did he blow it?’

‘My mother, watching from behind a gravestone, reported it as follows: Better not blow it, Monty says. Who knows what might happen? And young Jane’s hopping up and down. Oh do blow it, Uncle Monty! Do! But Monty pockets the whistle, saying, Perhaps I’ll blow it later. Let’s continue with our exploration.’

‘And did he?’

‘Well my mother, despite having no idea what any of this was about, never having read the story, was fascinated to find out. And so she followed them, through the churchyard, along the footpaths, and all the time Jane McBryde’s pulling Monty’s arm and saying, When are you going to blow it? Please blow it now!’

‘My mother remembers Monty stopping at the top of a rise which is very well known to me, and he takes out the whistle. Should I? Gives it a good wipe with his handkerchief, puts it in his mouth, puffs out his cheeks … nothing happens. Takes it out of his mouth, bangs it on a stone to get the dried mud out of the hole at the end. Back in the mouth, young Jane jumping up and down, nothing happens at first and then … peeeeep!’

‘You’re like … not making this up, are you?’ Jane said, changing smoothly down through the gears.

‘I’m telling it to you exactly as it was told to me by my late mother. Monty blows the whistle once, pops it back in his pocket. Couple of minutes later a gust of wind comes in – probably from the White Rocks – and down comes the rain.’

‘You’re kidding …’

‘My personal theory is that Monty knew there was a good chance of a change in the weather and wanted to wait until it was imminent to blow the whistle – to turn the tables on Jane. However, it rains harder and harder, and they run to some trees. But, with the wind, the trees are offering precious little in the way of shelter, and Jane’s dress is getting soaked and Monty’s rather concerned now that she’ll catch cold. Her poor father, of course, having died very young. Possibly the last of his drawings being, in fact, the “Whistle” ghost with its intensely horrible face of crumpled linen.’

Jane stayed in second gear for the descent, the road like a tunnel through the trees. It wasn’t raining, but it was dark enough to put on the headlights, dipped.

‘Monty’s perhaps very concerned now that his own joke is going to backfire and Jane will catch pneumonia – usually fatal, remember, in those days, before antibiotics. And then, through the trees, he spots a house … grabs Jane by the hand and they go dashing down. Monty’s banging on the front door, shouting, “Hullo! Hullo!” but no answer. My mother follows them to the edge of the yard. She sees Monty turn the handle … and the door opens. My mother’s hand goes to her mouth because … well, because she knows what’s in there.’

‘What?’

‘The force of the wind … slams the door wide, exposing a dim room, with the curtains drawn across the small, high window. Monty calls out, the rain thrashing down behind them. No answer. A small lamp is burning. He sees a long trestle table with a sheet covering something, just as a sudden gust of wind from outside blows the sheet away. And there, awaiting its coffin, lies the corpse of Naomi Newton, above which the white sheet is dancing in the wind before collapsing to the floor in a twitching sort of heap.’

‘Oh my God,’ Jane said. ‘Newton. The Master House?’

So caught up in the story that she’d driven up one side of the treacherous Dorstone Hill and down the other, round a seriously nasty left-hand band and into the broad sweep of the Golden Valley, where the oddly graceful fibreglass steeple of Peterchurch church was embossed on the low cloud mass like some downmarket Salisbury Cathedral.

‘A year later,’ Mrs Morningwood was saying, ‘M. R. James returned alone to Garway and got into conversation with my grandmother, who had her own reasons to be fearful of the Master House. He was a touch embarrassed. As if my own imagination was punishing me, he said. Perhaps I’m haunted by my own ghastly creations.’

‘Right. Wow.’

Jane drove on, in silence, still not sure whether or not Mrs Morningwood had made the whole thing up.

But remembering something.

Before they’d left, taking the spare car keys from the rack in the key cupboard at the end of the hall, she’d noticed something missing. The outsize key to the Master House had been hung on the rack by Mum, who was probably fed up with the weight of it and the memories it evoked every time she opened the bag.

The fact that the key was no longer there could mean one of two things – that Mum had put it back into her bag in case she had to go there at short notice. Or …

56 Bevvie

WHAT WAS MOST unexpected was the aggression.

‘Oh, let’s not waste time,’ Beverley said. ‘All that false bonhomie. All this, “Let’s help old Teddy out of his fix.” You’re not a bonhomie sort of person, are you, Merrily?’

Under the halogen lights in the stainless steel kitchen. Beverley’s hair down around her shoulders. A Chardonnay bottle half full on the chopping board, with two glasses, Beverley rapidly draining one, a different woman.

One who wanted to talk. Had maybe wanted to talk for a long time, to somebody. Building up to this, flushed and brimming now.

Oh God, how you could miss the signs …

‘As if you didn’t know, Merrily, exactly why you couldn’t do that service.’

The dusk was dropping like a roller blind. Merrily had gone into The Ridge on her own, leaving Lol in the truck with her phone, in case Jane or somebody rang.

‘Well, I think,’ she said, ‘that he could’ve told me about it.’

‘Told you about it? He doesn’t even tell me about it. Lodge nights, out comes the black case. Off to the Boys’ Club, Bevvie, don’t wait up. Like an old-time gangster with a violin case. Never yet seen the inside of that little black case.’

‘That seems to be the way it goes,’ Merrily said. ‘Except on Ladies’ Evenings, of course.’

‘Never been to one. I’m going to sit there with a bunch of old biddies dripping jewellery, smiling fondly at my husband and listening to endless self-congratulatory speeches? All rise for the provincial grand almighty … whatever.’

‘Yes, that could be very trying.’

‘My first husband played golf. A golf bore. Golf Club social events. Merrily, is it something about me? Safe, practical, reliable … and, above all, blatantly incurious.’

Merrily said nothing. Beverley poured more wine. Merrily left hers alone, wondering how best to play this, remembering something.

‘These guests – the ones coming tomorrow.’

‘Germans. Have you ever met German Masons? Last year it was Americans. Sold to me as a hiking group, but they never seem to hike further than the church, with their video cameras and their calculators and their … set squares.’

‘Why was it changed from Saturday?’

‘I think they were afraid that, on the actual day, it might be too crowded with, you know, normal visitors. That ordinary people might actually want to go to the service. Whereas Friday, as a working day, they’ll be left to get on with it … especially at the time it’s being held.’

‘When?’

‘Straddling midnight. So that, come the dawn on Saturday …’

‘The time of the original raids in France in 1307.’

‘The church draped with Templar banners. They’re all rolled up in the tower. It’s going to be the highlight of his … his life, probably.’

‘Sad?’

‘No, it’s not sad. Quite frightening, actually. Do you want to sit down?’

‘Where is Teddy now?’

‘Hereford. Little Boys’ Club. Won’t be back much this side of midnight. Don’t you like this stuff? Shall I open a bottle of red or something?’

‘I’d rather you made it coffee,’ Merrily said.

Lol had never used this phone before, and the first time the call came in, he accidentally killed it. He was fiddling around for some way of recovering it, when the church-bell noise it made started up again.

‘Merrily?’

‘She’s not around at the moment,’ Lol said. ‘Can I take a—?’

‘Lol Robinson?’

Lol froze. For a second he thought it was Hayter’s man again.

‘Frannie Bliss, Laurence. Where is she?’

‘Talking to somebody. Not far away. There a problem?’

‘Yeh, there is. I expected to have heard from her by now. When last we spoke, she seemed … I don’t like it when she’s quiet.’

‘I’ll get her to call you.’

‘Why’s she quiet, Laurence?’

‘Maybe she likes to think things out.’ Lol looked down from the parking area across to the darkening hills of east Wales. No lights anywhere. ‘I thought it was a wrap from your point of view. All sorted.’

‘Somebody saying it isn’t?’

‘You know I don’t mix in those circles, Francis.’

‘Well it isn’t. You tell Merrily it isn’t. Tell her … You’re norra blabber, are you, Laurence?’

‘No.’

‘And still a vested interest in keeping her intact.’

‘More vested all the time,’ Lol said.

‘We’ve had PM results on Barlow and Fuchsia. I’m not going into details, but the extent of Barlow’s injuries, the level of force, the level of trauma, that doesn’t look like a woman. Not often a woman’s method, either.’

‘What … blunt instrument?’

‘A bluntie, you see, generally speaking, they don’t. Requires a level of controlled rage. And sustained rage. And where’s the motive here? Where, at the end of the day, is the damn motive?’

‘So why did she kill herself?’ Lol said.

‘Yeh, well, did she? See, another thing, the effects of a railway engine running over a head are highly effective at concealing whether there might have been an earlier injury rendering the victim incapable enough, or dead enough, to be taken there and laid on the line.’

‘Carried there?’

‘Already dead, most likely. There’s a lorra shite talked about the accuracy of time-of-death assessment, largely as a result of TV pathologists who say, “Oh, the victim passed away between ten fifteen and ten forty-five.” In real life, they can just about tell you what day it was.’

‘You’re saying there could still be somebody out there …?’

‘I’m planting the thought. You can add it to the list of reasons why she needs to call me. On the mobile, naturally.’

Lol sat there, looking out over unlit Wales, wondering how many other crucial calls Merrily might have missed.

‘When we first came here, I thought we might walk the hills together. Walk to the pub, gentle strolls home by moonlight. Maybe get a dog. He didn’t want a dog. He didn’t do that kind of walking. His kind of walking, you’re out at dawn, proper hiking boots, and you aren’t back till dark and the worse the weather is the better. Him and the landscape. Walking his way into it. Throwing himself into it. As if he didn’t have much time to learn all there was to learn.’

‘God’s own weekend retreat,’ Merrily said.

They were sitting at the window table in the former dairy. Beverley tossed back her head.

‘The vacant vicar. The silly vicar. More tea, vicar? He plays that role so well. God’s own weekend bloody retreat.’

‘Balm for the soul.’

‘All the clichés.’ Beverley breathed out slowly. ‘Jesus, Merrily, I haven’t really talked to anybody like this in years. It’s like a big stone being rolled off your chest. Does it bother you that I don’t believe in God?’

‘Evangelism’s never been my thing. People come to it in their own way. Or not.’

On impulse, Merrily had left off the dog collar this morning. Pectoral cross over a black sweater. Some people were put off. This one, definitely.

You often heard clergy wives talking like this, their scepticism deepened by living day-to-day with a so-called Man of God, all his doubts, all his weaknesses and failings.

‘Teddy know you don’t believe in God?’

‘We’ve never talked about it. He doesn’t care one way or the other. I was a good source of money when he needed some. Big house to sell. Silly me. When I think back, I thought I was playing him, like a fish on a hook.’ Beverley drank some coffee. ‘He was playing me. I didn’t see it. He can be so charming. And needy, in this selfless, stoical, noble way. I bet you saw through it right away. I bet you’ve been mauled by the best.’

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘Actually … no.’

‘He didn’t make a move on you?’

Merrily looked into Mrs Murray’s flushed face. Maybe this was paranoia, after all.

‘Silly of me. Of course, he wouldn’t with you. He wants you out of here, done and dusted, quick as possible. When you left the other morning, he laughed. Women in deliverance, he said, that was never going to work.’

‘He said that?’

‘I watch, you know. I’ve been watching for some time. Thinking why are we here on this bleak bloody hillside? Why do we stay here? We have no real friends, no roots. At least, I don’t.’

‘He has?’

‘He’s found something. It’s like he owns the place, now. Comes in from his walk, it’s like he’s had sex. Actually …’ Short, bleak laugh ‘… I’m sure he has, sometimes.’

‘Beverley …?’

‘Sometimes we get lone women staying here. Of a certain age – divorced, bereaved – here to come to terms with something. And he’ll take them out for a walk. Talk to them in his vicarly fashion. Balm for the soul. They’ll go out for walks together. Balm for the soul, balm for the body. He ministers to them.’

‘You really think that? Where would he take them?’

‘In the grass, in the woods. I don’t know where he takes them. It’s therapy, isn’t it?’

‘So when … when you talked about going with him if he ever went to get treatment from Mrs Morningwood—’

‘Very sexy woman, isn’t she, for her age? Not like me.’

‘Beverley, you’re—’

‘Goes through periods when he hardly looks at me. Hardly seems to know I’m there. We even have separate bedrooms when there are no guests. Oh certainly, if it helps you get a better night’s sleep, Bevvie …’

Beverley looked away, out of the window. Almost dark now.

‘Other times – phases – he becomes almost frighteningly demanding. Rough. Animal. Well, I was quite flattered at first. This gentle, diffident clergyman. As if it was me bringing something out. I’ve never been very … you know. Men found me passably attractive, but not …’

A wind was rising, leaves blown against the glass.

‘And then, you see … at some point …’ Beverley swallowed too much coffee, choked, slapped her chest hard. ‘Don’t know how it took me so long to notice. Me with my genteel, suburban … At some point, after we’d been here a while, it became obvious that at … at those times … it wasn’t anything to do with me. Wasn’t me at all. Sometimes, I’d see his eyes above me in the moonlight. His wild, enchanting blue eyes. Wide open. And somewhere else.’

Merrily looked into Beverley’s eyes and saw loneliness.

Thinking back to Beverley begging her not to involve Teddy in whatever she was planning for the Master House. Not taking it in as well as she might have, self-pity taking over instead.

She’d been ill that night, and desperately tired. Missing the whole point. It wasn’t Teddy who was overstressed, vulnerable …

His workload was becoming ridiculous, poor man. Four large parishes in Gloucestershire, and the phone never seemed to stop ringing.

Didn’t tally with the man she’d first met in the shadow of Garway Church who’d said he’d never been a particularly pastoral sort of chap. You could get away with a lot in the Church, ignore things. Especially if you were a man. Men were seldom doormats.

‘Beverley … when you said he was playing you like a fish …’

‘Seems all too clear to me now. Although I don’t want to believe it. The implications of it are more disturbing than I can bear to think about for long. I lie in my bedroom and I stare at the ceiling, and I think, you’re wrong … you have to be wrong. It’s all too … elaborate. Machiavellian.’

The final straw … a wave of absolutely awful vandalism … desecration. Gravestones pushed over, defaced, strange symbols chiselled into them. And one night someone broke in and actually defecated in the church, which was horrible, horrible, horrible …

Merrily had begun warming her hands on her coffee cup, the implications forming like a numbness on her skin.

57 The Turning

HALF A MILE or so out of Garway village, Jane slowed right down: roadside cottage lights up ahead, a row of them curtained by a tingly kind of mist. This place was called The Turning, Mrs Morningwood said. She was winding down her window, annoyed.

‘Rather thought it would still be fully light when we arrived, but you’re a more careful driver than I expected, Jane.’

‘A lot of people have accidents in their first year on the road.’ Jane held the Volvo on the footbrake at The Turning, flattening the clutch. ‘You still want me to go down here, or what?’

‘Don’t think I said anything about going down here, did I?’

‘Well, seeing you nicked the key to the Master House from the rack at home, I just thought …’ Jane turned to her. ‘Like, was it something I said? About the green man or the Baphomet behind the inglenook? You have an idea what that’s about?’

‘I would have liked to see it,’ Mrs Morningwood admitted. ‘I’m not too sure about going now, though.’

‘Would you go if I wasn’t with you?’

‘Possibly. However … Look, Jane, don’t hang around, there’s a vehicle behind you. Keep going.’

‘Right. OK.’

Jane thought, Sod it, turned left into the downhill lane that led to the church, Mrs Morningwood sighing down her nose and mumbling something about thanking God she’d never had a child.

‘You want me to pull in by the church, so we can can follow the footpaths, like we did on—?’

‘No, that would take for ever. There’s a track a few hundred yards further on that leads to within a stone’s throw of the place. Broken white gateposts. Bit rough, but you should be all right, if you go carefully. You have a torch anywhere?’

‘It’s behind the seat at the back. Ah!’

‘Jane, for—!’

A rabbit had appeared up ahead in the dipped headlights, Jane slamming the brakes on, Roscoe falling into the well between the seats, and there was a tortured scream. Not Roscoe, not the rabbit … this was somebody’s brakes right behind them.

The Volvo stalled.

Oh no. It had to happen, didn’t it? This was where the guy in whatever vehicle had nearly rear-ended them would come leaping down, total road-rage situation, bawling her out.

‘It’s all right.’ Mrs Morningwood looking over a shoulder. ‘He hasn’t hit us. And he isn’t getting out. Just carry on.’

Jane turned the key and the engine coughed and …

‘Oh sh—’

… Died.

‘Try again.’

Mrs Morningwood still looking over her shoulder and her voice was lower and toneless, like with tension, like she was controlling something.

‘What’s wrong?’

No sound from the vehicle behind. Looked like a Land Rover. No blasts on the horn, just its headlights on full beam so you couldn’t look in the rear-view mirror and keep your sight.

‘Try again.’

The engine fired. Jane went carefully into first gear, let out the clutch, crawled away, looking for the entrance to the track.

‘Keep driving, Jane.’

‘I thought you said—’

‘Go! Keep on. I’ll direct you.’

‘But the track—’

‘Forget the bloody track.’

‘OK … whatever.’

Jane speeded up, put the headlights on full beam, the hedge springing up all white like a mesh of tangled bones.

‘OK, what’s the matter?’

‘Carry on to the bottom,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Then go right.’

‘Is there something wrong?’

When they reached the bottom of the road there were no headlights in the mirror.

‘Was that somebody you know?’

‘We’ll go to my house,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

It was like there was a ritual maze all around Garway Hill, marked out in lanes worn into the landscape over centuries. The rule was: high hedges low ground, low hedges or barbed wire meant that you were climbing. But it was impossible to tell one way or the other at nightfall in the mist. How many years did you have to live here before you knew where the hell you were?

‘Left,’ Mrs Morningwood said.

‘Here?’

‘This, Jane, is where I live.’

‘We just did a complete circuit? I thought we’d be halfway to Monmouth by now.’

‘Stop here. Anywhere.’

The mist had thinned quite a bit. Jane saw a row of low houses without lights. They looked unnatural, all the windows black.

When they got out of the Volvo, Mrs Morningwood put up a hand and laughed.

‘Wind from the White Rocks.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Blown a tunnel through the mist.’

That made sense?

Mrs Morningwood went to the front door but didn’t open it, just shook the handle.

‘Now we’ll go round the back.’

They followed Roscoe along the path at the side of the house. You could see the hulks of chicken sheds to the side, and a fence.

‘Where do you grow the herbs, Mrs Morningwood?’

‘Garden at the back, where the chickens can’t get in. Pick quite a lot from the wild. Keep your voice down.’

They came to a glassed-in porch, and Mrs Morningwood squeezed past Jane and went inside, picking up a torch. The beam showed that the back door inside the porch was already open, Roscoe surging through the gap as Jane said something stupid.

‘Do you, like, usually keep it open?’

‘He’s been in.’

‘The door’s been forced?’

‘Spare key in one of the chicken houses,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Nobody would know that, unless they’d been watching me for quite some time. He’s telling me he could come back any time. Whenever he likes.’

She went in briskly, but breathing hard, flicking switches, rooms springing out at Jane as the lights came on. She looked at Mrs Morningwood, her cracked Barbour and her cracked face, and knew that, for her, this wasn’t like coming home any more.

‘This is where you were attacked, isn’t it? This is where it happened. That’s why Mum brought you—’

‘Yes, Jane.’

‘Was it someone you know?’

‘Didn’t then.’

Jane looked down at Roscoe who was prowling, sniffing in corners, his tail well down.

‘And he’s been back,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Bastard’s been back. Wants me to know.’

They were in the kitchen. There were some jars on a dresser. They had screw tops. The tops had been taken off and laid next to the jars. Mrs Morningwood stood and looked at the jars but didn’t touch them. Jane felt a stirring of fear.

‘He’s not—?’

‘He’s not here now. Dog would know. Besides …’

‘I thought you had people looking after the house.’

‘Dawn and dusk. See to the chickens.’

‘What … what are you going to do?’

‘Going to get all the rest of the herbs in the house, all the preparations, put them all in a bag, take them away and get rid of them, bottles, everything.’

‘You think they’ve been tampered with?’

Mrs Morningwood turned, took Jane by both arms, looked into her eyes.

‘Go home, Jane.’

‘Now?’

‘Shouldn’t’ve done this. Big mistake. Get in your car, go home. Give your mother my apologies. Drive carefully.’

‘What about you?’

‘Got my Jeep.’

‘But I can’t—’

‘Go.’

‘Mrs Morningwood, what’s going on here?’

‘Be careful at the entrance to the track. Visibility’s not good at the best of times.’

‘You’re coming back, though? To Ledwardine?’

Mrs Morningwood didn’t reply, following Jane along the path to the Volvo, wet mist shivering in the lights from the house, and Jane knew she ought to ask her to give back the key to the Master House.

‘Tell you what?’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Take the dog.’

She opened one of the rear side doors, pointing. Roscoe looked at her and growled.

‘In,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘You too, Jane.’

Jane got in and started the engine, watching Mrs Morningwood walk back to the house, not turning around, stumbling once. Jane thought that Roscoe had whimpered, realizing a moment later that the small noise of distress had been in her own throat. She took in a deep breath, started the car, drove to the entrance of the track, just out of sight of the house and stopped, keeping the engine running.

Up ahead, the mist had closed in again, pale and shiny in the headlights like the doors of a big fridge.

Jane got out the mobile to call Mum, because there really was no alternative now to a confession. But there was no signal.

58 Excellent in Fields

BEVERLEY WENT TO answer the door, and Merrily stared into the dregs in the coffee cup, and there was no question of disbelief. For a proportion of priests, being a good and altruistic person was always going to be the price you had to pay to maintain the buzz.

Merrily remembering, as usual, the first time she’d felt it: period of personal crisis, stumbling into a tiny, unexpected Celtic church, watching the light on the walls, the blue and the gold and the lamplit path. A safety in stone, but also transcendence. The path opening up from there.

But there were different paths and different kinds of light.

Staring into the brown dregs, thinking about the Roman Catholic priest, Alphonse Louis Constant, who had made friends with a teenage girl and become Eliphas Levi, conjurer of spirits, fan of Baphomet … while still, if she was remembering this correctly, stressing the importance of God in magic and the magic in God.

And the spark of it that some of them fed and nurtured within themselves. Gnostic fire. The growing of the god inside.

She felt Teddy Murray at her shoulder under the gaze of Garway Church. I suppose, seen from above, it does look rather as though its neck has been broken. Like a chicken’s.

When Beverley came back into the dairy, Lol was with her, looking worried, saying to Beverley, whom he’d never met before, ‘The Turning? What would she mean by The Turning?’

‘Where?’ Merrily said, spinning. ‘Where is she now?’

Looking wildly in different directions from the rim of the parking area, where the tarmac crumbled into dirt and weeds and signs indicated two separate footpaths.

‘She doesn’t know exactly,’ Lol said. ‘Don’t panic. She had to drive up the hill to find a signal. Down by the church, mobiles don’t work. None of them, apparently.’

Merrily remembered putting 999 into the screen, entering Mrs Morningwood’s house after the attack. It wouldn’t have worked. They might both have been dead.

‘But she thinks she can find her way back to The Turning,’ Lol said.

‘On her own.’

‘Apart from the dog, apparently. We’ll wait for her there.’

Lol bleeped open the truck, Merrily jumped in.

That bloody woman.

They parked in the church entrance, the truck taking up most of it, and walked to the top of the lane where it met the slightly wider country lane which served as Garway’s main highway. Merrily had suggested that maybe Lol could drive up and down, looking for Jane, but he wouldn’t leave her. He told her what Bliss had said about Felix’s killer.

No great shock. Not really.

‘What’s Bliss doing about this?’

‘Probably nothing,’ Lol said. ‘They have a result … likely to stand up at an inquest … the cops are overstretched …’

‘Clean-up rate.’

‘Target figures. What counts. There’s no evidence, anyway. No more than a feeling backed up by Bliss’s professional experience of what kind of murders women do and don’t do.’

‘Why did he call, then?’

‘He wants you to be aware of it. Just in case you …’

‘Stir something up in my fumbling way.’ Merrily stepped into the roadway. ‘Where the hell is she, Lol?’

‘Driving very, very slowly. Just have to hope the traffic cops are too overstretched to be patrolling Garway.’

‘Please God.’

Merrily stood there in the middle of the road, the mist torn into rags by a wet breeze, the tarmac shining.

Work it out.

Freemasonry. Sycharth. And Stourport – who couldn’t finger a fellow Mason but said this is his voice.

Wished she’d heard him in church. Praying and preaching, mens’ voices changed. Actors. The Church is a faded but still fabulous costume drama. Mick Hunter had said that, her first ambitious, duplicitous, womanizing bishop.

Teddy Murray wasn’t like Hunter, not a flamboyant stage presence. Teddy was an actor in a long-running drama, playing a man who liked a quiet life. The countryside calms and strengthens. One of the functions of a parish priest is to remain centred and … essentially placid.

Which Beverley had translated as passive.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

‘What did you learn in there?’ Lol said.

‘I’m just trying to put it all together. Just … give me a minute, and I’ll tell you.’

Fuchsia.

He had, of course, met Fuchsia, when she came running into his church after whatever happened to her in the Master House. Fuchsia looking so like her mother. Disturbingly like her mother. Disturbing for some.

Strong guy. Strong enough to carry a body across a field in the dark, to the railway? Oh yeah, he could do that. He was good in fields. He was excellent in fields.

‘There you go,’ Lol said.

He drew Merrily back, out of the road, as headlights streaked a cottage wall.

With an expulsion of relief, she slumped against him, watching the Volvo crawling round the corner and pulling in at The Turning, a dog barking inside.

Almost like a real family, all the angst, all the tension. Merrily drove, Lol beside her, Jane in the back, arms around the dog, voice swollen-up.

‘Mum, there was nothing I could—’

‘Recriminations later.’ Merrily swung into the track that led to Ty Gwyn and all the empty holiday homes. ‘How long since you left Mrs Morningwood?’

‘I don’t know. Twenty minutes, half an hour? When did I get through to you, Lol?’

‘At least half an hour.’

Merrily pulled up in front of Ty Gwyn and they got out, all of them.

No lights in the house. The chicken houses shut down. Took a couple of minutes to find the house was all locked up, including the back door.

Lol shone the torch at the carport. No Jeep.

Roscoe sniffed around the porch, showing no great desire to go in. Merrily stepped back.

‘She’s not here. Jane, I’m not getting this … what did she say she was going to do?’

‘Throw out the herbs and mixtures and stuff. Like they’d been contaminated? That doesn’t sound convincing, does it?’

‘Well, you can see that it might be, from her point of view. But no need for urgency, was there?’

Merrily looked back towards the Volvo.

‘Look,’ Jane said, ‘if I had to take a guess …’

‘Go on.’

‘The Master House. I’d told her … I told her what happened to you. In the inglenook?’

‘When?’

‘Before we left. I’m sorry, I thought you’d probably told her yourself.’

‘And how did she react?’

‘She was interested in the inglenook. The Baphomet. It was like it had helped her put something together. But she was in a bit of a state, anyway. This was after that guy you stayed with called in with your bags, and Roscoe—’

‘You saw him? You saw Teddy Murray?’

‘Well, he came to the door, didn’t he? He said you’d left the bags behind and he was just passing, so he … It was kind of embarrassing, because Roscoe just like … went for him?’

‘Went for him how?’

‘Shot through the doorway, snarling, teeth bared? Mum, I’m just thinking, if she’s gone to the Master House, she wouldn’t take the Jeep, she’d walk.’

‘No. I don’t think she would. Tell me about Roscoe. What happened?’

‘Me trying to drag him back. Didn’t actually get to him. I don’t think the guy wanted to hang around after that, though.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He was like, “Oh, I see you’ve got a guard dog.” Two women on their own, that kind of thing. Trying to make light of it, but I think he was shaken, as you would be. He’s not exactly a Jack Russell, Roscoe, is he?’

‘Did he see Mrs Morningwood?’

‘Didn’t leave the kitchen.’

‘Right.’ Merrily turned away from the house. ‘We should go. We need to find her, don’t we?’

Teddy: how much circumstantial evidence did you need?

‘OK,’ Lol said. ‘This Murray, the feeling I’m getting—’

‘This is all my fault, isn’t it?’ Jane said. ‘You think I shouldn’t’ve brought her. Only, the way she—’

Merrily said, ‘Jane, there are no circumstances I can, at this moment, imagine under which it would’ve been OK to bring Muriel Morningwood back to Garway. Let’s leave it at that, for now.’

Lol backed off into the darkness, shaking his head.

Jane said, ‘I’m sorry. Am I … I mean, when am I going to be allowed to know what happened to her?’

‘Yeah, well, that was my mistake, flower. I should’ve told you. Mrs Morningwood was raped. And she’s deeply traumatized. Either more than she knows or more than her pride will let anyone else know. And that … is the main reason we have to find her.’

It was too dark to see Jane’s face.

You should look for two white gateposts, one broken in half.

Straight in this time, no oblique approach.

There was still a lot of track, well overgrown, the Volvo whingeing and grinding in second gear. Feeling a wheel slip, Merrily pulled the car back from the rim of a ditch, as the central chimney stack of the Master House rose up palely in the headlights.

The wind rising now, the last flurries of mist passing like the slip-streams of barn owls.

She dipped the lights, stopping the car against a wedge of impacted red mud, about fifty yards short of the hollow where the farmhouse lay, looking big and whole and intact and solid by night. Like it might have looked a century ago, in transit between Gwilym and Newton.

Merrily switched off the engine, put out all the lights, and the house vanished.

Except for a mustardy glow behind a window.

‘Oh God,’ Jane said. ‘I told you.’

Lol said, ‘I don’t see the Jeep.’

A landscape full of trees and hollows, ground mist, no moon; Merrily told him there could be half a dozen cars parked here and you wouldn’t see them.

She’d worked out that the light was upstairs, probably the bedroom over the room with the inglenook.

‘And obviously, we can’t all go in.’

‘I think we can,’ Lol said evenly.

‘Not if we want to learn anything. She’s already told Jane to go home, and she doesn’t yet know what a sensitive and discreet person you are, Lol, so …’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll go.’

‘No.’

‘Look, you’re just out here – what – twenty yards from the house? You can … watch my back.’

‘Yeah, I can give you covering fire. Merrily, this is—’

‘The best and most direct way to expedite a difficult situation.’

‘You don’t know it’s her.’

‘Who else could it be?’

Lol turned his head towards Jane and back at Merrily.

‘He’s in Hereford,’ Merrily said. ‘At a lodge meeting. The service tomorrow night … seems to need planning.’

‘It’s not as if we can have phone contact down here.’

‘You checked?’

‘Yes.’ Lol snapped the phone shut. ‘Nothing.’

‘If you can bear to keep the windows down, you’ll be able to hear everything for miles.’

‘Not the way the wind’s getting up.’

‘You can always hear a scream,’ Merrily said. ‘Trust me. I can do a scream you’ll hear.’

59 Joy You

AT THE FRONT door, under the overhanging skull-shaped broken lamp, Merrily waited and looked back and questioned the sense of what she was doing.

Inevitably, what kept coming back was the last time she’d sat in that car in a rising wind, having planned to go and check out the Master House, thinking of how she’d been shafted and then Sod this, I’m going home.

No guarantee that, if she’d come here then, it would in any way have altered her opinion that Fuchsia had made the whole thing up.

But it might have.

And in any case that didn’t matter. What mattered was giving in to the resentment, after Bliss told her about the Special Branch. Stomping out into the rain to walk it off and then going home anyway to moan on the phone to Sophie.

Lessons learned. She pushed at the door and it yielded enough to be shouldered open, the damp-earth smell wafting out at her as if she was going outside, not in.

It was colder too, a kind of airless, stagnant cold. The floor felt hard and ridged where the decayed linoleum had been ground into it.

Time slowed.

She saw a thin light falling on the cage of the iron fire-basket in the inglenook. A light, somehow, from up the chimney and, as she watched, it went away.

Merrily stood for a moment, listening to her own breathing, her own heart and the footsteps on the stone spiral steps, and there was no time for a prayer before he was standing at the foot of the stairs, the wire of a hurricane lamp hanging from his fingers, its low, sallow flame bringing up the red stains on his surplice.

‘Great minds, eh?’ Teddy said.

He put the hurricane lamp on the floor, its wick turned down low.

‘God!’ Merrily laid a palm flat on her chest, feeling the ridge of the pectoral cross. ‘Bloody hell, Teddy, scared the life out of me.’

He didn’t say anything, just stood there, with the lamp at his feet fanning pale fronds of light over the scarred and lumpy walls. He looked … avuncular, with his easy, white-bearded smile, his large teeth, bright eyes, forehead like the top of a brown egg. Walking boots.

‘Just been up to the …’ Merrily put on a rueful smile. ‘Called at The Ridge, to pick up my stuff.’

‘Oh, Merrily … I dropped off the bags at your home a few hours ago.’

‘Yeah, I know. Sod’s Law, Teddy.’

‘Didn’t your daughter tell you?’

‘No, Beverley told me. I mean, just now. Haven’t seen Jane since breakfast – I’ve been in Hereford. Damn. Thank you. But I mean, you shouldn’t’ve bothered, anyway.’

‘Not a problem, I was going past. More or less.’

‘Anyway … Now, since I was here, I thought we ought to have a word, clear up a few things, but Beverley said she didn’t know where you’d gone, so I thought I’d just …’

‘Thought you’d drop in here instead, and get things ready for your Requiem?’

‘Well … yes. Always helps, doesn’t it? Always things on the day that you’d wished you’d thought of earlier, like … an altar? It’s amazing how often you turn up to do a Eucharist and there’s nothing to use as an altar, so I’ve got this folding—’

Talking too fast.

‘Anyway, you know all that stuff.’

‘Yes,’ Teddy said. ‘And I think it’s terribly brave of you to come to somewhere like this, on your own, after dark. It’s just that I thought you – or rather the Bishop – had called it all off.’

Bugger.

‘Well …’ Merrily stared into the lamp. ‘I thought it was time to stand up for what I believed, for a change, instead of bowing to politics, so I went to see him today, persuaded him to let me go ahead. I thought it was important, I mean, to do something. Get rid of all the years of bad feeling and rumour, let this place go into a new era, clean.’

‘Good for you, Merrily!’ Teddy said.

‘Of course, I thought I’d have a bit more time to make the arrangements because it wasn’t going to be until Saturday, but then Beverley said your memorial service was being held tomorrow, and I obviously wanted to tie in with that, that whole Templar thing, so …’

‘Well, you know, I didn’t want it to become a circus, Merrily.’

‘No. I can understand that.’

‘All these odd people who seem to turn up at anything to do with Templars.’

‘Yes … in fact, I did want to—’

‘It’s why I’m here,’ Teddy said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Someone in the village was telling me that some people had been seen around the church and the Master House with metal detectors. Treasure hunters, you know? We get them all the time, and they’ve been known to cause quite a lot of damage, but … well, nothing on this scale before.’

‘In … in here?’

‘If you come upstairs, I can show you. Hell of a mess.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why I’m wearing this.’ Teddy plucked at the surplice. ‘It’s an old one I keep in the Land Rover to use as a kind of overall. Cover up my clothes.’

‘Oh … yeah. I was wondering about that.’

What Merrily could see now was that the red marks on the surplice were not blood but stone dust. Surprising how many clergy did that, recycled old vestments.

He beamed at her and gestured at the stairs with one hand.

‘Interesting, really. There’s a … Well, I’d heard about it, of course, but it was blocked up over fifty years ago by the Newtons. It was apparently pretty inaccessible, not much use as a storage area, reduced the floor space upstairs, and so they bricked it up. Priest’s hole, Merrily.’

‘Oh.’

‘Quite a lot of Papists here after the Reformation. An independence of spirit remaining from the time when the Templars owed no money or allegiance to anyone but the Pope himself. Quite a bit of persecution.’

‘Yes. Actually, I was going to—’

‘Anyway, what happened, I saw these two guys coming up from here towards the church, just before dark, shouted to them … and, of course, they took off. Came down here to investigate, door was hanging open, dust everywhere. They’d ripped up the floorboards upstairs, prised away the bricks, exposed the cavity.’

‘It’s in the wall?’

‘Back of the fireplace. Come and look.’

Teddy stood back from the stairs.

A test.

Merrily remembered the room upstairs, the smell of decay, probably dead mice and rats. The skeletal remains of two beds.

How she’d thought of M. R. James and the room at the Globe Inn.

And if she didn’t go up with him now, she’d be revealing fear. Fear of a colleague in the clergy. If she did go up … what?

Problem was, it rang true, this story. More than hers did, anyway. The light falling into the inglenook had been an indication of something being knocked through, perhaps the wrong stones being taken out.

She said, ‘Why would they … I mean, what did they expect to find?’

What had Teddy expected to find?

Or was he going to put something in? Brick it up again.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve not been able to see. If you were to hold the lamp for me, perhaps we might …’

‘Well, maybe not now, Teddy, if you don’t mind. Best clothes?’

‘Oh, it’s not too bad, now the dust has settled. They must’ve left in quite a hurry. Left this behind.’

He bent down, came up holding a crowbar, a long one, heavy-duty. Held it in both hands.

‘Well … well-prepared, then,’ Merrily said. ‘Templar treasure – that what they were looking for, do you think?’

‘Templar treasure.’ He looked at her, head on one side, lamplight glazing his eyes. ‘What a joke.’

‘Is it?’

‘If there was treasure, it wasn’t their kind of treasure – gold and jewels.’

‘No?’

‘Perhaps something much more … abstract than that. The essence of an ethos.’

She was starting to feel very cold. Cold and scared enough to shiver. Mrs Morningwood. Where was she? Had she been in here tonight? And if she had …

It was crazy. No rape victim would deliberately expose herself again to the …

… Rapist.

But how could you think that of easygoing Teddy, placid Teddy? How could anyone?

‘I keep hearing stuff about Jacques de Molay being here,’ Merrily said. ‘Some ex-Templar’s confession. Jacques de Molay forcing him to deny Jesus Christ or be … put into a sack or something.’

There was a sack in the inglenook, an animal-feed sack of thick plastic. Maybe two.

‘Ah,’ Teddy said. ‘That old tale.’

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘Confessions could be extracted without too much difficulty in those days.’

‘Not so easy now.’

‘No?’

‘To get someone to confess,’ Merrily said. ‘Not so easy.’

Wondering how quickly she could get out of here, if necessary. How fast she could run. Wearing a skirt.

But then all she had to do was open the door and scream for Lol, and he’d be down here in seconds, ready to face Teddy.

And his crowbar.

And Jane … Merrily flinched at an image of Jane’s soft face raked across by the sharp end of a crowbar wielded like a weapon of war. Like a Templar’s …

She straightened up. Patted some red dust off her best dark blue woollen jacket.

‘You know what, Teddy?’ she said. ‘I think you’ve been misleading us all.’

‘This is so weird.’

Jane and Lol had got out of the car. The night wind was blowing Jane’s hair back. She faced into it.

‘I can’t believe she did that, Lol. Can’t believe how much she’s changed … even this past year Or you, come to that. Never used to notice people changing.’

‘No.’

‘Scary, really.’

‘Yes.’

She didn’t think he’d taken his eyes off the front of that farmhouse once since Mum had gone in. He was like Roscoe, sitting upright on the grass between them, Jane resting a hand on the dog’s neck, feeling a quiver there.

‘When we came here – I mean to Ledwardine – I had no respect for Mum. I despised her. For being a priest. For making me watch her … pray and stuff. How could she, you know? How could she put me through that?’

‘That’s normal,’ Lol said. ‘Oh God, Jane, I forgot. Eirion rang.’

‘Irene?’

It was out before she could stop it.

‘He, um … he said you hadn’t been returning his calls.’

‘Did he?’

She looked at Lol’s shape in the darkness, tense. He used to look very boyish, in a wispy kind of way. Even just a couple of years ago. There was grey in his hair now and he had an air of faint regret. Maybe the wasted years. And there was still anxiety. Not so much about his career as a fear of losing Mum. And how to handle a priest.

‘He said he must’ve rung about twenty times,’ Lol said. ‘He sounded pretty upset. He thinks, um … he thinks you’re having an affair with a married man.’

‘Coops.’

‘That would be the guy, yes.’

‘It’s over,’ Jane said.

‘What?’

‘He’s given me what I need.’

Lol took his stare off the house for nearly a second.

‘The best places to apply for courses in archaeology.’

‘Jane …?’

‘I was thinking, well, if I hate the idea of the future so much, like the way the world’s going, why not just like … immerse myself in the way it used to be.’

‘You told your mum about this?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I wasn’t certain. Coops took me on a field walk. You just, like, walk a line through a … field. And pick things up … bits of stone, bits of pottery, and it’s like you’re peeling away the layers. It was amazing. Unexpectedly amazing. The feeling of … I dunno … contact.’

‘That’s … fantastic, Jane. You’ve found it? At last?’

‘Yeah. Maybe. I’d have to get accepted somewhere first. How did he sound?’

‘Who?’

‘Eirion.’

‘Seriously pissed-off.’

‘Oh God. Sometimes I can’t believe what a total bitch I am.’ Jane looked down at the long stone house. ‘What do you think they’re talking about in there?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t like the feel of this, Jane.’

‘You think Mrs Morningwood is … I mean, we know nothing about her, really. What are we going to do? About Mum.’

‘I don’t know. I’m not her … boss.’

‘Yeah, but you love her. Trouble is,’ Jane said, ‘she thinks the boss does, too.’

‘Which …? Oh.’

‘She’s inclined to trust the bugger too much, if you ask me. Faith doesn’t always win through. Look at all the good people He … Good people who get shafted. Destroyed. Happens all the time.’

She had to stay with this. Nobody else was going to find out. She sank her hands into her jacket pockets for warmth.

Misleading everybody. Not really. Teddy could have been standing up in various pulpits for thirty years and preaching from the Gnostic gospels and nobody would notice. Faith was flaccid. People no longer heard. Congregations didn’t listen.

‘I meant the Templars, that’s all.’ Merrily keeping her voice light. ‘You like to pretend you have only a cursory knowledge, but the first time we met you said you were a historian by inclination, and it’s just not possible for a historian to live in a place like this without getting …’

‘Obsessed?’

‘Totally immersed, I was going to say. I bet you were so excited when you found The Ridge. Like your … like your whole life had been moving towards Garway.’

Teddy looked up, first in surprise. And then, maybe, in suspicion, his eyes sullen in the lamplight.

‘Yes. I suppose so. I applied several times for this parish. Always went to someone else. I suppose the time wasn’t right. And, as a team minister, with the other parishes, I wouldn’t have had the space I have now. This has been a happy coincidence. A time to be seized.’

‘You knew a lot about them before you came? The Templars?’

‘Yes, I suppose I studied quite a bit. A good bit.’

‘Before theological college.’

‘Yes. Theology was … an interesting tangent. I grew up at a time when you could follow your …’

‘Stars.’ Merrily found a smile. ‘As it were.’

‘I was born in Hertfordshire. There’s always been a lot of Templar activity around Hertford itself.’

‘Hertfordshire to Herefordshire?’

‘Interesting. One letter and almost the whole width of a country away. In Hertford itself, there’ve always been rumours of tunnels under the town, connected to the Knights Templar, the Holy Grail. There’s still an organization there. An Order.’

‘Of Templars?’

‘It didn’t go away.’

‘Secret?’

‘To an extent. But enough on the surface for them to call on the Vatican to apologize for the inquisition of 1307.’

‘You think the Vatican should apologize, Teddy?’

‘It would just be a token gesture. The Templars never needed tokenism. They dug out their own heritage. Literally.’

‘From the site of Solomon’s Temple. Or is that a metaphor?’

‘It’s both. Like Garway. This place is as important as Solomon’s Temple now. More important.’

‘Because it hasn’t altered? Apart from the odd radio mast, much the same now as it was in the thirteenth century.’

‘And even the mast is symbolic. Like the hill itself, it communicates information that not everyone can receive.’

‘As above, so below.’

He shrugged.

‘You get periods of great activity and illumination,’ he said. ‘Periods of urgency.’

‘And this is one?’

‘The only one we’ll know in our lifetime. We have to … do the right thing. Exactly the right thing. Just to survive.’

‘We?’

‘The Templars.’

‘That’s a state of mind, is it?’

‘It’s a state of being. Seven centuries ago, they were the greatest combination of spiritual and physical power the Western world has ever known. It’s probably hard for a woman to understand.’

‘Probably, yes.’

‘A mocking tone, Merrily?’

‘Hell, no. I believe it. I believe if you immerse yourself in something, it creates within you enough of an illusion of power to … to be power. It’s likely to be a destructive power, of course, but that’s what the Templars did, isn’t it? They destroyed. Violent guys. Killed the infidel.’

‘And were sanctioned to do so by St Bernard of Clairvaux. As a result of whose influence they were also granted independence of all other ecclesiastical powers, except the Pope himself. The Templar is a fearless knight, St Bernard said, who, as the body is covered with iron, so the soul is the defence of the faith, Without doubt, fortified by both arms, he fears neither man nor demon.’

Teddy folded his arms over his reddened surplice, smiling.

‘Defence of the faith,’ Merrily said.

‘To defend faith the Templar needed knowledge. Only knowledge cancels doubt.’

‘And who’s the demon? Baphomet?’

‘He’s just a symbol, you know that. An aspect of the green man. Ubiquitous. The life-force in nature.’

Also, Merrily thought, the sex-force in nature.

Thinking of the night before the rape, at dinner at The Ridge: nut roast and gossip. Had it occurred to Teddy then, over that meal, that if Mrs Morningwood was the victim of a sex crime the list of possible suspects from her client book would direct police attention, from the start, far away from the Master House? He must have known about her. All his walks, his coffee stops at farms along the way.

Or had he simply fallen in lust with the idea? Just like old times. Watching Muriel from the hill, fantasizing about how he’d do it? Mild, cheerful Teddy Murray lacing his hiking books, pocketing his condoms. Already out there, probably, when Merrily was taking that dispiriting early call from the Bishop. Circling Ty Gwyn like a hawk, in complete command of his landscape.

Baphomet. Mat Phobe.

And now, at last, in the unsteady glow, she could see him with long hair, reddish, tangled around his face, an eager, mid-twenties face, bum-fluff on the jawline. Enthusiastic. Full of a raging fire, blown up by the bellows of testosterone and whatever other chemicals Jimmy Hayter had obtained that week.

‘So who’s the infidel now, Teddy?’

‘Today, Merrily, I’m very much afraid that term would have to include most people.’

She didn’t know if there were any anti-Islamic implications here, didn’t want to. He came further into the room, pushing the lantern with the toe of a walking boot, propping the crowbar against the side of the inglenook.

‘Are you getting what you wanted? To make your historic connections?’

‘More or less.’

‘I admire you, Merrily. You’ve taken on something that is, transparently, not for women, and you’re sticking in there. That’s really rather courageous.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Look, if you want to get off, I’ll carry on here for a while. Clear up some more of the mess.’ He dug into a trouser pocket, pulled out something white, balled-up, snapping it apart. ‘Got to take precautions, all these dead rodents. Sure you don’t want to see the priest’s hole? In fact …’

Surgical gloves.

Putting them on as he stepped into the inglenook, dragged a yellow feed sack, thick plastic, out into the room, and then a second one.

‘Can’t say they didn’t come prepared. Obviously collecting some of the rubble in these, to clear it out of the way, give themselves more space. If you step under here. Merrily, and look up the chimney, you can actually see into the priest’s … oh.’

Teddy glanced back, in mild annoyance, to where one of the feed sacks had fallen on to its side and some of the contents spilled out over the edge of the hearth. The contents included what looked like a clavicle, part of a ribcage. Finally, the top half of a skull, no lower jaw, with rubbery fragments of skin and black hair, rolling gently, with a clink, into the lamp.

Merrily screaming the scream as Teddy Murray casually stepped out. Choked off with heart-in-mouth shock, the scream wasn’t much of a scream at all, in the end.

And by then Teddy had her by the hair with one hand, the other half-clawed in her face, twisting. His mouth up close, whispering some words, but the only ones she heard, as he was forcing her to her knees in the dirt, were ‘… joy you.’

60 Crumpled Linen

THE IMAGE HAD formed in a hollow of powdery yellow light, while Lol was fighting for consciousness.

But with consciousness had come this unendurable pain and his senses had let go for a moment, storing the one frozen tableau: a man piling bones into a sack.

He must have passed out a third time, if only momentarily, because, the next thing, the yellow scene had gone and so had all the light.

Lol didn’t move, working out where he was, what had happened, the blackness resolving at one stage into the velvety coffin of the broken Boswell guitar.

Confusion. Panic. Need to get up. He planted a hand on the floor. His shoulder screamed, his head pulsed, his memory rewound.

One blow was all he could remember, and the whistling of the air before it came.

Below the shoulder he’d already damaged getting in. The oak door had jammed and he’d thought someone had locked it from inside and he’d taken a wild run at it, gone crashing through to meet the steel bar swinging out of near-darkness, sending him spinning around, his head ramming the door.

Ah. Old oak: the hardest.

Lol cried out into the darkess in his head.

Hands cool on his face now, the soft voice from the meditation in the candlelit church. Black jeans and sweatshirt, hair tied back.

‘Can you speak? Oh, God, please …’

The night air made it real.

Up on the rise, the wolfhound was going crazy in the Volvo, as if someone had gone past, someone he wanted to kill. And Jane, hearing him, was going, ‘Where’s Mrs Morningwood?’ and wouldn’t stop until they’d all gone back into the earth-smelling house, where Lol couldn’t do the stairs.

Jane had kept asking him if his shoulder was broken and he didn’t know – how were you supposed to tell? He waited at the bottom of the half-spiral, tense and sweating, almost sick with the headache and the pain in his upper arm, until they came back, the mother and the daughter, having found nothing up there, nobody.

At some stage, he realized that Jane was doing all the talking.

When they were outside again, he got close to Merrily, was able to say, ‘He touch you?’

‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Once. After I screamed. It’s all right.’

‘Didn’t hear it,’ Lol said, horrified. ‘I didn’t hear the scream.’

‘Walls are two feet thick. We never thought.’

It came back to him how they couldn’t stand it any longer, he and Jane, not either of them. Making a joint decision that Lol should go in.

‘Look,’ he said to Merrily. ‘Never … never do that …’

‘Again. No.’

‘You knew it might be him, didn’t you?’

‘Never again,’ she said and clung to his good arm all the slow way back to the car. ‘Hospital,’ she said. ‘Where’s the nearest? Abergavenny?’

‘Call Bliss. Drive till we find a signal and call Bliss.’

‘Ambulance first. Please, Lol.’

‘Can’t let him get away. Have to find the bones.’

Moving sluggishly through the rutted field, Merrily at the wheel, Lol recalled his dreamlike memory of the bones and the yellow sack, the scene for ever vivid with shock. Bones? Sack?

‘Two sacks,’ Merrily said. ‘A whole body. A skeleton. In pieces. He took it away. In the sacks. Must have got out the back way. Jane and me – upstairs, just now – we saw the priest’s hole. It must have been in there, all these years.’

‘Where anybody could have found it?’ Lol said.

‘No. Somebody, I think it was Roxanne Gray, told me about the priest’s hole, which the family had blocked up many years before. Fifty years? Maybe the commune people had rediscovered it and blocked it up again. With something inside. Someone.’

‘Mary,’ Lol said.

‘Mary Roberts. Mary Linden.’

‘Need to get Bliss.’

‘Don’t move,’ Merrily said. ‘Please don’t move more than …’

‘Need to find him. Before the bastard dumps the bones in the river or something. Or he’ll walk away from it.’

He saw Merrily clench the wheel.

‘Enjoy you,’ she said. ‘Going to enjoy you. That was what he said.’

She looked at him and he felt the scream that was going on inside her.

Jane said, ‘He’s got to be insane. Not just psychotic.’

‘I don’t think he’s insane at all,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s the trouble. Just driven towards something we can’t really understand. The only hope we have is that if they find that body maybe they can match the DNA against Fuchsia.’

‘He is insane,’ Jane said, leaning over from the back seat. ‘Because if he thought he could …’ putting her arms around Merrily from behind, and her arms were quivering ‘… if he thought he could just kill you and leave you …’

‘He was wearing surgical gloves.’ Merrily turned to Jane. ‘And he wouldn’t have just left me. When we were upstairs, just now, and we looked down into the priest’s hole? Struck me then that it was vacant. It had a vacancy.’

As they reached the top road at The Turning, she started to laugh, dangerously close to hysteria, and then she said, not even sounding surprised, ‘He’s there.’

Lol saw a flash. Out in the road, lit up in headlights, the surplice billowing.

Lit up in headlights, but not from the Volvo.

Merrily braked hard and the Volvo stalled, as was its habit. An engine roar and he flew up like a swan, this great, white flapping thing.

Merrily was out of the car before Teddy Murray hit the tarmac. She saw a wheel of the Jeep rolling easily over his head and she heard – one of those sounds you knew you were never going to forget for the rest of your life – the crunching of his shiny skull like an egg in the road.

Long minutes, then, of people continuously fading in and out of cottages and unseen farms, like a video rewinding. Atmosphere of nearmute horror. Merrily trying several times to talk to Mrs Morningwood and failing. Only getting close when the emergency services arrived and Mrs Morningwood was leaning against a wall, head in her hands, rocking backwards and forwards like a child on a fairground ride, blood and tears oozing between her fingers.

The back of the ambulance yawning and the most senior paramedic telling Mrs Morningwood that she had to come with them and getting reminded that while it might be a police state it wasn’t yet an NHS state.

‘Look at you,’ the woman paramedic said calmly. ‘Look at your face … your neck … look at your eyes. Please, my dear, these are serious injuries. At least let us check you out in the—’

‘It’s what I do. It’s what I do, you idiot!’

‘What’s she talking about?’ the paramedic said. ‘Does anybody know?’

‘She’s a herbalist,’ Merrily said.

‘Oh, well, that’s a big help, then, isn’t it, if she’s got a fractured skull. That is blood in her hair, you know.’

‘I do think you’d better go with them,’ one of the police said. ‘We can take your statement later.’

‘You can take my statement now.’

Mrs Morningwood peeling herself from the wall. Merrily saw a cop carrying ROAD CLOSED signs from a blue van. The wind was dying and the mist was coming back, swirling down from the hill. Mrs Morningwood limped into the road towards the Jeep, and a police-woman held her back, and she started to weep again.

‘Can’t you get him out?’

‘Don’t look, madam, that’s my advice.’

‘Do you think I’m some sort of innocent? You think I don’t know what I’ve done? I’ve killed the poor fucking vicar!’

A policeman said to Merrily, ‘Is that your car, madam, the Volvo?’ and she nodded and the copper said, ‘Did you see what happened?’ and Lol came over, and Merrily thought this was going to be the best time to get him into the ambulance.

‘I saw it,’ Lol said quietly. ‘You couldn’t miss him, all in white. He just ran out into the road. Wasn’t even walking, he was running. I don’t think there’s anything she could’ve done.’

Merrily stared at him. He looked past her.

‘We’ll need to take a proper statement, sir,’ the policeman said. ‘What happened to your arm?’

Lol explained that his friend had had to brake hard to avoid running into the Jeep and he mustn’t have had his seat belt on properly. Went into the windscreen with his head. The arm … he wasn’t sure.

‘Right, if you give your name to my colleague and then let’s get you into the ambulance.’

‘It’ll be OK. Honestly.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but all injuries at the scene of an accident …’

‘No problem.’ Lol tried to put both hands up, managed one. ‘Anything I can do.’ He looked over at Mrs Morningwood. ‘She’s going to be traumatized for life. He just … just came out.’

‘It’s true,’ Jane said from behind Merrily. ‘There’s no way she could’ve avoided him.’

Merrily glanced back at Jane; it sent a pain into her neck, from when Teddy’s hand had slammed into her face, twisting her head round. Different person. Like the Templars, sometimes pastoral, peacefully monastic, then the sword out, red to the hilt. Merrily stared at Jane and Jane stared back, defiant.

‘She didn’t have a chance,’ Jane said.

Another cop was asking Mrs Morningwood where she’d been going at the time of the accident and Mrs Morningwood was saying, ‘I was looking for my dog. My dog’s escaped. You haven’t seen a dog anywhere, have you?’

Merrily looked at Teddy’s body, no need to cover it because the surplice was up over his face, moulded to it by the blood and tissue and brain matter. Crumpled linen.