The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

FOURTEEN Word to the Wise

SO DANNY WENT after Sebbie Three Farms.

The wisdom of this... well, that was in question. Jeremy phoned early Sunday morning, to see how Danny was feeling, to repeat his offer of picking up the tab for Greta’s Justy and to tell Danny to leave well alone on account of Sebbie Dacre couldn’t be counted on to behave like any kind of rational human being.

Danny said he’d bear that in mind.

Hour or so later, Greta bathed his head again and said, ‘Leave it, you year me, Danny Thomas? You can patch him up, the little car. Leave it till tomorrow at least.’

‘Longer we leaves it, harder it’s gonner be.’

‘You are not going to Dacre’s place on your own. Suppose them fellers is there with their guns? You can wait till tomorrow, then you can take Gomer with you.’

‘Take Gomer with me?’ Danny stared at her. ‘You totally cracked, woman? Gomer? I’d feel safer with pockets full of bloody Semtex.’

‘En’t as wild as he used to be,’ Gret said. ‘He’s an ole man now. Look, you promise me—’

‘I promise.’ Danny went out, shaking his head at the idea that age could mellow somebody like Gomer Parry. But then, Gret had never seen Gomer at the controls of his JCB, that big gash of a smile around his ciggy, hell’s own light in his glasses.

The sky was near-enough the colour of a shotgun barrel, and the cold air ripped at Danny’s head wound like barbed wire as he crossed the yard to the Land Rover.

Well, no way was he gonner forget this. Couldn’t live with himself. Couldn’t afford another car for Greta if this one got written off.

He was on his way to Jeremy’s to see if he could somehow tow the Justy home when, as it happened, he seen Sebbie Dacre in person, turning right at Walton towards Radnor Forest. Sebbie was in his mustard-coloured Range Rover, and he was on his own.

Seemed like fate.

Last in the handshaking line outside the church porch after morning service was Alice Meek, in Sunday best. Not many people wore Sunday best any more; they came to church in fleeces and jeans.

The big man with Alice wore jeans and a shiny leather jacket.

‘This yere is Dexter Harris, vicar. My nephew from the tyre place? With the asthma? Didn’t seem right just bringing him along tonight, for the Healing Service.’

The Healing Service?

Merrily shook hands limply with Dexter and then stood there, shivering in the cold, weak sunshine of the first day of December. When, for God’s sake, had her loose prayer meeting, her meditative interlude, her quiet time before the start of the working week, become The Healing Service?

‘I told him there wasn’t nothing to be scared of. Don’t wanner bring on an attack, do we?’

Alice cackled, confident that this wouldn’t happen. Not on a Sunday, not at the church of the healing vicar.

Merrily looked up at Dexter Harris. He was a big, heavy man, shaven-headed, balding or both. He had a lower lip that jutted like a spout from a jug. He looked about thirty-five. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here, but few people argued with Alice.

Down by the lychgate she could see Ted Clowes, retired solicitor, senior churchwarden, her mother’s brother and the village’s most reliable opponent of Deliverance, faith healing and anything else that was, in his narrow view, spiritually off-the-wall and fiscally unpromising. If Ted was waiting for her by the lychgate, it was with the intention of following her home to bend her ear on neglect of crucial parish issues.

Oh well.

‘How would you feel about a cup of tea, Dexter?’ Merrily suggested. ‘In fact, there might even be a can or two of Stella in the fridge.’

Mr Sebastian Dacre JP.

Danny Thomas and Sebbie Dacre, they was about the same age and had known one another, to a point, since they was boys. But Danny was at the local schools and Sebbie was a boarder at the Cathedral School in Hereford and riding to hounds at twelve and screeching around Kington in a Triumph Spitfire at eighteen. And Sebbie’s ole man used to have close to a thousand wide acres while Danny’s dad had just under forty-three acres of hillside with soil skin-deep over the rock.

And Danny was Danny Thomas, the Rock ’n’ Roll farmer as was, and Sebbie was Mr Sebastian Dacre JP, Master of the Middle Marches, local organizer for The Countryside Alliance. It was like that.

Sebbie was clearly headed for the Eagle at New Radnor. Nice pub, situated just perfect in the middle of this nice quiet village – big wide street, widest in Radnorshire, sure to be, overlooked by a lot of houses and cottages and a shop and the Eagle. Danny was reminded of the streets in old Western movies, which were always very wide and quiet and just right for a shoot-out, two fellers approaching each other real slow from opposite ends.

Greta was wrong. Best to handle this on his own: Danny the negotiator, Danny the diplomat. He wanted something out of this to repair the Justy. Also it was very much time to put the arm on Sebbie to keep his muscle off Jeremy Berrows’s ground. Boy looked like he’d enough to worry about right now, without lying awake at night listening for tyres creeping up the track.

Most of all, though, Danny wanted to know what was behind it. Why was Sebbie Three Farms employing these three hard-bastard shooters from South Wales?

A shedload of questions here. And if he followed Sebbie now to wherever he was going, then he wouldn’t have broken his promise to Gret, would he?

Sebbie parked at the side of the road and Danny come in behind him just as he was climbing down: Sebbie Three Farms, all six foot whatever of him, tough-thin, like streaky bacon.

Sebbie put on his tweed cap. Always wore a cap because his reddish hair was sparse now and his skin was pale as watered milk. A walking invitation to skin cancer, was Sebbie, and yet he always walked tall and straight, like he was defying the sun.

Danny come right up behind him. ‘Mr Dacre!’

It was how you talked to people in these parts, only real close friends using first names.

Sebbie didn’t turn round at once, like a normal person would; he kept on walking towards the pub door and, when he did turn, it was only to flick a bleep at the Range Rover to lock the doors. At which point he deigned to notice Danny.

‘Mr Thomas, how’re you? Working with Parry now, hey? Diversification – only course open in these constricting times.’

‘You happen to ’ave a minute, Mr Dacre?’

Sebbie frowned. ‘People say a minute when they mean half an hour.’

His pale eyes had screwed up a bit now, cautious. Last thing he’d want would be Danny in the pub with him, where they’d be overheard, and the word spread over half of two counties by sundown.

’Cause Sebbie knew what this was about, nothing surer.

‘I’ll keep it short, then,’ Danny said. ‘Three of your boys was rampaging over The Nant last night, loosing off the kind of gun you don’t normally see this side of Credenhill base. And the end result—’

‘Mr Thomas—’

‘End result of this bit of a farm-invasion is this.’ Danny touched his forehead, winced.

‘Doesn’t look like a bullet wound to me, Mr Thomas, but more to the point—’

‘More to the point, Mr Dacre, is my wife’s car gets battered off the track and looks to me, bearing in mind he’s eleven year old, like we could be looking at a write-off.’

‘And you saw who it was, hey?’

‘Your boys, it was. Like I said.’

‘My boys? My boys?’

‘Said you was payin’ ’em to shift foxes.’

Sebbie squinted, like the sun had come out. ‘That sound awfully likely to you, Mr Thomas?’

‘I’m tellin’ you what they said. Three Welshies from down the Valleys, sounded like.’

‘And you saw them actually damaging your car, did you, these boys? At night.’

‘Men, they was, more like. And I sure enough seen—’

‘You informed the police, obviously.’

‘I sure enough seen one of the buggers come over and clobber me with the butt end of his fancy gun.’

‘And naturally you’ve told the police about that, too.’

‘No.’ Danny glanced down at his boots. ‘Not yet.’

‘And you’re saying these men claimed to be working for me. That’s an actual allegation you’d be prepared to make in front of witnesses and my solicitor?’

Danny fell silent. You forgot how hard it was getting a feller like this to put his hands up to anything. Outsiders, townies, they didn’t believe Sebbie’s sort existed any more, thought they was a joke – music-hall villains, feudal stuff out of history. But even now, with the countryside shrinking faster than a pair of market-stall jeans, Danny could still point you out five or six like Sebbie within twenty or thirty miles.

Sebbie gave out a look that was all but a mouthful of spit. ‘I thought you’d know better, Mr Thomas, than to come accosting me in the street with this kind of half-baked drivel.’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘They named me?’

‘Aw, come on, everybody knows it, Mr Dacre. Folk around yere en’t daft. Nobody understands it, why you’re letting foreigners in with illegal shooters, but they knows it’s down to you. And they knows there’s history between you and Jeremy Berrows.’

‘Who does?’ Sebbie was half-smiling, hadn’t broken sweat. ‘Who knows all this? Give me some names, Mr Thomas, hey? Give me some names and I’ll sue their arses orf in a court of law.’

Danny said nothing at all. Who was he supposed to drop in the slurry? You didn’t, did you? Not to a man who never forgot a name. Danny felt ashamed. He should’ve brought Gomer along, like Gret said; Gomer, to put it mildly, wasn’t fazed by nobs. Danny hadn’t said half of what he’d planned to say, and already it was all going pear-shaped on him. His head throbbed and his vision was lopsided somehow, so that he saw Sebbie Dacre like Sebbie was some tripping image, an acid flashback: thin neck craning out of the collar of his Viyella, and his head, under the beak of his cap, like a hawk’s watching a rabbit.

‘Easy target, en’t he, Jeremy Berrows?’ Danny said.

‘Mr Thomas, Jeremy Berrows would be an easy target for the Women’s Institute bowling team. Now geddout of my hair.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Danny said. ‘How come you live next to Jeremy all his life, and suddenly you’re turnin’ the heat on?’

Sebbie just looked and half turned away like the very sight of Danny was starting to offend him.

‘Or mabbe it’s the woman,’ Danny said. ‘Nat’lie.’

Sebbie swayed just slightly and then he came out with this one, real nonchalant, like he’d just been ferreting in Danny’s mind.

‘You still using drugs, Mr Thomas?’

‘That en’t bloody fair!’ Danny blurted, before he could stop hisself. His head pulsed and he felt faint.

‘Ain’t fair?’ Sebbie’s head shot forward like Danny’s words had pressed a button. ‘I’ll tell you what ain’t fair. What ain’t fair is what’s happening to the countryside under this fucking government. If they persist in trying to stop us hunting with hounds – make us subject to licensing and regulations, put the countryside into a suburban strait-jacket... if they go on trying to challenge our traditional way of dealing with vermin... then they can bloody well expect what one might call Less Orthodox Methods of Pest Control.’

At this point, Gwilym Bufton, the feed dealer, came across the road towards the Eagle, with another feller, and they exchanged ’ow’re yous with Sebbie, and Sebbie raised two fingers to his cap in a kind of mock-humble salute. When they’d gone into the pub, he came a bit closer to Danny, his pinky eyes shining. The street was quiet around them, and Danny had the feeling of folks at their windows, like this really was a showdown in a Western town starring the big-time rancher and the shabby dust-bowl farmer who couldn’t afford a haircut. Sebbie’s voice was low.

‘What I’m saying is, if they’re going to make us illegal, turn decent people into poachers, then they shouldn’t be surprised to find bands of brigands roaming by night.’

Danny was thrown – this was surreal. ‘What the hell’s that mean? You’re supposed to be a bloody magistrate!’

‘And with more of our local police stations closing every year,’ Sebbie said, ‘they won’t have the means or the manpower to counter it. Look, I don’t know what happened to your damn car, and I expect you’ve got another half-dozen clapped-out wrecks in your buildings to replace it, but I can tell you one thing... this is only the start. And if you’re not part of it, you should stay at home, get yourself quietly stoned and keep your nose out, eh? Word to the wise, Mr Thomas, word to the wise.’

He turned away. Danny didn’t move, couldn’t believe what he’d heard. This was a magistrate. He shouted after Sebbie Dacre, ‘Why’d you tell them Welshies Jeremy Berrows didn’t own his own farm? Why’d you tell ’em Jeremy was your tenant?’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You know what, Sebbie?’ Danny pointing the finger. ‘I don’t believe you. I think you’re full of shit. I reckon you’re covering some’ing up, boy.’

‘And you’re a faded old hippy full of pathetic, drug-induced conspiracy theories.’ Sebbie stopped at the pub door. ‘I’ll give you a question, now. Why did Berrows call to you for help? Why didn’t he call the police, hey? Give that some thought, I would, Mr Thomas, and be sure to hide your stash somewhere safe, because you can expect a visit in the early hours from the Dyfed-Powys Drug Squad. Good day to you.’

Then he went into the pub, and Danny saw the curtains twitching along the street and found he was shaking, like with cold turkey.

15 Milk into Concrete

WHEN MERRILY BROUGHT Dexter Harris into the kitchen, Jane had already made soup and sandwiches – not many big Sunday lunches in this household – and they’d shared them with Dexter, who at first was all shy and shambling, twice using his inhaler.

He ate steadily, glancing at Jane and occasionally at Merrily, something evidently on his mind. It took both cans of Stella to bring it out.

‘They, er, they reckons you’re the whatsit – county exorcist.’

‘Well, nowadays, they don’t...’ Merrily’s shoulders sagged. He’d have seen the movie on DVD – explanations were useless. ‘Yeah, kind of. Alice told you?’

Dexter shifted uncomfortably. Maybe he was expecting her to toss holy water at him, thrust a cross in his face, instructing the demon of asthma to vacate his system. Maybe that was a course of action Lew Jeavons might even advise.

In which case, one of them was in the wrong job.

‘It’s probably not what you think,’ Merrily said.

But what was she going to do? What did Alice actually expect of her? She smiled nervously at the big guy wedged into a dining chair with his leather jacket over the back. She felt worse than inadequate, she felt like someone recruited into a fraudulent enterprise, a trainee on a travelling medicine show.

And while the lager had loosened Dexter up, it didn’t make the situation any more promising. He was eyeing Jane now, and claiming that today was the first time he’d been inside a church since his christening. Tell the truth, he was only doing this to shut Alice up – her nagging him and his ma about it. Dexter lived at home with his ma and his younger sister in the Bobblestock area of Hereford. Useful to have somebody around if he had an attack, look. Also it was cheaper, and most of his girlfriends had their own flats or houses, so that was all right.

Suppose he had an attack here, what then? Merrily looked at Jane. If Dexter’s breathing changed rhythm, any laying-on of hands would take place only while they were waiting for the paramedics to get here.

Dexter started asking Jane which clubs she went to in Hereford at weekends. Jane named four, Merrily seriously hoping that she was lying. Dexter smirked at the last one, telling Jane he’d probably see her there sometime. Maybe he didn’t think of himself as being twice as old.

At about two-thirty, they heard a car pulling into the vicarage drive and Jane sprang up, conspicuously relieved.

‘It’s Eirion.’

‘Jane’s boyfriend.’ Merrily stood up, too, moved to the door of the scullery. ‘Let’s leave them to it, huh, Dexter?’

‘Boyfriend?’ Dexter looked like he’d been short-changed.

Merrily held open the office door. She was still in her dog collar and the Morning Worship kit, minus surplice, and this was probably for the best – too much informality could well convey the wrong impression to an overweight, dough-faced man of probably thirty-plus who seriously imagined someone Jane’s age could fancy him.

They went in and sat down, facing one another across the desk, like one of them had come for a job. On the desk: computer, answering machine, phone, Bible, sermon book.

Now what, Lew?

This... is at the heart of spiritual healing – taking the time to know people, making small deductions. How many doctors have the time or the patience to do that now – talking and considering and leaving time for small leaps of inspiration?

She had a cigarette half out of the packet when Dexter blandly shook his head, making wiping motions with his hands, his lower lip projecting like an outlet pipe. She pushed the cigarette back into the packet, wondering how he survived in the clubs. Putting the Silk Cut packet out of reach. We suffer, Jeavons had said.

An hour passed. It was growing dark.

Dexter was talking about the collapse of his engagement two years ago – how it had really knocked him sideways to learn that his girlfriend, Farah, had been seeing another bloke for months, apparently weighing up which of them was the best bet and then deciding, for some weird reason of her own, that it wasn’t Dexter.

Bitch. Made you stop trusting women, Dexter said. Made you want to start scoring a few points of your own. Dexter had hit the clubs. Shagger Harris, the foreman started calling him, down the tyre depot. Dexter grinned, looking down at the Bible on Merrily’s desk.

If we take the time to absorb what people are telling us about themselves, directly and indirectly, and we are in a suitable state of relaxation – a contemplative state – then the clues they come together and a feeling – or a word – sometimes drops into our minds.

‘How old are you, Dexter?’

‘Me? Twenny-nine, now. Soon be thirty. Yeah, I know I look younger.’

‘Nobody special since Farah? Just casual stuff?’

‘Just casual sex,’ Dexter said.

‘Doesn’t the asthma...?’ Merrily broke off, embarrassed.

Dexter wasn’t. ‘Naw, they reckons it’s stress brings it on, look. Well, I only gets stressed-out when I en’t having no luck. Most times I can go all night, know what I mean? Don’t get no problems that way.’ He smiled at her. ‘Funny thing, that, ennit?’

Merrily leaned back. ‘You don’t really think this is going to help you, do you?’

Dexter sniffed. ‘Like I say, if it keeps the old woman quiet, it’s something. No offence meant. I’m not much of a believer. Can’t help that, can I?’

‘No. If you try and force yourself to believe, that only causes... stress.’

‘Doctor says I’ve gotter avoid that. People gives me stress, I don’t bother with ’em no more.’

‘Do you remember the first one?’

‘You what?’

‘The first asthma attack you ever had.’

He shook his head. ‘Dunno.’

‘Do you remember how old you were? Or has it always been a problem?’

‘’Bout twelve, thirteen.’ He didn’t look at her. She felt a tightening of the air between them. ‘Do it matter?’

‘I was just wondering what might’ve brought it on. If there was a particular... emotional problem that might’ve caused it. I mean, I don’t know what Alice told you, but I’m not any kind of medical expert. I’m just looking for... maybe something we can focus on in our prayers.’

‘Prayers?’ He looked at her now. ‘Strange, a nice-looking woman like you being a vicar and going on about prayers and that.’ He looked down at her breasts. ‘You must’ve been quite young when you had your daughter.’

‘What do you think about when you’re having an asthma attack?’

‘Eh?’

‘What goes through your mind?’

‘Sorter question’s that?’

‘I don’t know, it just came into my head. Nobody ask you that before? The doctors?’

‘Why would they?’

‘I’d just like to know what it’s like.’

He stared at her defiantly. ‘It’s like you’re drinking a glass of milk, and it turns into fuckin’ concrete halfway down your throat. That’s what it’s like.’

‘Thank you.’ Sounded like an image that went way back. A childhood image.

‘Don’t you get me going,’ Dexter said. ‘If I starts thinkin’ about it, I’ll get stressed.’

He wasn’t much more than a big silhouette now – wide shoulders, a pointed head. It was dark enough to put on the lamp. She reached out automatically, then paused, with a finger on the button of the Anglepoise.

‘And I don’t want people talkin’ about me in the church,’ Dexter said. ‘She said you was just gonner... I dunno, just do the healin’.’

‘It wouldn’t be like that, Dexter – people talking about you. It’s just, you know, to give me some guidance. Everything you tell me is totally confidential. Just between the two of us.’

‘Nothing to tell.’

‘Have you really not been in a church since your christening? No weddings? Funerals?’

He didn’t reply. In the silence, she thought his breath had coarsened. She tapped the Anglepoise button, still didn’t press it down. The directional light might make this seem too much like an old-style police interrogation. She thought of the basement interview rooms, opposite the cells at Hereford police headquarters, the ventilator grilles high on the walls, no windows. You didn’t need to be asthmatic to feel you couldn’t breathe down there.

‘You ever been in bother with the police, Dexter?’

It just came out, on the back of the thought.

‘Eh?’

‘Look, I’m sorry if that was—’

‘I fuckin’ knew it.’ Dexter was pushing back the chair.

‘I’m sorry.’ With difficulty, she didn’t move. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

a feeling – or a word – sometimes drops into our minds.

Dexter was on his feet, a terrifying rattle in his breath.

‘It was out of order,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I dunno...’ Dexter moved clumsily to the door. ‘Dunno what she’s been tellin’ you, that ole bat.’ He had his inhaler out. ‘But fuck this for a game of soldiers.’

When Eirion tried to ease Jane back onto the bed, she just couldn’t go for it. Not with Mum two floors below, doing what she was doing. Doing the business, doing the priest bit, whatever she perceived that was today.

‘I really worry about her now.’ Jane sat on the edge of the bed, with her elbows on her knees.

‘It’s probably reciprocated tenfold,’ Eirion said.

‘I’m serious. The Jenny Box thing, that whole affair, it really messed her up – this woman in desperate need of support, sitting on awful secrets, and Mum not being there for her when it came to a head.’

‘She couldn’t know, though, Jane, could she?’

‘It doesn’t matter, she still feels responsible. Male priests can be aloof from it all – if they can get a few bums on pews then they feel they still have a role and a bit of status. Women, everything that goes wrong they take it as their fault.’

‘Isn’t that slightly sexist?’ Eirion said.

‘And with Mum you’ve got this constant self-questioning – all this, “Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing to try and fill His bloody sandals?” ’

Eirion came and sat close to Jane, bending forward to peer into her face.

‘I’m not upset,’ Jane said, ‘just in case you were thinking I might be in need of a groin to cry on.’

‘So what is she doing?’

‘Huh?’

‘Down there, with this bloke.’

‘I think she’s been invited to cure whatever it is that’s causing him to keep sucking his inhaler.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘OK.’ Jane let him take her hand. ‘It started with Ann-Marie Herdman. It’s all round the village that Ann-Marie Herdman was cured of something very nasty – that she may or may not have had – after Mum prayed for her. Now, if it had been a regular prayer for the sick, in the course of a normal service, nobody would’ve said a word. But because it was at one of the mysterious new Sunday-night sessions where there are weird things like – woooh – meditation... then it must be... you know?’

‘She’s teaching meditation now?’

‘In a simplistic Christian way. Nothing esoteric. I didn’t realize how far it had got until I went down the shop a couple of hours ago for some stuff for sandwiches, and there were these two women talking about it to Brenda, who’s Ann-Marie’s mum. I mean, I knew about Ann-Marie, but I thought it was just another NHS cock-up. I didn’t realize Mum was in the frame as... God, I can’t bear it. And if I can’t bear it, how does she feel?’

‘They’re saying she has healing skills?’

‘It’s the way people are, that’s all. Always desperate for evidence of miracles. It’s like when all these idiots form queues to worship a potato with the face of Jesus. One of the women said Alice Meek had brought her nephew in to have the vicar pray for him to be healed, and I’m imagining some little kid, and I’m thinking, Oh God, this is terrible, that’s all she needs. Then Mum turns up with this big jerk with the inhaler who keeps leering at me and accidentally rubbing his leg against mine under the table. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so... not funny.’

‘So what exactly is she doing?’

‘If she’s got any sense, Irene, she’s explaining to him that she’s unfortunately become the focus for a load of superstitious bollocks put about by old women with nothing better to occupy their minds. And then maybe suggest to this guy – Dexter, for heaven’s sake – that they say a quick prayer together but don’t expect to be throwing his inhaler into the river just yet.’

Eirion thought about this. He was Welsh; a large number of them still took religion seriously. ‘But she’s a priest,’ he said.

‘Er... yes.’

‘Don’t you see? She has to acknowledge at least the possibility of miracles. She has to accept that God can do it, and that she could be a channel for it. She can’t just walk away from it if anybody thinks there’s a small chance. You know?’

Jane sighed. ‘It’s a fine line.’

‘It’s not that fine, Jane.’

‘The big joke...’ Jane stared at the Mondrian walls – big plaster squares in the timber framing that she’d painted in primary colours. ‘The big joke is that women think getting ordained was some huge coup for their sex. The fact is, it’s the crappiest job there is, and it’s getting worse all the time, as society gets more and more secular and cynical. It’s obvious that the ordination of women was actually a subtle conspiracy by the male clergy, desperately searching for fall guys as everything around them collapses into some like... pre-Armageddon bleakness.’

‘I thought you were over that.’ Eirion stood up and walked to the window. It had started snowing: not much, but it always looked worse from up here, especially at dusk, white on grey.

‘I have the occasional relapse,’ Jane said.

Eirion sighed. ‘So, do you want to know how to work this video camera, or what?’

Maybe Merrily should have realized that something was spinning out of control. Maybe, if she hadn’t been thinking about Dexter Harris, she would have been curious about the extra cars on the village square. She didn’t even notice them.

It was becoming unexpectedly cold – she was aware of that. She saw snowflakes clustered like moths around the fake gas-lamps on the square. As soon as she slid into church, wearing Jane’s old duffel coat over jeans, her black cashmere sweater and her smallest pectoral cross, she made sure that the heating was on full – checking that Uncle Ted hadn’t crept in and turned it down.

He hadn’t, for once, but she still felt a need to do more and lugged the little cast-iron Calor-gas stove out of the vestry, wheeling it to the bottom of the chancel steps. It wouldn’t make much difference, temperature-wise, but a glimpse of real, orange flames kind of warmed the soul.

She felt domestic about the church tonight, wanting to turn the House of God into a big kitchen.

How she felt about Dexter Harris – that was different. The fact that he was so charmless and unresponsive somehow made it more important to try and help him. The fact that he didn’t want to be helped made it complicated: if there was something in his past that had caused or advanced the asthma, did she have any right, let alone responsibility, to try and find out about it?

Responsibility: where did it begin and where did it end?

Sitting alone in the choir stalls, she cleared Dexter from her mind, closed her eyes and became aware of her breathing, allowing it to regulate itself. A short meditation had become an essential preliminary to the Sunday-evening session. When she sat down here, twenty minutes before the start, she would usually have no real idea at all what form it would be taking. But when she stood up again, that no longer mattered.

It was the sounds of movement that brought her out of it. Too much movement. She knew her church; she knew her congregations and the sounds of them, familiar coughs and whispers.

When she came back into the body of the church, standing next to the faintly hissing gas stove, it was like she was in some other parish, staring out at faces she didn’t recognize: a woman with a baby, two teenage girls. And in the aisles, two wheelchairs, one occupied by a boy of about eleven and the other by a woman in her fifties with a tartan rug over her knees.

There was a shuffling quiet in the church, everybody looking at Merrily, in her black sweater and her jeans, and she felt small, bewildered, desperate.

Fraudulent.

It was snowing so hard that Eirion had to leave. Jane had been hoping he wouldn’t notice until it was too late, so he’d have to spend the night, but he’d borrowed his stepmother’s car again, needed to get it back to Abergavenny.

Jane stood at the front door, cuddling Ethel the cat and watching through the bare trees as he drove away, red lights reflected in the half-inch of unsullied snow on Church Street. Much of what he’d told her about the camera she was sure she hadn’t really taken in, but she’d made notes. She ought to practise with the gear before she went back to Stanner. In normal circumstances she could ask Mum to help, perhaps record an interview with her, with the external mike plugged in. Except that, because of the nature of what she might be shooting up at Stanner, it wasn’t wise even to mention it.

Christianity was a minefield. You could talk about spirituality but not spiritualism, open yourself to spiritual healing but never spirit healing. If she told Mum about the White Company, she’d be letting herself in for one of those long, serious talks, ending with the usual warnings: Well, it’s up to you, you’re intelligent and old enough to make up your own mind about what you get involved in, but...

The rest unsaid, the word ‘betrayal’ never passing between them.

The phone was ringing. Normally, she’d let the machine grab it, but she felt like talking to somebody. She stepped back inside and shut the front door, putting Ethel down and dashing through the kitchen into the scullery to snatch up the receiver.

‘Ledwardine Vicarage.’

‘Mrs Watkins?’ Female voice.

‘No, she’s in church. Can I help?’

‘Oh... no... It’s all right, I’ll call back.’

‘Can I give her a message?’

‘No, it’s all right, really.’

The caller hung up, just as Jane recognized the voice. Was sure she’d recognized the voice.

She dialled 1471.

‘You were called at seven-fourteen today. The caller withheld—’

Jane hung up. Two chairs were pulled away from the desk, as if Mum and Dexter had left in a hurry. Jane sat down in one.

Talk about betrayal...

Danny tried to listen to some music, but The Foo Fighters made his headache worse. It was the first time this had happened; normally, the heavier the music the more it relaxed him. In the end he watched telly with Greta, listening to Heartbeat with his eyes shut, identifying the sixties numbers on the soundtrack until he fell asleep.

And Greta woke him again, with the cordless phone.

‘No,’ Danny mumbled. ‘Please, God.’

‘Gwilym Bufton, it is. I told him you wasn’t well, but he said you’d want to hear this.’

‘Gwilym?’ Danny struggled to a sitting position. First time he’d had a call from the feed dealer since he’d given up livestock, which Gwilym saw as an act of treachery.

‘’Ow’re you, boy?’

‘Half dead.’

‘That’s good. Looks like we’re in for some snow, ennit?’

‘Sure t’ be.’

‘Not a problem for you n’more. In fact, it’ll be contract work with the council, you and Gomer. Got your plough fitted?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Good business, Gomer’s.’

Danny waited, his head throbbing. Bloody trouble with Border folk, took for ever to get to the point. For ever later, Gwilym gets there.

‘What you been doing to Sebbie, then?’

‘What have I been doing—?’

‘You and the Berrows boy.’

‘What’s he saying we done?’

‘En’t said a thing. Havin’ a go at him, though, wasn’t you? Not a happy man in the pub afterwards.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

‘Just wonderin’ what else you might’ve yeard.’

‘Like?’ This needed care; Sebbie was a valued client of Gwilym’s.

‘Worried man, Danny.’

‘Din’t look worried to me.’

‘Well, he don’t, do he? All bluff and bluster. You remember Zelda? Zelda Morgan, from the Min of Ag, as was?’

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘Sebbie been giving Zelda one for quite a while,’ Gwilym said. ‘Her lives in hope, poor cow. Distant relative of my good lady, see.’

‘I’d make it even more distant, her becomes Mrs Dacre.’

Gwilym laughed, just a bit. ‘He don’t sleep much.’

‘Zelda’s complainin’?’

‘Zelda’s bothered, Danny. Wakes in the night, there’s Sebbie, bollock-naked at the window. Shaking. Shaking like with the cold. And it is cold in Sebbie’s bedroom, but it never bothers him as a rule.’

‘Mabbe not as much as the price of heating-oil.’

As well as feed, Gwilym was the agent for an oil depot in Hereford.

‘So he’s going – this is Sebbie – he’s going – “Look, look...” Drags Zelda out of bed, points down the valley, over Berrows’s ground. “See it, see it?” ’

‘See what?’

‘Her don’t know. He won’t say. And Zelda don’t see nothing. Moonlit fields, that’s all. Couple nights later, wakes her up again. “You hear that? You hear that?” Her can’t year nothing, ’cept for Sebbie bleating like a ewe in labour. This is confidential, Danny.’

Sure it was. Fellers like Gwilym doing the rounds, farm to farm, was the reason this valley leaked like a smashed sump.

‘So what’s this gotter do with me?’ Danny said, patient as he could manage with a bad head. ‘If Dacre’s losin’ it, he’s losin’ it.’

‘And then Sebbie’s going, “It’s coming out of Berrows’s ground... Berrows’s ground.” ’

Danny’s hand tightened on the cordless. He said casually, ‘Good to know the bastard recognizes the boundary now.’

‘He says, “It’s Berrows. Berrows and that bitch.” ’

‘Zelda tell you this herself?’

‘Zelda’s pretty scared, Danny. Her asks Sebbie about it next morning, over breakfast, bugger hits the roof. Sweeps the bloody cups off the table, everything smashed. Thought he was gonner hit her. White with rage.’

‘He’s always bloody white, Gwilym, it’s the skin he’s got.’

‘So, like, Zelda says to me, “Can you ask Jeremy Berrows ’bout this? I can’t never talk to him.” ’

‘Which is why you’re askin’ me,’ Danny said.

‘En’t real sure what I’m asking, Danny. You’re the nearest he’s got to a friend – do any of this make sense?’

Danny thought about it.

‘No,’ he said after a bit. ‘Do me one favour, Gwilym, don’t spread this around. Gimme a chance to find out what I can. Or am I too late already?’

‘You knows me, boy.’

‘Aye,’ Danny said. That was the bloody trouble.

‘What was that about?’ Greta said when he’d clicked off.

‘Feller Gwilym knows with a David Brown tractor for sale. I said I’d pass the word on to Gomer.’

‘In other words, keep your nose out, Greta,’ Greta said.

Danny stared into the reddening wood-stove.

16 Responding to Images

FRANNIE BLISS, OF Hereford CID, called back on Monday afternoon, just as the light was fading.

‘Not a career criminal, Merrily, I can tell you that much.’

‘Didn’t really think he would be.’ Merrily brought the cordless and a mug of tea to the kitchen table. ‘I just thought, with mention of all the clubs... drugs?’

‘Certainly not a recognized dealer and if he was dealing he doesn’t sound bright enough that we wouldn’t know. Doesn’t sound like he could run very fast, either, if we were after him.’

‘Sorry.’ She pulled over the ashtray, fed up now. ‘Shouldn’t have asked you.’

And wouldn’t even have considered an approach to any other copper, but by now she and the Mersey exile Bliss knew too many of each other’s flaws for him to sell her down the Wye.

As for the ethics, it went like this: she was following through on something that might help Dexter Harris with his medical condition. She had nothing to tell Bliss that might get Dexter nicked. She hadn’t even told him why she wanted to know if Hereford Division had ever heard of Dexter, and he hadn’t asked her.

‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘I’ve known a few disabled villains over the years. Only difference is they tend to have less conscience. Feeling the world owes them. A wheelchair ramp at the town hall is often considered insufficient recompense.’

Merrily found a grin. ‘It’s so reassuring to talk to a man for whom the pit of human depravity can have no floor.’

‘Ah, you’re following your nose. You’re a priest. How can you know if a gut feeling isn’t a tip-off from God?’

‘That’s very empathetic, Francis.’

‘Yeh, well...’ Bliss was a Catholic from what was probably still the most Catholic city in England. He knew all the questions priests asked themselves with little hope of a convincing answer.

‘So, how are... things?’ Merrily said.

‘Kirsty? We’re not out the woods yet, but we’re having what you might call a trial reconciliation. It’s a start. The Job: I’m not on any shortlist for DCI as yet, but the word is that the main man in Worcester who, as you know, does not love me like a brother, may be on the top-detectives’ transfer list, with an eye on Thames Valley. So that could be goodish news.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘And how’s the healing coming along?’ Bliss said.

‘Sorry?’

‘One of the DCs, his wife’s had persistent back trouble. Done the rounds of osteopaths and chiropractors, getting nowhere with it. He reckoned somebody had told his missus they ought to come and talk to the vicar of Ledwardine.’

She stared blankly out of the window at the black, spidery apple trees. This could not be happening.

‘Might I have touched on a sore point, by chance?’ Bliss said.

Merrily sighed at length, lit a cigarette, then told him about the Sunday nights, Ann-Marie and Jeavons. The whole sub-Messianic mess.

‘About fifteen years ago,’ Bliss said, ‘when I was a young plod, there was a noise-nuisance complaint at this chapel up near Formby. I go in, and there’s one of these evangelical fellers clutching some poor bastard’s head in his hands and shaking it from side to side, screaming to heaven for some action. Whole place in uproar. Well... no disrespect intended, Merrily, but that doesn’t sound like your thing.’

‘Last night, my usual congregation had doubled. Doubled, Frannie. Two wheelchairs in the aisle. Desperate people, and the health service in perpetual crisis. But... me? What am I?’

‘What did you do?’

She blew out smoke and coughed. ‘What usually happens on the Sunday-night thing is we drag out some pews and arrange ourselves into a rough circle. Too many last night for that. No spiritual calm, no intimate atmosphere – only this... overpowering sense of... need. I just had to stand there in front of them all, in my jeans, feeling like a useless pillock, doing my best to explain that the Diocese was currently taking steps to create a proper healing network.’

‘Are they?’

‘God knows. We did some prayers, but no wheelchairs were abandoned. There was a general feeling like at the pictures once when I was a kid and the projector broke down before the cavalry arrived. Never felt so inadequate – let down the Church, the Women’s Ministry, the people for whom this might have been a last hope. Afterwards, this very nice little woman comes up, says how mortified she is about all these outsiders invading our lovely quiet time. What do you say?’

‘Bit of a shite situation, Merrily. I’m really sorry. However, this Dexter Harris, with the asthma...?’

‘His auntie cleans the church midweek. I’d guess she feels responsible because other people don’t find him terribly lovable. What can I do? I could just pray for him, or I could try and do what Jeavons does and look for an underlying something, a hidden source. Let God in the back way.’

‘Forgive me, this guy sounds like a nutter.’

‘But what if he’s right? What if it works?’

‘All right, look,’ Bliss said, ‘what I’ll do is, I’ll run Dexter past an ancient custody sergeant called Melvyn. Melvyn’s old-Force, very, very discreet and he’s gorra brain like an antique computer – feed him a name, it goes clank, clank, clank for a few hours, and if there’s a connection with anything notably unlawful over the past many years, he’ll deliver eventually, like ticker tape. His specialist subject is Prostitution in Hereford since Nell Gwynne.’

‘That’s a big one.’

‘Leave it with me,’ Bliss said.

After they cut the call, Merrily considered phoning Sophie to see how soon they could arrange a meeting of all the Hereford clergy who’d declared an interest in the Healing Ministry, not including those who wanted nothing to do with Deliverance, Lew Jeavons and women.

How many would that leave? Herself, probably.

The phone went again: Jane, out of breath. Behind her, the patient rumbling of school buses.

‘Mum, look... screwed up. Left vital books for Eng Lit at Stanner, so I... figured I should get on Clancy’s bus and pick them up. That OK?’

Stanner. In a matter of weeks, the whole axis of Jane’s life had shifted.

Merrily frowned. ‘And you’d get home how?’

‘I called Gomer. He’s with Danny, on a blocked-soakaway crisis at New Radnor. He could pick me up around seven, which would be perfect.’

‘So you do want to come home, eventually?’ Merrily said.

‘That a serious question?’

On Saturday, Jane, who didn’t like killing a tree for Christmas, had collected some dead branches, which they were going to spray silver and gold to arrange in the hall. She supposed she’d have to spray them herself now.

‘I don’t really know,’ she said.

A few minutes later, rinsing her mug at the sink, she heard a song of Lol’s in her head, the one he’d written in – she’d always supposed – a state of bitter despair about ever getting into her bed.

Did you suffocate your feelings

As you redefined your goals

And vowed to undertake the cure of souls?

She wiped the mug and hung it from the shelf over the sink. And thought about Lol and told herself she was too old for one-night stands.

She needed emotional back-up, someone to hold at night, when everything else was falling away: Jane growing up, moving on, and the cure of souls – the job, the calling – wobbling on the rim of the irrational.

Snowy dusk on the Border, but the moody pines rearing behind Stanner Hall were still black and green, dark guardians. The snow had stopped after a couple of hours last night, but it had frozen by morning, and Stanner was locked into winter, the witch’s-hat towers shining like white lanterns under an icy half-formed moon.

Such a lovely, lovely shot.

Jane leaned back, shoulders braced against one of the gateposts, both hands supporting the camcorder, holding it tight but not too tight. Sure, Irene, avoid hand-held. But if she wasted time rushing up to the hotel for the tripod, the dusk would be over and this incredible image would be history.

Jane triggered the shot, trying to breathe evenly. All day at school, she’d kept the equipment concealed in her bag to avoid attracting a crowd of sad boys with Quentin Tarantino fantasies. At lunchtime, in the school library, she’d studied her notes on Eirion’s instructions and added to them, remembering things he’d said.

Make sure your shots are long enough – remember you’re recording what might be a familiar scene to you for people who’ve never seen it before, so hang in there.

No hardship lingering on this one: pure Baskerville Hall. Was this what Conan Doyle had been picturing when he wrote about dull light through mullioned windows, holes in the ivy? OK, there was less ivy here, and it wasn’t built of black granite; if he hadn’t altered some of the minor details he’d have given it away.

She contained the urge to zoom in on one of the towers, holding the shot instead until she became aware of Clancy Craven shivering, kind of miserably – which, in that wildly expensive Austrian ski-jacket, Clancy was definitely not entitled to do.

Jane lowered the camera. ‘You can almost hear the distant howling, Clan.’ She threw back her head and howled at the cautious moon. The howl was unexpectedly resonant, echoing back off the Hall.

Clancy said, ‘Don’t.’

She had her shoulders hunched and her hands deep in the pockets of her blue jacket. Jane looked up to see if she was serious. Clan, though younger, was quite a bit taller than Jane. She was bony now, but you could tell she’d be like Natalie in a year or two, with a bonus of natural blonde hair. Clearly destined for serious beauty, this was a girl who really ought to be happier than she was.

Clancy shivered again, although this one was probably faked. ‘You really like spooky things, don’t you, Jane?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ Jane squeezed the camera back into her overnight bag, Poor Irene – he’d have been gutted to the point of self-mutilation if she’d told him that Antony was bunging her a hundred a week for this. Money for jam.

‘I don’t,’ Clancy said. ‘I never have. All the kids are on about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I can’t watch that stuff.’

They had nothing in common, did they? Jane shouldered the bag. Of course, she’d have to tell Mum about the hundred a week at some stage. Maybe she could actually spend the money on, say, a new automatic washing machine to forestall the Second Great Flood.

‘Why do they have to try and invent things to scare us, when there’s so much...’ Clancy shook her head and began to trudge up the drive, keeping out of the slippery tyre tracks in the snow, and Jane started giving her some attention, because something was very much bothering this kid.

The fact that she was here at all tonight was unusual. Normally, Clancy would go straight home to Jeremy’s farm. On the bus just now, she’d told Jane that Natalie wanted her to come up to the hotel from now on, so that they could go home together in the car. Jane wondered if there could be some problem with Jeremy. Older men, teenage girls in the house – these things happened, right?

‘Your mum’s not scared of anything is she, though?’ Jane probed, catching up with her.

Clancy stopped, fingering the drawstrings at the waist of her costly ski-jacket. Most of Clancy’s clothes were expensive. ‘Only thing she’s scared of is something happening to me.’

‘They’re all scared of that. Erm, I’ve never liked to ask...’ Jane zipped up her fleece. It was very cold; you didn’t notice the conditions when you were working creatively. ‘What happened to your dad?’

Clancy started walking again. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh.’

‘He wasn’t anybody special. Just some guy who got her pregnant.’

‘You mean like at a party or something, when everybody was pissed out of their heads?’

‘Something like that. Your dad was killed, wasn’t he?’

‘Car crash on the motorway. With his assistant, Karen. Assistant and lover. He was a lawyer. Having a thing on the side. Both killed.’ Jane was aware of the subject having been changed, but she was casual enough about this now. ‘Bit of a bastard, my dad. Obviously, I remember him as being really nice, but I don’t remember that much, as the years pass. I was still quite little when he died.’

‘I suppose your mother hasn’t been with many guys since. Being a vicar.’

‘It’s what makes it hard getting this thing with Lol beyond first base. She doesn’t know what you’re supposed to do, how you’re supposed to play it. Women priests haven’t been around long enough to establish a precedent.’

‘Excuse me?’

With her being so tall, sometimes you forgot Clancy was a couple of years less experienced and sat in classes with little children. ‘I meant, there seem to be no rules on whether it’s OK for a female parish priest to be having a conspicuous relationship with a man if neither of them’s married.’

‘They could always get married.’

‘Lifetime commitment? These are two very timid people, Clancy.’

Jane paused at the bend in the drive, where the Hall suddenly opened out in front of them, panels of light from the ground-floor bay windows imprinted on the clean, white lawns. Was this worth another shot?

Nah – face it, none of this was going to get used, anyway. Antony would deal with the arty stuff himself. All he wanted from Jane were snatches of what Eirion called ‘actuality’ – short exchanges, things happening around the place, people in motion. Get Amber in, and Natalie, when you can, Antony had told her. But be discreet about it, they’re not performers like Ben.

Clancy said, ‘It’s the first time we’ve lived with a man. It’s strange... not like I imagined.’

Jane wanted to ask, how... why? But they were getting too close to the Hall to approach an issue this big. The high pines were all around them now. It was like a medieval castle: the pines were the curtain wall and the lawns sloped up to the Hall, which was like the keep on its mound in the centre. In the dark, Stanner looked much older than Victorian. There obviously had been more ivy on the walls than there was now; you could see where it had been cut away for repairs, so maybe when Conan Doyle was here...

‘Something happened at the farm, the other night,’ Clancy said. ‘Something horrible.’

Jane stopped, a hand on Clancy’s arm. ‘You mean between Nat and Jeremy?’

‘No!’ Clancy shook her off. ‘Why do you always have to think of things like that? She was at work, anyway, she was here. It was Saturday night, and Jeremy and me were watching a video... and suddenly there was this blinding light through the window and all this shouting, and these men were outside the farmhouse, with guns and a big spotlight thing.’

‘The shooters – the ones Ben’s been getting hassle from?’

‘I don’t know. They were just... It was like a raid.’ Clancy stood at the edge of the lawn, looking over her shoulder. ‘They came out of the trees with their guns, and they were like surrounding the old barn opposite the farmhouse. They were going to shoot Flag.’

‘The dog?’

‘They would have!’ Clancy’s voice was raw and strained in the razory air. ‘They’d have shot him. It was like they owned the place, and they could do what they wanted. Jeremy told me to stay inside, but I couldn’t. I went out after Flag. And then Jeremy’s mate Danny was there, and one of them hit him with his gun.’

‘Danny Thomas?’

‘Long hair and a scraggy beard?’

‘That’s him.’

‘They hit him on the head, over an eye and made it bleed, and then they shoved his car into the ditch.’

‘Jesus. Is he all right?’

‘I think so, but—’

Jane was appalled. ‘Have you told the cops?’

‘Jeremy was funny about it. He didn’t want to talk about it afterwards.’

‘But he told your mum?’

‘That’s why she won’t let me walk down to the farm on my own any more. I think she and Jeremy think they’ll come back.’

‘Does Ben know about this?’

‘Don’t say a word! Jane, please, you haven’t to say a word! I’m not supposed to talk about it.’ Clancy started walking rapidly towards the house, face splattered with light from the big windows.

Jane thought of the men that she and Ben and Antony had encountered at Hergest, who claimed they’d been hired by a local farmer to get rid of foxes. If one of his neighbours was involved, this might explain why Jeremy didn’t want to cause any trouble.

‘Clan, did they have Valleys accents?’

‘What?’

‘Were they from South Wales?’

‘Might’ve been. I’m not sure.’

‘You should tell Ben. He’ll get something done without implicating Jeremy. Ben doesn’t—’

‘No!’

‘He doesn’t care about treading on people’s toes. He likes that.’

‘Please, Jane...’ As they reached the Hall, Clancy was nearly in tears. ‘I wouldn’t’ve told you if I thought you were gonna go telling tales. I just... suddenly everything’s a mess. It was OK in summer when we came, but now everything’s gone crap. I don’t like the people round here. Wish we could go back to Shropshire.’

‘Where were you in Shropshire?’

‘Craven Arms. It’s between Shrewsbury and Ludlow.’

‘Yeah, I know. Clancy Craven, of Craven Arms, huh?’

Clancy didn’t react.

Jane said, ‘Look, you’ve got to keep me informed of anything else that happens, OK?’ And Clancy nodded, looking relieved. Jane knew what it was like in these small Border communities: you wondered whether the normal rules of Western civilization applied or if you were part of some tight, taciturn little Anglo-Welsh banana republic. Well, she’d be seeing Gomer in a few hours, and if he didn’t know about this, as Danny’s partner...

The very last of the daylight was soaking away into night-cloud, and Jane was glad she’d stopped to do that moody, glistening shot. Even if it never got used, the fact that she’d thought to capture it showed she was like responding to images.

Despite the weather, there were extra cars on the car park. Apart from Jeremy’s old Daihatsu, used by Nat, and Ben’s MG, covered with old carpet where the soft-top was jammed, there were three of them she’d never seen before.

‘Guests? On a Monday?’

‘They’re not staying,’ Clancy said. ‘They’re just here for a meeting. Mum has to run the bar. She was moaning that they probably wouldn’t be drinkers anyway, people like that.’

‘People like what?’ Jane could see some figures through the bay window of the lighted lounge. They were standing around like they were making small talk. Ben was one of them, and then Jane saw a woman with pale hair, and a small thrill rippled through her. ‘Oh wow... it’s them, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t want to know,’ Clancy said, miserable again.

‘It’s the White Company, isn’t it?’ Jane had like just known she had to be here tonight. Psychic or what?

‘People round here are sick,’ Clancy said.

This time, Frannie Bliss was calling her from his home, out near Leominster. She could hear his kids in the background, squabbling over something that made techno-bleeps.

‘Merrily. Just had a call from Melvyn. He was pretty sure about this, but he likes to check his facts. There is a story, but it’s not quite what you thought. And it goes way back. The last time Dexter Harris saw the inside of an interview room was nearly twenty years ago.’

‘When he was nine?’

‘Twelve, actually. And looked older, Melvyn says. Big lad, even then, which was how he wound up in the grown-up felons’ interview room. Hang on a sec, Merrily. I said, No... Daddy will fix it later... Gerrout, or I’ll nick the pair of yer for aggravated assault. Let me shut the door, Merrily.’ Bliss put the phone down and when he came back he said, ‘I had my way, the age of criminal responsibility’d be reduced to four. You might want to make notes.’

Merrily found a pen, pulled over the sermon pad.

‘Right,’ Bliss said, ‘I’ll give you the bottom line first: Dexter killed somebody.’

17 Detestable to the Lord

WHEN SHE WAS about two, maybe three, someone had given Jane this vintage nursery-rhyme book, made out of thick cloth, with serrated edges to the pages. On the front was a watercolour picture of a little girl in an apron who had the saddest face Jane had ever seen. Both the little girl and the book itself used to make her feel deeply upset, and she remembered being convinced it had been owned by a child who had been so unhappy that she’d just died of it.

This was one of her earliest memories, and it faded up when she and Clancy padded into Stanner Hall and saw Amber Foley standing at the top of the kitchen steps, wearing a vinyl apron with a watercolour-type picture on it of a cottage on a hill. Amber hadn’t heard them come in, and she was staring across at the closed door of the residents’ lounge. Her hair was pulled back and her skin looked like thin white eggshell about to crack.

Jane thought of life-threatening misery and a voice on the phone. She swallowed. Amber saw Clan and jumped, then blinked and smiled – weak sun reflected in a stagnant pond.

‘Oh, Clancy... I’ve sorted out a table for you in the kitchen to do your homework. Your mum says—’ Becoming aware of Jane, Amber looked bewildered. Like, if this is Jane it must be Friday.

‘I left some things, Amber, on Saturday. School books.’

‘Oh, Jane, we could’ve got Natalie to send them with Clan—’

Amber looked hard at her, obviously aware that Jane would have known this. One of the wall-lamp bulbs had blown, and unfamiliar shadows made the lobby look dull and brownish and semi-derelict. Good location, crap place to live. How often had Amber stood alone here, wondering how she’d ever got herself into this? And realizing, of course, that she hadn’t; Ben had.

Amber flicked a glance at Clancy, who said, ‘I’d better get on with it. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jane,’ and meekly walked past Amber and down the steps to the kitchen. Doesn’t want to know, Jane thought. If there’s something bad or contentious going down, she just doesn’t want to know about it. We have absolutely nothing in common.

When they could hear the kid’s footsteps on the kitchen flags, Jane nodded at the closed door of the residents’ lounge.

‘The White Company, right?’

‘Ben’s in there with them. And Natalie. He’d be better off married to Nat, don’t you think?’

‘No, that’s ridiculous.’

‘You know what they’re doing, don’t you?’ Amber said.

‘Well, yeah, I... You’ve got a problem with it?’

Amber straightened up and flattened a bulge in her apron. ‘You knew they were coming, didn’t you? That’s why you’re here.’

‘Well, no, actually.’

‘You couldn’t keep away.’

‘No, it—’ Oh hell, no point in letting this fester. ‘OK, if you want the absolute truth, Amber, the real reason I came is because I happened to pick up the phone last night. When you tried to call my mum?’

There was the jittery sound of polite laughter from behind the lounge door.

‘And when you recognized my voice,’ Jane said, ‘you got off the line as quick as you could. Only I’m quite good with voices.’

‘Jane, I—’

‘So if it’s something about me, I’d like to know, OK? Because I haven’t told her anything about all this, and it could get me in a lot of bother.’

Amber’s doll’s cheeks were colouring.

Jane sighed. ‘I suppose Ben told you what she did. Like, apart from being just a vicar?’

Amber nodded, losing what might have been a grateful smile inside a grimace.

‘Only, I didn’t know you were religious,’ Jane said.

‘I’m not. Not really. Just neurotic.’

Jane gestured at the lounge door. ‘About that?’

There was the sound of more merriment, Ben’s peal obvious.

‘None of this worries him in the slightest,’ Amber said. ‘He loves it, for the drama. He doesn’t believe in it for one minute, though obviously he won’t tell them that – he’ll be hamming it up in there for all he’s worth. It’s how guys like him and Antony persuade people to do things on camera that are going to get them ridiculed in thousands of homes. Because they don’t laugh. At the time.’

Jane’s eyebrows went up. ‘They’re not doing it now, are they – trying for Conan Doyle?’

‘I don’t know. I just think people like that are irresponsible, and the point is: it’s not their house, is it? It’s ours, God help us.’ Amber moved away from the vicinity of the lounge towards the reception area. ‘Look, I know it’s money, much needed. I know it’s part of Ben’s Great Scheme. But getting cranks like that involved – that’s the pits.’

‘You rang Mum for, like, support? Did you get through to her in the end?’

Amber swallowed a breath. ‘When Ben told me what your mother did, it seemed a bit too coincidental – like a sign. We neurotics, you know? No, I didn’t try again. Not after you answered the phone.’

‘Well...’ Jane raised her gaze to the flaking frieze around the walls. ‘If you’d wanted support you’d have got it, no problem. Why didn’t you just ask me? I could’ve told you exactly what she’d say. Like, at some point she’d drag out a slab of the Old Testament. “Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practises divination or sorcery or witchcraft or pisses about with spells...” blah, blah... “Or who is a medium or spiritist or consults with the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.” ’

‘That seems fairly unequivocal to me,’ Amber said. ‘Of course, I’m only a cook...’

‘Amber, for heaven’s sake, it’s Old Testament. You can find bits of the OT that suggest blokes are entitled to strangle their wives for being unfaithful. It was political – anything paranormal, the priests of Jehovah had to keep it to themselves, or bang goes the power base. But trying to contact poor old Arthur... I mean, come on.’

‘I just—’ Amber folded her arms. ‘Like I said, I’m not particularly religious. And, God knows, I’m certainly not psychic, although I don’t entirely doubt that other people can perceive things that are beyond me.’

‘Well, I have pagan instincts,’ Jane said with relish, ‘and I believe there’s masses in this area to be sensed by anyone with the balls to...’

She let the sentence trail, realizing how smug and insulting it must have sounded.

‘Well—’ An uncharacteristic anger glowed momentarily like filaments in Amber’s eyes. ‘For all your pagan instincts, Jane, you couldn’t get out of that room quick enough, could you?’

‘Room?’

‘The tower room. I didn’t particularly want to put you in that one, because we’d had a couple of people already who— But Ben said, Oh, don’t worry about young Jane. Far too down-to-earth. Jane’ll be fine.’

‘So you... know about that.’ She’d had the impression that Ben had not told Amber, who was negative enough about this place already.

‘And wish I didn’t,’ Amber said. ‘Ben laughs. He says every hotel has a room like that, and some people would even pay extra to sleep in it. If you remember, what you told us at the time was that you weren’t used to sleeping in a big room.’

‘Well, I—’

‘Only I happened to recall you telling me when you first came how you’d turned a huge attic at Ledwardine vicarage into your apartment and painted some big coloured squares on the walls – like some famous abstract artist?’

‘Mondrian.’ Oh God, she couldn’t even keep track of her own lies. ‘All right, I had a bad night. I felt... not very well. I mean, I never know when it’s my imagination. I’m sorry, Amber.’

‘Of course, I didn’t actually know at the time that it was Hattie Chancery’s room,’ Amber said.

Jane flung a glance into the well of the hall, where the staircase twisted out of sight. There were certain phrases you could feel like fingers up your spine – what Ben would call a frisson – and this was one: Hattie Chancery’s Room. The possessive. Present-tense. Oh God.

‘The Chancerys were the family who built this place, right?’

‘I think their name was originally Chance, but they altered it to sound more distinguished. Incomers from the Black Country. Industrial wealth, delusions of grandeur. Most of the big Victorian homes in this area seem to have been built by rich Midlanders, who wanted their own castles. The names are usually a giveaway. Big houses around here tend to be called “court”, from the Welsh. But they called this Stanner Hall to—’

‘Yeah, right. So Hattie Chancery was the one who killed her husband?’

‘So you knew.’

‘Not then.’

‘Because Ben only told me about this yesterday. He’d known for some time, but...’ Amber’s voice was brittle. ‘He thought the little woman might be frightened.’

‘But it wasn’t in that room, was it?’

‘Not the murder. That was in the grounds, I think. It isn’t talked about much. Probably overshadowed by the War at the time, and she was mentally ill, apparently.’

‘A madwoman?’

‘No, Jane, I think we’d all prefer mentally ill.’

‘So, like, what did people see in the room?’

‘Oh... one man said he saw the shape of a woman against the window and smelt— Look I’m not going into this now, all right?’

‘But that’s the reason you’re unhappy about the White Company, right?’

‘I just don’t think this is a happy place. But then, I’m only a cook.’

‘What did he smell, this guy?’

‘Alcohol... beer, I think.’

‘You thought maybe Mum could do something about this?’

‘Jane, look, it was just a knee-jerk thing. I was angry, all right?’

‘She’d just warn you not to let the White Company in. And you’d go along with that, but Ben—’

‘Shhh!’

Amber was looking over Jane’s shoulder. Jane turned and saw the lounge door opening, and Ben gliding out, his hair sheened back, his slim, black Edwardian jacket hanging loose. His Holmes kit. He’d worn part of the Holmes kit to welcome the White Company. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?

‘Amber, where’s—? Jane!’ Ben looked fit, she thought, and energized, and showed no particular surprise that she was here on a Monday, only satisfaction that she was. ‘Jane, you wouldn’t by any chance have brought along that little Handycam Largo gave you to humiliate me?’

‘Well, actually—’

‘In which case, fetch it, darling.’ Ben clapped his hands. ‘Fetch it at once. We’ve got Alistair here, the medium, and we’re testing various rooms to work out which is the best place to try and contact, ah...’

‘And where are you proposing to go next?’ Amber said.

‘Amber, it’s a positive thing,’ Ben said casually.

‘Oh no,’ Amber said.

‘Amber—’

‘Understand this, Ben.’ Something passed swiftly, like the shadow of a small bird, across Amber’s white doll’s face. ‘Those people will not go into my fucking kitchen.’

‘Maybe I could just describe these events to you without any comment,’ Merrily said. ‘And then perhaps you could just tell me what you think.’ Her ear was aching from phone use.

‘So formal,’ Canon Jeavons said.

‘I’ve been talking to a cop. It’s all forms and recorded interviews with them, now. All about covering yourself, and isn’t the Church going the same way?’

‘Oh happy day,’ Jeavons said. ‘All right, go ahead, Merrilee. Lay it on me.’

Inside her head the chorus started up.

Forgive me, this guy sounds like a nutter.

My advice, for what it’s worth, is to avoid this man and all he stands for.

If anyone’s on the edge of a crisis, Jeavons has been known to tip them over.

There was no harm in listening to what he had to say. The fact was, if she’d never met Jeavons she wouldn’t have dug into Dexter’s history, and she wouldn’t have uncovered what might be the underlying cause of his condition.

‘It’s about three boys from the Belmont area of Hereford.’ The brief, bleak notes in the sermon book lay in the lamplight pooled next to the Bible. ‘Two of them are brothers – Darrin and Roland Hook, aged thirteen and nine. Dexter Harris is their cousin. This is seventeen years ago, and he’s twelve.’

Seventeen years ago. The year Jane was born. The year she quit university and married Sean. They said she could come back and get her degree, but she’d had a feeling at the time that this wouldn’t happen. Law: it had never felt right – why on earth was she reading law? Parental pressure, at the time, and the influence of Uncle Ted, family solicitor. It’s a good degree to have, Merrily. Whatever you decide to do with your life, it will always be there for you.

Wasted years.

‘Belmont’s an expanding suburb south of the city, close to open country. Less so now, since they built the all-night Tesco and the drive-in McDonald’s and hundreds more houses and the Barnfield Trading estate, but you get the idea. You keep going and you’re on the open road down to Abergavenny.’

She was seeing it as she talked: this widened country lane above the Golden Valley, which always seemed so aptly named on summer evenings with harvested fields aglow as if lit from underneath.

This had all happened on a warm evening in August, approaching dusk. The three kids were exploring a half-finished building site, where some of the houses were already lived in. Darrin had a plan.

Gorra wire coat-hanger down his pants, Bliss had told her. So it wasn’t an impulse thing, and he chose well, just like a pro: new house with high fences. People have gone out, leaving their second car in the drive. A gift.

Darrin had learned the techniques from a boy at school – how to force the window and then apply the coat-hanger to the pop-up locks. Then the hot-wire bit. The only drawback was that Darrin didn’t know how to drive.

Which was where Dexter came in. ‘Taller than the others,’ Merrily told Jeavons. ‘An unusually big boy for twelve, so he could reach the pedals, no problem. Dozens of drivers must have seen this Fiesta weaving about, but there weren’t many mobile phones in those days, so it was a while before the police got on to them. Not that you could miss them by now, because it was getting dark and Dexter hadn’t thought about lights.’

‘Already I’m sensing no happy ending,’ Jeavons said.

‘The police picked up the trail on the hill down to Allensmore, when they were picking up speed. Dexter subsequently told the police that he’d been afraid to brake. He was once on his bike and went over the handlebars, and he had the idea that if he did it now he and Darrin would go through the windscreen – certainly a possibility as neither had a seat belt on. By now the police are behind them, siren going. Not too close – volatile situation, car full of kids.’

Dexter’s well hyped-up now, Frannie Bliss said, the traffic lads blasting away behind them, blue lights going. He’s gorra do something. Decides the best thing is to get off the big road, dump the car and run like buggery. Sees this turning up ahead, on the other side, into this narrow little country lane, bus shelter on the corner. Decides to go for it. Just like that. No indication. Big lorry coming towards them, but Dexter reckons he’s got plenty of time. An experienced motorist now – driven all of six miles on his own.

Stupid little gobshite spins the wheel, sends the Fiesta whizzing across the road. Amazingly, he doesn’t turn it over, but it’s well out of control, as you’d expect, and naturally he’s missing the turning, heading straight for the hedge. Now even at this point, if he’d left well alone, the car would just’ve gone through the hedge into the field where, as long as it avoided trees, it’d just be a cuts-and-bruises job.

Unfortunately, Dexter panics, stands on the brakes and the Fiesta stalls on the kerb, directly in the path of the oncoming lorry. Haulage vehicle. Melvyn doesn’t recall the exact tonnage, which is rare for Melvyn, but the driver was a Mr Evans, from Newport, carrying steel, and afterwards Mr Evans gives up his job, telling the coroner that he’ll never drive a lorry again as long as he lives.

‘The lorry had collided with the rear half of the Fiesta,’ Merrily said, ‘flattening it into the bus shelter, which collapsed. Both front doors sprang open, so Dexter and Darrin both walked away. Darrin had a broken arm, Dexter was mildly concussed. Roland, however...’

Think of the forgotten sardine in the tin, Bliss had said brutally, after the tin’s been trodden on.

‘His parents were told it was instantaneous,’ Merrily said, ‘meaning he didn’t suffer. Which, as far as physical pain goes, may be true but disregards the state of helpless terror he’d have been in for several minutes before the crash.’

‘Yes,’ Jeavons said softly.

‘Probably the last thing Dexter would’ve heard before the impact was the final screams of his nine-year-old cousin. How much of the carnage he saw in the back of the car, we don’t know.’

‘What happen to Dexter?’

‘Not much. First offence. Appeared in court as a juvenile and therefore wasn’t named. Pleaded guilty to charges related to taking and driving away and causing death by dangerous driving. No previous convictions. Said very little in court apart from to apologize and burst into tears. The view of the court seems to have been that having to live with this for the rest of his life was a bigger punishment than anything the justice system could inflict.’

‘Not always a good decision,’ Jeavons said. ‘Incarceration puts a time limit on it. Life goes on.’

‘Certainly split the family. There was an awful scene at the funeral – Roland’s mother screaming that Dexter was a murderer who should be in jail. Maybe forgetting that Darrin was the instigator, the one who’d learned how to break into cars. But Darrin couldn’t drive, so it was Dexter who killed Roland.’

‘His grandma mention any of this?’

‘His auntie. Alice. Not a word, but it probably explains why Dexter’s never been near a church since. His parents apparently felt compelled to move to the other side of Hereford, and he went to a different school.’

‘Certainly explain why he freaks when you ask him what happens in his head when he’s having an attack,’ Jeavons said. ‘He have any counselling at the time?’

‘Not as common then as it is now, was it? Especially not for offenders.’

‘And he’s working in a garage now.’

‘Tyre depot. But still working with cars, yes. Hasn’t committed any criminal offences since, according to my friend. As far as health goes, he might always have been prone to respiratory problems, but the serious asthma attacks seem to have started within a year of the incident. So...’ Merrily closed the pad, stared at the flat, pastel mosaic of the Paul Klee print. ‘Can I help him?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think I know what you might suggest. While the thought of it leaves me feeling exhausted already, the logic of it’s almost too perfect.’

‘Yes,’ Jeavons said.

‘Would you do it?’

‘What? Say it.’

‘The healing of the living and the healing of the dead. A formal Requiem Eucharist to bring peace to the soul of a nine-year-old boy who died seventeen years ago. And to his cousin, who has it all stored up inside him like some old video nasty that keeps replaying itself in his head... until it constricts his lungs.’

‘Textbook,’ Jeavons said. ‘Unless maybe they already had a Requiem?’

‘They didn’t. I tracked down the minister who conducted the funeral. It was at Hereford Crematorium, they weren’t practising Christians and it didn’t take long. That’s how I found out about the row during the service. Which didn’t end there. When Dexter’s dad bought a new car it was vandalized – tyres ripped, bodywork scored. Their house was also broken into twice – damage rather than theft. They suspected Darrin.’

Not without reason. Bliss had said Darrin had burgled his way through half the houses in south Hereford. The family blamed Dexter for Darrin turning bad.

‘A few months ago, according to my colleague, Darrin’s mother encountered Dexter’s mother in the car park at Safeway... spat in her face.’

‘The healing capabilities of time are often overrated,’ Jeavons said.

‘So there’s a good deal more to heal here than a case of asthma.’

‘You think she wanted you to find out about all this, the aunt?’

‘I don’t know.’ Merrily lit a cigarette. ‘Alice seems to be the eldest sister. She and her husband opened a chip shop in Ledwardine about twenty years ago. He died a while back. She must be well into her seventies now but still works there part-time. And does most of the cleaning in the church. And her niece in Solihull recently went on an Alpha course, which seems to have inspired Alice to come to one of our Sunday evenings.’

Felt the Holy Spirit was in her heart like a big white bird, and you could feel its wings fluttering. As if this big bird was trying to escape from her breast and fill the whole world with love and healing.

‘You got yourself an enormously interesting case, Merrilee,’ Lew Jeavons said. ‘Why you trying to avoid it?’

‘Am I?’

‘Reach out! Embrace!’

He laughed hugely, the bastard.

The White Company: cool name, but...

Well, come on, what did you expect?

Jane stood by the stairs with Ben, watching them bunched in the hall under the blown bulb, and thinking that at least they blended with the decor. Of the three of them, Elizabeth Pollen was the most animated. There was a youngish guy with limp hair and Harry Potter glasses who had, like, anorak stamped across his shallow forehead, and if he didn’t have spots it was only because the Clearasil was working this week.

Which meant that Alistair Hardy, the medium, the main man, had to be the heavy-set sixtyish person with pewtery hair and an intermittent scowl and a briefcase. A man clearly aware of his professional standing, like a small-town bank manager. It was laughable.

‘Right,’ Ben said. ‘If we’re all in agreement, I’d like to record some of Alistair’s testing of the individual rooms. Antony Largo would have been here himself, but he’s tied up on another project at the present. And so—’

And then, what Ben did, he plucked the Sony 150 out of Jane’s hands, just blatantly lifted it.

‘—I’ll have to shoot this myself.’ Moving away with the camcorder, he tossed her a brief, faintly rueful smile over his shoulder. ‘Jane, you might like to watch how I do this. Give you a few basic ideas.’

Son of a bitch!

Jane was boiling with embarrassment. She thought she could see the Harry Potter guy smirking. She turned to look for Amber, but Amber had gone, maybe to barricade the kitchen. Natalie appeared in the lounge doorway, met Jane’s eyes and shrugged, sympathetic but helpless.

18 Shock of the Proof

IN THE DINING room, Alistair Hardy said he could see a spirit.

It was all quite repulsive, Jane thought, like he was feigning a stroke. Hardy was wearing a dark grey suit and a black tie, maybe to suggest respect for the dead, and it was as though one side of him had gone numb. An arm was sticking out from his body, fingers curled, as if he was holding another hand.

He’d moved to the area where Jane had stood with her tray while serving breakfast to Ben and Antony and absorbing their edgy banter. The stained glass in the window, with only the night behind it, looked as dense as lead. The concertina radiators were silent; Ben and Amber had no heat to waste.

Ben was into a crouch, no more than a yard away from Hardy, aiming the camera upwards, probably to make the guy look more majestic; also close enough, according to Eirion’s rules, to pick up usable sound through the built-in mike.

‘There’s an elderly lady, with a stick... no... it’s a walking... Oh, what do you call it?’ Hardy’s metallic voice was pitched up, like a priest in church. If he was supposed to be from Edinburgh, why didn’t he have a Scottish accent? Sounded faintly West Midlands to Jane. ‘A Zimmer frame! An elderly lady with a Zimmer frame!’

Jane, standing over by the door with Natalie, murmured, ‘Well, that sounds suitably Victorian.’

It was freezing in here. She zipped up her fleece. She hadn’t yet decided if Hardy was a phoney or merely self-deluded, but the fact that the filming had been literally taken out of her hands allowed her to be as cynical and acidic as she liked.

‘I believe this place actually used to be an old people’s home, Alistair,’ the Harry Potter guy said.

‘Yes,’ Hardy said. ‘Thank you, Matthew.’

Jane thought, He must have known that anyway. It was strange, really; she had this fairly liberal acceptance of the paranormal, based on a couple of meaningful experiences of her own, but spiritualism just didn’t light her candle. It was fusty and sad; it was rooms full of lumbering furniture and old ladies smelling of camphor.

‘I would say the poor old dear had dementia,’ Hardy said. ‘She still doesn’t seem to be fully aware of her own passing. And so she walks this room, around and around. I expect I can probably help her get to where she should be. When I have a little more time.’

‘Meanwhile, we’ll just leave her to hobble around for a few more weeks,’ Jane murmured. ‘This guy should be working for the NHS.’

Natalie shook her head, a little smile on her perfect, ironic lips. What, precisely, did Natalie believe in? Jane realized she had no idea. And somewhere, the incurious Clancy was quietly getting on with her homework. Jane didn’t understand that, either.

Ben said, from behind the camera, ‘Just the one, ah, spirit, Alistair?’ His voice was conversational. You could hear it on TV already, the out-of-shot director’s diffident prompt.

‘I’m fairly sure this room is not the one we’re looking for, Ben.’ Hardy’s arm relaxed, his fingers uncurling. ‘Not to worry.’

‘You didn’t get much in the lounge, either.’

‘No. Let’s go back into the hall. Perhaps upstairs?’

Jane looked at Ben. Ben said nothing. She wondered how Amber would react if he showed Hardy the ‘secret’ passageway under the stairs. Or if he took them up to Hattie Chancery’s room. She and Nat let the four of them go through and waited. Ben had hurried ahead to get a shot of them vacating the dining room; he wouldn’t want the staff in the picture.

‘This is moderately naff,’ Jane murmured to Natalie.

‘Perhaps it’s not for us to say.’

Nat was demure tonight, in a black woollen dress, the kind Mum might wear. Of course, she was responsible for this, setting it up, because it would be good for the hotel. But would it? If Stanner developed a reputation as the haunt of saddoes, where was the future in that?

‘I mean, do you believe that guy can see anything at all?’

‘I don’t know, Jane – what do you think?’

‘I think maybe he does – or did have – some psychic ability. But if it’s not happening for him, he’ll just make something up. That’s where it all goes wrong. Nobody gets it all the time, but if you’re a so-called professional medium, with an audience expecting fireworks, you’re going to make sure they get what they want, aren’t you? Like, if you know this place was once an old people’s home, you invent an old girl on a zimmer.’

‘And what does your mother think?’

‘You been talking to Amber?’

‘Ben told me about her.’

‘That guy is so discreet. Amber would like it if Mum came in and scattered some holy water before the White Company gets into it.’

‘And would she do that?’

‘Probably. But the point is that I would rather she didn’t get involved. Because I like it here, you know? I like this job.’

When they decided it was safe to leave the dining room, they saw Alistair Hardy moving upstairs, up the red carpet and – oh hell – Amber was alone at the top of the kitchen steps. Her face was blank, but you could sense the tension in the way she was standing, both hands pressing on her apron with the design of a cottage on a hill.

There was a subdued tension everywhere, the air drab with negative emotion, and it was like the fabric of Stanner Hall was moulding itself around this. Like bad vibes were part of its heritage.

If Ben was aware of this, he was pretending he wasn’t, crouching at the bottom of the stairs shooting Alistair Hardy. He loves it, for the drama. He doesn’t believe in it for one minute. Hardy had got halfway to the first landing when he abruptly turned and came down again.

‘Ben, I’m being pulled the other way.’

Ben carried on recording: digital video was dirt-cheap, according to Eirion, and went on for ever. Hardy came quietly down, standing at the foot of the stairs with one arm out at an unnatural angle, his eyes not quite shut, so that you could see the whites, like the light under a closed door. Maybe he was simply telepathic and had picked up what was threshing around in Amber’s head.

Slowly, like a soldier patrolling a boundary, Hardy walked away into the dimmer part of the hall, where the blown bulb was. He looked across at Amber, who looked away. Then he turned back, Beth Pollen and the others watching him in silence. Mrs Pollen had on a short grey cape, like nurses used to wear, over a long viridian skirt. Would have made better video, Jane thought, if she was the medium.

‘You’re not alone, are you?’

Jane twisted round. Alistair Hardy was standing next to her. She could smell his aftershave; it seemed wrong, somehow, for a medium to be wearing aftershave; shouldn’t they project a neutral ambience? Jane stiffened. It was like the way cats always chose to rub up against the one person in the room who was allergic to cat hair. She tried to move away and bumped into Harry Potter, who didn’t move.

Hardy was looking at her, as if he was noticing her for the first time. She met his eyes: flat and grey and somehow leaden, like the stained glass in the dining room with no light behind it. She glanced away, found herself gazing directly into the dark lens of the camcorder – Ben on his knees on the worn rug in the centre of the hall, poised and steady and relaxed. She found they were all grouped around her now, like a coven. What? Jane spun, looking for a way out of this. The hall seemed suddenly full of people and shadows.

‘Rather distinguished woman,’ Hardy said. ‘Elderly, but not at all like the poor dear in the dining room. Has your—? I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’

Jane said nothing, reluctant to give anything away to this creep. She’d been fitted up. She wanted to kick the camera out of Ben’s hands. Then again, she wanted to go on working here. Possibly.

‘Jane,’ she said sullenly.

‘Ah yes.’ As if he’d known that all along and was just making sure that she knew who she was. ‘Jane, have you a granny who’s passed?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

Hardy smiled his bank manager’s smile. He had a gold filling. ‘She’s definitely with you, my dear.’

‘And you’re sure she hasn’t got Alzheimer’s?’

He kept on smiling, which was unnerving. He was supposed to lose his temper with her; spiritualists had no sense of humour, everybody knew that.

‘Property,’ Alistair Hardy said. ‘She has a message for you relating to property.’ His right hand seemed to be vibrating, fingers clawed.

‘I don’t deal much in property these days.’

‘She says... tell them not to give up on the house.’

Jane shrugged. Usual banal crap.

‘She’s taller than you,’ Alistair Hardy said. ‘As tall as me. Formidable, I think would be the word. She has... rather sharp features – strong would be a better word. Not someone to trifle with, certainly. And she’s wearing... a shawl? Quite a large, thick shawl.’

‘Don’t know anyone with a shawl. Well, my mum has an old black one that she—’ Jane shut her mouth. It was like with fortune tellers: you never went along with it, never fed them information they could build on. She looked beyond Alistair Hardy into the sepia shadow-stain around the bulb that had blown.

‘It’s not quite a shawl, it’s – help me here, somebody – what do you call one of those garments that became very popular for a while back in the seventies? South American origins.’ He lifted his good arm, started to snap his fingers in the air. ‘Somebody... what’s the word? Come on, this is quite significant.’

‘Oh,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘You mean...’

The word had burst in Jane’s brain before it was uttered. She kept on staring into the blown bulb, like her consciousness was being drawn into its fog, and the broken filament inside the bulb was the size of a dead tree, her hands going numb around it. She felt insubstantial, grey and vague, barely feeling her legs give way.

‘You mean a poncho,’ Mrs Pollen said.

Over the clanking of the van, Gomer said, ‘It don’t sound right to me, boy. Sounds like he was handing you a barrow-load of ole bullshit.’

‘He was always full of it,’ Danny admitted.

‘ “Bands of brigands roaming by night”?’ Gomer and Danny were both staring through the windscreen at the lightless fields beyond Walton, sloping up to Radnor Forest. They were going to pick up young Jane Watkins at Stanner before Gomer dropped Danny off at home, else she’d think Gomer had forgotten about her.

‘That’s what he said. He d’reckon it’s the only way the farmers gonner keep the fox population under control when the Government bans huntin’ with hounds.’

‘Ah well,’ Gomer said, ‘I can understand Sebbie comin’ out with that ole wallop when he’s got the MP round his place for cocktails – put the frighteners on the politicians kind of thing. But not to the likes of we.’

‘So what was them bloody Welshies doin’ in Jeremy’s yard, then? They had his barn all staked out, Gomer, like they’d got the fox trapped up in there. All it was was Jeremy’s ole sheepdog. They’d’ve bloody shot that dog if the kiddie hadn’t run in. Shot the dog out of sheer spite, I reckon.’

‘Should’ve called in the law, boy. Let them sort it out.’

‘He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do it, Gomer.’

‘Then you oughter be asking why he wouldn’t.’

‘That was what Sebbie said. That we oughter be asking why Jeremy didn’t want the cops round. And then the bastard was asking me if I was still doin’ dope. Like as if Jeremy didn’t want no cops round for the same reason I never did.’

‘You en’t still—?’

Danny coughed. ‘Bit of home-grown. Strickly for personal use. And only a bit.’ Giving Gomer a nervous glance on account of, to Gomer’s generation, a twist of wacky baccy could put you on the down-escalator into hell and blacken the name of Gomer Parry Plant Hire for ever. ‘Pigs don’t do you for that n’more, see, long as you en’t dealin’.’ He was being a bit careful, though, since Dacre had dropped the little phrase ‘Drug Squad’. He might be full of bullshit, but he did have contacts.

Gomer drove on steadily, said nothing. Good ole boy.

‘So this woman,’ Danny said. ‘Miz Natalie Craven. Two ways of lookin’ at that, Gomer. On the one hand, blokes is like, Lucky devil, what’s he got we en’t? Whereas women’s sayin’ she’s bewitched him, the slag.’

‘And Sebbie Dacre?’ Gomer wondered. ‘What’s Sebbie think about her?’

‘Sebbie’s had his share,’ Danny said.

‘Zelda Morgan, ennit, now?’

‘Zelda, aye. Off the boil a bit, what I yeard. Zelda mabbe fig-urin’ it wasn’t worth the candle – Sebbie’s moods.’

‘Or mabbe Sebbie’s thinkin’ he can do better than Zelda,’ Gomer said. ‘Mabbe lookin’ for a woman of means, way he got fleeced by the missus in the divorce court.’

‘Have you...’ Danny hesitating, as they rattled out onto the Kington Road. ‘You yeard anythin’ about Sebbie goin’ strange, Gomer?’

‘What way?’

‘Well... the Welsh shooters. Settin’ ’em on Jeremy. Like he’s got an obsession with Jeremy, now Jeremy’s got hisself a serious woman. Anything, really.’

‘You reckon it’s to do with the woman?’

‘Dunno.’

They drove on in silence for a while, then Danny said, ‘Sometimes, it feels like everything’s filled up with some’ing, and it’s only a matter of time ’fore it bursts. I thought it was the snow – you know that feeling you get when there’s snow on the way. But it en’t just snow.’

Gomer looked at him. ‘Well, if you feel that way, think what it’s like for Jeremy Berrows...’

Nat had taken Jane down to the kitchen.

There was an old flowery-patterned sofa under one of the high windows, and they sat there and Jane drank hot, sugary tea. In the opposite corner, Clancy’s homework was spread over a card table; when it was established that Jane was OK, Clancy had gone back to it. She was working quietly, underlining things with a ruler.

‘It’s never happened to me before.’ Jane shuffled to the edge of the sofa, glaring into her cup. She felt furious now at having personally created one of those moments for Alistair Hardy. Could imagine the Harry Potter creep relaying the story to his anorak mates, or – worse – keying it into some global spiritualist chat-room: the story of the girl who was determined to slag everything off just keeling over with the shock of the proof.

‘It happens,’ Natalie said, next to her.

‘It doesn’t happen to me. I never faint.’

Natalie said nothing. She hadn’t asked the obvious question. Nobody had, not even Alistair Hardy.

‘Where are they?’

‘In the bar,’ Nat said. ‘He’s still looking for what he calls a point of contact.’

‘Where’s Amber?’

‘I don’t know. Amber’s in a state.’

‘Wishing she’d never seen this place.’

‘Something like that.’

Jane said quickly, ‘When we first moved to Ledwardine, I had a very good friend who ran a shop that was devoted to the history and folklore of the area and the poetry of Thomas Traherne.’

‘Look, you don’t have to tell me,’ Natalie said. ‘Your past, above all things, is your own. You’re not obliged—’

‘I want to. It’s going to drive me insane otherwise, and I can’t tell Mum for obvious reasons. She was called Lucy Devenish, and she was killed on the road. Knocked off her moped. She was elderly and thin, and she had a face like some old warrior, and she—’ The tears were like spikes behind Jane’s eyes. ‘Every time she went out, Nat, she wore this... bloody poncho.’

Nat said nothing. There was silence in the vast kitchen, except for a slow bubbling from the stove and the squeak of Clancy’s fibre-tip. Clancy always pressed down too hard, as if the words might fade otherwise.

Jane clasped her hands together, squeezing tightly. ‘Do you think he took her out of my mind? Stole the memory? You see, I can’t believe that even if she... I can’t believe Lucy would talk to a tosser like that. I feel he’s been into my mind. I feel like he’s extracted her, like some computer hacker can get into your hard disk and pull out some ancient, buried file. It’s like a kind of rape.’

‘I doubt that, Jane,’ Nat said.

‘That he took it from my mind?’

Natalie didn’t reply. There were footsteps on the stone stairs, and then Alistair Hardy was standing there with Harry Potter. Hardy had his jacket off. He wore a pair of those archaic expanding armbands around his shirt sleeves. He peered at Jane, his face shiny.

‘All right now, are we, my love?’

‘We’re fine. Just I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I felt sick earlier. That’s all it was. I feel fine now.’

‘Good,’ Hardy said. ‘Mind if we come in?’

Natalie stood up. ‘Well, I think you ought to—’

‘Won’t take a moment. This is the kitchen, is it?’ He blinked. ‘Or servants’ quarters once, I suppose.’

‘That’s right,’ Harry Potter said. ‘I’ve seen the Victorian plans.’

‘Where’d you get those?’ Jane stood up. She was half afraid her legs would give way again, but she was OK. Plans? They had plans of the house? Did Ben know about this?

‘Where’s Ben?’ Natalie said.

‘Oh, he’s gone outside.’ Harry Potter pulled a slick of hair from his concave forehead. ‘We were out near the entrance, and there was some shooting going on in the grounds, and he said it was coming through on the soundtrack and ruining everything. He was really annoyed. He’s gone out to – you know – remonstrate with them.’

Hell, the shooters...

‘Oh Christ.’ Natalie jumped up, pushed between Alistair Hardy and Potter, almost colliding with someone moving slowly down the stone steps.

Amber. She stood at the foot of the steps for several seconds after Nat had gone. Jane wanted to go after Nat, but...

Amber. Those people will not go into my fucking kitchen.

Jane saw Alistair Hardy walking in his measured, deliberate way across the flags until the island unit the size of Australia was between him and Amber.

‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mrs Foley,’ he said.

19 Nancy Boy

AMBER SAID, AND it was almost a wail, ‘This is the kitchen. This is the heart—’

‘Of the house. Yes. Precisely.’

Alistair Hardy was leaning forward over the enormous island unit, his hands splayed on the oiled hardwood: the bank manager at his desk, laying down the options.

But he and Amber weren’t coming from the same direction at all, Jane knew that much. Amber meant that the kitchen was the heart of her own shrinking world. This woman was probably all that was truly professional and worthwhile about the Stanner Hall Hotel, and this was her refuge, where what remained of her confidence was located, while the rest of the house faded and dripped and crumbled and rotted and soaked up money. This was her place. Whereas Hardy...

‘It’s on a lower level than the rest,’ Harry Potter explained. ‘They had to build the foundations into the rock. This part of the house is sunk into some of the oldest stone in the country – over six hundred and fifty million years—’

‘So what?’ Amber was arching from the hips in furious incomprehension. ‘I mean, six hundred million, four thousand million – all rock’s pretty bloody old compared with the human race. I don’t see the point of this.’

She backed off a little, maybe realizing that, she was shouting at the people who would be paying for Christmas.

‘Mrs Foley...’ Beth Pollen was stepping down on to the flags. ‘Oh golly, what a mess. All my fault. I assumed you were au fait with everything. If I’d known you were at all worried, I live just a few miles away, I could easily have—’

‘You don’t understand,’ Amber said.

For Jane, the vast kitchen had taken on a cavern-like feel: the purply-greyness, the uneven lighting, the high windows like enlarged slits in the stone. Perhaps some of that very ancient stone was in these actual walls – Amber’s kitchen sanctuary formed out of Stanner Rocks. In the corner, Clancy sat watching from her card table, the pen still in her right hand.

Amber must have touched a switch somewhere because the small bank of halogen lights came on, turning Hardy’s face bright pink.

He didn’t move. ‘Mrs Foley, I knew as soon as I came down the steps. This is where it happened.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Amber said.

‘It’s in the records.’ The Harry Potter guy, Matthew, strolled into the centre of the room. He seemed older now than Jane had first figured, probably even thirtyish, not much younger than Amber. ‘We know that the textile magnate, Walter Chance, who built this house, had a vague interest in spiritualism, as did a lot of people at the end of the nineteenth century. It was fashionable, state of the art – except that to them, of course, it was very much a science, with lots of gadgets. The scientific advances and the technological developments during this comparatively short period were mind-bogg—’

‘We know all that,’ Jane said, and was gratified when Matthew looked at her, irritated.

‘Who is this girl?’

‘Kitchen-maid.’ Jane did a tight smile. ‘With attitude.’

‘Let him finish, Jane,’ Amber said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

‘Walter retired here with his new young wife.’ Matthew looked at Amber. ‘I expect you know all this.’

It was clear to Jane that Amber didn’t. But had Ben known? Were there aspects of this that he’d hidden? Because if there were, he was going to be in some deep trouble tonight.

‘Mrs Bella Chance – or Chancery as they were known by then – was from London,’ Matthew said, ‘and Walter wanted to give her the kind of social life she was used to. He’d throw these big house parties, no expense spared. Hence a kitchen this size – loads of servants. He’d invite minor aristocracy, and some of them even turned up. But Walter Chancery was generally regarded as pretty crass and vulgar, and they were never really accepted either by the local people or by the gentry.’

Jane thought she could hear raised voices from outside, hoped to God, after what Clancy had told her about the bad attitude of the shooters at Jeremy’s, that Ben wasn’t chancing his arm with them. Especially while she wasn’t there, with her video camera. Christ, what if he still had it with him? What if it got broken?

Nothing she could do. Couldn’t walk out now. Besides, this was becoming interesting, stuff worth knowing, for a student of the Border. If you could put up with the anorak drone.

‘So when Walter discovered that Conan Doyle had friends and relatives nearby and sometimes stayed in the area... You see, we just don’t have authors now as celebrated as Conan Doyle was then. If the Strand was publishing a new Holmes story, there’d be endless queues for copies. Now, Doyle was told about the Hound by his friend Fletcher Robinson – who, despite being a Devonian, was said to have come across the story in a Welsh guidebook. So we assume that Doyle was making inquiries about it in the area. And the Chancerys, when they learned that the great man was staying in the vicinity, well, you can imagine they just had to have him as their house guest.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Amber came into the light. ‘I think this is conjecture. Ben’s been all over the place, trying to find evidence—’

‘Mrs Foley...’ Beth Pollen came forward, her cape folded over her arm, looking reassuringly nice and motherly, but you never really knew with these people. ‘The main reason your husband didn’t find out about this was simply because nobody wanted him to. The only remaining family in this area related to the Chancerys are the Dacres, who certainly don’t like to talk about it.’

‘I don’t know them.’

‘It wouldn’t help you if you did. There’s only one left – Sebastian Dacre, and he’s a difficult man. Ironically, the one place where your husband might have laid hands on useful documentation was in the very extensive records of The Baker Street League in London. Which is where I first happened upon them. Does this begin to make a certain kind of sense?’

Amber said, ‘And you have copies of this... documentation?’

‘Mysteriously – or perhaps not so mysteriously – when I applied to the committee to draw out the relevant papers to allow me to make some photocopies, they seemed to have... disappeared. I explained all this to your husband earlier.’

‘You’re saying this is something to do with Dr Kennedy?’

‘Dr Kennedy now disputes that the material ever existed, and Dr Kennedy is now in virtual control of The League. Furthermore, he and most of the present committee very much deplore the White Company and all it stands for. They’d rather forget Doyle’s obsession with spiritualism. And I’m not sure they’d go out of their way to preserve an account handwritten by a participant in the Stanner seances for a London magazine, Cox’s Quarterly – which, it appears, paid for it in full but never, in fact, published it. Was, in fact, persuaded – we think – not to publish.’

‘And you’re saying this article proved conclusively that Conan Doyle based his novel on the legend of Thomas Vaughan and the Hound of Hergest?’ Amber’s hands were pushing down the bulges in her apron again. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘What I read certainly suggested that, after his evening here, Doyle was fully acquainted with the Vaughan story. We’ve since established that the man who wrote it, who was quite elderly at the time, died within a year of submitting it, still waiting for his piece to appear. And the magazine itself went to the wall a short time later. We don’t know how or when the article fell into the hands of The Baker Street League, but I don’t suppose that’s important now.’

Interesting. Jane imagined Ben and Antony in London, doorstepping Neil Kennedy, for the programme: So, tell us Dr Kennedy, why did you suppress documentary evidence that Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel was based not in Devon but on the Welsh Border?

She waited for Amber to ask the other crucial question – what happened here? But Amber didn’t. Amber really didn’t want to know.

Sod that.

‘Excuse me.’ Jane stood up. ‘You said the writer of this article was a participant. Like, participant in what? What did they actually do here, in this room?’

There was a silence.

She never got an answer. In the midst of the hush, she heard chair legs scraping the flags in Clancy’s corner of the kitchen, as Beth Pollen looked at Hardy and Matthew adjusted his glasses and said, ‘Should I attempt to—?’

By then Clancy was on her feet.

‘Mum!’

Matthew was frozen into silence. Natalie had arrived at the bottom of the kitchen steps, dark brown hair tumbled over one eye, the sleeves of her black woollen dress pushed up over the elbows. Both men looking at her, because that was what men did.

‘Amber...’ The calmness in Nat’s voice was like this really thin membrane over panic. ‘Do we have a first-aid kit?’

The halogen lights were showing up, around her wrists, these wild, wet swatches of what could only be – Jesus Christ – fresh blood.

Amber’s whole body jerked. ‘Where’s Ben?’

Jane sprang up and ran for the steps.

At the bottom of the car park, there was a small wrought-iron gate to an old footpath that Ben had cleared. The path went down through the grounds, curving through tangled woodland, almost to the edge of the bypass, facing Stanner Rocks. This was where Ben went jogging most mornings; you could go along the side of the main road and then join up with the main drive back to the hotel.

Now the gate was open. Footprints in the snow.

Jane went through hesitantly, carrying the rubber-covered torch that Amber had given her; there was no great need for it: the moon was out and the ground was bright with virgin snow.

‘Careful,’ Amber said, the white canvas first-aid bag over her shoulder. ‘For God’s sake. We don’t know—’

‘It’s all right.’ Ben’s voice from some yards away – Ben’s voice like Jane had never heard it before, kind of thin and stringy. ‘It’s all right, Amber. All right, now.’

Just the other side of the gate was a small clearing. Jane stayed on the edge of it and shone the torch towards Ben’s voice. The beam unrolled a white carpet slicked by the marks of skidding footwear. No sign of the shooters, no voices other than the Foleys’.

‘Stay there, Jane.’ Amber put down the first-aid bag and said to Ben, ‘What have you done?’

It was like she’d asked him to stir the soup and he’d let it boil over. It was always easy to underestimate Amber: she worried about intangibles, but only because she was a practical person, controlled. She’d sent Natalie to the ladies’ loo to get cleaned up and then stand by to call an ambulance.

‘I’m sorry.’ Ben let out a long, hollow breath that was more than a half-sob. ‘I’m really sorry about this.’

At the same time she saw Ben, Jane heard these liquid snuffling noises, knowing as he turned into the torchlight that he was not making them. Behind him was a fence post with no fence, only shorn-off twists of barbed wire nailed to it. And a hump on the ground.

Ben turned fully towards them, rising, and Jane gasped. His Edwardian jacket hung open, exposing his once-white shirt, emblazoned now with a blotch like a red rose.

‘Lost it,’ Ben said. ‘I lost it.’ And then he giggled. He was trembling hard. He stumbled. ‘Oh Jesus.’

‘Hold the torch a bit steadier, can you, Jane?’ Amber looked at Ben. It was like he’d been fighting a duel and staggered back, rapiered through the heart.

‘No, really, I’m all right. Don’t bother about me. I’m really all right. We should see to—’

He gestured vaguely at the hump on the ground. Jane had been afraid to look at the hump. Hoping it was a dead tree. Or something. Something that didn’t snuffle.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ Ben said again.

The man was lying with his shoulders propped against the fence post. He was wearing camouflage trousers, an army jacket. He was holding his head back against the post. You couldn’t see much of his face through all the blood, but his mouth was hanging open, and there was blood in there, too, and all around his lips and nose, bubbling through a film of dirt and snot. Jane recoiled, swallowing bile. It was like he’d been bobbing for apples in a barrel of blood.

‘Called me a nancy boy, you see.’ Ben moved away back, so that Amber could undo the first-aid bag. ‘Nat tried to stop the bleeding. Not very successfully, I’m afraid.’

‘He needs to go to a hospital.’ Amber’s voice was crisp as the snow. ‘You’ve broken his nose, for a start.’

‘Is that really necess—? I mean, can’t you—?’

‘Ben, you’ve smashed his face! I can’t believe you could—’

‘It was dark, I couldn’t see what I— For God’s sake, Amber, they were destroying it all. Everything was going so— And then these, these bloody shots, shaking all the glass in the windows. These bast— That’s illegal, that’s—’

The man on the ground squirmed, as if he was trying to get up, and then he slid back down the post like he was tied to it. He tried to speak, but his voice was like a thick soup. He started to choke.

Amber said, ‘Jane, leave me the torch and then go back to the house and tell Nat we need an ambulance, will you?’

‘Naw!’ The man was prising himself up, his back jammed against the fence post. ‘No abulath!’

Ben snatched the torch away from Jane, the way he’d grabbed the video camera, and held it up over his shoulder, the way police held their torches, gripping the lighted end, so they could use the thick stem as a club.

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He said no ambulance.’ Jane retched.

Amber said, ‘What are you going to do now, Ben – beat all his teeth out?’

‘You don’t understand.’ Ben shone the torch briefly round the clearing. ‘There’s two more of these bastards somewhere. And a gun. One of them’s got a gun.’

‘He’s...’ Jane backed away. ‘He’s right. They were at Jeremy’s. They were going to shoot Jeremy’s dog.’

‘Then tell Natalie to phone the police as well,’ Amber said. ‘Jane, go!’

‘Yes.’

Jane turned away, grateful for an excuse, and ran blindly across the clearing towards the wooden gate. Couldn’t believe what Ben had done. OK, he was furious at the shooters invading his land, and it had been building up for weeks, and he was frustrated and desperate for something to work out. But this was Ben Foley – artistic, funny, slightly camp. You thought you knew people. You thought you knew—

She was pulling at the gate when the hands came down on her shoulders.

TWENTY Not About Foxes

‘SO HOW DID you find out, vicar?’ Alice Meek said. Resignation there, but no big surprise. ‘Who told you?’

Merrily shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t be fair. But it was more a question of finding out that there was something to find out. You know?’

‘You was guided.’ Alice put a mug of coffee in front of her. ‘See, Dexter, he thought you was just gonner lay your hands on him. He said he wouldn’t mind that. He come back afterwards, he says, that’s it, don’t wanner go n’more. I said, Dexter, I said, nothing comes easy, in this life. You want the Holy Spirit to pay you a visit in all His glory, I said, you gotter play your part, boy.’

Alice had a bungalow in a new close off Old Barn Lane, not a hundred yards from her chip shop. Alice’s kitchen was bright and shiny and full of chrome. Like a chip shop, in fact. It occurred to Merrily that, of all the women who gave up their time to clean the church, Alice was probably the oldest, the busiest and the richest.

And no kids. Dexter could be in for a sizeable bequest. Whatever Alice wanted, Dexter would have to listen.

‘What I was going to suggest, Alice...’ Nervously, Merrily sipped the coffee. It was, as she’d expected, the kind you made if you needed to work all night. ‘I mean, there might be something in this for more than Dexter.’

She hadn’t wanted to waste any time, to dwell too much on this before taking action. She’d walked straight down to Old Barn Lane and gone into the chip shop just as it was opening for the evening. Alice wasn’t working tonight, but the woman there, Sharon, had phoned Alice at home and Alice had told Sharon to send the vicar round directly.

‘En’t never had no kids, vicar, as you know. Used to babysit the others. Oldest sister, no kids, you spends half your nights babysitting – they think they’re doing you a favour.’ Alice sat herself down in a chrome-framed chair at the chrome-legged table. ‘What I’m saying, I knowed all of ’em, vicar, all them kids, better’n their own mothers in some ways, truth was known. Kids talks to the babysitter, see – when they wakes up in the night, when they’re tryin’ to put you off sending ’em to bed, they talks.’

‘So Dexter, Darrin, Roland...’

‘Babysitted all them boys for years. Never hardly had a Saturday night at home. Roland, he wasn’t like the others. Upsets me still to think about that child. He was... like he didn’t belong in that family. They’re – I’m saying this even though it’s my own family, but they’re a rough bunch, vicar, en’t got no social graces. En’t saying there’s no goodness at the heart of ’em, but you gotter dig deep sometimes. ’Cept with Roland. A true innocent, that child. He was that innocent it was like he didn’t belong in this world, which is a daft thing to say—’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘Like he never growed a skin, vicar. Sometimes, I wakes up in the night, years him, clear as day, sniffin’ his tears back. “Daddy was drunk”, he’d say. “Daddy’d come in drunk and he smelled bad.” Saturdays, see, Richie, he’d spend the whole afternoon in the pub – come back, trample on the kids’ toys and laugh hisself daft about it. Then they’d go out, him and my sister, Lisa, and I’d come round and babysit and clean up the mess and dry the tears. And talk to Roland. Darrin, he was his dad’s son, didn’t wanner talk, got bored easy. Roland, he wasn’t like neither of them. You think about what happened to him, and you think, why? Why was he put on this earth for that short time, for that to happen?’

‘You learned something from him,’ Merrily said.

‘Yes.’ Alice’s sharp little eyes filled up – a rarity, Merrily guessed.

‘What about Dexter’s family?’

‘That’s the middle sister, Kathleen. Her ex-husband, Mike, least he kept a job longer’n a week when they was together. None of ’em was bright, look, no get-up-and-go. You only gotter look at Dexter. I couldn’t look at Dexter for months, mind, after Roland died. I thought – God help me – why couldn’t it be him instead, or Darrin?’

‘Darrin’s... been in trouble?’

‘I never knows whether he’s in or out of prison, vicar, been in that many times. Beyond all redemption now, that boy. His dad, he was always destructive, but that was just clumsy and careless, through drink mostly – he never done nothing criminal. Most he ever got done for was urinatin’ in a public place – doorway of the Old House, dead centre of the city, all the shops still open, you imagine anybody that stupid? Thick as a beam-end, Richie. But Darrin – when his ma blamed Dexter for what happened to Roland, Darrin went and did damage on them, and Kath and Mike, they wouldn’t put the police on him ’cause they was ashamed of what Dexter done.’

Merrily sighed.

‘Problem with Dexter, look, he en’t got no charm, do he, vicar? Too fat, en’t too pretty to look at and not much of a way with him. Nothin’ about him, is there? Most people, they don’t know what he did – never did, even at the time; his name wasn’t in no papers nor nothin’, ’cause of his age. But he always reckons everybody knows and whatever he do they en’t gonner think no better of him, so he don’t even make the effort. But inside, it all builds up.’

‘Until he can’t breathe.’

It all added up. Except, perhaps, for the Requiem for Roland seventeen years dead. This was something she wouldn’t even have thought of before meeting Llewellyn Jeavons. It was unknown country. Embrace, Lew had said. Embrace the entire dysfunctional family? Was she big enough for this?

‘Nobody got no time for the boy but me n’more,’ Alice said. ‘He’s had girlfriends, but they drifts away. En’t a good bet, is he?’ She looked at Merrily. ‘What you got in mind then, vicar? You gonner have to spell it out for an ole woman.’

The difficult part. Merrily looked up and saw her own face reflected, warped and stretched and crushed, in shiny things on shelves.

Danny Thomas said, ‘We’ll take him to the hospital in the van. No problem at all.’ He turned to the man with the face like a bloodied waxwork. ‘Nathan, ennit, as I recall?’

The guy grunted something about his mates. Amber, apparently oblivious to the cold and the carnage, had cleaned his wounds the best she could and gone calmly back to the hotel. It was all less disturbing now, in the clearing, with Danny and Gomer there.

‘Looks like your mates didn’t hang about, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘If they got a mobile, we can phone ’em from the hospital and they’ll come and pick you up, mabbe.’

Everything was turned around now. The moment of panic when the hands had come down on Jane’s shoulders, and then the moment of wild relief when Ben had shone the torch on the man’s face and it had a beard and hair like grey seaweed around it and a puzzled expression.

‘Yes, but how—?’ Ben sounded worried again. ‘How’s he going to explain to the hospital what happened?’

‘Stick to the truth, I’d say,’ Gomer said. ‘What happened, he slipped on the ice and snow and come down on that ole broken post with his nose. We’d just parked the van, comin’ to pick Janey up, and we years the poor bugger moaning. Don’t reckon our friend yere’s gonner wanner make n’more of it than that.’

Jane had to smile. For a while, after what happened to his depot and to Nev, it had looked like Gomer’s effective years were over; he’d been erratic, disconnected. Now he was back in gear. And bringing Danny into the business... that had been inspired. Mavericks, both of them.

‘If you got a toilet that en’t too posh, with a basin and an ole pair of jeans, that might help too,’ Danny said to Ben. ‘We’ll stand outside, make sure he don’t get away. All right, Nathan?’

Nathan might have nodded. The blood had stopped flowing, but he was still breathing through his mouth.

‘This is very good of you guys,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t know what you saw—’

‘Not much,’ Gomer assured him. ‘Not much at all. What you wanner do now, Janey? Come with us to the hospital, or I come and pick you up on the way back?’

‘That’d be out of your way,’ Jane said. ‘I’d better come, I suppose.’

Not exactly looking forward to sharing a back seat with the remains of Nathan, but what could she do? She waited with Gomer in the foyer while Danny escorted Nathan into the ground-floor gents and Ben ran upstairs to replace his torn and saturated trousers. There was no sign of the White Company. Were they still in the kitchen? Was she missing Alistair Hardy’s first attempts to reach Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? All that stuff seemed so unreal now. As unreal as the idea of Lucy Devenish floating around her like some pagan angel.

‘What did you really see?’ she asked Gomer.

‘Like I said, not much at all, Janey.’ Gomer got out his tin to roll a ciggy. ‘Starts off when we’re just about to turn up the drive and Danny spots this green Discovery in the lay-by across the road, no lights. Had a run-in with these boys the other night, see.’

‘Clancy told me.’

‘Did she? Well, Danny’s quite keen to discuss a little matter of severe damage to Greta’s runabout, so he pulls in, and we waits a while. Then we sees the three of ’em running up the drive with the gun. Then there’s about three shots. That’s it for Danny – puts the lights on full beam, the ole fog lamps too, goes revving up the drive, windows down, bawling out, “Armed Police, stay where you are!” Seen ’em do it on the box.’

‘Cool.’

‘Bloody worked, too, ennit? They wouldn’t know, that stage. They muster took to the woods, ’cause next thing we seen two of ’em back on the road behind us. Jump straight into the Discovery and off. This one – Nathan – your mate Foley likely had him cornered by then. Time we gets to the top, we years Foley shoutin’ at the feller, Miz Craven trying to calm both of ’em down. He’s saying to the Welshie, Just tell us what this is about, all we wanner know’s what it’s about. Someone payin’ you to make trouble, kind of thing. Then Miz Craven, her says some’ing and then this Welshie – he don’t sound too scared, not then – we years him go, “So what you gonner do about it, you and this nancy boy?” And that’s when I reckon Foley goes for him.’

‘Insult to injury.’ Jane recalled Ben on the last night of the murder weekend. They think I’m soft. They think I’m effete, some arty bastard from London. Then he’d said, Where I come from we have real hard bastards.

Scary.

‘So, what if the hospital ask questions?’

‘Ah, that boy, he en’t gonner say nothin’. Wouldn’t look too good, where he comes from, getting ’isself filled in by – pardon me – a London pansy.’

‘What if the hospital tell the police?’

Gomer shrugged, lighting his ciggy. ‘Could always not bother goin’ all the way to the hospital – kick the bugger out, side o’ the road.’

And, for a few moments, Jane thought that was what they were going to do, when Danny Thomas pulled into the bay fronting a closed and lightless garden centre on the Hereford road and switched off the engine.

‘Right, then,’ Danny said.

He and Nathan were in the front, Jane and Gomer sitting on bags of sand and cement on the deck of the van. Nathan had his shaven head tilted over the back of his seat. He was wearing the jeans that Ben had brought for him. They were too long. And they were white – a last, desperate joke, as Ben had accepted from Danny, with a moue of distaste, the bin liner containing Nathan’s camouflage trousers.

Nathan sat up in a hurry. There was enough moonlight to show that he was very scared.

‘Relax,’ Danny said. ‘What you gotter worry about? All you done is wrecked my wife’s car and nearly put my eye out with a rifle. Do I look like the sorter feller holds a grudge?’

Nathan made a lunge at the door, slamming into it with his shoulder. He cried out.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Danny said. ‘Oughter’ve told you, that door’s knackered, he is – only opens from the outside. You gotter wind down the window, see, lean out and do it that way. You wanner bit o’ help with that, is it?’

Nathan slumped, still breathing hard through his mouth, like he had a very heavy head-cold. ‘Juss fuggig... ged id over.’

‘What – beat the shit out of you? Mess those lovely dinky white jeans? Nathan, we come to your aid, man. We’re your friends.’

‘Fuggoff.’

‘And friends – what does friends do but share a few confidences?’

A lighted bus went past on the Hereford road, and you could see the scar on Danny’s forehead like an angry red slug-trail. Beside Jane, Gomer took out his ciggy tin. Jane began to feel an edge of trepidation about what they were going to do to a man already in need of serious medical attention.

Nathan said, ‘You lemme out now, made, we’ll leave id at thad, eh?’

‘Mate?’ Danny said. ‘Mate? I was a fucking long-haired twat, if you recall, the other night.’ He leaned towards Nathan. ‘Do you recall the other night?’

Nathan said nothing.

‘Well, I recalls it in detail, Nathan, I recalls leavin’ with a whole load o’ questions bobbing around in my head, which also happened to hurt like hell. So where you wanner start? Let’s start with who’s paying you. Let’s start with Mr Sebbie Dacre.’

‘Dacre’s... nod payig us nothig.’

Danny pondered this, nodding rhythmically, like he was at a gig.

‘Nathan, one thing we don’t do is we don’t lie to our friends. Now we can have you all tucked up in Casualty in ten minutes – or at least in the bloody queue – or we can sit yere a while longer, admiring the moonlight over the Wye Valley.’

‘I’m id fuggig agony, you bassard!’ The sweat on Nathan’s face was making the dried blood glisten like jam.

‘And I feel for you, Nathan, but we en’t goin’ nowhere till after we has a meaningful conversation. Now... Dacre.’

‘Tells us go id heavy,’ Nathan said.

‘On Foley?’

‘Uh!’ Nathan twisted his head. ‘Be-ows.’

‘What?’

‘Beddows!’

‘Jeremy Berrows?’

Nathan nodding. ‘Said he was a bad tenad.’

‘He en’t a bloody tenant!’

‘Didn’ pay. Nebber fixed fences, loosed his sheep—’

‘Bullshit!’

‘Is whaddhe said!’ Nathan coughing, phlegmy. ‘Said go id hard. Beast on his ground, he won’t kill id!’

‘Beast?’

‘Seven grand,’ Nathan said.

‘What?’

‘Seven grand if we geds him.’

‘Nathan—’

‘Swearda God. We brings him a body, we geds seven, cash.’

On the back seat, Jane went rigid. Gomer carried on rolling his ciggy.

‘Run that by me again, Nathan,’ Danny said.

‘Fuggsake... We brigs him a beast, it’s seven thousad. Cash.’

There was a long silence. Gomer wet the ciggy paper with the tip of his tongue. Jane looked at Nathan; he wasn’t as old as she’d thought, might be no more than mid-twenties. And maybe not as hard as he’d imagined he was. You could start to feel sorry for Nathan. But she still didn’t understand what he was on about. Seven thousand?

‘Forgive me – we en’t talking ’bout foxes yere, are we?’ Danny said.

Nathan tried to breathe through his shattered nose and the breath got caught somewhere. There was a clicky, ratchety noise, and Nathan whimpered in pain. Whatever he’d done, Jane just wished they’d get this over, get him to hospital.

‘What, then?’ Danny said.

‘Dog.’

Jane breathed in hard. ‘Clancy said—’

Danny raised a hand. ‘Go on, Nathan.’

‘Killid’ sheep. Dacre said he’d god five, six sheep, throa’s ripped out.’

‘When?’

‘Dunno. Recent. Didn’ wad no fuss, no panig, see. Just wannid dealin’ wid.’

‘For seven grand? You really expect me to—?’

‘Wadds id kept quiet, he does, dassa mai’ thig. Don’ wadda locals involved. And don’ you go spreadin’ dis around, ’cause dis Dacre’s a hard basd—’

‘Seven grand?’

‘Swearda God! I’m not godder make ub da’ kinda moddey, ab I?’

‘And that’s why you was gonner shoot Jeremy Berrows’s sheepdog?’

‘We wadder godder shoot no fuggig shee’dog!’ Nathan gritted his teeth, rocking his head. ‘Bigger, yeh? Down from the Ridge. Big black bugger.’

Danny turned round to Gomer. ‘He on about?’

‘Hold on, boy.’ Gomer leaned over Danny’s seat, and Jane knew what Mum meant about the light in his glasses. ‘You talking some’ing like... for instance, there was this so-called puma down West Wales, year or two back.’

‘Uh!’ Nathan nodding hard, wincing at the pain. ‘We was on dat... How Dacre god onto us, see.’

‘A mystery beast? That’s what you’re sayin’? Dacre reckons he’s got a mystery beast preying on his stock?’

Nathan closed his eyes, still nodding, sank down in the passenger seat.

Jane felt this unearthly tingle.

‘Comin’ out of Jeremy Berrows’s ground?’

‘Uh.’

Danny said, ‘Let me get this right, boy. Sebbie Dacre was offering you and your mates seven thousand pound if you brought him the body of a big black dog that been attacking his flocks. Usin’ you on account he didn’t want no local boys involved.’

Nathan made some kind of grunt you could probably take as affirmation. Danny turned back to Gomer.

‘I knew it, see. All that bullshit about demonstratin’ what it’s gonner be like if they bans huntin’ with hounds...’

‘The Hound,’ Jane said, breathless. ‘The black—’

Gomer put a hand on her arm. ‘Don’t get too carried away, Janey. We don’t know the half of it yet.’

‘Berrows’s ground,’ Danny whispered. ‘Gwilym Bufton said Sebbie seen it on Berrows’s ground.’

Jane said, ‘Danny, I think...’

She was looking at Nathan struggling to sit up. A gout of fresh, bright blood flooded out over his lips. Jane stifled a scream.

‘Oh hell,’ Danny said, not too calmly. He turned on the engine.